For February 4-10, 2026

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. We’re just finding this out now, at the worst possible time, but apparently Tandem Downhill Short Humor Writing is NOT an event in the winter Olympics?? Anyway, if anyone has any recommendations for things to do in Cortina d'Ampezzo, let us know. We’re going to be here for almost two more weeks and we have a lot more time on our hands than we expected. (Please don’t suggest that we go see the Olympics, it would be too painful.)

What We Enjoyed This Week

Prop Bet Ideas from Someone Who Got Their Hand Stuck in the Toilet at Last Year's Super Bowl Party by Patrick Coyne (Points in Case) This is an extremely silly premise executed in a very clever way. Filtering the story through the prop bets form gives Patrick something to play off of, and allows him to rest the “hand stuck in toilet” jokes so that when he returns to them, they hit even harder. The character and the scenario are so funny, but presenting them via a straightforward narrative or monologue wouldn’t work nearly as well.

Airborne Thoughts of an Olympic Ski Jumper by Jesse Kubanet (McSweeney’s) We never thought about it this way before, but those ski jumpers do spend a lot of time up there, and they must be thinking about something! We always love it when a short humor piece makes you consider something in a new light—and we also love the image of the daydreaming ski jumper that this piece puts in the reader’s head.

My Dinner With Danny Kaye by Ruth Reichl (La Briffe) You’re a food critic who has been invited to the home of a famous actor so he can make you dinner. The actor is known for comedies but takes cooking extremely seriously, and has quite a high opinion of his own abilities in the kitchen. If he doesn’t live up to his own hype, will you be able to smile and nod your way through the meal, or will you have to tell him what you really think? That’s the tantalizing setup for this terrific piece of nonfiction that’s full of fantastic details and evocative descriptions of food.

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An Old Favorite

A Day in the Life of a Target-Market Female by Katie Brinkworth (McSweeney’s) This is a really fun satire of advertising tropes—it’s also an incredibly comprehensive collection of those tropes! The use of the “daily routine” form is terrific too. Since different products are associated with different times of day, Katie can explore her premise in a way that feels totally organic just by taking the reader from morning to night.

Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.

Updates From Your Editors and Friends of the Newsletter

James is reading on a cool new show called RAGEBAIT, on Friday Feb 20th at Nightclub 101, starting at 6:30 pm! All of the performers (and it’s a stacked line-up) will be reading parodies of ragebait, the viral, narcissistic, delusional confessional essays that make digital media go ‘round. Would love to see you there!

And over at Lit Hub, James wrote about two pieces of paranoid fiction he’s been thinking about a lot recently.

Luke had a new piece in McSweeney’s last Friday! It’s called, When I Invited All of You Over to Watch “The Big Game,” I Assumed You Knew I Was Talking about Human Chess.

Luke also has just ONE spot left in his Wednesday afternoon workshop starting Feb 18th! (His other February workshops are SOLD OUT.) And you can check out some of the great writing that’s come out of past workshops in this thread.