A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For March 7-13, 2019, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. Facebook and Instagram were down yesterday, leaving millions of people without a way to find links to short humor pieces! This just goes to prove what we've been saying for a long time: Social media is dying and newsletters are the future. If you know someone who went through short humor piece withdrawal yesterday, why not suggest they subscribe to this newsletter? It's trustworthy, reliable (except when we send it out late, but let's not focus on that right now), and we don't sell your personal data because we don't have any of it. (Actually, full disclosure: some subscribers DO keep emailing us their data--but we don't want it! Please stop doing this.)
 

What We Enjoyed This Week

Tips for Writing a Novel by Riane Konc (The New Yorker) This piece features some truly excellent joke writing. A piece like this alone would be more than enough to secure a spot in the newsletter, BUT...

Congratulations On Your Accomplishment! by Riane Konc (McSweeney's) ...that's not all from Riane this week! She also had THIS equally great piece published by McSweeney's ON THE VERY SAME DAY as the last one. (McSweeney's editor Chris Monks dubbed this rare achievement a "McShouty.") We think the best way to congratulate Riane is to paraphrase her own words from this very piece: "This accomplishment is so great for you. AND it’s great that [we're] able to accept that a good thing has happened to you without using it as a jumping off point from which [we'll] fixate on all of [our] personal and professional shortcomings! Haha! [We're] on a trampoline of existential pain and [we] can’t stop bouncing!"

Angry Metal Album Art Neural Networks by Sam Lade (Angry Metal Guy) Can you train a neural network to tell the difference between death metal album art and black metal album art? And can that same neural network, having been thus trained, then be used to tell us which cats are death metal cats, and which cats are black metal cats? Sam Lade has the answers.

Your Guide to the Cool New Airport Terminal by Dan Hopper (The New Yorker) The details in this piece are spot on. A very funny evocation of the strange, insular world of airports.

Daily Itinerary of the Pantsuit of a Twenty-something Who’s Just Trying to Get a Job by Delaney Murphy (The Belladonna) In honor of International Women's Day, The Belladonna had one of their signature Belladonna Ballyhoos, publishing a dozen articles, and raising money for Dress for Success. This was just one of the great pieces they ran on Friday--you should definitely check out the others as well. And you can learn more about For Success, and donate, at this link.
 

An Old Favorite

Establishing Shots from a Screenplay Written by Frank Sinatra by Max Cohn (McSweeney's)

This piece works so well because it makes big choices, marrying a very specific voice to a very specific format. And the setup couldn't be clearer. It's all there in the title. After that, the rest is pure payoff.  
 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

This weekend, Luke is doing Sketch Cram! It's a brand new sketch show written, rehearsed, and performed in JUST ONE DAY. It's always a fun, wild time. Saturday at midnight at the UCB Theatre Hell's Kitchen!
 

See you next week!

@brianagler, @lukevburns, & @jamesfolta

Did we miss a piece you loved? Did you love a piece we mentioned? Let us know! This is an experiment and we're hoping to continue to make it better and better. If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is.