A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #84
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For April 25-May 1, 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. Happy May, readers. Question: Do you know how to get a month? Every "thing" has a month. Did you know that it's both National Asparagus Month and International Drum Month? So, we were wondering, how do we get in on the action? Is there someone we have to talk to. Is it the Pope? Does he decide? If you have the answer, please send us an email. We think A National Month of Humorous Writings would be a big hit!
What We Enjoyed This Week
A Few Things to Know About My Sister, Your New Wife, on Your Wedding Day by Danielle Kraese (New Yorker) The Maid of Honor speech is ripe for parody, and this piece does a great job, effortlessly bouncing between tropes we can all recognize and a truly bizarre premise that somehow feels like it totally fits.
Making Friends After 400 by Jason Roeder (McSweeney's) Everything about this piece works, but what really makes it sing are the delightful specifics in each section that situate the advice in a hellscape from which even death cannot save us. It's a hoot!
I'm the Person Ahead of You in Line to Order Food by Joanna Borns (Points in Case) We don't necessarily believe that all humor pieces are part of some shared, Marvel-esque universe, but we also think that this narrator--who evidently has never seen food before, and says things like, "Is your mouth the only location you're supposed to place the food?"--eventually moved to Chicago and became one of these people.
Sorry Kid, But the Amount Of Cute Animal Posts I’ve Mainlined Has Numbed Me To Even The Most Adorable Content by Sean McGowan (McSweeney's) Is there an official ranking of cute internet content? What is, by the rule book, cuter: A puppy wearing a hat, or a kitten going down a slide? What about baby otter trying to compose a topical tweet? That's got to be #1, right?
An Old Favorite
The Oral History of this Oral History by Kevin Seccia (McSweeney's)
A Newsletter of Humorous Writings: The thing you've got to understand is, when we read The Oral History of this Oral History, we were blown away. We had never seen anything like it before. No one was doing that! It was an entirely new format, which, frankly, is what the humor writing world was in need of. We were so impressed by not just how funny it was, but how technically difficult it was to pull off. Kevin read this at our show and absolutely killed.
James: I remember that!
Brian: So funny!
Luke: He was great!
A Newsletter of Humorous Writings: Yeah, what they said. Anyway, it's a great piece. Give it a read.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Brian is hosting the next edition of SpeakEasy--a show featuring speechwriters, humor writers, and a former national pun champion who wrote for Bill Clinton--on 5/13 at Caveat.
Luke is teaching a workshop on humor writing at the Magnet on June 19th at 7PM! If you’re interested in writing short humor but aren’t sure where to start (or if you’re an experienced writer looking for some help getting a tricky piece off the ground), this is the class for you. And send us a note if you sign up!
Other Humorous Writing News
Friend of the Show Kady Ruth Ashcraft is working on a new short film, a whimsical and surreal comedy called RAMSEY. If you enjoyed her satirical lifestyle blog, Olive and Lark, or any of her many performances at the Evening of Humorous Readings, you’ll want to check it out.
Are all humor writers heroes? Decidedly not. But this one is.
News About The Next Show
Our next show is on 5/23 at 8pm at (le) Poisson Rouge. We've got a great lineup, including Dru Johnston! We'll have more info soon, so keep constantly hitting refresh on your inbox between now and the 23rd to find out!
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.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
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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!