A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #87
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For May 16-22, 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. A serious note up top this week: the news has been grimmer than usual lately, and we urge you to donate to the Yellowhammer Fund. Once you've done that, come on back for the jokes! We swear they'll still be here, and you'll feel better laughing too.
What We Enjoyed This Week
Back In My Day, Kids Didn’t Watch TV… No, They Played Outdoors Because They Heard A Rumor That A Dead Body Was Out By The Quarry by Dan Caprera (Weekly Humorist) Along with creepy manors, misty bogs, and creaky ships, old quarries are consistently reliable settings for humor pieces.
As Your Fiction Workshop Instructor, I Don’t Want to Read Anything Less Than Beautiful—Or About Boats by Brooke Knisley (Weekly Humorist) Actually, you know what, strike what we said about creaky ships being good settings for pieces.
Senator Says The Only Acceptable Way To Kill A Fetus Is With a Gun (Reductress) Reductress was in top form this week, responding to the horrific news from Alabama with a series of sharp pieces. As Vulture's Megh Wright noted in her piece, "No Comedy Outlet Has Tackled Alabama’s Abortion Ban Better Than Reductress," this is "a case study in how crucial it is to have more women writing comedy, especially in the world of satire."
If You Should Chance to Find This Message, Tell the World That I Did Not Enjoy the Last Episode of "Game of Thrones" by Cathy Herbert (Points In Case) Though we haven't featured many of them, it's worth noting the end of Game of Thrones as it relates to short humor. Over the past eight years, GoT has seemed to demand comedic responses and the end of the series has seen a final flurry of humor pieces. This one by Cathy Herbert is particularly effective because it doesn't recite dogged tropes, but instead riffs on the phenomenon of required opinions and conversations about GoT. Combine this with a strong, specific voice and a clever scenario, and you have a Thrones piece that breaks through the noise.
An Old Favorite
Casting Call For My Internal Biopic by Joyce Miller (McSweeney's)
This piece has some fun specifics and solid jokes, but is really worth returning to for the distinctive format. Styling a piece as a casting call is a fun way to get directly into specifics about characters and lets Miller draw two stories in parallel, one set in real life and the other in the always-more-sparkling imagined life.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
James and Friends of the Show Lucas Adams and Joe Veix put together a piece called "Pardon The Interruption" about spammy newsletter pop-ups on publications, their weird language, and Zuckerberg's jelly bones, for Topic.
Luke co-wrote (and makes a small appearance in) a romantic comedy sketch show that currently has a run at the UCB Theatre in Hell's Kitchen. It's called "You Can't Spell Love Without Cleveland, OH" and the next performance is in one week: Thursday, 5/30 at 9PM! Luke also directed Bridge and Tunnel's new sketch show, which is going to be going up at the PIT on Friday 5/31 at 7PM!
Other Humorous Writing News
Little Old Lady is coming out with a podcast based on their recent live shows, and the editors Ginny Hogan and Mary Cella did a fun interview talking about how LOL got started, and what's next for them.
News About The Next Show
- Dru Johnston (The Chris Gethard Show, The New Yorker, UCBT, The Onion News Network, Improvised Seinfeld, @drujohnston)
- Taylor Kay Phillips (McSweeney’s, Reductress, The Belladonna)
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!