A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #90
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For June 6-12, 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. With the Women's World Cup underway, we find ourselves asking: Which country would win in a humor-off? Would it be the Brits, with their classic understated comedy? Or, maybe the Brazilians, with their big-energy jokes? Or maybe, the good old U. S. of A with our loud, aggressive, weirdly-gun-focused prose. Yeah, we think it's that one. USA! USA!
What We Enjoyed This Week
As Mayor, I’m Saving This City By Getting a CSI Set Here by Keaton Patti (Slackjaw) Friend of the Show, Keaton Patti, hits it out of the park here. Not only is the main thrust of the piece fantastic, but it's filled with hilarious specifics and runners that take it to the next level.
Sorry, But I Don't Think Attending Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters Will Get Me Into Brown by Felipe Torres Medina and Taylor Kay Phillips (McSweeney's) Apparently, the new X-Men movie totally bombed. Probably because everybody was too busy to go to the theater because they were reading this piece.
Healing Crystals and How to Shopilft Them by Sarah Lazarus (The New Yorker) Rock solid premise (GET IT???) that does a great job of finding new and interesting directions while still honoring a central idea.
All the Things I Would Have Said to the Dentist Who Insulted My Wife's Teeth If I Wasn't Busy With My Jet Ski That Day by Ryan Ciecwisz (Points in Case) We at Humor Writing HQ love a piece that 100% commits to how strange it is. This one goes from 0-60 in about two sentences, and never once slows down. It's hard, as a writer, to keep up that energy through the end, but when you can, you unearth such gems (GET IT???) as "I first realized large teeth were important to me, even horny-inducing, when I returned home from being stranded at sea for eleven years."
An Old Favorite
Wow, Weather by Riane Knoc (The New Yorker) Friend of the Show, Riane Konc, has about a million great pieces to choose from--and no doubt, we will get to them all. But, we chose this one because, as we write this newsletter, it's raining outside. Ok, end of blurb!
No, seriously, we picked this piece because Riane does such a fantastic job establishing and maintaining voice. That's hard enough in and of itself, but Riane gives herself the extra challenge of having the speaker be a high-status idiot--that this person has truly no idea what they're talking about, but has to appear like they do. So, Riane has a tightwire to walk: She has to include specifics, but not too many. She has to hit tropes, while viewing them through a lens of someone who clearly doesn't understand them. She has to convey emotion, but give no foundation as to why that emotion exists. It's difficult, and it works to great effect.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Have you signed up for James' workshop "Creating Parody" yet? If you have, thank you, see you in exactly one month. If you haven't, please consider it! The class is on July 13th at the Magnet Training Center, conveniently located in the same city that James lives in, so he's a shoo-in to not miss class for geographic reasons.
"You Can't Spell Love Without Cleveland, OH", the weirdo romantic comedy sketch show Luke co-wrote, is back for another performance this Monday, 6/17/19, at 9PM at the UCB Theater in Hell's Kitchen! The show is paired with Rumpleteaser, the musical improv group, so it's gonna be a blast all around (and is also very likely to sell out).
Other Humorous Writing News
For all the New Yorkers (citizens, not magazines) in the audience, Jonathan Appel is starting a new, humor writing open mic. Learn more here, and sign up for the newsletter here!
News About The Next Show
BIG NEWS!
An Evening of Humorous Readings is moving to Caveat. We want to thank (le) Poisson Rouge for all their support--please go see a show there if you find yourself in Greenwich Village.
We'll have an event page soon, but you can mark your calendars now. Our first Caveat show will be July, 23.
We're excited to start this next chapter and can't wait to see you all there!
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!