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My most recent McSweeney’s piece is “A Message from Your University’s Vice President for Magical Thinking.” This one seems to have touched a nerve (or maybe there are just a lot of academics who read McSweeney’s).
Here’s a very silly monologue, “I’m the Coroner in the Game of Clue, and My Job Is a Lot Harder Than You’d Think.”
In fall 2019 I wrote “University Assessment Committee Erotica,” which seems to be popular with academics who enjoy feeling just a little bit naughty.
One of my favorite McSweeney’s pieces, and the one that they chose to reprint in their massive Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something anthology, is a poem parody, “The Incel Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” David Simon retweeted it! I might as well retire now.
Here’s another literary parody, “Thinly Veiled Metaphors in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction.”
They also ran a few monologues:
“Welcome to My Podcast, In Which I Do a Feminist Analysis of Thundercats and Sob Quietly.” Long title, but then it gets going.
This Spider-Man/Batman/Daredevil sendup, “Since You’re About to Be Orphaned, Young Future Superhero, Let Me Lay One Last Guilt Trip On You.”
“Kate Chopin’s The Awokening.” With all due respect to Ms. Chopin, I think I now have to agree with my students who said Edna was selfish.
I’ve also written a couple of short lists, “Summer Camps for Parents Whose Kids Are Away At Summer Camp” and ” Common Bird Calls, As Identified by My Mother. ” My mom isn’t really like this, but just to be safe, let’s all agree that none of us is going to send her this link, OK?
“As the Token Female Member of this Action-Adventure Team, My Job Is to Kick” is my most popular piece to date. Fans of The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy will be amused, I hope. You can also listen to the actress Anna Faris reading the piece here; the reading is a live recording, broadcast as part of Nate Corddry’s Reading Aloud podcast. Faris’s reading of my piece begins at 3:48.
I read most of Raymond Chandler’s novels a few summers ago, and they inspired this piece, “Philip Marlowe Attends a Court-Mandated Women’s Studies Workshop.”
Other Humor Sites
Here’s a silly list, “What the World War II Movie Your Father Wants to Watch Together Says About Your Relationship,” in Points in Case.
The Weekly Humorist ran this list, “Coming Soon! To That Place in the Strip Mall Where the Halloween Store Used to Be” in 2019.
The Belladonna Comedy is a humor site featuring women writers, which I think is a fantastic idea. Here’s my piece, “Marvel Studios’ 25-Year Plan for Spider-Man Reboots.”
We all love Stephen King, right? Sure we do, but I had a little bit of fun with him in “House Hunters: Local Color in Castle Rock” on Robot Butt.
I watch a lot of true crime shows on ID Discovery. Like, a lot. Here’s “Ted Bundy for President in 2020!” on Weekly Humorist, and here’s “You Almost Certainly Won’t Discover a Body During Your Hike Today, But Just In Case,” at Splitsider.
Here’s one at The Millions, “Scenes from Our Unproduced Screenplay STRUNK AND WHITE: GRAMMAR POLICE.” This was was co-written with my BFF Erica Dawson, who’s also a terrific poet.
How much do I miss The Toast? A lot. A while back they were nice enough to run this piece of mine, “I’m Looking for an FBI Profiler Who Really Gets Me.”
A new humor site, The Reject Pile, has a premise that I love: they publish quality work that has nevertheless been rejected by McSweeney’s, The New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs, and other sites. I think this is a great idea, and I’m proud to have two of my rejects featured there. The more recent is a list, “Lies Volkswagen Told Me.” (I drive a 2012 Golf. Nuff said.) The second is a monologue, “To a Cashier at a Discount Liquor Warehouse.”
This piece, “Take It From Me, Phil Was So Much More than Shark Movies,” is up at Defenestration. It was inspired, in part, by my deep and abiding love of the movie Sharktopus.
Defenestration also published a second monologue, “Sex With My Girlfriend Is Even Hotter When I’m Not There,” in April 2015. You don’t want to know what kinds of results I got when I Googled images for “remote sex.”
The Big Jewel has been kind enough to run two of my pieces. Here’s one that was definitely not inspired by my sister’s wedding, “Facebook Group Message: Bridesmaids Dinner.” And here’s one for the holidays: “When I First Learned There Was No Santa Claus (Intermediate Writing Prompt #7).”
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