Humorism

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Humorism

A newsletter about labor, inequality, and extremism in comedy.

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"I don't care what they think anymore."

A conversation about working in comedy.

Hello: thank you for reading Humorism. If you can, please help keep this newsletter going by updating your subscription for six bucks a month: Upgrade to paid Also, a periodic reminder: if you bought a paid subscription back when Hunorism was on Substack and someday, for some reason, decide to unsubscribe, please email parthi@letterdrop.com or me personally to handle it. For annoying Substack-related reasons, simply unsubscribing through Letterdrop doesn't work for pre-Letterdrop customers. Okay, on to today's newsletter. Some of the best parts of my made-up job are the conversations I get to have with readers about how they navigate all the impossible moral questions they run into working in comedy. These conversations are usually off-the-record and not the sort of thing I can write ab

Seth Simons

Jan 19 2022

19 mins read

What Happened to UCB?

The owners will probably get around to it eventually.

One of the interesting things happening in comedy right now is the disappearance of the Upright Citizens Brigade. A shadow of the training center is still up and running, with a small battalion of teachers in its employment and a catalog of online classes for people who, I guess, have not lost hope in the future of the Harold. But the theatre and its accompanying brand—as one of the most important institutions in the recent history of comedy—is nowhere to be found. I touched on this in my end-of-year newsletter, but here's a quick recap anyhow. At the beginning of the pandemic, UCB laid off almost all of its workforce. A month later it took out two massive PPP loans—relief funding intended to help businesses retain workers—and said it would treat them “generally” as low-interest loans to h

ucb

a modest proposal

Seth Simons

Jan 13 2022

6 mins read

What I Liked

2021 edition.

Well, here it is, the 2021 edition of my favorite things I consumed this year. As you will recall from previous installments of this much-clamored-for annual list, selections need not be released in 2021 to qualify, though I think in this particular case most of them were anyhow. Alright, here they are, in no particular order, happy new year, be safe out there, see you next time around. -Pig -Returning the Sword to the Stone, a poetry collection by Mark Leidner -The poet Hera Lindsay Bird’s 2019 interview with Mark Leidner, specifically this passage: > Someone once told me “Make every character as smart as possible.” I forgot who > it was, and it took me a million years to even understand what that meant, but > once I started trying to apply it, my stories took a leap forward. Another

Seth Simons

Dec 31 2021

4 mins read