Dear All You Lovely Funny People Out In The World,
Queen Mob’s Teahouse’s very own Underground Funnies satire series is doing a special theme week, “The Blue Blues: A Satirical Clapback Against Police Terror,” and we need work from you because frankly, we have a problem.
We have a big fucking problem.
Every day or so, somewhere in the U.S., with little provocation, police rise up and take a black person down. Police terror in Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD and soon, IN A TOWN NEAR YOU.
There was Rekia Boyd and Tamir Rice and Mike Brown and Prince Jones and Amadou Diallo and Mya Hall and Walter Scott and Sean Bell and Ramarley Graham and Freddie Gray, whose spine was severed in several places, and Kathryn Johnston…I’m going to stop now because I’m tired and depressed and there are so many names I’m having trouble keeping them straight and if I kept typing names of people unjustly killed by the po-po I’d be here all night.
The point is we have a big fucking problem and we need a lot of things–such as THE IMMEDIATE END TO THE EXTRA-JUDICIAL MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE–but since the system stubbornly refuses to do that we need satire.
We need wicked satire that skewers people who’d like us to believe spines sever themselves; satire that skewers those who tell us blue lives matter and all lives matter, but will cringe when you say that black lives matter; we need satirical pieces that show us that though things are bad and dark, we can still laugh, because we are alive and we will survive and we’ll even thrive and one day we will win.
Make it weird, make it funny, make us think, laugh and/or cry. Make it 2,000 words or less (Yeah, we’ll look at longer shit, but that shit better be extra funny/weird/thoughtful/and shit.)
Send pictures, postcards, cartoons, razor-blades, carrier pigeons, pigs-in-blankets, send anything…we’ll look at and consider it all. Submissions will close on Aug. 31.
Submit to: underground@queenmobs.com
Sincerely,
The Underground Funnies Team:
(The Ghost of ODB,
The Ghost of Richard Pryor,
The Ghost of Mark Twain,
(*Not his Ghost. Yet. That might change if he does something stupid like walking around being all black in front of a cop or something.)
P.S.: We’re still reading regular Underground Funnies submissions so send those too (Guidelines here). This is what we’ve been up to in the Underground.
P.P.S.: Phrases I tried, but could not work into the above: “Putting lipstick on a pig;” “The Original Pigs of Comedy.”