Dear Judging Committee for the American Society for Magazine Editors,
I notice you have not been receiving my letters. I can not emphasize enough how much I respect your work, despite the fact that my letters were all addressed to a fictional individual whom I created with the intent of confusing your mailman such that he simply delivers your award to 44 Bow St to avoid finding the home of “Emoji Jones.” Without your magazine awards, we would not know what magazine is good. And for that, I am grateful.
I see that the most recent winner of your Ellie, which seems to be the Oscars of written fiction in periodically printed publications, was The Paris Review for “Under the Ackee Tree,” by Jonathan Escoffery. I’m gonna be honest, I checked it out, and I would really direct you to “Adelbert” by HLD ‘18, which is provably from where Jonathan ripped his little story. Sorry, I let my emotions get the best of me sometimes. I harbor no resentment. In fact, I’ve sent you (Mark Schoofs, Editor-in-Chief of Buzzfeed, head of the Ellies committee) this magazine to your personal address (510 Gordon St, Encino, CA 91316) as a gesture of peace.
The truth is that I am heartbroken that the Lampoon’s quality has never been validated with an award. In fact, the majority of recent press we have gotten has not been validating at all. That is why I have created this entire issue for your consideration. That’s right, only one copy of this issue exists, and it’s in your hands, Mark.
All I can hope is that you will see in the Lampoon what the Oscars see in white people. I want you to flip through this magazine, personally curated for the American Society for Magazine Editors and the things they like to do / talk about (awards), and I want you to say: “Wow JLG. This thing is full of anthrax. Why did you do that?”
That’s pretty much all I have to say, Mark. And, in the unlikely event of a freak clerical error which results in this issue being distributed to our entire readerbase, I will leave our 750,000 paying subscribers with one piece of advice: whatever it is that you want to do with your life, whatever you’re afraid of, whatever’s holding you back — never tell yourself it’s because you’re not good enough, not talented enough, not intelligent, not beautiful or important — it’s because you don’t have an award like I soon will.
