About

Carlos is an Afro-Latino engineer, writer, filmmaker, and occasional Bruno Mars impersonator. He teaches online satire and personal essay classes at The Second City, is a coach at Hillside Writing, a features contributor at The Onion, and runs the humor newsletter Shades of Greaves.

His writing has been featured in The New Yorker, NPR, and he is a frequent contributor to the humor site McSweeney’s, where he’s written several of the site’s most-read articles in 2020, 2021, and 2022. In 2023, he was a writer on the Peacock special, Back That Year Up, hosted by Kevin Hart and Keenan Thompson.

His debut book, Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter and is available wherever you get your books.


Writing

Shades of Greaves

This Newsletter is Now Sponsored by Raytheon

I Got Fired From the Perfect Job

How I Grew My Substack From 439 to 451 Free Subscribers In Just 11 Months

The New Yorker

I Have Found the Perfect Sneaker
(illustrated by Tayo Falase)

Everything Coming to and Leaving Your Favorite Streaming Service This Month

Script of Every Movie Set in Boston

Welcome to Your Ten-Year Reunion at Fancy College

What Your Indoor Plant Says About You
(illustrated by Tayo Falase)

Work E-Mails During an Apocalypse

An Episode of “Euphoria,” Based Solely on the Jokes I’ve Seen About It on Social Media

A Guide to Getting on an Airplane Again

Plots of Nineteen-Eighties Movies if Their Protagonists Had Been People of Color
(17th most-read Shouts article of 2021)

McSweeney’s

How to Become a Professional Writer

Math Concepts the State of Florida Finds Objectionable
(7th most-read McSweeney’s article of 2022)

The Young Man and the Tax Return

A Jeopardy! Board for Determining Who Should Be the Next Host of Jeopardy!
(14th most-read McSweeney’s article of 2021)

Are You Allowed to Criticize Simone Biles?: A Decision Tree
(2nd most-read McSweeney’s article of 2021)

Schedule of Speakers for the 2020 Republican National Convention
(14th most-read McSweeney’s article of 2020)

Just Because They’ve Turned Against Humanity Doesn’t Mean We Should Defund the Terminator Program

The Only Acceptable Form of Black Protest Is to Stand in This Field in Rural Nebraska and Scream Into the Void

Sure, the Velociraptors Are Still On the Loose, But That’s No Reason Not to Reopen Jurassic Park
(3rd most-read McSweeney’s article of 2020)

As a 28-Year-Old Latino, I’m Shocked My New Novel, Memoirs of a Middle Aged White Lady, Has Been so Poorly Received
(16th most-read McSweeney’s article of 2020; Featured in NPR podcast Selected Shorts)

LEVEL

Here’s the Correct Way to Make a G.O.A.T. List the Internet Will Love (Hate)

14 Questions We STILL Have About the Montgomery Riverboat Brawl

We Found Ice Cube’s Gratitude Journal Entries From “It Was a Good Day”

The 55 Biggest, Blackest Dad Jokes You’ve Never Heard

Points In Case

Franz Kafka’s The Thesis

Useful Quarantine Words in Other Languages

Join Our Pirate Ship as an Unpaid Pirate Intern, and Gain Valuable Experience on the High Seas!

Slackjaw

Engagement Ring Shopping

More Sequels America Didn’t Ask For But is Going to Get Anyway

Sequels America Didn’t Ask For But Is Going To Get Anyway

Flexx

10 Types of Vicks VapoRub Your Abuela Keeps Around the House
(Listen to me reading this piece for Latinx Lit Mag here)

251

Titles the showrunners considered before choosing ‘Sex and the City.’

Film and Television

Television

Back That Year Up (2023) – Writer

Commercial

FlutterFlow for PS5 – April Fool’s Video (2022)

Sketch

Meet Your New Instructors: A Masterclass Parody (2020)

New York City Independent Film Festival – Official Selection
Houston Comedy Film Festival – Finalist, Best Mockumentary
Portland Comedy Film Festival – Finalist, Best Mockumentary Micro Film
Poor Life Choices Comedy Film Festival – Official Selection
Battle of the Sketches – Official Selection

Super Duper Diversity Film Festival – Official Selection


Webseries

RF News (2019-2021)


Short Film

Home for the Night (2018)

Woods Hole Film Festival – Official Selection


TikTok:

@shadesofgreaves What other moments would be in the remake? #sketchcomedy #humor #funnyvideos ♬ original sound – Carlos Greaves

Books

Spoilers

Book cover for Spoilers depicting well-known movie characters waiting at the DMV

Superman tries to apply for a Green Card but doesn’t have the proper documentation from his home planet. The Little Mermaid writes a tell-all book about her struggle to fit in with her new siren-skeptical royal family. And an increasingly unhinged J. Edgar Hoover opens an FBI investigation into a counter-cultural rabble-rouser by the name of Forrest Gump. These are just a few of the scenarios explored in this raucous collection of essays from frequent New Yorker and McSweeney’s contributor Carlos Greaves. Spoilers will leave you laughing at hitherto unexamined plot points of your favorite films, at the sorry state of the world we live in, and definitely at whoever’s idea it was to open a theme park full of people-eating dinosaurs.

Spoilers is now available! Please consider buying the book from your local independent bookstore, or any of my favorite bookstores (they ship anywhere in the US):


Also, if you’re looking for the book at your local library and can’t find it, you can request that they add it to their catalog:

Contact

email: carlos@carlosgreaves.com

Instagram / Twitter / TikTok: @shadesofgreaves

You can stay up to date on what Carlos is up to, as well as receive topical satire and analysis of the humor writing process by subscribing to his newsletter, Shades of Greaves, below: