All the talk about National Lampoon got me searching for digitized versions, and I found a ton of them at archive.org.
It’s fascinating reading these commentaries and then looking at the archive and seeing it all play out. Lots of talented people on the team, maybe a few seasons that didn’t go so well.
It’s similar to my experience reading old stuff from spy and being blown away one minute and depressed the next. Tony Hendra had a finger in that dying pie, too, if I recall correctly.
IIRC Tony was brought in at SPY after the founders left (Graydon and Kurt and Steve Schragis). When Tony left, the new owners interviewed a couple of folks for EIC--myself included. I believe their eventual pick was a fellow named Bruno Maddox. I could be misremembering the details. My primary memory remains a traumatizing lunch with the rich young man who had just purchased the magazine.
After reading your original post about sick humor, it got me thinking about Hunter S. Thompson. His earlier work definitely rode the sick humor train along the edge of hilarious political satire. But later on, like in his last two books before he offed himself, the humor was longer there. Similar to how O'Rourke's writing evolved , Thompson's later books became mean diatribes spewing venom in every direction. The drugs, lifestyle and bitterness had taken its toll on his creativity. So no truer a warnings was ever written than yours about how sick humor had to runs its course or else it eats its creator.
Oh I think that HST--whose early work I adore--suffered terribly from the neurological impact of drug and alcohol use. A writer is above a PERCEIVER, and the sensitivity of the mechanism dulls with basting in Lowenbrau and amyl nitrate (or whatever he was doing).
I’m interpreting here for Ellis but i read that as contrasting Doug Kenney’s warm, nostalgia-but-nasty style (as in “First Blow Job”), with Henry Beard’s tonally perfect but more technical premise-driven stuff (as in “Law of the Jungle”).
“Generally speaking, carnivore courts end up handling criminal cases and herbivore courts civil cases, not because of any sensible legal reason, but simply because, traditionally, a carnivore convicted in a herbivore court got off lightly or ate the court.”
A reason that The Bystander resonates so well with me is that breath on the tinder of the Lampoon. Remembrances from those who were there, regardless of timeline, is immediate connection to my youth when NatLamp took over from Mad and became the lingua franca of that generation. I miss that connection and don’t really see its current cognate, although that might just as well be the myopia of age blinding me to whatever serves as elevated dick jokes nowadays. The Lampoon had the danger of teaching us to be mean in our humor and I know that although I enjoy the full-body-check style with a sap in hand for emphasis, that road had an end and wouldn’t easily empty out onto another boulevard. Would a touch of humanness at the wheel have made a cultural difference and smoothly routed to that new flow? We’ll never know but it’s interesting to think about.
There is a purely artistic problem in classic Lampoon style which is: you cannot heighten forever. One of the biggest hurdles to running Bystander is how our Lampoon-raised readers want things to be louder and brasher, but with no strong authority or mainstream, there’s no hard surface for that iconoclasm to bounce off.
Exactly. Bystander is not the Lampoon, it has connections threading from Lampoon. This isn't the '70s and that situation doesn't exist so searching for it is a waste of time. You're threading a needle here and it's wonderful. I love it and enjoy the work immensely.
“Threading a needle” is exactly right. So much of my job is trying to create some kind of central comedic ground where lots of creators can meet, and that’s just not what humor magazines have done in the past. They’re usually four or five really funny people following some specific and new train of thought. Bystander has to be...postmodern? It’s difficult to explain but it’s a bitch to do and sometimes I feel like what I’m doing most of all is creating an institution for the NEXT crop to really inhabit,
You just might be. There's no template - it could be as much a virtual room of monkeys rocketing turds off the walls as a squishy dream sequence of an Algonquin Table directed by David Lynch, changing every few weeks like some demented kaleidoscope. And who doesn't love a good demented kaleidoscope, other than maybe the guy who has to keep the panes aligned?
I have a few regrets about being born in the wrong era. One is that I wanted to be on the staff of the NYer in the 1920s (thurber, benchley, parker etc) and the other is to have been on the staff of the Lampoon in the era this describes.
Maybe in another life and an alternate timeline. A man can dream...
I believe the Jewish writers were most inspired by the usual gang of idiots at Mad Magazine, which came across as Jewish because it embraced outsiders by circumstance as well as those who attained outsiderdom by pursuing their vision.
I’ve read a fair amount of ‘70s NL stuff, and it seems to prove the old adage (?) that satire does not age well. Once people don’t know about the stuff that’s being satirized, the satire doesn’t work.
All the talk about National Lampoon got me searching for digitized versions, and I found a ton of them at archive.org.
It’s fascinating reading these commentaries and then looking at the archive and seeing it all play out. Lots of talented people on the team, maybe a few seasons that didn’t go so well.
It’s similar to my experience reading old stuff from spy and being blown away one minute and depressed the next. Tony Hendra had a finger in that dying pie, too, if I recall correctly.
IIRC Tony was brought in at SPY after the founders left (Graydon and Kurt and Steve Schragis). When Tony left, the new owners interviewed a couple of folks for EIC--myself included. I believe their eventual pick was a fellow named Bruno Maddox. I could be misremembering the details. My primary memory remains a traumatizing lunch with the rich young man who had just purchased the magazine.
After reading your original post about sick humor, it got me thinking about Hunter S. Thompson. His earlier work definitely rode the sick humor train along the edge of hilarious political satire. But later on, like in his last two books before he offed himself, the humor was longer there. Similar to how O'Rourke's writing evolved , Thompson's later books became mean diatribes spewing venom in every direction. The drugs, lifestyle and bitterness had taken its toll on his creativity. So no truer a warnings was ever written than yours about how sick humor had to runs its course or else it eats its creator.
Oh I think that HST--whose early work I adore--suffered terribly from the neurological impact of drug and alcohol use. A writer is above a PERCEIVER, and the sensitivity of the mechanism dulls with basting in Lowenbrau and amyl nitrate (or whatever he was doing).
Really great article. Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what's the difference between the "blow job" type and the "Law of the Jungle" type?
I’m interpreting here for Ellis but i read that as contrasting Doug Kenney’s warm, nostalgia-but-nasty style (as in “First Blow Job”), with Henry Beard’s tonally perfect but more technical premise-driven stuff (as in “Law of the Jungle”).
Ah. That makes sense to me
Here’s a great line from “Law of the Jungle.”
“Generally speaking, carnivore courts end up handling criminal cases and herbivore courts civil cases, not because of any sensible legal reason, but simply because, traditionally, a carnivore convicted in a herbivore court got off lightly or ate the court.”
A reason that The Bystander resonates so well with me is that breath on the tinder of the Lampoon. Remembrances from those who were there, regardless of timeline, is immediate connection to my youth when NatLamp took over from Mad and became the lingua franca of that generation. I miss that connection and don’t really see its current cognate, although that might just as well be the myopia of age blinding me to whatever serves as elevated dick jokes nowadays. The Lampoon had the danger of teaching us to be mean in our humor and I know that although I enjoy the full-body-check style with a sap in hand for emphasis, that road had an end and wouldn’t easily empty out onto another boulevard. Would a touch of humanness at the wheel have made a cultural difference and smoothly routed to that new flow? We’ll never know but it’s interesting to think about.
There is a purely artistic problem in classic Lampoon style which is: you cannot heighten forever. One of the biggest hurdles to running Bystander is how our Lampoon-raised readers want things to be louder and brasher, but with no strong authority or mainstream, there’s no hard surface for that iconoclasm to bounce off.
Exactly. Bystander is not the Lampoon, it has connections threading from Lampoon. This isn't the '70s and that situation doesn't exist so searching for it is a waste of time. You're threading a needle here and it's wonderful. I love it and enjoy the work immensely.
“Threading a needle” is exactly right. So much of my job is trying to create some kind of central comedic ground where lots of creators can meet, and that’s just not what humor magazines have done in the past. They’re usually four or five really funny people following some specific and new train of thought. Bystander has to be...postmodern? It’s difficult to explain but it’s a bitch to do and sometimes I feel like what I’m doing most of all is creating an institution for the NEXT crop to really inhabit,
You just might be. There's no template - it could be as much a virtual room of monkeys rocketing turds off the walls as a squishy dream sequence of an Algonquin Table directed by David Lynch, changing every few weeks like some demented kaleidoscope. And who doesn't love a good demented kaleidoscope, other than maybe the guy who has to keep the panes aligned?
I have a few regrets about being born in the wrong era. One is that I wanted to be on the staff of the NYer in the 1920s (thurber, benchley, parker etc) and the other is to have been on the staff of the Lampoon in the era this describes.
Maybe in another life and an alternate timeline. A man can dream...
I believe the Jewish writers were most inspired by the usual gang of idiots at Mad Magazine, which came across as Jewish because it embraced outsiders by circumstance as well as those who attained outsiderdom by pursuing their vision.
I’ve read a fair amount of ‘70s NL stuff, and it seems to prove the old adage (?) that satire does not age well. Once people don’t know about the stuff that’s being satirized, the satire doesn’t work.
Sorry. Lactose in the M&Ms.