Weasel Question Time #1

Young Pershan asks, "Wait—you sat in editorial meetings at National Lampoon?"

Indeed I did! That came at the end of more than 15 years of thinking about Lampoon, which I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about at all. I was born in 1969—The Onion is my generation’s magazine, with original writers all around my age. But all print humor since 1970 is in conversation with The National Lampoon—The Onion, SPY, of course Bystander itself.

My mother had a Lampoon subscription when I was a boy—I remember this issue, because we were a Stevie-worshipping household, and this is an excellently art-directed cover. But Mom hid her issues when she discovered I was getting the sex jokes. This of course was part of the appeal—like Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, I didn’t have much of a latency period—but Lampoon’s hold on me was also rooted in how it constantly referenced Boomer history and culture. I grew up with a strong sense that something quite great and important had happened, but I’d just missed it.

Deprived of my supply of Lampoon, I made do with MAD, still cruising through its very solid Feldstein Era. But as soon as I was old enough, I began haunting old head shops and record stores—like Wuxtry Records on Euclid in St. Louis—in search of old copies of Lampoon. This bin-browsing gave me a grounding in underground comics, which were just starting to leave theit hippie days behind for a RAW future. I found I preferred the issues of Lampoon produced between 1970-75, and before I went away to college, I had amassed a nearly complete collection of that run. Quite an achievement, in the days before eBay.

In 1985, when I was in high school, SPY launched—but I didn’t connect with it. People called it “Son of Lampoon,” but to me SPY felt very different. Whereas every issue of the classic Lampoon was about everything—from Picasso to fisting to Jesus—SPY seemed like the Upper West Side talking to itself. Though beautiful (great Alexander Isley design!) SPY wasn’t graphic like Lampoon was. Drawing on a century of college humor ideas and an impossibly deep bench of illustrators culled from publishing and advertising, The National Lampoon was probably the most visually sumptuous print magazine America has ever produced.

Looking back, I think the real reason SPY didn’t set me alight was how neoliberal it was in its assumptions; it acted as though the issues raised by the Sixties had been settled, when of course they hadn’t, and still haven’t. Thirty years later, all the SPY fans asked, “How can Donald Trump become President when we made such wicked fun of him?” The answer is: SPY accepted The Ground Rules—of capitalism, of Wall Street, of Hollywood—they simply had extensive notes.

For precisely these reasons, SPY was practically the house organ of Yale when I arrived there in 1987. National Lampoon, such as it was thought of at all, was dismissed as puerile. But as depressing as puns like “Clitoris Leachman and Nipplesey Russell” admittedly are, there’s at least one thing more depressing: a 20-year-old interested in Abe Rosenthal.

So near the end of my Junior year I wrote a blind letter to NatLamp asking about a summer internship, enclosing the above and other issues of my dogeared but let’s call it extremely exuberant version of The Yale Record. I got a lovely response from Executive Editor Dave Hanson inviting me to lunch. I took Metro-North down to NYC, and met him at The Lampoon’s dogeared but let’s call them extremely exuberant offices on Spring Street. Far from a place where magic happened, the offices looked beat up and dirty, like a backstage but with no stage.

Dave and I went to lunch and by the end of my second taco, he had offered me a summer internship.

Dave and I are friends to this day, and he still feels bad about what happened next. The first week in June, I called and as soon as Dave answered, I knew something was up. “Where are you?” he asked. “New York or Chicago?”

“New York. I just moved into my sublet. East 73rd, a block from J.G. Melon. My roommates are two baby bankers. Real Bright Lights, Big City stuff.”

“Mike, I’m sorry to say this, but: We’ve all been shitcanned.”

“Really? Why?”

“Publishing works in mysterious ways.”

One thing to know about Dave: his prose is full of profanity, but he never swears in person. Except on that phone call. On that phone call, he swore a lot. When he’d finished, Dave said that I should call back tomorrow and talk to the new EIC.

“What’s he like?” I asked.

“Some Harvard guy, in between TV gigs.”

The next day, after a brief conversation, the new EIC allowed me to come down to Spring Street and answer the phones and read the slush for an evening. I suppose I hoped that my raw charisma would carry the day; it did not. As I sat out in reception, reading some truly bad humor, I overheard him talking to his agent; the Good Ship Lampoon was going down, no doubt, and this fellow needed a quick paycheck but wanted no part of that. I remember being shocked, in my Midwestern way, at his taking the job with no intention of keeping it. Who knew this world could be so wicked? I smile at my young self, and this TV guy doing exactly what TV guys do.

As we took the 6 train uptown, the man told me almost absentmindedly that he didn’t care what I’d been promised, or what arrangements I’d made, I could get lost. If phones had been invented, he would’ve been on his as he said all this. When I asked why, my Yaleness was mentioned as a disadvantage. I remember being shocked by this, but that, too, faded over time; it was merely an Ivytized version of Hollywood as usual. What could I, a young Yale guy, do for him?

I ended up working in real estate for the summer.

The next spring, with another year of running The Record under my belt and graduation looming, I had come up with a business plan: I would launch a new magazine which would collect the best stuff from all the college humor magazines across the country, redesign it into a coherent package, and insert that 24pp magazine inside college newspapers. There had been a couple of non-humorous publications that had pulled this off—I believe Chris Whittle was behind one of them—so it wasn’t such a crazy idea. Remember, companies used to pay for advertising.

In the meantime SPY had started to wobble, and National Lampoon had been taken over by two Yale guys, Chris Marcil and Sam Johnson, who were attempting to revivify it really and truly, in their sincere Yalie way.

I cold-called Chris and Sam, whom I didn’t know, for advice on my project. As we talked, I asked if they’d be willing to run an insert in Lampoon in the fall; I’d put together the collection, Lampoon’s salespeople would sell some pages in my package to their advertisers, and we’d split the profit. This was very similar to what i had just done with The Record’s parody of Frank Deford’s short-lived National. So it wasn’t crazy. Companies, advertising, the past, etc.

Chris and Sam ran it up the flagpole and the money men said no. But the suits decided to do a college specific issue that fall…which in their defense, was kinda what what every issue of The National Lampoon had devolved into.

I think Chris and Sam felt a bit bad about this, so they invited me down to a couple of editorial meetings, just early planning sessions for the College Issue. Then when I moved down to New York in June, I attended a few more. Through me, my writing partner Jon got connected and we both sold a few squibs to this issue.

By the time we’d gotten paid, Lampoon was in Chapter 11. Or something? Who knew? It had entered the financial zombie state it still exists in today. It was pretty clear that nothing was going to save National Lampoon as it had been for 21 years; to be a successful print publication again they would’ve had to solve some unsolvables on the publishing side—the decline of the newsstand business, print in general, and the rise of first cable TV and then the internet as sponges that suck up every moment of everyone’s day. And even if they’d done that, they’d have to develop a crop of homegrown talent with a voice and topics unique to the 1990s; but as soon as anyone talented came through, they were lured away to Hollywood, or even the cable networks starting up in New York, HA! and the Comedy Channel. I’d like to think that had I been given the reigns in 1991, especially with my adamantine commitment to print and my laser-like focus on the college market, I might’ve been able to pull it off, simply through charisma. But that’s nuts. In 1970, The National Lampoon had the breath of an entire generation, the biggest richest ever, filling its sails.

Lampoon went 6x/year in April 1992; then was once a year for a while after that, just to fulfill their agreement with The Harvard Lampoon; and then stopped publishing altogether in 1998. Chris and Sam went to LA and thrived, as did Jon, who came back to New York in 1995.

For reasons known only to my karma, I stayed in New York the entire time, writing and designing print humor. A few years later, in 1996 I began reaching out to the old Lampooners, people like Henry Beard and Sean Kelly and Brian McConnachie, with the Wall Street Journal parody Jon and I did. That’s what I should’ve done in the first place—the institution was always messed up, but the writers and artists have always been a joy.

My final brush with National Lampoon happened in 2006. Through one of my Lampooner friends, I’d learned that Rob Hoffman, the least-known of the three Harvard boys who founded The National Lampoon was dying of leukemia. Conjuring up the fearless young man I used to be, I called his office. “Mr. Hoffman,” I said, “you don’t know me, but I just wanted to thank you for helping found The National Lampoon.”

“That’s very kind of you, son,” he said.

“I know that my life would’ve been very different without it,” I said, “and I’ve met Henry and thanked him, and read about Doug, and thanked a close friend of his. But I think your business acumen was what held Matty’s feet to the fire that first couple of years, when he was losing money. I think, Mr. Hoffman, if you hadn’t crafted the deal you did, the whole thing would’ve never happened. And all the stuff after it, including my career. So thank you. I hope you’re feeling well today.”

“A little better after this phone call,” Mr. Hoffman said, and we hung up.