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C. Raduenzel 2016
The first time I read a National Lampoon magazine was in my cousin Jon’s bedroom. It was laying in a pile of dirty laundry I was supposed to retrieve and what a great load I found!
It was comic porn with bad words, dirty pictures, ADULT humor, which I knew must be awesome because all things “off limits” were EXCELLENT...when you are 10. Case in point was my favorite TV show Saturday Night Live and John Belushi and Chevy Chase were my idols. My favorite movies were Animal House and Caddyshack...soon to be followed by Stripes. Harold Ramis and Bill Murray were my other fan favorites.
Being a jokester was my destiny!
I also read a lot MAD, Playboy Joke Books (good for cocktail parties). I begged for a subscription to National Lampoon and my step-mom promptly replied, “absolutely NOT”!
So I tried my dad, “don’t you think that’s a little too adult,” he questioned from his Lazy- Boy recliner, making a squeeze cheese and Ritz cracker for me while I pled my case. “It’s got really good political articles!” He rolled his eyes and handed me back the subscription card, “ask your mother.”
Shit....
I finally had to settle for cousin Jon’s cast off’s...he was only reading it for “the tits”. So he gave me a big bag of MAD, National Lampoon’s and Crawdaddy....ohhhh, Crawdaddy. The now defunct music magazine for people who really knew music, he explained.
It’s amazing to see the writers who began their careers in National Lampoon, such as John Hughes of Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink fame, or P.J. O Rourke, now famed political author of Parliament of Whores and Eat The Rich. Most of my favorite comic artists, such as Roz Chast and Gahan Wilson also donned the pages of this hallowed relic and now draw for the likes of The New Yorker magazine.
As smutty as National Lampoon was it also was a great place to spread your wings as a writer and comedian. Folks were really taking a chance as the old guard of comedy was fading out...this new breed of aggressive, out spoken alcoholic-drug addicts fueled by Harvard degree’s was blowing my young mind and making me laugh and question society’s hypocrisy.
You couldn’t help but become a critical thinker if you listened to the news and then read these periodicals. Also, growing up in a small Indiana town out side of Chicago, we had this strange melange of urban forward thinking, mixed in with the staid country clubs and small town PTA mentality.
I was going to Brownies, coming home playing with my Wacky Packages (done by some of the greatest underground cartoonists of the 70’s- satirizing popular consumer goods) and reading these alternative publications, but also being influenced by Judy Blume (teen lit author), Dynamite and Banana’s Magazine (John Holstrom of PUNK magazine drew for them from time to time) and RollingStone Magazine...also my step-mom never missed an issue of People Magazine...and I ate that up too!
By the time I hit puberty I was sure that some how, some way music, comedy and writing would be in my future.
Computers and the internet highway have given rise to Vice Magazine- I think it’s probably the most cutting edge/smutty and critical underground information mag there is...they also have morphed into video. They have their own channel on YouTube, and I recommend it....they too focus on the carnival of weird sex that seems to drive we human beings but Vice also is daring to go get the stories you will not see on mainstream TV about war, religion, sex trafficking and any and all things that are going on right here/right now on this planet from Africa to Bosnia- to The Bayou!
So I will forever thank my Aunt Marrianne for asking me to do a load of laundry for cousin Jon, if I hadn’t maybe I would be a good little conformist living back in my hometown, going to the PTA and living an exemplary life instead of being the wild woman I am!
The first time I read a National Lampoon magazine was in my cousin Jon’s bedroom. It was laying in a pile of dirty laundry I was supposed to retrieve and what a great load I found!
It was comic porn with bad words, dirty pictures, ADULT humor, which I knew must be awesome because all things “off limits” were EXCELLENT...when you are 10. Case in point was my favorite TV show Saturday Night Live and John Belushi and Chevy Chase were my idols. My favorite movies were Animal House and Caddyshack...soon to be followed by Stripes. Harold Ramis and Bill Murray were my other fan favorites.
Being a jokester was my destiny!
I also read a lot MAD, Playboy Joke Books (good for cocktail parties). I begged for a subscription to National Lampoon and my step-mom promptly replied, “absolutely NOT”!
So I tried my dad, “don’t you think that’s a little too adult,” he questioned from his Lazy- Boy recliner, making a squeeze cheese and Ritz cracker for me while I pled my case. “It’s got really good political articles!” He rolled his eyes and handed me back the subscription card, “ask your mother.”
Shit....
I finally had to settle for cousin Jon’s cast off’s...he was only reading it for “the tits”. So he gave me a big bag of MAD, National Lampoon’s and Crawdaddy....ohhhh, Crawdaddy. The now defunct music magazine for people who really knew music, he explained.
It’s amazing to see the writers who began their careers in National Lampoon, such as John Hughes of Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink fame, or P.J. O Rourke, now famed political author of Parliament of Whores and Eat The Rich. Most of my favorite comic artists, such as Roz Chast and Gahan Wilson also donned the pages of this hallowed relic and now draw for the likes of The New Yorker magazine.
As smutty as National Lampoon was it also was a great place to spread your wings as a writer and comedian. Folks were really taking a chance as the old guard of comedy was fading out...this new breed of aggressive, out spoken alcoholic-drug addicts fueled by Harvard degree’s was blowing my young mind and making me laugh and question society’s hypocrisy.
You couldn’t help but become a critical thinker if you listened to the news and then read these periodicals. Also, growing up in a small Indiana town out side of Chicago, we had this strange melange of urban forward thinking, mixed in with the staid country clubs and small town PTA mentality.
I was going to Brownies, coming home playing with my Wacky Packages (done by some of the greatest underground cartoonists of the 70’s- satirizing popular consumer goods) and reading these alternative publications, but also being influenced by Judy Blume (teen lit author), Dynamite and Banana’s Magazine (John Holstrom of PUNK magazine drew for them from time to time) and RollingStone Magazine...also my step-mom never missed an issue of People Magazine...and I ate that up too!
By the time I hit puberty I was sure that some how, some way music, comedy and writing would be in my future.
Computers and the internet highway have given rise to Vice Magazine- I think it’s probably the most cutting edge/smutty and critical underground information mag there is...they also have morphed into video. They have their own channel on YouTube, and I recommend it....they too focus on the carnival of weird sex that seems to drive we human beings but Vice also is daring to go get the stories you will not see on mainstream TV about war, religion, sex trafficking and any and all things that are going on right here/right now on this planet from Africa to Bosnia- to The Bayou!
So I will forever thank my Aunt Marrianne for asking me to do a load of laundry for cousin Jon, if I hadn’t maybe I would be a good little conformist living back in my hometown, going to the PTA and living an exemplary life instead of being the wild woman I am!
