Animal House Double Secret Probation Edition DVD is out. This special edition includes a bonus “Where Are They Now?” segment directed and produced by John Landis (and co-produced by Matty Simmons) in which many of the original cast members (Kevin Bacon, Tim Matheson, James Widdoes, Bruce McGill, James Daughton, Karen Allen, DeWayne Jessie and Stephen Furst) reprise their Animal House roles. To promote the release, Universal Home Video has set up a special sound board where you can hear sound clips from the movie.

Update: The “sound board” page is long gone, but I’ve redirected to an archive of it on the Wayback Machine. Also, since it was Flash-based, and Flash is also long gone, you’ll need the Ruffle Flash-player plug-in to access it on a modern computer. Bonus: You’ll hear the title of Josh Karp’s 2005 book about Doug Kenney if you click on the “Go All Out” button.

The Onion Interviews P.J. O’Rourke, erstwhile editor of National Lampoon, here.

Update: Unfortunately, that page is long gone. And there’s nothing the Wayback Machine archive, either.

Did you work at National Lampoon between 1970-1980, or did you know Doug Kenney, Henry Beard or Michael O’Donoghue? An author working on a biography/history of Doug Kenney and the National Lampoon has asked for my help, hence this item. If you answered “yes” to any of the preceeding questions, please contact Josh.

Uproar Entertainment has acquired the rights to release a number of National Lampoon comedy albums on CD. Up for September release will be “That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick!” (1977) and a new title “Rules of the Road.” Other titles, such as “Radio Dinner” (1972) and “Goodbye Pop” (1975) are slated for release in early 2004.

On a related note, Uproar is also releasing a Harvard Lampoon CD called “No Sense of Danger.”

See the Uproar site for details.

Update: Actually, it appears that Uproar no longer carries Lampoon albums. However, they are not hard to find on Amazon and even streaming services.

For years, I have quoted Mr. Mike in my email signature (“One thing led to another and, before we knew it, we were dead.”—from The National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor). Prof. Karl Petruso has compiled a whole page of them, here.

Update: The original page is long gone, but I’ve redirected the link to a Wayback Machine archive of the page. Good stuff!

The Italian Ghostbusters Fan Club has announced that they will be posting an interview on July 7 with Michael Gross, former National Lampoon art director who also happened to be the associate producer on Ghostbusters. Update: Sadly, the site no longer seems to exist.

A lot of people come here looking for information about National Lampoon beyond the “golden age” (as I like to call it). I admit there was a lot of good, funny stuff outside of the narrow scope of this site. But I just don’t have the time or interest (for the moment) to cover it all.

Nevertheless, to better serve those who fondly remember later issues, who arrive here only to be disappointed by the specificity of Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon site, I have a very special gift: A downloadable, fully searchable database listing every issue of National Lampoon ever published, including issue dates, themes, etc. Okay, it’s just a tiny 8k text file, but what a text file.

This useful little document was compiled by reader Stephen Higham a while back. Why I didn’t think to make this available sooner, I don’t know. The important thing is that it is here, now.

Click here to download the National Lampoon Concordance, 1970-1998.

Tip: To download the file to your computer (rather than view it in your Web browser in its raw, unadulterated form), right-click (Windows users) or control-click (Mac users) and choose “Download linked file” from the menu that pops up. If you have a spreadsheet, you can just open or import it. If not, you can open it in a word processor and fiddle with the tabs to get the columns to line up.

The February 2003 issue of Comic Book Artist magazine is completely devoted to National Lampoon artists and writers. It is a bit behind schedule, but should be hitting the newsstands about now.

I helped a little with the issue (including drawing the logo and providing high-res scans of covers and a few other items), but editor Jon Cooke deserves virtually all the credit for putting together an amazing amount of material, including:

• Covers by Gahan Wilson and Mark Bodé.

• Interviews with Gahan Wilson, Michael Gross, Neal Adams, Frank Springer, Ed Subitzky, M.K. Brown, Alan Kupperberg, Mark Bodé, and more.

• Extensive samples of artwork are also featured, including some very rare stuff.

I haven’t seen the issue myself yet, but I’m very excited to get my hands on it. Some of the former NL contributors featured in the issue have been under the radar for a long time.

Update: The print edition is long out of print, but they still sell a digital edition (PDF).

In 1969, not long before founding National Lampoon, Doug Kenney and Henry Beard wrote a parody of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings called Bored of the Rings (published by the Harvard Lampoon). A few years ago I acquired a copy. I had long wanted to read this classic parody, but, never having read the original Tolkien books, I set it aside.

Earlier this year, after thoroughly enjoying the first two installments of the movie adaptation, I finally got around to reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was pretty good (better than the movies, in fact), but, more importantly, I could finally sink my teeth into Bored of the Rings.

I don’t think I would call it the funniest thing I’ve ever read, but I found myself giggling constantly as I read it. It captures Tolkien’s style perfectly, while at the same time mocking it. All the character and place names are re-cast as familiar brand names (Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin become Frito, Spam, Moxie, and Pepsi). Well, familiar brand names in 1969, anyway. In fact, so many brand names are used in the book, I think it would be impossible to make into a movie today. The legal costs would be prohibitive. It follows the plot of the original at least as closely as the movies, and in only 160 pages.

Not surprisingly, there are some drug references and sex, but not nearly as much as I expected. My favorite parts turned out to be my least favorite parts of the Tolkien books: the songs. In the original, I found the songs to be tedious and self-indulgent, and mostly skipped over them. Maybe because of this, in Bored, they are the highlight. Here is a sample (in ancient “elvish”):

A Unicef clearasil
Gibberish ‘n’ drivel
O Mennen mylar muriel
With a hey derry tum gardol
O Yuban necco glamorene?
Enden nytol, vaseline!
Sing hey nonny nembutal.

Anyway, it’s all pretty silly, so anyone who takes Tolkien too seriously will likely be offended. But if you’ve read the original, it makes a nice dessert. And thanks to the renewed interest brought on by the movie adaptations, it’s available again. So you shouldn’t have to hunt around for a copy of the original paperback like I did.

Tony Scheuren was a multi-talented artist who performed on and wrote music for numerous National Lampoon projects, including the road show cast of Lemmings (1973), The Missing Whitehouse Tapes (1974), National Lampoon Radio Hour, Goodbye Pop (1975), as well as some of the later albums. Despite his talent, the fame and fortune acheived by some of his fellow performers eluded him. Alcoholism led to his untimely death at the age of 45 in 1993.

Many of you reading here, if you know his name at all, probably only know him for his uncanny parodies of Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Neil Young and others. But he was also involved in several rock bands, including a group called Chamaeleon Church which had a young drummer named Chevy Chase.

After his death, Scheuren’s family sifted through several hundred reel-to-reel tapes of songs he had written and recorded in his home studio over the years which were never commercially released. A CD of some of these songs, Gaining On You, was released last Fall. More info about Tony and the CD is available on the Beacon Agency website. (Thanks to Margot Scheuren.)