Out of the blue, I just heard Brian McConnachie do a very funny piece on NPR’s All Things Considered. He’s just as absurd and funny in his inimitable way as he was at National Lampoon back in the seventies. First PBS kids’ shows and now this. Wonders never cease.

Update: Turns out, Brian was a regular contributor on NPR. You can see (and listen to) all his contributions here.

Michael Gross, art director of National Lampoon from 1970 through 1974, is alive and well and living in Oceanside, California, where he is a curator at the Oceanside Museum of Art. I’ve (finally) added his bio to the Staff & Contributors section.

Quite a few back issues of National Lampoon are on sale at The Mad Store, according to proprietor Scott Gosar, pictured at left. He’s the one shoving the Idiot™ into the trash can.

Update: “The Mad Store” is long gone. In 2004, Scott took over as the editor of Cracked magazine during the final years of its print incarnation. Not sure what happened after that.

Shary Flenniken is going online soon with a website at www.sharyflenniken.com. Nothing much there at this writing except an announcement, some contact info, and a scan of one of Shary’s drawings.

CD Review Magazine featured a sampler CD of bits from National Lampoon Radio Hour in the early ’90s, according to reader Robert Thompson. This was five years before the Rhino boxed set appeared. Anyone out there ever seen one of these?

National Lampoon Radio Hour Logs, whatever those are, are available here. Courtesy of Scotty Crane from Shaken Not Stirred. Update: Well, they used to be. Gone now. Wonder whatever happened to AOL?

National Lampoon Show alum Sarah Durkee dropped me a line recently to answer question topic “Live Tours in 1978” on the Answers page: Who was in the troupe that toured in spring of 1978?

In addition to appearing in the touring productions of “That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick!” and “If We’re Late, Start Without Us,” Sarah has also worked as a writer on projects and kids’ TV shows with Lampoon veterans Chris Cerf, Henry Beard, and Sean Kelly. She also married Paul Jacobs, the musical director of the original Lemmings. She was also a co-writer with Beard, Kelly, and Cerf on “The Book of Sequels” (1991), which wasn’t a National Lampoon publication, but “sure felt like one, given that we were all Lampoon alums to one degree or another.” David Kaestle was art director as well.

Sarah is curious about whatever happened to her fellow actors from the tours. If you know, let me know.

Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon Site now has a more flexible system for delivering you, the crazed and aging NatLamp fan, the latest information about this site and the world of National Lampoon.

It’s a spiffy little content management system for weblogs (also known as “blogs”) called Movable Type. If you’ve never heard of “blogs” or “content management systems,” don’t worry. The main thing is that I will be able to update Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon Site in a simpler and more timely fashion. At least in theory.

Bobby London informed me that there were still more factual errors about him on the Answers page. They are now corrected. (Thanks Bobby, and sorry it’s taken so long.) Incidently, there is now an official Dirty Duck website.

John Bendel, editor of National Lampoon‘s popular True Facts section from 1978 to 1992, is alive and well and living in New Jersey. Nowadays, he makes a living as a technology writer. For a while, he maintained a personal web site about life and politics in New Jersey. It’s still up, but he hasn’t updated it in a while. Update: Not anymore.