Lampoon’s New Laugh Track

What’s funny? A drive-in theater sign reading, inexplicably, “Loose Coeds for Sale”? How about a fake advertisement for Rolling Stone magazine with a photograph of publisher Jann Wenner just after he has gnawed the head off a live chicken?

If a magazine could nail down America’s sense of humor, it would laugh all the way to the bank. But comedic tastes are the toughest to define. Which may explain why, as one magazine puts it in its ads, “You can count the number of humor publications on the fingers of one hand. Even if you’ve lost several fingers to a garbage disposal or a microwave oven.”

The magazine in that ad is National Lampoon; the humor--or alleged humor--cited above appears in its February issue.

An offshoot of the 100-year-old Harvard Lampoon, the National Lampoon turns 20 this year.

It doesn’t look a day over 15.

In the early ‘70s, the Lampoon--with enough peculiar contributors to fill an asylum, including John Hughes, P. J. O’Rourke and Michael Donahue--was as much a fixture in dorm rooms as the bong and the stereo. Then it seemed to go the way of bell bottoms.

In March, 1989, however, a couple of boom babies named Tim Matheson and Dan Grodnik managed to swing a takeover of the Lampoon company and get their names implanted atop the National Lampoon’s masthead as co-CEOs.

Matheson was a child actor (“Leave It to Beaver,” “Bonanza,” “My Three Sons”) who got his big post-puberty break in National Lampoon’s infamous film, “Animal House.” Grodnik, 36, wrote and produced such films as “Terror Train” and a Hulk Hogan vehicle, “Goldi and the Bears.”

Both grew up on the Lampoon’s involuntary, sneak-up-from behind, beer-expelled-through-the-nose humor. But like many in their generation, they drifted away from the collegiate mirth magazine as they grew older.

Now they’re intent on turning the Lampoon into nothing less than “The American forum for humor.”

Clinging to the shirttails of the film “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” which stars Chevy Chase, the magazine is doing better than it has in a long time in subscriptions and advertising. But it has a long way to go before becoming America’s anything (even if Matheson and Grodnik can figure out which America they’re talking about).

Almost a year into their stewardship, the magazine still seems tired. The February issue, for instance, is billed “Welcome to the Nineties,” and features a satirical piece about a Japanese takeover of America. But the issue, like many past issues, is mired in the ‘60s. One page, for example, shows a dozen pictures of Dick Clark modeling hair styles of rock stars; the most happening star featured is Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, who has been dead for a decade.

Grodnik says not to worry. By the time the Sept. 20 anniversary issue hits the stands, things will change and the magazine again will become “smart and funny and hopefully hip.” They plan to bring in new talent and to re-establish themselves on college campuses, drawing funny folks as interns from Harvard, Stanford and other schools.

Lampoon, as Grodnik describes it, will position itself somewhere between Mad magazine, which appeals to pimply faced sixth-grade suburban comedy rebels, and Spy, which is read by acne-scarred rebels who moved to Manhattan and became filthy rich, elitist humor snobs.

“National Lampoon should reflect current values in our country and allow us to look at them in a humorous way,” Grodnik said. “The mandate is, if it’s funny it goes in the magazine.”

But what’s funny? Not naked women.

“When we took over this magazine, they had ads in it that were off-color. We’re not looking to put out a salacious magazine,” Grodnik said. On the other hand, “This isn’t the Christian Science Monitor. Everything doesn’t have to be tasteful. It just has to be funny.”

The new owners have searched for just the right editor, “an editor with vision and entrepreneurial spirit,” Grodnik says. He won’t name names but says several California editorial hot-shots have stepped forward to fill the role--only to retreat “because they didn’t have the courage.”

Meanwhile, Larry (Ratso) Sloman, the Lampoon’s current executive editor, is, for the most part, happy about the changes foreseen. As for the controversy about “salacious” layouts, he said: “Oh, we’ll still have those kinds of photo shoots. . . . It’s just that they won’t appear in the magazine.”

‘Dismal Science’ Makes Interesting Reading

The January Atlantic devotes its cover to Lester Thurow, “probably the most famous economist in America who has not been the host of a PBS television series.” It’s one article on the “dismal science” that is not dismal reading.

Some of Thurow’s colleagues dismiss him with the nickname “Less Than Thorough” because he generally prefers to air his economic concerns in public rather than in scholarly forums. As portrayed by Atlantic writer Charles C. Mann, he is “a man of action rather than a doodler with equations, he rides on newspapers and magazines to America’s homes, yelling out his warning in orthodox Paul Revere fashion.”

The essence of his warning is that America may be transforming from a rich into a poor nation. There are many reasons for this and many solutions in Thurow’s analysis, but at the heart of the matter is the elitist class that has ruled and will continue to rule this country.

Thurow defines these moneyed, privileged, well-connected folks with two labels: the Oligarchy and the Establishment.

The difference, in his estimation, is that an Establishment is truly interested in the nation’s long-term success and “personally confident that if my country succeeds, I will succeed.” On the other hand, “an oligarchy is intrinsically insecure and has got to have secret Swiss bank accounts, because they’re sure that the world is going to fall apart tomorrow and they won’t get their share.”

The U. S. wobbles between these types of ruling classes, Thurow believes. The Founding Fathers were Establishment; the ruling class of the ‘80s--he names Donald Trump and Michael Milken, for instance--were an oligarchy.

The big question facing America now, Thurow argues, is which group will take charge in the 1990s as the nation faces its most difficult economic dilemma to date.

The Establishment, as Thurow defines it, will help the country change to meet the challenges.

“An oligarchy,” he says, “Will pull the country down with it.”