Now that’s entertainment

National Lampoon stepped back into the parody business earlier this month with a characteristically tasteless but mildly amusing skewering of the entertainment business.

Among the less offensive items in its Hollywood Reporter look-alike, “The Hollywood Retorter”:

An obituary for Feathers, “MGM’s script-choosing parrot,” who “had worked at MGM since 1991, greenlighting various projects throughout his tenure by nodding his head at one of a fan of scripts laid out in front of him. Many credit him with single-handedly jump-starting the once ailing studio. ‘Feathers had a gift,’ stated MGM/UA President Michael Nathanson. ‘For a bird whose brain was roughly the size of a plump raisin, he had a keen eye for scripts that perfectly mirrored what America wanted to see at a given time.’ ”

A barbed-wire-adorned ad for “Writers Concentration Camp”: “Two feature-length screenplays a day? Sound unreasonable? Not with our intensive immersion method!! Don’t miss the train!”

And on a sweeter note, a look at “Bram Stoker’s Count Chocula,” billed as a new Jonathan Demme project: “Demme’s coldly majestic style and Chocula’s raw animal sexuality blend as nicely as bananas and corn flakes.”