From its first issue in April, 1970, the National Lampoon blazed like a comet, defining comedy as we know it today. To create Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, former Lampoon illustrator Rick Meyerowitz selected the funniest material from the magazine and sought out the survivors of its first electrifying decade to gather their most revealing and outrageous stories. The result is a mind-boggling tour through the early days of an institution whose alumni left their fingerprints all over popular culture: Animal House, Caddyshack, Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters, SCTV, Spinal Tap, In Living Color, Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons—even Sesame Street counts a few Lampooners among its ranks. Long before there was The Onion and Comedy Central news shows, there was the National Lampoon, setting the bar in comedy impossibly high!
Praise for Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead:
"The other night I started laughing so hard I had to leave the room . . . And then I realized that I hadn't laughed so hard in 35 years, since I was a teenager, reading National Lampoon." --The Wall Street Journal
"If you grew up with the Lampoon, this book is a trip down memory lane like no other; if not, it will demonstrate that the much maligned 70s could produce humor that has never been surpassed." --Vanity Fair
"Meyerowitz delivers more than he promises [in his introduction]. The alumni reminiscences he commissioned, taken together, paint a vivid picture of a tight-knit family of twentysomething humorists at the dawn of their careers."
-Newsweek
"Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a coffee-table book-big, colorful, and fun to flip through. But it also serves as an important reminder: Where would American humor be without the National Lampoon?"
-The New Yorker
"With page after page of exquisitely reproduced articles and illustrations, DSBD is a satiric cornucopia . . .You're gonna need a bigger stocking for this one!"
-NationalEnquirer.com
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About the Author
Rick Meyerowitz was a prolific contributor to the National Lampoon for 15 years, during which time he created the iconic Animal House movie poster. With Maira Kalman, he made the “New Yorkistan” cover of the New Yorker, the bestselling cover in that magazine’s history. He lives in New York City.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
70 of 71 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Unequalled Pinnacle of Artistic-Comedic Genius Finally Gets its Due
September 13, 2010
Format:Hardcover
There was a time, kids, when popular humor meant more than LOLcats and people getting hit in the crotch on America's Funniest Home Videos. It gave us deft, subversive parodies of Titus Andronicus, da Vinci's notebooks, Kafka, and the Code of Hammurabi and dared the audience to keep up.
The National Lampoon was a pure flash of genius in 1970s America due in no small part to its corps of genius artists, who finally get the celebration they deserve in Rick Meyerowitz's wonderful book.
For a kid like me discovering the scathing power of satire at the intersection of Vietnam and Watergate, 1972-73, the National Lampoon was a gust of visual and verbal nitrous oxide in an oleo world; nothing in my life has made me laugh harder. NatLamp boldly ran long, texty pieces that would likely be spiked today over lack of faith in readers' attention spans; one high point was a perversely intricate 12,000-word overview of the "law of the jungle" (literally, an invented legal system for animals) complete with demented Latinate citations, lovingly reprinted here.
But it was the art direction that genuinely made your jaw drop, and a lot of the best of it is in here. You'll find astonishing, gorgeous, dark-side takes on Herge's Tintin books, the Yellow Pages, SAT tests, Nazi zeppelin tourism brochures, insane niche mag titles they made up like Brave Dog magazine... from artists like Gahan Wilson, Charles Rodrigues, Bruce McCall, Brian McConnachie, and so many more... this was genius, fearless, hysterical and important stuff of a type wholly AWOL from today's scene. People who forward Onion or Colbert links to each other today would probably be struck dead silent by NatLamp's Vietnamese Baby Book parody or fake - and hilarious - Dutch hate campaign. The Onion is pretty thin soup in comparison.
But what gets you about this excellent collection of Lampoon high points is how the artists and writers trusted their audience to get it - catch the allusions, make the connections, and dig the bravery of the thing no matter how far it went. We got it. Today, on the other hand, big swaths of Onion and Colbert fans have to have it explained to them that these are jokes they're enjoying.
So I wish it were possible to call the Lampoon "seminal" -- there's a word that gets trotted out a lot for important old work -- but that would mean we'd see its descendants all around us today. I don't. The mag dried up in the 1980s, SNL grew cautious and corporate, and today our culture has grown sour and ultra-sensitive; we shall not see the like of this work again.
I loved this magazine for its literacy, intelligence, and fearlessness and this book captures the very essence of National Lampoon in its high-water years, 1970-77 or so. If you're old enough to remember and love that era but failed to save your back issues, this book will delight you. If you're not, and you think you know what far-out subversive humor is, this book will educate you.
The National Lampoon was a pure flash of genius in 1970s America due in no small part to its corps of genius artists, who finally get the celebration they deserve in Rick Meyerowitz's wonderful book.
For a kid like me discovering the scathing power of satire at the intersection of Vietnam and Watergate, 1972-73, the National Lampoon was a gust of visual and verbal nitrous oxide in an oleo world; nothing in my life has made me laugh harder. NatLamp boldly ran long, texty pieces that would likely be spiked today over lack of faith in readers' attention spans; one high point was a perversely intricate 12,000-word overview of the "law of the jungle" (literally, an invented legal system for animals) complete with demented Latinate citations, lovingly reprinted here.
But it was the art direction that genuinely made your jaw drop, and a lot of the best of it is in here. You'll find astonishing, gorgeous, dark-side takes on Herge's Tintin books, the Yellow Pages, SAT tests, Nazi zeppelin tourism brochures, insane niche mag titles they made up like Brave Dog magazine... from artists like Gahan Wilson, Charles Rodrigues, Bruce McCall, Brian McConnachie, and so many more... this was genius, fearless, hysterical and important stuff of a type wholly AWOL from today's scene. People who forward Onion or Colbert links to each other today would probably be struck dead silent by NatLamp's Vietnamese Baby Book parody or fake - and hilarious - Dutch hate campaign. The Onion is pretty thin soup in comparison.
But what gets you about this excellent collection of Lampoon high points is how the artists and writers trusted their audience to get it - catch the allusions, make the connections, and dig the bravery of the thing no matter how far it went. We got it. Today, on the other hand, big swaths of Onion and Colbert fans have to have it explained to them that these are jokes they're enjoying.
So I wish it were possible to call the Lampoon "seminal" -- there's a word that gets trotted out a lot for important old work -- but that would mean we'd see its descendants all around us today. I don't. The mag dried up in the 1980s, SNL grew cautious and corporate, and today our culture has grown sour and ultra-sensitive; we shall not see the like of this work again.
I loved this magazine for its literacy, intelligence, and fearlessness and this book captures the very essence of National Lampoon in its high-water years, 1970-77 or so. If you're old enough to remember and love that era but failed to save your back issues, this book will delight you. If you're not, and you think you know what far-out subversive humor is, this book will educate you.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I spent a good portion of the 1970s in my room listening to music and reading National Lampoon. During its prime years it was probably the funniest magazine that ever existed - at least to my teenage mind. I still have a pile of them in storage, including the 1964 Yearbook, the 199th Birthday Book, and The Very Large Book of Comical Funnies. Pure gold! This book is great. Rick Meyerowitz gives us a generous selection of the magazine's greatest work. He also includes reminiscences about the writers and artists who made it all possible. In 1976 I thought these guys had the greatest job on earth. I was probably right.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By T. Hensgens
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Loved the book. Well done by the author. Explained just enough too not too much of what it was like to work at NL with the crew.
I did not realize there were so many personalities in one office. A hell of a clash.
If this book brought back memories as a reader, I can only imagine what it was like to have lived it.
I guess the title of the book says it all.
I did not realize there were so many personalities in one office. A hell of a clash.
If this book brought back memories as a reader, I can only imagine what it was like to have lived it.
I guess the title of the book says it all.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still Funny
When I was 13 or 14 (1973 or 74) my cousin Jerry Ryan gave me a tremendous gift - a huge pile of back issues of the National Lampoon. After that I never missed an issue. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Michael P. McCullough
4.0 out of 5 stars
held my interest
took me back to the old days when I bought the lampoon down at the corner drugstore - I'll always remember laughing out loud when I saw the cover with the gun to the dog's head. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Raymond G. Schoch
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good for Natl' Lampoon Fans
This is a good, but not great, ode to the writers that made Natl' Lampoon great. The best part is not the sometimes obsequious praise of the wrtiers but rather the accompanying... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Wayne
4.0 out of 5 stars
Making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.
This is a coffee table sized book about the writers and artists of National Lampoon magazine. There are short write ups about the creators (usually Rick Meyerowitz's memories of... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Johnny Heering
5.0 out of 5 stars
funny stuff
this is a terrific compilation of the best humor from this fabulous title, instead of trying to get all the copies of the magazine, here you have in one book the essential artwork.
Published 19 months ago by Steve Cooper
3.0 out of 5 stars
10 year anthology was better
from it's brilliant cover of a hippie and yuppie version of a guy looking at each other with horror, this book isn't what I'd hoped. Read more
Published on May 6, 2011 by ec05
5.0 out of 5 stars
She loved it!!
I got this book for my daughter for Christmas. She has a weird sense of humor, following the rest of her family, and just loves the book. Read more
Published on January 18, 2011 by Diane Adkins
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Gift for Lampoon Fan
My husband collected (and still pulls out to read) Lampoons from the early 70s through the mid 80s. He is very hard to buy and this book made an excellent Christmas gift for him.
Published on January 8, 2011 by L. Gremillion
5.0 out of 5 stars
trip down memory lane
Love- love - loved it! I remember some of the stuff from Lampoon's heyday on the magazine market. I bought it for my brother, who frequently references old Lampoon articles - I... Read more
Published on December 28, 2010 by bluetree
4.0 out of 5 stars
Live from The 1970s, It's The National Lampoon!
Illustrator Rick Meyerowitz - best known for the National Lampoon's "Mona Gorilla" cover and the poster for "Animal House" - looks at what made the Lampoon a 1970's comedy... Read more
Published on December 14, 2010 by BlogOnBooks
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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