Customer Reviews

National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't know why they changed the cover page by dropping in the yellow banner across the cheerleaders bare butt. The original was full on. Not that thats the big deal here, but that IS the first thing I noticed when this was released. The original was superior in quality. This repo takes a bit of eye squinting in places to see the details. And if you're anyone who was and is a Lampoon reader, you know thats what its all about. Its not a comic book. Crap, it took a month just to read (and often reread) and get through just the monthly magazines. The book releases were like making your way through a full length novel. Thats just they way you attacked a Lampoon. Almost like it was homework, but fun homework. If anymore of these reproductions come out, I hope the publishers will opt out of using a cheap copy machine and enter the digital age to re-create the final product. Lampoons were labors of love by its creators and writers. The 21st century versions should be given the same treatment.

This thing looks like a student got a copy of the original off eBay, scanned it in and printed it at Kinkos. Cheesy and close to illegible in parts. This seems to be the new NatLampCo mode of operation. Grave rob their own material and release poor quality reissues. Very sad, too bad. Echoes of the great read it was, but kind of like digging up Marilyn's corpse for a shag.

When this first came out, it was an amazing success.

First great conceit: printing the whole thing upside down. The "front cover" is the only page that faces the way it does; all the rest of the piece relates the back cover as the front, which is a beautifully done leatherette high school yearbook cover.

And then there's the content. It's all here - the clubs, the class clowns, the juvenile delinquents, the jocks, the cheerleaders. No one has ever topped the orginiality and satirical edge that the editors lovingly contributed to the piece.

I do agree that this reproduction is not as good as the original. I actually have an original and yes, it looks a lot better than this. But look past the print quality and enjoy the content. It's no less brilliant now than it was when it first came out in 1974.

Before "National Lampoon" devolved into a brand name for films about college hijinks, it was a magazine of some of the most brilliant and subtle satire ever written in a monthly format. Riding the counterculture wave, it was a hip and intelligent skewering of all things that could lend itself to parody and irreverence. Sometimes you couldn't tell where reality began and satire ended. I'd bet every NL fan remembers the Volkswagen ad with a photo of a classic VW bug floating in a river, the slogan in the photo sagely counseling from hindsight, "If Ted Kennedy had been driving a Volkswagen, he'd be president today." Nearly every page was distinguished by some level of this mordant ingenuity.

As an avid NL reader, I bought into all things NL, including a parodic record album of a rock festival, which further illustrates what protean talents these guys were. This parody of a 1964 yearbook came out at the peak of their powers (or so it seems to me). I read it cover to cover more than once. The brilliance here is that the yearbook isn't just a facsimile that captures the self-conscious bittersweet motifs of high schoolers. This particular copy of the C. Estes Kefauver Memorial High School yearbook belongs to "Lawrence Kroger" and it's really about HIM, his senior year. A larger piecemeal narrative develops through the student biographies, club memberships, candid photos of student activities, and student autographs. The winners and losers are implicitly identified, stuffy attitudes are laid bare, and the identity of a notorious prankster is revealed. However, if you don't read it from front to back, you could miss that story. If this had been something else besides a softcover newsstand item, it would be deemed a must-read comic masterpiece. Yes, that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but I stand by it.

I stumbled on this new edition by searching for the original at eBay. I was thrilled at the discovery that someone somewhere also considered it brilliant enough for a reprint. I opted for the newer edition, as an original would probably be dilapidated after forty-odd years, especially if someone loved it as much as I did. Missing from this edition is the trick cover. Originally, the front cover you see here -- sans the censor strip -- was for the news rack display only, so it could catch the eye and be identified as National Lampoon. But once you have it in your hands, you flip the book over, upside down, and the back is now the front, a leatherette-printed cover of the "1964 Kaleidoscope," and complete immersion into the parody begins. There is no other reference to NL until you get to the back page, where the credits are listed. This new edition bypassed that neat gimmick, marketing the book toward a nostalgic readership. This time, the fake yearbook cover was just another page in the book, behind the NL cover.

Also, a reunion update is illogically added at the beginning of the book, before the pages of the original faux yearbook begin. Unless you've got a steel-trap memory as to everyone's names and what they represented as characters, it's best to bypass this until you've reread the original stuff. It's very funny, but you'll need a refresher to get the humor.

It's great stuff, and I'm happy to see it again. I've thought about this for years, and have mentioned it to so many people. Sadly, there's nothing like National Lampoon on the market these days. It was slick and smart, parody and satire aimed at informed grownups. I guess the idealism of the anti-establishment milieu that made mocking things so much fun has turned to cynicism, and the national mood is too dark and divisive for this sort of humor (in a periodical format). Now all that remains of the NL brand is what's associated with adolescent humor obsessed with horniness and drinking, stuff ANYBODY can produce.
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I remember my roommate having the National Lampoon yearbook parody back when I was in college in the 70's, and laughing so hard I couldn't stand up. I always had it in the back of my mind over the years to back-order a copy, if one still existed, but never could find it. Ecstatic to find a re-issue. The humor in magazines like this can often seem dated years later, but not in this case. Completely side-splitting from cover to cover. Especially ground-breaking considering when it was originally published.

I lost this yearbook back in the late 70's when a girlfriend, I'm not sure which, booted me from her apartment. It was something that happened very often during that time period - I was in my early to mid-Twenties. During my very wild and now long gone years. I can't remember the name of the girl who forgot to include my NatLampCo Yearbook with all of my other stuff that she'd managed to cram into my car - all while I was in her bed in a drunken coma. But I never forgot about that lost '64 High School Yearbook! I looked for years in every bookstore I'd pass - I checked public libraries - all to no avail. Along comes the Internet and with it Amazon.com - and I had my treasured National Lampoon yearbook back from the past. I've always loved name puns, and this book has more name puns than you've ever heard or knew existed. The underclassmen pages are where you'll find some of the most hilarious puns in this entire book. Many are tame like Alfredo D. Darke, Grace B. Formeels - some are more racy like Mandy Lifeboats or Lotta Zits - or the risque Matt Tress. I'm just kidding - my favorite is Buster Hyman. The rest of the book is a hoot, too! It describes the early 1960's high school days perfectly, although I was a couple of years behind them. Baby boomers will love this. It took me and my friend weeks to figure out the very last pun on the Underclassmen pages - and it's the best one - Enjoy!

It is almost as good as the old one that I lost. I think I have grown up a bit (I hope) since then so some of the humor has lost a little of its edge. The printing quality on the new one was not as good as the original. On some pages it almost appeared that they had photocopied the original to make the new one. I still think maybe the best part is the list of names of all the underclassmen. To come up with those dozens of puns the writers must have stayed up late smoking lots of good stuff.

Ah, the good old days when 'National Lampoon' magazine was funny.

Plus, this yearbook was the origin of the Lampoon's classic movie "Animal House", with the first appearance of Larry 'Lance' Kroeger.

Lots of fun!

I bought this book when it came out in the early 70s...amd I thought it was hysterical. Now, with a few reunion additions, this book is as funny and clever as ever. You have to read every line, or you'll miss something. That's why it's great to go back over it again. You will get hours of laughs out of it. I'm so glad there were still copies around.

I had the original and lost it. It is a work of pure genius!
I love it.It looks so much like my yearbook. And the characters are fabulous.