Saturday, August 13, 2005
 
Book Report: The Best of National Lampoon #3 (1973)
I bought this book at a garage sale or such, probably for a quarter. I'd hoped to turn it into a vast eBay profit back in the day when a small timer could hobbyhorse a bit of profit out of eBay, but those days are gone and the book made up a small part of the 16 boxes of unsold speculative books I had in my closet. I culled through them one final time to find books I might like to read before I get rid of the lot, and this one filtered out.

You know, I've always found National Lampoon more amusing than funny. I even had a subscription to it, briefly, in middle school or high school because my mother, funder of all magazine subscriptions at that time, didn't realize it had the occasional boobies (please don't tell her now, for it would break her heart to know that she enabled her hormonal teenage boys in any way). I didn't get a lot of yuks out of it even then, and the boobies were marginal at best.

This book collects pieces from 1971 and 1972. Unfortunately, that means that 50% of the topical humor applies to topics before I was born. A lot of Vietnam humor, which I don't find particularly amusing, much less funny. I could appreciate some of the non-political humor, such as Chris Miller's parody of a Mike Hammer story, but I've read my share of late sixties pulp to access it.

So this book doesn't hold up well. Also, no O'Rourke and only a little Beard. Worth a glance or browse if you've got nothing else, maybe even worth a quarter if you're not over sticking it to that lying bastard Nixon. If it's too funny, you're too old.


 
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."