Old National Lampoons and other stuff

This post a day thing is sort of kicking my ass, but I'm determined to do it.

This post is a potpourri or grab bag of random thoughts.

Something I didn't mention yesterday in my Redd Kross post is their appearance in the cheap indie 1984 movie  Desperate Teenage Lovedolls. I wonder now how it's possible I didn't even know this existed until about a month ago. I started watching it on YouTube and it's entertaining so far. It's about an all-girl teenage rock band. I'll have more about  this later.

I was listening to a podcast (The Press Box) and the subject of old magazines came up, specifically National Lampoon. The host of the pod talked about ordering a 1980 National Lampoon issue with John Hughes' short story Christmas '59, which was the inspiration for the movie Christmas Vacation. The podcast was more about the experience of reading and flipping through the vintage mag more than the Hughes story. It took me back to being a kid in the early '80s and discovering my dad's stash of mid-'70s National Lampoons in an old steamer trunk that was kept in my room. Though the Lampoon was primarily a humor magazine definitely NOT like Playboy or Penthouse, it still had some female nudity in it--though nothing terribly graphic--and the humor could be quite bawdy. That might be why my dad kept them buried in a steamer trunk--though why it was kept in my room is beyond me.

I did leaf through those old Lampoons and felt like I was doing something illicit and forbidden. The magazines seemed very adult and a lot of the humor went over my head. Of course, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see boobs and read "dirty" humor. 

A few years ago, I asked my parents if they still had those Lampoons--figuring that in my 50s, enough time had passed to admit I knew of their existence. Sadly, it appears my dad got rid of them. I was looking forward to possibly acquiring those vintage '70s humor mags, but that dream was dashed. (My parents didn't seem to care that I admitted to knowing about them. In retrospect, the stuff inside National Lampoon is fairly quaint. It certainly isn't as if I was inquiring about some old Penthouses or Hustlers).

So, it might be time to see how much old Lampoons are going for on eBay, though I really don't think I need more junk cluttering up the house--though maybe one or two issues wouldn't hurt.

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