Harvard Lampoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor organization and publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Published five-times yearly, The Harvard Lampoon was originally modelled on the former British satirical periodical Punch, and has outlived it to become the world's longest-running humor magazine still in publication. The organization also produces occasional humor books (the best known being the 1969 J.R.R. Tolkien parody Bored of the Rings) and parodies of national magazines. Much of the organization's capital is provided by the licensing of the "Lampoon" name to National Lampoon, begun by Harvard Lampoon graduates in 1970.
Notable Harvard Lampoon alumni include William Randolph Hearst, George Santayana, John Reed, Robert Benchley, William Gaddis, George Plimpton, Fred Gwynne, John Updike, Douglas Kenney, Andy Borowitz, Conan O'Brien, B.J. Novak, and innumerable writers and producers for The Simpsons, Futurama, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman, Seinfeld, NewsRadio and dozens of other television comedies and feature films including Bruce Almighty, The Game, The Cat In The Hat and Daddy Day Care.
The Lampoon sensibility can be said to have influenced all American comedy since the mid-1960s, ever since Lampoon editors Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard wrote the Tolkien parody Bored of the Rings. The success of this book and the attention it brought its authors led directly to the creation of the National Lampoon, which spun off a live show Lemmings, then a radio show in the early 1970s, introducing such performers as Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Chevy Chase. Lampoon writers from these shows were hired directly to help create Saturday Night Live.
The organization is housed a few blocks from Harvard Square in a small mock-Flemish castle with a copper statue of an ibis on the roof. The Lampoon is known for its bacchanalian parties, which can result in smashed plates and furniture and sometimes even hurt feelings.
In 2006, the Lampoon began regularly releasing content on their website, including pieces from the magazine and web-only content.
Many celebrities have visited the Lampoon Castle as honorary members, the most recent being Danny Bonaduce and Sarah Silverman. Their visits have been documented on the Lampoon website, and Danny's visit will be featured prominently on the third episode of Season Two of Breaking Bonaduce, his VH1 reality show.
In October of 2006, the Lampoon released a downloadable version of The Wiki Number, an issue containing humor about Wikipedia, the Internet and computers in general.
[edit] Rivalry with The Harvard Crimson
The Lampoon has a long-standing rivalry with Harvard's student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, which repeatedly refers to the Lampoon in its pages as a "semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization which used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine". The Lampoon, in return, is noted for never referring to the Crimson.
A noted event in the history of the Lampoon–Crimson rivalry was the Crimson's 1953 theft of the Lampoon Castle's ibis and presentation of it as a gift to the government of the Soviet Union. Lampoon staffers retaliated recently by "liberating" the Crimson president's chair and accompanying it to Reykjavík, where it was given as a ceremonial gift to the Prime Minister of Iceland. The president's chair is now chained to a wall in the Crimson building.
