This week's episode of the Wal-card Podcast is brought to you by last week's episode of the Wal-card Podcast. Previously on the Wal-card Podcast. Doug Kenny, born a poor black child in Mississippi. Wait, I thought he was born in Florida.
His family later moved to a rugby camp in the Chilean mountains. That's the alive episode. Afterwards, Kenny attended Berkeley University in Boston. That was me, you dumbass!
It was there that he studied science and theology and founded Omni Magazine. I don't like this. Not at all, Ronda. He later was thought to have disappeared, but then was found in a broom closet having a threesome with Marilyn Monroe and Imogene Coco.
This is ridiculous. Before you even listening to your own episode, I mean, hold on. Imogene Coco, you say. And now, part two of the Wild Cards Get Lampooned again.
Still lampooning. Welcome to the Wild Card Podcast. I'm your host, Jared Eaton, and my co-pilots on this journey to wherever. Are my good friends, Jeff Curtis?
Hello! And I'm gonna look at him straight in the eye. Now I'm gonna tell him what a cheap, lying, no good, rotten, forfleshing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-casing, brainless, tickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spy-licked, worm-headed, sack of shit. He is!
Oh, that's hallelujah! That's good. Hallelujah and holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?
I love that nickname. That might be my favorite of all time, right? You know where it came from? Yeah, of course I do.
That's from Christmas Vacation. Holy shit! Hallelujah! And holy shit!
Where's the Tylenol? And we're gonna have the Happy and Christmas since Bing Crosby tapped dance with Danny Fucking K. Oh, I love it. That's a great...
I love it. The National Lampooned Christmas Vacation. There were only two good National Lampooned Vacation movies, and those were the two. Vacation and Christmas Vacation was okay.
The remake is hilarious. Yeah, it is. It's not a National Lampoon movie. It's just a vacation with God.
Damn, it's funny. I wasn't expecting it to be as funny. I thought... I thought I thought up last year for a long time, I think it's gonna be bad.
What I saw was that holy shit. Speaking of thinking it's gonna be bad, Ron Baler, tell everyone what this podcast is all about. What? This is part two.
Episode. It's the same as the last week's episode. Isn't it? What?
I thought it would carry over. It's not so funny. Still getting in there. Still getting in there.
I had to come up with it. It's called my God. This thing was last week. Yeah.
Whatever that was. It's being lazy this week. It's totally gazzy. Last week it was forgetting.
This week it's... Hey, I'm not gonna go. We finished last episode 10 minutes ago. What are you doing?
I mean, it was last week. It was last week. I totally forgot. I'm looking at what I was gonna do for my time.
I get to watch it just over here for last week. It's still easier. Next week's episode is gonna be called the Wild Cards Pick-A-Fight. Ooh.
Three, one. God go in. Three, one. Three, one.
Sunday, one. Sunday in the Thunderdome. Three men enter. One Madley's anti-entity who run Mardertown.
We'll sell you the whole thing. You only need the air. You only need the air. You're biting it so hard.
Alright, so this is the favorite section of the podcast. Excellent. And I went... I don't know, it's not exactly like the lightning round one, but it's a few little small ones in here.
Okay. Alright. Have we talked about fears on here before? Fears?
Yeah. I don't think we've ever... I don't think we have either. I don't think we should give the list of fears.
I hope we're going to. This is how things play mis before I have. I hear answers to questions about my fears. Too bad.
We're doing it. I know. They're gonna use that. Rational and irrational are much more funny.
I don't believe that I have any irrational fears to me. So what are we afraid of? Yeah, absolutely. Are we choosing rational or irrational?
I'm sorry, we'll start with irrational. Start with irrational. I think. Irrational is more like...
I think it's creepy, you know. I have a fear of falling. That's kind of rational. Yeah, I think so.
I used to say heights, but I can be on a roller coaster. I can be on a roller coaster. I can ride on a glass elevator of many heights. As long as I'm secured, I feel fairly well okay.
I think I'll put it up ways and down ways and sideways and less all there. Yes, and always, that you can think of. We can bust through the glass ceiling of the elevator. I guess let's do it.
Come with me. I am a fear of touching yogurt. I'm going to call that irrational right now. Right immediately now.
It makes me so happy. Wow. We might go part three with the beginning episode because I got to get this for it. We might have to talk about yogurt now.
Yeah, because when Madeleine was a baby. Yeah. And she was just a fan. The fangs is part of the reason.
You know, so I guess it's probably all started with the time I let her take. Figure paint and then she touched me afterwards. But with the yogurt, she's eating this. I'm feeding her the yogurt and she's getting these yogurt fangs.
And then she's reaching out to touch me. And then she's reaching out to touch me and it's like, and I'm starting to fight this feeling the vomiting. I'm looking at these fangs dripping down her. Chef, I want to be very clear.
I don't remember, but I won't feed her yogurt. She has to feed herself yogurt. Oh, she's eating the fangs anymore now. But it's like, so I know it's irrational.
I've touched yogurt. But so I don't want it on my clothes. I don't want to touch my fingers. I don't want to touch you.
I don't want to touch her. I don't want those fangs. Oh my god. It's spectacular.
So I hate ranch dressing. Yeah. I can clean it up. I can touch it.
What about the smell? Because it's a strong smell. Oh, that's true. That's true.
I will be unhappy. But it's not. I just also, like, even stronger than that, I just like ants. I used to cut grass in their head hills, and they broke my leg, or leave food line around, and there's ants in it, and you're eating it.
You don't throw up for your rest of their ants crawling all over it. So I have a couple of memories of ant attacks. That's a rational thing. But I see an ant.
I don't get freaked out. I don't fear ants. Like, there's so many people with your clowns. Right.
Cool, refugel. Yeah. Or some people with your water, or the dark, or spiders, or snakes. I have, I wouldn't call it a crippling fear.
It's a livable fear of wasps. Of doing labor, of any sort. I don't like getting up is the thing. Wasps.
No, they can hurt you. Yeah. Not all stinging. It's a bees are usually I'm OK with.
One motherfucker got me in the back of the head over the summer. That was awful. That was awful. All the loss.
All the loss. Yeah. He bumped my head a few times. I'm sorry if I just stay still.
He was lying on. Nope. He bumbled into me a few times before he stuck it in, and it was bad. It hurt right on top of my head.
Oh. You've been rushing me to the emergency room and it's stuck me on top of my head. Yeah. I don't like the bees.
We have a few people on set that were allergic to bees. And it was scary as the producer of this piece that people were getting stung left and right. We just take a break before we get to rational fears and talk about irrational fears of people you know, like some of the most irrational fears you've ever heard of. I find colerphobia.
I don't like clowns. I don't like clowns. I don't like. It's like, if I see one, I'm so afraid of it.
Yeah. Even if I saw clown carrying a knife, I wouldn't be more scared of that than anyone else carrying a knife. Yeah. I'm a little scared of people who want to be clowns.
Yeah. Well, that's very rational. I've met clowns. It's a rational.
I had a young lady who I was teaching once who was afraid of bananas. Who was afraid of bananas? Banana. No allergy or anything.
No one was that. And I do a guy in college who was afraid of, I think it was cucumbers or pickles. A fear of cucumbers or something. Yeah.
And so one time, and there's a story I'm not going to do right now, we were breaking into those houses. It was okay. Sure. No, I get it.
And we stole this. For some reason I get it. I was still this object and it was who could possess it. You couldn't break anything.
You couldn't break anything. You couldn't break anything. You can't even bite it in or get a key somehow. That's what I said.
That you hung on the wall to show it to show it down. Oh, yeah. And someone left a pickle at his nightstand. And when he woke up, he couldn't move or speak.
Someone who lived with him had to call into work for him because he couldn't go to work because he was destroyed. Wow. Yeah. By the pickle.
By seeing that. By the pickle. By not being expecting it was there when he woke up and he was paralyzed by fear. I used to fear spiders.
Yeah. But not so much anymore. He used to be a paralyzing. I'm walking to spider webs.
I do it every day though. I do it every day and I'm used to it and I hate it. I hate it. But I'm afraid it's gross.
Oh, the fear thirteen. I remember working on bank when I was a kid and they didn't have the thirteen button on the elevator. And just like we don't have a thirteen full room like no you do. You just know the fourteen.
It doesn't matter what you call it. It's still thirty four. I think fear tends to go away a little bit once you reach this rationalization of yeah it's thirteen. There's no evidence to support that.
But I think just by nature of being a science teacher, I am not superstitious. Right. So I'll say Macbeth is loud and proud as I can. That one now.
That's the one that gets me. Everything else. I really like good luck, people say break a leg instead of luck because they're superstitious about it. Right.
It didn't bother me. Terribly. Just moths. Yeah.
They're ugly and gray. They can run your clothes. Yeah. They'll eat them.
That's true. That's true. I've heard of it. I think that's part of it.
Because Caleb loves the moth, man. He's a moth. When I was taking a shower this morning and I took a watchcloth off the wall and there's a moth that came out of it. Oh, you were freaked out.
I think what gets Caleb about moths is my sister still is in the house like we're up in, way out in the country where the moths can get up to like five inches in diameter. These are huge. Yeah, they're huge moths. And I think that's where the fear comes in.
You see when you're small, something happened and just lingers at this horror. Yeah, I think the moth flew onto it like landed on him or something. He just really... Let's not talk rational about that.
We'll just take the irrational ones. Like moths. Yeah. What is the worst job you could imagine for yourself?
Like if you had to do this thing. A spider wrangler? That one's about. I don't think that's a job though.
Oh, window washer. Yeah, because you're out on that. Fuck that or a bridge painter? No.
Have you seen those guys that work like hundreds feet in the air? No. No, it'd be lay or anything. And walking on these...
And that's also a rather good job because you finish the bridge and you start over on the other side. And you're just walking on girders and stuff like that. There's the wind? How does the wind knock?
No. No. So yes. Yes, that's my worst job.
I could ever think of it like even a power line. It's not worse job. It's not worse job. It's not worse job.
It's not worse job. No. No. No.
It's not worse job. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. Right.
I do. You have a propensity to go, that's bullshit. I do. I don't know.
And the army is... bobulated with who will unquestionably do whatever... You know, think the way the sergeants want to think the way the militia... They may not think that way, but they'll...
Yeah. They'll do what I would want to tell. We'll adjust it that way. You know what I'm gonna wringuff that way.
You know. I don't know. Hello He's in the Air Force, he's a captain in the Air Force, and he's missed several weeks of school because he has to go. And sometimes when they were flooding in North Carolina, he was gone for about a week and a half, two weeks.
He was in emergency with a relief down there. He said that lifestyle is just awful. How about people choose it because it's what's best for them, their family, they believe in it. What about you, Joe?
Yogurt Farmer? That's horrible. I think it was for you. So I could never work in a prison.
No, I can see that as being horrible. Yeah. I can be a guard. I wouldn't even want to go in there as a social worker.
No. That doesn't seem like an environment that you would be especially happy working in. That's an office job for you. I could take an office job.
Yeah. An office job's not so bad. I've worked so many different jobs. I've done a lot of things over there.
I can do paperwork all day long. I can look at Excel spreadsheet, it's all day long. No work until nothing to worry about. When I worked an office job at college for a work study, and I went into my room and I was like, where are my bands?
I can't have any of the words. I'm like, okay, sure. That's not for me. That's not for me.
No. Last part of the paper question, I get it all completely unrelated. Right. Popular musical artist that makes you change the channel.
They come on, other people are like, oh yes, and you're like, no. I do that a lot, but I don't really know their names. I'll do it with almost any modern. See, I mean, they were popular maybe in a time when people you respected like them, you're like, I can't do this.
Oh, Steve Miller. I can't speak Miller every time. I like Steve Miller. I know.
He's done a lot of crap too. Oh yeah. All I have to do is hear someone starting to talk at the beginning of their song and I'm like, okay, well, I'm turning this, I'm changing the station. I mean, it's Prince.
No shit. I'm instantly changing the channel. You don't want his voice to be close. Yes.
I just voiced some pleasant. Oh, wow. I don't know why it's surprising. That's why I brought this up.
They are popular music artists. Obviously, they're very good at what they do, but you don't like them. Yeah, I don't like all Prince. I'm automatically turning this.
I'm not saying all these things. Yeah. Most people do. He's incredibly popular.
Yeah, yeah. He's absolutely. There are talented people I can't say. Yeah.
There's a point where I would turn all else, but. They're okay. I'm okay with them. Phil Collins, I used to turn, but only because of over listening to Sussudio.
Sussudio. I like Sussudio. I'm not a Sussudio. I'll turn them off anymore.
I like some of them. Yeah. Do you answer Jeff? I did.
You said everybody's... Anytime I turn off. Anytime I turn off, the song starts, it starts with someone talking, I'm turning the chain. I'm turning the stage.
I'm turning the stage. Hey baby, yo baby, or it might. I don't know. Have you seen her?
Have you seen her? That's older than what you're turning on? Probably. I don't listen to music to listen to people talk.
Right? Yeah, we do podcasts. Yeah, we do podcasts all the time, that's right. We do it again.
In other words, self-loathing generally, you know. We're artist. Yeah. There's a lot of hate.
Every day. It's so bizarre how much you look like we go. Is that just because I said we're artists and you're like, I go. He doesn't look like they go.
That's a man go would say. I thought I've said that on the show before that you said I'm here. That's the missing year. It's the leading year.
And after all these weeks, I'm going to put a bar down on that. Right. That's the most important thing to do in the four parts. Too many years.
I've got it. I've got it. Lust for life. We're doing that same version next.
I'm already missing the year. All right. Speaking of missing the year, people have been missing out. They have been missing out.
They have been missing out. They have been missing out. The Young Blackshop. The Young Blackshop for Mississippi and I barely.
I think a lot of people didn't get the Jerk reference. You know what makes me sad. But I think they didn't. If they didn't I'd probably have to agree.
I didn't think that I'd get that. I got the reference today. You got the reference. We've got the reference.
We've been watching movies. We know we're here. I've got the conversation. Right.
I remember seeing the Jerk at home. I remember seeing that when I was younger. But would you enjoin that in Flint. Yeah.
Which I adore, that you like. That's one that I had on video growing up. And it was just on repeat. It's just dead Henry.
It was just all the time. The more absurdly comfortable people are just being goofy, unless it was from my childhood, I don't connect with it. But I can look back at like Eastern Terrain, Jim Carries, absurd movies that people would hate, and be like, that was my time to enjoy surgery. If he made a movie like that today, I would hate it.
No, I think you absolutely would. But because it's from my childhood, I love it. And so when I see something that worked from my time, with the absurdity, it doesn't matter. Yeah.
I think what I... So like John Belushi, Animal House? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He does nothing for me that. Him and Blues Brothers, I love it. Oh, that's hip. Yeah.
That's fun, that's a good thing. And I'll get to this later, but since you were talking about Chevy Chase's dry delivery, deadpan delivery, it's important to note that later on, Doug and Chevy Chase become best buddies. And that's Henry Beard was very Chevy Chase like in the delivery, the deadpan. And Chevy Chase became kind of known for that deadpan delivery, but with absurdity.
Yeah. And while I'm on, Chevy Chase was brilliant with that. I know a lot of people have said, Chevy Chase is kind of a dick, nobody wants to work with him. And I've seen evidence of both, that being incorrect and that being correct, it's weird.
But I don't know. I just thought it was interesting that Kenny was gravitated towards those kind of people, the buttoned up, people who still had a sense of humor. Yeah. But anyway, so we're good to start then.
We left off where he was left, the love thing he was done. He and Henry had lived together since moving to New York. And they lived with, it was Doug Kenny, Henry Beard, and Kenny's girlfriend, Alex Garcia, Maude, I don't want to talk about his relationships. An enormous deal.
I don't think those are hugely important. They probably are. I feel important to him, but in terms of comic legacy. Right, right.
I hadn't mentioned her before because, well, I'll get to that in the first paragraph here. So while the rest of the staff had to carry on without Doug after he had left, it was Henry Beard who became a father figure in opposition to Doug's motherly kind of thing. And he was firm. He found deadlines.
Right, right. And he wasn't going to hold your hand through it. He wasn't as altruistic as Doug was. Doug was just a person who had a big heart and wanted to help you even if it meant sacrificing for himself.
But that's why he was burned out. That's exactly why. Well, that was a year and a half of him working constantly. There had to be at least some people there who knew that he would finish their stuff they didn't have done.
And then he would take advantage of that. I get his teacher sometimes. And at the same time, this is minor to note right now. But he was usually high when he was working.
This is Doug. This is Doug. He was so he smoked a lot of pot at the time. He was drinking as much as the rest of the staff, which is a lot.
It's an enormous amount. But it's the early 70s. They're kids out of college. They've got money now.
So yeah, substance abuse is not a horrible issue for Doug right now. Not terrible. But he left the lampoon in disarray. It was a crisis when he left.
He was the lampoon. And he was gone. Now, nobody at the lampoon knew where he went. He had spent two months in California with a couple of his friends from Harvard, a guy and a girl.
Her name was Lucy. He's something I can't remember until a peer later in the story. And they mothered him for the next few months. They badeed him at his request.
And I don't know whether that was unhealthy or healthy or what. It was probably nurturing that he needed after nurturing so many other people and getting that distance from his own family. When he left, it was he probably needed. No, he was totally threatened.
Yeah. After two months of his disappearance where people at the lampoon were like, should we call the cops? Is he dead? Where is Doug?
Henry received a postcard in the mail that said, next time, try a yay-lee. Love, Doug. And of course, I don't know whether that should grin Henry or not being that his father went to Yale and it was a big deal. Yeah.
Anyone to Harvard to irritate his father. But Doug did after two months. He returned to New York. But only long enough to gather some of his belongings and get a divorce from Alex Garcia Motta.
He married her at the time. He had married her less than a year before. They had dated for three years and then they had been married less than a year before he left for California. But she wasn't devastated because she felt like she never really knew who he was.
Doug would only give part of himself to anyone. He was generous. He was very kind. But as far as who is this guy, he was so busy giving that.
Buddy, who was compartmentalizing who he gave to who. That's exactly what I know. Nobody got all of him or it could see him as a complete person. Now, he may not know the answer to this question.
It may not be a story. But it's bothering me a little bit. He left Henry a note. Yeah.
Tell his wife. Well, she lived there too. But it was Henry that got the note. So it was both of you.
You shouldn't get any more note than he did, wow. No, no. Henry and Alex got pretty much the same note. The note was for Henry, not Alex.
Not that this makes it OK or anything. But Alex Garcia-Mada, they said she had no sense of humor. She didn't understand why Doug was funny. Why would she be interested?
It's the weirdest thing. Because Doug, his defining feature was a sense of humor. And she had no sense of humor. Yeah.
Yeah, so they were kind of a weird couple anyway. And this is the young falling out of love right after Harvard, kind of thing. So he came back to give a divorce. And he headed for Martha's Vineyard, where he had spent a year allegedly living in a tent, taking copious amounts of LSD and attempting to commit suicide a few times and working on his novel, Teenage Counties from Outer Space.
The suicide, him treating to commit suicide, that could never be verified. When Doug got back to New York, he was very uncomfortable talking about his time at Martha's Vineyard. He wouldn't open up about it. I'm guessing that the thing about LSD was probably true.
He was probably taking copious amounts of LSD at Martha's Vineyard, which would be a great place. If you're going to drop acid, Martha's Vineyard would be a great place to do it. If you have to do it. I've never been there or dropped acid.
So I can't confirm. I've only done one of those things. But I'm guessing Martha's Vineyard would be a great place to be. He's not going to tell you which one he's done.
Well, I'm not going to tell you what he's doing. Don't tell him, Jeff. Let him figure it out on their own. We've given them just to give him that much.
So it is obviously verified that he did write the novel Teenage Counties from Outer Space. But when he got back, was that a hit? That novel? Well, I'm going to get to that.
Yeah, I'm going to get to that. Even for Doug Kenny, you can't do everything, you know, and expect it to succeed. But and he was pretty much, I don't want to say shunned from the rest of the staff, but it was all the hard to come back from. For several months, you can have a conversation without him apologizing.
He came back to the National Lampoon. Every year, he came back to New York, and the Lampoon. It was his business. He had every right.
So it was like taking a year vacation, but he didn't actually quit because he could come back. Right. Right. He was I don't know if he was contractually bound to come back, but it was his magazine.
So like him and Henry, and he came back. I don't know what happened to Robert Hoffman, and all this time. I'm not sure when he left or anything. He does come back in the story here just for a second, but I'm not sure of that whole timeline with Hoffman, but that's not enormously important.
So the only confirmed activity 100% is that he finished Teenage Comics from Outer Space. He gave it to Henry Beard to read, which he did in front of Kenny at Kenny's urging. Afterwards, when he saw that Beard was a little bit speechless after finishing the novel, Kenny said, it sucks, doesn't it, to which Henry replied? Yeah.
Kenny threw the manuscript out of the window. Can he read it? No, Kenny did. But there are some say he just threw it in the garbage, and that him throwing out the window was like a hyperbolic story.
Nobody knows what actually happened. But except the Teenage Comics from Outer Space probably did indeed suck. It was probably horrible. LSD ramblings of a guy who was used.
Most things created on LSD suck when not on LSD. Oh yeah, yeah. I've tried to create on LSD. It's not.
It's dumb. It's dumb. So he just confirmed it wasn't Martha's vignards. It wasn't Martha's vignards.
It was tried to be opened up. Yes, there's a shocker for our fans that I've taken acid a few times back in my last week. And one last week, my body's not meant for LSD. I don't care for LSD if I can take a second here to do a PSA about acid.
It's not fun. It's not great. It's not worth doing more than a few times. Oh, fuck now.
It hurts my body. They bonded off of face amounts of sprit mine, which settles in your joints. And at the end of the night, your joints end up hurting real bad. So I didn't like LSD.
I loved mushrooms, but we're not going to get into it. I mean, I really like mushrooms. Yeah, on his pizza. Right, on my pizza, of course.
Nothing more than that. So anyway, back to the other drug guys. He's not as a gaming drug. Right, right.
So anyway, Henry threw out Teenage Comics from Outer Space. And they tried to move past it. They tried to move past canning disappearing from over here. Well, you never trust that.
That's the thing. Here's the thing. The environment, of course, had changed under Henry Beard after a year, a year and two months. And it was clear to both canning and beer that Beard couldn't count on Kenny Moore.
There's a trust that was damaged in that whole relationship. It's one thing to take a sabbatical. Right. Tell someone to take a sabbatical.
You plan for it. But it just disappeared one morning. Leaving Henry with the entire weight of that. It's not even that we're saying we don't understand why he did it.
Right. Middle health, of course. You have to do these things sometimes. I'm thinking he disappeared because he didn't tell anybody because it would have made him seem weak.
And I don't think Kenny could have stood to seem weak. But the thing is, once you disappear without telling people and then they can never trust that you're going to stick it out when you come back. No. You'd be always be spending half your time planning for what you're going to do when Doug doesn't show up to work.
That's it. That's exactly it. And so their relationship, it was damaged forever. There wasn't hostility for the most part, from Henry towards Doug.
They were still very good friends. And he loved his friend. But there wasn't that close trust that they had up into that point. Yeah.
And it was predicted that it would remain tense for a while between Kenny and the rest of the staff. So Beard decided to put Kenny on a special assignment. It's unclear whether Henry thought of doing this or whether Matty said, let's do a special edition. But they were going to do a special edition.
And around the same time that Kenny returned, it's important to mention that a writer by the name of PJ Rourke had been hired. PJ Rourke ended up later being an editor for some, he was a right wing. He was a Republican. Yeah, he's still around.
He's a right wing. He's a right wing. Yeah. Yeah, it's Mickey Rourke.
But I don't think PJ is like the Trumpian kind of right wing guy. I think he's just more the straight laced. Well, he's pretty conservative. I don't know that he's a pretty smart guy, very entertaining.
He was assigned with Kenny to spearhead a special edition based on a high school yearbook parody that Michael O'Donnehue had done in an earlier issue with the magazine, just a small two pager of a yearbook and they decided to expand up on that. I also want to mention that later on, Rourke and John Hughes became co-editors of the magazine later on. John Hughes, I'll talk about John Hughes's. They said John Hughes's stuff was very suburban, very family oriented and the dirtiest stuff you could.
Yeah, it's the suburbanite and what's really going on in suburbia. That's what John Hughes would uncover, the sex and drugs and all that. But under this, it was very lampoonish. But that was later on.
So Rourke and Kenny, their relationship was tentative at first until they started talking about their high school experiences in which they realized that they had more, their viewpoint had more in common than was different. Even though they came from very vast backgrounds, they had decided that there are essentially 12 people in every high school and everybody fits into these 12 archetypes. And so they bonded. Kenny once again poured himself completely into his work, even wearing his high school jacket to where it became the high school thing.
He embodied the project that he was working on. He and Rourke created what became a legendary work of satirical literature. One of the most famous pieces ever released was the 1964 high school yearbook parody. It's sold over a million copies at the time.
That issue elevated the lampoon from a satirical magazine to a cultural phenomenon. It was enormously received. Everybody loved it. If you ever see stills from the piece, it's absolutely hilarious.
It's true for its time. The way it's been described is that the National Lampoon, it was like going into an attic where relics from 1945 to 1970 hadn't been touched at all. And so they were rummaging through this attic and finding all of this common ground. It was ridiculously funny.
It was still very dark. They still poked fun at things you're not supposed to poke fun of. But it was absolutely brilliant. It was a perfect piece of satirical literature.
So in 1973 after the book parody had become this enormous hit, Michael O'Donohue created the National Lampoon Radio Hour. Really? Yeah. So up till now they'd only done literary print.
And let's see where I'm at. He and Tony Hendra had already had modest success with the National Lampoon Radio Dinner, which was a riff on TV dinner. It was a mix of comedic music and sketches. In 1973, earlier, this is January, they did the Radio Hour in November of 1973.
In January of 1973, they produced a live stage show entitled Lemmings, which had been written and co-directed by several of the Lampoon staff, including Beard and Kitty. Lemmings is a riff on Woodstock. And the general conceit of Lemmings is that they've all gathered to this one farm to listen to music and kill themselves as Lemmings do once per year. And so they play on that.