D'ja Hear The One About TheSick HumorMagazine?   

At National Lampoon and Spy, it ain't funny. Revenue is down. Readers are scarce. And their muse ran off with the auditor.

"Go placidly amid the noise & waste & remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet & passive persons unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires." – National Lampoon, 1972

Boy, weren't those the good old days, when you could count on National Lampoon for a joke? And why not? There was so much to laugh at. Remember the classic issue with the shot of a buoyant Volkswagen that suggested that if Senator Kennedy had been driving a Bug over the Chappaquiddick bridge, he'd be president? Or how about the magazine's version of "Desiderata" (above) that brings a smile long after the prose it parodies carries much weight among homegrown philosophers?

But seen Lampoon lately? Probably not, unless you were digging through an old attic trunk. The Lampoon has taken a serious pratfall in recent years – its circulation down from more than 1 million to less than 220,000, its profits an eight-year-running nose bleed (since 1982, it's lost as much as $2.4 million a year).

Tough times have struck the entire magazine industry, but for adult humor magazines the 1990s have been a comedy of terrors. Wigwag folded in January and Lampoon and Spy – once hailed as the hottest magazine in America – both needed quick cash from new owners to survive. Even the dean of humor titles, England's 150-year-old Punch , is on the verge of collapse.

Like a Rupert Pupkin comedy routine, the recent plight of humor magazines has been a series of not-so-funny "toppers": a glut of magazines (from 1980 to 1990 the number of consumer titles doubled from 1,500 to 3,000); topped by a "comedy boom" in clubs, movies, and cable channels that siphoned off humor magazines' audience; topped by a lengthy recession; topped by – now what? – magazine ad sales that plummeted nearly 11 percent during the first half of 1991 compared to the same period last year.

After all that, it's not only difficult to make a go of it financially as a humor magazine – it's hard to know what's funny.

In the Roaring '80s, it was a howl when Spy magazine skewered "short-fingered vulgarian" Donald Trump. But, when Trump kabobed himself on bad real estate deals, the shards of a broken marriage and a tabloid-tuned affair, suddenly Spy was kicking the tycoon while he was down. The mood of hip America seemed to shift: Spy 's biting satire suddenly appeared as mere name-calling and Lampoon 's crude jokes and gratuitous sex were pushed closer to the realm of disdain. Many Americans began to embrace values not necessarily followed by zeroes, and simpler concerns such as the environment, the family and old-time religion were said to have become the central cogs in our geared-down culture.

Out of those shifting sensibilities came Wigwag , a New York-based magazine whose editors – most of them former New Yorker staffers – gazed west across the Hudson and saw anything but the land of backwater Babbits envisioned by Spy . Instead, Wigwag tried to tap readers whose sensibilities and sense of humor in many ways were captured by Garrison Keillor's old radio program, "A Prairie Home Companion."

But while the artful, literate, graphically appealing " New Yorker for non-New Yorkers" was an artistic success, it was a financial failure. Wigwag achieved a modest rapport with advertisers (213 ad pages in 1990) and readers (a circulation of 85,000), but it wasn't enough. During its 18-month history, it lost as much as $3 million.

"You can buy writers, you can buy readers, but one thing you can't buy is a reputation with the ad community," laments former Wigwag Publisher Samuel E. Schulman.

Once upon a time – perhaps in the 1920s and '30s, when magazines such as the old Life and Ballyhoo were in their heyday – Wigwag 's contemporaries might have commiserated. But, at Spy , the editors openly savored Wigwag 's death. After all, it was Wigwag that was said to be shoving Spy off the main stage of American humor as the country converted from fast and nasty to warm and fuzzy.

When Wigwag died, Spy Editor Kurt Andersen offered this by way of condolences: "They were one of the main cudgels used against us, and it was nice to see that cudgel taken away."

There were other cudgels to contend with, though. Andersen has been particularly tender to criticism since he and the other founders of Spy – one-time Co-Editor E. Graydon Carter and former Publisher Thomas L. Phillips – agreed to sell a 87 percent stake in Spy for $5 million to a group of European investors, including Charles Saatchi, the English advertising baron. (Saatchi and partner Jean Pigozzi have since increased their share in Spy to 95-97 percent.) Already Carter has left (to edit the weekly New York Observer ), a move he hinted at shortly after Spy 's sale last winter. ("Rich people don't buy toys and let other people play with them.") And publisher Phillips has been replaced by Gerald L. Taylor, Lampoon 's publisher during its golden years in the '70s.

Spy has made money the past few years, but just barely – about $100,000 in 1990 – while Lampoon has continued to hemorrhage red ink. New owners could move both off the endangered species list, but long-term survival is less certain. Besides America's changing laugh-track, the entire ecosystem of the magazine industry has shifted, making it difficult for irreverent magazines to prosper.

"Advertisers, especially in tight money times, expect support from a magazine" such as special advertising sections or advertorials, says Abe Peck, chairman of the magazine program at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. "Humor magazines at the very least don't (cater to advertisers), and in some cases mock whole categories of ads. Advertisers figure, 'Why run the risk?' "

How much might the hard-edged Spy need to change its image to please advertisers – and its new owners? Spy 's stock-in-trade has been to lacerate what it calls the "meritocracy" – hobnobbing celebrities like Trump or gossip columnist Liz Smith – and doing it with just the facts. The facts may be in nasty juxtaposition – as in the magazine's "Separated at Birth?" feature, which compares photos of unrelated people who look alike (e.g., baseball player Darryl Strawberry and stone-age pet Dino Flintstone) – but they're facts, just the same. As wicked as Spy has been, it's never been sued.

The magazine takes particular joy in skewering the nabobs over at The New York Times (it devotes a monthly column to the paper), sometimes in fetish-like detail. One item, for which Spy 's editors reportedly offered a private apology, reported that an unnamed Times editor didn't wash his hands after using the bathroom.

That kind of coverage has created mutual enmity in publishing circles. In 1989, New York magazine ran a "Spying on Spy " cover story that examined Carter's inflated resume and tailed him for a day, even noting the "modest" $2.55 tip he and a colleague left after lunch at a Manhattan deli. Last year, when word leaked that Spy was looking for a buyer, The New Republic detailed Spy 's financial woes and its founders' evident greed in a story entitled " Spy 's Demise." The story asserted that Carter "openly fantasized about going off to live the life of a country squire" and that Spy had steered clear of an article that could have imperiled Andersen's acceptance to an exclusive New York social club.

"There's some innate dishonesty about Spy ," says humorist Cynthia Heimel, echoing The New Republic 's sentiments. "They make fun of the rich and powerful, yet the magazine feels elitist."

Outwardly, at least, Spy has changed. The print's been enlarged so it's easier to read, and the graphics have been simplified. A few columns are gone (such as Roy Blount's regular "Un-British Crossword," which even the editors profess they didn't understand), but mainstays such as "Logrolling in Our Time" (book reviewers who trade complimentary jacket blurbs) and the "Review of Reviewers" remain. Andersen says there will be greater emphasis on investigative pieces (a September piece on Klansman-turned-legislator David Duke was an example) and more money to attract top freelancers. And while Spy plans to continue its focus on Manhattan, more stories will be directed at the 70 percent of the magazine's readers who live in the hinterlands. The magazine even plans a two-person Washington, D.C., bureau, and a late-night TV show, and book and record spin-offs are in the works.

Still, advertising sales haven't increased significantly and Spy will lose money this year. Pages are down about 25 percent from last year and nearly 70 percent from 1988. Circulation has climbed modestly, however, up 8,000 from last year to about 145,000, and Taylor predicts a profit by the end of 1992.

Peck says Spy 's editors have done "a very good job...taking it from a downtown to a national magazine." But he still has doubts it can survive in a tough market. "When it comes to [a consumer] making a decision whether to buy a magazine, 'kinda funny' is not enough. People are harder on humor magazines."

Nobody knows that better than National Lampoon publisher James P. Jimirro. When his Los Angeles-based J2 Communications bought Lampoon last year for $4.7 million, the magazine had been losing money for a decade. He has pledged at least $4 million before 1995 to rebuild the ailing company, which has been bumbling along since the late 1970s like a bad "Saturday Night Live" skit.

Jimirro also hired Editor George Barkin to make the magazine funny without the traditional doses of nudity or crude jokes. Barkin, the former editor of High Times , said he wanted the magazine to reach beyond the "convicts and guys in the army" who wanted to read about "big breasts and big glasses of beer." Instead, he envisioned a reader who enjoyed "literate humor."

But Barkin was unceremoniously ousted earlier this summer, and just a few weeks ago, several other staffers who showed "an unwillingness to get with the program" also lost their jobs, according to Jimirro. "Some people felt they were artisans and weren't interested in the commercial enterprise of turning the magazine around," he says. The Lampoon is now run by Editors Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil.

These days, Jimirro refers to Barkin's tenure as "a three-month false start" and adds that his former editor "had a good sense of satire and parody, but he wasn't funny."

The jokes came easier once for Lampoon . In the early 1970s – with Nixon in the White House, a war in Vietnam and the sexual revolution in full swing – Lampoon was one of the first and last outlets for America's angst, especially the angst of its youth. Since the magazine was an offshoot of the Harvard Lampoon (the training ground for early National Lampoon staffers, scores of late-night comedy writers and even Spy 's Andersen), it also had the Swiftian smack of real literature. What a great place to get away with jokes about masturbation, oral sex, big-breasted women and homosexuals!

"The problem with Lampoon isn't the humor – it's terrible management," says Cynthia Heimel. "They need a good editor who has some vision, but instead there's some weird conglomerate in charge...All they're doing is carbon copies of what Lampoon 's done before, but with no talent."

Even with new voices churning out jokes, there's little evidence that Lampoon will soon recover. Circulation continues to slide (though Jimirro attributes that largely to the recession), even if advertising is up. In fact, Jimirro doesn't believe Lampoon will ever regain its mass appeal. "The magazine will survive," he says, "but, in many ways, it's just a fount out of which everything else grows – like Mickey Mouse is the centerpiece of Disney."

That fount holds the many on-screen projects associated with Lampoon , and Jimirro admits his chief aim in buying the magazine was to boost video profits. "We want [the magazine] to create brand awareness," he says. In the past decade, Lampoon movies and video rentals – from "Animal House" through three Chevy Chase "Vacation" films – have kept the magazine afloat with annual royalties totaling as much as $350,000.

Jimirro hopes adding more color pages, reducing the magazine's cover price by $1 (to $2.95) and "buy-two-months, get-the-next-month-free" newstand offers will push circulation up another 155,000 to break-even (at 375,000) so it won't eat into profits from the first Lampoon made-for-video movie, "Meet the Parents." And the company soon will issue the Lampoon "Lost Tapes," taken from an early '70s radio program that featured comedians such as Chase, Bill Murray and John Belushi. There are also plans for comedy clubs and a new feature film.

Despite all that, Jimirro admits he may be forced to cut Lampoon from 10 issues per year to six, with two of those likely filled with reprints and marketed as "greatest hits" compilations.

That's too bad, in that Lampoon 's September issue showed promise. Media critic James Ledbetter of The Village Voice went so far as to call the issue "easily the funniest in years." (That may not be such grand praise, considering the magazine's recent fortunes.) The issue examined "coming of age" and all the discoveries that go with puberty such as amusing yourself with sex magazines and growing hair in new places. Since J2 has insisted on a vow of relative chastity for the magazine, that's a Barbie doll on the cover – not a real woman – gazing in the mirror to discover her BREASTS HAVE GOTTEN BIGGER!

The editors also offered remembrances of their first sexual encounters ("I was in prison on some trumped-up charges at the time..."), and a recipe, ostensibly from the Frugal Gourmet, for "Dog Shit Pie." There was the regular and always fascinating "True Facts" column of weird items clipped from newspapers (Police Blotter: "A man reported finding a loaf of bread buried in his yard..."), a few perverse cartoons worth clipping, an article or two that found humor in their simplicity ("The F-Word Comes of Age," with a parody of a Frank Rich theater review that begins "Fucking Incredible!") and a media column that detailed, among other things, the promotional pitches that parent General Electric had managed at NBC (e.g., the "Today" show set now includes a GE refrigerator).

Spy hasn't gone limp yet, either. The satire isn't as biting as in the past, perhaps only because the targets aren't as generally disliked. When it comes to celebrity skewering, Arnold Schwarzenegger is no Donald Trump, and the nasty monikers accompanying targets' names (e.g. Abe "I'm Writing as Bad as I Can" Rosenthal) no longer bring that whistle of recognition that an inflated ego has taken a dart to the rump. Some readers also wonder how much longer the once-fresh supply of pranks and cultural cataloging, such as sending miniscule "rebate" checks to rich people to see who's the biggest skinflint, or timing the audience applause on The Arsenio Hall Show, can continue before reaching the bottom of the barrel of "cuteness."

Still, the September issue has the strong lead article on Duke ("Conduct Unbecoming a Racist"), an intimate update on the couples whose wedding announcements appeared in the Times one day 20 years ago ("Someone gave us a clay owl (as a wedding gift)...I just can't bring myself to throw it out," says one wife) and a fine bit of skepticism in an article about the new "Planet Hollywood" celebrity cafe, which "seems suspiciously like a no-brainer remake of the Hard Rock." The magazine's opening essay is consistently funny month-to-month, as are the "Party Poop" society pages. (The recent photo of Robin Leach in his teeny weeny bikini briefs was particularly memorable.) But the new "insider" columns grow stale occasionally and Walter "The Movie Publicist's Friend" Monheit™ needs a vacation.

The beleaguered editors at Spy and Lampoon could probably use some time off, too, as they work overtime to recapture America's eye. They do succeed occasionally – Spy 's cover with a hairy, pregnant Bruce Willis, for example, had people laughing. At least among humorists there's the perennial hope that anything, seen from the proper angle, can be funny – except maybe dead humor magazines. l

Jeffry Scott is a business reporter for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

A Sniffle from S.F.
Even as the National Lampoon and Spy struggle to find the bank – let alone laugh along the way – the staff at San Francisco's The Nose are still crazy enough to believe. The 2 1/2-year-old publication is similar to Spy, spinning its jokes from truth rather than fiction. Though its survival is still iffy – "Well, we're not losing money," shrugs Editor Jack Boulware – they've turned out nine issues and have generated a circulation around 45,000.
The Nose is a surf's-up (but low-budget) version of Spy, though it lacks Spy's graphic appeal and attention to detail. And it's not quite as mean. The most recent issue, themed "L.A. Dissected," reports on the plastic surgery boom ("Body Butchers of Beverly Hills") and the astonishing glut of celebrity poetry (Ally Sheedy, Suzanne Somers, Leonard Nimoy). A darker piece – "Disneyland's Death Count" – chronicles the accidential deaths of tourists and workers there. "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Fired" is an especially well-written piece about working on the set of a Chase movie.
Boulware says The Nose fulfills "a need for an absurd watchdog to alert people to the strange things that other people are doing." In the West, the magazine has found no shortage of material. "There's a weirdness out here where people still have that kind of pioneer spirit. You get away with as much as you can – until you run out of real estate."
Hey – that's pretty funny.
– J.S.