Sunday, August 26, 2012

Gymnasty

Today I feel completely uninspired to write anything of great wit, depth or complexity.  So I’m going with a cheap joke.

Back in the 70s, the National Lampoon was not only famous for their bawdy humor magazine (to which I subscribed), but the also put out a series of comedy albums.  One of the cool things was that their “cast” starred some folks that went on to become much more famous, starring in the first few casts of Saturday Night Live.  They included Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, John Belushi, Christopher Guest and Harold Ramis, the latter of whom went on to become a film star and director.

Watching the London Olympics reminded me of an old favorite (completely NSFW) bit they did about little gymnast, Nadia Comaneci, the punch line of which became kind of a refrain among my friends and I, back in the day.  The sketch features Brian Doyle-Murray and Rhonda Coulett.

Where the female announcer is cut off is where the next sketch started right up on the album.  That’s how they rolled back then.

I don’t know why it took me so long to look some of these sketches up on YouTube, but there are a lot of them there.  Look for me to drop a few more favorites in the coming weeks.  And no, not all of them will be as nasty as this one.

In fact, here’s one that even your kids will love.  Well, “boy” kids, anyway…

Obviously, this bit provided inspiration for cartoonist Gary Larson's Far Side...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had no idea National Lampoon was a magazine. I only knew about the movies.

bluzdude said...

Finally! A comment! I thought this was going to be my first post since 2009 that didn’t draw a comment…

National Lampoon was kind of like Mad Magazine, for young (and old) adults. While it had Mad’s snark and sarcasm, it also had lots of dirty jokes, outrageous, filthy stories and lots of boobs. I loved it and had a subscription, back in the late 70s-early 80s.

It was the writers from the magazine that started making movies, starting with Animal House.