Word: lampooning
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...What's interesting is that being on the Lampoon [a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to be occassionally publish a so-called humor magazine], all the seniors go to L.A. or New York and go get writing jobs. And when you're surrounded by that, it's a different atmosphere. You think, "Oh, these guys do survive. They're still living, even though they're not I-banking...
...about Natalie Portman, however, also points to a more troublesome feature of the Lampoon book: probably inadvertently, the writers forgot that more than half of entering college first-years are not heterosexual men. This is not surprising, given the Lampoon's demographics: only one of the nine editors who helped write the book last summer was a woman. Page 10: 'The life of a Math Teamer is paradise. Wake up, sleep through class, then go home and have sex with hot girls.' Parody of a National Honor Society charter, next page: 'If you see someone say something rude...
...Lampoon product would be complete without a mention of Thomas Pynchon, and the Guide to College Admissions obliges (see p. 148, and maybe others that I missed). The Lampoon's collective obsession with Pynchon is bizarre, and probably beyond my ability to explain. Pynchon the novelist is inaccessible, just like the 'Poon. Very few people make it all the way through his books, just like very few people can read an entire issue of the Lampoon. And people who do read Pynchon get to feel like they're part of a special intellectual club - just like the Lampoon thinks...
Referencing obscure authors seems to be a part of the Lampoon's larger overall strategy, evident in this book, to base their humor on allusions so arcane that almost no one will understand them. To the magazine's credit, more of the latest Lampoon effort than usual is funny on its own. But to get some of the gags you would have to take the same classes at Harvard as the students who wrote the book. The boys at the 'Poon certainly know what they're doing, though: making obscure references the basis for their humor inoculates them against...
...Lampoon suffers from a common weakness of undergraduate publications: they forget that they're writing for an audience, not just for one another. Amusing your friends is easy; making strangers laugh is tough. The Lampoon's Guide to College Admissions will be sold to thousands of people whose names they have never heard. Will there be enough genuine humor nuggets mixed in with the inside jokes to keep these unread proles laughing? For once, the answer is probably yes --they got through all 165 pages without even one mention of Maxwell's Demon. If this parody is a harbinger...