Word: yearbooks
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Harvard Yearbook Publ...
...Harvard Yearbook Publications--Some of you may have worked on your high school yearbook. In fact, you were probably the editor, and although it was a hell of a lot of work, you probably enjoyed it. But, come now, could you really see doing it again, for a bigger and more indifferent student body? HYP seems to be a real drag. And each year the yearbook doesn't have a name; instead, it is known by the number of the graduating class--as in 342, or whatever. Pretty stuffy, eh? You bet. The one essential service provided...
...such tasteless license can come some of the best comic writing in the country. Four years ago, O'Rourke and Kenney edited the Lampoon's most successful publishing project to date (1.6 million copies sold): the 1964 High School Yearbook Parody. A precursor of Animal House (also co-written by Kenney), this work was a replica of a second-rate school annual, right down to the pushy ads for local merchants and the classmates' autographed cliches in the margins. The book is so rich in social detail that it brings a whole fictional town, Dacron, Ohio...
...supposedly, but there really is nothing funny about perpetuating the stereotypes that lead to racism, even casual racism. And at times the noticeable tendency of the writers to repeat old gags becomes annoying--even some of the names are lifted directly from the Lampoon's 1964 yearbook parody of a few years abck--but most of these complaints are of the nit-picking nature. No doubt about it, this movie is quite funny, and definitely destined to bring even more cash into the National Lampoon coffers...
Even in 1972, when it was brand-new on Broadway (where it is still doing good business), Grease managed to look engagingly tattered and funky. It was like an old yearbook in the carton of high school memorabilia we all keep stored somewhere in the back of our lives. But there was nothing static in the show's evocation of '50s style and slang. It moved, man, to the solid beat of a score that was capable, on occasion, of affectionately parodying the emerging rock sound of that era. Grease was a marvelous entertainment, mostly because...