''National Lampoon'', Jan. 1973
(Quick Note: should you decide to venture into this issue to see what content it contains, you should be warned that the humor is solidly of its time and that there is a section in here that I find to be in poor taste called "Play Dead", ostensibly making fun of 'Playboy', where naked women assume various forms of death by suicide. Y'all, it's fucked up and it's even more fucked up when I imagine the possibility of some adolescent boy masturbating to those images. How many serial killers and sexual predators did this issue midwife into existence?*)
This was the cover for 'National Lampoon's' "Death" issue and it became one of the most famous magazine covers of the 1970s.
"Designed by the late Lampoon art director Michael Gross, the cover is widely regarded as one of the greatest not only in the history of the magazine but in the history of magazines, period. In 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors named the Death cover one of the Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years. It ranked No. 7, right between the New Yorker's 9/11 cover on September 24, 2001 and the October 1966 cover of Esquire."
From what I've been able to glean from some (what the podcast 'The Rewatchables' would call) half-assed internet research, people bought this issue in droves to save this dog's life. (I can only image what the internet reaction would look like to a magazine cover that had the message "If You Don't Buy this Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog.")
The dog's name is Cheeseface and the crazy thing about this dog that is news to me as I type these words is that in 1976 an unknown person shot and killed Cheeseface in Vermont. "The identity and motivation of the assailant remain unknown." Someone labeled this shooting "the only assassination in celebrity animal history." I can't verify that claim. (I mean, who would put in the time to verify that claim? Some "true crime" podcast maybe. I hear there's some Reddit threads out there on this. I won't be reading them.)
Maybe all of this is covered in the 2018 film adaptation of Josh Karp's 2006 book, "A Futile and Stupid Gesture." I haven't see it yet.
*this sentence is a joke although the warning prior it and the sentiment about the section is sincere.
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80's memories @Rerunthe80s
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(via Bruce McCall, Satirical Artist Who Conjured a ‘Retrofuture,’ Dies at 87 - The New York Times)
Bruce McCall, whose satirical illustrations for National Lampoon and The New Yorker conjured up a plutocratic dream world of luxury zeppelin travel, indoor golf courses and cars like the Bulgemobile Airdreme, died on Friday in the Bronx. He was 87.
I love the Bulgemobile
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The red carpet premiere for 'A Futile And Stupid Gesture' at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival
📷 Jason Merritt (24.01.2018)
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