If you have the stick-to-itiveness and the writing chops, if you “get” Harvard Lampoon, you’re in. “The article that I wrote that helped me get on was called ‘The Ed Norton Anthology of English Literature,’ ” says Jean. “It was just a parody of the Norton anthology, with references to The Honeymooners and things. People there really love TV.”

“It takes most writers at least a year of trying,” says Moerder. After that, in between semi-regular bursts of work to put the magazine out, they hang out at the castle and drink and play Nintendo. “It really was a place to hang out for hours on end, much to the detriment of our grades,” Borowitz says. “The magazine was an afterthought, and it showed.”

Still, “the atmosphere at the castle, more than anything else, was smart,” says Aboud. “Lampoon humor is very surreal and abstract, so the vibe was never mean. Except when stupid people were around. We liked making stupid people cry. And we were pretty rough on Filipinos.”

Not a comedy mafia
Once commencement day has come and gone, the Lampoon imprimatur certainly helps with the job search. Depending, of course, on the field you choose.

I ask the assembled members — many of whom are English majors, but a good portion of whom have scientific concentrations — whether they plan to crash the entertainment industry when they graduate.

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“Either that or environmental science,” says one.

“I’ve got to try to stop global warming first,” says Limm.

“We’re all very concerned about global warming,” jokes Berkman, “and want to publicize it using English.”

“Probably everyone in here at least wants to try their hand at comedy,” says Friedman, “whether or not it’s immediately when they graduate.”

One of the beauties of the club is convincing college kids who might otherwise never have dreamed of it that they could have a career in TV or movies. “Before I was on the Lampoon I assumed I was going to law school,” says Borowitz. “The Lampoon changed all that.” Says Feldman: “If I was not on staff here it would have never even occurred to me that I could write comedy for a living.”

Asked about the network of Lampoon alums, the scores of writers and producers in New York and LA who skim from this comedy feeder system, Friedman says “there is one, but we’re not allowed to talk about it.”

Just don’t call it a comedy mafia. “I think mafia implies organized, which we’re not,” says Jean. “What happened was a fellow named Jim Downey, who wrote for many years for Saturday Night Live, hired several people for there or recommended them for David Letterman. And it kind of spread. But it wasn’t just people who were related.”

Adam Moerder seems to agree: it’s not so much a matter of being well-connected so much as it is of honing your craft. “We’re writing all the time. I don’t know what normal people do in college, but I assume it’s not practicing writing all day.”

And while there’s no doubt that the Lampoon is, as Limm puts it, “a brand name,” it’s also true that at times it’s a strike against those seeking made-man status in the comedy mafia. “When I’m reading scripts, it’s actually a slight detriment,” says Jean. “I think that that perspective is well represented, so I’m trying to find funny people that have different backgrounds.”

Anyway, says Feldman, it’s not like students join this place with the sole intent of getting on the fast track to a fun and lucrative career. “Very few people, if anyone, joined Lampoon in order to get a job later on.”

Instead, there’s camaraderie and the chance to have ownership of their product. The magazine they put out, however hard they work on it, however it’s received by the campus at large, is theirs. “Total control,” says Moerder. “We’ll probably never see that again, so we better take advantage of that now.”

In the meantime, they’ll continue being regular college kids. As regular as college kids can be while hanging out in an exclusive stone castle (financed in part by William Randolph Hearst), with original volumes by illustrious alumni lining their library’s time-aged shelves, in a room cooled by the “John Updike memorial air conditioner,” with a bottle of gin (still half full) bestowed by John Wayne on a visit in 1974 sitting high up on a shelf.

It’s a remarkably cool room. And it was the only room of the Harvard Lampoon castle I was able to see. What other secrets are they hiding from me? “We’re all really drunk right now.”

On the Web
The Harvard Lampoon: //www.harvardlampoon.com/