What happens when you
take a bunch of unfunny rich kids with a huge sense of
entitlement, and let them run a small institution? I'll
give you a hint: the best that can happen is
something akin to that stupid graphic I made to the
right -- that is, a fairly meaningless parody like, oh,
the junk today's Harvard Lampoon produces. And
the worst that can happen? How about the
Lampoon staff bringing James Brown to their
office, promoting it as a show, and then instead making
the crowd watch a monster truck crush eggs?
Oh, it happened. A
friend of a friend was in attendance, and his full
report is right here...
I know – you
think we already have enough reasons to hate Harvard.
Well, you’re wrong. You can’t have too many reasons to
hate Harvard. So here’s another one. Wednesday night, I
was motivating through the Central Square T Station when
I noticed a small poster, inside the locked case where
the T’s official announcements are posted, with a
picture of James Brown that said something like “See
James Brown Live, Harvard Lampoon, Bow St., Cambridge.
September 16. 4:30 PM Sharp.”
The next day
(September 16) I couldn’t find anything on the web about
this event – although the Godfather of Soul’s booking
agent’s website did say he was available for private
parties and corporate events. About 3 PM or so,
curiosity got the best of me and I called the Lampoon:
“This may be a stupid question, but is James Brown
appearing at the Castle today?” “Yes. 4:30.” The Castle,
by the way, is the headquarters of the Harvard Lampoon,
located in Freedom Square – where Bow Street intersects
with Mount Auburn. It’s the narrow building with the
brightly painted door and the pelican
weathervane.
A little history here. The Harvard
Lampoon is Harvard’s humor magazine – although you
wouldn’t know that from their website, nor from the
speeches made by the Lampooners at the event I’m about
to describe, all of which can be charitably described as
“not funny.” Back in the day, the Lampoon was staffed by
people who were actually funny (like Doug Kenny and
Michael O’Donough) and who published the first in a
series of clever parodies of publications
including Life, Time, and the Boston Globe (“HUB MAN
KILLED IN PARIS. City destroyed by nuclear explosion.”)
These staffers went on to form the National Lampoon,
which went on to publish parodies, a humor magazine, and
give its name to a series of movies that made a lot of
money.
The Harvard
Lampoon got a chunk (and still gets a chunk) of this
dough, given that the original staffers set up a
licensing agreement with the Lampoon to use the name –
or at least the Lampoon part of it. There ain’t enough
money in the world to get Harvard to allow anyone to use
its name, like Bob Segal does when he’s trying to pick
up women at Johnny D’s. “A tenured professor! How
exciting!” I don’t want to be around when Harvard’s
lawyers catch up with Bob.
For years the Lampoon
would spend this dough on expensive entertainment for
themselves. I once walked by the Castle and found a guy
in a straightjacket hanging upside down from a huge
crane for the entertainment of, oh, 12 or 15 people. All
this spending culminated in 1980-something when Cadillac
announced they would cease production of the their
convertible, the last domestically produced ragtop. The
Lampoon gave John Kenneth Galbraith a pink Cadillac
convertible for being “the funniest professor at
Harvard.” He kept it for a year and then donated it to
WGBH for their auction. This got a lot of bad press –
rich Harvard kids being frivolous with lots of bucks
while a lot of other kids can’t afford to go to college.
So Harvard worked out an arrangement with the Lampoon to
give part of their royalties to a scholarship
fund.
The bottom line is that the Lampoon could
afford to have James Brown appear in front of the
castle. And given that I needed to get myself to
the Harvard Ticket Office at some point to pick up a
Melissa Ferrick ticket, I figured I’d go into the Square
and check it out (as the young people say).
So I
went into the Square to check it out (as the young
people say). There were some good signs: a large part of
Bow Street was behind barricades, the Castle stairs were
filled with Lampooners in formalwear drinking beer and
wine, and a sound system was playing James Brown tunes.
And about two minutes after I arrived, the Godfather of
Soul and his wife pulled up in a long black limousine,
got out, and went into the Castle. So I proceeded to
enmob for a good position in front of the steps. I
figured they would have the Hardest Working Man In Show
Business sing there to backing tapes, as there was no
band in sight. I spent quite a while watching a bunch of
over-privileged young people wander around, drink beer,
and generally act smarmy. It was amazing how much smarm
they exhibited. They reeked of smarm. They had smarm to
spare. At one point, a monster truck parked on Mt.
Auburn fired up and drove around to the barricaded
section of Bow Street. The Lampooners told the crowd,
which was fairly substantial by this point, that they
might want to gather behind the barricades on Bow Street
rather than in front of the steps. Much jostling and
shoving ensued as people jockeyed for new positions. We
were then treated to the spectacle of the monster truck
squashing eggs (yes – eggs) and a couple of chairs; a
very small child’s chair (which elicited boos from the
crowd) and a much larger chair.
None of this was
at all entertaining as the truck was so large that
the crushable objects just crushed with no noise or
drama. It had all the entertainment value of David
Smith stepping on an ant (except for the screaming,
of course). All of this was accompanied by the Lampooner
in charge asking things like “Would you like to see
it crush an egg?” and his cohorts in the street
running around and shouting things like
“Impossible. It couldn’t crush an egg.” These are the
funniest people at Harvard? It makes me want to buy
John Kenneth Galbraith a Cadillac convertible so he can
escape.
The Lampooner in charge also related that
it was a recent tradition to have celebrities ride
unusual types of vehicles on Bow Street. Last year they
had the Strokes race go-karts. I have a feeling that the
original plan was to have Mr. Dynamite arrive in the
monster truck and he objected, leaving them to kill some
time by crushing eggs, chairs, a copy of the
Harvard Crimson.
After the crushing, they brought
Soul Brother No. 1 himself out the front door and
onto the steps. All of us who had been tricked into
moving onto Bow Street rushed, as best we could, for our
former positions in front of the steps – the Lampooners
all having positions on the steps. He graced our
presence all of three minutes. He was presented with a
silver bowl and made a brief speech, the only part of
which I could hear was “I ain’t singing.” And then he
went back into the Castle. End of show. To quote Mr.
Johnny Rotten: “Did you ever feel like you’ve been
cheated?” At least they could have let James shoot the
limo. It would have been a lot more entertaining than
watching a monster truck crush eggs.
Well, that’s
what happens when you give young people with too much
money even more money. They jerk you around. All wasn’t
lost. I managed to get myself a third row seat to see
Melissa Ferrick. I remembered to pick up a carton of 2%
for the weekend (I need to get myself down to no body
fat for her show – Louder, Skinnier, Faster and all
that). I remembered where my car was parked. And I got
to hear the Inventor of Funk answer the question which
most of the crowd shouted at him when he appeared on the
stage – “Hey James. How do you feel?”
