Let's do these backwards:
Does National Lampoon actually publish a magazine anymore?
No, but they do have a
web site. Considering that more people read the Onion off the web than read the hard copy paper in the four markets where it's available, it's probably the smart move to make.
What do you think of it?
Which, of course, you mean \"Funny Money.\"
It's not on my list of favorites (and I haven't been able to watch a weeknight ep yet, so I can see what they do when they don't have Entertainment Weekly's \"It D-Lister\" Kathy Griffin on as a guest), but I won't turn it off. Pardo does OK, but the game's just too cluttered. As Lemon has pointed out, the game is designed to penalize comics who work slow and reward one-liner machines. I can't say much about the routine round because I thought before seeing the show that the format would either be guess what the comic's going to say (like the photo caption round) or \"Hit Man\" with stand-up routines.
And to me, the picture end game is anti-climatic. What I'd like to see is an end game where a comic is chosen to talk for 30 seconds on a topic without saying a certain word or phrase related to that topic (which the audience and contestant knows but the comic doesn't)--if s/he can do that, the contestant wins the bonus prize. Yeah, it's a combination of \"Just a Minute!\" (or the \"Cram\" Rant round) and \"Taboo,\" but it just might work--and it would test either the comic's ability to ad lib or the depth of his/her material.
But, hey--supposedly this show was tested before off-night audiences at the Improv before it was offered to either the Lampoon, Pat Finn or GSN, so Marc \"Skippy\" Price thinks he's got a great format nailed down. Knowing from my experience when the Improv had a club in Chicago how they get off-night audiences (or some Friday and Saturday audiences, for that matter), I heartily disagree, but I'm not the producer.
