"The other night I started laughing so hard I had to leave the room. . . . And then I realized that I hadn't laughed so hard in 35 years, since I was a teenager, reading National Lampoon." -Wall Street Journal From its first issue in April, 1970, theNational Lampoonblazed like a comet, defining comedy as we know it today. To createDrunk Stoned Brilliant Dead,formerLampoonillustrator Rick Meyerowitz selected the funniest material from the magazine and sought out the survivors of its first electrifying decade to gather their most revealing and outrageous stories. The result is a mind-boggling tour through the early days of an institution whose alumni left their fingerprints all over popular culture:Animal House,Caddyshack,Saturday Night Live,Ghostbusters,SCTV,Spinal Tap,In Living Color,Ren & Stimpy,The SimpsonsevenSesame Streetcounts a few Lampooners among its ranks. Long before there wasThe Onionand Comedy Central news shows, there was theNational Lampoon,setting the bar in comedy impossibly high! Praise forDrunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: "The other night I started laughing so hard I had to leave the room . . . And then I realized that I hadn't laughed so hard in 35 years, since I was a teenager, reading National Lampoon."--The Wall Street Journal "If you grew up with the Lampoon, this book is a trip down memory lane like no other; if not, it will demonstrate that the much maligned 70s could produce humor that has never been surpassed."--Vanity Fair