REVIEWER FINDS IRISH LAMPY ABOVE AVERAGE

It is unfortunate that the Lampoon spends all of its meagre talent on its special issues. The current number, for instance, the St. Patrick's number, though much less amusing than a magazine ought to be, where the vigorous and noisy wit and humor of youth should run riotously, is undeniably better than the numbers unadorned by Mr. Child's interesting covers.

Excuse for New Board

A great many excuses might be made for the new board, who have just completed their first special issue. It is not certain, however, that they need excuses. Loveis of tradition would say that they were irreproachable, for they have maintained all the safe, conservative, comfortable principles so unbecoming to humorists, so ingrained in the foundations of the Lampoon. A custom can become a tradition in five years at Harvard, a practice may become a rigid rule in one year of Lampoon usage.

Eddie Cantor maintains that a humorist needs a sympathetic audience before be will venture new tricks. Can this account for the even sameness of Irish spirit which pervades the magazine? Certainly there is no boldness there, and even the Irish jokes have been diluted with un-Irish college humor, Lampoon variety, which seems quite out of place against the dull emerald background. The whole presents the appearance of a catalogue of sure-fire "Pat and Mikes" for the ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville performance.

Of the Irish jokes and parodies, the ones worth mentioning are: the imitation headlines under "The Day"; the "Boston Society Page in Fifty Years," the most consistently clever and almost brilliant contribution; the "Life of St. Patrick," which is good only in spots; and "Abie's Irish Potato," which is saved from brutality by several original lines.

Best Drawing in Ad

Of the drawings the best is the one illustrating the Lampoon's advertisement; the most interesting is the one with the caption, "St Patrick's Day Is Greeted by Appropriate Ceremonies." This latter is in the manner of the Dial artists--full of exotic emotion and of strange technique (can the artist be satirizing?). The majority of the sketches, though, are amateurish originals or uncomplimentary copies. Often the jokes seem made to fit the drawings; or at least the one seldom fits the other. The ideas in the cover drawing are clever, but the drawing itself is careless and not up to the artist's usual good work. The person who drew the lady in the African river should be instructed in anatomy. With the air filled by anthropology Professors who discuss the "missing link" over the radio, nothing could be more priceless than the first picture in the magazine, a chip of the Old Sod. The "Prologue" is above reproach.

"Erin Go Blah!"

The editorials could easily have been left out except for that one line, "Erin go blah!"

When a reviewer has said this much it would appear that he has worked out the vein. Such a vein of superficial criticism cannot serve long as a paying proposition. This does not. Whenever an antagonist meets the Lampoon he must meet it on its own playing field and under its own rules. So we do.

Lampoon's Standards Win

The Lampoon code, artificial though it is, tiresome though its products may be, is admirable. It has a standard. And, that alone is praise among "college comics," for where is the college humor magazine which can boast one of those? "No 'He and She' jokes," says Lampy. Immediately the magazine steps to the head of the class. When prohibition jokes, mother-in-law jokes, and the like are added, Lampy distances the field.

We cannot complain of this or of her almost unbecoming affection for Punch. She has granted those points in our favor before the competition starts.

Undoubtedly we are vanquished, overcome by that glacier of tradition, which defies us. But the reviewer may triumph in the end by reproaching the Lampoon as if it were a small boy.

To do this he mounts the heights of humor and ascends to the shoulders of Donald Ogden Stewart, from whence he advises. "Humor in America is in the process of finding itself. Its strength lies in the power of the ridiculous. Parody is upon us.