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BOOK REVIEW! "GAG ON THIS" BY CHARLES RODRIGUES (Fantagraphic Books, 2015)

I dunno about you Bunky, but at this stage in my life I don't care if humor is funny. And, judging from what is passing as comedy these days, neither does anyone else. Right now I'm laboring under the perhaps not-so-strange delusion that in order to appeal to my own sense of values (or lack thereof), a joke doesn't have to be guffaw-inducing anymore, but it does have to be RACIST, ANTI-GAY, TRANSPHOBIC, SEXIST, DOWNRIGHT BIGOTED, XENOPHOBIC, ANTI-HANDICAPPED and even a few more niceties that you just don't see on the tee-vee set or the funny pages anymore. Yeah, I'll be laffin' my pitted butt off even if there ain't that much outright funny about these sources of jollies in question, but then again I'd be wettin' myself silly if I ever got to see any garden variety choice of late night "jokester" hit in the face with a pie. A poop pie, that is!

Anyhoo getting back to more palatable things, some of you might remember back when I reviewed one of these Charles Rodrigues collection of legendary NATIONAL LAMPOON cartoons (the RAY AND JOE one...search this blog if you so desire to read the thing), and darned if this 'un's even better with regards to giving bad taste an even WORSE name! Yes, in this day of Big Mother Watching Each And Every One Of Us So SMILE, getting a hefty dose of these tasteless, offensive and downright negative cartoons really is something that gets my juices flowin'! And if you are of the opinion that being funny is something that doesn't pertain one iota to the moralist highbrow rants and post-Carrie Nation lectures that comedy has become over the past few decades well then, you probably need this book just as much as I do!

Yes, almost nothing was beyond the realm of bad taste when it came to Rodrigues, and this collection, mostly culled from LAMPOON, serves to remind us just why issues of that mag were flying off the shelves back when we were living in some sort of post-racial/gender/Nixon land where even the radicals could poke potent fun at themselves. Ya gotta remember that the likes of Bill Griffith's and Jay Kinney's (even R. Crumb's) better work of the day pretty much satirized the entire underground milieu from which they sprang, and ya also gotta get through your head that seventies attempts at humor from NATIONAL LAMPOON and BLAZING SADDLES to the original SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE would never be allowed in the grim clime of modern day what passes for entertainment. These cartoons by Rodrigues (not to mention his LAMPOON partner in bad taste, the superbly named Sam Gross) really do remind me of the times when envelope pushing did rattle the ire of more'n a few blue haired old lady and budding feminist types, but then again many of 'em were probably laughing their own pockmarked behinds off before being able to mutter...."that's not funny".

The targets of Rodrigues' humor might be considered "easy" enough, but then again it wasn't until the likes of LAMPOON that he or anyone else would have had the chance to make fun of the things he did. Sheesh, only a few years earlier gag cartoonists couldn't touch anything along the lines of snakes or bare titty, and here Rodrigues was rollin' around in the taboo and making some pretty high-larious cartoons in the meanwhile. And (in case I haven't beaten this dead horse into prime chuck throughout this very review) I gotta say that it is a BLESSED RELIEF to see others being given the royal razz considering just how much people like myself and the rest of go to work and cut the grass Ameriga has for the past few decades. Reading GAG ON THIS is more or less my way of telling all of the narcissistic soyboy gay-loving updates on the old D. W. Griffith-loathed reform types seen these days HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE ON THE SHIT END OF THE STICK FOR ONCE, YOU NANCY BOY YOU!!!!!! And like, does it feel good!

Yes, everything from tampons to catheters, colostomy bags, club foots, bedpans, saggy tits, death row inmates, assassins, sex changes, iron lungs, Thalidomide babies and cerebral palsy get the laffaminnit treatment here. And frankly, if you can't laugh at transvestites or amputees who can you laugh at anyway?