Touring the southeast corner of our office...

The creative department office was probably no more than eight feet by ten or twelve feet, but within that space, there was crammed two desks, two drawing tables, maybe a bookshelf, and this storage cabinet, which highlighted two current films -- Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" (actually a GQ ad which Jeff V. customized) and "Ordinary People" -- ask Jeff or John to do an impersonation of Donald Sutherland (top left) calling Timothy Hutton (bottom left) down to breakfast.

(Side note:  Check out the pegboard at far left, holding different sizes of border tapes for use in ad keylines.)

Crazy, man, crazy...

By the summer of '81, Jeff J. hadn't been on staff for over a year, Bruce had stopped hanging around and even John was off at Scout Camp.  That left only Jeff V. and I to man the creative department and create the theme of the summer Coupon Bonanza.  Following up on the satiric approach of Spring's "Coupon Digest" magnum opus, we decided to parody both the typical summer "Kah-ray-zee Days!" Sale and the hackneyed "what's wrong with this picture?" puzzle:

(click on it for a closer look)

(Please make special note of the second appearance of "Cornet Man" at bottom center.)

Found all 20 yet?  I'll make it easy on you by enlarging and flipping the answers:

(Unless your eyes are still that sharp, click on this, too)

I seem to recall hearing from at least one frustrated reader back then who took our challenge a bit more seriously than we did...

Naturally, John takes the place of Kevin Bacon...

Being that we do consider ourselves the real-life incarnation of the "Diner" guys (although, as far as I know, none of us have ever played the Popcorn Trick on a date), it was inevitable that we'd use one of our own weddings to recreate the "Diner" movie poster image:

(Wonder what ever became of those guys?)

Meet Mr. Gormly

I have only vague memories of this.  Maybe something about an ad John was writing for a Dinkytown bank that started with the phrase, "Is your banker...?" 

How Jeff V. got from there to this, well, probably only he or John can explain:

(Click to read captions.  LIke you're not curious.)

The Way We Were...

So young, so beautiful...

(Okay, so I wasn't actually working at the Daily when this photo was taken.  But it's so iconic, so well remembered, there's NO WAY I'm gonna miss out on being a part of it!)

This was the photo we photocopied onto yellowed paper (to "age" it), framed and sneakily screwed onto the wall of Bullwinkle's bar back in the '90s -- we figured we'd spent enough lunches and evenings there (and eaten enough coney dogs) that we deserved a place among the other historical photos.  So we took a table upstairs in back, away from everyone else and when no one was looking, out came the cordless drill and up we went.

I seem to remember returning a week or two later, and being pleasantly surprised to see we were still undiscovered.  The next time we came by, however, the photo was gone.  Ah, well.  For one brief, shining moment...

The Music Of Our Lives (part 1)

As you'd expect in a department as loosey-goosey and as cluttered with gags and cultural detritus as ours was, offbeat music just had to be part of the mix.  Once John brought in an old suitcase-style record player, old 45s and albums weren't far behind.

Courtesy of Jeff V., came this record which combined the swingin' '60s rock instrumentals with shrieks, creaks and other ghoulish sounds. Thanks to walls that didn't reach the ceiling, our eclectic music would drift far beyond the confines of our own office, leading to some annoyed office mates.  Once, while playing a Frankie track (maybe the one you can listen to here), the office receptionist demanded, "What is that -- It sounds like a woman being raped."

Finally, it's official!

Years after John awarded us the title after a typically hilarious get-together (perhaps at the Improper Fraction downstairs from the Minnesota Daily offices), the appropriate documentation was finally issued to each of us in 1997:

Note the Official Seal of The Five Funniest Guys In America (before we were upgraded) at lower right, reproduced and enhanced for clarity below:

(And if you think it's all been about privileges and no obligations, then you've never been to a party where someone comes up to you and says, "So I hear you're one of the five funniest guys in the world...")

Never mind young Jeff, check out those ads!

How many do you recognize?

(Click to enlarge)

The King Is Back

From the Minnesota Daily photo issue in April, 2007 -- okay, not really, but it's something I tricked up for the benefit for Jeff last year. The photo, of course (of course?) is from King Koupon, another Coupon Bonanza insert from 1981. And we'll be posting more on that epic production another day.

(click to enrage -- I mean, enlarge!)

John makes with the funny

Here's the "cover" to Coupon Digest -- our Reader's Digest parody (before magazine parodies were commonplace, mind you) that filled the unsold ad space in the Spring 1981 Coupon Bonanza ad supplement to the Minnesota Daily. As a measure of how much good will we apparently had built up at the paper, management actually added 4 extra pages to the supplement for no other reason than to give us room to play.

Here's John's table of contents; note the '80s political references and well as other examples of John's distinctive brand of erudite, dry humor:

(click to enlarge; it's worth reading every word)

Somebody get that dummy a tissue...

Danny O'Day, the resident ventriloquist dummy of the Minnesota Daily Creative Department (and future Iran hostage, but that's another story) gets caught in an embarrassing moment.

Paging Dr. Dog...

Two posts in, and we're already fast becoming more a Tribute to Artistry of Jeff Vlaming, but we'll share the spotlight in later posts.  In the meantime, here's a fine example of the quicksilver way Jeff's mind works.  He starts with one image then, just when you embraced the lunacy, he abruptly drops the formality while simulaneously upping the absurdity for an even more memorable drawing.

We've got to start somewhere...

And what better place than our official crest, as created by Jeff V., sometime back in the early '80s:

As for the name itself, I suspect it was Bruce that first brought this Latin pun ("Always where under where") to our attention.  I do know for certain that Jeff V. later decided that it was the perfect name for the humor magazine we never actually put out.

But finally, some 27 years later, "Semper Ubi Sububi" lives!

So dig into your archives, John, Bruce, and the two Jeffs.  This is our official online posting place for all the great gags, photos, drawings and Coupon Bonanza supplements of our Minnesota Daily years -- and all five of us have posting privileges, so get busy. 

Guaranteed to amuse only 5 people in the entire Internet -- but that's exactly the same number who were originally amused by this stuff, so what the heck.