The Ecphorizer

Inside Joke
Susan Packie

Issue #36 (August 1984)



This is classified information - 'for Eyes', if you know what I mean. I am letting you in on it only because I am a professional leak. A real drip. I also have a personal grudge against this particular enterprise.

I can't tell you exactly what it is, but it's a real laugh. An INSIDE JOKE. I can't tell you where it is located, but the city is a little fruity. Just think of Adam and Eve, sin, and red balls.

Actually, it's a magazine, or what passes for a magazine. It is usually 20 or so 8½" X 11" pieces of paper stapled together, with obscene art on the cover (the summer, 1984 issue featured Ronald Reagan) and a sick joke on the back.

On the staff are a rabbit named "Uncle Wiggly", a mouse who happens to be yours truly, and a bunch of derelicts who can't spell their own first names. You know the type. The ones who leave off the final 'e' of George and change the 'y' of Candy to 'i'. Even the editor-in-chief can't tell a 'y' from an 'i', insisting her name is Elayne.

The publication is hexaweekly. They should have called it sexaweekly. This magazine makes PLAYBOY look like the boy scout manual. Why, it includes everything from porno film reviews (never having seen a film, I can't be sure, but what else would a magazine called INSIDE JOKE write up?) and personal revelations (Anni takes hot showers. You got it. HOT showers!) to political claptrap - prisons that people break INTO, the Red Peril, stuff like that.

Then there are perverted cartoons, poetry about incontinence and voyeurism, specials from high lifers in Brooklyn (Whoops! I didn't want to get this specific!), and serials - every six weeks, another chapter comes out. Either no one reads them or everyone has a fantastic memory.

The best part of the magazine is the letters to the editor section. This is where readers can mouth off. I'm just surprised people don't complain about having to pay $1 for each issue. I guess they think it is worth it. Maybe even more. $1.25 or $1.30.

Send it. They'll take it. And if you are really generous, they may even send you a T-shirt. But don't spread it around. That's an INSIDE JOKE. Send your George Washingtons to INSIDE JOKE, P0 Box 1609, Madison Square Station, New York, N.Y. 10159. Maybe they can do you a favor some day!


Humorist Susan Packie continues to send us crewel-work coasters, a practice she began quite spontaneously and has continued since we indicated our interest in the old journalistic custom of drinking. We are wondering when she will take to weaving her articles into the pattern. Now all we need is for someone to send us a bottle. Farewell, crewel world!

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