| Brown's monster award
When the Godfather of soul and America’s oldest humor magazine get together, there’s obviously going to be a monster truck involved, right? Well, maybe not all the time, but today at 4:30 in front of the Harvard Lampoon castle on Bow Street in Cambridge these three disparate icons will be joined together in a public ceremony where Brown will be awarded the Wheelwright Award for his extraordinary influence on music. “Because Mr. Brown is a figure of such monumental stature, we have commandeered the services of a fitting vehicle for him,” says Lampoon Editor Zach Kanin about the Monster Mutt, which is the number 2 monster truck in the world. “The truck may or may not destroy things.” (Yes, we also didn't believe it, but when pressed Kanin said this is "definitely happening.") The Wheelwright Award is named after one of the Lampoon’s founders and the architect of the castle, Edmund March Wheelwright. Brown joins the ranks of other esteemed winners such as Winston Churchill, John Wayne, Robin Williams and George Foreman. Kanin says there was no monster truck present at Churchill’s presentation, which makes this afternoon’s presentation especially significant. “They just had two of those bikes with the huge front wheel and the tiny back wheel,” he says. Pat Healy Back |
 A monster truck? In my honor? I feel good. |