What, Me Worry?
July 4, 2019 6:40 AM   Subscribe

 
SAD.
posted by entropicamericana at 6:47 AM on July 4, 2019 [19 favorites]


Holy shit. MAD was the best education avant-garde me could possibly have had.
posted by notsnot at 6:54 AM on July 4, 2019 [14 favorites]


Is this what "outliving your time" feels like? I don't like it one bit.
posted by mikelieman at 6:57 AM on July 4, 2019 [45 favorites]


.
This world has finally gone completely bonkers, dare I say... MAD.
Sigh, this is the darkest timeline, how the hell did I end up here?
posted by jkaczor at 7:01 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


.
posted by voltairemodern at 7:01 AM on July 4, 2019


I enjoyed MAD, with my favourite being Spy vs Spy. I don't see how the magazine can remain successful in an age where it's easier to find that kind of humour and thinking online.

I'll just leave this here.
posted by ashbury at 7:16 AM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


Read it? I lived it! I still remember the issue where the two bikers waved goodbye to their two rebellious kids on their way to school with their square attire and briefcases. My wife and I, two hippies born in the year Mad was born, 1952, had a child who was a straight-A student, prom queen, and student council president. Now a scientist.

I haven't read a copy since 1970 when I went away to college, though. I do miss picking up my free copy of The Onion every week at the liquor store. Print will always trump pixels.
posted by kozad at 7:17 AM on July 4, 2019 [14 favorites]


Is this what "outliving your time" feels like?

Al Jaffee is 98. How weird is it that he outlived Mad Magazine?
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:18 AM on July 4, 2019 [58 favorites]


Super sad... but from being a bright light of satire and silliness in a dull, staid time to just one of so many of sources mining the same material it's not at all surprising. When Colbert and the Onion and Cris Shapan (amongst hundreds) are all free (cash money-wise, at least) who is going to pay for months old (due to print lead time) humorous commentary in magazine form.
I quite literally grew up with Mad, first in the form of the paperback reprints of the early 1970s, then the Super Specials, then passed-down subscription copies starting in the mid 1970s to early 1980s (thanks to my super-hip Grandma!). It shaped my sense of humour, my outlook on politics, movies and TV, and helped inspire (along with comics) the career that I love so much. I was lucky enough to meet a few of the "Usual Gang of Idiots" over the years, and have some original Mad art staring down at me from my studio walls as I write this. So thank you, Mad Magazine. Rest in Peace.
posted by acroyear at 7:27 AM on July 4, 2019 [10 favorites]


I'm really grateful I grew up on a crate of MAD compilation paperbacks from my dad's era that he dug up for me at a garage sale. But those old paperbacks were already way more relevant to my mid-90s life than any of the new stuff MAD was actually printing in the mid 90s. And I gather it kept getting worse. This feels like the last bit of closure on something I'd already mostly finished mourning a while ago.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:30 AM on July 4, 2019 [8 favorites]


I was surprised to find it was still going. It appears to have largely remained static (though had the occasional flash of inspiration, such as the recent gun-law-themed Gashlycrumb Tinies). It was ironic that Cracked, which began as part of the tide of 1950s MAD knockoffs (all with their own Alfred E. Neumanoid grotesque mascot) had, in the digital age, leapfrogged it and become a fount of social inquiry.
posted by acb at 7:33 AM on July 4, 2019 [8 favorites]


C.D

(dot with Alfred E. Neuman ears.)
posted by Gelatin at 7:33 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


Also via Boing Boing:

A young Dennis Eichhorn reads Mad for the first time in 1954.
What was this? I've never seen anything like it before.
Something was very wrong! I felt nauseous.
I went to the men's room and barfed my guts out.
I've never been the same since.
It's hard to imagine these days just how subversive and revolutionary its humor was in the 1950s.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:36 AM on July 4, 2019 [21 favorites]


It seems overly fitting that this is on boingboing.net

Like when one retired ball player introduces a newly retired player
posted by French Fry at 7:37 AM on July 4, 2019 [16 favorites]


RIP the last surviving EC comic.
posted by Artw at 7:38 AM on July 4, 2019 [18 favorites]


My favorite bit of MAD trivia (and apologies if I'm not remembering this absolutely correctly) was hearing that Don Martin used to drive a car with personalized Florida license plates that read SPLORP.
posted by gimonca at 7:44 AM on July 4, 2019 [15 favorites]


My mom passed a year ago in March and as I was clearing out the shed I found a box of old comics, including a few dozen MADs. I've been reading through them the past few weeks at bedtime.. Mostly late 80s and 90s. What a trip.

I always found Cracked to be a weak imitation.. People have told me the online Cracked was pretty neat but I never did get into that.

Aragones all the way.. his marginal stuff, the Groo series.. Thanks MAD.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:44 AM on July 4, 2019 [5 favorites]


(It might also have been SHTOINK.)
posted by gimonca at 7:44 AM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


I remember reading "You can never win with a bigot" when I was 9 or 10 and it's informed my world-view ever since.
posted by octothorpe at 7:45 AM on July 4, 2019 [53 favorites]


MAD was being published by DC Comics, which also very recently shuttered its Vertigo imprint. This is all hot on the heels of DC's parent corporation being purchased by AT & T. Given this and dark rumors about the fate of the DC Universe streaming enterprise, you have to wonder what plans they have for the publisher. They own a LOT of IP that's worth a fantastic amount of money.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:46 AM on July 4, 2019 [11 favorites]


I loved the folding pictures. Great mag in the 70s. Stopped reading it around '85.

.
posted by AugustWest at 7:48 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


So now the whole mag is folding rather than just the back page. I'd have just changed the name to 'SANE' and kept publishing.

Maybe now Neuman will get illegally appropriated to replace that frog as a more fitting icon for the alt-right. 'What, me whitey?' :-)

Potrzebie. That's MADspeak for '.'.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:52 AM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


“Boy, they’re really socking it to that Spiro Agnew guy again. He must work there or something.” – Milhouse
posted by porn in the woods at 7:56 AM on July 4, 2019 [37 favorites]


kittens for breakfast, you just made me realize... Dear lord, the phone company now owns Alfred E. Neuman, Bugs Bunny and the Flinstones. And Disney owns Hawkeye and Klinger along with Mary Tyler Moore and the Simpsons.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:05 AM on July 4, 2019 [9 favorites]


.

MAD goes KERFLOOEY
posted by theory at 8:12 AM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


Some context on the sales of MAD, both in its heyday and some more current numbers. As a periodical rather than a comic they were obligated to publicly report on their sales.
posted by thecjm at 8:12 AM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


I loved MAD when I needed it. Late 60s, early 70s, still in my pre-teens. I had my meager allowance allotted in such a way that I could afford to buy one comic a week. At first it was some superhero option, but then one pivotal day, I discovered I was more interested in laughing at the world than watching men in tights fight evil. So MAD was the easy choice.

Until two things happened (maybe three). One. I realized they had Motor Racing magazines on the shelf just up from the MADs, and they cost about the same. Two. I stumbled into Monty Python which represented a whole new level of laughing at the world.

Maybe Three. Just growing up in general. Puberty and all its passion-confusion-etc was hitting and MAD was seeming ... well, just not up to it. It was starting to feel an awful lot like kid's stuff. Yet it had most certainly done its job. I knew what satire was. I had appropriate filters more or less permanently installed in the part of my brain that decides what's worth taking seriously. For which I am eternally thankful.

.
posted by philip-random at 8:20 AM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


Also previously, one of my all-time favorite old-fashioned websites, the alphabetical list of Don Martin onomotopoeia. (The Metafilter thread is here, but the link in that thread is dead.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:20 AM on July 4, 2019 [13 favorites]


(though had the occasional flash of inspiration, such as the recent gun-law-themed Gashlycrumb Tinies)

I went out and bought that issue. It felt a bit odd to do so. I hadn't bought Mad in over 30 years. Like many my age I had stacks of not only the magazines but the paperback collections, including separate anthologies of Aragones and Don Martin.
posted by vacapinta at 8:22 AM on July 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


I loved Mad Magazine, as did my friends. To obtain it, we had to walk about a mile to a "Spa," which was, in 1960s-70s Boston, the nomenclature for a tiny hole-in-the-wall store with its stock stacked to the ceiling. Spas carried a little bit of everything, including porn and other reading material deemed subversive, but survived by selling candy, soda, cigarettes, and eventually lottery tickets... and often serving as the neighborhood bookie.

Anyway, in 1970 on a beautiful spring Saturday, my BFF and I set out to HandySpa, each with precisely 35 cents jammed deep into a pocket, enough for the latest edition of Mad Magazine and a Reese's peanut butter cup. We were 10, the school year was nearly over, and life was good.

Along the way, we encountered an old man in an unseasonably heavy black coat seeking donations to support veterans causes and offering remembrance poppies in return. He asked us for a donation. BFF and I have since dissected this event many times, as recently as our 40th high school reunion, and while we both remember looking at each other and communicating silently that we really didn't want to sacrifice either the magazine or the peanut butter and chocolate deliciousness, neither of us remember who first thought to exclaim, "But we don't have any money!" knowing that as little girls we could get away with that explanation.

We continued on, without a care, and made our purchases. Heading home, we didn't think to change routes. There ahead, unavoidably, was the old man with the poppies. And there we were, Mad Magazines tucked under our arms and holding Reese's cups with bites taken out of them. "So you have money after all!" the guy said. But now we really didn't, having spent it all, we told him, probably protesting too much trying to make him believe us. And then he gave us each a poppy.

We could never decide if he was menacing or kind. But both of us still have our poppies to this day.
posted by carmicha at 8:24 AM on July 4, 2019 [46 favorites]


.
posted by Mrs Potato at 8:25 AM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


the alphabetical list of Don Martin onomotopoeia.

reminds me of a friend from Grade 6-7. Every now and then for no particular reason, it seemed, he'd sort of smack you on the shoulder for attention, look you seriously in the eye and say, "PLORTCH!"
posted by philip-random at 8:26 AM on July 4, 2019 [5 favorites]


I will be forever grateful to my mother, who bucked the stereotype of the mom who throws away kid's valuable collection after kid goes off to college. I had stacks of 60s and 70s MAD magazines, and they stayed untouched in my old room, probably because she also understood their value as collector's items, and knew I didn't have room for them in my apartment. Yay mom.

Some years after she died I realized my dad threw them out.

I still have some paperbacks, and I'll be wearing my Spy vs Spy t-shirt today.
posted by sageleaf at 8:35 AM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


I grew up with MAD. As others here have said it shaped my view of the world. And for that I am really grateful. I actually subscribed after the new issue #1 as I found out I liked it. The Gashlycrumb Tinies piece nailed my appreciation of the new magazine. Now? Some nostalgia as my subscription runs out?
posted by njohnson23 at 8:38 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm really sad to learn about Mad Magazine's demise; in the age of King Trump and his MAGA-hat followers, the kids really need it.
posted by carmicha at 8:49 AM on July 4, 2019 [7 favorites]


Here's a great short clip of a Canadian interview with Bill Gaines from 1977.

Like many above, I haven't read MAD in many years but I'm curious has anyone have experience with it in more recent years? Was the writing as consistent as it was in its heyday?
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:06 AM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


.

I have so many feelings about this, but they're muted by time. MAD was extremely important to me, but I think kids today are getting a whole lot more snark and satire from their media than they were, say, twenty years ago. (Some parents say it's too much, and have banned certain shows for causing sassmouth.) I'm not sure kids need MAD in the way we used to. That's not necessarily bad.

The art, though -- everybody needs the art! As a kid, one of the things I could share with my dad was that we could both recognize MAD artists by style. (Most of them had been already been working when my dad was young.) He gave me his old, yellowing paperback collections with the Wally Wood art. I remember learning to tell Paul Coker from Al Jaffee, recognizing how (if not why) Dave Berg's art never changed, and looking for Easter eggs in Mort Drucker's or Jack Davis's pages.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:07 AM on July 4, 2019 [5 favorites]


My introduction to a lifetime of iconoclasm and contrarianism. My gateway drug to the wider world of comix.

Recently, I've gone back to reading their paperbacks, and while some of the humour hasn't aged well AT ALL, there's no denying that it was a quality production and that they took their comedy very seriously. Stuff which I found simply funny as a kid -- like Jack Davis' work -- good lord, is that now ever loaded to my adult eyes. And that all that work was directed to children (nominally). Astounding.

There were definite weak spots, but on the whole, it was always a solid read. I can see why it had visibility problems in a new world of ever-widening sources of satire, but all those newcomers can trace their lineage back to MAD.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:09 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


I actually know one of The Usual Gang Of Idiots. He's been writing for MAD pretty much since he graduated college back in the 80s. Every once in a blue moon he would mine friends' names for use in things he wrote; I was one of about five people who were enshrined in a piece he called "the 25 least influential people in show business" or something like that (my name was used for a performance artist who did an installation protesting Iran-Contra, another friend's name was used for "the person who cleans the spit out of Larry King's mike", things like that).

Have not heard from him about this issue. I'm almost afraid to ask.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:10 AM on July 4, 2019 [8 favorites]


One of my favorite memories (now that time has reduced rage to poignancy) is that of my choirmaster, renowned composer William Ferris (not the NEA guy), grabbing my Mad magazine out of my hands at choir practice, ripping it apart in front of me and the other singers, slapping me in the face, and kicking me out of the group. It sort of set the tone for the next 50-60 years of my life.
posted by Chitownfats at 9:12 AM on July 4, 2019 [16 favorites]


This blows. My pal got a gig writing for MAD this past winter and it was a life-long dream of his. Well, at least it happened at all. RIP Alfred.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:12 AM on July 4, 2019 [8 favorites]


When my father fled Yugoslavia after the war for the refugee camps in Strasbourg, he learned French by reading "Le Canard Enchaine", the leftist satirical newspaper. When he settled in New York City, he learned English reading "Mad Magazine". We kids grew up reading the "Mads" he faithfully brought home for us (after reading them himself).
posted by acrasis at 9:19 AM on July 4, 2019 [10 favorites]


From Evan Dorkin: "Today won't end. Goodbye, MAD Magazine. As a youngster I was a huge fan of the 70's era, as a young adult I rediscovered the 50's comics, as an old nerd I somehow became a contributor (often working w/@colorkitten) for the last decade +. Getting the e-mail today was crushing.

"It's wild that Al Jaffee outlasted MAD as a living entity. I wish others were still here as well to raise a seltzer bottle. And I wish MAD would hire Jaffee to do the cover for the last original issue of the magazine. Because, for all intents and purposes, MAD is folding. #hooha"

posted by Capt. Renault at 9:24 AM on July 4, 2019 [13 favorites]


Oh MAN
posted by potrzebie at 9:24 AM on July 4, 2019 [7 favorites]


.
posted by dfm500 at 9:27 AM on July 4, 2019


Awww. What weird timing, I just started reading Al Jaffee's biography. He was born in the US but basically kidnapped by his mom (maybe?) to Lithuania when he was six and lived there in pretty neglectful circumstances until he was 12.

I had a subscription as a kid. Have a box of MAD books that I just rediscovered in my mom's house as we're packing it up with plans to sell it. My SO is a MAD fan like me and I think it says a lot about our senses of humor and sensibilities.

I saw Joe Raiola speak at a library conference maybe eight years ago talking about free speech (when it was more about being able to have books about gay penguins and less let Nazis do their recruitment) and he really brought it. Super thoughtful and interesting. MAD was one of the few periodicals we still got in the YA section of the library. I'll be sad to see it go.
posted by jessamyn at 9:39 AM on July 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


I remember seeing it on the magazine rack as a kid and having a super-conflicted deep emotional reaction to it. Like "this is punkrock and cool and I think there's some key to what my true belief system is in here, but. Thanks I Hate It." It felt like dangerous magic in my hands and I could not read it.

I wanted to read it, because it looked anti-System. But I couldn't handle it. The low-talent intentionally grotesque aesthetic? It was just... boy shit. It felt so fucking male.
posted by Sterros at 9:45 AM on July 4, 2019 [9 favorites]


For those of you who have asked: the re-boot has been scathing. Honestly, I've been excited to get each issue because they've been brutal, to the extent that I've not seen since the 1970s heyday.
posted by notsnot at 10:11 AM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


And then my mother threw them out....

(Downsizing, I hasten to add, not an editorial comment. Read what you like was her motto.)
posted by BWA at 10:20 AM on July 4, 2019


Someone else whose reaction was, "It was still publishing? In print?" (Although I can't quite imagine it having nearly the success online, maybe because of those back covers that you folded together to reveal the hidden picture.) Probably the last I'd really thought of it was MADtv, which tried to emulate its ostensible inspiration's subversiveness, but aside from some animated Spy vs. Spy cartoons in its early years, never really managed to be more than the road company SNL. Maybe the reboot was all that notsnot says, and if I remember to take a peek at the newsstand at the local B&N the next time I pass by, I'll see if there's a lonely issue there, but even perusing the magazine racks now seems like a relic of a bygone era, when doing so was the equivalent of surfing the internet: a window into a world more sophisticated, sarcastic, and sexy than anything you'd seen with your own eyes. I'd said recently in a FanFare thread on the movie Network that I read the MAD parody of the movie many years before seeing the movie itself, and that was true for a lot of movies.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:24 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


Discovering my uncle's complete collection of 1960s Mad Magazines in my grandparents' attic was one of the best experiences of my adolescence. My brother and I read them to pieces, and would stick phrases like "Fershluggener Potrzebie Axolotl" in our school assignments, confusing our teachers (except for the ones who also read Mad in the 1960s). It wasn't just subversive, it was intellectual and well-read, and sent the message that a teenager could be smarter than the authorities in charge of his life.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 10:29 AM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


... recognizing how (if not why) Dave Berg's art never changed...

Berg's stuff was always such a weird anomaly with the pipe smoking dads and get-off-my-lawn-you-kids humor. I never really understood why he was in Mad Magazine.
posted by octothorpe at 10:52 AM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


I was delighted to learn from this New York Times profile last year that it published computer scientist Donald Knuth's first paper:

At age 19, Dr. Knuth published his first technical paper, “The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures,” in Mad magazine.
posted by bunbury at 10:53 AM on July 4, 2019 [15 favorites]


I liked MAD when I was a pre-teen in the 80s - but it isn't hard to entertain an 11-year-old. I'm honestly always mystified to hear people talk about it as some kind of brilliant, subversive thing.

Maybe it really was, back in the 60s and 70s. But the few times I've seen new issues as an adult, it...really hasn't aged well. Lame humor, dated references, always smugly convinced that it's far cleverer than it actually is.

To be fair, I feel the same way about the "underground comix" of the 60s, which I guess are a second cousin to MAD. Maybe you just had to be there?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:58 AM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


My 4th grade teacher snatched my MAD out of my hands with great asperity one morning, and I guess she must have sent it to the principal's office to show him what an awful kid I was (believe me, Miss Tuemler, that was purely superfluous), because when he got on the intercom system for his morning address, he read a fairly lengthy piece from it (their 'The Night Before Christmas' parody) to the entire school as she subjected me to her fierce green glare.

The weird thing is, looking back on it, that the confiscation must have taken place before Christmas that year, and the morning after Christmas, early enough that we were all in bathrobes and pajamas, the two of them showed up unannounced at my house in their formal work clothes to have a discussion about me with my parents.

They were a very good looking couple, he was tall and resembled Omar Sharif, and she was equally tall in heels, and looked like Doris Day but with more luminous eyes. It became clear later in the year that they were actually an item, but I will never forget the shock I felt seeing them standing there together on the flagstone steps when I opened the door to their knock.
posted by jamjam at 11:10 AM on July 4, 2019 [11 favorites]


Mad Magazine was something my entire family enjoyed. We had all the regular magazines, Time (Slime)!Newsweek ( Newspeak) Life, Look, The Rifleman ( Democrat NRA family) we got the Chronically and the Denver Post. And the two Albuquerque daily’s after moving to New Mexico, National Geographic, Archeology ( for me). We did not ALL read all the magazines. Probabably only my Mom and I did. We had foreign magazines like Dee Speigel and Paris Match. Also Mexican magazines. Mad was the Only one all of us read. It’s sad it’s gone. For all it’s faults, it was a good laugh. Even the lame stuff.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:34 AM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


So, so many movies I only know via their parodies. I haven’t read Mad in ages but it was a part of my childhood, definitely.
posted by PussKillian at 12:16 PM on July 4, 2019 [11 favorites]


Like Siskel and Ebert; Mad often substituted for actually being able to go to the movies, but everything got roasted.

Not the worst early reading material out there; bonus points for artwork that changes to a Fold-in. More physical artspace moved to the digital realm.
posted by Afghan Stan at 12:30 PM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


The pipe smoking dad in Dave Berg’s comics was himself.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 12:35 PM on July 4, 2019 [9 favorites]


Over the last decade, I'd only bought MAD when travelling. Grab a copy from an airport bookstore, read on the plane, leave in the pouch behind the safety card in the hopes of making someone's economy-class experience slightly better. One change I was not expecting to like was the inclusion of actual advertisements - I didn't realize it'd make discerning the fake ads genuinely difficult (...sometimes). It also ensured I'd actually LOOK at every ad, which is kinda amazing.

Really gonna miss it, and always going to be grateful for what it did to improve my childhood. RIP, Mr. Neuman.
posted by BetaRayBiff at 1:04 PM on July 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


I had family friends who would buy Mad and Cracked magazines and I'd read through them all whenever we had sleepovers. But I haven't read either magazine in something like 30 years so I'm more surprised that they were still printing than anything else.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:53 PM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Pouteria at 2:02 PM on July 4, 2019


I remember I was about 12 and I worried some relatives by talking about Silence of the Lambs, until I explained I was aware of the general plot by reading the Mad parody.
posted by ckape at 2:28 PM on July 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


.

Ages ago, MAD had a sketch about sports, and how each separate sports seasons were getting longer and longer, and overlapping, and eventually it will be all the sports, all the time. That has stuck with me FOREVER, especially as became reality in many ways.

Ah, MAD....I'll miss you, but I do have a few books of collections lying around...
posted by annieb at 3:48 PM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Melismata at 3:49 PM on July 4, 2019


Seems right that it is folding up.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:24 PM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]


.
One of my earliest memories is the reading the Jaws parody, ending with Brody shooting the shark while singing "The Sea Where They Live". (Google Image search result)

And in my teen years, when my Mom was digging through the attic for something else, and found a couple of issues of hers from the late 60s - that was the first time I ever considered she had been a kid, and that I might have gotten some of my dark sense of humor from her.

Some thoughts from Mark Evanier on the subject.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 5:09 PM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


So long, usual gang of idiots, and thanks for all the blecch.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 5:46 PM on July 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


Worry.
posted by kenko at 7:43 PM on July 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


.
posted by limeonaire at 7:45 PM on July 4, 2019




"It peaked at 2.8 million subscribers in 1973, but had just 140,000 left as of 2017."

Jesus, so even 140,000 subscribers isn't enough to keep a magazine viable these days?
posted by Paul Slade at 4:54 AM on July 5, 2019 [4 favorites]


AT&T demands more, apparently.
posted by mediareport at 5:10 AM on July 5, 2019


.
posted by lester at 9:05 AM on July 5, 2019


I was just watching Catch-22 last week (the 1970 one), and couldn't help thinking that I enjoyed the MAD spoof so much more.
posted by Kabanos at 2:29 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


Ominously, reality has become more twisted than anything MAD could satirize.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:13 AM on July 6, 2019 [2 favorites]


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posted by detachd at 6:35 AM on July 6, 2019


.

MAD was far before my time, but was lucky enough to find some of their books on my grandparents' massive and fruitful bookcase, and spent many happy afternoons with them. 43-man Squamish in particular has stayed with me.
posted by cosmic owl at 9:25 PM on July 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Some thoughts on the tortured middle-class politics of MAD's Dave Berg by noted musician and activist Terre Thaemlitz.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:54 AM on July 9, 2019


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