It Is A Mad Mad World
So, while some digital jackass named “Microchip” is dominating so much discussion here, let us talk about other things.
When I was a kid, I read Mad Magazine.
If I had to ride my training wheels bicycle there to the local store, I did. There were Playboys there on the shelf, and I did not even know that yet. I went for Mad. Alfred E. Neuman.
There were a lot of “illustrators” of Mad over the years, too many to go into currently, but (thank you Scribe) Al Jaffee was one of the most important.
“Microchip” is a blip, Al Jaffee spanned, and influenced, in a very good way, generations.
I’ll start the setup:
Is this the time for the stupid question?
Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions. Made me who I am today. I even had the paperbacks.
“Is this elevator going up? (Asked under the flashing UP sign)
No, we were gonna fool everyone and go sideways!
“ Can I take this train to Altoona?”
“ Sure you can, as long as you bring it back!”
Rip. A.J.
What, me worry?
Said tfg to Jack Smith.
Not to hijack, but the movie ‘It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world’ also is a perfect distraction from today’s news too. Jimmy Durante really kicked the bucket in that one.
“it’s under the big W!”
It could almost be a Trash Talk post. A hilarious movie, with enough stars to fill up an awards ceremony, and….yet….went on way too long without quite enough yuks.
Come-on bmaz; Johanthan Winters raging on a gas station? What could be more apt than that these days?
The gas station scene in Zoolander?
For the record, I thought “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World” was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Of course, I was only twelve years old, but still …
Zoolander: “killed in a freak, gasoline fight accident.”
Winters was great but for gas station comedy nothing beats Steve Martin in and as The Jerk – “Somebody hates these cans!”
That is almost perfect.
“The new phonebooks are in! The new phonebooks are in!”
Although, that quote probably needs explaining for the younger readers. A ‘phonebook’ was… oh, nevermind.
Steve’s duet with Bernadette Peters in The Jerk is the bomb.
SM’s ‘The Jerk’ references. One of my all-time faves. I needed this.
“Remember, when it comes to trash, we men in gar-bage are at your disposal.”
I remember my folks taking us to see it in Ultra Panavision. It was supposed to make you feel like you were in the movie.
The drive-in was the perfect pace to see that.
Except for the one or two asses in pickups who insisted on parking in the front rows.
As a family, we subscribed to National Geographic, Time, Reader’s Digest, and more. But Mad Magazine and AM radio at 2 am was mind expanding. When I graduated from high school in 1969 I had been there, driving by the Chicago Democratic National Convention on Lakeshore Drive. Yippies announcing cover your mouths with wetted cloths because of National Guardsmen sending out well, you know.
Thanks to Mad Magazine. Thanks to a liberal education at a state university. Far out.
What me worry?
Well, yeah.
Hey, the next Dem convention is, apparently…..going to be in Chicago.
What could go wrong? But Durbin is a Dick.
AM radio at 2 am:
Beaker Street with Clyde Clifford on KAAY Little Rock
Followed Beaker Theater at 3 a.m.
Those were the days…
Memory fail above. I believe Beaker Street was on at 11 pm to 2 am, then Beaker Theater at 2 am. Both mind expanding.
bmaz, training wheels? Seriously? I’m sorry, but you’ve gone down a few notches in my eyes.
Gift link to WAPO obit:
https://wapo.st/41pA0Bq
Best anecdote is the birth of “Snappy answers….”
No problem with the training wheels, especially since you didn’t inquire about his age when he used them. But most of us couldn’t even start what he graduated to, let alone drive them.
I’m laughing. He did start with “when I was a kid….” And, knowing him here as The Dr. bmaz, O.F.C. (Order of the Family Cactaceae), I figured he learned as I did: dad or older sibling put you on the seat of a too big bicycle barely able to reach the pedals, trotted along a few steps, gave you a big push, and off you went. Down to the ground. But after a few more tries, and not a few bumps & bruises, you got it. Wobbly & tentative, and still falling, but you got it.
What did bmaz graduate to? I eventually graduated to the subway.
I believe the official title is The Dr. bmaz, O.F.C., wielder of the Blowtorch of Wrath ™
I’m surprised bmaz hasn’t chimed in. His love motorcars and motorcycles is legendary, as is his affection for F1.
I’m pretty sure Bmaz was training the wheels. Gotta read carefully.
Question is whether David Letterman is related to Alfred E.
& fortunately the ‘rents never found out about Mad mag. One blessed piece of respite. R.I.P.
It is 4 am in the morning here, and I am awake. So, let me answer the training wheels question. Think I was five years old give or take. First bicycle. My mother had training wheels installed because that is what moms do. They lasted all of a couple of weeks before I found the right sized spanner in the storage room and took them off.
The local grocery and drug store was maybe a mile, at most, away. I did ride that same bike over there to read Mad. But not with training wheels, that was embellishment. My mother got a phone call from a neighbor who saw me pedaling by. Nothing got past neighbors in those days.
This is my cue to remember my lovely Mum who let me and my brother read Mad magazine while other mothers were scornful. She loved satire and passed it on to us.
My parents were not fans.
But to their great credit, they tolerated Mad and never raised a fuss.
I am not sure, but I think my dad gave me my first copy. I know he always read them after I did.
Fast forward a generation or more: would The Simpsons fill a similar role? I know it was crass (and with the passage of time, full of bad stereotypes), but I did garner modest Cool-Dad points for watching it with our kids – and finding it “hella funny” for the most part.
or Family Guy for that matter.
Based internet meme culture has fully embraced The Simpsons. {look up ‘based’ as a term used online if unfamiliar, it’s used in general and on the right & the left}
Not exactly MAD, but yeah def comparable head space
I loved Mad Magazine — also Rocky and Bullwinkle. When there was a recent scandal about universities not educating athletes and the media seemed shocked I showed my grandson the Whossamotta U episode.
That, and, in my family, Pogo, and, much later, Calvin and Hobbes.
Tell me this isn’t a solid representation of Florida’s dumbass governor Ron DeSantis:
I shudder to think that the human version of Alfred E. Neuman might win the GOP nomination. Jaffee is lucky to be spared that, may his name be for a blessing.
(Image came from this decent piece in WaPo about MAD Magazine as an effective tool in media literacy.)
Still cannot do the impossible.
Also, too, I did NOT give you permission to publish that picture of me.
As the spiny cactus of Emptywheel, your image is in the public domaine.
I’m really surprised you make this comparison. To me, Alfred E. Neuman is a good-natured simpleton, sort of like Spongebob Squarepants, while DeSantis is an educated, hateful asshole who tries his hardest to show what a shitbird he can be.
I really enjoyed Mad Magazine growing up, and I saved the December 1966 issue for years because it had an insert one was supposed to cut out to assemble a “Mad Mobile” with all the characters. I eventually did so 20 years later. It’s gone now. Perhaps it was in that issue where there was an article lampooning modern society, and saying that in the future, clothing designers would be so presumptuous as to affix their labels to the outside of people’s clothing. I was aghast at the thought. …
Didn’t W already serve two terms?
How many years did he run for president?
We chose the wrong clown to let in there.
The man ordered me to take this down from my cube:
https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/574dd434130000d605383263.jpeg?ops=scalefit_630_noupscale&cache=nhozdguzit
Spy v Spy
https://youtu.be/ji8aAsnta1I
I traded up to two Mad comic books (EC) at a comic convention in DC in 1980 or so, I still have those two comic books!
That fold-in thing on the back cover was GENIUS and was the thing I did first.
Same here, it was my favorite thing!
Same here!
My mom wouldn’t let me or my brother anywhere near Mad magazine. She and my dad were real religious, in a Protestant way. (He read Argosy, but she made him keep them in the garage.)
If I was lucky, there’d be a friend at school who had the latest Mad and would let me look at it. You couldn’t be an American Boomer and not know Mad. Kids would think you were stuck-up and square.
I still remember the cover of the first MAD magazine I ever bought. It was a portrait of Fidel Castro smoking a big Cuban cigar. Alfred E Neuman was lighting it for him and you could see a little label letting us know it was an exploding cigar! Surprise, Fidel!! Also remember the issue with a flexible plastic record included with the song “It’s A Gas!!” Kind of an R&B instrumental track with periodic fart noises dropped into the tune as I recall.
The one with the record? That one showed up at our house, too.
(Dear Ghu, that was a loooong time ago!)
Yes, I’d guess early-mid 1960s.
My first (and best) memory of Mad Magazine is about when I was looking through my older brother’s Mad Magazine. There was an “iron on” page to put on a T Shirt. It read, “I’m a perfect 10, what’s your IQ?” Being about 8 years old, I didn’t quite get the joke but for some reason I wanted to do the iron on. It’s probably fortunate that my mom said no. Still incredibly amusing to this day.
Until I discovered the underground comix in the late sixties MAD Magazine was my inspiration. Al Jaffee’s fold-ins in the back were a source of wonder to me, so clever and surprising. RIP Al Jaffee!
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Dr. Atomic. Still have a Dr. Atomic in my office here!
Zap and Mr Natural sustained my college years.
Truly a brain opener in this nerd’s early years (Navy brat born in 1959). One of the “features” that still sticks in my mind, for some reason, is “sport fishing” for dogs, in fighting chairs in the beds of pickup trucks…why did that stick with me?
How bout the 10 ways to clean-up dog poop? OMG, what a gas.
Ha! “Trolling for Dobermans”! I remember that too!
And it obviously stuck with you because you are a person of refinement and taste.
Axolotl!
Potrzebie!
It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!
“30 days has Septober…”
[Thanks for updating your username to meet the 8 letter minimum. /~Rayne]
I just realized that this phrase has a translation:
It’s crackers=crazy to slip a rozzer=policeman the dropsie=bribe in snide=counterfeit.
Potrzebie axolotl fink!
Poiuyt!
(I have a lab coat where I embroidered one on the pocket and one on the back, like logos.)
We had to hide our copies of Mad. It made them more precious. I still have one or two of the paperback books somewhere, the books that compiled from a bunch of issues’ the Spy vs. Spy, Don Martin, etc.
The facet of Mad I most loved was … no ads. Their business model kept them cranking out issue after issue and making a profit from newsstand sales and subscriptions without the need for a penny of ad revenue.
The minute they started running ads, it died.
“Is this the end of the queue?”
“No, it’s the beginning and we’re all standing backwards.”
Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions. Fisherman with a rod in the water and a fish in a bucket on the dock;
“Did you catch that?”
“No, I talked him into giving himself up”
Gawd, bmaz, I’ve been wondering for years why you remind me so much of one of my brothers. When I was 11, I had a job running the dishwasher after lunch in the school cafeteria. Lunch was my payment. But my mom gave me the 30 cents everyday for lunch anyway. I don’t remember if she knew I had the job.
I saved the lunch money until I had enough to buy Big Boys and cherry cokes for me and my brother. Sometimes we had enough for Superman comic books. Then my brother graduated to Mad Magazine. It was considered a boy’s thing and I didn’t get to see it much. But I do remember Spy vs. Spy. The Fold-In made such an impression on me that I made a brochure in graduate school with that concept.
You’re right! Not a lot of girls were into MAD….I was the only girl I knew that read MAD…and I was crazy about MAD –I would read it in private in the garage and I would laugh until I cried– When I occasionally come across an old copy –fifty years later–I still laugh out loud.
The first thing I did was the tri-fold page to see what it was hiding.
As for being Mad, I’d say it applies to Trump’s b.s. $500m suit against Mickey Cohen.
Those back covers were some of Jaffee’s best work, IMO. I always treated them as a puzzle & tried—with varying levels of success—to figure out what the resulting words and picture would be. Great comic artist!
My personal favorite was Don Martin. I loved Fester Bestertester and Karbunkle, with the inevitable object falling from the sky on Fester gag. Some of the sounds Don Martin came up with were just delicious—POP-Sproing-GING!
One from Don Martin’s books. Two guys are moving a safe which falls out a window. Just then woman and her husband are walking by. She asks him about the dental work he had just had done and he tells her that with the anesthesia, he didn’t feel a thing. She then pulls a hammer from her purse and asks, “so if I hit you with this hammer, you wouldn’t feel a thing?”
Just before the hammer hits his noggin, the safe falls on his head, drives him into the ground with only his head above the concrete and his tongue shoots across the road. Just then a parade comes by and Army troops walk over his tongue, jeeps, then tanks roll over it, and finally, a kid on a pogo stick hits it. He tells his wife “I didn’t feel a thing”
I was 12 years old and that doubled me over.
I can still envision that particular strip. The pogo stick got me.
My favorite Don Martin was an anesthetist demonstrating his latest technique: “Freezing!” If I recall he stuffed some poor sap into a fridge for a moment, then opened the door a moment later to reveal the frozen body–which then slid out onto the floor and broke into a pile of ice cubes.
I believe I still have a copy of “Don Martin Steps Out”…SHPLAT!
…aaaaand “Don Martin Bounces Back?”
I would wait with bated breathe for each new issue of Mad magazine and go directly to the back for the latest fold in. Reading each new issue cover to cover was to dive into a warped world of wonder and truths.
I can still recite “The Night Perry Masonmint Lost a Case” from memory.
the best part of being home sick from school was sneaking into my brothers’ closet and grabbing the paper sack filled with my Dad’s MAD magazine collection. I re-read them over and over and over. the Frankie & Annette beach movie satire is imprinted on my brain.
Seriously, just the imagery takes you back to the beach.
In a parody of the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea – almost all TV and movie parodies drawn by the great Mort Drucker – there was a washing machine window with suds and spinning clothes where a porthole looking out underwater should have been. I laughed then, I’m laughing now at the memory. Sergio Aragones in the margins. Mad and then the first few years of the National Lampoon were required reading for TV/Movie comedy writers back in the day.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: hard to parody a parody.
Fun fact: Captain Crane, David Hedison, was the original offeree for the role of the father on the Brady Bunch. He declined.
I was in college, sitting in the campus massive lecture hall (900 seats), for one of those freshman classes, and the person in front and just to my right was reading Mad.
They were thin enough magazines you could hide them in your fat textbook!
Or your notebook. Much better place.
A mad research project, if one had the time:
Discover:
Ratio of Mad Magazine covers featuring Trump to Time Magazine covers featuring Trump.
In my opinion, the movie parodies were the absolute acme of Mad. Modern Youtube channels like Honest Trailers, Ryan George’s Pitch Meetings, or The Onion Film Standard do a great job skewering Hollywood, but they all owe a huge debt to Mad parodies like The Poopside Down Adventure or The Odd Father.
They nailed the tropes and cliches, and the artwork was hilarious too.
I’d also offer a shoutout to MADtv. In a lot of ways it was looked down on as a cheap imitation of SNL, but in a lot of ways they made Lorne Michaels’ pets look like, well, Jimmy Fallon.
Key and Peele, Andy Daly, and Alex Borstein got major exposure on Mad TV while Michaels was flirting with Trump. The claymation takes on Rankin Bass and Rudolph are absolute classics.
I mentioned earlier in the thread that Mort Drucker was the illustrator for a huge majority of the class TV and Movie parodies. A remarkable caricaturist and a reason to buy Mad. As for MadTV, a great shout-out. Between that show and In Living Color, there have always been alternatives to and competition for SNL.
The density of Drucker’s drawings was incredible.There was always a ton of wordplay in the balloons, but then you’d go back and look at the marginalia and pick up a whole new level. Just great stuff when you were a kid.
My brother was an illustrator for Mad a few years back and there is a name for that density of humorous details. Cartoonists call that ‘chickenfat’. He also had the good fortune of meeting many of his idols, including Al Jaffee, at the annual Reuben Awards.
I would bet dollars to kreplach that it was called “schmaltz” prior to the Anglicized definition – “chicken fat”
I also want to give a shoutout to their fairly recent Edward Gorey-esque bit The Ghastlygun Tinies.
Bad op-ed writers turn out hot takes. This is art.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/business/media/mad-magazine-school-shootings-comic-strip.html
If you didn’t catch it, Mad’s Al Jafee just passed away at age 102.
When I was a kid I thought I wanted to be a commercial artist/illustrator. I was very much influenced by the great artwork, especially the covers. In any case, I wisely chose, for me, a different path.
Ah, bmaz. Thanks to you, I finally want to speak. From MAD magazine to Frank Zappa…high points of the world I grew up in, as well as Firesign Theater. My father, a Madison Avenue Art Director, turned me on to William Saffre when I was about ten.
The world I grew up in is gone, seemingly without a trace, and I’ve somehow outlived so much of what and who I loved.
Never in my wildest dreams did I consider I’d spend so much time reading about the law (of which I know little to nothing), but emptywheel is a goddess of OCD / ADHD rabbit holes, and I am totally hooked.
I won’t have much to contribute: I am a high school and college drop-out (with two associate degrees, finally) but I intend to stick around as a lurker. Thanks to all here for providing depth and terrible puns.
oh, you’re right: Mad was the gateway drug. led inexcricably to –> the Mothers –> the Fugs –> WBAI in the wee hours with Fass, Josephson & Post (listening with a transistor radio under the pillow at 2AM), Firesign…
I am surprised there has not been a call here to organize a 43-man Squamish team. (cover, sometime in the mid-60’s, I think?)
It always cracked me up that almost any map appearing nearly anywhere in the magazine would have a little railroad track drawn on it and the word “Syosset” at the end of the line.
altogether, now:
Chopped liver, onions on the side,
My social life has died from thee
Mad Magazine forever warped my sense of humor, and I will be forever grateful for this cultural icon. My favorites were the horrifying cliches and the movie parodies.
Come the holidays, I always sing my favorite Mad Xmas carol:
Doorbells ring, it’s the season. And you know what’s the reason. It’s people out there, going after their share, sticking out their greedy little hand.
First to come is the doorman. He’ll exclaim he’s a poor man. The janitor’s next, on some weak pretext, sticking out his greedy little hand.
My family (or at least part of my father’s side, including my parents) got hooked on Pogo, back around 1952. So Mad was easy to get into.
If you don’t already have it: https://www.madmagazine DOT com/books/the-mad-fold-in-collection
Hope that link is shared correctly.
I think MAD gave me much of the sense of humor I have. “No. I’m covered in liquid sunshine.” And as stated above, it had a more elicit feel than any other media at the time.
The only issue I still have is the first one distributed after 9/11. It’s an amazing time capsule and miles ahead of every other piece of contemporaneous pop culture.
Between Mad magazine and George Carlin;
I was never long for the straight and narrow
As a tween (well before that was a word) I read Cracked, a shameless, low-rent knock-off of Mad largely because Mad’s reputation made it something my parents wouldn’t specifically allow. Lacking any real understanding of why Mad was “problematic”, Cracked slipped through by the simple virtue of not being singled out for criticism.
The people coughing in other people’s faces, usually on a subway, were the best. Seeing a big chicken bone in their sputum was so great. Clods!
My favorite edition was the Summer of 42.
Ah yes: Frank Kelly Freas, Mort Drucker, Wally Wood, Don Martin, Jack Davis, and Will Elder are the artists I remember; and the collection of rack-sized paperback MAD Readers, which could never be left visible in one’s bedroom for fear of them being confiscated by the parental units; the cardboard recording of Alfred E Neuman and his Fershlugginer Five; “The guy who writes the ads ought to write the rest of the magazine;” the earliest movie parody I remember is “The Wild 1/2” starring Marlon Branflakes and then of course there were all the TV parodies (like the Today Show parody featuring Dave Garrowunway and of course J. Fred Muggs [“Vootie”]). In the fifties, it was the only seriously funny, seriously subversive vehicle for us kids to discover that Madison Avenue and our parents were lying to us—and it made us feel daring and hip simply to read it. At the time, nobody was pushing the envelope of respectability further, although Stan Freberg and Ernie Kovacs came close. Once the late 60s and 70s hit, MAD didn’t quite have the same poke; we all knew by then that the adult world was bullshit because now the entire communications industry was telling us so. And to Al Jaffee—hail and farewell.
I know next to nothing about Mad World…
[was probably already out of the house when my brothers got into it],
but man, have I enjoyed reading this post and comment thread! :-)
I imagine it gives you all a sense of community through time and space
just from sharing the memories. Can’t think of a better legacy!
don martin
spy vs spy
all the genius onomatopoetic, sound-effect words
and who sez girls didnt read Mad magazine?
Have to believe that Mad didn’t lead directly to my favorite early Rolling Stone headline: Captain Beefheart Isn’t Even Here
Not to mention Jonathan Winters in The Loved One
Good thread for old men.
Strike that didn’t please
This girl’s daddy bought her a subscription!
One of the best birthday gifts ever. I felt so grown up with my own subscription.
He, and they, definitely influenced my world view.
Bought every paperback collection I could find in the mid-60s before I discovered there was a monthly magazine…you could get this stuff sent directly to you! My first personal magazine subscription and I read it faithfully until I moved on to National Lampoon in college. I would shamelessly steal jokes and include them in my grade school hoomework assignments and bask in the laughs (to the best of my recollection anyway!) when I read them aloud.
Al Jaffee, Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Mort Drucker…
Aragones is still alive – he’s 83.
Speaking of laughs…
Happy Birthday, Dave!!
https://youtu.be/PO5VeTbi7QI
I confess (sorry bmaz) that I never really got Mad but you guys definitely have some of the greatest comics ever: Krazy and Ignatz; Peanuts; Pogo; Calvin and Hobbes; and more. I’m also very fond of Doonesbury although I know it’s from over the border.
Well, there was Mad and then there was Mod. In 1967 I bought my first Mary Quant dress. It was a mod mini; chartreuse velour with a wide orange band at the waist, and white trim. You can see what it looked like in the 2nd photo, on the right, in the link below. Mary Quant died today at the age of 93. RIP, Mary Quant, and thanks for the fun you added to my life.
http://braxtonandyancey.blogspot.com/2011/05/mary-quant-queen-of-mod-fashion.html
Feels like yet another chunk of my childhood set on fire. So much of my clothing and even my haircut was influenced by Mary Quant’s work when I was a kid.
SL – in ’67 I think my mother was dressing me in miniskirts to ensure my constant embarrassment. By 71-72 I was wearing hotpants and ignoring the closet full of dresses mom thought her little human doll should wear.
But I always had blue jeans – AKA dungarees!
I loved that dress. And I had a few others that I thought were spectacular, as well. Young women were required to wear dresses or skirts when eating in the dorm cafeteria and also when attending classrooms of some profs. But we soon learned to boycott those profs if we could find alternatives.
The next year I moved off campus, and soon I was wearing slacks or jeans, regularly. By 1970, I’d estimate that the vast majority of women on campus had gone drag, so to speak. It was much more comfortable, especially in the winter. Seems sexist that men can’t choose to go drag if they want in any location they prefer. If women can, why can’t men? I wonder if anyone will ever challenge DeSantis and other fascists on grounds like that. It seems like it would also boost support for anyone who is transitioning.
In fourth grade, which would have been 1969-70, I was tired of freezing my butt off during winter in NYC, wearing the standard dress/skirt and knee-socks (since the only tights mom bought had the crotch at knee-level). I wore my first pair of “slacks” to school under my dress. They were a blinding red plaid.
It was “assembly day,” and my teacher decided I couldn’t go to the auditorium and salute the flag wearing pants. I refused to take the pants off.
A phone call was made to my mother – and I saluted the flag wearing pants. Mom wasn’t all bad.
In hindsight we really should have a separate post and thread to honor Mary Quant’s passing. Your comments and Savage Librarian’s are those we won’t hear from men whose attire and corresponding place in society didn’t change as dramatically during the 1960s-70s.
When your mom called the school to defend your wearing pants, she couldn’t fully expect to get credit in her own name.
What a great idea, Rayne.
When my parents divorced, my mom was a tenured professor at Emory, but my dad had to sign for her to get utilities in her own name.
And some folks want to take us back to those days. . .
Sergio Aragonés in the margins was one of my favorites. I still recall a drawing of a long-haired type waving on his band of supporters to grapple with the riot police unaware that behind him, the other protesters were running away in terror.
Recurring items like the fold-in back cover were very clever. “Horrifying Clichés” was funny as hell: “Guerrillas Attack on Plain of Jars” had a kid imagining a bunch of gorillas running across a bunch of mason jars. Parodies of movie/tv shows were fun (Star Trek parody: Spock says “I can’t hear you captain” Kirk replies, “you’re talking into your wristwatch, you donkey-eared baboon”)
I also recall one comic of a guy walking down a street with people saying “look at that schmuck”. The man says to himself he is a schmuck because of how he is dressed. He goes into a men’s clothing store and emerges transformed only to hear “look at that well dressed schmuck”
Star Blecch!
There was Kojerk, a parody of Kojack. One of the jokes was Kojerk had to go to a costume party and someone said “paint your head blue and go as a roll-on deodorant”.
At the end, “Stayfroze” was the villain. The plants he was growing in the police station were marijuana.
Detective: “So, you see, Stayfroze is the heavy”
Kojerk: “He’s not the heavy, he’s my brother” 😂
A few months ago I flashed back on a Mad magazine advertisement parody of Magtag washing machines.
A family living in a backwoods ‘holler, received a “Mayjag” washing machine, but having no electricity, turned it into moonshine making. The caption was “Mayjag, it’s a workin’ still !”
We moved into Casa de bmaz pretty much over twenty years ago. Bought the house from friends. We changed out most everything. But the washer and dryer were Maytags. Kept both. And they lasted. Finally had to replace the washer maybe eight years ago. Gas dryer still working fine.
Great thread. Brings back some great childhood memories and laughter. Many thanks to hard-working Mr. Jaffe.
yay thanks bmaz and to all of you for celebrating Mad and Al here
i had my issue confiscated by the teacher in grade eight during ‘reading time’
it was a parody of Carradine’s Kung Fu and i not only burst out laughing but i could not recover. even the teacher was smirking as she slipped the mag into her desk
i loved it all, Mort Drucker is my hero
but the craziest thing about Mad was the social commentary and how informative it was.
i learned so much and developed all my curiosity through Mad
my teacher even had us study it after my outburst
politics
satire
world events
advertising
art
Mad had it all
it all lead to reading newspapers and staying informed
and to emptywheel
Surprised nobody mentioned “East Side Story”, the UN-based take on the cold war, from 1963. Absolutely my favorite piece of work of theirs. It’s a little unfair to call it a parody of “West Side Story”, since they’re not sending up the musical, but oh, well.
“When You’re a Red” sung to… I’ll let you guess that one.
A site called madcoversite.com claims the Internet Archive lets you check out “Totallly Mad CD-ROMs” and view them. The proprietor has East Side Story posted for viewing (it’s in #78) I’m not sure of the copyright status of all this so I won’t link it, but it’s easy enough for Mr. Google to find.
I grew up in NYC, so the UN and “We will bury you” (and Mad itself, which is very much NYC humor) are all very personal.
And if you have to ask what a CD-ROM is you don’t belong in this thread.
How do you dust a harp?
Extremely carefully it turns out.
If you never see me again…..
Uh-oh.
Very briefly, in the first 3 seconds, you can see the harp on the right side of the screen. Maybe if you sing this to Mrs. bmaz she’ll forgive you a little quicker.
https://youtu.be/BKXjTUzYrTw
“Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart | Listen, Darling | Warner Archive”
Thankfully is all still intact. There was a scary second of life flashing though.
The satire of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was called Voyage to See What’s on the Bottom. That still cracks me up.