I remember, as a child, attempting to reproduce the BASIC program in one of the MAD magazine issues. Somewhere, I had made a typo, which completely screwed the output. I guessed that the tediousness of the whole exercise was part of the joke, shrugged, and moved on.
Luckily, someone else succeeded: https://meatfighter.com/mad/
Through my childhood, my mother always found a copy of MAD to give me for Christmas.
Honestly, it'd be great to have more physical zine-style humor back in the US zeitgeist.
It's important to laugh at the issues of the day, while also thinking and doing something about them.
Satire and laughter is a critical antidote to the 24/7 BREAKING-NEWS panic-fear response that all-day news so often inspires.
PS: Also, long live Spy v Spy. Go team black spy. https://archive.org/details/SpyVsSpyTheCompleteCasebook/Spy%...
In case you didn't know, The Onion is back in print:
You'll probably love this.
https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/cartoons-s3/styles/pro...
...An artistic portrait of Antonio Prohias (Mr. "Spy vs Spy") by Cuban cartoonist and illustrator Ramses Morales Izquierdo.
Hah! Mad Magazine was one of the things my mother refused to allow me to checkout from the library.
Jeanette Winterson recalled her mother's lament about books: "You can't tell by looking what's inside them."
The Simpsons did the best tribute to Mad that captured its true essence:
I read the magazine religiously as a kid (early 2000s). I got special editions for christmas (collections of prior articles/comics on particular subjects). There was one about advertising (Called MADvertising or something) that has a lot of information about old advertisements from the 1950s onward
Related. Others?
The Mad Magazine Fold-In Effect in CSS – Thomas Park (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36856428 - July 2023 (5 comments)
Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35517629 - April 2023 (64 comments)
Frank Jacobs, Mad Magazine writer, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26819773 - April 2021 (18 comments)
Al Jaffee turns 100 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26461739 - March 2021 (28 comments)
The Al Jaffee / Mad Magazine Fold-In Effect in CSS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23457930 - June 2020 (43 comments)
Mad magazine legend Al Jaffee retires at age 99 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442041 - June 2020 (25 comments)
A World Without Mad Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20527990 - July 2019 (2 comments)
The World According to Mad Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20427142 - July 2019 (5 comments)
Mad Magazine to mostly stop publishing new material - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351524 - July 2019 (86 comments)
A personal tour of MAD magazine, in the crucible of a young life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11984032 - June 2016 (12 comments)
Al Feldstein, the Soul of Mad Magazine, Dies at 88 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680093 - May 2014 (17 comments)
I love MAD magazine. I remember my mom half-jokingly telling me to stay away from my older cousins' copies as a kid. Funny now, considering how tame it is compared to Tiktok/twitter humor. But as a kid it felt otherwordly.
Anyways here's the example MAD folding picture from the exhibit when its folded -- https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbtwberkshi...
The linked Norman Rockwell Museum is in Stockbridge, MA, which is also home to (formerly) the Alice's Restaurant[0] of Arlo Guthrie fame.
[0] For today's lucky 10,000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM
Many years ago, I was just doing a drive through vacation of New England and woke up in my B&B to the smell of roasting turkey - I hadn’t realized it but I’d wound up in Stockbridge on Thanksgiving day. I don’t recall anything special going on in town other than a radio station playing Alice’s Restaurant on repeat.
If you look around in stores, MAD is doing kind of “best of” issues.
I purchased one recently with their old sci-fi stuff (original “Star Drek”, there Star Wars parody, etc. ). I found it in a grocery store.
Classic stuff to be sure.
MAD was one of the first pieces of humor I truly fell in love with. I knew about comedy before it, but I don’t know that I really understood comedy before it.
It’s not that it was perfect; it’s that I grew up with it and came of age with it. Also, my immigrant parents didn’t get it, so I was able to enjoy it on my own and it was my first taste of figuring out what I find funny, rather than laughing when other people did.
My mom would buy me these because she loved hearing me laughing hysterically.
When I was I preteen in 1980s I loved MAD. I even had a collection, I resisted the urge to fold the back page just to keep them nice and instead folded the back page of a copy in the grocery store
YOU! My mom would always come home, and claim it "was that way" when she bought it for me.
I thought she was doing it. But it was you.
If anyone is interested why there is "Potrzebie" above "what, me worry?" on the drum: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie
“What Simple Pastime is Becoming a Luxury that Many Americans Can No Longer Afford?”
Anyone have the “after” of the fold-in image?
Stuff You Should Know had a podcast last year on it with the back story of how it was created https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-stuff-you-should-know-26...
I just love Don Martin's style!
Came in to comment on this, all of them were great but Don was the GOAT. And his sound effects! I would love to compile a list of them.
in my day MAD was purely subscription based: no advertising
