What, me worry? RIP Mad

There's a Don Martin that sticks with me to this day

A man walks by a building and under a sign "Fonebone's Eyeglasses", complete with a big pair of glasses
Next: "Fonebone's Wigs", with a large wig on the sign
Then: "Fonebone's Shoes", featuring a large shoe
He turns the corner and sees a giant Don Martin in his underwear wearing the wig, shoes and glasses, holding a sign that says "Fonebone".

 

I got into Mad as a 12-13-year-old in the late 80s, for maybe a year or two. One of the articles that always stuck with me -- especially in 2016 -- was from 1989 called, "Headlines we'll never see," and one of them was "Cubs, Indians set for World Series."
God, I wish I still had that issue.

 

Mad Magazine was pretty much the literary background to the swinging "Mad Men" suburban Sixties.

It was produced with a definite New York sensibility. Even as a grade school kid in Michigan I could pick that up.

I loved the movie parodies and the Dave Berg "Lighter Side" series.

 

Robert Boyd of the Los Angeles Times said it best about Mad Magazine. From Wikipedia:

"Plenty of it went right over my head, of course, but that's part of what made it attractive and valuable. Things that go over your head can make you raise your head a little higher.

The magazine instilled in me a habit of mind, a way of thinking about a world rife with false fronts, small print, deceptive ads, booby traps, treacherous language, double standards, half truths, subliminal pitches and product placements; it warned me that I was often merely the target of people who claimed to be my friend; it prompted me to mistrust authority, to read between the lines, to take nothing at face value, to see patterns in the often shoddy construction of movies and TV shows; and it got me to think critically in a way that few actual humans charged with my care ever bothered to."

I read Mad Magazine in the 1970's and often reference it.

 

The thread in Sports and News is getting more action, and deservedly so. Mods, please delete.

 

I vividly remember National Gorilla Suit Day as a kid. That one mesmerized be because of all the horrible outcomes Fester encountered.

 

Jack Davis, Dave Berg's "Lighter Side" , the movie spoofs - genius. Probably made me the huge fan that I am of editorial cartoons.

 

You and me both, down to being a grade school kid in Michigan (though it sounds like I'm about a decade younger). Started reading MAD in first grade (early 1977 -- I was an early reader), when my grad-student single mom would sit me down in the MSU student lounge with a ham sandwich and a grape soda on half-days while she was teaching undergrads. First issue I read was the Jimmy Carter inaugural issue -- probably the only kid in my class who was laughing at Billy Carter jokes. Also learned a lot about figures in the news like Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, Idi Amin, Ralph Nader and Yasir Arafat from the "Mad Nasty Book." Got a sense of social and political issues -- everything from busing to inflation to gas shortages to marital infidelity -- from Dave Berg. The gags about the economy definitely hit home living in a GM town in the 1970s. And I felt like I got to enjoy all the movies I was too young to see from the satires. Read it religiously through about 8th or 9th grade and my favorite 40th birthday gift was the whole collection on DVD Rom (unfortunately I no longer have a computer with a DVD/CD player). One of the biggest influences on my worldview. Really sorry to see it go.

 

I can't be the only one who remembers the records they'd include as inserts on occasion? Like this one ("Making Out):

 

Remember a 1984 cover had Alfred E. Neuman peeing the words 1984 into the snow.

Love Al Jaffe.

 

Well, this digital media world claims another victim.
As the rest of you, I was a loyal reader for a good five, six-year stretch from the late '70s to the early '80s. In fact, one of the big thrills I had as a 12-year-old was seeing one of my submissions on the letters page (the one with Raiders of the Lost Ark on the cover). I also thought it was cool coming home from college in the '90s and seeing that my kid sister, then 12 or 13, had a decent stack of current MADs on her bedroom dresser.
X-Hack makes a great point on the magazine doing stuff on current events: I felt I knew a little more about the world than other kids my age, because I would see some celebrity or politician I hadn't heard of being lampooned in the magazine and going to look them up or ask my parents just so I knew what the heck was so funny.