They call me Snichael

Well, for those who haven’t heard, the Heritage Auction of original MAD art (see posts below) was held last Friday and took in an amazing $750,000 - more than double the pre-auction estimates. Good for them! That should keep the DC/TIME, Inc. wolves away from the magazine’s door for awhile longer.

The piece fetching the highest price was, as expected, the original Norman Mingo cover art for MAD #30 (December 1956) - the first cover with Alfred E. Neuman and the phrase “What - me worry?” It sold for an impressive $203,150 (including the auction house’s commission) — which I read is the most ever paid for a piece of original comic art.

The AP story about this auction also says: “A Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter who requested anonymity was the winning bidder of three other MAD art covers.” Ooooh! I love a Mystery! Now, who could that be? My first guess was the composer of the haunting and immortal 1965 MAD ditty, “It’s a Gas!” But then I remembered the old Grammy bias against “pressed-onto-cardboard-&-stuck-inside-a-magazine” recordings, so…nix that one. Second guess - one I’m sure has already occurred to many of you –  “Weird Al” Yankovich. But, alas, this is also a “nix”: Al is actually a 3-time Grammy WINNER, in addition to “nominee,” and nobody in show biz ever UNDER-states their credits, even when trying to be anonymous! Well, those two guesses have left me tired out and in need of a nap…so how about some guesses from YOU all? Just put them in the comments, and if we ever find out who the mystery bidder actually is, I’ll present the winner with…uhh,  a virtual gold star!

ONE FINAL NOTE directed at the winning bidders and new owners of the MAD art who may be generously considering Dick DeBartolo’s suggestion to donate them back to magazine: DON’T do it! The DC vampires would just sell them again! Donate them to Dick personally, or to someone in Bill Gaines’ family — hell, even one of the editorial interns would appreciate it more!

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[Note: In a display of impeccable timing, here now is this blog's first post about "MAD-TV" -- the very week it's being CANCELED by the Fox Network after 14 years on the air!]

There’s never been much of a connection between the show and the magazine besides the name and few trademark characters (such as Spy vs. Spy and Alfred’s face); and the few MAD Magazine writers who ever wrote on the show (Arnie Kogen being the only one that comes to my mind). Oh, and then there’s the matter of the “chunk of change” MAD gets from the show’s production company for using the MAD name & stuff on every episode. I’ve heard conflicting stories about how much money that actually is - ranging from “eye-popping” to “eh, not much” - but whatever the amount, it can’t be good to be losing ANY revenue stream at a time when you’ve just been forced to sell off the last of your original cover art (that you swore you’d never sell, “no matter how high the offer!”)

Our first look at MAD TV, even before its premiere in the fall of 1995, was when the magazine offices sent out to all of us a preview dub-tape of a few partial episodes. Lots of people, including me, were actually quite surprised at how good it was…and also a little confused about how the name “MAD” related to this particular sketch-comedy show.

Even though there was a lot of head-scratching at first, the appeal of using the pre-existing MAD “brand” to try and jump-start a new TV comedy show is pretty obvious (if somewhat “strained” in this case). But, surprise, surprise: it soon became a case of the tail wagging the dog as MAD-TV rather quickly caught on and actually (gasp!) exceeded the magazine in popularity. Even in its worst ratings years — say, last year — the show attracted well over 10 times the number of eyeballs as the magazine, which has been bumping along the bottom with a paid circulation of around 200,000 for most of the past decade.

(To those of us associated with the magazine, the most obvious sign of its being eclipsing by the show is the total change in likely responses we get from “civilians” whenever we say “I write/draw for MAD Magazine.” Before the show, it was always either “Oh, I used to read MAD as a kid” or “Are they still around?” Ever since the show first took off, it’s been “‘There’s a MAD Magazine?!! Never heard of it.” or “Is that anything like MAD-TV?”)

One other impact of the show’s popularity: it was generally a lot more “edgy” (that word again!) than the magazine or even than its TV big-brother, Saturday Night Live — especially when it came to the subject matter of Race. I’m sure that this brought added pressure down on the magazine to be more edgy itself — that’s my own recollection, verified by a quick rifling through my old MAD papers for the sudden increase about this time in Editor’s Memos about “getting more edgy”. Not to mention the infamous Issue #356 (April 1997), MAD’s largest single leap into alleged “edginess”…and, I’m pretty sure, also its greatest “Irate-Letter-Generating” issue, to date.

David Saltzman, the co-producer of MAD-TV, is quoted in Variety as saying they’re hopeful about getting the show picked up by another network for next year. Good. I think it’s a show worth saving. If for no other reason than having something around to keep the name “MAD” alive.

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If you’ve been anywhere near a radio this past week, you know that Christmas music has started! (In fact, some stations were already playing it on Halloween Day!) Am I the only one who finds it a little unsettling? No, not just the extra-early onset of Christmas music…I’m talking about the actual Christmas songs they’re playing this year:

• “I’m Dreaming of Still Having a Job This Christmas”
• “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like the 1930s”
• “All I want for Christmas is some Food Stamps”
  
• “Let there be Credit Market Liquidity on Earth”
  
• “I saw Mommy ‘doing’ Santa for some extra Christmas money”
  
• “Deck the Halls with Eviction Notices”
  
• “I’ll be Homeless for Christmas”
  
• “Jingle Bailout”
  
• “Rockin’ Around the Picture of Last Year’s Christmas Tree”
  
• “Here we come a-panhandling”
  
• “Gramma got run over by another banker in a BMW committing suicide”

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Every four years, we elect a President; and every four years, we turn into a nation of Sore Losers & Sore Winners for weeks or months after the election.

Since it’s almost that time, how about if we all take the pledge…c’mon, raise your right hand and repeat after me…

If my candidate LOSES:

• I PLEDGE not to spend all my waking hours for the next several weeks threatening to move to Canada, or a militia compound in Montana…however, in the event that I can’t resist such moaning & groaning, I PLEDGE to do all my irritated friends & co-workers a big favor and actually MOVE!
• I PLEDGE not to rant and rail against entire states as if they were living, sentient beings whose “RED-ness” or “BLUE-ness” makes it reasonable for me to hate them.
• I PLEDGE to only start screaming “Vote Fraud!” and “Stolen Election!” if there IS something to support such claims besides my candidate losing.
• I PLEDGE to look on the bright side: at least my candidate will be able to sit on the sidelines saying “I told you so!” as the other candidate “crashes and burns” while in office!

If my candidate WINS…

• I PLEDGE to celebrate in moderation — as if I am aware of the fact that it’s likely to be months or years before it can definitively be said whether I, or anyone I know, actually “won” anything or not!
• I PLEDGE not to be that surprised, shocked, and depressed when, in spite of all the soaring campaign rhetoric I bought into, my candidate turns out to be…just a politician!
• I PLEDGE to humbly remember that, in 4 years time, I will be defending all the mistakes and stupid statements my candidate will have inevitably made as the incumbent!
• I PLEDGE to keep in mind that, with the extremely dire economic situation my candidate will now be expected to actually FIX…it’s a toss-up whether history will remember him as “the second F.D.R.” or “the second Herbert Hoover!”

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More about the Heritage Auction of the LAST pieces of original MAD art that I talked about in my last post: I must be getting Old-Timer’s Disease or something - because I had read years earlier, but forgotten, that Frank Jacobs, in the book “MAD - Cover to Cover,” referred to the very same original cover art that is among those now being auctioned off as “Soul of MAD“-covers, the early iconic Alfred E. Neuman covers which would “never be sold, no matter how high the offer.” Obviously something has happened between that line-in-the-sand declaration and now. Something that, oh, I’m guessing starts with the letters “DC“…as in “DC Comics, a division of soul-less media behemoth TIME-WARNER,” MAD’s bean-counting bosses these days.

I was reminded of the ‘We’ll NEVER sell these covers‘ quote by a commenter on MAD’s own message boards at madmag.com (Hey, I’m their most loyal reader!). But what floored me even more was the response to that comment by veteran MAD Writer Dick DeBartolo (who regularly comment-responds on the site):

Frank Jacobs was slightly mistaken in his wonderful book. Those covers were not the soul of MAD, but appendics [sic] of MAD. And due to a rupture, they must be removed. The MAD offices will still feature exact copies of the originals and you can be sure we will continue to pass them off as the true originals. But in the meantime you get to bid on covers that were the very soul of MAD! Furthermore, if you’re high bidder and win them, should you still feel bad, you could always donate them back to us!

Wow. Unless ‘ruptured appendix‘ is Dick’s code-phrase for what DC is doing to them generally, that whole thing seems like an extremely nonchalant and inappropriately “make-happy” comment, given the ominous circumstances. The only wisp of a hint of the possibility that they’re being involuntarily forced to sell off the MAD “treasures” (and that they’re not happy about it), is the last little bit about the high-bidders maybe donating the art back to the magazine.

So…if you’re looking for clues about the state of the magazine in their public utterances…you’re probably out of luck. My guess is, they’ll probably be trying to make it look like everything is swell, and their future’s so bright they have to wear shades….right up until the microsecond that DC Comics issues the press release that they’re shutting down MAD for good.

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Well, I’m not sure if this news falls into the category of “alarming for the near-term future of the magazine,” but MAD is selling at auction what they say is the LAST of the original art from their vaults. (And it must REALLY be the “last,” because they said the auction 2 years ago was the “last” stuff they had.)

They’re auctioning off mostly MAD covers from the late 50s and 60s — some of the classic ones that I loved as a kid, even more so after I became a regular writer for the magazine and started comparing them to new MAD covers as they appeared. Sometime in the 70s, the archetypal “Alfred E. Neuman-as-the-hot-new Movie or TV character“-cover took over; personally, I found that trend crass and pandering in a way that the old MAD covers definitely were not. Old MAD covers usually featured just Alfred and some comical demonstration of his imbecility, or maybe a surreal, M.C. Escher-like optical illusion, and basically said to the potential reader, “Take us or leave us, we don’t care — these are the kind of covers we like, dammit!”

I’ve always thought the “Alfred-morphing” covers were the lamest (conceptually, not artistically) — especially ones where there was nothing else “there” except the Alfred-substitution and maybe a simplistic turning-around of an actual phrase or saying — the most recent lame example being the “Yes, We Can’t!” sign held up by “Alfred-morphed-into-Barack Obama” on the cover of MAD #493. Yawwwwwn. (In fairness, though, I ought to disclose that the Alfred E. Obama cover made my teenage nephew laugh out loud.)

So, definitely check out the MAD Art at Heritage Auctions. There’s some really great stuff there — including a few I wouldn’t mind trying to snag for myself, that is, IF my personal-playthings budget were 1 or 2 orders of magnitude greater than it is! The pre-auction estimates have most of these covers going for $5,000-$10,000 each. But if you’re a filthy rich MAD nut who still has “buckage” to blow after the recent economic meltdown, go do some shopping! (Heck, you might even be helping save the magazine for an additional month or two!)

(BTW: One nice little “bonus” of the previous MAD Art auctions - literally –was that we writers actually got a little taste of the action, as well as the artists, if the art sold was based on ideas or scripts written by us. Last year, I received a $600 check for art sold at the 2006 Heritage Auction that was drawn for articles I wrote years ago! I have no idea whether they’re legally required to do that or not…but either way: Thanks, guys!)

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You KNOW you’re Really a MAD Writer when…you spend almost as much time trying to “game” the MAD editors as you do actually writing! Half the challenge of selling articles to them on a regular basis is anticipating what type of stuff they’re more likely to buy — before you actually waste time writing up stuff that they won’t. This task is made exponentially more difficult by the fact that MAD editors sometimes have a habit of saying one thing, but doing something else. Like, for example, periodically sending out memos to the writers that “we want new & different kinds of articles”…but continuing to buy and publish mostly the same old style of articles.

To me, the most glaring example of this “disconnect” involves the old MAD article formula, “You KNOW you’re a [blank] WHEN…” If you’re at all familiar with “classic MAD,” you KNOW they did this exact piece to death, over and over, all during the 60s, the 70s and into the 80s. Here’s just a partial list I swear I’m not making up:

• You Know You’re Really Getting Old When…
• You Know You’re Really Married When…
• You Know You’re Really a Parent When…
• You Know You’re Really Overweight When…
• You Know You’re Really A Nobody When…
• You Know You’re Really in Trouble When…
• You Know You’re Really on Your Own When…
• You Know You’re Really a Football Fan When…
• You Know You’re Really Grown Up When…
• You Know You’re Really Divorced When…
• You Know You’re Really a Pet Owner When…
• You Know He/She Is Not For You When…
• You Know You’re in a Second Marriage when…
• You Know Your Days Are Numbered When…
• You Know There’s Something Fishy When…
• You Know You’ve Really Got a Problem When…

It got so ridiculous that, in the mid-80s, even the (then) editors themselves realized they might be beating a dead premise, and they started specifically mentioning it in their Submissions Guidelines — as in ‘Don’t EVER send us ANY MORE ‘You Know You’re Really a [blank] When… pieces!!!’ And they dutifully kept on mentioning that in the writers guidelines for over 20 years…even as they kept on buying essentially the same articles!

See, what we discovered — and what became the worst-kept secret among MAD writers — is that even though the editors said they wouldn’t buy any more “You Know You’re a [blank] When’-articles…in point of fact, they DID, and would CONTINUE TO buy them — as long as you re-worded the offending You Know-title into something like:

• Warning Signs you’re a…
• Sure Signs you’re…
• Sure-fire Signs that you’re…
• Tip-Offs that you’re…
• Tell-tale Signs you’re a…

Other than the reworded title/template…they’re practically identical in format, style of gag, etc. to every “You Know You’re a [blank] When...”-article  from 20, 30, or 40 years ago! (Prove it to yourself: take any ‘reworded special’ from the last couple decades that has “Warning Signs,” “Tip-offs” or “Sure Signs” in the title; and change it back to “You Know You’re a [blank] When…” form. Did you have any problems?)

I’m not too proud to admit I sold them GOBS of articles like that over the years, as have lots of the other guys, including my friends Desmond Devlin and, especially, John Caldwell — who, even now, gets one published in roughly every other issue; he’s probably put a kid through college just on the $$ he’s made from these kind of articles alone! (But I have to admit, John does bring more than his share of laugh-out-loud jokes, and art, to this particular dead-horse format.)

So, there you have Reason #312 why MAD Hasn’t Changed (That Much): the editors wouldn’t stop forcing money down our throats for writing the same old stuff year after year! Hee hee. (My tongue is only halfway in my cheek — if they had actually bought more of the “new & different” material than the “old, safe & familiar” kind, we would have written and sent them MORE of the former. You can bet my Bank Account on it.)

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• Today on Wall Street, there are only 2 positions: “Cash”…and “Fetal”
• Q. What’s the capital of Iceland? A. About $3.50
• “I went to buy a toaster — they threw in a free Bank!”
• Q: In these busy market times, how can you get the attention of your broker? A: Say, “Hey, waiter!”
• Q. What do you call 12 investment bankers at the bottom of the ocean? A. A good start.
• Q. What’s the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza? A. A large pizza can feed a family of four.
• “This Financial Crisis is worse than a divorce. I’ve lost half my net worth and I still have a wife.”
• “Get my broker, Miss Jones.” “Yes sir. Stock, or Pawn?”
• Q. How do you get a broker down from a tree? A. Cut the rope.

[I can't take credit (or blame) for any of the above; the funniest thing in my life at the moment is the hilarious number that Chas. Schwab must've mistakenly put on my monthly statement next to "Current IRA value!" - MS]

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(Snichael Press Associated) - If you’re a lonely man who watched Thursday’s vice-presential candidate debate and asked yourself, “Is that woman winking at ME…repeatedly?” - the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

Faced with collapse in the polls, the McCain-Palin campaign is trying out a radical new vote-getting strategy: deliberately targeting a heretofore uncourted segment of the electorate: “Strange Men living alone who think women appearing on TV are sending coded love-messages or signals over the air to them, and them alone.” Ergo, Sarah Palin’s performance on Thursday night, which included not only 12 winks directly into the camera, but also: 23 suggestive lip-licks; 8 passionate nostril-flares; and 4 “come hither”-looks.

Campaign officials say it’s still too early to judge the success of the stalker-outreach effort, but point optimistically to “very promising” numbers they’ve been getting from florists, candy stores, and greeting card shops, reporting large jumps in sales-volume since the debate. “And that’s not even counting the weird guys buying lingerie or rope,” enthused an unnamed GOP source.

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True Story #1: During one of the 4 MAD Trips I went on (1987-93), a group of us were engaged in our favorite MAD Trip activity, sitting around drinking and talking - there was me; longtime writer Frank Jacobs; Jack Albert, MAD’s attorney for most of the Bill Gaines era; and several others. Somehow the topic of being sued by targets of satire came up, and Frank, who at this point had been writing for the magazine for about 30 years, proudly said, “Well, at least MAD has never been sued over something I wrote.”

To which Jack Albert countered, in all seriousness: “What makes you think we’ve never been sued over something of yours?”

Leaving Frank wearing the only look of total surprise I ever saw on his face. I left before he was able to pry out of Jack the full list of “legal encounters” that, thanks to Bill, he’d been completely insulated from — oblivious to — over the previous 3 decades.

True Story #2: (a story, by the way, that Lives in Infamy among the entire MAD creative community today!). A few years ago, a lawyer for MAD’s new parent company, DC Comics, happened to hear about a certain MAD article script, which had already been completely written and bought, and was in the pipeline for future publication. This lawyer had the article “killed” — not over an actual lawsuit or a pending lawsuit or even a letter threatening a lawsuit, but for the mere reason that they thought it “might” (MIGHT!) get MAD/DC Comics sued.  (!!!)

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