MAD Trips, Part IIb: 1991 Bermuda Cruise, “the continuing trials of Andrew S.”
In the long history of MAD, there have been a lot of practical jokes & pranks played by MAD guys upon each other, office staffers, even complete strangers. There was MAD Publisher Bill Gaines pretending to be his own evil twin-brother back in the 60s; the entire MAD group on a MAD Trip to Haiti (I think) showing up, unannounced, to beg the lone Haitian subscriber to renew his subscription; the famous recreation of the stateroom scene from the Marx Brothers’ “Night at the Opera” for the sole benefit of Gaines (on this very same Bermuda Cruise) and many others. [BTW: If you're curious about these or other MAD-insider tales and haven't already done so, check out the excellent books by MAD writers Frank Jacobs (1972) and Dick DeBartolo (1994)]
But, to me, the greatest (and surely longest-running) MAD practical joke involved the aforementioned intern-turned-staffer Andrew Schwartzberg - starring as “The Butt of the Joke” – and a vital sub-chapter of it transpired on this 1991 MAD Cruise to Bermuda.
First, the back-story: As some MAD readers know, there have been lots of pseudonyms used as writer and artist bylines in the magazine, for various reasons. One such pseudonym is J. Prete – who is actually one of the MAD staffers (I won’t say which, in case he plans on being pseudonymous again). Everyone in the MAD offices knew J. Prete was a fictitious name — that is, everyone except for the new guy, Andrew! One day, after several months of getting to meet or talk on the phone to most of the real MAD contributors, Andrew asked about Prete. Thus, a “fish” was born…and the guys played him hook, line & sinker, doing everything possible to make him believe there actually was a live human being named J. Prete…for several years!
In the beginning, they concocted fake cover letters from Prete that were then paper-clipped to his script-submissions making the rounds of the MAD office, being sure that Andrew got to read them. They enlisted the vocal services of someone outside the staff (unknown to Andrew) to make calls pretending to be Prete, even had him gradually build up a casual, passing relationship with Andrew via the phone. But the upcoming 1991 MAD Trip presented a golden opportunity to kick it up another notch or two.
By pure happenstance, there were going to be an odd number of smokers on the trip, and since I was an out-of-town Smoking contributor who hadn’t met Andrew (or Prete, of course)…I was elected “Prete’s roommate.” Months before the trip, the editors briefed me on the entire history of the hoax, and we drew up plans which included me “dressing up” the empty half of my double-occupancy cabin to make it look, uh, “Prete-occupied.”
Once on the cruise ship for the trip itself, I unpacked my extra suitcase and stuffed the extra shoes & clothes I’d brought along into Prete’s side of the cabin. I messed up his bed. On “his” little desk & nightstand, I set out: a half-written postcard and pen; an almost-empty beer can (with spilled-beer rings nearby – Prete was obviously a slob!) – even a pack of a different brand of cigarettes from my own, with several “pre-smoked” butts in the ashtray. My favorite “touch” – made possible by a call from Andrew’s (real) roommate down the hall telling me he was on his way – was to have a fresh one of Prete’s cigarettes lit and still burning away in the ashtray. When Andrew came and asked for Prete, I had my toothbrush in hand and pretended to have been in the bathroom; I invited him in and acted surprised when Prete wasn’t there in the middle of my just-created stage-set, smoking and finishing up his postcard. “Hmm. Well, he was here — I was just talking to him. [theatrical head-scratch] He must’ve just went to one of the other guys’ rooms.” I chatted with Andrew for a few minutes (“Oh, yeah – Prete was saying he was looking forward to finally meeting you.”); and he gave up on waiting and asked me to tell Prete that he stopped by.
Since most (or all) of the other MAD trippers knew about this hoax, they were prepared to say they either had or had not seen Prete whenever Andrew brought up his name. Some even had elaborate stories about what they and Prete had done together while on the ship or the island of Bermuda.
But it was Bill Gaines himself who delivered the coup de gras, the piece de resistance: At the first dinner on board ship after departing Bermuda (before Andrew had much of a chance to start getting suspicious about still not having met up with Prete) a headwaiter strode officiously to the table occupied by Bill (and, 2 chairs away from him by prearrangement months earlier, Andrew). The Best-Supporting-Actor/headwaiter presented Bill a folded piece of paper on little silver platter. He took it and pretended to read it, then exploded in a snarling, table-pounding mock rage: “Goddammit!!! That son of a bitch Prete missed the boat!!! If that shithead thinks I’m paying for his goddamn plane ride back to New York, he’s out of his fucking mind!” It was a magnificent acting performance! And it cemented the concept of the actual existence of Prete into Andrew’s mind, for future episodes of the prank….which, according to Andrew, included a climactic appearance by the “Prete-pretender” in the MAD offices at 485 Madison, yelling and screaming about suing the magazine over something Andrew had done to one of his articles. (Don’t worry: Andrew was quickly “backed away from the window ledge,” so to speak.)
It wasn’t until after Andrew left MAD, and moved out here to Arizona to attend college, that he finally learned of the NON-existence of J. Prete, and the elaborate “punking” of him…from my stepfather Bob, who had heard all the stories and, one holiday gathering, couldn’t resist spilling the beans. Oh, well.
Actually, Andrew told me he had already had his suspicions earlier – but the beauty of this particular hoax (besides its @ 4-year duration!) was that there was always enough “evidence” to make it believable AND to make disbelief of it seem unreasonable. Think about it: when was Andrew supposed to have given in to his suspicions: when listening to the legendary Al Jaffee talk about his bar-hopping with Prete? Or Sergio Aragones recounting how he and Prete went snorkeling yesterday? Or when a “real” Prete was standing right in front him, threatening to sue his employer over something he had done?
Andrew has continued to do some writing for MAD, and remained friendly with the guys in the MAD offices, visiting them when he’s back in New York. And I’m pretty sure that he’s come to recognize it was actually kind of FLATTERING — all the sustained effort all those people they put in over the years, just to “trick” little old him. But it wouldn’t surprise me if, somewhere, deep down inside…he’d still like to kill them.