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Quarterly?! They’re turning MAD Magazine into a Quarterly? I confess that I didn’t see this coming myself — but I should have; it’s exactly the sort of middle-of-the-road “weasel out” that executives in soulless media behemoth corporations specialize in! It’s like declaring a “trial separation” instead of a divorce. It’s like saying “Let’s date other people” when you really just want to break it off.

They’re also ceasing publication entirely of MAD Kids and MAD Classics; and permanently laying off “several” MAD staff. (And probably losing the interest of many of the remaining Usual Gang of Idiots; with 66.6 percent fewer Art or Script pages to sell?!! Hey, everybody’s got to make a living!)

Quarterly publication is going to be a disaster for a humor magazine like MAD! Just when they’ve been getting pretty good at shrinking their “topicality lead-time” (did you see how much Pres. Obama material was in the current issue, #498; that went to press a little over a month after the election!). From now on, with 3 months between issues, even the biggest and most satire-worthy news events are likely to get ignored. (“Will readers even remember this 3 months from now?” “Will it be totally irrelevant by then?”). I’m guessing that this will lead to even more “old, familiar MAD-style” pieces than ever. (“You KNOW you’re HAMSTRUNG as Humor-Magazine Editors WHEN…”) And, thus, making MAD even more of a “museum piece,” appealing mainly to those who LIKE it “1965-style!” But, new & younger readers they need to survive? Eh…not so much.

(BTW: Does anyone even know of a Quarterly magazine that’s successful? Are there ANY Quarterly magazines on the newsstands?)

Here’s my prediction: a year or two from now, after having done everything in its power NOT to give it a chance to survive, DC COMICS will announce that, “having given it every chance to survive,” we are ceasing publication of MAD Magazine.

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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Yes, it’s official: Hell has frozen over, and my Arizona Cardinals are actually going to the Superbowl! (Did you hear me at the NFC Championship Game in Phoenix last Sunday? I was the guy in Section 241 going “Woooo!” really loud.)

For all of you OUTSIDE the state who are surprised that the Cardinals won the NFC Championship…just imagine how shocked & stunned those of us INSIDE the state are!

Up until 3 weeks ago when they began their string of playoff wins, being a Cardinals fan was an exercise in Humility…Futility…and the Cruel Practical-Jokes that Fate and the Football Gods sometimes play on mortals. (Exhibit A: the infamous 2006 Monday Night game in which the Cardinals went 57 minutes of the way toward pulling the upset of the century against the Chicago Bears…then suddenly turned into a last-place Pop Warner team the final 3 minutes and gave back a 20-point lead!)

Up until 3 weeks ago, rooting for the Cardinals was like rooting for the Washington Generals over the Harlem Globetrotters; the Coyote over the Roadrunner; like always voting for the Libertarian presidential candidate, or worse, Ralph Nader!

Their last NFL Championship, as the Chicago Cardinals way back in 1947, leaves them with the 2nd longest drought in all of Pro Sports, behind only the (far more respected) Chicago Cubs. And the only other Cardinals title, in 1925, is still shrouded in controversy, with many believing that year’s crown rightfully belongs to a long-defunct team with the cartoonish name, “the Pottsville Maroons“ (?!!).

After they moved to St. Louis in 1960, they became “the football Cardinals,” so as to differentiate them as the ugly hidden-in-the-attic stepsister to the REAL Cardinals of baseball legend & lore. Such was the impression the team left on that city that, a few decades later, when they sprung the customary NFL-Owner’s Ultimatum (“New Stadium, or we’re Leaving”), the predominant response was…”Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!”

So, in 1988, the team snuck out of St. Louis in broad daylight and moved to Phoenix, its 3rd city (or is it 4th? 5th? Who knows for sure, when they attract such little attention). For years, The chief preoccupation of local fans & sports media was coming up with exactly the right medical term to pair them up with, to describe their sickliness: “Cardiac Cardinals”? “Comatose Cardinals”? For their entire time playing at Sun Devil Stadium, Cardinals fans were routinely outnumbered by those cheering on the visiting team; in fact, some teams – most notably, the Dallas Cowboys – considered the trip to Tempe their (all-but-technically) “9th Home Game” of the year! Before this season’s success, the primary function of the Arizona Cardinals had become: “Team of Last Resort for Future Hall-of-Fame Players & Coaches Too Proud to Admit When their Active Careers are Over!”

But that’s all forgotten now: we’re going to the Superbowl! Just in time to see the face value on Superbowl tickets go over $1,000 for the first time. Lucky us.

Tags: Still more misc. by Mike_Snider
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With the 17-zillionth flareup in the Eternal & Unsolvable Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, I’m reminded of perhaps the most surreal moments I ever witnessed on any of my 4 MAD trips. Let me paint the picture for you:

The Year: 1989. A resort hotel lobby in peaceful, neutrality-loving Switzerland, listening to Dave Berg and Sergio Aragones carry on a “spirited” discussion of the tit-for-tat history of the Middle East, whilst the latter works on pages of his (and Mark Evanier’s) comic book “Groo the Wanderer” spread over a large table. (BTW: Yes, it’s true: Sergio IS the Fastest Artist in the World!) Every so often, as the rising outrage- and volume-level of the arguments threatens to boil over, Dave turns to me, the new kid, to explain that “Sergio is one of my best friends!” To which Sergio reciprocates, “Absolutely! And Dave Berg is one of MY best friends!” “That’s right,” Dave says, “even though he actually believes that the Palestinians…” And then it’s back to the argument – to be interrupted again by Dave (the author of a 1960s book entitled, “My Friend, God”) telling me that “he’s not that religious”; that his views on Israel are strictly secular. And back to the argument…on and on, ad infinitum (pretty much like the conflict itself!)

Dave and Sergio were the only two MAD guys I ever heard get serious about Israel/Palestine. I guess everyone else knows in their bones what a “comedy killer” it is and, therefore, utterly pointless for a comedy writer to spend time thinking about (unless you happen to be a comedy writer living in Beersheba or Gaza City). One of my few forays into this topic was within a MAD piece I wrote called “CNN Sitcoms Based on News Stories They’ve Covered” – it was a faux sitcom called, “Shlomo Loves Fatima,” about an Israeli soldier during the intifada and the female Palestinian agitator “whose rock hits him like Cupid’s Arrow.” Apparently, I heard, even that was too much for some angry letter-writers. 

Other “Comedy Killer” subjects: let’s see, Cancer…Child Abuse…oh, the new kid on the block, 9/11, and of course, the JFK and Lincoln Assassinations (the other 2 presidential hit-jobs are theoretically okay…but it’s been ages since I’ve heard a good McKinley Assassination joke!)

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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