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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.  (!!!)

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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People often fling the epithet “out-of-touch Media Elites” at us in the entertainment/publishing world — well, I don’t know how “elite” I am, but I’ve definitely been out of touch with the economic “pain” of the everyday MAD buyer, over the last 25+ years of getting my copies free from the editorial offices. Now that I’m “MAD’s Most Ostracized Writer“ and have to buy my own issues — yikes! It’s really $4.99 a copy?!! Both MAD and MAD KIDS?!! Good Lord!

When I was a kid-MAD-reader back in the 1960s, for the longest time, a copy of the magazine cost exactly the same as one large dipped-cone at Dairy Queen, 35 cents. Which was well within the reach of any kid, even those with extra-stingy allowances. For just one less ice cream cone every month and a half, you could experience the semi-subversive pleasures of MAD Magazine! I don’t know what the DQ cone costs today, but I’m 100% positive (without even looking) that it’s nowhere near $4.99! (To look at it another way: inflation in general, measured by the Consumer Price Index, has gone up a little more than 500% since 1967, while the MAD price has gone up, uh-oh, 1,425% in the same time — and that’s WITH their accepting advertising the last several years!)

But wait: something else is going on besides just the price-gouging! (And I’m amazed I haven’t brought it up until now — this struck me as one of the more slimy DC Comics “initiatives” when I first heard of it; and one of the things the MAD editors themselves complained about — that is, before they succumbed to a case of The Stockholm Syndrome!) As the MAD guys told it, a few years ago, DC Comics decreed that there shall be fewer and fewer pages with wholly original writer & artist content in MAD; and more and more staff-written, “recycled-art” (or NO art) pieces. If you’ve ever wondered about that new waste-of-space regular feature called, “What the Heck is the Difference [between 2 slightly different versions of an old MAD cover]?“, that’s exactly what this is. So, too, with “The Darker Side of the Lighter Side,” which is just old Dave Berg spreads with new editor-written word-balloons, at about half the page-density of the originals. And pretty much anything else you see in MAD without both a writer and artist byline. When I last talked with any of the editors 6 months ago, they were being pressured from above to do even more of this!

You have to admit: from the perspective of a businessperson, this sort of “content-shorting” is absolute GENIUS; on the other hand, for MAD readers (not to mention MAD writers & artists)…it kinda SUCKS!

And, just think: if all of the above trends continue…according my calculations, by about the year 2016, a newsstand copy of MAD should cost $149.99 and have NO original content whatsoever!

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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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.

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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There was a very curious thing in the July 2008 (#491) issue of MAD that I’ve been meaning to write about, because it just struck me as particularly emblematic of “What’s wrong with MAD — Chapter VII: Why hasn’t MAD changed that much over the years?” It’s a piece entitled “G*d Damn America” [not a typo] – a lyrical lampoon of Barack Obama’s “Rev. Wright problem” of several months back, written, to the tune of “God Bless America,” by MAD’s unparalleled comic-versifier Frank Jacobs (whom I’ve always suspected must be the reincarnated soul of W. S. Gilbert, I’m so jealous!). Anyway, the piece itself is actually quite good and succinct; the thing I find “curious,” as you may have guessed, is the asterisk in the word “God” in the title, and all other occurrences of the word in the text (a decision by the editors, not something Frank, or any writer, would’ve done!).

“G*d Damn America.” Hmmm.

Now, my own recollection of the Rev. Wright story first hitting the news earlier this year was that almost EVERY news outlet used the actual words “God Damn America” rather than MAD’s “self-censored” version with the asterisk…and a recent Google search confirms my recollection: only @ 360 hits for Rev. Wright & “G*d Damn” [or "G*d D*mn"] vs. 112,000 for Rev. Wright & “God Damn” (including not only EVERY mainstream media/web outlet, but nearly every traditionalist/conservative one such as National Review, Fox News Online, Christian Science Monitor, Pat Robertson’s CBN.com (!!!), and even the LDS-owned Deseret News).

Pardon my impertinence, but this raises several questions:

• Exactly who was MAD even aiming to “protect” with “G*d Damn”…when virtually all the mass media — including a Mormon newspaper in Salt Lake City! — had already used “God Damn”?
• Is there anyone over the age of “fetus” who is incapable of deciphering a lame attempt to disguise “God Damn” by replacing one letter with an asterisk?
• Can a magazine of Humor/Satire in 2008 America seriously claim any aspirations to “edginess” if its editors aren’t willing to go even “as far” as a news event it’s satirizing…OR 99.998% of the rest of the media?

Put your pencils down, you don’t need to answer those questions – they answer themselves. (I designed them that way myself. Hee hee.)

In my opinion, there are lots of reasons that MAD, despite sincere efforts, hasn’t really changed much over the years (And I’m talking REAL change, not just cosmetic design & layout changes; the kind of change where “The Simpsons” wouldn’t be able to keep making dead-on jokes about MAD’s dated and “softball” humor). In my opinion, this particular “G*d Damn”-case illustrates just a couple of the reasons:

1) the persistence of lots of seemingly random “over-sensitivities” & “sacred cows” among the editors — religion being only one of them. (Another example of oversensitivity to religion that springs to mind is how late MAD was to the “Pedophile Priest gag”-party (so to speak), and how little, if anything, they ultimately “contributed.” I personally know of 2 such premises – mine and another writer’s – rejected for the stated reason of not wanting to risk offending Catholics, rather than whether they were funny or not.)

2) the also-persistent MAD demographic of very young readers with parents constantly monitoring the “suitability” of MAD-content. Parents who like to deluge the MAD offices with outraged letters and threats to cancel subscriptions  — AND even some actual cancellations! Has that threat made MAD too “gun shy” about tackling truly “edgy” topics and transitioning to a more hard-hitting, “adult” style of humor? My vote is “Yes.” (Of course, all magazines have to be somewhat sensitive about possibly offending the paying customers; but, I’m sorry: I think that in this case, the MAD editors veered way, way, WAY off to the timid, “conservative”-side of the road — I mean, really: a humor magazine being more cautious about the words “God Damn” than the Christian Broadcasting Network’s website!? Good grief!)

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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Well, it’s been 3 months since I started this here blog, so it’s probably time to revisit the topic of whether or not I am actually entitled to use the moniker “MAD’s Most Ostracized Writer.” When I last posted about it, the first week or so, my main evidence for The Ostracization was the complete silent treatment from all the MAD Editors — leading to suggestions from some commenters (“sock puppet” or otherwise) that the idea I was being ostracized was a figment of my imagination or a phony controversy pumped up out of nothing just to drive eyeballs to this site. (Man, it’s a tough Internet out there!). So let me bring you up to date with everything on the “persona non grata front,” and what makes me suspect they might be giving me the permanent cold shoulder:

• The Silent Treatment continues; since my emails informing all the MAD editors about this site 3 months ago, I still haven’t heard a single thing from them. (Which, come to think of it, is almost indistinguishable from the preceding several years of trying to write for them! BTW, fellas: I’m still awaiting word from you on at least 2 scripts from over 4 years ago. [The first sentence in parentheses is an exaggeration; the second is not.])
• My complementary advance copies of every issue of MAD, regularly mailed to me by the editorial offices since the early 1980s, suddenly stopped after the appearance of this blog. (So, now I’m having to do something I haven’t done in over a quarter century — gasp! — actually BUY my own MADs! I hope they appreciate my financial support!)
• An entire comment-thread about me and this site just up and disappeared from MAD’s own message boards at madmag.com. What are the odds? (They acknowledge that it’s totally gone, but deny having anything to do with it. So, let’s wish them good luck on their O.J. Simpson-like search for “the real censors!”)
• Second-hand accounts of what the editors have actually said and done, RE: me & this blog — which I can’t be more specific about without tipping off the identities my sources, who still have to work with/for them. (Sorry if this seems like a “weasel-out” — but in my mind, these accounts leave NO doubt whatsoever, even absent the other things above.)

So, there it is. Unless somebody can come up with a benign explanation for the totality of the above…or another member of the Usual Gang finds a way to get The Boys even more riled up at them…then I’m sticking with my “Most Ostracized Writer!” It’s mine. I earned it. I’m keeping it.

UPDATE 9/16/08: In addition to the 4 things listed above, in the Fundalini section of MAD #494, they have a new installment of “my” long-running feature, “Celebrity Cause-of-Death Betting Odds” written by someone else (I’m guessing one of the editors). Now, they’re legally entitled to do that — they buy ALL rights to everything! — but there’s always been an unspoken (and unbroken, until now) MAD Rule that whoever originates a premise or concept gets “first dibs” on writing all future episodes of that concept. So, at least part of their running a new installment of “my” feature, not written by me, at this particular time…is their sending me a little passive-aggressive “message.” (Either that, or they imagine they’ve driven me to gnashing my teeth and calling a lawyer over the “lost” $150.00 micro-fee they’re paying for those tiny Fundalini pieces!)  Regardless of which it is…it still counts as “Ostracization”…so I’m finally having the business cards printed up, dang it!

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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Andrew Schwartzberg is a bright young guy, and friend of mine, who first came to MAD @ 1990 as an intern; was then hired on staff (I believe the first intern ever); and has continued on as a sometime-contributor to the magazine on a freelance basis. His first MAD trip was the cruise to Bermuda in 1991 — a trip that Andrew can now laugh about, after the passage of time, and much therapy…

The first of Andrew’s “trials” during the cruise involved the ship’s Talent Contest. We talked him into entering as a stand-up comic; we would all write his routine for him; he would be the smash hit of the evening and the Toast of Lido Deck for, oh, at least a day and a half. Why Andrew? Some of us thought he had a vaguely Woody Allen-ish look and delivery — plus he was the junior person there; he had to do it!

The morning of the talent show, about a dozen of us writers and editors gathered at a big table on the open-air deck and, in the space of a couple hours, wrote Andrew a killer 5-minute routine. (Certainly the cheapest professionally written comedy routine in the History of Show Biz., whether on land or at sea!)  My favorite joke one of the editors came up with: “I was just playing Blackjack in the ship’s casino. I don’t want to say they’re dealing from the bottom of the deck, but I think I saw barnacles on my 7 of Spades!” (Of course, being comedy professionals, we argued for 15 minutes over exactly which card “worked” best in the gag…”3 of Clubs”…”Ace of Diamonds”…”8 of Hearts”…?).

The  whole routine centered around cruise- and nautical-jokes, so we conned — I mean, convinced Andrew to dress up in nothing but swim trunks…flippers…and a snorkel mask. The get-up alone was good for one big audience laugh as soon as he stepped out onstage. Then, unfortunately, his act began. Don’t get me wrong: they were good jokes, and Andrew did his best to ‘sell’ every one of them, but…

The first sign of trouble was Andrew’s would-be ‘big opener’ joke: “I don’t want to start a panic about the ship being in trouble…but I just looked out a porthole and saw Shelley Winters swimming by in a dress!” …Dead silence…Crickets…Dead crickets. I’m sure the audience was familiar with Shelly Winters (and probably Shelley’s parents & grandparents, too!); they probably weren’t familiar with the movie, “Poseidon Adventure“; or with the concept of “jokes.” (Or maybe with the “volume”-knob on their hearing aids?)

Anyway, there is nothing funnier to a comedy professional than the sight of another “bombing” onstage before a live audience…so, as more and more of Andrew’s gems died silently, the couple dozen of us MAD guys, naturally, broke into hysterical laughter…which I’m sure confused the audience even more…and probably reduced to absolute-ZERO the chances of any future jokes working!

Alas, Andrew lost the Talent Contest…but I’m sure that, from then on, he was viewed with a newfound respect around the MAD offices as they barked at him daily to do every little ‘go-fer’ job nobody else wanted to.

Coming in Part IIb: Andrew’s other “adventure” on this trip — The Cruise Ship Chapter of the longest-running, most-involved and, in my opinion, the best practical joke/prank in MAD history!

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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Recently, I was chatting with another MAD-Writer friend about the state of the magazine, and the likelihood of its continued existence, when I piped up with my favorite pet theory of the past few years: “Y’know, I’ll bet one of the few things saving it is, nobody at DC Comics wants to be known for the rest of time as ‘the guy who pulled the plug on MAD Magazine.’‘”

My friend’s completely serious reply: “Oh, no — they all HATE us! They’d like nothing better than to kill off MAD!”

Now, even I would’ve been inclined to think that goes too far. Whatever “squeeze” they’re currently putting on MAD — and, in case I haven’t mentioned it, they are! – I’ve always assumed it’s “just business” to them. Except for one recent DC Comics edict that’s struck me as extra-weird since I first heard of it, and which might be the one thing to convince me that the shit-sandwich being force-fed to MAD these days is more than “just business.”

I’m referring to their decision to move the MAD offices. Well, actually, to move and shrink the MAD offices. Not that far of a move; just one floor down in the same building at 1700 Broadway. From their previous offices, specially designed for MAD, taking up all the 5th floor…to approximately half that amount of space, on the 4th floor. Okay, that’s bad enough. But…think about it for a second: even if they had a completely legitimate need to “reclaim” some of MAD’s office space for non-MAD DC Comics activity, why not just have MAD “compress” their offices into half the space on the same floor they’ve already been occupying for over a decade. That way, there’d be less of a move; less disruption of work; and less “MAD-design decor” to have to re-do for new occupants. That would’ve been the “just business”-move. What they actually did seems more like “a move PLUS a ‘message!’” And probably NOT a message like “Gosh, we value and respect you guys!”

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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Well, now…this is interesting: on the Media page of Huffington Post, there’s a piece about MAD and its take on the presidential election — including 3 actual advance pictures of the cover and 2 political posters from the upcoming September issue – which, the writer notes, “DC Comics, the publisher of MAD Magazine, has offered Huffington Post an exclusive look at…”

Wow. So, evidently, it looks like someone at the parent company of MAD has decided to start doing something for them other than locking them into a “death spiral” by concurrently: doubling their workload; slashing their budget and their staff; and squeezing them into half of their previous office space.

You’ll have to excuse me: I find this development so shocking, I’m going to have to go lie down for awhile!

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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Without a doubt, the 4 MAD Trips I went on (the last ever, it turned out) were my favorite times as a junior member of The Usual Gang of Idiots. (For those not familiar with them, the MAD trips were begun by Bill Gaines in the early 1960s – all-expense-paid jaunts for staff and regular contributors to places all around the world, lasting 1 or 2 weeks each; at first, they were every year; but by the late 1980s, every other year. Bill thought they would build cameraderie and enhance creativity…whatever: they were a damn good time!)

My first was the 1987 MAD trip to Paris and Zermatt, Switzerland. It was also the first trip of Sam Viviano (now MAD’s Art Director but then a lowly freelancer like me). Sam and I realized that the two of us must have been the first new contributors on the trips in 15, maybe 20, years. (there had been new MAD staffers, but I think we were the first new writers or artists to meet the page-count requirements to go on The Trip). Aside from the honor of being admitted to this truly exclusive club, one unforeseen benefit of being the “new kids” was that, for the Founding “Usual Gang” — who had been on more than 20 MAD Trips together, and who had heard all of each others’ stories several times over — Sam and I were, at long last, a fresh audience for them! Which we took full advantage of, hanging out ’til 3 a.m. in the bars with Al Jaffee, Bob Clarke, Jack Davis, George Woodbridge – hearing all the stories of not only the good old MAD-Magazine days, but the MAD-comic/Harvey Kurtzman days; the non-MAD stuff like their doing the artwork for half the national ad campaigns, board games, and graphic-design-whatevers of the 1950s and 60s; the days of Bob Clarke on staff of “Stars & Stripes” with Bill Mauldin during WWII. It was great stuff! All from first- or second-hand sources of the guys who actually lived it! I can’t speak for Sam, but I’m pretty sure I glanced over at him several times during these bar all-nighters to see a look in his eyes that said the same thing I was thinking:“Wow! Can you believe this?! We’ve hit the All-Time Mother Lode of Fandom!” Because that’s what we were right then: just fans.

And then there was…The Dinner. (Which I capitalize because for most of the invitees, every other dinner in our lives will pale into undeserving lowercase by comparison.)  The setting: the world-famous L’ami Louis restaurant in Paris, which had been the center of the gastronomical universe of Haute Cuisine a generation earlier (none of this light, low-fat “Novelle Cuisine”-crap for Bill Gaines! Even if it was the 80s!).  We were duly warned beforehand: eat light earlier that day; this would be a 7-course meal, over roughly 4 hours…”and forget about your cholestrol!” The best way to sum up this exotic & expensive feast: they served us pate de foie gras...and escargo…and frogs legs — all BEFORE the main course. (And, yes – it was at this dinner that epicurean history was made by our Lenny Brenner: I’m referring of course to the Invention of the Escargo Hero-Sandwich!)

Also in the joint that night, we would learn, was the president of the French company that makes Cointreau [KWAHN-troh ], the very classy & also expensive liqueur. His young American wife was a MAD fan and recognized several of the more recognizable MAD folk. He had the restaurant serve us all complimentary glasses of Cointreau, and, in return, several of the MAD artists drew up quick ‘thank you’-sketches to present him. One was a caricature of him and his wife; another was a drunken Bill Gaines swigging a bottle of Cointreau; still another, Alfred E. Neuman in a beret sipping Cointreau. Finally, Bob Clarke’s drawing was passed along – it was a giant koala bear sitting astride a 747. After much head-scratching and confused questioning, it dawned on Bob, “Cointreau?! I thought he said he was president of Qantas!”

One other memorable group-recognition incident: we all took a trip-within-The-Trip to the house of Claude Monet, iconic French Impressionist painter, in the town of Giverny, northwest of Paris. In the middle of all the high-art reverence we could muster, suddenly a large group of visiting college students from Northern California spotted Dave Berg, Al Jaffee, and Sergio Aragones…and proceeded to surround and besiege them for the next half-hour with fan-questions about MAD, and requests for autographs and sketches. (Monet wasn’t home at the time, so I’m not sure how he felt about being “upstaged” by other artists in his own house; the rest of us were highly amused by it.)

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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There’s a longstanding gag between the editors and writers of MAD: whenever someone submits a premise for an article so risque, so “out there,” or so over-the-top that it’s really unusable, it’s put into the category of “Save it for the LAST ISSUE of MAD” (meaning, the VERY last issue, after the hypothetical time when the corporate weenies will have already decided to pull the plug on the magazine, and literally no one would care how dirty, foul, or in rock-bottom Bad Taste we decide to make the final edition!) At first, writers accidentally stumbled into “Last Issue of MAD”-type submissions. Then, as pressure from the editors increased for us to write “edgier material,” it became a more and more frequent occurence, until finally some of us would intentionally slip into a batch of regular premises, one that was absolutely heinous, sick and/or twisted, solely for the entertainment of the editors. (Well, and to contribute to the ever-growing pile of material for the Last Issue!) Occasionally, we would be shocked and surprised (and remunerated) to see one of these throwaway gag-premises actually make its way into print! Such was the case with my piece “MAD’s Guide to Suicide Etiquette.”

But probably my most “out-there” MAD premise of all time (which almost made it into print) was something I had originally written for the “Bits & Pieces”-humor section of HUSTLER Magazine [Hey, "pride" was never in the vocabulary of this freelance writer!]. It was a take-off on those little phone-sex ads in the back of every skin mag. (Y’know, before The Age of Free Internet Porn.) The idea was “TRUE-to-life Phone Sex Ads,” with photos of nude women holding telephones, beckoning lonely men to call — but, instead of the fantasy sex-world of the real ads, mine would reflect the actual mundane & disappointing love life of the average guy, with such call-in services as:
- “The Married-Sex Line” (“Hurry up and finish! I’ve got a PTA meeting at 7:30!)
- “Fat, Ugly Women who only SOUND sexy over the Phone”
- “Nice Jewish Girls are Waiting for your Call”(“Eeeewww! You want me to do WHAAAT?!!!”)

HUSTLER expressed some interest in it, but ultimately passed. I mentioned this offhandedly in a call to one of the MAD editors, and he said, “Hmmm. Send it to us.” When I picked up my jaw off the floor, I said sure and sent it off to them. Apparently, they were actively considering it for 2 or 3 months. Obviously, they would’ve had to do some major “cleaning up” on the article – nix on the actual nudity, of course; tone down the explicit words; figure out how to “euphemize” various popular sex acts for the pre-pre-pubescent cohort of MAD readers. (I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall during those editorial meetings!) Finally, alas: they decided they just couldn’t make it work. But, now you know just how far out on the edge they were willing to go. Almost.

(BTW: What better use of this personal platform of mine than to ask all the other MAD writers to send me your own favorite “Last Issue of MAD”-premises — I’ll even change your name to protect the guilty, if you want.)

Tags: MAD topics by Mike_Snider
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