No doubt about it: Michael Jackson will be sorely missed — ESPECIALLY by those of us in the Comedy & Humor Business, including MAD Magazine. I can’t think of another public figure who provided such a strong & steady stream of “comic fodder” over such a long time — more than a quarter of a century! I’ll bet that if you did a text search of the entire contents of MAD since 1980, his name would be the most frequently mentioned, in articles about him but also liberally sprinkled all over other articles & satires as a comic reference. (“…as [blank] as Michael Jackson!” or “…makes Michael Jackson look like [blank]!”)
A few Michael Jackson notes:
- Of all the MJ gags/articles I wrote, my personal favorite was the Michael Jackson/Lisa-Marie Presley Pre-Nuptual Agreement (MAD #333. Jan/Feb 1995) — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only recycle old unused MJ material, but also unused Elvis material, AND newly generated Elvis-&-Michael material! (Forget Lisa-Marie herself! She’s merely a plot device in this whole premise, as she was for the actual marriage!) About a week after the script was bought, I called one of the MAD Editors with an idea to use this piece as a publicity teaser. Have someone issue a fictitious (but real-looking) “Press Release” about the “discovery” of the Michael/Lisa-Marie Pre-Nup, listing some of the gags as if they were actual terms of a legal agreement…and then, in the 4th or 5th paragraph, casually drop in the attribution “MAD Magazine.” Just the sort of jokey celebrity crap/filler that local TV newscasts love. But when I explained the idea to my Editor, all I got was a long, discouraged sigh (the “DC COMICS sigh,” we’d call it) and a flat “they’d never go for it upstairs.” End of story. (Or: Beginning of Story, if the “story” is “How DC COMICS ground MAD down.”)
- My fellow MAD Writer Desmond Devlin told me this little Michael Jackson gem, from his days as a writer at MTV during the 90s (on “Rumor Control” and other game shows; and probably writing 90% of the “ad libs” for Bill Bellamy, Carson Daly, etc.): See, whatever legal/financial arrangements were made between MTV and MJ included the stipulation that the network would ALWAYS refer to Michael as “the King of Pop.” Always. Always. Always. And Jackson’s camp was deadly serious: Whenever some on-air personality would slip up and say “Michael Jackson” WITHOUT adding the mandatory phrase “King of Pop,” the network would actually get stern phone calls and letters from his lawyers and publicity people. Not just once or twice…but EVERY time it happened! (Because: hey, you don’t mess with a KING!)
- Once I heard that Michael Jackson had died, I thought I had finally scored my first actual “hit” from all the “Celebrity Death Odds“-pieces I wrote…but, alas, my Old-Timer’s Disease must be acting up again: it turns out I never did a Michael Jackson Death Odds! (I vaguely recall having written one years ago, but apparently it was never bought or run.) Which means I still have a perfect record: NONE of the nearly 100 celebrities I’ve hypothetically “killed off” over the past couple decades has actually died! What are the odds?! [This death-immunity only applies to the Celebrity Death Odds that I myself wrote, up to MAD #458 (Oct. 2005) -- and NOT the just-for-spite Celeb Death Odds that the MAD Editors have been churning out since their Nixonian reaction to my starting this blog a year ago. All of their Celebrities are going to die before next Christmas.]
Tags: MAD topics, Other topics by Mike_Snider
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Photo from Iran State-controlled media showing obvious Photoshopping of an extra 4th missile and accompanying smoke-billow. (distributed by Agence France-Presse and published in newspapers all over the U.S., including New York Times, Los Angeles Times & Chicago Tribune.)