So, don’t think of me as “MAD’s Most Ostracized Writer” anymore. Just call me “First Rat Off the Sinking Ship,” thank you.

The clincher that makes this book a MUST-have is the bargain price (at least right now)! Even though it’s only been out a month or so, it’s being discounted at Barnes & Noble online for around $9 — which is a GREAT deal, considering that’s less than the cost of just 2 regular issues of MAD at the newsstand. (And a CRAZY-INCREDIBLE deal when you further consider the paltry amount of original content in what they insist on calling a whole MAD issue these days!)

BTW: I have no independent confirmation of the rumor I just made up that the original title of this book was “1001 MAD pages you must read before MAD dies”. (Sorry…I couldn’t help myself.)

Seriously - buy the book! 

[Full disclosure: I receive no payments ("micro" or otherwise) for steering you to buy this book; and no additional writer's fees for all the articles of mine in this volume -- as I probably mentioned in earlier posts, MAD buys all rights upon original acceptance of material, including the rights to "reprint & reprint until the cows come home!"]

If you’ve ever wanted to be an intern at MAD Magazine…Good News: there’s an ad for you up on the madmag.com website. Just one problem: the internships they’re seeking applicants for…ENDED on August 21, about 3 months ago! Yet the ad is still up there. That’s where the Time Machine comes in: if you’ll just Marty-McFly yourself back to last Winter and fill out the applic — oop, sorry, even that won’t work. Apparently the latest issue of MAD, #502, has a little blurb and photos of the two actual persons who were selected and have served the internships so, unless your name is either “Sarah Chalek” or “Matt Lassen,” even the Time Machine won’t help you. Too bad.

My real point, of course: Is there ANYONE “there” at the MAD’s website?!! Okay, there must be ONE person — the person who finally got around to changing the ad for MAD#500, after MAD#501 had been on the stands for several weeks. And it only took a half dozen commenters pointing this out on the message boards to get him/her to spring into action! (He/she has another opportunity to work: right now, as of this post, the ad for MAD#501 is still up on the website, even though MAD#502 is on the stands and has already gone out to subscribers and comics stores. Let’s see how long it takes them to correct it this time, shall we?)

Okay, okay: even semi-alert readers of this blog will be thinking that I’m hardly the Paragon of Regular Posting to be passing judgment on any other website. Fair enough. Go ahead and flame me in the comments…just keep these SLIGHT differences in mind: I’M one putz with a lightly visited “hobby-blog” who has paying gigs keeping him otherwise occupied; THEY are an iconic American humor brand-name for over 50 years that’s barely hanging onto its print existence, whose parent company (part of the 2nd largest Media Conglomerate in the world) is spending as close to ZERO resources as possible on their web presence - the only probable route to survival.

At one time, MAD’s corporate overlords DID do “more-than-nothing” for the web version of the magazine. Early this decade, they hired an additional associate editor dedicated solely to MAD-on-the-Web…but 2 years ago, they laid him off and eliminated the position. (I’m not sure why; but for years before that, I heard lots of grumbling from the editorial offices about “lack of support” for the website.)

One other little anecdote: when the New York Times website published a nice feature piece on Al Jaffee last year, their web people came up with a way to let a visitor to their site actually “fold” several of Al’s Fold-Ins, with a click & drag of their mouse. Every fellow MAD person I talked to about this said TWO things: 1) how nifty that was; 2) why the hell couldn’t/didn’t they do this on the MAD website?!!  (I actually asked MAD Editor Charlie Kadau about it — this was back in the pre-tantrum days when The Three Editors were still talking to me — and all he gave in reply was a long, disgusted grunt, which could have meant: A) “You’re the Umpteenth person to ask me”; B) “DC never gave a shit about our website”; and/or C)“Screw this joint! I’m only here ’til my Powerball ticket hits!”

UPDATE Nov. 18: Well, somebody caught the outdated ad for issue #501 and changed it to a #502 ad — HOWEVER, the WAY-out-of-date “Be an Intern”-ad is still up there. Which means, we know their web support is “HALF-assed” anyway.

UPDATE Nov. 23: Anddddd…they just sprung into action and changed the text of the “Be an intern”-thing to make it a really, really early “Summer 2010″-internship ad, instead of a laughably late “Summer 2009″ one. (It’s nice to know that someone is reading my blog! Also: nice to help reaffirm the notion that sometimes “shame” is a better motivator than “competence” or “pride of doing your job”.)

How did I arrive at #506 (@Jan. 2011 cover date) as the final issue of MAD? Well, besides the Ouija board and Tarot cards…

First, and most obvious, is what’s already happened to MAD just since the beginning of this year: the slashing of MAD staff; reducing MAD to quarterly publication and totally eliminating MAD Kids and MAD Classics. I’ve heard rumors (unconfirmed, but from 2 different sources) that DC Comics execs had already officially decided to kill off MAD even before announcing “The Big Shrinkage” - but to keep it limping along until after one or more big employment contracts with MAD Staff ends within the next year or so (which they’d have to pay anyway). Plus, the whole going-quarterly charade lets DC look like the good guy supposedly giving MAD “another chance.”

Regardless of whether those rumors are true, let’s look at what else is happening with MAD that doesn’t exactly speak of a magazine that has the confidence, commitment, and resources of its publisher:

–Even the infrequent quarterly issues they’re now putting out are really only “HALF-issues,” in terms of new, original content. And they’re being printed on the cheapest see-through gift-wrapping paper stock available. (Grab a MAD issue from a couple years ago and see how much heavier it is than the current ones.)

–the recent publication of a MAD book (”Bo, Confidential“), written by MAD Editors, illustrated by MAD Artist Tom Richmond — which doesn’t have the MAD logo on the front cover! Sure, there’s a small MAD logo on the book’s spine — but, c’mon, why wouldn’t you put a big one on the front, like (ahem) every other MAD book ever published? Someone along the line must’ve decided it would sell better without one. Not a good sign.

-Whatever the hell is going on with mail subscriptions starting with the latest issue, #501! Right now, the most popular topics on their own madmag.com message boards are “Haven’t gotten my issue yet” and “What’s the deal with putting mailing labels directly on the cover?!” No idea how such a dramatic deterioration in service quality even happens that fast — did DC just switch MAD over to the We Give LESS of a Shit than anyone else, Inc. subscription fulfillment company?!!

Hey, waitaminute — re-reading the above, I think I’ve just figured out the actual end-game strategy that DC Comics has in mind for MAD: Do everything possible to get ALL of the remaining 170,000 MAD-readers totally pissed off at it, so that, when the very last ‘TENTH-of-an-issue printed on Chinese crepe paper’ creaks off the presses late next year…there’ll be literally nobody left to complain! Brilliant!

Of course, this is only the beginning. Knowing lawyers, they’re surely at work right now on a full-blown class action suit, something like this:

Imagine my surprise at one of the photos (at left) that clearly shows, on the back wall in the upper right, a cutout/poster of our old friend ALFRED E. NEUMAN (!!!). Right there in the corner of one of many toy-filled rooms that prosecutors called part of Michael’s “child bait” — but defenders of his would call “just a completely innocent toy-filled room, Michael being a kid at heart himself.”

Anyway, after the initial chuckle of recognition upon seeing Alfred there, something occured to me (that may also be occuring to many of you): Whoa, waitaminute: was Michael Jackson himself really a MAD fan? After all the gags & slams & put-downs the magazine published about him over the preceding two decades???** Really?! Is anyone that much of a masochist? But, you may ask, “What if he was just a good sport about all the jokes?” C’mon! Besides — isn’t “good sport” only a facade you put on for other people, not for deciding what mementos to buy/collect/save in the privacy of your own home? (Or what he thought was the “privacy of his own home,” until some cops with a different opinion and a search warrant showed up! Yuk yuk.))

(Someone pointed out to me that the ALFRED-head may be attached to the cartoon poster behind it with vaguely MAD-like panels. Could be — you can’t tell for sure; the photo’s resolution isn’t that good. Was this constructed and sent in by a fan of Michael’s? If so, I still think it’s curious that it’s up on a wall where it is…rather than in a basement closet to be forgotten along with all the other junk people gave him.)

I’m sorry, but I find it beyond belief that Michael would’ve overlooked the hundreds and hundreds of MAD jokes at his expense. To me, there’s a far more likely & obvious reason for the ALFRED E. NEUMAN picture up on his wall: it’s just one more piece of “bait” for luring in “the boys” — like the candy, the Spiderman pajamas, the Transformers, the comic books, the Star Wars forcebeams — hell, all of Neverland Amusement Park Ranch!

As ALFRED himself might say about this if you asked him right now, “Eccchhhh!”

**(Not that I, or any comedy professional, feels the least bit of remorse: if he was going to keep serving up “softballs, right over the plate” like he did, we’d have been fools not to keep hitting them over the fence!)

Hurry! Order now – before you come to your senses!

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.]

This story aired the night before we all gathered at Kennedy Airport in NYC for the 1987 MAD Trip (Paris & Zermatt, Switzerland), which happened to be my very first MAD Trip. It also lead to getting my very first belly laugh out of Bill Gaines, about an hour after meeting him. See, once this 60 Minutes piece aired, Bill suddenly started getting recognized by probably 100 times the usual number of strangers, coming up to him and saying “Hey, aren’t you that MAD guy?” or “Weren’t you on 60 Minutes last night?” After a non-stop parade of maybe a dozen people accosting Bill in the airline ticket-counter line, I tugged on his rumpled white shirt sleeve, pretending to be another of them, and breathlessly said to him, “Hey, I know you: aren’t you that guy who testified at the Kefauver Crime Committee hearings back in 1954?” [Check out the brief clip of actual footage from Bill's infamous appearance at that hearing, toward the end of this video.]

BTW: Note Morley Safer’s first line of questioning, essentially taking MY side about MAD being “outdated” — 22 years ago!

However, in the interests of fairness and equal time (not to mention mock humility), I have to admit it’s entirely possible that I and everyone else who feels the same are full of shit; that making dramatic and wholesale changes to MAD could’ve driven it faster and deeper into the Magazine Death Pool than it’s already headed.

What brought this up again to me was the story of the recent re-branding of Tropicana Orange Juice. See, late last year, executives there decided it was time for change, specifically, a total package re-design. So, they went to the (formerly) most respected design firm in New York, threw millions of dollars at them, and got an entirely new package…which then proceeded to lose them 20% of their sales in less than 2 months! Think about that: a 20% drop in under 2 months! Usually all it takes is a single-digit YEARLY sales decline to put a company into panic mode!

Why did 20% of presumably satisfied Tropicana customers suddenly stop buying the exact same orange juice in a different package (at right in photo)? No one’s exactly sure, but the theories run from absence of the familiar Tropicana “straw-in-the-orange” on the label…to the new package looking like a generic or house-brand orange juice. Whatever the reasons, it’s clear that this well-intentioned move to modernize and “refresh” the branding backfired on Tropicana, big time. (If you’re interested, read about it in this article; it also links to a longer original article in Advertising Age - which is behind a Registration wall, sorry!)

What does this have to do with MAD? Hold your horses, I’m getting to it: About 3 or 4 years ago, I had a conversation with one of the MAD editors right after I’d read a startling newspaper report that fully 1/3 of all U.S. households have NEVER owned a computer (!!!) and therefore were extremely unlikely to be regular Internet users, or even that familiar with the Internet at all. I asked the editor if maybe the universe of Remaining MAD Readers included a disproportionately large number of this non-Internet-using demographic. He said they had no idea. Seriously.

The $64,000 Questions: What if it does turn out that, say, 50%, 60%, 70% of MAD Readers are NON-internet users? If you suddenly change MAD to appeal more to Internet users, you could be screwing yourself royally. Or, worse, what if MAD had successfully transitioned to a full Web presence (not the POS bare-bones site they have now!)? That 50%, 60%, 70% would never even be in a position to find it!

Once you commit to Change, you never know for sure how it’ll turn out. (No doubt that uncertainty has fed the inertia in the editorial offices!) But - when you’re talking about a magazine that’s plummeted from a peak circulation of 2.1 million all the way down to 170,000 now…if it were me, I still think I would’ve taken the gamble on Change rather than Standing Pat.