Thank you, Mad magazine!

I loved MAD! I would steal my brothers' collection, mostly for Spy vs. Spy. I also played the Spy vs. Spy Commodore 64 game until I could do it blindfolded.
 
Oft-heard conversation in the Bluess household...

Mr.Blue: Can you get rid of some the magazines, at least? Why are you hanging on to MAD magazines from 1970?

Bluess: Cause they're damn funny still. Here, read this.


I like the very old MAD's. There is a hysterical musical with Dick Tracy. And in the new ones, the Goofus/Gallant satires make me laugh.
 
Oops, I misspelt it -- potrzebie, not portzebie.

@Euromutt: "Sir, you're smarter than you look, SIR!" =^_^=

@rebecca: I never did get the hang of that one, but it was refreshingly different.

@bluess: It's possible to parody Goofus and Gallant? =@.o=
 
Metullus said:
Mad forever ruined the song "She's a Grand Old Flag" for me:

Oh she's a fat old hag
She's an unsightly bag
But she's still my true love
Emmy Lou
She's the emblem of
The land I love,
Her complexion is red, white, and blue.

Overweight and big,
In her ill-fitting wig,
Oh forever in peace may it wag,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
I'll escape from that fat old hag!
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I remember that one! I even recall the illustrations. Somewhat old-timey and ineffably grotesque. I loved that whole piece.

Do you recall the counter-culture greeting cards? "Happy Birthday, Muthuh!"
 
Piggy said:
When I was a kid -- and I mean a little kid -- I used to swipe my older brother's issues of Mad and read them. There was a lot that I understood, but a lot that I didn't...
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Like the rules to 43-Man Squamish
 
Piggy said:
I remember that one! I even recall the illustrations. Somewhat old-timey and ineffably grotesque. I loved that whole piece.

Do you recall the counter-culture greeting cards? "Happy Birthday, Muthuh!"
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They were great! I also still have a box of Mad stickers which includes my all-time favorite:

Fester Bestertester is alive and well and living in Argentina!
 
do you have the computer version with ALL the issues?

It's wonderful!!!!
 
Meffy said:
Two of them!



:-D

The Linotype, a keyboard-operated machine that cast a line of metal type at a time, helped speed up the printing industry in the late 19th and 20th centuries. As you filled a line with text, the machine would assemble wedge-shaped "spacebands" and master type forms called "matrices" in a row. If you mess up there's no "Undo" -- you have to fill out the line, send it to be cast in hot type metal (then thrown in the "hellbox" to be re-melted) and start a new line.

To fill out a line of text, the easiest thing to do was to run the finger along the first two rows of keys. The Linotype isn't arranged like a typewriter, though; the letters in those rows are... you've guessed, haven't you? -- etaoin shrdlu.
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And isn't the keyboard layed out this way because etaoin shrdlu are the letters of the alphabet, in order, from most often used, to less often used, i.e., e is the most often used letter of the alphabet; t is the second most often used, etc.? I seem to remember learning that in Boy Scouts while learning Morse Code.
 
Mr. Skinny said:
And isn't the keyboard layed out this way because etaoin shrdlu are the letters of the alphabet, in order, from most often used, to less often used, i.e., e is the most often used letter of the alphabet; t is the second most often used, etc.? I seem to remember learning that in Boy Scouts while learning Morse Code.
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Yes, that's true -- for whatever large sample of late 19th-century text they used for their statistical workup, anyway.
 
Metullus said:
They were great! I also still have a box of Mad stickers which includes my all-time favorite:

Fester Bestertester is alive and well and living in Argentina!
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I tell you what I really miss -- and sadly I don't even know what happened to it -- is the special edition with a fold-out section of stickers featuring dozens of Don Martin sound effects, appropriately illustrated. What a treasure!

I do still have a small selection of stickers, including the timeless "Donnie and Marie can be cured!"
 
You know, it's amazing the impression something can have on you as a kid. I distinctly remember two Don Martin creations. The subject being "Cartoon Sound Effects" or some such.

Two I always remembered:

"PLOIP!" (Popeye's other eye popping out)
"SNIKT -- FLOOBADOOP!!" (Wonder Woman undoing her bra)
 
I used to buy the paperback books too. I always assumed these were distilled from the magazine, but I might be wrong.

My favorite magazine was a spoof of Star Trek, "Keep on Trekking", I believe was on the cover. I still remember most of the songs.
 
Esperdome said:
I used to buy the paperback books too.
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Oh yeah, me too. I remember I had "Hopping Mad", "Boiling Mad", "It's a World World World World Mad", a collection of Dave Berg's Mad strips, and a few others. I wonder whatever happened to all this stuff. My mom probably tossed it all out at some point.
 
Piggy said:
I don't recall "Car Toons" but I also had several editions of "Cracked" and "Crazy". "Cracked" was pretty good. Did you know they relaunched the magazine?
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Yes, I know about the relaunch.

CARtoons was published by Peterson Publishing (Hot Rod, Carcraft, etc) and had a similar format to Mad or Cracked but all the stories and humor focused on cars.

Here's a website with some info
 
Getting caught with Mad would be like getting caught with porn at my house. (So I went over to my friend's to read it.)

Spy vs Spy. Yeah.
 
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