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Health & Fitness

Rediscovering Mad Magazine: 60 years old and still poking holes in our "serious"!

I was at the library catching up on my reading of MacWorld, the magazine on Apple computers. As I finished and put the magazine back, I spied an old friend on the rack beside it, Mad Magazine.

Mad is indeed an old friend. It emerged in my youth and has been publishing regularly ever since. In its over 60 years, it has covered just about every world event, smearing it with a satire coating that somehow makes current events almost, well, bearable. Most less-than-catastrophic events become laughable and some even rolling on the floor riotous. If we have views from the Left and we have views from the Right, we also have the Mad viewpoint and sometimes it makes much more sense although you have to have a particular mindset to see it.

Since I hadn't read MAD in several years I stood there a few moments to span a few pages. Then I took it to one of the leather easy chairs and sat back to give it an even better look. Against my will and looking like the loon I try to avoid looking like, I started snartling and chortling even as I bit my lips and chewed on the inside of my cheeks hoping pain was easier to control than laughing out loud in the Reading Room.

Mad is as funny today to this aging geezer as it was when he was a doofus teenager. Mad is as relevant today as it was in 1956 when we first danced to Rock and Roll and giggled over Commies, the Eisenhower vs Stevenson election, the Hydrogen Bomb, and the Cold War. Every page comes equipped with a giggle of some sort, whether you are current on events or dull almost to sleeping. There's something in Mad for everyone and weeding through it, sorting it out, is half the fun. Life has lost a little of its appeal what with the depressing daily drivel. The downward spiral the world seems to be taking, if one reads the newspapers and watches TV news, seems to sap one's strength. Mad, on the other hand, takes whatever the world tosses at us and serves it up as a nourishing comic salad. Nothing is sacred, today or 60 years ago. Anything is up for inspection, dissection, debaucherization, and reinterpretation through the addled minds of the loony contributors too far out there to work for Time or Good Housekeeping.

First published in 1952 by William Gaines and edited by Harvey Kurtzman, Mad was, at first, just another comic book, albeit wierder than most. A comic book in size if not content. However it soon burst out of that bubble. When I saw my first Mad, the cover had footprints and smudges all over it as if it had been laying on the floor of a busy hallway. Wikipedia®, the online encyclopedia, tells us that in 2010, Al Jaffee, Mad's oldest and longest running contributor, told an interviewer, "Mad was designed to corrupt the minds of children. And from what I'm gathering from the minds of people all over, we succeeded." Even with that implied success, we have a hard time blaming the present state of the world on Mad Magazine.

Mad never takes the easy road when it pokes fun at the most serious of our  sacred tigers, lambasting things we'd rather not admit about ourselves but things we love to see that make others squirm. An avid crossword puzzler, I dream of having my name as a clue in one before I kick the bucket. Today I added being mentioned in Mad, preferably one where I am on top of the joke, not the brunt. Whatever! I have a small but telling bucket list.

Here's a test to see if you are a potential Mad reader. I'm going to cite a few random goodies from just two pages of the 56 pages plus cover of the reigning issue but it's in the name of illustrating Mad's allure, satire, and potentially upping circulation. If it reawakens the Mad-ness in you, then I'm good:

• A rejected fortune cookie: "You will be winded from the exertion of opening this cookie, you fat, lazy American."

• Two of five signs your mayor is smoking crack: 1. Inaugural ceremony ends abruptly when he's apparently attacked by a bunch of invisible spiders. 2. Proposes balancing the budget by stealing all the car radios from the next town over.

• From Wayne LaPierre, Executive VP of the National Rifle Association: "Shrimp forks kill more people than guns"

• News Item: A barge carrying mannequins and strawberry jam crashes near [North] Pole." Not nearly as bad as it looked," says the captain.

• News Item: GOP Congressman embroiled in unthinkable sex scandal. Llamas and ping pong balls allegedly involved.

Nobody ever takes this stuff as factual. If these samples do not light your fire, take a minute to go back and review them with more intense thought. Scratch some of the crust off your brain. We are sometimes so dulled by daily existence that things like this might easily sneak past our awareness. Try again. If still no snicker, grunt or chortle, perhaps Mad is not for you. Good humor sometimes must be rutted out but it's always worth the effort. Everything good in life is worth a little effort. If, after all, you still come up with nothing or think "silly," Mad's not for you but a good sauna and loofah rubdown might be.

Mad Magazine's fortunes rise and fall with the times, good or bad. It almost seems it's at its best when things are at their worst and we need it most. I think I want to be reading Mad Magazine when the end of the world comes. Somehow, it won't seem quite as harsh and if the light lasts long enough, it might even prove fun. In any event, I dragged out my iPad, got online and subscribed for a year. If you see me on the street some day soon and I look less dour than usual, it could be Mad-ness!






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