Fighting Mad

I grew up with Mad Magazine. And much to my delight, I actually held on to a lot of them, including a bunch of these paperbacks. So re-reading them now is a real stroll down memory lane.

This particular book was published in 1980 but the content is drawn from magazines published from the 1950s to the 1970s. What a different world that was! What struck me as particularly strange was the target demographic. Mad was a satirical magazine, including a lot of political satire that I would have thought over the head of most young people. And while there’s not much in the way of politics on tap here, there are passing references to Harvey Matusow and Dave Beck. Give yourself a pat on the back if you recognize either of those names. Or if you get the joke about a subliminal ad in a bookstore telling people to buy a copy of The Hidden Persuaders (1957).

Maybe young people as well as the culture at large were just more aware back then. I mean, I didn’t get (and still don’t get) the 1873 on the pugilist Alfred E. Neuman’s belt buckle. “The Great Dumb Hope” is a spin on the phrase “Great White Hope,” which only goes back to 1911. But what happened in 1873?

A joke like “Great Dumb Hope” wouldn’t fly today for obvious reasons, but this isn’t the most politically incorrect cover among the Mad pocketbooks I have so get ready. Indeed, you should be braced for some of the content here as well. Things kick off with a parody primer for teaching tots how to read that describes the adventures of a brother who helps his grandfather run a stolen car ring and a sister who tortures and kills the family cat. Brother and sister (looking to be seven or eight-years-old) meet up with their buddy Bobby (a juvenile Marlon Brando from The Wild One) for some extracurricular activities:

Bobby sells reefers to the other children at school.

Sometime we buy a stick from Bobby.

We light up behind the garage.

Crazy, man.

Then, in a later piece, there are these final words of wisdom for anyone quitting playing golf:

Giving it up is easier than you think. Many former golfers find that drinking takes their minds off the game. For others, gambling provides a new outlet for that competitive spirit. Sleeping late is also a good substitute. Or beating up your wife.

What did I think of this, reading it as a pre-teen? Did it register at all? If the violence was scary, you could find solace on their being an ad for the “wife-of-the-month” club that promises domestic bliss: “How would you like to come home from the office on the first Monday of every month, and find a new wife cooking supper for you?” When you hear manosphere types talking about trad wives, remember this is the stuff they may have been raised on.

The references to smoking reefers and lines like “Crazy, man” also date things a bit. As does the modernized or “up-to-date” Shakespeare that translates the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet into hep cat patter. “My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound” turns into “My lobes have not yet dug a hundred notes of your jive, but, like, I’m woke to your sound,” and becomes less comprehensible in the process. Or take this exchange: “By whose direction found’st thou out this place?” “By love, that first did prompt me to inquire” becomes “Who finked on how to find my shack?” “Love, baby, love first bugged me to plea.”

That all sounds kind of lame today, but I still got a smile out of reading it again. And several of the pieces included here hold up very well. The parody of a Mickey Spillane novel is great, and the nursery tales retold as newspaper stories were nicely done. But really I found all of it enjoyable, however much it had dated and had slipped into an irretrievable past.

Graphicalex