Our price: Cheap!

Good news for us old geezers who have a soft spot for various nostalgias. You know, stuff like scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July (although I'm sure you, like me, have upped the ante in terms of the quality of tubular food stuffs you stuff in your doghole these days. I mean, as kids we sure as hell didn't have the option of rolling with chicken pesto apple mango marshmallow brats on the Fourth. Our dogs in the '60s, you'll recall, were pure squeegee-scrapers right off the Oscar Mayer slaughterhouse floor, and I've completely lost my train of thought because of that lengthy parenthetical remark, but you know, uh—yes, well, uh, hmmmm.)

Anyway, the nostalgic news is that one recent day, I was at a supermarket checkout line, and there amongst the usual array of trash, slime and crap (a.k.a. Kardashian updates) was a Mad magazine. Mad! I hadn't seen one in years and had assumed that it was long gone, consigned to a much deserved hallowed spot in the humor pantheon of the past. But no, there was our old pal Alfred E. Newman, in classic form, sitting atop a perfect sendup of the multi-sworded chair of the King on Game of Thrones, which of course for Mad became a toilet backed by lots of medieval plungers and stuff, and of course Alfred has his royal pants around his ankles as he grins his timeless toothless grin in his timelessly vapid yet all-knowing way. I simply had to buy it, and I'm delighted to report that it was pretty damn funny. Yes, the great Mad masters of the past that us boomoids grew up with (Don Martin and Mort Drucker, for example) are dead and gone, but man, there are a lot of new, young, funny, talented sickos out there on the fruity plain to take their place. The writing and artwork on the lampoon of GOT was spot on and beautifully done, featuring a slew of terrific caricatures, plus loads of other cool stuff ripping the heck out of modern nonsense, just as you would expect Mad to do.

And amazingly enough, Barack Obama as Alfred E. Newman is just as hilarious and perfect as George Dubya Newman. Truly LOL material. In the end, I had to say “Bravo!” and I can honestly report I got at least five bucks worth of chuckles, giggles and hoots for my five bucks. Maybe even $7.50 worth! It was great to see an old friend from the past still alive, relevant and good. Their current offer of a year for 13 bucks may well prove irresistible to the Van Dyke household.

(From my research department—also known as Wikipedia—Mad has been publishing continuously since 1952! Sixty-one years! Now up to issue 521, the magazine comes out six times a year. I have no idea how it flew under my radar for so long, but, hey, you know, poop occurs.)