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Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#31

Post by redshirtrob »

bombcar wrote: post #25
PostOnce wrote: post #21

I moved to the other side of the world 8,000miles / 13,000km away. So I go into the public library and pick up a MAD Magazine one morning, and there in the letters section is my old GP from back home, writing in that he's been reading MAD since he was a kid. Small world.

Donald Knuth’s first published work was published in Mad Magazine - https://silezukuk.tumblr.com/post/616657913 He lists it as his first published paper: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.pdf So the arguably most reknown computer scientist of all time got his start in Mad Magazine.

Here's a fun fact: There's a typo in his article [0].

I only learned about the typo when I asked him to sign my copy at a Christmas Tree lecture years ago. Instead of signing it, he corrected the typo. He had a mnemonic he used to remember the digits in a Potrzebie. He had the mnemonic stored on a file on his home machine. I watched him ssh to the machine, then fire up Emacs to look up the mnemonic.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#32

Post by jimbokun »

DonHopkins wrote: post #18
DonHopkins wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You fold it, you bought it!" -Jeff Albertson "Those magazines create a dangerous amount of laughter." -Marge Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG_f0_jfHRU "Wow. I'll never wash these eyes again." -Bart Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjlDDZkGONs "Not Mad! That's our nation's largest mental illness themed humor magazine!" -Homer Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zghcvq-pL7A "So, we meet again, Mad…

Oh, this is a recently unearthed gem: The Mad Magazine TV Special | 1974 | 16mm | 2K Scan 6,763 views Premiered Sep 9, 2022 #Animation #MAD #MADMagazine Mark Kausler animated the ‘Spy vs Spy’ segment on this special. He managed to get a copy of the special on 16mm which is what we used to scan. Film scanning done by Blackhawk Films: https://www.fpa-blackhawk.com An animated adaptation of the notorious satire comic ma…

Just watched the whole thing. Holds up surprisingly well! Mysterious charges on hospital bills are just as relevant today as in 1974.

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#33

Post by nkozyra »

kstrauser wrote: post #24

I'd have a hard time exaggerating Mad Magazine's influence on my young mind. In particular, their cynical take on advertising pretty much is my view of it. For instance, if I see something like "'Hot New Game' is 'a thrill ride'", I assume they lopped off "...for kindergartners who scare too easily". I love ya, Mad gang. Thank you for sneakily teaching this kid some critical thinking.

I think it falls in that category of stuff meant for kids but not dumbed down for kids.

This tends to be the absolute best content for young readers, because we all feel like we're hanging with the adults. Even better, with the funny and/or smart adults. It tends to elevate young people because that's when we're most desperate to be older/cooler/smarter/funnier.

Despite this being a huge part of a lot of people's lives, it always felt like you were in a club. You could get away with stealing jokes and delivering them at school without anyone catching on. You could copy the style of art from an issue and nobody was the wiser (I won an art contest in 6th grade with something very close to a MAD artist I no longer recall).

I don't know what the modern equivalent is. What's the barely-above-ground cultural lynchpin that sneaks a few kids into the late night comedy club now?

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#34

Post by effingwewt »

nemo44x wrote: post #17
CharlesW wrote: post #8

Since the article has no examples that show how this worked, here's a CSS simulation of two fold-ins for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of folding the back page of their Mad Magazine : https://thomaspark.co/2020/06/the-mad-magazine-fold-in-effec... (Note the bottom copy before/after as well.)

The best part of the fold-in was the comically cynical idea behind it that collectors of Mad Magazine had to ruin their issue to do the fold-in thus forcing them to buy another issue to keep in “mint condition”. Was a meta-satire on the collecting hobby that required collectors to not actually use and enjoy the collectible.

Not really- my friends and I would just sort of bend the pages gently and you could see the combined picture just fine, and always flattened back out no problem if stored in a plastic insert with cardboard backing.

Most people I knew didn't fold them completely ever, and we were just kids.

I'd have to imagine it was the same for the collectors.

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#35

Post by ipcress_file »

kstrauser wrote: post #24

I'd have a hard time exaggerating Mad Magazine's influence on my young mind. In particular, their cynical take on advertising pretty much is my view of it. For instance, if I see something like "'Hot New Game' is 'a thrill ride'", I assume they lopped off "...for kindergartners who scare too easily". I love ya, Mad gang. Thank you for sneakily teaching this kid some critical thinking.

About 1980, I bought a Mad Digest called "Madvertising, or Up Madison Ave." Here's a link: https://archive.org/details/madvertisingorup0000deba

I know that it helped shape the cynic that I am.

Those guys were great.

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#36

Post by Lammy »

DonHopkins wrote: post #6
singeezie wrote: post #5

Wow. Respect for the guy with the longest career ever as a comics artist, think over 70 years in the game. He began his career in the comic book industry in the 1940s, working for publishers such as Timely Comics (which later became Marvel Comics) and DC Comics. Jaffee began working for Mad magazine in 1955, and over the years, he became one of the most influential contributors to the magazine. He created the famous…

"You fold it, you bought it!" -Jeff Albertson "Those magazines create a dangerous amount of laughter." -Marge Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG_f0_jfHRU "Wow. I'll never wash these eyes again." -Bart Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjlDDZkGONs "Not Mad! That's our nation's largest mental illness themed humor magazine!" -Homer Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zghcvq-pL7A "So, we meet again, Mad…

“What kind of slime would I marry?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9QiYuErgvE

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#37

Post by erickhill »

effingwewt wrote: post #34
nemo44x wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part of the fold-in was the comically cynical idea behind it that collectors of Mad Magazine had to ruin their issue to do the fold-in thus forcing them to buy another issue to keep in “mint condition”. Was a meta-satire on the collecting hobby that required collectors to not actually use and enjoy the collectible.

Not really- my friends and I would just sort of bend the pages gently and you could see the combined picture just fine, and always flattened back out no problem if stored in a plastic insert with cardboard backing. Most people I knew didn't fold them completely ever, and we were just kids. I'd have to imagine it was the same for the collectors.

Boy, I sure did. I found getting the fold absolutely perfect a bit of an obsessive compulsive experience that ultimately paid off big time once I nailed it.

The drawings and supporting copy were almost always jaw-dropping genius that blew my mind. The kind of thing I'd always want to share with someone else in the house once I'd done the fold.

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#38

Post by kstrauser »

nkozyra wrote: post #33
kstrauser wrote: post #24

I'd have a hard time exaggerating Mad Magazine's influence on my young mind. In particular, their cynical take on advertising pretty much is my view of it. For instance, if I see something like "'Hot New Game' is 'a thrill ride'", I assume they lopped off "...for kindergartners who scare too easily". I love ya, Mad gang. Thank you for sneakily teaching this kid some critical thinking.

I think it falls in that category of stuff meant for kids but not dumbed down for kids. This tends to be the absolute best content for young readers, because we all feel like we're hanging with the adults. Even better, with the funny and/or smart adults. It tends to elevate young people because that's when we're most desperate to be older/cooler/smarter/funnier. Despite this being a huge part of a lot of people's liv…

I love how perfectly you described that. Yes, I was a kid, but I was in on the joke. The cool grownups were giving me a knowing wink as they made fun of, well, everything.

If I knew of something like that today, I’d leave it laying around for my kids to find.

Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died

#39

Post by kstrauser »

tanseydavid wrote: post #27
kstrauser wrote: post #24

I'd have a hard time exaggerating Mad Magazine's influence on my young mind. In particular, their cynical take on advertising pretty much is my view of it. For instance, if I see something like "'Hot New Game' is 'a thrill ride'", I assume they lopped off "...for kindergartners who scare too easily". I love ya, Mad gang. Thank you for sneakily teaching this kid some critical thinking.

Reading Mad always felt so subversive! And this was before I had any idea what the word "subversive" even meant.

It permanently warped millions of American youths.

Fortunately.

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