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Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#52I'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 remember being younger and reading highlights magazine, which had cool stuff like hidden pictures.
But then I "graduated" to mad magazine and couldn't go back. I also vaguely recall a magazine called cracked, but it was a poor knockoff in comparison.
Apart from the fold-in, I also remember Spy vs. Spy when I was younger and couldn't get all the in-jokes when they made fun of a current movie.
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#53Earlier 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.
I think that’s exactly the type of culture it was poking fun at. Valuing the material object over the art and experience.
You can estimate the fold-in but you’ll never truly experience the artists intent unless you make a perfect fold.
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#54I'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.
Thanks for this link - I used to have a huge collection of the Mad books, unfortunately my parents sold most of them when we moved. "MADvertising" was my favorite, fortunately I still have "History Gone MAD" which was my second favorite (most of which has been floating around the internet uncredited for years, e.g.: https://blowjoke.com/time.html )
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My son watches The Simpsons and I put that in the same boat.
It wasn't when I was a kid and watching it fresh, because everyone watched it, but I've asked my son if any of his friends watch it and apparently it doesn't register at all with kids today.
I'm sure he only got into it because I must have put it on at one point or he stumbled into it on Disney+
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't know what the modern equivalent is Sponge Bob in its first season. I thought it was a dumb kids cartoon, until I inadvertently watched an episode. The humor in it worked on many levels, there was the kid's humor, with a wicked overlay of adult humor on top. I recall one where SB and friends were out on a fishing boat. The name of the boat was painted on the prow. The framing of the shot cut off the first co…
An older cartoon with the same idea is Rocky & Bullwinkle. They had the slapstick for the kids, and sly satire for the adults. For example, one plot centered around a pond named Veronica Lake. (Veronica Lake was a film star renowned for being sultry.) Someone asked where the boys were at some point, and the reply was "they are playing in Veronica Lake." I always wondered how that got past the censors.
On the live-action front, there was Laugh-In, which runs in syndication now, and seeing an episode 50+ years after originally seeing it aired (when I was under 10 years old) gives me a whole new perspective on the show. I realize now how much of it flew right over my little head. While today some of the jokes have aged like milk, it's surprising how much of it is spot-on even today.
Saturday Night Live with the OG cast was also a groundbreaker. To this day, I find myself imagining a Dan Aykroyd voiceover for a wide variety of current commercials.
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wasn't "gzorp" a Mad-ism too ? And no doubt forgetting many others...
That could be Don Martin - he was the sound effects king. sklork
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#58Gothamist did a great interview with him 6 years ago. it’s 5 minutes and he talks about the origin of the foldin.
(5 minutes)
From the article:
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/hanging-with-al-jaf...
When I was a kid I always loved when I could get a hold of a mad magazine.
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#59That man shaped a major chunk of my mindset, alongside George Carlin. I used to have MAD magazines strewn across my room. I loved the schticks where they mocked various movies, the criticism was almost wholly on-point
RIP Al. I had just bought the latest MAD "The Best of The Worst" a week or so ago, and am now compelled to read it.
Re: Al Jaffee, king of the Mad Magazine fold-in, has died
#60We should train LLaMA and DALL-E on the Mad Magazine archives and create AI-Jaffe.