You couldn’t make up the Winklevi; they are so much better than satire.
I enjoy a train wreck as much as the next surly old geezer, but I have not yet sampled the Aoelan cadences of Mars Junction.
Decade After Decade
View this post on Instagram
What, Me Worry?
Gone but not forgotten!
This video is only concerned with the artists who contributed to Mad in it’s first two decades – even if some of them carried on for longer. I’ve got nothing against those who came later but I’m selfishly only dealing with the ones who inspired and influenced me as I grew up. They taught me more than 4 years of college ever did. Apparently in the early Kurtzman comic years Mad was printed in colour, although all the examples I found were black and white only, and according to a particularly grumpy viewer Dave Berg didn’t die until 2002. Mea culpa.
Mark Twain Should Win The Jon Stewart Prize
There’s No Way This Will Be Good
Will I still watch it? Morbid curiosity compels me to check out the first episode.
Best YouTube comment …
I’m getting “Vyvyan from the Young Ones” vibes from this – and not in a good way.
Someone else made the astute observation that Rotten was always more sardonic than angry. The tone is all wrong.
Tomorrow
Borat may be a little tired but Sacha Baron Cohen is still a genius. I’ll be watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan tomorrow evening on Amazon Prime. Jagshemash?
Shit
Ron Cobb, an underground political cartoonist, who happened to befriend a young Spielberg, and went on to design Star Wars Cantina creatures, the Back to the Future Car, the Nostromo (ask Makerbot), a time traveling DeLorean, and ET (Spielberg gave him a cut, and made him so rich he fucked off to Australia and was never heard from again), has died. His political cartoons were ridiculously prescient, and are sadly still timely. Comic above is from 1968!
View samples here.
Garfunkel & Oates
Charming.
They Call Me Naughty Lola
VERY British personal ads from the London Review of Books. All are witty, many are pants-wettingly funny. Here’s a taste …
Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite. Box no. 9612.
I’ll see you at the LRB singles night. I’ll be the one breathing heavily and stroking my thighs in the ‘art’ books. Asthmatic, varicosed F (93) seeks M to 30 with enough puff in him to push me uphill to the post office. This is not a euphemism. Box no. 4632.
I once found the perfect match in this column, but then it turned out to be an ad I’d written two years earlier that they’d forgotten to publish. Still, you have to admire my consistency. Man, 43. Consistent. Admiring. Admirable. Box no. 4321.
In a certain light I look like Robert Mitchum. In a certain light, you look like Kim Novak. More usually, I look like Shrek. More usually, you still look like Kim Novak. Yes, you’re very unlucky. Now pass me the Doritos and get over it. Box no. 3917.
My favorite Ben & Jerry’s is Acid-Boiled Bones of Divorce Lawyer. They don’t make it, but, damn, I can taste its sweet, sweet ice-creamy softness already. Bed-sit-living doctor (M, 54). Box no. 6321.
Shy, ugly man, fond of extended periods of self-pity, middle-aged, flatulent and overweight, seeks the impossible. Box no. 8623.