It's too bad today's kids don't have something like MAD Magazine. There's plenty of comedy, but nothing like MAD was. Last year was the 70th anniversary of the magazine, and it got me thinking like MAD again.

I must have picked up my first issue of MAD sometime in the mid-1960s when I was attending P.S. 215 in Brooklyn. The year and the issue are lost in the mists of time, which is to say, my mother threw it out a long, long time ago.

MAD was available regularly on newsstands from 1952 to 2018, first as a comic book, then as a magazine starting in 1955. MAD's circulation peaked in 1973, right about when I stopped reading it.

MAD shaped my entire concept of humor. This magazine I loved was sometimes over my head because it didn't condescend to the 10-year-old, 12-year-old, or even 14-year-old reading it. It was subversive without being so subversive that our parents would stop us from reading it. It wasn't until the 70s and the influence of the National Lampoon that MAD's formula for laughs became apparent and somehow less funny. The magazine that taught us to think for ourselves led me to realize that I didn't find it funny anymore.

Every MAD reader of my generation has their favorite repeating feature, and MAD was all about repeating features (if it worked once, the MAD team could get a good decade or so out of it). Some people were into artist Sergio Aragones' little cartoons in the margins. We all loved Don Martin's cartoons, those characters with improbable noses, impossible feet, and the best sound effects.

The movie and TV parodies were the most popular feature in the magazine, especially the ones drawn by master caricaturist Mort Drucker. Confession: some boys wanted to grow up to be ballplayers. I wanted to grow up to be drawn by Mort Drucker.

Was my bent toward sarcasm formed by Al Jaffee's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions"? Perhaps not formed; certainly encouraged. As an adult, I've had to rein it in, but here's a sample:

My favorite features and greatest inspirations were the song parodies by Frank Jacobs. I still know some of those lyrics by heart. I'm talking about things I memorized 56 or 57 years ago, like the Chinese Restaurant Song to the tune of "Oh What A Beautiful Morning": There's a bright golden glaze on the egg roll…

The inspiration part: in sixth grade, Kenny Carr and I wrote "What Is Leavenworth To Me?" to the tune of "The House I Live In:" The yard, the guards, the cell I see, a certain word - penitentiary…

In eighth grade, Larry Cohen and I wrote an entire song parody musical about the digestive system (featuring "I Left My Iron Inside The Liver") for science class. Without Frank Jacobs, I would have failed science.

MAD helped form my young view of how the world worked. That 'usual gang of idiots' taught me to question authority, whether that authority came in the form of parents, teachers, government, or television. MAD taught me to see the silliness in everyday events (thank you, Dave Berg). MAD gave me something funny to look forward to, month after month, forming my formative years. And MAD had no advertising. The only ads you could find in MAD were parodies or promos for MAD's books. We trusted MAD when they told us that the things we bought (including MAD itself) were crap.

So I find myself in that middle ground that nostalgia often engenders – I want to like MAD as I did then, but I'm a grown-up now, and Thomas Wolfe was right. Still, it can be fun to look back and remember what MAD gave me, even though it doesn't give me the same things now.

By the way, although I'm eulogizing, MAD is allegedly not dead; there's still a website, and like LIFE, they publish print collections from time to time. The print edition is available in comic book stores, but at the risk of sounding like the boomer I am, it ain't the same.

Thanks to the Absolutely MAD DVD set (yes, that's an affiliate link), I can read all the old issues whenever I like; frankly, most haven't aged that well. But some of the old silliness now makes me laugh out loud.

Thank you, idiots.

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