Book Details
| Title: |
|
Good Days and Mad |
| Author: |
|
Dick DeBartolo |
| Times Read: |
|
1 |
| Last Read: |
|
10.20.08 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
Notes History
| Date Read |
Note |
| 10.20.08 | A great find for 4 bucks at a discount book store; this is basically a kinda-sorta history of Mad Magazine wrapped up as a tribute to Mad's head geek William M. Gaines and a biographical memoir of Dick DeBartolo, "Mad's maddest writer." This was a very enjoyable foray back into my childhood and the one summer or year or however long it was that I discovered Mad Magazine at either a book store or a comic shop and managed to strike a mother lode of used issues dating back who knows how long. I absolutely fell in love with the magazine even though a lot of the stuff really went over my head (both because the current issues dealt with stuff above my pay grade and the older issues made references to "current events" that I didn't know or care anything about. I do know that Spy vs. Spy was my fave and the fold-ins, Don Martin's stuff, Sergio Aragones' work, and all the movie parodies really cracked - oops, i mean broke - me up. So having this whole book written by the guy who wrote all those movie parodies is great because it's filled with the kind of cheap gags, goofy humor, and knuckle-brained buffoonery that I remember so fondly from the magazine. It also has enough pictures, artwork, album covers, and article reprints to shake the memories loose and on top of it all it's a decent portrait of the eccentric life of William M. Gaines. Pretty damn cool.
It was a little weird though, since I read it in 2008 and it was written in 96 or whatever. Whenever he mentions things like how Mad still doesn't have advertising or how such and such still contributes, it sounds pretty awesome until I check wiki and learn that ads started running in 99 and such and such died in 03. I guess that's fitting though, since my first exposure to the magazine was through dusty browned back issues bought for a quarter to read this book a decade late as well. Still a very fun read and a wonderful trip down memory lane. |
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