My Influences – Part One
You know what I really hate? All of these social media postings that tell you to post a photo of your favorite book, movie, concert, Album/CD, party, alcohol, drug, sexual position, your job, or whatever and then say, “Don’t write anything just post the photo.”
WTF?
Don’t write anything about what you’ve posted? I don’t get this at all.
Okay first off I feel like most of these things are phishing for your information so companies or organizations can get your info, steal your passwords, build a file about you, and sell it to others. That’s what most of this social media shit is all about anyway.
But let’s not think about it that way right now.
If something truly influences you, I want to know why. I don’t want to look at some photo I may not recognize that you fucking posted without any explanation. That makes no sense to me and it’s a waste of my goddamn time. And if you’re too lazy to write then save us all a lot of time and don’t post the photo either and I don’t give a rat’s ass who told you to do it! And don’t pass that shit onto me either. (You see, I’m still the Angry Filmmaker…)
If you’re going to post something tell us why! What are you posting and how/why did it influence you? What is it that you think is important? What makes you think of it the way you do? Did it affect your development as a person? Did it get you through a horrible part of your life? Is it the reason you became a writer, musician, plumber, CIA Agent? What?
That’s what’s interesting, the explanation.
We all have influences. We see or read something and it sets off a chain of events in our lives and we end up where we are. They can be good things, or bad. But they are things that affect us and got us to where we are now.
Over the next few months I’m going to write on my website blog about the things that have influenced me. I’ll post links on social media so you can follow and read it if you wish.
And the first thing I’m going to write about is a really early influence.
MAD Magazine.
MAD Magazine was subversive. It taught me that there was more to humor than what I had been exposed to up until then. And it was hilarious.
I don’t recall how old I was when I discovered MAD Magazine but once I did everything changed. I’m sure I didn’t understand a lot of what was in there, but it made me want to understand. It made me want to read and learn more so that I could be in on the joke.
Sure, I read comics and even subscribed to some through my college years but it was MAD that calibrated my humor meter.
MAD introduced me to satire.
Of course my mother hated it and thought it was a waste of money, but every issue was filled with such joy for me. I could read a single issue over and over for hours always finding something new in the backgrounds or the margins.
Things that stood out to me were the TV and Movie parodies of course. Also, they were making fun of everything and doing it in a smart way. They weren’t resorting to name calling and insults. (It seems like we have digressed as far as name calling these days.) And MAD did it in a way that made me see the absurdity, laugh, and question everything I was being taught.
When I first went to grade school we were still doing the “duck and cover” drills in case of nuclear attack. We were told, actually scared into believing that Russia or “Red” China was going to blow us up.
When politicians, the media and/or other people talk about the “good old days”, and how much better it was back then, they’re lying! Those weren’t “good old days”. We were scared shitless! And Fonzi was some bully who’d beat the crap out of you for your lunch money.
In MAD I found artists writing and drawing things that we saw every day and putting their own spin on it. They were saying look at this crap. You’re being manipulated. Think for yourself! And these people were ADULTS! Not like the other adults in my life. But if they could do this why couldn’t I? Why couldn’t I write and put it out there?
MAD got a couple generations thinking about humor and the world around us in a whole different way. They didn’t take sides. They taught us to laugh at the world around us, and to laugh at ourselves as well. They made light of our fears but they never talked down to us.
To this day I can still recite word for word some of the things I read, especially the song parodies, and recall in great detail the dialogue from the movie and TV parodies. In a box somewhere in storage I still have my Alfred E. Newman for President poster from 1964. It’s in the same box as my giant Buster Keaton poster, (I’ll talk about Keaton another time).
For me, MAD paved the way for other things in my life like Rocky and Bullwinkle, Get Smart, and eventually, the National Lampoon, George Carlin, The Firesign Theater and so much more. MAD made me look at our world differently.
To me, MAD was rebellion.
And it certainly didn’t hurt that my Mother didn’t like MAD at all.
So blame it all on MAD Magazine.
Posted on December 28, 2021