Blogger Ben Shakey writes:

On top of my regular job at a call center for an online Casino, I work 5 hours a week a bookstore. This provides me with a sizable discount toward my addiction to books.

While putting out the magazines this week I saw a new title. MAD KIDS is a version of MAD Magazine targeted at kids. http://www.dccomics.com/madkids/ On the cover this month is Wallace and Vomit. Claymation parodies puked all over the page.

This of course led me to ask "Isn't Mad Magazine already targeted at kids?" As I recall it was me that read Mad. I don't recall seeing my father sitting, smoking a pipe with his feet raised on an ottoman, reading "The Eccch-sorsist" parody.

Well, I haven't read Mad lately. It's turned into the New Yorker or something. All the Spy Vs. Spy comics are sparse black and white cartoons of the spies standing at cocktail parties trading quips about therapy. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an exhaustive, if readable, discussion on 'The Lighter Side Of Hippies'. This month's fold in is written by Joyce Coral Oates. It the first time that I have had to use a bookmark so I didn't lose my place in the middle of a fold in.

As a side note, when I was younger I submitted some jokes to Mad. They sent the greatest rejection letter anyone could receive. It was a form letter telling me that they try to encourage young talent with nurturing criticism but in this in this case I was just terrible. The form letter had several negative comment with boxes next to them fro the editor to check. I believe that they may have checked "Just not funny for mine". They may have also called me a clod.