Monday MADness!

I occasionally get the question “What was the first piece you ever did for MAD“? which is not an easy one to answer. The full story is here, but the quick answer is a feature piece called “MAD‘s Cable TV Viewing Odds”, which I was assigned in June of 2000 but did not actually see print until MAD #406, June 2001. In between my doing that job and it seeing print I did several pieces for the MAD website and five jobs for the magazine including my first two TV/movie parodies.

I recently ran across a dusty DVD with some old jobs archived, including that first assignment for MAD. Here are some of the spots along with the gags as written by John Biederman:

Mtv

• Chance of catching an actual music video: 38 to 1
• Chance of catching an event on The Real World that resembles something you’ve seen in the real world: 50 to 1
• Chance of Tom Green making Adam Sandler’s humor look highbrow: Even Money

CNN

• Chance of viewing an “on-the-scene” report in a case where an “on-the-scene” report was totally unnecessary: 2 to 1
• Chance of seeing coverage of a strife in some country you previously didn’t even know existed: 3 to 1
• Chance of catching a lengthy “update” that, in a nutshell, say’s that nothing’s changed: 5 to 1
  

C-Span

• Chance of hearing a politician utter a bald-face lie within the first five minutes of viewing: 2 to 1
• Chance of seeing some guy in a bad suit pointing to a chart that only confuses the issue: 7 to 1
• Chance that a commentator’s monotone explanations during a break in the “action” will actually add something to your understanding of the proceedings: 25 to 1

E!

• Chance of seeing a show or promo with one of the Rivers women clapping and braying like a seal: 3 to 1
• Chance of catching E! True Hollywood Story and mistaking it for VH1’s Behind the Music: 4 to 1
• Chance of being taken on a tour of a celebrity home of a celebrity you’ve never heard of: 1 to 1

Food Network

• Chance of catching Emeril so worked up, you’d swear he’s about to hump that roast: 4 to 1
• Chance of hearing the virtues of some spice over-extolled: 6 to 1
• Chance of seeing a culinary profile of a restaurant in either New Jersey or South Dakota: 300 to 1

AMC

• Chance you’ll suddenly want to “do” an actress you previously only knew as a shriveled up old has-been: 3 to 1
• Chance of glamorized chain-smoking occurring on screen: 4 to 1
• Chance of catching a lplot-line recently ripped off by a “new” Hollywood film: 2 to 1

All artwork and text above ©2001 EC Comics/MAD Magazine, used with permission