Sam’s Al Jaffee Project!

Next month is Al Jaffee‘s 100th birthday, which doesn’t come around too often… for anybody, let alone one of the world’s greatest cartoonists. To celebrate, longtime MAD artist and former MAD art director Sam Viviano is putting together a little project for AL. This from Sam’s Instagram feed:

SPECIAL POST!

Next month. Al Jaffee, dean of MAD’s Usual Gang of Idiots, will observe his 100th birthday. Yes, Al Jaffee, creator of the Fold-In, “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” and more insane inventions than you can count, will be 100 years old on March 13.

In normal times, we’d throw a huge party for Al, and invite all fifty billion of his closest friends to attend. Unfortunately, this is not a normal year and that sort of mass mingling is not permitted. Still, I think Al should know how many people love and admire him and would like to celebrate this special event. To that end, I am inviting everyone to make, buy or steal a card wishing Al a Happy 100th Birthday.

Of course, it would not be prudent of me to post Al’s address on social media (Mr. Putin, can you read this?), so I have set up a post office box specifically for this purpose. I won’t post it just yet (I’m still working out the details), but I figured I should give everybody time to start putting something together. I will post complete instructions on February 12, a little more than one month before the big day, so watch this space.

Remember, Al’s birthday is on Saturday, March 13, and you’ll want to mail your greetings at least a week before that. I’ll gather up all the cards and tributes and half-assed attempts at Fold-Ins that come in and deliver what I hope to be an enormous bag of birthday cheer to Al on his big day.

By all means, share this post. Spread the word. Make this the best 100th birthday celebration Al’s ever had!

– Sam Viviano via Instagram

Needless to say I’ll be sending Al a card, and if you want to, so can you! I will publish that PO Box address here on my blog when Sam has it set up.

Incidentally, and this is something Sam would never mention himself, March 13th is also HIS birthday, although he will be considerably less than 100. Somewhere around 87 I think, or maybe that’s just the snowy white beard and the bum knee.