It is that time of year when individuals focus on becoming better people by making promises to themselves. However, whether consciously or in the back of their minds, they know they will not be able to keep their New Year’s Resolutions. The only real question is how soon into the year will they lose their resolve. Therefore, in the spirit of the season, I have decided on making one resolution that, should I achieve it, would also mean achieving my Secret Ambition.
My New Year’s Resolution for 2022 is to become one of The Usual Gang of Idiots, the various writers and artists who contribute to each issue of Mad Magazine.
Growing up, I loved the pointed humour in every issue of Mad. It’s pointed humour fostered my own sense of silliness, satire, irreverence and rebellion against popular culture. Very little was sacred within its pages. A good example is I never saw the movie Grease when it was released in the cinema. I think this was due to my reading the MAD Magazine parody of the movie first. One panel toward the end of the piece is indelibly implanted in my mind. Girl next door Sandy (Olivia Newton-John’s character) shows up in a tight leather outfit to woo and claim Danny (John Travolta’s character) for her own. To paraphrase that moment, Mad suggested the moral was a woman could be as nice and sweet as she wanted to be but, to get her man, she would have to dress like a slut.
Mad Magazine is still published today. Coming back to my New Year’s Resolution I have a problem. Since December 2019, MAD became, in many ways, less current. Not in humour but in print. Owing to: (1) the maxim that everything old is new again; (2) the cost of production of new material; and (3) the reduction of sales income for the printed issue, the magazine mines its history. New issues are made up of thematic pieces of reprinted material from past issues. Except for primarily the cover and fold-in, very little else is new.
What this means is it is unlikely I will ever become a member of The Usual Gang of Idiots.
My Secret Ambition is and will be an empty promise, one that makes it a perfect New Year’s Resolution. In past years there was always hope. Instead, now I will be left having to content myself with just being a Usual Idiot in my own right rather than as one of the Gang.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Happy 2022.
I’ve always lovingly thought of you as an unusual idiot.