Well, dear readers, I am MAD, MAD do you hear me? I am damn MAD due to another night of lousy sleep and being loaded with gunk – where that came from all of a sudden, who knows, but I’ll just blame it on the lack of sleep or possibly I could blame it on Rio, I could put the blame on Mame, I could blame it on my youth, I could blame it on the summer night. I think it might be blamed on allergies, for I did not take a Claritin-D or a Mucinex-D last night because I was feeling almost all better. Anyway, the entire day was irritating due to all that and I was MAD. I did have good food though – a new jernt I’ve never tried before, even though it was and is right across the street from a restaurant that folded during the pandemic but which I loved – Tony’s Bella Vista. Anyway, the jernt across the street is called Pinocchio’s and it’s more of a deli although you can eat there, too. I had penne in pink sauce with a meatball and garlic bread. It was just the right size portion, and I found the taste better than Maria’s Kitchen and Antonio’s, the two jernts that I usually order penne in pink sauce from. The garlic bread didn’t travel that well and I didn’t eat but a couple of bites, but the pasta was hot, fresh, and the meatball was really good, too. I’ll probably order from their again. It was NOT, however, what I originally ordered. What I originally ordered was a pulled pork sandwich from nearby Boneyard Bistro, a great barbecue jernt. They’re only open during the day on Sunday – usually they open at four – but Sunday they open at eleven. I ordered at around one. The order went through, I was excited and then they cancelled the order. It was not clear WHO cancelled it – Grubhub or the restaurant, because they don’t tell you anything, which irritated me and made me MAD – so, I went to the restaurant’s website and sent them a message asking for the reason they cancelled. They actually got back to me, which was nice, and apologized for cancelling, but the meat for the sandwich wasn’t ready – it was taking much longer than usual. Oh well. I was so tired after food that I could barely function. I played on the computer for a bit, then sat on my couch like so much fish. It’s funny to me that I usually doze off for an hour or two, but when I need the sleep I doze off for ten minutes – twice. Anyway, I watched another ABC Movie of the Week, entitled Revenge, starring Shelly Winters, Bradford Dillman, and Stuart Whitman. It was written by Joseph Stefano, the man who wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s Psycho and who wrote several good episodes of the Outer Limits TV show. It was a very good little TV movie – Shelly was great, I’ve always found Bradford Dillman to be a bit of a stick in his later work, but I’ve always really liked Stuart Whitman. And a good score by Dominic Frontiere.
After that, I took a little break and nosed around the Internet, then I watched the new documentary entitled When We Went MAD, about MAD magazine. I liked it very much. It was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. I wonder how much they raised – a lot of people were listed in the credits, so I’d imagine quite a bit. Nope, 58K. Must have been cheap to do. But while on Kickstarter there was something called The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals which according to them had a sold-out run in LA in some unnamed theater – odd not to have heard of it. So, they wanted to bring it back for a limited run at the El Portal. They were trying to raise a whopping 150K to do it with a no-name cast. They raised – wait for it – 640K. Which means even if the show cost 150K to do at the El Portal, which is doubtful, they get to keep the rest of the money. They also say they’ve been producing musicals for sixteen years. And yet, I have never heard of these people. Ah, it had a limited run at the Matrix Theater and these sixteen musicals were done at some college somewhere on the East Coast, where they founded their group. Maybe I’ll go see it at the El Portal to see how they spent their 640K. I mean, there are some things I just do not get. Amusingly, it has two rave reviews from th El Portal, both written by teen bloggers. This is what we’ve become. Anyway, the MAD documentary has lots of great interviews (Grant Geissman does a lot of talking) with MAD artists, there’s some great vintage footage, too – it’s a bit long for its own good at an hour and forty-seven minutes, but I really did enjoy it.
I bought my first issue of MAD at the newsstand at Pico and Robertson, before going to a movie at my beloved Stadium Theater. This would have been in 1954 with issue eleven. From then on, I bought all the comic book issues. I never had the ones before that until I got a complete set of the first thirty issues about twenty years ago. I got the first MAD paperback collection called The Mad Reader, which is where I first saw material from the issues before number eleven. I also bought many of the magazine version, which began with number 24. I still have over two hundred issues somewhere, either in the garage or in storage. And here we are.
Today, I really am hoping I get a really good really excellent really good night’s sleep – I really need it. Really. I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll do Ny-Quil. We’ll see if I can fall asleep without it. Once up, I’ll answer e-mails and maybe go do a quick trip to the mail place, depending on how I’m feeling. I’m hoping I wake up feeling better and that my voice is back to getting stronger, because yesterday was about eight steps backward in terms of my voice. It’s a bit better right now as I type these here notes. I’ll take a hot shower and that will relax me. And I’ll try to be in bed no later than one, but hopefully earlier. I hope to hear from the publisher that they have my files and have begun working on them, I’ll eat something, I already finessed the commentary and cut it down even more, but mostly I’m resting my voice and body, and then I can watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is our stumble-through at three – two people are coming at two to run their stuff, since they weren’t here on Saturday. Prior to that, I’ll just be resting. After it, I’ll eat and then relax. Wednesday is sound check and show, and then I can just relax.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully get a really really good night’s sleep, I’ll hopefully hear from the publisher, I’ll maybe go to the mail place, I’ll eat, but mostly I’ll rest my voice and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: When did you first discover MAD magazine and how big a fan were you? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, glad to be reminded that I was MAD about MAD.