Mad Magazine #476 April 2007

And what was, according to the address label on my March issue, my last issue of Mad forever! April 2007 was so far into the future, it didn't matter. But in February, I sent off the subscription card for 2 years for $40. And when the bill came, my mom paid it.

But! The issue's white cover, instead of a cartoon or silly note, said this is your last issue!

I had a doctor appointment on the same day my new Mad shows up. Is that fate or what? When we got there, I was restless and worried about having to pay the cover price for the next issue ($3.99 Cheap!), since subscriptions don't kick in for a month, if I recall, which is why you resubscribe months before.

Mom said she'd paid for a Mad subscription, but if it was for the classic series or the regular, she wasn't sure. I checked her logbook, she wrote down Mad Classics! So I said, "That's it, I'm calling them to find out what's what."

What's what is that she wrote down the wrong thing, my subscription won't expire until April 2009, which is like so far into the future it's not worth thinking about. (I'll renew it for two more years at my birthday or Christmas in 2008.)

Onto the magazine!


(I took this picture because last time I tried the scanner, it didn't work, and scanned images are huge, and Becky's fixed our camera so pictures are taken at a smaller, easier to upload size.)

I read the entire issue, even the parodies of Entourage and the Amazing Race, even though I've never seen either show.

I loved the Boratz dolls, the rejected Army recruiting posters, the fascinating music factoids, and Ted Rall's 7 Periods Closer to Death, which is about high school.

The last one was really good, but sad. It talked about how teenagers have to get up at 6am to get to high school (or middle school), and to get the hours of sleep teenagers need, they have to go to bed around 9pm. But teenager's bodies aren't wired for early to bed, early to rise.

So the logical solution is to let high schools start at 9am, instead of 7. But they won't do it. Like the cartoon said, schools are babysitters, and parents don't want their kids at home in the morning without them.

In our district, all the high schools and at least one middle school start at 7am. On the dot, you have to be in your first period at 7. It used to be 7:15, but they changed it two years ago, along with all the school start times, so we have schools starting at 7 and ending at 2, starting at 8 and ending at 3, and starting at 9 and ending at 4. The last category is for a local elementary school and a local middle school.

The reason our times are staggered? Too many students, not enough buses.


As for the cover, I only knew about the fight through the Daily Show and Colbert Report. The page on the feud... meh. The cover... well, I can't believe they got away with her nipples.