Quoth The Spaniel, Buy a Ford!

Sam Marley here. Does anyone remember trying to figure out just what Mad Magazine was all about?  Today, as I was painting my front door red ––I do this each year on the 29th off November––and I don't want to talk about it, my inner Hi Fi system, you know the one that plays the songs that get stuck in your head, started reciting a famous poem by Baltimore's own Edgar A. Poe.  Before I talk about that, I'd like to mention that I have a real issue with people whose last names fit what they do too closely.  Like I knew a Doctor Foot who did feet, and there is a well know guitarist in Germany called Peter Finger and there was a baseball pitcher called Raleigh Fingers.  So you got Poe and he is a poet and I think that's just creepy and I'm painting the door at the bodega here and my inner HI FI doing The Raven, by Poe.  We this wakes up an old Mad  bit where they get this talking spaniel shows up at an ad agency on Madison Avenue (of course) and starts giving sales pitches in perfect voice without sounding the least bid bored or insincere.  The joke is the story is told in rhyme like the "Raven" except instead or saying "Never more" the dog rhymes  "insincere" with "Drink Schlitz Beer" and "slightly bored" with "by a Ford"  and there was one where he says "Eat Kraft Cheese" but I can't remember the rhyme.  I don't even remember what happened in the gag.  Like I was saying it was kind of hard to figure Mad Magazine out and it wasn't until many years later when I came to be working at a studio in NYC and chanced to spend a few days with a friend's parents out on Long Island that I got the joke.  It was about Jewish people who lived on Long Island and worked in the city.  Gentiles as well  But all those comics by Dave Berg were spot on.  Of course, I could have lived on the Don Martin cartoons  with those crazy looking guys whose feet would bend when they walked.  I can still go hysterical at the thought of some of those.  Go here and click on "the don martin shrine"   

http://humor.about.com/cs/cartoonscomics/a/ds030104.htm  You might think its funny.

Me, I am going into the inside outside bodega and read a book.  Take care.

Sam