I recall when I first became a fan of National Lampoon. It’s when I read an early-mid 70’s article (probably written by O’Donoghue, Chris Miller, or P.J. O’Rourke) that began with a very wholesome Thanksgiving dinner scene (complete with Norman Rockwell-esque accompanying illustration), but degenerated into a wild orgy on the dinner table. It was the dirtiest (and funniest) thing I’d read up to that point (what grandma did with that stick of butter still makes me wince :eek:). It was like an expanded Aristocrat joke, only filthier.
Mad was extremely influential in my life. It gave a different perspective, quite removed from my Silver Age Superman ideals. I read it obsessively, pasted the stickers everywhere (Free Huey, Dewey, and Louie!) and can still quote vast reams of text, sing the parody songs (Deli, well hello Deli, could you please send up some nice corned beef on rye? A box of Ritz, Deli, and some Schlitz, Deli, some chopped liver and a sliver of your apple pie?) and recall the marginal drawings. I bought the book collections of back issues too.
It definitely introduced me to cynicism, and to the idea that there’s humor in pain. And that there will always be pain.
I didn’t leave it behind until the day I saw the NatLamp cover where they threatened to shoot the dog.
How does that happen? I have tons of those parody songs stuck in my brain, 50 years later. It must have hit me at a very impressionable age.
Huh, while looking for this, I found out the drug class is actually spelled “barbiturate”. I’ve been using Mad’s incorrect spelling for years. DAMN YOU, MAD MAGAZINE, YOU FILTHY FURSHLUGGINERS!
Last night, when I happened to catch a glimpse of a bit Jimmy Fallon was doing on the Tonight Show, it occurred to me that some of the comedy bits that have been done on the late-night comedy/talk shows, going back to at least the early days of Late Night with David Letterman, are the kind of thing that could have been taken straight from the pages of MAD Magazine. I don’t know how much of that is direct influence and how much is common ancestry or great minds thinking alike, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that at least some of the writers of these pieces grew up on MAD.
As is your user name. Are you really Don Martin? 
Now that you mention it, I wonder if there’s some subconscious influence there…
nm
Turkey legs, Deli,
hard-boiled eggs, Deli,
with tomatoes and potatoes you French-fry!
Oh, please don’t be late, Deli,
'cause I cannot wait, Deli!
Deli, without breakfast I will die! 
I always picture the sound that a drop of liquid makes is “poit!” and a building being imploded goes “FAGROON!”
The song parodies made me interested enough to find out what the originals sounded like. They did a sendup of Nixon’s administration singing tunes from the Mikado in their own words.
J. Edgar Hoover sang “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Criminologist” (…Major General), Pat Nixon and her daughters sang “Three Little Nixon Wives Are We” (Three Little Maids from School Are We), and Spiro Agnew sang his version of “The Lord High Executioner,” calling out “All folks who disagree with me, who have divergent views, like Catholics and Protestants, Mohammedans and Jews.”
Now if only I could find the MAD versions again so I can sing those songs with the correct tunes.
“Hello Deli”…suing to the tune of “Hello Dolly”
With illustrations by Paul Coker.
Burned into my brain.
And written by Frank Jacobs, who was Mad’s specialist in song and poetry parodies–and perhaps still is, as I see he’s still contributing after all these years!
Re: Cracked.
OTOH, Cracked.com has just been sold to Scripps for $39 million. Apparently they’re going to push the video side more.
I don’t see Mad’s website ever being that valuable.
One of the articles I read as a kid in Mad was proposing modern versions of nursery rhymes. At that point Mickey Rooney was on his seventh wife. The poem went:
As I was going to St Ives.
I met a man with seven wives.
I know this sounds absurd and loony.
But that poor man was Mickey Rooney!
About twenty-five years later I visited St. Ives (in England) for the first time, and that poem kept going through my mind.
I liked the book of modern Dr Seuss rhymes, f’rinstance:
*Hark, hark! It is Clark in the park!
Clark’s in the park after dark, and he’s being mugged,
what an easy mark!
As Clark yells out, three cops take flight,
and six other people run out of sight.
But along comes a man whose name is Dunn,
who isn’t the kind to turn and run.
He pitches right in, kicks Clark in the crotch,
and helps himself to Clark’s Benrus watch.
Said Clark before this scene dissolved,
“It wasn’t much, but he got involved!”*
Another modern Dr Seuss rhyme:
*There is this thing, she’s called a wife,
she loves a husband all her life.
Here is this husband loved by her,
bringing her a fancy fur.
Loving, kissing, billing, cooing,
who knows what they’ll soon be doing?
Wife and husband, father and mother,
both are married, but not to each other!*
There was also this one:
George, Ringo, Paul and John
George, RIngo, Paul and John
Played a trick that put us on.
Laid hints that Paul was dead as nails,
And rocketed their record sales.
I believe that MAD did more than the Marx Brothers and Lenny Bruce combined to mainstream Yiddish slang in this country (I mean your country; I live in Korea). “Klutz” simply wasn’t a widespread term until Don Martin’s The Adventures of Captain Klutz made it one.
Into a lot of our brains, it seems. 