21- VEEBLEFETZER SALUTE TO MCBEARDO

We lost friend of the blog Mike McPadden yesterday at 52. He was actually going to do a guest post some time in the next two months about how magazines like MAD, Cracked, and Crazy helped make him a cinephile. But it's not about me. Not necessarily our little echo chamber of pop culture ephemera either. The world is much quieter without him.

I hadn't been in touch with him in twenty years or so and was just starting to reconnect with him. I knew him back in New York City when he was going by the name Selwyn Harris (named for the last two remaining grindhouse cinemas) and we were both young creative-types at the New York Press and we both drank too much. I hated being around him when he talked about what he hated. But when he talked about what he liked it was different. We both had a common ground when it came to schlock pop-culture and sophomoric comedy. And our shared disdain for the impact of Star Wars. Not Star Wars itself, which I will defend as a masterpiece, but the impact that it's made on cinema to this day. He had video parties every New Years' Day (day, not eve) where he'd show things like Myra Breckenridge or Sextette. They were like Superbowl parties but instead of sports it was old showbiz.

But he was the biggest fan of this blog. Whenever I'd send out a tweet that I'd dropped a few posts, he would always retweet me. He was one of the few people who could tell you the difference between the humor magazines, mentioning the magazines often on his podcasts, and like I said, he was going to say here how much of an influence they were on his worldview. One of his very first tattoos was of Alfred E. Neuman. Now, like the zine he was publishing when I first met him, he's back in Happyland.