Every Cover of MAD Magazine, from 1952 to the Present: Behold 553 Covers from the Satirical Publication

in Comedy, Magazines | July 30th, 2018

For 65 years and count­ing, the pages of Mad mag­a­zine have enter­tained read­ers by sat­i­riz­ing all the cul­tur­al items, social fads, news items, and polit­i­cal issues of the moment. Through­out that span of time the cov­ers of Mad mag­a­zine have done the same, except that they’ve enter­tained every­one, even those who’ve nev­er opened an issue, whether they want it or not. Though on one lev­el designed pure­ly as dis­pos­able visu­al gags, Mad’s cov­ers col­lec­tive­ly pro­vide a satir­i­cal his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, and one you can eas­i­ly browse at Doug Gil­ford’s Mad Cov­er Site, “a resource for col­lec­tors and fans of the world’s most impor­tant (ecch!) humor pub­li­ca­tion.”

Gil­ford start­ed the site back in 1997, a year that saw Mad’s cov­ers take on such phe­nom­e­na as The X‑Files, the Spice Girls, the Tam­agotchi, and Sein­feld. That last seizes the pre­sum­ably irre­sistible oppor­tu­ni­ty to draw Jer­ry Sein­feld scowl­ing in irri­ta­tion at “Neu­man” — not his neme­sis-neigh­bor New­man, but Mad’s mas­cot Alfred E. Neu­man, who appears in one form or anoth­er on almost all of the mag­a­zine’s cov­ers.

These sort of antics had already been going on for quite some time, as evi­denced, for instance, by the June 1973 cov­er above in which Neu­man dons a Droog out­fit to take the place of Mal­colm McDow­ell in A Clock­work Orange — or, in Mad’s, view, A Crock­work Lemon.

To see the archive’s cov­ers in a large for­mat, you need only scroll to the desired year, click on the issue num­ber, and then click on the image that appears. (Alter­na­tive­ly, those with advanced Mad knowl­edge can sim­ply pick an issue num­ber from the pull-down “Select-a-Mad” menu at the top of the page.) Gil­ford keeps the site updat­ed with cov­ers right up to the lat­est issue: num­ber three, as of this writ­ing, since the mag­a­zine “reboot­ed” this past June as it relo­cat­ed its offices from New York to Cal­i­for­nia. Recent tar­gets have includ­ed Don­ald Trump, Don­ald Trump, Don­ald Trump, and, of course, Don­ald Trump. Mad’s longevi­ty may be sur­pris­ing, but it cer­tain­ly does­n’t look like Amer­i­ca will stop pro­vid­ing the ridicu­lous­ness on which it has always sur­vived any time soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Al Jaf­fee, the Longest Work­ing Car­toon­ist in His­to­ry, Shows How He Invent­ed the Icon­ic “Folds-Ins” for Mad Mag­a­zine

Mad Magazine’s Al Jaf­fee & Oth­er Car­toon­ists Cre­ate Ani­ma­tions to End Dis­tract­ed Dri­ving

Enter “The Mag­a­zine Rack,” the Inter­net Archive’s Col­lec­tion of 34,000 Dig­i­tized Mag­a­zines

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Big Digital Archive of Independent & Alternative Publications: Browse/Download Radical Periodicals Printed from 1951 to 2016

in Archives, History, Literature, Magazines, Politics | July 4th, 2018

The con­sol­i­da­tion of big media in print, TV, and inter­net has had some seri­ous­ly dele­te­ri­ous effects on pol­i­tics and cul­ture, not least of which has been the major depen­dence on social media as a means of mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion. While these plat­forms give space to voic­es we may not oth­er­wise hear, they also flat­ten and mon­e­tize com­mu­ni­ca­tion, spread abuse and dis­in­for­ma­tion, force the use of one-size-fits-all tools, and cre­ate the illu­sion of an open, demo­c­ra­t­ic forum that obscures the gross inequities of real life.

Today’s media land­scape stands in stark con­trast to that of the mid-to-late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when inde­pen­dent and alter­na­tive press­es flour­ished, dis­sem­i­nat­ing art, poet­ry, and rad­i­cal pol­i­tics, and offer­ing cus­tom plat­forms for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties and dis­senters. While the future of inde­pen­dent media seems, today, unclear at best, a look back at the indie press­es of decades past may show a way for­ward.

Para­dox­i­cal­ly, the same tech­nol­o­gy that threat­ens to impose a glob­al mono­cul­ture also enables us to archive and share thou­sands of unique arti­facts from more het­ero­dox ages of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. One stel­lar exam­ple of such an archive, Inde­pen­dent Voic­es—“an open access col­lec­tion of an alter­na­tive press”—stores sev­er­al hun­dred dig­i­tized copies of peri­od­i­cals “pro­duced by fem­i­nists, dis­si­dent GIs, cam­pus rad­i­cals, Native Amer­i­cans, anti-war activists, Black Pow­er advo­cates, His­pan­ics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alter­na­tive lit­er­ary mag­a­zines dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.”

These pub­li­ca­tions come from the spe­cial col­lec­tions of sev­er­al dozen libraries and indi­vid­u­als and span the years 1951 to 2016. While exam­ples from recent years show that alter­na­tive print pub­li­ca­tions haven’t dis­ap­peared, the rich­est, most his­tor­i­cal­ly res­o­nant exam­ples tend to come from the 60s and 70s, when the var­i­ous strains of the coun­ter­cul­ture formed col­lec­tive move­ments and aes­thet­ics, often pow­ered by easy-to-use mimeo­graph machines.

As Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an John McMil­lian says, the “hun­dreds of rad­i­cal under­ground news­pa­pers” that pro­lif­er­at­ed dur­ing the Viet­nam war “edu­cat­ed and politi­cized young peo­ple, helped to shore up activist com­mu­ni­ties, and were the movement’s pri­ma­ry means of inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” These pub­li­ca­tions, notes The New York­er’s Louis Menand, rep­re­sent “one of the most spon­ta­neous and aggres­sive growths in pub­lish­ing his­to­ry.”

With pub­li­ca­tions from the era like And Ain’t I a Woman, Bread & Ros­es, Black Dia­logue, Gay Lib­er­a­tor, Grunt Free Press, Native Move­ment, and The Yip­ster Times, Inde­pen­dent Voic­es show­cas­es the height of coun­ter­cul­tur­al activist pub­lish­ing. These are only a smat­ter­ing of titles on offer. Each issue is archived in a high-res­o­lu­tion, down­load­able PDF, per­fect for brush­ing up on your gen­er­al knowl­edge of sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism or 60s Black Pow­er; sourc­ing schol­ar­ship on the devel­op­ment of rad­i­cal, alter­na­tive press over the past six­ty years; or find­ing mate­r­i­al to inspire the future of indie media, what­ev­er form it hap­pens to take. Enter the Inde­pen­dent Voic­es archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

Enter the Pulp Mag­a­zine Archive, Fea­tur­ing Over 11,000 Dig­i­tized Issues of Clas­sic Sci-Fi, Fan­ta­sy & Detec­tive Fic­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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National Geographic Has Digitized Its Collection of 6,000+ Vintage Maps: See a Curated Selection of Maps Published Between 1888 and Today

in History, Magazines, Maps | May 14th, 2018

As some of the finest fic­tion­al world-builders have under­stood, few things excite the imag­i­na­tion like a map. And despite the geo­graph­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion implied by its title, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s maps have sur­veyed the entire globe and beyond. The magazine’s arti­cles have not always pre­sent­ed an enlight­ened point of view, but for all its his­tor­i­cal fail­ings, the rich­ly-illus­trat­ed month­ly has excelled as a show­case for car­tog­ra­phy, over which read­ers might spend hours, pro­ject­ing them­selves into unknown lands, jour­ney­ing through the care­ful­ly-drawn topogra­phies, cityscapes, and celes­tial charts.

Start­ed as the offi­cial jour­nal of the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety, the mag­a­zine has amassed a huge, 130-year archive of  “edi­to­r­i­al car­tog­ra­phy,” the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic site writes. “Now, for the first time,” that col­lec­tion is avail­able online, “every map ever pub­lished in the mag­a­zine since the first issue of Octo­ber 1888.”

The entire archive is only avail­able to sub­scribers (how­ev­er you can find curat­ed selec­tions on the Nat­Ge­oMaps Twit­ter, Insta­gram, and Face­book accounts), but we can still see an aston­ish­ing qual­i­ty and vari­ety on dis­play in dozens of maps on social media of every con­ceiv­able loca­tion, top­ic, and event, begin­ning with the very first pub­lished map, depict­ing the Great White Hur­ri­cane, “one of the most severe bliz­zards to ever hit the Unit­ed States” (above)—the “start of a long tra­di­tion… of enhanc­ing sto­ry­telling with maps.”

As long­time read­ers of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic well know, the maps—often sep­a­ra­ble from the mag­a­zine in fold-outs suit­able for hang­ing on the wall—function as more than visu­al aids. They tell their own sto­ries. “A map is able to con­nect with some­body in a dif­fer­ent way than a text will or a pho­to will,” notes the magazine’s direc­tor of car­tog­ra­phy Mar­tin Gamache. Maps “engage with a dif­fer­ent part of our psy­che or our brain.” From its ear­li­est artic­u­la­tion, geog­ra­phy has inclined toward the poet­ic. The ancient geo­g­ra­ph­er Stra­bo cred­it­ed Homer as “the founder of geo­graph­i­cal sci­ence,” who “reached the utmost lim­its of the earth, tra­vers­ing it in his imag­i­na­tion.” Maps present us with a visu­al poet­ry often Home­r­ic in its scope.

Though so many of these maps are detach­able, it often helps to under­stand the spe­cif­ic con­text in which they were cre­at­ed, which doesn’t always appear in a self-con­tained leg­end. The map above, for exam­ple, pub­lished in March 1966, shows the Krem­lin “in unprece­dent­ed detail,” as the magazine’s Twit­ter account points out: “Sovi­et reg­u­la­tions pro­hib­it­ed aer­i­al pho­tos, so artists col­lect­ed dia­grams and ground-lev­el pho­tos to draft a sketch that was brought to Moscow and cor­rect­ed on the spot.” Fur­ther up, we see a map of Mex­i­co from May 1914, “one of the first gen­er­al ref­er­ence maps of the coun­try” from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic archive. The map at the top, from the Decem­ber 1922 issue, is the magazine’s very first pub­lished gen­er­al ref­er­ence map of the world.

There are maps celes­tial, as above from 1957, and architectural—such as recent dig­i­tal recre­ations of King Tut’s tomb, late­ly revealed to have no hid­den cham­bers left to explore. Maps of plan­ets beyond the solar sys­tem and plan­ets (or “dwarf plan­ets”) with­in it, such as this first pub­lished map of Plu­to. Maps of rivers like the Rhine and spec­tac­u­lar nat­ur­al for­ma­tions like the Grand Canyon. There are even maps of flow­ers, like that pub­lished below in May 1968, show­ing “the ori­gins of 117 types of blooms.” Some maps are much less joy­ous, like this recent series show­ing what the world might look like if all of the ice melt­ed. Some are pure­ly for fun, like this series on the geog­ra­phy of Star Wars and oth­er fic­tion­al fran­chis­es.

If we can imag­ine it, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic sug­gests, we can map it, and con­verse­ly, when we see a map, our imag­i­na­tions are imme­di­ate­ly engaged. Learn more at the Nat­Geo blog All Over the Map, and con­nect with many more curat­ed maps from this huge col­lec­tion at the magazine’s Twit­ter, Insta­gram, and Face­book accounts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

The Illus­trat­ed Med­i­c­i­nal Plant Map of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (1932): Down­load It in High Res­o­lu­tion

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

Inter­ac­tive Map Shows the Seizure of Over 1.5 Bil­lion Acres of Native Amer­i­can Land Between 1776 and 1887

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Enter “The Magazine Rack,” the Internet Archive’s Collection of 34,000 Digitized Magazines

in Magazines | April 5th, 2018

Before we kept up with cul­ture through the inter­net, we kept up with cul­ture through mag­a­zines. That his­tor­i­cal fact may at first strike those of us over 30 as triv­ial and those half a gen­er­a­tion down as irrel­e­vant, but now, thanks to the Inter­net Archive, we can all eas­i­ly expe­ri­ence the depth and breadth of the mag­a­zine era as some­thing more than an abstrac­tion or an increas­ing­ly dis­tant mem­o­ry. In keep­ing with their appar­ent mis­sion to become the pre­dom­i­nant archive of pre-inter­net media, they’ve set up the Mag­a­zine Rack, a down­load­able col­lec­tion of over 34,000 dig­i­tized mag­a­zines and oth­er month­ly pub­li­ca­tions.

Mag­a­zines haven’t gone away, of course, and at the Inter­net Archive’s Mag­a­zine Rack you can do just what you might have done at a tra­di­tion­al mag­a­zine rack: flip through brand new issues of pub­li­ca­tions like Tech Advi­sor, Avi­a­tion His­to­ry, and Amer­i­ca’s Civ­il War. But quite unlike a tra­di­tion­al mag­a­zine rack, where recen­cy was all, you can also read back issues — in some cas­es quite far-back issues, stretch­ing all the way to the mid-18th cen­tu­ry. The Lon­don Mag­a­zine, or, Gen­tle­man’s Month­ly Intel­li­gencer vol. XXII for the Year 1753, the old­est mag­a­zine on these dig­i­tal shelves, offers such arti­cles as “Remark­able acci­dents,” “Dan­ger of the empire’s being with­out a head,” and “Life and char­ac­ter of Christi­na, queen of Swe­den.”

As British mag­a­zines of the past go, it also delight­ed me per­son­al­ly to find in the Mag­a­zine Rack many issues of Com­put­er and Video Games (also known as CVG) which did much, giv­en its inex­plic­a­ble avail­abil­i­ty at the library of the Seat­tle sub­urb where I grew up, to shape my world­view. Oth­er titles cater­ing to “nerdy” inter­ests, broad­ly speak­ing, have — per­haps pre­dictably — been archived with a spe­cial exten­sive­ness: com­put­er and gam­ing mag­a­zines have their own vast sec­tions, but the col­lec­tions of ear­ly Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, sci-fi fan mag­a­zine Star­log, vin­tage men’s mag­a­zines (some, of course, NSFW), and the long-run­ning ama­teur radio jour­nal 73 Mag­a­zine come not far behind.

The Mag­a­zine Rack also con­tains plen­ty of pub­li­ca­tions of the kind we tend to ref­er­ence here on Open Cul­ture, includ­ing quite a few titles devot­ed to pulp fic­tion, the influ­en­tial Moe­bius- and H.R. Giger-fea­tur­ing “adult fan­ta­sy mag­a­zine” Heavy Met­al, the Hugo Award-win­ning sci­ence fic­tion mag­a­zine IF, and the made-for-PDF-for­mat inter­na­tion­al art mag­a­zine Rev­o­lu­tion­art. Spend enough brows­ing time there and you’ll remem­ber — or learn — that, espe­cial­ly in the print-sat­u­rat­ed twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, mag­a­zines did­n’t just let us keep up with the cul­ture, they helped cre­ate it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Heavy Met­al, the Influ­en­tial “Adult Fan­ta­sy Mag­a­zine” That Fea­tured the Art of Moe­bius, H.R. Giger & More

Read 1,000 Edi­tions of The Vil­lage Voice: A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Icon­ic New York City Paper

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Eros Mag­a­zine: The Con­tro­ver­sial 1960s Mag­a­zine on the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Down­load the Com­plete Archive of Oz, “the Most Con­tro­ver­sial Mag­a­zine of the 60s,” Fea­tur­ing R. Crumb, Ger­maine Greer & More

Enter the Pulp Mag­a­zine Archive, Fea­tur­ing Over 11,000 Dig­i­tized Issues of Clas­sic Sci-Fi, Fan­ta­sy & Detec­tive Fic­tion

Enter a Huge Archive of Amaz­ing Sto­ries, the World’s First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, Launched in 1926

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Digital Archive of Heavy Metal, the Influential “Adult Fantasy Magazine” That Featured the Art of Moebius, H.R. Giger & More

in Magazines, Sci Fi | March 6th, 2018

In mak­ing a time cap­sule of the late 20th cen­tu­ry, one would be remiss if they did not include at least an issue or two of Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine. Yes, it spe­cial­ized in unapolo­get­i­cal­ly turn­ing women in met­al bras into sex objects. The glee­ful amount of T&A on its cov­ers, sur­round­ed by space­ships, swords, and sor­cery, mark it as a rel­ic of its era that appealed to a spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ic. But Heavy Met­al was much more than sexy sci-fi mas­cots drawn in lurid pulpy styles. Along with its share of erot­i­ca, the “adult illus­trat­ed fan­ta­sy mag­a­zine” pro­vid­ed a vivid show­case for some of the most inter­est­ing artists and sto­ry­tellers work­ing in the main­stream and in var­i­ous sub­gen­res of fan­ta­sy and sci-fi. (It con­tin­ues to do so.)

Debut­ing in 1977, the year of the first Star Wars film, Heavy Met­al was not named after the brand of gui­tar rock pio­neered by Led Zep­pelin and Black Sab­bath, though there’s an obvi­ous influ­ence, but after a French mag­a­zine that start­ed two years ear­li­er called Métal hurlant, or lit­er­al­ly “Howl­ing Met­al.” (We’ve fea­tured it here on OC before.) When pub­lish­er Leonard Mogel decid­ed to adapt the orig­i­nal for an Amer­i­can read­er­ship, he changed the name, but kept the con­tent, repub­lish­ing work by Jean Giraud—the artist bet­ter known as Moebius—and many oth­er accom­plished Euro­pean illus­tra­tors.

Found­ed and staffed by the cre­ators of Nation­al Lam­poon, the mag­a­zine lat­er fea­tured orig­i­nal work from artists like H.R. Giger, inter­views with Den­nis Hop­per, John Waters, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, John Car­pen­ter, Roger Cor­man, and even Fed­eri­co Felli­ni; and with musi­cians like the Eury­th­mics and Deb­bie Har­ry. It ran pop­u­lar seri­al­ized sto­ries, show­cased graph­ic lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions (of Par­adise Lost, for exam­ple), and pub­lished authors like Ray Brad­bury, Stephen King, and oth­er heav­ies. Rock, comics, film, and fic­tion all got their due in between the magazine’s extrav­a­gant pin­up cov­ers, many of which inspired the art paint­ed on the side of many a car­pet­ed van in the 70s.

You can see a siz­able col­lec­tion of scanned Heavy Met­al mag­a­zines, from the first, 1977 issue to the mid-90s, at the Inter­net Archive. Part of Archive.org’s exten­sive “Mag­a­zine Rack,” a dig­i­tal library of thou­sands of scanned peri­od­i­cals, the Heavy Met­al col­lec­tion was launched in 2012 by archivist Jason Scott. Though it doesn’t con­tain the magazine’s com­plete run by any means, it offers a broad enough sam­pling of all of its major themes and ten­den­cies.

Heavy Met­al’s inter­ests are very focused, one might say, but the few things the mag­a­zine does, and has done since 1977, it has done excep­tion­al­ly well. Enter the archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Métal hurlant: The Huge­ly Influ­en­tial French Com­ic Mag­a­zine That Put Moe­bius on the Map & Changed Sci-Fi For­ev­er

Dis­cov­er the First Hor­ror & Fan­ta­sy Mag­a­zine, Der Orchideen­garten, and Its Bizarre Art­work (1919–1921)

Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb Cre­ates an Illus­trat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hunter S. Thompson’s Decadent Daily Breakfast: The “Psychic Anchor” of His Frenetic Creative Life

in Food & Drink, Life, Literature, Magazines, Writing | February 26th, 2018

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Is break­fast real­ly the most impor­tant meal of the day?

It cer­tain­ly seems so from all the care­ful­ly staged pho­tos of overnight oat­meal on Insta­gram.

The phys­i­cal and men­tal ben­e­fits are well doc­u­ment­ed. A nutri­tious meal in the morn­ing boosts blood glu­cose lev­els, improv­ing con­cen­tra­tion, boost­ing ener­gy lev­els and main­tain­ing healthy weight.

Sad­ly, many Amer­i­cans gob­ble their break­fasts on the fly. How many hun­dreds of film and tele­vi­sion scenes have you seen where­in the main char­ac­ters hur­tle through the kitchen snatch­ing bananas, gra­nola bars, and trav­el mugs on their way to the door?

The late gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son would sure­ly not have approved, though he may have enjoyed the sense of supe­ri­or­i­ty these morn­ing scram­bles would have engen­dered.

This was a man who bragged that he could “cov­er a hope­less­ly scram­bled pres­i­den­tial cam­paign bet­ter than any six-man team of career polit­i­cal jour­nal­ists on The New York Times or The Wash­ing­ton Post and still eat a three-hour break­fast in the sun every morn­ing.”

Report­ing for Rolling Stone in “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail 76,” he inti­mat­ed that he viewed break­fast with the “tra­di­tion­al­ized rev­er­ence that most peo­ple asso­ciate with Lunch and Din­ner.”

One won­ders who exact­ly he meant by “most peo­ple”?

Tex­ans? The Irish? Rabelais?

Regard­less of whether he had been to bed, or what he had got­ten up to the night before, he insist­ed upon a mas­sive repast—consumed al fres­co, and prefer­ably in the nude. The sun he enjoyed bask­ing in was usu­al­ly at its zenith by the time he sat down. The meal, which he called the “psy­chic anchor” of “a ter­mi­nal­ly jan­gled lifestyle, con­sist­ed of the fol­low­ing:

Four bloody Marys

Two grape­fruits

A pot of cof­fee

Ran­goon crêpes

A half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef-hash with diced chilies

A Span­ish omelette or eggs Bene­dict

A quart of milk

A chopped lemon for ran­dom sea­son­ing

Some­thing like a slice of Key lime pie

Two mar­gar­i­tas

And six lines of the best cocaine for dessert

Last sum­mer, a Dan­ish Vice reporter recre­at­ed Thompson’s break­fast of choice, invit­ing a poet friend (and “aspir­ing alco­holic”) to par­take along with him. It end­ed with him vom­it­ing, naked, into a shrub. His guest, who seems to be made of stur­dier stuff, praised the eggs bene­dict, the Bloody Marys, and dessert.

Thomp­son pre­ferred that his first meal of the day be con­sumed solo, in order to get a jump on the day’s work. In addi­tion to the edi­ble menu items, he required:

Two or three news­pa­pers

All mail and mes­sages

A tele­phone

A note­book for plan­ning the next twen­ty four hours

And at least one source of good music

Read “Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail 1976” here. The key break­fast quote reads as fol­lows:

I like to eat break­fast alone, and almost nev­er before noon; any­body with a ter­mi­nal­ly jan­gled lifestyle needs at least one psy­chic anchor every twen­ty four hours, and mine is break­fast. In Hong Kong, Dal­las, or at home—and regard­less of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a per­son­al rit­u­al that can only be prop­er­ly observed alone, and in a spir­it of gen­uine excess. The food fac­tor should always be mas­sive: Four bloody Marys, two grape­fruits, a pot of cof­fee, Ran­goon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef-hash with diced chilies, a Span­ish omelette or eggs Bene­dict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for ran­dom sea­son­ing, and some­thing like a slice of Key lime pie, two mar­gar­i­tas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three news­pa­pers, all mail and mes­sages, a tele­phone, a note­book for plan­ning the next twen­ty four hours, and at least one source of good music… All of which should be dealt with out­side, in the warmth of the hot sun, and prefer­ably stone naked.

And just in case, here is a recipe for Crab Ran­goon Crepes…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Not Yorker: A Collection of Rejected & Late Cover Submissions to The New Yorker

in Art, Magazines | December 18th, 2017

What’s hap­pened to the thou­sands of cov­er designs that have been sub­mit­ted to The New York­er? And then been reject­ed, either sum­mar­i­ly or with much con­sid­er­a­tion? Prob­a­bly most have fad­ed into obliv­ion. But at least some are now see­ing the light of day over at The Not York­er, a web site that col­lects “declined or late cov­er sub­mis­sions” to the sto­ried mag­a­zine. See a gallery of declined illus­tra­tions here.

The cre­ators of the new site encour­age illus­tra­tors to sub­mit their reject­ed cov­ers here. And lest there be any doubt, The Not York­er is not offi­cial­ly affil­i­at­ed with The New York­er.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Toky­oi­ter: Artists Pay Trib­ute to the Japan­ese Cap­i­tal with New York­er-Style Mag­a­zine Cov­ers

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The New York­er’s “Com­ma Queen” Mer­ci­ful­ly Explains the Dif­fer­ence Between Who/Whom, Lay/Lie, Less/Fewer & Beyond

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

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The Tree of Modern Art: Elegant Drawing Visualizes the Development of Modern Art from Delacroix to Dalí (1940)

in Art, History, Magazines | December 14th, 2017

Select­ing cer­tain fea­tures, sim­pli­fy­ing them, exag­ger­at­ing them, and using them to pro­vide a deep insight, at a glance, into the sub­ject as a whole: such is the art of the car­i­ca­tur­ist, one that Miguel Covar­ru­bias ele­vat­ed to anoth­er lev­el in the ear­ly- to mid-20th cen­tu­ry. Those skills, com­bined with his knowl­edge as an art his­to­ri­an, also served him well when he drew “The Tree of Mod­ern Art.” This aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing dia­gram first appeared in Van­i­ty Fair in May of 1933, a time when many read­ers of such mag­a­zines would have felt a great curios­i­ty about how, exact­ly, all these new paint­ings and sculp­tures and such — many of which did­n’t seem to look much like the paint­ings and sculp­tures they knew at all — relat­ed to one anoth­er.

“Because it stops in 1940, the tree fails to account for abstract expres­sion­ism and oth­er post–World War II move­ments,” writes Vox’s Phil Edwards, in a piece that includes a ver­sion of the Covar­ru­bias’ 1940 “Tree of Mod­ern Art” revi­sion with click­able exam­ples of rel­e­vant art­work.

But “the orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture alone reveals a sur­pris­ing­ly large amount about the way art has evolved,” includ­ing how it “becomes broad­er and more inclu­sive over time,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing into a “glob­al affair”; how “artis­tic schools have become more aes­thet­i­cal­ly diverse”; how “the canon evolved quick­ly”; and how “all art is inter­twined,” cre­at­ed as it has so long been by artists who “work togeth­er, bor­row from each oth­er, and grow in tan­dem.”

You can also find the “Tree of Mod­ern Art” at the David Rum­sey His­tor­i­cal Map Col­lec­tion, a hold­ing that illus­trates, as it were, just how wide a swath of infor­ma­tion design the term “map” can encom­pass. “The date is esti­mat­ed based on the ver­so of the paper being a blue lined base map of the Nation­al Park Ser­vice dat­ed 12/28/39,” says the col­lec­tion’s site. “This draw­ing was found in the papers of B. Ash­bur­ton Tripp” — also a map­mak­er in the col­lec­tion — “and we assume that Covar­ru­bias and Tripp were friends (ver­i­fied by Trip­p’s descen­dants) and that the blue line base map was some­thing Tripp was work­ing on in his land­scape archi­tec­ture busi­ness.”

The leg­end describes the tree as hav­ing been “plant­ed 60 years ago,” a num­ber that has now passed 130. Many more leaves have grown off those branch­es of impres­sion­ism, expres­sion­ism, post-impres­sion­ism, sur­re­al­ism, cubism, and futur­ism in the years since Covar­ru­bias drew the tree, but for some­one to go back and aug­ment such a ful­ly-real­ized cre­ation would­n’t do at all — as with any work of art, mod­ern or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Take a Trip Through the His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art with the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Mona Lisa Descend­ing a Stair­case

Every Exhi­bi­tion Held at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Pre­sent­ed in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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