The chart above depicts a complex mathematical principle. Well, not really a principle, it’s a graphic representation of a mathematical reality. It’s a model. O.K., not a model, it’s just a… chart. Yea, that’s what I mean. It’s a chart, right. Right? Math is not my thing. On one line, I mean axis, and I’ll take a guess here and say the “X” axis, it shows my age. On the other line (let’s just call it a line), it’s supposed to show my ability to locate and purchase funny printed material.

I created the chart because a picture is worth a thousand words and a thousand words is a lot to type…not to mention spell. I wanted to illustrate one of the realities of my life, which is that when I was a kid there seemed to be all of these funny things I could buy and read but now I can’t find anything. There are some funny movies, TV shows, and websites, but I want a funny magazine, and there hasn’t been a funny magazine in America for a long time, and there probably will never be another one again. I have a theory as to why that is, but I’ll save it until the end. If I tell you now you’ll just say, “another dumb idea from Gutbloom,” and not read into the mire. Then you won’t look at all the spanky pictures I found for you.

Now, I may have failed all my courses in Galois theory, but that red line in the chart is roughly what I call a “bell curve”, which means that I couldn’t find many funny things when I was an infant, because I couldn’t walk, and I can’t find many funny things now because I won’t walk (I have a car). The high point in my acquisition of material was between the ages of 8–17. Here is an explanation of what we in the world of higher mathematics call milestones:

Age 8 : Wacky Packages
Wacky Packages were a set of culture-jamming trading cards (each was also a sticker) that were all the rage in my third and fourth-grade classrooms. They aped the packaging of well-known brand products and then introduced high brow cultural commentary by renaming “Crest” “Crust” and showing a picture of a guy with crap all over his teeth… or renaming “Lipton” soup, “Liptorn” and showing a picture of someone having their lower lip melt from hot soup. Funny, huh? Well in third grade it was a gas. I only wish I could go back.

Age 12 : Mad Magazine
The best thing about having a bike and a little baby-sitting money is that you can buy your own bag of Funions and bar-b-que potato chips and a Mad magazine and you don’t have to share with your brothers. Mad magazine was full of scatological, sexual, and drug referenced humor and somehow survived the censure of my parents. I enjoyed Mad magazine so much as a kid that I buy about two issues a year just to make sure that it still sucks. I’m like a rat that was given a pellet for hitting the lever for two years and forty years later still hits the bar whenever he’s on that side of the cage. The problem is that the usual gang of idiots isn’t there anymore. What can you say? Yeeeech.

Age 14 : Underground Comics
Unfortunately, the fact that Mad was O.K. with my parents eventually made it not O.K. with me. I had to find material that was objectionable. Underground comics like R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural or the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers had enough sex, drugs, homophobia and racism to eventually make them as dated as an episode of The Little Rascals. What really killed the buzz, however, was that somewhere along the way, comics became really expensive. I bought issue #4 of Bitch Planet recently and it cost me $3.50. That’s OK if its a good comic, but nothing stops the fun quite so quickly as getting ripped off.

Age 17 : National Lampoon
My parents never understood the difference between National Lampoon and pornography, despite my repeated attempts to explain that in National Lampoon the women were exploited in the name of humor. When I went off to boarding school I got a subscription to National Lampoon. It was chock-o-block full of sex and drugs. I’ve haven’t been so devoted to a magazine since. The problem, eventually, was that the “nothing is sacred” humor made fun of everyone except quasi-intellectual liberal white guys. When I figured out that I was one of them, it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t be laughing so hard at other people.

Age 21 : Spy
To be honest, I was never that big a fan of Spy, but they certainly had a good number of wickedly funny articles. In the end, the only thing worse than a bunch of white guys making fun of minorities and women is a bunch of white guys making fun of celebrities because they know they can’t make fun of women and minorities.

Here’s the Theory
There aren’t any humor magazines anymore because humor magazines rely on drugs for humor, and drugs have stopped being funny. Amy Winehouse isn’t funny. Whitney Houston isn’t funny. Lindsay Lohan isn’t funny. I was going try to test my theory that a humor magazine filled with drug references would bomb. I planned to make a magazine called “Beergut.” The first issue was going to be the “Drugs are Funny Issue” — but I lacked the motivation to finish that first issue, and, besides, what the fuck is a magazine?