Things were fading fast. Money was tight. We were losing the team of artists. The covers were getting busier and busier, tabloid style. And the behind the scenes activities that I didn't hear about until much later were more pronounced. The editor quit and was replaced by 2 guys, and they got a write up about it inside the issue!
#362, Apr '04
Things were fading fast. Money was tight. We were losing the team of artists. The covers were getting busier and busier, tabloid style. And the behind the scenes activities that I didn't hear about until much later were more pronounced. The editor quit and was replaced by 2 guys, and they got a write up about it inside the issue!
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#360, May '03 Notice they're now "picking the top 10 Simpson episodes." The mag started drifting into prose land. And the assissant editor was pumping out material, writing articles to be drawn up and writing prose pieces and "Letters to the Editor" articles.
Well, no one else wanted to make this, so I did it myself. So there.
Yeah, I've put this off awhile, but last summer we vacationed in Myrtel Beach, SC. We had a great time and a lot of fun. But I wanted to mention one place in particular. We wanted to do some touristy things and we both like historical stuff and wanted to do something a little off the beaten trail. The weather was iffy inland, so we didn't go to Charleston. So we came upon Hopsewee Plantation. It was built in 1740 for the Lynch family, which included Thomas Lynch Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It was a rice plantation, so it's not the grand Tara-type of place. And it's privately owned, but the owners allow tours all day. You get to go into their bedrooms, attic and basement. But not their drawers or closets.
Here's the thing, after the tour, we were hungry and we were a long way from the main road north to where the restaurants were. But they have a small cafe on location, The River Oak Cottage. After some debate about going or staying, we stayed. And we were glad we did. The food was terrific and the deserts even better. It's a light menu, but very tasty. Local dishes with their own little twists. And was a nice change of pace from all the franchise restaurants we had been frequenting. Anyway, if you find yourself in South Carolina, stop there. #354, Apr. '01 Things were getting busy. And by things, I mean the covers. Oh, and this was the issue I was "granted" a title in the masthead, I was now Roving Editor. This was in lieu of actual cash. #353, May '01 There were longer gaps now between my appearances in the magazine and there would be longer gaps between issues of the magazine itself now. The editor wrote a note on the masthead announcing the great bits in the magazine. They were touting a reprint from just the previous year along with one from the 1960s. It was a clumsy mix of old and new, but the guy was really being backed into a corner, finance wise. #349, Nov '00 As I noted earlier, the company that owned Cracked was sold to the company that owned The National Enquirer. All the editorial staff left. Or rather the magazine left to move to Florida to the headquarters of America Media. The change wasn't immediate, except for the covers which got tabloid-style busy like you'd see on Weekly World News (the former home of the new editor). #348, Oct '00 Ok, here's the deal; While I was missing from its pages for the previous five issues, Cracked (and its parent company) got sold to American Media (the owners of the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News). Little did we, the freelancers, know it was the beginning of the end. There was still a lot of material in the pipeline from the old regime that would make it into the pages. But the new editor had his own crew coming in. The level of competency between old and new is really noticeable. Note the cover. And the new editor insisted he was an ace artist and had his own "cast of characters" he was going to turn into regular characters in the pages of Cracked. |
Dan FiorellaFreelance writer, still hacking away. Archives
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