Night Owl Cards

Satire. It's everywhere. Even in the 1970s, it was everywhere. In newspaper editorial cartoons. On Johnny Carson. In a new late-night comedy show called "Saturday Night Live." But as a kid, who didn't understand newspapers yet and who couldn't stay up that late (who even knew that a TV worked at midnight?), there were only two places where we could find satirical content. At the corner store and at my grandmother's house. My grandmother's was a haven for satire and parody in the form of the high holy trinity of humor magazines in the '70s: Mad, Cracked and Crazy. I believe Mad is the only one left standing. Now if you knew my grandmother, you'd know she didn't have a satirical bone in her body. She was a pleasant, quiet-spoken woman who baked cookies, watched birds and grew up on a farm. But her son -- my uncle -- operated a music studio in her home, providing piano and organ lessons to just about everyone musically incl...