Late one extremely hot night in the spring of 1958, alone and naked, I was sitting at my desk in Lyle Stuart’s office, preparing final copy for the first issue of the Realist. I had served my journalistic apprenticeship at Stuart’s anticensorship paper, the Independent, and now I was launching my own satirical magazine. The 60s counterculture was in its embryonic stage, almost ready to burst out of the blandness, repression and piety of the Eisenhower-Nixon administration, Reverend Norman Vincent Peale’s positive thinking and Snooky Lanson singing "It’s a Marshmallow World" on Lucky Strike Hit Parade.

I was supposed to have everything ready for the printer the next morning. I was exhausted, but there were two final pieces to write. My bare buttocks stuck to the leather chair as I created an imaginary dialogue about clean and dirty bombs. Then I borrowed a form from Mad and composed "A Child’s Primer on Telethons." Our office was on the same floor as Mad, in what became known as the Mad building—225 Lafayette St. I had sold a few freelance articles to them, but other submissions were turned down because they were "too adult." [ read on! ]

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