At my retirement party my co-workers gave me a new iPhone.

What does the “I” in “iPhone” stand for anyway? Why does everything need a pronoun in front of it? There’s the iPhone. There’s YouTube. There’s Wii Bowling. And of course there’s she-males. But that’s just at one bar I sometimes go to with Mike Wallace.

This new iPhone comes with a 2-year contract. That’s a long term commitment for a man my age. The library won’t even lend me books anymore. My health’s not that good. Last week the doctors found blood in my urine. The week before that, they found urine in my blood. Even as I’m typing this, I’m tasting copper. They used to make pennies out of copper. Now it’s zinc. Zinc’s a funny word...  It... Oh, f**k  it.

You can type on an iPhone. I like to type on a typewriter. Too bad Underwood didn’t ever get into the cell phone game. That’s a brand you can trust. It’s the Studebaker of typewriters!

I understand that these phones have to be charged. I never have to charge the phone in my kitchen. I don’t think you should have to charge an appliance. If you had to charge your blender, you’d never use it!

I went to get my fedora blocked and the owner, Gary, was on something called a Bluetooth. That sounds like something you get from eating too many blueberries. Not to be confused with a Blackberry, which is another kind of phone. Maybe they should get together. Black and blue. They could create a phone called The Bruise. Whew! I almost collapsed after coming up with that one!

Morley Safer said this phone comes with 500 minutes. I don’t know if 500 minutes is enough – I could talk for that long just about cottage cheese. Not that you’d ever want to talk to Morely Safer for 500 minutes. He’s a very boring man.

Now, where was I about cottage cheese...

We know what you’re thinking. In this age of digital photography and Photoshopping, it would be oh so easy for us to take a photo of the First Lady shopping at Target yesterday and fill her cart with a treasure trove of MAD books, DVDs, T-shirts, Spy Halloween costumes and more in a desperate attempt to elevate our status and drum up business for our ersatz line of products. But you would be wrong! It wasn’t “oh so easy!” It was actually a lot of work!

Only time will tell if The X-Factor is worthy of receiving "The Ecch-Factor" treatment in our pages.

There’s a legal thriller beginning in Los Angeles and paparazzi from around the world have got to be there as the trial begins for Michael Jackson’s former personal physician. Dr. Conrad Murray is charged with the involuntary manslaughter of the King of Pop. The question is: will he beat it? From our "MAD 20 Dumbest 2009" issue (#502), comes this hit.