Dick DeBartolo | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | October 19, 1945 78) Brooklyn, New York, U.S. [1] | (age
Occupation | Writer |
Known for |
|
Spouse | Dennis Wunderlin (m. 2012) |
Website | gizwiz |
Dick DeBartolo (born October 19, 1945) is an American writer, most famous for writing for Mad . He is occasionally referred to as "Mad's Maddest Writer", [3] this being a twist on Don Martin's former status as "Mad's Maddest Artist". DeBartolo served as the magazine's "Creative Consultant" from 1984 to 2009. He is also known for his work on Match Game in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mad long spaced out DeBartolo's articles to ensure that at least one appeared in every issue. From 1966 to 2019, new DeBartolo material appeared in 459 consecutive issues, dating back to 1966. This is tied for the longest such streak with Sergio Aragonés (whose streak is active). [4]
DeBartolo has written well over 250 television or film parodies for the magazine, easily the most by any Mad writer. [5]
DeBartolo recounted his first-ever experience submitting material to Mad in 1961:
DeBartolo was also a writer for several TV game shows, beginning with Barry-Enright before moving on to Goodson-Todman. DeBartolo was on the staff of the original Match Game in 1962, when the show was cancelled by NBC. In what were supposed to be the final weeks of the program, DeBartolo is credited with coming up with the silly and suggestive style of questions that the show is remembered for, which led to improved ratings and an "un-cancellation" that kept the show on the air. At the same time, DeBartolo cast several of the show's panelists and guests in his own 8mm film comedies, which he shot on the studio's rooftop. A rare public showing of those films was held in a Manhattan hotel ballroom in 1964.
DeBartolo told Game Show Network in 2006 that when Match Game moved its production west to Los Angeles in the 1970s, he stayed in New York and mailed in his questions to the Match Game staff in Los Angeles. The 1973 West Coast-based version ran for nine more years on CBS and in syndication, with DeBartolo as a long-distance contributor; even writing questions for the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour on NBC and the 1990 revival on ABC. Besides his experience on Match Game, DeBartolo served as creative consultant on other Goodson-Todman game shows, such as Tattletales and What's My Line . In 1971, he was able to induce Mad publisher William M. Gaines to appear on To Tell the Truth as himself. However, all four panelists failed to pick out the real Gaines. After stumping the panel, Gaines jokingly denied knowing DeBartolo. [7] After the episode, panelist Kitty Carlisle told DeBartolo, "I never figured it was him. I mean, look at the way he's dressed. I was looking for someone who ran a very successful magazine, so I thought it couldn't be him!"
DeBartolo's book, Good Days and Mad: A Hysterical Tour Behind the Scenes at Mad Magazine (1994), traces his first 30 years at Mad and details his friendship with publisher William Gaines. Featuring contributions from other Mad writers and artists, the book recounts memorable anecdotes, notably the ascent that DeBartolo, Gaines, and Gaines' wife Annie once made through the arm of the Statue of Liberty.
DeBartolo was also the author of numerous non-reprint Mad paperbacks, including MAD-vertising, MAD Murders the Movies, and The MAD Book of Sex, Violence, and Home Cooking. [8] DeBartolo also scripted several of Don Martin's "Captain Klutz" adventures, which appeared in Martin's series of paperbacks.
In February 2006, Dick DeBartolo and Leo Laporte began producing a podcast called The Daily Giz Wiz, a short, daily discussion about technology and gadgets appearing on TWiT.tv. Each episode features one gadget chosen by DeBartolo, except for Tuesdays, when Laporte chooses it (Turn the Tables Tuesday). Many times, the gadget is not a fancy mainstream one, but a weird, odd, or extremely simple device. For the Friday episodes, DeBartolo picks the gadget from his Gadget Warehouse, an actual storage facility in NYC he rents for keeping his old gadgets.
For its 600th episode on June 27, 2008. DeBartolo traveled from NYC to Petaluma, California to do the 600th show with Laporte on TWiT Live Archived 2011-09-15 at the Wayback Machine ; the gadget was "Fred Lanes" third hand.
A shorter, weekly version of "The Daily Giz Wiz" had formerly appeared on Laporte's syndicated radio show The Tech Guy, but was discontinued after a radio network request to make way for more live callers. But, as of mid-2010, DeBartolo comes on Laporte's radio show on Saturday to discuss a gadget. In 2011, the daily netcast program was refactored into a weekly netcast, therefore retitled "The Weekly Daily Giz Wiz."
On July 24, 2012, "The Weekly Daily Giz Wiz," changed its day, format, and show title (again). Currently appearing on Thursdays, "The Giz Wiz" features DeBartolo and Chad "OMGChad" Johnson (or Leo Laporte before January 2014) sharing gadget reviews, a random gadget, and a pick from the "Gadget Warehouse." A new segment, in connection with "Turn the Table Turkey," started on July 31, 2012, features "Crap We Found in Skymall," where the viewers vote on the gadget they want reviewed on the next week's show. This segment ended in mid-2013.
DeBartolo appears as a monthly guest of Computer America, which is heard in over 30 markets including New York and Boston, as well as a streaming broadcast on the internet. He also has a periodic "gadget" segment on ABC World News Now . DeBartolo made over 100 appearances on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee , offering purchasing advice about various devices and products.
On April 23, 2015, it was announced in Episode 1515 that The Giz Wiz would be leaving TWiT.tv and continuing the show solo with Chad "OMGChad" Johnson, utilizing Patreon for funding. [9]
On August 23, 2012, DeBartolo married his partner of 32 years, Dennis Wunderlin. [10]
DeBartolo was awarded the Inkpot Award in 2011. [11]
Mad is an American humor magazine first published in 1952. It was founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, launched as a comic book series before it became a magazine. It was widely imitated and influential, affecting satirical media, as well as the cultural landscape of the 20th century, with editor Al Feldstein increasing readership to more than two million during its 1973–1974 circulation peak.
Gene Rayburn was an American radio and television personality. He is best known as the host of various editions of the American television game show Match Game for over two decades.
Match Game is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the last six decades. The game features contestants trying to match answers given by celebrity panelists to fill-in-the-blank questions. Beginning with the CBS run of the 1970s, the questions are often formed as humorous double entendres.
William Maxwell "Bill" Gaines was an American publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines presided over what became an artistically influential and historically important line of mature-audience comics. He published the satirical magazine Mad for over 40 years.
The Screen Savers is an American TV show that aired on TechTV from 1998 to 2005. The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV on May 11, 1998. The Screen Savers originally centered on computers, new technologies, and their adaptations in the world. However, after it was taken over by G4, the show became more general-interest oriented and focused somewhat less on technology. The final episode of The Screen Savers aired on March 18, 2005. Repeat episodes continued to air until March 25, 2005 when its replacement program Attack of the Show! began 3 days later on March 28, 2005. Two spiritual successors to The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech on the TWiT Network with Leo Laporte and Tekzilla on Revision3 with Patrick Norton, were started after the original show concluded. On April 19, 2015, Leo Laporte announced The New Screen Savers, which began airing on TWiT network May 2, 2015.
John C. Dvorak is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a regular columnist in a variety of magazines. He was vice president of Mevio, and has been a host on TechTV and TWiT.tv. He is currently a co-host of the No Agenda podcast.
Leo Laporte is the former host of The Tech Guy weekly radio show and founder of TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host (1998–2008) and a technology author. On November 19, 2022, actor, writer, musician, and comedian Steve Martin called into Laporte's radio show to announce Leo's retirement from The Tech Guy radio show. Laporte's last new radio show was December 18, 2022 with reruns for the remainder of the year. Rich DeMuro later appeared on the show to announce that he will be taking over in January with a weekly show, recorded on Saturdays, called "Rich On Tech."
What's My Line? is a panel game show that originally ran in the United States, between 1950 and 1967, on CBS. The game show started in black and white and later in color, with subsequent U.S. revivals. The game uses celebrity panelists to question contestants in order to determine their occupation. The majority of the contestants were from the general public, but there was one weekly celebrity "mystery guest" for which the panelists were blindfolded. It is on the list of longest-running U.S. primetime network television game-shows. Originally moderated by John Charles Daly and most frequently with regular panelists Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and Bennett Cerf, What's My Line? won three Emmy Awards for "Best Quiz or Audience Participation Show" in 1952, 1953, and 1958 and the Golden Globe Awards for Best TV Show in 1962.
The Mad Fold-In is a feature of the American humor and satire magazine Mad. Written and drawn by Al Jaffee until 2020, and by Johnny Sampson thereafter, the Fold-In is one of the most well-known aspects of the magazine, having appeared in nearly every issue of the magazine starting in 1964. The feature was conceived in response to centerfolds in popular magazines, particularly Playboy.
Julius "Nipsey" Russell was an American actor, comedian, poet, and dancer best known for his appearances as a panelist on game shows from the 1960s through the 1990s, including Match Game, Password, Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and Pyramid. His appearances were often distinguished by short, humorous poems he recited during the broadcast, which led to his nickname "the poet laureate of television". He had one of the leading roles in the film version of The Wiz as the Tin Man. He was a frequent guest on the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast series and often appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien during the program's early years.
Amber Dawn MacArthur is a Canadian television and netcasting personality, bestselling author of two books, and keynote speaker. MacArthur is the former co-host of BNN's App Central and Bloomberg Brink, G4TechTV's Call for Help, and TWiT's The Social Hour. She was the most followed Canadian television personality on Twitter in 2008. In 2018, she was named DMZ's 30 inspirational women making a difference in tech.
This Week in Tech–casually referred to as TWiT, and briefly known as Revenge of the Screen Savers–is the weekly flagship podcast and namesake of the TWiT.tv network. It is hosted by Leo Laporte and many other former TechTV employees and currently produced by Jason Howell. It features round-table discussions and debates surrounding current technology news and reviews, with a particular focus on consumer electronics and the Internet. TWiT is produced in the TWiT "eastside" studios in Petaluma, California, United States, since 2016, a few miles away from the former "brickhouse" studios where it had been produced for 5 years, and earlier TWiT "cottage", where it was produced for over 6 years. The podcast is streamed live on Sundays at 2:15 P.M. PST.
Buzz Out Loud, "CNET's podcast of indeterminate length," or BOL, as it is affectionately titled by its fans, was a podcast about technology produced by CNET. The podcast was released daily on weekdays for the majority of its run, and weekly on Thursdays near its end. At its inception, the show was hosted by Tom Merritt and Molly Wood. Later in the shows life, other hosts, producers and guests appeared on the show although throughout most of its life, the show had either Tom, Molly or both hosting.
MacBreak was an internet television show hosted by Leo Laporte, Kendra Arimoto, Alex Lindsay, iJustine and Emery Wells from TWiT.tv and the Pixel Corps. The podcast was dedicated to Apple's Macintosh computers and other Apple products such as the iPod.
FLOSS Weekly is a free and open-source software (FLOSS) themed netcast from the TWiT Network. The show premiered on April 7, 2006, and features interviews with prominent guests from the free software/open source community. It was originally hosted by Leo Laporte; his co-host for the first seventeen episodes was Chris DiBona and subsequently Randal Schwartz. In May 2010, Schwartz took over from Laporte as lead host. May 2020 saw Doc Searls take over the host role in episode 578, and Jonathan Bennett leads the show since episode 762 in December 2023.
Alex Ben Lindsay is an American computer graphics and video production specialist. He is also the founder of the Pixel Corps and dvGarage which were both companies involved with computer graphics, computer animation and video production.
Missing Links is a Goodson-Todman game show hosted by Ed McMahon which originally ran on NBC from September 9, 1963 to March 27, 1964, then moved to ABC for its final nine months, with Dick Clark replacing McMahon as host.
The Tech Guy was a widely syndicated US radio show hosted by Leo Laporte, formerly of TechTV and later with TWiT.tv. The show, which was first exclusively broadcast on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles, was picked up for syndication by Premiere Networks in February 2007. Laporte streamed video of his side of the show on TWiT Live, including caller audio. The show was available live on Saturdays and Sundays at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Natali Terese Morris is an American online media personality and co-founder of Morris Invest, a real estate investment company. She was formerly a technology news journalist with CNET and CBS.
Veronica Ann Belmont is an American online media personality. She was formerly the co-host of the Revision3 show Tekzilla alongside Patrick Norton. Belmont was the co-host of the former TWiT.tv gaming show Game On! along with Brian Brushwood, and the former host of the monthly PlayStation 3-based video on demand program Qore. Additionally, she was the host for the Mahalo Daily podcast and a producer and associate editor for CNET Networks, Inc. where she produced, engineered, and co-hosted the podcast Buzz Out Loud.