Page 96

Similar to GQ's "Open Letter" or Mad Magazine's "Fold-In", "Page 96" was a humorous and topical way to close out each issue of the magazine. The section allowed for the greatest creative freedom as there were no requirements for content or format. The only rule was that it had to make our readers laugh.

For an all-food issue we produced, my idea for this section was a parody of that family restaurant staple, the puzzle-laden child's menu. Because the level of difficulty on the games tends to hover on the lower end of the eight year old intellect spectrum, I thought it would be funny to see an incredibly difficult puzzle collection for gifted children.

Internet solicitation from online "universities" promising discount degrees and college correspondence courses on the cheap is a familiar sight to anyone with an email address. For the last page of a March issue where the cover feature was an interview with NCAA president Myles Brand, I composed such an advertisement from "Phoennix University", regarding the fundamentally absurd formation of a varsity basketball program at the online school.

The Indiana State Fair is one of the largest state fairs in the country and is a major point of interest and conversation in the month of August. Implicit with any large fair is a sizable midway, constructed and administrated by those oft-ridiculed American gypsies known as carnies. But bolting together the Tilt-a-whirl or guessing a fairgoer's physical dimensions must require some sort of knowledge and training, or at very least, a short competency exam.

Themed restaurants were constantly a source of both disdain and hilarity at IMM's office. I once pointed out that every Restaurant corporation must employ someone who has the responsibility of finding theme-appropriate designations for the men and women signs on the restrooms doors. This observation led me to create a simple matching game of such signs for several area restaurants.

Angie's List is a national company headquartered in Indianapolis. Angie Hicks founded the outfit, which details customer reviews of a myriad of service professionals, soon after graduating college. But maybe she caught the consumer advocacy bug at a very young age.