Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to Me!

The Rake is the oldest continuously published periodical in the English language, but it didn’t get to this venerable and celebrated position without sacrifices! You remember the Cedars of Lebanon? They provided the reams of paper that became our massive “Top Priests” issue of May, 501 AD. Atlantis? The island defaulted on payment for its legendary “Get to the Bottom of It All” tourism campaign that ran in our pages, which at the time were printed on clay tablets. (Our tough-love comptroller sank the island, along with its economy, sometime during the tenth century BC.) Throughout it all, we’ve managed to keep sex, violence, and moral turpitude out of our glossy pages. The cost for such constancy and righteousness? Well, let’s just say you’d be surprised at the improvements in staff morale that accrue from our semi-annual pig-roast, bake sale, and office orgy—a relatively new tradition, established by our legendary 19th century publisher, Lord Thomas Aquinas Bartel. A “safe room” with duct-tape and plastic sheeting? We’ve been into that since the Gilded Age.