Today, I was in the gym on a treadmill while Kanye West was blathering on to Donald Trump. In this gym, they had MSNBC on a tv to the left of me and Fox News to the right. Seriously. But what I noticed, is that the middle was empty. How’s that for a metaphor? When you think about ideas for comics you think about the things we do that make us alike. Things that we can all relate to. As opposed to things that drive us apart.

Case in point, have you ever struggled with those new-fangled parking meters? Well I was meeting John for breakfast one early morning after we were interviewed on a local radio show. He was rushed on the other end because he had a tennis game coming up. I pulled up to one of those new meters where you have to download a parking app and add a user name and password, not to mention the zone number, meter number and my credit card number. Phew. All this on an empty block and it took almost 20 minutes before I came inside the diner. When I got there, John was finishing breakfast and had to leave in 5 minutes. This, we thought, deserves to get turned into a comic.

When you do this stuff long enough you start to see the world through the prism of your comic strip. Yep, that’s a comic. Nope, that’s not a comic.

Take a couple of weekends ago for example. My whole family was invited to a wedding. The groom was the son of very close friends and two years ago, said son even officiated my daughter’s wedding. My wife and I know most of the “kids” there. Knew them since they were, well, actual kids. Now they were young adults either approaching 30 or well into their 30’s. People who had important jobs, fascinating careers, and in some case, children of their own. We spoke as peers, but deep down I still saw them as kids and they still saw me as Mr. Landorf, or Ali and Greg’s dad. And that difference, between the way we think and the way we act, is what makes for good material. And was the inspiration for our second comic this week.

If you’ve read this far you’ve come to the “bonus” part. A third new comic. But if you read us on Facebook at thenew60comic.com (how’s that for a subtle plug) you’ve seen it already this morning. It’s a new format we've come up with. One that we will throw in there from time to time. It’s called Then and Now. It’s about, unsurprisingly, the way we did things back then, and the way we do them now. It’s fun to think back about the way we were, and for John, it’s fun to draw tie dye shirts, ponytails and mutton chop sideburns.

That’s it for this week, and if we’ve done our jobs right, it’ll be funny for Democrats and Republicans. Independents, not so much. Kidding.

Have a great weekend

Andy/John