A very special shout out to our friend Betsy Cadel, who not only suffered a case of hat hair, but helped shape it (the idea, not her hair) into an idea for a new strip. Hat hair is just one of the injustices of a cold winter. And unlike the comic, it even happens to bald people. Trust us.

It’s the little funny indignities we go through each day that make their way into our comics. As long as they are relevant to people in their 60’s. The good news for us is that a lot of what’s relevant to people in their 60’s is relevant to people in their 50’s. Or 70’s. Or even 30’s. Okay, that might be stretching it a little, but you get the point. By all means, please share it with your friends of all ages.

The second idea actually happened to one of us. Okay it was me, Andy. You know the old cliche about turning chicken shit into chicken salad? This one was like that. When I told it to John, he had the character trip over the dog with the pizza flying through the air. But I didn’t trip over a dog. I don’t have a dog. John has a dog, but he didn’t attempt to make a pizza. See, that’s what makes us good partners.

ANYWAY, in actuality, it was the result of an exceedingly poor transfer from pizza stone, to pizza peel, to dinner plate. As the slow motion horror unfolded (of the pizza folding on itself) it looked for all the world like a calzone. Just the night before, my wife had executed the transfer seamlessly (we made two balls of dough). Next night, with Joanie out of town, I tried it myself, bungled it and the world’s sloppiest calzone was born. It tasted pretty damned good, by the way, and who knew, 4 years after it became a dinner, it would become a comic.

So that’s it for this week. Next week, in addition to the endless babble about the Super Bowl (we used to watch for the commercials, but that was when we were in advertising) we will be back with two completely- unrelated-to-Super-Sunday comic strips.

See you next Friday

Andy and John