Pretending to be Jewish, instituting an Employee of the Month award, electing George Santos to Congress — they all seemed like good ideas at the time, but, in retrospect, some of them worked out better than others. Which got me to thinking, what were some of my great ideas that I wish I could take back? There was that party in my early 20’s in a suburb of Chicago, when I tried my first pot brownie. Of course nothing happened so I ate a second one. Whoops. I tried to tell my body, “Slow down now. Stop. You’re plenty high enough. Okay now stop. I SAID STOP!!!!!!” But that wasn’t all, I then snuck out of the party and drove back home, which at the time was Evanston, Illinois. The trip should have taken about a half hour. Ten minutes through some dark, winding suburban streets until I hit the highway, and then another 15-20 minutes until I blessedly reached home. Along the way on the aforementioned dark, winding suburban streets, I noticed a police car coming up from behind me, lights flashing. I cursed softly to myself and stopped (nothing like flashing lights to sober you up in an instant). The officer approaches the car, I roll down my window, lower my voice a few octaves and give my best, “Hello Officer.” He looks at me and says, “Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” And I replied, “No sir. I don’t” And he responded, “9 miles per hour. Try and pick it up a bit and get home safely.” I said (still in my deep octave voice), “Thank you officer and have a nice night.” Phew. Maybe not the best decision making.

And then there was the time at the NY Health and Racquet Club. I went there every morning before work, right when the doors opened at 7:00 am. I was an advertising copywriter at the time and I befriended a guy who designed blue jeans for Murjani. We’d jog together and end up stretching together at the end of our workouts. One day, he tells me he’s thinking of going out on his own and asks if I’d be interesting in doing his advertising to help him grow. I told him, “You know, I’m really flattered, but I don’t know the first thing about fashion advertising, Tommy.” Oh, did I forget to mention his last name was Hilfiger?

But I’d be remiss to mention bad decisions without mentioning one of John’s most egregious career errors. I was between jobs at the time and got a freelance gig at the agency, Ogilvy and Mather. They teamed me up with a guy on staff to write commercials. This guy was an art director who was in need of a partner. His name was John Colquhoun. Yeah, that John Colquhoun. We worked together for a week or so. And then the creative director came over, shook my hand and informed me today would be my last day, but keep in touch. I recounted this incident to John when we reconnected a couple decades later, and he had absolutely no recollection of that week. Had he liked my effort we could have rocketed to advertising superstardom, or, failing that, at least gotten a 20 year jump on the comic strip. But I evidently made such an impression that he still isn’t sure I ever worked there. Like Brando said in On the Waterfront, “I coulda been a contender.” Of course John went on to make a bunch of famous commercials for Little Caesars and even got to work with Jerry Seinfeld for Amex, but still…

At any rate I feel duty bound to reprint John’s response: “Andy likes to bring this up every now and again to make me feel bad and I’m pretty sure it never happened. Or perhaps it happened to Andy and another John Colquhoun. It was Manhattan after all, a city of 8+ million people. You can’t swing a dead cat in Manhattan without hitting another John Colquhoun…”

So here we are. After all these questionable decisions we’re still around. Entering our fifth year of The New 60. Our first published comic was January 25th, 2018. Our thanks to all of you loyal readers who follow the comic and the blog every week. You are what keeps us going. Well, that and the dream of syndication. If and when that day comes, hopefully we’ll learn from our past and give that syndicator a resounding “YES!”

Oh, and if Tommy Hilfiger is listening and wants to remake that offer, I’ll strongly reconsider it.

Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with two new comics.

Andy and John