All About Al. 07/15/23

We got an email from one of our readers saying she kept misreading the name “Al” as “AI” or artificial intelligence. Granted the “l” and the “capital I” resemble each other, but if you read it in context, it will sort itself out. Except now, every time I type the name Al, I think “what if someone thinks I meant A.I.?” So from now on, A.I. will have periods between the letters whereas the name “Al” will not. Capiche? Also, Al doesn't possess that much intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

But this week it’s all about Al, the guy. In one comic he’s getting ready to move out of the house he lived in with Joanne and the house they raised their children in. It’s a big, emotional move. For some people. I remember when my wife and I moved out of the house we raised our kids in, we pulled out of the driveway and I asked my wife, “Wanna take one last moment to look at the house we lived in for the past 30 years?” She replied, “Nah.” Her mother once told her, “A house is only your home when you live there with your loved ones.” Or as Luther Vandross once sang, “A chair is still a chair/ even when there’s no one sitting there. But a chair is not a house/ and a house is not a home/When there’s no one there to hold you tight/and no one there you can kiss goodnight.”

For Al at least, it’s an emotional moment. And it’s one we think many of our readers have experienced or will experience once they’ve reached a certain age. Fill the house with the scent of cookies baking in the oven, fill the air with jazz. These days real estate agents employ someone called a “stager.” The stager basically removes everything that’s personal and that you cherish. “Take those family pictures down, people want to imagine their own families,” is an example of their wisdom. I put my foot down, however, when I came home from work one day and saw the stager had moved the L-shaped couch from in front of the tv into another room. I called her and asked her to move it right back to where it started. I don’t care if moving the couch makes the house “more sellable.” I just need a place to park my butt when I watch the Mets! Having said that, the house sold in one day so I guess the stager knew what she was doing.

And then we return to Al’s second career, managing a Pizza-on-a-Stick franchise. Note: John is still experimenting at home with a way to actually make pizza on a stick, and he promises photos once he figures it out. The sticking point, or rather the non-sticking point, is how do you get the toppings from not falling on either the floor or yourself? I must confess I have trouble preventing food from falling on me even when sitting down at a dining room table, so I’d have no shot of not wearing several pieces of pepperoni to go along with multiple grease stains if I ever tried to consume a pizza on a stick. So John, good luck with your experiment, but please don’t ask me to try it unless you’ve saved one of your granddaughter’s bibs for me. At any rate we get to see what happens when the workers take over at Al’s franchise as Al recuperates from an undisclosed illness. As John likes to say, “hilarity ensues.”

That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next week with two new chapters in the saga of Pizza-on-a-Stick minus Al. Have a great weekend and if you want a pizza, try it by the slice instead. Trust us.

Andy and John