With apologies to Samuel Beckett, today’s blog has little to do with “Waiting for Godot,” and more to do with just waiting. Well, that’s not entirely true. In “Waiting for Godot,” the characters spend the entire play waiting for a someone named Godot who never shows up. It’s about the fruitlessness of waiting for something to happen that never does. Waiting to hit the lottery. Waiting for that long lost love to come running back into your arms, waiting for the Mets to win another World Series (sorry, just had to throw that one in), or in Marv’s case, waiting to lose enough weight to fit back into his “skinny pants.” Or waiting for his lawn mower battery to recharge. At least in the case of the lawn mower, the event he’s waiting for will actually occur. But in the meantime, why not take a little rest?

You know the older I get, the more I appreciate a little rest. You know the cliche, “when you want a task to get done, give it to somebody who’s too busy to do it”? Example: I remember back in time (38 years ago, to be exact) my wife and I both had full-time jobs and my wife was 6 or 7 months pregnant. We were moving into a condo development which was still under construction. One random mid-week afternoon, we both asked for extended lunch breaks, took the train to our new suburb, went into the condo’s office and picked out our floor shade, window treatments, and what seemed like 20 other decisions in about an hour, took the train back into the city, and went back to work. In contrast, I know of someone who was long retired (in other words, with little to do) who took over two years to replace a single set of drapes.

In retirement, Marv doesn't have that much to do. When I worked full-time I used to go to the gym every morning at 7 am to fit in exercise before my work day started. Yesterday, I finished working on the comic, debated going out for an invigorating hike on an absolutely sparkling day, then decided, like Marv to lay down on the couch for “just a minute” while I worked my way through The NY Times crossword puzzle, Spelling Bee, Mini Crossword, Wordle and my new favorite, Connections. Then by accident my eyes fluttered to a complete close. You see, it’s not that I didn’t have enough time to exercise, it’s that I had too much time. Capiche? To be fair John does not fit my cliche, and spends his free time chopping wood, carving pumpkins and building stuff. Phew, after just writing about chopping wood I need to lie down. Just for a minute or two.

On second thought, maybe Marv’s saving his skinny pants has little to do with waiting for something that will never happen, but more to do with hope. Now as the co-creators of Marv, John and I think he might be waiting in vain. But you never know.

Getting back to hope for a minute, we hope you pick up our book, The New 60: A Comic Collection for the Ages. You can buy it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or the Archway Publishing websites. The Amazon link is https://a.co/d/j2wjguY. If you do happen to choose Amazon, please give us a 5 star review and a little sentence or two (or three…the longer the better,) about why you like the book. It helps us move up the Amazon popularity list. You know…algorithms. Okay you don’t know algorithms, that makes three of us.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week,

Andy and John