Perspective 09/09/22

If you’re old enough to be reading The New 60, you’re probably old enough to have grandchildren. And if you’re old enough to have grandchildren you know that you’ve just been knocked back a rung or two in the family pecking order. Speaking from experience, my wife and I rented a beach house this summer and invited our daughter, her husband and their child, who doubles as our first grandchild. Now admittedly she is cute as a button, likely the cutest baby ever (okay that’s just grandpa getting carried away…a little) but enough is enough. One day my wife was feverishly working, door to our bedroom closed as she conducted a zoom meeting on her computer. I needed to desperately ask her a question and couldn't wait for her meeting to end in order to ask the question. She had at least another hour to go. So I gingerly opened the door and entered the room. She looked over her shoulder, saw it was me and waved me away, as if to say “Get out of here, can’t you see I’m in the middle of an important meeting?” I retreated. Now to be fair, she is the only one of us with a full-time job since I unceremoniously “retired” from advertising at the end of 2016, and her work is very important. At any rate, not five minutes later our granddaughter came crawling down the hallway, and I, feeling rejected (and being a wiseass) , wanted to get my wife back. So I said to the baby, “Want to see grandma? C’mon, she’s right in here. So baby Charlotte crawls right up to the door, and slaps at it, making a loud sound repeatedly. My wife comes to the door ready to hand me my head, when she looks down, sees who’s making the racket, and in her sweetest, highest voice, says Hiiiiiiiii sweetheart, want Grandma to pick you up?” And of course she does, brings Charlotte to the computer, introduces her to the zoom meeting, and everybody is oohing and ahhing and speaking in their own high voices for the next five minutes, before she hands Charlotte back to her mom, shuts the door and resumes the meeting. Now couldn't she have done the same with me? Granted she couldn't have lifted me up, but at least an “Excuse me guys, I just have to speak to my husband for a second, oh wait, want to meet him?” I mean I am 69, which is not nearly as cute as our 16- month-old, but I am temporarily disabled with a broken ankle suffered while riding a bicycle. So give me a little break, but wait, I’d rather not have any more breaks. Okay, I guess it’s pretty tough to score sympathy points when competing with a baby. She wins. As does my wife and her accurate set of priorities. But what I had to say was important. Something crucial like, “Could you pick up some tonic water at the grocery store?” In truth it was so unimportant that I can’t even remember what it was. So maybe it wasn't that important, but it did inspire our first comic.

Next up was Pickleball. John is a tennis player and has also tried his hand at Pickleball. It is being billed as a great sport for seniors, right up there with walking and frisbee golf. It requires good hand-eye coordination and not much running since most people play doubles and the court is about a third the size of a tennis court. But what it does require is a lot of quick movements including lunging. Back to my broken ankle. I was reading an article about the emerging popularity of Pickleball, when they quoted Dr. Neil Roth, an orthopedic surgeon, extensively. Dr. Roth said it was a great game for seniors for many reasons but cautioned that he had repaired a lot of broken limbs as a result of Pickleball. That stopped me because that is the same Dr. Roth who just performed surgery on my ankle. When John and I discussed how we were going to approach Pickleball, I suggested doing a comic about a broken limb, but he went right to the fact that part of the court is called the kitchen and we both knew who has trouble in the kitchen. Loveable old Marv, that’s who.

So that’s it for this week. Enjoy your weekend, Can you believe it’s already football season? See you next week with two new ones,

Andy and John

Lazy Days of Summer 09/02/22

Well Monday is it. Labor Day, end of summer, back to work (for our younger readers who still work), and even more horrifying, back to the office and back to commuting. In our Labor Day comic, Al and Marv ponder all this and, as a smile forms on their lips, realize they no longer have to put up with any of it. I was reminded of a time 6 years ago, November, when my time as an ad guy came screeching to a halt (not my decision). It was the first free, non-vacation weekend I had in 40 years. I was taking a walk with my wife on this beautiful natural trail through the woods called the Old Croton Aqueduct. Yep, that’s right, it used to be an aqueduct carrying water from Croton-Harmon in Westchester all the way down to NY City. And then man discovered pipes, and so no more aqueduct. All that was left was this beautiful, wooded trail that stretches for 26 miles, about the length of a marathon. But I digress (is it really digressing when it’s something you do all the time?) Anyway, it was a Saturday afternoon and I realized I had forgotten to go grocery shopping. Saturday afternoon was my time to go shopping, because I commuted and worked Monday through Friday. I said to my wife, “Damn, we’ve got to cut this walk short. I forgot to go to Whole Foods (yeah, call me a yuppie but that’s where I go). She turned to look at me and said, “Why don’t you just go Monday?” It took a second for this new reality to sink in, and as it did, I felt my shoulders drop as I relaxed, and realized this was going to be my new reality. Free time, bike rides on Tuesdays, golf on Wednesdays, movies on a Monday when everyone else was working. Woo hoo! We imagined that’s how Al and Marv might feel as they pondered their own futures.

Our next comic was about grandparenting. How can you get the most joy from the least work? If you’re not yet a grandparent, believe us, there’s a lot of work. And a lot of joy. If you can figure out how to cut down on the work and up the joy, you’ve got yourself a winning combo. And bingo, we had our comic. Al just attached an inner tube to a rope tied to a remote-controlled boat, and the kid was being towed all over the pool without Al having to once get off his lazy butt. We all have shortcuts we use from time to time. Some, like putting the kids in front of Sesame Street while you get ready for work, are considered helpful. While others, like putting the kids in front of cartoon shows while you get ready for work, are considered lazy.

So how would you consider Al’s shortcut of watching his granddaughter in the swimming pool. Ingenious? Or lazy? Or a bit of both? Obviously Joanne, Al’s wife, opted for lazy.

Enjoy the last weekend of your lazy Summer as we retired folks transition to our lazy Fall. See you next week with two new ones. See, we’re not that lazy. Or at least John isn’t.

Andy and John

Falling From Grace 7/29/22

For those of you who like shorter blogs, this is your week. One half of the New 60 team got hit by a car while on his bicycle this week. That constitutes one fall from grace (as well as a broken ankle.) Then we did a comic about a terrifying amusement park ride we called Free Fall, where you take a lift and step into what looks like an elevator 20 stories up in the air. The elevator then does a free fall until the hydraulics kick in and slow you down seemingly 10 feet from total destruction. I wouldn’t go on that for the life of me, but I guess it tops being hit by a car. And the final fall comes when the beloved waitress, Dottie, reveals today’s wordle. (Don’t worry readers, it isn’t really TODAY’S Wordle.)

But back to the amusement park. The genesis for this came from a visit to Great Adventure Amusement Park in New Jersey. Two dads took their two kids each. One had two boys, and I had a boy and a girl. On all the scariest rides, all three boys were raring to go. I was terrified. And my daughter looked a little reticent as well. So I did the brave thing and hid behind her. “Are you sure you want to go down this thing?” I’d ask. And she would decline and I’d tell my buddy, the other dad, why don’t you go with the boys and I’ll stay with my daughter. It all worked out in the end, though truth be told, if I had asked my daughter in a bright voice, “Wanna do down this thing with me???” she likely would have given it a try. So bad parenting yes, but give me a break, or rather don’t, my ankle is broken enough.

See you next week with two new ones and a walking boot.

Andy and John.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 10/22/21

Okay so there’s not really a comic about planes this week, but the trains and automobile parts, yeah. First the car part. When it’s time to fill up (and you drive a gas-powered vehicle) we get less and less help from the “service station.” I mean, where’s the service? Nowadays you’ve got to get out of the car, remove the gas cap, squeegee your own windshield, fill ‘er up with gas, pay in advance with your credit card that the pump doesn’t recognize in the first place, so you have to go inside anyway, and then you forget your mask so you have to return to the car to get your mask, and you haven’t even started pumping the premium yet. Want to check your oil, or refill your washer fluid or make sure the tire pressure is good? Fuhgeddaboudit.

This is one of the ways that society has unravelled. I was low on gas, and out on the eastern end of Long Island this summer when I pulled up to an old-fashioned gas station this summer with a name I’d never heard of. Royal Gas. I was looking in the glove compartment for the aforementioned gasoline credit card and when I sat up I nearly had a heart attack. There was this stranger hanging by my window, way too close, looking in at me. Tentatively, I rolled down said window and shakily asked, “yes?” The scary guy then said, “Regular or premium,” and it took my another second to realize that he was going to fill my car up for me. What was he gonna do next, offer a free toaster oven? Not. But that fit the narrative for our first comic, another in the Then and Now series.

Next up was the second and final version of our Model Train series. As we pointed out last week, John was much more into electric train sets than I was. Only thing I remember about my dad’s set was a rocket launcher and one of the coolest things ever, an exploding box car. Okay maybe it wasn’t the coolest thing ever, but it was pretty cool. No, really. I guess you had to be there. At any rate, we wondered what would happen if Al’s grandson got his hands on the train set, without having Al peering over his shoulder with one of those dad-like, “Don’t you dare touch anything until I say you can” kind of looks. The kid lets his imagination run wild which is obviously an excuse to let our imaginations run wild, and this was the result of our overwrought imaginations. Speaking of imaginations, I imagine some of you thinking, “Grow up already and write about something relevant or at least something happy,” but as Leslie Gore might have sung decades ago, “it’s our comic, and we’ll whine whine when we want to, whine when we want to, you would whine too if it happened to you.”

We will leave you with that and have a pleasant weekend, email the comic onto your friends so WE have a pleasant weekend and we’ll see yo next week with two new ones hot off the proverbial press, or at least off the internet.

John and Andy

When I'm 64 10/08/21

You know the Beatles’ ditty. This writer happens to be 68, but there are no song titles about that particular age. So we went with 6'4. And what does that have to do with the price of sliced bread, you ask. Actually, nothing. And everything. Because when you reach your 60’s, you can say it’s the new 40, but you’re only kidding yourself. It’s the New 60 (see how we cleverly threw that plug in?). You still play golf, but it’s in a cart. Okay, you might walk and carry occasionally, but only for 9 holes, not 18. Gone are the pickup touch football games, slow-pitch softball leagues, full-court basketball and road races. Now it’s a nice hike or walk. And that’s more than fine. But this week we focused on two activities that time is starting to infringe on (and yeah, I know I ended the sentence with a preposition, but you know what Churchill said about that rule? He said, “That is precisely the type of poppycock up with which I shall not put.”) I wish I could say it as well as Winston, but I’ll just stick to ending the occasional sentence with a preposition (from). See, I’ll even do it if it makes no damn sense.

At any rate the two activities we presented were 1) a trip to the county fair and 2) eating at the diner. Now everything being equal, we would have run the county fair in the heat of the summer, but this is when they happened to fit into our crowded calendars, so forgive our lack of timeliness. The County Fair is ripe with lots of fun activities, funnel cakes, Corndogs, Skee-ball and of course the rides. I have a couple of stories about the rides. The first one revolves around the time I went with a friend to Six Flags. He took his two sons who were around 7 and 10 years old and I took my daughter who was 11. Truth is, we’re both scared of things like loop-de-loop roller coasters and elevator drops. So while my friend and I encountered these scary rides, his two boys said, “Let’s go,” while my daughter was unsure. So I did the brave thing and hid behind her. I said to my friend, you go with the boys while I stay with Ali (my daughter). I mean I had no choice, did I? But secretly I told her “I’m glad you didn’t go. These things scare the hell out of me.” The other story was during a summer between college years. I went on a double date with my cousin and her serious boyfriend (who was also my roommate) and this girl I had just met. We went to a Chinese restaurant and then to Playland, a small deco amusement park in Westchester County, New York. Well the combination of egg rolls, moo shu pork and a swaying Ferris Wheel didn’t sit so well with yours truly, as a wave of nausea took hold. All I could think of was, please hold it in until we get down. Somehow I managed to do that and ran over to the bushes immediately after the seat bar was lifted. Just like Al, I tossed my cookies, as the saying goes, but this time my “cookies” happened to be the aforementioned egg rolls and moo shu. Maybe there was a fortune cookie in there somewhere so I could literally say I tossed my cookies, but it was not a great way to impress a girl on a first date. Suffice it to say that the amusement park is one area where we get less enjoyment the older we get.

Which brings us to another situation that does not improve with age. Hypochondria. I mean, do you listen to some of the discussions we all have when we go to dinner with similarly-aged friends? “Oh, my knee is killing me. I don’t think I can walk with you tomorrow.” Oy (for our Jewish friends, and me), my acid reflux is killing me, can you please serve it without the red pepper flakes.” Or, this is the absolute truth, my wife and I ate with very close friends of ours last weekend and when I remarked that the guy looked like he lost weight, he immediately replied, “It’s probably a deadly stomach disease.” So there you have it. In this case we had the guys show concern about a mysterious new black spot on Al’s arm. If you haven’t already read the comics, I won’t spoil it by telling you what the spot actually was.. John and I went back and forth several times about whether it was too gross to have him eat the “spot” after he scratches it off his arm. Lest you think we’re too prudish, the only reason he didn’t pop it in his mouth is because we ran out of frames. And there you have it, the sturm and drang of a cartoonist’s life. To eat or not to eat, that is the question.

And that is it for this week, we’ve got a couple new ones for you next week. Have a great weekend.

Andy and John

Expanding Families

This week we devoted ourselves to expanding families. Al’s family expands as his daughter Emily is about to give birth to twins. And Marv’s family expanded, or actually, Marv expanded by eating donuts, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But first to the upcoming birth. My own daughter gave birth to our first grandchild, Charlotte, back in April. We raced down to the hospital and when we got there, were told we couldn’t come in due to Covid-19 protocols. I suggested we go back home, because there was nothing we could do by being there. My wife refused and wanted to hang out there, “Just in case…” I could try every logical argument I could think of, but no, she wasn’t biting. It was clear I wasn’t winning this one. She was going to be there for our daughter and son-in-law come hell or high water. Finally, the baby arrived, and thank goodness everyone was okay and we eventually made our way back home. When I told John about this he instantly turned the idea around, saying we didn’t need the Covid part. The essential story was when it comes to the birth of a child or grandchild, mother (or grandma) knows best. So we just focused on the act of driving to the hospital. We all have our emotional connections and if they make sense to us, that’s all that counts. When I am watching a Mets game and it’s a tense situation, I give the pitcher or batter instructions. To the pitcher, “Throw him a curve ball, he’ll ground into a double play.” Or to the batter, “Don’t swing at the next pitch, let him walk you!” My wife will ask, “Who are you talking to?” I know my words have no effect, but what if they do? In a similar vein she knew she had to be there just until the baby was delivered. She knew there was nothing she could do about it, but just in case…

The second comic came from another observation. I shared with John, a story about our rental house this summer. A guest came up with two large cookies. Not just cookies in the traditional sense, but huuuuge cookies with all sorts of goodies baked inside. The guests were staying for a long weekend and for two days the cookies just sat there, still wrapped in plastic. Nobody wanted to be the fatso who committed to an entire cookie which must have contained at least a full day’s worth of calories. So I unwrapped the cookies and broke them up into 40 or 50 bite size pieces and put them out on the counter. Within one day they were gone. Everyone who passed through the kitchen, which was everyone, stopped and grabbed a bite size piece on their way to wherever it was they were going. “Oh, on my way to the pool, a little piece won’t hurt.” “Oh, on my way to the bathroom, what the hell, it’s just one bite.” “Going to run an errand, let me grab one while nobody’s looking.” John shared that he does this with the occasional donut and we had our second comic. Here’s a helpful hint, DO NOT try the broken cookie routine at home. 8 extra pounds later, you’ll be cursing us out.

One last point. The Mets finally won a game Wednesday night and you know why they won? Because I told the batter, Kevin Pillar, to hit a game-winning 3 run homer in the 11th inning and he listened. The fact that I recorded the game earlier and watched it hours after it had actually ended had nothing to do with it. The batter heard me! Everyone has their little emotional tics. And no two people have the same ones. But in the end, they are what make us, us.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Sid Grows Up (Al, not so much) 5/28/21

It’s easy for a couple of older guys to poke fun at 30+ year-olds still living at home. But the world today isn’t like the one we grew up with. Steady jobs with benefits that have a career path have been replaced by freelance gigs with no benefits whatsoever. They usually end with some form of “Thanks for the work, we’ll call you again next time we need you.” Followed by the click of a phone hanging up. Sigh. I actually once worked at an agency where I asked one of the other creative directors, “How do you find people who are content making the same ads into different sizes to fit different digital platforms?” His response, “I look for people with no ambition. People who are just happy to have a job.” Yikes. Well, your intrepid cartoonists were not about to let Sid suffer the same fate. So he sold his app for beaucoup bucks. And now he’s a big shot, in the way kids finding their first jobs and apartments are big shots. No place to sit, not furniture, not enough plates or silverware but, damn, there has to be room for a 70” hi-def tv and a Peloton. The Peloton is important because who among us wouldn’t want to have a $5,000 machine featuring a televised sweaty person in much better shape than we will ever be, screaming at you to tighten up that resistance screw, stand up on those pedals and move! move! move! That they have. A couch with an ottoman? Not so much.

And we also wanted to visit that age old tradition when your kid picks up the check for dinner. Most people are touched with love and admiration and a feeling akin to, “Wow our little (fill in the name) has really grown up!” Well, Al feels that as well, but a little dessert and an after-dinner drink would make him feel even better. As long as it’s on Sid.

We’ve spent a lot of time on kids lately. Grown up kids like Sid and his sister. New kids like the one Sam just had. And new grandparents like our characters will soon become (just wait for our upcoming gender reveal party). Maybe it’s because one of us (me) just became a grandpa or maybe it’s just that Spring is in the air, and we see lots of baby carriages out there. In any event we’ve got a lot of fresh new storylines out there for the summer and the best part about our comic book children, is that their crying makes no noise, they can’t pee or throw up on you, and when you’re done reading, you’re done. Sounds like a good deal to us.

See you next week with two new ones,

Andy and John

Sam Embraces Fatherhood 5/14/21

Being a new father is exhilarating, life-altering and exhausting. But what about if you’re in your 60’s? Luckily, neither John nor I would know, but what follows is what we imagine it would be like. This series is informed by friends of ours who are first time grandparents in their 60’s. It’s pretty much the same experience, except you don’t get to give the kid back to the real mommy and daddy once the weekend is over. In Sam’s case He IS the real daddy. I have a friend who started taking off Fridays so he could help his pregnant daughter by babysitting her toddler. My buddy and his granddaughter had a great routine culminating in lunch at the diner, followed by nap time. Yeah right. Grandpa and his granddaughter would head back to his daughter’s house and lie on couches facing one another. He would put his granddaughter’s favorite blankie around her, and take another blanket for himself. It’s debatable who needed the nap more. Actually, it’s not very debatable at all because each time my friend would feel himself drifting off, his granddaughter would get up off the couch and pull his blanket off, giggling. This went on for a long time before she finally wore out. And by that time, he was toast. That was with one grandchild. Now there are two, and instead of playing man-to-man he was forced to switch to a zone defense.

Our second comic features the other 60-somethings commenting on Sam’s absence from their diner crew. A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do, but somehow, someway, he’ll get a babysitter and then life can go back to normal, or at least he can join his buddies at the diner once a week. Is that too much to ask? Not only does a newborn add a lot to life, it also adds many a plot twist to your favorite comic strip. You’ll see them in the coming weeks. Sam got more than what he bargained for but he and Shellie and his buddies at the diner will all figure it out. Or, as the Beatles once famously sang, Ob-la-di, ob-la-da/Life goes on, bra…

See you next week with two new chapters in the continuing saga of Stay at Home Sam.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

New Rules 10/30/2020

With apologies to Bill Maher, we’ve stolen the end title of his show to make a semi-clever headline for the blog. Shameless, I know. And it applies more to the second comic in your scroll anyway, so the hell with it. First off, we wanted the chance to showcase some of John’s other talents. Besides illustrating and writing and animating, he is a renowned pumpkin carver every Halloween. But what if you weren’t so renown and your grandchild wanted to carve pumpkins with you? What would you do then, huh? You’d have to pretend you knew what you’re talking about wouldn’t you? I ask because neither of us are grandparents yet but one of us is about to become one in May, God willing. We will reveal who when the time comes. Anyway, there’s only a short period of time when your kids think you know everything, and if you’re reading this blog, chances are your kids have figured you out a long time ago. (Okay, an extremely long time ago.) But then there are the grandkids, and for a few years, we can still fool them. But some kids are more artistic than others and in this case, you can’t even fool them. So this first Halloween comic is a take at how it feels when the kid figures you out. (In my case I knew I was done artistically when my daughter hit 1st grade. She had to do a diorama about the Wild West in a shoe box for class. When she asked me for cotton balls to represent clouds, I knew I was toast.) I’m sure John’s kids had a higher bar to climb.

Our second spot came out of our New England trip. This is the third and final comic from that trip but it centered on outdoor dining. Our kids are way more responsible than we are during the pandemic, mostly because they don’t want to be the cause of us keeling over. So each night of the two nights we were there, we ate outside. In October. In Maine. At night. And did I mention we were outside? One night the restaurant had large propane lamps and we asked the waiter if he could please move the one over there just a wee bit closer to our table. Immediately there were howls of protest from the table who’d had it moved closer to them before we got there, the bastards. Thankfully they were on dessert when we were just starting, so as soon as they signed their check, boom, we moved the lamp closer. But on the second night, well no such luck. No heat lamps. Because every freakin’ restaurant for miles around had ordered them way before so there are no more to be had. And here’s a public service. You know the kind where you can see flames all the way up the stem? Well they’re not as good as the mushroom shaped ones with the flame only at the top. The curved top makes the heat radiate down towards you. So if you insist on eating outside this winter, remember this tip. And also, buy some stock in a propane gas company. But what I most remembered about our cold, outside, non-heated meals were the attempted smiles on everyone’s faces, as if to say, no problem here, we’re being responsible AND we’re enjoying the hell out of ourselves. The truth was revealed when the waiter asked us if anyone wanted coffee or dessert and the whole table simultaneously shouted, “NO!” before the waiter could finish his sentence. My softly uttered “Cappuccino and creme brulee please” got lost under the emphatic roar of the “no.” John came up with the “anyone interested in our blanket menu” line and we thought that was a more unexpected way to go, so there you have it. But truth be told, I’m still a little peeved about missing out on the creme brulee.

So th-th-th-that’s all folks for this week. Enjoy your no trick or treat Halloween and prepare for your no family Thanksgiving and we will see you (virtually, of course) next week with two new ones.

But first, a long awaited promise to show you a link to John’s pumpkin carving expertise. It’s worth it, if you can figure out how to open it. Which of course depends on my ability to copy and paste it. Here goes:

https://www.facebook.com/outrageouspumpkins

Happy Halloween,

Andy and John

We're not getting old, just older 10/09/2020

There was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last year where Larry David wants to go to the bathroom, but this old man using a walker is ahead of him and Larry can’t pass him in the hallway. So behind the guy’s back, Larry waves his arms in a “come on already, get a move on!” type of gesture. I must admit to that feeling sometimes (okay a lot of times) (okay, all the time) but our first comic today is the total opposite of that. It summons our better angels. Kind of like Mike Pence during the debate Wednesday, expressing thanks to Kamala and Biden for their well wishes towards President Trump and Melania’s recoveries. It’s such a relief from the constant fighting, but face it, conflict is much more entertaining. That’s why most of our comics are about some kind of conflict, but this time, we thought we’d try something different. Maybe it’s that we’re getting nicer as we get older but maybe it’s that as we feel more vulnerable, we want to be treated the way Al’s son treated him in this strip. At least in my case, it’s the latter.

Full disclosure: when we decided the plot was going to revolve around building something, an age-old father-son activity, I told John, “You’re gonna have to figure out what they build because I’ve never done anything like this in my life, I’m Jewish.” Except for that one time when my daughter Ali moved into her first Brooklyn apartment with two former college roommates. I took her to Ikea and we bought bookshelves, among other things, and I mounted them above the desk in her bedroom. Luckily she went to work everyday because a couple weeks later, the whole assembly, books and all, came crashing down on her desk when she wasn’t there, thank goodness. But like I said, I’m Jewish.

The second comic features the little kid falling asleep but grandpa keeps reading anyway. Well John had experienced that as a dad, and I have a television version of the same story. Many years ago, when our kids were still at home, we joined them in watching one of their favorite shows, Dawson’s Creek. As the weeks passed, we got into it with them and it became a family activity every Wednesday (or whatever day of the week it was) evening. As we got into the next season though, something happened. The kids started losing interest but Joanie and I were riveted. It got to the point where we were watching it alone because they couldn’t be bothered with such a babyish show. I must admit we watched it right until the series finale when Mitch Leary, Dawson’s father, tragically lost his life. He was driving at night down a two-lane, unlit country road while licking an ice cream cone. The top scoop fell off and he reached down to pick it back up. By the time he was sitting upright he had crossed the yellow line and a two ton truck was roaring to him…I can’t go on. But this is all a (very) long-winded way of saying that sometimes we get more caught up in our kids’ or grandkids’ activities even more than they do.

Enjoy the weekend, and follow our rule, don’t eat outdoors unless the restaurants have a freaking heat lamp!

Andy and John

Summer's going, going... 08/28/2020

As we all cope with the end of summer and the Covid season, we thought about how things have changed. And there’s no better way to express ourselves than another entry in our “Then and Now” series. In the past we contrasted passing around a joint with passing around reading glasses (one is much more fun), sex then and now, and since it is the summer, we took a shot at how we take in the sun. My mother used to put on baby oil and iodine and then hold a reflector under her face. John never knew her and we never discussed this, but he just showed me a picture of “Then” and I said, “Holy shit, that’s my mom.” As for the “Now,” well, that’s easy. Cover up and cover up the cover up some more. At the beach a couple weeks ago, a friend proudly wore a zip hoodie wth UPF 50+. Now I have no idea what the hell “UPF”stands for, but it sounds extremely protective. In short, we love the sun and summer, but do everything in our power to protect ourselves from it.

The second comic came from a discussion about what to do with the grandkids when you’re stuck inside. There’s always the jigsaw puzzle and John introduced me to a trick I’d never heard of. He knows a lot of tricks I never heard of (apparently I lived a very sheltered childhood), but this one was so good visually, we had to make it into a comic. Seriously, what kid would go to the trouble of finding all the pieces that go in the middle of the puzzle, hide them when grandpa wasn’t looking, and then sneak under the table to place his face in the missing hole? Who would even think of that. Hmm, maybe someone extremely visual like, John? Huh?

At any rate, we hope you enjoyed this week’s comics and we will be back with our end of summer strips and then, it’s onto flu season. Enjoy!

Andy and John

Write about what you know 07/17/2020

We often get mail asking us to write more about one particular group or another, and we always reply, we like to write about what we know. That is why the situations (hopefully) feel authentic. One of my favorite emails came from a reader who asked, “Why don’t you feature a cranky old gay man like myself?” That’s a great question and we will try to do more of that in the future, but it will be our perception of a cranky old gay man. Not beig cranky old gay men ourselves, it would sound inauthentic to try and sound like one. Granted, we are plenty cranky and old, just not gay. But most of the subjects we write about are comic spins on things that actually happened to one of us. This week features two takes on stuff that happened to John.

The first came from an observation that John’s wife Linda isn’t particularly fond of bugs. So we imagined a situation where Al and his grandson are inspecting a bug with great interest. Al is feigning interest because he’s enjoying his grandson’s interest. Joanne doesn’t share the same intrigue and may have reacted with a little more passion than the situation called for. We would just like to reiterate that no actual bugs were injured in the drawing of this comic strip.

Next up also came from a trip to the dog trainer. Since the last dog I had was 20 years ago, this is firmly from John’s camp. After learning what dogs react to and how to make them obedient, Rachel decides to try the technique on Marv. Of course, very little works on Marv that doesn’t include food. In a previous strip, faithful readers may recall Sam mourning the loss of his dog. When his new wife wants to quickly replace the dog, Sam naturally wonders if she’d be so quick to replace him when HE died. For those of you who think this is crazy, ask yourself this. How much do you humanize your dog? Hey, they’re part of the family. We can’t help it. Think about it, if you’re in your 60’s and get to the point where you have to put your dog down, are you going to be so quick to get a new one? Or are you going to enjoy your new found freedom from having to find dog sitters when you go away or from worrying about how long it’s been since the dog has been let outside and whether you should skip dessert and get home? Maybe it’s the same way with husbands. Hopefully not, but in any case, have a nice weekend and don’t ask for a Corona with lime. It wasn’t too long ago that a Corona with lime was something you looked forward to at the end of the day. Now Corona and Lyme are two of the most worrisome diseases on the planet.

Boy did this turn maudlin in a second. On second thought just ignore the entire last paragraph except for the “have a nice weekend” part.

Andy and John

On not sweating the small stuff 2/21/2020

Andy’s daughter Ali recently gave him a gift on Valentine’s Day, four colored glass straws. This was a marked improvement over the metal straw Joanie brought home. And an unbelievable improvement over the biodegradable paper straws that Andy was using to drink his beloved iced coffees and iced teas. You know the kind. They collapse if you suck on them too hard and then when you try to pinch them back into shape, they tear, requiring you to put a finger over the rip so you can create some form of suction. In other words, a major league pain-in-the-ass. Now if you’re not in the loop environmentally, you might ask, what’s so bad about plastic straws? Well they are used only once and thrown away. Yet they stay on the planet FOR-EV-ER.

But still…when you’re used to a flexible bendy straw your whole life, it’s kind of off-putting to place a piece of unyielding metal in your mouth. And what happens if you’re walking down the stairs on a hot summer day, sipping your iced tea through a metal straw and you trip on your flip flops? Huh? So as we confront this new environmental nightmare, we thought, straws are one of those things you can still find at grandma and grandpa’s house, along with Mallomars and chocolate-covered raisins, but we digress. John was likely scarred during childhood from those paper straws you had to poke into the milk cartons which collapsed during the first sip, and he struggles with the memory. Andy, a full 5 years older, had to tough it out by pinching the carton open and going straw-less. At any rate, we thought the different generational reactions to a plastic straw belonged in a New 60 comic. We hope you agree.

Next comic up was inspired by Andy’s recent visit for a routine check-up. The first thing you do is get weighed with your clothes on. Now, Andy has his secrets. No breakfast that morning, don’t wear jeans, wear khakis or something light, empty your cell phone, watch, car keys, gum, toothpicks, take off your belt, suck your breath in (we know it doesn’t work, but still…) and gingerly step on the scale. When Andy told John of his modest strip-tease, John immediately thought, let’s strip him down to his underpants and only the nurse stops him from going “The Full Monty” (that means totally naked and is also a title of a movie in which two out-of-work, overweight dads, decide to become male pole dancers). Now let us reassure you that neither John nor Andy have any thoughts of that type of career change, but we thought it’d make a good story for the “Marv” character who is always trying one diet after another. But John couldn’t resist drawing Marv in his tighty whities (and he also couldn’t resist calling them “skivvies”).

So there you go. See you next week with two new ones and we may even reveal Shellie’s new condition to our hapless men.

Have a wonderful weekend

Andy and John

Adventures in driving and grandparenting 1/24/2020

First on your feed this week is a lesson in grandparenting. When Andy pitched the ending, John said, “I don’t want to do the dumb husband/smart wife thing.” Andy replied, “Why not,” and John said, “We need to be less obvious.” The guy had a point. But the other point was that this exact incident happened to Andy, his wife Joanie and their daughter Ali who was about 2 at the time. They weren’t about to go sleigh riding, they were about to go to an unveiling. Outside. In February. In a foot of snow. And Ali, always the fashion maven even at 2 years old, wanted to wear her black, shiny, patent leather, party shoes, while her dad was trying to force her boots on. She was wailing and kicking, anything to avoid putting on those rubber boots. Suddenly her mom Joanie entered the room and suggested the compromise you saw in the comic. Ali immediately calmed down and put on her party shoes, and THEN her snow boots.

The challenge for your intrepid cartoonists was how to end this and John had the thought of coming up with some ancient wisdom. It turns out both Andy and John had separately worked with Pat Morita, the famed master in The Karate Kid. So a Jew from New York and a Protestant from Long Island put their heads together came up with some ancient Chinese wisdom instead. Which makes for a more intersting ending. But as Andy says, the guy is still a dummy. And he ought to know, because that guy was him. One final note was that Joanne’s final comeback, “You learn well, grasshopper,” is a nod to the show “Kung Foo” starring a white man, David Carradine, in flowing robes. Those were certianly different times.

Our second comic was inspired by a friend of Andy’s named Kyle who was a little late to Andy’s apartment to watch the conference championship football games last Sunday. What happened was Kyle had left his house but had forgotten his phone. He went back to get it and wanted to send a text from his car, saying he’d be late. He was hoping to encounter a red light so he could stop and text but every light he reached was green. When he finally got to a red light, he pulled out his phone and…the light turned green. When he finally arrived, midway through the first quarter, he announced, “If you ever want to avoid running into a red light, just try to send a text.” Andy said, “You are late but forgiven because you just gave us a new comic.”

That’s it for this week. We will see you again on Super Bowl weekend. Until then, be well and keep on reading.

Andy and John

Cell phones, a love/hate relationship 11/15/19

Cell phones - those ubiquitous, annoying objects that we can’t seem to live without - are the subjects of both of this week’s comics. It’s hard to believe how long we lived without them, and lived perfectly well. Example: at a college lecture for Andy’s daughter back in 2004, during Freshman Orientation Week, the professor said, “Back in our day (speaking to the parents, most of whom are squarely in the target group for this comic), when we got a poor grade from a professor, we’d have the week to fix our mistakes and improve our work before the inevitable Sunday night (right after Ed Sullivan) weekly phone call home. Nowadays though, your kid gets a bad grade on Tuesday and the first thing she does is pick up one of these (a cell phone) and call you. And then you pick up one of these and call me! Earth to parents, let your kids figure it out for themselves.” Wise advice indeed. How did we live without cell phones? We lived just like the professor suggested.

Today’s first comic comes from an incident Andy had in Grand Central Station. He was walking with two favorite colleagues from his ad agency, Tanya and Amanda, the latter who doubles as a stand up comic, and they were rushing to make a train. Stuck behind an incredibly slow-moving person who was attempting to text and walk at the same time, Amanda yelled “Luke Textwalker, move it!” When Andy relayed this to John, he immediately switched the scene, because a big wide view of Grand Central at rush hour doesn’t easily fit into a little comic strip frame. Nonetheless, the subject of textwalking is grist for our New 60 mill. And next time you’re stuck behind a slow textwalker, feel free to use the phrase.

Our second strip shows the other side of cell phones. How incredibly useful they are in helping us navigate more easily through our days. In a matter of minutes, Al’s daughter does all his errands for him without ever moving. And this enables Al to spend the day with his grandson. The fact that he’s teaching him how to burp on cue is besides the point. One of your comic strip duo here knows how to do that, but which one? We will leave that to your imaginations.

That’s it for this week, we’ll be back with some more leading into Thanksgiving. In the meantime, have a wonderful, if freezing, cold weekend and don’t textwalk if either of us is behind you. Seriously!

Andy and John

It's bath time, and it's time to Return to the "drug"store 7/19/19

• Remember the marijuana dispensary where Marv did a face plant? Of course you do, that was just last week. Well, the boys decided to give it another shot. But your intrepid creators, who actually did a field trip (without either of us falling down), were wondering why was the place called Wellness? Andy and his wife just stayed at a “wellness hotel” in Brooklyn (the Even Hotel, which is a little odd, paradoxically) and there was nothing but a bunch of exercise equipment in each room, including a foam roller and a yoga mat. And of course, an array of non-caffeinated, herbal teas. Now if that was wellness, how could a store selling pot in all its new guises, be part of wellness. Why don’t they just come out and say, “this one is a light, easy high, and this one will really get you fucked up?” Why instead do they talk about “states of relaxation and creativity boosts?” After our careers in advertising, we have a good idea. Because the second thing sounds therapeutic and good where the first one sounds hedonistic, which is … bad! It’s like in politics where you don’t say you are for or against anything. You say “I think it’s a matter of each state choosing individually.” Here we’re not about getting high, perish the thought. We are about “Wellness.”

• Our other script this week comes out of a well-intentioned bath that Andy was giving his then-toddler daughter Ali (sorry for embarassing you Ali, but heck, you were just 2 or 3 years old.) Anyway, Andy, who at the time was writing a script for a Pillsbury commercial, brought home a squishy rubber Pillsbury Doughboy, which Ali immediately named “Doughby.” Doughby instantly became one of her favorite bath toys. As Ali was playfully splashing around, Andy noticed Doughby had a lot of water sloshing around inside him. So Andy helpfully suggested he wanted to fix Doughby, lifted him out of the bath, calmly pulled his head off and dumped the water back in the tub. Ali’s completely normal reaction is forever captured in our second comic. Rumor (and a very highly placed rumor at that) has it Andy is still smarting over that one.

  That’s all for this week, and enjoy the weekend, all 110 degrees of it.

  Andy and John