Who You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Lyin' Eyes? 04/07/23

I remember when my wife and I moved into our current home 8 years ago. It’s a complex of apartments and townhouses and our new “community” was throwing an open house. We walked inside the community clubhouse and were shocked at how old everybody looked. Now 8 years ago we were no spring chickens ourselves. We were 61 years old. And even though the complex didn’t bill itself as an ”Over 55 community,” there’s no doubt that is exactly what it is. And while you can recognize how old everybody looks to you, you can’t exactly verify how old you look to them. I was reminded of this moment when John pitched his “antiquities” idea. Because it relies on the fact that most people, in this case the security guard, have no clue how old they look to everybody else. Plus everyone has a weird reaction to age. I have one particular person in mind (whose name shall not be repeated in order to protect the guilty), who has never once revealed her age to anyone. At any time. For any reason. But here’s the thing, unless we are botoxed up the wazoo, your appearance gives you away. Maybe it's the fact that your hair is still blonde or jet black, long past when it should be. Maybe it’s walking with a cane or walker. Maybe it’s the fact than you can no longer read the menu without a flashlight plus reading glasses, but whatever it is, the fact is that most people know the truth. It’s like bald people with bad toupees, short people with ridiculously high heels, and even heavily botoxed people (I’m thinking of you, Jane Fonda in the movie “80 for Brady”), you ain’t foolin’ anyone. If we can’t tell whether your laughing or crying because your face is pulled back so tightly you know longer have expressions, it’s a sign you’re trying too hard.

Our other effort this week, comes from John and I discussing our exercise routines. I go to the gym and have seen a number of chubby personal trainers which led to the particular comic. Whereas John works out at home, with only his wife to make observations, and that led to this one. As we age, we hear reams of evidence that walking is the absolute best exercise you can undertake. Whereas other “experts” claim that weight bearing exercise is better because the muscles work overtime to repair themselves many hours after you’ve finished. In any case many of us are convinced that the way we are doing it is much better than the way other people are doing it. Then once in a while it takes a spouse, significant other or a really good friend who’s not afraid to tell you the truth. For me, all it takes is one good downward look from my wife in the general direction of my stomach to let me know it’s time to start skipping dessert for the next couple weeks.

So that is it for this week. One half of your favorite comic-writing team (Andy) is off to Patagonia for the next two weeks for an exciting adventure in aerobic exercise and altitude sickness, but fear not, there are two new comics per week in the pipeline for many weeks to come. See you soon and until then, enjoy this beautiful Spring.

Andy and John

Where Do We Come From. 02/03/23

So here’s the deal. When it comes to the subject of where did we come from, there are two types of people. People like John who trace their roots back through the ages and people like me who basically couldn’t care less. Pet peeve, people who say “I could care less,” which means the exact opposite of what they’re trying to say. I think if you could care less, then go ahead and care less. But I wandered off course again. The point is, I know very little about my past and haven’t thought of searching for it. I know one set of grandparents came over from Russia and the others used to live in Boston, but that’s it. After that, bupkis (which means “nothing” for those of you who don’t know a few choice Yiddish phrases). Friends have said to me, “You think your mother’s parents come from Boston? How about their parents?” And I shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t know.” Whereas John can say he’s 29% Scottish, another 69% from other European locales, and 1% Ivory Coast and Ghana (the latter part is probably why he played jazz trumpet in high school). As for me, there’s the Russian part and then I’m told that my last name (Landorf) is actually German for “country village” so maybe I’m part German and I can see why my ancestors were smart to get the hell out of there. Come to think of it, I do have a predilection for sausage, sauerkraut, brown bread, beer and mustard with seeds, but that’s probably coincidental.

At any rate we decided to invent a past for Marv. Think about it, if we gave Marv my attitude, it wouldn’t have made much of a comic.

Mike: Hey Dad, what are those pictures?”

Marv: Oh just some old family photos I found in the attic.

Mike: Who’s that? Marv: I have absolutely no idea.

See what I mean? Not much of a comic. So we went with John’s ancestor-friendly approach and invented a past life for Marv’s grandpa, which explained the strange last name for a Black man, Mandlebaum. After some back and forth, John wondered about making Morris a baker of Streit’s Matzo. I went into my cupboard and just happened to have a box of the very same. As luck would happen they opened their matzo factory in 1925 which happened to fit our timeline perfectly and the story emerged. How many Black men in the 1920’s can you think of that became Matzo bakers? And how many of those starred for the company hoops team? Not too many, except for the esteemed Morris Mandlebaum, a guy that could make a crisp matzo. And a hook shot from 12-feet.

The other thing we like about the search for Marv’s past is it gave Marv a profound way to bond with his son. Come to think of it, maybe I will get the Ancestry kit after all.

Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you next week with the conclusion of the Morris Mandlebaum story and a trip back to Al’s new workplace, Pizza-on-a-Stick.

Andy and John

It's All About How You See It 01/20/23

After three installments on Craig, we can safely say that the thread of this underwear story has run out. Sorry, couldn’t resist. At the last second, John came up with the final joke on a joke line about putting the item up for sale on eBay. With Dottie asking for Craig’s autograph, you can’t be too sure what her actual motives were. I was listening to sports talk radio in the car the other day (please don’t judge me, the Giants are in the playoffs for the first time in years and I can’t get enough), the former star running back Tiki Barber told a story of people coming up to him asking him to autograph footballs for a holiday, birthday, etc. And then he found out that some of those people were turning around and selling them on eBay. No one has asked for my autograph or John’s. Yet. Of course neither of us were former underwear models either.

The other comic was based on a real incident, as opposed to the stuff we make up out of thin air. John and are both proud new grandparents of beautiful baby girls. I regale him with stories about mine, he doesn’t have as many stories yet because his granddaughter is still an infant. In the case of this comic, it was based on my granddaughter who was about 1 1/2 years old at the time. She came for a sleepover along with her dad and mom (who doubles as Joanie and my daughter). The next morning, our kids packed up the car to go to breakfast and head back home. My wife joined them for the breakfast part. When the kids buckled their daughter into her car seat she started wailing. When Joanie returned home from breakfast, I commented on how sweet it was that Charlotte (our granddaughter) looked at me and cried when they left. I asked her if she noticed Charlotte crying because she missed her grandpa. Joanie told me gently that no, Charlotte was just crying because she hated being buckled into her car seat. Oh well, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Have a great weekend, especially those of you who root for the Giants, and we will see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

On Thanksgiving and Feeling Our Age 11/24/22

I was at physical therapy the other week, and I said something about Charlie Chaplin to the therapist who was working with me. Another therapist, a young woman in her late 20’s, looked over and said, “Who’s Charlie Chaplin?” Talk about feeling your age. I looked over and explained he was not only a famous writer, actor and director, he was also a songwriter. Yep that’s right, “Smile When Your Heart is Breaking” was written by Charlie, for his first movie with sound (they called them “talkies” back then) Limelight. But the point is, the comment made me think two things: 1) I must be really old and 2) she shoulda known. I mean, c’mon now. What’s that quote, something like “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”? What about those who never learned history? This is all a lead-in to our first comic of the week, second on your scroll, called “Phone Book.” John and I had, for lack of a better term, a lively discussion about whether or not a kid Sid’s age (approx 30) would know what a phone book was. John asked his kids and one of them said, “Yeah, it’s that thing I used to have to sit on to reach the dining room table.” That about says it all. I suggested John just tell him, “You know, it’s that thing that hangs in every phone booth.”

And next up is our annual Thanksgiving comic/poster. Nothing like eating and drinking 5,000 calories, getting a belly-full of tryptophan and settling on the couch to watch the third football game of the day, to knock you right the hell out. And it’s okay, because you’re with family and they would never dream of being judgmental. Here’s another thing to be thankful for. Ever since John and I left the world of advertising, we’ve become our own bosses. So when I want to take Thanksgiving off or write a short blog today because I’m leaving early tomorrow for my daughter’s house, I just look in the mirror and ask, “Hey Andy, can you write a quickie this week and then go on vacation?” John asked the same of himself. And surprise, surprise, we both said a resounding “YES!”

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and we will be back with you next week.

Andy and John

It Depends on How You Look at It. 09/16/22

A lot of us are getting to the age where we’re becoming grandparents. For John it was a little over a month ago and for me it was April 2021. Now most grandchildren come with two sets of grandparents, and chances are, they are both over the moon with their new arrivals. So, with this being baseball season, and with John and I both being New Yorkers, we figured we’d get the twins a matching set of Mets’ pajamas. In fact, my son bought his niece NY Giants’ pj’s, which she proudly (okay maybe not proudly, but she wore it, okay?) wore during the Giants improbable victory against the Tennessee Titans last Sunday. And even though we have only good feelings towards the other set of grandparents, there is still an underlying pang of jealousy. From one side: “Oh, you took them to Disney World, how great.” From the other, “Oh, you spent the summer with them, how great.” So what if both sets of grandparents bought onesies, which competing team’s onesie would piss off a Mets fan more? The Braves? The Phillies? Nah. The Yankees, and that was the inspiration for our comic.

Next came a situation based on an invitation to the Catskills. It was a wedding and my wife and I accompanied our son there this summer. One thing about mountains, they have no telephone reception and very, very spotty WiFi. We were trying to get somewhere and trust me, it’s hard enough to do out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s nearly impossible to do so without wifi. You end up asking people and they end up misunderstanding you. It’s a rule. Plus, when you’re giving me directions, don’t tell me, “head north out of the parking lot.” Tell me “make a left out of the parking lot.” Because a) I don’t know which way north is, and b) I’m too embarrassed to admit it. This trip proved challenging in many ways which will lead to another strip in the near future and that’s one of the great things about having a comic strip. When you get lost, frustrated, hacked, become the victim in an accident, etc., it still sucks, but at least you can say to yourself, “Well, that’s another strip!” We’ll see what kind of trouble we can get in in future months, but until then, enjoy. And wait for our new collection of comics in a coffee table book this holiday season.

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

Stevie and James 07/22/22

So the SOS (Saga Of Stevie) finally comes to an end. Yes, Sid has a significant other named Stevie. And no, Stevie does not turn out to be a boy. And yes, Sid’s Uncle Tim, who is gay, was wrong in thinking Stevie might be a man and Sid might be gay. In talking to some readers about the comic, a couple of people (one who is in her 40’s, for crying out loud) didn’t understand the term gay-dar. As a public service, allow us to explain. Gay-dar is a portmanteau, (a mash-up of gay and radar). It refers to the ability to tell if another person is gay or not. Tim thought it was certainly possible Sid was gay, and when it turned out Sid was straight, Al took a jab at Uncle Tim’s gay-dar. Capiche? Given that most of our readership tends to be on the other side of 50, we wondered how they might react to wondering about the sexuality of their grown children. I know of a dad whose teenage son, in an all-boys boarding school, wondered if he was gay. The dad gave (in my opinion) a beautiful response, saying something to the effect of “It wouldn’t matter to me either way. I would love you just the same if you were gay or straight and you and someone you love and who loves you back will always be welcome here with open arms. The only thing we care about is your happiness.” The kid said thanks, but here’s the kicker. Years later when he knew he was straight, he got angry with his dad and said, “Why didn’t you tell me I was straight in the first place!” So even when you do the right thing, it turns out wrong. That’s part and parcel of being a parent. Let’s hope Sid and Stevie live happily ever after. As an interesting aside, John and I were debating what this woman’s name should be. We went through all the names that could belong to both men and women, and after suggesting the obvious ones like Sam, Pat and Alex, I remembered my own son once dated a girl named Stevi (no “e” at the end) and that sealed the deal.

Our second strip of the week (first on your scroll) featured a concert that John attended with his wife at Tanglewood. For those of you who have never been there or heard of it (think Ravinia, for our midwestern readers) it’s an outdoor concert venue featuring classical music with a few classic folk singers sprinkled in from time to time. In John’s case, he and his wife Linda attended a James Taylor concert early this summer. These things tend to be massive gatherings of older people (I think you get a free pass if you can prove you attended Woodstock) carrying coolers, backpacks, ice bags, wine, cheese and maybe a marijuana vape pen (or two). The tendency most of us have is to look around and think, look at all these old people, before realizing, wait, what do we look like to them? This is also true of the apartment building I moved into 8 years ago with my wife. It isn’t billed as a 55+ community, but clearly it is one. When they had an open house, I whispered to my wife, “Look how old these people are,” before realizing what we looked like to them (impossibly young and beautiful). But back to the comic, John and I talked about what would be the most distinguishing feature of a person attending a (pick one) James Taylor, Steely Dan, Allman Brothers, Michael McDonald concert and we landed upon the bald guy with a ponytail. Yeah, we get it, you used to be cool as hell, but now, you’re 65. Truth be told, I considered the look myself but then decided to go the route of a shaved head and two-day growth of beard. I made the mistake of doing this one summer when we sent our kids off to sleep-away camp. When it came time for Visiting Day, they took one look at me … and burst into tears. Who was this strange man? And what happened to dad? I relented and went back to my Larry David look, clean shaven with messy hair on the sides. And I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s much easier to shave everyday than to maintain the two-day growth look. Or you can go John’s way and do the full-beard, mountain-man look. I’d consider that myself, except I’m way too sloppy of an eater as it is, and the visual of me chowing down a pepperoni pizza with a thick beard is not a pretty image.

So that’s it for this week and we will see you next week with two new ones, hot off the press.

Andy and John.

Taking the Plunge 7/7/22

First of all, I’d like to wish Joanie, my beautiful bride of 38 years, a very happy anniversary. I’d like to thank her for sticking with me for so long. It takes a lot of patience on her part, trust me. I love you and thanks for hanging in there. As Paul Simon once sang, we’re still crazy after all these years. And now, back to the comics. With beach season here, we take a look at the relatively new phenomenon of manscaping. At least it’s relatively new to us. John noticed different levels of hair removal amongst different generations and suggested we do a comic on it. Here are a couple of my partcular hair removal incidences. On a family trip to Mexico last year, my aforementioned wife noticed our niece’s husband, age 43, had a well-groomed body. No visible chest hair or back hair or, heaven forbid, shoulder hair. She was asking because her husband (that’d be me), has hair everywhere I don’t want it, and nowhere that I do want it. To put a fine point on it, no hair on the top of my head, but lots of hair on my chest, back and, yes, shoulders. So she asks our niece’s husband how he achieved that look, and he shows her the razor he uses on his chest, coupled with a long folding contraption that enables him to shave his back while in the shower. Naturally, I ordered the same stuff online and started to use it in the shower. There were three distinct problems. One is that it added significant time to the length of my shower. The second point is I missed a spot. Or two. Or three. Okay, I missed a lot of damn spots. And the third was that the stupid batteries wore down in the back shaver and then I said, “screw it” in much more colorful language. Oh yeah, did I mention a fourth problem. You know what happens when you shave your chest hair with a razor? It grows back like a beard, in sharp, scratchy bits. So when you put on a tee-shirt, the shirt sticks to the front of your body and you constantly find yourself pulling it forward to unstick it from your beautifully shaved chest. In short, Joanie, I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with a hairy bald guy. Unless you knock me out first and take me to a body waxer. But I saw the 40 Year Old Virgin and it looks like that really, really hurts.

Next up is the start of a 4-part series on Al and Joanne’s grown up son, Sid. It seems every time we visit Sid, we come up with a multi-part series and this time is no different. We are about to meet Sid’s new beau. John and I wondered how we would react on the inside and outside if we learned one of our son’s had a significant other. Seeing how Al, Joanne and Uncle Tim react before and after they meet Sid’s love interest is the topic for this new 4-part series. Happy reading and we will be back next week with parts 2 and 3.

Andy and John

Ahh, Baseball and Fresh Dirt. What could be better? 5/13/22

With summer rapidly approaching, our thoughts turn to baseball. And since this is the New 60 Comic, we turned to the joys of taking your grandchild to a baseball game. As summer rituals go, this one can’t be beat. But, it gets even better when it comes to teaching your kids (and now grandkids) how to keep a proper baseball scorecard, a feat both John and I managed to pass down. My first job out of college was as a sportswriter for the Pawtucket Times, and part of that job was, from time to time, to be an official scorekeeper for the beloved minor league team, the Pawtucket Red Sox. Trust me when I say it didn’t pay well. You got $4.50 for the scorecard you turned in to the league and an additional $4.50 for the one you turned in to the team. I learned this one night when covering for the sports editor for the local newspaper (my boss) who was attending the wedding of his 8th or 9th chlld (I didn’t do such a hot job of keeping score of how many children this guy had). Before the game ended he called from the wedding to tell me to just leave the scorecards on the scorer’s table, and he’d turn them in. When I turned to a fellow reporter who worked for the Woonsocket Call and asked why my editor would ask me such a thing, he replied, “Because he’s a cheap bastard who was thinking about the $9 bucks he was missing out on.” That summed up my editor perfectly. Anyway, suffice it to say that the experience made me into a pretty good scorekeeper. For instance, do you know what it’s called when a guy steals a base and the catcher doesn’t try to throw him out? Defensive Indifference, and it goes in the scorebook as DI. Did you know when the pitcher walks a batter, you don’t score it as a “W” for walk, but a BB for “Base on Balls?” Did you know when a pitcher strikes a guy out, it doesn’t get scored as an “SO” it gets scored as a “K?” Unless the batter strikes out without swinging his bat, in which case it goes into the books as a backwards K (there’s no way to type that on a computer)? Did you know, and more importantly, do you care? Well, it’s a time-honored tradition to pass this skill along to the next generation, but it is becoming a lost art form. When my dad used to take me to games, he’d buy a scorebook and pencil for 0.15 cents. And he’d lose interest in scoring by about the 6th inning. So is it any wonder that when Al teaches his grandson, the kid takes his eye off the ball, so to speak, and turns said eye to a gigantic swirl of cotton candy? I’m proud to say that my son, even at age 7, would’ve known how the bases got loaded, and besides, he never cared much for candy. My wife and I used to routinely steal his Halloween candy and when he got a little older, he’d just hand it to us.

Our other comic this week goes to the joys of grandparenthood (is that even a word?). Unlike scorekeeping, which never changes from one generation to the next, the rules of being a parent, and therefore a grandparent, are constantly changing. Hence when you treat your grandchildren the way you treated your own children, you may be out of step with current thinking. Our childhoods were more laissez-faire. When we said we were going bike riding with our friends, our parents said, “Okay, just make sure you’re home for dinner by 6.” Not so much anymore. Nowadays the parent drops the kid off for a playdate, and then the playdate parent says “You can ride your bikes but just around the block and don’t you dare go into the street!” So it is in this changing environment that Al falls a bit short of his daughter’s expectations. Although both John and I thought his comeback was pretty good. Anyway, it’s a new dynamic. We were used to telling our kids what to do, but when it comes to taking care of their kids, they’re the ones telling us what to do. Although we still might let them stay up a half-hour after their appointed bedtimes, but shhh, please don’t tell.

Have a terrific weekend and we will be back next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

On Retirement. Now What? 4/22/22

I remember my first day of retirement as if it were yesterday. For anybody counting, it was in November of 2016. And to be truthful, it wasn’t exactly retirement, but you get the point. So many of my friends have stopped working and their collective thought is, what am I going to do with all that time??? You’ll figure it out. So let’s get back to my first weekend as a free man. As I often did, I went for a hike with my wife. I looked at my watch and saw it was almost 4 pm and grew worried. She asked, “What’s wrong,” and I replied, “It’s almost 4 and I haven’t gone to the grocery store yet.” She said, “Why not go Monday?” What she was saying without saying is you’re free to do whatever you want now. For me, I was so used to having to fit everything (like groceries) into a tight window on weekends so it didn’t interfere with my work week. But now? What the hell. I instantly felt my shoulders relax. That fall and the ensuing spring were filled with Tuesday bike rides, Wednesday golf games, mid-week afternoon Mets games and in the winter, the occasional afternoon movie (remember when we went to movies), or even a theater matinee. And grocery shopping on a Tuesday. In the morning. With no one there. Now we’re not claiming it’s going to be all roses for Marv moving forward, because, well, he’s Marv, but we are going to examine how his presence (just as mine did 5 years ago) turns the house upside down. Everyone was used to him NOT being there Monday through Friday, from 8:30 in the morning until around 7 at night. We will follow Marv from his retirement party through his first awkward days at home, to his venturing out into the brave new world, sometimes on his own.

Our next comic dealt with, oh yeah, retirement. More on that next week, and if you’re retired, you’ll have more than enough time to see what happens. If you’re still working, you can see what you have to look forward to. And if you retired folks need an idea for what to do, you could, I don’t know…start a comic. Just don’t call it The New 60.

Enjoy the weekend,

Andy and John

On Euro Steps and Getting Along 03/25/22

Let’s get a couple things straight. I am a big basketball fan. And I just returned from Europe. And I still have no idea what a Euro step is. John was watching the NCAA tournament and heard the term and didn’t know what it meant either. He asked me. Clueless. I asked my brother who insisted he DID know what a Euro step was and then proved himself unable to explain it, finally leaving me with, “You’ll know it when you see it.” Finally, Wednesday night, when watching an NBA highlight reel featuring the day’s action, I heard the announcer say, “Harden Euro steps to the hoop and lays it in!” I backed up the recording and watched it again. Then again. The player in question stepped to his right, dribbled, sharply cut and stepped to his left, dribbled and then took 3 steps before converting a layup. Now I don’t know about you, but if a player takes 3 steps, that’s called traveling. But now it’s called a Euro step. Does that clear it up? Good ‘cause it still makes no sense to us either.

Next up was how to navigate the time-old conundrum of getting along in a marriage. It’s all about the stuff we choose to say, and the stuff we choose not to say. Of course, this is where the comic thought bubble comes in handy. In the past we covered a trend that is common to us empty nesters. The kids are all out of the house now, but we want to have spare bedrooms for the times they come to visit and for when they have kids of their own. Consequently, we have multiple instances of two people living in large spaces. And we try to yell to each other from great distances. Trouble with that is nobody can hear what the other person is saying. But many of us have been with our partners so long, we know what they’re thinking. In the case of this week’s comic, we say the unsaid out loud and then regret it in a thought bubble. Which is kind of backwards when you think about it. Think the thing that shouldn’t be said (thought bubble material), and say the thing that should be said.

Someone once asked me, “Would you rather be right or happy?” Hint: the correct answer is “happy.” But if I have a great zinger in my mind, I want to say it out loud. Truth be told, this whole scenario came from John, but I wonder if he was channeling me when he let Al say the zinger. That’s a major difference between us. He’d think it, but would be smart enough not to say it. I’d be so proud of thinking it, that I’d say it, and then regret it silently. Too bad life doesn’t provide us with thought bubbles, you know?

Have a great weekend and we will be back next Friday with two new ones.

Andy and John

Stuff We Do...Just Because 01/07/22

Can’t believe I just typed “22” into the date box. When I was a kid I used to think about how old I’d be when the calendar hit the year 2000 (the answer was 47). Now it’s 22 years past that? Can’t be. But it is. And it got John and I thinking about why we do the things we do. And of course it turned our thoughts to vaccinations. Now we try hard (or at least John does) to be apolitical here. But there’s nothing really political about wearing masks if you’re interested in not getting Covid. We’ve heard all sorts of reasons why people don’t choose to get vaccinated, “Nobody’s telling me what to do,” and my personal favorite, “I’m waiting for the research.” I must admit I hate being told what to do, unless I’m convinced about the dangers of doing what I do. Heck, I quit smoking cigarettes when my first child was born in ‘86 and I wear a seatbelt. After years of smoking and not wearing seatbelts, I heard enough evidence to convince me to change my evil ways. Plus I hate when the car starts going bing, bing, bing … until I fasten my damn seatbelt. So about the vaccination. In order to show how silly it sounds to “wait for more evidence,” we had Marv’s mom wanting to wait, along with her new friends at the Shady Acres Assisted Living facility. And let’s not even think about assisted living. At least not yet.

Our other comic this week deals with a cleaning person. We said “cleaning lady,” because that’s how people speak, but if we offended anyone, we apologize and will heretofore refer to the cleaning lady as a cleaning person (who happens to be a lady). Anyway, what is it with people who clean before the cleaning person comes? That’s like reading the Cliff Notes of the book before you read the book. Or filling the car up when it’s 7/8 full. Or cooking dinner in the morning. Let’s let people do what they do. If they didn’t do it better than us, we wouldn’t have hired them in the first place. But full disclosure, I wrote this blog before the official blog writer comes to write it this evening. Just kidding. But it would be nice once in a while.

So that’s it for the first installment of 2022. We will be back next week with two new ones and we officially launch the putting together of our first compilation - a New 60 book. Ready for the holiday season this year (hint, hint).

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

HAPPY NEW YEAR 12/31/21

This week we bid adieu to 2021. And it got us to look back at last year’s New Year’s Eve poster when we were gleefully kicking 2020 out the door. This year had to be better, so we featured Al’s happy new grandchild, dressed up as 2022 and Al as Father Time (not particularly enjoying the moment), or, in Al terms, being Al. 2021 looked a lot better than 2020 for a while, but now that the Omicron variant is here, things are upside down again. Suddenly we do not feel as free to hop a plane, go to a hotel, dine indoors, take in a play or, heaven forbid, a movie in an actual movie theater. One ultra-responsible, artsy movie theater near me is staying open, at half capacity, but is no longer serving their delicious popcorn with real butter (rather than butter-flavored topping—word to the wise, don’t ever buy something that says “flavored” or “style” it bears no resemblance to the real thing. A couple years ago a woman sued Kraft when she discovered that the “guacamole-style” dip she served for her Super Bowl contained no avocado. I would’ve sued her for buying guacomole-style, but I digress). I guess we’ll have to stop shaking hands again and start doing elbow bumps when we meet friends. I don’t mean to suggest we will look back fondly on 2020 someday, just that 2021 felt all too similar to 2020. Or as Janis Joplin once vamped in a live recording, “It’s all the same f’ing day man,” only she didn’t say f’ing.

Our other comic is based on a present my wife sends to her favorite clients and friends during the holidays. It is a massive tub of chocolate-covered popcorn. And when I say chocolate-covered, I don’t mean just chocolate-covered, you actually have to bite through layers of chocolate just to get to the actual popcorn. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. John and I both took on this challenge in our respective houses. He challenged himself last year to see how long he could make the popcorn last. He failed miserably. I told him this year I could make it until mid-January. I just recycled the empty plastic bin a couple days ago, on December 29th to be exact. But I have an excuse, I swear. The excuse is our 32-year - old son came home to visit and consumed massive handfuls, accompanied by milk. I realized how quickly I had to replace the half gallon of milk to estimate how much chocolate popcorn he consumed. So that’s my excuse. On the other hand, my wife was recovering from a breakthrough Covid case (she was triple-vaxed) and out of concern for me and my son, never plunged her hand into the popcorn tub. Thankfully, she is all better, and what I’m trying to say is I ate way too much of that stuff. But it’s okay. Now we can live up to our New Year’s resolutions about hitting the gym on a regular basis. Or, if you invested in home exercise equipment, about riding that damn bike several times a week. But first you have to take all the shirts and hangars off the Peloton handlebars before you begin. Otherwise your knees keep bumping into the shirts and if they’re not covered in plastic from the dry-cleaners, you might sweat all over them. And then you’ll think, “Forget it, it’s too big a hassle,” and go back to eating chocolate popcorn.

Have a wonderful last weekend on 2021 and we’ll see you next year with two new ones, once we sober up from New Year’s Eve.

Andy and John

Happy ChrismaHanukwanzaakah 12/24/21

I know, what about Kwanzaa? Listen, it’s hard to combine Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa into one happy word, so I stole ChrismaHanukwanzaakah from The Urban Dictionary and the OC. But please keep it between us that I ever watched The OC. I have an excuse. The kids were young teens and we used to watch it with them. The problem was, they got bored and we got hooked. Had to hang in there until the bitter end. But that’s our only example of such deviant behavior. Well, unless you count Dawson’s Creek. I mean, who among us didn’t shed a tear when Dawson Leary’s dad, Mitch died in a collision with a truck at night? Granted, when his ice cream fell off the cone onto the floor on the passenger side, Mitch should never have bent over to pick up the ice cream. But when he did and set his eyes back on the road, what did he see except for blinding headlights and a blaring truck horn? I can’t go on. Suffice it to say, it left an everlasting mark. So for now let’s go with ChrismaHanuKwanzaakah. Feel free to write in if you’ve got a better way to keep everyone happy.

But this comic came to John when he and his wife Linda went shopping for a Christmas tree. I must confess, my wife Joanie and I don’t have one because we’re Jewish and celebrate Chanukah. Anyway, the tree farm had a tree shaker, so the loose pine needles don’t get all over your floor. And he wondered, what would happen if the shaker shook too hard. Your answer is comic #1. One final note on Christmas trees. My daughter Ali, when she was a little girl in a car seat, used to love the pretty Christmas tree in Dobbs Ferry where we would exit the highway to go home. Every time we passed it she’d say “want a Christmas Tree, want a Christmas tree.” And we’d patiently explain, “We don’t celebrate Christmas honey, we’re Jewish.” Finally, when she became 5, she crossed her arms and defiantly responded, “Fine, then I’ll marry someone Christmas.” 25 years later, that’s exactly what she did. And tomorrow the family is going to their house to exchange presents under their beautifully decorated tree. But for our Jewish friends and readers, they celebrated Hanukkah too.

Now onto the holiday card. We immediately liked using the bare tree as the symbol for our holiday card. One reason is because it makes for a neat package this week: shake the tree bare and then use the bare tree as our card. But the other reason was it symbolized 2021 for us. We checked out our Happy New Year card from last year and it showed the cast kicking 2020 out the door. Couldn’t wait for 2020 to leave. But guess what, 2021 hasn’t proven to be much better, at least as far as Covid goes. But, it’s a new year, with new discoveries and maybe, just maybe we can kick this thing in the butt. Anything, anything, to not have to keep dancing this dance. I leave you with a funny scene from two weeks ago. My wife and I went to a Broadway show, the Lehman Trilogy. Before the curtain went up, I noticed this guy one row in front, talking and gesticulating with his mask under his nose. I gently tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to please pull his mask above his nose. After the first intermission I went to buy a bottle of water and came back to my seat and took a big sip. He turned around in his seat and said, “Excuse me, can you please pull up your mask?” Yikes.

Happy Holidays and we will see you next week with two new ones. The last two for 2021.

Andy and John

Perspective 11/12/21

Perspective is a funny thing. I remember being 9 years old when my parents called me into the living room with solemn looks upon their faces. They said, “Grandpa Sam died last night, he was only 61. Such a young man.” I distinctly remember two thoughts coming into my 9-year old mind: 1) “Poor grandpa. And 2) 61 is really old.” Another example revolves around a summer when we took our young kids to Disney World and then later that summer to a local, small-sized retro amusement park in Rye, NY, called Playland. I loved that place as a kid, but now, being an adult, I realized I could see from one end to the other. It’s about 3 to 4 city blocks long. My kids, being decidedly smaller, were overwhelmed with all the games and rides. And I asked, “Which place do you think is bigger, Disney World or Playland?” And at once they gleefully shouted out, “Playland!!!” There’s one thing that can be said about perspective: it always changes.

Like our perspective about our misspent youth. I remember a friend showing me the huge field he used to play on when he was a kid. Baseball in the summer, football in the fall. Upon revisiting it, it was a small patch of green surrounded by a bunch of dirt. Or, a couple years ago, this Italian restaurant I loved as a child reopened. It was called Grotto Azura, which means Blue Cave. And you went literally underground, down a couple flights of stairs. The place served family-style huge plates of pasta and clams and sausage, anything you wanted, and it was decorated as if it were a cave. Coolest place ever. When some friends came in from out of town, my wife and I took them there. What a spectacular letdown. The underground part was closed because there wasn’t enough business to justify opening it. And when we tasted the food, we understood why there wasn’t enough business. It sucked. Perspective.

Which brings us to Joe Namath Electric Football, a game both John and I happened to own. I remember getting it as a holiday present. It came with 22 football player statues, 11 for each team. You put them in position on the “field”, which was a board that vibrated when you turned it on. The problem was the players didn’t necessarily travel in the direction you wanted them to go. They went backwards, they went sideways, they fell down. In fact, I think it’s safe to say they never went in the direction you wanted them to go. It was the worst football game I’ve ever played. It was even worse than the food at the new Grotto Azura! This must have been before the days of product testing because the damn thing never worked, ever. Kinda like Joe after his knees were shot. Sorry Jets fans, that was uncalled for. The game seemed like a good idea at the time, but trust us both, it wasn’t. Now Madden 22? That is a good football game. Not because either of us know how to play it, but because we’ve seen our kids play it and those images are a LOT more realistic than Joe Namath Electric Football.

So that is that for this week, but we would like to give a special shout out to John, his wife Linda and their kids, especially daughter Alison, who is getting married this weekend in beautiful, bucolic Charleston, South Carolina. Cheers.

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

The More Things Change... 10/15/21

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I’ve never quite understood that one, but whatever it means, it applies to both of this week’s comics. First the Train Set. Now John and I grew up differently from one another. He loves to build stuff, cut down trees, carve pumpkins, manly stuff like that that he probably learned from his dad, who in turn learned from his dad and so on. And so he is naturally enthralled with things like train sets. Me, I’m Jewish. When something needed fixing or building, my grandfather called the super, my father called the super and I call the super, and we don’t even have a superintendent. So we found a guy who is great at fixing stuff and call him when the need arrives, which is often. But back to the train set. Come to think of it, my dad did have a Lionel train set at one point. I can remember an exploding box car, which you tried to hit with a rocket launcher as the train was moving, but that’s about it. I imagine John’s childhood train set to be much, much more detailed. With the diversity of train set experience hanging between us, we settled on one thing we have in common, age. And let’s face it, when you want to show off your fancy toy train set to your grandkid and the kid doesn’t recognize anything in it, it’s a little deflating. And that was the influence for the Train Set comic. But not to worry, we are going to have a second train set comic next week. You don’t build (in this case, draw) a whole train set only to use it once.

Next up is the trip to the library. But what this is really about is clutter. Maria Kondo wrote a best-selling book about removing clutter. Really, people are attracted to books like hers, which to me seems like more clutter, but anyway… She says that you should only keep things that “spark joy.” I say, “spark this.” But she has a point. In my childhood home, the train set didn’t spark as much joy as the ping pong table it was sitting on, so after a while, bye bye train set with exploding box car and rocket launcher. I have a theory that there are two kinds of people in most relationships, hoarders, and chucker outers. I am a chucker outer. If I buy a new pair of jeans, which isn’t often, I put an older pair in the clothing bin in our local strip mall. Same with shirts, shoes, etc. My wife is a “collector.” In this case we switched roles and made Marv the hoarder. His wife Rachel wants to get rid of stuff. But when he was at the book fair at the public library, he saw so much stuff that sparked so much joy, he kind of forgets his mission.

7 years ago, my wife and I, empty nesters now that our kids were out of the house and graduated from college, sold our house and moved to an apartment. Now that requires a whole bunch of downsizing and, let’s face it, different things “spark joy” in different people. I remember a conversation we had upon moving in. Me: We cannot possibly have 4 sets of china in an apartment. She: Or 4 tv’s.

Guess how that ended? As I might say, you never know when a 4th person might come over and want to watch something different from what 3 other people are watching, so we really need 4. And as Joanie might say, this was my mother’s set, this was my grandmother’s set, this is my great grandmother’s and then there’s our everyday dishes and it makes me feel good to have them. So we compromised and kept everything, just in case.

That is it for this week. We will be back to you next week with two new ones, including what Al’s grandson wants to do with the train set.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus 09/24/21

I actually have no idea about the planets. Suffice it to say that men and women are, well, different. Take the case of television watching, for example. When we watch something my wife likes, she will ask me to turn the volume up so she can hear it. When I watch a ball game, any kind of ball game at any time of the day or night, I am asked to turn the volume down. When I mentioned this to John, he immediately went for an English period drama (the most boring thing we could think of to watch (although I did love The Crown) vs. the most boring sports moment we could think of. The announcer saying what yard line the football is on. You see, if we had the announcer saying “Touchdown” or “It’s outta here” for a home run, that would be loud all by itself, so we went for dull, the ball is on the 35-yard line.

We shared a beach house this summer with my daughter, son-in-law and their child, our first grandchild. After the kids put the baby to bed, we’d all watch a drama (no, not an English period drama. It was Designated Survivor, if you must know) and I swear, the volume was up to 30. When said drama was over, I’d tune in the Mets game, which I had previously recorded. The volume was at 15, and I was repeatedly asked to “Turn that down, wayyyyy down.” I pointed out that nobody in the house could possibly hear it, because at this point, I couldn’t hear it. Men are from Mars…

Our other comic came from nowhere else but our imaginations. We’ve all heard of the cliche of the husband running off with the nanny, or babysitter or au pair, or whatever else you call them these days. And we flipped it on its head. If you remember a storyline from our recent past, Sam and Shellie hired a male nanny (who had just come out of prison—hey it’s a comic, we can do anything we want). And when Sam decides to do a guy thing and go to the car show, well, what’s a woman supposed to think? That men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. We rest our case.

That’s all she wrote (who the hell is SHE anyway)? Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with two new comics.

Andy and John

Good Eatin' 8/27/21

This week we become food obsessed. Okay, okay, we’re always food obsessed. Because face it, once you’re firmly in your 60’s, what else are you going to become obsessed with? 

The point is not everything works the way it used to work. Which is why we came back to food. In the first comic, we return to Al’s franchise, Pizza-on-a-Stick. One of the employees came up with a brilliant idea for dessert, Spumoni-on-a-Stick. What’s the plural of that? “I’ll take 6 Spumoni-on-a-Sticks please?” Or “I’ll take 6 Spumonis-on-a-Stick please?” These are the kinds of meaningful debates John and I engage in. The second one sounds better but the first one is right. Plus, John draws the strip so he won, not that I’m a sore loser or anything. To put the final ribbon on the bow I asked my daughter, an excellent grammarian, which version she preferred. She said, “I know the second one sounds right but the first one is actually correct. You’d order a cheeseburger or 6 cheeseburgers. So…” When she’s right and she agrees with John, it just doesn’t seem fair. But I’ll tell you this, if you come into Pizza-on-a-Stick and order 6 Spumonis-on-a-Stick, I promise not to be literal like John and pile 6 scoops of spumoni on one stick. I know this is fiction, but who the hell would do that?

Okay, now that THAT’S off my chest, let’s go to comic #2, Al’s backyard vegetable garden. John and I have a mutual friend Chris who built a magnificent garden with raised beds and every natural method of maintenance and pest control. John tried to mimic it as best he could, and when I had a house, I maintained a vegetable garden as well but much more basic. Why? For one thing I’m not very good with my hands (a common affliction among us Jews) and secondly, my love of vegetables stops at salads. But the point is, these gardens are a TON of work and they yield very little until you get overrun by cherry tomatoes during the last of summer, and end up having to shovel half of them into the soil so they make for a rich mulch the following summer. Sure, it’s a great thrill to go into the garden and pick out your salad or dinner for the night, but if you stop off at the farmstand on your way home, that works too. Plus, the cost/benefit ratio is a bit out of whack, as Al’s son Sid gleefully points out.

So, as Porky Pig said, Th-th-that’s all folks (at least for this week). We will be back next week with two new ones that take us up to Labor Day! Where does the time go?

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

These are a few of my favorite things 7/09/21

It’s kinda hard to believe that we are already past two of the big three summer holidays. At least we don’t have to go back to school. But as we race along through the year, it’s good to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going. Like Marv, who moved his mom into an assisted living home, where she was happy to go (hey this is a comic and things work out the way we want them to work out, okay)? But now it was time to get her papers in order, whatever that means. To me it means shuffling them around and putting them into piles that make sense at the time, and then never doing anything with those piles. But it was in the nascent days of The New 60 when John and I were at work on a bunch of upcoming comics. We had yet to hit our working rhythm. So, we would either work at his apartment on the balcony or my apartment on the balcony (this is before he moved over 100 miles away-maybe it was my breath?). This was also before the invention of Zoom. On this particular day we were working on my deck and John showed me a bunch of magic marker-type drawings he had done for upcoming ideas. He was very well prepared. He even came with stones to use as paperweights. Trouble is, I live right by the Hudson River and it gets pretty windy (note, if Larry David hadn’t already made it his trademark, I would’ve said, pretty, pretty, pretty windy, but he already said it so I can’t). Moving on, John neglected to place said drawings under said stones when a huge gust of wind came along and blew all the papers off the deck. I live on the 3rd floor so we had to knock on the people’s door on the second floor whohave the deck right below me, and then we actually broke into the deck on the ground floor and recovered almost everything, and while I was breaking and entering, John was going through some prickly shrubbery to recover the rest, and eventually emerged, worse for wear. Somehow, this turned into Marv losing his mom’s papers, but you get the idea.

Next up is the guys at the diner talking about one of their favorite topics, food. Hint to our women fans, when guys get together (heterosexual guys anyway), they used to talk about girls but after a certain age, they talk about food. Not just any food, but the food we sneak so you don’t see us eating it. There, the secret’s out. Shoot me. On second thought, please don’t. We had a lot of (un)healthy debate about McDonald’s vs White Castle vs In ‘n Out, but thought In ‘n Out was too esoteric for our east coasters. Another hint, if you go to In ‘n Out, as I once did with my nephew David, order it “animal style.” It’s an insider’s secret he taught me and now, well, I’ve blown that too. In short, don’t tell me secrets. Shhh. That’ll be our little secret.

We will see you next week with two new ones hot off the press. Until then enjoy your summer weekend.

Andy and John