You Can't Fool Me (or maybe you can) 02/09/24

“Mother, make it stop! He’s trying to kill me.” If you’re old enough to subscribe to this comic, you’re old enough to know where that quote came from, The Exorcist. I saw that as a college kid in St. Louis, Mo., and I’ve never been so scared in my life. But the same feeling can apply to the current political season and its unending stream of emails asking for donations. Today’s comic is the last in the three-part series about unsubscribing, but as you well know, once you’ve successfully unsubscribed from one email address, you get hit with another. And another. And still another. You also get hit with three comics on the same subject, but this is our last one on it. We promise. At least for now.

Our other comic is about how we use “company coming over” as a lever to get things done. Why is a loosely made bed okay most of the time but when company comes over, the sheets have to be tucked in, hospital corner style, and on top of the neatly stacked pillows…go throw pillows. I once was a creative director on Swiffer. And my favorite team came up with an online idea about how to clean up the house featuring a cranky old man (I hope they weren't using me or my partner as inspiration), but anyway the guy comes up to a couch covered in throw pillows and he says, “Ya know why they call them throw pillows? ‘Cause they’re meant to be thrown.” And with that he takes his arm and sweeps them all onto the ground.

It’s ridiculous but it’s true. We treat our company much better than we treat ourselves. We use the “good silverware,” and the “good china,” and put out the “good placemats,” and “good napkins,” with a pretty flower arrangement and a soundtrack of jazz or classical music playing softly in the background. And oh, don’t forget the candles or the wine we save for “special occasions.”

But there’s another, more subtle way we use an upcoming party to manipulate our significant others. It’s a great way to get stuff done. Remember those shelves you meant to put up in the bathroom? The walls you were going to paint? The leaves you were going to rake? That pile of bills stacked up on the kitchen counter? There’s nothing like the promise (or threat) of company coming over to get you to clean it the hell up. I feel compelled at this moment to point out that John is very handy and is constantly taking on projects while I, well, am Jewish. Which means I call the super.

That’s it for this week and for our Unsubscribe Series. We’ll see you next week with two new ones, hot off the press (does anybody say hot off the press anymore?).

Andy and John

The more Things Change... 01/18/24

Sometimes we pull comic ideas out of thin air. Sometimes we get them from things that happen in our own lives. And sometimes from things we observe. This one happened right in front of my eyes. There I was on a Saturday, one day before the end of the regular NFL season. We live with an open kitchen design, so the “living room” and “kitchen” are just sort of one big open space divided by a counter. Consequently, when I watch football and my wife invites two of her closest friends over to bake for a party we’ve been invited to, somebody is going to be inconvenienced. A few polite “Honey, could you turn that down” requests from my wife later, I retorted with one of my patented comebacks, “I happen to know you can hardly hear the tv. You know how I know? Because I can hardly hear the tv!” Unlike Sam in the comic, I did not end up in the bedroom watching the game on my phone. That was John’s brilliant invention. Nope. I held firm and watched in the living room. So, I could still see the game. I just couldn't hear the game. Ahh, the art of compromise.

And now about the New Year’s resolution. If you watch any amount of television, and remember, John and I spent almost 40 years apiece creating television commercials (this was before the days when people could fast forward past said commercials) you will notice that they are all for diet pills, diet programs, and most of all, gym memberships. Planet Fitness and Crunch Fitness come to mind. If the gym has enough treadmills, ellipticals, bikes and weight machines for say 100 people, they sell maybe 200 memberships. This is because they know full well that the gym will be crowded in the beginning of January with all those people swearing they’ll stick to a routine “this time,” while knowing full well that most people will come in, have to wait for a machine to free up, and then go home frustrated, never to come back again. So, by February the place is down to the 50 or 60 regulars who always go to the gym. A couple days ago, I went to my gym. Two people were together, approaching the lat pulldown machine that I wanted to use. It’s January, what did I expect? Anyway, the two people approaching the machine consisted of a thin man and a guy with a large pot belly. The thin guy sat down at the lat machine while the pot-bellied guy gave him instructions. Yes, that’s right, he turned out to be his trainer! Oh well, it’ll be February soon enough.

Have a nice weekend and we will see you next week, as they used to say on Batman, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

Andy and John

The Art of Compromise 11/11/22

First a little shoutout to a special grandniece, Emery. She has the coolest birthday, born 11/11/11, which makes her 11 years old today. If that doesn't make you want to go out and play the lottery… Anyway, happy 11th, Ms. 11/11/11. And now to the art of compromise. It applies to both our comics this week. The first of course was the final chapter in our “Bhutan” series. In real true life (as my son used to say when he was a little boy) my wife wants to go to Bhutan. You hike, you see temples and you eat…vegetables. The entire country is f’ing vegetarian. It also ranks at or near the top of something called a “World Happiness Index.” If one has anything to do with the other, I’d rather eat meat and be miserable. Ever see a 69-year old man who still pushes his vegetables to the side of the plate? Then you haven’t met me. John is much better in this regard. Except for peas.

The other comic in today’s feed was about getting a new dog. If you are in your 60’s or a little younger or a little older, you probably are struggling with this dilemma as we speak. Dogs are great. Man’s best friend and all that. They also are a major responsibility. Today, on a walk, I watched a couple with their dog. They threw a ball and the dog would bound away happily to fetch the ball and come racing back with it so they could do the sequence all over again. When the guy was talking to his girlfriend the dog would stand there, jumping up and down, way up in the air as if to say, “Hello…remember me? Throw!” And so they did. I got tired of watching before the dog got tired of running and jumping. So about compromise. My wife and I are on the same page on this one. At this point, with the kids out of the house, the last thing we want is to be tied down. I sense John and his wife may be straddling the fence on this one. Why? Because when we discussed the premise, John came out with a list of why not’s in under 20 seconds. Not that he’s been thinking about this subject or anything like that.

One last thought about compromise as it relates to going away on vacation. Some people like action/adventure vacations, diving, hiking, skiing, biking in places like the Maldives, Patagonia (no not the store) and even Bhutan, for heaven’s sake. While others prefer to relax and luxuriate with a spa, a beach, a golf course, stuff like that. My question is this: who WOULDN’T like that? Pass me the Pina Colada please? Oh, and the chips and guac.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next Friday with two new ones.

Andy and John.

Bucket Lists 11/4/22

If you are a loyal reader of this comic and blog, you’re probably old enough to have a bucket list. These are the things you want to do and places you want to go before it’s all over. The name, of course, comes from the thought “...before I kick the bucket.” And just like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two bucket lists are alike. Now I must admit that a close family relative of mine has Bhutan on his bucket list and that was the genesis of this idea. As always in this blog, names are omitted to protect the innocent. He is, was and will always be an adventure traveler. My wife and I spent a memorable Labor Day Weekend with him several decades ago. We were becalmed (another word for trapped) on a sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay for 3 days in temperatures approaching the 90’s. We were roasting and if you went below deck it was murderously hot. Finally our adventurer jumped in the Chesapeake to cool off, and was instantly attacked by a school of jelly fish. When we returned home, I wrote an article called “Inward Bound.” If the sailboat was like the program “Outward Bound,” then I wanted to do a program based on the opposite. Instead of being becalmed on a sailboat for 3 days in 90 degree weather, you’d be stuck inside the Ritz-Carlton with air-conditioning, cable tv, and room service complete with french toast for breakfast and steak frites and a nice cabernet for dinner. If I can ever find the article, I’ll repost it as a blog.

When I pitched the idea to John, he immediately got a smile on his face. We googled Bhutan and came up with two important facts: their favorite sport is archery and the entire country is vegetarian. And they also rank high on the World Happiness Index. Put it this way, if you can be happy watching archery and eating vegetables, you are not likely to have the same bucket list as me.

And speaking of bucket lists, do you guys remember the show “Green Acres”? A husband (Eddie Albert) and his wife (Eva Gabor, sister of Zsa Zsa) were thinking of moving to the country. It was at the top of his bucket list, not even at the bottom of hers. The theme song was a classic. Here’s how it opened:

“Green Acres is the place for me/Farm living’ is the life for me/Land spreadin’ out so far and wide/Keep Manhattan just give me the countryside.” To which his wife replied:

“New York is where I’d rather stay/I get allergic smelling hay/I just adore a penthouse view/Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.”

I consider it one of the funniest (and telling) theme songs ever written. Except for the closing, which was the height of sexism and could never get on the air today. Here is how the argument gets decided:

“You are my wife/Goodbye city live/ Green Acres we are there” (And she spent the rest of her life living on a farm in Hooterville with her husband and a pig named Arnold).

At any rate, Al comes back with a bucket list of his own and next week, in the third and final installment, we reach a decision, and no, it’s not sexist like Green Acres. We promise.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week with the conclusion of the bucket list series and another new direction.

Andy and John

Ever Try Changing Clothes in a car? Don't. 09/23/22

Earlier this summer, our son was invited to a friend’s wedding and was one of the groomsmen. My wife and I were invited as well. We had rented a beach house and drove, in our flip flops, shorts and tees, from Long Island to pick up our son at LaGuardia airport, to then proceed to the Catskill mountains, on a Friday afternoon, at rush hour. The total distance was approximately 2-3 light years. One of my favorite sayings is: Man Plans, God laughs. Our plan was to drive to the hotel where the kids were staying, drop our son off, giving him time to change into nice clothes for the rehearsal dinner. Then we’d go to our hotel, where all the old folks were staying, and change into the outfits we’d picked out for the dinner. It would make a hectic day seem a bit more relaxed. Brilliant right? What happened next gave us enough fodder to make this a 3-part saga, so we can't tell you the ending until next week’s blog. But think about this. If it’s true that when an ordinary man (or woman) makes plans, it causes God to laugh, then just think about how God reacts when AL attempts to make a plan. Trust us, God has plenty of new material.

What happened was there was a little bit of traffic. Okay, a lot of traffic. And cell phone service, once you get to the mountains, ohh, how can I say this politely, sucks the big one. Which means no Waze. Which means in addition to being late, we were lost. We dropped our son off and as we got to his hotel, the entire wedding party was leaving. So we waited for our son to change, and then we drove him to the rehearsal dinner so he wouldn't miss the whole thing. Now it was so late, if we turned back to our hotel, we’d have no chance to make it back to the rehearsal dinner in time. So we went to the upper parking lot, lined in gravel the size of rocks. Looked around and saw it was empty, and proceeded to pull our suitcases from the trunk and change, standing up, in the lot. The full Monty. I know it’s a pain to change while sitting in the car, but this was somehow worse. Imagine, if you will, standing on one foot on this big-rock gravel while attempting to put your opposite foot into your pants leg. The good news is we made it and had a great time. The bad news is I am still picking gravel out of my socks. But when I told this story to John, he immediately saw it taking place in a car, which, I must admit, is a hell of a lot funnier visually. And you wind up avoiding rocks in your socks.

That is it for this week, we will see you next week with the last comic in this series plus we’re starting a brand new three-parter about computer help lines. Trust us, they aren’t the least bit helpful.

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

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

Leftovers 08/26/22

As the summer rushes to a close (can Labor Day really be a week away), we start packing up to return to our normal routines. If you happened to rent a vacation home, it’s time to take stuff out of the refrigerator and either 1) toss it out or 2) take it home. Hint: toss it out. But it is our observation that most couples consist of a hoarder and a tosser outer. This inevitably leads to conflict. “But this yogurt is one day past its expiration date! Toss it!” Followed by “We haven’t even opened it. It’ll be fine tomorrow.” Followed by, “I won’t eat it!” Followed by, “Fine, I will!” Sound familiar? Well there’s a crucial step prior to the tossing out step. And that is the “to go” step at the end of a typical restaurant meal. Most restaurant meals are way larger than they need to be (except for molecular gastronomy, which we covered in early August) which leads to the inevitable decision at the end of said meal. The waitperson approaches the table with some form of “Would you like me to wrap that up for you/still working on that/do you need more time?” My least favorite end of meal request happened in a fancy Portland, Maine, restaurant when the waitress inquired, “How were your flavors?” I wanted to reply, ”I don’t know, eat me,” but decided (for once in my life) that marital happiness trumped cleverness, and responded, “Fine.” Back to the takeout. John pointed out that most take out containers make it back to the refrigerator (unless you forget them overnight in the back seat of your car) where they remain unopened for the rest of the week, before being tossed into the garbage -unopened and uneaten. You’d think we’d learned our lessons after repeating this habit after almost every restaurant meal, but nah, we’re likely to reply to the waiter/waitress, “Thanks, I’ll take it to go.”

Our other comic is also about leftovers. Leftover Covid tests, to be exact. Did you know that Covid tests have an expiration date? John did. I had no clue, but the knowledge that the tests had a time limit changed our behavior around the tests. We’re having company for dinner tonight? Ask them to take a test. You coughed, sneezed, felt tired, felt sad that the Mets got swept by the Yankees, take a test. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I am awfully tired of continually sticking that overgrown Q-tip up my nose. Ugh! Maybe that’s why Dr. Fauci decided it was time to retire. In any event, stay safe and Covid-free and if it means sticking that swab up there again, and if I have to, then sigh, stick it I will. Have a great weekend and we will see you on Labor Day weekend as we prepare to launch into the fall. At least we’re all old enough to not have to go back to school.

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.

Snitches get Stitches 6/24/22

This week, we go to a place where I thankfully don’t have much experience. Prison. John maybe, but not me. Okay, not him either. I do have some experience with babysitting these days however. If you don’t yet have grandchildren you’d be amazed at what type of qualifications it takes to be a babysitter. At least around New York City. You have college graduates, art history majors, child development experts, all vying for these jobs. No kidding. My own daughter’s babysitter is leaving to act in a production of Macbeth this summer. True. But we decided you can’t judge a book by its cover, so we went in the opposite direction and had Sam and Shellie hire an ex-con, covered in tattoos, to be little Sammy’s babysitter. We figured, how many degrees does it take to change a diaper (actually several). If you remember back to when we first introduced the babysitter, Sonny, he had a deeply intuitive understanding of how to speak to babies. And once Sam and Shellie got over the shock of seeing Sonny, they quickly decided he was their man. We get requests from some of our readers to do characters with alternate lifestyles, and we always respond, “We write about what we know.” This is why the strip is not filled with ex-inmates. Similarly, Sonny talks about what he knows. So John reached back into his prison knowledge base and pulled “snitches get stitches,” out of his a…I mean, out of thin air.

In our second comic, we have Sonny making up a bedtime story for Sammy. What else is he gonna talk about? He’s going to tell a better story if he speaks about what he knows. All we know is one thing, little Sammy is going to grow up to have quite an imagination. That is certainly one way to afford your kid a “well-rounded education.”

We’ll be back next week with two new ones and, before you know it, it’s going to be the 4th of July. Yikes, where does the time go?

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Frozen Foods and Forgotten Birthdays 5/20/22

Okay, I’ll admit it. After 37 years of marriage I could not remember my wife’s birthday. Was it April 22nd or the 23rd? I’ve always known this like I know the back of my hand, but now, when preparing to make a birthday dinner reservation for her and our kids, I could not, for the life of me, place it. This was particularly disturbing in retrospect since the 23rd is an enormously important date in our family. Her birthday is April 23rd, our son’s is May 23rd, and one of her brothers’ is March 23rd. But I couldn’t remember the 23rd. I thought, should I ask the kids? But then decided no, they would really worry about me if I admitted I couldn’t remember the day. I called my wife who was out of town on business and said, “Should I make the dinner reservation for Friday night or Saturday,” and she said, “Of course, make it Saturday on my birthday.” And then I knew. Being the sometimes moron that I am, at dinner on the night of the 23rd I admitted before her and my daughter that I had a momentary lapse of memory and could not recall whether or not her birthday was the 22nd or 23rd (it doesn’t escape me that I just admitted it also to the couple thousand people who read our blog). I had gotten away scot free, but I had to get it off my chest. My daughter, ever on alert to make peace, reminded me that I had just gotten over Covid that week (true) and that memory loss was part and parcel of that experience. Still, it freaked me out (and I think it freaked my wife out a little as well). This past weekend was my birthday, which she had no trouble remembering, and as I turned 69, I wondered if I was losing my mind. The other thing I wondered is that when I hit 70 next year, can I still write the New 60. My much younger comic partner John, said yes. And if you combine our ages and take an average, it only comes out to 66 1/2. So there. The other thing I thought about is that this would make a good comic. And John agreed.

Our other effort this week is a version of something that was inspired by a friend of John’s, Tony DiBernardo.. As the Dan Fogelberg song “Same Auld Lang Syne” goes, “I stole behind her in the frozen foods and I touched her on the sleeve.” Well John’s pal saw his wife up ahead and used a cheesy pick-up line from a Steve Martin movie But we came up with a new twist and something even cheesier. Al says, “You’re way too hot to be standing in the frozen food aisle,” And then the twist.. Whoops. Happens to the best of us. At least in the comics, where we can make anything happen that we want. And to that end, we’re making up two new ones for next week. See you then and have a great weekend. Just don’t get caught in the frozen food aisle all by yourself.

Andy and John

Are You Guys Still Talking About Retirement? Yes! 4/29/22S

So here’s the thing. We thought about Marv’s retirement and found we could do 5 comics on it. First the retirement party at work where everyone says how much they love you and loved (note the use of the past tense here) working with you. Then you get to the first days at home. If Marv bears any resemblance to me, it’s that his wife Rachel (in the wake of the pandemic) works at home and was used to having the place to herself between, say 8:30 am and 7:00 pm. And she is very self-sufficient. So when Marv starts hanging around the house wanting to “help” or accompany her to the grocery store, thereby turning a 45-minute trip into a 2-hour ordeal—”Hey what’s that brand of fabric softener you wanted me to find? And what aisle again?”—he ends up driving his poor wife crazy (not that I or John, who works from home, would ever do that). Soon Marv will find the joys of a mid-week afternoon baseball game (no crowds, just you and busloads of camp kids) or the occasional mid-week afternoon bike ride, golf game or movie theater. Sometimes, yeah sometimes, you have to bite the bullet and go yourself, where you will encounter other like-minded individuals in similar circumstances and hopefully nobody you know.

So as Marv expands his world, we expand right along with him, making new friends along the way. With every new phase in life John and I discover, we will have our characters discovering right along with us. I will speak for myself here and not my very busy partner, but after 40 years of working, how much do I miss it? Not one little bit at all. Except for meeting and working with people you like everyday. And now that more and more people are working from home, you don’t even get the “working with people you like” part anymore. But you know what, I like that “working from home” title so much, I am officially unretiring. From now on, I’m working from home, even if I’m taking a nap.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Goin' Down the Rabbit Hole

In “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice goes through the looking glass into the proverbial rabbit hole and starts her adventures. In today’s world, we enter the rabbit hole through our computers, tablets, phones and tv’s. The only difference is algorithms. They take what we are naturally interested in and push us to what other people who are interested in the same thing are also interested in. I realize that sentence made no sense at all. For instance, if you’re interested in combating pollution, you might get served an article about mulching your leftovers, which might lead you to an article on planting a vegetable garden with the previously mentioned mulch, which might lead to a recipe for garden salads. I frequently read about sports but at the bottom of the articles are what’s known as “clickbait,” articles that ask you to guess what these former sex symbols like Raquel Welch, look like today. After 25 clicks you still haven’t gotten to Raquel Welch, but after they send you to Tom Selleck, you decide you’ve had enough. That kind of thing. So John and I thought long and hard about what kind of rabbit hole we wanted to send Marv down. The obvious one was politics, but that seemed too obvious, so we turned to a rabbit hole John may have gone down himself, although he won’t admit to it. Part of it was he was looking for best exercises for guys with bad knees (I looked at that one myself and found an article saying jogging was good for you and another saying it was the worst possible thing you could do, so my rabbit hole was a fairly shallow one). As for John, he moved upstate to a house he built on a hilltop. One of the activities he enjoys either by himself or with his sons or son-in-law is chopping wood. So is it any surprise Marv went down the rabbit hole about wood chopping? I think not.

But when you chop wood, you need something to do with that wood, which brought us to Rabbit Hole, part 2, in which Marv decides he’ll use all that wood he’ll chop (keep in mind he still has yet to start chopping) as firewood. But he doesn’t have a fireplace. Yet. And that’s the thing with rabbit holes, you just keep digging deeper until you have no idea where you are or how you got there. Which is kind of what this blog feels like today. Now where was I? In any event Marv’s trip down the hole is a 3-parter ending next Tuesday, which is when he will finally come up for air (we hope).

Have a great weekend and please avoid all rabbit holes. We’ll see where Marv ends up next week before exploring what else he does with his spare time in retirement. We spend our spare time writing this comic, besides that, what we do is anybody’s guess.

‘til we meet again,

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

Enough with the Drugstores Already 2/11/22

What is it with John and me and drugstores? And why am I asking you when I can easily ask John? Or myself? Okay, I’ll tell you why it is. Because when you get beyond a certain age (hint, it’s the age specified in the name of our comic strip) you find you have to visit the drugstore with increasing frequency. And there’s so much to love about the process. There’s the fact that you don’t have the right loyalty card or the ridiculously long receipt with offers (if you bother to read the damn thing) for things you actually want because you’ve bought them before. But they also expire before you ever get a chance to act on them. Well with the world spinning ever more crazily out of control, Marv figured one way to get the best of them. Why not plan on making two trips to the drugstore instead of the normal one? Figure you buy something cheap the first time, like a bottle of water. Then you come back the very next day with your coupons from the day before (surely coupons can’t expire that quickly) and load up on toothpaste, mouthwash, body wash, razor blades—the whole kit and caboodle. Genius right? I don’t actually know if it works (John thought this whole nefarious plot up in the first place), but it seems like it’s worth a try. Yeah, I know it’s a waste of time to have to go to the drugstore an extra time, but hell, we’re in our 60’s and beyond. Trust me, if there’s one thing most of us have, it’s time. Truth be told, I went to the drugstore two times in one hour last week. The first time I bought whatever it was that I came to buy but after approaching the register, I realized I had left both my wallet and phone back home. No, I’m not THAT much of an idiot (I had gone out for an exercise walk, and don’t like to weigh myself down with extra accessories I don’t anticipate using), but upon reaching the cashier I told him, “No problem, I can recite my credit card number by heart,” to which he replied, “But I can’t enter the number manually, only digitally.” I walked home, bitched to my wife, who responded, “Just get in the car and go back there with your wallet and take care of it, you’ll feel better.” And so I did. And so I confess, she was right. I also completely forgot about the floor-length coupon that came with my purchase. But we digress. The point is, if I’m willing to go twice in the same day without a damn coupon, then I can surely go twice in two days, WITH the aforementioned coupon. And now that we have that straight, let’s move on to our second comic.

The germ for this idea happened to a buddy of mine. He was on a call when his wife walked in the front door in mid-conversation on her phone. He overheard her say things that gave him pause, “You know, I’ve had it, I am so done with…” He took a deep breath before she mentioned the guy’s name, and miracle of miracles, it turns out she wasn’t talking about him. I told John and we pounced on that one right away and called it “Guilty Conscience,” because, after hearing a string of horrible attributes, why would someone think it was about him? In fact, John suggested that our character, Joanne, should say things like “he only thinks about himself,” which made me wonder, was he talking about me? I think of other people. I often ask them what they think about what I’m wearing.

Okay enough for this week. Onto the Super Bowl where this particular guy would not be surprised by a Cincinnati Bengal upset. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rams blew them out either. How’s that for taking a stand? See you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

On Football (yes again) and Destination Weddings 2/4/22

We imagine you non-football fans asking, “So what’s with all the football comics?” Well it’s the NFL playoffs now, the thrilling three-week tournament that ends up deciding who will play in the Super Bowl. After many unexpected turns and upsets, it’ll be the Cincinnati Bengals vs. the Los Angeles Rams. They will play in the Rams’ new multibillion-dollar pleasure dome known by the poetic name of SoFi Stadium. But that setting does not do justice to the inspiration for today’s football comic, titled “Shirtless.” No, that was inspired by the night game a couple weeks ago in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You heard us right, night game, Green Bay, in January. As the cameras are often wont to do, they pan the crowd and always, and we do mean always, there is the seemingly mandatory shot of a bunch of guys in their 20’s sitting in the stands, with temperatures in the low teens, and negative-degree wind chills, without their shirts on. By the way, they are always, and we mean always, drinking ice cold beers (face it, even hot chocolate would become ice-cold out there). And we often wondered, what kind of idiot would do that? Then just like that, the answer came to us. Sid, the headstrong son of Al and Joanne, Sid would do that. And that became our first comic this week. But since we load them into the website in the order they’re completed, the first comic comes up second in your newsletter, which becomes challenging when we do a 3-part story. Got all that? Good, neither do we.

Next up (or first on your scroll) came from a therapist friend of mine whose name will be withheld to protect the guilty). She is getting married next week and she and her husband-to-be chose a destination wedding in Costa Rica. When I asked her why, she said something to the effect of, “This way we can invite everybody from both families while being reasonably sure nobody will come.” Brilliant. When I shared the idea with John, he thought a lot of people would be thrilled to come to Costa Rica so we moved the comic wedding to Kuala Lumpur, figuring, who in their right mind would ever go there? I mean, I don’t even know where Kuala Lumpur is. I didn’t even know how to spell it correctly until I asked the Google. I guess I could ask it where it is located. Just did. Of course, it’s the capital city of Malaysia. Duh, everyone knows that. At any rate, it’s far away. As John likes to say, “That’s the beauty part.” Actually John picked this up from a former advertising creative partner who picked it up from her father, but what the hell, the whole thing is pretty ingenious, don’t you think? Instead of spending days, weeks or most likely months worrying about who to invite and who not to invite, instead of wasting precious brain cells trying to make sure Uncle Marty and his second wife Sarah aren’t seated at the same table as Aunt Esther and her tennis pro, Rafael, just throw the damn wedding in Kuala Lumpur. Or Thailand for that matter (except that didn’t work for one married couple because my wife and I actually attended that one anyway).

So that is it for this week. We’ll be back next week with two new ones about who knows what (actually we know but we’re not telling).

Have a great weekend

Andy and John

On Football and Loyalty Oaths

Loyalty. We hear a lot about it these days, but to us it often seems like a one-way street. The store, the cable company, the politician, they all want your loyalty but don’t show you much of the same in return. This particular comic came from a trip John made to his local CVS. Being the good and loyal CVS customer that he is, the cashier asked him if he had a CVS loyalty card and the answer was yes, he did. Upon showing the card in question the cashier went on to tell him about the CVS CarePass Card, an even better way to show your loyalty. It came with a host of mouthwatering benefits like having your prescriptions delivered straight to your home. All for the low, low price of ONLY $5.00 per month (or the even LOWER price of $48 if you sign up for the year). The point is, there’s always something better out there, and you don’t have it. Now John and I didn’t spend over 70 combined years in advertising to see what’s really going on at CVS. Seems like there’s this little competitor out there called Amazon Prime, who coincidentally offers free shipping straight to your door for the low, low price of ONLY $119 per year! It’s a steal!! Or how about American Express. Got an Amex Gold? Well good for you, here’s a Platinum. But wait, there’s an even better one. Amex Black, for only $10,000 per year you can have so many benefits like first dibs on tickets to the next Ariana Grande concert. Who could resist that? And what about the airlines? If you are a loyal frequent flyer you get priority boarding. Which sounds great on paper until you realize you come after the 67 other groups that have more priority than you do. You know how to avoid all that? Just pony up an extra $1,000 or 2 to fly first class. I hear that even comes with pillows and blankets. Now that’s loyal. By the way, the final frame and joke on our drug store comic was a none-too-subtle shout-out to our friends at American Express.

And that brings us to the guy’s weekend. You could not have had 4 more exciting football games in one weekend. The final Sunday game between Kansas City and Buffalo is being called the greatest game ever played. I always look forward to that particular weekend every year. I used to watch with my son when he still lived at home, then later flew out to meet him wherever he happened to be living. But this year, with Covid and all, I thought I’d do something at home. Just like the comic said, my wife went to visit our kids and grandchild, knowing I’d be glued to the set. After making a bunch of calls, I ended up with a massive pot of chili and one friend to help eat it. When my wife came back we managed to kill it off over the course of a couple dinners, but c’mon. The excuses! Plans with children, grandchildren, shopping, weekend retreats, what is this world coming to? Everything is so complicated. Take the case of John, who dutifully recorded the KC-Buffalo game before going out. He came back and watched the whole thing before realizing it was the AFC Championship game from last year. Ooops. Fortunately, he got over it in time to see the end of this year’s game. And that my friends, is a wrap.

See you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Improving Memory and Health 1/21/22

First the health part. Now if you are like many of us, you’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions that you are promising to stick to. High on the list is the vow to stay in shape. There’s an old Nike ad I love and it features a lone runner in silhouette on a distant bridge running across the background of a beautiful sunset. And the copy goes something like this (remember, I’m relying on my memory here) “Why do I run? Because there’s this guy, he’s fat, balding, approaching 50 and he’s trying to catch up to me, and I won’t ever let him get me.” At least it’s pretty close to that. Now we just have to modify that copy to say “He walks with a cane, he runs out of breath too easily, he’s in his 80’s (okay, his 90’s) and I won’t let him catch up to me.” Scary, right? So to prevent this from happening, yours truly joined a beautiful, new health club. The other day, with the temperature hovering around 8 degrees, I went. I hopped on the treadmill to do “interval training” where you walk or run at a slightly faster pace than usual but then, every five minutes, you run like a bat-out-of-hell for one minute. 5 minutes later, you run like a slightly faster bat-out-of-hell and so on. Here’s the problem. In keeping up with the latest health and safety protocols, the gym requires everyone to wear a mask. I totally get it and support it. But try sprinting with a mask on. It’s not fun. The “gasping for air” part becomes much more difficult because you’re trying to breathe through a mask. But I figured out how to show them! I just pulled the mask away from my face, sucking in all that potentially covid-ravaged air, until my breathing calmed down. When I mentioned this to John, he said something like, “Yep, that’s a comic.” Don’t ask me exactly what he said because my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. Which segues perfectly into our second comic, Memory Tricks.

Now this is one that popped out of John’s head in whole. It wasn’t like, here’s an idea, let’s discuss. It was more like here’s an idea and I even sketched it out. And here’s the thing. it was damn good. We usually deal in reality, and say the things most of us think but don’t say out loud. This one was a full-scale trip to the land of make-believe. What appealed most to me was the vision of Mickey Mouse on the toilet. Anyway, the trick described in the comic is an actual memory trick. It’s not the trick I would have used to remember, but it was funnier than mine. Mine would skew closer to reality, when thinking about how to remember I’d left the memory book in the bathroom. I would have thought, this book is shit, and that would have helped me remember it was in the bathroom. John’s vision is much more fun and a hell of a lot better to visualize.

That’s all we’ve got this week, keep your masks on when you’re indoors with strangers, yeah even in a health club, and have a good 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