To Sit or To Stand? 10/13/22

When it comes to peeing, it seems like we’ve got it all figured out, right? Men stand, women sit. But sometimes we find ourselves out of our comfort zones. In the case of a guy with a broken or twisted ankle, when you can’t put weight on a foot, you are forced to sit and pee. Conversely if a woman has to go really bad, and she’s say, hiking in the woods, she has no choice but to stand (alright, she squats, but that didn’t fit my sentence as well). As Al is about to find out, 1) nobody cares and 2) a lot of guys choose to sit. Who knew? Apparently John knew more than I did and that forms the basis for our two part series. Basically I did my part by breaking my ankle and learning the hard way, while John supplied the reasons a guy might sit.

Our two-part series this week deals with both points. The fact that nobody really cares, and the fact that however you do it is up to you. In fact, this topic is going to result in this week’s blog being mercifully short. Because, I can’t, for the life of me, think of one more thing to say about going #1. I leave you with this funny and true story:

After my bike accident in July, I spent the next couple months on crutches, or on a “knee stroller” and had no choice but to pee sitting down. One Sunday night in late August, my wife and I went out to dinner with another couple we’re very friendly with. Names, as always, are withheld to protect the guilty (and also to assure that I will have at least a couple of friends left after I finish blogging one day). The male part of this couple we had dinner with is both a very loyal friend and a very natty dresser. He is exceedingly neat and a bit germophobic. As we approached the end of the meal, my wife had a pre-existing zoom call and had to leave before dessert. She asked our friends if they would drive me home and help me up the steps to see that I got back in one piece. This was fine, except for one glaring omission. I had to go pee. And since it takes so much longer to do anything when you’re in a cast and on crutches, I knew I couldn't wait until I got home. The fact that the cast was up to right below my knee meant it wasn't going to be easy to pull my pants down, meaning I was going to pee standing up (at last, he comes back to the topic). This required asking my friend to accompany me to the men’s room of this very tony restaurant, and when I saw there was no rail to hang onto, I asked if I could support myself with my free hand by putting my arm around his shoulder. Fortunately for me, the loyal friend part of my friend won out over the fastidious part and he stood there allowing me to hang on his shoulder while emptying my bladder. Again, I never want to name names, but you, sir, are indeed a great buddy.

That’s it for this week. See you next week, same time, same place with two new ones. Enjoy your weekends and if you are a Mets fan like John and me, let It go, it’s time for football.

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

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

Longevity 8/19/22

It’s all about perspective. I remember my wife and I selling our house and moving into our apartment at the tail end of 2014. We moved into a townhouse/apartment complex that doesn’t refer to itself as a 55+ community, it just is a 55+ community. You know the signs. No more mowing lawns, no more hauling your trash and recycling to the top of the driveway, no more shoveling snow off your front steps, no more front steps. Everything with multiple stories (like a townhouse) has an internal elevator. Just don’t call it “adult living” or anything remotely close to that, because that implies one step from assisted living, which is one step from the nursing home, which is one step from…ahh forget it. Anyhow, shortly after moving into our “not 55+ complex” we went to a housewarming party for all the residents (it was brand new at the time) in the “clubhouse.” We arrived fashionably late so as not to seem too eager and Iupon taking a step inside, gasped and whispered to one another, “these people are f’ing old.” Only we didn’t say “f’ing.” The point was, what did we look like to them? F’ing old, just like everyone else. And, that friends, is what they call perspective. Look at a lot of the acts still filling arenas and concert halls, Elton John, Steely Dan, Billy Joel, The Stones and, of course, The Who. They’re not old, right? They’re cool (or at least they were in the ‘70’s). John seized upon the Who’s line from “My Generation,” “Hope I die before I get old,” and the rest just fell into place.

Our other idea involved the continuing Covid crisis. As you are likely aware, the coronavirus is kinda like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator, “I’ll be back!” Or to borrow a phrase from “Jaws,” “Just when you thought it was safe to go back…” I can hear you all thinking, “enough with the movie references” (notice that in my imagination everybody speaks like a New York Jewish person). So let’s move on. If you are anything like John or me (who are not very much alike) you have likely let your Corona guard down. How many of you still put a mask on when you enter a grocery store? How many of you pull your mask back up after you finish your popcorn and soda at the movies? How many of you still go to the movies? Really? Not even for Top Gun Maverick??? So many people we know have caught the virus for the first (or even second ) time. But relax, the government came to the rescue and offered every family a bunch of free Covid tests. So what would you do if you had an excess number of tests? You might use them for every reason imaginable. And for things you didn’t even imagine (after all, that's why you have us). So we hope you have no more contact with the virus and if you don’t, then we’ll stop doing virus-related comics. Except for next week, when we unveil Part 2 of our two-part Coronavirus comic mini-series. Until then stay well and stay safe and enjoy the end of the summer. See you next week with two new ones.

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

ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND WAITING

“Patience is a virtue,” claimed English poet William Langland in 1360. That’s a long time ago. But today, some 662 years later, we are asked to be constantly patient. Waiting on line at the drugstore, waiting online while that stupid beachball from hell keeps spinning on your computer screen, waiting for a fellow texter to respond, waiting for a table at a popular restaurant (“as soon as that table pays the check, the table is yours”) and most annoyingly, waiting in the doctor’s office which is where we take you in our first comic (second in your scroll). I don’t know how many times I have sat in a waiting room stewing, thinking, “I’m gonna charge them MY hourly fee and deduct it from the final bill!!!!” Yeah right. But this time Al figures, “Screw it, how about I make the doctor wait?” It works in a comic strip, good luck trying it in real life.

Our second strip deals with political correctness. Now surely, if an entire race or culture finds a term insulting, we should do our best to avoid using it in the future. But the rules keep constantly changing. For instance, we no longer should refer to a “master bedroom,” because “master” is a term that dates back to slavery. We should now refer to it as the “primary bedroom.” Just yesterday, I found myself in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and stopped at a Chinese restaurant named Koi. First of all, every other place named Koi, is a Japanese restaurant. But what struck me most is what was written underneath Koi on the restaurant’s sign in the parking lot. It said, “Koi, Oriental food.” Now I know you can’t say “Oriental” anymore unless you’re talking about a rug, but here was a Chinese restaurant with a Japanese name using the offending term (I wasn’t offended, I was too busy enjoying the chicken with black bean sauce). Similarly, John was listening to classic rock and wondering, what if he was walking along, listening to some playlist on his headphones, singing out loud, and Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” came up. Would you sing the politically correct version instead? Incidentally, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” along with “Lola” were way ahead of their time, dealing with cross-dressing and transsexuality (Fran Lebowitz once said, “Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football.”) But I digress. The point is that these two avant-garde songs still had phrases that today seem completely out of touch. So what’s a confused 60-something to do? Don’t ask us, we don’t have a freakin’ clue.

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

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

On Gender Reassignment and Halloween

Sometimes the subjects of these blogs fit into a neat little headline. Like last week’s for instance. One comic was about filling your car up at gas stations and another about trains, so the title “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” came naturally (even though there wasn’t anything about planes). But, sometimes the two comics have absolutely nothing in common and so I am forced to go with the more prosaic, “On Gender Reassignment and Halloween.” If you readers have any suggestions for a more pithy title, send them in.

Let’s start with Halloween, even though the comic is only remotely about Halloween. I live in Tarrytown, NY, and right across the street is North Tarrytown, which has been renamed Sleepy Hollow. If there was ever a place that went absolutely nuts for Halloween, this is it. Washington Irving, who wrote the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the one with the headless horseman) has the next town over named for him, Irvington. They have haunted hayrides with high school students dressed up as ghosts and witches who pop out from behind trees and scare the bejesus out of the little kids on the hayride. I have a couple questions here. 1) why is that considered fun and 2) what does bejesus mean? Anyway, suffice it to say that this corner of Westchester County takes its Halloween seriously. Having said that, my wife and I moved to an apartment building 6 years ago with mostly empty nesters so there’s almost no trick or treating involved, and no need to dress up like a haunted figure to answer the door, because no kids are showing up in the first place. But this comic was really about crass commercialism. There are stores (remember stores, they were those buildings with signs in front before Amazon took over?) that cater to one holiday season at a time. There are Christmas stores, Summer stores (patio furniture and beach chairs, etc.) and Halloween stores. But the funny thing is these places run out of costumes or Christmas trees or decorations or deck chairs long before the season they are meant to serve. I mean, who even thinks about Halloween decorations in September? Apparently a lot of people, because when (if you are like us) you finally get around to shopping for Halloween, everything is gone and the store is loaded with Christmas decorations. In October! John and I had a discussion about the clerk at the store, whether he should say we ran out of Halloween stuff after Labor Day or should we say after Columbus Day. Columbus Day won because it was more believable.

Then there was the comic we called Gender Bender. Now everytime we broach a controversial subject we tread carefully, not wanting to offend anybody. But let’s face it, that’s pretty damn impossible. When we were putting this one together, we focused not on the gender reassignment surgery, but rather on Marv’s uncomfortable reaction to it. Our guess is that would be pretty typical amongst people in our particular age group. But who are we to judge? In this case, it turned on the lie everybody says when they run into someone they haven’t seen in many decades…”You haven’t changed a bit.” Doesn’t matter if they put on an extra 100 pounds, had hair plugs, silicone boobs, lap-band surgery or even if they changed sexes, we all say the same thing. But face it, everybody changes. Except for John and me who still have all our hair, which miraculously hasn’t turned grey, all our height and all our physical strength. We haven’t changed a bit. Except for, well…everything.

That’s all folks for this week. Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Picture This 10/01/21

John and I both attended recent weddings at which there were photo booths. Which led us to do a comic about, well, photo booths. Actually it led John to the topic and I just went along because I had nothing better to offer. At the wedding I attended, I submitted to a picture with my wife and the parents of the bride. I put on my best smile and tried like hell to keep my eyes open when the camera flashed. It worked! A nephew of mine had a different use of the photo booth. He used it as a kissing booth with one of the cute young women at said wedding. My wife has many rules for taking pictures and she has imparted them to me. Shoot from above (one has no control over that in a photo booth). Keep your chin up (this is called DCA - Double-Chin Avoidance). The booth situations are so freaking awkward that it makes people (okay, it makes ME) uncomfortable. Thus the dialogue between Marv and Rachel as he tries and fails at everything she suggests. But at least he has a cute butt.

The other comic, ostensibly about a sausage upgrade at our favorite franchise, Pizza-on-a-Stick is really about second acts in general. Just for the sake of clarity, a second act refers to the career you pursue after your first career is over and done. The thing about second careers is that they are usually a chance for the pursuer to be in charge. Your own business, be it a bed and breakfast, a cookie-making factory, a comic strip (now where did that idea come from?) and a pizza franchise. Since it’s yours, you care about it way more than if you were merely an employee. On a little side note, a friend of ours, a super-talented art director and big fan, Tanya Mishu, sent us a YouTube video of a new franchise idea, Pizza in a Cone. Seriously. Imagine an ice cream cone filled with piping hot tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and fillings. Now imagine biting into it. It seems to us like you’d burn the hell out of the roof of your mouth, but what do we know? Suffice it to say, Pizza-on-a-Stick is a way, way better idea. And Al, the former ad man/employee and now a boss, wants to make his new venture better. So he went farm to table with his pizza toppings. What could possibly go wrong?

When you’re an employee, you gleefully help yourself to the free bagels, coffee, cream cheese, birthday cake, beer (during pub hour) and assorted snacks. When you’re the owner, suddenly the free giveaways are costing you a bunch. So who wants a second career again?

That’s all for this week folks. But we’ve got two more coming up so hang on to your hats, have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you next week.

Andy and John

The evolving bathroom 7/30/21

Frequently, John and I will relate stories from our immediate present or past and then decide it they are comic-worthy or not. Occasionally, an idea happens that is so telegraphic, it doesn’t need any words. Such an idea happened to John and a much shorter colleague he used to work with. If you’re not a guy, you may not be aware that men’s bathrooms have urinals of differing heights. One for kids, one for adults. But there is also an unwritten rule that if more than one guy enters at the same time, whoever enters the bathroom first, goes to the furthest urinal, leaving the closest one open to the last person who comes in. There are other unwritten rules as well. Don’t ever take the urinal directly next to someone peeing, if there are more than two urinals. You leave one in between the two of you for some (imagined) sense of privacy. And then the big rule, don’t ever, ever, look down in the direction of the person standing at the closest urinal to you. Well, this particular comic happened to John and the aforementioned shorter colleague. As it is drawn. John, the significantly taller of the two, was about to pee into the kid’s urinal while his friend had to practically stand on tiptoe to get over the rim of the taller urinal. They broke the rule, took a look at each other, and switched. Wordlessly. Very funny indeed, but with no words to accompany the action, I have nothing to do with the comic except to say, “Funny idea, let’s do it.” So, I will swallow my disappointment on the comic not having any dialogue because, you know, I wouldn’t want to piss all over a great idea.

Second up in your “stream” is about a summer beach house rental that is so “smart” the renters can’t figure out how to use anything. Hint: I am living in such a rental as we speak. First of all is the toaster. It has a name, “June.” No kidding. You put an English muffin in and close the door, and a picture comes up saying “English muffin, two slices.” If you decide to toast on medium, it goes on for 4 minutes. If you don’t think it’s done enough, you push “add 30 seconds,” and after that if you are satisfied, it asks “do you want me to save the longer cooking time?” This impressed me and freaked me out at the same time. Later that same week, I went to reheat a piece of pizza in the same oven, shut the door and it said, “Pizza, one slice, thin crust.” I kid you not. But let’s get to the toilet (jeez, we’ve been speaking a lot about bathrooms today). You walk into the bathroom, and the light goes on. You walk to the toilet and the seat raises automatically. The seat, by the way, is heated. After you go, It rinses and dries your butt for you. And when you stand up again, it flushes and closes the seat for you. I explained all this to John and he said, here’s the ending, “Marv gets so frustrated he wishes he could turn the whole thing off and then, of course, the house is plunged into total darkness.” And we had ourselves another comic. None of this smart tech is an exaggeration. Which leaves me with two thoughts. First, how can I ever come back to my apartment, where you have to estimate how long to toast things all by yourself? Secondly, do you really expect me to lift my own toilet seat after all this???

Only time will tell. We will see you again next week with two new ones and until then, have a wonderful weekend.

Andy and John

The Great Outdoors 7/2/21

Is it just us or does it seem like the older we get, the more time flies? I mean it seems like only yesterday when we were stuck indoors, wearing masks every time we stepped outside. The thought of going to a restaurant or an outdoor baseball game seemed out of the question. And now? 17,000 people are packed into indoor basketball arenas, maskless, screaming their heads off. And are we really on the cusp of Independence Day 2021 already? So John and I decided we would celebrate our recent relative freedom by doing a maskless 4th of July celebration. With a tan line. If you remember last year’s 4th of July version, we had our guys mistakenly squirting a giant size bottle of hand sanitizer on their hot dogs. This year, a few lines from masking up outdoors. That is a definite sign of progress.

The second strip on your scroll is one of our favorites. As John says to me, you just live your life and tell me the incidents and I will make them funny. To me they are funny enough already, but as my dominant sense is verbal, and comics are basically a visual medium, I see his point. As James Thurber, a noted author and cartoonist once said, “A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.” In any case I was supposed to be writing about the comic. Here’s the inspiration; my wife and I sold our house and moved to an apartment when our kids were grown up and living on their own. One of my favorite activities is to go out on the deck, sit in a lounge chair to meditate and look out over the Hudson River. We planted beautiful pots of flowers on the deck to enhance the view. I like to go outside and commune with nature as I do a 20-minute meditation. The birds are attracted to the flowers and often come and sit on the deck railing by the flowers and call out to each other. At first I thought this was incredibly charming and wonderful. Then the birds got a little louder and started calling to each other from other decks. It got so I couldn’t concentrate on my meditation. Caw, caw, Tweet, Tweet, CHIRP, CHIRP! Suddenly my calm was broken and I started thinking, “Will you shut the f@#% up already!” And there you have it, with the add-on of a concerned neighbor thrown in for a laugh. I actually don’t have a concerned neighbor, or if I did, she was out of town, because I gave those birds a piece of my mind alright. I guess it didn’t matter because they were back the next day and every day thereafter. We sure showed them. We just rented a beach house and left them behind. Now all I have to interrupt my meditation are crickets, cicadas and whatever crazy, unsanitary thoughts are rolling through my mind at the moment. That’s all. But in fact, that’s a lot.

See you next week with two new ones, both maskless.

Andy and John

On Gender Reveal Parties and Emotional Support Animals 6/11/21

If you are a regular reader of The New 60 Comic (and if you’re reading this blog there’s a good chance that you are indeed a regular reader) you probably wonder why everything is becoming more and more complicated. Case in point, the gender reveal party. Used to be, your kid called you and said something like, “Mom, dad, we’re pregnant!” To which you would respond, “Oh that’s great,” and you’d follow it up with, “Do you know what you’re having,” and they’d either tell you or say, we didn’t want to know, we want it to be a surprise.” SImple, right? And then once the baby was born, you could come to the hospital and figure it out the old fashioned way. But now? Noooo way. Introducing The Gender Reveal Party. Like a lot of things these days, people compete over who has the most dramatic reveal. One brilliant couple in California decided to shoot off pink fireworks to reveal they were having a baby girl. Congratulations guys. Only trouble was 1) it was in the middle of an historic drought, 2 )the temperatures were extremely hot and dry and 3) there were strong Santa Ana winds. Know what happened? They started a wildfire that burned thousands of acres of forest, forced people from their homes, and killed others who couldn’t escape fast enough. But at least they got to tell everyone they had a girl. Fortunately, we chose to make our young couple a little more responsible and just send up balloons. which are kind of dramatic, and also ensures there’ll be plenty of helium left over to inhale and enable people to speak in really high voices.

Which brings us to emotional support. With the world getting more and more complex (ever try to find a radio station on your car these days), some of us (okay,okay LOTS of us) have turned to our doctors to help us cope with anti-anxiety and anti-depression. We consume drugs as if they were giant-sized party bags of m&m’s. But what if you want a non-medical way to cope? How about an emotional support animal? These have proved very helpful to people of all ages coping with all sorts of issues. Just recently a friend of mine (who shall go nameless to protect the innocent) found out her emotional support cat was very sick. The emotional support animal now needed her emotional support. What happens if you weren’t trained as an emotional support human? What do you do then, huh? Maybe there is such a thing as an emotional support animal specifically trained to provide emotional support to emotional support animals who are suffering. Or maybe this blogger needs to find himself a real job.

Okay that’s it for this week, see you next week with two new ones. Stay safe everyone,

Andy and John

Both Ends of the Life Cycle 5/7/21

That’s convenient, now isn’t it? My daughter just had a baby a month ago and now Al’s daughter has one! Imagine the coincidence. Is it art imitating life? No, it’s just a damn good storyline. But unlike Al’s daughter, mine actually revealed her baby’s gender (a girl, Charlotte) as soon as she found out from the doctor. But John and I felt a gender reveal party was just too juicy to pass up. It’s the kind of thing that has made its way into the cultural zeitgeist, and most of us 60+ year-olds have heard of it but actually have no idea what it means. John and I actually called our daughters to get the lowdown. The bottom line is this: some people want to know the gender of their baby before it comes out, some want it to be a surprise and some want to make it an excuse for a party, or in the lexicon of today, an event. As my children used to say “In real true life,” one of these parties had a couple setting off fireworks, which led to a massive wildfire destroying thousands of acres of California. Another in Mexico just last month had a small plane flying over Mexico, set to reveal the baby’s gender. The only problem was it crashed and the result wasn’t pretty. We promise a gender reveal party somewhere down the road where nobody dies or even gets injured. But don’t ask us what the baby’s gender is because we ain’t tellin’!

The second strip is something a lot of us in this age group has gone through or is going through. It involves selling your parents’ house because either they’ve moved into an assisted living home or they passed away. Gosh this blog is very morbid today, isn’t it? John and I have both been through some form of this and everybody tells you the same thing, “Don’t get emotional. Whatever the buyer want to do with the house is up to them. It’s no longer the home you grew up in. It’s now their home.” You can nod along in agreement to this very rational piece of advice, but when the moment comes, all reason flies out the window. Marv’s interior dialogue goes something like this: “That was MY room damnit! And if I say it’s a great boy’s room, then that’s what you should use it for. I don’t care that you don’t have kids. Keep your freakin’ loom outta here and put up some posters of Jacob deGrom, okay?!” (By the way, that last piece of punctuation - ?! - is called an interrobang. John taught me that from a book about cartooning, written by Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey). At any rate, Instead of that angry interior rant, Marv just says, “Or a loom, a loom would be perfect in here.” This type of debate between the internal dialogue and what actually pours from our characters’ mouths is the type of discussion we have every week. If you know us it would come as no surprise that I would be the type to say the internal dialogue out loud whereas John would go for the second, more politic way of speaking. Since you’ve already read the comic, I guess you can figure out who won the debate for what Marv actually does say.

So that’s it for this week. Next week we’ve got another series coming up. We’ll be checking in on Sam, as he deals with the demands of being a new dad in his 60’s. The fun begins.

Have a safe, covid-free weekend and thanks for staying with us

Andy and John

Adjusting 03/19/21

Adjustments. We make a small series that most people don’t even notice, but over time, they add up. Having spent nearly 4 decades in the ad biz, I can tell you that products you are very familiar with tweak their labels in small ways, keeping consistent elements, but changing all the same. You wouldn’t notice them from year to year, but if you looked back, say 5 years, you’d see an obvious difference. Coca Cola has the familiar red and white can, but they play with the white stripe, the type face and whether it says Coke, or Coca Cola. Sometimes the adjustment is too much too soon. Does anybody remember New Coke? Exactly.

It’s like that in relationships as well. Al and Joanne are struggling to adjust to life without their son at home. They were also struggling with being able to see the small type on their tv monitor. That was an adjustment that worked out for Al. A similar situation arose in my home a couple weeks ago. The big screen tv went kaput after 6years (they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to, do they?). I wanted a bigger screen, my wife not so much. The old tv was on a bracket where it pulled out and swiveled. The adjustment: a bigger screen, but flat against the wall. Both sides ended up being happy. Of course, most adjustments don’t work like that. It’s usually where either side didn’t get quite what they wanted, but they are at least willing to live with it. Another example happened when we downsized from our house to our apartment. I said, “Honey, there isn’t room for four sets of china.” To which my wife replied, “And there’s no room for 4 tvs.” You can’t argue with good solid logic, so we adjusted. We have 4 sets of china and 4 tvs.

Next week we will deal with compromise, which is really just another word for adjustment. Until then, have a great and virus-free weekend.

Andy and John

Adult Children 3/05/21

What kind of world is this? When did it become the rule that people of a certain age had to take care of their parents and elderly relatives, and also still have to help their kids out? It’s not all our kids’ faults. Gone are jobs with nice, comfy perks like medical insurance and bonuses and pensions and the guarantee of 40 years with the same company (what the hell is a company anyway?). Nope. Now we live in a “gig” economy. As far as I can tell gig stands for no freakin’ benefits. Gig makes me gag. But this is supposed to be funny, so enough.

We thought we’d take a look at Al and Joanne’s 33-year-old son who works on his computer upstairs and has no income. He does however have a plan. First, we gave him a name, Sidney. And then, as part of our new push to tell more continuing stories, we are doing our first ever 5-part story, the Saga of Sid, if you will. We are going to explore the push/pull of “C’mon kid, it’s time to move out” combined with “Do you have to go so soon?” Sure, they’re pains in the butt but they also solve all your tech problems. Sure, they eat you out of house and home but they also listen to cool music you’d never hear and watch new tv shows you’d never watch. In short, they keep you a little more hip than you’d be otherwise. John and I have no kids living at home, which may be a reason why we are so unhip, even though we did visit a pot dispensary in a past comic.

The other thing about a five-part series is this: once we enter a comic, say Part 1 on the website, and then enter the subsequent comic, Part 2, the subsequent comic comes up first in your feed, so that when you click open your email on Friday, you’d see part 2, followed by Part 1. And then next week, you’d see Part 4 at the top followed by Part 3. In other words, “Help! Where are our kids when we need them???

Have a great weekend and get vaccinated,

Andy and John

FRIENDS 1/22/21

I think as we get older, we get a bit more unfiltered. We don’t agree to as many things as we used to agree to and we don’t just go along for the sake of going along as much either. In other words, we become more cantankerous. Today’s first comic results from an inability to filter. And it comes from personal experience. Back when I was working in advertising, sometime in the 18th century, there was a woman who worked for me who used to regularly break down in tears or get worked up into hysterics, and, suddenly, she seemed noticeably calmer. I asked her what was different. She told me she had embarked on Transcendental Meditation and it had changed her life. She even showed me a secret hiding place to meditate during work hours. We worked in a huge NYC high rise on the 32nd floor, but right off the second floor, there was a secret side door just to the left of where the company cafeteria was located. There stood 7 rooms reserved for lactating mothers. At most one or two of these would be in use at a time. She would simply claim one, slide the in use tab outside the door, lock the door and sit in the easy chair with her eyes closed for 20 minutes. Heaven. When she exited, she was refreshed and ready to take on the rest of her day. And she didn’t even have to lactate. So I went to take a course in TM along with my wife and it was terrific. But, I’m ashamed to say, I took my colleague up on her secret the very day after my course had ended and used one of those 7 lactating rooms. Fortunately no one ever saw me exiting, because I had no idea what I might say. “No, you don’t understand, it’s not what it looks like…” But I digress. The funny thing is that after paying a semi-exorbitant amount for my wife and I to get our training and our own personal mantras, a friend pointed out that you could get mantras for free simply by going online. Way to harsh my mellow, dude. And if you want to know what that means in English, it means “way to ruin my peaceful mood.” And so was born today’s first comic.

Our second comic came from John enlisting his wife to hold up the big screen tv while he attempted to connect it to an extending, rotating arm he installed in the back of the wall. Note: this is a major difference between us, I just call the super (I believe it has something to do with growing up Jewish but I cannot prove it). So he wondered, what would happen if we tried to call our friends to help us with a physically demanding task? What would their excuse be if they no longer had to work? And this is where our age difference came into play (I am 5 years older than John). I wanted the excuses to be, “Oh I can’t, I’m having an endoscopy, while John was more in the “Oh I can’t, I’m taking the family on a ski trip,” vein. Since I can’t even draw a stick figure and since his version was more optimistic, guess who won. But in the words of the hit play Hamilton, I say to you John, “Just you wait!”

So that’s it for this week but we will be back next week with parts 2 and 3 of our meditation series. Try it, you’ll like it.

Have a great and safe weekend

Andy and John

Crossing the Line 12/11/2020

I remember going on safari many moons ago and we passed over an airplane tarmac where there were a group of rhinos. They passed over the pavement onto the grass heading for a grass circle. One of the young males kicked at the grass and mud and peed on it. The guide breathlessly explained that this circle had been created by the elder and that the young male was carving out his territory by pissing on and kicking the elder’s territory. It was quite a sight indeed. Now you’re probably thinking, have I lost my mind? Why am I bringing this up? The answer to the first question is: probably yes. And to the second: because we’re all animals and we all mark our territories. There’s my stuff and there’s your stuff and never the line shall be crossed. It’s called territory. There’s stuff that goes on my side and stuff that goes on your side. But what happens to the stuff we share? Like toilet paper? Or, in the case of this comic, cotton balls? It seems to John and me that these items usually find their way to the side with less stuff. Sharing means caring, or something like that.

Now the other comic is a little idiosyncratic thing from yours truly. When people stop me and say, you know who you look like? The answer is always, Larry David. Now, I don’t see it, (If you want to see my picture, go to our website thenew60comic.com and click on the tab “the creators”) but I do think I act like him. At least sometimes. And this comic is one of those times. The key to his character, I’ve always felt, is “the world is out to get me.” So in this case, when Al pushes the lobby button in an elevator, and somebody gets on after him and pushes the very same button he pushed, it is an affront. Why did she do that? Did she not think he did it correctly? Judging from the comments’ section, not many other people think this way, which says something good about the world, if not about this writer’s psyche.

So that’s it for this week, as we rocket our way to the end of 2020 (thank the lord). We’ll be back to you next week with two new ones.

Stay safe

Andy and John

Thanks for nuthin' 2020 11/27/2020

2020 can kiss our collective butts goodbye. But before it goes we ended our three part advertising saga and John did a Covid-themed Norman Rockwell poster for Thanksgiving. First, about Thanksgiving. We hope you enjoyed yours. We’ll have a distant one, with one kid and her husband in Brooklyn and our son in Colorado. While John and Linda will have two family members visiting and for the rest an equally scattered holiday. For all the wonderful memories Thanksgiving brings, there’s also the political arguments, the aggressive cheek pinching, and drunk uncles falling asleep watching football, so at least there’s a little bit less of that, though to be truthful, this was written before Thanksgiving and I might have too much wine, affectionately pinch Joanie’s cheek and fall asleep watching football, but not during the Steelers-Ravens night game, which might actually be exciting. And I have one question about turkey. If it’s so unbelievably damn good, why does nobody think about making it any other night of the year? Ever? Just asking.

Now onto the ad thing. We all love funny Super Bowl ads with great jokes and visuals at the end, like 90-year-old Abe Vigoda getting tackled at the end of a Dorito’s commercial a few years back. But almost nobody admits to liking a good jingle. We remember them, that’s for sure, but like them? Well, that’s a different story. We all like things we are embarrassed to admit. I, for instance, like Neil Diamond. And This Is Us. As well as a good jingle. But you didn’t hear that here. And when Al is confronted by his buddy on how well the jingle served his business, he was forced to admit it did pretty damned well. That’s his story and he’s sticking with it.

As 2020 comes to close to a close, we hope a vaccine is around the corner followed by a sense of normalcy and hopefully a book of New 60 Comics which will be a perfect holiday gift for next year, hint, hint.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week which is already December. Yikes, how time flies,

Andy and John

Getting in Shape 11/13/2020

Happy Friday the 13th. You know, there’s all different kinds of getting in shape. You could be in shape for running a marathon, but that does not get you in shape for bringing up a new baby. You could be in shape for being a college student, partying all night and still managing to go to class the next day, while staying up all night the next night studying to pass the test you’re about to take the day after that. That’s one kind of shape. But it doesn’t prepare you for the kind of shape you have to be in to commute while working a full-time job. And that doesn’t prepare you for the kind of shape you have to be in to work a full-time job while being a new parent. Suddenly those mid-week all-night parties are a thing of the past, or else you too will be a thing of the past. At least at work. So Al, in our first comic, preps for watching sports on a Sunday afternoon from 9:30 am all the way through Sunday Night Football which usually doesn’t end until 11:30 pm or midnight. Now that takes a certain type of stamina. So I’ve heard. It can be done, but you have to allow for a few naps along the way. Especially if there’s beer and hot dogs involved. And chips. And guac. Not to mention salsa. A chocolate chip cookie. And the occasional 5 mg. gummy. Again I reiterate, not that I’d know.

Now onto our second comic, which was actually the third in our “Sam’s a New Dad” trilogy. I know, it’s not as intergalactically impressive as saying “The Star Wars Trilogy,” but first of all, “Star Wars“ had a much bigger ad budget and secondly, they had about 6,000 movies so how the hell is that a trilogy? “Sam’s a New Dad” is a real, honest to goodness, trilogy. It takes us all the way from when he first became a new dad to when he settled in to becoming a new dad. Now maybe that doesn’t sound like a very long journey to you but remember those first few days of first-time parenthood? That was a looooong journey. Now imagine going through it at age 60. At this age, what he lacks in energy, he makes up for in money and (hopefully) patience. And that explains the $900 jogging stroller, a “must-have” for any new parent of means.

All right, have a happy Friday the 13th unless you have triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13). If that’s the case we gently suggest, GET OVER IT!

ps: I never heard of triskaidekaphobia either until John, aka Mr. Smarty Pants, brought it up

See you next week with two brand new comics and a brand-new saga.

Andy and John

Getting Carried Away 10/23/2020

In the last blog I revealed that my wife and I went to Portland, Maine, a couple of weeks ago while John and his wife went to the Cape. We both visited New England, and I promised that these would lead to several comics. The first on your list is about my favorite show courtesy of Mother Nature, the changing of the leaves. The breathtaking beauty of red, orange, gold, green and yellow leaves. But the New York area (where we live) is awash in another less beautiful tradition. And that is a not so silent competition about being and experiencing “the best.” When it comes to leaves, that means going during “Peak Season.” What is the proper definition of peak season? Duh, It’s the weekend you choose to go leaf-peeping. But there is an unofficial definition as well. And it changes depending on where you live. On the east coast, it starts earliest up north, where the days get shorter and the nights get colder a lot quicker than they do further south. Hence, states like Maine and Vermont and New Hampshire see their leaves ablaze in color weeks sooner than in New York. New Yorkers want to brag that they are seeing the leaves at their peak, and the locals take great delight in proving them wrong. And that was the premise for our first comic. Marv and Rachel just loved, loved, loved the spectacular colors but they needed the approval of a local to tell them they were there at the exact right time. And when they found out it was past peak, well then the leaves weren’t quite so beautiful. Confession: neither John nor I are competitive about silly things like that, though I must point out that since Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is well south of Portland, Maine, that we saw much much better leaves than they did.

Comic 2 in your scroll had absolutely nothing to with our mutual trips to New England. But it has everything to do with the dread that lies close beneath the surface of each and every one of us. Fear of Covid. (I sneezed, that’s a sign! I think I might have a temperature, that’s a sign. I’m really tired tonight. Is that a sign? Well you got only 5 hours of sleep last night and you hiked 8 miles, so that could have something to do with it. No that’s not it, I’ve got to get tested.)

The point is that so many people have contracted it, and nobody really knows how they contracted it, that we will go to any length to avoid it. Including my taking a jog in the rain so as not to run on the nice, indoor treadmill at my local gym, only a five-minute walk away. Fear of Covid even conspired to ruin Al’s Taco Night. Fortunately, in Al’s case, he will live to see another comic which next week will feature yet another New England inspired misadventure.

That’s it for now, and we’ll be back with two new ones for Halloween weekend, where there will be no trick or treating, which is a real shame, especially since John is a champion pumpkin carver. We’ll put a link to his personal site up next week so you can view his work.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John