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

The (not so) great outdoors. 4/26/19

If you live in the northeast like we do, you’ve endured another cold, snowy, wet winter. Now that the weather is warming, you can’t wait to get out there. One of us did just that last Monday. I called a buddy on the spur of the moment and said, “Let’s play golf, right now.” The friend (names are omitted to protect the innocent) belongs to a country club, so we met there. I took out my pull cart and was told that pull carts were against club rules. My friend calmly strapped his bag across his back and started walking uphill to the first tee. Way uphill. Not wanting to panic or seem like a wimp, I carried my bag (for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to admit). John said, that’s a comic, and we dreamed one up.

The second strip comes from the fact that both John and I are big Mets fans. Watching a game a couple weeks ago, the announcers said it was Jackie Robinson Day. Jackie Robinson wore #42. That number can never be worn again by any player in the major leagues. But on this one day, every player in the major leagues wears #42. The visiting team made a pitching change and the Mets announcer, Gary Cohen, had no idea who the new pitcher was. He said “Coming in to the game, #42, uhh, wait, there is no #42.” Voila. Comic #2.

In addition to thinking up ideas, we also have to think about who plays what roles. In this case it was easy. The character of Sam Lipisi used to be a commercial voiceover, the kind of guy who says “This Bud’s for you.” So it was an easy choice to give him a side hustle as the announcer for the local baseball team, the Boulder City Bullets. We thought Sam needed a foil to play off, so he invited his friend Marv to sit in with him in the booth on Jackie Robinson Day and watch his buddy not know a single player on the other team. As the cliche goes, “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” In this case, you couldn’t tell the players even WITH a scorecard.

Enjoy the great outdoors this week, and let’s hope it turns out better than it did for our guys.

See you next week.

The New 60