What's Next??? 12/17/21

Are we really getting to the end of 2021? And what do we make of these times? If you are anything like us, chances are you find them increasingly hard to understand. This being a blog about a comic strip, however, we are not going to tackle politics or artificial intelligence (speaking of artificial intelligence, spell check just corrected the way I spelled intelligence, but that’s a story for another time), we will confront such life changing events as the all too real supply chain-induced cream cheese shortage. Talk about a problem. I mean, if you’re anything like me, butter just won’t do (John vehemently disagrees with this). In fact, I have a certain family member (who will go unnamed) who likes to PRE-BUTTER her bagels BEFORE she puts them under the broiler, resulting in a golden topped bagel. That’s the good news. But when you next apply a liberal schmear of cream cheese (note: not a coating, not a layer, a schmear) it’s too damn fatty. So leave the butter off, okay?? And speaking of artificial intelligence, it’s not that smart. It just tried to autocorrect my spelling of “schmear” to “schemer.” I can assure you, there was no scheme whatsoever. Clearly, the artificial intelligence is not Jewish. But back to the comic. There really IS a worldwide cream cheese shortage, and when I mentioned to John that I have a half-full container of Whole Foods 365 Cream Cheese plus a back-up container of Philly, he immediately called me a hoarder. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me (though he may have a good point).

Now, back to the future, as we pick up the saga of Sid. You may remember him as the 30-something son of Al and Joanne who still lived at home with his parents. But then he sold an app and is now a rich young man. John and I wondered how a young guy with money would decorate his new apartment. For research I used my own kids. I have a son who loves sports like I do and so a tv plays a prominent role in his apartment. I have a married daughter who is most definitely not a sports fan and the tv plays a minor role in her house. It’s quite possible to go there for a visit and then have to go to the local sports bar to catch the Knicks. So John and I debated, how would Sid decorate. And then he came up with the idea for a hidden tv. We debated should it come down from the ceiling or up from a wall unit. Well, since we didn’t want to break in through the floor of the apartment above (I mean he’s rich, but not THAT rich), we went with the wall unit. That’s the thing about comics, you can pretty much make them up as you go along. And speaking of making them up, we need to make up two new ones, which takes us right into the holiday season.

So merry Christmas, happy Chanukah and a joyous Kwanzaa (in advance)

Andy and John

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

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

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

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

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

Andy and John

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

Nothing's on tv and doin' nothing 08/21/2020

With no movies, and not much going out to dinner, a lot of us are spending a lot more time together and watching a lot more tv. And when you do get to see friends, you find out they’re doing much the same. Not surprisingly, the conversation turns to some form of “Did you see that great series on TV?” Pre-pandemic, the answer usually was, “We did not.” But now, at least before the baseball season resumed, we had a chance to catch up on all we missed. There was Ozark and Catastrophe and Schitt’s Creek and Little Fires Everywhere and The Morning Show, to name a few. We loved them. And then there was Fleabag. When I mentioned to John that I was laughing my ass off, while Joanie was only watching politely, he said he had a similar experience. When it came to Ozark, at least in my household, we were both so into it. We’d ask each other questions like, “What do you think will happen next?” or “Why did Wendy do that?” Does she want to die?” For Fleabag, it was, “What’s the name of that show again?” And so our first comic of the week was born. It is another version of “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”. I can barely stay awake during an awards show, whereas I find the Mets endlessly fascinating, even when they’re 3 games below .500. Don’t ask. Well, we can always watch the political conventions. Or not.

Next up comes from a common experience and a twist on a joke we heard from our friend, Marvin Waldman. The joke was about feeling a sense of accomplishment from doing nothing. Just make it feel like something. There’s an old cliche that states, if you want to get something done, give it to somebody who’s busy. Conversely, you don’t want to give the assignment to someone who has nothing to do. They have the time to mull over every decision from inside and out and take forever to complete the task. For instance, now that I’m retired (except for this comic strip) I was supposed to return two items to our storage locker (less than half a mile away) and still haven’t gotten to it 4 days later. In contrast, when I was working full time in advertising, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and we had to move from the city into a townhouse in a nearby suburb, we took a train out during lunch, stopped by the condo development office, and chose the wallpaper, kitchen floor, cabinets, lighting fixtures and window treatments in under and hour and took the next train back to work.

Maybe having too much time is a problem. But I’ll take it.

Have a terrific weekend and enjoy the last of the summer. We will be back next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Happy 4th of July 07/03/2020

Happy 4th of July. Just think of the possibilities. You can gather up the whole family, kids and grandkids and go to the ballgame, or if it’s hot, a trip to the pool or better yet, the beach. And afterwards you can all enjoy a trip to your favorite restaurant or have a cookout at home. But wait a minute. There are no ballgames. And unless your governer is in denial, he or she has already closed the public pool and the public beaches not to mention indoor dining. And that stuff about the kids coming over? Well you can’t invite the kid who went into the office last week but had to quarantine since someone in her office contracted the virus three days ago, and then she can’t bring her husband or the kids so there goes that idea, etc., etc., etc. Which is how John got the inspiration for his poster, a socially distant 4th. At least there’s Hamilton on Disney +, so thank goodness for small favors.

But onto the next one about watching TV at home with mom or mom-in-law. I kept telling John about Ozark, this awesome series on Netflix my wife and I binge-watched and he kept saying, my mother-in-law is here for the time being and she won’t appreciate the language, violence and nudity. So we came up with our second comic, mom friendly TV. The day before we posted it, I was in Pittsburgh with my wife at her mother’s house and we came home after dinner and wanted to watch a movie. Well there’s only so much Hallmark Channel a man can take so we went with our friend Sandy’s advice and watched a Mark Ruffalo movie, “Begin Again.” Joanie’s 98 year old mom watched with varying degrees of interest, and when it ended, I asked her if she was okay with the language. Now in 37 years of knowing Joanie’s mom Charlotte, I can say I have never heard her curse even once. But when I asked if the language was offensive she said with a nice smile on her face, “No, it didn’t bother me. It was all fuck this and fuck that and fuck you. Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

What else can I say, besides have a Happy 4th and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Andy and John

CUTTING THE CORD 8/02/19

Maybe you’re a Mets fan. Maybe you’re not. But if you’re not, please don’t look down on those of us who are (both of us). The point is when you move - John to a new house and Andy to a summer rental - it’s hard to get the ballgames. Or what happens if you’re not finished with Game of Thrones and the new place doesn’t get HBO? Anybody for Killing Eve? Oh, just watch it on Hulu. But what if I don’t get Hulu? Oh, no problem, you can get it on BBC America. Huh?

You get the idea. As time marches on, it seems that things become more and more complicated. Like feeding parking meters, changing stations on the car radio, turning on the tv, and once it’s turned on, accessing the very thing you wanted to watch in the first place.

The good news is, once you get it, you have more and better options than ever before. Andy once saw A Star is Born with his daughter, then on the ride home, managed to get his phone to play the soundtrack through his car speakers and get turn by turn directions all at the same time! He felt as if he were the reincarnation of Einstein. The possibilities are endless. If we can figure out how to access all the data available to us, it truly makes life easier. If.

As you have figured out (and likely read by now) weaning yourself off cable was the subject for not one, but BOTH of our comics this week. Our kids have largely done it, but for us — different story. And even when it gets explained in person, it’s still, shall we say, unclear. It’s kinda like with math. You’ve got to learn to add and subtract before you know how to multiply and divide. And in the end, you might, as one of us did, just stick with cable. After all, those Mets are looking good these days.

See you next week and we promise, we’ll move on to subjects we actually understand.

The New 60