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

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

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

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

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

Andy and John

On the Joy of Baseball Day Games and Click Clack 05/06/22

So many things we used to play with as children have now been reconsidered as hazardous. I am reminded of a scene from Mad Men. Sally Draper, daughter of Don and Betty, was having a good time, running around with a plastic, dry cleaning bag over her head. Her mom, Betty Draper, possibly the worst mom in the history of television (June Cleaver she wasn't) calls her daughter over to chastise her. But what comes out of her mouth is “If the clothes that were in that dry cleaning bag are on the floor of my closet, you are going to be one unhappy young lady!” It was with that type of empathy and foresight that the makers of Click Clack must have tapped into when inventing their product. It was two acrylic balls attached at the opposite ends of a piece of string. When you flipped your wrist up and down the balls would click together at the top of their arc and then clack at the bottom. Click, clack, it went faster and faster until, oops, the acrylic balls had a previously undisclosed tendency to shatter, sending shards of sharp acrylic pieces flying through the air. As the saying goes, what could possibly go wrong?

The other comic at the baseball game, that scene actually happened to me. Or something close to that. I went to a midweek afternoon game, my favorite kind, just me and thousands of brightly t-shirted camp kids, and randomly started a conversation with another guy two seats to my right. The seat between us was empty. Somewhere in about the third inning I heard somebody in the row in back of me address his friend by his full name. I recognized the name so I turned around and saw not one, not two, not three, but four guys I used to work with, including the guy who initially hired me. I was happy to see them but mortified that I was there by myself. I wondered what they were thinking, “Poor guy, he has no friends,” so I started talking more to the guy two seats away in my row. I think I fooled them. But when I told this story to John, he came up with the whispered bribe, “If I buy you a hot dog and beer will you pretend to be my friend?” Now in reality, I didn’t quite sink to that level, but I came pretty darn close. Truth is, I plan to go to a couple more midweek afternoon games this summer, so if I sort of know you, do me a favor and sit somewhere else.

Happy Cinco De Mayo and Happy National Cartoonists Day to the best cartoonist I know, and also the one I work with, John Colquhoun.

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

On Retirement. Now What? 4/22/22

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

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

Enjoy the weekend,

Andy and John

On Rabbit Holes and Jackie Robinson 04/15/22

The third time is the charm. We could have gone on amost endlessly with Marv’s trip down the rabbit hole. But enough is enough. And anyway the next step would have been from the Monty Python skit, which would have seen Marv in women’s garments. “I am a lumberjack/I work all day/And I wear women’s clothes. As the New 60 is a family-rated site, we just couldn’t be having that. So Marv stopped with the rugged flannel shirt.

Now it just so happens that today is Jackie Robinson day. And we decided to bring back a New 60 classic. Got to hand it to the Mets, who are unveiling a Tom Seaver statue on the very same day. Now Tom Seaver is probably the best Met player ever, but still, Jackie Robinson. Got to give the man his due. He was a fearsome player who of course broke baseball’s color barrier, and he was strong enough to not let himself be goaded by racist players trying to get him to fight. Everything about the man is admirable. Except if you’re an announcer. You see, Jackie Robinson day is April 15th, right at the beginning of the season. And since every player on both teams wears #42 in his honor, it can get a little confusing if you don’t yet know all the players on the team. Truth be told, I had trouble naming each player on the Pawtucket Red Sox, when I started out as a sportswriter. And they all had different uniform numbers.

But enough about me. Okay, one more thing about me. I have a pinched nerve in my neck and a horrible cough, so I am cutting the blog short this week and climbing back into bed.

Have a great weekend and we will start a series about Marv’s retirement (what the hell do you do all day) next week.

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

April Fools 04/01/22

April Fools. This time we decided to fool ourselves into thinking the strip was internationally famous. What do internationally famous cartoon strips do to make money? They make stuffed toys out of their characters, right? There’s stuffed Snoopy dolls and stuffed Charlie Brown and Lucy dolls but who the hell is going to want to take an Al Bondigas lunchbox to work? Or drink their coffee in a Marv Mandlebaum mug? Who even goes to work anymore? Which of our female fans would want a Joanne or Rachel purse? So we put on our thinking caps. We’ve already made old people jokes in past comics, with New 60 hemorrhoid pads, dental adhesive, etc., but what could we do to fit a more active lifestyle? And the answer came. Tada. Pickleball! It seems like every other person we know is taking up pickleball. Apparently, it has nothing to do with pickles. It’s a cross between tennis and ping pong (so why not ting tong?) and the court is much smaller so it doesn’t involve much running. What is does involve is a lot of lunging, but what could possibly go wrong with that? So we came up with New 60 pickleball paddles. If Al or Marv were bugging you in the comics one week, you could take their faces and mash them into a pickleball. How much fun would that be? We added bibs for any occasion because both John and I confessed to one another that we seem to be spilling more food on our shirts that ever before, so bibs, they’re not just for babies anymore. Heck, you have old guys wearing adult diapers, so why not a bib? And finally, New 60 sunscreen with an SPF of 1,000. This came from watching people of a certain age at the beach. They wear huge floppy hats, slather themselves in sunscreen and sit under umbrellas all to avoid the sun they seem to be worshipping. New 60 sunscreen. At least it prevents you from doing the t-shirt thing which leaves really ugly tan lines.

And then we turned our attention to a particular breed of sports fanatic. One so crazy that they want to watch every game their team plays. I have this affliction and have passed it on to my son, unfortunately. When you go out of town or go out to dinner, you record the game to watch it at a later date. Then you have to avoid hearing the score so it doesn’t ruin the experience of watching it. I go into an SIMP. What is that, you ask? It’s a Self-Imposed Media Blackout. Sometimes it works, but a lot of times it doesn’t. Many years ago, when my son was about 10 or 11 years old, our family went with two other families on a beach vacation to St. Martin. The trip was great. We were scheduled to fly back home on a Sunday, the very day the NY Giants were playing the Philadelphia Eagles. The last game of the season. The winner goes to the playoffs, the loser goes home for the winter. We were on a plane that day. I had already set the recorder to record the game at home before we went away. The trick was now to avoid hearing the outcome. As luck would have it, the plane was delayed, and then delayed some more. Then it went to pick up more passengers in the Dominican. But the plane had to circle there endlessly before it could land. In fact, it used up so much fuel circling that it had to touch down in Miami before continuing to our final destination in NY. As the plane touches down in Miami, some douchey guy on a cell phone yells out, guess what everybody, the Giants won!!! This was past midnight now and I was ready to kill him. Here’s the really crazy part. When we got home, we watched the whole thing anyway, wrapping up past 4 in the morning. Before you report me to child services, it’s important to note that the kids were off on Christmas break for another week. But this was the genesis for Al, trying to avoid the Knick game. I’m hoping to get over this habit when I grow up.

That’s it, ladies and gents. We’ll see you next week with two brand new ones, hot off the proverbial press.

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

Man Plans, God Laughs 03/17/22

You know the phrase “Man plans, God laughs?” When you think about it, it’s really true. Though why God laughs - I haven’t the slightest idea. I remember a case in my misspent youth. I was driving back to college with a friend of mine. We planned. We rolled a bag of joints for the roughly 17-hour trip from NY to St Louis. Please don’t judge. I was a teenager. At any rate, somewhere along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a police car comes up the left lane, sirens blaring, going at least 100 miles per hour. After cursing, we lifted out the ashtray and placed the bag in the cavity, and then stuffed the ashtray back in place. I envisioned a phone call, “Hi, mom and dad, about my second semester, I’m gonna spend it in a Pennsylvania prison instead.” But God laughed. The cop just whizzed right past us, chasing whoever he was chasing. After a massive and collective sigh of relief, we removed the ash tray and went for the baggie. Not there. It had fallen into the innards of the car and was likely lying untouched somewhere on the Penn Turnpike. Man plans, God laughs. Our comic was a bit less dramatic illustration of this saying. In this case John stood out on his deck and looked out over his property and talked with his wife about prepping the garden the next day. They went to sleep that night and when they woke up in the morning, there was an issue. 6 inches of snow had fallen. God laughed. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the grist for our first comic.

The next comic is something we’ve all been through. Most recently, my wife and I babysat for our granddaughter so our daughter and her husband could have a night out. They had only two remotes to their tv. They patiently explained how to use them and in what order, and after our grandchild went to bed we went to watch a movie. Guess what? I had no idea what to do and so, despite having hi-def multiple streaming options at our disposal, we ended up reading. It has also happened to John while staying at 1) a beach house and 2) a ski rental. Each one presented a new and different problem trying to figure out how the tv works, regardless of how detailed the owner's instructions were. Whether you end up reading, playing cards, Monopoly or a mean game of Twister, you don’t end up watching tv. To each his own. And with that, this half of the New 60 is signing off. Because I'm on vacation visiting friends in London. And I'm being kind of rude.

See you next week.

Cheerio,

Andy and John

Badvertising 03/11/22

In last week’s blog we reminisced about how much advertising has changed. This week, it’s more of the same. Hey, many of you have asked about us doing more multi-part series so here it is. Trouble is, we then have to write the blog about the same subject we wrote about last week. Okay, it won’t be exactly the same. It’ll be the same, only different. Glad we cleared that up. This is how targeted advertising has become. Say you were looking for some living room furniture. You type into your search engine the word “sofa.” Now the data scientists of the ad world know you are over 50, otherwise you would have typed in “couch.” Furthermore they know you like soft, overstuffed things so they serve you ads for easy chairs, recliners, extra fluffy pillows, etc. And they know you like the color “yellow” (I just made that part up). So it’s all about data collection, and then how to micro-target all that data to the exact right person. And who doesn’t want to read an entire blog about data collection?

The point is, I can sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I actually have no clue what I’m talking about. The ad business has gone from two weeks in Beverly Hills, driving a Mustang Convertible, and going to Nobu for dinner, to coming up with an “event” and then an invitation to said “event.” Like Tecate Beer Tuesdays at your local taqueria. So a copywriter, which is what I used to be, has to come up with clever lines like, “Music, fun and friends! Join us for Tecate Tuesday’s at Mole Mole in beautiful, downtown Poughkeepsie!” Oh, and they love exclamation marks. Absolutely love them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I don’t know about you but I’d rather be shooting a commercial with Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz sipping cold ones on a beach in sunny Acapulco, but this is what the business has become. And if you’re really lucky these days, you can shoot a video of people drinking beers at the aforementioned Mole Mole on your iphone, edit it on your computer, and then run it on Twitter for under $5,000, soup to nuts. Which version of advertising would you rather be in?

Happily John and I discovered comics instead which is wayyyy more rewarding (except for the getting paid part).

So that’s it for this week, we’ll be back next week with another multi-parter. And before you know it, Spring will have sprung.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Bad Advice 3/4/22

If a friend asks you to speak with their kid about going into a field you used to work in, ignore the request. Chances are, the field you remember is nothing like the field is today. So your advice tends to be outmoded or worse, irrelevant. Yesterday businesses were more local. Today they are global. They are digital. And they involve algorithms. Hell, not only don’t I know what an algorithm is, I don’t even know how to spell algorithm, I had to rely on spell check. As we’ve written before, both John and I spent our careers in advertising. You used to get an assignment to do one of three things: create a print ad, a radio commercial, or a tv commercial. You tried to be funny, because it made the commercial more memorable. To make up an example, let’s say you were doing an ad for JCrew shirts and they were on sale. You had to come up with a clever headline like “We’re giving you the shirts off our backs.” Okay, maybe that wasn’t so clever, but you get the drift. You hoped someone would see the ad and remember it the next time they passed a JCrew store. That was advertising then. Nowadays you might go into JCrew and buy a v-neck t-shirt. The cashier offers you 25% off if you sign up for the JCrew credit card. You agree. Now they know you and what you like. And you’ll get a text message like, “Hey Arnie, ya know that v-neck t-shirt, size large in blue that you bought last month? Well we’ve got ‘em in all colors of the rainbow for 50% off.” No need to be clever anymore because they already know what you like, so the message just has to be some form of, “Here it is, for less.” That’s what advertising has become. No longer broadcasting, but narrowcasting, one-to-one. And a lot of the jobs in advertising now involve how to discover the most cost-efficient ways to reach your consumer. Who needs a Super Bowl ad for $5 million when you can get a Facebook impression for $10.95? And that was the basis for our comic, Ad Biz, Part 1. In fact I had to call my son-in-law and a good friend’s son just to find out what the hell they did in advertising. I still don’t understand and neither did John, so he promptly took their words (which they intentionally dumbed-down for us), and dumbed them down even further. Got it? Don’t feel bad, neither did we.

And then it was on to Dishwasher, Part 2. In last week’s blog I wrote about how tough it was to find the proper repair person. The “Bad Advice” title of this blog refers to the advice all your well-meaning friends give you to call this person or that one, and when you call, it turns out they don’t do what you need them to do at all. Until you finally get to the one, which in this case, John did. Only to find out that the guy was on vacation for two weeks in Key West. Sounds a lot better than sitting in your dining room thinking up new ideas for comics. But on the other hand, I’d much rather think about new ideas for comics than try to repair dishwashers, which I know even less about than modern advertising. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a sink full of dishes to wash.

Have a great weekend.

Andy and John

Twice as Nice 2/25/22

Last Tuesday’s date was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Truth be told, I did pass it up only to be reminded by John on Monday, “Do you realize tomorrow is 2/22/22? We won’t have another date like that until 11 years from now when it’s 3/3/33?) I added that even that is not as cool as 2/22/22, with it’s one number repeated 5 times. But I have one even better. My niece Emery (actually my niece Tahlia’s daughter so I guess that makes her my grand-niece or 3rd cousin once-removed or whatever, but her mom calls me Uncle Andy, so let’s leave it at that). Anyway her date of birth was 11/11/11 and this year she’ll turn 11. Got that all straightened out? Good. That makes one of us. So we made up a comic about 2/22/22. Frankly, it would be better if this were the 22nd month, but who’s counting? We did the comic. And Al this time represents John’s thinking, while Al’s duly-unimpressed wife, Joanne represents mine. Gee, that’s great, now let me get back to whatever it is I was doing before you interrupted me with this totally unimportant detail. Until you can match Emery’s birthday, with one number repeated 6 times, I ain’t impressed.

Onto the second comic of the week which actually comes up first if you click your newsletter. It concerns a broken dishwasher and the frustration of “finding a guy.” Once we get over the inherent sexism in that phrase, we can concentrate on the fact that it’s true. Trying to find a repairman or woman in today’s day and age is almost impossible. They can see you in a couple weeks, or a couple months, and then when the day draws close, they call and tell you they can’t make it after all because their current job is running late. This phenomenon has happened to yours truly in our laundry room, my bedroom closet (the door had come loose and jammed, making it impossible to access half my closet, but it’s covid and I wear nothing but sweats so it didn’t really matter), the television (streaming over a computer sucks) and, last but not least, the dishwasher. Yes, this really happened. Here’s the scene: my wife goes to Baltimore to visit her cousin for the weekend and after dropping Joanie off at the train station I come home to empty the dishwasher but, to my horror, the dishes are just sitting there in a pool of water at the bottom of the aforementioned machine. So I did what I used to do for years before finally living in a place with an actual dishwasher. I became the dishwasher. And at first it was relaxing. Then not so much. I grew to resent being the dishwasher which then metastasized into hating to be the dishwasher. I called the plumber. They answered, “Oh we don’t service dishwashers but here’s the name of a guy who does”. I called the name of the guy who does. Turns out he doesn’t. He said to call Bosch, the manufacturer. Bosch told me they could make it in 5 weeks and gave me an appointment date. I asked if they had the name of a local person who might be able to come by sooner. They said, “If we give you the name of someone else, we’ll have to cancel your appointment for next month”. I asked if they actually had the name of someone else and when they demurred, I hung up. Finally I called an appliance store who said they’d be happy to put in a new dishwasher but couldn’t repair an old one. HOWEVER, tada, they had the name of somebody who could. The guy came in, looked at the dishwasher (the machine, not me) and found a piece of a wine glass had broken off and was blocking the pump. He took the piece of glass out, the dishwasher drained, and voila, it was fixed. I recounted all this to John who said (as he often does), “That’s way too complicated, why don’t we just say the guy’s on vacation for two weeks in Key West?” So we did, and then John revealed that that was exactly what happened to him when he was searching for a repair person. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.”

That’s it for this week. We’ve got another two new ones coming next week including the exciting end to the 2-part broken dishwasher saga. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

A TRIP TO THE (USED) BOOKSTORE 2/18/22

Many of us wax poetic over small stores and the lack thereof. The corner drugstore has given way to CVS. The barber shop to SportsClips. And of course record stores, bookstores and dvd rentals to Amazon, Amazon and Netflix (not to mention Amazon). If a superstore like Barnes and Noble struggles, then what chance do used bookstores and record stores have? Spoiler alert: a range from very little to none at all. My 30 something daughter, her husband and their baby live in Brooklyn (where else)? And my daughter recently bought a turntable for them to play actual 33 1/3 lps on vinyl at home. I loved it and as chance had it, there was a vintage vinyl store two blocks from their home. After all, it’s Brooklyn. So I went in to buy them a present. I got lost in the racks, remembering all those albums, and album covers, speaking to the owner and just overall having a great time. I must have spent half an hour in there and I was the only customer that entire time. Then I found the the album that started the late, great Janis Joplin and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, with the iconic cartoon cover by R. Crumb. I brought it up to the register and the owner told me it was $3.99. I couldn’t fathom it. I gave him $10 and told him to keep the change. He was beyond grateful. So the question is, if that’s how little they’re selling for, then how much can you reasonably expect to get paid when you’re trying to sell your inventory to them? Second spoiler alert: not much.

Which brought John to this idea of visiting a used bookstore. If you happen to have one in your neighborhood, pay them a visit. They’re wonderful places to hang out. They are definitely not wonderful places to make money. As Al vainly tries to bargain, he also shares his thoughts about how it feels to read biographies of famous pepole in the past. And here’s a third spoiler alert: it doesn’t make him feel accomplished. I agree. I mean when I read the biography of Steve Jobs, the story of how he started Apple, got kicked out and then returned to make it the most profitable company in the world…about how he invented the Mac, the iMac, the iPod, iPad, iPhone, AppleWatch and so on, how am I supposed to feel when I realize my accomplishments spanned the range of dreaming up scenarios of women breaking up with their mops and brooms to working on a twice weekly comic strip? At least John invented the Little Caesars guy with his toga so he has a lasting legacy. Sigh. This is why when I go to the bookstore, I read novels. They’re about made-up people and things, so there’s no way to fall short of them. They’re not real. Except for James Bond.

That’s it for this week and we will see you next week with a new series about…you’ll just have to wait. How’s that for a cliffhanger? Have a great weekend, and think about this: no new comics about football for at least 7 months.

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

On College Days (then) and Electric Toothbrushes (now) 01/14/22

It still feels pretty weird typing “/22” into the date space. And I know you think I’m talking about our Then and Now series when I put those words in the headline. But you probably know better, because you likely have read the comics before you get to the blog, and only one of the comics is a “Then and Now .” At any rate, I couldn’t think of a connection between electric toothbrushes and college (trust me, when I went to college they didn’t have Oral B electric tootbrushes with L.E.D. screens on them), so I went with the old standard, On. As in “On college days and electric toothbrushes.”

So let’s start with something I CAN remember. My new toothbrush. I was complaining to John about this new wonder brush recommended by both my dentist and periodontist (don’t ask what a periodontist is because I still don’t know. I just know that it’s expensive and hurts a lot). So this toothbrush encourages you to brush for 2 minutes. That’s a lot longer than it sounds. And if you’re in a rush, like during the mornings, you sometimes cut it a little short. Okay, a lot short. But after I have covered all the teeth, front and back, upper and lower, and am racing out of the house to catch a train, go a gym class or drive to some appointment or other, I look at the screen and see either a complete frown (if I’ve only brushed for say 45 seconds) or a half frown (only the left side is downturned) if I’ve made it to 1:37. I tried to compensate by refusing to look at the small screen on the brush, but it bothered me. In fact it bothered me enough so that I took a picture of the various faces (up to and including the full smile, which I achieve every single night) and sent them to John and said, I think we’ve got a comic here. As soon as I explained the dilemma to him, he countered, “Why don’t you just brush the complete two minutes?” And we had our comic, complete with punch line. I still maintain 2 minutes is a long time.

The inspiration for our other comic came from a crappy winter Monday. Temperatures in the low teens with a howling wind. I was supposed to meet a college buddy, also recently retired, for lunch and a hike…but there were prevailing circumstances: a) it was too cold to hike and b) due to the Omicron variant, we didn’t feel comfortable eating inside a restaurant and c) one restaurant did offer heated outdoor seating but (refer to circumstance a) it was too damn cold outside. So I went to my friend’s house, and he ordered take out and we ate it in his kitchen. Then we hung out and talked. We talked about now, we reminisced about the past and we may or may not have shared a drink and a couple hits of a joint (I’ll never tell). And I laughed because it occurred to me that this could have been 50 years ago on a winter Monday afternoon back in college and we would’ve been doing the exact same thing. I brought this scenario up to John and we molded it into one of our “Now and Then” series. He, as he usually does, steered us away from a more obvious ending to one that basically let the picture do the talking. As the song says: “that’s what friends are for…”

Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with our two latest.

Andy and John

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

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

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

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

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John