Stevie and James 07/22/22

So the SOS (Saga Of Stevie) finally comes to an end. Yes, Sid has a significant other named Stevie. And no, Stevie does not turn out to be a boy. And yes, Sid’s Uncle Tim, who is gay, was wrong in thinking Stevie might be a man and Sid might be gay. In talking to some readers about the comic, a couple of people (one who is in her 40’s, for crying out loud) didn’t understand the term gay-dar. As a public service, allow us to explain. Gay-dar is a portmanteau, (a mash-up of gay and radar). It refers to the ability to tell if another person is gay or not. Tim thought it was certainly possible Sid was gay, and when it turned out Sid was straight, Al took a jab at Uncle Tim’s gay-dar. Capiche? Given that most of our readership tends to be on the other side of 50, we wondered how they might react to wondering about the sexuality of their grown children. I know of a dad whose teenage son, in an all-boys boarding school, wondered if he was gay. The dad gave (in my opinion) a beautiful response, saying something to the effect of “It wouldn’t matter to me either way. I would love you just the same if you were gay or straight and you and someone you love and who loves you back will always be welcome here with open arms. The only thing we care about is your happiness.” The kid said thanks, but here’s the kicker. Years later when he knew he was straight, he got angry with his dad and said, “Why didn’t you tell me I was straight in the first place!” So even when you do the right thing, it turns out wrong. That’s part and parcel of being a parent. Let’s hope Sid and Stevie live happily ever after. As an interesting aside, John and I were debating what this woman’s name should be. We went through all the names that could belong to both men and women, and after suggesting the obvious ones like Sam, Pat and Alex, I remembered my own son once dated a girl named Stevi (no “e” at the end) and that sealed the deal.

Our second strip of the week (first on your scroll) featured a concert that John attended with his wife at Tanglewood. For those of you who have never been there or heard of it (think Ravinia, for our midwestern readers) it’s an outdoor concert venue featuring classical music with a few classic folk singers sprinkled in from time to time. In John’s case, he and his wife Linda attended a James Taylor concert early this summer. These things tend to be massive gatherings of older people (I think you get a free pass if you can prove you attended Woodstock) carrying coolers, backpacks, ice bags, wine, cheese and maybe a marijuana vape pen (or two). The tendency most of us have is to look around and think, look at all these old people, before realizing, wait, what do we look like to them? This is also true of the apartment building I moved into 8 years ago with my wife. It isn’t billed as a 55+ community, but clearly it is one. When they had an open house, I whispered to my wife, “Look how old these people are,” before realizing what we looked like to them (impossibly young and beautiful). But back to the comic, John and I talked about what would be the most distinguishing feature of a person attending a (pick one) James Taylor, Steely Dan, Allman Brothers, Michael McDonald concert and we landed upon the bald guy with a ponytail. Yeah, we get it, you used to be cool as hell, but now, you’re 65. Truth be told, I considered the look myself but then decided to go the route of a shaved head and two-day growth of beard. I made the mistake of doing this one summer when we sent our kids off to sleep-away camp. When it came time for Visiting Day, they took one look at me … and burst into tears. Who was this strange man? And what happened to dad? I relented and went back to my Larry David look, clean shaven with messy hair on the sides. And I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s much easier to shave everyday than to maintain the two-day growth look. Or you can go John’s way and do the full-beard, mountain-man look. I’d consider that myself, except I’m way too sloppy of an eater as it is, and the visual of me chowing down a pepperoni pizza with a thick beard is not a pretty image.

So that’s it for this week and we will see you next week with two new ones, hot off the press.

Andy and John.

Parenting An Adult Child 07/15/22

What does it mean to parent a child? Certainly, it means different things to different people, but how does it change once your kids become adults themselves? I remember many years ago (I’d appreciate a medal just for remembering many years ago) observing a friend parenting her own 6 years old (my kids were 5 and 8 then). The kid was upset about something or other (about what specifically…I do NOT remember), and the kid said something to the effect of “What should I do?” And the parent turned to her child and asked, “What do YOU think you should do?” I never forgot that. because I, on the other hand, would have answered that question directly by telling either of my kids exactly what they should do (“You go up to that kid tomorrow and tell him that what he did wasn’t very nice and it hurt your feelings”). I cleaned up what I would have said for the purposes of this blog. Truthfully it was more like “You go to school tomorrow and sock him in the nose, that’ll teach him for hitting you!” Bad advice, but more importantly, it was an example of telling your kid what to do as opposed to helping him/her to think for themselves. When John and I discussed this series of “Stevie” comics, we discussed a bunch of things. The first was how to react if your son (or daughter) was coming out to you for the first time. What would you say or would you say nothing at all? And how much reaction is appropriate if your “kid” is over 30 years old? This was never meant to be a story judging a person’s sexuality. It was judging the parents reactions to their kid’s sexuality, when their “kid” was all grown up. The humor does not rely on the kid’s reveal of Stevie. It relies on Al and Joanne’s reaction to it. If you happen to judge them as being appropriate, then you are agreeing with our approach to parenting: be vague and keep them guessing. If you disagree with it, well then we have one thing to say, good luck.

That is all for this week. We wrap up the Stevie story next week and embark in new directions.

See you then,

Andy and John

Taking the Plunge 7/7/22

First of all, I’d like to wish Joanie, my beautiful bride of 38 years, a very happy anniversary. I’d like to thank her for sticking with me for so long. It takes a lot of patience on her part, trust me. I love you and thanks for hanging in there. As Paul Simon once sang, we’re still crazy after all these years. And now, back to the comics. With beach season here, we take a look at the relatively new phenomenon of manscaping. At least it’s relatively new to us. John noticed different levels of hair removal amongst different generations and suggested we do a comic on it. Here are a couple of my partcular hair removal incidences. On a family trip to Mexico last year, my aforementioned wife noticed our niece’s husband, age 43, had a well-groomed body. No visible chest hair or back hair or, heaven forbid, shoulder hair. She was asking because her husband (that’d be me), has hair everywhere I don’t want it, and nowhere that I do want it. To put a fine point on it, no hair on the top of my head, but lots of hair on my chest, back and, yes, shoulders. So she asks our niece’s husband how he achieved that look, and he shows her the razor he uses on his chest, coupled with a long folding contraption that enables him to shave his back while in the shower. Naturally, I ordered the same stuff online and started to use it in the shower. There were three distinct problems. One is that it added significant time to the length of my shower. The second point is I missed a spot. Or two. Or three. Okay, I missed a lot of damn spots. And the third was that the stupid batteries wore down in the back shaver and then I said, “screw it” in much more colorful language. Oh yeah, did I mention a fourth problem. You know what happens when you shave your chest hair with a razor? It grows back like a beard, in sharp, scratchy bits. So when you put on a tee-shirt, the shirt sticks to the front of your body and you constantly find yourself pulling it forward to unstick it from your beautifully shaved chest. In short, Joanie, I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with a hairy bald guy. Unless you knock me out first and take me to a body waxer. But I saw the 40 Year Old Virgin and it looks like that really, really hurts.

Next up is the start of a 4-part series on Al and Joanne’s grown up son, Sid. It seems every time we visit Sid, we come up with a multi-part series and this time is no different. We are about to meet Sid’s new beau. John and I wondered how we would react on the inside and outside if we learned one of our son’s had a significant other. Seeing how Al, Joanne and Uncle Tim react before and after they meet Sid’s love interest is the topic for this new 4-part series. Happy reading and we will be back next week with parts 2 and 3.

Andy and John

Do's and Don'ts While Dining Out

Let’s face it, sports talk and dating and dining usually don’t mix. But don’t worry, because in our case they’re the subject of two completely unrelated comics. Let’s go with the genesis of the first comic (second in your scroll), about refraining from sports talk when you go out with company. A couple of months ago, my wife and I went out to dinner with another couple to a loud restaurant. In an effort to not make it boys sitting across from each other and girls sitting across from each other, I suggested mixing it up so the husband of one couple faced the wife of the other, and vice versa. This resulted in each couple talking across each other and since it was hard to hear in the first place, well… you get the idea. Epic fail, as the millennials would say. Put another way, my idea was a bad idea. At one point I was hogging the conversation, rambling on about politics, when my wife subtly smashed my foot under the table, to which I replied, “Oww, why’d you do that???” On recounting this tale to John, we reworked it so Al and Joanne made a pre-dinner deal that he wasn’t allowed to dominate the conversation with sports talk. Sports, politics, same idea. John came up with the idea of making a pre-dinner deal on the way to the restaurant. When I saw how well that worked out in the comic, I decided that it was a good idea to try at home from now on. I’ll let you know how that works.

Our other comic deals with a phenomenon that you see in fancy places. Older, distinguished-looking men with considerably younger women. I observed such a pair when going out to a special dinner in NYC with friends. Both of us guys were celebrating our birthdays. When we got seated, I noticed a banquette in front of me, with an older guy, replete with a three-piece suit, tie, pocket square, and cufflinks. If I’m calling him old, suffice it to say, he appeared as if his best days were behind him. Suddenly a cute young woman, in her late 20’s at most, slides into the banquette beside him. Hmm, I said, to my companions, check this out. We weren’t sure if he was in a second marriage and this was his daughter, or whether he was married only once and it was his granddaughter. Then she scoots over right next to him, puts her arm around his shoulder and starts whispering into and kissing his ear. And I, master of the obvious, said, that is not his granddaughter. The ending of the comic kinda wrote itself (John hates when I say things like this, because if it wrote itself, you wouldn’t need us). So it didn’t write itself but the situation was so perfect we didn’t have to do too much to alter the reality of it. My wife and my friend’s wife said Something like, “Ewww, gross,” and my friend and I readily agreed just how absolutely gross it was (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Well, that’s it except for one final coda to the story. When we left the restaurant, the snuggling couple was still there, and my wife took a look at the young lady on our way out. When we got on the sidewalk, she told me, “By the way, she was not his girlfriend. Did you notice the huge rock on her finger? (No, I was looking elsewhere). She’s married to him.”

And with that, have a great weekend and a happy July.

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

Accepting Our Fate 06/17/22

How many times have you been on the phone waiting and hoping to hear a human voice as the “digital assistant” keeps asking you what the issue is so they can “better direct your call?” You know what’s worse than that? Getting the actual person on the line, finally. Now I realize these people are only supposed to answer in a certain way, that they are held to some sort of script, but still…

The thing that I find most infuriating is the circular argument where absolutely nothing gets resolved. In my case, it went something like this: ME: I received a box from Fresh Direct that I never ordered and I’d like to return it and get a refund. THEM: You can’t return food and I can’t issue you a refund because we already sent you the box. ME: But I never ordered the box. THEM: But we already sent it. ME: Did you hear a word I said? THEM: Is there any thing else I can help you with?

I recounted this story to John and we developed the situation you read in the comic, where the item was delivered a day late. John, being much more polite than I am, came up with the scenario of the bakery apologizing and giving Al the cake for free. I would have had Al smash a slice of cake into the telephone in frustration, venting his anger while destroying his phone, but that’s just me. Oh, and John’s solution led to a funnier ending so that decided that.

Onto our second strip. I’ve often noticed that as life goes on, all our contemporaries have similar milestones at similar times. First was people getting married, followed by having kids, followed by bar mitzvahs and confirmations, followed by kids getting married, followed by kids having kids, followed by funerals for our parents, followed by transitioning from tennis to pickleball and softball leagues to golf and eventually to physical therapy, which is where yours truly ended up in April. And no sooner did I start attending twice-a-week sessions, than I started running into people I know. I ran into one person who I always thought was a pain in the neck even though I was there treating a pain in my neck. Anyway, we thought it would be a fun contrast in our Then and Now series. Hope you guys agree.

See you next week, or maybe sooner if we run into you at physical therapy.

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

Accepting Who We Are 06/03/22

A few weeks ago John participated in the NYC Five Boro Bike Race. We all tell ourselves the same thing after age 60, we’re not in it to compete, just to enjoy the camaraderie and being outdoors on a bicycle. And then the race starts. And people are cheering on the sidewalks. And you’re passing riders and they’re passing you. Wait, what? If you’re anything like me, when someone passes you, the inner dialogue goes something like this: “Not that person, he’s too old. And not this person, she’s too young. And certainly not that person, his stomach is hanging down to his bike seat!” The point is, it’s impossible not to be competitive when you’re in the middle of a competitive race. And, speaking for myself, not John, it’s impossible to be competitive without properly training for the event in the first place. At some point we just accept who we are and take pride in simply participating and finishing. I personally like the attitude of my daughter and her husband, both 36 years old and the proud parents of a 1-yr old baby girl. My wife babysat while they ran the Brooklyn Half marathon, 13.1 miles. They ran at a comfortable pace without killing themselves, but what I admired most was what they did at the finish line. They went to Nathan’s for hot dogs and fries. Now that’s my idea of competition!

Our other comic this week features a pair of uncles at a birthday party. In the past we’ve gotten mail from some of our readers who are gay, asking why we don’t feature more gay characters in our comic strip. Our answer has always been that we write about what we know and we wouldn’t want to pander to any stereotypes or sound inauthentic when representing what our characters say and how our characters feel. So we thought we’d introduce Billy’s gay uncles through what we imagine to be Billy’s eyes. Guileless and non-judgmental, whether it’s an aunt and uncle or two uncles, he’s only happy that they arrived so he can eat the birthday cake. And as far as we’re concerned, if the world worked like that, it would be a far better place (but I guess that’s judgmental in itself). In any case it’s the official kickoff of summer and one half of the New 60 team is on a summer break with 21 family members, ages 1-75, at the beach on a barrier island in South Carolina. That’s my way of saying this will be a mercifully short blog. Sayonara and we’ll see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

On Doctors and Toys 5/27/22

If you’re over 50, you know how it goes. You go out to dinner with your friends and the conversation usually starts with, “So how’s your arm/leg/shoulder/hip/foot/back doing?” And as you describe it, along with what doctor you’re seeing, you usually get a response something like, “Oh, if you’re interested, I’ve got a great internist/oncologist/ foot doctor/orthopedist/gynecologist you could talk to, I’ll text you the number.” This is what led Al to request no doctor talk before the meal started. It’s something I have requested more than once (not that I’m controlling or anything). And it caused us to wonder, are we talking about doctors so much because we have to see them so much more often, or are we talking about doctors because we have nothing interesting left to say? And (this one is only me), are we talking about doctors because we are getting older or does talking so much about doctors and physical ailments actually make us older?

Moving on to our second comic. This one was inspired by John’s Click Clack comic a couple weeks ago. For those of you who might have missed it, Click Clack was a popular toy way back consisting of two acrylic balls attached to both ends of a string. By flipping your wrist up, you made the balls click, by flipping it down you made them clack. Click clack they went until, sometimes, they exploded, sending shards of acrylic flying. Such a game would never be approved today which led us to think about the most dangerous games of our collective youths. We agreed on the EZ Bake Oven and Big League Chew, but we had different recollections of Lawn Darts. The game, as directed, put two people on opposite sides in a backyard. Each player put the enclosed circle or “target” on the ground and the idea was to throw a metal-tipped dart so it stuck in the lawn within the circle. The twist that my friends put on it was to add the game of “Chicken” to the festivities. That is, you became a chicken and lost points if your opponent’s throw caused you to move your feet for fear of getting impaled by the aforementioned lawn dart. Confession, I lost a bunch at this game but avoided getting impaled.

That’s it for this week, see you next week as the summer officIally kicks off. Yikes, how did that happen so fast?

Andy and John

Frozen Foods and Forgotten Birthdays 5/20/22

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

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

Andy and John

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