Helpless HelpLine 10/07/22

Hi again. It’s your New 60 fellas back with the end of the “Help Line” series. As I wrote last week, more of these incidents happen to me instead of to John, but this week we’re doing two comics about something that has plagued us both. Yes, it’s true, you have to be profoundly untech (is that even a word?) to allow yourself to get hacked. But waiting on a computer helpline, well that’s something we both have suffered through as has everyone who has ever owned a computer (press 1), a tablet (press 2) - no fellow Luddites, not the Bayer Aspirin kind of tablet, or a smartphone (press 3). The evil computer company seems bound and determined to keep you on the line without speaking to a person as long as humanly possible. For me, they keep me on long enough to start cursing and hitting the “0” button (mistakenly thinking that stands for “operator”) while shouting, “Agent, agent, agent, okay representative, representative, representative,” until someone gets on and tells you that you’re been connected to the wrong number, they don’t handle computers issues, but if you are patient while they put you on hold for another 23 minutes and 13 seconds (but who’s counting?), they will connect you with the proper department, when you will have to once again explain the reason why you are calling. Is this any way to run a business? Or do they just hate talking to customers so much they’ll do anything to avoid it. I guess I can understand that too. I heard about a couple that called a TV repairman to fix their Apple TV, and when he got to their apartment, he asked them where their Apple remote was and they didn't know. Then he asked them their Apple password and of course they didn't know that either, so I can understand the frustration of the techies, but c’mon guys, give use a break, especially if we’re over 60 years of age. John envisioned the larger than life ending of Al screaming “noooooo,” so loud, it reverberated throughout not only the neighborhood, but also the entire tri-state area.

A special note of thanks to David Ockene, a, proofreader extraordinaire, who has been patiently reading the New 60 blog for all 3 years of its existence. He would always write us emails pointing out the various affronts to grammar and the English language that I’d make on a weekly basis. Finally one day we asked if he would consider proofreading the blog out of the goodness of his heart, and he responded with, “I was just about to suggest the same thing.” My wife and I finally got the chance to meet David and his lovely wife in person. We all love to point out what is wrong with social media, but David, you’re all about what’s right with it. We wanted to give you a heartfelt thanks for your efforts.

See you all next week,

Andy and John

Help Line. 09/30/22

We finally got to the end of the three part series about getting to a destination wedding. Our ultimate destination to the destination, as it were. And as we described in last week’s blog, the actuality of the situation was that my wife and I changed into our rehearsal dinner clothes in a large gravel-strewn parking lot. It hurt standing on it and we also hoped and prayed nobody else drove up there while we were in our birthday suits. Nobody did, but in the end, when I was putting on my jacket, another couple DID drive up there. They had also gotten lost, but unlike us, they were already dressed.

Onto comic 2. The first in another 3-part series, this time about online “help.” Now why these things keep happening to me, as opposed to John, is a mystery to me. Unless John is not revealing the embarrassing missteps he must take. But this, this felt like a new low. As I was lying about our beach house this summer with my broken left ankle elevated, my wife asked me if I knew about this $249 yearly charge for the Best Buy Geek Squad. I didn't know, but in the back of my mind I might have signed up for it. I saw a phone number attached to the email, and since I was reliant on my wife for everything since I couldn’t walk, (can you get me an iced coffee dear, oh, not so much ice, good, and a little more coffee, good and would you mind putting in some half and half?) Anyway, there was a phone number attached to the email and I promptly called it, after saying heroically (at least in my mind) “Don’t worry dear, I’ll handle it!” Famous last words. I made the call and got a guy from Bangalore on the phone, wanting ro be my friend who will rescue me from the evil jaws of Best Buy. He asked if I was sitting in front of a computer and then he started to direct me to this website and that website and al leading to getting me a refund. Now I will admit I was starting to get suspicious, but then again, he said I had been charged for two years and he was helping me get my $500 back. One of the sites he led me to said “Best Buy Return Site,” so yeah, I fell for it. After much back and forth, he said he sent me the $500 to my bank. Would I please check my checking account to make sure the deposit was made. If I was thinking, I would have thought, how would he even know where to send the money? He doesn't have my account info. And when I checked Citibank, it finally hit me, Oh my god, I just let him into my bank account. At this moment, I told him (in the most gentle way possible) “F^#k you hacker!” and hung up. I went to shut off my computer and that’s when I saw my cursor wasn’t cooperating. Panicked, I now unplugged the computer, turned off the internet router (my wife was working and that messed her up as well) and got off my chair and started rapidly walking to her office (in our apartment). That’s when I remembered, oh no, I’m not supposed to walk and walked back to my knee stroller to enable myself to get to her and warn her. It’s all a happy ending, we reacted quickly enough so the hackers got nothing, but I did have to spend the next couple days online with help desks from the bank, from Apple and others. I recalled all this to John and it left us with this question, why do they call help desks, help desks? What exactly do they do to help? Do you even get a chance to speak with a human? It’s enough to make you tear your hair out, but fortunately for me, I don’t have much hair. But it led us to this 3-part series, so there’s always that. Follow Al in his journey as he gets all the help the help desk can deliver.

One further note of help. After explaining this whole incident to John he just said, when you get one of these emails, just check out the address of the sender. When you see it’s not from Best Buy, but from Dave120.6, you know it’s a scam.

See you next week and in the meantime, have a beautiful, scam-free weekend.

Andy and John

Ever Try Changing Clothes in a car? Don't. 09/23/22

Earlier this summer, our son was invited to a friend’s wedding and was one of the groomsmen. My wife and I were invited as well. We had rented a beach house and drove, in our flip flops, shorts and tees, from Long Island to pick up our son at LaGuardia airport, to then proceed to the Catskill mountains, on a Friday afternoon, at rush hour. The total distance was approximately 2-3 light years. One of my favorite sayings is: Man Plans, God laughs. Our plan was to drive to the hotel where the kids were staying, drop our son off, giving him time to change into nice clothes for the rehearsal dinner. Then we’d go to our hotel, where all the old folks were staying, and change into the outfits we’d picked out for the dinner. It would make a hectic day seem a bit more relaxed. Brilliant right? What happened next gave us enough fodder to make this a 3-part saga, so we can't tell you the ending until next week’s blog. But think about this. If it’s true that when an ordinary man (or woman) makes plans, it causes God to laugh, then just think about how God reacts when AL attempts to make a plan. Trust us, God has plenty of new material.

What happened was there was a little bit of traffic. Okay, a lot of traffic. And cell phone service, once you get to the mountains, ohh, how can I say this politely, sucks the big one. Which means no Waze. Which means in addition to being late, we were lost. We dropped our son off and as we got to his hotel, the entire wedding party was leaving. So we waited for our son to change, and then we drove him to the rehearsal dinner so he wouldn't miss the whole thing. Now it was so late, if we turned back to our hotel, we’d have no chance to make it back to the rehearsal dinner in time. So we went to the upper parking lot, lined in gravel the size of rocks. Looked around and saw it was empty, and proceeded to pull our suitcases from the trunk and change, standing up, in the lot. The full Monty. I know it’s a pain to change while sitting in the car, but this was somehow worse. Imagine, if you will, standing on one foot on this big-rock gravel while attempting to put your opposite foot into your pants leg. The good news is we made it and had a great time. The bad news is I am still picking gravel out of my socks. But when I told this story to John, he immediately saw it taking place in a car, which, I must admit, is a hell of a lot funnier visually. And you wind up avoiding rocks in your socks.

That is it for this week, we will see you next week with the last comic in this series plus we’re starting a brand new three-parter about computer help lines. Trust us, they aren’t the least bit helpful.

Andy and John

It Depends on How You Look at It. 09/16/22

A lot of us are getting to the age where we’re becoming grandparents. For John it was a little over a month ago and for me it was April 2021. Now most grandchildren come with two sets of grandparents, and chances are, they are both over the moon with their new arrivals. So, with this being baseball season, and with John and I both being New Yorkers, we figured we’d get the twins a matching set of Mets’ pajamas. In fact, my son bought his niece NY Giants’ pj’s, which she proudly (okay maybe not proudly, but she wore it, okay?) wore during the Giants improbable victory against the Tennessee Titans last Sunday. And even though we have only good feelings towards the other set of grandparents, there is still an underlying pang of jealousy. From one side: “Oh, you took them to Disney World, how great.” From the other, “Oh, you spent the summer with them, how great.” So what if both sets of grandparents bought onesies, which competing team’s onesie would piss off a Mets fan more? The Braves? The Phillies? Nah. The Yankees, and that was the inspiration for our comic.

Next came a situation based on an invitation to the Catskills. It was a wedding and my wife and I accompanied our son there this summer. One thing about mountains, they have no telephone reception and very, very spotty WiFi. We were trying to get somewhere and trust me, it’s hard enough to do out in the middle of nowhere, but it’s nearly impossible to do so without wifi. You end up asking people and they end up misunderstanding you. It’s a rule. Plus, when you’re giving me directions, don’t tell me, “head north out of the parking lot.” Tell me “make a left out of the parking lot.” Because a) I don’t know which way north is, and b) I’m too embarrassed to admit it. This trip proved challenging in many ways which will lead to another strip in the near future and that’s one of the great things about having a comic strip. When you get lost, frustrated, hacked, become the victim in an accident, etc., it still sucks, but at least you can say to yourself, “Well, that’s another strip!” We’ll see what kind of trouble we can get in in future months, but until then, enjoy. And wait for our new collection of comics in a coffee table book this holiday season.

Andy and John

Perspective 09/09/22

If you’re old enough to be reading The New 60, you’re probably old enough to have grandchildren. And if you’re old enough to have grandchildren you know that you’ve just been knocked back a rung or two in the family pecking order. Speaking from experience, my wife and I rented a beach house this summer and invited our daughter, her husband and their child, who doubles as our first grandchild. Now admittedly she is cute as a button, likely the cutest baby ever (okay that’s just grandpa getting carried away…a little) but enough is enough. One day my wife was feverishly working, door to our bedroom closed as she conducted a zoom meeting on her computer. I needed to desperately ask her a question and couldn't wait for her meeting to end in order to ask the question. She had at least another hour to go. So I gingerly opened the door and entered the room. She looked over her shoulder, saw it was me and waved me away, as if to say “Get out of here, can’t you see I’m in the middle of an important meeting?” I retreated. Now to be fair, she is the only one of us with a full-time job since I unceremoniously “retired” from advertising at the end of 2016, and her work is very important. At any rate, not five minutes later our granddaughter came crawling down the hallway, and I, feeling rejected (and being a wiseass) , wanted to get my wife back. So I said to the baby, “Want to see grandma? C’mon, she’s right in here. So baby Charlotte crawls right up to the door, and slaps at it, making a loud sound repeatedly. My wife comes to the door ready to hand me my head, when she looks down, sees who’s making the racket, and in her sweetest, highest voice, says Hiiiiiiiii sweetheart, want Grandma to pick you up?” And of course she does, brings Charlotte to the computer, introduces her to the zoom meeting, and everybody is oohing and ahhing and speaking in their own high voices for the next five minutes, before she hands Charlotte back to her mom, shuts the door and resumes the meeting. Now couldn't she have done the same with me? Granted she couldn't have lifted me up, but at least an “Excuse me guys, I just have to speak to my husband for a second, oh wait, want to meet him?” I mean I am 69, which is not nearly as cute as our 16- month-old, but I am temporarily disabled with a broken ankle suffered while riding a bicycle. So give me a little break, but wait, I’d rather not have any more breaks. Okay, I guess it’s pretty tough to score sympathy points when competing with a baby. She wins. As does my wife and her accurate set of priorities. But what I had to say was important. Something crucial like, “Could you pick up some tonic water at the grocery store?” In truth it was so unimportant that I can’t even remember what it was. So maybe it wasn't that important, but it did inspire our first comic.

Next up was Pickleball. John is a tennis player and has also tried his hand at Pickleball. It is being billed as a great sport for seniors, right up there with walking and frisbee golf. It requires good hand-eye coordination and not much running since most people play doubles and the court is about a third the size of a tennis court. But what it does require is a lot of quick movements including lunging. Back to my broken ankle. I was reading an article about the emerging popularity of Pickleball, when they quoted Dr. Neil Roth, an orthopedic surgeon, extensively. Dr. Roth said it was a great game for seniors for many reasons but cautioned that he had repaired a lot of broken limbs as a result of Pickleball. That stopped me because that is the same Dr. Roth who just performed surgery on my ankle. When John and I discussed how we were going to approach Pickleball, I suggested doing a comic about a broken limb, but he went right to the fact that part of the court is called the kitchen and we both knew who has trouble in the kitchen. Loveable old Marv, that’s who.

So that’s it for this week. Enjoy your weekend, Can you believe it’s already football season? See you next week with two new ones,

Andy and John

Lazy Days of Summer 09/02/22

Well Monday is it. Labor Day, end of summer, back to work (for our younger readers who still work), and even more horrifying, back to the office and back to commuting. In our Labor Day comic, Al and Marv ponder all this and, as a smile forms on their lips, realize they no longer have to put up with any of it. I was reminded of a time 6 years ago, November, when my time as an ad guy came screeching to a halt (not my decision). It was the first free, non-vacation weekend I had in 40 years. I was taking a walk with my wife on this beautiful natural trail through the woods called the Old Croton Aqueduct. Yep, that’s right, it used to be an aqueduct carrying water from Croton-Harmon in Westchester all the way down to NY City. And then man discovered pipes, and so no more aqueduct. All that was left was this beautiful, wooded trail that stretches for 26 miles, about the length of a marathon. But I digress (is it really digressing when it’s something you do all the time?) Anyway, it was a Saturday afternoon and I realized I had forgotten to go grocery shopping. Saturday afternoon was my time to go shopping, because I commuted and worked Monday through Friday. I said to my wife, “Damn, we’ve got to cut this walk short. I forgot to go to Whole Foods (yeah, call me a yuppie but that’s where I go). She turned to look at me and said, “Why don’t you just go Monday?” It took a second for this new reality to sink in, and as it did, I felt my shoulders drop as I relaxed, and realized this was going to be my new reality. Free time, bike rides on Tuesdays, golf on Wednesdays, movies on a Monday when everyone else was working. Woo hoo! We imagined that’s how Al and Marv might feel as they pondered their own futures.

Our next comic was about grandparenting. How can you get the most joy from the least work? If you’re not yet a grandparent, believe us, there’s a lot of work. And a lot of joy. If you can figure out how to cut down on the work and up the joy, you’ve got yourself a winning combo. And bingo, we had our comic. Al just attached an inner tube to a rope tied to a remote-controlled boat, and the kid was being towed all over the pool without Al having to once get off his lazy butt. We all have shortcuts we use from time to time. Some, like putting the kids in front of Sesame Street while you get ready for work, are considered helpful. While others, like putting the kids in front of cartoon shows while you get ready for work, are considered lazy.

So how would you consider Al’s shortcut of watching his granddaughter in the swimming pool. Ingenious? Or lazy? Or a bit of both? Obviously Joanne, Al’s wife, opted for lazy.

Enjoy the last weekend of your lazy Summer as we retired folks transition to our lazy Fall. See you next week with two new ones. See, we’re not that lazy. Or at least John isn’t.

Andy and John

Leftovers 08/26/22

As the summer rushes to a close (can Labor Day really be a week away), we start packing up to return to our normal routines. If you happened to rent a vacation home, it’s time to take stuff out of the refrigerator and either 1) toss it out or 2) take it home. Hint: toss it out. But it is our observation that most couples consist of a hoarder and a tosser outer. This inevitably leads to conflict. “But this yogurt is one day past its expiration date! Toss it!” Followed by “We haven’t even opened it. It’ll be fine tomorrow.” Followed by, “I won’t eat it!” Followed by, “Fine, I will!” Sound familiar? Well there’s a crucial step prior to the tossing out step. And that is the “to go” step at the end of a typical restaurant meal. Most restaurant meals are way larger than they need to be (except for molecular gastronomy, which we covered in early August) which leads to the inevitable decision at the end of said meal. The waitperson approaches the table with some form of “Would you like me to wrap that up for you/still working on that/do you need more time?” My least favorite end of meal request happened in a fancy Portland, Maine, restaurant when the waitress inquired, “How were your flavors?” I wanted to reply, ”I don’t know, eat me,” but decided (for once in my life) that marital happiness trumped cleverness, and responded, “Fine.” Back to the takeout. John pointed out that most take out containers make it back to the refrigerator (unless you forget them overnight in the back seat of your car) where they remain unopened for the rest of the week, before being tossed into the garbage -unopened and uneaten. You’d think we’d learned our lessons after repeating this habit after almost every restaurant meal, but nah, we’re likely to reply to the waiter/waitress, “Thanks, I’ll take it to go.”

Our other comic is also about leftovers. Leftover Covid tests, to be exact. Did you know that Covid tests have an expiration date? John did. I had no clue, but the knowledge that the tests had a time limit changed our behavior around the tests. We’re having company for dinner tonight? Ask them to take a test. You coughed, sneezed, felt tired, felt sad that the Mets got swept by the Yankees, take a test. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I am awfully tired of continually sticking that overgrown Q-tip up my nose. Ugh! Maybe that’s why Dr. Fauci decided it was time to retire. In any event, stay safe and Covid-free and if it means sticking that swab up there again, and if I have to, then sigh, stick it I will. Have a great weekend and we will see you on Labor Day weekend as we prepare to launch into the fall. At least we’re all old enough to not have to go back to school.

Andy and John

Longevity 8/19/22

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

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

Andy and John

Revolutionary Schlep 08/12/22

Before we get started, we have a major announcement. This is The New 60 Comic after all and its creators are in their 60’s. So we’re not having children, but our children are having children. This week John and Linda’s daughter Ali (yeah, I have an Ali as well) and her husband Neil gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Sloane Catherine Donnelly. Now both New 60 co-creators are beaming grandpas of baby girls. Expect a slew of grandchild related comics in the future.

As for the comics, we first took a look at Revolutionary War reenactors. You know the kind. The guys dress up as British redcoats, complete with tricorn hats and the women all seem to enjoy dressing up as milkmaids. Now we have a couple of questions about the war itself though we’re not sure if any of our readers are old enough to have participated. First, when being shelled by cannonballs, what protection is a tri-cornered felt hat? Ever hear of a damn helmet? No wonder they lost. And also, why would you want to act in a scene when you don’t even get to read any lines? We wondered which character might get into something like this and the answer was obvious: Craig, who in addition to being a golf coach, is also a history professor. In researching this comic, I mentioned to John that there was actually a Battle of White Plains (close to where I live) which is memorialized on the highest point in White Plains on, get this, Battle Avenue (I kid you not), with a cannon. As I drove by to take a picture John could reference for his illustrations, I was disheartened to see cranes and earth movers (definitely NOT from the Revolutionary War era) and the aforementioned cannon had been moved to the side to make room for a playground, of all things. I can just imagine the conversations this will inspire when the project is finished. Mother to toddler, “Look sweetheart, over here is where youR great-great-great-great-great grandfather got gored to death by a British bayonet.” Ahh, to keep the memories alive. That’s why people like Craig get dressed up in the first place.

Moving on to our second effort, the “beach schlep,” John and I noted a tendency people have to try and find the “best” spot to set up camp on the beach. For some reason, the person doing the least amount of hauling is the person who calls the shots about where to sit. “Not here, it’s too close to those people. Not there, we’ll block their view when we put up the umbrella.” And finally, just like Goldilocks, “Right there. It’s just right.” Inevitably followed by, “Well maybe not there, how about here?” Also it’s really funny when John draws smoke coming out of someone’s head in a thought bubble. We’ve all been there.

But back to the big news, I can’t wait for the day baby Sloane meets “big girl Charlotte” one day and Charlotte can teach her tricks like how to throw your sippy cup on the ground when you’re finished drinking water. Funny trick that NEVER gets old.

Have a great weekend as we race towards Labor Day and the end of summer. Where does the time go and does it go quicker the older we get or does it just seem that way? See you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Food, Glorious Food

These days, at our age, it’s all about weddings and funerals. The weddings of our friends’ children and the funerals of our friends’ parents, our own parents or, heaven forbid, our friends. Recently John attended a funeral while I went to a wedding. And you end up hearing a lot of stories that you knew about, but a bunch of stories that you didn’t. John suggested this as a topic for a comic. For instance, I learned of the random arrest of a kid who was buddies with one of my kids (what did he get into and was my own kid involved????), acts of surprising kindness and charity, and in the case of a funeral, you can also be surprised in ways both good and bad. John said he learned some surprisingly good things at the funeral of a friend’s parent—that the parent had fought in a couple of big battles in WW II. Who knew? Not John. At any rate we decided to play this out in a funeral parlor, after debating doing it in the deli where Sal actually worked. It would have looked a lot like Katz’s because we’re both native New Yorkers and Katz’s is the last of the old-time delis still standing. Some of the old faithfuls remain, but in vastly different locations. For instance, the famed 2nd Ave Deli, spelled with English letters that resemble Hebrew letters (famously designed by my former art director partner, Mark Shap-may he rest in peace) is now no longer located on 2nd Avenue. Go figure. But back to the comic, it’s fun to hear about people you thought you knew well. The positive stuff, but also the negative stuff that makes you raise your eyebrows silently (even if we made it all up).

Now our next comic also has to do with food and this time it’s something John experienced and I read about. Molecular gastronomy. Food is all about experimentation. And as the world becomes flatter, we frequently mix different cuisines to produce new flavor combos. I once went to a sushi restaurant in Madrid where one of the courses was a mini cheeseburger, cut like a piece of sushi, atop a small bed of rice. Pretty damn good if I say so myself. But these wildly innovative chefs are constantly trying to experiment and the pressure must be enormous. For instance, John and his wife once visited WD-50, which sounds like a motor oil but stands for the chef, Wylie Dufresne. I’m sure we all remember past cooking techniques, like “tall food” where your plate was stacked high, one ingredient atop the other. Trouble with tall food is that once you cut into it, it all fell down on the plate and it wasn’t so tall anymore. Well, Wylie ushered in a technique called molecular gastronomy. I mean, who wouldn’t want liquid nitrogen sprayed on their chicken paillard? What is a dish without foam and fog? According to John, everything they ordered looked nothing like it was supposed to but tasted exactly like you thought it would. And because of its tiny size, it was packed full of flavor. The only thing that wasn’t miniaturized was the check, and there came our punchline. Sadly (or happily if you’re me) this fad faded as less accomplished chefs tried their hands at it. As Alex Stupak, Dufresne’s pastry chef put it, “It’s like pyrotechnics at a Kiss concert. Take that away (the smoke and fog), take your face paint away and you suck.”

That’s all she (or he) wrote this week. Next week the surgically repaired half of The New 60 (the Andy half) will try next week’s blog but who knows what kind of drugs I’ll be on? One thing’s for certain, like molecular gastronomy, it’ll be an adventure.

Andy and John

Falling From Grace 7/29/22

For those of you who like shorter blogs, this is your week. One half of the New 60 team got hit by a car while on his bicycle this week. That constitutes one fall from grace (as well as a broken ankle.) Then we did a comic about a terrifying amusement park ride we called Free Fall, where you take a lift and step into what looks like an elevator 20 stories up in the air. The elevator then does a free fall until the hydraulics kick in and slow you down seemingly 10 feet from total destruction. I wouldn’t go on that for the life of me, but I guess it tops being hit by a car. And the final fall comes when the beloved waitress, Dottie, reveals today’s wordle. (Don’t worry readers, it isn’t really TODAY’S Wordle.)

But back to the amusement park. The genesis for this came from a visit to Great Adventure Amusement Park in New Jersey. Two dads took their two kids each. One had two boys, and I had a boy and a girl. On all the scariest rides, all three boys were raring to go. I was terrified. And my daughter looked a little reticent as well. So I did the brave thing and hid behind her. “Are you sure you want to go down this thing?” I’d ask. And she would decline and I’d tell my buddy, the other dad, why don’t you go with the boys and I’ll stay with my daughter. It all worked out in the end, though truth be told, if I had asked my daughter in a bright voice, “Wanna do down this thing with me???” she likely would have given it a try. So bad parenting yes, but give me a break, or rather don’t, my ankle is broken enough.

See you next week with two new ones and a walking boot.

Andy and John.

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