Upside Downsizing. 09/15/23

One of my wife’s closest, longest-term friends happens to be a real estate agent. And she shared the following insight about people “our age.” She said, people always say they want to downsize but they still want every single amenity they had before. Plus room for storage. Not us. We pay extra for storage. You know the deal. We put the stuff that used to be in our garage in boxes that have never been opened, into a storage unit where they remain in boxes, unopened. About the only thing we use from storage is a folding table and chairs which come out for two occasions only. One is tailgating at Giants games (which I do a lot less of the older I get) and the other is for holidays when we have company and we don’t want said company sitting cross-legged on the floor. John, on the other hand, was smarter. He moved from a house to a house. Okay there was a temporary apartment in between, but why make it easy on yourself?

In a previous blog I shared a conversation I had with my wife when we downsized to an apartment, and it was a downsize, from approximately 3,000 square feet to 2,000. I think our exchange captures the essence of the downsize. ME: There is no need to bring over 4 sets of china. They won’t fit. SHE: There is no need to have 4 televisions in a 3 bedroom apartment. They won’t fit.

Guess what happened? We now have 4 sets of china and 4 tv’s. And no place to put anything new, hence the need for a big storage unit. Sigh. As the Fab Four sang, “ob la di, ob a da, life goes on, brah.

And finally, our long-awaited, oft-promised New 60 comic book collection is here. The New 60: A Comic Collection or the Ages. Check it out at https://a.co/d/j2wjguY

Buy early and buy often. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

End of Summer 09/08/23

Summer is filled with lots of fun activities. End of summer, not so much. In fact last summer nothing was fun for yours truly, coming as it did with a car hitting me while I was riding my bike, which in turn resulted in a broken ankle. But this summer was terrific. No bicycle accidents and my son moved back from Denver to Brooklyn so the whole family is once again in the same area. But the end of summer came with a surgical procedure (don’t worry folks, everything is fine) which led me to think about well, everything, up to and including my longevity. I shared this with a friend of mine, Matt Fischer (who is a friend to John as well,) which led me to reminisce about my father’s passing some 15 years ago. I told him about my eulogy and he told me to put it in a comic. I then shared his thoughts with John, and boom, there it is. I had ended the eulogy saying my dad died doing the Tuesday NY Times crossword puzzle, and that I thought that was one of the easier days. For those of you not familiar with the Times crossword, the easiest puzzle is on Monday and it gets tougher everyday ending with the toughest puzzle on Sunday. And that’s the thing about writing a comic strip. Even when bad stuff happens (or especially when bad stuff happens) you can always make a comic out of it.

Which brings us back to the end of summer. As you readers may or may not know, my wife and I sold our house and moved into an apartment 9 years ago. John moved from a temporary apartment to a house. So I no longer have a vegetable garden while he has a thriving one. But the thing about end of summer vegetable gardens is you get overrun with certain vegetables. If you live in the suburbs, that explains people coming over and dropping off tomatoes, green peppers, etc. In addition to these veggies and other goodies, he grew some of the most gigantic zucchini I’ve ever laid eyes on. Big, green, ripe zucchini. Lots of zucchini. Lots. So he wondered what he might do with that embarrassment of riches. And he suggested a dinner party with everything zucchini. And here’s the thing I love the best about thinking up stuff with a partner as talented as John, we spend a lot of time arguing over the most important issues like, “Do we call it a zucchi-tini or a zucchini-tini?” Zucchini-tini eventually won out, but I am willing to bet it’ll be a good long time before they eat another bite of zucchini at Casa Colquhoun.

That’s it for the summer and for this weekend. We will see you next week with a new series.

Andy and John

Road Rage. 09/01/23

In most couples, there’s an unwritten rule while driving. Usually, one person is the designated driver and the other is the designated passenger. And if the trip is of any considerable length (like for us, visiting our children and grandchild in Brooklyn) the designated passenger usually brings along reading material they’ve been dying to catch up on, and emails they haven’t yet responded to. Oops, there I go again, ending a sentence with a preposition. As Winston Churchill once said about that ridiculous rule; “That is precisely the type of poppycock up with which I shall not put.” But I digress. There’s another unwritten rule about driving. That is when said designated driver is forced to make a quick maneuver like braking or swerving to avoid a crash, said designated passenger is forced to look up from her/his reading material and chastise the designated driver. I’m not saying this ever happens in my family, but if perchance it did it would go something like this: driver is going along smoothly in left lane, keeping pace with the traffic, aware of vehicular activity in front and in the rear. Passenger is blissfully reading a recipe out loud for the driver to make for dinner next week. Suddenly some idiot hotshot driver in a Dodge Challenger (it’s always a Dodge Challenger, right?) cuts our heroic driver off, forcing him/her (I think those are our pronouns, but I’ll get back to you on that) to step on the brake, which in turn causes the following chain reaction: the driver hits the horn and lets loose with a volley of curses, which then causes the passenger to look up from his/her recipe and chastise the driver, which then causes the driver to say “Me????? What about him???? What’d ya want me to do, get into a crash????” If the following sounds familiar, welcome to our world. If you don’t think that sounds familiar, then either a)you are never in a car or b) you’re lying. In any case when John and I came up with this one, the dialogue practically wrote itself.

Our other effort this week, Happy Labor Day, required much less forethought and since it’s about to be Labor Day weekend, where we take a break from labor, we’re gonna sign off early and take a break. We’re done, except for the next 12 hours John has to spend rendering and eventually coloring this year’s Labor Day poster. Enjoy the last weekend of summer and we’ll see you again next week,

Andy and John

Will This Help? 08/25/23

There was a time when every generation seemed to surpass the previous generation, in terms of education and success. Lately, that has slowed down or even reversed. You hear of 30+ year olds still living at home. And we made a character, Sid, Al and Joanne’s son, who lived in his parents home past the ripe old age of 30. What was he doing in his room all day? Why didn’t he go out and get a “real job?”

As it turned out, he was developing an app (of course he was) and he became an overnight internet multi-millionaire (of course he did). And what do internet multi-millionaires do with their money? As I wrote last week, there’s a famous story about how one of these newly minted internet zillionaires actually got NSYNC to perform at his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Not sure if they played the have negila, the traditional Jewish celebratory dance, but that’s beside the point. The point is (is there a point?) that if this internet guy can get NSYNC, then our Sid can have Hootie and the Blowfish. Take that, nameless Internet millionaire. Okay, okay, I know Sid’s band doesn't include Justin Timberlake but it’s still pretty impressive (and it didn’t cost John or me a dime). When Al sheepishly offers to pay for one of the Blowfish, it becomes apparent how wide the financial gulf has become between father and his previously ne’er-do-well son.

In our previous lives as ad guys, the last agency we worked for was undergoing a digital transition. The then Chief Creative Officer kept talking about developing apps and something called “utility.” I didn’t get the part about utility until he revealed the agency’s proudest digital accomplishment to date: an app for a toilet paper manufacturer that told you where the nearest public bathrooms were in whatever area you happened to be standing in; a hotel lobby, a restaurant that didn’t first require you to buy an $8.00 venti latte before revealing the 5-digit code to their restroom, those kinds of places. For somebody who spends a good deal of time walking around NYC, I can tell you, that app had utility.

But back to Hootie for a minute. With our half of the New 60 Comic’s revenue, my wife and I are thinking of hiring the Eagles for our 40th Anniversary…what’s that? One of them recently passed away? Alright then how about Steely Dan…oh wait them too? Then let’s do Tom Pett…you’re kidding… I guess we’ll just go with the “dad rock” station on Spotify.

Have a great weekend and we will see you next week for Labor Day.

Party on.

Andy and John

Sid, I heard you're getting married 08/18/23

John and I once spoke to the head of a huge comic syndication and she told us we have to give people a reason to keep coming back. If everything was a “one-off,” meaning a single comic not attached to an upcoming or previous comic, people wouldn’t be as likely to want to read the next one. It was good advice. So we started to do mini-series comics, 3 or 4-part comics that hopefully keep you wanting to come back for more. She also showed us a comic featuring a pink unicorn to get us to think about what we could do to keep this different from all other comics, but thankfully we didn’t listen to that part (although we had one strip featuring a talking hedgehog). At any rate Sid is getting married. And that lit a fire under our collective imaginations. We thought, so Sid is an internet multi-millionaire, what kind of wedding would he and his fiancee want to throw? And then we let loose. After all, we’re spending Sid’s money, not ours. And his blushing bride Stevie just got a job at Google so she’s not exactly an economic slouch herself.

In this age of excess, with figures like Jeff Bezos building a yacht so huge he asked the city of Rotterdam to dismantle a bridge symbolizing their heroic resistance to the Nazi’s in WWII, so that his yacht could go out to sea, where 5 people paid $250,000 apiece to go to the bottom of the sea in a sardine can, and where Elon Musk sends up billion dollar rocket ships that crash seconds later and terms it a smashing success, how much fun could we have with a wedding? And where does the excess stop? For everybody who rents a private jet for a destination wedding, there are other people that OWN their own Lear Jets, forget about renting! And for everyone that owns a Lear Jet there are people that own Gulfstreams. And make sure the plane isn’t too big, because you want it to be able to land at smaller private airstrips.

Oh the problems of the rich! We had fun imagining how over-the-top you could make a wedding. I once questioned a family member (who shall go nameless) who once worked for an internet zillionaire (who shall go nameless), about his boss’s values. And he replied that the zillioinaire was a great dad because he booked NSYNC for his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Sid isn’t quite there yet, but give it time and we’ll see. As the summer races to a close, we’re hanging on for dear life and asking it to slow down. In the meantime enjoy the last couple weeks and we’ll see you next week with the final installments on Sid’s wedding (for now).

Thanks for continuing to be such loyal readers. We really appreciate it. And finally our new coffee table anthology of comics will be ready for the upcoming holiday season. Stay tuned and have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Give Us a Break, It's Summer! 08/11/23

Over the years we’ve brought you comics on topics like political correctness, forgetting why you walked into a room, parenthood, grandparenthood, marriage, divorce, bad dates, kids moving out of the house, etc. So this week we decided to take a page out of the Seinfeld playbook and write about…nothing. Yep, an ice cream truck and an inattentive waitress. That’s about as nothing as you can get. Except for the waitress part. We don’t know about you, but we have noticed over the years an increasing amount of inattentiveness and/or lack of eye contact from people who are supposed to serve us. Like cashiers, grocery store shelf stockers, restaurant hosts and hostesses, maitre d’s, you name it. Well, you don’t have to name it. We just did. There are a number of possibilities for this, some more painful than others. One is that young people (like the above-named workers) tend to ignore older people (like a lot of our audience, and us). Many years ago, we did a comic based on an actual incident that happened to a friend of mine who shall go nameless. He tried to chat up the hostess so that she’d seat his foursome, after they had been waiting at the bar for some interminable time. Upon approaching the hostess, she said, “Let me see…” and as she ran her finger down the list of guests, she stopped at the following description, “Bald guy, glasses, 4.” Then she turned to my friend who shall still go nameless and said, “You’re the next party of 4.” This is how she saw him. Ouch. It’s almost as bad as being called “Sir.” “Sir” is just another name for “old guy.” “Right this way, sir” is not what I want to hear when I’m being led to a table by a young woman. How about, “Over here, hot stuff,” or something like that?

So that is one possibility for the lack of eye contact. The other is something I like to refer to as “millennial indifference,” or “MI.” This certainly does not apply to all millennials, but it’s still a generational trait. You approach a cashier and they say, “$49.95,” without ever making eye contact. Or they answer a question by saying “aisle 4,” while pointing to it but not ever once making eye contact with you. Or my favorite, you go the grocery store and the cashier not only doesn't help you pack your recyclable grocery bags, he or she hands over the receipt without once registering where your hand is to receive said receipt. I have a method for dealing with this particular slight. I simply stand there, holding my grocery bag open, without reaching for the receipt, until the cashier is forced to make eye contact. Then I politely say, “Will you put it in the grocery bag please?” This is a technique I like to call “the silent schmuck.” It’s when you say a sentence and leave the word “schmuck” off the end. Example, “Have you seen my glasses?” And the answer, a classic silent schmuck, is “Uhh they’re right on top of your head…” fill in the blank.

Our other effort about nothing this week is about paying too much. In other words, sticker shock. Try going out for sushi in the Hamptons some time. But in this case it’s about a friend you used to know from work, trying his or her hand at something else. It’s one thing that Al has become successful at running his Pizza-on-a-Stick franchise and quite another when his friend charges him almost $50 bucks for a couple ice cream cones. But hey, at least the friend made great eye contact.

Have a great weekend and we will see you (virtually) next week with a brand new 4-part series.

Andy and John

Adventure Travel. 08/04/23

Hey, I get it. If you have a yearning for adventure travel, now’s the time. What, you’re gonna wait until you’re well into your 80’s to hike the Dolomites? I can imagine the tour leader saying, “Hey it’s a little steep and on the way down there’s a lot of loose rocks and pebbles, but just go down sideways and you’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?” And chances are you’ll be fine. Except for the hip replacement, the odd cortisone shot to make up for the fact that your knee joint is bone-on-bone, the constant stiff neck (unfortunately that’s the only thing that’s constantly stiff) and the elevated cholesterol levels. In fact I don’t have to imagine it at all. I recently took the exact type of trip I described to Patagonia. John recently completed the 5 Boro Bike Tour, which I couldn't even do on an e-bike. If truth be told (and I told it to everybody on my adventure travel trip), I’d rather be at a beach resort with a spa, one or two golf courses, a couple of nice restaurants, a beachfront tiki bar (and a casino would be nice also). But that’s me.

So John and I sent Al and Joanne on an adventure travel trip to the Grand Canyon, where it’s either 115 degrees in the shade or snowing. My wife and I were supposed to join good friends on such a trip (turns out it was snowing) but had to postpone it, due to the aforementioned elevated cholesterol level which led to a stent placed in the heart of yours truly. So while I need the exercise provided in adventure travel, and also the food (it tends to be a lot of quinoa and fava beans), I still like the fancy resort. I just have to order turkey bacon with my eggs, hold the English muffin, hold the cream cheese, and go for the sushi, not the steak. Sigh.

And here’s the thing about adventure travel. It sounds great. You get lots of oohs and aaah from friends, but do you really want to ride a mule down the rim of the Grand Canyon? John and I have both done it, but the mules do stop every now and then, and their heads actually hang out over the rim of the Canyon. Like wayyyy over. Like there’s nothing between you and a horrible death besides this damned mule, who is walking on loose rocks very, very near the edge Just sayin’. Did I happen to mention it was very near the edge?

So at a certain point you have to put your foot down and do what makes you happy. Which is why I told my wife I’m through with adventure travel. And she responded by booking us on a trip to Bhutan in the Fall. When confronted with this reality, I said, “Yes dear.” Now to be fair, Bhutan does feature luxury amenities. Like vegetarian meals, yak butter tea, Buddhist Temples and archery tournaments. And hey we can always do the resort trip when we’re older, provided I don’t slip down the path with loose rocks.

Have a great weekend and go relax and get a message. You’re worth it.

Andy and John

On Millenials and Boomers. 07/28/23

This isn’t entirely new news. Millenials and Boomers have a tough time figuring each other out. So to the millennial readers we have out there, sorry if we don’t capture you exactly. Whaddya want? We’re boomers. I mean we sort of get it. You guys want a balance between work and your personal life and we just want to work, work, work. Well some of us want to work, work, work. And I, for one, am happy to hide behind the hard-working image of my generation while I stretch my arms to get out of bed no earlier than 9 a.m. In other words, maybe I’m a secret millennial (just add another 40-50 years to me, shake, stir and there you have it).

So Miguel kicked some butt, the cash registers rang, but some of Miguel’s millennial employees weren't too happy about it. If truth be told, we remember many a weekend we were asked to come in and work, and many times we were not happy about that either. In fact, I remember one time the ad agency I worked for hired a new hot-shot writer. The first week he arrived in New York, he was asked to work the 4th of July weekend and he wasn't too happy about it. So, he literally bought a few bags of sand into the office and spilled it out onto his office floor, put a beach umbrella in the sand and a beach chair and worked in that environment in his office (remember offices?). Unfortunately for him, the powers that be didn’t appreciate his stunt or the clean up bill that followed his stunt, and he was soon sent packing back to wherever it was he came from in the first place.

So while the first comic is about millennial work ethic (an oxymoron if there ever was one), the second one is about boomer fashion (another oxymoron if there ever was one). What is it about belonging to a certain generation that draws you to different fashion choices? Well one thing is that Boomers remember what it was like to be cool and hippie-like. The height of cool was hanging out at the beach. Now it also is true that as we get older, our bodies tend to settle and become a little less supple than they used to be. So what about a brand that specializes in loose, flowing beach styles, that also hides our stomachs? Voila! Welcome to Tommy Bahama. As I write this, let it be known that I would never stoop to such an obvious choice. Well, except for the Tommy Bahama beach chairs, Tommy Bahama beach umbrellas and a couple of Tommy Bahama, loose-flowing shirts, that’s it. I am certainly not a walking Tommy Bahama ad. Nor does John want to be known as a Ralph Lauren Polo model. We refuse categorization (except for the approximately 10 shirts I own from Untuckit). Okay Boomer?

Enjoy the end of July in whatever style you wear and to you millennials, if your boss makes you work over a summer weekend, don’t cover the floor with sand. It’s not worth it. Take a hint from us. Just call in sick (from the beach).

Have a great (non-working) weekend and we’ll see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Going to his head. 07/21/23

You know that phrase, “the power has gone to his head?” One thing you almost never hear is the female version of that, “the power has gone to her head,” but we’ve all seen what happens when many a politician and many a tech guru have the power go to their respective heads. For example, you need to look no further than the upcoming steel-cage mixed martial arts match between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. How much would you pay to watch that? (Okay, time for an admission. The truth is I’d plunk down $50 to watch that on pay-per-view, but please don’t let on to anybody that I said that.) And if Zuck and Elon ended up maiming each other, and Facebook and Twitter were hurt as a result, how bad would that be?

But I digress. In this week’s series Miguel takes over for Al who is suffering with an undisclosed temporary illness (and no it’s not Covid, he’s been vaccinated and boosted up the wazoo, not that THAT necessarily helps- I’ve gotten it twice despite being boosted up a similar wazoo). In fact, the pizza place does better during Miguel’s short stint than it did during Al’s entire tenure, despite the fact that Al just won the national Pizza-on-a-Stick Franchisee of the Year award.

Al’s got to be careful he doesn’t do a Wally Pipp. For those of you who don’t know what that means, Wally Pipp was the Yankee first baseman who sat out one game due to a headache on June 2, 1925. The Yankees started a rookie first baseman by the name of Lou Gehrig that day, and Lou played in the next 2,130 consecutive games. Wally probably wished he had re-thought that headache. He could have avoided a lot of splinters from sitting on the bench. As for Al, he’s impressed by what Miguel has accomplished in his one week at the helm, but he’s not worried about being replaced by Miguel. No one is calling Miguel the “Lou Gehrig of pizza,” at least not yet. Miguel has yet to master the art of when to push, and when to back off. When I was running a creative group at an ad agency a few years back, I had to learn the same thing. But being allergic to hard work, the backing off part was the easy part. Okay, hold your comments. I’m still working on it.

Finally, John and I have put over 200 comics together along with insights and chapter headings for our upcoming Comic Book, “The New 60, a Comic Collection for the Ages.” Either former Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago or Al Capone was quoted as saying, “Vote early, vote often.” When it comes to our book, we say “buy early, buy often.” But no pressure. Okay, a little pressure. Details to come soon. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll be back next week with the conclusion to Miguel’s first foray into management.

Andy and John

All About Al. 07/15/23

We got an email from one of our readers saying she kept misreading the name “Al” as “AI” or artificial intelligence. Granted the “l” and the “capital I” resemble each other, but if you read it in context, it will sort itself out. Except now, every time I type the name Al, I think “what if someone thinks I meant A.I.?” So from now on, A.I. will have periods between the letters whereas the name “Al” will not. Capiche? Also, Al doesn't possess that much intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

But this week it’s all about Al, the guy. In one comic he’s getting ready to move out of the house he lived in with Joanne and the house they raised their children in. It’s a big, emotional move. For some people. I remember when my wife and I moved out of the house we raised our kids in, we pulled out of the driveway and I asked my wife, “Wanna take one last moment to look at the house we lived in for the past 30 years?” She replied, “Nah.” Her mother once told her, “A house is only your home when you live there with your loved ones.” Or as Luther Vandross once sang, “A chair is still a chair/ even when there’s no one sitting there. But a chair is not a house/ and a house is not a home/When there’s no one there to hold you tight/and no one there you can kiss goodnight.”

For Al at least, it’s an emotional moment. And it’s one we think many of our readers have experienced or will experience once they’ve reached a certain age. Fill the house with the scent of cookies baking in the oven, fill the air with jazz. These days real estate agents employ someone called a “stager.” The stager basically removes everything that’s personal and that you cherish. “Take those family pictures down, people want to imagine their own families,” is an example of their wisdom. I put my foot down, however, when I came home from work one day and saw the stager had moved the L-shaped couch from in front of the tv into another room. I called her and asked her to move it right back to where it started. I don’t care if moving the couch makes the house “more sellable.” I just need a place to park my butt when I watch the Mets! Having said that, the house sold in one day so I guess the stager knew what she was doing.

And then we return to Al’s second career, managing a Pizza-on-a-Stick franchise. Note: John is still experimenting at home with a way to actually make pizza on a stick, and he promises photos once he figures it out. The sticking point, or rather the non-sticking point, is how do you get the toppings from not falling on either the floor or yourself? I must confess I have trouble preventing food from falling on me even when sitting down at a dining room table, so I’d have no shot of not wearing several pieces of pepperoni to go along with multiple grease stains if I ever tried to consume a pizza on a stick. So John, good luck with your experiment, but please don’t ask me to try it unless you’ve saved one of your granddaughter’s bibs for me. At any rate we get to see what happens when the workers take over at Al’s franchise as Al recuperates from an undisclosed illness. As John likes to say, “hilarity ensues.”

That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next week with two new chapters in the saga of Pizza-on-a-Stick minus Al. Have a great weekend and if you want a pizza, try it by the slice instead. Trust us.

Andy and John

Independence 06/07/23

First, a word. You may have noticed that last week’s “Trumpet Call” comic was in black in white. That’s because our Color Department, otherwise known as John, otherwise known as our Department Of Color, was in bed feeling under the weather. But all is well as our entire Dept. of Color is back, large and in charge. We left the black and white version up on the site so you could see the evolution.

So the topic this week is independence. Both in how we celebrated this past Independence Day and the independence that comes with finally moving out of the house you raised your kids in, and moving into something more manageable, with lower taxes and freedom from mowing a lawn, tending to a flower bed and hauling garbage and recycling bins to the top of the driveway twice a week. First the celebration part. My wife and I downsized to an apartment by the Hudson River with an unimpeded look of a spectacular fireworks show. So how do we celebrate? By renting a house where you can’t see any fireworks. Makes sense. If you’re us.

And now onto the move. They say (or at least Kris Kristofferson says) freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. But you know, I never quite agreed with that. Because we felt the freedom of moving from a house where you have to do everything to an apartment where almost everything is done for you, and still we lost a lot of stuff, so take that Kris. In the move, we lost pictures, books, old athletic equipment, power cords, important records, you name it. In any case, Al and Joanne are now going through the practice that many of us, including me and John separately, have already gone through. The most memorable conversation I had with my wife when we moved was: ANDY: “Do you really think we need three sets of dishes in an apartment?” JOANIE: “Do you really think we need 4 televisions in an apartment?” I must admit she made a good point and we compromised. Our now cramped apartment has three sets of china plus 4 tv’s. In talking to John, it seems to us that most every couple is comprised of a hoarder and a chucker. Nowhere is this highlighted more than when it’s time to move. If the hoarder wins out, you then pay extra for a storage space to transfer the stuff that was unopened in your garage to a leased vestibule where the same boxes can remained unopened until the time of your demise, in which case it falls upon your children to do the onerous task of going through your unopened boxes. If and when that day comes, I implore my kids to obey this hoary saying, “When in doubt, chuck it out.”

That’s it for this week and we’ll see you again next week with the end of Al’s move plus a visit to his award-winning franchise, Pizza-on-a-Stick.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Having a Blast. 06/30/23

With summer now officially underway it’s time for the beach, the pool, amusement parks and their soggy clones, waterparks. Now I don’t know about you, but it seems to me with all these places, that the scarier the rides, the more people like them. Count me out. I once went to the Atlantis Hotel and they have a massive water slide called The Mayan Temple. You climb up several flights of stairs and then rush down on a stream of water almost vertically whooshing between two shark tanks at the end. My kids said, “C’mon dad.” I refused. My 12 year old daughter said fine and bravely went by herself. Then my 9-year son said, “C’mon dad.” I refused. Finally my wife said, “C’mon Andy.” I refused. And she went down by herself. Now before you call me a wimp, I’ll let you know I’m still thinking about going down. Still haven’t reached a final decision, but if we’re ever back at the Atlantis Hotel, you can bet I…will think about it. At any rate we wondered how Al would react when his grandson wanted to go down the slide we named The Big Kahuna, because Mayan Temple was already taken. And look what happened to Al. An epic wedgie. Ya know what? On second thought I thought about it and I am not going down the Mayan Temple, even if we go back to that hotel (which I’m pretty sure we won’t). Anyway, if you know anyone in my family, please don’t tell them about this. Just keep it between us.

The second comic is straight from the life of John. This actually happened to him and he actually got out his trumpet and played it for the nice caller who was asking for the 14,000th time about his extended warranty. His patience was clearly not extended. And listen, you can try and get rid of these annoying callers by blocking the number, but then they just call on a different number. And I wonder, does this scam actually work? Now I did get scammed last year and ended up giving a hacker access to my bank account, but they tricked me into it. Who on earth would believe that pitch about their extended warranties expiring? Obviously it works on a lot of people, otherwise these folks wouldn't keep making these stupid calls. But as long as you’re going to do it, can’t you think of anything more believable. like, “Hi Grandma, this is Billy and my car broke down and mom and dad aren’t home. Could you wire me $100 bucks?” Maybe that’s not so believable after all. I guess that’s why they keep going with the extended warranty. But please Extended Warranty Callers, leave us and all readers of The New 60 out of it next time you try, because we’re on to you. And if you reach John, he might blow out your other eardrum.

Have a great weekend and we’ll be back next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Did We Forget Anything? 06/23/23

KEVIN!!!!!!!!!! That was Catherine O’Hara’s famous reaction when she realized she forgot to take her son Kevin with them, leaving him Home Alone. It’s a funny movie, but it very well could happen. Think about it. The littlest member of your family (John and I are both proud, recent grandpas) requires the most luggage. Car seats, pacifiers, stuffed animals, drawing boards, books, clip-on seat for restaurants and rental units, foldable playpen/crib, snacks, bottles, toys…oh, and did we mention diapers and wipes?

The other thing is that the most precarious time for a kid is when multiple people are watching him/her. You relax because in the back of your mind you know your partner or another relative has your back. I am reminded of a trip to Galveston, Texas, about 32 years ago. We took our young family to visit the family of one of my wife’s brother’s. We were sitting around the apartment complex swimming pool. Between the two families we had both sets of parents and 4 kids. There was an inner ledge, about a foot down, to rest your feet on when you were sitting on the pool deck, dangling your legs in the water. We’re talking, laughing, having a good time, when my brother-in-law Buzzy, says, “Better watch Greg,” who was about 2-years old at the time. He was walking on the aforementioned ledge and I hadn't even noticed, assuming my wife Joanie was watching. One step later, he fell into the pool without making so much as a peep. I instantly dove in and scooped him up underwater and when we surfaced, he was laughing. If my memory serves me well, he said something like, “Again,” like it was the most fun game in the world. So before we judge Sam and Shellie too harshly, it could happen to anyone. Maybe not anyone, but it certainly happened to me.

In fact when John and I were discussing this idea, I initially pushed back, saying “C’mon, no one would really forget about their kid,” before remembering that I did exactly that in Texas. Then there was the time my dad lost my son (the one and only Greg) when he was about 4, in a drug store. But I’d prefer to forget about that one. Or the time my wife and I forgot to lock the stroller carrying our baby daughter Ali, when visiting a friend. We watched in horror as the stroller proceeded to kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk down the 4 steps leading to our friend’s townhouse. Fortunately, as they say on many a sports telecast, “Nobody got hurt.” John himself had his son Jake hide in the middle of a department store circular coat rack. What a fun place to crawl into and hide, right?

So to all our children, whether we forgot you or lost you, we still love you. And thank heaven you’re still here. Oh and one other thing, when it becomes your turn (as it is for both of our daughters who are coincidentally both named Ali) to become parents, you’ll see. We promise.

Enjoy the first official weekend of summer (it’s supposed to rain all weekend here in NY) and we will see you again next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

The Joys of Going Electric. 06/16/23

What could be more satisfying than owning and driving an electric vehicle? You can feel proud that you are not contributing to global warming every time you drive to the grocery store. You can marvel at the absolute quiet that envelops you, even as you turn on the “engine.” You can put the pedal to the metal and literally get thrown back into your seat by the acceleration, because the car doesn’t have to switch gears to speed up. There aren’t any freakin’ gears. When you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, you switch to “regenerative braking” and your car’s range actually increases! For sake of full disclosure, I recently bought an electric vehicle and it has indeed been a life-changing experience, but not for any of the above positive reasons.

I am now in full possession not only of a new car but of a new fear called “range anxiety.” The car can supposedly go 270 miles without a recharge. More like 240. And when that range figure dips below 100 you start worrying. Where the hell is the closest charging station? And is it a level 3, that delivers a full charge in under 2 hours, a level 2 that does the same in 12 hours or a level 1 (like what you plug your bedside lamp into (which can complete the task of a full recharge in 100 hours,) which if you’re not a math wizard, is 4 full days plus an additional 4 hours. I took the occasion to drive to John’s house so we could work out the comics and wording for our upcoming Comic Book anthology. It is about 100 miles in each direction, and whaddya know, I had range anxiety. I didn’t feel confident I could go to John’s house and back on a full charge, so John had to pick me up at his local public library, where there happens to be two chargers. Rather than wait there 6 hours for the partial recharging, we went to his house, worked and came back 6 hours later with the car fully recharged. A pain in the butt? Undeniably. As we have stated in the past, our collective misfortunes may be unfortunate, but they are often the grist of the mill for our comics, including both of this week’s efforts.

Back to electric vehicles. The point is, you tend to plan your activities around recharging. One night, my wife and I drove to a mall in another county (about 15 miles away) because they had level 3 charging, PF Chang’s and a movie theater showing the Oscar nominated “Everything, everywhere, all at once.” That made the 2 1/2 hour recharge a non-factor. A win-win-win if ever there was one. I was so happy with that decision, I didn't even contemplate the fact that I drove 30 miles round trip to recharge my car, which only gets 240 miles to begin with. Incidentally, if you find yourself at PF Chang’s, try the chicken lettuce wrap, damn good. As for the movie, not so much. I fell asleep during it (due to a combination of boredom, confusion and a cocktail from the aforementioned PF Chang’s).

One last thought about the comics: we had fun with the level 1 charger that takes over 4 days to fully charge your car. As Marv (and we) imagined, that would mean your invited company would have to stay for 4 days (and 4 hours). We leave you with this quote John remembered from Benjamin Franklin that John remembered: “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after 3 days.” Have a great weekend and we’ll see you again next week with two new ones hot off the press.

Andy and John

Apps Schmapps 06/09/23

If artificial intelligence weren’t bad enough, we are also confronted with an onslaught of apps. Take my attempt to watch the Mets - Braves game the other night. In hindsight I shouldn’t have bothered. My family and wife’s extended family (24 people in all counting grandparents, parents, and children) are on vacation in South Carolina. Each family rented a house. In our house are several tv’s including a big one no less than 70” in the living room.

On this particular night we were alone, and after we put our granddaughter to bed, my wife asked me if I wanted to watch a movie. “Sure,” I replied. I then picked up one of the two remotes in front of the tv (or smart tv monitor, if you want to get technical) and pressed a button saying “Netflix.” Simple, right? Wrong. I then was asked for the password from the owner of the house we’re renting and of course I had no idea of that one, so I signed in as myself but it turns out myself has no account on this particular dumbass tv, err, I mean smart tv monitor. So after several attempts on Amazon, Prime, Hulu, etc I gave up and we read books. Real books too, not the iPad versions.

Then our kids came home and I attempted to watch the Mets game with our son. He managed to download the Major League Baseball App (which he pays for) after at least 20 minutes of trying. After he finally, heroically sets it up, he clicks on Mets-Braves and a message pops up…”This game cannot be shown due to a contractual obligation with another network.” Really? The other network, it turns out, was TBS. We change the tv channel to TBS by saying “TBS” into the smart remote and what message are we confronted with? “Tonight’s game on TBS cannot be shown in your area due to contractual obligations.” You have got to be f@#k*&g kidding me.

But then I said, “Wait, I pay for the Mets network, SNY at home. So after another quadrillion steps I downloaded the app and we got to watch the game. On my little iPad. And this is supposed to be the future. Just one more gripe and I will leave you to enjoy your weekends and hope I come down from being pissed off so I can enjoy the rest of mine. My wife and I bought a one year subscription to Peacock, so we could watch the first four seasons of Yellowstone. Which we did. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of watching something on Peacock, you pay a subscription fee PLUS they make you sit through commercials. I know, I know, John and I made a living writing those commercials for most of our adult lives, but now that we’re out of the business, we hate being interrupted by ads as much as you do. At any rate, when Season 5, the supposed final season, came around, it wasn't on Peacock. Yet. It would be if you were patient enough to wait 6 months. If not, you had to buy a whole new streaming system, Paramount+. Don’t you hate the + sign? It always means that the regular thing you pay for won’t include what you really want to watch. That is only available on +.

Okay, I'm finished ranting this weekend. I’ll be back home and we’ll be back to you with two new comics, but they’ll only be available on TheNew60+. Nah, just kidding. Have a great weekend.

Andy and John

The More Things Change...06/02/23

You know that hoary old cliche, “the more things change, the more they stay the same?” We kinda disagree on that one. It feels like it ought to say, “The more things change, the more complicated they get.” We already went over new car radios in last week’s blog, but smart refrigerators requiring you to know which shelf to put the milk on, smart watches telling you it’s time to stand up (while you’re driving your smart car), theaters and ball games that only accept tickets on a movie phone, not the paper kind, it’s all getting a tad overwhelming, but just a tad. How do we cope? By writing a comic strip of course. And our mutual confusion leads to an endless supply of stories, so there’s that.

Our baseball comic was inspired by an actual incident a few weeks ago when one of us, (I won’t say who so as not to embarrass John), fell asleep at a baseball game, despite it being over in a crisp 2 hours and 10 minutes. Okay, okay, it was me, but I’m blaming it on the pregame tequila shot. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Besides, while baseball is played at a much faster pace than in previous years, it’s still…baseball.

And onto A.I. We’ve all heard the horror stories about how it’s going to replace us, the same way robots did, only worse. We’ve read accounts that say that the more sophisticated A.I. becomes, the more apt it is to decide it doesn’t need us anymore. That we are inefficient and respond at a much slower rate than A.I. can. For instance, for the low, low price of just $20 per month (sorry, you can take the boy out of advertising, but you can’t take advertising out of the boy), you could ask it to write you an article about the deficit ceiling. And then ask it to rewrite it the way William Shakespeare would have written it. And then ask for it to be a poem. In iambic pentameter. And then make it into a Broadway show tune in the style of Lin Manuel-Miranda. We have no idea why you’d want to do this, but the point is that a program like ChatGPT could do all this in a matter of seconds. When it comes to writing commercials, I’m sure it would do a great job of that as well, and I would’ve been fine with that so long as I was still getting paid. I’d imagine the copy would flow beautifully without ever revealing it was artificially generated. Something along the lines of, “Hey, members of the baby boom generation born after 1955, have a Pepsi. It’s the preferred drink of world leaders, movie stars and top athletes that people in your demographic are sure to admire!”

At any rate we officially welcome you to the Summer of ‘23. And we will see you again next week with two new comics. And we’ll keep on going until we get taken over by A.I. By the way, if A.I. and Al were in a fight, I’d put my money on Al.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Baby You Can Drive My Car. 05/26/23

The more cars become sophisticated electronically, the harder they become to operate. Take the radio. I like the push button days, when pressing #1 gave me my favorite music station, #2 was my favorite news station, #3 was sports talk radio, etc. Now, every time I turn on my all-electric car, I get a randomly selected radio station. I cannot save my “favorites” unless I properly enroll in “My BMW,” which I cannot figure out how to do. So I first have to push the “media” button on the console, and then select “FM” or “Sirius” and then have to turn a dial also on the console, to my selected channel. All while trying to keep the car in the same lane on the highway, mind you. Not easy. And what the hell happened to “AM radio?” They don’t even offer it!!!!

And then let’s talk about keys, which are the subject of both this week’s cartoons. John calls them key fobs, I call them keys, but you can see from the comic who won that battle. At any rate, with an old-fashioned key, you had to stick it in the ignition. Then came the key fobs, and the car makers still had a slot for you to insert the key fob (there, are you happy now John?) into the ignition, so you always ended your drive the same way. Step 1, turn off the engine. Step 2, pull the key out of the ignition. Step 3, put the key in your pocket, purse, backpack, etc. So what went wrong? Turns out with the modern key fob, you don’t have to do anything with it, except have it with you. There is no place to put the key (fob) into the dashboard. The key slot has gone the way of the car cigarette lighter. No more. So what do you do? You put the damn key FOB in the cup holder. And promptly forget it. The good (and bad news) is the car doesn’t lock when the key is still inside, which I like, because I used to routinely lock my keys in the car after a round of golf, when I forgot that I put the keys in my golf bag and my golf bag was in the trunk, and…

See something like that was bad enough, but what Marv did was worse. Because he just left his key or as some would have it, key fob, in the cup holder. And since the car can no longer be locked with the keys or key fob inside, it makes it very easy for a car thief to prowl the neighborhood and look for cars parked in driveways where many people routinely make the same mistake Marv did, and poof, his car was gone. One last question about keys. Why are a single set of keys referred to in the plural (Honey, have you seen the car keys?) but a key fob is singular? (Honey where did you put the key fob). Questions like this are part of what make the comic business so rewarding.

Finally, John and I are putting the finishing touches on our new compilation of the New 60’s Greatest Hits. A comic book, if you will. Hundreds of our favorite comics, with some wry (whatever that means) commentary by us. Should be on sale before the end of the year. That’s it for now. Until we meet again next week, have a great Memorial Day Weekend,

Andy and John

Here Comes Summer. 05/19/23

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve likely seen both of today’s comics already. One dealt (mercifully) with Al’s final game as an ump. And the other deals with Marv settling in for the season with his new backyard setup. But first a word about the strip. Well it seems that Andy (that’s me) turned 70 last week, which begs the question, can a 70-year old still write about life in your 60’s? And the answer is, hell yeah. And John is still squarely in his 60’s. I can hear you 60 somethings sitting back there saying, I still play tennis while you play pickleball, I ride a real bike while you ride an e-bike, I walk 18 holes, blah, blah, blah. Let me tell you something, I can do everything you 60-year olds can do. Just not quite as well. And to tell the truth, I haven’t yet tried pickleball. Besides, as John points out, Charlie Brown never aged, nor did Lucy, or Popeye. And neither did Beetle Bailey, Dagwood Bumstead or for that matter, Dick Tracy. So the New 60 will continue to be the New 60, and besides, John is 5 years younger. And he plays tennis. And rides a real bike. Far. Which gets us back to summer.

Sure Al tried his hand at umping the boys of summer, but a brutal collision at home plate, getting barreled over by an aggressive 8-year old, ends his newest career path. Which is a good thing, because sooner or later he was bound to call his grandson Billy out at the plate, and who knows where that would’ve gone? Actually we do, but we’re not telling.

And then there’s Marv in his new backyard setup. When you have dreams like building a pool, buying a sports car or (in my wife’s case) traveling to Bhutan, if you don’t do it now, when are you gonna do it? Now is the time to go for it. Unless you’re like the long-suffering fans of the old Brooklyn Dodgers who, upon losing to the hated Yankees year after year (except for 1955 when they finally beat them), adopted the famous slogan, “Wait ‘til next year.”

Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll be back next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Relief Pitch. 05/12/23

How much more is there to say about umpires? Plenty, in fact. As Al gets ready to join the fraternity of umpires and referees, I’m reminded of John and me going into the comic strip arena. Physical newspapers are dying out, those that are left have a shrinking “funny pages” section and there aren’t as many comics today as there used to be. Perfect! Let’s go for it!! “So how does that relate to umpiring,” I hear you ask? They too are on their way to becoming obsolete. Baseball, once “America’s National Pastime,” is becoming a fringe sport. It’s too slow, there’s not enough scoring, blah, blah, blah. John and I for one (actually I guess that’s two) still are big fans. But back to the umps. Did you know that in the top levels of the minor leagues, the home plate umpire, the guy or gal that calls balls and strikes, has a communication device in their ear. It says “ball” or “strike” in the umpire’s ear after every pitch. In fact Major League Baseball was actively recruiting for Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) techs in the biggest minor league cities. The ump has essentially been reduced to a robot. But I’ll bet robots make way fewer bad calls.

Poor umps. But not all of them. I’m reminded of a Robert DeNiro movie in the late ‘90’s called “The Fan.” In it, Wesley Snipes was a superstar player traded to the San Francisco Giants (note: if you’re still upset the former NY Giants baseball team ended up in San Francisco then you may actually be too old for this comic strip)! He was having a tough start to his season and DeNiro, a down on his luck, out of work salesman, took his angst out on Snipes, following and harassing him all over the city. Finally Snipes comes around and starts playing like the star he’s always been. In a chilling final scene, he comes barreling around third base and slides into home. The ump removes his mask and signals, “safe!” But when the ump pulls off his mask, we see it’s none other than Robert DeNiro. This time it wasn’t poor ump, it was poor batter. He wanted to kill Wesley Snipes.

This is all to say that Al doesn't really know what he’s getting into. If you’re reading this, you likely have already read the comics, and you know that far from becoming a knock-out umpire, Al becomes a knocked-out umpire. Don’t worry folks, he’ll survive. But maybe he’ll stick to Pizza. On a stick. On a personal note, I (Andy) am turning 70 on Monday. I am hoping this doesn't disqualify me from working on The New 60. And what happens when John turns 70 also (don’t worry fans, he’s still got a long way to go) do we change the title of the strip? No. As John points out, Charlie Brown and Lucy never aged so why should our peeps be any different?

That’s it for this week. Have a great week and we’ll be back next Friday with the conclusion of our umpire series and a whole new direction.

Andy and John

You're...safe! But Am I? 05/05/23

Last week, I wrote that we were embarking on a 4-part series on umpiring. Turns out we had so many stories, it became a 6-part series. John, for those of you who don’t know, played college soccer and went on to play in adult leagues after graduation where the competition was, to put it lightly, fierce. He recalled a game very close to where I now live in Westchester in which his team beat the other team. Suffice it to say, the other team didn’t take it well. John and a buddy ran for their car amidst a hail of rocks and bottles, and good thing for John and this comic strip, he was parked very close to the field and he and his friend made it to safety. This event gave us the advice that Al receives at Umpiring School: park very close to home plate.

I only umped one time, at my daughter’s softball game, which I wrote about in last week’s blog. But I coached baseball, soccer and basketball up until 7th grade, at which time the middle school coaches took over. And forgive me for moralizing, but parents are becoming increasingly out of control. I was coaching a 5th and 6th grade soccer team, a rec team where every kid gets to play. It’s less competitive than a travel team, where only the best kids play. The idea is participation and fun. Not for some parents. This one mother was incensed that the referee, a high school girl and varsity soccer player herself, made a call against our team. And we ultimately lost by one goal. This mother of a player on my team rushed out onto the field at the final whistle and whacked the ball out of the referee’s hand! I rushed out onto the field (or the “pitch” as they say in soccer) and had to put both arms around the irate parent to restrain her from physically attacking the poor referee. In yet another incident, this time with a 3rd and 4th grade team, an unruly parent called for his son to break the leg of my son. He was shouting “Take him out! Take his legs out!” The referee was in over his head and when I told the guy to shut his mouth, he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Go fuck yourself.” Thankfully, three of the dads of players on my team, went over to this guy, who was drunk, and forcibly took him to the other side of the field, where he remained, by himself for the remainder of the game. When I asked one of the dads what he said, my friend replied, “I told him if he opened his mouth again, he’d spend the rest of the game in the Hudson River.” Since it was November, I’d imagine the water would have been quite chilly, and the jerky man miraculously calmed down. This umpiring stuff is serious business because, in my opinion, parents have become wayyyyy too involved. Immediately after that previously mentioned one-goal defeat, the kids were on the sideline arranging play dates, “Mom can I go over to Billy’s house, puh-leeese?” They had no interest in smacking the ball out of the ref’s hands.

Which all goes to show you that Al is going to have his hands full. He may have bitten off more than he can chew. But keep reading next week and you’ll find out. It’s another example of the rule, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll be back next week with parts 4 and 5. And if you’re thinking of umpiring your grandchildren’s games, here’s a suggestion: please don’t.

Andy and John