Practice, Practice, Practice. 08/30/24

Sometimes one of us plucks an idea out of thin air. Sometimes it’s something somebody said. Or an expression we overhear. Or it’s something we take for granted but shouldn't. And sometimes it comes right from the mouth of a loved one. Word for word. We’re talking about ideas and where they come from. In this case, my wife and I were out to dinner. Afterwards she pointed out to me that I shouldn't have said something I said. What else is new? But in this case, I defended myself, saying, “I was just being myself,” to which she replied, “Why don’t you try being someone else?”

The good part about writing a comic is that even if someone criticizes you, even when they’re right, there’s still a good comic that can come out of it. In this case I texted John as soon as I got home that night. And when we met the next morning it became a comic. We just had to change whatever the insult was. In this case the comic was about insulting someone’s new hairstyle. I shudder to think what my actual insulting comment was, but I’m sure my wife remembers.

Our other comic comes from being retired. The thought process is, “Now that I’m retired, I’ve got time to learn to do something I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t had the time to do it.” Like taking a cooking class in Italy. Or learning to play a new instrument. Or relearning to play an instrument you once knew how to play. Another variation on that theme is, “If we don’t do it now, when are we ever going to do it.” This includes taking action/adventure trips like exploring Bhutan (I got out of that one thanks to Covid), rafting down the Colorado, or riding a mountain bike down a damn mountain. Ain’t happenin’. Then there’s “we’ve got to do it now, while we still can.” If this means going on a safari, taking up pickleball, or taking the grandkids to Disney, I’m all for it. Well, maybe not Disney. But if it means climbing Everest, my answer to “we’ve got to do it while we still can,” becomes, “I can’t, so let’s not.”

In this comic Joanne reminds Al of all the things he’s taken up and abandoned. In real life I was given a beautiful guitar from a cousin who could no longer play it. I last played for real in college and that was at least 10 years ago. Okay, maybe 20. Screw it, that was 49 years ago, okay? Don’t rub it in. But it turns out, I forgot a lot. Playing an a-minor chord, no problem. A b-minor chord, problem. After a few futile attempts, it lies in its case, taunting me. I will get back to you, guitar, I promise. I’m just a little intimidated by that b-minor, and you really can’t sing Puff the Magic Dragon to your three-year old granddaughter without the damn b-minor. Thankfully she’s still too young to realize I stop strumming every time I get to the b-minor and then resume strumming when I’m back to a chord I can play. Sigh.

Maybe this winter I’ll finally learn to ski.

Have a great last weekend of summer, a terrific Labor Day, but for now excuse us, our class in Acapulco Cliff Diving starts in 15 minutes,

Andy and John

On First Dates and Candlelit Dinners. 08/22/24

Listen, there’s nothing wrong with a bowl of French onion soup. It’s cheesy, delicious, and just the right thing on a cold night. But on a first date? Not that it’s not still hot, cheesy and delicious. It’s just that cheese pull thingy. You know, the part when you manage to cut the soggy bread and the mozzarella and ladle up some soup, all using a spoon (which, last I checked, has no sharp edges) and proceed to lift it to your mouth. It’s inevitable that the cheese will string out from the bowl all the way to your mouth because of the aforementioned no sharp edges on a spoon thing. Okay so now you’re in a pickle. Well, actually you’re in a bowl of french onion soup, but I digress. What options do you have? You have to either try to saw off the cheese with your teeth, or bring a knife up under the cheese pull and cut upwards, or (my preferred method) pull it free with your fingers. Now this is a subtle art that must be timed perfectly for when the other person is not looking. This is particularly important on a first date. Not as important if it’s a long-standing relationship in which case your partner has already become adjusted and accepting of your manners (or lack thereof). One obvious solution is not to order onion soup on a first date. But on the other hand, it’s so damn good I think it’s worth the CPC (Cheese Pull Conundrum). Obviously our character Craig does not agree. But that’s part of the reason he’s still single.

Our other comic came from a John observation about how hard it is to read a menu in a restaurant. One reason is the light is very low. Another is that the type on the menu is very small. A third reason is that eyesight doesn't generally improve with age. So how do we compensate? Do you don a pair of reading glasses? Still doesn't help with the low light. Whip out your iPhone or Apple Watch (which I just learned about last week watching a waiter use his) and put it in flashlight mode? Or do you save yourself the trouble of having to search through your pockets or purse or, god forbid, fanny pack and just hold the paper menu up against the romantic candle on the table. What could possibly go wrong? Glad you asked. I take you back to a time in my early teens when I went to Sunday School (that’s like Bar Mitzvah light) at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. We had a Purim festival. For the uninitiated, Purim is a festival celebrating the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient times. People dress up in costumes, kind of like Halloween. In this particular Sunday School festival, the little girl sitting right beside me leaned over a candle to get a piece of cake, and, as God is my witness, her hair caught on fire! Before the teacher could reach her with a towel, I dumped my whole glass of water and accompanying glass juice on top of her head to put the fire out. It worked. The Sunday School teachers patted me on the back and told me I was a hero, and the girl (whose name I cannot recall) was crying hysterically with singed hair, but it never reached her scalp, thank goodness, The event left an everlasting mark on me (and on her I’m sure), and for this reason, I never hold something flammable near a burning candle. My new go-to is the Apple Watch in flashlight mode. Granted, it’s a little pool of light, but it beats the hell out of holding a burning menu.

Have a great weekend and there’s only one more week of summer vacation and then it’s back to school new crayons, backpack, three-ring binder notebooks...oh wait, that was over for me and John a few years ago. Like 50, but who’s counting?

See you next week,

Andy and John

What Next? 08/16/24

About a year ago, I was channel surfing (the only kind of surfing I’ll ever do), and saw a channel featuring a game between the San Francisco 49’ers and the New York Giants. Ooh, I thought, this must be a replay of that great NFC Championship Game from 2011. So I clicked on the channel and saw…a video game between the two teams. It was a video of two people playing a Madden Football video game. I thought, “This must be the end of civilization as we know it.” But recently, John told me about the Pickleball Channel. All pickleball all the time. And so I looked. And there it was. Did you have any idea people are so enamored with pickleball that they want to watch it on tv? And did you know that there are pickleball teams? And did you have any idea that basketball great Kevin Durant bought one of the aforementioned pickleball teams? Said Durant (yes he actually said this) “We really, really want to leave our mark from day one on how hard this team is going to play and how successful we’re going to be as a group.” Inspiring words, to be sure. Makes me want to watch. But there you have it, people really watch this garb…uhh, stuff. Don’t people have anything better to do? Like read a book (or at least listen to one on tape) or do a crossword puzzle or drink a bottle of bleach?

But people don’t read so much anymore, and that makes us lazy, at least when it comes to language. Over the years in advertising I’ve watched the language get obliterated. So a “request” becomes an “ask.” As in, “The client has an ask…” I’ve got an ask for you, right here. Other favorites are, “I have a hard stop at 5pm.” Or, “Let’s reloop after the meeting.” Or (warning: this one is really gross) “That’s our BHAG.” A BHAG, I kid you not, stands for Big Hairy Aggressive Goals.” Oh those marketers are so clever, aren’t they? Let’s take it up in OND (short for the 4th quarter of the year or October, November, December). Whenever I heard this I’d have to figure out which months OND stood for and by the time I did, the speaker was three paragraphs ahead of me. Another example of business speak is the term “journey.” Life is a journey. You can go on a journey of self-fulfillment or sef-discovery or self-flagellation for all I care. Just don’t call it a journey. Journey is the band that sung the last song in the last episode of the Sopranos, Don’t Stop Believin’.” And you can’t convince us otherwise.

So as you go on your individual journeys of self-knowledge this weekend, think of us and our individual weight-loss journeys (but not before that generous helping of pie ala mode for dessert).

Andy and John

A Burger By Any Other Name... 08/09/24

Last week we wrote about the joys of summer. This week it’s raining and cold and exhibition football has already started, which makes us shout to the Fall season: “Slow down already!!” That said, we find ourselves hurtling towards Labor Day (which marks the end of summer even though it’s not officially the end of summer until Sept. 21st). Which brings us around to things not being what they claim to be. Case in point: the airport security line, home to our first comic this week. My wife and I have opted for everything and anything that can get you through airport security faster. PreCheck? Check. Global Entry? Check. Clear? Check. Though when my wife and I went on a trip this past May, we were standing on a long, slow airport security line while the people who didn’t have PreCheck or Clear or Global Entry went prancing through an empty line straight up to the conveyor belt. Sure, they had to take off their belts and shoes, but they still beat us through security by a good 10 minutes. And why worry about shoe removal when there’s Skechers slip-ons? And how hard really is it to put your belt back on? So I’ve got a deal to make with the TSA. Don’t try to trick me into paying more for the ability to rush to the head of the line and I won’t keep trying to smuggle six-ounce bottles of spf 50 sunscreen into my bag. Okay?

And now the other comic. Like most of our strips, either John or I (or both of us) have experienced or read about what we write about. Now I had to have a stent put in an artery 1 1/2 years ago, and was warned to cut wayyyy down on my meat intake. Like from once a day to once a month. Which raises a lot of questions for yours truly. Does pork count as red meat even though it comes off the grill white? Yeah, I know. But how much fish and chicken can a person eat? As it turns out, plenty. And if any of our dear readers are going through anything like this, I’ll give you some hints. Turkey bacon instead of real bacon…no way. You turn up the flame on the oven with turkey bacon and there’s no sizzling. Why? Because there’s no damn fat. On the other hand, turkey sausage is absolutely delicious. No give up whatsoever. Now that we have sausage settled, what about burgers? If I can’t eat too much meat, can there be a way to eat juicy burgers without eating meat? Yes I know about veggie burgers. There’s stuff like boca burgers, which are made to taste like meat and they’re pretty good. But then along came the ubiquitous plant burger, which now appears on seemingly every menu, even freakin’ Burger King’s. Two brands have reached the plant-burger pinnacle: The Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger. Dutifully, I tried them both out. If you pile a plant burger high with mustard, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles, it’s pretty close to the real thing. Then I tried them without all the toppings. And at least to me, Impossible kicks Beyond’s butt every time. So after coming to that conclusion, we fast forward to a backyard summer barbecue. My daughter is very healthy and is concerned with my health. As proof of how healthy she eats, she likes veggie burgers that taste like vegetables. When I proudly pointed out that I was grilling an Impossible Burger, she pointed out that it actually rivals and sometimes even surpasses a beef burger in terms of saturated fat and sodium. Huh? Are you kidding me? Her advice, “If you’re gonna eat a burger, eat a burger. Just don’t eat them too often.” Sigh. So I counted back a month before Labor Day (August 2nd) and stopped eating meat until Labor Day, on which day I will have a real hamburger and a hot dog! Then it’s back to chicken. Or fish tacos. And perhaps a cold non-alcoholic brew. Or not.

Have a great weekend (if you’re living on the East Coast it’s probably raining) and I’m off to meet a friend for lunch. I’ll start with a side salad and then a nice, juicy, uhh hamb… ehh change that to a cheesy bowl of French Onion sou…uhh make that a tuna burger, medium-rare to the rare side, please?

Andy and John

The Joys of Summer 08/02/24

I am a dinosaur. I love baseball and going to baseball games. I do not, however, enjoy catching foul balls. 1) They hurt. 2) Catching one looks cool on tv, but is terrifying in person. I meant, unless you’re 12 and remembered to bring your mitt, you’ve got no chance. And I’m not talking about hard line drives. Even balls that are fouled up way high in the sky. They hurt too. And 3) Did I mention they hurt?

A couple years ago I went to a Mets game and since they weren’t playing that well, the seats were going for less on the secondary market. I went to an afternoon game and one of my favorite Mets at the time, Juan Lagares, a great centerfielder but not such a great hitter, hits a foul ball way up into the air. As it was descending I thought, “Oh good, that’s coming right to me.” Followed by, “Oh sh*t, that’s coming right to me!!!” I put up my hands defensively, as much to protect my head as to catch the ball. As it came hurtling down with mind-numbing velocity (hey, we’re writing the blog so we can make it look as heroic as possible) the ball missed my hands entirely (phew) and came down one seat to the right of me, hitting the concrete floor and bouncing underneath the empty chair. I leaned over, picked up the scuffed ball and took it home, where it resides to this very day. If you ask me how I caught it, I’ll tell you it was a screaming line drive coming right at me and I barely blinked an eye. I just stuck out my left paw and made a one-handed grab while simultaneously holding a Nathan’s hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut in the other. Another few weeks go by and I go to another game and at this one, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was sitting a few rows ahead of me. Same deal, foul ball goes way high up and comes hurtling down in his direction. He puts his hand up, misses the ball. Said ball then crashes into the concrete step next to him, bounces up softly, and he grabs it out of the air. Turning towards the crowd with his arm, foul ball in hand, raised triumphantly to the crowd and the tv cameras as if he caught the ball out of the air in the first place. But I know the truth governor. And I’m spilling the beans.

The other great summer activity is swimming. There’s swimming in the lake, the ocean or the swimming pool. In this case Sam went the bargain route and bought the backyard, inflatable version of a swimming pool. You know the type. Little kids love to splash around in them and it will keep them occupied all day. Unless there’s a big, hairy, slightly porky old man taking up all the space. John also bought a backyard, inflatable pool. Now I’m not saying he takes up all the room in the pool and meanwhile his kids are big enough to toss him out, but trust me, little kids see us much differently than we see ourselves. I once went into an outdoor hot tub in a California hotel. It was peaceful, quiet and I could see the stars out over the Pacific Ocean. Just then a mom came in with her toddler. The kid takes one look at me and says, “Look mom, why is that man so hairy?” Followed by, “Why does he not have any hair on his head/” The mom giggles and apologizes, and I told her not to worry about it. And then I submerged her kid underwater for the next 15 minutes. Okay, I didn’t touch the kid, but I had evil thoughts.

As Porky Pig used to say,” th-th-th-that’s all folks.” We’ll be back next week with two new ones and until then, if you’ve got an inflatable pool, try getting out and giving the kids a chance.

Andy and John

There's No Waffling When it Comes to Breakfast 07/26/24

Did you ever wonder why it is that the more expensive a hotel is, the less they offer for free? You go to a Motel 6 or Super 8, you get free wifi, free cable, and free breakfast. You go to a top hotel, (which we used to do all the time in advertising) they offer fast wifi for $15.99 a night. And for breakfast you can order a $6.00 cappuccino, $21 dollar scrambled eggs (at least the toast is free) and a $9.00 side of bacon (turkey bacon is better for you but requires a $2.00 upcharge). Water? That’s on them unless you want bottled. Oh a little fruit, you ask? Try our fruit cup, which we call a fruit salad, for $14.50. But who cared? The company was paying. Then came holding companies who bought up all the independent ad agencies and made them more “efficient” by firing all the back office workers, and cutting down on how much meal money the employees could charge when they were away from home, in a hotel, and had no choice but to eat out. One of my favorite memories was when I tried to save the company money. I took my laundry to a $10.00 wash and fold laundromat. They handed back my laundry, warm, fluffy and neatly folded for $10.00, as advertised. Trouble was they gave me a hand-written receipt on one of those little green pieces of lines paper you get at diners. I turned the partly-smudged, hand-written receipt in to accounting, and they disallowed it because it wasn't a computerized receipt. I had to eat the $10.00. Lesson learned. Next time I was at the same hotel shooting a different commercial, I had the hotel do my laundry, because they gave computerized receipts. The bill? I kid you not, was $212.00. The company accepted that with no questions. Maybe if they tried allowing hand-written receipts they wouldn’t have had to fire so many workers. Just sayin’.

But onto waffles. This week’s comics are from John’s experiences. I am more of a bacon and egg or breakfast burrito guy (we were always shooting commercials in LA, so they had breakfast burritos instead of breakfast sandwiches). John, as it turns out, is a waffle man. If you are not a waffle aficionado you will likely find that making a waffle with a hotel waffle maker is a complicated experience. And if you want your waffles, it is apparently painful to watch somebody who is in front of you, figure out how to make their waffles. So Marv, who has this in common with John, helps the guy in front of him. Partly because he’s a nice guy. But mainly because he wants to make his own waffles already, dammit! Truth be told, John and his wife attended an out-of-state wedding this weekend, and managed to find a hotel with a waffle maker. We came up with the idea (really he came up with the idea) of doing a two-parter about waffle makers and this past weekend he lived up to the comic. What isn’t clear was whether he put the butter on before the syrup or vice versa. He’s not telling.

Anyway on to the Olympics. Have a wonderful weekend, and if you’re reading this over breakfast, try adding some sliced bananas on top of your Eggos.

Andy and John

Man Plans, God Laughs 07/18/24

Calendars used to mean one thing. There were Playmate of the Month calendars, Sexy Fireman of the Month calendars, and plain old calendars that your mom used to hang up on the wall. Each day had a box and on each box was written the appointments for the day. Pack school lunches 8 am, grocery shopping 9 am, dentist appointment, 11 am. And unless you were a hopeless day drinker (that’s a phrase I wasn’t even aware of until my friend Matt Fischer accused me of it when I wrote him “lmk” instead of “let me know”), most people managed to keep up with these appointments. Even though they were written in pencil or pen, they were written in stone. Nowadays (is that even a word?) things are “written down” electronically. Heck, we even have calendars on our phones. But it seems to me that electronic plans are worth the paper they’re written on. In other words they’re as likely to be canceled as they are to be kept.

John and I have both had extensive dental work done in the past year. Crowns, root canals (trust us, they ain’t beautiful like Venice canals) periodontal cleanings that are worse than filling cavities, you name it, one of us has had it done. And just like the comic, if we had to change the appointment or the dentist had to change it, the next available appointment was months in advance. This is no joke. I had an appointment with a nutritionist (I prefer burgers, dogs and pizza to dark, leafy greens and vegetable medleys) in January of this year. They gave me an appointment in May. I said yes but totally forgot we were going to Greece in May. It was impossible to coordinate a time that worked from Greece so I rescheduled and the earliest they could come up with was late July. At least I think it’s late July, because I can no longer find it on my digital calendar. Sigh. I guess there’s nothing more to be done except to throw a couple of Impossible Burgers on the grill, topped with cheese and not the vegan kind. Although my extremely healthy daughter tells me they have as much saturated fat as the real thing, so on second thought…

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next Friday. Don’t forget to mark it on your calendar.

Andy and John

Carpenter Bees?

Let me admit to something. Despite running a two-part series on Carpenter Bees, I haven’t the slightest idea what a carpenter bee is. John not only knows what one is, he knows what they do, so I take his word for it. I've heard of carpenter ants (I think). But carpenter bees? I have this image of a bee with goggles and a belt weighed down with heavy tools so that you see its butt-crack every time it bends over, but apparently that’s not what it looks like. According to John, it looks just like a regular bee except instead of buzzing around and pollinating flowers and making honey, this little guy (actually female) likes eating wood. And she pollinates as well but forget the good stuff. This is all about smearing the reputation of the carpenter bee. According to my vast research on these dreaded insects (okay, I just looked it up on Google), they prefer unpainted, weathered wood, especially softer types of wood like redwood, cedar, cypress and pine. Duh. John apparently used one of these types of wood while building the beams on his house and the bees said to themselves, “Whoopee! We’re moving in with John and Linda!” Which begs the question, do bees say stuff to themselves like “whoopee,” but that’s a subject for another blog. On second thought, maybe not.

According to this same website, carpenter bees don’t mean any harm. In fact, the males don’t even possess a stinger (I’m sure there’s a sophomoric sexual entendre in here but I will NOT sink that low) and all the little hole drillers want is to provide a safe environment for their young. Also, only the female is the hole driller which also leads to a sophomoric sexual entendre but this blog is rated PG, so please get your collective minds out of the gutter or at least out of the carpenter hole. The way to eliminate them, according to the website, is to add a protective coat of paint. While this may work in reality, it didn't stop John’s imagination, so he resorted to his inner-Rambo (trust me, he has one. Check out our comic when Al goes shirtless and dons a scarf tied around his head like a headband as he eliminates weeds with a flamethrower) and pulls out the Super Soaker. Ask anyone who’s ever been splashed by a Super Soaker, that stuff hurts! It comes out in a stream so powerful it should have been part of the assault weapons ban. If it feels like that to a fully grown human, imagine what it must feel like to a carpenter bee. We did.

Have a wonderful weekend and add an extra coat of finish to those beams, okay?

Andy and John

Ahh Nature...

Who among us doesn't like nature? Who among us would admit it if we didn’t like nature? Shellie is a city girl. I grew up as a city boy. So I get her. And John gets Sam. Some people know how to pitch a tent. I know how to pitch a baseball. And not that well, mind you. Years ago I took my young son on a baseball trip across the country. When we got to Detroit to see the Tigers we went to their stadium, Comerica Park (what the hell is a Comerica anyway?), and in one of the concourses they had a pitching machine. You stood on a mound 60’6” away from home plate (just like in the big leagues) and throw a baseball while a speed gun tracked how fast you could throw. My son, in his young teens, got up and fired one in at, if memory serves me right, around 62 mph. I chuckled softly and said something like, “Pretty good for a kid. But watch this.” I wound up and fired the ball and the radar gun hit…48 mph. And it hurt my arm. And my ego. Anyway, back to nature. Must we?

We must. My wife and I rent a beach house every summer and we love the idea of eating outside at night. Surrounded by nature. The house has outdoor speakers so you can play music while you eat. The pool has solar lamps around it and the pine trees are backlit. It’s a beautiful setting. Here’s the usual dinner drill: We have guests over. We go outside to set the table, rough-hewn and cut from a tree, place the plates and napkins and wine glasses, light some candles while the grill is grilling something healthy like salmon (except for July 4th and Labor Day when it’s burgers and dogs all the way). We bring out the salad and appetizers and then people start slapping at their necks, their arms, their legs, etc. It’s the damn mosquitoes. Oh we’ve tried citronella candles, an electronic device that emits a “non-toxic mist guaranteed to keep the bugs away,” and then invariably we ask, “Would everybody be happier taking their dinner inside?’ At first there’s a tentative, “If that’s what you want,” which immediately turns into a groundswell of “Yes!!!” as everyone runs inside, nature be damned.

I think the point is (is there really a point?) not that some people abhor nature. It’s that they’re simply uncomfortable around it. And yeah okay, some people abhor nature. You either grow up in a house in the country with two dogs or in the city with none. Where other people see wonder and beauty in a baby fawn, others see…deer ticks! Let me tell you, having suffered through a near fatal case of Lyme disease in my early 30’s, deer ticks are no picnic, (although I think I got my deer tick bite during a picnic). So while Shellie hates the thought of bats, she hates the mosquitoes even more. Somehow we think she’ll survive. And that little Sammy’s relationship to the great outdoors is shaped more from his dad than his mom.

So have a happy 4th of July. After finishing this blog, I am headed out to commune with nature on the beach. Just me, our guests and the great outdoors, covered with a spf 50 sunscreen, a large, floppy hat, sitting on a Tommy Bahama beach chair under a matching Tommy Bahama umbrella. which no ray of sun is capable of penetrating. Until our party of four decides to pack it up a couple hours later, because, you know, too much sun.

Have a great holiday,

Andy and John

Country Living. 06/28/24

Hurray! Summer’s here! And so are bugs! And mosquitoes! Wait, don’t mosquitoes count as bugs? Never mind. Point is, there’s a lot to love about the summer. And a lot to hate. It seems like there are basically three types of preferences for summer living, among people lucky enough to be able to afford choices for summer living. One group loves the beach. There’s nothing like the sound of the waves crashing on the beach, the gentle ebb and flow of the tide, the squawk of the seagulls, the occasional whale sighting, long walks and cooling dips. There’s nothing like it. Unless you hate sand, have fair skin and don’t want to get sunburned, think it’s a pain in the butt to load your car with Tommy Bahama chairs and umbrellas, coolers, plastic glasses and towels, sunscreen and talcum powder. Talcum powder? Yes there’s a little-known trick for removing the wet sand from your feet before getting back into the car. You sprinkle talcum powder on your feel and ankles. It instantly absorbs the wetness, then you brush it off with your hands and the sand comes completely off with no effort. Now it’s true that talcum powder has been linked to some serious diseases, but man, does it take the sand off! Except for the little grains that find their way into your sandals, the floor mats of the car, the beach house you rented, and of course, the bedsheets.

Another option is the country house. If you’re a country person you probably like hiking, forests, mountains and building stuff with your own hands. A swimming pool is always a nice accessory. Sure there are bugs. And bumpy driveways (John has a long and bumpy driveway that was the inspiration for Sam’s long and bumpy driveway). Full disclosure: John is a country guy, I’m a beach guy. He can build a deck or an outdoor garden or a manly fire pit. If a tree falls, he gets out his chain saw and cuts it into firewood. I can barely get the beach umbrella into the ground (although we have the kind where the end looks like a big plastic screwdriver, so that helps big time). As for firewood, we buy it in bundled logs outside the grocery store.

And then there’s a third type. The stay at home in the city type. Good news: you can easily get into plays and restaurants and comedy clubs and museum exhibitions that are tough to get into when everybody is home. It’s less crowded. There’s less traffic. And it can seem like you have the whole place to yourself. Of course there’s also an unrelenting hot sun bouncing off the pavement when you walk, heaping bags of trash on the street waiting for collection, no place to jump in the water, and you are just counting the minutes or seconds until you are back home. Inside. But no bugs.

The classic push/pull between city and country folk was brilliantly covered in the show Green Acres. Da da duh da da: fresh air! Da da duh da dam Times Square! And in this series we are having fun with Sam’s country enthusiasm and Shellie’s country reticence. But hey, how come there’s no Green Acres chorus about the beach???

Have a happy summer wherever you are and however you choose to spend it and we’ll see you (virtually) next week with our final two installments of Sam and Shellie’s country house.

Andy and John

Gift-Giving. 06/20/24

Remember when our kids were little and they’d bring us gifts from school? The Mother’s Day hearts, outlines of their hands to look like turkeys for Thanksgiving and the Father’s Day ash trays? Ash trays? Yeah ash trays. That’s what dads did back then, they smoked cigars. Handed ‘em out when the kids were first born. We come from a time when a bubble gum manufacturer thought it was a good idea to shred the gum, put it in a resealable pouch, and sell it like the bubble gum version of chewing tobacco. Big League Chew. I confess to stuffing a “chaw” between my cheek and gums on the softball field (to look like a big leaguer) until I realized that you can’t chew the damn stuff until you put it between your teeth. But that was then. As for now, I still have a laminated bookmark from my daughter and a NY Giants coaster from my son. Still use them.

Speaking of gifts, how about the gifts given in wills? There’s an Advertising Hall of Fame ad for Volkswagen back in 1969 (the days after Mad Men) featuring a long line of limos and, in the back, one young man driving a VW Beetle. The announcer reads the last will and testament of the deceased. I’ll spare you the full script but as you see the limos go by and the fat cats in the limos, the announcer says, “To my business partner Jules, whose motto was spend, spend, spend, I leave nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally, to my nephew Harold (the young man bringing up the rear of the procession in his VW), who said a penny saved is a penny earned, I leave my entire fortune of $100 billion dollars.” Now Sam wasn’t going to inherit anything like Harold’s $100 billion. John and I don’t even know how to write that amount down. Suffice it to say it’s a lot of zeros. So we (in the guise of Uncle Eddie) decided to give him a house in the country. Shellie doesn’t know from country. Green Acres here we come.

That’s it for this week. Have a terrific weekend in the country, unless you’re like Eva Gabor, in which case you want to tell us “Dahling I love you but give me Park Avenue,

Andy and John

Whose Line is it Anyway? 06/14/24

Ever been to Costa Rica? You can’t go there without experiencing a zip line and getting to rappel down a waterfall. Fun. Unless you’re terrified. One of us is that way. Here’s a hint: John once parachuted out of a plane. I still refuse to go off the high diving board at the local pool. As it happens, the both of us, at completely different times, went with our families to Costa Rica. You can have a beautiful vacation on the beach or you can have an eco-vacation in the rainforest. My family did a little of both. We actually had to rappel down a waterfall, each time you let go of the rope to descend you bounced your feet off the rock. And your feet got soaked because you were hitting the waterfall. Now I was wearing open-toed Keen’s sandals, a shoe that is so ugly, a female comedian friend of mine referred to them as “deal breakers.” But I digress. The point is, the looser you hold the rope, the more freely and effortlessly you descend. But if you are terrified you hold on to the rope tightly. Which results in you taking twice as long as it should and a pair of rope-burned hands. But that is nothing when compared to a zip line. For those of you who have never experienced one, you climb up a ladder perched against one tree. The trip organizers put a helmet on you, gloves to protect against those previously mentioned rope burns, and hook up your safety vest to a safety harness. In sum, you are pretty safe. The only thing you can’t do is panic and apply the brake too soon. If you do this, you won’t have enough momentum to reach the tree and platform on other side. Instead, you’ll just hang down from the middle of the rope while everyone laughs at you as you now have to propel yourself hand over hand to get to the other side. Exhausting and humiliating at the same time. Not that I’d know. So John and I thought it would be funny to have a terrified Marv have to take the zip line to get to the reception for Sid’s wedding. Our choice came to Marv and his bulk, tie flapping in the wind, vs. an older woman with a clutch and her pearls flapping in the wind. We looked at each other and decided nobody would know who that woman was (heck, we didn’t know who that woman was) and decided to have Marv go along for the ride.

Then there’s the other kind of line we like to avoid. The line at the prescription drug counter. There’s a couple of reasons we find ourselves on these lines more than we’d like. One reason is we ain’t exactly getting younger. And the other more sinister reason is we are being targeted by pharmaceutical ads. All the shows we watch, like nightly news, cable news, golf tournaments, TONY Awards, they see us coming. And every single ad is either an insurance ad or a pharmaceutical ad. And of all the pharmaceutical ads in all the world, the one that drives John, me and a host of other people crazy is the ad for Jardiance, the little pill with the big STOR-ee to tell. As far as I know, you emphasize the second syllable, sto-REE, not the other way around. In musical terms it’s a syncopation - “a disturbance or disruption of the regular flow of rhythm.” Another sterling example is the jingle for the charity Kars for Kids. They sing, “do-NATE your car today.” So one issue is how badly the songs are written and the other one is you can’t get the damn thing out of your mind. At least we can’t. So have a wonderful weekend and in an effort to get those songs out of your head, just remember, we all live in a yellow submarine.

Andy and John

First World Problems. 06/07/24

Of all the problems in the world, having too much money to spend doesn't seem like a biggie. But we’ve seen it before. Professional athletes, actors or app developers, hedge funders and corporate lawyers who earn untold riches before they’re old enough to understand it’s not going to last forever. I know of a certain actor who lives in a fancy building in Brooklyn. There’s a rooftop deck for the building. Said actor (trust me, you know him) bought 3/4 of the deck, the part with views of the Manhattan Skyline, the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty for himself, and let the other 29 tenants split the 1/4 of the roof that’s left. The part without the views. And this from a guy that probably spends no more than 4 weeks a year there. Yeah, that kind of money. Or there’s the recent example of a 22-year-old multimillionaire athlete who covered the floor of a strip club with $100 dollar bills so his friends could have unlimited fun.

We didn't give Sid that kind of money, but close. What would he do with it? What would we do with it? You’d like to think you’d be responsible, but hey, why settle for a mere car when you can just as easily afford a Maserati? Thank goodness the comic doesn’t make the kind of money. The kind that would give John or me the type of aforementioned trouble our young billionaires have to deal with. On the other hand, as The Beach Boys once sang, “Wouldn't it be Nice?” The point is that while we would be sorely tempted to do crazy things with unlimited money, we’re in our 60’s (okay, okay, one of us is in his very, very early 70’s) we at least have some perspective. For a young kid, it would be awfully tough or nearly impossible not to spend it recklessly. Like a private destination wedding in a foreign, far away land. A private plane that doesn't serve its passengers microwave trays of salisbury steak (whatever that is) and pop chips, but instead passes out elk-burger sliders and hand cut fries with a lemon aioli. Heck, it’s not John’s money or mine. So we can spend it as recklessly as we want. So there!

Have a nice weekend, and take it from us, chopped chuck and American cheese makes a better hamburger than ground sirloin and roquefort. Any time.

Andy and John

The Good and Bad of the Web 05/31/24

The internet can be bad. If you’ve ever ordered an article of clothing off the internet (and who hasn't?) you know the rule. It never fits. Ever. Take shoes for instance. I know I’m a size 8 1/2 here in the good old USA. But what size am I in Europe? I think I’m a 41. But it could easily be a 42. Shirts, fuhgeddaboutit. Small, medium large, that - I get. But collar size? Sleeve length? No shot. And our size changes as we get older so what you think you know may very well not be accurate. Which brings us around to Marv and his shirt. Maybe the sizes in China are different. Maybe Marv put on a little weight. But Rachel could have been a little nicer. She could have just gazed at his stomach and not said anything, but that doesn't make for a funny ending.

And then the internet can be extremely good. Like for Sid. Remember Sid? He is the son of Al and Joanne. Sid lived in their basement into his early 30’s working on an idea for a “killer app.” Sid was devastated when Al and Joanne took him off the family phone plan (my kids still haven’t forgiven me). And then one day, as if by miracle, Sid emerges from his room to announce he was a newly minted internet multi-millionaire. Funny how that works. So John and I asked ourselves, what would a guy with untold riches do for a wedding. And since we don’t have to pay for it, we had no problem spending Sid’s money. In this era of celebrity weddings, Peltz-Beckham, RFK Jr and Cheryl Hines, Ben Affleck and…wait a minute, that one just ended. Anyway, we wondered what a pair of healthy, wealthy 30-somethings would do if they could do anything they wanted. In the next couple weeks, you’ll find out.

What’s the most extravagant, over-the-top wedding you’ve ever attended? Write us and if we hear something really crazy, we’ll write about it in the blog. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week with two new installments of Sid’s big event.

Andy and John

Post Retirement Life. 05/24/24

Once you stop working your responsibilities at work obviously end, but your responsibilities at home exponentially increase. More time to prepare meals at home translates to more time at the grocery store. While I am the primary cook, my wife is the fancy cook. She is particularly amazing at the wok. So an innocent request from me like, “Can you make us that delicious beef and broccoli dish you cook and maybe some veggie fried rice?” Turns into my least favorite part of going to the grocery store: the “ethnic foods” aisle. Here you’ll find Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese items along with Jamaican, Middle Eastern, Mexican and African foods. Jerk chicken spice anyone? How about Peri Peri sauce? Anyone for tahini paste? I know where they all are. But when it comes to Chinese cooking, my wife will ask me to pick up stuff like hot sesame oil. I have looked at four, mind you, four grocery stores and asked probably ten different supermarket aisle checkers where to find the hot sesame oil and the conversation goes like this. Me: Where can I find hot sesame oil? Them: Sesame oil? Me: No, HOT sesame oil. Them: Here let’s look in the ethnic foods aisle. Me: I was already here but okay. Them: This? Me: No, that’s toasted sesame oil, I want hot.

And don’t even get me started on chili garlic paste. Apparently, such a thing exists. And as I’m checking out, in comes the request for baby bok choy. Anyhow, it was this phenomenon that led John and me to our grocery store comic. He thought water chestnuts were exotic enough. I wanted tahini paste. In the end, I folded like a moo shu pancake.

The other part of being retired is during the week you’re generally around other people who don’t work…kids and grandparents. Hence the chance to receive compliments you might receive at work (‘Oh, you look nice today,” “ Love those shoes,” “Where did you get that shirt?”) decreases. Instead you might get a compliment from your 87-year-old neighbor. But you know, I’ll take it. Something is better than nothing.

So that’s it. I’m flying home from the Greek Islands today and back on the job next week. Thank you John for an excellent job of holding down the fort. Have a wonderful weekend everyone,

Andy and John

SHRINKFLATION 5/17/24

Ever notice what’s written on the new 10 ounce Snapple bottles? “Same great taste, brand new bottle.” Or something to that affect. We don’t know about you dear readers, but John and I would rather have the same great taste in the old fashioned 12 ounce bottle. Just sayin’. You can’t really do that with clothing, otherwise a pair of pants would be a pair of shorts. But if it’s packaged goods, man have they figured this game out. Toothpaste, mouthwash, toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex boxes, etc. Now it is true that there is a certain nostalgic magic to a glass 6 1/2 ounce bottle of Coke. And it is true that along the way, we’ve been supersized and supersized until we eat and drink more now than ever before. So I am all about going back to the 1960’s bottles, but I’d like them even better with 1960’s prices. Okay shrinkflation corporations, you can charge us 1960’s prices, adjusted for inflation. But maybe not. It might turn out costing us $250 a bottle. And they no longer put cocaine in it, like the old days…

But I digress. Both John and I would rather pay more for the same size. It just feels like they’re trying to put one over on you. But we spent a collective 75 years in advertising, and we know all about trying to fool consumers. You know when any kind of pain reliever, Advil, Tylenol, Motrin, etc says, “no other pain reliever works faster?” Well every one of them works just as fast, but none of them works faster.

Anyway, because I’m thousands of miles away now on a Greek island, I’m going to shrink this blog. But thankfully, we’re not charging a penny more! Same great blog, just less of it. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

The Club 05/10/24

Let me start by saying that I do not like country clubs. I like golf. I like tennis. I like swimming pools. But I don’t like clubs. First of all, they tend to be exclusive. Which is another word for exclusionary. When L.A. country clubs wouldn't allow Jews in the 1920’s, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny and George Burns said “Screw it, we’ll open our own.” Which would have been great, except they didn’t let the people in who wouldn’t let them in. Full disclosure: my parents belonged to a country club when I was a kid. I used to call it, “The Not Allowed Club.” Somehow I did everything you were not allowed to do. Cut off jeans in 80 degree weather, not allowed. T-shirts without collars, not allowed. Cannon balls in the swimming pool, not allowed. And then there was the dining room. If you’ve never eaten in a country club dining room, you’re not missing out on much. First of all, everybody knows everybody because they all play golf and tennis together and they all invite each other to their parties. So the people from each table are always getting up to come over to say hello, and you are constantly expected to stand up when they come. My dad would say stuff like, “Andy, you remember Mr. and Mrs Rubin and their son Jeffrey.” And he would nod his head slightly upwards, and I would be required to stand and say, “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Rubin, then shake their hands, then sit back down again. Only to rise two minutes later when the Grossmans came by. Secret: I never remembered their names.

John, however, belonged to a tennis club. The all-whites policy was a term he knew as well as the term Jr. Club. When he mentioned it, I remembered that they also had an all-whites policy at the Not Allowed Club. Of course they did. They may have modified the policy over the last few years to allow pastels, but I’m not holding my breath. Although I must admit, I look pretty (damned good) in pink.

That’s it for this week. John will hold down the fort while I go on vacation for two weeks. And then I’ll hold the fort for him. What exactly does it mean to hold the fort? I hope the fort doesn't have an all-whites policy.

Andy and John

May Peace Be With You. 05/03/24

If you’ve ever been to the Hamptons, you’ve seen it. The coupling of a younger woman and a much older man. Good luck with that, because 70 can’t keep up with 40 no matter how hard 70 tries. So how do these seemingly incompatible couplings occur in the first place? Glad you asked. A leading social scientist (whose name escapes me) made a scale, assigning different values to different assets. Intelligence, attractiveness and money being among the highest scoring assets. To serve up a cliche, a 70-year-old male or female movie producer would score very high on the money, power and influence scales, while scoring lower on the attractiveness scale. While the 25-year-old arm candy would score high on the beauty scale, but not very high in the other categories. Does Robert DeNiro becoming a father at age 80 ring a bell? While there is no way these aforementioned pairs should fit together, when you add up the scores on this social scientist’s scale, the pairs make an even match. All of which has little to do with Sam and his much younger wife, Shellie. He liked Shellie and was amazed she went for him. But with age difference comes different responsibilities. Most guys in their mid 60’s aren’t first learning how to put on a diaper (unless it’s on themselves). The inspiration for this comic came from a recent experience I shared with John. My wife and I (we are only 3 weeks apart in age, I might add) took care of our granddaughter one weekend. On the list for that Saturday was taking our granddaughter Charlotte to a 3-year-old birthday party at the NY Aquarium in Coney Island. The party room consisted of a bunch of 3-year olds and their parents. A couple of the parents introduced themselves and said, “Oh, you must be Charlotte’s grandfather.” I told John this, and his response was, “Yeah, so?” And I countered, “You don’t think it’s funny everybody just assumed I was the grandpa? He didn’t think that was surprising in the least, so the hell with him (he’s 5-years-younger anyway, the whippersnapper). And that’s when he suggested the school play might be a better venue for our character Sam, who actually IS a 60-ish parent of a small child. Hilarity, well at least awkward hilarity, ensues. I hate it when he’s right.

The other comic this week was very close to an actual experience I had in Japan last year. My wife and I were part of a three-couple trip. We were being led by a guide to the Temple of Peace. To get there, you had to stand on a long line, and then walk, single file, over a narrow bridge to get to the beautiful orange temple which was in the middle of a lake. The line stretched backwards, up six flights of a huge staircase. When we saw the line I said to our crew, “Screw it, why don’t we just run up there to the side of the line and take a group picture with the Temple in the background. Some of the people on the line thought we were trying to cut to the front and I explained, “Oh no, we’re just taking one picture and then we’re leaving.” Trouble was, nobody spoke English except for one person who exclaimed, “No cutting.” When I shared this experience with John, he liked it, we turned it into a comic, and we allowed the idea to cut to the front of our comic line this week.

That’s it for now. Join us again next Friday. With summer just around the corner, we take a trip to the country club. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Maybe We're Not That Old, but We're Not That Young Either. 04/26/24

I’m one of those people who refuses to listen to Sirius XM channels like “Classic Vinyl.” I have friends that listen to that, but all they hear is Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Pink Floyd, etc. The consequence is they’re not exposed to new music. And listen, I love those bands (except for Zeppelin, so shoot me), but I also want to be consistently exposed to new music, so I listen to a station called The Spectrum. It plays “the whole spectrum” of music from oldies to newies (is that even a word?) to everything in between. So it was while listening to The Spectrum that I started to appreciate an artist, a country rocker and brilliant lyricist named Jason Isbell. And wouldn’t you know it, he started becoming popular out east, not exactly a country music stronghold. He wound up playing at this old music hall in my town, capacity 850 seats. We eagerly attended the concert and loved it. About a year later he had become so popular he filled Radio City Music Hall, capacity of 6,000. My wife and I eagerly attended, figuring we were in for a similar experience, except the tickets were suddenly way more expensive. He hits the stage with a rock ‘n roll crowd pleaser, “The Two of Us.” The audience leapt up, the music was so driving, you couldn’t sit. Dueling electric guitars, horn sections, drum solos, the whole nine yards. I turned to my wife and said “Wow, this is even better than I expected!” Then the next song starts and we sit down. But a funny thing happened. The people in front of us remained standing. The people behind us remained standing. The people to the side of us remained standing. And nobody sat, even during a slow, contemplative song about love and loss. We took a few songs off and sat. There were two huge monitors on either side of the stage showing the band, so if you sat down, you could see some part of the monitor if you craned you head to the right and looked in the space between this tall guy’s shoulder and his much shorter girl friend’s shoulder. I shared this experience with John and the result was our “Concert Standoff” comic. Gives a whole new meaning to “Standing Room Only.” I mean, even the front row was standing, and there was nobody in their way. So it was a great concert, but note to the other 5,998 people in the audience, “Sit the f*@k down!!!” Just sayin’.

Our second comic was a New 60 spin on a Passover Seder we had just this past Monday. We had our traditional Seder, with 14 people. The meal started around 7:30. So did Game 2 of the NBA playoffs featuring my beloved New York Knicks. That’s right, 7:30, during Passover, in New York City. But, I reasoned, that’s why the good Lord invented digital video recording. As we discussed current events, followed by the story of the Jews going through the desert with their unleavened bread (I happen to love matzoh, but prefer it lightly salted with a little butter), 7:30 became 8:30, became 9:30 as we’re singing Dayenu. And at 10, I went into my bedroom, changed clothing and exited still in my suit, only this time, it was a sweat suit. In a flattering shade of navy, I might add. In case the point wasn't made, I turned the game on at 10:30. John couldn’t believe I did that, but he thought we could mold it into a damned good comic.

If you think this behavior was a one time thing, I once attended a Rosh Hashanah dinner in my Eli Manning jersey. Which begs the question, why do my favorite teams always play at the most inappropriate times? Or, as my wife might put it, it’s not the games that are inappropriate.”

Th-th-that’s all folks for this week. We’ll see next Friday with two new ones hot off our MacBook’s,

Andy and John

We're Not THAT Old, Are We? 04/19/24

Ever been stopped for some kind of traffic violation? C’mon, admit it. Of course you have. When you’re young you can try to charm the police officer. When you’re older, you hope maybe they’ll take pity on you. Or like Al, you can be clueless. About a week ago, I practiced one of my go-to moves: the rolling stop. It’s an art form. You have to go slowly enough to give you plausible deniability (No officer, I came to a stop), but fast enough to not slow down your arrival time. I thought I had it down to a science, but was mistaken when the flashing lights of a police car appeared from behind me. I looked in the rearview, then I looked in front of me to ascertain just who was getting pulled over. And upon seeing no other vehicles, I concluded the officer must have been pulling over yours truly. I rolled down the window and a female officer approached the car. She said, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I replied, “Uhh, I did a rolling stop? I thought I had stopped sufficiently.” She said, “License and registration please.” I proceeded to pull every card I had out of my wallet until I found the license, and then started rooting around my glove compartment for the registration, turning over papers until she stopped me and said, “That’s okay sir.” She saw that I lived in the same Westchester town where she pulled me over and said, “I’m going to let you go with just a warning this time, but be careful next time.” Wow. Talk about lucky. But then there was this other time about a year ago, when all the charm in the world did absolutely nothing for me. That time, I got pulled over by a much meaner policeman. He looked like he was in his early twenties and thought you had to be like Kojak to be a cop. What was my infraction? Yep, you guessed it. Another rolling stop. And Kojak appears from nowhere, lights flashing. After the license and registration bit, he walks back to his car. Aha, I think. This is where he sees I’m a local boy and lets me off. But no, he comes back and hands me a ticket. “Maybe he missed my address,” I think. So I remind him. “I live just a couple blocks from here,” And he replies, “Then I don’t have to tell you how dangerous this corner is.” I resisted the urge to reply, “There’s absolutely no other car coming or going here. It ain’t exactly 42nd Street and Times Square!”I resisted, but just barely. I told all this to John and we made a mash up of our respective traffic violations and nailed poor Marv with a ticket.

Our second comic comes from an observation I made to John about seeing the Miami Marlins pitching coach, Mel Stottlemyre Jr., walk out to the mound. To those of you who aren’t into baseball, he is the son of Mel Stottlemyre, a former Yankee, who was their star pitcher when I was growing up. Now here was his kid, Mel Jr., trotting out to the mound to talk to his pitcher. Peeking out from under Junior’s cap was a full head of white hair, and he had a white beard to boot. John countered with, “If you think that’s something, how about Mike Yastrzemski, the Giants outfielder?” Again, for those non fans, Carl Yastrzemski (pronounced ya-strem-ski or just “Yaz” for short) played on the Boston Red Sox during our misspent youths. I said, “Oh, Carl’s son?” And John replied, “No his GRANDson,” and another comic was born. By the way, Mike himself will be likely retiring in a couple years. The point is, there is a progression among young male sports fans. First we dream of being professional ballplayers. Then, in our twenties, we watch a game and think, “Damn, some of these guys are younger than me!” Then it’s, “Wow, he just retired and I’m older than he is!!” Followed by, “No, that’s his grandson.”

So that’s it for this week. A special shoutout to my wife Joanie, who is getting honored tonight for her years of service on the board of Girls Inc., and one final thought: The Mets third baseman just pulled his hamstring. If they need an emergency replacement, I’m still here. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John