Looks Can Be Deceiving. 04/24/26

Forget fake news for a second. Let’s talk fake pictures. One of my granddaughters just turned 5. Thanks to Yellow Submarine, turns out she loves the Beatles. So grandpa (yours truly) sees this really cool Beatles baseball cap online, It looks like a weathered blue denim cap and on the crown is a sewn-on picture of the Fab Four walking across Abbey Road. Cool, right? Thankfully I didn’t say anything early on to her because the hat took almost two months to finally arrive at my house. I eagerly unwrapped it to find an overly large, shiny, polyester blue cap with an unimpressive sketch of the guys crossing Abbey Road. I was bummed, I was going to return it with a pissy email (which always seems to do so much good) but my wife and I took it over to our granddaughter’s house, where her eyes lit up and she promptly, happily put in on her head. Hey, she’s 5. But it’s still a fake picture, the hat in that picture was so much nicer than the actual object. Sort of like the photo of a McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese. It looks like a fat, juicy burger, the cheese melting over the side of the burger. Of course the one you actually get at McDonalds, the real one, is a flat, round piece of meat, grey throughout, no thicker than a coaster. And that cheese? Well it would be melting over the side if the damn burger were remotely hot, but nooooooo!!!

Okay, I got a little carried away there, but John had a similar experience buying a hoppng bunny for his granddaughter. It hopped okay. It just looked nothing as impressive as the picture of it looked. So what is a pissed off consumer to do? Get in touch with the manufacturer? Hah! The name is written entirely in Japanese. If that’s even Japanese. Anyway, it’s a lot of fancy, curlicued letters that don’t resemble a language John of I could come close to understanding.

I think that’s why they don’t have a customer service number that connects to a human, non-precorded voice. An actual human. Because this way they never hear your complaint so they never have to respond to it. This is all the fault of the NY Times. Let me explain. The Times used to have a fantastic sports section, but they shuttered it down and now use an online source, the Athletic, to act as their sports section. I’m not a fan of it, so I subscribed to the NY Post which has a great sports section. But boy do they bombard you with ads in the middle of whatever column or story I’m reading. That’s how I found the Beatles hat. That’s how come I spend 45 minutes looking up an article before I even get to the article. I get hit with various come-ons for easy walking shoes for seniors with poor balance, the only nail clipper you’ll ever need, you’ll never believe what this former child star looks like now (But she’s never part of the list, is she?), and my all-time favorite: get a rock-ha…never mind. But all these cheap, untrue come-ons gave us the idea for the miracle cures. What a carnival barker used to look like and what they look like now.

The point is, please be careful about buying something without seeing it first. And if you buy it online, good luck trying to find someone to speak to. Oooh, I think I hear the doorbell. It must be that Ginsu knife I bought where they throw a tomato up and the knife slices it mid-air. Here honey, please toss me the tomato..

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

What Do you do Week Nights at 7? 04/17/26

If you answered, “Watch Jeopardy,” then you are in the right place. And don’t be embarrassed to admit it. According to the documentary, “Mel Brooks, the 99-Year-Old Man,” Mr. Brooks watched it religiously with Carl Reiner every night at Carl’s house. At that point they were both widowers and took comfort in each other’s company. Mel would come over, they’d set up folding tables in front of the tv, and eat Chinese or deli, because…what else? And then they’d watch Jeopardy and try to shout out the answers before the other guy. If you didn’t state your answer in the form of a question, you were out. In fact, there was once an episode of the Jerry Seinfeld series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, where Jerry comes over for Jeopardy. Good thing he arrived early because they immediately send him back out to get Chinese. After all he was much younger and more fit then they were. Who else was going to pick up dinner? In the documentary, it was revealed that as a way to honor his friendship with Reiner, Brooks continued to come over to Reiner’s house every weeknight to watch in the same chair with the same folding snack table almost a year after Reiner’s death. Sigh.

At the risk of sounding sexist, I think women enjoy bonding with one another while men enjoy competing as an important part of friendship. It’s subtle but true. Instead of saying, “I love Steely Dan,” we say stuff like, “What’s the best Steely Dan song ever?” Or “How many times have you seen them in concert?” I once had a friend ask me if I wanted to see Knopfler. It was a subtle challenge to see if I knew that Mark Knopfler was the lead songwriter, singer and guitarist of Dire Straits. It was a test and this time I passed it. But the crazy part is I was really proud of myself for getting it right. And it was a hell of a concert.

It is in this spirit that Al and Marv test each other. I wonder if anyone would guess, “All in the Family” if our line was “Gee our old LaSalle ran great?” This was part of what John and I discussed when making these comics. One of us saying, “Nobody would ever get that!” And the other one saying, “That’s what makes it perfect!” “Nobody would get that” was the winner, and there you go, Competition. But it’s what makes this entire process so rewarding. And fun.

Question: What tv show jingle had the line, “Here’s Cathy who loves a minuet, the ballets russes and crepe suzette?” Write us back and see if you know. And above all, please give your answer in the form of a question. Also, send in some other jingles you know and love and if we pick one for a future New 60’s Jeopardy comic, we’ll give you credit and a free subscription for a year to the comic, which represents a savings of…oh forget it, it’s already free. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

The Adventure Ends. 04/10/26

I have taken many shots against adventure travel, but maybe there’s a way to do it that doesn’t seem so, well, adventurous. Have you ever tried glamorous camping? The portmanteau for that is glamping. I once took a safari featuring a glamping site. All day you saw magnificent African animals, lions, rhinos, hyenas, zebras, elephants. It was fascinating. The only exercise required was walking to breakfast and then to the open air Jeep. If you saw kudu on the trip, that night’s dinner might be Kudu Wellington. After dinner you go to your glamorous tent. But not alone, because there might be a baboon not so happy to see you. No kidding. But that tent. Nicer than a lot of hotel rooms I’ve stayed in. A raised platform of varnished teak, a king bed with anti-fly drapes, a full bathroom with shower and toilet and running water. This was not exactly roughing it. And it certainly was an adventure. One I will never forget. But it’s the more vigorous type I rail against.

When I was younger, we did two, count them, two Vermont Bicycle Tours. Vermont, the green MOUNTAIN state. Back then they had these low handle bars where you had to bend over to decrease your wind resistance and ride a hard narrow saddle so you don’t sink, therefore getting the most out of each pedal. That was also an unforgettable experience. The part I remember is getting back on the bike the next day. Put it this way. I didn’t know if I’d ever be capable of having children since I couldn’t feel anything down there in the place you do child-making stuff. I’m happy to report however, no lasting damage was done. Now however, I ride an e-bike with a soft, cushy seat and something they call “pedal assist.” It amplifies the effort you make when pedaling. I happen to live in a New York suburb in what is called the Hudson Valley. I’m at the bottom of said valley so to get anywhere you have to go straight uphill. Like I have to go up an enormous hill to get to a beautiful, relatively flat, bike trail through the woods. I used to put my bike on a rack on my car and drive up the hill to the path. Now no rack, just pedaling. I put on the pedal assist to level 5 (the max) and I’m gliding uphill while the poor people in their spandex suits and bent over handle bars are huffing and puffing and standing up on their pedals and breathing hard. I passed one of those guys on my e-bike last fall and he looked at me with a sense of longing in his eyes. As if to say, “How can an old guy like you be getting up here while a young guy like me is out of breath?” I anticipated his thoughts and said, “Don’t worry, I’m cheating.”

So that’s how I stand on adventure travel. John, on the other hand, is a fan. If you get a chance you can post on this blog to tell us your adventure travel adventures. If we love one, we might even turn it into a comic. Thanks and have a great, slightly adventurous, weekend,

Andy and John

Non-Adventurist Travel. 04/05/26

John actually walked the trail he drew in our comic, Sedona, part 2. You know, the one that said, “8 people have died on this trail this year.” Truth be known, that particular trail was in Zion National Park, not Sedona, but why quibble? You’ll get a good look at it next week. So how much adventure can you take, dear readers? I guess it all depends on who you are, how old you are, and how much physical risk you feel comfortable taking. Me, I see a sign that says, “8 people have died this year (doing exactly what the hell you’re about to do)” I’m outta there. Okay it didn’t really say the ‘doing what you’re doing’ part. I just threw that in. But to others, like John, it’s just a fun challenge. When you hit your 60’s (and in my case, 70’s, but who’s counting?) You can say to yourself, “We don’t have many years left when we can take physically demanding trips like this so let’s do it while we can.” That is my wife’s philosophy. And apparently John’s. For me, ehhh, it goes something like this: “We’re getting older. We did that adventure stuff when we were a little younger. See that thing over there? It’s called a beach chair. This thing over here? A book. My exercise will include setting up the chairs and umbrellas. Maybe walk a mile on the beach before jumping in the ocean (if the water is not too cold). Let the young whippersnappers get hypothermia while climbing Mt. Everest. If I walk 9 holes on a golf course while carrying my bag, I need oxygen for that. No way am I climbing a scary ridge with loose rocks, hiking up a rocky trail with 50 mph winds making you feel like you’re going to fall over, or going on a bike tour covering 30 miles per day. I’ve done those things, as Billy Joel once sang, “When I wore a younger man’s clothes.”

I think of vacation as a time to chill out from your day to day labors. To take a break. But in my case, a break from what? Eating? The comic takes work, but it takes John a lot longer since we both think them up, but he is the one that has to draw the ideas and color them. So I really can’t complain, but if I didn’t complain, I wouldn’t be me. So I’ll complain. Do you know how long it took to write this blog??? Woe is me. I need a break, as long as it doesn’t involve getting off the train one stop earlier in order to hike to Machu Picchu. The hike took at least 8 hours. It ended up with a downhill over wet rocks where I slipped three different times. It was a bit over 10 years ago. I dream about it often. In nightmares.

Have a great weekend. Happy Passover and Easter. I will be roughing it by playing a round of golf (but not carrying- in a cart).

Andy and John

Seemed Like a Good Idea. 03/27/26

Yogi Berra was once asked about whether or not he and his Yankee teammates were going to this popular restaurant after the game. His response, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” has become legendary. While it doesn't make sense literally, we all know exactly what he meant. It’s great when you have a secret spot that only “people who are in the know” know. There’s a place in NYC, in the theater district, where you have to walk up a flight of stairs to get in. It looks like a regular brownstone and you are walking up this outside flight of stairs, and there isn’t even a name on the door. But once you know, you know. I was once in a bar in Milwaukee that you entered through a telephone booth. Once you dialed the secret number, the back panel of the booth slid down and you entered the bar. Like you were in the tv show, “Get Smart.” When our kids were little, there was a place that was a former lunch counter restaurant that made stuff like grilled-cheese sandwiches, but in the kitchen was a Japanese chef who specialized in the most delicious Italian food my wife and I have ever had. What a secret. Our kids would have the aforementioned grilled cheese while my wife and I would eat the most amazing pasta dishes. Then it got discovered. Moved into a fancy setting. No more kid’s food, plus it became harder to get in. Sadly, it went out of business within a couple years. We hope Armondo's has a better fate.

Our second comic features Al playing pickleball with his son and two of his son’s friends. John plays pickleball. I played once. Doubles. My wife was not a fan and did not want to play again. I did want to play again. So I asked my son. Sure he’s half my age. Literally. I’m 72 and he’s 36. But I had PBE (PickleBall Experience) while he had none. For those of you who don’t know the rules, the first person to get 11 points wins the set. My son said, “I’ll give you 5 points a set,” which means he wanted to start each set 5-0 in my favor. I said, “I don’t need that.” And he said, “You have no chance otherwise.” “But you’ve never played before,” I shouted. I refused his charity. First set, Greg 11-Andy 3. Followed by 11-4, and finally 11-7. I was getting closer. Until I lost the last set 11-2. On a side note we played a week later and I took the five points. Still lost every time. Anyway when I told John the story, we came up with today’s pickleball comic. Notice that he put Al in a doubles match. I told John, “But I played singles,” to which he replied, “Nobody plays singles.” I can tell you this: I’m not playing anymore singles unless the other guy is twice my age.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next week with two new ones hot off the Macintosh,

Andy and John

It's Not Easy Being Green. 03/20/26

If you had to take a commuter train to work and back home everyday, you’d know what we meant. John and I travelled this way for decades. And the single worst day of the year, every year, was St. Patrick’s Day. Now sure, there were daily annoyances. People who thought you should stand for 40 minutes while their backpacks got an entire seat. Loud people who shouted across the aisle to one another. People who listened to loud videos without headphones. It got so bad that Metro North (they run the trains in NY and CT) created a quiet car where no talking was allowed. Did that stop any of these noisemakers? No it did not. But the worst, the absolute all-time worst, was St. Patrick’s Day when people not only got super loud, they also were super drunk which led to super-disgusting vomiting on the floor of said train. This year Metro North issued a “No Alcohol on Board” policy that threatened to have you removed if you brought alcohol on board. Great, but by then it’s too late. They’re already bombed. And in essence they did bring alcohol on board. And then they left it there. Sigh. One great part about writing a comic is it doesn't require us to commute. Side note: I really hate vomit.

The other comic deals with AI. Artificial Intelligence AI, not AL. I mean c’mon, AL is anything but artificial. What you see is what you get. But he’s also not that intelligent, so please don’t confuse the two. But these algorithm people are something else. First they figured out how to only feed you stuff you’re already interested in, ensuring you never get reasoned opinion from the other side. But then they figured out how to flatter you in order to keep you engaged. One of the old theories was enragement equals engagement. The more outrageous something is, the more time we spend reading it. But there is something even more insidious than creating rage. Something that works even better. Flattery. Not the honest, heartfelt kind. But the servile, obsequious kind. The “Oh sir, you are the most intelligent person in the world” kind of flattery. When you ask a question to Siri, Claude, Chat, no matter how banal or stupid, if you ask,” Should I pull my pants down before I go to the bathroom,” it answers, “That’s a great question.” I tested it over and over until I finally got a mild rebuke from Chat GPT. It answered my query by saying, “No, it’s never a good idea to shove marbles up your nose.”

Words to live by. Have a great weekend and excuse me, if I insert these tweezers I might be able to remove that…

Andy and John

Who Can Forget Whatshisname? 03/13/26

John and I recently returned from separate trips to the Galápagos Islands. It is a topic very much made for The New 60, and it’s in our personal incubators. But for now, let’s concentrate on the here and now. The Oscars are coming up. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I try to see all the nominated movies before the show. But this year’s show runs right up against a Knick game, so all that movie watching was for naught. It’s hard to keep up with current movies. We all have so many distractions now that we didn't have decades ago. There’s movies in theaters. Movies on Netflix. Movies that started in a theater and went straight to Netflix. And let’s not forget Amazon Prime (as if we could). The point is that it’s almost impossible to keep up with everything, especially when you throw in all the great streaming tv shows, that are every bit as good as movies and our ubiquitous cell phones. So if that doesn’t make it hard enough, consider that our collective memories are declining. Most of ours. Our apologies to our younger readers.

But failing memory jokes aside, I have another beef about awards shows. As you may recall, both John and I spent our careers in advertising. Ad agencies figured out that if their agency wins prestigious awards, they’ll attract more clients. So in the period preceding the Cannes Gold Lions (advertising’s equivalent to the Oscars, complete with red carpet, believe it or not), many agencies try to create commercials strictly to win awards, not to sell products. In the same way, Hollywood creates movies at the end of the year specifically to win awards, not to sell movie tickets. They know what fills theaters. Romcoms, Marvel comic superheroes, and extensions of a movie franchise. Mission Impossible part 17 anyone?

And now that we have taken care of the Oscars, what about Friday the 13th, which is…today? Most of us don’t believe in bad luck when a black cat crosses our path or when walking under a ladder (why would anyone do that anyway?) but we all are a little superstitious. Maybe it’s carrying a lucky rabbit’s foot or a picture of a saint. Maybe it’s tossing salt when it spills, or praying to God before your airplane takes off or lands. How about having a “good luck song,” or a good luck omen (every time I see a rainbow, I immediately buy a lottery ticket). They are kind of like conspiracy theories. You either believe in them or you don’t. Now I personally have no superstitious beliefs, except for when I watch a Knicks game and I shout at the shooter, “Make this shot!” Almost every time I do this, the shot goes in. This despite the fact that the shooter can’t possibly hear me and that I am frequently watching the game two hours after it’s already over. It doesn't matter, I believe it works. Until it doesn't. C’mon Jalen, hit it! Damn, he missed.

See you next week with two new ones. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

A Hazy Shade of Winter. 03/06/26

I was away last week in the Galapagos Islands. While my wife and I were basking in the sun and snorkeling, the rest of my family got hit with another blizzard, this time with 22” of snow. Supposedly worse than the one a few weeks ago. The Hudson River was completely frozen over. Dirty roadside snowbanks, black ice, we hadn’t seen anything this severe in years. So what’s a team of comic maker uppers to do? A two-part series on having the winter blues. The Who sang, “There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues,” but I prefer to complain about the winter. So we wrote about winter blues and I come back and what happens? A warming trend, that’s what. No more ice in the Hudson. That baby’s flowing the way it was intended to flow. And next week? Next week? The high temperatures from Sunday through Wednesday are 60°, 65°, 68° and 71°. 71°??? Who has winter blues when it’s 71°?

Nonetheless your trusted comic guys wrote about the winter. Who would have predicted shorts weather? Neither of us claims to be Nostradamus here. We barely know how to spell Nostradamus (spell check helped). So the first comic was about where Al and Joanne should go. The second one was about a hot tub. Let’s stop right there. I love hot tubs. Love them. About 20 yeas ago we lived in a house with a deck and backyard, but after a couple decades of use, including kid’s birthday parties, an engagement party, etc, an architect friend attended and said he thought the deck was unstable and needed to be replaced. Damn. But out of necessity sometimes comes opportunity. Such as, if we need to replace the deck, what about sinking a hot tub into it? It was an immediate hit. I used to go out there at night to see the stars and I even used it all winter, when I had to trudge a short path through snow. But there’s something magical about cold air outside and the steam rising from the hot tub, beckoning you (okay, me) to get in here and relax. It was the perfect respite for my daughter after she finished running the NY Marathon one year.

I loved that hot tub, and when it came time to move out of our house and downsize to an apartment, I told the buyers of our house, “Look, it even comes with a hot tub.” They said, “We don’t want the hot tub.” I was so incensed I wanted to cancel the sale but my wife reminded me we had already signed the papers, so…

The kicker was that I had to PAY to get the tub removed. That’s right. A mover had to take all the fencing off the deck, move a heavy truck onto the lawn, thereby destroying part of it, and then hydraulically lift the tub up and over the deck, never to be seen again. Sigh. So that’s it for this week. Now that we’re done with the blog, I’ll jump in the hot tub. At least I would if I had one. So we’ll let Al and Joanne enjoy it instead.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Heading in the Right Direction. 02/27/26

Just what you’ve all been waiting for! Advice from the New 60. It’s about subscriptions. Not the kind we forgot about and are still paying in perpetuity. More on those later. No, I’m talking about the ones you have but don’t really use and you are thinking about doing the unthinkable—unsubscribing. John had such an experience with a small-town local paper. He reads the national papers, but did he really need the local one? Upon calling the representative and explaining his reason for wanting to stop, the guy kept continually lowering the price. This is the advice part. Call up your subscriptions, or at least the ones you are not sure about keeping and tell them you want to discontinue their service. Listen to them squirm. My wife and I had two separate music accounts, Spotify and something called Deezer. The Spotify family plan was cheaper than the two separate services individually. I emailed Deezer to unsubscribe and they sent subsequent versions of, “Are you sure?, we’re willing to throw in 3 months for free, we’ll upgrade you to our premium service at no extra charge for the first year!!!”

It reminds us of an old joke. A guy walks into his boss’s office and says, “I want a raise to $200,000 and I won’t take a penny less!” The boss stares silently and doesn’t say a word. The guy then says, “Okay, $175,000 but that is the absolute bottom.”

The boss stares. You get the idea, the boss never says a word and the worker keeps lowering his price. The kicker is the guy offers to work for free, the boss remains silent and the guy finally says, “I’ll pay you.” And the boss sticks out his hand and says, “Deal.” It’s a good trick, and I’d use it if it were possible for me to remain silent. Which is not remotely possible. I still get magazines I never read and subscribe to streaming platforms I bought for one particular series and then never watched again. We bought an Amazon Kindle and took the option to read any book any time for the low, low price of only $10.00 per month. Terrific. Until we realized 8 years later that we had never used the service and finally had the wherewithal to cancel that feature. All that time I was downloading books on my iPad. Take that Amazon!

That’s all for this week. And thank you all for subscribing to The New 60 Comic. Unfortunately (since it’s currently FREE) we cannot lower the price…

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Winter Olympics. 02/20/26

I love sports. Tossing a ball around, playing a round of golf, riding a bike, hiking a trail. That’s exercise but I was really talking about sports on tv. Football games (did you know a couple years ago, 93 of the top 100 rated tv shows for the year were NFL games?) True. So there, basketball and baseball! I follow all my favorite NY teams religiously. But there comes a time every year, in the dead of winter, when the football season comes to a close with the Super Bowl, and basketball is playing its last couple of games before the All-Star break, which lasts a bit more than a week. To recap, no football, no hoops, and baseball hasn’t started up yet. But not to worry, there’s the Winter Olympics from some places called Milan Cortina. Actually that’s two places they’ve mushed into a single place. Try as I might, I can’t get beyond my disdain for “Big Air” skiing, the ski jump, slalom combo, curling, synchronized swimming. These sound like made-up sports to me. There’s a reason for that. They are made-up sports. Try as I may, I just cannot bring myself to sustain any interest into something I don’t understand and won’t see for another four years anyway.

And there’s something else. Whether its slaloming down a hill at 75 mph or ice dancing with a tall guy and petite woman (so he can toss her in the air and catch her and spin her, put her down gently and then eventually marry her). They practice relentlessly for four years awaiting their one chance, which might last all of three minutes. If the ice dancer falls only once, if the gymnast doesn’t “stick her landing,” if the biathlon guy misfires his rifle, then all their hopes and dreams go up in flames. And not Olympic flames. That’t it. Kaput. They’re done. The Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks lost three times this season and they won it all. The best basketball team loses 20 times before the playoffs even begin. Baseball? The best team loses at least 60 times while the worst team still manages to win about 60 games. But in the Olympics, one slip, one fall and everything you’ve dedicated your life to achieving is poof, gone, out the window. Too much pressure. I hate watching when their dreams come crashing down to earth. It makes me wonder what Olympic event I might excel at. The only thing that looks remotely possible is curling, but I’m afraid my broom would touch the stone and then I’d be toast. John is a lot bigger than me and played collegiate soccer. He might be able to play a few minutes of center forward in the Summer Olympics, but me? No shot. The only thing I could win gold at is sleeping, which is exactly what I end up doing every time I attempt to watch the aforementioned Winter Olympics.

Sweet dreams,

Andy and John

Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over. 02/13/26

The last football has been thrown, kicked or fumbled. The last runner has been tackled, or has broken away for a 60-yard touchdown, the last pass interference penalty has been called until next fall. For some, it’s thank the lord. For others it’s time for FW, or Football Withdrawal. When Monday Night Football debuted in the ‘70’s, one of the commentators, Dandy Don Meredith, a former quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, would sing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” whenever a game was out of reach for one of the two teams. This was revolutionary back in the day, when it was thought that acknowledging the fact that the game was over would cause people to turn off the game. As if they wouldn’t have done that already.

But as the clock wound down to the final minute of a boring, one-sided Super Bowl, that song from Dandy Don played in my head. Turn out the light, the football season is over. All the plans, the get togethers, the attending of games or going to family or friends’ houses to watch, all that came crashing to a halt. But first the Super Bowl and obligatory Super Bowl party. It’s about more than the game. It’s an excuse to eat all the stuff you’ve tried to avoid all year. We invited a neighbor and our son. The healthy part included crudite with a pureed vegetable dip which was barely touched. The rest was stuff I’m not supposed to indulge in due to (pick one) maintaining a healthy weight, a family history of heart disease, two stents, etc, etc. So we kept it healthy with buffalo chicken wings, pigs in blankets, pizza (both plain with basil and sausage and mushroom), beer, tequila, and, oh yeah, a salad with pine nuts and creamy balsamic vinegar. That was as good as the game was bad. Our neighbor and my wife left after dinner not five minutes after the game started. My wife, because she had a meeting and doesn’t give a damn about football and our neighbor, who had no meeting but also doesn’t give a damn about football. In an ironic twist, John and I thought up and wrote the comic about friends leaving early, weeks before the Super Bowl, so this was merely a case of life imitating art.

So how does a football nut replace Sundays, Monday nights, Thursday Nights and my favorite, a special Saturday edition of Thursday Night Football? I didn’t make that up. Amazon Prime did. Am I supposed to watch curling? The biathalon? The new season of the PITT?

I like the PITT but the … Spoiler Alert … I could have done without the scene of the old woman with impacted bowels, a moment I still can’t get out of my head. With no more football, John and I will tackle (sorry about the pun, couldn’t help myself) new subjects. Until then, we hope these comics and blog will help kickoff (ugh, make it stop!) a great weekend.

Andy and John

On Chocolate Chip Pancakes and the last Day of Football. 02/06/26

John is an artist. I am not, unless you consider writing an art. So when I showed him a picture of the Mickey Mouse pancakes I made for my granddaughter, he laughed and told me it looked more french toast than Disney. The secret he said was to pour the ears over the circle you use for the face. This way they drip onto the face and look like three separate circles, a face and two ears instead of one continuous piece of pancake that looks like a misshapen square. Sigh. I hate it when he’s right. But this isn’t so much about that as it is about when little kids learn to manipulate. When they become smart enough to know what you’ll approve of and what you’ll disapprove of. Last summer I came home with two grocery bags in my arms. She said, “Grandpa, can you help me put on my bathing suit?” I said, “Sure honey, let me just put these bags down.” By the time I came back, she had her baby sitter putting on her bathing suit. I said, “I thought you asked me to put it on.” She said, “No I didn’t say grandpa, I said glampa.” I put my chin in my hand and said, “I must have misheard you.”

Onto the SuperBowl or, as I call it, the last week of football. After this I go into football mourning, and no these spring leagues like the USFL don’t cut it. The season kind of ends for me with the previous round. Nobody who doesn’t like football watches the NFC and AFC Championship games. But everyone watches the Super Bowl. I have been to my share of Super Bowl parties. Not anymore. Nobody pays attention to the game, and I like to hear the announcer explain the intricacies of the big plays. But John and I can tell you the worst part. It’s people asking you your opinion of the commercials that just aired. It usually begins with, “You’re in advertising. What did you think of that commercial (or this commercial or the next commercial?” And you’re stuck explaining it while the game is back on. When my family and I first moved to the burbs (when we had our first child and our city apartment was no longer big enough), we were invited to a Super Bowl party in a neighboring town. Trouble is, my favorite team, The Giants, were playing in that particular Super Bowl. This time my other SBPP (Super Bowl Pet Peeve) worked in my favor. Halftime all year long is precisely 12 minutes long. In the Super Bowl you’ve got Bad Bunny, or in the past, Eminem or Tom Petty or even Diana Ross and they’re on for at least half an hour if not more. So this time I got up at half-time and said, “Excuse me folks, I’ve got to go.” And was home to watch the second half in blissful silence.

This weekend, my wife and I are inviting one guest, our son (who is as crazy a fan as I am if not more so) and we will watch. There’s even a possibility I’ll pay attention to the commercials.

Have a great weekend and don’t bet too much,

Andy and John

The More Things Change the More They...Change. 01/30,26

Since when did it become so hard to watch tv? Well that depends. If you’re reading this, chances are you remember the good old days. The days when you turned the tv on with an on/off switch. You actually got up from your coach and manually changed the channels. Not that there were so many choices.

In New York we had the three networks, CBS (channel 2), NBC (channel 4), ABC (channel 7). That was basically it for the big blockbuster shows. Oh sure we had fill-ins. Channel 5 was a local FOX station before FOX became FOX. Channel 9 was called WOR. They showed the Mets games for free! Imagine that. And they had Chiller Theater which used to scare the bejeezus out of me and my younger brother. You want Dracula, Frankenstein, Godzilla, King Kong (“Oh,no, it wasn’t the airplanes, (insert long meaningful pause) it was beauty killed the beast.”) And a personal favorite, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with one of my favorite movie voiceovers of all time, when Kevin McCarthy looks into his girlfriends eyes who had fallen asleep in one second and had become one of THEM. “In a second, the woman I loved was an inhuman enemy bent on my destruction.” If you’re getting the impression that I watched far too much tv as a kid, you’re right. But to finish the channel lineup, we had channel 11, WPIX, which showed the Yankee games for free and finally Channel 13, WNDT, which was the PBS station which I never watched. That’s it. 7 channels.

Now, I’ve got one remote that turns on the cable tv and then a second remote that turns on streaming tv, I do all this through an Apple TV, which is not a tv at all but a box that allows your tv to stream. Huh? Oh, and that’s not all. The cable has to go through HDMI 2, while the streaming goes through HDMI 4, requiring you to hit the input button on the regular remote but not on the Apple Remote which makes the switch automatically. But don’t worry, as soon as you figure it out, it’ll change again. No wonder I read so many books.

Which brings us to our next comic, corkage fees. If you don’t know what a corkage fee is, it’s something snooty restaurants charge when you bring your own bottle of wine. It can be as high as $50.00. The reason they do this is obvious. It’s to encourage you to buy their wine and discourage you from bringing your wine. Alcohol is by far the biggest profit maker for a restaurant. John and I were talking about this and the thing that seemed disingenuous was the term “corkage.” They’re really not charging you $30 -$50 to remove the cork, are they? So I asked John, what happens if you bring in a screwtop bottle, no corkage there? And he said, then it’s a screwage fee and bam, we had our second comic. Sometimes it seems so easy, but most of the time, it’s not.

Well that’s it for this week. Before we go I have to open a bootle of Snapple Diet Peach Tea. The best part? No cap opening fee. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Affordability 01/23/26

Yes, affordability is the new buzzword. And it’s no joke. Especially when it comes to private school tuition. But you can look at affordability in a couple different ways. “Can you afford the tuition?” is the most obvious way. But then you start to rationalize. “Can we afford not to send little Johnny, Betsy, Charlie, Rena to this great school?” Yeah, you can but that’s another discussion.

To make matters even more confusing there are a few terrific public schools that deliver a top private-school-level education. One way to benefit from such a school is to buy a house in a great school district. But guess what? The houses are way more expensive than equivalent houses in less desirable school districts and the school taxes are almost as bad as private school tuitions, but you only pay them once, no matter how many kids you’re sending to school. John and I both lived in that type of community. Now if you’re not fortunate to live in one of those good school districts you have to either have a kid super-smart enough to pass a test to get into one of those elite public schools, or you have to stand in a blocks-long line in the cold in order to win the lottery that grants your kid the opportunity to get into a charter school.

In other words, you need a top quality education in order to understand your options about what constitutes a top quality education for your child. Understand? We don’t either. But I still haven’t covered another option: people who are so wealthy they buy a house in a fancy school district, pay the exorbitant school tax, and then send their kid to a private school anyway. What? If you’re one of those people, well, this blog is rated PG so I will withhold my opinion.

Of course, the other option is to join the military and get into college through the G.I. bill, but then you might end up going to war in Greenland and it’s really cold up there. Thank goodness we and our children are long past going to school, but not the grandkids. As Roseanne Roseannadanna once said, “It’s always something.”

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Testing 1,2,3

I’m all for testing. Testing a microphone before you go onstage to give a speech, for example. Testing, 1,2,3 testing. Good, it works. Testing a recipe before you serve it to your friends. Good move. Testing Zoom, before you have to go on a Zoom call. But testing preschoolers? Well that’s something else entirely. Anybody familiar with the movie Rashomon? It was directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1950, older than even yours truly, but it was about perspective. How you can see something and have a completely different point of view about what happened from somebody else who saw the same thing. If you’re watching the events in Minneapolis lately, you’ll know what I mean.

So when it comes to testing a preschooler, what does it mean when they bang stuff with a hammer? How about their scribbles? How about if they take a nap when they were supposed to be scribbling? You know what that would mean to me? That they were tired. To a school psychologist it might mean that they lacked scribbling skills or fine motor skills and thus were practicing avoidance. And what are motor skills anyway? Most preschoolers I know are too young to drive, to reach the gas pedal or to even see over the steering wheel. But the other part of Rashomon, the part which actually has a name, The Rashomon effect, challenges the basic idea that there is one single truth. Suffice it to say I am not a fan of kid-testing. And that’s my single truth.

Listen, I went to a small, fancy, private prep school in New York City and John went to a large public school in Long Island. The two experiences could not be more different. And while I ended up being a hot shot creative director at a big New York ad agency who went on to create a comic strip, John ended up being a hot shot creative director at big New York ad agency who went on to write a comic strip. Or as the group Dawes sang, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

We will wrap up the Sammy preschool series next week as part of our first ever 6-part comic. But before that happens, we’re going to make sure our grandchildren are good with puzzle pieces. It might get them into an Ivy League school.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Pre-School Follies. 01/09/26

Many moons ago, I was going to work after a week’s vacation. I got off the train and went to my favorite breakfast place for a toasted bagel with sesame seeds and a schmear and a cup of java. I was feeling relaxed until this producer got in line behind me and said, “Guess what, my kid just got into the gifted program.” He was talking about kindergarten. That is one kind of person. I shared this the next day with a friend on the train and she said, “I think my twins are the only two children in Irvington who aren’t in the gifted program.” God bless her. For the record those twins went on to attend Dartmouth, so there, Mr. Producer. Chat GPT said that “…trying to engineer a path from kindergarten to college can actually backfire.” No kidding. In my own experience, I was taken out of public school where I thrived and put into one of the most competitive, challenging private prep schools in the country where I floundered. And that’s putting it mildly. Nonetheless, new parents often think this way, especially in the age of data science spitting out likely outcomes like, “If your kid goes here, they’re more likely to get in there.” Testing preschoolers? I mean really? If they see a kid trying to knock down a tower of blocks instead of building it higher, does that mean the kid doesn’t have what it takes to get into the school? Or does it mean he/she just likes crashing big towers?

There was a famous case that supposedly predicted a child’s chance for future success. Stanford University took a bunch of 3 to 5 year olds in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and gave them a marshmallow. Then said if they didn’t touch the marshmallow for 15 minutes they would get another marshmallow as a reward. The study concluded that the kids who were able to wait were going to be more successful than the ones who ate the marshmallow right away. They were able to “delay gratification.” Years later, the test was proven to be flawed. Why? Because kids from disadvantaged backgrounds were hungry whereas the more advantaged children were secure in knowing where their next meal was coming from. And as a completely unrelated aside, did you know if you put a couple marshmallows into a bag of brown sugar, it will keep the sugar from caking up? True.

In the coming weeks we’ll see how little Sammy fares, and know that none of it means a damn thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to give my 4-year old granddaughter a marshmallow.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Too Many Emails. 01/02/26

Another blog another…year?? Sure, we have a lot to be thankful for. And a lot for which we are less than thankful. Like emails. John and I were talking about the preponderance of them we get each day. I like to get them down to zero each night. John, not so much. He had thousands upon thousands of them. And a woman I know (whose name I will not reveal in order to protect the guilty) has an inbox of over 320,000 emails. This particular person who shall go nameless does not feel comfortable deleting because, “Who knows, I might need them someday.” And she might. Who knows. Now my response to unread emails is slightly different. I describe it as a three-step process, 1: Select all, 2: Trash all, 3: Delete all. And boom, you’re done. I must admit I sometimes deleted things I need, leading me to utter phrases like, “The theater tickets were right here.” Or you can substitute movie tickets, or football tickets or an email saying the name and address of the party we’re driving to, etc. We need it? I don’t got it. That’s my mantra. Last week I was sitting on the couch, half-watching Slow Horses with my wife, when I burst out laughing. There was an email or text I was deleting when I came about a particularly salacious email from some bot. It came with a phone number and said how she was just waiting for a hunk like me. I burst out laughing which prompted my wife to say, “What’s so funny?” I showed her my phone and she said, “How did you get this??” You can’t win, but at least it led us to the end frame of this comic.

Emails are bad enough, but political emails? The worst. “Are you still a Democrat?” Are you still a Republican?” Why haven’t you given? Do you believe in democracy…?” Yes, emails are the worst during election years. And they used to come every four years. But now, everyday, over and over. Again. It’s enough to make me want to move to Canada, but they won’t take anybody unless they’ve got a job from a Canadian company (or at least that’s what Chat GPT says.) So ixnay on Canada. Plus it’s cold there anyway.

That’s it for this week. We’ll see you next week with…excuse me, I just got a text…

Happy New Year,

Andy and John

Fetivus for the Rest of Us. 12/26/25

By the time you read this, it’ll be the day after Christmas. But I’m writing it on Christmas Day. What? Christmas? How could I? It’s easy. I’m Jewish. Christmas Day for a Jew is 1) go to a movie, followed by 2) go out for Chinese. Now, not every Jew is the same. My daughter, for instance wants a tree, ornaments, the whole nine yards. And she celebrates Hanukkah as well. Ever since she was able to speak she kept wanting a Christmas tree. And we kept telling her, honey, we don’t celebrate Christmas, we’re Jewish. Until one year, when she was 4 or 5 years old, she was in her car seat and defiantly crossed her arms and said, “Fine, when I grow up I’m gonna marry someone Christmas!” And so she did, and they are very happy celebrating both.

To my wife, Christmas used to mean watching one of three Christmas movies, a different one each year, with her daddy. You know the three: Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas. She wanted to continue the tradition with me. I love Miracle and Wonderful Life but for some reason, I kept avoiding White Christmas. I mean, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye singing and dancing for Army troops? No thanks. I finally broke down and watched it last year. And I must admit, I liked it and even teared up a little at the end. Okay, more than a little. In fact, I was so engaged, I looked up some fun facts about the movie. To those of you who have never seen it, it revolves around these soldiers who hear that their old pal, the General, has retired and bought a hotel in Vermont, but was struggling because it hadn’t snowed. They put on a big show to help him out and at the end, miracle of miracles, it snows! They all go outside and look up as the snow falls on their faces, their hands and on their tongues. I asked Chat GPT how the producers made it snow, thinking they used a snow machine like they do on ski slopes. But this was 1954 and that technology didn’t exist. So, you know what they used instead? Asbestos. That’s right, and they stuck their tongues out to catch the “snow” in their mouths. I think the end is worth watching, just for that.

So, to sum up, Christmas means different things to different people. For John, it’s a houseful of family, and grandchildren running downstairs to open their presents (although at an early age, the kids like the boxes and ribbons much better than the actual gifts inside the boxes.) I remember a couple years ago, my daughter and son-in-law turned a big box upside down, cut a crescent-shaped hole in it so their two-year-old could crawl into her “fort’” and that beat every other present by far. For me, we’re going with friends to see Song Sung Blue with Hugh Jackman playing a Neil Diamond impersonator (embarrassing fact: I freaking love Neil Diamond), followed by an early dinner at Szechuan Village, followed by one of the three classics back at home.

Since this is the 52nd and last blog of the year, we wanted to take the opportunity to thank all our loyal readers for continuing to engage every week with The New 60 Comic. That’s the best present of all,

Andy and John

Holiday Spirit

Recently we read about the world’s first $1 trillion company. They make AI chips as opposed to AL chips (depending on the font, AI and AL can look the same), because there’s no such thing as an AL chip, except John and I are working on turning AL into an AL Coin, a form of crypto meant to compete with Doge Coin. Not really. But crypto is a way to lead us into just what one trillion means. When we grew up nobody talked about billionaires, though I’m sure there were a few like the Rockefellers. We heard of millionaires, and then multi-millionaires. So and so was worth a staggering $100 million. Today that is seemingly chump change, not for us, but that isn’t the point. You’d need 10 times that much to be a billionaire. Why is it that every time I write the word “billionaire,” I hear Bernie Sanders saying, “the billionaaah class.” At any rate, the term, “billionaire” is now so common, we’re hearing about trillionaires. It sounds like the same thing to us. But this comic put it into perspective for me. Perhaps we’ll understand it better when we become 31,000 years old.

Nothing puts us in the giving spirit more than talking about millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires. What do they buy each other? I imagine them saying, “Honey, this year I got you a great gift, Australia!” “You mean we’re going to Australia on vacation?” “No, I meant I bought Australia, the entire continent.” But for us more down to earth types, we get to see, “25 cool gift ideas for the holiday season.” Every day. In every single online article. Because if you click on it just once you’ll be served a similar ad every day for the rest of your life. Even if you live until you’re 31,000 years old. But that’s not what bothers us. Nope. It’s that come-on page. The one with the home self-serve frozen custard maker. Think of it. It’s like having a Dairy Queen in your own home. But then you open the ad and start to scroll and it’s not in there. Even when you get to #25. And that is the problem. It’s nowhere. Just like those sponsored stories showing, for instance, a picture of a young and beautiful Julia Roberts accompanied by a teaser like, “you won’t believe what they look like now.” So you scroll and scroll and scroll and you get before and after pictures of almost everyone who has ever lived and breathed but you don’t get Julia Roberts. What’s up with that?

Happy Holidays. That’s it for this week’s rant. We’ve gotta run. We’ve got about a trillion things on our to do lists.

Andy and John

It's All Relative. 12/12/25

One of the few advantages of being older is that we don’t have to be so worried about A.I. taking over our jobs. Because most of us don’t have jobs anymore. Otherwise, A.I. would be taking over our jobs. And just a note here, we wouldn’t normally abbreviate artificial intelligence as A.I., we’d do it without the periods. AI looks too much like Al, our beloved Al Bondigas, so A.I. it is. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, A.I. is coming for us. It can learn way more quickly than we can. Think about it, our skulls are only so big, and our brains have to fit inside them. Not so when the “skull” is one of these data farms. They’re huge, they can learn instantly, and they have so much information, we can’t possibly learn at the same rate. Remember the movie, “Her?” Joaquin Phoenix is in love with an A.I. bot. Now granted the voice of that bot was Scarlett Johansen, but still, she was a bot, a hot bot, but a bot nonetheless. Spoiler alert: at the end, she gets so smart, poor old Joaquin can’t keep up with her. And she dumps him for…no, not Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Glen Powell, no she dumps him for another bot! Face it, we’re screwed. John and I thought that no machine would ever be able to write and illustrate a comic strip about getting older better than we could. Now we’re not so sure. But we’ll tell you this. Every time we write the newsletter you receive each Friday, the mailing program we use asks if we want A.I. to rewrite the letter we’ve just written. I know it’s just a bot asking that, but like Scarlett’s bot was thinking about Joaquin, you’ve got no f*#@ing chance.

Our other effort, about squeezing the last drop of toothpaste out of the tube isn’t really about squeezing the last drop of toothpaste out of the tube. No, it’s about how our perspectives change when your income dries up and your outflow takes over. You’re working, you’re getting a steady paycheck, you don’t think so hard about that $90.00 sushi deluxe plate that comes with either salad or soup, pick one. I used to tell the waiter, “I’ll take the soup AND the salad.” Now, when that paycheck isn’t coming in, that’s a different story, I pick one. If it’s hot out, the salad. If it’s cold, the soup. These choices aren’t necessarily real, but they seem real. As they used to say in advertising, perception is reality. As our comic indicates, expensive is in the eye of the beholder. “$500 for a handbag, are you crazy?” If it’s important to you it doesn’t seem so expensive after all. “$800 for a new HDTV? What a bargain!” I remember when I was in college, in the ‘70’s believe it or not, we rebelled against authority, we wore faded blue jeans with holes in them. Not because they came off the rack faded and hole-y. No, because we wore them so often, they became faded and ripped. However, these same people who ate a Zen macrobiotic diet, had elaborate reel-to-reel recorders with amps, pre-amps and graphic equalizers. If you can tell me what the hell a pre-amp or graphic equalizer is, you win a free one-year subscription to the New 60 Comic. Oh wait, it’s free anyway. Never mind. And anyway, we don’t really know what a pre-amp is anyway.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy your pre-holiday weekend and we’ll see you same bat time, the same bat website, next week, (okay, that worked much better for Batman than for us.)

Andy and John