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

Did You Hear What I Just Said? 12/05/25

Which is it? Can we not hear anything because every place is so loud? Or can we not hear because we’re getting older. The answer is yes. Pay attention to the next time you go to a restaurant. All hard surfaces. No window drapes, no carpeting, no cushioned chairs. All of these would absorb sound, making the space much less loud and making it easier to have a conversation with your dinner companions where every other word isn’t, “What?” So why do restaurants do this? Because they think that a place would sound “dead” if it wasn’t noisy. When you walk in and hear a lot of noise, it sounds like a party. It sounds “alive.” But it’s a vicious cycle. Because the place is so loud, everybody in the restaurant has to raise their voices in order to be heard. According to some people I know who wear hearing aids, they just make everything louder still. John and I recently attended weddings with hard surfaces, a 12-piece band and a table near a massive speakers (not the same wedding but the same scene.) I had to scream to the person directly to my left in order to have a conversation. By the way, the subject was hearing aids. I have a theory that the deep state wants to ban speech altogether. Don't believe me (don’t worry, I don’t believe me either)? I went to a basketball game with my son last year and it was almost impossible to have a conversation even though he was sitting right next to me. The organ plays during the game in order to psyche the crowd up. What happens during a time out? There is no such thing as a noise time out. Noooo. The silence has to be filled with, (pick one) the Knicks City Dancers, our lucky fan three-point contest, Atlantic Records recording star Cardi B or…you get the idea. And when you throw in cell phones, conversation doesn’t have a chance in hell.

Onto our second comic. My daughter attended high school two decades ago. She had a terrific English teacher who we became friendly with. He told me, “When we used to get a “D” we’d be scared to come home and show it to our parents. They’d yell and scream at us. Now, when I give someone a “D” the parents yell and scream at me. Now my child won’t get into Harvard. Their life will be ruined, all because of you.” Never mind Harvard. Your kid might not make it to 12th grade. Unless he or she gets Chat GPT to write their papers.

So that’s it for this week. We’ll see you next week with two new comics. Did you hear me? I SAID WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT WEEK WITH TWO NEW COMICS. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Happy Holidays. 11/288/25

Hard to believe but this will mark the end of our 7th year at the New 60. Writing from our World Headquarters, okay it’s only my house, John’s house and zoom, but World Headquarters sounds so much more impressive. At any rate, we give thanks to our loyal readers for continuing to read us every year. And we give our thanks to Al and Marv and Rachel and Joanne for being in their 60’s for perpetuity. At least one of us is in their early 70’s but I’m not telling which one. Here’s a hint, his name isn’t John.

But onto Thanksgiving. It could be a joyous time with your family or it could be a nightmare depending on your family. In my case we have brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, kids, grandkids…the whole works. And it’s joyous. As long as the Dallas Cowboys get their collective butts kicked. Listen, I know that most of the world loves turkey. But I wonder about that because, a) why do we only make it once an year and b) how come it needs to be smothered in gravy and stuffed with some combination of sausage, chestnuts, olives, tomato paste, egg yolks and paprika? Huh? To me the best part is getting together (and having so many people around that nobody notices you’re too lazy to help with the cooking or clean up). My favorite tactic is, “I’ll be right there honey, as soon as this game is over.” Followed by a tactic so old, that nobody falls for it anymore, “There’s only 5 minutes left in the game.”

As for picklelball, I finally got to play it for the first time and I loved it. We played doubles with some friends who have a house right near pickleball courts. My wife, limped around for a week afterwards and filled me with horror stories about pickleball injuries. To prove her point about this violent, dangerous game, her pilates teacher said forget about it. And my physical therapist wrote a book entitiled, “How to Avoid Pickleball injuries.” Geez. It’s not exactly tackle football. And we’re playing on a court that is 1/4 the size of a tennis court. I think it’s great but my only complaint is your partner yelling, “Stay out of the kitchen,” I hear that enough at home. You know who else doesn't like pickleball? Neighbors who live near pickleball courts. Apparently the constant thwack of something that resembles a whiffle ball against a wooden paddle creates a sound with a high-pitched frequency that drives people crazy. Ir’s so offensive that in the case of our pickleball friends, their community required the paddles to have a stretchy, nylon cover that still makes the ball bounce but muffles the sound of the impact. I think the most dangerous aspect of pickelball is having to deal with irate neighbors who hate the sound.

Here’s hoping your Thanksgiving is filled with laughter, love, turkey, gravy, stuffing (hold the truffles please,) a 5k Turkey Trot (after that you can eat anything you want) and maybe even a game of pickleball.

Happy Holidays,

Andy and John

Expiring (Miles). 11/21/25

Recently I got an email saying my Marriot Bonvoy points and 1 free room night were about to expire. Horrors. At the same time my Delta Miles were going to disappear. No problem, I took my son to Chicago (round trip fare $0.00) and stayed at The Westin overlooking Lake Michigan (3 night total, $0.00 except for that stupid “destination charge”) and tickets to the NY Giants vs Chicago Bears (don’t even ask). There are now so many credit cards with so many competing offers that it’s hard to know which card earns you what. This card comes with a free $5,000.00, 0% loan for the first six months. This card offers great benefits but costs $500.00 per year. That card offers even greater benefits, but you have to pay $750 yearly. Who can keep track? Thank goodness for the internet reminding me about all these expiration dates. As long as they’re not telling me about my expiration date. Don’t laugh, I bet someday AI will be able to figure that out for you as well. And one further observation about this topic: read the fine print. It’s not so easy on a laptop unless you know how to increase the font size. If I hadn’t worked in advertising I wouldn’t have even known what “font size” was. Chewing over the point about the fine print is what led John to suggest, “only on months beginning with the letter “m”.

Our other comic has nothing to do with expiring. It’s not exactly a topic we want to think about as we reach older age. I took a train back home from NYC last night and the guy sitting by the window had to get up to get off the train. He stood, and I saw him and began to stand, when he said, “Thank you for letting me slip by, sir.” Sir??? DO I LOOK LIKE A SIR TO YOU (I thought), but what I said was, “Of course.” But I digress. It’s about old names. How everything old is new again. My mom’s name was Ina. You don’t hear that one much anymore. Esther, Lenore, Joan, Murray, Saul…not nearly as common as they once were. But, as the song goes, everything old is new again. Welcome to a new generation of Maxs and Charlottes and MIles’, Hazels and Eleanors, Arthurs and Theodores. One thing we can brag about, names like John and Andy are evergreen. They never go out of style. Until they do. See you next week and have a great…ooops I’ve got some miles about to expire…

Andy and John

It All Depends on How You Look at It. 11/14/25

Botox. Did you know it stands for botulinum toxin type A? What does that mean? It means every time you inject yourself with Botox, you are injecting botulism. And, oh yeah, toxins. Why is it we do all these spa treatments and saunas to “cleanse the toxins from our bodies,” but then go right ahead and inject the stuff back in? Me, I’d rather get my toxins from brie cheese and bacon. I once worked at the same ad agency as John. One of the leaders of the agency was a woman who had significantly transformed her appearance with Botox. I’ve heard it said that one can get addicted to Botox. On one particularly hot summer afternoon, I had a lunchtime dental appointment, and rode a Citi Bike (a bike sharing program in NYC) to the dentist and then back to the office where I had a meeting. I cleverly wore a blue work shirt that day and arrived to the conference room with massive sweat stains. The previously mentioned Botox woman, who was leading the meeting, said, “Hi Andy. You know you can stop yourself from sweating by getting Botox injections under your arms.” I sat down and said, “No thanks, I’d rather sweat.” The comedienne Joan Rivers, who was infamous for receiving many Botox injections, once joked, “I’m laughing, you can’t tell from my face but I’m laughing.”

Which brings us around to our second comic about outlet shopping, which is really about longevity. I have recently heard comments from friends like, “If life was like a round of golf, what hole would you say we’re on. The 16th?” For those of you who have never played golf, a round is 18 holes, so being on the 16th means you’ve lived 8/9th’s of your life. Kinda morbid, don’t you think? So I immediately backtrack and say, “The 16th? No way. I’m on the 14th at most.” More compelling was a visit from my bff who moved to Los Angeles. I would see him regularly because I would go to L.A. to shoot commercials. I also saw him whenever he came to New York to visit his family. Well now his parents are no longer with us and I no longer am in advertising, so I no longer shoot commercials. My wife and I rent a beach house each summer. He comes in whenever he can make it, including a visit this past summer. At the end he pointed out how much we should cherish these visits because, “How many more times do you think we’ll see each other in our lives?” On a much lighter note, we applied this line of thinking to t-shirt shopping. Who wants to think about how old we’re getting? On second thought I’m going to get a shot of Botox.

That’s it for this week. Have a terrific weekend while we go the gym to defy the aging process (though I must admit, I’ve gone from running to jogging to fast walking on the treadmill),

Andy and John

Language. 11/7/25

As a former copywriter, misuse of the language pisses me off. As a former art director, it turns out it pisses John off even more. Case in point, “I could care less.” If you could care less, then care less. The proper statement is, “I couldn’t care less,” as if you had no interest whatsoever. I once was in a meeting with another copywriter, whose work I was overseeing. I told her I didn’t like most of what the script was saying, but if she followed up on this one specific part of it, that would make it a better piece of communication. She replied, “Okay I’ll flush that out.” I replied, “You can flush this script down the toilet. You need to ‘flesh’ it out.” Okay, maybe that wasn't very nice, but c’mon, she was supposed to be a professional writer. There was another time when a nephew came to visit us in our beach house. He is an amazing chef. It was intimidating to cook for him, but happily, he “helped me out.” Later on I said how amazing a cook I thought he was. To which he modestly replied, “Don’t overexaggerate.” I have heard this same phrase used on tv and radio, but never in print. You can’t overexxagerate. Can you underexaggerate? Doesn't exaggeration mean overdoing it in the first place? Well, my nephew pulled out his phone and, sure enough, overexaggerate was acceptable in some online dictionary. I guess if people misuse a word often enough, it then becomes part of the language. It also means if you are too much of a language scold, you begin to piss people off and that could lead to losing your job. Thank goodness that never happened to me. Oh wait…

Our other tour de force is about aging. Or rather, fear of aging. I recently had dinner with a very close friend and the conversation found its way to heart conditions, hearing aids and absorbent underwear. I recently have had trouble hearing parts of conversations while out to dinner in a noisy restaurant with hard surfaces which makes noise bounce off the walls instead of absorbing it. Turns out the restaurants do this on purpose because when people enter it sounds like a happenin’ place, like there’s a party going on. However it takes away from the party when you can only hear every third word. Then my wife and I attended a wedding and sat very close to a huge speaker amplifying the sound of the 12 piece band that was playing 15 feet away from us. All this made me visit an audiologist who told me I’d need a hearing aid in a few years, but not necessarily now. Back to aging. While sampling a few styles of hearing aids, I was more concerned about people not being able to see the hearing aid than I was about how well the thing worked. I was the same way with glasses, which I didn’t need until I was 45. I draw the line on coloring my hair, largely due to the fact that I don’t have any hair. And this observation led John and me to think about what else would we try to avoid using. That’s when he came up with the walking stick. It’s not a cane. I’m young and fit. It’s a damn walking stick. When it comes to needing those walkers with four wheels, fuhgeddaboudit. There’s no way to disguise those babies. But hopefully that’s wayyyy down the road.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next Friday with two new ones. You can take it for granite.

Andy and John

Get Outside While the Getting's Good. 10/31/25

The leaves are changing, the temperature is dropping and it gets dark earlier and earlier each day. Is that an upbeat way to start a blog or what? If you’re anything like me, you want to get outdoors as much as you can before it’s too cold to go outdoors (unless you live in Florida). Instead of pounding away on a treadmill in a gym, I prefer a walk in the woods, complete with chirping birds, the aforementioned leaves, and obnoxious bike riders yelling, “On your left,” as I panic and move left by mistake. One time when I did that a funny and sarcastic bike rider shouted out, “Your other left.” All of which is a long-winded way to say that Al took his exercise walk outdoors. And just as it’s important to lace on your sneakers, it’s also imperative you strap on your smartwatch. John and I both have our MTD’s (no it’s not some sexually transmitted disease, it stands for Movement Tracking Device — which is a term that doesn’t actually exist because I just made it up). And we have both been on walks when we discovered we left our device at home. So does the walk count if you don’t track it? Of course it counts. What a dumb question. Well to be fair, you readers didn’t ask it, I did. It counts to me but not to my dumb smart watch.

And onto our Halloween comic. Let me be clear. I hate Halloween. Not always, but ever since we moved out of our house and into an apartment in the Westchester town of Tarrytown, which borders on Sleepy Hollow, as in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane, etc. For one thing, kids don’t generally trick or treat in apartment buildings. And what fun is it to hand out Snickers bites and “fun size” Kit Kats to a bunch of 55 plus adults? Not much. But that’s not the worst of it. Thanks to local news coverage, Sleepy Hollow has become the national center of Halloween. Out-of-towners come on the Metro North Railroad and spend entire weekends in my town. For the entire month of October! People walk four abreast on the sidewalks, making it impossible to pass them. Cars use up every available parking space in town including some that aren’t parking spaces at all. And that local non-Starbucks coffee shop where you go for a non-Starbucks coffee and a bagel most mornings? Well now there’s a line around the block to get in. Good for the non-Starbucks coffee shop, not for yours truly. Oh, and the traffic is so bad, you might as well not even try to drive. Sooo, I will be a grouchy hermit today, only traveling by foot and constantly saying, “Excuse me,” as I turn my shoulders sideways to get by another four-abreast pack of tourists. And then tomorrow, poof! All will return to normal, but not before I empty the contents of the economy-sized bags of Kit Kats and Snickers that I bought to hand out to the trick or treaters that never came.

Have a great weekend. At least we get an extra hour of sleep on Sunday.

Bah Humbug (oh, there I go mixing holiday metaphors),

Andy and John

And Just Like That, It's Time to Come Home

It’s great going away for two whole weeks. In comic land two means four comics. In blog land it’s “I wrote about traveling last week, what the hell am I gonna write about this week?” Coming home. For some, that’s a tough transition. For me, it’ back to my tv remotes which only I can understand (sometimes), my chair, my food (I mean, how many nights in a row can you eat tapas?). But you also want to show your friends and family some cool stuff you can only buy over there. And maybe buy some cool stuff as presents to give out. So, imagine getting something over there that you could easily buy over here. That occurred to John as he was walking through a Spanish sardine store. You want sardines in oil, sardines in tomato sauce, sea bass and sea bream in olive oil you got it. He and his wife were in there trying to buy something exotic to bring home. So, when he asked the counter girl and got a response that they had an additional store in Times Square, he had a laugh and we had European Trip, part 3. Sometimes we make up stories (most of the time) and then sometimes they write themselves.

But speaking about exotic presents that aren’t in fact exotic, I remember a time when a friend of my mother’s, who fancied himself a bon vivant, came over to our apartment and brought over this amazing ice cream he brought back all the way from Denmark. It was called Haagen Dazs. Now this was the late 1960’s and we’d never heard of it before. It was also the best coffee ice cream I ever tasted in my then young life. The fact that he said he bought ice cream back all the way from Denmark should have been a clue that he was not who he seemed to be, but I was too busy eating that ice cream to care. It surely would have melted somewhere over the Atlantic. But the truth is Haagen Dazs was then and is still today made in Brooklyn.

The point is (is there a point?) that we all like stuff that’s different, that’s not from where we live. Levi jeans are cool in Europe, Armani jeans are cool over here. You just don’t have to go all the way to Italy to get them.

So have a great weekend and enjoy a plate of sardines. You can even eat the bones. They’re filled with calcium and are healthy for you. If you don’t know where to find them, have we got a store for you.

Andy and John

Time To GET Away

Hey, we’re getting up there in age, okay? Many of us are retired. And with all that time on our hands, what are we going to do? Let’s go on a vacation. Let me say that my wife and I have different ideas about what constitutes a vacation. I like the beach, golf, easy hikes, great food, maybe a game of pickleball. And while she likes those things, she is also a big fan of adventure travel. Call me crazy but my idea of a vacation does not include hiking down a steep path with wet rocks and loose gravel. In fact we did that once in Peru and I slipped and fell backwards three different times, only to be saved from hitting my head by the big, heavy backpack I was carrying. My wife’s point is a valid one: let’s take these trips while we are still physically able to. Don't want to try these in your 80’s. No, I certainly do not. But I ain’t so crazy about doing them at 72 either.

So Al and Joanne are taking the kind of trip John recently took and that I like to take. A little sightseeing in a country we’ve never been to before and great eating. A couple years ago, we went with another couple we’re very close to, and explored the Greek Islands. This past spring we went to Sicily with other close friends. Greek food, Italian food, beautiful natural settings, you can’t go wrong. We climbed a lot but they were streets and staircases, not mountains with wet rocks. Well there was a climb of Mt. Etna one day, an active volcano, but the only really challenging part was trying to get the black lava ash off my hiking shoes. A year later I’m still working on it. Part 1 is a riff John and I took on something that happened to me when I was a teen in Paris. I went into a patisserie and asked, “Combien coute…” before the woman behind the counter said impatiently (hey it’s France), “How much is what?” I replied, “the Napoleon.” To which she responded, “For a nice Jewish boy like you, one franc (this was before Euros, wayyy before). I said, “How did you know I was Jewish,” and she replied, “Your face looks like the map of Tel Aviv. No kidding. I hope the map of Tel Aviv is good looking, but I have no idea.

Al will keep trying to use his high school Spanish and French and we’ll keep trying to make you laugh. Have a great weekend, nous ami and amie (I have no idea if that is right). See you next week,

Andy and John

Wow Is That Funny!

“Oh, that’s a riot!” “LOL.” ROFL.” “That is soooo funny.” “Stop, you’re killing me.” These are all things people say when they are not actually laughing, but think what you said was funny or at least lightly amusing. If they really thought it was funny they’d laugh, right? It’s just one of the many verbal tics people have. We say stuff without thinking about it first. When I was working full-time and it was Friday, people would say, “If I don’t see you, have a great weekend.” I used to respond, “And what if you do see me?” The part I didn’t say was,” Should I have a terrible weekend if that happens? I think the older we get, the more we get stuck in what we say without realizing it. I once saw Jerry Seinfeld perform and he asked the audience, “Have you ever said, “Send them my best?” When you tell a friend that you’re visiting a mutual friend, the first friend usually says, “Be sure to send them my best,” to which Seinfeld replied, “Is that really your best? To ask me to tell them you send your best? Why don’t you pick up the phone and send them your regards, or better yet, why don’t you visit them? That would be your best.” At least these make sense grammatically, unlike the phrase, “I could care less.” Because if you could care less, then go ahead and care less. The point is, you couldn't care less.” If you said one of those things to me, I wouldn’t correct you out loud but I’d be thinking of correcting you out loud. And if you know me you’re likely thinking, “Oh, you’d say it out loud all right.”

Next up is another of our pieces of marriage advice. About using pet names. Okay, I admit my wife and I have a couple of pet names but we only speak them to each other. Not in public unless one of us slips, and forget it, I’m not slipping by revealing them here. When I proposed over 40 years ago, I visited a fortune cookie factory, where you could print your own fortune and they would slip it inside the cookie. The message had a pet name that only we knew, so she knew it was an actual proposal from me. Pet names. When used in public they often mask exasperation. Like a mother to a misbehaving child. “Okay sweetie pie, time to get off the swing and come home. Sugar pie, let’s get off now. SWEETHEART, I SAID NOW!” And why are they called “pet names” in the first place? Rover, Fido, Furball, Barker, those are pet names. I once had a wheaten terrier that my young daughter named Otis. I asked, “Why Otis,” and she replied, “He’s a wheaten terrier, wheat and oats, get it?” Otis it was.

Anyway, if we don’t see you, have a great weekend. And if we do see you, still have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Stuff That's Annoying

If you are like most of our readers, you remember a simpler time. A time when coffee was coffee (alright there was Sanka but that didn't count), chocolate was chocolate and milk was just milk. I mean we’re all for change but not when it comes to waiting on a concession line for a movie. Not waiting for a movie online, but actually waiting on a line in a real live theater. Nobody cares about missing the commercials, even though John and I spent over a combined 70 years writing them. But imagine you’re standing on the concession line and instead of popcorn, candy and Coke, there’s a seeming million variations on the theme. Plus new stuff like beer, non-alcoholic beer, wine, wine coolers, fruit and cheese plates, etc. But let’s just stick to the basics. My wife and I were waiting on a concession line this summer before a movie. This place offered iced coffee, which sounded good. But the person in front of me thought so too. She asked for an iced coffee and the conversation (to the best of my ability to memorize) went something like this: Woman: “I’d like an iced coffee.” “Would you like nitro or cold brew?” replied the teenager behind the counter.” This went back and forth for what seemed like ten minutes. “Do you have decaf nitro?" “We do. What size?” “I’ll take the large with milk.” “Would that be regular cow’s milk, soy, almond or oat? Sweetener?” I’m thinking “you have got to be f’ing kidding me,” when the woman now starts inquiring about chocolate bars. I will spare you the details of the 85% dark cocoa with red chili, but as John and I always say to one another, when something annoying happens, it’s still annoying but at least it makes a good comic,

Our other one is about cell phones. I take you back to the summer when my wife and I rented a beach house. Nothing bugs me like sharp, tinny noises coming out of a cell phone. Instagram posts and comedy routines I understand. I just don’t like hearing them on tinny speakers. But there are two CPI’s (Cell Phone Interruptions) that drive me especially crazy. The first is you talking on speaker phone when you’re in my house. “Hello Margie? Yes I can’t speak now because we’re at someone’s house. What’s that? You did??? Get outta here. Oh, I have to tell you the funniest thing…” And the other is the “bing” reminder that some people insist on activating. Every time these people receive a message, their phone emanates a high-pitched ding that gets right through my ear canals (do ears even have canals?). We’re driving in a car showing guests the sites, when every five seconds or so there’s another ding. “See here, that’s where Paul McCartney (ding!) has a summer house. What was I (ding!) saying? Oh yeah, and this is where they (ding!) filmed the HBO hit, (ding!), uhh could you please turn that off? (ding! ding! ding!) You know you can still look at your messages without the freaking ding.” And there goes 1) our friendship and 2) their invitation for next year. But, like all things annoying, it makes for a good comic.

Okay, we won’t annoy you further with what annoys us, but do us a favor and turn off the ding!. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John (ding!)

Good Advice. 09/26/25

“It’s good advice, that you just don’t take.” That’s a line from Alanis Morissette’s album, “Ironic,” in which none of the stanzas are actually ironic. It’s also good advice about any advice I am about to part. That said, I have some advice. Don’t blame people for stuff you did. My brother visited a house that my wife and I rented this past summer. We try to keep the place neat. I looked at a cabinet drawer that had jelly smeared on the handle. When I called my brother out and told him to be more careful, he said, “I didn't have any jelly for breakfast.” Turns out I had a piece of French bread with cream cheese and jelly on it. The culprit was me. After I apologized profusely, I thought every time John or I screw up, at least there’s usually a comic in it. And of course I will try to be much neater the next time. Try being the operative word.

Our other comic deals with marriage advice, which I am equally unqualified to give. So thank goodness for John. I have read “how to” articles about the secrets to a successful marriage and have followed none of them, but my wife and I have been married for 41 years, so there’s that. I mean a little hidden love note would be sweet, but as one of our readers,Wayne Reising said, asking for cottage cheese actually should count as a love note since lasagna made with 2% milk fat cottage cheese tastes just as good as ricotta without all the fat. He’s got a good point, but personally I’d rather get a note saying “C’mon home right now, you burning hunk of love,” though nobody I know would ever speak like that. It’s just my imagination that one feels better than being asked to pick up 2% cottage cheese. Although that beats a note I once got asking for white miso paste which took me 25 extra minutes of searching, asking two different employees where to find it, and being looked at by those employees as if I had two heads, only to be told, “We don’t carry that.” So let’s review the rules: Worst request - white miso paste, better request - 2% cottage cheese, best request - burning hunk of love.

That’s it for this week, I’m on my way to pick up some avocado oil.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Accomplishments. 09/19/25

Okay, we realize that the Gary, Keith and Ron comic may have sailed over the heads for our fans that don’t watch baseball, but here’s the thing. When watching a Mets game a couple weeks ago, the announcers (Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez) started talking about their love of comics. The game was one-sided and they had to fill the airtime. John and I thought, “Hmmm (actually I thought hmmm, with three m’s but John thought “hmm”with two m’s, but I digress), we wondered if we could get them to notice us with a comic made especially for them. Then they’d mention us on the air and we’d get a million new followers. This, at least, is the attempt to use social media from one guy in his late 60’s and another in his early 70’s. The tough part is we have no clue about how to actually get the comic to Gary, Keith and Ron. Any suggestions from our more media-savvy fans? We’d love to hear from you. But this comic reminded yours truly about a real-life experience from 50 years ago. I had just gotten out of college and wanted to be a sports announcer or sportswriter. I interviewed with a local radio station and they gave me a test assignment to cover a college game between two historically black colleges, Marshall vs. Grambling. I was so excited. The game was on a Sunday afternoon. And my radio report was then next morning. The problem was that I had tickets to a Rolling Stones concert Sunday night and wasn’t about to give them up. So I went to the game, wrote my script and went to the concert. The I showed up bright and early the next morning prepared for my big moment. I told my friends and family in advance and they all tuned in to hear. Everything I had written, the host of the show said before handing the mic to me. She said something like, “Marshall University beat Grambling 28-23 yesterday behind a 4 touchdown performance from quarterback Rip Johnson (made that name up). I wasn’t able to be there, but sports reporter Andy Landorf was. Andy? So I said something along the lines of, “Thank you Liz. As you said, Marshall beat Grambling 28-23. And like you said, Rip Johnson was amazing. he threw 4 touchdown passes, as you mentioned. Back to you Liz.” Shockingly, I didn’t get the job.

Our next comic dealt with bucket lists. Well, if you are in our “target audience” (see how media-savvy we are?) you are likely thinking it’s about time to start crossing things off said list. John visited his ancestral country in Scotland, I am going next year to the Galápagos Islands. Bucket list stuff. Of course there are things I have on the list that will likely never come to pass, like running the NY Marathon in my 70’s. Does a leisurely four-mile hike in the woods count as sort of the same thing? Maybe that’s the way to do the list. Do stuff that comes close to what’s on the list and cross them off anyway. One of my brother-in-laws had a bucket list wish of visiting Bhutan. So my wife’s family arranged a trip. The thing is, Bhutan is a vegetarian country which automatically excluded it from my bucket list. Nonetheless, I sucked it up and prepared to go. I was sneezing all the way to the airport and before we checked in, my wife gave me one of those portable Covid tests, just to make sure. Wouldn't you know it, I had Covid. I had to turn around and go back home so as not to infect everyone on the airplane. I put on my saddest, most apologetic face and went down the escalator to the Uber stand to drive back home. Once I was out of sight, I had one of the biggest ear-to-ear grins you’ll ever see. I masked myself, rode home, and drowned my sorrows by watching my beloved Giants take on the Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday Night Football. Somehow, I survvied.

This week’s bucket list included finishing this week’s blog, so while I cross that off my list, we hope you get to cross something off of yours, like reading this book-length blog. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Keep on Tryin' 09/12/25

It’s not easy. Being a good husband or wife, being a good dad or mom, being a good grandparent. Things change. Pronouns change, expressions change, and while I consider myself open minded, I have trouble referring to women as “people with uteruses.” John and I discuss the grandpa stuff and the marriage stuff. We both happen to be proud grandpas each with two granddaughters, both from our daughters who are the same age and have the same name, Ali. (my grandchildren are 4 years old and 9 months old, John’s are 3 years and 6 months). This gives us a lot of common insights. My four-year old granddaughter plays games with me, goes swimming in the pool with me, watches Frozen with me, etc. And then along comes this interloper, the new kid on the block. I figure I have to give her some quality time as well, but when I’m playing with her and the older one comes along, well, I feel almost like a husband who got caught cheating. “It’s not what it looks like!!!” And then I remember I’m addressing a 4-year old. Put it this way: when I’m playing Hungry Hippos with my 4-year old (Hungry Hippos being a great suggestion from John), the little one looks on with great fascination. When I’m playing with the baby, my older granddaughter looks on with a “What the hell?” kind of look. At least that’s my interpretation.

Our next comic is our attempt at giving tips on how to make a marriage last. We’ve both been married over 40 years so either a) we must be doing something right or b) our wives have unbelievable patience. As for our advice, as the saying goes, take what you need and leave the rest. My theory is that the people who write those advice columns must be single themselves because their advice is based on theory as opposed to reality. For instance, the columnists tell you to find common interests, but my wife is no more interested in a crucial Mets game than I am in a new season of Downton Abbey. (“At this late point of the season, this game is as important as a playoff game!”) I exclaim. To which she replies, “According to you EVERY game is like a playoff game.” She’ll say to me, “I think the butler is having an affair with the Princess, to which I reply, “In these shows everybody is having an affair with somebody.” In theory, these are great suggestions, in reality, ehhhh. My wife and I find something we love to watch together and then, like boxers at the end of a round, retreat to our separate corners. It might not be for everybody but it works for us. At least it works better than being forced to watch an entire season of something you don’t like or, horrors, having to sit through a doubleheader.

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend and we’ll be back in the coming weeks with some more invaluable marriage tips. We know you can’t wait to hear them,

Andy and John