Snitches get Stitches 6/24/22

This week, we go to a place where I thankfully don’t have much experience. Prison. John maybe, but not me. Okay, not him either. I do have some experience with babysitting these days however. If you don’t yet have grandchildren you’d be amazed at what type of qualifications it takes to be a babysitter. At least around New York City. You have college graduates, art history majors, child development experts, all vying for these jobs. No kidding. My own daughter’s babysitter is leaving to act in a production of Macbeth this summer. True. But we decided you can’t judge a book by its cover, so we went in the opposite direction and had Sam and Shellie hire an ex-con, covered in tattoos, to be little Sammy’s babysitter. We figured, how many degrees does it take to change a diaper (actually several). If you remember back to when we first introduced the babysitter, Sonny, he had a deeply intuitive understanding of how to speak to babies. And once Sam and Shellie got over the shock of seeing Sonny, they quickly decided he was their man. We get requests from some of our readers to do characters with alternate lifestyles, and we always respond, “We write about what we know.” This is why the strip is not filled with ex-inmates. Similarly, Sonny talks about what he knows. So John reached back into his prison knowledge base and pulled “snitches get stitches,” out of his a…I mean, out of thin air.

In our second comic, we have Sonny making up a bedtime story for Sammy. What else is he gonna talk about? He’s going to tell a better story if he speaks about what he knows. All we know is one thing, little Sammy is going to grow up to have quite an imagination. That is certainly one way to afford your kid a “well-rounded education.”

We’ll be back next week with two new ones and, before you know it, it’s going to be the 4th of July. Yikes, where does the time go?

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

On Football (yes again) and Destination Weddings 2/4/22

We imagine you non-football fans asking, “So what’s with all the football comics?” Well it’s the NFL playoffs now, the thrilling three-week tournament that ends up deciding who will play in the Super Bowl. After many unexpected turns and upsets, it’ll be the Cincinnati Bengals vs. the Los Angeles Rams. They will play in the Rams’ new multibillion-dollar pleasure dome known by the poetic name of SoFi Stadium. But that setting does not do justice to the inspiration for today’s football comic, titled “Shirtless.” No, that was inspired by the night game a couple weeks ago in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You heard us right, night game, Green Bay, in January. As the cameras are often wont to do, they pan the crowd and always, and we do mean always, there is the seemingly mandatory shot of a bunch of guys in their 20’s sitting in the stands, with temperatures in the low teens, and negative-degree wind chills, without their shirts on. By the way, they are always, and we mean always, drinking ice cold beers (face it, even hot chocolate would become ice-cold out there). And we often wondered, what kind of idiot would do that? Then just like that, the answer came to us. Sid, the headstrong son of Al and Joanne, Sid would do that. And that became our first comic this week. But since we load them into the website in the order they’re completed, the first comic comes up second in your newsletter, which becomes challenging when we do a 3-part story. Got all that? Good, neither do we.

Next up (or first on your scroll) came from a therapist friend of mine whose name will be withheld to protect the guilty). She is getting married next week and she and her husband-to-be chose a destination wedding in Costa Rica. When I asked her why, she said something to the effect of, “This way we can invite everybody from both families while being reasonably sure nobody will come.” Brilliant. When I shared the idea with John, he thought a lot of people would be thrilled to come to Costa Rica so we moved the comic wedding to Kuala Lumpur, figuring, who in their right mind would ever go there? I mean, I don’t even know where Kuala Lumpur is. I didn’t even know how to spell it correctly until I asked the Google. I guess I could ask it where it is located. Just did. Of course, it’s the capital city of Malaysia. Duh, everyone knows that. At any rate, it’s far away. As John likes to say, “That’s the beauty part.” Actually John picked this up from a former advertising creative partner who picked it up from her father, but what the hell, the whole thing is pretty ingenious, don’t you think? Instead of spending days, weeks or most likely months worrying about who to invite and who not to invite, instead of wasting precious brain cells trying to make sure Uncle Marty and his second wife Sarah aren’t seated at the same table as Aunt Esther and her tennis pro, Rafael, just throw the damn wedding in Kuala Lumpur. Or Thailand for that matter (except that didn’t work for one married couple because my wife and I actually attended that one anyway).

So that is it for this week. We’ll be back next week with two new ones about who knows what (actually we know but we’re not telling).

Have a great weekend

Andy and John

You Can't Be Too Careful 9/10/21

Actually, you can. In the case of our hand sanitizer comic, Craig was allergic to it. Seems the stuff is everywhere now, drugstore counters, supermarket check-out lines, restaurants - but then they swipe your card in a machine that has everybody else’s swipes and hand you a pen that 2,000 people have used before you and, more hand sanitizer. But this comic doesn’t come from that insight. It comes from John’s wife Linda who mistakenly confused the sanitizer with bug spray. Turns out hand sanitizer doesn’t do a damn thing for preventing mosquito bites. Nor does bug spray do a particularly good job of cleaning your hands. Who knew? One of the most memorable cases of mistaken bottles occurred when my children were 7 and 4. One day when my wife was out of town, I was driving to a rollerblading rink and both my kids were in their car seats. My 7-year-old daughter was playing with her stuffed animals when I heard her say to her brother, “Uh, I don’t think you should be playing with that.” Then I heard the sound of an aerosol being sprayed. I was driving, so I said, “Can you please hand me that, having no idea what it was. It turned out to be a bottle of pepper spray. I exclaimed, “Fuuuuuck!” before I realized what I was saying. The genesis of this story is my wife worked in an office building that was quiet and dark come nighttime, where she went back to work, once the kids were asleep. So I got her a bottle of pepper spray to carry, just in case somebody surprised her. She put it in the center console, just in case…) Two hours and a long shower after, the situation was resolved, the pepper spray washed from our son’s eyes. My wife had just come home from her trip as I was towel-drying our son’s hair. She said to our son, “Hello honey, how was your day?” And he replied, “Guess what, Daddy said fuck!” So much for mistaken bottles.

As for the twins, we had a gender reveal party for Al and Joanne’s daughter a couple months ago and we figured it was time to deliver the twins. Turns out the delivery process is a lot easier to draw than it is to live through.

My wife and I were fortunate enough to spend a good part of the summer in a beach house with our daughter, her husband and their new baby girl, Charlotte. Though my daughter and son-in-law were overwhelmed with love for their daughter, I observed Charlotte not sleeping through the night, my daughter giving multiple feedings, both she and her husband never getting a full night’s sleep, and the toll it took to carry strollers, car seats, diapers, etc. When I explained this to John, he said, “Now imagine if you had twins. They might not have the same nap schedules, feeding schedules, etc.” (He didn’t actually say “etc.” I just put that in because I forgot the rest of what he said.) The comic that followed was what we imagined having baby twins would feel like. Turns out I just got a taste of the real thing. We just came home from a wedding in Denver followed by a few days with our niece, her husband and her kids, an 11-year old daughter and a pair of 5-year-old twins. One twin said to me, “Pick me up!” Followed by the other saying the same. Then the first one asked again and the second one said, “Hey, not fair, you picked her up two times!” You get the idea. The good news is that if you wanted two kids, you get it over at once. The bad news is, as the old Doublemint gum jingle said, “Double your pleasure, double your fun…’

See you next week with two new ones hot off the New 60 press. (There isn’t really a New 60 press, but I just like saying it.)

Andy and John

Sam Comes Back 6/4/21

When we first started this comic, we thought it would be fun to have a diverse set of friends, not only diverse in the racial sense, but also diverse in how their lives turned out. Gives us lots of fodder for different plots. That’s why in addition to two married couples (Al/Joanne and Marv/Rachel) we have a single guy dating (Craig) and a guy on his second marriage (Sam). At first Sam was the object of jealousy when he married a woman 20 years his junior (Shellie). And then she got pregnant and had a baby (Sammy) and suddenly the gang was not jealous of Sam anymore.

Because John and I are in our 60’s and our kids are all grown up, we tend to forget what a tremendous amount of time and effort it took to raise children from infancy. Now, because I’m a new grandpa, I see it up close and cannot believe we got through it in one piece. Suffice it to say, Sam is not getting through it in one piece. So they hired a babysitter with an advanced degree in child development. The fact that he’s covered in tattoos and just came out of prison is entirely beside the point. Who are we to judge? Well, it turns out we’re just like everyone else. So we introduce you to the new male babysitter, Sonny. He will give Sam some form of his old life back again and he gives us a fun new character to play with.

This week we reintroduce Sam back to the diner with his buddies and then take him to the park where Marv gets to meet Sonny for the first time. We hope, once you finish judging him, you will grow to love him. Afterall, there’s nothing to lose, because what the hell, it’s not like he’s looking after YOUR kid.

Have a good weekend (even if it’s cold and rainy) and we will see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Sid Grows Up (Al, not so much) 5/28/21

It’s easy for a couple of older guys to poke fun at 30+ year-olds still living at home. But the world today isn’t like the one we grew up with. Steady jobs with benefits that have a career path have been replaced by freelance gigs with no benefits whatsoever. They usually end with some form of “Thanks for the work, we’ll call you again next time we need you.” Followed by the click of a phone hanging up. Sigh. I actually once worked at an agency where I asked one of the other creative directors, “How do you find people who are content making the same ads into different sizes to fit different digital platforms?” His response, “I look for people with no ambition. People who are just happy to have a job.” Yikes. Well, your intrepid cartoonists were not about to let Sid suffer the same fate. So he sold his app for beaucoup bucks. And now he’s a big shot, in the way kids finding their first jobs and apartments are big shots. No place to sit, not furniture, not enough plates or silverware but, damn, there has to be room for a 70” hi-def tv and a Peloton. The Peloton is important because who among us wouldn’t want to have a $5,000 machine featuring a televised sweaty person in much better shape than we will ever be, screaming at you to tighten up that resistance screw, stand up on those pedals and move! move! move! That they have. A couch with an ottoman? Not so much.

And we also wanted to visit that age old tradition when your kid picks up the check for dinner. Most people are touched with love and admiration and a feeling akin to, “Wow our little (fill in the name) has really grown up!” Well, Al feels that as well, but a little dessert and an after-dinner drink would make him feel even better. As long as it’s on Sid.

We’ve spent a lot of time on kids lately. Grown up kids like Sid and his sister. New kids like the one Sam just had. And new grandparents like our characters will soon become (just wait for our upcoming gender reveal party). Maybe it’s because one of us (me) just became a grandpa or maybe it’s just that Spring is in the air, and we see lots of baby carriages out there. In any event we’ve got a lot of fresh new storylines out there for the summer and the best part about our comic book children, is that their crying makes no noise, they can’t pee or throw up on you, and when you’re done reading, you’re done. Sounds like a good deal to us.

See you next week with two new ones,

Andy and John