Who You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Lyin' Eyes? 04/07/23

I remember when my wife and I moved into our current home 8 years ago. It’s a complex of apartments and townhouses and our new “community” was throwing an open house. We walked inside the community clubhouse and were shocked at how old everybody looked. Now 8 years ago we were no spring chickens ourselves. We were 61 years old. And even though the complex didn’t bill itself as an ”Over 55 community,” there’s no doubt that is exactly what it is. And while you can recognize how old everybody looks to you, you can’t exactly verify how old you look to them. I was reminded of this moment when John pitched his “antiquities” idea. Because it relies on the fact that most people, in this case the security guard, have no clue how old they look to everybody else. Plus everyone has a weird reaction to age. I have one particular person in mind (whose name shall not be repeated in order to protect the guilty), who has never once revealed her age to anyone. At any time. For any reason. But here’s the thing, unless we are botoxed up the wazoo, your appearance gives you away. Maybe it's the fact that your hair is still blonde or jet black, long past when it should be. Maybe it’s walking with a cane or walker. Maybe it’s the fact than you can no longer read the menu without a flashlight plus reading glasses, but whatever it is, the fact is that most people know the truth. It’s like bald people with bad toupees, short people with ridiculously high heels, and even heavily botoxed people (I’m thinking of you, Jane Fonda in the movie “80 for Brady”), you ain’t foolin’ anyone. If we can’t tell whether your laughing or crying because your face is pulled back so tightly you know longer have expressions, it’s a sign you’re trying too hard.

Our other effort this week, comes from John and I discussing our exercise routines. I go to the gym and have seen a number of chubby personal trainers which led to the particular comic. Whereas John works out at home, with only his wife to make observations, and that led to this one. As we age, we hear reams of evidence that walking is the absolute best exercise you can undertake. Whereas other “experts” claim that weight bearing exercise is better because the muscles work overtime to repair themselves many hours after you’ve finished. In any case many of us are convinced that the way we are doing it is much better than the way other people are doing it. Then once in a while it takes a spouse, significant other or a really good friend who’s not afraid to tell you the truth. For me, all it takes is one good downward look from my wife in the general direction of my stomach to let me know it’s time to start skipping dessert for the next couple weeks.

So that is it for this week. One half of your favorite comic-writing team (Andy) is off to Patagonia for the next two weeks for an exciting adventure in aerobic exercise and altitude sickness, but fear not, there are two new comics per week in the pipeline for many weeks to come. See you soon and until then, enjoy this beautiful Spring.

Andy and John

Perspective 09/09/22

If you’re old enough to be reading The New 60, you’re probably old enough to have grandchildren. And if you’re old enough to have grandchildren you know that you’ve just been knocked back a rung or two in the family pecking order. Speaking from experience, my wife and I rented a beach house this summer and invited our daughter, her husband and their child, who doubles as our first grandchild. Now admittedly she is cute as a button, likely the cutest baby ever (okay that’s just grandpa getting carried away…a little) but enough is enough. One day my wife was feverishly working, door to our bedroom closed as she conducted a zoom meeting on her computer. I needed to desperately ask her a question and couldn't wait for her meeting to end in order to ask the question. She had at least another hour to go. So I gingerly opened the door and entered the room. She looked over her shoulder, saw it was me and waved me away, as if to say “Get out of here, can’t you see I’m in the middle of an important meeting?” I retreated. Now to be fair, she is the only one of us with a full-time job since I unceremoniously “retired” from advertising at the end of 2016, and her work is very important. At any rate, not five minutes later our granddaughter came crawling down the hallway, and I, feeling rejected (and being a wiseass) , wanted to get my wife back. So I said to the baby, “Want to see grandma? C’mon, she’s right in here. So baby Charlotte crawls right up to the door, and slaps at it, making a loud sound repeatedly. My wife comes to the door ready to hand me my head, when she looks down, sees who’s making the racket, and in her sweetest, highest voice, says Hiiiiiiiii sweetheart, want Grandma to pick you up?” And of course she does, brings Charlotte to the computer, introduces her to the zoom meeting, and everybody is oohing and ahhing and speaking in their own high voices for the next five minutes, before she hands Charlotte back to her mom, shuts the door and resumes the meeting. Now couldn't she have done the same with me? Granted she couldn't have lifted me up, but at least an “Excuse me guys, I just have to speak to my husband for a second, oh wait, want to meet him?” I mean I am 69, which is not nearly as cute as our 16- month-old, but I am temporarily disabled with a broken ankle suffered while riding a bicycle. So give me a little break, but wait, I’d rather not have any more breaks. Okay, I guess it’s pretty tough to score sympathy points when competing with a baby. She wins. As does my wife and her accurate set of priorities. But what I had to say was important. Something crucial like, “Could you pick up some tonic water at the grocery store?” In truth it was so unimportant that I can’t even remember what it was. So maybe it wasn't that important, but it did inspire our first comic.

Next up was Pickleball. John is a tennis player and has also tried his hand at Pickleball. It is being billed as a great sport for seniors, right up there with walking and frisbee golf. It requires good hand-eye coordination and not much running since most people play doubles and the court is about a third the size of a tennis court. But what it does require is a lot of quick movements including lunging. Back to my broken ankle. I was reading an article about the emerging popularity of Pickleball, when they quoted Dr. Neil Roth, an orthopedic surgeon, extensively. Dr. Roth said it was a great game for seniors for many reasons but cautioned that he had repaired a lot of broken limbs as a result of Pickleball. That stopped me because that is the same Dr. Roth who just performed surgery on my ankle. When John and I discussed how we were going to approach Pickleball, I suggested doing a comic about a broken limb, but he went right to the fact that part of the court is called the kitchen and we both knew who has trouble in the kitchen. Loveable old Marv, that’s who.

So that’s it for this week. Enjoy your weekend, Can you believe it’s already football season? See you next week with two new ones,

Andy and John

Accepting Who We Are 06/03/22

A few weeks ago John participated in the NYC Five Boro Bike Race. We all tell ourselves the same thing after age 60, we’re not in it to compete, just to enjoy the camaraderie and being outdoors on a bicycle. And then the race starts. And people are cheering on the sidewalks. And you’re passing riders and they’re passing you. Wait, what? If you’re anything like me, when someone passes you, the inner dialogue goes something like this: “Not that person, he’s too old. And not this person, she’s too young. And certainly not that person, his stomach is hanging down to his bike seat!” The point is, it’s impossible not to be competitive when you’re in the middle of a competitive race. And, speaking for myself, not John, it’s impossible to be competitive without properly training for the event in the first place. At some point we just accept who we are and take pride in simply participating and finishing. I personally like the attitude of my daughter and her husband, both 36 years old and the proud parents of a 1-yr old baby girl. My wife babysat while they ran the Brooklyn Half marathon, 13.1 miles. They ran at a comfortable pace without killing themselves, but what I admired most was what they did at the finish line. They went to Nathan’s for hot dogs and fries. Now that’s my idea of competition!

Our other comic this week features a pair of uncles at a birthday party. In the past we’ve gotten mail from some of our readers who are gay, asking why we don’t feature more gay characters in our comic strip. Our answer has always been that we write about what we know and we wouldn’t want to pander to any stereotypes or sound inauthentic when representing what our characters say and how our characters feel. So we thought we’d introduce Billy’s gay uncles through what we imagine to be Billy’s eyes. Guileless and non-judgmental, whether it’s an aunt and uncle or two uncles, he’s only happy that they arrived so he can eat the birthday cake. And as far as we’re concerned, if the world worked like that, it would be a far better place (but I guess that’s judgmental in itself). In any case it’s the official kickoff of summer and one half of the New 60 team is on a summer break with 21 family members, ages 1-75, at the beach on a barrier island in South Carolina. That’s my way of saying this will be a mercifully short blog. Sayonara and we’ll see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Goin' Down the Rabbit Hole

In “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice goes through the looking glass into the proverbial rabbit hole and starts her adventures. In today’s world, we enter the rabbit hole through our computers, tablets, phones and tv’s. The only difference is algorithms. They take what we are naturally interested in and push us to what other people who are interested in the same thing are also interested in. I realize that sentence made no sense at all. For instance, if you’re interested in combating pollution, you might get served an article about mulching your leftovers, which might lead you to an article on planting a vegetable garden with the previously mentioned mulch, which might lead to a recipe for garden salads. I frequently read about sports but at the bottom of the articles are what’s known as “clickbait,” articles that ask you to guess what these former sex symbols like Raquel Welch, look like today. After 25 clicks you still haven’t gotten to Raquel Welch, but after they send you to Tom Selleck, you decide you’ve had enough. That kind of thing. So John and I thought long and hard about what kind of rabbit hole we wanted to send Marv down. The obvious one was politics, but that seemed too obvious, so we turned to a rabbit hole John may have gone down himself, although he won’t admit to it. Part of it was he was looking for best exercises for guys with bad knees (I looked at that one myself and found an article saying jogging was good for you and another saying it was the worst possible thing you could do, so my rabbit hole was a fairly shallow one). As for John, he moved upstate to a house he built on a hilltop. One of the activities he enjoys either by himself or with his sons or son-in-law is chopping wood. So is it any surprise Marv went down the rabbit hole about wood chopping? I think not.

But when you chop wood, you need something to do with that wood, which brought us to Rabbit Hole, part 2, in which Marv decides he’ll use all that wood he’ll chop (keep in mind he still has yet to start chopping) as firewood. But he doesn’t have a fireplace. Yet. And that’s the thing with rabbit holes, you just keep digging deeper until you have no idea where you are or how you got there. Which is kind of what this blog feels like today. Now where was I? In any event Marv’s trip down the hole is a 3-parter ending next Tuesday, which is when he will finally come up for air (we hope).

Have a great weekend and please avoid all rabbit holes. We’ll see where Marv ends up next week before exploring what else he does with his spare time in retirement. We spend our spare time writing this comic, besides that, what we do is anybody’s guess.

‘til we meet again,

Andy and John

Improving Memory and Health 1/21/22

First the health part. Now if you are like many of us, you’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions that you are promising to stick to. High on the list is the vow to stay in shape. There’s an old Nike ad I love and it features a lone runner in silhouette on a distant bridge running across the background of a beautiful sunset. And the copy goes something like this (remember, I’m relying on my memory here) “Why do I run? Because there’s this guy, he’s fat, balding, approaching 50 and he’s trying to catch up to me, and I won’t ever let him get me.” At least it’s pretty close to that. Now we just have to modify that copy to say “He walks with a cane, he runs out of breath too easily, he’s in his 80’s (okay, his 90’s) and I won’t let him catch up to me.” Scary, right? So to prevent this from happening, yours truly joined a beautiful, new health club. The other day, with the temperature hovering around 8 degrees, I went. I hopped on the treadmill to do “interval training” where you walk or run at a slightly faster pace than usual but then, every five minutes, you run like a bat-out-of-hell for one minute. 5 minutes later, you run like a slightly faster bat-out-of-hell and so on. Here’s the problem. In keeping up with the latest health and safety protocols, the gym requires everyone to wear a mask. I totally get it and support it. But try sprinting with a mask on. It’s not fun. The “gasping for air” part becomes much more difficult because you’re trying to breathe through a mask. But I figured out how to show them! I just pulled the mask away from my face, sucking in all that potentially covid-ravaged air, until my breathing calmed down. When I mentioned this to John, he said something like, “Yep, that’s a comic.” Don’t ask me exactly what he said because my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. Which segues perfectly into our second comic, Memory Tricks.

Now this is one that popped out of John’s head in whole. It wasn’t like, here’s an idea, let’s discuss. It was more like here’s an idea and I even sketched it out. And here’s the thing. it was damn good. We usually deal in reality, and say the things most of us think but don’t say out loud. This one was a full-scale trip to the land of make-believe. What appealed most to me was the vision of Mickey Mouse on the toilet. Anyway, the trick described in the comic is an actual memory trick. It’s not the trick I would have used to remember, but it was funnier than mine. Mine would skew closer to reality, when thinking about how to remember I’d left the memory book in the bathroom. I would have thought, this book is shit, and that would have helped me remember it was in the bathroom. John’s vision is much more fun and a hell of a lot better to visualize.

That’s all we’ve got this week, keep your masks on when you’re indoors with strangers, yeah even in a health club, and have a good weekend

Andy and John

An Exercise in Futility 12/04/2020

As far as I can tell there are two schools of thought when it comes to exercise. There’s the “Oh My God, I’d Rather Stick Burning Embers Under My Fingernails” school and there’s the “No Day is Complete Unless I Get My Work Out In” school. I belong to the second (in case you’re wondering, golf in an electric cart counts). I will workout unless the weather outside is particularly terrible. And in that case, I’ve got a gym in walking distance. But then Covid hit. And it turns out my local gym reported a case of Covid. And it turns out, the person who got Covid lives in my building. On my floor. And it turns out, we play golf together every Friday in the nice weather, so now it’s back to exercising outside. My friend, by the way, is recovering nicely. And I hurriedly got a test and it was negative. So unsurprisingly, both of this week’s comics have to do with how to get and stay in shape during the pandemic.

One way is to order one of those treadmills which promise the experience of a gym class (think spin class but on a treadmill) in the privacy of your home. Now I know people love them, but, if you’ve ever taken a gym class, you can find much to hate about them as well. Hell, some of them are even called “boot camps.” No thank you very much. John and I discussed it and we found different things to hate. For me, it was the instructor with the headset and microphone yelling at me over the blaring disco music. Disco music? Who the hell listens to disco music anymore? Apparently, these people do. Or maybe it’s not called disco anymore. Maybe it’s EDM (electronic dance music for you old farts) but whatever, it was a horrible experience I will never repeat. For John, it was the yelling. But screaming, virtual instructors aside, these things are amazing. You can walk, you can hike (can somebody please explain the difference to me?), you can jog or run, you can look at the instructor as she/he implores/induces/screams at you to keep going. Hell, you can even have the virtual instructor take over the machine for you and make the incline harder as they he/she/they ramps up the speed while you watch the sun set over the Cinque Terra instead of watching the screaming virtual instructor. Well, you get the drift.

The other comic this week stems from a story I told John about a sweatshirt I bought when staying in Westwood, CA, to shoot a commercial. Having some free time one day, I roamed the UCLA campus and went into the bookstore and bought a UCLA sweatshirt, which to this day remains one of my favorite sweatshirts to work out in. Except. Except I never attended UCLA, never thought about going there, my kids didn’t go there, my wife didn’t go there, nobody I’m related to went there, and almost every time I wear the damn thing and go out for a walk or jog, someone gives me a thumbs up and yells something about the school, like Go Bruins! And I fail to react because I don’t even realize they’re talking to me until several steps later, at which point they’ve written me off as a complete jerk. So now, it has become the sweatshirt of last resort, unless I can cover it up with a down vest or a parka. Upon hearing this story, John (who loves to laugh at my expense) had already written and done a rough sketch of the comic.

So that’s it for this week as we roar into December and the holiday season. Stay safe and thanks for being such a good and loyal audience. We really appreciate it, and that’s no joke.

Andy and John