You Can't Fool Me (or maybe you can) 02/09/24

“Mother, make it stop! He’s trying to kill me.” If you’re old enough to subscribe to this comic, you’re old enough to know where that quote came from, The Exorcist. I saw that as a college kid in St. Louis, Mo., and I’ve never been so scared in my life. But the same feeling can apply to the current political season and its unending stream of emails asking for donations. Today’s comic is the last in the three-part series about unsubscribing, but as you well know, once you’ve successfully unsubscribed from one email address, you get hit with another. And another. And still another. You also get hit with three comics on the same subject, but this is our last one on it. We promise. At least for now.

Our other comic is about how we use “company coming over” as a lever to get things done. Why is a loosely made bed okay most of the time but when company comes over, the sheets have to be tucked in, hospital corner style, and on top of the neatly stacked pillows…go throw pillows. I once was a creative director on Swiffer. And my favorite team came up with an online idea about how to clean up the house featuring a cranky old man (I hope they weren't using me or my partner as inspiration), but anyway the guy comes up to a couch covered in throw pillows and he says, “Ya know why they call them throw pillows? ‘Cause they’re meant to be thrown.” And with that he takes his arm and sweeps them all onto the ground.

It’s ridiculous but it’s true. We treat our company much better than we treat ourselves. We use the “good silverware,” and the “good china,” and put out the “good placemats,” and “good napkins,” with a pretty flower arrangement and a soundtrack of jazz or classical music playing softly in the background. And oh, don’t forget the candles or the wine we save for “special occasions.”

But there’s another, more subtle way we use an upcoming party to manipulate our significant others. It’s a great way to get stuff done. Remember those shelves you meant to put up in the bathroom? The walls you were going to paint? The leaves you were going to rake? That pile of bills stacked up on the kitchen counter? There’s nothing like the promise (or threat) of company coming over to get you to clean it the hell up. I feel compelled at this moment to point out that John is very handy and is constantly taking on projects while I, well, am Jewish. Which means I call the super.

That’s it for this week and for our Unsubscribe Series. We’ll see you next week with two new ones, hot off the press (does anybody say hot off the press anymore?).

Andy and John

The more Things Change... 01/18/24

Sometimes we pull comic ideas out of thin air. Sometimes we get them from things that happen in our own lives. And sometimes from things we observe. This one happened right in front of my eyes. There I was on a Saturday, one day before the end of the regular NFL season. We live with an open kitchen design, so the “living room” and “kitchen” are just sort of one big open space divided by a counter. Consequently, when I watch football and my wife invites two of her closest friends over to bake for a party we’ve been invited to, somebody is going to be inconvenienced. A few polite “Honey, could you turn that down” requests from my wife later, I retorted with one of my patented comebacks, “I happen to know you can hardly hear the tv. You know how I know? Because I can hardly hear the tv!” Unlike Sam in the comic, I did not end up in the bedroom watching the game on my phone. That was John’s brilliant invention. Nope. I held firm and watched in the living room. So, I could still see the game. I just couldn't hear the game. Ahh, the art of compromise.

And now about the New Year’s resolution. If you watch any amount of television, and remember, John and I spent almost 40 years apiece creating television commercials (this was before the days when people could fast forward past said commercials) you will notice that they are all for diet pills, diet programs, and most of all, gym memberships. Planet Fitness and Crunch Fitness come to mind. If the gym has enough treadmills, ellipticals, bikes and weight machines for say 100 people, they sell maybe 200 memberships. This is because they know full well that the gym will be crowded in the beginning of January with all those people swearing they’ll stick to a routine “this time,” while knowing full well that most people will come in, have to wait for a machine to free up, and then go home frustrated, never to come back again. So, by February the place is down to the 50 or 60 regulars who always go to the gym. A couple days ago, I went to my gym. Two people were together, approaching the lat pulldown machine that I wanted to use. It’s January, what did I expect? Anyway, the two people approaching the machine consisted of a thin man and a guy with a large pot belly. The thin guy sat down at the lat machine while the pot-bellied guy gave him instructions. Yes, that’s right, he turned out to be his trainer! Oh well, it’ll be February soon enough.

Have a nice weekend and we will see you next week, as they used to say on Batman, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

Andy and John

Bad Advice 3/4/22

If a friend asks you to speak with their kid about going into a field you used to work in, ignore the request. Chances are, the field you remember is nothing like the field is today. So your advice tends to be outmoded or worse, irrelevant. Yesterday businesses were more local. Today they are global. They are digital. And they involve algorithms. Hell, not only don’t I know what an algorithm is, I don’t even know how to spell algorithm, I had to rely on spell check. As we’ve written before, both John and I spent our careers in advertising. You used to get an assignment to do one of three things: create a print ad, a radio commercial, or a tv commercial. You tried to be funny, because it made the commercial more memorable. To make up an example, let’s say you were doing an ad for JCrew shirts and they were on sale. You had to come up with a clever headline like “We’re giving you the shirts off our backs.” Okay, maybe that wasn’t so clever, but you get the drift. You hoped someone would see the ad and remember it the next time they passed a JCrew store. That was advertising then. Nowadays you might go into JCrew and buy a v-neck t-shirt. The cashier offers you 25% off if you sign up for the JCrew credit card. You agree. Now they know you and what you like. And you’ll get a text message like, “Hey Arnie, ya know that v-neck t-shirt, size large in blue that you bought last month? Well we’ve got ‘em in all colors of the rainbow for 50% off.” No need to be clever anymore because they already know what you like, so the message just has to be some form of, “Here it is, for less.” That’s what advertising has become. No longer broadcasting, but narrowcasting, one-to-one. And a lot of the jobs in advertising now involve how to discover the most cost-efficient ways to reach your consumer. Who needs a Super Bowl ad for $5 million when you can get a Facebook impression for $10.95? And that was the basis for our comic, Ad Biz, Part 1. In fact I had to call my son-in-law and a good friend’s son just to find out what the hell they did in advertising. I still don’t understand and neither did John, so he promptly took their words (which they intentionally dumbed-down for us), and dumbed them down even further. Got it? Don’t feel bad, neither did we.

And then it was on to Dishwasher, Part 2. In last week’s blog I wrote about how tough it was to find the proper repair person. The “Bad Advice” title of this blog refers to the advice all your well-meaning friends give you to call this person or that one, and when you call, it turns out they don’t do what you need them to do at all. Until you finally get to the one, which in this case, John did. Only to find out that the guy was on vacation for two weeks in Key West. Sounds a lot better than sitting in your dining room thinking up new ideas for comics. But on the other hand, I’d much rather think about new ideas for comics than try to repair dishwashers, which I know even less about than modern advertising. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a sink full of dishes to wash.

Have a great weekend.

Andy and John

Stuff We Do...Just Because 01/07/22

Can’t believe I just typed “22” into the date box. When I was a kid I used to think about how old I’d be when the calendar hit the year 2000 (the answer was 47). Now it’s 22 years past that? Can’t be. But it is. And it got John and I thinking about why we do the things we do. And of course it turned our thoughts to vaccinations. Now we try hard (or at least John does) to be apolitical here. But there’s nothing really political about wearing masks if you’re interested in not getting Covid. We’ve heard all sorts of reasons why people don’t choose to get vaccinated, “Nobody’s telling me what to do,” and my personal favorite, “I’m waiting for the research.” I must admit I hate being told what to do, unless I’m convinced about the dangers of doing what I do. Heck, I quit smoking cigarettes when my first child was born in ‘86 and I wear a seatbelt. After years of smoking and not wearing seatbelts, I heard enough evidence to convince me to change my evil ways. Plus I hate when the car starts going bing, bing, bing … until I fasten my damn seatbelt. So about the vaccination. In order to show how silly it sounds to “wait for more evidence,” we had Marv’s mom wanting to wait, along with her new friends at the Shady Acres Assisted Living facility. And let’s not even think about assisted living. At least not yet.

Our other comic this week deals with a cleaning person. We said “cleaning lady,” because that’s how people speak, but if we offended anyone, we apologize and will heretofore refer to the cleaning lady as a cleaning person (who happens to be a lady). Anyway, what is it with people who clean before the cleaning person comes? That’s like reading the Cliff Notes of the book before you read the book. Or filling the car up when it’s 7/8 full. Or cooking dinner in the morning. Let’s let people do what they do. If they didn’t do it better than us, we wouldn’t have hired them in the first place. But full disclosure, I wrote this blog before the official blog writer comes to write it this evening. Just kidding. But it would be nice once in a while.

So that’s it for the first installment of 2022. We will be back next week with two new ones and we officially launch the putting together of our first compilation - a New 60 book. Ready for the holiday season this year (hint, hint).

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Then and Now 11/3/21

A lot has changed between then and now. Boy, now there’s a deep insight for you. We explored those very changes in different ways this week. Let’s talk about pickup trucks, shall we? Way back when, they used to be the sole vehicles for people who needed them. Farmers, construction workers, home builders, remodelers, etc. Fast forward to the 1990’s, I was shooting a television commercial with a hotshot director who had directed a few Hollywood hit movies (name being withheld to protect the guilty). He drove to the set in a shiny, brand-new pickup truck. Now this guy, like me, grew up Jewish in New York. I asked him why a pickup, and he said, “It’s cool.” Well it might have been, but he certainly wasn’t. It’s not like he needed it. He didn’t haul his own equipment around. He had “people for that.” In fact, he didn’t even have to haul his half-caf/half-decaf cappuccino because he had someone bring him that every morning, along with his breakfast burrito. As far as I could tell, he never had to carry anything. After that, I noticed that seemingly every third car on the LA highways and freeways was a pickup truck. There couldn’t be that many farmers barreling into Santa Monica at 7 pm when the shooting wrapped. And that brings me to today. When two people I know and respect, John, my partner in crime, and Mark, my son-in-law, decided they were in the market for pickup trucks themselves. They are from different generations and their reasons for wanting a pickup were completely different as well. John wanted a truck to simply haul garbage to the town dump, to dispose of fallen trees, or to haul lumber from the local Lowe’s store. Whereas Mark wanted one to carry his surfboard and to have a second row of seats in the cab, so his baby daughter could ride safely in her car seat. Suffice it to say, they had very different reactions at the dealership. While John was thinking, “Why do I need an extended cab? Who the hell am I taking along with me to the town dump?” Mark was thinking extended cab, wireless hotspot, cool. And this dichotomy was the inspiration for our first comic.

The second comic was a horse of a different color. John and I have talked about this one for almost a year, and you can see from the details in the illustration how long he had pondered this one. As America has changed, as society has changed, so have our stores. Sure you can understand how typewriter repair shops, camera shops and video rental stores have all gone the way of the Edsel, but do we really need competing drugstores and cell phone stores and coffee shops and donut shops that compete with the coffee shops on every corner? Seriously? Oh, excuse me, I’ve got to run to Walgreens to fill my subscription before they close. Or was it CVS?

That is it for this week and as we bundle up for winter, your two comic guys will see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

The New Normal 4/16/21

If you are like either of us, you start making more and more noises accompanying physical exertion. Bend down to pick something up - that’s a noise. Stretching while getting out of bed - another noise. Leaning over to retie an untied shoelace - yet another. Sitting down in a chair, getting up from said chair, exiting and entering a car, and let’s not even talk about going to the bathroom. The point is the older we get, the more noises we make. John and I thought it would be fun to do a comic on this. The only trouble was how to spell the specific sounds. Like how do you spell the sound when you stretch in the morning? I spell it Uhharghhhh! To John it’ s more of a AAaaarrhghh. Guess who pens and inks in the letters? Guess who wins. I’ve got something to say about that. Unnnnnnhhhhh! Now I promised myself I wouldn’t be like that when I got to certain age, but creeeeeakkkk, here I am. As the saying goes, Man plans, God laughs.

Our other comic is about America’s new favorite phrase to explain everything, “in an abundance of caution.” In an abundance of caution will you please wear a mask before entering, wash your hands before touching, don’t rake the sand trap or touch the flag stick, and subject yourself to the temperature gun. In an abundance of caution my favorite beachside roadstand stopped serving fried whole clam bellies and soft serve ice cream, which were the only two reasons I liked going there. Now don’t get us wrong, we realize much of this is necessary, but some folks take it a little too far. Example, friends who ask, “Have you gotten your vaccine yet?” before they’ll talk to you on the phone. Okay, I exaggerated a little bit there but you get the point. I used to use Lysol wipes to germ-proof the groceries and the grocery bags before putting them away. After receiving our second doses, no more of that. At last, now that we have the vaccine, we can all breathe a little sigh of relief. Just don’t do it if you’re less than 6 feet away from me, okay?

That’s it for this week and we’ll see you next week with two new ones. And if we see you, please make sure to wear a mask.

Andy and John

Winter Wonderland 2/5/21

Newsflash: it hasn’t exactly been the easiest winter. Now in addition to Covid and Marjorie Taylor Greene, we had a huge snowstorm, another is on the way, and Tom Brady is back in the Super Bowl. Yeah, that Tom Brady. In a pathetic attempt to be topical, your intrepid cartoonists decided to do a Super Bowl comic this week and another about shoveling snow. First of all, it’s important to note that we have entirely different perspectives on the aforementioned Tom Brady, The GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). While I am a Giants fan and we beat Tom and the Patriots not once, but twice, in two Super Bowls, John is a Jets fan and they have had decidedly less success against Mr. Brady. Secondly, through a weird glitch in the universe, both my children were born during Giants Super Bowl winning years, although not against Brady. So the inspiration for watching with your baby comes with experience. Truth be told, it was John’s suggestion, even though it was my experience. My solution, back in ‘86 and ‘90 was to offer my wife the following deal, “Honey, I’ll watch the baby (and in the case of our second child {the kids} all day), but when it comes kickoff time, I’m off duty.” And since my wife doesn’t really care about football, she was only too happy to comply. Now back to the comic. It is my contention that John has been psychologically bruised by having Brady and the Pats beat on his beloved Jets time and time again. So it was no accident when he thought it would be funny to have the baby spit up on his Tom Brady jersey. I don’t think that makes up for all the beat downs but hey, every little bit helps.

Now onto the second comic. I have a friend who is a stand-up comic and writes for Jimmy Kimmel. She once said about Facebook, “They should call it In your Face… Book.” You know, people telling you how much better their life is than your life. How great their vacation is, their relationship is, their kids are, etc. Well that’s kind of the way it is with a lot of snowbirds. I can’t prove it but I have a sneaking suspicion they get a little kick when it’s 78 degrees and sunny outside and they’re lounging in the pool with a pina colada, while we are shoveling 18 inches of snow off our driveways. The reason I suspect this is because that’s exactly how I’d feel if I’d have been smart enough to move someplace warm. And why is it that we Northerners can come up with no better excuse than, “We like the change of seasons?” Don’t get me wrong, the change of seasons is nice, but so is watching the Super Bowl from a hot tub, while nursing a beer and cigar, like I did a few years back at my cousin’s house in Florida. After which, my wife and I flew back home and enjoyed the hell out of the rest of the winter.

That’s it for this week. And before signing off, I’d like to celebrate the life and times of my mother-in-law Charlotte Bluestone, a selfless, loving soul who passed away at the age of 99 1/2 years. You’ll be missed. We will be back to you next week with two new comics. Thanks for reading.

Andy and John

The Great Indoors 05/01/2020

We wrote you a few weeks ago about how not every comic would be a Coronavirus Comic. And what did we do this week? We wrote another two of them. We also realized we’ve been coming up with more and more ideas that take place in the home, on the couch or, if we get really expansive, at the supermarket. A wise teacher once said, “write what you know” and the supermarket is about the only place either one of us goes these days.

We both have a routine as we are sure you readers do. Whenever a package comes in the mail, we go throught the prescribed steps. 1) Put on gloves 2) pick up the cardboard box 3) wipe it down with Lysol wipes and 4) mutter under your breath about how f*%@ing ridiculous this whole thing is. And, oh yeah, 5) After you’ve opened the box and removed it from the counter, wipe down said counter with yet more Lysol wipes. Maybe one day there’ll be a conspiracy theory that Lysol started the whole pandemic, but at least they came out with a warning not to swallow the damn stuff. At any rate, today’s first comic came straight out of this routine. And by the way, how thrilled would you be to actually receive a new case of Lysol wipes? Some people would rather get that than a box of 24 karat gold bullion bars. Not this writer, but some people.

The second comic comes from doing what we suspect everyone is doing. No, not sex, this is the New 60 after all, binge-watching Netflix or Hulu or Disney Plus or YouTube or Amazon Prime Video or…okay, we’ll shut up. But John and I talked about doing something with this ubiquitous habit and he said something like, “You know that message that pops up after you’re done with your 4th episode in a row, ‘are you still watching’, well what if it actually saw you?” The point is, you know in your heart of hearts how lazy you’re being and you’re likely playing a tape like this in your head, “I better get up, oh just one more episode, but what about that project in the garage, but this series is sooo good, but the floor needs to be vacuumed, but what’s gonna happen to Marty when the drug cartel finds out…” Anyway, it seemed like a pretty good idea for a comic. And yes, Andy did manage to Swiffer the house. Last week. For only the second time during the stay at home lockdown in NY. He is still awaiting a medal for this groundbreaking burst of energy.

As Porky Pig used to say, in pre-politically correct days, th-th-th-that’s all folks! (and the exclamation is Porky’s).

See you next week with two new ones and please, stay safe.

Andy and John

Stay in Your Lane 4/10/2020

We wrote you a newsletter explaining why not all our comics would depict situations in and around the coronavirus. So what did we do? Almost all coronavirus. Finally last week we had two couples go to a restaurant. Remember those days? But you’ve got to admit, the news and concern about the aforementioned virus is pretty much all-consuming. However, The New 60 is all about what it’s like to be of a certain age in the here and now. Take the first comic in your scroll this week. It concerns a guy in a supermarket, trying to decide whether to go on the much shorter self-checkout lane or go to a traditional lane with a cashier. That’s a subject that works both ways. Both before and after corona, our motivation is the same. To get into and out of the store as fast as possible. But now in the age of Corona, we want to get out even quicker. And so we brave the self-checkout lane, but hey, it’s not as easy as it looks. And fine, we’re good with how to position the bar codes when every purchase gives off that satisfying “beep” but what about produce? They don’t have bar codes. And how about if you brought your own bags, place them on the converyor belt and then it starts moving away from you? Not that this would ever happen to either one of us, but it happens, trust us. And how honest are you going to be when you bought organic cucumbers but when the price chart comes up on the screen, you see regular cucumbers are cheaper? Huh? And then, no matter how smart you are and no matter how technically proficient you are, something goes wrong. Always. You hit debit when you meant credit, you forgot to enter your coupon number for a particular item, and you don’t know how to make the screen go backwards, you get the drift. That’s why they always have those people stationed nearby. So that when everybody yells “Help!!!!” they can come over and fix your problem. Except that almost everyone in line is yelling help and the final result is you get stuck in the supermarket longer than if you had just gone over to the traditional checkout line in the first place. Ugh. But if you do go traditional, promise us you won’t be one of those people who take 12 items to the 10 items or less express lane. Andy is counting and he does not like getting stuck behind those guys.

The next comic is about dealing with the novel coronavirus and all the new rules. We don’t care who you are, but if you are housebound for a considerable length of time, you go stir crazy. You’ve got to get out and do something, even if it’s exercise. If you are like either of us, you are desparate to change your routine of the last three weeks, even if just a little bit. So if you usually go walking in the woods with your mask and gloves, chances are you want to walk somewhere else with your mask and gloves. That is why we took you to the high school track. Lots lanes on the track and long benches on the sidelines so it’s relatively easy to maintain social distance (and shouldn’t it be called physical distance anyway)? Social is defined as “…needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities,” and distant is well, distant. So social distance is an oxymoron if we’ve ever seen one. Anyway we had fun on the track with the fact that once we get tired of our new activity, then what? Do you want to go back home and shelter in place some more? We didn’t think so.

In closing this week, please have some patience with your cartooning buddies. It’s a little tougher coming up with new stuff when you can’t do 95% of the stuff you used to do. However fear not, we will slather ourselves in hand sanitizer and press ahead. See you next week with two new ones. If there is a next week.

Peace, love and social distance

Andy and John

Togetherness 4/3/2020

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, the question remains: what does togetherness do? If you and your husband/wife/partner/roommate have been cooped up inside for the better part of three weeks due to corona restrictions, we think you know the answer already.

In the past you may have heard your partner tell a particular story 100 times while you sit there patiently and smile. But now, maybe you’re a little bit testier. Maybe hearing the story for the 101st time is not so adorable. Maybe you just want to get on with it and finish the story yourself. After all, you’ve heard it so many times you could finish the story. You know just the right line, where to pause for the laugh, when and how to deliver the punchline, it’s just, it’s not your story. And that little insight was part precursror to today’s first comic. Truth be told, John had the idea for overlapping speech bubbles being a cool way to portray one person cutting off another, and then that very night, when we got to our prospective homes, John found an overlapping thought bubbles cartoon in the New Yorker. The guy was thinking how wonderful it was that he and his girlfriendknew each other so well, they completed each other’s sentences. Meanwhile his girlfriend was thinking, “I hate that you interrupt me all the time!” So we waited a couple months and then put our own spin on it. If you’ve gotten this far you may have noticed we put them in a restaurant with another couple. Nowadays nobody goes to restaurants because they are all closed during the pandemic. One reason for this is we thought it up two months ago and the other reason is ‘cause one day we’re going to go to restaurants again, and this one was about overtalking, not about the novel coronavirus.

The second comic on your scroll IS about coronavirus. Kind of. It’s about what happens when two people are locked inside the same house for too long. Put it this way, if it weren’t for the corona lockdown, this situation wouldn’t have occurred. Okay, it still would have occurred, but with less venom. This idea comes from a couple years back, when Andy was runningn the Cascade dishwashing detergent account at his ad agency. He observed that there were two types of people loading dishwashers, the loaders and the rearrangers. Loaders just want to throw everything in and run the damn machine. Rearrangers see that it could be loaded better so that everything fits in it’s own place and that you can actually squeeze in a couple more dishes or cups if you just do it this way. We imagined that during the corona lockdown, the house could become a bit more combative and that such a conversation might occur.

These times make us all do things we’re not used to doing, especially household chores. For instance, Andy proudly pointed out how he’d just finished vacuuming to his wife (she mops) and she asked, did you remember to do the bathrooms? He hadn’t, by the way. Okay, it’s day 17 of the self-imposed lockdown, make that 17 days, 16 hours, 43 minutes and 07 seconds, but hey, who’s counting?

See you next week and, all jokes aside, everyone please stay healthy

Andy and John