April Fools 04/01/22

April Fools. This time we decided to fool ourselves into thinking the strip was internationally famous. What do internationally famous cartoon strips do to make money? They make stuffed toys out of their characters, right? There’s stuffed Snoopy dolls and stuffed Charlie Brown and Lucy dolls but who the hell is going to want to take an Al Bondigas lunchbox to work? Or drink their coffee in a Marv Mandlebaum mug? Who even goes to work anymore? Which of our female fans would want a Joanne or Rachel purse? So we put on our thinking caps. We’ve already made old people jokes in past comics, with New 60 hemorrhoid pads, dental adhesive, etc., but what could we do to fit a more active lifestyle? And the answer came. Tada. Pickleball! It seems like every other person we know is taking up pickleball. Apparently, it has nothing to do with pickles. It’s a cross between tennis and ping pong (so why not ting tong?) and the court is much smaller so it doesn’t involve much running. What is does involve is a lot of lunging, but what could possibly go wrong with that? So we came up with New 60 pickleball paddles. If Al or Marv were bugging you in the comics one week, you could take their faces and mash them into a pickleball. How much fun would that be? We added bibs for any occasion because both John and I confessed to one another that we seem to be spilling more food on our shirts that ever before, so bibs, they’re not just for babies anymore. Heck, you have old guys wearing adult diapers, so why not a bib? And finally, New 60 sunscreen with an SPF of 1,000. This came from watching people of a certain age at the beach. They wear huge floppy hats, slather themselves in sunscreen and sit under umbrellas all to avoid the sun they seem to be worshipping. New 60 sunscreen. At least it prevents you from doing the t-shirt thing which leaves really ugly tan lines.

And then we turned our attention to a particular breed of sports fanatic. One so crazy that they want to watch every game their team plays. I have this affliction and have passed it on to my son, unfortunately. When you go out of town or go out to dinner, you record the game to watch it at a later date. Then you have to avoid hearing the score so it doesn’t ruin the experience of watching it. I go into an SIMP. What is that, you ask? It’s a Self-Imposed Media Blackout. Sometimes it works, but a lot of times it doesn’t. Many years ago, when my son was about 10 or 11 years old, our family went with two other families on a beach vacation to St. Martin. The trip was great. We were scheduled to fly back home on a Sunday, the very day the NY Giants were playing the Philadelphia Eagles. The last game of the season. The winner goes to the playoffs, the loser goes home for the winter. We were on a plane that day. I had already set the recorder to record the game at home before we went away. The trick was now to avoid hearing the outcome. As luck would have it, the plane was delayed, and then delayed some more. Then it went to pick up more passengers in the Dominican. But the plane had to circle there endlessly before it could land. In fact, it used up so much fuel circling that it had to touch down in Miami before continuing to our final destination in NY. As the plane touches down in Miami, some douchey guy on a cell phone yells out, guess what everybody, the Giants won!!! This was past midnight now and I was ready to kill him. Here’s the really crazy part. When we got home, we watched the whole thing anyway, wrapping up past 4 in the morning. Before you report me to child services, it’s important to note that the kids were off on Christmas break for another week. But this was the genesis for Al, trying to avoid the Knick game. I’m hoping to get over this habit when I grow up.

That’s it, ladies and gents. We’ll see you next week with two brand new ones, hot off the proverbial press.

Andy and John