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