Happy ChrismaHanukwanzaakah 12/24/21

I know, what about Kwanzaa? Listen, it’s hard to combine Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa into one happy word, so I stole ChrismaHanukwanzaakah from The Urban Dictionary and the OC. But please keep it between us that I ever watched The OC. I have an excuse. The kids were young teens and we used to watch it with them. The problem was, they got bored and we got hooked. Had to hang in there until the bitter end. But that’s our only example of such deviant behavior. Well, unless you count Dawson’s Creek. I mean, who among us didn’t shed a tear when Dawson Leary’s dad, Mitch died in a collision with a truck at night? Granted, when his ice cream fell off the cone onto the floor on the passenger side, Mitch should never have bent over to pick up the ice cream. But when he did and set his eyes back on the road, what did he see except for blinding headlights and a blaring truck horn? I can’t go on. Suffice it to say, it left an everlasting mark. So for now let’s go with ChrismaHanuKwanzaakah. Feel free to write in if you’ve got a better way to keep everyone happy.

But this comic came to John when he and his wife Linda went shopping for a Christmas tree. I must confess, my wife Joanie and I don’t have one because we’re Jewish and celebrate Chanukah. Anyway, the tree farm had a tree shaker, so the loose pine needles don’t get all over your floor. And he wondered, what would happen if the shaker shook too hard. Your answer is comic #1. One final note on Christmas trees. My daughter Ali, when she was a little girl in a car seat, used to love the pretty Christmas tree in Dobbs Ferry where we would exit the highway to go home. Every time we passed it she’d say “want a Christmas Tree, want a Christmas tree.” And we’d patiently explain, “We don’t celebrate Christmas honey, we’re Jewish.” Finally, when she became 5, she crossed her arms and defiantly responded, “Fine, then I’ll marry someone Christmas.” 25 years later, that’s exactly what she did. And tomorrow the family is going to their house to exchange presents under their beautifully decorated tree. But for our Jewish friends and readers, they celebrated Hanukkah too.

Now onto the holiday card. We immediately liked using the bare tree as the symbol for our holiday card. One reason is because it makes for a neat package this week: shake the tree bare and then use the bare tree as our card. But the other reason was it symbolized 2021 for us. We checked out our Happy New Year card from last year and it showed the cast kicking 2020 out the door. Couldn’t wait for 2020 to leave. But guess what, 2021 hasn’t proven to be much better, at least as far as Covid goes. But, it’s a new year, with new discoveries and maybe, just maybe we can kick this thing in the butt. Anything, anything, to not have to keep dancing this dance. I leave you with a funny scene from two weeks ago. My wife and I went to a Broadway show, the Lehman Trilogy. Before the curtain went up, I noticed this guy one row in front, talking and gesticulating with his mask under his nose. I gently tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to please pull his mask above his nose. After the first intermission I went to buy a bottle of water and came back to my seat and took a big sip. He turned around in his seat and said, “Excuse me, can you please pull up your mask?” Yikes.

Happy Holidays and we will see you next week with two new ones. The last two for 2021.

Andy and John

Happy Holidays 12/25/2020

Happy Holidays. And good riddance to 2020, though we’re supposed to save that sentiment for next week’s blog. Anyhow, with holiday season upon us we did a holiday themed two pack of comics. Now I celebrate Hanukkah and John is a Christmas guy, so we settled on this idea which gave a shout out to the both of us. But what about Festivus, you ask? Good question. Did you know, that was actually a thing before Seinfeld? No kidding. It seems that one Mr. Daniel O’Keefe of Readers Digest made it up in the ‘60’s, because he was tired of family squabbles around the holidays. He even called for sitting around the table for the Airing of Grievances. I kid you not. And get this, his son Dan became a writer for Seinfeld and wrote the Festivus episode which made the made up holiday famous. For those of you keeping count, the official date is December, 23rd, the date the elder O’Keefe had his first date with his future wife. But I digress. The storing and retrieving of ornaments is apparently such a struggle, it’s almost not worth it. I wouldn’t know. I’m a Jew. But my daughter, who for years, yearned for a tree, showed us and eventually married a Methodist and has that damned tree every year!

As for the holiday card, well that sprung from the mind of John. It’s tough to kiss from 6-feet apart, and by the way, that’s a hell of a lot of mistletoe.

So whether you have your holidays on zoom or together wearing masks, stay safe and we will see you next week with a new comic and a New Year’s poster wishing 2020 a not very fond farewell.

And if this blog seems a bit short, well, cartoonists get some time off too.

See you next week,

Andy and John

Smart Devices 12/18/2020

Smart devices. They all promise to make our lives so much better. But are we smart enough to use them? There are smart refrigerators that tell you when you’re running low on milk, smart toaster ovens that know what you’ve put inside them and how long to bake or broil said item, smart watches, phones, tv’s, and I’m not smart enough to go on with more examples. Our first comic this week deals with a smartphone. Now if you are like me or John, you’ve gotten rid of your landline because it was just an expensive relic that did nothing more than receive useless junk calls. As time went on, my wife and I started ignoring our landline when it rang and our friends and family only called our cell phones. Eventually, the robocallers or bots caught on and now our smartphones get as many junk calls as our landlines used to get. Ahh, but we were smart, so we thought, so we’d outsmart our smartphones. First thing we did was sign up to the National Do Not Call Registry. Total waste of time. Next option was to immediately hang up after each call from Bluffton, Tenn. or Portsmouth, NH, where we didn’t know a soul. Then go into last call, info, and finally, block caller. Also not worth a hot damn. Because as soon as you block this particular number, whoever it is just calls you back on another number. As the pirates used to say, arghhhhhh! So we made a comic out of it. If anyone has any suggestions about how to defeat these seemingly endless crank calls, we’d love to hear about it and we’ll post it on the site, but until then, just don’t answer.

Next up is the smartwatch. I wonder if this happens to you. Almost every night I’ll be sitting on my couch around 10:30 or 11 when I feel a bump on my wrist. Inevitably it’s my watch, telling me it’s time to breathe. And immediately I think, do I really need a reminder telling me it’s time to breathe? Isn’t that sort of obvious? I mean, don’t you need to breathe to be able to sort of, ‘ya know, live? Oh I know, they mean deep breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, but still, soooo annoying. What’ll it do next, tell me when it’s time to stand? Oh wait, it already does that. This next part is no joke. Kara Swisher from the N.Y. Times wrote that she bought a new watch to test for a column she was writing. The watch measured her pulse and told her, among other things, that she seemed upset at 4:46 pm yesterday and happy at 9:27 pm. Can’t you see it now, an ad for an antidepressant or Tito’s Vodka at 4:47 followed by a promo for a new romantic comedy at 9:28? The more and more devices are thinking for us, the less and less we are being asked to think for ourselves. Now if only someone can come up with a program to write this blog I can lie down and take a nap. John, who cannot be replaced by a bot, is busy working on our Christmas Card.

Have a great weekend and Happy Holidays,

Andy and John