On getting out there 07/31/2020

Well, we have to get to some form of normal at some point, right? So we thought of Al and Joanne taking a trip on an airplane. The poor airlines have to make money somehow, so they sell us first class, business class, coach, even coach with extra leg room, pillows, snacks and our personal favorite, early boarding. Who knew there could be so many categories, and sub-categories? And how is it that no matter how much privilege we pay for, we still wind of getting on last, with no overhead room for the bags which now go to the cargo hold and then cost you an extra hour as you watch the baggage carousel spin without your bag on it? Ain’t it good to have priority? And that was all it took for our first comic.

Next up we wondered what would happen when people went back to their physical offices. And what would employers do to make their returning employees overjoyed at being back? Plan a corporate retreat? John and I have both been on our share of company retreats before and this time we discussed the kind with “team-building exercises.” I would venture that everyone who has ever been part of a “trust fall” contemplated doing exactly what Marv did and let the bum fall. But nobody would really do that. Except this is a comic, which gives us the right to do anything we like. Sorry Gladys.

Have a great weekend and we’ll see you next Friday (and please, refrain from trust falls),

Andy and John

On two topics that change with age, work and sex 07/23/2020

Let’s start with sex, because, why not? It’s one of those topics you think about constantly in your teens and twenties, talk about with your friends, and seek out constantly. All the models and images you see are people in their 20’s and maybe even 30’s but not much beyond that. Except maybe Jennifer Aniston. But then as you get older, you settle down. Get married. Have kids. Which makes you even older. And more tired. And after a certain age, it’s not a topic you’re talking to your friends about. At least not very often. Which leads us to today’s first comic. One of us (named John) was at a dinner party when a conversation, much like the one in the comic, actually occurred. If that same revelation happened in your twenties or thirties, you might be inclined to ask, “Costumes? What kind of costumes?” At least I’d be inclined to ask that. Truth is, I still am but now l know better than to ask. So sex is still in the air, but now it’s lurking in the background. One of our favorite strips ran a couple years ago. Craig, our confirmed bachelor, was about to have sex for the first time with a woman he was dating. She asked, “Lights on or…” and before she could get the last word out, they both proclaimed, “Off!!!” Telling us what kind of costumes you wear to “keep it fresh” is something we can hear on a “need to know” basis. And we don’t need to know.

The second strip deals with going back to work. It may not have been the greatest to begin with, but now that you’ve been used to working from home, do any of us really want to go back to the office? Back to running for the commuter train during rush hour? Or sitting in your car in bumper to bumper traffic? Or listening to your 32 year-old boss drone on about the vital importance of search engine optimization? Sure you may miss the comraderie, but the rest of it? And now add plastic partitions, indoor mask-wearing, and recoiling in horror when you’ve absent-mindedly touched something. Quick, anyone have some Purell? My forearm touched the banister!” For these and other reasons, Marv is counting down the days until retirement, or even worse, involuntary retirement.

So keep it covered, wash often and we’ll see you next week with two new comics.

Andy and John

Write about what you know 07/17/2020

We often get mail asking us to write more about one particular group or another, and we always reply, we like to write about what we know. That is why the situations (hopefully) feel authentic. One of my favorite emails came from a reader who asked, “Why don’t you feature a cranky old gay man like myself?” That’s a great question and we will try to do more of that in the future, but it will be our perception of a cranky old gay man. Not beig cranky old gay men ourselves, it would sound inauthentic to try and sound like one. Granted, we are plenty cranky and old, just not gay. But most of the subjects we write about are comic spins on things that actually happened to one of us. This week features two takes on stuff that happened to John.

The first came from an observation that John’s wife Linda isn’t particularly fond of bugs. So we imagined a situation where Al and his grandson are inspecting a bug with great interest. Al is feigning interest because he’s enjoying his grandson’s interest. Joanne doesn’t share the same intrigue and may have reacted with a little more passion than the situation called for. We would just like to reiterate that no actual bugs were injured in the drawing of this comic strip.

Next up also came from a trip to the dog trainer. Since the last dog I had was 20 years ago, this is firmly from John’s camp. After learning what dogs react to and how to make them obedient, Rachel decides to try the technique on Marv. Of course, very little works on Marv that doesn’t include food. In a previous strip, faithful readers may recall Sam mourning the loss of his dog. When his new wife wants to quickly replace the dog, Sam naturally wonders if she’d be so quick to replace him when HE died. For those of you who think this is crazy, ask yourself this. How much do you humanize your dog? Hey, they’re part of the family. We can’t help it. Think about it, if you’re in your 60’s and get to the point where you have to put your dog down, are you going to be so quick to get a new one? Or are you going to enjoy your new found freedom from having to find dog sitters when you go away or from worrying about how long it’s been since the dog has been let outside and whether you should skip dessert and get home? Maybe it’s the same way with husbands. Hopefully not, but in any case, have a nice weekend and don’t ask for a Corona with lime. It wasn’t too long ago that a Corona with lime was something you looked forward to at the end of the day. Now Corona and Lyme are two of the most worrisome diseases on the planet.

Boy did this turn maudlin in a second. On second thought just ignore the entire last paragraph except for the “have a nice weekend” part.

Andy and John

I've got too much time on my hands 07/10/2020

If you’re retired, you’ve got too much time to think. And ponder. And rethink. And re-ponder. You think about useful stuff and not so useful stuff. Like retronyms. And what’s the use of your ingenious insights if you can’t share them? John and I both have a love for words and for trivia. Combine them and you come up with a bunch of stuff not many other people give two hoots about. For instance, what’s the only place on Manhattan Island that isn’t part of New York, or for that matter, the United States? It’s considered international territory. It’s the United Nations. Or did you know that Times Square was named Times Square because that’s where the NY Times was published? Or that Woody Allen’s real name is Allen Konigsberg? Well we are filled with such useless, trivial info and couldn’t wait to share it with you all. So we dumped it on Al’s son, because it would take John way too long to draw all of you. And, even though he has great love for his dad, he eventually throws up the white flag. Meanwhile, did you know that Babe Ruth once ate 13 hot dogs at…never mind.

Next up is Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of what it takes to be really good at something. 10,000 hours of practice. Now that might be useful to an 11 year old kid trying to be a great baseball player. Or ballet dancer. Or writer, painter, chef, etc. But what about a 60-something guy trying to learn harmonica? (Or golf, which I still haven’t mastered after at least 10,000 hours, thank you very much Mr. Gladwell). How much patience would it take from the person trying to accrue the aforementioned 10,000 hours of practice, and more importantly, how much patience would it take from his friends and family members forced to listen to many of those musically-mangled hours? Our conclusion: few people would have the patience, up to and including Marv’s wife Rachel.

Hopefully you guys have the patience to wait for us to reach 10,000 hours of comic creation, before we become “experts.” In the meantime we will continue our journey with two brand new comics next week.

Thanks for hanging in there and have a terrific weekend,

Andy and John

Happy 4th of July 07/03/2020

Happy 4th of July. Just think of the possibilities. You can gather up the whole family, kids and grandkids and go to the ballgame, or if it’s hot, a trip to the pool or better yet, the beach. And afterwards you can all enjoy a trip to your favorite restaurant or have a cookout at home. But wait a minute. There are no ballgames. And unless your governer is in denial, he or she has already closed the public pool and the public beaches not to mention indoor dining. And that stuff about the kids coming over? Well you can’t invite the kid who went into the office last week but had to quarantine since someone in her office contracted the virus three days ago, and then she can’t bring her husband or the kids so there goes that idea, etc., etc., etc. Which is how John got the inspiration for his poster, a socially distant 4th. At least there’s Hamilton on Disney +, so thank goodness for small favors.

But onto the next one about watching TV at home with mom or mom-in-law. I kept telling John about Ozark, this awesome series on Netflix my wife and I binge-watched and he kept saying, my mother-in-law is here for the time being and she won’t appreciate the language, violence and nudity. So we came up with our second comic, mom friendly TV. The day before we posted it, I was in Pittsburgh with my wife at her mother’s house and we came home after dinner and wanted to watch a movie. Well there’s only so much Hallmark Channel a man can take so we went with our friend Sandy’s advice and watched a Mark Ruffalo movie, “Begin Again.” Joanie’s 98 year old mom watched with varying degrees of interest, and when it ended, I asked her if she was okay with the language. Now in 37 years of knowing Joanie’s mom Charlotte, I can say I have never heard her curse even once. But when I asked if the language was offensive she said with a nice smile on her face, “No, it didn’t bother me. It was all fuck this and fuck that and fuck you. Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

What else can I say, besides have a Happy 4th and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Andy and John

Back to (some form of) Normal 06/26/2020

It had to happen sooner or later. Slowly but surely we’re getting back some of our old lives. Traffic is returning (not so good). Restaurants are reopening (good), but only at half capacity, (not good). People are getting a little less stringent about their masks, (good when it’s us, not when it’s somebody else). And yes, we feel brave enough to order takeout (definitely mixed). And that is the impetus of today’s first comic. We’ve seen so many places have so many different rules about what they will and will not allow. There’s our favorite Italian restaurant, which asks what color and make car you drive and your license plate, before you pull up to the curb. But I’m wary of that, because when they ask what kind of car I drive, if I say “an Audi,” will they say, “Oh, in that case we have to add a 20% GLCT (German Luxury Car Tax).

At any rate John and I have tossed around war stories about getting takeout and the tremendous steps you have to take before you show up (it’s an amalgamation of every rule the two of us have encountered), and we wondered, what would happen if you forgot something? Would you have the patience to go back their again and ask for it? John and I both decided, definitely not. Even when the local restaurant two blocks from my house forgot the salad dressing. Bastards.

The other comic, and this week you WILL receive two comics, is about, heaven forbid, going back to work. Since John and I both stopped going to an office before we started the comic, we can only imagine what it would be like, but whatever it is, it’ll likely suck. Oh sure it’ll be good to see your friends again but do you have to wear your mask indoors? What about gloves? And what about those perks, like the coffee maker? Are you reaching into the fridge and taking out the milk carton that 27 other people have touched? And about coffee. I went into a Starbucks before they shut down for awhile and they took away all the options for personalizing your coffee. For me, it’s iced coffee, and if I want to put in skim milk and top it off with half and half, and a packet of Truvia (1 and 1/2 packets if it’s a large) I’d appreciate you not looking at me that “what a weirdo” way. At least I didn’t order oat milk. But back to the office. We imagined what Marv would think, and it went something like this: “You can take away the free pens, make me swab down my laptop after every use, and wash my hands frequently…BUT DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TAKING AWAY THE CRUMB CAKE!!!”

Believe it or not, we’re heading headlong into the summer season and we will see you next week with a new one and a happy July 4th poster, suitable for framing (just thought we’d throw that in there).

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

Happy Father's Day 06/18/2020

Is it really a Happy Father’s Day? If you’re in the New 60 age group, the kids are out of the house, although they might be back IN the house until this virus subsides sometime around summer of 2021 at which point you’ll be back to work…never mind. The thing is that with social distancing and family distancing and nobody wanting to get on a plane, family holidays are a little different than what they used to be. So John and I imagined what Father’s Day might look like in 2020. And we imagined we’d do it over Zoom, of course. And if you are like me, you have idiotically said cheers over zoom when you’ve “met for drinks or dinner” with friends. Sure you can click glasses with your spouse or partner who is sitting right next to you. But if a virtual clink with your friends or family isn’t enough, you might actually clink the computer or tablet screen itself and if you clink too hard then… So that was our first comic.

Next up was based on an observation. Now that gyms are closed and pools are closed, one of the few exercise options left is walking outside. Now if you are like us and wear your mask, then you notice other people who don’t wear their masks. The other day I was walking and saw somebody without a mask and then he sneezed! Now he turned his head towards the woods and away from the people, but still, it was like he was pointing a semi-automatic weapon at everyone. We went back and forth for a half hour about mask on or mask off for the comic but John is the artist here, so… And the point is, they still ducked for cover.

Hope you enjoyed the comics this week and if you don’t have enough to keep you occupied we put “The New 60 Coloring Book” up on the website. John posted the comics in black and white, so you can practice coloring them in and being your own cartoonist. Just don’t be too good or you’ll put us out of business.

Have a Happy Father’s Day and we’ll see you next week.

Andy and John

On second thought... 06/12/2020

John and I often talk and wonder what the hell are we going to write about, now that everything is reduced to Covid-19. But here’s the thing. Stuff just keeps happening, and since it’s different stuff than we’re used to, it often makes its way into comics. A little while ago, we did a comic about what happens at the checkout line when you have to take your gloves off to get your phone to work. The big trouble with latex gloves is trying to put them back on. I was thinking of this when last week, I found an extra latex glove in my car turned inside out. I mushed the fingers back in the right way and blew it up like a balloon. Just like the clowns do at birthday parties to make the kids laugh. When I got upstairs I brought the glove up with me and proudly blew it up for my wife. I said, “Look, I figured out a fool-proof way to get the gloves to stop turning inside out.” And I blew them up. John had the exact same reaction as Joanie when I told him the story. They both responded by saying some form of “You put your mouth around that thing??!!” SInce this is a family-oriented site, I can’t repeat exactly what they said, but trust me, it was similar. John and I worked hard on crafting the language until we came up with “covid-covered latex surface,” and then John threw in the bit about saving 49 cents. Not 50 mind you, 49. And voila, we had our first comic. I mean, is it really that bad to blow the thing up? On second thought…

The next comic standing is about another idea that seemed good at the time. The logic was impeccable. If you grow your own veggies and herbs, you can not only pick your own salad at night, you can save extra trips to the supermarket. Except when you get to the nursery you find it is packed with people having the exact same idea. It’s packed more tightly than the rows of tomato plants. It’s packed more…you get the idea. In order to avoid one crowd at the grocery store, you are faced with an even bigger crowd at the nursery. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But on second thought…

Have a great weekend, stay safe and we will see you next Friday with two new ones hot off our computers.

Andy and John

Musings on Plexiglass and Getting Older

I’ve got a friend who made adjustments to his office before anyone was discussing the pandemic. He got standing desks for everyone and in an attempt to encourage togetherness, he lowered the partitions between cubicles. Uh oh, or as Astro from the Jetsons would say, “Ruh roh.” So now he has to do it all over again. John and I wondered what Al would have to do to his Pizza on a Stick franchise, to encourage employee safety. Unfortunately, Al being Al, he forgot to order the plexiglass with a pre-cut slot. Sometimes plexiglass protectors are a giant pain, even if there’s a hole in the plexi. For instance, did you ever try to use your phone to pay in a parking lot? There’s usually a space at the bottom of the glass shield, with a curved coin tray at the bottom. If you happen to have one of those bigger sized iPhones, it’s not an easy fit. Anyway, Al went the parking garage one better and left the space out altogether. By the way, it’s a good thing John is also the artist, since he’s got to figure out how to draw glass so you guys will know it’s glass.

The second comic today happened on Andy’s mid-May birthday. It happened to the one of us that is 5 years older than the other one. We’ll never tell which is which. Okay, we will. Sure John has a white beard and everything but I (Andy) am the older one. While discussing our relative ages it occured to us that John is still in his EARLY 60’s while Andy has graduated to his LATE 60’s. Labels, just labels. I mean, you’re only as old as you feel and I feel like…never mind. John and I both worked for an advertising icon named Linda Kaplan Thaler and when she hit a certain age in her 60’s she said “I’m in my incredibly late 40’s.” I think we will go with that definition instead.

So the young, spry John and the creaky, old Andy wish you a beautiful, corona-free, weekend. And we will be back at you next week with a couple new ones, ripped from the pages of whatever it is we experience.

Andy and John

The New Reality 05/29/2020

Have you experienced this at the grocery store? You get ready to go, put on your latex gloves (we haven’t used this much latex since college, but that’s another story), slip on your mask, take along your disinfectant wipes and off you go. First anomaly is you get the cart and THEN they have wipes at the front entrance after you’ve already touched the cart. Now okay, we can deal with the one way signs down each aisle and the obvious impossibility of maintaining 6-feet when the person in front of you, mask around his or her chin, is pondering which of 36 varieties of paleo granola to pick. But, then you finally lose your patience and pass them. BUT, and we do mean BUT, the real challenge occurs at the checkout line. Do you think those taped x’s are really 6 feet apart? And is that guy in back of you edging just a little too close? Even that is fine. The real kicker is what we turned into a comic. Andy read that you can pick up the virus when the cashier swipes your credit card through the machine, so he uses his phone and pays in that way. Only problen is A) the phone’s facial recognition feature doesn’t recognize you wearing a mask, requiring him to be one of those aforementioned jerks who proceeds to pull his mask around his chin and B) if the facial recognition still won’t work he now can’t punch in his passcode without first pulling off the damned latex gloves. But you gotta eat, so….

Our second one came from a near mystical experience in Coney Island. Andy decided on his birthday a couple weeks ago to drive down to Brooklyn and walk along the boardwalk. It was a beautiful spring day and he couldn’t pass Stillwell Ave, without getting off the boardwalk and going to Nathan’s. He got the requisite dog and fries and came back to the boardwalk to find a bench facing the ocean, with no one else sitting on it. He carefully pulled out a lysol wipe and wiped the bench down. He unwrapped what is considered the world’s greatest hot dog, and took a bite. It was so good, he closed his eyes and listened to the gentle surf hitting the shore and the sounds of the seagulls. Heaven. Until suddenly some guy comes bounding down the boardwalk blaring rap music from, get this, a boombox! No kidding. Some ear-splitting hip hop dittie about peace, love and understanding. Not really. Anyway, Andy recounted this to John and he said, I got it. Boom boxes and zoom boxes. One thing remains constant. We hate them as much today as we did 30 years ago.

So that’s it for this week. Next week are two goodies about how it feels to get yet another year older and we return to Al’s pizzeria as he considers reopening.

Have a wonderful weekend and if we pass each other, let’s make sure we pull our masks up, okay?

Andy and John

Food Fight 05/22/2020

Now, more than ever, our lives revolve around food. With everyone sheltering in place, we are more likely to talk about food, think about food, shop for food and yes, fight about food. This week’s two comics take their lead from that. The first one comes from the insight that when you wear a mask, 1) most people don’t know who you are and 2) most people can’t hear what you say. Andy goes on a lot of hikes and when he passes somebody not wearing a mask, he mutters into his mask, “wear a f^*%king mask.” When he sees a mask worn under someone’s chin, he is reminded of Bill Maher’s comment, “wearing a mask around your chin is like wearing a condom around your balls. It doesn’t work!!!”

When Andy related his habit of muttering mean stuff under his mask to John, it inspired John to think about point #1, “under that mask, you can do just about anything you want, because nobody knows who you are.” Despite being married to women, Andy and John both love Broadway show tunes, so our initial thought was to have Marv belt one out. But then John wanted the theme from Oklahoma and Andy wanted “Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes,” so we scrapped that and came up with “What’s New Pussycat?” which is not a show tune at all so you might as well forget the previous two sentences. And don’t suggest we delete them, it’s not in our contract.

The second comic strip today is also concerned with food. If you’re like either of us, you want to minimize trips to the grocery store. That being said, you probably eye what’s in the fridge and plan your next meal accordingly. What if you saw some cheddar cheese and had two slices of bread? You might ponder a grilled cheese sandwich. What about if you had two slices of bacon left and wanted to limit your dairy? Well then let’s make it a BLT. What if you wanted to cut out meat? We didn’t get that far and it messes up the idea (eg: one impossible burger left, not so funny), so we landed on a BLT. What if you inadvertently ate the one thing your spouse had their eye on? Or what if he or she unwittingly did that to you? How far would you go to replace what they longed for? Apparently, not that far.

That’s it for this week. Andy is off to watch Game 3 of the 1986 World Series, and please, don’t tell him who won. He’s pretending he doesn’t remember so the game still seems exciting to him (don’t ask). We will be back next week with two new ones that reflect our new reality. Gosh that sounded dire, but like the comics hopefully show, you can still have a bit of fun, even in a pandemic.

Andy and John

Relations in the time of Corona 5/15/2020

So you’ve run through 6 seasons of Breaking Bad, 3 seasons of Ozark, the NFL Channel’s Best SuperBowls of all time, The NBA channel’s Best Game 7’s, Covid extravaganzas with stars singing from home, Homeland, Better Call Saul, Marriage Story, and let’s not forget a replay of Linsanity for you Knick fans longing for 2012, and the question is…now what?

With less to occupy people’s time, some folks take to reading recipes. Inventive recipes with, shall we say, exotic ingredients. Said exotic ingredients are easy to copy down from a recipe onto a shopping list, but they prevent an altogether different challenge for the person who does the grocery shopping. What on earth is tamarind paste (found in a recent recipe for bbq ribs)? Do you find it in the ethnic foods shelf? Or is it in produce? Can you use a tamarind instead, and what the hell does one even look like? Who do you bother to ask, “Uhh excuse me, do you know where to find the tamarind paste?” The guy stocking the shelves? The person at the information counter? Dilemmas like these formed the basis for our first comic. And just so you know, Andy went through all this only to discover he doesn’t much care for the taste of tamarind.

The second comic in your scroll comes directly from the first paragraph of this blog. After watching every single show your friends have recommended, now what? Board games? When’s the last time you played one? And which ones do you even have anymore? And you mistakenly left Monopoly at the beach house you rented last summer, didn’t you? John instantly recalled the “Hungry, Hungry Hippos” game and the incredibly silly commercial featuring animated, rhumba-dancing hippos and we had our second comic.

We will be back again next week with two new ones that explore our rapidly decreasing worlds. I mean, how many comics can you come up with about staying at home, grocery shopping, binge-watching or a trip to the drug store? Stay tuned and we’ll let you know.

Have a great and safe weekend.

Andy and John

How times have changed 05/08/2020

One thing about this pandemic…it reduces the amount of personal “touches” we have in our daily lives. I’m not just talking about the family members you can’t see and hug. I’m talking about all the tangential people in your life that are suddenly gone. For a suburban New Yorker, there are the people you knew on the train into the city every day, the guy at the bagel and coffee cart, your coworkers, the people behind the counter at the place where you picked up lunch, etc. You also did stuff like going out to dinner, going to the occasional ball game, movie theater and Broadway show. Now all of this is temporarily gone. And the people you do run into are all wearing masks. Andy went to the local coffee shop to pick up a 1 lb. bag of beans last week and two people on the six-foot-apart line he was standing on had the following conversation. Larry: Jim, is that you? Jim: Yeah, who’s this? Larry: It’s me, Larry. Jim: Oh, I didn’t recognize you with the mask, (at which point they each pulled down their masks, which kind of defeats the whole purpose). But that incident is a perfect segue into our first comic.

Andy and his wife Joanie took advantage of Whole Foods’ Senior Hour, where the entire store is open only to people age 60 or over, for one hour, from 8-9 am. Once they got going, they heard, from behind a mask, “Andy, Joanie, hi. It’s my first time taking advantage of being over 60. This is great.” To which Andy thought to himself, is he REALLY over 60 or just close enough so he thinks no one will notice? You know, the only thing worse are the people who bring 12 items to the ‘10 items or less’ express lane. But who’s counting? Anyway, that was the impetus for this week’s first comic.

The second as you scroll down comes from the pandemic giving us so much free time, we can get to those projects we’ve been meaning to get to for the last 20 years. This is clearly more of a John thing than an Andy thing, since Andy has a rule that if something stays in a box through two moves and has never been opened, it’s outta here. If you haven’t gotten to the kids’ bar and bat mitzvah books by the time they hit 30, it ain’t happening. John, in contrast, actually gets to those things. And it is there he noticed he had two prints of every photo he had taken, even the accidental ones of his foot. Good old Fotomat. We guess the offer made sense at the time.

So what’s up for future comics? It seems we only go to two types of places, supermarkets and drug stores, and what’s more exciting than that? We will spend the next week washing our hands and coming up with more CITOC (Comics In the Time Of Covid).

Stay safe,

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

Fun is in the eye of the beholder

Fun is whatever you decide is fun. If you’ve ever given a kid a Christmas present they were begging for and then watched them completely ignore the present and play with the empty cardboard box, you know what we’re talking about.

In our first comic this week, we go back to Al’s new franchise, PIzza On a Stick, to see how it’s working out. Apparently not so well. The employees, like good employees everywhere, are bored out of their minds. They use the sticks, meant for serving pizzas on sticks, to wage swordfights, leaving the franchise stickless. If you’ve gone inside any fast food chain lately to pick up an order, you’ll recognize the behavior that inspired this comic. Now it’s not just any fast food place, mind you. It’s the places that don’t have drive-thru windows. The places that were designed to encourage people to dine in. Like 5 Guys, which Andy happened to go to before the shelter at home phase of this pandemic response really kicked in. It was right after the last time he ventured outside to play golf, socially distant golf mind you, and he was now hungry. He cautiously ventured inside, cautiously pulling his long-sleeved shirt over his hand to avoid touching the door handle, and saw a completely empty store save for two employees who never bothered to look up, until the third hello (hello? Hello? HELLLLLOOOOO!) One employee finally looked up from his phone and responded while he had to ask the other to go to the grill and start cooking. And by the way, they overcooked the damned burger. Andy also tried hard not to retouch the sleeve he had pulled over his hand but can’t be completely sure he succeeded.

At any rate, the next comic also comes from personal experience. There are some couples where one of the partners enjoys driving with the top down and the other one…doesn’t. This is especially true among bald men (who don’t have any hair to mess up and their wives (who hopefully do). Andy mentioned this to John. And John, being the thoughtful one, said so the only time they’d drive a convertible is on vacation. Which made Andy smile, because those were the only times he’d be driving a convertible. On vacations or commercial shoots. For him it was the sun, the wind, the thrill of the open road. For his wife it was hair pins, baseball caps or tightly wrapped scarves and having to shout in order to get heard. To get back to the title of this blog, fun is in the eye of the beholder.

Well there you go. We promised a week of corona-free comics and we did it. Next week, we will be back with two new ones that refererence our new reality. Unless we forget to send them out because we didn’t realize what day it was. One last thought. A special shout out to Andy’s wife Joanie wishing her a very happy birthday. And how do you celebrate? Movies? Out. Restaurant? Out. Concert, ball game, Broadway show? Out, out, out. Or do you get take-out, pick up a cake and watch Ozark on Netflix? In other words, a night like all the other ones that have preceeded it for three weeks (except for the cake part). Sigh.

Have a great weekend, at least the part of it you don’t spend washing your hands.

Andy and John.

Adjustments 4/17/2020

During these trying times, we all have to make adjustments. It’s not that our needs and wants change. It’s that we have to go about fulfilling them in a different way. This first idea was sparked by a conversation Andy had with his daughter Ali a couple weeks ago. He offered to drive to Brooklyn to where she lives, and drive Ali and her husband Mark up to the suburbs where Andy lives and then back home after dinner. In order to sweeten the deal he offered to make his famous (well maybe not famous, but good, damned good) lemon sole with capers. Ali replied that while she didn’t feel comfortable leaving her house, we could cook the same meal together on Zoom. Andy told that to John and that turned into the Virtual Date comic which appears first in your scroll. We imagined what would happen to our divorcee character, Craig, in such a moment. He could still try to meet someone online, but they would have to keep their social distance. They couldn’t go to a restaurant even if they wanted to so we imagined what it would be like to cook dinner “together” but in separate places. Not quite as satisfying as the real thing. Andy also has a friend Rich, who with a third friend, wanted to tape the Giants-Patriots 2007 Super Bowl which was on Fox last Sunday at 3. But, it was a nice day so we decided we would tape and all watch together on Zoom at 8 pm. But then we thought well, we’re going to fast forward through commercials at different rates, we won’t start at exactly the same second, and ya know what? This idea isn’t gonna work at all. Sometimes the virtual thing is almost as good. Other times, not so much.

Which brings us to the second comic which blissfully has nothing to do with Corona (or maybe it does and that’s why Andy was so weak, he couldn’t open the jar in question.) Truth is, this incident occurred last summer, when the only thing you thought about regarding Corona was a cold, frosty beer with a wedge of lime. So sadly, there is no excuse. Andy had a jar of capers (there’s that famous lemon sole and capers recipe again) and for the life of him, couldn’t get it open. He tried with his hands, he used a trusty jar opener which he’s had for at least 40 years. He tried banging the lid on the corner of the counter. He tried running it under hot water. He tried everything he knew, and then swallowed his pride and asked Joanie if she could open it. She couldn’t either, but then she suggested he swallow his pride even further. No, she didn’t actually say that, but what she did say was , “Why don’t you take it to the hardware store.” Now remember, this was before Corona, so wearing a mask into the store was not an option. Nonetheless, Andy swallowed hard and went to the store with the JIQ (Jar In Question). Just like in the comic, he asked if they had a tool to open jars and just like in the comic, the guy said, “Let me see that.” And in a mere second he pressed down, twisted and off it came! Andy made a lame joke, like “I probably loosened it for you,” and the guy just smiled. Bastard. It’s one of those adjustments we make to getting older. Sometimes we need a little help when before we didn’t.

So that’s it for this week and next week, we plan two comics that aren’t corona-centered. Although you never know what might change. In the meantime have a great weekend and if you have any extra Lysol Disenfectant wipes or Charmin extra soft, please send them to… never mind.

Disinfectantly yours,

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

Now what??? 3/27/2020

If you’ve come to the New 60 blog for advice on how to handle the corona virus, you are just as clueless as we are. And while we don’t know exactly how to handle our isolation and social distance, at least we can make fun of it. Apologies in advance if anyone or their loved ones are suffering from this horribly scary virus. We would never make light of suffering. We are just poking fun at how we’ve had to change our lives.

And just as Corona has changed everything we do in real life, it also has an affect on our comics. This week we heard from two of our loyal fans, Bill and Diane Mech, who pointed out that the guys should not be meeting in the diner since just about every restaurant in America (and most of the world) is closed. In fact Bill suggested we put them in separate booths, which we did. And then we went a step further into the land of the absurd and had them break in, of course. Thanks Bill and Diane.

In coming up with two new comics per week, we try to stay more than a month ahead of when we publish, so we have a stockpile of finished work. Well, when you get ahead you run the risk of being out of touch with what is happening here and now. We will be sure to serve up some off kilter takes on our changing reality but also, we will just do plain old life. A) because we’re optimistic the world will eventually return to “normal” and B) because we already thought up all these cool ideas and we’re too stubborn to scrap them.

Now the second idea you’ll see is based on another result of living with the threat of Corona. If you’re into sports like John, you’ll notice this. If you’re really, really into sports like Andy, you are suffering without anything to watch at night. In fact, one of Andy’s favorite activities is to watch a game while texting with his son or to actually watch with him. They get passionate about the games, the strategy and the moves and they debate what moves their teams should make. What do you do when you no longer have any games to watch? You can’t yell and debate over a replay of a game from last year (yes, Andy has lowered himself to watching the occasional Mets and Knicks 2019 reruns) when he already knows the result. One night when on the phone with his brother-in-law Buzzy, he heard about people so desparate, they were watching chess. Bingo! A comic was born. John and Andy imagined the same passion for baseball strategy being applied to a chess match. And chess, by the way, is considered a sport. Really. C’mon. I mean it’s easier to imagine an NBA player being good at chess than it is to imagine a chess player being good at hoops, but we digress.

At any rate, we want to thank you from 6 feet away for continuing to follow us. As we see it, everyone can use a little laugh, especially in these troubling times.

See you (digitally) next week,

Andy and John

On low testosterone and back seat drivers 3/20/2020

Oh the things our parents used to let us get away with. When the rules of the day were, “Be home in time for dinner at 6,” and then you could go out and do whatever the hell you wanted. We had toy guns, chocolate cigarettes and cigars, nobody heard of a bicycle helmet or a seat belt, and bread and pasta were good for you. Did our generation turn to “helicopter parenting” as a result from being left alone to do crazy stuff, or do we just know more than we used to and are living in more dangerous times? We suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle. In any case, it’s fun to revist our youth and this is more about John’s youth than Andy’s, since Andy grew up in NYC and didn’t take as many car trips. We used to think we were sooooo funny, sitting in the back seat of the woody station wagon, no seat belts, hatch door open, when any unsuspected bump could send us hurtling on to the highway (somehow, thankfully, that never happened) and then shooting water pistols at the cars behind us. Could you imagine pulling out a toy gun and pointing it at an unsuspecting driver today? The other driver would call 911 and report you, the cops would stop you and you’d lose custody while your kids spent the rest of their lives in foster care. Maybe that’s a tad extreme, but it’s that kind of thinking that lead to becoming helicopter parents in the first place. Andy would like to revisit his parenting techniques and just tell the kids, “Be home in time for dinner at 6,” but that probably won’t work since a) both of the kids are over 30 and b) they live on their own and c) we never eat before 7.

Onto comic #2, which is a more sensitive subject. We both notice that we are more prone to getting emotional while watching a sappy movie or reading a sad book these days. More than in the past. When you lift your glasses to swipe the tears away while watching Sleepless in Seattle (Andy) or grab an extra Kleenex brand tissue (sorry, we were both in advertising for decades and can’t help ourselves) to dab at our eyes during an old war movie (John), the fact is that something is going on. Some scientists link this new emotionality to a drop in testosterone, something NO man would ever want to think was happening to him. Changing, not admitting to the changes, this is where the potential for comedy lives. Now let us make one thing perfectly clear. Neither Andy nor John’s weepiness at the aforementioned prompts has ANYTHING to do with lowered testosterone. That’s just our characters in The New 60, not us. Okay? Good now that we’ve cleared that up, we need to go back and watch the end of “The Notebook.”

Have a great weekend, wash your hands and we’ll see you next week with our take on coping in these Coronavirus times.

Andy and John