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

Twice as Nice 2/25/22

Last Tuesday’s date was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Truth be told, I did pass it up only to be reminded by John on Monday, “Do you realize tomorrow is 2/22/22? We won’t have another date like that until 11 years from now when it’s 3/3/33?) I added that even that is not as cool as 2/22/22, with it’s one number repeated 5 times. But I have one even better. My niece Emery (actually my niece Tahlia’s daughter so I guess that makes her my grand-niece or 3rd cousin once-removed or whatever, but her mom calls me Uncle Andy, so let’s leave it at that). Anyway her date of birth was 11/11/11 and this year she’ll turn 11. Got that all straightened out? Good. That makes one of us. So we made up a comic about 2/22/22. Frankly, it would be better if this were the 22nd month, but who’s counting? We did the comic. And Al this time represents John’s thinking, while Al’s duly-unimpressed wife, Joanne represents mine. Gee, that’s great, now let me get back to whatever it is I was doing before you interrupted me with this totally unimportant detail. Until you can match Emery’s birthday, with one number repeated 6 times, I ain’t impressed.

Onto the second comic of the week which actually comes up first if you click your newsletter. It concerns a broken dishwasher and the frustration of “finding a guy.” Once we get over the inherent sexism in that phrase, we can concentrate on the fact that it’s true. Trying to find a repairman or woman in today’s day and age is almost impossible. They can see you in a couple weeks, or a couple months, and then when the day draws close, they call and tell you they can’t make it after all because their current job is running late. This phenomenon has happened to yours truly in our laundry room, my bedroom closet (the door had come loose and jammed, making it impossible to access half my closet, but it’s covid and I wear nothing but sweats so it didn’t really matter), the television (streaming over a computer sucks) and, last but not least, the dishwasher. Yes, this really happened. Here’s the scene: my wife goes to Baltimore to visit her cousin for the weekend and after dropping Joanie off at the train station I come home to empty the dishwasher but, to my horror, the dishes are just sitting there in a pool of water at the bottom of the aforementioned machine. So I did what I used to do for years before finally living in a place with an actual dishwasher. I became the dishwasher. And at first it was relaxing. Then not so much. I grew to resent being the dishwasher which then metastasized into hating to be the dishwasher. I called the plumber. They answered, “Oh we don’t service dishwashers but here’s the name of a guy who does”. I called the name of the guy who does. Turns out he doesn’t. He said to call Bosch, the manufacturer. Bosch told me they could make it in 5 weeks and gave me an appointment date. I asked if they had the name of a local person who might be able to come by sooner. They said, “If we give you the name of someone else, we’ll have to cancel your appointment for next month”. I asked if they actually had the name of someone else and when they demurred, I hung up. Finally I called an appliance store who said they’d be happy to put in a new dishwasher but couldn’t repair an old one. HOWEVER, tada, they had the name of somebody who could. The guy came in, looked at the dishwasher (the machine, not me) and found a piece of a wine glass had broken off and was blocking the pump. He took the piece of glass out, the dishwasher drained, and voila, it was fixed. I recounted all this to John who said (as he often does), “That’s way too complicated, why don’t we just say the guy’s on vacation for two weeks in Key West?” So we did, and then John revealed that that was exactly what happened to him when he was searching for a repair person. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.”

That’s it for this week. We’ve got another two new ones coming next week including the exciting end to the 2-part broken dishwasher saga. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John

A TRIP TO THE (USED) BOOKSTORE 2/18/22

Many of us wax poetic over small stores and the lack thereof. The corner drugstore has given way to CVS. The barber shop to SportsClips. And of course record stores, bookstores and dvd rentals to Amazon, Amazon and Netflix (not to mention Amazon). If a superstore like Barnes and Noble struggles, then what chance do used bookstores and record stores have? Spoiler alert: a range from very little to none at all. My 30 something daughter, her husband and their baby live in Brooklyn (where else)? And my daughter recently bought a turntable for them to play actual 33 1/3 lps on vinyl at home. I loved it and as chance had it, there was a vintage vinyl store two blocks from their home. After all, it’s Brooklyn. So I went in to buy them a present. I got lost in the racks, remembering all those albums, and album covers, speaking to the owner and just overall having a great time. I must have spent half an hour in there and I was the only customer that entire time. Then I found the the album that started the late, great Janis Joplin and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, with the iconic cartoon cover by R. Crumb. I brought it up to the register and the owner told me it was $3.99. I couldn’t fathom it. I gave him $10 and told him to keep the change. He was beyond grateful. So the question is, if that’s how little they’re selling for, then how much can you reasonably expect to get paid when you’re trying to sell your inventory to them? Second spoiler alert: not much.

Which brought John to this idea of visiting a used bookstore. If you happen to have one in your neighborhood, pay them a visit. They’re wonderful places to hang out. They are definitely not wonderful places to make money. As Al vainly tries to bargain, he also shares his thoughts about how it feels to read biographies of famous pepole in the past. And here’s a third spoiler alert: it doesn’t make him feel accomplished. I agree. I mean when I read the biography of Steve Jobs, the story of how he started Apple, got kicked out and then returned to make it the most profitable company in the world…about how he invented the Mac, the iMac, the iPod, iPad, iPhone, AppleWatch and so on, how am I supposed to feel when I realize my accomplishments spanned the range of dreaming up scenarios of women breaking up with their mops and brooms to working on a twice weekly comic strip? At least John invented the Little Caesars guy with his toga so he has a lasting legacy. Sigh. This is why when I go to the bookstore, I read novels. They’re about made-up people and things, so there’s no way to fall short of them. They’re not real. Except for James Bond.

That’s it for this week and we will see you next week with a new series about…you’ll just have to wait. How’s that for a cliffhanger? Have a great weekend, and think about this: no new comics about football for at least 7 months.

Andy and John

Enough with the Drugstores Already 2/11/22

What is it with John and me and drugstores? And why am I asking you when I can easily ask John? Or myself? Okay, I’ll tell you why it is. Because when you get beyond a certain age (hint, it’s the age specified in the name of our comic strip) you find you have to visit the drugstore with increasing frequency. And there’s so much to love about the process. There’s the fact that you don’t have the right loyalty card or the ridiculously long receipt with offers (if you bother to read the damn thing) for things you actually want because you’ve bought them before. But they also expire before you ever get a chance to act on them. Well with the world spinning ever more crazily out of control, Marv figured one way to get the best of them. Why not plan on making two trips to the drugstore instead of the normal one? Figure you buy something cheap the first time, like a bottle of water. Then you come back the very next day with your coupons from the day before (surely coupons can’t expire that quickly) and load up on toothpaste, mouthwash, body wash, razor blades—the whole kit and caboodle. Genius right? I don’t actually know if it works (John thought this whole nefarious plot up in the first place), but it seems like it’s worth a try. Yeah, I know it’s a waste of time to have to go to the drugstore an extra time, but hell, we’re in our 60’s and beyond. Trust me, if there’s one thing most of us have, it’s time. Truth be told, I went to the drugstore two times in one hour last week. The first time I bought whatever it was that I came to buy but after approaching the register, I realized I had left both my wallet and phone back home. No, I’m not THAT much of an idiot (I had gone out for an exercise walk, and don’t like to weigh myself down with extra accessories I don’t anticipate using), but upon reaching the cashier I told him, “No problem, I can recite my credit card number by heart,” to which he replied, “But I can’t enter the number manually, only digitally.” I walked home, bitched to my wife, who responded, “Just get in the car and go back there with your wallet and take care of it, you’ll feel better.” And so I did. And so I confess, she was right. I also completely forgot about the floor-length coupon that came with my purchase. But we digress. The point is, if I’m willing to go twice in the same day without a damn coupon, then I can surely go twice in two days, WITH the aforementioned coupon. And now that we have that straight, let’s move on to our second comic.

The germ for this idea happened to a buddy of mine. He was on a call when his wife walked in the front door in mid-conversation on her phone. He overheard her say things that gave him pause, “You know, I’ve had it, I am so done with…” He took a deep breath before she mentioned the guy’s name, and miracle of miracles, it turns out she wasn’t talking about him. I told John and we pounced on that one right away and called it “Guilty Conscience,” because, after hearing a string of horrible attributes, why would someone think it was about him? In fact, John suggested that our character, Joanne, should say things like “he only thinks about himself,” which made me wonder, was he talking about me? I think of other people. I often ask them what they think about what I’m wearing.

Okay enough for this week. Onto the Super Bowl where this particular guy would not be surprised by a Cincinnati Bengal upset. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rams blew them out either. How’s that for taking a stand? See you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

On Football (yes again) and Destination Weddings 2/4/22

We imagine you non-football fans asking, “So what’s with all the football comics?” Well it’s the NFL playoffs now, the thrilling three-week tournament that ends up deciding who will play in the Super Bowl. After many unexpected turns and upsets, it’ll be the Cincinnati Bengals vs. the Los Angeles Rams. They will play in the Rams’ new multibillion-dollar pleasure dome known by the poetic name of SoFi Stadium. But that setting does not do justice to the inspiration for today’s football comic, titled “Shirtless.” No, that was inspired by the night game a couple weeks ago in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You heard us right, night game, Green Bay, in January. As the cameras are often wont to do, they pan the crowd and always, and we do mean always, there is the seemingly mandatory shot of a bunch of guys in their 20’s sitting in the stands, with temperatures in the low teens, and negative-degree wind chills, without their shirts on. By the way, they are always, and we mean always, drinking ice cold beers (face it, even hot chocolate would become ice-cold out there). And we often wondered, what kind of idiot would do that? Then just like that, the answer came to us. Sid, the headstrong son of Al and Joanne, Sid would do that. And that became our first comic this week. But since we load them into the website in the order they’re completed, the first comic comes up second in your newsletter, which becomes challenging when we do a 3-part story. Got all that? Good, neither do we.

Next up (or first on your scroll) came from a therapist friend of mine whose name will be withheld to protect the guilty). She is getting married next week and she and her husband-to-be chose a destination wedding in Costa Rica. When I asked her why, she said something to the effect of, “This way we can invite everybody from both families while being reasonably sure nobody will come.” Brilliant. When I shared the idea with John, he thought a lot of people would be thrilled to come to Costa Rica so we moved the comic wedding to Kuala Lumpur, figuring, who in their right mind would ever go there? I mean, I don’t even know where Kuala Lumpur is. I didn’t even know how to spell it correctly until I asked the Google. I guess I could ask it where it is located. Just did. Of course, it’s the capital city of Malaysia. Duh, everyone knows that. At any rate, it’s far away. As John likes to say, “That’s the beauty part.” Actually John picked this up from a former advertising creative partner who picked it up from her father, but what the hell, the whole thing is pretty ingenious, don’t you think? Instead of spending days, weeks or most likely months worrying about who to invite and who not to invite, instead of wasting precious brain cells trying to make sure Uncle Marty and his second wife Sarah aren’t seated at the same table as Aunt Esther and her tennis pro, Rafael, just throw the damn wedding in Kuala Lumpur. Or Thailand for that matter (except that didn’t work for one married couple because my wife and I actually attended that one anyway).

So that is it for this week. We’ll be back next week with two new ones about who knows what (actually we know but we’re not telling).

Have a great weekend

Andy and John

On Football and Loyalty Oaths

Loyalty. We hear a lot about it these days, but to us it often seems like a one-way street. The store, the cable company, the politician, they all want your loyalty but don’t show you much of the same in return. This particular comic came from a trip John made to his local CVS. Being the good and loyal CVS customer that he is, the cashier asked him if he had a CVS loyalty card and the answer was yes, he did. Upon showing the card in question the cashier went on to tell him about the CVS CarePass Card, an even better way to show your loyalty. It came with a host of mouthwatering benefits like having your prescriptions delivered straight to your home. All for the low, low price of ONLY $5.00 per month (or the even LOWER price of $48 if you sign up for the year). The point is, there’s always something better out there, and you don’t have it. Now John and I didn’t spend over 70 combined years in advertising to see what’s really going on at CVS. Seems like there’s this little competitor out there called Amazon Prime, who coincidentally offers free shipping straight to your door for the low, low price of ONLY $119 per year! It’s a steal!! Or how about American Express. Got an Amex Gold? Well good for you, here’s a Platinum. But wait, there’s an even better one. Amex Black, for only $10,000 per year you can have so many benefits like first dibs on tickets to the next Ariana Grande concert. Who could resist that? And what about the airlines? If you are a loyal frequent flyer you get priority boarding. Which sounds great on paper until you realize you come after the 67 other groups that have more priority than you do. You know how to avoid all that? Just pony up an extra $1,000 or 2 to fly first class. I hear that even comes with pillows and blankets. Now that’s loyal. By the way, the final frame and joke on our drug store comic was a none-too-subtle shout-out to our friends at American Express.

And that brings us to the guy’s weekend. You could not have had 4 more exciting football games in one weekend. The final Sunday game between Kansas City and Buffalo is being called the greatest game ever played. I always look forward to that particular weekend every year. I used to watch with my son when he still lived at home, then later flew out to meet him wherever he happened to be living. But this year, with Covid and all, I thought I’d do something at home. Just like the comic said, my wife went to visit our kids and grandchild, knowing I’d be glued to the set. After making a bunch of calls, I ended up with a massive pot of chili and one friend to help eat it. When my wife came back we managed to kill it off over the course of a couple dinners, but c’mon. The excuses! Plans with children, grandchildren, shopping, weekend retreats, what is this world coming to? Everything is so complicated. Take the case of John, who dutifully recorded the KC-Buffalo game before going out. He came back and watched the whole thing before realizing it was the AFC Championship game from last year. Ooops. Fortunately, he got over it in time to see the end of this year’s game. And that my friends, is a wrap.

See you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Improving Memory and Health 1/21/22

First the health part. Now if you are like many of us, you’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions that you are promising to stick to. High on the list is the vow to stay in shape. There’s an old Nike ad I love and it features a lone runner in silhouette on a distant bridge running across the background of a beautiful sunset. And the copy goes something like this (remember, I’m relying on my memory here) “Why do I run? Because there’s this guy, he’s fat, balding, approaching 50 and he’s trying to catch up to me, and I won’t ever let him get me.” At least it’s pretty close to that. Now we just have to modify that copy to say “He walks with a cane, he runs out of breath too easily, he’s in his 80’s (okay, his 90’s) and I won’t let him catch up to me.” Scary, right? So to prevent this from happening, yours truly joined a beautiful, new health club. The other day, with the temperature hovering around 8 degrees, I went. I hopped on the treadmill to do “interval training” where you walk or run at a slightly faster pace than usual but then, every five minutes, you run like a bat-out-of-hell for one minute. 5 minutes later, you run like a slightly faster bat-out-of-hell and so on. Here’s the problem. In keeping up with the latest health and safety protocols, the gym requires everyone to wear a mask. I totally get it and support it. But try sprinting with a mask on. It’s not fun. The “gasping for air” part becomes much more difficult because you’re trying to breathe through a mask. But I figured out how to show them! I just pulled the mask away from my face, sucking in all that potentially covid-ravaged air, until my breathing calmed down. When I mentioned this to John, he said something like, “Yep, that’s a comic.” Don’t ask me exactly what he said because my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. Which segues perfectly into our second comic, Memory Tricks.

Now this is one that popped out of John’s head in whole. It wasn’t like, here’s an idea, let’s discuss. It was more like here’s an idea and I even sketched it out. And here’s the thing. it was damn good. We usually deal in reality, and say the things most of us think but don’t say out loud. This one was a full-scale trip to the land of make-believe. What appealed most to me was the vision of Mickey Mouse on the toilet. Anyway, the trick described in the comic is an actual memory trick. It’s not the trick I would have used to remember, but it was funnier than mine. Mine would skew closer to reality, when thinking about how to remember I’d left the memory book in the bathroom. I would have thought, this book is shit, and that would have helped me remember it was in the bathroom. John’s vision is much more fun and a hell of a lot better to visualize.

That’s all we’ve got this week, keep your masks on when you’re indoors with strangers, yeah even in a health club, and have a good weekend

Andy and John

On College Days (then) and Electric Toothbrushes (now) 01/14/22

It still feels pretty weird typing “/22” into the date space. And I know you think I’m talking about our Then and Now series when I put those words in the headline. But you probably know better, because you likely have read the comics before you get to the blog, and only one of the comics is a “Then and Now .” At any rate, I couldn’t think of a connection between electric toothbrushes and college (trust me, when I went to college they didn’t have Oral B electric tootbrushes with L.E.D. screens on them), so I went with the old standard, On. As in “On college days and electric toothbrushes.”

So let’s start with something I CAN remember. My new toothbrush. I was complaining to John about this new wonder brush recommended by both my dentist and periodontist (don’t ask what a periodontist is because I still don’t know. I just know that it’s expensive and hurts a lot). So this toothbrush encourages you to brush for 2 minutes. That’s a lot longer than it sounds. And if you’re in a rush, like during the mornings, you sometimes cut it a little short. Okay, a lot short. But after I have covered all the teeth, front and back, upper and lower, and am racing out of the house to catch a train, go a gym class or drive to some appointment or other, I look at the screen and see either a complete frown (if I’ve only brushed for say 45 seconds) or a half frown (only the left side is downturned) if I’ve made it to 1:37. I tried to compensate by refusing to look at the small screen on the brush, but it bothered me. In fact it bothered me enough so that I took a picture of the various faces (up to and including the full smile, which I achieve every single night) and sent them to John and said, I think we’ve got a comic here. As soon as I explained the dilemma to him, he countered, “Why don’t you just brush the complete two minutes?” And we had our comic, complete with punch line. I still maintain 2 minutes is a long time.

The inspiration for our other comic came from a crappy winter Monday. Temperatures in the low teens with a howling wind. I was supposed to meet a college buddy, also recently retired, for lunch and a hike…but there were prevailing circumstances: a) it was too cold to hike and b) due to the Omicron variant, we didn’t feel comfortable eating inside a restaurant and c) one restaurant did offer heated outdoor seating but (refer to circumstance a) it was too damn cold outside. So I went to my friend’s house, and he ordered take out and we ate it in his kitchen. Then we hung out and talked. We talked about now, we reminisced about the past and we may or may not have shared a drink and a couple hits of a joint (I’ll never tell). And I laughed because it occurred to me that this could have been 50 years ago on a winter Monday afternoon back in college and we would’ve been doing the exact same thing. I brought this scenario up to John and we molded it into one of our “Now and Then” series. He, as he usually does, steered us away from a more obvious ending to one that basically let the picture do the talking. As the song says: “that’s what friends are for…”

Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with our two latest.

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

HAPPY NEW YEAR 12/31/21

This week we bid adieu to 2021. And it got us to look back at last year’s New Year’s Eve poster when we were gleefully kicking 2020 out the door. This year had to be better, so we featured Al’s happy new grandchild, dressed up as 2022 and Al as Father Time (not particularly enjoying the moment), or, in Al terms, being Al. 2021 looked a lot better than 2020 for a while, but now that the Omicron variant is here, things are upside down again. Suddenly we do not feel as free to hop a plane, go to a hotel, dine indoors, take in a play or, heaven forbid, a movie in an actual movie theater. One ultra-responsible, artsy movie theater near me is staying open, at half capacity, but is no longer serving their delicious popcorn with real butter (rather than butter-flavored topping—word to the wise, don’t ever buy something that says “flavored” or “style” it bears no resemblance to the real thing. A couple years ago a woman sued Kraft when she discovered that the “guacamole-style” dip she served for her Super Bowl contained no avocado. I would’ve sued her for buying guacomole-style, but I digress). I guess we’ll have to stop shaking hands again and start doing elbow bumps when we meet friends. I don’t mean to suggest we will look back fondly on 2020 someday, just that 2021 felt all too similar to 2020. Or as Janis Joplin once vamped in a live recording, “It’s all the same f’ing day man,” only she didn’t say f’ing.

Our other comic is based on a present my wife sends to her favorite clients and friends during the holidays. It is a massive tub of chocolate-covered popcorn. And when I say chocolate-covered, I don’t mean just chocolate-covered, you actually have to bite through layers of chocolate just to get to the actual popcorn. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it. John and I both took on this challenge in our respective houses. He challenged himself last year to see how long he could make the popcorn last. He failed miserably. I told him this year I could make it until mid-January. I just recycled the empty plastic bin a couple days ago, on December 29th to be exact. But I have an excuse, I swear. The excuse is our 32-year - old son came home to visit and consumed massive handfuls, accompanied by milk. I realized how quickly I had to replace the half gallon of milk to estimate how much chocolate popcorn he consumed. So that’s my excuse. On the other hand, my wife was recovering from a breakthrough Covid case (she was triple-vaxed) and out of concern for me and my son, never plunged her hand into the popcorn tub. Thankfully, she is all better, and what I’m trying to say is I ate way too much of that stuff. But it’s okay. Now we can live up to our New Year’s resolutions about hitting the gym on a regular basis. Or, if you invested in home exercise equipment, about riding that damn bike several times a week. But first you have to take all the shirts and hangars off the Peloton handlebars before you begin. Otherwise your knees keep bumping into the shirts and if they’re not covered in plastic from the dry-cleaners, you might sweat all over them. And then you’ll think, “Forget it, it’s too big a hassle,” and go back to eating chocolate popcorn.

Have a wonderful last weekend on 2021 and we’ll see you next year with two new ones, once we sober up from New Year’s Eve.

Andy and John

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

What's Next??? 12/17/21

Are we really getting to the end of 2021? And what do we make of these times? If you are anything like us, chances are you find them increasingly hard to understand. This being a blog about a comic strip, however, we are not going to tackle politics or artificial intelligence (speaking of artificial intelligence, spell check just corrected the way I spelled intelligence, but that’s a story for another time), we will confront such life changing events as the all too real supply chain-induced cream cheese shortage. Talk about a problem. I mean, if you’re anything like me, butter just won’t do (John vehemently disagrees with this). In fact, I have a certain family member (who will go unnamed) who likes to PRE-BUTTER her bagels BEFORE she puts them under the broiler, resulting in a golden topped bagel. That’s the good news. But when you next apply a liberal schmear of cream cheese (note: not a coating, not a layer, a schmear) it’s too damn fatty. So leave the butter off, okay?? And speaking of artificial intelligence, it’s not that smart. It just tried to autocorrect my spelling of “schmear” to “schemer.” I can assure you, there was no scheme whatsoever. Clearly, the artificial intelligence is not Jewish. But back to the comic. There really IS a worldwide cream cheese shortage, and when I mentioned to John that I have a half-full container of Whole Foods 365 Cream Cheese plus a back-up container of Philly, he immediately called me a hoarder. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me (though he may have a good point).

Now, back to the future, as we pick up the saga of Sid. You may remember him as the 30-something son of Al and Joanne who still lived at home with his parents. But then he sold an app and is now a rich young man. John and I wondered how a young guy with money would decorate his new apartment. For research I used my own kids. I have a son who loves sports like I do and so a tv plays a prominent role in his apartment. I have a married daughter who is most definitely not a sports fan and the tv plays a minor role in her house. It’s quite possible to go there for a visit and then have to go to the local sports bar to catch the Knicks. So John and I debated, how would Sid decorate. And then he came up with the idea for a hidden tv. We debated should it come down from the ceiling or up from a wall unit. Well, since we didn’t want to break in through the floor of the apartment above (I mean he’s rich, but not THAT rich), we went with the wall unit. That’s the thing about comics, you can pretty much make them up as you go along. And speaking of making them up, we need to make up two new ones, which takes us right into the holiday season.

So merry Christmas, happy Chanukah and a joyous Kwanzaa (in advance)

Andy and John

Things Just Ain't What They Used to Be 12/10/21

Obviously, a lot of stuff just ain’t what it used to be. Like me for example. A couple of weeks ago, my 36-year old son-in-law Mark ran the New York City Marathon. My wife Joanie and I went to watch him in Brooklyn along with our daughter Ali, a former NYC marathoner herself, and her daughter Charlotte, a marathoner-in-training. Of course she has to learn how to walk first, but anyway… You see, I’ve always harbored a “bucket-list’ desire to run a marathon. John already ran his, the bastard. Then I gave up on it. While training in my early 30’s, my knee locked up on me after a half-marathon. Nonetheless, there we were on 4th Ave in Brooklyn when Mark came running by to say a quick hello. As Mark hugged his daughter, an older runner came up and hugged his granddaughter who was right next to where we were standing. As he ran off, I asked his son how old his marathon dad was, and he said “68” which happens to be my exact age. If that wasn’t a sign from God to get out there and run one next year I don’t know what a sign looks like. Of course there was also another sign near the finish line of two people, who appeared to be in their 30’s, sitting on a bench, having their feet and shoulders rubbed by their respective partners, and burying their faces in their hands, crying tears of pain. Nonetheless, I went out the next day and ran, or should I say jogged, 2 miles at a super slow pace. As I came back to my apartment building feeling all proud and accomplished, the doorman looked concerned at my reddened face and hard breathing. With all seriousness he asked, “Are you okay. Should I call 911?” He sure knows how to ruin a good buzz. At any rate, this desire to run a marathon spurred on our first comic.

Next on your list is a comic about logos. I would love to be a professional golfer on the PGA Senior Tour. Trouble is, I usually shoot in the 90’s. But if I were on the tour I would object to all the logos I had to wear. 2 or 3 on the hat, one on the shirt, left side, another on the shirt sleeve, perhaps both sleeves, and let’s not forget the belt and perhaps the pants and certainly the golf glove, golf bag and ball. I would put my foot down and say absolutely not. Until they described to me how much I’d be getting paid for all these logos. Then I’d suggest another one on each butt cheek. But enough about me. This is about John. He needed some new clothes and he went with his wife Linda to the outlet mall and he observed that clothes today just ain’t what they used to be. Everything in the store had a logo on it. And not just a small logo. A big, fat, honking logo. A logo that shouts, “Look at me, I don’t wear just any shirt, I wear a Polo by Ralph Lauren” (whose real last name is Lipshitz, but for some reason they thought it wouldn’t make a good logo, so they went with Lauren and the polo ponies). Ya know it’s not so much the polo pony itself that’s objectionable, it’s the SIZE of the polo pony. And you’ve got to ask yourself, does the three-striped Adidas logo on the pants leg really go with the Nike swoosh on the sneakers? And would anybody in their right mind wear a Champion long-sleeved tee underneath a Tommy Hilfiger sweater? I mean, nobody is going to be able to admire the full-length CHAMPION logo running down your right arm and who’d want to miss that? So John’s shopping trip became the subject of today’s second comic.

And that’s all we have for this week. See you next week with two new ones.

Happy Holidays

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

Thanksgiving Fun 11/26/21

Thanksgiving. What else were we going to write about this week? Thanksgiving is great. The family gets together, and who doesn’t love family? Then we carve the turkey, and who doesn’t love turkey? Besides me? I also don’t love sweet potatoes with marshmallows, roasted carrots or brussel sprouts, but that’s another story. By the way, just so you don’t think I’m a total curmudgeon, I’m good with stuffing, orange-cranberry relish, gravy and pies. Ahhh, the holiday spirit.

In celebration, we decided to devote both comics to this beloved day. I mean, who hasn’t fallen asleep after stuffing themselves on cheese, crackers, wine and the Detroit Lions. Why are the Detroit Lions on every single Thanksgiving at 12:00 Eastern? Is it in the Bible? “Thou shalt watch 3 hours of possibly the worst team in football get trounced every year.” I must have missed that passage. What happens when you fall asleep in front of the family? Some people leave you alone. But others, armed with cell-phone cameras, are all too eager to embarrass the hell out of you. And that was the inspiration for our non-poster comic this week.

The inspiration for the poster? Well duh, that was Thanksgiving itself. And this year, we are giving ourselves a present by writing a much shorter blog, ‘cause guess what, the doorbell is ringing, the Lions game is starting and here comes family…

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours,

Andy and John

It All Depends on How You Look at It 11/19/21

True story. It’s funny, but it still was a digital slap in the face. I was getting ready to pay a bill using the Venmo app. Also, I had just gotten a new, upgraded iPhone. Apparently this Venmo app wants to connect with your telephone list so it can properly direct your payments. It’s just some silly algorithm that checks your phone list out and says “You have 287 friends,” or some such blather. The app counts the number of contacts you have and enters it into the appropriate space. Well, since it was a new phone and I hadn’t yet synched up all my contacts, the damn phone came up with a screen saying “You have 0 friends.” Now granted there’s a sane, rational part of me that laughed and thought “They really should come up with a different way to express that. Instead of saying I have zero friends, they could tell me I haven’t yet synched up my phone list to Venmo.” But nooo. They said “You have 0 friends.” So there’s this other part of me (the part that always takes over) that thinks “Oh really? Says who? What about Jimmie and Rich, and Marvin and Peter and Ted and John and Rob? And let’s not forget Ali, Greg, Joanie, Mark, Buzzy and Stuart. Even though they’re family, they count as friends too, don’t they??? How dare you? But it’s just an algorithm, so let’s move on. And it didn’t really affect me at all. Well, maybe just a little.

Our next comic took place at a trip to the eye doctor. Now we know Larry David featured a trip to the eye doctor last Sunday night on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but we thought up our trip to the eye doctor before his ever ran. So there. Anyway, is there anything worse than failing a test? I had a lot of practice at it in high school, but it still doesn’t blunt the humiliation. And how many tests do we take now anyway, except for those ridiculous online quizzes that nobody takes (except for me). Are you good in bed? Apparently not. Rock hard abs, six steps to help anyone create a six pack. Not me. Are you a genius? See how many of these questions you can answer? Not too many. But failing a visit to the eye doctor? That takes the proverbial cake. No matter how hard you squint you can’t make out the difference between a “c” and an “o” on line 4. Here’s a conspiracy theory. I’m convinced they make the type so small on those eye charts so they can sell you a new set of progressive lenses. And our conservative readers can relax. It’s not THAT kind of progressive.

John is back in town from his daughter’s wedding and we are back in gear. We will see you next week with two new comics including one wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving.

Andy and John

Perspective 11/12/21

Perspective is a funny thing. I remember being 9 years old when my parents called me into the living room with solemn looks upon their faces. They said, “Grandpa Sam died last night, he was only 61. Such a young man.” I distinctly remember two thoughts coming into my 9-year old mind: 1) “Poor grandpa. And 2) 61 is really old.” Another example revolves around a summer when we took our young kids to Disney World and then later that summer to a local, small-sized retro amusement park in Rye, NY, called Playland. I loved that place as a kid, but now, being an adult, I realized I could see from one end to the other. It’s about 3 to 4 city blocks long. My kids, being decidedly smaller, were overwhelmed with all the games and rides. And I asked, “Which place do you think is bigger, Disney World or Playland?” And at once they gleefully shouted out, “Playland!!!” There’s one thing that can be said about perspective: it always changes.

Like our perspective about our misspent youth. I remember a friend showing me the huge field he used to play on when he was a kid. Baseball in the summer, football in the fall. Upon revisiting it, it was a small patch of green surrounded by a bunch of dirt. Or, a couple years ago, this Italian restaurant I loved as a child reopened. It was called Grotto Azura, which means Blue Cave. And you went literally underground, down a couple flights of stairs. The place served family-style huge plates of pasta and clams and sausage, anything you wanted, and it was decorated as if it were a cave. Coolest place ever. When some friends came in from out of town, my wife and I took them there. What a spectacular letdown. The underground part was closed because there wasn’t enough business to justify opening it. And when we tasted the food, we understood why there wasn’t enough business. It sucked. Perspective.

Which brings us to Joe Namath Electric Football, a game both John and I happened to own. I remember getting it as a holiday present. It came with 22 football player statues, 11 for each team. You put them in position on the “field”, which was a board that vibrated when you turned it on. The problem was the players didn’t necessarily travel in the direction you wanted them to go. They went backwards, they went sideways, they fell down. In fact, I think it’s safe to say they never went in the direction you wanted them to go. It was the worst football game I’ve ever played. It was even worse than the food at the new Grotto Azura! This must have been before the days of product testing because the damn thing never worked, ever. Kinda like Joe after his knees were shot. Sorry Jets fans, that was uncalled for. The game seemed like a good idea at the time, but trust us both, it wasn’t. Now Madden 22? That is a good football game. Not because either of us know how to play it, but because we’ve seen our kids play it and those images are a LOT more realistic than Joe Namath Electric Football.

So that is that for this week, but we would like to give a special shout out to John, his wife Linda and their kids, especially daughter Alison, who is getting married this weekend in beautiful, bucolic Charleston, South Carolina. Cheers.

Andy and John

If Martians Could Hear Us Speak, What Would They Think? 11/05/21

As anybody over the age of 60 can attest, going out to dinner with your friends becomes increasingly complicated. First, there’s the ailment discussions. “Oh, my knee is killing me, what’s the name of that foot doctor you like?” “Feet and knees are different things.” “I don’t think I’ll have a drink tonight, my headaches have been acting up.” “Ya know I complained to my doctor about acid reflux. He said to lay off red wine, red meat, chocolate, cigars and alcohol.” And that’s before we start to order the food, which is what one of this week’s comics is focused on. When did we transition from asking for a caesar salad to asking for a caesar salad, no anchovies, hold the croutons, dressing on the side and please make sure that egg yolk isn’t raw? Remember the Burger King jingle, “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us?” That’s where it all started and I’ll tell you one thing, they upset me! And let’s not even start with gluten-free. Okay let’s. Does anyone know what the f#@k gluten is? I certainly don’t but I know I sure as hell like it. Stuff like bread, cake, pasta have gluten in them, and they taste pretty damn good. If you have a certain medical condition and can’t eat gluten that’s one thing, but for everyone else, enough with the gluten-free alright? Have you ever tasted brown rice pasta or red lentil pasta or (yummy) chickpea pasta????? About as tasty as cauliflower pizza. A couple months ago, we bought a loaf of gluten-free bread at a nearby farmer’s market. As we put two slices into the toaster oven, the most remarkable thing happened. It started to bubble. Have you ever seen bread start to bubble? No. Because bread shouldn’t bubble. It should turn brown. Period, the end. Give me a good slice of old-fashioned sourdough any day of the week. Oh, and gluten-free potato chips? Every potato chip ever made has been gluten-free to begin with. They’re potatoes. As for fat-free and gluten-free, We think they ought to be free, because that’s all we’d be willing to pay for them.

And then we tackled the wonderful world of cliches. Stuff people say without giving it a second thought. Jerry Seinfeld once said, “When I’m going to visit a friend and another friend says, ‘Send them my best’, I want to say, is that really your best-- to ask me to tell them you send your best? Why don’t you pick up the phone and tell them yourself? Wouldn’t that be better?” There are so many examples of these silly sayings we don’t think about, but I’m not going to repeat them here, because they are sure to become fodder for future comics. But about the one we chose, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” I mean we’re sure there is more than one way, but why such a gory metaphor? And why would you want to skin a cat anyway? Isn’t that what cat lovers love about cats in the first place, their furry, huggable skin? And it’s not like we eat cats, so there’s absolutely no reason to skin a cat in the first place. Nonetheless, Marv manages to come up with an answer. Which brings us back to the title of this blog, If Martians could hear us speak, what would they think? We think the Martian would say, “You know what, I”m heading back to Mars.”

On Gender Reassignment and Halloween

Sometimes the subjects of these blogs fit into a neat little headline. Like last week’s for instance. One comic was about filling your car up at gas stations and another about trains, so the title “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” came naturally (even though there wasn’t anything about planes). But, sometimes the two comics have absolutely nothing in common and so I am forced to go with the more prosaic, “On Gender Reassignment and Halloween.” If you readers have any suggestions for a more pithy title, send them in.

Let’s start with Halloween, even though the comic is only remotely about Halloween. I live in Tarrytown, NY, and right across the street is North Tarrytown, which has been renamed Sleepy Hollow. If there was ever a place that went absolutely nuts for Halloween, this is it. Washington Irving, who wrote the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the one with the headless horseman) has the next town over named for him, Irvington. They have haunted hayrides with high school students dressed up as ghosts and witches who pop out from behind trees and scare the bejesus out of the little kids on the hayride. I have a couple questions here. 1) why is that considered fun and 2) what does bejesus mean? Anyway, suffice it to say that this corner of Westchester County takes its Halloween seriously. Having said that, my wife and I moved to an apartment building 6 years ago with mostly empty nesters so there’s almost no trick or treating involved, and no need to dress up like a haunted figure to answer the door, because no kids are showing up in the first place. But this comic was really about crass commercialism. There are stores (remember stores, they were those buildings with signs in front before Amazon took over?) that cater to one holiday season at a time. There are Christmas stores, Summer stores (patio furniture and beach chairs, etc.) and Halloween stores. But the funny thing is these places run out of costumes or Christmas trees or decorations or deck chairs long before the season they are meant to serve. I mean, who even thinks about Halloween decorations in September? Apparently a lot of people, because when (if you are like us) you finally get around to shopping for Halloween, everything is gone and the store is loaded with Christmas decorations. In October! John and I had a discussion about the clerk at the store, whether he should say we ran out of Halloween stuff after Labor Day or should we say after Columbus Day. Columbus Day won because it was more believable.

Then there was the comic we called Gender Bender. Now everytime we broach a controversial subject we tread carefully, not wanting to offend anybody. But let’s face it, that’s pretty damn impossible. When we were putting this one together, we focused not on the gender reassignment surgery, but rather on Marv’s uncomfortable reaction to it. Our guess is that would be pretty typical amongst people in our particular age group. But who are we to judge? In this case, it turned on the lie everybody says when they run into someone they haven’t seen in many decades…”You haven’t changed a bit.” Doesn’t matter if they put on an extra 100 pounds, had hair plugs, silicone boobs, lap-band surgery or even if they changed sexes, we all say the same thing. But face it, everybody changes. Except for John and me who still have all our hair, which miraculously hasn’t turned grey, all our height and all our physical strength. We haven’t changed a bit. Except for, well…everything.

That’s all folks for this week. Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 10/22/21

Okay so there’s not really a comic about planes this week, but the trains and automobile parts, yeah. First the car part. When it’s time to fill up (and you drive a gas-powered vehicle) we get less and less help from the “service station.” I mean, where’s the service? Nowadays you’ve got to get out of the car, remove the gas cap, squeegee your own windshield, fill ‘er up with gas, pay in advance with your credit card that the pump doesn’t recognize in the first place, so you have to go inside anyway, and then you forget your mask so you have to return to the car to get your mask, and you haven’t even started pumping the premium yet. Want to check your oil, or refill your washer fluid or make sure the tire pressure is good? Fuhgeddaboudit.

This is one of the ways that society has unravelled. I was low on gas, and out on the eastern end of Long Island this summer when I pulled up to an old-fashioned gas station this summer with a name I’d never heard of. Royal Gas. I was looking in the glove compartment for the aforementioned gasoline credit card and when I sat up I nearly had a heart attack. There was this stranger hanging by my window, way too close, looking in at me. Tentatively, I rolled down said window and shakily asked, “yes?” The scary guy then said, “Regular or premium,” and it took my another second to realize that he was going to fill my car up for me. What was he gonna do next, offer a free toaster oven? Not. But that fit the narrative for our first comic, another in the Then and Now series.

Next up was the second and final version of our Model Train series. As we pointed out last week, John was much more into electric train sets than I was. Only thing I remember about my dad’s set was a rocket launcher and one of the coolest things ever, an exploding box car. Okay maybe it wasn’t the coolest thing ever, but it was pretty cool. No, really. I guess you had to be there. At any rate, we wondered what would happen if Al’s grandson got his hands on the train set, without having Al peering over his shoulder with one of those dad-like, “Don’t you dare touch anything until I say you can” kind of looks. The kid lets his imagination run wild which is obviously an excuse to let our imaginations run wild, and this was the result of our overwrought imaginations. Speaking of imaginations, I imagine some of you thinking, “Grow up already and write about something relevant or at least something happy,” but as Leslie Gore might have sung decades ago, “it’s our comic, and we’ll whine whine when we want to, whine when we want to, you would whine too if it happened to you.”

We will leave you with that and have a pleasant weekend, email the comic onto your friends so WE have a pleasant weekend and we’ll see yo next week with two new ones hot off the proverbial press, or at least off the internet.

John and Andy