Famous Quotes from Famous Artists (2 of 5): Aldous Huxley

Hopefully, you can see this blog entry with a quote from Aldous Huxley, the author of "Brave New World," there seem to be tech glitches beyond our control at the moment!

"There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail."

SIDEBAR: Are you taking a three-hour lunch break at Chanello's Pizza in Norfolk, Va., today? Then, you are having an 'intern lunch' according to The Urban Dictionary, it is a term for a very, very long lunch break.

http://www.chanellospizza.com/index

Famous Quotes from Famous Authors (1 of 5): Gertrude Stein

"I write for myself and strangers. This is the only way I can do it," Gertrude Stein, she was played by Kathy Bates in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris."

SIDEBAR: Last week, we learned from The Urban Dictionary, that God Donut is a term used as a sub for God Damnit; the term originated from an iPhone auto correct....thanks, Steve Jobs!

Sunday Best from the Washington Post

Greetings to our blog readers in Colombia, Honduras and Canada...

Why do we have images of Gil Gerard from his "Buck Rogers" day (an NBC sci fi show that aired circa 1979), '60s cartoon favorite Atom Ant and a bunch of green golf balls???!!!

This is because all of these things relate to our favorite comic strips from this Sunday's "Washington Post." "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy," which we actually first saw in "The Atlanta Journal Constitution" in 2007, wins this week with a great comic strip about a carbon copy selfie?! The comic strip is also in the "News and Record" in Greensboro, NC.

Second place goes to "Lio," which shows an alien octopus scaring away the rug rats from "The Family Circus" comic strip. The bronze medal goes to "The Argyle Sweater" which shows Army ants having a picnic in what could be lower Manhattan. Fourth place goes to the always funny and hip Keith Knight and his autobiographical comic strip "Knight Life," which this week, shows a man who literally has his eye on the (golf) ball. Tiger Woods would be proud!

Knight will be singing books at an event in San Fransisco from Oct. 9th-11th. 


Here is our list:

1. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

2. Lio

3. The Argyle Sweater

4. Knight Life

5. Speed Bump

6. Reply All

7. WUMO

8. Rhymes with Orange

9. Frazz

10. Sherman's Lagoon

http://www.ajc.com

http://www.accessatlanta.com/

http://www.news-record.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit

http://www.gocomics.com/theargylesweater

http://www.gocomics.com/theknightlife

http://www.kchronicles.com/

Top Sunday Comic Strips from the Roanoke Times: The Satan Gag Works!

Greetings to our blog readers in Wales, Estonia and Thailand.

Today, we once again look at our favorite Sunday comic strips, and this week, we focus on the comic strips found in Sunday, Sept. 21st edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. The Sunday strips include strips aimed mostly at children ("Garfield," "Family Circus"), adults ("Dilbert" and "For Better or For Worse") and people who are 112 years old and living in a nursing home in Christiansburg, Va. ("Hi and Lois" and "Pickles").

We imagine "Pearls of Swine" may have received the wrath from Rev. Johnny Robertson from Martinsville, Va., which is just barely in the Roanoke newspaper's circulation area in which a woman who is dressed like the devil convinces the devil character rat to engage in mischief. "Pearls" is our strip of the week. (Yes, it is the reason for our poster from "The Devil," an amusing Turkish remake of "The Exorcist," no Linda Blair in the remake though).

Other strips in our top five include "Speed Bump" which has a take on what it would be like to be Icarus (center image) and visit a tanning salon, "Doonesbury" which has an American 'helping out' against radicals in the island national nation of The Maldives, and "Funky Winkerbean" which takes on a high school stage production of "Macbeth," aka 'The Scottish play.' Since, Criterion Classics announced it was releasing the vintage Roman Polanski film version of the Shaekespeare play, we though we'd include a poster from the film here.

Here is the top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Speed Bump

3) Doonesbury

4) Funky Winkerbean

5) Non-Sequitur

6) Zits

7) Agnes

8) Get Fuzzy

9) Dilbert

10) Mutts

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.criterion.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

http://www.doonesbury.com

For our look at Sunday comics from "The Washington Post," be sure to visit our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" at: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Today is Our 9th Birthday....

Greetings to our blog readers in Malaysia, Jordan and Argentina.

It was indeed nine years when we posted our very first entry on here.

We must profess that we had no idea what to blog about when we first started. In fact, one thing we posted was our very own grocery list!

Last Ten Films I Saw Before Last Week: Indy Films, Foreign Films and Guilty Pleasures

Greetings to our blog readers in Japan, Slovenia, and Scotland (good luck with your impending divorce, which I am politically opposed to).

The above images of a) Jehovah's Witnesses (for the film "The Visitor," which has nothing to do with them), a Scottish terrier (for "Dog Day Afternoon") and a 1977 caprice (for "Blue Caprice," a disturbing, but solid film about the DC snipers) all relate to a film on the list. "Blue Ruin," which was filmed around Lexington, Va., and "Paradise: Love" were viewed via Netflix streaming. Films from "Boy" (#6) to "Bucket of Blood") were taped off TCM; "The Visitor" aired as part of TCM Underground.

Here is the list:


1. Fill the Void. Israel. 2012. Dir: Roma Burshtein.

2. Bucket of Blood. 1966. Dir: Roger Corman

3. The Visitor. 1979. Dir: Guilio Paradisi. (Released through Alamo Drafthouse Films)

4. La Pointe. Courte. France. 1955. Dir: Agnes Varda

5. Dog Day Afternoon. 1975. Dir: Sidney Lumet w/Al Pacino

6. Boy. 1969. Japan. Dir: Nagisa Oshima

7. Blue Ruin. 2013. Dir: Jeremy Saulnier

8. Blue Caprice. 2013. Dir: Alexandre Moors.

9. Paraside: Love. Austria. 2012. Dir: Ulrich Siedl (part of a triology)

10. Life After Beth. 2014. Dir: Jeff Baena w/Aubrey Plaza

www.tcm.com/underground/

www.netflix.com

http://drafthousefilms.com/

www.ifcfilms.com/

Tweets from This Crazy World: International Reactions to ISIS Terrorists

Here are some tweets regarding ISIS and the terrorist group's beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff in Syria. The same group is very active in Iraq. These comments come from the likes of Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish journalist, David Corn, a liberal American journalist, and Josh Block, who is pro-Israel.

1) Mustafa Akyol: "I condemn the ruthless murderers of 'Islamic State' with all my heart. They are an insult to Islam, and a threat to the world."

2) The Jerusalem Post: "Foreign Ministry reveals journalist beheaded by Islamic State terrorist had Israeli citizenship."

3) David Corn: "The Arab World's version of the Ice Bucket Challenge: Burning ISIS flags."

4) Zaid Benjamin: "PKK Co-founder Abdullah Ocalan to Kurdish Forces: Do not wait for the offensives. Attack ISIS and destroy them- leaked letter." (Personal note, we fully support the State Department's classification of the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that started in Turkey, as a terrorist organization. This may or may not be the tweeter's view)

5) Josh Block: "And if his death awakens the world to the evil among those who killed him, then maybe, maybe, there can be redemption."

6) Jeff Gauvin: "Pres. Obama soft on ISIS? He's already ordered 300 effective Super Hornet and B-1 strikes on ISIS tanks and artillery."

7) Rabbi Kenneth Cohen: "There is humanitarian crisis going on in Kurdistan, but nobody cares because they can't blame Israel."

NOTE: The photo on top is of the Turkish shadow puppets Karagoz (the one with the beard) and Hacivat, since the puppets represent Turkey's split between east and west, we felt their use was appropriate here.

Soccer Scores from France: We Could NOT Find an Image of Serge Gakpe

Greetings to our blog readers in Estonia where our president Barack Obama is headlining a crucial international summit...........come to think of it, we may have said greetings to our readers in Estonia yesterday as well...........

But, our focus right now is on France and weekend play in the nation's top domestic league.

Since we could not find images of Serge Gakpe, a Togo national, who scored the lone and winning goal for Nantes in their 1-0 over Montpellier, we decided to just go ahead with other images of France, including our hero Asterix the Gaul (pictured top), the French flag and a box for Fermier cheese, which may actually be illegal here (as surprisingly many French cheeses are).

It was also another huge weekend for Swedish superstar Zlatan Ibrahimovich of Paris St. Germain who delivered a hat trick for PSG in their 5-0 thumping of St. Etienne.

French national player Dimitri Payet delivered two goals for Marseilles in their own resounding 4-0 victory over Nice.

Here are the complete scores from France:

PSG 5 St. Etienne 0

Marseilles 4 Nice 0

Metz 2 Lyon 1

Monaco 1 Lille 1, tie

Nantes 1 Montpellier 0

Toulouse 1 Evian TG 0

Lorient 4 Guingamp 0

Lens 4 Rems 2

Caen 0 Rennes 1

Bordeaux 1 Bastia 1, tie

http://www.ligue1.com/

The Sunday Washington Post Comics Survey: Dustin Just Misses the Cut

Greetings to our blog readers in Estonia, Ireland and Yugoslavia......err, we mean Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia and.............

We are also hoping to find Dursun Duzen, a 37-year-old man in Sivas, Turkey, a girlfriend as according to the English-language Turkish newspaper "The Daily Hurriyet," he has decided to post posters of himself with his phone number all over town. Perhaps, I should try the same thing...........well, perhaps not?!

There is a reason why we have retro images of tennis star John McEnroe and punk pop rock singer Pat Benatar for this blog entry as well as a photo of a Jack Russell Terrier, as all three of them relate to to our top three Sunday comic strips of the week from "The Washington Post." (Note: Benatar performs in her hometown of Richmond, Va., on Oct. 15th)

We had a unique fork in the road when we could not decide between giving "Dustin" a tenth place finish or going with the Scott Stantis strip "Prickly City," but even though Stantis is known to poke fun of us liberals, we decided to give him the final slot. Hopefully, we can work "Dustin" in next time.


We are also happy to include Keith Knight's autobiographical comic strip "Knight Life," which this week showed the pains of giving a kid something good and healthy for them, especially in the form of a soup or stew!

Here is our weekly top ten. For those of you new to this blog, we alternate between "The Washington Post" and "The Roanoke Times," to see this week's comic strip survey from "The Roanoke Times," go to http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com


1) WUMO (image one, it deals with a talking tennis ball)

2) Rhymes with Orange (image two, it has dogs at a country fair trying out dogs on a stick)

3) Foxtrot (image three, it deals with a teenage girl getting haircut advice from her brothers)*

4) Knight Life

5) The Argyle Sweater

6) Lio

7) Speed Bump (was number one in our "Roanoke Times" comic strips survey)

8) Pearls Before Swine

9) Sherman's Lagoon (last week's number one)

10) Prickly City

*-If you reside near Greensboro, NC, we recommend getting haircuts at Salon Bailey's on Elm: http://www.salonbaileysonelm.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://www.gocomics.com/theknightlife

http://www.gocomics.com/pricklycity

http://rhymeswithorange.com/

http://benatargiraldo.com/ (Pat Benatar's web site)