Comic Strips Survey from the Roanoke Times: Will Anyone in Portugal Read This

Yes, we are wondering if anyone in Portugal or Romania for that matter reads our Sunday comics strips, but if you are checking us out from Lisbon or Bucharest, we hope the weather is nice in your respective nations today.

We are featuring photos of a random exotic fish, a Siamese cat, and Cong. Morgan Griffith (R-Va), because each of them pertains to the top three comic strips in "The Roanoke Times." (I suppose the next time we choose a photo of a House of Representatives members we will go with Cong. David Price, D-NC, to show we are nonpartisan, even though we make no secret of our center-left politics here).

"Speed Bump" by Dave Coverly was this week's winner as his strip showed a fish who had combed his hair just for his date, who was also a fish. Second place went to "Get Fuzzy" which depicts a mad Siamese cat named Satchel. Finally, the bronze medal goes to "Pearls Before Swine" which ventured into new territory by making fun of how corporate donations to members of Congress taint the political system. "Pearls" is usually an apolitical strip!

"Blondie" edged out "Dilbert" for tenth place. The two comic strips seem radically different, but unusually enough they are the two comic strips which seem to focus most on the workplace, except we never actually see Mrs. Dilbert (if there is one) in Scott Adams' strip.

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Doonesbury

5) Non-Sequitir

6)Funky Winkerbean

7) Garfield

8) Zits

9)  Agnes

10) Blondie

To see our Washington Post comics survey, go to our sister blog: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

Favorite Comic Strips from the Sunday Roanoke Times: Another Great Week for Pearls Before Swine

We aren't just posting a 1993 photo of Heather Locklear in the hopes that it will generates lots of hit from Cuba to Kazakhstan to New Zealand (though that would be nice), but because a blonde woman named Wanda who looks a bit like a young Heather, is the main guest character in this week's Sunday comic strip.

Wanda ends causing friction to Rat, one of the strip's central characters, and his Uncle Dan, without intention.

Here are our top 10 comic strips from this Sunday's "Roanoke Times" (Roanoke, Va.):

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Agnes

3. Doonesbury

4. Get Fuzzy

5. Garfield

6. Speed Bump

7. Funky Winkerbean

8. Dilbert

9. Blondie

10. Jump Start

http://www.garfield.com

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.doonesbury.com

Top Ten Comics from the Sunday Washington Post: Brewster Rockit Rocks..........

Yes, Thanksgiving, that holiday which falls between Halloween and Christmas, is going to be Thursday. So many comic strips focused on the upcoming occasion, including our personal favorite strip of the week, "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy."

The title character is at the centerpiece of Tim Rickard's comic strip as his co-workers or fellow space travelers talk about Brewster's inept, dubious clumsiness which frequently causes him to put things over his head.

"Reply All" by Donna A. Lewis focused on the title character, a suburban valley girl who likes to go to yoga and chat on her Blackberry, takes her dog for a walk during the Thanksgiving holiday, reflecting on the zaniness which comes with family gatherings.

Though it didn't finish in the top ten, "Mark Trail" provided a very informative examination of the turkey in North America, including the fact that wild turkeys almost became extinct at the outset of the 20th century.

As always, "Judge Parker," a soap opera comic strip that finished sixth this week, had some of our favorite lines, including the first line of the comic: "You Can't Be Serious.....The Drone Found the Car?;" drones were also the subject of "Blondie."

Here is our top ten:

1. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!

2. Pearls Before Swine

3. Dustin

4. Reply All

5. WUMO

6. Judge Parker

7. Prickly City

8. Lio

9. Knight Life

10. Foxtrot

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/

http://dustincomics.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/replyall#.UpKetOKJLtk

Comic Strip Dialogue- Strike a Pose

Wowza! We had lots of tech glitches trying to get this entry posted. We should point out that the yoga pose image above is in reference to a line from yesterday's "Reply All," which like most of the lines used here came from a comic strip in the Sunday, Dec. 2nd edition, of "The Washington Post:"

1) "I want you to take the trash out!" (from "Zits")

2) "Did you get my text Santa?" (from "Blondie")

3) "Walk it in and rise up as you release the breath of a new start." (from "Reply All," said by a yoga instructor).

4) "We're leaving in a few hours, Sam! I'll be in Toronto tomorrow!" (from "Judge Parker")

5) "I saw you on the news!" (from "The Amazing Spiderman")

6) "Would you like paper or plastic?" (from "Dustin")

7) "Good thing I was born with no apparent purpose in life." (from "Sherman's Lagoon," said by a shark).

8) "I was worried about you," (from "Hagar the Horrible")

9) "Some guys just shouldn't enter spelling bees." (from "Pearls Before Swine.")

10) "Table Scraps?! Well I Never!" (from "Peanuts," said by Snoopy).

11) "Carpe Diem!" (from "Prickly City.).

12) "I've beeb following you on Facebook. You have a lot to explaining to do," (from "Duplex," said by Santa Claus).

13) "Whatcha doin'?" (from "Knight Life")

14) "I think I need to take the car for a tune-up." (from "Hi and Lois.").

15) "Now what were you telling me about distractions?" (from "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee.")

http://www.replyallcomic.com

http://www.edisonlee.net

http://www.knightlifecomic.com

http://www.slagoon.com

Sunday Comics Dialogue_ A Cameo from Big Bird

Greetings to our friends in Baltimore, St. Louis, Denver and San Diego here in the USA, and to those of you in London, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Dubai.........

Today's entry looks at funny pages dialogue from the Sunday, Nov. 18th edition of "The Charleston Gazette-Mail" in Charleston, W.Va., which still carries the wonderful comic strip "Mother Goose and Grimm," which features a cameo from Big Bird, but Mitt Romney was nowhere to be seen (to think 47-percent of our fellow Americans wanted Mitty Rich to be prez.....wow!).

Oh...but, first an update on how former American gold-medal winning gymnast Shawn Johnson is doing on "Dancing with the Stars," drats, someone changed the channel!

Here we go:

1) "Just a turkey hallucination. I get them this time every year" (from "Garfield")

2) "Ok, I'll need to but a turkey," (from "Grand Avenue")

3) "It's not proper for a girl to call a boy on the telephone" (from "Peanuts")

4) "They're trying to kill me out there. They want to cut my head off. I'm going to die!!" (from "Mother Goose and Grimm," a turkey is talking)

5) "What a great cook! I'm the luckiest man in the world!" (from "Hagar the Horrible")

6) "It says here that more Americans are eating something besides turkey for Thanksgiving." (from "Over the Hedge")

7) "Our invitation for tonight is lit up........more than 200 and climbing!" (from "Rex Morgan M.D.")

8) "Very nice?! Are you kidding?! She's world-class!!" (from "Blondie")

9) "I'm still fond of soft-spoken intellectuals" (from "Shoe")

10) "She asked me to put up the holiday lights while she was gone." (from "Dilbert")

11) "When I come back, I'll show you some trout holes you won't believe." (from "Judge Parker")

12) "What are those funny-looking birds?" (from "Hi and Lois")

http://www.wvgazette.com

http://www.grimmy.com

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.blondie.com

Comic Strip Dialogue_ Raking Those Darn Leaves

Today, we continue our series of quoting lines from comic strips with a look at lines from comics in yesterday's Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times," a daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va.

We noticed that several strips, including "For Better or For Worse," "Zits," "Hi and Lois" and "Blondie" all dealt with fall foliage, which is very apparent in many American states this time of year, including Virginia, West Virginia and Vermont.

Our image of Lee Marvin from "The Dirty Dozen" is what came to mind when we were thinking of an image of Veterans Day, which was celebrated yesterday here in America.

Here are the lines from the funny pages:

1) "Mmm.....Smell that Clean Air! Look at Those Leaves!" (from "For Better or For Worse")

2) "Happy Veterans Day!" (from "Red and Rover")

3) "Notice Anything?" (from "Agnes")

4) "You're Pretty Good at Driving" (from "Mutts)

5) "Well, that's offenisve" (from "Speed Bump")

6) "An emergency came up at the animal hospital" (from "Garfield")

7) "Well, I know for a fact that's not true! Ha Ha!" (from "Get Fuzzy")

8) "Soooooo, what are you getting mom for Christmas?" (from "Sally Forth")

9) "I'd rather talk about the Bengals or the Steelers!" (from "Jump Start")

10) "I'm not raking until the last leaf falls." (from "Hi and Lois")

11) "It's weird how clouds make you hungry" (from "Blondie")

12) "Cantaloupe!" (from "Pearls Before Swine")

13) "It was a lousy program, anyway!" (from "Peanuts," said by Linus)

14) "Excellence is the only market that isn't crowded" (from "Dilbert")

15) "Now Stop Dawdling and get on with it!" (from "Pickles")

16) "Does this write?! Yes, I guess it does. That's good; I guess," (actually a note to myself when seeing if a pen was working or not).

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.muttscomics.com

http://www.roanoke.com

The Funny Pages Dialogue_ That's No Problem, Helga

Keith Knight is a brilliant cartoonist and journalist, and someone I greatly admire. That is made especially true because I can't even draw stick people! His comic strip "Knight Life" runs in the Sunday Washington Post. We did not get a chance to use a line from his comic strip this time, but we do have lines from many of the other strips that were in the most recent edition of the Sunday Post.

We have noticed that comic strips tend to use a lot of exclamation points!!!!

By the way, we must give credit to Javier the Intern for compiling this (a running in-joke on this blog, Javier is a fictional character); the aim here is to compile in a way that makes for one silly conversation.

Here we go:

"You're not getting any better at this are you" (from "Sherman's Lagoon")

"What kind of animal did you draw?" (from "Frazz")

"That's the problem, Helga!" (from "Hagar the Horrible")

"Hey, I told you to go with the "Dcotor Who" scripts." (from "Foxtrot," an image of Dr. Who is in the center).

"Honey, are you ok? What's going on?!" (from Blondie, we thought Dagwood was the one who likes to sit on the couch, but that distinction belongs to another old-time comic strip "Andy Capp")

"You did not just write that to me in an email." (from "Reply All," one of Javier's favorite comic strips)

"All I have to do is make a few phone calls!" (from "Judge Parker")

"I can afford to lost one crummy quarter!" (from "The Amazing Spiderman")

"I'll go scare that kid dressed as a space skunk!" (from "Brewster Rockit")

""Excuse me, but wasn't the Halloween section over there?" (from "Dennis the Menace, a comic strip character that is known in Turkish as "Bacaksiz"_ the kid without legs)


SIDEBAR: You wanna impress your hot girlfriend who looks as gorgeous as Kim Kardashian? Well, then you should go the web site for Mr. Porter where you can find unicorn-stamped sweater (pictured) which retails for $725. It must be true because we read it the Sunday Post.

And, for those of you who are into fashion (I'm just a novice myself), then you should check out "All on the Line," with Joey Zee; new episodes air on the Sundance Channel every Monday night at 9:00 p.m. Reruns of the series will be airing this evening (east coast time).

Comic strip links:

http://www.slagoon.com

http://www.kchronicles.com

http://www.foxtrot.com

http://www.replyallcomics.com

http://www.tundracomics.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

Fashion links:

http://www.ustopshop.com

http://www.dapperlow.com

http://www.theurbanagent.com

http://www.guysstyleguide.com

http://www.mrporter.com

http://www.sundancechannel.com/all-on-the-line/

20 Things To Do List for September- Read the Sunday Comics

Here is our 20 Things To List for September:

1) Listen to "The Turkish Music Hour" on WUVT (90.7-Blacksburg, Va.; the image above is of Turkish pop diva Sertab Erener)

2) Get the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post" (hence the reason for the "Blondie" image as Sunday papers here in America generally have comic strips in them; "The New York Times" is one of the exceptions).

3) Use LinkedIn more often

4) Wear the Spiderman tie more often

5) Watch "Nature" on PBS

6) See an art exhibit at a museum or gallery

7) Read the novel "The Rum Diary" by the late Hunter S. Thompson

8) Watch the Washington Nationals on tv

9) Call Mike

10) Get an Obama/Biden 2012 bumper sticker

11) Pay bills

12) Take photos

13) Read magazines

14) Watch Japanese movies you ordered from Netflix (hence the reason for the image of the late, great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune)

15) See if family cat needs to have a check-up at the vet

16) Join local athletic club/gym

17) Drink coffee some place besides Dunkin Donuts

18) Fix/ update resume

19) Go see an art-house film

20) Look into joining an online dating services besides E-Harmony


http://www.wuvt.vt.edu

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.neckties.com

http://www.toshiromifune.org

http://www.pbs/wnet/nature

UPDATE (Sept. 2nd): In amazing coincidence, I learned that a song from Turkish pop singer Sertap Erener was actually played during the "Turkish Music Hour." Alas, I was unable to listen to the show because the Internet was down; it airs from 1:00-2:30 p.m. on Saturdays on WUVT (90.7 FM_Blacksburg, Va.).