20-Word Fiction: A Real-Life John Hughes Movie

Greetings to our blog readers in Spain, Brazil and Japan............

Today's second 20-word fiction story imagines what a real-life Ferris Bueller would do on his day off if he lived in Roanoke, Va., as opposed to Chicago. This year marks the 30th anniversary of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," a film from the late John Hughes which stars Matthew Broderick.

Originally this story had Ferris going to the Mill Mountain Zoo where he fed a pygmy goat, but with a mere 20 words that part had to be omitted, though we feature a photo of that kind of goat here.

We also support the Sleepy Goat farm in Pelham, NC, just over the state line from Danville, Va., their goat cheese is awesome! In the We Caught It department, we originally said the goat farm was in Yanceville, NC, another town in Caswell Country (not that it matters as we are not "Atlantic" magazine!):

"Ferris decided to skip class on Thursday, but he quickly realized Roanoke is not an exciting place during the week."

http://www.mmzoo.org/

http://www.sleepygoatfarm.com/

http://www.theatlantic.com/

Top 10 Things 2 Do in the Next Week (or so..........)

On occasion when something we want to post becomes too complicated, we resort to our proverbial old bag of tricks, which might also work for David Copperfield (for those of you in Tajikistan, he is an American magician).

And, one of our traditional entries, even dating back to our earliest entries way back in the stone ages of 2005, was a Top 10 Things To Do List; this effectively postpones our hopes to make fun of conservative newspaper columnist Cal Thomas.

So, here is our latest installment, we imagine at the BBC, they are never this desperate:

1) Taxes (the reason for the image of the vintages Mr. Professor children's calculators from the 1970s; I don't live in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, but if I did, I'd check in with Ronald A. Weiss)

2) Watch a tape of the University of North Carolina-Clemson baseball game that we recorded on Monday from ESPN-U (this is the reason for the image of a tiger; the Clemson mascot is a tiger with no name, but finding a suitable image of that tiger proved to be difficult and time-consuming as is this explanation)

3) Go to West Virginia

4) Eat a gyro

5) Get new library card

6) Read the Torah (It should be pointed out that I am not Jewish, but I did get a copy of the holy book for one dollar at an estate sale; the image below is of a synagogue in the Czech Republic).

7) Go through old records........as in stuff from bands like The Bee Gees

8) Write a poem (for myself, not for a woman- that never seems to work in real life)

9) Get stamps

10) Read the current issue of the Sunday "Washington Post." (We personally love how the woman always says the man that she is hooked up with in 'Date Lab' is never good enough or lives a few many Metro stops away from her!).

Virtual Postcard from Illinois- The Sears/Willis Tower

I'm not actually in Chicago, but since Illinois is one of the 8 states we've been through on this mammouth roadtrip, we thought we'd send you 'a virtual postcard from there.'

Apparently, the Sears Tower is now called the Willis Tower; I guess I should thank the kids working at Google's regional office in Boulder, Colo. (yes, that place does exist) or Javier the Intern, which is a long-running gag on my two blogs.

http://www.theskydeck.com

http://www.willistower.com

Casualties of Modern Technology (12 of 12)-Paperback Novels

We conclude our long-running series on Casualties of Modern Technology with an ode to the paperback novel. Though it still exists as a media and entertainment form, the paperback novel is increasingly being voted off the island in favor of electronic reading gadgets, such as Kindle and The Nook.

It was a common practice for the cover of a paperback novel to be tied into a film if one was being made of the novel, as was the case with Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (pictured). My late grandmother in South Carolina actually gave me a copy of this novel with the the image of Jack Nicholson, but I have no idea what has happened to it.

There also have instances when a film became a book as was the case when Steven Spielberg penned his very own novel version of his 1977 film "Close Encounters of the third Kind."

In some incarnations, the paperback novel was known as an airport novel, which were usually fast-paced novels that a traveler could read while flying Air France from Chicago to Paris.

Earlier editions of the paperback novel were the dime novels, which originated at the outset of the 20th century; some of these works were actually sold for fifteen cents.

Hapy Children's Day in Turkey

Saturday, April 23rd, will be Children's Day in Turkey. It was officially started in 1927 as an idea by the Republic of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

For more info on the date and its origins, visit our sister blog "The Daily Vampire."

Here in America, many local Turkish-American associations, including the one in the Chicago metro area, have their own events for the occasion.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (known more commonly as Dr. Oz), Cenk Uygur of MSNBC, a fellow progressive Turkish-American and author/writer Elif Batuman whose work has appeared in "The New Yorker" are among the most notable of Turkish-Americans who were born in the United States. Uygur, who turned 41 last month, and I have birthdays that are two and a half weeks apart!

Quotes from the Composers- Zoltan Kodaly

We conclude our Quotes from The Composers series with a quip from Hungarian master Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967) who was also an educator, linguist and philosopher. Kodaly is perhaps best-known for his orchestral/opera "Hary Janos" (1926) which Wikipedia describes as 'a Hungarian folk opera.' It was first performed by the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest that same year.

We love this quote, and in case, you were wondering the image above is of Hungarian goulash, which they might serve at the Mirabell Restaurant in Chicago, which is actually a German restaurant:

"The laws of morals and the laws of music are the same."

Classical music fans in Pittsburgh, Pa., can hear a performance of "Mozart's Symphony, Number 4" on Jan. 28 at 8:00 p.m., followed by another performance on Jan. 30 at 2:30 p.m.

SIDEBAR: Since I am a Turkish-American, it may surprise a few folks that I am a huge fan of the Greek film composer Mikis Theodakris, who is alive and well (we hope!) at age 85. Theodakris is known for his legendary compostions to "Z" and "Zorba the Greek" and he also scored the 1973 Al Pacino drama "Serpico."

One can listen to WUVT-FM (90.7 Blacksburg, Va), the student-run college radio station of Virginia Tech, for Greek music from 11 a.m.-1:00 p.m. on Saturdays. A Turkish music show follows on the same station from 1:00-2:30 p.m. I co-hosted a Turkish music show on WUVT in 1994 and I was told that I played too much music from the late pop singer Baris Manco which proves it's impossible to make people happy!

Things We Learned on Twitter Today- Movie Critic Talks Politics

One may assume that legendary Chicago film critic Roger Ebert might be tweeting about how much he hates "Jackass 3-D," but instead he was talking politics tonight.

Ebert has made headlines for his groundbreaking surgery which allows a new artificial voice-box to speak for him since he lost his real voice to cancer as well as criticism of California high school students who were wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco De Mayo. Of course, those t-shirts were probably made in Honduras (hmm...., we probably lost some members of the Tulsa Tea Party for that remark!).

Here was the tweet from Ebert which was in reference to (he provided a link) a column from Frank Rich of "The New York Times" about how President Barack Obama is perceived by many Americans to be subservient to elitists even though he provided a tax break for 95 percent of all Americans. This was the exact tweet from Ebert:

"Obama won't go after Wall Street thieves: GOP should be applauding. Ordinary people get screwed."

Perhaps, tomorrow Ebert will tell us who will win the World Series between the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants. I suppose I am a bit of a fervent center-left political person because I'll be rooting for the Giants merely because the Rangers were once owned by George W. Bush!

Things We Learned on Twitter Today- Someone is Even More Unhip Than I Am!

I must profess that when it comes to the current music scene, yours truly is not one who is hip to 'the happening bands of the moment' though we make an effort.

In fact, I have only recently 'discovered' the '90s English band Blur even though the band broke up (well, they've now apparently reunited) some ten years ago!

So, it gives me great pleasure that according to a tweet from "TimeOut Chicago," there is at least one Lolapalooza Festival-goer who has no idea where Gogol Bordello, one of my favorite bands 'of the moment' is from.

According to the tweet, a staff reporter for the journal overheard someone ask if the New York-based Russian-emigre punk band was Australian?

Perhaps, they got them mixed up with Men at Work?!

As for Gogol Bordello, after their festival stint in Chicago, the band will perform with Primus in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Monday. Why is Iowa (where Devo also performed recently) getting all the hip shows?

Things We Learned on Twitter This PM- Greg Allman Backs Out of Show

A major setback has occured for Allman Brothers fans in Chicago as the band announced that their legendary front-man and former Cher spouse will be undergoing a liver transplant at The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.

As a result, The Allman Brothers will not be performing at The Crossroads Guitar Fest at Toyota Park, according to "Chicago Tribune" rock journalist and "Sound Opinions" (an NPR music show) co-host Greg Kot.

The tweet from Kot linked to an article in "The Trib" which said that The Derek Trucks Band will replace The Allman Brothers for the festival.

There will also be a joint performance from Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton at the show.

We certainly wish Greg Allman a speedy recovery.

In other news, since I forgot to link Twisted Sister's web site to our blog during a post yesterday, I wanted to point out that the '80s hair band will also be performing at Rockweekend 2010 in Soderham, Sweden, on July 9. Closer to home, Twisted Sister arrives in Wichita, Kan., for a performance at the Midwest Rockfest on July 24.

They were the ones who did "Come on Feel the Noise" right?! Oh, yeah---sorry, that was Quiet Riot! (Yeah, I know Twisted Sister did "We're Not Going to Take it." We were just messing with ya'!).

Chicago Teenager Has Perfect NCAA Brackets!

Alex Hermann, 17, has made national headlines by somehow managing to pick every NCAA Tournament game correctly so far. (As we write this, Butler is beating Syracuse 5-0, so one more team from my Final Four could be gone. Georgetown and Villanova have biten the proverbial dust so far!).

Hermann, who is autistic and lives in the Chicago area, picked Northern Iowa to upset Kansas, Ohio to beat Georgetown and Cornell to whack Wisconsin.

The odds of such success is one in 13,460,000! Hermann has said that he was shocked by his success, but as he told various media outlets: "I am very good with math."

My other Final Four team West Virginia is in the Sweet 16, but one of the their star players was injured in practice this week.

We are picturing the Kansas State Wildcats cheerleaders in this entry because that team is set to face Xavier (Ohio) in the Sweet 16, and we think one of them should actually date a smart guy like Hermann.....but, we all know Archie always gets the girl over Jughead!

Quote of the Week- Mike Royko

Lately, we have been posting quotes from famous people associated with large American cities.

Today, we go with a quote from famous Chicagoan Mike Royko (1932-1997) who was the Windy City's most famous journalist:

"When I asked him how long he had been driving a taxi, he said. Dree mouse."

Note: The cabs in this photo are actually from New York!