Celebrating International Literacy Day with Gillian Flynn

Welcome to our blog readers in Croatia, Estonia, and France....

Today we celebrate International Literacy Day, and this list features titles we have not read before or perhaps did but fell asleep in the process. A children's author highly recommended I read more Ray Bradbury. So, we are putting a Bradbury novel on the list, but not the one he suggested, as is our usual fashion, like Matthew Broderick's title character in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off,' we are a bit rebellious around here!

And, now the list....

1) Cosmopolis. Don DeLillo. 2003 (pict. top)

2) Me and Orson Welles. Robert Kaplow. 2008.

3) The Leftovers. Tom Perrotta. 2011.

4) Gone Girl. Gillian Flynn. 2012 (pict. center)

5) Submarine. Joe Dunthorne. 2008.

6) God's Pocket. Pete Dexter. 1983.

7) Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury. 1953.

8) Tender Is the Night. F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1934 (pict. bottom)

9) The Naked and the Dead. Norman Mailer. 1948.

10) The Museum of Innocence. Orhan Pamuk.* 2008

*-originally published in Turkish

http://www.internationliteracyday.com

http://www.denverlibrary.org (Denver Library)

Top Ten Comics from The Washington Post (Sunday Edition): We Endorse Dustin for President

Greetings to our blog readers in Croatia, Israel, and India.....

During our lunch hour, we took the Mental Floss Presidential Quiz, and we forgot about Chester Arthur, who was president 20 years after the Civil War. Our sincerest apologies to his descendants. Otherwise, we named all the presidents correctly, even Rutherford Hayes and Martin Van Buren.

Here are our top ten favorite comic strips from "The Washington Post." First place, goes to "Dustin," where a water balloons gag (pict. top) ends with a brilliant zinger. Second place goes to "Lio," a comic strip with dark, gothic humor, which this week features a Grim Reaper gag (pict. center), and lastly in fifth place, the lazy American male is lampooned in "Rhymes with Orange."

"Hagar the Horrible" is not actually out tenth favorite comic strip, but we thought we would start our own running gag, by having it in tenth place every week. Here's the list:

1. Dustin

2. Lio

3. Doonesbury

4. WuMo

5. Rhymes with Orange

6. Foxtrot

7. Zits

8. Brewster Rockit

9. Prickly City

10. Hagar the Horrible (Pearls Before Swine would've actually gotten tenth place)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.dustincomics.com

http://www.gocmics.com/lio

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

The Last Ten Movies We've Seen: Some Fairly Effed Up Films Here.....

Greetings to our blog readers in Croatia, Israel and India.......

"I Saw the Devil," a Korean revenge thriller shock horror is quite jolting at every level. It leads off the last ten films we've seen list here (Hot Stuff is used as the image for the film). We also saw Wes Anderson's brilliant 1998 film "Rushmore" with Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray for the first time since we saw it in a small movie theatre in Woodstock, Va., in early 1999. 

"World War Z" is pretty good for a big-budget summer zombies movie, "Miss Bala" is an unsettling drama about the drug war and its effect on Mexico (bottom image), and "All Fall Down," an early Warren Beatty drama with Eva Marie Saint.

Here is our last ten:

1. I Saw the Devil. South Korea. Jee-woom Kim. 2010.

2. Rushmore. Wes Anderson. 1998.

3. World War Z. Marc Foster. 2013. w/ Brad Pitt

4. The Professionals. Richard Brooks. 1965 w/ Lee Marvin

5. Miss Bala. Mexico. Gerardo Naranjo. 2011

6. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Matt Reeves. 2014

7. All Fall Down. John Frankenheimer. 1962.

8. We Have a Pope. Italy. Nana Moretti. 2011.

9. Taxi Driver.  Martin Scorsese. 1976 w/ Robert DeNiro

10. The Andromeda Strain. Robert Wise. 1971

http://www.filmcomment.com

Top Ten Comics from Sunday, March 29th Washington Post: An Homage to The Far Side

Greetings to our blog readers in New Zealand, Croatia and Turkey.........and to our friends in North Carolina (listening to the song "The Man I Used To Be" by John Howie Jr. on "Back Porch Music" on WUNC-FM (NPR-Chapel Hill, NC).

We are going into our back stacks for a great comics section in the March 29th edition of "The Washington Post," which was remarkable at every level.


Our top strip from this section is "Lio," which featured a tribute to Gary Larson's "The Far Side" comic strips from the 1980s; cows, house pets and aliens were both featured on a residential front lawn in suburbia.

Scott Hilburn's "The Argyle Sweater" depicted two teenage frogs coming into mama's kitchen after a baseball game in which 'they caught a fly.' Perhaps, Kermit the Frog would be proud.

The bronze goes to Denmark as the cheese nation's import illustrated why it is perhaps not a good idea to be a clueless highway department worker when you are paving a road around a place like the Grand Tetons mountains in Wyoming (pictured bottom).

Here is our comics survey:

1. Lio

2. The Argyle Sweater

3. WuMo

4. Rhymes with Orange

5. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

6. Barney and Clyde

7. Prickly City

8. Sherman's Lagoon

9. Knight Life

10. Reply All

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Last Ten Songs We've Listened To on Steve-FM in Roanoke, Va: Everything Except Kenny G

Greetings to our fans in Sweden, Croatia, Ukraine, Egypt and Greece (kudos on your new prime minister.........). Now that we have perhaps officially entered the world of The Jetsons (but, where are the flying cars?), it is actually possible for people in Anchorage, Alaska, and Bucharest, Romania, to listen to an eclectic pop-rock fusion radio station in Roanoke, Va.

So, with that in mind, here are the last ten songs we heard on 106.1 (SteveFM-Raonoke, Va) from the 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. hour on Friday afternoon. These songs are in reverse order:

1) Dark Horse. Katy Perry. 2013.

2) Keep on Loving You. REO Speedwagon. 1980 (pict. bottom)

3) Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen. 1975.

4) Never. Heart. 1985.

5) Clocks. Coldplay. 2002 (pict. center)

6) Janie's Got a Gun. Aerosmith. 1989. (pict, top)

7) Your Smiling Face. James Taylor. 1977.

8) Tainted Love. Soft Cell. 1981.

9) Moves Like Jagger. Maroon 5. 2011.

10) Hold on Loosely. 38 Special. 1981.

http://www.1061stevefm.com

http://www.visitroanoke.com

http://www.roanokedoesntsuck.com

http://www.aerosmith.com

http://www.speedwagon.com

Best Comics from Sunday, Jan. 18th from GoComics: Gotta Love F-Minus

Greetings to our blog readers in Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and........well, we're not sure how popular we are in eastern Europe/the Balkans/the former Yugoslavia anyway!

GoComics is the premiere comics distributor in America with over 200 comic strips, including "Garfield," "Dilbert" and "Get Fuzzy." We couldn't possibly have checked all their strips on Sunday, but from the 40-50 that we did check out, we were able to find ten which really stood out.

The images above are of: 1) Lucy from "Peanuts" actually for "The Argyle Sweater" which made fun of Charlie Brown, who will be the place kicker for the Seattle Seahawks for Super Bowl Sunday (yeah, no one in Macedonia will get that joke); 2) the cactus for "Reality Check" in which Bugs Bunny gets lost in the desert thanks to faulty GPS directions; and 3) a parking spots war photo for "F-Minus," the single-panel strip, which this week had a driver drop someone's hoodie in a parking spot to assure that the right person got it.

Here are the top ten:

*-comics in "The Washington Post" (Sunday edition)

#-comics in "The Roanoke Times" (Sunday edition)

1) The Argyle Sweater *

2) Reality Check

3) F-Minus

4) The Flying McCoys

5) Foxtrot *

6) Speed Bump *#

7) Get Fuzzy #

8) Brewster Rockit: Space Guy*

9) WUMO *

10) Brevity

http://www.gocomics.com/fminus/2015/01/18 (the Sunday F-Minus strip)

http://www.gocomics.com/fminus

http://www.gocomics.com/realitycheck

http://www.gocomics.com/theargylesweater

Our Ten Favorite Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post: Cheetos Anyone?

Greetings to our blog readers in Turkey, Croatia and Spain.....

Today, we once again turn our attention to our favorite comic strips from the Sunday "Washington Post," and the Jan. 4th edition offered lots of laughs and even more gags.

"Brewster Rockit: Space Guy," a comic strip that is also in the (Greensboro, NC) "News and Record" and "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution," provided one hilarious moment when a patron aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise (forgive the "Star Trek" humor) spills Cheetos (pict. top) all over himself.

In second place, the Danish import "WUMO" featured a fishing trip (pict. middle) in which the fish were a bit more animated than one might expect.

Third place went to "Rhymes with Orange," in which a new product is tested in a factory to unexpected, negative results.

Lastly, fifth place went to Keith Knight's "Knight Lie" in which the cartoonist pokes fun at right-wing paranoid men who may listen to Rush Limbaugh, sort of like the old tv sitcom character Archie Bunker (pict. bottom).

Here is our top ten:

1) Brewster Rockit

2) WUMO

3) Rhymes with Orange

4) Foxtrot

5) Knight Life

6) Doonesbury

7) Speed Bump

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Pearls Before Swine

10) Reply All

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/

http://www.comicskingdom.com

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.kchronicles.com/ (Keith Knight's political cartoons)

5)

We Are Suffering from Blogger's Block

Yes, this bout with blogger's block reminds me of the days when I taught English as a Second Language at a minimum-security prison in Yanceyville, NC, just across the border from Danville, Va. I should point out that I wasn't an inmate there myself!

But, hopefully, someone in Finland, Croatia or Iran is actually reading this, and hopefully that person realizes that even in America one can become bored and confused and somehow try to function!

Of course, people like Mark Twain, Nazim Hikmet* and F. Scott Fitzgerald never had to worry about blogger's block!

*- A famous Turkish poet who died in Moscow some 50 years ago.

Image to Fill Space: The Yugo Car

We learned today that "Time" magazine considers the 1985 model of the Yugo, a car that was made in the former Yugoslavia, to be one of the 50 worst cars of all time. We have no idea when this car was made.

Yugoslavia disbanded after a tumultuous civil war: The modern countries which were a part of the Land of Yugos, include Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro* and Kosovo.

*-This marks the very first time we've mentioned Montenegro on this blog..............

Presidential Quotes, Cont'd: Jimmy Carter

Greeting to our blog readers in the Netherlands, Croatia and Uzbekistan.

Today, we are continuing our series of presidential quotes with a quip from Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Georgia who upset other Democratic candidates in the 1976 primaries and then defeated incumbent President Gerald Ford, whom Carter later became good friends with, to become president of the United States.

Other quotes in the series can be found on our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" http://www.nocturnalguys38.blogspot.com

Interestingly enough, the Marvel Comics character Howard the Duck also ran for president in 1976; we think he got more votes than Ralph Nader.

Here is the quote:

"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, human rights invented America."

http://www.carterlibrary.gov

http://www.cartercenter.org

Quote of the Day/Week- James Joyce

Although Ireland has had what can be objectively qualified as a dismal Euro 2012 Cup with big losses to Croatia (3-1) and Spain (4-0), they are still among the 16 countries in the tournament so hence we are quoting a famous Irishman.

That person is the legendary novelist and poet James Joyce (1882-1941) whose novel "Ulysses" has been considered to be among the best ever written in the English novel.

There is also a statue of Joyce in Dublin.

Here is his quote:

"Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part that schools cannot recognize."

http://visitireland.com

www.jamesjoyce.ie

Quote of the Day/Week-Toni Kukoc

Today, we conclude our series of quotes from Olympic athletes who won either gold or silver medals at the Summer Olympics with a quip from Croatian basketball player Toni Kukoc, who was also an instrumental supporting player during the Chicago Bulls championship run of the 1990s.

Kukoc, now 43, won silver with the Yugoslavian national team at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but just four years later, after a bitter civil war erupted which meant that Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia would each would have separate Olympic teams in every sport, Kukoc won silver again only this time it was for Croatia. Ironically, the team that defeated Croatia was the Dream Team of the United States which was captained by Michael Jordan, who would be Kukoc's teammate with the Bulls.

Here is Kukoc's quote:

"If you are physically ready to play, it's a matter of confidence. Your confidence goes down when you lose games, when shots are not going in."

SIDEBAR: Back on Dec. 28, 2010, in what has become one of our most popular entries, I professed to eating an entire anchovy pizza at the Red Rocks pizza joint in Washington, DC. Well last night, I replicated the feat by downing a whole small anchovy pizza at Amante Gourmet Pizza in Carrboro (Chapel Hill), NC. Call me insane, but it was delicious!


http://www.redrocksdc.com

http://www.amantepizza.com

Status Update_ Cat Scratch Fever

My six-year-old (soon to be seven-year-old) cat Gizmo is actually a tuxedo cat. But he is one with a naughty streak.

This morning, as I was feeding him no less, he scratched my hand and hissed. I suppose he doesn't tuna (he must be one of the very few cats in the old who would prefer something else.....moo goo gaipan?!)

So my Status Update for 1/30/11 is: "This morning, my crazy Gizmo scratched the hell out of me."

I suppose that is one of the nice things about living in Cucumber, W.Va*, it is that it brings pure delight to use the word hell on a Sunday morning. Of course, doing it publicly is perhaps not a good idea, definitely not in a small hamlet in southeastern West Virginia.

For those who wish to adopt a cat or dog in Greensboro, NC, they can reach the Guilford County Animal Shelter at 336-297-5020. And, for those in Richmond, Va., they can contact the Henrico County Animal Shelter at 804-652-3360.

And, to those in the Washington, DC metro area who want to ease my guilt for listening to Mozart via an Internet stream from WETA-FM (an NPR station that only plays classical music), they can go to http://weta.org/fm (.), but don't tell them I sent you!

Alas, we can not list every animal shelter in the country up here, but we can always make fun of West Virginia!

*- Yes, Cucumber, W.Va., does really exist. No, I don't actually live there. According to Wikipedia (don't tell them, I 'borrowed' info on them, the small mining community in McDowell County is the only Cucumber in America!

PS- Alas, my beloved Radford University Highlanders lost to Coastal Carolina yesterday, but we did found out that surprisingly enough the women's tennis team has four young ladies from Croatia, and one of them, Mia Drobnjak has a name that's very hard to spell (well, she has my sympathies actually!)