Top Ten Comic Strips from the Sunday Roanoke Times: Going to Syria

We are quite pressed for time today, so let's go ahead and jump in the pool, which probably doesn't translate well in Japanese, Polish, or Norwegian!

This week's first place comic strip went to "Pearls Before Swine" where pig gives a brilliant line in the last panel; we don't want to give out a Spoiler Alert, so we shall let you find the strip for yourself (see link below).

In "Doonesbury," political satire takes center stage as one patriotic American wanting to defeat ISIS terrorists realizes that coming to Syria is even more problematic than Afghanistan, a country he knows much better.

In our third place strip, Bucky the cat and Satchel the dog have a spot about Atlantic salmon (pict. bottom); here is our top ten:

1. Pearls Before Swine http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2015/08/09

2. Get Fuzzy http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

3. Doonesbury http://www.doonesbury.com

4. Agnes http://www.gocomics.com/agnes

5. Non Sequitur

6. Jump Start http://www.gocomics.com/jumpstart

7. Dilbert http://www.dilbert.com

8. Mutts

9. Speed Bump

10. Zits

http://www.roanoke.com

Top 10 Sunday Comic Strips from the Times-Call: Carlos Gonzalez Makes the Chart

Greetings to our blog readers in the Czech Republic, Japan, and Ireland......

As we are posting this, Wolf Blitzer of CNN is interviewing Republican long-shot presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for his views on the nuclear agreement our government has just made with Iran. Yes, of course, we diligently paid attention to Mr. Huckabee.......zzzzzzzz.....Wait, did Huckabee just say Israel borders Iran?! He may want to check the map again.

Politics aside, this week, we are running our top ten from "The Times-Call," a daily newspaper serving the Boulder County suburbs of Denver, Colo. One of the unique aspects of this paper's comic pages is that they run two King Comics strips: 1) "Take It from the Tinkersons" and 2) "The Pajama Diaries," which are not in some major newspapers' funnies section, like "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" (we're just kidding on the NYT as they don't have a comics section).

For this week's survey, we are going back to strips which ran on Sunday, May 4th. Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies (pict. top) is in reference to "Foxtrot," the top strip in our survey, which depicts a kid catching a fly ball as he is taking a selfie of himself in the process. The second image of a colorful fish is for second place finisher "WuMo" which revolves around a fish who want to plug in a toaster in a fish tank. Lastly, the Bulgarian cuisine picture at the bottom is for "Tinkersons" in which a family meal is interrupted by a cellphone, which perhaps ironically belongs to the father as opposed to his wife and children.

Here is our top ten:

1. Foxtrot

2. WuMo

3. Take It from the Tinkersons

4. Pearls Before Swine

5. Get Fuzzy

6. The Pajama Diaries

7. Dilbert

8. Zits

9. Mother Goose and Grimm

10. Hagar the Horrible (this comic strip also finished tenth last week in our poll of comics from "the Martinsville Bulletin in Martinsville, Va.)

http://www.pajamadiares.com

http://www.tinkersons.com

http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://www.coloradorockies.mlb.com

Top Ten Sunday Comic Strips from May 24th Roanoke Times: A Trip Down the Yellow Brick Road....

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

This week, we select "Speed Bump" with an homage to "The Wizard of Oz" as our top pick. Second place goes to "Get Fuzzy," where Satchel the Dog and Bucky the Cat have a row. There is a mention of a cat in a Youtube video; hence we are using an image of a Van cat. Finally, "Pearls Before Swine" has a humorous take on a husband and wife having it out via messages in a bottle. This made us think of the famous song "Message in a Bottle" by The Police, a band with Sting which featured Stewart Copeland (pict. bottom) as its drummer.

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Dilbert

5) Doonesbury

6) Garfield

7) Zits

8) Jump Start

9) For Better or For Worse

10) Family Circus

http://www.roanoke.com/comics

Our Top Ten Comic Strips from Today's Mother's Day Sunday Roanoke Times: Oh, Look, It's a Kangaroo

Greetings to our blog readers in Iran (perhaps), Japan and Costa Rica.........

Our top ten comic strips from today's "Roanoke Times," a daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va., which David Letterman calls the greatest city in the world (we're just kidding, he sez that for New York City), include a "Speed Bump" strip in which there is a surprise:
http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

"Non-Sequitur"  features a man who sees surprise messages in the night sky which his wife is oblivious to: http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur

Third place goes to "Get Fuzzy" which features a kitchen argument: http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

We also enjoyed today's "Mutts" which features a quote from the late '60s era stand-up comic Lenny
Bruce (pict. bottom) who once said he hated to visit small towns because once you see the canon in the park there is nothing else to do: http://www.gocommics.com/mutts

Here is our top ten: http://www.roanoke.com/comics

1. Speed Bump

2. Non-Sequitur

3. Get Fuzzy

4. Pearls Before Swine

5. Zits
 
6. Agnes http://www.gocmics.com/agnes

7. Dilbert http://www.dilbert.com

8. Doonesbury http://www.doonesbury.com

9. Jump Start

10. Mutts

For our survey of the comic strips from today's Washington Post, go to http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

Last Ten Films We've Seen: The Other Interview

Greetings to our beloved blog readers in Slovakia, Cyprus and Kenya..........as well as those of you in Lewisburg, West Virginia, where we gather there is about 15 inches of snow!

We are posting this list just one day before the Oscars are revealed. In the United States, the Oscars are broadcast on ABC stations, such as WTVD-11 in Raleigh, NC, and KTVX-4 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

We originally got this idea from "Film Comment." There is a Dutch connection here as one of the films "Waiter" (pict. top) is from the Netherlands, and another one "Interview," which is not the headline-making film with Seth Rogen and James Franco, but rather a small indy film starring and directed by Steve Buscemi (pict. bottom) that is a remake of a Dutch film made by the late Theo van Gogh who was murdered by a fanatical man of North African heritage in Amsterdam.

We are also using the Japanese flag (pict. center) ironically as the three hour epic docudrama "United Red Army" is actually about a terrorist group made up of far-left college students in Japan during the early 1970s; amazingly enough, they are most known for a terrorist incident in Israel!

Here is our list:


1) Interview. 2007. dir:Steve Buscemi.

2) Kill Your Darlings. 2013. dir:John Krokidas

3) The Impossible. 2012. dir: J.A. Bayana

4) The Past. Iran/France. Aghar Farhadi

5) United Red Army. Japan. 2007. dir: Koji Wakamatsu.

6) Two Days, One Night. France. Belgium/France. 2014 dirs: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

7) Waiter. Netherlands. 2006 dir:Alex van Warmerdam.

8) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Australia. 1978.  dir: Fred Schepsi

9) Lacombe, Lucien. France. 1977. dir: Louis Malle

10) The Arrangement. 1969. dir: Elia Kazan w/Faye Dunaway and Kirk Douglas

http://www.filmcomment.com

http://www.abc11.com

http://www.good4utah.com

Last Ten Songs on Simon-FM (Greensboro, NC): Two Swedish Songs!

Greetings to our blog readers in Colombia, Japan and Hungary.....

Welcome to another addition of this wacky blog.

Today, we focus on the last ten songs we heard on 98.7-Simon FM (Greensboro, NC), which can now be heard all over the globe thanks to streaming but we imagine less than one percent of the station's listenership comes from Bergen, Norway!

Speaking of nations from Scandinavia, two songs which almost came up consecutively were from Swedish bands (sorry, not Roxette!), which makes us wonder if the computer which designates which songs to play is aware that the radio station played two songs from Swedish pop bands with Eric Clapton (pict. center) in between.

Here are the last ten songs from the 4:00-5:00 p.m. hour on Mon., Feb. 16th, 2015:

1) Some Like It Hot. Power Station. 1985. (The song was actually released on March 4, 1985, my 15th birthday!)

2) Smooth Criminal. Michael Jackson. 1988.

3) Sweet Emotion. Aerosmith. 1975 (we can't stand this band, actually)

4) The Sign. Ace of Base (pict. top, one of the Swedish bands)

5) Cocaine. Eric Clapton. 1977 (we learned while researching this, that J.J Cale of Velvet Underground originally performed this song)

6) Take a Chance on Me. Abba. 1978 (the other Swedish band)

7) Under the Bridge. Red Hot Chili Peppers. 1992.

8) Respect. Aretha Franklin. 1965 (pict. bottom)

9) Talking in Your Sleep. The Romantics. 1983

10) When I See You Smile. Bad English (w/John Waite) 1989.

http://www.987simon.com/

http://www.visitnc.com/piedmont

http://www.ericclapton.com/

Last Ten Films We've Seen (as of Sept. 22nd): Some Pretty Violent Films

Greetings to our blog readers in Ireland, Jordan and Japan.

With two gangster films ("Killing List" and "The Drop") plus one horror film (the "Carrie" remake/reboot) in addition to a Turkish film dealing with domestic violence ("The Confession"), there are some quite violent films on the list.

But, there are light films as well, and since Ben Stiller's film "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," a remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye classic, is about daydreaming, we thought we'd post a photo of a Turkish babe in a hot black bikini, I suppose in Yemen, this entry will be censored.....oh well!

Boris Spassky, the great Russian chess player (top image) is being used in conjunction with "The Master," one of the great films in the acting career of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, and conversely the yellow crayon is for "I Am Curious Yellow," a steamy left-wing experimental Swedish film from 1967 which includes footage of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here are the last ten films we've seen (as of Sept. 22nd):

1. The Master. 2012. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

2. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 2013. Dir: Ben Stiller

3. The Lego Movie. 2014. Dirs: Phil Lord; Christopher Miller

4. The Drop. 2014. Dir: Michael R. Roskam (last film of James Gandolfini)

5. Killing List. 2011. Dir: Ben Wheatley

6. The Confession. Turkey. 2002. Dir: Zeki Demirkubuz

7. I Am Curious Yellow. Sweden. 1967. Dir: Vilgot Sjoman

8. The Great Beauty. Italy. 2013. Dir: Paolo Sorrentino

9. Nathalie. France. 2003. Dir: Anne Fontaire

10. Carrie. 2013. Dir: Kimberly Peirce.

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/

Sunday Night Tweets: Be on the Look-Out for Runaway Cheetahs

During our last entry, we said that we were going to send Dutch Ambassador Rudolf Bekink (pictured center) a card to congratulate the Netherlands' successful third place  finish at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

Alas, a Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 385 passengers, about half of which were Dutch citizens, was shot down by Russian separatist terrorists in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, so the Netherlands has gone from a period of joy to tragedy in a very short time span. The plane was in route from Amsterdam, Holland, to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.

It also been a disastrous week for Palestinian-Israeli relations as Israel has taken defensive measures by bombing Palestinian areas in the West Bank, killing scores of women and children, which also coincides with the Muslim Ramadan holiday.

But, we do have some light-hearted tweets as well; let's take a look:

1) Washington DC News: Pro-Palestinian Groups march to the White House.

2) Pittsburgh Post Gazette: Man arrested after barricading himself, and a 2-year-old in a Mount Washington apartment.

3) Mark Duplass (actor/filmmaker): "The Master" is now streaming on Netflix. Do it. Like now!

4) The Onion: This week, last year FBI offered $1 million for any information on cheetahs (see top image)

5) Netherlands Embassy: The Dutch embassy in DC will open a condolence register for victims of MH17 this Monday and Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon, and from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

6) Dallas Morning News: Dallas police handing out Slurpee tickets to kids for being good (Bottom image, actually of a 7-11 in Japan).

7) Jeremiah Owyang: Seriously, the current news cycle is morbid and bleak. Hoping for a better week, planet earth.

When It's 8:00 p.m. in New York, It's (now) 8:00 p.m. in Athens (until March 30th)

Yes, for all we know, the sushi pictured on the bottom might well be from a shopping mall food court in Fort Worth, Texas, as opposed to an authentic Japanese sushi eatery in Tokyo, but we need to get this entry up so we can watch the exciting clash of the NBA titans tonight as the Washington Wizards battle the Charlotte Bobcats (forgive the American sports humor!).

On Sunday morning, there was a one hour 'spring forward' across North America, and most of us Americans and our Canadian friends are still recovering from it.

Here are the times around the world which will be in effect when it becomes 8:00 p.m. here in the Eastern time zone, which includes the American cities of New York, Boston, Detroit, Washington D.C, Atlanta and Orlando and the Canadian cities of Toronto and Montreal:

1) Athens 2:00 a.m. (same time as Istanbul)

2) Berlin 1:00 a.m. (pictured middle)

3) Houston/St.Louis 7:00 p.m.

4) Rio de Janeiro 9:00 p.m.

5) Tokyo 9:00 a.m.

6) Dubai (pictured top) 4:00 a.m.

7) Honolulu 2:00 p.m.

8) Tel Aviv 2:00 a.m.

9) Beijing 8:00 a.m.

10) Warsaw 1:00 a.m.

11) Seattle 5:00 p.m.

12) Tunis 1:00 a.m.

http://www.dubaitourism.ae/

http://www.visitberlin.de/en

https://www.gotokyo.org/en/

http://www.visitseattle.org/Home.aspx

Top 10 Olympic Lists (1 of 10): The Flag Bearers; We Spelled the Japanese Curlers Name Right (we hope)

We had planned to post this by Thursday or Friday, but we finally managed to get it up. As it is, several countries, such as Azerbaijan, changed flag bearers at the last minute. Here are ten select flag bearers from the opening ceremonies, for ten more, go to our sister blog: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com


1. USA. Todd Lodwick. Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Nordic-combined. (pictured top)

2. Japan. Ayumi Ogasawara. Women's Curling. (pictured center)

3. Turkey. Alper Ucar. Ice Dancing (pictured bottom: his partner is actually Alisa Agafonova, a Ukrainian who will compete for Turkey)

4. Iceland. Saevar Birgisson. Men's Cross-Country Skiing.

5. Netherlands. Jorien ten Mors. Men's Speed-skating.

6. Russia. Alexandr Zubkov. Men's Bobsledding.

7. Norway. Aksel Lund Svindal. Men's Alpine Skiing. (Yikes...we almost didn't spell his name right!)

8. Poland. Dawid Kupczyk, Men's Bobsledding.

9. Switzerland. Simon Ammann. Men's Ski-jumping.

10. Canada. Hayley Wickenheiser. Women's Ice Hockey.

http://www.teamusa.org

http://usskiteam.com/

http://www.hockeycanada.ca

http://www.olimpiyatkomitesi.org.tr/ (Turkish Olympic Team, in Turkish)

http://www.nbcolympics.com/

http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/2014

http://olympics.cbc.ca/

http://www.worldcurling.org/

Little Thinker Quotes (12 of 16): Oscar Wilde

"True friends stab you in the front," Oscar Wilde.

SIDEBAR: Since there is a bit of a Polar Vortex around here, we thought we'd post some temps around American and across the world, including Nagano, Japan, where the 1998 Winter Olympics took place:

37 degrees- Nagano, Japan

34 degrees in Richmond, Va.

27 degrees in Hartford, Conn.

22 degrees in Malmo, Sweden

15 degrees in Chicago

5 degrees in Kiev, Ukraine

http://www.oscarwildesociety.com/

Little Thinkers Quotes (3 of 16): Marilyn Monroe

Greetings to our blog readers in Dubai, Japan and Argentina.

Our quote today comes from Marilyn Monroe. Wasn't she great in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (we're kidding! It was Audrey Hepburn who starred in that film; Marilyn starred in "Some Like it Hot").

Here is her quip:

"Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered."

http://www.marilynmonroe.com

Top 10 Best Comics from This Sunday's Washington Post: Don't Wash the Flamingos

Wow! We had the hardest time finding an image of Captain Crunch! Anyway, no one wants to hear about the cumbersome side of blogging.

Greetings to our blog readers in the Bahamas, where we danced with some flamingos at the zoo in Nassau.

"WUMO," our favorite comic strip of the day featured (SPOILER ALERT) a man telling his wife not to wash flamingos with the laundry. This made us wonder if John Waters, who directed the cult film "Pink Flamingos" saw this strip. Of course, there is a .00009% chance that he reads our blog.

Our runner-up strip is our friend Keith Knight's comic strip "Knight Life," in which Keith (along with "The Pajama Diaries," it's an autobiographical strip) listens to a friend who is as fat as a Japanese sumo wrestler rant about how he likes to make rebellious New Year's resolutions.

Lastly, Captain Crunch, the character who promotes the 70s-era breakfast cereal that is still around and probably not recommended for middle-age adults with diabetes (we're pretty sure our fellow Turkish-American Dr. Mehmet Oz would agree with us) is part of the punchline in "Brewster Rockit."

Alas, "Rhymes with Orange," "Judge Parker" and "Reply All" were among the good comic strips which didn't finish in our top ten, but "The Washington Post" (Sunday edition) has some 30-plus comic strips.

1. WUMO

2. Knight Life

3. Doonesbury

4. Brewster Rockit

5. Sherman's Lagoon

6. Foxtrot

7. Pearls Before Swine

8. Lio

9. The Argyle Sweater

10. Dustin

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo#.UsoHxzYo6Uk

http://www.gocomics.com/theknightlife#.UsoIKDYo6Uk

http://www.bahamas.com/#/ragged

http://www.visitjapan.jp/en/

http://www.capncrunch.com/#show

DC Week (7 of 8): Meet Rudolf Bekink and the Other Chief Diplomats

We are continuing our look at ambassadors who serve their respective countries in Washington, DC, the other chief diplomats at http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Here is our list, the year the ambassador began their American mission is in parentheses:

1. Netherlands/Holland, Rudolf Bekink (pict. top with Barack Obama) (2012)

2. Canada, Gary Doer (2009)

3.South Africa, Ebrahim Rasool  (2010)

4. Brazil, Mauro Vieria (2010)

5. Sweden, Jonas Hafstrom (2007)

6. Australia, (mr) Kim Beazley (pict. bottom) (2010)

7. France, Francois Delattre (2011)

8. Japan, Kenichiro Sasae  (2012)

9. Italy, Claudio Bisogneiro (2013)

10. Germany, Peter Ammon (2011)

http://www.washdiplomat.com/

http://dc.the-netherlands.org/

http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/english/html/

Our First Entry in Turkish

Herkese mutlu gunler. Bugun Malatya Kayisilar bizim destek oluyor (tabikii saka ediyoruz).

Ayrica, butun Sudi Arabistan, Japonya, ve Polanya'daki dostlarimiza merhabalar gondermek istiyoruz.

Bugun ABD'nin orta Atlantik bolgesinde baya cok yagmur yagmis. North Carolina devlet'i bir kac kentler'de sel olmus. Ve Bashkent Vashington'da bulutlu, yagmurlu ve ruzgarli gun gecirdigin'e duyduk.

Eger siz bana Twitter'de selam solyle'mek istersiniz, @Tilly70 benim Twitter isminimdir.

English translation abridged: "We wish everyone a nice day. Today, Malatya Apricots (a real company) is today's daily sponsor (this is a joke; we have no sponsors). We want to say hello to all our friends in Saudi Arabia, Japan and Poland.

It rained very hard in the mid-Atlantic part of the country. The state of North Carolina and Washington, DC (there is no 'W' in Turkish, though George W. Bush, who was not popular in Turkey because of the Iraq War, made everyone aware of the letter W). If you want to say hello on Twitter, my handle is @Tilly70."


http://www.malatyaapricots.com

http://www.malatyaapricots.blogspot.com

Sports Desk: Russian Aliya Mustafina Wins Gold in Gymnastics

Uni the Snow Leopard Kitten (pictured center) was the mascot for the 2013 World University Games in Kazan, Russia, in the country's Tartarstan region, and the host country came through well in artistic gymnastics as Aliya Mustafina (pictured top) won individual gold.

Mustafina, who won individual all-around bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, hails from Tartarstan. She won the competition with a 57.9 score. Her teammate Ksenia Afanaseva (pictured bottom) won individual silver while Kim Dui, a gymnast of Chinese descent who represented Germany, finished third.

Elizabeth Black of Canada finished third on balance beam and she tied for second on vault with veteran gymnast Elsa Garcia of Mexico.

In other women's sports at the World University Games, Aysegul Coban, from my father's home country Turkey, finished third in women's weightlifting in the 195-kg division. Kanae Yasi of Japan won gold in that event. Coban hails from Konya in central Turkey.

Team USA won five overall gold medals, including one from Auriell Scott, an alumni of Central Florida University, won gold in the 100-meters track event.

http://www.intlgymnast.com

English Premiere League Scoreboard

American women's soccer goalie Hope Solo certainly doesn't play in the English Premiere League, but we thought posting an image of her may help our hit counts; we understand she has a loyal following in Slovakia (well, we aren't 100-percent certain of that).

Many of the soccer games in the EPL this weekend (plus one on Monday) were lop-sided, but there were some real gems as well.

Tottenham Hotspur prevailed over Arsenal 2-1 with goals from English national Aaron Lemmon in the 35th minute and Welsh star Gareth Bale (pictured bottom); for Arsenal, the lone goal came from German player Per Mertesader in the 43rd minute of play.

Japanese sensation Shinji Kagawa scored a hot trick for Manchester United in front of a home crowd of 75, 586 spectators in the team's 4-0 dismantling of Norwich.

And, our beloved Chelsea won a 1-0 match on a goal from Senegalese national Demba Ba in the 28th minute in a game against West Brom on Saturday.

Here are the scores:


Everton 3 Reading 1

Queens Park 2 Southampton 1

Swansea 1 Newcastle 0

Manchester City 1 Aston Villa 0

Tottenham 2 Arsenal 1

Sunderland 2 Fulham 2

Manchester United 4 Norwich 0

Liverpool 4 Wigham Ath. 0

West Ham 1 Stoke 0

Chelsea 1 West Brom 0

Chuck Norris vs. Cuneyt Arkin_ The Wonder Kick Years

It is 6:30 a.m. in Harare, Zimbabwe, 1:30 p.m. where one might be having sushi for lunch in Tokyo, Japan, and 9:30 a.m. in Karachi, Pakistan; we read an article in "Mental Floss" that said 9:30 a.m. on Mondays was the best time to post a blog entry. The problem is I don't think we get too blog-reader traffic from Pakistan, but perhaps today is that day.

We are looking at the collective careers of American action movie star Chuck Norris, who turned 72 on March 10th, and his Turkish counterpart Cuneyt Arkin, who is now 75. Both actors have right-wing views, well we are not 100-percent sure of Arkin, but since Norris said that the re-election of President Barack Obama would bring 1,000 years of darkness, it is safe to Norris is very conservative. But, he may actually be to the left of the Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan.

In 1977, Norris had a break-out role as a truck-driver hell-bent on finding his missing brother in "Breaker! Breaker!," a film which has been screened on IFC (The Independent Film Channel) here in the states. There was a time when IFC would show arthouse films with indy screen goddess Parker Posey ("House of Yes," "Personal Velocity"), but it appears that Norris films get slightly better ratings.

On a sad note, Norris' co-star in "Breaker! Breaker," veteran actor George Murdock, who also played Testikov in a "Seinfeld" episode in 1994, died this year.

So, we are asking which actor actually won a Best Actor the year Norris made "Breaker! Breaker!," which incidentally has a 3.4 on the Internet Movie Database, in 1997.

Is the answer?:

A) Jack Nicholson

B) Dustin Hoffman

C) Richard Dreyfuss

D) Marlon Brando

E) Jon Voight

As to the answer in our last entry in this series, in 1982,  the year that Cuneyt Arkin was in  "The Turkish Star Wars" the Oscar went to B) Ben Kingsley for the title role in "Gandhi."

http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

 http://www.chucknorris.com

http://www.ifc.com

http://www.imdb.com

http://www.parkerposey.org

http://www.cuneytarkin.com.tr

http://www.mentalfloss.com

Quote of the Week- Kabo Abe

Today, we quote the late Japanese novelist Kobo Abe (1924-1993) who penned an erotic masterpiece "The Woman in the Dunes" (1962) which was made into an excellent film in 1964. I had a chance to find it in the Hollins University library in Roanoke, Va., some years ago.

Here is the quote from Abe (from the novel):

"Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost."

http://www.hollins.edu