Our Top Ten Comics from Sunday, Dec. 14th Washington Post: Bill Cosby Had a VERY Bad Year

Greetings to our blog readers in Costa Rica, Sweden and Australia......

Today, we focus on our ten favorite comic strips from "The Washington Post"(Sunday, Dec. 14th edition). For those of you in Kazakhstan who may have never been to America, Sunday is the day when color comic strips are posted in newspapers and web sites, such as http://www.gocomics.com

"The Washington Post" has substantially more comics than small-town newspapers like "The Register and Bee" in Danville, Va. And, there are comic strips for virtually every demographic, including "Reply All" (young women), "Baldo" (Hispanics), "Mark Trail" (children) and "Beetle Bailey" (Republican senior citizens men with hearing airs...........our apologies to Mort Walker).

Darrin Bell's "Candorville" is our top comic strip of the week for the first time in the survey (there are over 30 comic strips in the Sunday Post) when the title character, an African-American man presumably in his late twenties, overhears two school children talking about why their parents don't want them to watch "The Cosby Show." For those of you in Uzbekistan, there are some serious criminal allegations aimed at Bill Cosby (pictured top), a former stand-up comic and sitcom star.

"Candorville" is followed closely by "Pearls Before Swine" in which Rat declares that he wants to be president of the United States so he can aim drones to spy on every living person on earth. Of course, if he were running as a Republican for Congress in South Carolina, he could say something that outlandish and get elected as Congs. Joe Wilson and Mark Sanford, two of the most dubious members of Congress, did on Election Day (forgive the political commentary).

We used "Three Little Pigs" as our image for "Pearls" because Pig is one of the three major characters in the strip (Goat is the third).

Third place went to "Speed Bump," which depicts a medieval jousting the age of social media.

And, in fourth place, there was a hilarious look at Star Wars fanatics in Keith Kinght's "Knight Life," in which guys dressed like Storm Troopers are camping out for tickets to the next Star Wars film, which is due out next year.

Here is our top ten:

1. Candorville

2. Pearls Before Swine

3. Speed Bump

4. Knight Life

5. Lio

6. WUMO

7. The Argyle Sweater

8. Dustin

9. Prickly City

10. Doonesbury

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.gocommic.com

The Olympics Lists (10 of 10): The Medalists

Greetings to everyone around the world; I'm Bob Costas and you're not (yes, we are making fun of Chevy Chase's signature line from the early days of 'Saturday Night Live.').

Here is our last list:

1) Erin Hamlin. (pictured top). 27. USA. Women's Luge. Won bronze.

2) Denis Ten (pictured center) 20. Kazakhstan. Men's Figure Skating. Won bronze.

3) Torah Bright (pictured bottom). 27. Australia. Women's Snowboarding. Won Silver. Resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.

4) Pierre Vaultier. 26. France. Men's Snowboarding. Won gold.

5) Lizzy Yarnold. 25. Great Britain. Women's Skeleton. Won gold.

6) Alexander Treitakov. 28. Russia. Men's Skeleton. Won gold.

7) Alla Tesper. 34. Belarus. Women's Free-style Skiing. Won gold.

8) Zbiginew Brodka. 29. Poland. Men's Speed-skating. Won gold.

9) Carina Vogt. 24. Germany. Women's Ski-jumping. Won gold.

10) Matthias Mayer. 23. Austria. Men's Alpine. Won gold.

http://www.nbcolympics.com

http://www.sochi2014.com/en

Top 10 Olympic Lists (3 of 10): Athletes from Former Soviet Republics

Here are ten athletes competing for former Soviet Republics; one of the more interesting ones is Patrick Brachner, who skis for Azerbaijan, but he is an Austrian. Brachner was originally slated to be Azerbaijan's flag-bearer.
Our image is of Yulia Galysheva, a free-style skier from Kazakhstan.

Here is our list:

1. Roman Krech. 24. Kazakhstan. Speed-skating.

2. Yulia Galysheva. 21. Kazakhstan. Free-style Skiing.

3) Yosef Penyak. 20. Ukraine. Snowboarding.

4) Patrick Brachner. 22. Azerbaijan. Alpine Skiing.

5) Hanna Huskova. 21. Belarus. Free-style Skiing.

6) Lelde Gasuna. 23. Latvia. Women's Alpine Skiing.

7) Andris Sics. 28. Latvia. Men's Luge.

8) Katya Galstyan. 21. Armenia. Cross-country Skiing.

9) Kadri Lehta. 28. Estonia. Biathlon.

10) Dmitry Treleveski. 30. Kyrgyzstan. Alpine Skiing.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/ (Shaun White is going for gold number three today)

http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/2014 (Curling is among the sports that is of most interest in Great Britain).

No Blog Entry Today as I am Sick as a Dog

American English idioms may be lost on our blog readers in Uzbekistan, so we will refer to the NPR radio series "Way with Words" http://www.waywithwords.org and the ever-hip Urban Dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com or perhaps even the Scrabble dictionary http://www.scrabble.com

We got this image when we googled in the term: "Dogs in Turkey," but we are not sure if this fella is from Malatya, Erzurum or Kars (forgive the Turkish humor). We imagine dogs in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan look fairly similar to this one?!

We shall try to post a more meaningful blog post when this nasty cold has left the building.....

Presdiential Quotes (11 of 16): John F. Kennedy

To answer your question, especially those of you who read this blog in Kazakhstan (we're not making that up!): "Yes, it was our intention to have this series of quotes from American presidents overlap with the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, which occurred on Nov. 22nd.

This is also the 20th anniversary of the release of Oliver Stone's controversial film about the Kennedy assassination "JFK." The year before, then-independent filmmaker Richard Linklater poked fun of Kennedy assassination  conspiracy theorists in a segment for his film "Slacker," filmed in Austin, Tex. JFK was killed in Dallas, Tex.

President Kennedy who hailed from Massachusetts is perennially ranked as the most popular 20th Century president, eclipsing both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

Ironically, he has even been praised by conservatives who generally opposed the Democratic Party, which all of the Kennedys (also Sens. Robert and Teddy) were a member of. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died in 2009, was the last remaining Kennedy brother.

The right-wing spoof film "An American Carol," which generally got bad reviews, from the makers of "Airplane" actually included a positive representation of Kennedy, who was played by character actor Chriss Anglin.

Along with Robert Kennedy, JFK is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington, D.C. and the JFK Presidential Library is located in Boston, Mass.

Here is JFK's quote:

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolutions inevitable."

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org

http://www.jfklibrary.org

Image to Fill Space: A Dalmation

Greetings to our blog readers in Senegal, South Africa, Honduras, Jamaica, Chile, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Australia, Japan, France, Iceland, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

Tomorrow, we shall have something more substantive.

Soocer Week (8 of 8): Good Day for Swansea City (plus 11 European teams you've never heard of)

Today, our image is of Wilfried Bony, an Ivory Coast teammate of one of our favorite soccer players Didier Drogba, formerly of Chelsea who now plays for GalataSaray (Istanbul, Turkey). Today, Bony scored one of Swansea City's three goals in their 3-0 victory over Valencia on the road in Spain.

Swansea City is a Welsh team that plays in the English Premiere League as does Cardiff.

Today, a staggering 24 games were played across Europe, which in soccer also includes Israel and Kazakhstan, two countries which are clearly in Asia (but, hey the Dallas Cowboys play in an 'eastern conference' in the 'other football.')

Here is a look at 11 teams you may have never heard of:

1) Austria Wien (Austria): This team based in Vienna is playing in the UEFA Champions League. Though they lost at home this week to Porto (Portugal), one can continue to expect good things from them.

2. Swansea (EPL)

3. Freiburg (Germany): This Bundesliga club held their own today at home in a 2-2 tie with Liberec (Czech Rep.); Swiss national Admir Mehmedi scored for the home team.

4. Plzen (Czech Rep.) Though this team lost to Manchester City 3-0 in the Champions League two days ago; Plzen are one of several competitive teams in a small, but soccer-worthy country.

5. Shakhter Karagandy (Kazakhstan): Though this team created a scandal when they sacrificed a sheep before their match with Celtic United in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, they do have an array of talented players including Roger Canas, a Colombian player, who scored for Karagandy in the team's 2-1 loss to PAOK (Greece).

6. PAOK (Greece): They are a team with lots of long last names, and one of the most successful Greek clubs. In their 2-1 win over Karagndy, Zvonimir Vukic of Serbia scored the winning goal.

7, Tromso Il (Norway): This team plays all the way up in the Arctic Circle! Though they went scoreless today in London with a 3-0 defeat to Tottenham; this squad will likely be competing strongly in Norwegian domestic play.

8. AZ Alkmaar (Netherlands): Though American star Jozy Altidore to Tottenham, the team still has a great Icelandic futboler in Johan Gudmundsson who scored the team's lone goal in a 1-0 over M.Haifa in Israel today.

9. Legia Warsaw (Poland)

10. Steau Bucharest (Romania): Alas, this Romanian team did not fare well in Germany in the Champions League with a 3-0 loss to Schalke '04, but hey they are in the Champions League.

11. Elfsborg (Sweden): Not to be confused with Esberg in Denmark; both teams are in the Europa League. Though with a 4-0 loss to Salzburg in Austria, it appears Esberg which won its game 2-1 over Standard Liege in Belgium had a happier flight back home.

We were going to make fun of Iranian soccer, but it's almost midnight here at the sports desk in Portland, Maine (not really where we are at), so we'll save that for another time!

http://www.greeksoccer.com

http://www.az.nl/en

http://www.swanseacity.net

Soccer Week (4 of 8): Soccer Players with Very Very Long Lastnames

Who is this player from Georgia, a former Soviet republic, who is the captain of the Turkish team Kayserispor, which plays its home games in the central Turkish city of Kayseri? Well, you will have to find out as we don't want to spell or misspell his name more than once.

Here is the list:

1. Tarik Elyonoussi (Norwegian player or Moroccan heritage who plays for 1899 Hoffenheim in Germany)

2. Manuel Schmiedebach (German player who plays for Hannover '96 in Germany)

3. Angelis Charalambous (Cypriot player who plays for Appolon Limassol in Cyprus)

4. Zurab Khizanishvili (Georgian player who plays for Kayserispor in Turkey; he is the player pictured above...........his name is not actually the longest one we have)

5. Kamo Houhannisyan (Armenian player with Pyunik Yerevan in Armenia)

6. Javid Imamverdiyev (Azeri player with Neftci Baky in Azerbaijan)

7. Sergei Khizhinichenko (Kazak player with Shakhtar Karagandy in Kazakhstan)

8. Dinya Bilyaletdinov (Russian player with Spartak Moscow in Russia)

9. Ruslan Mukametshin (Russian player with Rubin Kazan in Russia)

10. Dzhamaldin Khozhaniyazov (Russian player with Zenit St. Petersburg in Russia)

11. Roman Pavlyuchenko (Russian player with Lokomotiv Moscow in Russia)

http://www.turkish-futbol.com

Our Favorite Olympic Athletes (2 of 4)_ A Korean Archer and a Kazak Lifter, et al

We just noticed that somehow Ilya Ilyin, a gold medalist in weightlifting from Kazakhstan, and Aron Szilagyi, a gold medalist in fencing from Hungary, look like the exact same person!

Here are some of our favorite international male athletes from the 2012 London Olympics, in alphabetical order:

1. Rolf-Goran Bengtsson, 50, Sweden, equestrian_ Bengtsson who won silver at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics was expected to perform well in horse-jumping this time around, but things didn't go according to plan (Cliche Alert!). But, the country's flag-bearer will hopefully be happy that his teammate Sara Algotsson won silver. Equestrian is the only event we now of where men and women compete against each other. Sweden has won one gold medal in sailing, and seven overall in London so far.

2. Im Dong-Hyun, 26, South Korea, archery (pictured top)_ Im Dong-Hyun won a team gold medal in both 2004 and 2008. This year, South Korea finished third behind the United States and Italy, which won gold. South Korea has had a very successful Olympics with 12 gold medals and 23 medals overall. In addition, the women's indoor volleyball pulled a major upset over Italy yesterday.

3. Ilya Ilyin, 24, Kazakhstan, weight-lifting (pictured center)_ Kazakhstan has won a very impressive total of six gold medals so far. Ilyin won gold in the -94 kg division of weightlifting, beating out two other lifters from former republics_ Alexander Ivanov (silver, Russia) and Anatoli Ciricu (bronze, Moldova). Ilyin lifted a total of 418 kg (921 pounds) and his country won four gold medals in men's and women's weightlifting.

4. Kirani James, 19, Grenada, track and field (sprinter)_ One of the highlights of the Olympics has to be the moment when James switched jersey numbers with Oscar Pistorius of South Africa (see below). James won gold in the 400-meter relay; it was the first ever for the tiny Caribbean island nation. James also competes for the University of Alabama in America.

5. Oscar Pistorius, 25, South Africa, track and field (sprinter)_ Known as 'the blade runner,' Pistorius is likely to be one of the most remembered London Olympians even though he didn't win a medal. The South African sprinter, who has won four gold medals and a bronze at the paralympics was the first paraplegic athlete to ever compete at the Olympics.

6) Aron Szilagyi, 22, fencing (sabre), Hungary (pictured below)_ Szilagyi won the first of what is now six Hungarian gold medals in London. Krisztian Berki of Hungary won a gold in the pommel horse event in men's gymnastics.

Quote of the Day/Week-Nastia Liukin

Today, we get back to quoting American athletes who won either or both gold and silver medals at the summer Olympics with a quote from Nastia Liukin, 22. Amazingly enough, her mother, former Soviet/Russian rhythmic gymnast Anna Kotchava, 42, is only six weeks older than me. Her father Valeri Liukin, 45, a former Soviet/Kazakh gymnast who won gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics is Nastia's coach.

According to the May 15th edition of "The Inqusitir," Nastia Liukin, a native of Texas, intends to compete at the Olympic women's gymnastics team trials in San Jose, Calif., on June 28th. Those trials will determine which gymnasts get to compete at the 2012 London Olympics.

Here is Nastia's quote; we presume it's in regards to the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Shawn Johnson was one of her Olympic teammates) where she won gold:

"I think it's going to be a little more exciting and a little more confusing."

Quote of the Day- Lars von Trier

Today, we begin our series of quotes from famous Scandanavians with a quip from the provoacative, innovative and highly controversial Danish film director Lars von Trier, who has directed plenty of subersive films, usually with over political themes, including "Dogville" with Nicole Kidman and more recently "Anti-Christ."

The later film about a married couple with a fairly messed up, kinky relationship (to put it mildly) starred Willem Dafoe and the great Anglo-French actress/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg.

We are highly jealous of her long-time romantic partner actor/director Yvan Attal, whom she apparenly has never officially married. The couple had their second child on July 16, just five days before Gainsbourg turned 40.

Here is the quote from von Trier, which seems ironic, since one would never accuse him of modesty:

"I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden."

SIDEBAR: As the six people who regularly read this blog know, we have a series that deals with countries that were once republics of the Soviet Union. Tomorrow, we are hoping to profile yet another one of these countries, perhaps Tajikistan, unless we've covered them before.

But, we learned today from the public radio show "The World" (we were alas not able to listen to the broadcast) that the Chu River Valley, which borders Kazakhstan and Krgyzstan, two former Soviet republics with mostly Muslim population that we have featured so far in the series, happens to ironically be a vast haven for marijuana growth!

Whoops, We Forgot Belgium

Well, we are posting this simply to balance this blog with our other blog "The Daily Vampire," where we made an error sending an entry meant for this blog on that one.

But, we were thinking about taking a day off from blogging tomorrow to go wash dogs at an animal shelter in Lynchburg, Va. (that is a joke, but we understand there is a great animal shelter in that city).

Alas, an image we hoped to post of Borat at the rodeo in Salem, Va., which is my hometown, as featured in the film "Borat" fell through in our Kazakhstan entry due to technical problems or perhaps a block from that particular site. (By the way, the answer is B for the question in that entry).

And, earlier today, I was able to name 24 of the 25 cities that have hosted or will host the summer Olympics in mentalfloss.com quiz. We forgot about the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. I have even been to Antwerp, Belgium, (back in 1993) but I completely forgot that the city was an Olympic host. Our apologies to Tintin, and everyone else in Belgium.

Yvonne Tousek, a former Olympic gymnast and UCLA stand-out competed for Canada, who I get to chat with every now and then, competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She is curently performing with Cirque du Soleil.

I would say that I competed for Turkey (my late father's homeland) in greco-roman wrestling at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when I would have been 22 years old, but I imagine the actual members of that team would not care for the joke.

Things We Learned on Wikipedia This Week- Capital of Kazakhstan

We are continuing our look at former republis of the Soviet Union today with Kazakhstan. The second largest former Soviet republic behind Russia was made famous/infamous by the film "Borat" (2006) starring Sacha Baron Cohen as the fake television reporter from Kazakhstan.

The film, which was in my top five list for the best films of 2006, will always be a special to me because the rodeo scene where Borat/Cohen tricked rodeo-goers into singing a butchered verison of "The Star Spangled Banner" was filmed at a rodeo in my hometown of Salem, Va. And, just today, I saw that the Internet Movie Database indicated one of the film's factual goofs is that it shows Salem, which neighbors the larger city of Roanoke, as being in the eastern part of Virginia as opposed to southwest Virginia.

Many of the Kazkakhstan village scenes for the movie were actually filmed in Romania. In one of the scenes, the audience is introduced to Borat's neighbor Nursultan Tuyakbey, who is a cross between the names of the current Kazak president/dictator Nursultan Nazabayev and his political opponent in the mid-2000s Zharmakan Tuyakbey.

In April, Nazabayev ran virtually unopposed and got close to 100 percent of 'the vote.'

Today's question is what is the capital of Kazakhstan? Is the answer:

A) Alma Ata

B) Astana

C) Chimkent

D) Pavlador

This is the fifth of 17 entries in this series, and the first one presented in trivia question form. The other four Soviet republics in this series were Uzbekistan, Russia, Kyrgzstan* and (the) Ukraine.

*-This has to be one of the hardest countries in the world to spell!

SIDEBAR: My friend Bruce Piephoff, a folk singer in Greensboro, NC, may not be heading out to Kazakhstan for a concert anytime soon, but he will be performing a live set for WXDU (88.7-FM, Durham), the student-run radio station of Duke University at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday. My personal favorite song of his might very well be "I Remember Asheville," even though I've only been Asheville, NC, one time!

Things We Learned on Google Today- Bishkek is the Capital of Kyrgyzstan

It has been a long time since we posted a Things We Learned on Google Today entry. May 5th was the last date to be exact. But, we continue with our look at the 13 former republics in the Soviet Union with a look at Kyrgyzstan. It was the only republic I forgot in a "Mental Floss" quiz on the magazine's web site, and it might very well be the hardest country to spell in the world: K-Y-R-G-Y-Z-STAN.

Bishkek is indeed the capital city of...here we go again...., and the city has a population of 762,308, which means that it is a lot larger than the hamlet of War, West Virginia.

The capital city is located in the Chuy Province and the city's name is also the name of the country's national drink, which is a milk beverage.

Bishkek is surrounded by rivers and mountains and the city is relatively close to the border with Kazakhstan, the country that Borat made famous/infamous in the film "Borat." Incidentally, the hilarious rodeo scene in "Borat" was filmed in my hometown of Salem, Va. (near Roanoke).

Amazingly enough, there is actually a Catholic church in Bishkek, though the country is predominantly Muslim.

Both liberals and conservatives in America has criticized this country with a long name for various reasons, including human rights abuses and religious intolerance, but we are not here to be political (did I just say that?!).

The country has also had considerable ethnic strife which makes international headlines quite frequently, though much of that unrest has lost media attention due to the uprisings in places like Libya and Syria. And, to be honest, we are not sure how well the former Soviet republic is managing right now, but we certainly wish them well. We also forgot to check is there was a McDonald's in Bishkek.

SIDEBAR: Maine is the apparently the place to be here on the east coast as it is a cool 76 degrees in the state's capital city of Augusta. In comparison, the weather in the mid-Atlantic region was periliously hot as my hometown of Roanoke, Va., was at 93 degrees. Greensboro, NC, was almost as hot at 91 degrees. And, to top it off, Bethesda, Maryland, our favorite suburb, was 96 degrees. Thsi reminds me, I really need to get my air-conditioner fixed!

Happy Birthday Cuneyt Arkin

Cuneyt Arkin, Turkey's leading machismo action movie hero of the 1970s turns 73 today.

We are big fans of Arkin who is perhaps best known in the rest of the world for his gymnastics stunts that he performed as the lead in the famous/infamous 1982 film "The Man Who Saved the World," which is also known as "The Turkish Star Wars" since it was a rip-off of the George Lucas mega-blockbuster.

Arkin, who has appeared in more than 250 films, made his debut with "We Are Not Alone" in 1964. Up until the '70s, he was predominantly a romantic leading man along the lines of Gregory Peck or Rock Hudson with Turkish cinema goddess Turkan Soray often playing his conquests.

But, that quickly changed when Turkey's brief war with Greece over Cyprus in 1974 caused a nationalist frenzy in Turkey which was illustrated through Arkin's film of the period, most notably "Once Vatan/My Nation First" (1974).

Arkin also starred in "Little Cowboy" (1973), which is perhaps the ultimate oxy moron- a Turkish Western!

Though none of his films are available in the United States except through Turkish good distributors like tulumba.com, several of his films like "Lion Man" (1975) and "Holy Sword" (1982) have developed underground cult followings.

SIDEBAR: The world basketball championships are underway in Istanbul and both The United States and Turkey have performed well so far. Turkey beat France 95-77 and the team will next face Slovenia on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Team America, with NBA players like Kevin Durant, bounced the African nation of Angola out of the tournament with a 121-66 win in which a former Montana State player named Divaldo Mbguna scored four points for the losing side.

Turkey also won a road game by a 3-0 score against Kazakhstan (which is where the fictional journalist Borat hailed from) in a European Cup qualifier on Friday.

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Gymnastics Teacher

We conclude both our series witin series on summer jobs and our series Silly Photo to Fill Space with this image of very flexible young lady whom we don't know personally!

We have had a lot of fun with this series in the year or two or so since its inception and we never got around to showing the image of a samurai ski-jumping, but there is always a chance that this series will resurrect itself like Freddy Krueger some time in the neat future.

Our feature city of the month for this series is Trenton, NJ, where one can find the Discover Gymnastics Academy, which is offering a free trial class according to their web site. Though we don't have any idea if they have openings for gymnastics instructors or not, we can't imagine a more fun summer job than trying to make some young gymnast the next Nellie Kim (or at least the next Courtney Kupets, who was a legandary gymnast at The University of Georgia).

Of course since more and more folks were born either during end of or after the Cold War, we should remind our readers that Kim, a former Soviet gymnast who turned 53 on July 29, made Olympic Gymnastics history. She won three gold and two silver medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics where another gymnast (a Romanian named Nadia whose name we can't spell, or perhaps we can, but we're too lazy!) became a household name.

Kim also won two gold medals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics where Misha the Bear was the mascot. I ate a great place called Misha's Cafe in Baku, Azerbaijan- of all places in 2008, but that's really getting off the topic.

Even though many Americans used the word Soviet and Russian arbitrarily in the days when "Welcome Back Kotter" initially aired, Kim is actually from Kazakhstan which Borat made famous/infamous.

As of 2002, Kim lives in or around St. Paul, Minn. Nadia lives in or around Norman, Oklahoma. No one knows what happened to Misha the Bear.

SIDEBAR: Alas, The Ragsdale High School Tigers, one of our past 'high schools of the week' (there are many of them!), lost to their rival, the Dudley High School Panthers of Greensboro, NC, by a 12-0 score. The Tigers played on the road Friday night, but their next game against Western Guilford High School will be at home in the Greensboro/High Point 'burb of Jamestown, NC. We hear the Tigers' band kicks butt, by the way!