Sunday Comics Grand-Slam (3 of 4): Pickup Lines for Satan

This week, we have a special surprise as we profile our top ten favorite comic strips from "The Richmond Times-Dispatch," not one of the two regular newspapers we profile in our weekly comic strips survey.

Our favorite comic strip of the week is "Pardon My Planet," a cutting edge single panel comic strip, along the lines of "The Far Side" and "Rhymes with Orange," which had the devil trying to pick up a young blonde woman in a strip which evoked the famous Edward Hopper painting "Nighthawks," with James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe.

The break-our comic strip "Dustin," which also runs in "The Washington Post" features the title character having a discussion with his girlfriend over who said a famous quote; the strip is made funnier by the fact that Dustin has an iPhone which can verify his or her argument.

"Mark Trail," an always informative strip, talked about the lifestyles of bears in the wild, and the reader learns that a grizzly bear can get up to 1,100 pounds as an adult! These creatures which are commonly found in Alaska were recently videoed by a very brave photographer and the magazine "Grit" showed the taken footage, which reminded us of the Werner Herzog documentary "Grizzly Man."

Lastly, "Funky Winkerbean" revolved around a family vacation to the beach which included the family dog (yeah, that's the reason for our image of Astro the Dog from "The Jetsons") which seems quite suitable as (to our memory) the comic is also found in "The Myrtle Beach Sun-News," the local paper for Myrtle Beach, SC.

Here is our top ten:

1. Pardon My Planet

2. Dustin

3. Doonesbury

4. Foxtrot

5. Mark Trail

6. Funky Winkerbean

7. Rhymes with Orange

8. Get Fuzzy

9. Dilbert

10. Grin and Bear It

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/

http://www.timesdispatch.com

http://www.gocomics.com/marktrail

http://www.alaskamagazine.com

http://www.grit.com

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Jack-O-Lantern

Of course, October is a great time of the year to visit a nice country town like Abingdon, Va., where the Barter Theatre is currently performing the stage version of "The Full Monty" (admitedly not my cup of tea, but my 70-year-old mom would probably enjoy it).

However, if one is staying home because they are overwhelmed with cleaning house, grading papers or awaiting a call from an All-State agent, they can watch lots of horror films.

Even many fellow film fanatics are a bit surprised when I tell them there is a Turkish version of "The Exorcist!"

The film called "Seytan/Satan/The Devil" was made in 1974 a year after Linda Blair shocked cinema audiences around the world. The director Metin Erksan was actually one of Turkey's most accomplished filmmakers at the time!

The plotline from the film which is available from Netflix (which is how I saw it on dvd) revolves around a troubled girl named Gul, played by Canan Perver, who becomes possessed by the devil.

Perhaps, the most singular cultural difference between the two versions is that Gul is saved by a shrink rather than a priest which seems appropriate given that Turkey is a Muslim country!