The Top 10 Sunday Comic Strips from "The Washington Post:" We Love WUMO Again

Hermit crabs were mentioned in two comic strips: Two which made our top ten........"Sherman's Lagoon" and "Mark Trail." And, there were Daylight Savings Time gags in "Foxtrot" and "Rhymes with Orange" as well as appearances by aliens in "Lio" and "The Argyle Sweater." Plus, there was the return of Mister Butts in "Doonesbury."

The Danish import "WUMO" is our top Sunday comic strips from "The Washington Post" even though the joke about an airline going into outer space seems to be a jolting coincidence given the missing Malaysian Airlines plane tragedy, but we think our friends at Turkish Airlines will like the use of their image here (we only know one person who works for them, actually!).

"Speed Bump" scored again as the single panel comic strip depicts the horror of a couple having breakfast as they are approached by very large bed bugs, which reminds us of the epidemic hotels in Raleigh, NC, had with the insects several years back.

Finally, Lio and his buddies from outer space go a Red Box machine and pick out Steven Spielberg's "E.T.," which we had difficulty finding an image of.

Here is our top ten:

1. "WUMO"

2. "Speed Bump"

3. "Lio"

4. "Sherman's Lagoon"

5. "Agnes"

6. "Reply All"

7. "Big Nate"

8. "Rhymes with Orange"

9. "Doonesbury"

10. "Mark Trail"

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://shermanslagoon.com/

http://comicskingdom.com/mark-trail

http://www.turkishairlines.com/

Our Oscar Predictions....

Here are our Oscar forecasts, there are some major upsets that we are projecting:

Original Screenplay: Mark Boal "Zero Dark Thirty"

Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio "Argo"

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones "Lincoln" (pictured)

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway "Les Misreables"

Best Actor: Bradley Cooper "Silver Linings Playbook"

Best Actress: Jessica Chastain "Zero Dark Thirty"

Best Director: Steven Spielberg  "Lincoln"

Best Picture: "Argo"

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.

Quote of the Day/Week- Warren Beatty

Today, we conclude our month-long quotes from Oscar-winning film directors with a quote from Warren Beatty, who is better known as an actor.

Beatty won the Oscar over Steven Spielberg ("Raiders of the Lost Ark") who subsequently won a Best Director Oscar for "Schindler's List" for the film "Reds"
(1981).

Beatty, who was established as a rising star in Hollywood, cemented his place in Tinseltown with "Bonnie and Clyde" (1968) which also made him a bona fide international star.

The actor who was also known for his great off-screen affairs with some of the industry's most gorgeous actresses, including the French actress Leslie Caron, made his directorial debut with "Heaven Can Wait" (1978, which he he co-directed with Buck Henry). In the film, which also starred another Beatty flame in Julie Christie, he played an aging quarterback for the the then-Los Angeles Rams.

At the time, many people in the media observed how the character resembled Joe Namath, who had recently retired in 1977 when he was quarterback for the real life L.A. Rams.

Here is Beatty's quite ironic quote:

"For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship."