Happy Thanksgivingukkah: Our Dream Thanksgiving Dinner List

Since tomorrow is the first known Thanksginukkah, a combination of Thanksgiving and Hanukah, in the modern calendar, we thought we'd post an entry for the occasion with the 16 people we'd most like to have for dinner. Of course, as you'll soon see, many of the people mentioned here may have problems sitting beside each other. But, that would, of course, make the occasion which is highly unlikely to ever happen all the more ironic and enjoyable.


Here we go:

1. Cong. Morgan Griffith (R-Va, pictured top)

2. Michael Moore (a liberal documentarian)

3. Bruce Tinsley (a conservative cartoonist of "Mallard Fillmore" fame)

4. Keith Knight (a liberal cartoonist of "Knight Life" and "K-Chronicles" fame)

5. Rudolf Bekink (Dutch ambassador to America)

6. Clarence Thomas (the most conservative Supreme Court justice)

7. Sonja Sotomayor (one of the most liberal Supreme Court justices)

8. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC)

9. Parker Posey  (film/stage actress perhaps best-known for "Waiting for Guffman;" pictured center)

10. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va)

11. Joe Lieberman, a former member of the U.S. Senate, though he was a Democrat for three of his four terms it seems like he is more popular amongst Republicans.

12. Joan Baez, popular '60s folk singer

13. Abdullah Antepli, a Turkish man who is the first imam for Muslim students at Duke University.

14. Gwen Ifill, the PBS moderator of "Washington Weekly."

15. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn., considered to be one of the most liberal members of the Senate)

16. Namik Tan (Turkish ambassador to America; pictured bottom)

http://www.kchronicles.com

http://www.joanbaez.com

http://www.vashington.be.mfa.gov.tr

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

http://www.morgangriffith.house.gov/

http://www.hagan.senate.gov

Top Ten Comics from the Sunday Washington Post: Brewster Rockit Rocks..........

Yes, Thanksgiving, that holiday which falls between Halloween and Christmas, is going to be Thursday. So many comic strips focused on the upcoming occasion, including our personal favorite strip of the week, "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy."

The title character is at the centerpiece of Tim Rickard's comic strip as his co-workers or fellow space travelers talk about Brewster's inept, dubious clumsiness which frequently causes him to put things over his head.

"Reply All" by Donna A. Lewis focused on the title character, a suburban valley girl who likes to go to yoga and chat on her Blackberry, takes her dog for a walk during the Thanksgiving holiday, reflecting on the zaniness which comes with family gatherings.

Though it didn't finish in the top ten, "Mark Trail" provided a very informative examination of the turkey in North America, including the fact that wild turkeys almost became extinct at the outset of the 20th century.

As always, "Judge Parker," a soap opera comic strip that finished sixth this week, had some of our favorite lines, including the first line of the comic: "You Can't Be Serious.....The Drone Found the Car?;" drones were also the subject of "Blondie."

Here is our top ten:

1. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!

2. Pearls Before Swine

3. Dustin

4. Reply All

5. WUMO

6. Judge Parker

7. Prickly City

8. Lio

9. Knight Life

10. Foxtrot

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/

http://dustincomics.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/replyall#.UpKetOKJLtk

Virtual Postcard from Ohio- World's Oldest Traffic Light

It's now 4:00 p.m. in Denver, midnight in Paris and 3:00 a.m. in Dubai, whereever you may be today thanks for stopping by and tell all your friends and distant relatives about us.

Today, we are sending each of you a Virtual Postcard from Ohio with an image of the world's oldest stoplight which sits in a small museum in Ashville, Ohio, which is relatively close to Cincinnati.

We also learned today that there is a real Alice's Restaurant in Woodside, Calif., even though the Arlo Guthrie Thanksgiving Day epic late 1960s' folk song (it lasts 19 minutes) takes place in New England, which is three time zones away.

Virtual Postcard from Kentucky- Horse Park in Lexington

We continue our eight part series (four entries with a pause for two other entries within the next few days) with a Vitual Postcard from the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, which might make one want to watch "Seabiscuit" again.

It was Thanksgiving Day here in America, and social media made the day interesting for us as we got Happy Thanksgiving tweets from Kevin Spacey, Julian Castro (the Democratic mayor of San Antonio, Texas) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), all of whom are three people we have never met; Sen. Nelson is retiring at the end of his term this year.

The day was also special for us because our good friend Bruce Piephoff, a folk singer in Greensboro, NC, has a song called "Notes from Knoxville," which I like to listen to around Thanksgiving. I must profess that as much as I admire another folk singe Arlo Guthrie, I'm not sure I have the patience to listen to his Thanksgiving song "Alice's Restaurant Massacre"or "Alice's Restaurant," which lasts close to 19 minutes; Piephoff''s song is some 13 minutes and 30 seconds shorter (we believe).

Piephoff will be playing at Southern Bistro in Greensboro on Thurs., Nov. 29 and Tues., Dec. 4. Greensboro has a vibrant local music scene and on Sunday, at the Green Bean coffe house downtown, there will be a performance by Julian Sizemore followed by Patrick Ferguson starting at 7:00 p.m.http://www.kentuckytourism.com

http://www.horsepark.com

http://www.brucepiephoff.net

http://www.thegreenbeanblogspot.com

http://www.southernbistro.com

Virtual Postcard from West Virginia- Babcock State Park

Today, we are starting an entry series dedicated to our rather lengthy road trip for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend from Roanoke, Va., to Denver, Colo. For those of you in Europe, this might be as far or farther than a drive from Paris, France, to Van, Turkey, a city in far southeastern Turkey which is near the Iranian border.

The image above is from the lovely Babcock State Park in central eastern West Virginia, in relative close proximity to Beckley. It is an even more amazing when snow is around the structure and the adjoining creek.

More on the road trip in tomorrow's blog where we will share an image of Kentucky.

http://www.wvtourism.com
http://www.visitwv.com
http://www.babcocksp.com

Sunday Comics Dialogue_ A Cameo from Big Bird

Greetings to our friends in Baltimore, St. Louis, Denver and San Diego here in the USA, and to those of you in London, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Dubai.........

Today's entry looks at funny pages dialogue from the Sunday, Nov. 18th edition of "The Charleston Gazette-Mail" in Charleston, W.Va., which still carries the wonderful comic strip "Mother Goose and Grimm," which features a cameo from Big Bird, but Mitt Romney was nowhere to be seen (to think 47-percent of our fellow Americans wanted Mitty Rich to be prez.....wow!).

Oh...but, first an update on how former American gold-medal winning gymnast Shawn Johnson is doing on "Dancing with the Stars," drats, someone changed the channel!

Here we go:

1) "Just a turkey hallucination. I get them this time every year" (from "Garfield")

2) "Ok, I'll need to but a turkey," (from "Grand Avenue")

3) "It's not proper for a girl to call a boy on the telephone" (from "Peanuts")

4) "They're trying to kill me out there. They want to cut my head off. I'm going to die!!" (from "Mother Goose and Grimm," a turkey is talking)

5) "What a great cook! I'm the luckiest man in the world!" (from "Hagar the Horrible")

6) "It says here that more Americans are eating something besides turkey for Thanksgiving." (from "Over the Hedge")

7) "Our invitation for tonight is lit up........more than 200 and climbing!" (from "Rex Morgan M.D.")

8) "Very nice?! Are you kidding?! She's world-class!!" (from "Blondie")

9) "I'm still fond of soft-spoken intellectuals" (from "Shoe")

10) "She asked me to put up the holiday lights while she was gone." (from "Dilbert")

11) "When I come back, I'll show you some trout holes you won't believe." (from "Judge Parker")

12) "What are those funny-looking birds?" (from "Hi and Lois")

http://www.wvgazette.com

http://www.grimmy.com

http://www.dilbert.com

http://www.blondie.com

Happy Thanksgiving from Lucy van Pelt

As is our custom, we are wishing everyone a Happy holiday from a cartoon character, though at times, we've used obscure celebrities or politicians (I think we said "Merry Christmas from Bob Dole" once).

Today in New York, an estimated 3.5 million people watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from the streets alone. Among the balloons were Snoopy, who debuted at the parade in 1968.

As for Lucy van Pelt, we found out while researching that not only is Linus her younger brother, but so is Rerun, an infrequent "Peanuts" character. Lucy is a nemesis to Charlie Brown, and we're not sure if Snoopy and Woodstock like her either.

Lucy, who is known for pulling the football and her five cents psychiatry booths, actually made her "Peanuts" debut a year and a half after Charlie Brown and Snoopy on March 3, 1952. But, she joined them in the final original strip for "Peanuts" on Feb. 13, 2000, which was published right away the series' cretor Charles Schultz
(1922-2000) had died.

Amazingly enough, Lucy actually liked Charlie Brown at first!

SIDEDISH: I wanted to wish a special congratulations to the Radford University women's volleyball team. The squad, which represents my alma mater, won the Big South tournament over top-seed Liberty University in Charleston, SC, on Sunday. the Highlanders scored the victory in straight sets (25-20, 25-23, 25-22). They will now head to the NCAA tournament. Seedings will be announced this Sunday.

SIDEDISH TWO: We are happy to report that my friend Chris Knight in North Carolina did not get injured when deep-frying his turkeys today, as is his annual Thanksgiving tradition. Because of the high potential risk for deep-frying turkeys, many celebrities, including William Shatner, have spoken out against it. But, that didn't prevented Knight from engaging in his holiday ritual.

Quote of the Week- Elizabeth Manley

As we continue to quote famous Canadians this month, we turn our focus to women's figure skating legend Elizabeth Manley, 46, who won silver at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Manley, who hails from Trenton, Ontario, is the Canadian spokesperson for Ovarian Cancer Awareness as the illness claimed her mother's life.

Here is her quote, despite efforts to find out who 'she' is, we were unable to pinpoint it, but this seems like a nifty quote as it is:

"If she keeps her nerves under control....she could easily be the one to upset the apple cart."

SIDEBAR: My friend Chris Knight in North Carolina has promised to once again take part in his annual Thanksgiving tradition of deep-frying, which he will almost certainly discuss on his blog "The Knight Shift" (http://www.theknightshift.blogspot.com); while I am very interested how things turn out for Knight, I would not try this myself.

I recall reading a story from a Kansas City news source via Twitter that many people in the metro area were injured from turkey deep-frying efforts over Thanksgiving last year. But, we wish Chris well!

SIDEBAR 2: We were surprised to find out that the Greek Cypriot team APOEL Nicosia became the first team from their country to qualify for the knock-out round of the UEFA Cup tournament by tying the Russian team Zenit St.Petersburg 0-0. Though, we try to avoid putting ethnic politics into sports, I was amused to read (I am a Turkish-American) that APOEL was suspended from UEFA play back in 1986 because the government in Nicosia refused to let the team play the Turkish soccer power Besiktas (Istanbul) in UEFA play. Turkey and Greece tragically went to war over Cyprus in July of 1974.

It was also a good day for the Greek team Olympiakos FC from Piraeus as they defeated the French team Marseilles 1-0 thanks to a goal in the 81st minute from Ioannis Fetfazidis, aka 'the Greek Messi' in the 81st minute of play.

In other soccer games today, the Spanish team Valencia decked the Belgian squad Genk 7-0, and the Portuguese team FC Porto beat out the Ukrainian champs Shakhtar Donetsk 2-0.

Things We Learned on Twitter This Week- Southwest Airlines Thinks We Still Like to Fly

Ahh, yes, the good ole days before 9/11 when it took less time to get through the airport in Albany, New York*, than it did in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Oh well!

With the advent of the new full body scanners which has undoubtedly increased ACLU memberships, people from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, are moaning and of course, I am one of them, even though I was not on an airplane this holiday weekend.

But, Southwest Airlines tweeted on Wednesday that they were looking for some positive tweets for their passengers, and amazingly enough people seemed to be giving them just that:

"I LUV all the travel tweets coming in this morning! Let us know how we're doing on this busy travel day! Where are you headed today?"

In other airplane news, British comic actor Neil Morrissey reportedly made an ass of himself on a British Airways flight from Singapore to London Heathrow by going on a profanity-laced tirade while under the influence of alcohol.

And, according to "The Daily News," an English-language journal in Pakistan, the country's leading airline Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was completely unprepared for the massive numbers of Muslim pilgrims travel on hajj to Mecca, as there were long delays in most flights from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan last week during the Muslim Eid Mubarak holiday. The journal reported that some 100,000 pilgrims were flying out of Jeddah back to major Pakistani cities, including Karachi and Lahore.

*-Albany is one of the many airports, a surprising number of which are in smaller markets, that has started using the full body scanners.

Happy Thanksgiving/Black Friday from Howdy Doody

Gazooks! Gazooks! Gazooks!

As we were finishing up this entry about 45 minutes ago, my mom's whole computer abruptly crashed!

So, let's cut to the chase before anything else goes wrong!

I did want to mention that even though I'm not a vegetarian or vegan myself, that I thought it was interesting that WUNC-FM reported yesterday that the largest vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner in the nation is served in the Raleigh, NC, area.

This year, Dilip Barman put together two T'giving dinners: one at Cafe Parizade in Durham and another at Spice Street Restaurant in Durham. A total of some 800 folks come out for the gathering, and it sold out weeks in advance. The Triangle Vegan Society is in fact already taking reservations for next year!

I have to wonder if an evangelical like Rev. Chris Hazilip of Salisbury, NC (a real person) would venture to such an event, but since most vegans are very, very liberal and most revival preachers are EXTREMELY conservative, it might not go over well here in Purple Carolina.

Alas, our beloved Ragsdale Flying Tigers from Jamestown, NC, fell to arch rival High Point Central, the alma mater of Olympic speedskater Heather Richardson, by a 21-14 count last week. But, we wish them well next year.

Finally, NPR reported today that the Mister Kool Aid float made its debut at the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York today. I was only able to get a glimpse of the Hello Kitty float on tv; it made its debut in 2007.

Well, no crashes this time around, but of course, mom is not going to be too happy with me!

Thanksgiving Day Blog-a-Thon Starts with Shakespeare Quote

We start our crazy idea of having a Thanksgiving Day Blog-a-Thon (I sure hope my friends and fellow bloggers Moviezzz and Chris Knight have better things to do today; even if that means eating their grandma's green bean casserole!) with a quote from William Shakespeare:

"I say there is no darkness, but ignorance."

Since the holidays are upon us, many stage companies which perform Shakespeare productions are opting for Christmas plays, which Shakespeare didn't write (alas, our intern Javier went hope to visit family in Honduras this weekend, so we can't verify this!).

Hence, the Georgia Shakespeare Company in Atlanta is performing a stage version of the 1983 holiday cult film "A Christmas Story" from Dec. 7-26 (box office is 404-264-0020).

And, the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival in High Point will be performing Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" from Dec. 3-19.

Silly Photo to Fill Space: Macy's Garfield Float

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade starts Thanksgiving Day at 9:00 a.m.; I'll be watching on TV!

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Since "Sesame Street" is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade will be held on Thursday in New York, we thought we'd go with this image of Kermit the Frog. Maybe it's because my dad came from a Muslim country (Turkey), but I think he can do better than Miss Piggy.........

If you can't get a Greyhound bus ticket from Roanoke, Va., or whichever town you might be in, you can always watch the festivities on NBC. And, then you can watch the Detroit Lions get destroyed by the Green Bay Packers.

What???! No Turkey for Thanksgiving???!

That's right. My mom is fixing chicken for Thanksgiving tomorrow! At first, I was a bit shocked, but one can't argue with her reasoning. The two of us simply can't eat a whole effing turkey!

I'm sure my sister Lale and her husband Matt will love this post, but they are too busy to fool with reading my blog.........(I hope!).

And, Christmas should be celebrated on Dec. 5 in North Carolina. There have already been Christmas (not Thanksgiving!) parades in Raleigh, High Point and Reidsville.

I was hoping to go to the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia this year, but I will have to settle for watching it on CBS_ presuming I can get up in time tomorrow morning!