Best of Sunday Washington Post Comics (Oct. 12th edition)

Greetings to our blog readers in Slovenia, Netherlands and Italy, we recognize that all three countries had club team defeats today in UEFA Champions League play today, but if you are from Slovenia and you root for Maribor, just go ahead and enjoy London and forget about the penalty kick from Didier Drogba of Chelsea and the other four or five goals that followed. Yeah, I guess that is easier said than done as we say here in America.

Our personal favorite comic strip from the Sunday Washington Post (Oct. 12th edition) was "Lio," in which the title character sees an alien who looks exactly like one in the Alien films with Sigourney Weaver, clips off a tab from a poster to learn how to dress for Halloween.

The silver medal went to American gymnast Nastia Liukin (just seeing if you were doodling) or rather "Sherman's Lagoon" in which Sherman the shark and his family try to get holiday photos at a Walgreen's in Dayton, Ohio (or some place like that).

A moving tribute to Robin Williams as Mork (center image) in "Mork and Mindy" was our third-place pick, and "Mark Trail," which featured an amazing illustration of a rock python strangling a crocodile (bottom image is of the beloved children's lit character Gena the Crocodile).....yeah, we have a bit of an off-beat sense of humor here.

Here is the top 10:

1) Lio

2) Sherman's Lagoon

3) Brewster Rockit

4) Mark Trail

5) Zits

6) Candorville

7) Knight Life

8) Doonesbury

9) Frazz

10) Judge Parker

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://shermanslagoon.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit

http://www.tvland.com/

http://www.hulu.com/mork-and-mindy

http://www.marktrail.com

http://www.nastialiukin.com/

Coming Soon to This Very Blog Near You (No Promises): Ten Most Embarrasing Ways to Die

Greetings to our blog readers in El Salvador, Latvia and Jordan or wherever you may be today.

Oh...........In case you are wondering, yes, the image of the late French mime Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) is being used just to grab your attention.


Here are some blog entries we are contemplating/considering:

1) More Casualties  of Modern Technology: It's been a good two years since we ran this series, but it seems that pay phones, clothes lines and mixed tape cassettes are not the only things which have been mushroom clouded due to the advent of the new age (my apologies to the Grammar Girl for using mushroom cloud as a verb).

2) A List of Ten Embarrassing Ways to Die: Getting hit by a Valley Metro Bus in Roanoke, Va., does come to mind, but of course, there are two issues with possibly posting this entry: 1) There might well be someone who is a relative of a person who was eaten by Gustave the man-eating crocodile in the central African nation of Burundi; 2) I may get hit by a Valley Metro Bus myself!

3) How to Say Certain Words in Norwegian or Turkish: Did you know they call sharks 'the dog fishes' in Turkish (the actual word is kopekbaligi), and of course, we are arbitrarily mentioning that because we suspect that with the Discovering Channel's upcoming Shark Week that anything relating to sharks shall be trending.

Au revoir for now mon amis...........


http://www.valleymetro.com/

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week

Casualties of Modern Technology (11 of 12)_ Slide Projectors

Back in the 1970s, while other families

were watching "The Love Boat," my late father Mehmet Gokbudak would get out the slide projector and we would watch slide shows featuring images of backyard family trips (we lived in Roanoke, Va) of Highland County and from the two European trips we took. One famous slide was of me posing besides a street sign for Attila Josef Street in Budapest, Hungary, in a Dallas Cowboys hat and jacket. Since Attila is my name, this seemed very cool to my dad. And, I had no idea who Attila Josef was until today (a legendary Hungarian poet who died at age 32 in 1937).

Another famous slide was one of a crocidile at a restaurant in Warsaw, Poland- of all places. The croc was a gift from Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. We have no idea what the croc's name is, but we learned from Google that the croc came to the establishment in 1972. He may well still be the only crocidile in Poland.

As for the slide projector, it was very popular and hip from the 1950s to the 1970s, as it allowed slide prints to be displayed on a screen. But, today, many manufaturers have quit making both the prints and the machines.

http://www.highlandcountyva.org/

Turkish Soccer Results....

It has been a busy hectic week, and it's only Monday?!

Anyway, it is for this very reason, that we are putting off some other blog entry projects until a day when life is as slow as it on a Sunday afternoon in War, West Virginia, in the far southwestern part of the state which is perhaps a good place to go (aside from an asylum or a prison) if you want to read all 1,225 pages of Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in its entirety!

So, with that in mind, let's turn to sport as they say on the BBC, and here are the results from weekend action in the Turkish Premiere League. I should note that my late father came from Turkey, and since his favorite team was GalataSaray, I know he would want me to jeer those who root for their arch rival Fenerbahce, but alas those fill-in-the-blank Yellow Canaries** won as well!:


Kayseri 1 Eskisehir 1

Istanbul BB 1 Antalya 1

Gaziantep 1 Manisa 0

Ankara Genclerbrligi 2 Konya 1

Trabzon 2 Bucaspor 1

GalataSaray 3 Kasimpasha 1

Fenerbahce 1 Karabukspor 0

Sivas 1 Ankaragucu 1

It should be noted that the game between the BursaSpor Crocodiles* (yes, we don't think there are any crocs in Turkey, not even at the Ankara Zoo!) and the Besiktash Black Eagles was cancelled. We presume, given the fervent passion of the fans on both sides, it was for security reasons. Elif Batuman, a fellow Turkish-American I've never met, wrote an excellent, haunting piece about Besiktash fans for "The New Yorker" several issues ago. Amazingly enough, Che Guevara is one of the fans' icons! Since many of the most fervent soccer fans in Turkey are a bit right-wing, this came as quite a surprise to me!

And, as a gesture of ethnic political goodwill, which will of course do absolutely nothing to ease tensions between us Turks and our Armenian friends, I will mention that the three teams atop the Armenian Premiere League are Ulisses, Gandzasar and Pyunik.

As I jokingly tell my friends who have neither ethnic background, if a Turk and an Armenian happen to come across each other at a Buddhist temple during a mutual tourist visit to Bhutan, yes they would probably go at it!

But, as far as the dispute we have with our Greek comrades over who has the better yogurt and feta cheese, well, of course, it is us Turks! Of course, I'm overlooking the fact that an Egyptian friend of mine said that Bulgarians were actually better at making these products than either of us.


*-There is actually a notorious man-eating crocodile named Gustave in the central African country of Burundi; I wonder how that country's tourism department gets around that!

**- Yes, Turkish soccer teams have nickanmes which are almost as strange as some minor league baseball teams--my favorite nickname is the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers who are based in Appleton, Wisc., where there might be six people of Turkish and Armenian heritage combined!