Potluck Quote (2 of 10): Slavoj Zizek

According to the Instagram site for "Mental Floss," the American embassies for nations of Slovenia and Slovakia get together once a month to exchange letters that are meant for the other. We imagine the folks at "Washington Diplomat" are fully aware of this.

And, perhaps by merely mentioning Peter Sagal, the host of NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," who actually wrote a play called "Denial" some twenty years ago, we can get a few more domestic hits for this blog.

Today, we quote Slovenian left-leaning philosopher Slavoj Zizek who is probably not admire by either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio:

"When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks."

Image to Fill Space: The Yugo Car

We learned today that "Time" magazine considers the 1985 model of the Yugo, a car that was made in the former Yugoslavia, to be one of the 50 worst cars of all time. We have no idea when this car was made.

Yugoslavia disbanded after a tumultuous civil war: The modern countries which were a part of the Land of Yugos, include Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro* and Kosovo.

*-This marks the very first time we've mentioned Montenegro on this blog..............

Virtual Postcard from South Carolina

Though we left South Carolina a few days ago, I thought would send this Virtual Postcard from South of the Border in Dillon, SC, right on the North Carolina border on I-95, a place that I can objectively say is one of the South's most notorious tourist traps. Of course, we mean that in a good way.

We were actually not at South of the Border, but it is a unique place with lots of strange souvenirs. Some of which probably have rebel flags.

The man in the sombrero is called Pedro; we do not know him personally.

SIDENOTE: I want to send a special thanks to those of you in Macedonia, Ukraine and Dubai* who are visiting our blog today. I must profess that while I know I have never been to Ukraine or Dubai, I'm not sure if I have been to Macedonia or not. We went through the area when it was Yugoslavia during the 1970s when I was a child, and since the country split some 20 years ago, I have been confused as to exactly where we were ever since!

*-I always refer to the United Arab Emirates as Dubai as it makes life easier. Hopefully, those of you in the country's other large city Abu Dhabi take no offense.

Quote of the Day- Film Director Dusan Makavejev

Today, we continue with our plan to quote 32 people from each of the 32 countries in this year's World Cup (are we mad?!). We are dividing the quotes between this blog and our sister blog The Daily Vampire.

Our quote today comes from Yugoslavian.....err we mean Serbian film director Dusan Makavejev (note to self: double-check spelling!) who is considered the greatest living film director to ever come out of Belgrade.

One of my favorite Makavejev films is the English-language Australian film "The Coca-Cola Kid" (1985) with Eric Roberts (Julia Roberts' brother) and the English-Swedish actress Greta Scacchi who I still find very sexy after all these years!

The film was produced without the knowledge or consent of Coca-Cola, but since the product was shown favorably in the movie they decided not to make a big whooppee over it.

Makavejev was at last report teaching film at Harvard.

We were hard-pressed to find any quotes from him until we came across this 2000 interview with him from the Australian cinema connosiuers' web site Sensesofcinema.com, which also features articles from my friend Bilge Ebiri (a film critic in New York).

Though I'm not in the film industry myself, this one makes a lot of sense:

"It's very difficult to say what makes you get involved with movies."