Virtual Postcard of Kansas- The State Capitol

Welcome to those of you who have just finished watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" reruns on TV Land. Tonight, we are going to do something slightly different by pretending that we are writing an actual postcard to Aysegul Akdemirli, a fictional person in Izmir, Turkey.

Interestingly enough, we learned tonight that former U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican, is now the governor of Kansas; this image is of the state capitol in Topeka. Unlike me, Gov. Brownback is pro-choice, but we are both morally opposed to capital punishment. But, I''m not sure this in itself will get me an offer to have lunch with the governor at the Row House Restaurant in Topeka as I am a Democrat.

Here is our postcard........

Merhaba Aysegul,

How are things in Izmir? I really miss Turkish food especially doner kebab. I recently passed through Kansas, and I saw that the gas station I stopped at only had postcards of the Kansas capitol building. This is also the state where Dorothy and Toto went to see the Wizard of Oz. Yes, it's the movie with a song about the yellow brick road. Well, I must get going, I inadvertently parked in a handicap parking space.

Gule Gule...........

http://www.ksabolotion.org (Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty)

http://www.tvland.com

http://www.ksdp.org/ (Kansas Democratic Party)

http://www.rowhouserestaurant.com

http://www.kshs.org

Virtual Postcard from Missouri-Toy Museum

This image is from The World's Largest Toy Museum in Branson, Missouri, a resort town in the Ozark Mountains which is known as a mecca for country music fans. Russian emigre stand-up comedian Yakov Smirnoff also has a theatre in Branson.

Well, that's all for now.......I just heard Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" playing on the radio...................he will be 'on the road again' himself when plays in Charlotte, NC, on Dec. 5th http://www.visitbranson.com/

http://www.missouribeautiful.com/

http://www.yakov.com/branson/

http://www.willienelson.com/

Virtual Postcard from Illinois- The Sears/Willis Tower

I'm not actually in Chicago, but since Illinois is one of the 8 states we've been through on this mammouth roadtrip, we thought we'd send you 'a virtual postcard from there.'

Apparently, the Sears Tower is now called the Willis Tower; I guess I should thank the kids working at Google's regional office in Boulder, Colo. (yes, that place does exist) or Javier the Intern, which is a long-running gag on my two blogs.

http://www.theskydeck.com

http://www.willistower.com

Very Cheap Things to Buy for the Holidays

On our other blog "The Daily Vampire" http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com we loved at some very expensive things one could get for the holidays, including a $600,000 ocean-front property in Nags Head, NC, in the Outer Banks.

Here we are looking at considerably more inexpensive things, and we will go from the cheapest item to the most expensive, which happens to be a velvet Jesus painting, like the one below.

1) 1984 Topps baseball card for Billy Sample, who is arguably the most-famous pro athlete from my hometown of Roanoke, Va: $0.84

2) Crayola crayons (8-pack) $0.99

3)"Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits" on vinyl (pictured center) $0.99

4) Candy Land Gingerbread Pawns game $4.50

5) Dashboard Buddhist monk (pictured top) $7.95

6) Velvet Jesus painting $32.99

SIDEBAR: Well, we were going to tell you some exciting women's college volleyball games to look for this Thursday and Friday, but we will go ahead and give you our final four selections: Oregon, Penn State, Stanford and USC. The finals will take place in Louisville, Ky. We are going to project third-ranked Stanford as the women's volleyball champ for this year.

http://www.neildiamond.com

http://www.thevelvetstore.com

http://www.gostanford.com

Sunday Comics Dialogue_ Bombs Away

 

 

Here's a look at today's Sunday comic strip dialogue from "The Denver Post," we were going to give you the weather in Baltimore (45 degrees, partly cloudy) but due to time constriants, we are going to go ahead with some nifty lines from those cartoon balloons. We hope you enjoy:

 

 

 

1) "Louie!!! What are you so excited about?" (from "Overboard*)

 

2) "There are a lot of apocalypse-themed shows on these days" (from "Prickly City*)

 

3) "Pizza!! Pizza!!" (from "The Knight Life" by Keith Knight*)

 

4) "It's just too soon! It's just too soon!" (from "Dilbert")

 

5) "Boy, they're really stetching out this season's winners" (from "Blondie")

 

6) "What's the best way to get rid of garlic breath, I recently had a cold," (from "Luann")

 

7) "What's with the canary?" (from "Mother Goose and Grimm")

 

8) "We should go back in time to 1970" (from "Adam @ Home")

 

9) "No Love, he died before you were born" (from "Family Circus")

 

10) "This is George Washington. You can look him up on the Internet, too." (from "Sherman's Lagoon")

 

11) "Then I spent an hour in the waiting room" (from "Pearls Before Swine")

 

12) "I just tend to get really depressed this time of the year" (from "Mallard Fillmore*, yes- we are still a liberal blog...."; it is a right of center strip)

 

13) "Uhm, sir...what's with all the boxes? Are you moving to an even more prestigious office?" (from "This Modern World"*http://www.boulderweekly.com#)

 

14) "Nicole will go on Facebook and tell everyone how sweet and super awesome you are..." (from "Foxtrot*)

 

 

*- Not a strip that ran in the Sunday "Denver Post"

 

#- Strip ran in "The Boulder Weekly"

 

 

 

Virtual Postcard from Indiana- James Dean is Buried Here

The grave of the iconic American actor James Dean (1931-1955) who died in an automobile accident at a very young age can be found in Fairmount, Indiana. The town of some 3,000 residents is also home to the James Dean Gallery which is located in a reburshised 1890 Victorian house.

The collection includes posters of all three of Dean's films, including "Rebel Without a Cause" (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1953), which co-starred Natalie Wood, who also died young (at age 43). The gallery opened in 1968, 13 years after Dean's untimely death on Sept. 30, 1955.

http://www.jamesdeangallery.com

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.