Silly Photo to Fill Space: Things Republicans Like

The great Mel Brooks, who is thankfully still with us, said the best way to get even with your enemies is to make fun of them. And, we can't think of any way to get back at real-life Yosemite Sam characters than to stick to them. We sure hope the late great Soupy Sales, who railed from West Virginia (which has alas evolved into a red state) would agree with us.

Today, we are thus featuring a Big Foot Monster Truck in our first in our month-long series of Silly Photos to Fill Space dedicate to Things Republicans like.

For those of you in Antwerp, Belgium, who have not been exposed to this side of American culture, the Big Foot, which shares its name with a mythological creature of the woods, is basically a big pickup truck with big wheels that arbitrarily crushes things.

When I happened to be in the parking lot of the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC, on the eve of a monster truck show, I was amazed how many people were lining their vehicles up to get in.

This weekend, at least three incarnations of Big Foot will be touring America; the Summit Racing Big Foot #18 will be in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on March 9th.

Meanwhile, its cousin Bigfoot #15 will be in Jonesboro, Arkansas, for shows on both March 8th and 9th and Bigfoot #10 will be in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state which actually went blue for Barack Obama!

http://www.bigfoot4X4.com

Things We Learned on Google Today- Ryan Giggs is Simply the Best

We are continuing with yet another entry in our Things We Learned on Google Today series even though we have not posted any entries in the series since back on May 5!

Today, we learned that Manchester United fans chose Welsh soccer player Ryan Giggs, 37, as the best player in the team's history over the likes of Eric Cantona, George Best and David Beckham, who along with Brazilian legend Pele is one of three futbol players that Americans have heard of. (Actually, we aren't sure who that third person might be).

Giggs, who is still active with Manchester United though he retired from international play in 2007 (he was captain of the Welsh national team; yes we know Wales is not a country too but one day when we figure out why the United Kingdom has four separate national soccer teams, we will let you know), is the most decorated player in English soccer history as he has won 12 English Premiere League medals. Astonishingly, Giggs scored 17 goals in the 1993-94 season for MU.

In England, the personal life of this superstar is apparently quite scandolous, but we are too busy to find out the sordid details.

SIDEBAR: It appears that one of the few places to get away from the here in les etats unis is Fargo, North Dakota, a city that the Coen Brothers made famous with the film "Fargo" even though they are from Minnesota. According to wunderground.com, it was a mere 64 degrees in North Dakota's largest city today.

This seems exceptionally cool given that in our corner of the globe, it was 94 degrees in both Raleigh, NC, and Lynchburg, Va, and a staggering 97 degreees in Washington, DC. Hopefully, House Speaker Cong. John Boehner (R-Ohio) was not hanging out by the Washington Monument and working on his tan.

(For those of you from England, here in les etats unis, those of us who are Democrats love making fun of Republicans!).

We're Back on the Air- I Hope....

For the last three weeks, there have been many-a-snafus with my mom's personal home computer, and I have summoned to Milton, West Virginia*, to help assist her with it for more or less the last three weekends in a row. It looks they might perhaps very well be fixed. But, like the possibility of yesterday's federal government shutdown (which thankfully didn't go through) anything bad can happen even if you are optomistic as Cheech and Chong when they are high!

So, tonight I could sit back and watch "The Lawrence Welk Show" which airs on most PBS stations around the nation at 7:00 p.m., including North Carolina Public Television (unctv.org), Blue Ridge PBS in Roanoke, Va., (blueridgepbs.org) and Oklahoma Public Television, which syndicates the show.

(*-my mom does not actually reside in Milton, West Virginia).

Lawrence Welk (1903-1992) was born in Strasburg, N.Dak., which is not to be confused with Strasburg, Va., a little town some 75 miles south of Washington, DC, that we mention a lot on this blog.

While researching this entry, we found that American honky tonk singer Danni Leigh, who is my age (we're both a year older than Scooby Doo), resides in Strasburg, Va. On April 22 and 23, Leigh returns to her home state to perform at The Circle T Arena in Hamilton, Tex.

Wikipedia described Welk, whose originally ran from 1955 to 1982, as 'a musician, accordionist, bandleader and tv impresario.'

It should also be pointed out that all the people who watch Lawrence Welk's show tonight in places like Mount Airy, NC, can stay tuned to the British comedy series "As Time Goes By" afterwards. We can't imagine that the college students in Chapel Hill will be watching either of these shows, but then again I listen to Mozart and Metallica!

DC Diary- The Map Art of Guillermo Kuitca

Argentinian artist Guillermo Kuitca, 49, took up much of our attention on the fourth day of our family excursion to Washington, DC, which was Thursday. His works, which include two striking paintings of airport baggage merry-go-rounds, are on display at the Smithsonian Hirshorn Museum of Art until Jan. 16.

I was most awe-struck by Kuitca's paintings of maps, one of which was for the entire state of North Dakota (the image is a standard map of the state). Like the baggage carousel, one would think such a subject might be way too mundane to make an elaborate painting out of, but Kuitca managed to pull it off by illustrating how arbitrary lines that divide states, counties and even international borders can be.

Kuitca did something similar with a grander map painting that made Fargo seem close to Chicago and Philadelphia seem close to Kansas City, which made one realize that our lives are indeed shaped by these lines and they can be rearranged without any logical sense of geography, especially in a world where we can now get emails from Karachi, Pakistan, as well as our friend who might live in the next town over from us in a place like Welch, W. Va.

According to Wikipedia, Kuitca has said that he believes our notions of place are always evolving.

As for North Dakota, which is quite far from Washington, DC, it is the 19th largest state in size, but it also has the third lowest population. North Dakota also has the highest density per capita of any state for churches, which makes it all the more amazing that Barack Obama almost captured the vote for the state against the McCain-Palin ticket (or should we say the Palin-McCain ticket).

There were 920 Muslims and 730 Jews in North Dakota according to the 2000 Census (as stated in Wikipedia) and assuredly those numbers might well have radically changed. Interestingly enough, there are many famous Jews from neighboring Minnesota, including Sen. Al Franken and Bob Dylan.

Perhaps, the famous person ever from North Dakota was the late band leader Lawrence Welk, born in the hamlet of Strasburg, N.Dak. His tv specials still air on PBS stations around the country.

SIDEBAR: A great tweet that we read tonight from The Kansan, who we presume is a progressive college student in Lawrence, Kan., was the following: "That doesn't make sense. Where does the bible say you're free to let your neighbor die so the super rich profit?"