Blogging in Three and a Half Minutes (or less).........Games Children Play

Yes, today we are just going to use an image of a dodgeball in our effort to save time and energy, and besides our intern Javier the Intern is vacationing in Vermont (this is an in-joke as Javier is a fictitious person, and well, we'd like to be in Vermont actually).

Let us take a minute to greet those of you in Israel, South Africa and Malaysia, who might be checking us out today.And, to generate more hits, we will arbitrarily mention Jon Hamm, Nik Wallenda and the Rev. Joel Osteen.

Wallenda is that crazy guy who walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon in Arizona last night. Since he is a Christian fundamentalist, he brought Osteen along for support.

Today, we are going to ask a simple question, which one of these sports was the favorite sport of Tilly Gokbudak, our managing editor (well, he is actually moi) while growing up in Roanoke, Va.

Was it?:

A) Dodgeball (pictured)

B) Kickball

C) Volleyball

D) Softball

E) Bowling

The winner gets a free ticket to see Dwight Yoakam perform at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, on June 21:)

http://www.930.com

Our Top Ten Comic Strips for This Week- Hermit Crabs, TED Talks and Norwegian Lemmings

Last year, we took lines from Sunday comic strips and made a collage out of those words for a series of entries. But, since those entries were very time-consuming, and we thought we might get the wrath of Bill Griffith, the cartoonist of "Zippy the Pinhead," among others, we decided to try the same concept in another way.

Our absolute favorite comic strip of the week was "Brevity," which made fun of TED Talks, and hence we have English education maverick Kenneth Robinson, a frequent TED contributor, in the middle image.

Other highlights included Tom Batiuk's "Funky Winkerbean," which dealt with two pizzeria guys talking about their high school days. Batiuk was in our region over the weekend as he visited our friends at Chapel Hill Comics in Chapel Hill, NC. The strip is carried in "The Roanoke Times," the newspaper of my hometown of Roanoke, Va.

We also loved the conversation between a hermit crab (pictured top) and a Galapagos turtle in "Sherman's Lagoon" about how 'cool it is to be single,' though (SPOILER ALERT) at the end of Jim Toomey's comic strip this week, once senses one or both of them will seek out the underwater version at E-Harmony. Of course, one can see such undersea creatures at The National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland (come on, give us a free admission for the plug, we'll make the 7.5 hour drive in return!).

Lastly, "Pearls Before Swine," which is even in the "News and Advance" in Lynchburg, Va. (we love to make fun of Lynchburg here), featured the fate of Norwegian lemmings, creatures known to commit ritual suicide in droves every year.

Ironically, we are featuring the usually right-wing comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" because they made fun of Greek yogurt (the executive editor of this blog Tilly Gokbudak is a Turkish-American").

Here are ten of our favorite comic strips of the week (in alphabetical order as opposed to the more subjective order of preference); we found this comic strips in "The Washington Post" and the online version of "The Denver Post:"


1. "Brevity"

2. "Dog Eat Doug"

3. "Funky Winkerbean"

 4. "Garfield" *

5. "Lio"*

6. "Mallard Fillmore"

7. "Overboard"

8. "Pearls Before Swine" *

9. "Rhymes with Orange" *

10. "Sherman's Lagoon"*

*-Comic strips featured in the Sunday print version of "The Washington Post"

http://www.garfield.com

http://www.shermanslagoon.com

http://www.chapelhills.com

http://www.aqua.org

http://www.ted.com/talks

Tilly Gokbudak is Moving to Bulgaria in August

All of us here at "The Daily Vampire" are pleased to announce that our managing editor Tilly Gokbudak, who happens to be me, is moving to Sofia, Bulgaria, to teach at the American College of Sofia.

He was accepted there for a full-time position teaching English, and Gokbudak will also travel to his late father Mehmet Gokbudak's native Turkey to assist elementary school teachers teach English in the provinces of Edirne, Tekirdag and Kiriklareli.

Turkey and Bulgaria share a common border, and there many ethnic Turks in Bulgaria.

But, we are happy to announce that this blog will not discontinue in any way.

Comic Strip Dialogue_ Open Letters

Today, we are going with comic strip dialogue from a newspaper we haven't used before; this one is "The News & Record," the daily newspaper in Greensboro, NC. The strip dialogue used here is from the Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012, edition of the newspaper.

Of course, our sincerest thoughts go out to the family of Jack Pinto, one of the children killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut and the other victims' families, but we feel that with the constrains of the holiday season here in America, it is best to resume 'normal programming."

Here we go:

1) "Dear Editor. How did you manage to get this letter open?" (from "Shoe," yes, it is the reason for the Greek stamp, which we are using to show irony; the managing editor of this blog is a Turkish-American named Tilly Gokbudak, who happens to be me).

2) "How often do you check your email?" (from "Jump Start")

3) "Santa got down that?" (from "Over the Hedge")

4) "Is this your place?" (from "B.C.")

5) "You should go on Broadway or TV or the movies!!" (from "Curtis")

6) "I'm glad you speak his language" (from "Dennis the Menace")

7) "So........what's on the agenda today?" (from "Wizard of Id")


http://www.news-record.com

http://www.shoecomics.com

Ten People Who Will Decide the Election (10 of 10)- Ohio

It is 5:00 a.m. in Liverpool, England; 7:00 a.m. in Eskisehir, Turkey; and 8:00 a.m. in Yerevan, Armenia. On a personal note, we are hoping the Armenian-American news and opinion web site http://www.asbarez.com publishes my comments regarding the very interesting, heated inner party political race between Cong. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and Cong. Howard Berman (D-Calif.); it should be pointed that the 'executive editor of this blog' is a Turkish-American named Tilly Gokbudak, who happens to be me. They have apparently been reluctant to do so, and even though my statements were not hostile towards the Armenian community, we are concerned that the reason maybe because of ethnic politics.

But, for right now, we are focusing on Ohio, and the city of Akron, Ohio, which is home to Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of The Pretenders, and here is our fictional voter, who will be making a big decision in 26 days:

Name: Thanh Nguyen

Residency: Akron, Ohio

Occupation: Bartender

Will Likely Vote for: Barack Obama

There are no exact numbers of how Vietnamese-Americans are voting in the 2012 election, at least to our knowledge, but Barack Obama did win Ohio by a 4.6 % margin over John McCain in 2008. Currently, "Politico" shows Obama with a slight .8% lead over Mitt Romney.

Summit County where Akron is located went to Obama by a 58 to 42 % margin in 2008. And, the local newspaper "The Akron Beacon-Journal" reported that Romney gave a stump speech in nearby Mount Vernon where he promised to lower taxes.

To our knowledge, Big Bird did not come up, but Romney's mention of the beloved "Sesame Street" character and a hint of the possibility that he would guy public broadcasting in the United States if elected has many educators and parents concerned.

According to a column in today's online version of "The Washington Post," the controversial Obama campaign video with Big Bird, which the producers of "Sesame Street" have asked to be removed, has 1.6 million views on Youtube.

http://www.politico.com

http://www.ohio.com

http://www.sesamestreet.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/thefix

http://www.barleyhouse.com (a bar in Akron, Ohio)

GOP Convention Day One (Delayed Due to Weather) Tweets

Today was supposed to be Day One of the exciting Republican National Convention.........oh well!

Of course, by now, you've figured out that this blog has a strong center-left, pro-Democrat bias, nevertheless, we feel for our Republican friends who might well be stuck in their Tampa, Fla., hotel rooms watching "The O'Reilly Factor" or "Antiques Roadshow" tonight.

But, there are still lots and lots of tweets that we can log here, including one from Callista Gingrich, the 46-year-old wife of Newt Gingrich. We were stunned to find out that Cally, born on March 4, 1966, is exactly four years older than Tilly Gokbudak, who happens to be, well, me.

Robert Costa of the online version of the conservative magazine "National Review" wrote about Newt U, Mr. Gingrich's new workshop at the convention which will be a week-long series of lectures on right-leaning issues, such as Medicare-reform proposals and free-market principles. Newt U was also covered by National Public Radio (NPR), the leading commercial-free radio news source in America.

We should explain that the images above are of: 1) Cuban hats; according to Hats on the Belfry, an east coast hat store, fedoras value for between $25-59 2) Cally Gingrich herself and 3) Sri Lankan Tea: Yes, that is a dig at the Tea Party.

Here are the seven selected tweets from this afternoon/early evening east coast USA time:

1) @TeaPartyCat (Top Conservative Cat, actually a liberal satirist): "GOP: While Donald Trump will not be attending the #GOP2012 convention, he says he remains available to the press to make stupid comments."

2) @RedRoadRail: "Tea Party takes credit for pushing Mitt Romney to the right."

3) @seanagnew (Sean Agnew, a self-described Reagan conservative): "Must Eat Tampa: Hugo's Spanish Restaurant THE Best Cuban sandwich (Hyde Park).

4) @thenation ("The Nation," a liberal magazine): "The Tea Party came to Tampa, but not to celebrate the Republican nominee."

5) @DailyKos (The Daily Kos, a liberal blog): "Mitt Romney comes full circle on abortion: 'It's been settled for some time in the courts.'"

6) @NPRPolitics (NPR Politics): "Herman Cain and his ABCs: He sees Blacks Turning to the GOP."

7) @callygingrich (Callista Gingrich): "Looking forward to offering remarks with @newtgingrich this Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Tampa."

http://www.ambassadoroftea.com

http://www.hatsinthebelfry.com

http://www.stylesalvage.blogspot.com

http://www.newt.org

http://www.thenation.com

http://www.southfloridateaparty.org

http://www.natuionalreview.com

http://www.coffeepartyusa.com

For other tweets, check out our sister blog at:

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.com

Quote of the Day/Week-Simon Pegg

We continue quoting people born in 1970, the year that this blog's managing editor Tilly Gokbudak (ok, that is me) was born, with a quip from the British comic actor Simon Pegg who turned 42 a month ago on Valentine's Day.

Pegg is known for many comedy roles with a sci-fi or horror angle, including "Star Trek," "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz" and "Paul."

His nickname is The Fresh Pegg, and he apparently likes "Star Wars" and "Doctor Who;" here is his quote:

"American audiences tend to be more expressive than British ones."

Quote of the Day/Week- Halle Berry

Today, in honor of Black History Month, we are quoting actress Halle Berry, 45, who was a model before she became an actress. Berry won an Oscar for "Monster's Ball" (2001), becoming the first African-American to win a Best Actress Oscar.

Amazingly enough, three years later, she won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress for her performance in "Catwoman" (2004), a film where she actually injured herself and was briefly hospitalized, and then surprised the world by accepting the dubious award in person.

We were about to say she was the only person to have won both 'honors,' but we remembered (ok, we asked Google) that Sandra Bullock actually won both in the same year!

Here is Berry's quote:

"Beauty is not just skin deep."

SIDEBAR ONE: Tilly Gokbudak, the managing editor of this blog (ok, I just referred to myself in the second person) jokingly tweeted that he would put in the words Yerevan, Liberace and Newt Gingrich (who lost to Mitt Romney in Florida Republican Primary yesterday) so that Google would think he was a 'gay Armenian Republican.'

Well, he actually took this upon himself and in the process he found out through "Yerevan" magazine (a publication actually based in Los Angeles as opposed to the Armenian capital) that Armenian-American playwright Vahe Berberian's** new play "Gyank" opens at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, Calif., on March 16th.

SIDEBAR TWO: Since Tilly Gokbudak is a Turkish-American*, he thought it would also be good to mention that his two favorite Turkish soccer teams Bursaspor, from Bursa, Turkey's fourth largest city, and GalataSaray, a traditional Istanbul powerhouse, played over the weekend.

Surprisingly, the underdog Crocodiles (yes, that is BursaSpor's nickname even though we are fairly certain that if there are any crocs in Turkey, they would be in the Ankara Zoo) beat GalataSaray 1-0 on a goal in the 50th from the team's star Argentinian player Pablo Battalla.

*- For those of you living in a desert island near The Bahamas, Turkey and Armenia have bad relations; we would explain more, but Tilly Gokbudak has an urgent dentist appointment.

**- We almost didn't spell the playwright's last name correctly, but alas we don't expect any friendly emails from ANCA, the main Armenian-American lobbying group because we caught it!

Special Quote of the Week_ Giuseppe Verdi

Today, we conclude our quips from famous Italians in honor of the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification with a quote from opera composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) who wrote many of my favorite operas, including "Rigoletto" (1851), "La traviata"
(1853) and "Aida" (1871).

But, since my name is actually Attila Gokbudak (I go by Tilly Gokbudak) and I was in fact named after Attila the Hun, I have to quote Verdi since he penned the opera "Attila" (1846). My late father Mehmet Gokbudak was, in fact, a serious history buff and yes, he actually admired Attila the Hun. He also admired Suleyman the Magnificient, but I'm thankful he didn't choose that option (going through school being named Magilla Gorilla Attila after the famous cartoon character Magilla Gorilla was torture enough).

Earlier this year, the Utah Symphony produced Verdi's last opera "Falstaff" (1893) earlier this year. Verdi also composed two operas that were based on William Shakespeare plays, including his version of "Macbeth" (1847) and "Otello" (1887), based on "Othello."

An interesting thing I found out regarding Attila the Hun and pop culture is that he was played by two different actors, Anthony Quinn and Jack Palance, in two different films in 1954.

And, ironically enough my first name is often misspelled whenever I'm in Turkey as it is spelled Atilla over there, but it is spelled Attila in Hungary where Attila the Hun reigned.

In other opera news, NPR's "The World" reported yesterday that Antonio Vivaldi's 'lost opera' "L'Unione della Pace e di Marte" will be performed this week in the Czech Republic for the first time in 284 years.

Here is the quote from Verdi:

"You may have the universe if I have Italy."

SIDEBAR: The NPR show "Marketplace" which was broadcasting from the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colo., reported that the local newspaper "The Aspen Times" mentioned that the city's tap water won a blind taste test over Dasani and Fiji.

There is also an annual International Bottle Water Tasting Festival in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, each year. In February, the winner of the contest was the Canadian bottle water Muskoka Springs.

Special Quote of the Week- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Today's quote comes from former Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is now 64:

"I can do something else besides stuff a ball through a hoop. My biggest resource is my mind."

SIDEBAR_ This past weekend, I was actually on the NPR show "Studio 360." The show asked listeners to submit what they would want to be the first line of their obituaries.

The reason for this was their guest novelist Timothy Schaffert's new work of fiction is told from the perspective of an old woman who types obituaries for a small-town Nebraska newspaper, perhaps like "The North Platte Telegraph" in North Platte, Neb.

The first line of what I would my obit to say, as submitted to "Studio 360," was: "His dad died on his thirteenth birthday on March 4, 1983, but Tilly Gokbudak somehow managed to live a happy and productive life."

But, my personal favorite submission came from a fellow listener in Connecticut who said: "Rodger has spent his whole life working toward this moment."