Top Ten Comics from The Roanoke Times (Sunday Edition): Trudeau Jabs Trump, Read All About It

Greetings to our blog readers in Costa Rica, Hungary, Kenya, as well as those of you who may be checking in from Sacramento, Calif., where the Monday 9:00 a.m. work day is just getting started.

Today, we look at our favorite comic strips from yesterday's "Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. Our chart-topper this week is Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury," where the cartoonist lampoons Donald Trump (pict. top) and his bad hair. This is followed by a clever edition of "Zits," which features a hand grenade gag (of all things), and "Jump Start" in which two kids ask each other what they think of aliens (pict. bottom, "Alf").

For those of you who might be herding sheep in Mongolia, Trump is one of 15 (or is it 16 or 17) Republicans running for president. We just learned that the conservative magazine "The National Review" has Carly Fiorina on its cover. Like Trump, she has zero political experience as well. (Her name is not spelled right on our tags, but we've learned from the Donald to not apologize).

Here is our top ten:

1. Doonesbury

2. Zits

3. Jump Start

4. Garfield

5. Pearls Before Swine

6. Speed Bump

7. Get Fuzzy

8. Dilbert

9. Family Circus

10. Pickles

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.doonesbury.com

Virtual Postcard of Colorado- The UFO Watchtower

Tonight, we are wrapping up our Virtual Postcard series until our next road trip wheveever that might. Though we are back home, wherever that might be, we conclude with Colorado and an image of the UFO Watchtower in Hooper, Colo, near the Great Sand Dunes National Park in the central part of the state. The 'monument' was apparently built as a joke in 2000, and it has naturally attracted little green men afficiandos from around the globe!

http://www.roadsideamerica.com

http://www.ufowatchtower.com

http://www.colorado.com

Rabbit Ears Quiz (9 of 12)_ "In Search Of...."

Today, we go with an image that doesn't exactly match the tv show, as this is an image of the UFO Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, of all places.

We are focusing on the 30-minute documentary series "In Search Of..." which was narrated by Leonard Nimoy, who is, of course, best known for being Mr. Spock on "Star Trek."

Amazingly enough, "In Search Of..." is his most succesful venture away from "Star Trek." The series also outlasted "Star Trek" as it ran for 146 epidoes over a six-year period from 1976-1982.

The series examined mysterious things, like paranormal activiting, such as BigFoot, UFOs and the Lochness Monster, as well as people who disappeared mysteriously, including D.B. Cooper and Amelia Earhardt.

Three shows I recall watching when the show aired at 6:30 p.m. on Sundays on WSET (Lynchburg, Va.) when I was a child included an episode about the death of Marily Monroe, the disappearance of Charles Lindbergh's baby and the mass suicide in Guyana of followers to the Rev. Jim Jones.

Other unique shows, included one about the Swamp Monster in Louisiana, the discovery of Troy in modern-day Turkey and just who was Jack the Ripper.

Today, for our quiz, we ask who hosted the initial pilot episode of "In Search Of...," Rod Serling of "Twilight Zone" fame had narrated two documentary films which lead to the series that Nimoy hosted.

Is the answer:

A. Robert Vaughn

B. William Conrad

C. Peter Falk

D. Orson Welles

Bonus Road Trip- New Mexico to Iowa

Hello. And, for those of you in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, welcome to my blog.

As most of my faithful followers know (and, I have no idea how high or how low my following really is), I like to make fun of Republicans. And, with candidates as extreme as Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Ron Paul, it is frankly very hard not to make fun of them!

I must profess that even though his politics and ideas are extreme and radical, it is hard to make fun of Herman Cain. For one, he is an African-American and secondly I liked his Godfather's Pizza for quite a while. And, Cain certainly looks as cool as the Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft, who is also an African-American republican.

But, it is easier to make fun of Ron Paul. To be honest, I actually endorsed him for the Republican nomination in 2008 simply because I admired any Republican willing to speak out against the Iraq War. But, since I am an uber-partisan Democrat, the endorsement probably didn't help him much. And, within the last four years, we've all heard the Texas congressional rep (yes, he actually holds a federal office) express some real far-out things, including some highly controversial remarks about
9-11. One may have attributed such sentiments to the far-left intellectual scholar Noam Chomsky, except that those remarks were made by Paul during a Republican debate!

I have also noticed that if there is an alien sent here from outer space to take over the world in the political forum, it would have to be Paul. I mean with Republicans making illegal immigration one of their main cause celebres, especially for Bachmann, it is highly ironic that one of their own might be from Mars!

So, we decided to see how far Roswell, New Mexico, is from Ames, Iowa, since Roswell is associated with UFOs and since Ames, also the home of Iowa State University, is where a key political straw poll takes place.

For, our two destinations, we went with the UFO Museum in Roswell (there is also one in Istanbul, Turkey_ of all places!) and The Cafe Ames in Iowa.

So, what is the answer; is it:

A) 16 hours even
B) 16 hours, 30 minutes
C) 16 hours, 45 minutes
D) 17 hours, 15 minutes

If you get this right, we will promptly send you a copy of "Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits" on 8-track tape (that is a joke!).

Virtual Postcard from South Carolina

At the moment, I am not actually in South Carolina, but I was over the weekend. This image, for those of you logging from Singapore today (and, yes, I saw someone from that city nation was checking us out!), this image is from the Peach water tower in Gaffney, SC, which motorists can see as they drive on the interstate.

There is an event called the South Carolina Peach Festival in Gaffney every year.

A strange thing happend when I was in Charlotte, NC, for a sidetrip. A panhandler with a walking stick who had just given me directions to a Starbucks (keep in mind, this was when the Carolina Panthers were playing a home football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, a game which the Panthers won 16-10, and there were lots of folks flooding the downtown area) asked me for a dollar so 'he could buy a cup of coffee.'

Well, about five minutes later, I saw him at that same Starbucks with a cup of coffee. A part of me felt like I was scammed since coffee at Starbucks is more expensive than most places, but another part of me said: "Well, he said he wanted a cup of coffee."

SIDENOTE: I was actually going to take a week-long hiatus from the blog, but ultimately it is too much like going a long time without making fun of Republicans (especially Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann) or some iced vanilla coffee from Starbucks. In short, all of us, to a degree, have our vices!

Speaking of Ron Paul, I gather the state of Montana has a substantially high number of UFO sightings, so perhaps he is on his way there as we speak to meet up with his fellow little green men.

Weekend Road Trip- Rhode Island to Nevada (6 of 20)

Today, we continue our series Weekend Road Trips with a look at how far two cities with famous minor league baseball teams are from each other. The two cities are Pawtucket, RI, where the Pawtucket Red Sox play, (triple-A team for the Boston Red Sox) and Las Vegas, Nev., where one can see both a Las Vegas 51s game and an expensive-as-all-get-out show from Wayne Newton on the same night.

We are actually going to measure the distance between Modern Diner in Pawtucket, which has been featured in the great "Zippy the Pinhead" comic strip, and Ibo Turkish Restaurant, which we assume serves our favorite meat dish Adana kebab, on West Flamingo Road in Las Vegas. According to the "Providence Phoenix," the Modern Diner serves very good pumpkin pancakes!

The Pawsox are currently on the road in Syracuse, NY, today, where they are playing the Syracuse Chiefs. The team's web site reported that they were winning 2-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning. The Pawsox are playing the Chiefs on a double-bill as we speak. They return to Rhode Island on Saturday to host the Buffalo Bisons. On April 30, the Pawsox will have a special fireworks display after their game with the Toledo Mudhens.

While we were looking at the PawSox's web site, we saw that Yamaico Navarro, a shortstop from the Dominican Republican, was at bat for the road team. The team also consists of his countrymen Tony Pena Jr., a 30-year-old pitcher for the PawSox whose father Tony Pena was a major-league all-star who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and five other teams.

As for the Las Vegas 51s, they are named for Area 51 which is a military base that is 80 miles north of town; it is also where UFO believers feel that ETs have passed by so perhaps it serves as their Atlanta (forgive the airline passenger humor).

Actor Billy Bob Thornton once wore a 51s team hat on a late-night talk show. The next home game for the team will be against the Fresno Grizzlies tommorow night at 7:05 p.m. local time.

Brad Mills, a pitcher who is almost exactly 15 years younger than me (he is 26, his birthday March 5 is a day after mine), was pitching for the 51s today in a road game at Sacramento. Mills played college baseball for the University of Arizona.

Though the two teams are in different Triple-A leagues and could only play each other in the Minor League World Series, today we are asking how far from each other these two zip codes are.

Is the answer:

A) 39 hours, 57 minutes

B) 40 hours, 57 minutes

C) 41 hours, 57 minutes

D) 42 hours, 57 minutes

PS_ The answer to last week's road quiz was A) 26 hours is the distance between New Haven, Conn., and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Things We Learned From the BBC Today- UFOs Over Rio?!

The BBC has reported today that the Brazilian government is actually going to start recording UFO sightings. The decree has stated that all military and civilian pilots as well as air traffic controllers should register UFO sightings with the national aerospace defense command.

There have apparently been a number of UFO sightings in Brazil that have caused concern.

In 1986, Brazilian air force jets scrambled to investigate a UFO over the country's largest city Sao Paolo.

And, way back in 1977 when "Space 1999" was on the air and I was in the first grade, citizens of the Amazonian town of Vigia said they were attacked by aliens!

We dedicate today's entry to students at Glendale High School in Glendale, Calif., (for our bonus high school of the week) which has the largest Armenian-American populations per capita in the country. The mayor of this city where comic actor legend W.C. Fields is buried happens to be an Armenian-American named Ara Narajarian. We imagine his ninth grade geometry teacher couldn't spell his name right, either!

The school where I would probably be hard-pressed to get a prom date since I'm a Turkish-American (we have a spat--long story!) if I were in high school.... But, I didn't get a prom date at my high school in Virginia back in 1987 either! Glendale High is nicknamed the Dynamite or Nitro. The school's principal is Deb Rinder.

John Wayne (yes, the guy who was in "Stagecoach" and "The Searchers"), who was actually born in Winterset, Iowa, is Glendale High's most famous alum.

And, the school has both boys and girls water polo teams. Definitely, not something that my alma mater in southwest Virginia will likely have any time soon!

But, we did have a soccer team........I have still have the benchmarks on my rear end to prove it!

Today is My 40th Birthday, and I am NOT Turning into a Republican

I do have good friends who are Republicans, many of whom went to high school with me in the Roanoke, Va., area, so I will say that not all of them are gun nuts, religious whackos or extreme anti-government lunatics, but then again quite a few of them are-LOL!

In all seriousness, I want to thank everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday on Facebook whatever their politics might be.

Alas, since today is a work day, I will not be able to go UFO-watching in Logan, Utah, but perhaps this time next year I can just that (of course, we are not being enitrely serious here).

Ironically, today is also the 60th birthday of Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex., pictured here along with Yosemite Sam and the Rev. John Hagee) who used to be a Democrat, or at least that's what Karl Rove said on "The Charlie Rose Show" last year, but I will not be joining the GOP anytime soon, or at least until Sarah Palin is kidnapped by those very aliens who are hanging out in Utah.

Silly Picture to Fill Space- Illegal Alien

I guess today's entry might attract those who read "The National Review" as well as those who read "UFO Magazine" (I read neither).

Since the Academy Awards, which will air on Sunday, have two science-fiction films this year "Avatar" and "District 9" up for Best Film this year (coincidentally, my one-two worst films of the year, but I generally like sci-fi films-in fact, I think "ET" should have won in 1982 over "Gandhi"), we thought we'd find some science-fiction related photos.

There happens to be a UFO Museum in Istanbul, Turkey- of all places. I've actually been there, and it's quite an interesting museum which is amazingly close to the Covered Bazaar.

But, of course, there is one such place here in America as well. The Roswell UFO Museum in Roswell, N.Mex., is hosting an annual festival from July 2-5th this year. Perhaps, Marvin the Martian will stop by as well.........