10 for 10 (5th Entry): Love Those Yorkies!

Greetings to our blog readers in Belgium, Canada, and Japan......

Tonight, we are desperately trying to catch up on our 10 for 10 series, and we now know you perhaps cartoonist Bill Griffith must feel if he has gotten behind on drawing his comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead." But, we imagine he is not a notorious procrastinator.

We are featuring an image of Yorkshire terrier, also known as yorkies.

You may not find a yorkie at your community animal shelter here in America, but you may just find a friend for life, so here are two animal local shelters we will provide links for:

https://www.coastalhumanesociety.org/ (Animal shelter in Brunswick, Maine)

http://www.hshponline.org/ (Animal shelter in Hays, Kansas)

Comic Strip Survey: For the First Time, We Check Out the Baltimore Sun

Greetings to our blog readers in Hong Kong, Turkey, and Germany........

This week for the first time in the eight-year history of this blog, we look at Sunday comic strips from "The Baltimore Sun." We were hoping to see "Zippy the Pinhead," and as it turns out, yesterday Bill Griffith's comic strip was truly a piece of art. Today, he made vintage fun of Donald Trump; even Bao Bao, the panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., isn't such an easy target.

Omigosh, we just made a major faux paux as it is considered rude to mention Washington, D.C., when one is talking about Baltimore. Fortunately, when I briefly met John Waters, a cult film director from Charm City, in 2002, I did not make this mistake. But, I only talked to him for about eight seconds, which is how long I spent talking to Willie Nelson backstage at a Farm Aid concert  around that same time.

"The Baltimore Sun" features several comic strips which we don't see in the other newspapers we survey, like "The Washington Post" (whoops again!), including "Mother Goose and Grimm," "The Middletons," and "One Big Happy." All three of those strips made our big list.

First place goes to "Foxtrot," which features the family going out for a Sunday picnic at a state park in a place like The Humpback Bridge State Park in Covington, Va., and they encounters all sorts of natural elements likes ticks (top image), poison ivy, and snakes. Of course, in Florida, they would also have to worry about alligators.

Third place goes to "Speed Bump," in which a judge (center image) tweets his verdict, somehow we can't imagine Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas doing such a thing (ahhh, that's the third D.C. reference).

And, in sixth place, we have "Mother Goose and Grimm," which ironically has a nursery rhyme themed strip (given its title) as Humpty Dumpty falls off his great wall. We actually didn't get the Obamacare gag (and, that makes four), but we liked the strip enough as it is.

Now, let's give this list which you can perhaps read on the Metro after you've come back from seeing that new Woody Allen movie at the Landmark E-Street Cinema...........now, we are up to five!:

1) Foxtrot

2) Pearls Before Swine

3) Speed Bump

4) Dilbert

5) Get Fuzzy

6) Mother Goose and Grimm

7) The Middletons

8) One Big Happy

9) Garfield

10) Zits

http://www.baltimoresun.com/

http://baltimore.org/

http://www.visitmaryland.org/

http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot

Top Ten Comic Strips from Comics Kingdom: We Like Bizarro

 

 

 

Greetings to our blog readers in Panama, Denmark, and Singapore.

 

Happy 72nd birthday to Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones.

 

This week, we take a look at our ten favorite Sunday comic strips from the Kings Comics Distributor, which features strips as diverse as "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith" by John Rose of Harrisonburg, Va., and "Zippy the Pinhead" by Bill Griffith, from Hartford, Conn., actually we are not really sure where the cult cartoonist lives, but last we heard it was somewhere in the Nutmeg State.

 

The images are of 1) The original "King Kong" (1933) with the late Fay Wray is an image we are using for "Bizarro," which showed King Kong's fist and Fay Wray (the barefoot woman in his hand has also been played by Jessica Lange and Naomi Watts) going through the Empire State Building; 2) Tony Hawk, the skateboarding legend now in his mid-40s, is used for "Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog" which showed the boy in the strip getting carried with skateboarding tricks; and 3) a chemistry lab is used for "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee."

 

Those three comic strips are three of our top favorites from Kings Comics, but we also  liked "Rhymes with Orange," which featured a man on a couch.

 

Today, we will also mark which comic strips are in "The Washington Post" (Sunday edition) with a WP, and "The Denver Post" (also Sunday edition) with a DP as well as the "Mrytle Beach Sun" in Myrtle Beach, SC, with a MBS.

 

1. Bizarro

 

2. Dustin WP; MBS

 

3. Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog

 

4. The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee

 

5. Rhymes with Orange WP; DP

 

6. Take It from the Tinkersons

 

7. Pardon My Planet

 

8. Retail

 

9. Zippy the Pinhead

 

10. Hagar the Horrible WP, MBS

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/

 

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

 

 

Top Ten Comics from the Sunday Roanoke Times: Jump Start Gets the Bronze

Greetings to our blog readers in France, Russia, and Bulgaria......

Today, we bring you the last installment in our favorite Sunday comic strips of the week series.

This was a week when Bill Griffith used his comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead" (not in "The Roanoke Times") to make fun of another comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" (which is in "The Roanoke Times"). Both strips share the same distributor Kings Features.

Our favorite comic strip from "The Roanoke Times" was "Speed Bump" http://www.gocomics/speedbump which featured several ducklings taking selfies of each other. Second place goes to "Get Fuzzy" in which a cat and a dog fight over a baby rattler, which one can presumably find at a Toys R Us http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy ............. Lastly, we went with "Jump Start" for third place which revolved around an African-American and a white mother with children almost colliding in the produce aisle of a grocery store http://www.gocomics.com/jumpstart

Here is the top ten:

1. Speed Bump

2. Get Fuzzy

3. Jump Start

4. Non Sequitur

5. Garfield

6. Agnes

7. Pearls Before Swine

8. Dilbert

9. Doonesbury

10. Zits

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

For a look at our favorite comic strips in the "Martinsville Bulletin" go to our sister blog at http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Last Ten Movies We'Ve Seen: Catching Up with 2014

Greetings to our faithful blog readers in Afghanistan (well, maybe), The Bahamas and Poland.

Here are the last ten films we've seen (well, actually as of last week). We are still trying to catch up on the best films of 2014, some of which are listed in the IMDB as 2013 films.....yes, we are confused as well!

1) Night Moves (top image, film is about eco-terrorism.) 2013. Dir: Kelly Reichhardt

2) Palo Alto (center image, Palo Alto is where Stanford U is located). 2013. Gia Coppola.

3) Inherent Vice. 2014. Paul Thomas Anderson.

4) Post Mortem. Chile. 2010. Pablo Lorrain

5) Tabu. Portugal. 2012. Miguel Gomes

6) Drug War. Hong Kong. Johnnie To.

7) And, Now a Word from Our Sponsor. (bottom image, Ipana, originally an American toothpaste now only found in Turkey!)* 2013. Zack Bernbaum. (w/Parker Posey)

8) Museum Hours. 2012. Austria. Jem Cohen.

9) Lfe of Pi. 2012. Ang Lee.

10) Under the Skin. 2013. Jonathan Glazer (w/ Scarlett Johansson)

#- We learned that from Bill Griffith's comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead"


http://www.imdb.com

http://www.netflix.com

Today Marks Our Ninth Year of Blogging

Greetings to those of you in Dubai, Singapore and the Republic of Istanbul (forgive the Turkish-American humor).

Yes, we count only candles as well, but today marks the ninth anniversary of our very first blog entry on Sept. 21, 2005, on "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

In 2005, Zappa the Family Cat was still a one-year-old kitten, it had only been four years since Sept. 11th, and gun wackos only had one Uzi per household.

We have frequently mentioned everything from George F. Will to Zippy the Pinhead and from H.R. Puff N Stuff to Alice Cooper as well as everything from Turkish soccer player Burak Yilmaz to Katarina Witt.

Hopefully, we will continue blogging (when we have time) for years to come even though blogging, which is a product of modern tech, might soon be nullified by modern tech as well....

Arctic Cold Comic Strip Spectacular (1 of 3): Best Comics NOT in Our Local Newspapers

Even with the imported "Washington Post," there are lots of comic strips which are not in the Sunday editions of the two main newspapers which are commercially available here in Roanoke,Va., where "The Roanoke Times" is the local paper.

In fact, we looked at 42 additional comic strips ranging from the cutting edge "F-Minus," which is available in daily editions of the "News and Observer" in Raleigh, NC, (at last check), to the right wing comic strip "Mallard Fillmore," which ironically started at "The Daily Progress," which serves Charlottesville, Va., the most liberal city in our state.

Neither of those strips made the cut this week, but we will give both of them another look in February. 

Since we have artic weather, which makes one think it might be warmer in Bergen, Norway, today than it is here in southwest Virginia, we had the time to look at all these strips, and we placed a ranking system to put them in their right place in a remotely objective manner.

We have the odd numbered strips on this blog, and the even numbered ones on our sister blog (see link below).

The top  strips in this Top 10 list dealt with an evil computer in "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee" (which is the reason why we have HAL from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"), an ice storm in "Edge City" (see top image) and a great satire of the beloved American board game Monopoly in "Brevity"  (see bottom image).

The comic strip "Beeker" dealt with an ill-fated backyard hockey game, which probably helped win over Ottawa Senators fans in Canada (we could use some fans in Canada ourselves).

Here is the list:


1. "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee" 8.4

2. "Bleeker" 8.0

3. Edge City 7.7

4. Brevity 7.6

5. Deflocked 7.5

6. Close to Home 7.4

7. The Duplex 7.3

8. Heart of the City 7.2

9. Zippy the Pinhead 7.2

10. Fort Knox 7.1

http://edisonleecomic.com/

http://bleekercomics.com/

http://edgecitycomics.com/

http://deflocked.com/

http://www.zippythepinhead.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

Comic Strip Dialogue_ In the Mending Pile

 

Wow! What-a-nightmare we've had trying to get this blog entry up; it was initially supposed to be posted by midnight, New York Time, which was 16.5 hours ago.

 

At any rate, here are some samples of actual dialogue from various comic strips, most of them are Sunday strips and about of them are from yesterday's edition of "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va. As much as we love doing this series, we will only be doing it until the end of the year. As it is time-consuming and there is the chance that Hank Ketcham of "Dennis the Menace" fame will see this blog entry and not be amused (this is actually a joke, Ketcham has been dead for a full decade, but the comic strip was still in his name up until just a few years ago.)

 

#- Strips which are not carried by "The Roanoke Times."

 

%- Strip dialogue that was used from a daily strip

 

*- Strips we have never quoted before

 

 

 

 

 

1) "She usually just leaves stuff there till we've grown out of them!!!" (from "For Better or For Worse," yes, it is the reason why we have a children's Smurfs t-shirt. This is also the strip which lead to us calling this entry "The Mending Pile," since this retro term was used in that same strip)

 

 

2) "Your homework better be finished" (from "Zits")

 

3)  "Can we take a rain check? I've got some thinking to do." (from "Funky Winkerbean," our personal favorie line of the day).

 

4) "Go back to your cubicle and don't leave until five o'clock."

 

5) "Mystery Science Theatre 3000"? What's that?" (from "Sally Forth")

 

6) "I must've missed that?" (from "Blondie," said by Santa Claus)

 

7) "Come to think of it, you're kind of a copy cat" (from "Hi and Lois")

 

8) "Who robbed my coffee shop?" (from "Jump Start")

 

9) "See that girl across he room? She just whispered she wants me..." (from "Rhymes with Orange#%)

 

10) "Think now's a good time to have some friends over?" (from "The Pajama Dairies" *#)

 

11) "Well, you know I've always wanted to party like a rock star." (from "Mother Goose and Grimm.") #

 

12) "Well I think we have a good start and a lot to think about." (from "Prickly City") #%

 

13) "I did it! A Thousand! Somebody take my picture! Unbelievable!" (from "Animal Crackers") *#

 

14) "But it don't make no sense" (from "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith") *#

 

15) "Wait a minute....was so and so elected" (from "Zippy the Pinhead.") *#

 

http://www.dilbert.com

 

http://www.rhymeswithorange.com

 

http://www.pajamadiaries.com

 

http://www.zippythepinhead.com

 

 

http://www.roanoke.com

 

Post GOP Convention Response ....zzzzzz

Mitt Romney, pictured above, did not get around to delivering his stump speech until circa 10:30 p.m. last night, which was apparently almost as late as when Democratic nominee George McGovern gave his party nominee acceptance beach at the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami.

Our personal, which is assuredly a bit biased, New Jersey governor Chris Christie gave the best speech in Tampa whereas Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) gave the worst.

We thought we'd do something a bit different with this entry by using seven terms to describe the Republican convention: they are Zippy the Pinhead, Albert Einstein, Che Guevara, Charlie Chaplin, Peter Pan, Kyla Ross (a member of the Fierce Five Olympic gymnastics team) and Yakubu Adesokan, the Nigerian paralympic weight-lifter who won gold this week at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London; we do owe Mad Libs as our inspiration for this:


"The 2012 GOP Convention seemingly featured everyone from Condi Rice to Zippy the Pinhead this week in Tampa. One of the highlights/lowlights was when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) essentially compared President Barack Obama to Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina might have benefited with a quote from Albert Einstein, so liberal critics of her Tea Party politics would come to the realization of just 'how smart' she is. When Ann Romney said her husband should be president, she mentioned how great she was as the title role of Peter Pan in a fifth grade play. She also said he was as funny as Charlie Chaplin, which drew an applause from Karl Rove and John McCain. Last night, every Olympic athlete except Kyla Ross came on stage to endorse Romney, and then retreated to the hot tub backstage. Paralympic athlete Yakubu Adesokan was considered for a speaking lot until his birth certificate disclosed that he was born in Nigeria. "


http://www.rubio.senate.gov

http://state.nj.us/governor

http://www.thehill.com

http://www.theonion.com

http://www.floridadems.org

http://www.zippythepinhead.com

Sunday Funnies- A Quote from Zippy the Pinhead

Since we 'got into trouble' for hotlinking an image of the Bill Griffith comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead," we thought we'd go with this image of The Coneheads, characters that first appeared on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1970s. Some believe The Coneheads was influenced by the cult comic strip, which was also mentioned in an episode of "Seinfeld."

We are taking this quip from the relatively-new collection "Lost and Found," which not only features Zippy the Pinhead, but many tales involving Griffith's other signature character Mister Toad. Parents should perhaps be warned that some pieces in the book from Griffith's early years of cartooning originally appeared in comic strip characters. Gosh, I just sounded like Nancy Reagan there...and, I'm not a Republican!

Here is the quote:

"Mr. Ed is the illegitimate offspring of Captain Kangaroo and Donna Reed." 

http://www.zippythepinhead.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Marcel Duchamp

Today, for the very first time, we quote the great French surreal artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) who is best-known for his....hmmm, there is no nice way to say this, his urinal piece.....

Duchamp was also apparently an avid chess player, a sport which according to the NPR show "The World," the former Soviet Republic of Armenia is apparently very good at; here is his quote:

"Chess can be described as the movement of pieces eating one another."

We gather there is even a "Peanuts" version of chess where (you guessed it) Charlie Brown is the king and Lucy van Pelt is the queen.

SIDEBAR: Oh, I almost to mention that I am on way to the Golden Corral in Rock Hill, SC, where Fred Thompson once stumped* to formally endorse the one Republican candidate who I see fit to hold office; his name is Zippy the Pinhead**.

*-true story

**-underground comic book character that is the creation of Bill Griffith

Quote of the Week- Dr. Seuss

Since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is coming to a close tomorrow, I have been reminded of many unusual culture clashes which occured in the living room as a child in the 1970s. Since my late father Mehmet Gokbudak was a Turkish immigrant, the decision to let me get a copy of the legendary Dr. Seuss book "Green Eggs and Ham"
(1960) could not have been an easy one. Alas, it has been misplaced over the years.

On a recent trip to the quaint town of Lewisburg, WVa, I had a chance to go to Open Book, an independent bookstore downtown, I noticed that all current editions of those classic Dr. Seuss books, which also include "Cat in the Hat" (1957) and "Hop on Pop" (1963) now retail for $9.95. And, there are Dr. Seuss neckties as well!

So, since "Green Eggs and Ham" is perhaps as likely to get translated into Turkish as Bill Griffith's "Zippy the Pinhead" comic strips, which are a novelty even here in America_ its country of origin, we have selected Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) as our subversive for this series of quotes from cultural radicals. And, this quip from Dr. Seuss, who has a memorial statue in his native Springfield, Mass., seems just like something that the likes of John Waters and R. Crumb would fully agree with:

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

SIDEBAR: We loved this tweet from Roger Ebert, the legendary Chicago movie critic who got me interested in quirky films like "Q-The Winged Serpent" when I was between 12-15 years old: "Never marry someone who doesn't love the same movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love you."

SIDEBAR TWO: We also loved this bumper sticker that we saw in Roanoke, Va., today: "I would rather Phish than work." This is in reference to the musical improv band Phish, which formed in Burlington, Vermont, in 1993. They broke up in 2004, but reunited in 2009. Phish will be performing from Sept. 2-4 in Commerce City, Colo.

Special Quote of the Day- Marcel Proust

First of all, we want to wish everyone in France a Happy Bastille Day. Secondly, we want to arbitrarily mention Rupert Murdoch, Casey Anthony and fringe right-wing nutcase Michele Bachmann so we can use three trending topics and increase our hit count for the day.

We'd also love to make fun of the Mormon missionary from Utah who made the very unwise decision to climb a concrete wall to pose with a pair of lions at the Guatemala City Zoo (I've actually been there), but since the lions attacked the 20-year-old missionary and he is hurting (to put it mildly), we will alas have to play nice.

Oh, we almost forgot to talk about Harry Potter! Is there anyone out there who is actually going to dress like a wizard for a midnight screening tonight?

They are showing a midnight screening premiere for the latest installment of the eight film series at the Grandin Theatre in my hometown of Roanoke, Va., tonight.

For Bastille Day, we are going to quote the great novelist/essayist Marcel Proust
(1871-1922), who is frequently quoted in "Zippy the Pinhead" comic strips:

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Coming Attractions- Amadeus in Bethesda

Well, the world did not come to an abrupt end today as the radical evangelical radio station tycoon Harold Camping, who has gone missing, reported but there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Perhaps, God is punishing them for Bjork (that is a joke to everyone in Reykjavik!).

And, though we were hoping to start our blog series "Amadeus in Bethesda" about yet another hectic, but very fun-filled trip to Washington, DC, we are going to post it hepfully at some juncture next week instead.

The play "Amadeus," which was the basis for the 1985 Oscar-winning film of the same name that undoubtedly inspired Quentin Tarantino to become a filmmaker (hmmm.....yes, I know my off-beat sense of humor may make as much sense as a "Zippy the Pinhead" comic strip....?! By the way, we love Bill Griffith's work) is now being staged at the Roundhouse Theatre in Bethesda, Md., which is the reason why we are calling the series "Amadeus in Bethesda."

We did not get to see the play, which opened May 11 and runs through June 5, but I have read the play in addition to seeing the film, and if I lived in the Maryland 'burbs, I would like to think I'd go to the play instead of seeing "Bridesmaids" at the multi-plex. Also, by sheer coincidence, we stayed in Vienna, Va., which is named the capital of Austria, Mozart's native land.

Here is a quote from Mozart (1756-1791) who died young, though he did outlive Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison:

"As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence."

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.

Top 10 List- Favorite Celebrities to Follow on Twitter

Oooops! In our last entry, we forgot to mention our "High School of the Week," which is Eastside High School in Gainesville, Fla. For those of you residing in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, this town is also where the University of Florida Gators play football (and other sports!). On Aug. 14, Eastside High School, where Jeff Charbonnet is the principal, will hold a Stop the Violence rally.

Now for our main subject manner which is my top ten favorite celebrities to follow on Twitter. Those of you who are fans of the singer Julian Casablancas will be disappointed to learn that he finished 11th!

Here is our list:

1) "Zippy the Pinhead" (pictured here): Yes, Zippy the Pinhead is a comic strip character who is the brainchild of Bill Griffith, but he is so much fun to follow on Twitter! Most of the tweets from Zippy/Griffith are actually quotes from back strips including this one from today: "In 1993, Nancy Sinatra will lead a bloodless coup on Guam."

2) Sarah Silverman: Well, we honestly can't post many of her tweets here because they could get one stoned to death in Qom, Iran, but today the standup comedian/actress said that: "I try not to be as hard on myself as I am on other people." She's great, isn't she!

3) Rainn Wilson- The star of "The Office" always posts great Tweets including an entry on Friday in which he said that: "Today should be Val Kilmer Day."

4) Amanda Palmer- The lead singer of The Dresden Dolls is just slightly less irreverent than Sarah Silverman which always makes for an unpredictable guess as to what she'll tweet next?!

5) MoRocca- We're not exactly sure exactly what MoRocca does or how he became a celebrity except that he's on NPR about as much as Big Bird is on PBS. The always funny Mo said that he was hanging out in Bogota with Miss Colombia. Earlier, he tweeted that he watched "Alf" in Spanish in his hotel room.

6) Paris Hilton- An actual recent tweet: "Going to bed. Sweet dreams everyone." Yes, she is not known for intellectual commentary but the heiress has 2.3 million followers on Twitter, and she is on occasion quite amusing.

7) Pee Wee Herman- He may actually be even more of a narcissist than Sarah Palin, but we love the '80s tv star who tweeted this weekend that he was going to reinact his 'Tequila' dance at the huge bikers' rally in Sturgis, South Dakota!

8) Kim Kardashian- see Paris Hilton

9) Kevin Smith- The director of "Clerks" is always fun to read on Twitter. Recently, he mentioned "Mallrats," so perhaps like those of us who couldn't get a date in high school (incidentally, Smith and I were both born in 1970) perhaps he can't 'move on.'

10) Apolo Ohno: This Winter Olympic speed-skating sensation spent the day helping needy children in Seattle, which should make all of us who slept 'til noon today feel even guiltier than normal!

Special Quote of the Day--Happy Bastille Day!

France has been in the news quite a lot lately as the national soccer team openly feuded while competing at the World Cup, a controversial Islamic face garb ban was passed in the French Parliament yesterday and this year the country has been forced to scale back Bastille Day celebrations because of domestic economic problems.

Since today, July 14th, is Bastille Day, we are going to quote the great French noveslist/essayist/modernist Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who is frequently the subject of "Zippy the Pinhead" comic strips. Proust was also featured as the centerpiece in a Sunday "New York Times" article about Kindle last year.

We have to wonder if the likes of Robin Reed, a Channel-7 (Roanoke, Va.) meteorologist would agree with this sentiment from Proust:


"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."

I must profess that my favorite thing about France, after cheese and Jean-Luc Godard movies, would have to be the great comic book character Asterix the Gaul.

Happy Bastille Day to everyone in France!

Xenophobic Criminals in Greensboro?!

According to the police blotter in the Greensboro newspaper "Yes Weekly!," Greensboro police responded to an emergency call at 10:40 p.m. on June 29 from the Tienda Mexicana store on West Market Street which turned out to be an armed robbery.

Store employee Maria Ruiz and her 9-year-old sister were in the store when two black men in their late teens or early twenties came in and one of them pointed a gun at Ruiz's face. The second suspect jumped over the counter and demanded cash.

The two then sped off in a black four-door vehicle. Anyone who may have info is asked to call CrimeStoppers at (336.373.1000).

SIDEBAR ONE: We expect Glenn Beck's head will explode over this one (and, we would love to see that happen actually!) as the Mexican beer Tecate aired several ads en espanyol on ESPN-2 last night during Friday Night Fights.

SIDEBAR TWO: A Mexican waiter at a local Mexican restaurant, a Greek co-worker of mine and a Turkish friend of mine in Greensboro all think Spain will beat Holland- the team I am both picking and rooting for in the World Cup final tomorrow. We'll see what happens tomorrow at 1:30 p.m.

TEASER: Next Saturday, we will be debuting a new series called "The Weekly Top Ten List." We will either go with our top ten favorite people to follow on Twitter or the my top ten favorite cities in North Carolina. Among the candidates for the top slot on my Top Ten Favorite people to follow on Twitter list are "Yes Weekly!" reporter Jordan Green, conservative activist Nathan Tabor of Winston-Salem (who I rarely agree with, but it's fun to see what's on his mind), comic strip character Zippy the Pinhead who we presume to really be his creator Bill Griffith or the acidic-tongued stand-up comedian Sarah Silverman.

Quote of the Week- Maya Angelou

This Quote of the Week which is being done in conjunction with the Fourth of July as we are quoting famous Americans on Mondays this month. Since Bastille Day, the French day of independence in on July 14th, we will be quoting famous French people on Wednesdays this month as well.

I thought this quote from poet Maya Angelou who teaches just down the proverbial road at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, would be appropriate since we are working on the laundry!:

"Achievement brings its own anticlimax."

SIDEBAR: The Twitter feeds were quite busy this p.m.

We learned that Trophy Cupcakes in Seattle is lobbying to win a new Best in Seattle poll in "Seattle Weekly."

Nathan Tabor, a conservative activist in Winston-Salem who I normally differ strongly with, had an interesting link about a Texas store which sold an American flag with 61 stars. I guess they're counting Guam and Puerto Rico and some other places!

Cartoonist Darrin Bell who pens "Candorville" said: "I'm alone in a Cosco and so scared."

While "Zippy the Pinhead" himself (an alternative comic strip from Bill Griffith) said: "The Korean War must have been fun!"

Lastly, we learned that University of Michigan gymnast Kari Pierce who is actually from Ann Arbor, Mich., had a birthday today. We don't know; however, if she is old enough to drink an Amstel Light at Applebee's just quite yet!