20-Word Fiction: The Last Song on the Radio

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

We actually listened to the song "Walk of Life," a hit single from Dire Straits from their album "Brothers in Arms" (1985) on Q-99.1-FM in Roanoke, Va., right before writing this piece. Our apologies to Mark Knopfler, the lead singer and guitarist of Dire Straits, though since we aren't using any lyrics from the song, we presume he can't sue us!:

"Nelson was listening to Dire Straits' song 'Walk of Life' when the train hit his car. His obit will run tomorrow."

Actually, this is 21 words, but this isn't "The New Yorker"!!!!

http://www.newyorker.com

10 for 10 (10th entry): Three Hip Urban Slang Defintions............Defining Hottish with Tori Spelling

Greetings to our blog readers in the Netherlands, Argentina, and Burkina Faso....

We will be the first to admit that we should be at the gym in a yoga class or in a public library reading "Esquire," "Mental Floss," or "The Atlantic." But, we are here, and this will mark the 10th and final entry for a series commemorating the tenth anniversary of our blogging practice, which started on Sept. 21, 2005.

Today, we are going with three definition from The Urban Dictionary which have been slightly altered.

Tori Spelling, the former "Beverly Hills 90210" (original show) actress, is pictured here because she is the first woman who came to mind when we heard the term 'hottish.' The second woman who came to mind was Florence Henderson from "The Brady Bunch" (original version). And, the third choice was Sarah Palin (now, we are swimming over our heads).

To find out what that word and the other two urban slang words/terms of the day just keep reading, Angry Birds will be waiting for you when you are finished here:

1) Hottish: Somewhat hot. Although cannot be considered as 'hot,' a person who is hottish is not completely ugly either. (Our apologies to Ms. Spelling)....

2) Donald Trump: Living proof that money simply can not buy good hair.

3) More Issues Than Vogue:  When you imply that your amount of issues (personal problems) are greater than the amount of issues of Vogue (the magazine).

http://www.urbandictionary.com

Last Ten Songs We Heard on Simon (98.7-FM,Greensboro,NC): Slow Ride

Greetings to our blog readers in Argentina, Belgium and Italy.....

Last night, we experienced major technical difficulties while trying to listen to Simon-FM, 98.7-FM, Greensboro, NC, but we were able to catch an hour of songs between the 9:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. (21:00-22:00) hour last night.

The oldest tune that was played on the variety mix 'we play everything' rotation was "Drive My Car" by The Beatles, which is celebrating its' 50th anniversary as it was released in 1965 (middle image, year it's a Delorean, which came out some 20 years later).

The second newest song in the lineup was the last one in this mix: "Slide" by The Goo Goo Dolls (pict. bottom) which hit radio stations in 1998. The Goo Goo Dolls have a post-game concert following a Milwaukee Brewers game on Aug. 15th.

The most current release was actually a cover of a bluegrass standard "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show; the band plays at Clinton Presidential Park in Little Rock, Ark., on July 16th.

The top image of an Andrew Jackson twenty dollar bill is an homage to Eddie Money, but of course, you already knew that! Mr. Money plays at the Santa Barbara County Fair in Santa Maria, Calif., on July 15th.

For those of you in Spain, Twisted Sister, one of the bands listed here, is playing the Barcelona Rock Fest on July 24th.

Here is the list:

1) Take Me Home Tonight, Eddie Money, 1986.

2) Drive My Car, The Beatles, 1965

3) Pump Up the Jam, Technotronic, 1989

4) Don't Stand So Close to Me, The Police, 1981

5) Wagon Wheel, Old Crow Medicine Show, 2004

6) We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions, Queen, 1977

7) Slow Ride, Foghat, 1975

8) Dancing Queen, ABBA, 1976

9) We're Not Gonna Take It, Twisted Sister, 1984

10) Slide, The Goo Goo Dolls, 1998

http://www.987simon.com/

http://www.googoodolls.com/

http://www.eddiemoney.com/

http://www.crowmedicine.com/

http://www.twistedsister.com/

Top Ten Comic Strips from Sunday May 31st "Washington Post".....We Like Lio Again!

Greetings to our blog readers in Serbia, Argentina and Australia.........

It took us like 3.5 hours to find the images above, so let's get straight to the list...

Well, first, we should add that Cheech and Chong (top)  are in reference to this week's "Lio" comic strip in which the title character kills a weed who is smoking weed, we imagine this might be a reason why the comic strip can not be found in newspapers in South Carolina and West Virginia.

The Danish import "WuMo" has a fat man blowing up dolls who look like him and other tourists at a beach, which is why we chose to go with an image of a potentially Cute Annoying Young Couple wind-surfing in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Lastly, we go with an image of rhinos as an homage to this week's "Mark Trail" even though the strip did not make our top ten:

1) Lio

2) WuMo

3) The Argyle Sweater (featured pizza cops at the scene of the crime!)....

4) Foxtrot

5) Baldo

6) Sherman's Lagoon

7) Speed Bump

8) Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

9) Knight Life

10) Frazz

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://www.gocomics.com/baldo

Quote of the Day: Pope Francis

Since Pope Francis of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the first Pope to ever be on the cover of "Rolling Stone" magazine, who also happens to be from the land of Barcelona soccer great Lionel Messi, whom along with Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers is a spokes person for Turkish Airlines, we thought we'd quote the pontiff today:

"I love tango, and I used to dance when I was younger."

http://www.rollingstone.com

http://www.vatican.va/

http://ncronline.org/

http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php

http://www.turkishairlines.com/

Turkish Futbol Notebook: A Wild Tie Game in Istanbul

Argentinian soccer player Fernando Belluschi (pictured) of Bursaspor may get overshadowed by this countrymen and Bursaspor teammate Pablo Battala, but they won a game on the road against Elazigspor 2-1. The game also saw red cards for Serdar Aziz of Bursaspor and Pepe Sow of Elazigspor.

Trabzonspor won its home game over Kayseri Erciyesspor 3-1 with two goals from Florent Malouda of France.

And, finally, there was a zany Istanbul derby match between powerhouses Fenerbahce and Besiktash which ended in a 3-3 draw. The highlights of the game included goals from Fener's star Moussa Sow of Senegal (77th min) and Dirk Kurt of the Netherlands (83rd min). For BJK, Portuguese national Hugo Almeida had two goals very close to each other (43 min. and 45th min.) The game also saw two red cards!

Here are scores from domestic weekend play in Turkey:

Eskisehirspor 0 Karademir 0 (tie)

Kasimpasa 1 Galatasaray 1 (tie)

Trabzonspor 3 Keyseri Erciyesspr 1

Fenerbahce 3 BJK 3 (tie)

Elazigspor 1 Bursaspor 2

Anakara GB 1 Gaziantepspor 3

Kayserispor 0 Akhisar 0 (tie)

Konyaspor 2 Rizespor 1

Sivasspor 0 Antalyaspor 3

http://www.flashscore.com

Coming This Week (we hope): Futbol Week

If all goes well, we are hoping to launch a seven-week series entitled Futbol Week. Our aim is to post lists, soccer results and perhaps Twitter feeds from soccer experts, such as Turkish soccer enthusiast Ahmet Bob Turgut and Grant Wuhl.

We will also be focusing on specific domestic league, and see how some of you favorite teams, including the Dutch futbol team Go Ahead Eagles (yes, that is their real name) with Turkish international Deniz Turuc (pictured above) who grew up in the Netherlands and Turkish soccer team BursaSpor with Argentine national Pablo Battalla (pictured below) perform as Week 4 gets underway in most UEFA-sanctioned domestic leagues.

Of course, the big news in the soccer world today is that Mesut Ozil, a German international player of Turkish heritage, has signed a 'cok para' (Turkish term for lots of loot) to transfer from Real Madrid to Arsenal.

Ironically, Aresnal ousted Turkish soccer team Fenerbahce from the UEFA playoffs just over a week ago without Ozil's help.

7 Words in Turkish (6 of 7): Oysters

Greetings to our blog-readers in Argentina, Belgium and China.

Even though I am 90-percent fluent in Turkish (or maybe just 89 -percent), I didn't know the Turkish word for oysters; it is ISTIRIDYE; I am not using all caps because I've gone insane or towards political extremism, but rather because the Turkish word for oysters is hard to spell. And, we certainly didn't want to eff that up.

For some genuine underwater laughs, we recommend the "Sherman's Lagoon" comic strip. The Sunday edition of the strip is carried by the Sunday editions of "The Washington Post" and "The Denver Post" as well as other newspapers throughout the United States (see link below).


http://www.shermanslagoon.com

Times Around the World: From Boston to Baku

 

We were going to look at what our favorite people were saying on Twitter; we are especially curious what comic actor Marc Maron and fellow liberal Turkish-American Cenk Uygur are tweeting, but as it is, Javier the Intern told us to keep it simple tonight.

So, we are looking at times around the world, but rather than going with Grenwich Mean Time, we are going to look at times compares to New York City when it is midnight in the Big Apple.

Here we go:

USA

Boston 12:00 a.m.
Denver 10:00 p.m. (map of Colorado is pictured)
San Diego 9:00 p.m.

South America

Rio de Janeiro 1:00 a.m.
Buenos Aires 1:00 a.m.
Quito, Ecuador 11:00 p.m.

Africa

Nairobi, Kenya 7:00 a.m. (Mount Kenya pictured top)
Cape Town 6:00 a.m.
Casablanca 5:00 a.m.

Former USSR

Moscow 8:00 a.m. (Misha the Bear pictured top)
Yerevan, Armenia 8:00 a.m.
Baku, Azerbaijan 9:00 a.m.

Here is a Look at Times Around the World

As is custom when there is a time change in the United States, where we sprang an hour forward yesterday, here is a new look at various times around the world. The top image is the logo for Radio Sweden, the middle image is of Moscow, Russia and the third one is an antique pocket watch.

We imagine one can this and other antiques at Terrace Oaks Antiques in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the nicest (and slowest) cities in North America.


Here we go:

New York: 11:30 p.m.

St. Louis 10: 30 p.m.

Los Angeles 8:30 p.m.

London 3:30 a.m.

Istanbul 5:30 a.m.

Stockholm 4:30 a.m.

Moscow 7:30 a.m.

Tokyo 12:30 p.m.

Hong Kong 11:30 a.m.

Capetown (South Africa) 5:30 a.m.

Sydney 2:30 p.m.

Buenos Aires (Argentina) 12:30 a.m.

http://www.charlestoncvb.com

http://www.terraceoaksantiqes.com

http://www.twitter.com/radiosweden

Quote of the Day/Week- Alicia Sacramone

We were going to quote American Olympic gold medal winners this month (for those of you blogging in from Argentina or Greece, I will quote international gold medal winners next month), but we realized two things: 1) Alicia Sacramone, women's gymnastics team captain of the 2008 Beijing Olympics team won a team silver and 2) Sacramone is sure to get more hits per day than 1984 Los Angeles gold medal winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton. So, we are 'cheating' today, by quipping Sacramone.

The 2012 Summer Olympics will take place in London this summer.

In 2010, Sacramone made a huge comeback by winning a gold medal on vault at the world gymnastics championships in Rotterdam, Holland.

Sacramone is a graduate of Winchester High School in her native Winchester, Mass.

In 2006, Sacramone had the tremendous distinction of competing in college gymnastics for Brown University in Providence, RI, while taking a full class load and still competing as an elite gymnast!

Last year, Sacramone made headlines again, but this time because she posed nude (the actual published pictures are actually partial nude shots) for the 'Body Issue' of "ESPN" magazine along with women's soccer star goalie Hope Solo.

Here is Sacramone's quote:

"Missing the Olympic team gave me the push I needed. I stepped it up a couple of notches and did my stuff."

SIDEBAR: It appears to be a virtual certainty that no local colleges will represent the Greensboro/Winston-Salem, NC, area in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

Today, North Carolina A & T fell to Howard University from Washington DC in the MEAC tournament. Three other local universities fell in their respective conference tournaments: Elon and UNC-Greensboro lost in the semi-finals of the Southern Conference, which was won by another North Carolina college in Davidson (which is near Charlotte) and High Point lost to eventual Big South champions UNC-Asheville in the the quarter-finals of the Big South Conference.

This means that Wake Forest, a very low seed in the ACC tournament, must somehow prevail over the likes of UNC, Duke and Florida State in Atlanta this weekend for a team from the Triad to get into the NCAAs.

Quote of the Week/Day- Che Guevara

For the record: "No, I'm not a socialist, but I would be one if I lived in Provo, Utah."

Nevertheless, the Argentinian radical revolutionary figure Che Guevara (1928-1967) who was executed in Bolivia at age 38, has been good for massive hit totals on our two blogs. And, personally, I'd love to have this puppet for Christmas, if not to see the shocked look on a conservative friend's face.

By the way, we are dedicating to one Paul Doss of Roanoke, Va., who wrote in a letter-to-editor to "The Roanoke Times" in which he defended folks like Donald Trump and Uncle Scrooge. He added that 'anyone who wants socialism should move to Europe.' Of course, my response to that is that if Newt Gingrich becomes president, many of us may actually opt for Cuba.

And, while researching this piece, we found that many actors have played Che Guevara on film, including Antonio Banderas (in "Evita," 1996), Benicio Del Toro, Gael Garcia Bernali and most astonishingly Omar Sharif (?!). Yes, the Egyptian actor who is still alive played the title role in "Che!" (the dubious 1969 version, not the one which got a Criterion Edition release). Of course, in this same version of Che, the late Jack Palance (1919-2006) played Fidel Castro.

So, irregradless if your political legions are with Ron Paul or Noam Chomsky, here is the quote from Che:

"In a revolution one wins or dies, if it is a real one."

This our first in a month-long series of quotes from famous Latin Americans.

SIDEBAR ONE: The road trip between the two Charleston takes C) 8 hours, 30 minutes (see Saturday's entry).

SIDEBAR TWO: Didier Drogba, the Ivory Coast national, who is the main star for English soccer power Chelsea, scored two goals in UEFA Champions play for a 3-0 victory over Spanish team Valencia. This helped Chelsea win Group E.

Here is a partial rundown of the eight games played today in Europe; the stars indicate the teams that advance:

Shankhtar Donetsk (Ukraine) 2 *APOEL (Cyprus) 0

Porto (Portugal) 0 *Zenit (Russia) 0, tie

*Barcelona 4 BATE (Bulgaria) 0

*AC Milan 2, Plzen (Czech Rep.) 2, tie

SIDEBAR THREE: Last night, my fellow Turkish-American progressive Cenk Uygur made an impressive debut with Current TV on his show "The Young Turks" as he took great digs at Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. But, my favorite segment was when he uncovered footage from Fox News of some right-wing nut pundit saying that the new Muppets movie "The Muppets" is encouraging children to become communists. And, the reason for this is because the film suggests big oil companies don't have our best interests at heart; uh huh! Tonight, Uygur welcomes Al Gore as his guest.

Quote of the Day- James Baldwin

Today's quote of the day comes from the late poet and writer James Baldwin (1924-1987) who was also a Civil Rights activist. Since he was black, gay and an atheist, Baldwin felt alienated from society and spent some time abroad as a writer, primarily in Paris, France, (starting in 1948) as well as Switzerland and Turkey.

Among his famous works are his second novel "Giovanni's Room," which was quite provocative when it was released in 1956.

Here is Baldwin's quip:

"Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced."

SIDEBAR: Many radical fundamentalist Christians in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere, are predicting that Judgment Day will come on May 21 of this year (wow!, they have an exact) and the end of the world as we know it will come on Oct. 21,
2011. And, they claim to spread optimism?!

Meanwhile, so we may be 'objective,' it should be pointed out that the heavy metal band Slayer is apparently not concerned with Judgment Day (even though we are not radical Satan-worshippers, I am inclined to agree with them here) as they play on performing in Santiago, Chile, on June 2, 2011. Closer to home, Slayer will be in Pittsburg, Pa., on July 23.

And, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a group that makes fun of Christian doomsdayists and other radicals of this genre, had a cake made in their honor in Argentina recently. We wish we could share that image here with you, but we hate to agitate folks we actually agree with!

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?"

Top 10 Countries to Defect To...if Sarah Becomes Prez

Yes, much like Dubai oil, free time is becoming a rare commodity these days, but we had to blog about where we would go if the nightmare scenario of Sarah Palin becoming president were to happen. Much like actor Matt Damon, I have to agree that it would be 'like a bad Disney movie.'

I was actually planning to post this BEFORE the travel alert to Europe, but I would love to travel to these countries, six of which I've never been too (four of the countries are not actually in Europe, and one can dispute if Turkey is in Europe or not!):


1. Iceland (pictured...24 hours of daylight six months of the year!)
2. Norway
3. Costa Rica
4. Finland
5. Canada
6. France
7. Argentina
8. Turkey (well, I speak the language)
9. Greece (the recession there should make living there much cheaper!)*
10. Cuba (yes- we just put this up here to irk the right-wingers!)

*- Besides, I've always wanted to go to the island of Chios!

My World Cup Final Four Picks

Without commentary which will have to include some other time, my final four are Argentina, Holland, Uruguay and Spain. I pick Argentina to win the World Cup. One of their star players Lionel Messi is pictured above.

I would personally love to see Argentina play The Netherlands in the World Cup final for sentimental reasons. Those same two countries met in the 1978 World Cup final which was in Argentina in 1978.

That was the year I first started watching international soccer in Black Sea Eregli, Turkey, where the whole country watched the games with black and white tvs. Now, Turkey not only has color tv, but satellite and cable services with up to 200-plus channels, where they can watch reruns of "Gunsmoke" like the 'rest of us."

Quote of the Day- Pele

Today's quote of the day from Brazil's legendary star Pele is being posted in conjunction with the World Cup in South Africa, where our traditional ethnic rival Greece (I am a Turkish-American) won its first ever World Cup game by a 2-1 margine with a surprising comeback over Nigeria. The game-winning Greek goal was scored by Vasillis Torosidis in the 71st minute.

Pele is reporetdly engaged in some kind of war of words with Argentinian team coach Diego Maradona, who is himself a futbol god. But, we don't know the details and we certainly don't want to irritate potential blog-visitors from Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires as we have agitated enough people from Athens and Tel Aviv (and perhaps even Istanbul!):

"Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string."