Comic Strips Survey from Father's Day Roanoke Times: We Like This Week's Doonesbury

Greetings to our blog readers in Dubai, Bulgaria, and Indonesia.......

A lot has happened since we last tweeted one week ago today: 1) There was a mass shooting that resulted in the deaths of nine African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, here in America, sparking a national debate between guns and racism. 2) President Barack Obama surprised the world by sitting down for an interview with edgy comic podcast host Marc Maron in Los Angeles. 3) And, Muslims around the world started celebrating Ramadan, which according to the Turkish English-language newspaper "The Daily Sabah" is quite challenging in Iceland where there is 18-22 hours of daylight per day. There are about 770 Muslims residing in Iceland, and adjustments have been suggested for the holiday period's fasting period.

Our images for the week are of: 1) The Jetsons family as "Doonesbury" tackles how fathers are adjusting to modern parenting; 2) Since "Dilbert" features a character who looks just like Turkish shadow puppet Karagoz (center image, the dude with the long beard and a drum; Hacivat is his frenemy; 3) Doctor Who for "Pearls Before Swine" which features a British alien (not in the E.T. sense)

Here are our ten favorite comic strips from Sunday's "Roanoke Times":

1) Doonesbury

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Dilbert

4) Pearls Before Swine

5) Zits

6) Jump Start

7) Non Sequitur

8) Agnes

9) Mutts

10) Speed Bump (this comic strip was number one for four weeks in a row!, but not this week).....

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

Father's Day Kitsch

For me, Father's Day is about remembering my father Mehmet Gokbudak (1921-1983) and my second stepfather Donald Sullivan (1918-2003).

The two men had some similarities as my father liked to collect knives and he frequently wore orange Elmer Fudd hunters caps even though to my knowledge baba (the Turkish word for father) never hunted himself. He also had a fascinated with gun shops.

Donald really, really liked guns, and our political differences on gun control could at times be a sensitive matter. Although we both loved western films, I remember a time when we sat down together to watch a Hopalong Cassidy movie on tv. And, on Father's Day one year, Donald almost cried when he stood up as a 'father' on my behalf during a Salem Avalanche game (now the team is the Salem Red Sox). Since Donald had no children of his own, he cherished being a father figure for my sister and I.

My father had other interests which remain a bit pecuilar to this day. Though he rarely drank beer, though I believe he drank a few Efes Pilsen brews when he was back in Turkey, he loved German beer drinking songs and he had many lp records of those songs, some of which we recently rediscovered. Donald, on the other hand, had little use for Germany as he was a World War II veteran who had seen action in countries like Germany, Belgium and France.

My father's game of choice was soccer, and he rooted for GalataSaray though we didn't have the advantage of watching Turkish soccer games on tv via satellite in the 1970s and early 1980s as many Turkish families can today.

Baba was also not to found of the tv sitcom "Happy Days," which I watched regularly. He considered The Fonz to be subversive because he defied authority, and at times, there was actually a de facto ban on "Happy Days." For me, this simply meant, that I would simply watch the show whenever I was at a friend's house. And, reruns of the show also aired in the afternoon when he wasn't home.

My father also enjoyed classical music, especially accordian tunes, leather belts,
'70s floppy hats, playing the Turkish saz, riiding his bicycle all over town and the Laurel and Hardy short films that he saw at cinemas in Istanbul when he was a teenager.

Besides guns, Donald also liked trains, hot dogs, yard sales, watching airplanes take off and land as well as fishing.

Donald was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but his family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he resided on Minnesota Street. He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1948.

Though I am very different from both of them in oh so many ways, I miss them both every day. And, on Father's Day, I prefer to think of how fortunate I was to have them in my life rather than mourn the fact that they are no longer around.

Happy Father's Day

For those to young to remember, the man pictured here Fred MacMurray played a dad on the tv sitcom "My Three Sons," which aired in the sixties. I watched it in reruns as a kid in the seventies. Alas, my own father Mehmet Gokbudak died when I was 13 in 1983.