Top Ten Sunday Comics from Gocomics.com: Making Fun of Donald Trump and Darth Vader

Greetings to our friends in Boulder, Colorado, and their sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan....

Tonight, we bring you our favorite Sunday comics from gocomics.com, a syndication which features many big titles, including "Garfield," "Dilbert," "Pearls Before Swine," "Get Fuzzy" and "Marmaduke," yeah, that is probably not their most cutting edge comic strip.

This week, "Doonesbury" once again lampooned the ridiculousness of  the Donald Trump presidential candidacy by calling the Donald "Mister Clown." Though I've never met Garry Trudeau, I wonder if he also thinks Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian (w are not sure where they stand politically) would have also qualified for tomorrow night's Republican debate from Cleveland, Ohio.

Two of the comic strips in our survey, "Brewster Rockit" and "La Cucaracha" made fun of Darth Vader. In "Brewster," Darth laments his intergalactic battlefield losses while in the Hispanic-character strip, Vader zips by in a cool car as if he is Danica Patrick.

"F-Minus" featured a creative recycling gag while "Flying McCoys" depicted pigeons flying with Superman to take advantage of mass transit, which is why we have an image of the late Turkish actor Tayfun Demir (center) who played the Man of Steel in a yesteryear rip-off of the D.C. Comics franchise.

Meanwhile our "Heart of the City," our top pick of the week featured a satire of the famous "Psycho" shower scene, this one featured a child instead of Norman Bates.

Here is our top ten:

*-strips in the Washington Post


1. Heart of the City

2. F-Minus

*3. Doonesbury

4. Flying McCoys

5. La Cucaracha

*6. Lio

*7. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy"

* 8.WuMo

9. Close to Home

10. Ziggy

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.doonesbury.com

Survey of the Best Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post (Oct. 19th edition)

Greetings to those of you reading this blog in Germany, Ukraine and Cyprus, and special greetings to those of you have just joined us after watching the Florida gubernatorial race debate between incumbent Rick Scott (R) and his challenger Charlie Crist (D) or for those of you who are already bored with the World Series, which is starting tonight.

This week, we really liked the "Pearls Before Swine" take on the old Abbott and Costello skit "Who's on First," but it was a week full of great comic strips in the Sunday Washington Post. The Danish import WuMo had Yoda, Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh meeting in the children's section of a public library, perhaps they were in Hartford, Conn. (we have a gag about how we are posting from the Hartford Public Library even though we've never been in that building). "WuMo" got second place in our survey.

The bronze medal went to Turkish weightlifter Naim Suleymanoglu, no, we just said that to keep you from daydreaming; it actually went to "Rhymes with Orange" which features selfies from the whole family. We're sure our friends at the Urban Dictionary who have coined terms like 'shoefie' and 'brofie' got a hoot out of the Hilary B. Price strip (http://www.urbandictionary.com) The selfie gag is the reason why Kim Kardashian is in our top image slot.

We also enjoyed the educational comic strip "Mark Trail" which focused on various spiders like tarantulas (pictured center) and scorpions; the strip revealed that some spiders actually dine on fish?! Perhaps, they would like Red Lobster.

The cutting edge comic strip "Candorville" had a take on man seeing a shrink, and for that we are featuring an image of Lucy from "Peanuts," a nice comic strip that will probably be in newspapers until the year 2073, when Lucy will be 116 years old.

Here is our top ten:

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. WuMo

3. Rhymes with Orange

4. Speed Bump

5. Sherman's Lagoon

6, Dustin

7. Lio

8. Big Nate

9. Mark Trail

10. Candorville

http://www.hplct.org/ (The actual web site of the Hartford Public Library)

http://www.slcpl.lib.ut.us/ (The actual web site of the Salt Lake City Library in Utah; they have 12,711 followers on Twitter)

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine

http://www.gocomics.com/wumo

http://marktrail.com/

http://rhymeswithorange.com/

http://www.candorville.com

Ten People Who Would Make Better Oscar Hosts Than Seth MacFarlane (satire)

Seth MacFarlane was so exceptionally awful as an Oscars host that we thought we'd make a mock list of who would be better than him. Last night, MacFarlane crossed a clear line by making a reference to Jodie Foster in her Oscar-winning role in "The Accused," a film about a woman who has been raped, in a "We Saw Your Boobs" song.

Alas, our good friends at "The Onion" did something somehow even more dubious when they called Quvenzhane Wallis, the nine-year-old Oscar nominee for "Beasts of the Southern Wild," an unmentionable expletive on Twitter. "The Onion" took the tweet down and apologized.

Here is our list:

1) Paris Hilton (pictured, obviously)

2) Miley Cyrus

3) Kim Kardashian

4) Jimmy Kimmel

5) Toby Keith

6) Bob Costas

7) Howie Mandel

8) Alex Trebek

9) Kristen Stweart

10) Rush Limbaugh

Quote of the Week- William Shatner

Admitedly, us Americans tend to overlook our neighbors to the north. In fact, my last entry dedicated to a Canadian may have been when I wished former UCLA gymnast and Canadian Olympian Yvonne Tousek a happy 30th birthday (on our other blog) last year.

But, this month, I am quoting all sorts of famous Canadians. And, perhaps no Canadian is as famous as William Shatner, who turned 80 earlier this year. He is, of course, known for playing Captain Kirk on "Star Trek" on tv in the '60s, and again with a series of films starting in 1979.

Recently, Shatner stunned the world by releasing a music album with his covers of songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. Having heard a snipet of the song on NPR, I can vouch that listening to the Oak Ridge Boys' song "Elvira" on an AM country radio station in Kentucky might be slightly less painful.

So, here is our quote from Shatner:

"How do I so healthy and boyishly handsome? It's simple. I drink the blood of young runaways."

SIDEBAR: Our good friend and fellow blogger Chris Knight took on Shatner in a spoof of "Priceline" commercials with the help of Addy Miller, who is the little zombie girl in AMC's "The Walking Dead." And, Shatner himself actually tweeted about the matter!

A similar thing occured several months ago when Harry Shearer, the voice of Principal Skinner on "The Simpsons," tweeted that my friend Jason Garnett was showing Shearer's documentary film about the Hurrican Katrina fiasco "The Big Uneasy" at the Shadowbox Microcinema in Roanoke, Va. That film is now out on dvd.

SIDEBAR TWO: Much focus has been on the futile marriage between Armenian-American model/celebrity/reality tv show star Kim Kardashian and Kris Humpries of the New Jersey Nets. For those who have been hanging out in Buddhist monastaries in Bhutan, the marriage ended after a mere 72 days on Monday. A Twitter site for the Nets actually asked fans if Kardashian should give her gifts back?

But, a more interesting thing appears to be happening in the Kardashian family's ethnic homeland. Of course, it is perhaps fittingly ironic that I am mentioning this, since I am a Turkish-American, but the NPR show "The World" ran an amazing story on Tuesday by reporter Shanti Shahrigian about an effort to educate Armenian school children about the game of chess.

As it turns out, even though Armenia has a population of circa three million people, the country has some 30 chess grandmasters. Teacher Grigor Martikian is running the elementary school program, and so far it appears to be quite succesful.

I more or less quit playing chess after losing to an eight-year-old girl who was the reigning Virginia state champ in her age group, an incident which occured some ten years ago. That girl is probably old enough to vote now!

Quote of the Week- John Lennon

Ahhh! Now there is apparently something wrong with the Amadeus Mozart bobblehead doll image I posted over the weekend. Well, it is fitting for both the zany day and the zany week I have been having, but that's as personal as we go here. Well, ok, I will admit I honestly don't care that Kim Kardashian is getting hitched. I'm a Turk; she's an Armenian. It would never work out:)

John Lennon (19401-1980) is one of several decased celebrities whom I've recently outlived. Malcolm X, Lenny Bruce, the French actress Jean Seberg ("Breathless") and the Austrian pop singer Falco (who sang "Rock Me Amadeus" which seems fitting given our recent entry) are among those who died at age 40. And, none of these deaths were natural ones.

We are quoting Lennon as part of our homage to left-wing radicals, and since Lennon was perhaps the most vocal opponent of the Vietnam War aside from Jane Fonda, he qualifies. Though, certainly given the dubious nature of that conflict, one does not have to a radical or even a liberal (well, I am the later) to think it was a very bad idea.

Here is our quote from Lennon, who would surely marvel at how insane the world is more than 30 years after his untimely death:

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

Celebrity Tweets- Kim Kardashian

I joined Twitter a few months ago, and ever since I have followed political figures ranging from Al Gore to John McCain as well as some celebrities who have less sway on Capitol Hill. Among those is reality tv star/rich girl Kim Kardashian who shared what she was doing for the holidays with those of us who are following her (should I publicly admit this?!):

"How is everyone spending their Thanksgiving tomorrow? I am cooking! Any good recipes?"