Ten Things to Know: Culture Club is Coming to Washington DC

1) Syracuse Stage in Syracuse, NY, will be staging the play "Steve Martin's The Underpants," which depicts a young man who literally drops his drawers and is dealt with public humiliation. The play will be the troupe's season opener and it will run from Oct. 21-Nov. 8. Bill Fennelly directs.

2) The Both: A Rock duet consisting of veteran performers Ted Leo and Aimee Mann performs at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro (Chapel Hill), NC, on May 5th.

3) "While We're Young," a comedy directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts opens at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, Va., on May 2nd (there is a concert there on May 1st).

4) Pauline McKee, 90, was refused a $41.8 million jackpot for Miss Kitty at a casino in Iowa, according to the BBC.

5) Bayern Munich won its 25th German title; the team faces Barcelona FC with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez in the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League.

6) The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC, named the best bookstore in Raleigh/Durham by "Indy Weekly" will be one of many bookstores celebrating Independent Bookstore on May 2nd.

7) Culture Club will be performing at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va., a Washington, DC-suburb on August 10th.

8) "The Toronto Star" is reporting that the Canadian province of Ontario will give $1 million to relief efforts for the devastating earthquake which struck Nepal this weekend.

9) According to What the F*** Facts, the top export in America is cars, the top import in America is also cars. You do tend to see lots of Kia, a South Korean car, on the roads these days.

10)  Today is the 39th birthday of British actress Sally Hawkins ("Blue Jasmine," pict. bottom)

http://syracusestage.org/

http://www.catscradle.com/

http://www.thelyric.com/

http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/

http://www.wolftrap.org

http://www.culture-club.co.uk/

Top Ten Comic Strips from Sunday Dec. 28th Washington Post

Greetings to our blog readers in Singapore, Nepal and Taiwan..........

This week, we look at our top ten favorite Sunday comic strips from "The Washington Post;" once again, Stephan Pastis did brilliant work for "Pearls Before Swine," a comic strip which only ran in a few newspapers when it first started and is now even in "The News and Advance" in Lynchburg, Va. (we love making fun of Lynchburg here at 'The Daily Vampire').....In the latest Sunday strip, Pastis has Goat telling his mutual frenemy Rat that he can in his house as his house if getting painted. SPOILER ALERT: But, Goat has so many attached conditions that Rat just decides to check into a hotel anyway, hence the reason we have an image of an old motel postcard from Joplin, Missouri (top image). "Pearls" wins this week's comics survey for this amazing strip.

In a close second, we have "Lio" where the little boy who is the title character attempts to return a dragon in a long line for Christmas returns at some Sears or Target or Wal-Mart or Best Buy (you get the joke, I hope)......btw, a dragon from Wales is featured here in our middle image...

In third place, Scott Hilburn's "The Argyle Sweater" ponders what would happen if a fisherman working for Red Lobster found one of Spongebob Squarepants' friends (bottom image)....

Here is our top ten, that we are typing up as we listen to Peter Gabriel's great 1992 album "Us" which would listen to more of instead of vegging out to Billy Idol (forgive the Gen X humor)....

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Lio

3. The Argyle Sweater

4. Foxtrot

5. WUMO

6. Dustin

7. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

8. Reply All

9. Sherman's Lagoon

10. Prickly City

For this week's "Roanoke Times" comic strips survey, go to our sister blog's link here: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/

http://www.gocomics.com/

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.visitmo.com/