Top 10 Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post: Lio Takes Gold

Greetings to our blog readers in Switzerland, Sweden and Turkey........

Today, we once again rank our ten favorite comic strips from the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post," which carries 40 comic strips, including some that rarely make the cut, ie. "Hagar the Horrible," which was brilliant 40 years ago..........oh well.........

Since, there squids in both "Lio," which came in first, and "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy," which came in third, we thought we'd start off with an image of an animal that you can eat in most Greek restaurants. The late Soupy Sales is the image in our middle slot as "Rhymes with Orange," the second place strip had a pie-in-the-face gag which Sales was famous for, but the strip actually has clowns as the subject of its joke.

Finally, a map of the United States marking where Kansas is will be used for our final image as the always hip Garry Trudeau nailed Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in a financial fiasco which messed up the lives of countless educators and school students across 'The Land of Oz.' According to our iPhone, Topeka, Kansas, and Washington, D.C., are almost exactly 1,000 miles from each other. Brownback was also a Republican member of the U.S. Senate.

Here is our top ten:

1. Lio

2. Rhymes with Orange

3. Brewster Rockit

4. Doonesbury

5. Pearls Before Swine

6. WuMo

7. Speed Bump

8. Knight Life

9. Prickly City

10. Sherman's Lagoon

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Halloween Tweets: Trick-or-Treat Invasions

Greetings to our beloved blog-readers in Scotland, Switzerland and Kuwait.

Today is not only Halloween; it also marks the sixth anniversary of our blog "The Daily Vampire." Perhaps some of you remember 2008, The Beatles had just arrived in America, Chairma Mao Tse Tung became the leader of China and a marijuana-inspired cartoon with a talking dog named "Scooby Doo"debuted on television..........:)

In case, you are wondering the bottom image is from the Turkish horror film "Drakula Istanbul'da/Dracula in Istanbul"!

Here are some unique tweets from Halloween night:

1) News&Record: Trick-or-treaters invade Greensboro neighborhood.
 
2) UNC Swag: Everyone in Chapel Hill tonight, please be safe and careful in what you do.....

3) Abraham Lincoln: Tonight in 1865, Lincoln, Mary, and Miss Clara attended Grover's Theatre for opera "The Magic Flute." She was with them at the assassination.

4) Bill Amend (the cartoonist from "Foxtrot"): All right enough with the sad Halloween boredom. Booze, meet Springsteen. Booze and Springsteen, meet Bill Amend.

5) Top Conservative Cat (a satiric tweeter): Next on Fox News, President Obama lures children to pagan festival at the White House.

6) Marc Maron (stand-up comic, star of "Maron" on IFC): "Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh! WTFHaloween!!!!"

7) The Coffee Bean (a LA-based coffee producer): "Spooky Halloween greetings 2 U from Ur friends at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Have fun and be safe tonight."

http://www.visitgreensboronc.com/

http://www.visitchapelhill.org/

http://www.foxtrot.com/

http://www.wtfpod.com/

http://www.coffeebean.com/

Soccer Week (8 of 8): Suppose They Gave a Soccer Game in Cyprus, and No One Cared (plus 11 European teams you've never heard of)

Hmm....we were going to post a photo of Trabzonspor's Turkish soccer player Yusuf Erdogan, but what we got were photos of Turkish Prime Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is about as popular amongst Turks abroad as Porky Pig cartoons are in Dubai (forgive the political humor).

At any rate, this image is of Marco Streller, the Swiss international and captain of the Swiss team Basel, which is ranked 51st in UEFA club standings. He kicked the winning goal for Basel in the Champions League. Basel went into London on Tuesday and shocked the global soccer community with a 2-1 win over Chelsea.

Our lead though is in reference to today's soccer game in Limassol, Cyprus, between traditional Turkish soccer power Trabzonspor and Appolon Limassol, the team that surprised Europe last year by reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League.

Even though Cyprus is just across the sea from Turkey, Trabzonspor traveled quite a ways for the game as Trabzon is located in northwestern Turkey.

For those who feel asleep in your history class at Cornell University (next time we'll pick on Princeton), Turkey and Greece had a short, but ugly war over Cyprus in 1974. Even though I was four years old at the time, I remember the Cyprus War quite well, or at least as well as the Vietnam War, for my late father Mehmet Gokbudak hailed from Turkey.

Thankfully, no one on either side of my family died in Famagusta or Hanoi.

Before we get to the ten European soccer teams you've never heard of, let's look at some scores that will help you the blog-reader get through this entry:

UEFA Champions League:

Sociedad (Spain) 0 Shkhar Donesk (Ukraine) 2

Chelsea 1 Basel 2

Benfica (Portugal) 2 Anderlecht (Belgium) 0

UEFA Europa League:

Apollon 1 Trabzonspor 2

Dynamo Zagreb (Croatia) 1 Odessa (Ukraine) 2

PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands) 0 Ludogorets (Bulgaria) 2

Standard Liege (Belgium) 1 Esberg (Denmark)  2

Freiburg (Germany) 2 Liberec (Czech) 2...........tie game

Rubin Kazan (Russia) 5 Maribor (Slovenia) 2

Now here on the 11 teams you've never heard of:

1. Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine): This was considered the second biggest upset in the Champions League. Brazilian international Alex Teixeira scored both goals for the Ukrainian club in their 2-0 win in Spain).

2. Basel (Switzerland)

3. Benfica (Portugal): They are seemingly a team which always sneaks up on other teams in European play.

4. Anderlecht (Belgium)

5. Apollon Limassol (Cyprus): "The Daily Hurriyet," an English-langauge newspaper in Turkey said Trabzonspor won in 'Greek Cyprus,' but we don't like to get into politics here. Well, at least, not when we are writing about soccer. Gaston Sangoy (Argentina) scored for the Cypriot team in the team's close loss to Trabzonspor.

6. Trabzonspor (Turkey): This squad is one of only two teams outside of Istanbul that has won a Turkish domestics championship; Bursasapr from Bursa is the other team.

7.Dyanmo Zagreb (Croatia)

8. Ludogorets (Bulgaria): Amazingly enough Virgil Misidja a Dutch international player for this Bulgarian team kicked in the second goal in his native country today to help Ludo upset PSV Eindhoven 2-0.

9. Esberg (Denmark): Not to be confused with Swedish team Elfsborg, which is also in the Europa League, this Danish squad celebrated a road win in Belgium thanks to the game-winning goal from Musaga Bakenga, a Norwegian player of Congolese heritage.

10. Rubin Kazan: This team which plays in the Tartar region  of Russia boasts Gokdeniz Karadeniz, one of Turkey's better exports. Today, he scored a goal today in their win over Maribor of Slovenia.

11. Maribor (Slovenia): Today's lop-sided loss to Rubin Kazan was apparently closer than the score sheet indicates. Maribor is a competitive team from the former Yugoslavia and today the team saw a goal from Slovenian national Martin Milec.



http://www.turkeyfootball.blogspot.com

http://www.turkish-football.com

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

http://www.trabzonspor.org.tr (in Turkish)

http://www.russianfootballnews.com

http://www.apollo.com.cy

http://www.uefa.com

Soccer Night_ Viva Italia

Alas, we did not get to putting this entry up in time to get info on who scored the goals for their respective Italian premiere league teams, but we can tell you the top image is of Gianluigi Buffon, a veteran goalie who is the captain of first place Juventus. The bottom is image is of Gokhan Inler, a Swiss international of Turkish heritage who plays for third place Napoli.

Here are the current standings:

1. Juventus 80

2. Napoli 69

3. AC Milan 62

4. Fiorentina 61

5. AS Roma (pictured middle) 55

6. Udinese 54

7. Inter Milan 53

8. Lazio 52

These are the scores from LAST week's games:

Udinese 1 Cagilari 0

Napoli 3 Pescara 0

Parma 0 Lazio 0, tie

Atalanta 1 Bologna 1, tie

AS Roma 4 Siena 0

Genoa 1 Chevo 0

Juventus 2 Torino 0

Fiorentina 3 Sampdaria 0

Palermo 1 Inter Milan 0

AC Milan 4 Catania 2

Casulaties of Modern Technology (6 of 12)_ The Typewriter

First of all hello to those of you in Davos, Switzerland, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, who have somehow found time to check us out today. We also wish to congratulate teh citizens of Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Zambia for reaching the finals of the African Cup in world soccer play over the weekend. Lastly, kudos to Eli Manning and the New York Giants for winning the Super Bowl over the New England Patriots 21-17.

And, you thought Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were the only ones kissing babies left and right!

Today's Casualty of Modern Technology is the typewriter. Since I am a big fan of the Tom Robbins novel "Still Life with Woodpecker" (1980) and the novelist typed the whole work on Remington SL3, that is the image we are going with today.

In his novel, Robbins even alluded to the machinery with the line: "I sense that the novel of my dreams is the Remington SL3_ although it writes much faster than I can spell."

The typewriter was also an external force in the excellent William Burroughs novel "Naked Lunch" (1959), a surreal masterpiece that was turned into a David Cronenberg film many years later in 1991.

There are many serious collectors of typewriters, including actor Tom Hanks and politcian/business leader Steven Soboroff, who has typewriters from Jack London and Ernest Hemingway in his collection.

The legacy of the typewriter, which was first invented circa 1868 remains today as the QWERTY keyboard is found on all personal computer keyboards.

Typewriters became more standard around 1910, and they were gradually implemented into newspaper journalism. The IBM selectic typewriter was developed in 1961 as a replacement for the originals. The newer typewriters were less noisy and printed more effectively.

But, by the 1980s, the world processor evolved, and typewriters were soon allegedly sent off to former Soviet republics, such as Azerbaijan, where even today, the computer is highly preferred.

Quote of the Day/Week- Dr. Jack Kevorkian

This month, on Thursdays (days may vary depending on schedule), we will posting quips from famous people who died in 2011. Don't worry: Osama bin Laden will not be one of them.

But, there will be some controversial figures, including today's subject, Dr. Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011) who died at age 83 on June 3, 2011, in Michigan.

Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-15 year jail sentence in Michigan for second degree murder. He was tried for assisting suicides four times. The assisted suicides happened between May 1994 and June 1997. These trials made Kevorkian an international celebrity.

Assisted suicide has also been highly debated in Switzerland, where it is allowed. But, this has lead to the 'suicide tourism' trend in which people with terminal illnesses come to Switzerland for assisted suicides or euthanasia. In 2008, 725 citizens from the United Kingdom came to Switzerland for this purposes.

Kevorkian was also an Armenian-American, and he was portrayed by Al Pacino in the HBO film biography "You Don't Know Jack." He lived and worked his whole adult life in his native Michigan.

Here is his quote: "Among doctors in general, I think more than half support what I am doing."

UEFA Madness: Those Darn Ruskies

Since I'm a Turkish-American, I was hoping that Black Sea power Trabzonspor, the lone Turkish team in the UEFA Champions League, would pull through as they were expected to. But, CSKA Moscow went to Milan, Italy, and pulled a stunning 2-1 upset over Group B leader Inter Milan. This eliminated not only Trabzonspor, but the French team Lille. Trabzonspor and Lille played to a 0-0 tie yesterday.

Hence, we are posting an image of Misha the Bear from the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and in what is simply a ploy to arbitrarily get more hits on this blog, we are also featuring the famed 1993 "Sports Illustrated" switsuit issue with the Swedish supermodel Vendela, who is now 43 and reportedly newly single.

The goals for CSKA Moscow were scored by Seydou Doumbia, an Ivory Coast national, in the 50th minute of play, and Valli Berztutzki in the 86th minute. The Argentinian player Esteban Cambiasso score for Inter Milan in the 51st minute.

In Group C, there were some stunning developments as well as traditional English powerhouse and reigning UEFA runner-up Manchester United failed to qualify for the round of 16 as they fell to the Swiss team FC Basel 2-1. The Swiss side's goals came from Marco Streller (9th min.) and Fabian Frei (84th min.), both Swiss nationals while the lone Manchester United goal came from 19-year-old wunderkid Alex Jones late in the game.

FC Basel is also the team with Pak Kwang Ryong, the lone North Korean player in the UEFA Champions League and the first ever North Korean player to play in the tournament. He made his debut in a match at Manchester United on Sept. 14th.

The other team to advance from Group C was Benefica (Portugal) as they beat Otelul Galati (Romania) 1-0 on the road. Oscar Cardoza scored for the winning side a mere seven minutes into match play.

Here is a complete list of the scores from Wednesday's UEFA action, rundowns on the other four games will be on our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time:"

*- Teams which advanced

y- Teams which won their groups

Group A

Napoli (Italy) 2 Villareal (Spain) 0

Manchester City 2 *y Bayern Munich 0

Group B

*CSKA Moscow 2 *y Inter Milan 1

Trabzonspor 0 Lille 0, tie

Group C

*y Benefica 1 Otelul Galati 0

* FC Basel 2 Manchester United 1

Group D

*y Real Madrid 3 Ajax Amsterdam 0

* Lyon (France) 7 Dinamo Zagred (Croatia) 1

SIDEBAR: There was also a major domestic game in Turkish soccer yesterday as two of the three main Istanbul rivals Galatasaray and Fenerbahce met (the third Istanbul power team is Besiktash), and it was Galatasaray which prevailed 3-1. The goals for the winning yellow and reds came from Emmanuel Eboue, yet another Ivory Coast player who is shinning in European soccer, John Elmanders, a Swedish national and Felipe Melo of Brazil. It was another Brazilian national Alex de Souza, who is also the Fenerbahce captain, who scored the lone goal for the yellow and blues.

Quote of the Week- Sophia Loren

Tonight, we continue with our quips from famous Italians since Italy is celebrating its 150th anniversary as a republic. Ironically, even though Sophia Loren is Italy's most recognized screen star around the world, she resides abroad in Geneva, Switzerland.

Loren, who will turn 77 on September 20, provided the voice for Maria Topolino in the upcoming animated film "Cars 2." She was the very first woman to win a Best Actress Oscar for a foreign-language when she won the award for the 1962 Italian film "Two Women." The French actress Marion Cottilard would be the second actress to achieve that rarity when she Oscared for her role as the iconic French singer Edith Piaf in the 2007 French film "La Vie en Rose."

Loren is also said to be an inspiration for the Spanish actress, superstar Penelope Cruz whose title role in Pedro Almodovar's film "Volver" (which recieved an Oscar nomination) is said to be inspired by the Italian legend.

Here is the quote from Loren:

"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wired fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."

Quote of the Week- Jimmy Carter

He is undoubtedly Rush Limbaugh's 'favorite president' (which is reason to love the guy) and tomorrow night former president Jimmy Carter will sign copies of his latest book at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC.

An interview with Carter will also air this weekend on C-Span 2 (Book TV), and an exhibit called "The Working White House" is currently on display at the Carter Museum and Library in Atlanta where Rosalynn Carter will hold her own book-signing in December.

Here is our quote from the president, one of only four living ex-presidents, who came in between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan:

"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America."

Another ex-president Bill Clinton speaks at the Greensboro Coliseum tomorrow night as part of Guilford College's Bryan Series. Clinton will reportedly head to Switzerland on Wednesday to start lobbying for an American bid to host the 2022 World Cup.

SIDEBAR: Speaking of Carter's home state of Georgia, we learned that there is a happening vegeteranian restaurant in the college town of Athens, Ga., called The Grit, which serves brunch from 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Quote of the Day- Audrey Hepburn

She is best known for her role in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," yet she won an Oscar for her earlier performance in "Roman Holiday" with Gregory Peck.

We are quoting Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) in our series of 32 quotes from 32 people associated with the 32 countries in the World Cup.

I must profess that with Hepburn we are sort of 'cheating' as she was born in Belgium, but she spent most of her adult life in Switzerland. Since the Swiss, who shocked Spain 1-0, are in the World Cup and Tintinland is not, we are posting Hepburn's quote for Switzerland.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that one of the nicest hotels in Istanbul, Turkey, is actually Swissotel, an international chain which also has hotels in Chicago (but presumably nowhere else in les etats unis, Berlin, Beijing, Lima (Peru) and (of course) Geneva. They also have two other hotels in Turkey in Ankara and Izmir.

The Swissotel in Istanbul overlooks the Bosporus and it also reportedly has a very, very nice spa.

As for the World Cup, in today's action, our American boys came from behind to tie Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic which Sarah Palin probably thinks is in West Africa somewhere near Ghana (they are also in the World Cup).

The Slovenian goals came from Valter Birsa (25th min.) and Zlatan Ljubijankic (and, people think my Turkish last name is hard to spell!). While the American goals came from superstar Landon Donovan (48th min.) and Michael Bradley (82nd min.); there was also an American goal which was called back by referee Koman Coulibay from Mali (who coincidentally turns 40 on the Fourth of July).

Coulibay's Wikipedia page was hacked in response to the highly-controversial call sometime today. This of course makes me wonder if some kid from Skokie, Ill., (a Chicago suburb) or Bethesda, Md. (a DC 'burb), has to much time on his hands!

Oh, before I forget, here is our quote from Hepburn, who was also known for her charity work in places like Africa (perhaps she went to Ghana and Mali!):

"I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it."

Olympic Athletes Profile- (21 of 25) Michael Schmid/men's skicross/Switzerland

We are getting closer to the proverbial finish line with our 21st profile (this was a crazy idea, actually!), and since we looked at Jamaican skicrosser Errol Kerr in Entry 3 of the series, we thought we'd look out at the man who ended up winning the competition (though Kerr performed quite well, advancing to the finals of the event).

Schmid, who turns 26 on March 18, won the gold medal at the Vancouver games over fellow skicrossers Andreas Matt of Austria (silver) and Audurn Groenvold of Norway (bronze) on Monday. These Olympics marked the debut of skicross, which had previously been known mainly to Winter X-Games spectators (the event is held annually in Aspen, Colo.).

The Swiss skicrosser debuted in 2004, and he finished fifth the following year at the sport's world championships in Ruka, Finland.

Schmid consistently ranked in the top ten, and he won his first World Cup race in 2009 in Austria.

During the Olympic competition, Canadian Chris Del Bosco, a Winter X-Games gold medalist, fell on his next to last jump which allowed his competitors to move up in the rankings.

According to the AP, Schmid handled a series of jumps and banked turns which allowed him to win the gold medal.

"It was not easy," Schmid said. "You must have a perfect day when you go to the Olympic competition."