Comic Strips Survey from Sunday Roanoke Times (Oct. 19th edition)

Greetings to our blog readers in Australia, Uganda and Finland; and to our domestic friends in New Jersey, Utah, and Florida.

This week, we resume our look at our favorite comic strips from the Sunday, Oct. 19th edition of "The Roanoke Times," for our favorite strips from last week, visit our sister blog at http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Our favorite comic strip of the week was "Pearls Before Swine," by Stephan Pastis which did a brilliant take on the Abbott and Costello (top image) skit "Who's on First," but in this satire, Rat asks Goat "Which band did Keith Moon play for?"; the answer is The Who, and all the shenanigans roll from there.

"Dilbert," which has substantially jumped in our rankings in recent weeks, features an office visit from a robot (center image) who actually doesn't speak in Scott Adams' strip, which finishes second in our survey this week.

The bronze medal goes to East German ice skater Katarina Witt (we were just trying to see if you were paying attention). Actually, the third place finisher is Dave Coverly's "Speed Bump," a single long panel strip that has some Tennessee raccoons (actually, we have no idea what they are from) digging up trash through backyard garbage cans as well as community recyclable bins that one might find in a hip college town like Boulder, Colorado.

Here is our top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Dilbert

3) Speed Bump

4) Get Fuzzy

5) Non-Sequitir

6) Zits

7) Agnes

8) Doonesbury

9) Garfield

10) Jump Start

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine

http://www.dilbert.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

http://www.boulderweekly.com/

Casualties of Modern Technology (9 of 12)_ Pinball Machines

The rock band The Who had a memorable song from their rock opera "Tommy," about a blind pinball wizard who a miracolous sensation. Today, teenagers may have a hard time understanding the song because there are fewer pinball machines in existence that there were in 1976 when that song was popular.

The pinball machine is a coin-operated arcade game that was formally developed in 1931. The flippers were introduced in 1947. And, solid state electronics were formalized with the pinball game "Hot Tip" in 1977.

There was an initial decline in pinball machine useage in the 1980s thanks to the likes of video games, such as "Ms. Pac-Man" and "Donkey Kong." But, the pinball machines industry fought back by developing innovative pop culture games, such as "The Addams Family" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

The machines have again declined in the advanced hom video games Angry Birds era, though according to Wikipedia, the Illinois pinball company PinBall Manufacturing produced 178 reproductions of the the popular pinball game "Bing Bang Bar" in 2006.

Many pinball players are known to cheat by tipping the machines and even attaching a piece of string to a coin and lowering the counter switch to get free games.

Popular brands include "Dolly Parton" (1979) that was the brainchild of George and Dave Christensen who developed the pinball game for Bally.

There is also "Dirty Harry" (1992), which is based on the succesful "Dirty Harry"
(1971) film with Clint Eastwood which spurred many less remarkable sequels. This particular game, which I also saw at a laundromat in the hamlet of New Castle, Va., (near Roanoke) has sold for between $1,800-$4,000 via Internet auctions.

One can find a Pinball Hall of Fame museum in Las Vegas, which has 400 games.

Additionally, there is Rose City Pinball in Portland, Ore., which hosts weekly tournaments.