Coming Soon to This Blog Near You (No Promises): What You Might Expect in August

Greetings to our blog readers in Estonia, Ghana and Italy or wherever you might be today. It's now mid-noon in New York and Atlanta, 5:30 p.m. in London and 7:30 p.m. in Ankara, Turkey. If we are wrong about any of this, we will blame Javier the Intern and Zappa the Family Cat.

Today's image is of the early year American comic actor W.C. Fields (1880-1946), who once professed that anyone who hates children and puppies couldn't be all bad. Of course, he said this a full seven decades before Dick Cheney became vice president (forgive the political humuor-we prefer the Brit spelling).

Fields is buried in Glendale, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, which is home to a very large Armenian-American population. Ironically, we know this because the person blogging this info is a Turkish-American.

If you need to explain the irony, I suggest you go to the Facebook pages for the Turkish and Armenian embassies respectively.

Here are three items we hope to post within the next few days, months or perhaps years:

1) Ten More Things To Do in Roanoke, Va: Perhaps we may even discuss some of the more unique attractions in the southwest Virginia area, including a pet cemetery in nearby Cloverdale and Mini-Graceland as well as some of the nifty places to hang out, such as Alejandro's Mexican Grill in downtown Roanoke.

2)  Ten Things to Do in Greensboro, NC: Though I am no longer a resident of North Carolina, the state holds a dear place in my heart for me. The Green Bean Coffee Shop in downtown Greensboro and the a/perture Cinema in nearby Winston-Salem, which is showing the indy dramedy "The Way, Way Back" along with two other films, would be among the places we would plan to profile.

3) Virtual Postcards: We are hoping to resume the series, which was fairly popular, in some way, shape or form.


Stay tuned.....

DULY NOTED: The links below will actually be for the Armenian Consulate in Glendale, Calif., rather than the embassy in Washington, D.C. Conversely, turkey.org is a web site for information on Turkey, and is not the web site for the Turkish embassy either (see links below).

For those wondering who the ambassadors are (thanks to Google), we can say that it Tatoul Markarian who is Armenia's ambassador to America. His counterpart is Namik Tan for Turkey.

Somehow, we don't expect either of them to be having lunch at Ray's Hell Burgers in Arlington, Va. (a D.C. suburb) any time soon!

http://www.aperturecinema.com

http://www.alejandrosmexicangrill.com

http://www.wcfields.com

http://www.turkey.org

http://www.armenianconsulate.org

Things We Learned From the BBC Today- UFOs Over Rio?!

The BBC has reported today that the Brazilian government is actually going to start recording UFO sightings. The decree has stated that all military and civilian pilots as well as air traffic controllers should register UFO sightings with the national aerospace defense command.

There have apparently been a number of UFO sightings in Brazil that have caused concern.

In 1986, Brazilian air force jets scrambled to investigate a UFO over the country's largest city Sao Paolo.

And, way back in 1977 when "Space 1999" was on the air and I was in the first grade, citizens of the Amazonian town of Vigia said they were attacked by aliens!

We dedicate today's entry to students at Glendale High School in Glendale, Calif., (for our bonus high school of the week) which has the largest Armenian-American populations per capita in the country. The mayor of this city where comic actor legend W.C. Fields is buried happens to be an Armenian-American named Ara Narajarian. We imagine his ninth grade geometry teacher couldn't spell his name right, either!

The school where I would probably be hard-pressed to get a prom date since I'm a Turkish-American (we have a spat--long story!) if I were in high school.... But, I didn't get a prom date at my high school in Virginia back in 1987 either! Glendale High is nicknamed the Dynamite or Nitro. The school's principal is Deb Rinder.

John Wayne (yes, the guy who was in "Stagecoach" and "The Searchers"), who was actually born in Winterset, Iowa, is Glendale High's most famous alum.

And, the school has both boys and girls water polo teams. Definitely, not something that my alma mater in southwest Virginia will likely have any time soon!

But, we did have a soccer team........I have still have the benchmarks on my rear end to prove it!