10 for 10 (3rd Entry): Love Those Zoo Animals

Greetings to our blog readers in Saudi Arabia, India, and France....

Alas, we are running way, way behind in our efforts to post 10 entries in honor of our 10th anniversary of blogging, which is on Sept. 21st.

Life has been crazy and zany lately, and I promise our good friend Chris Knight of Reidsville, NC, that it is not due to watching hours of the '70s English sitcom "Are You Being Served?" on Youtube.

Here is a link to the Denver Zoo, the Philadelphia Zoo and the North Carolina Zoo (in Asheboro, NC, near Greensboro) in case you want to see a giraffe or another zoo animal of your choice in real life.

http://www.denverzoo.org/

http://www.philadelphiazoo.org/

http://www.nczoo.org/

http://www.zoo.com.sg/ (A link to the Singapore Zoo for our world audience)

Things We Learned on Google Today- Olympiacos Has Won 38 Greek Soccer Titles

Today's soccer team of the week on this blog is Olympiacos (or Olympiakos), a Greek soccer powerhouse based in the port city of Piraeus, near Athens.

The image above is sort of a joke as Priest Christos, who is really a Greek Orthodox priest, is a fan for one of Olympiacos' main rivals, PAOK FC (Thessaloniki) and apparently the priest's devoution to soccer madness has caused him legal problems.

Ironically, the colors of PAOK FC are identical to those worn by the Turkish team Besiktas (Istanbul), and I suppose this is a good time to mention that I am a Turkish-American, though I prefer Galatasaray over Besiktas.

Of course, what this means to those of you born after 1974 when Turkey and Greece went to war over Cyprus, is that I will really have to spell all these long and difficult Greek names correctly!

Olympiacos is also in the UEFA Champions League, and they are in Group F, a group of death, featuring such traditional Euro powers as Arsenal (England), Dortmund (Germany) and Marseille (France). Their next game is against Arsenal on Dec. 11. The English premiere league power has several international greats, including Robin van Persie from the Netherlands and Andrei Arshavin from Russia.

But, the Greek team has its own impressive roster, with the likes of Ioannis Fetfatzidis (whew, hope I spelled his name right!) who has been called 'the Greek Messi' in reference to Argentinian soccer superstar Lionel Messi. The Greek Messi scored the lone goal in the team's 1-0 win over Marseilles on Nov. 23.

Domestically, things are looking better for the team with 38 Greek titles, as they bounced back from a 2-0 loss to astera Tripoli with a 6-0 drubbing of Doxa Dramas. We believe the team is slated to play rival Panaitokolis (Athens) over the weekend. The third major rival for Olympiacos is AEK Athens.

Hooliganism is a problem in Greek soccer, as is the case in England and Turkey as well, as figths between fans of rival clubs have become violent and even deadly in some instances.

The captain of the current squad is Vasilis Toosidis and the co-captain is Avroam Papadopoulos (whew, again!). But, the team has a highly diverse international roster inclusing Swedish soccer star Olef Mellberg and French player Francois Modesto.

In addition, Olympiacos features five Spanish nationals, two Algerian players and two Serbian futbolers.

The team is currently in third place in both the domestic league and the UEFA Champions League.

The two teams on top of the Greek Premiere League are as of right now first-place Panathinaikos and second-place AEK Athens.

SIDEBAR: Interestingly enough as we were putting this piece together, we heard through a Terry Gross interview with Jeffrey Rosen from "The New Republic" yesterday on NPR's "Fresh Air," that in 2007, Youtube was blocked in Turkey. I was always aware of what happened, but I didn't realize the infamous Youtube videos which hurled insults at Mustafa Kemal Ataturk were, at least in part, posted by Greek soccer militants.

This incident put Nicole Wong of Google, which owns Youtube, in a very awkward disposition. As it is, Youtube was banned in Turkey as a result of the videos. We are not sure if the ban is still in place or not.

50 Beers Around the World- Taedonggang from North Korea

Today's entry in the long-running 50 Beers Around the World Series (today we are posting entries number 31 and 32 on our two blogs) is perhaps the longest beer name in the world, Taedonggang Beer from North Korea.

The isolationist nation's brew has only been operational since 2000 when Kim Jong-il decided it was time for a Pyongyang version of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

A commercial for the beer, which has become fairly popular on YouTube, aired on North Korean tv in June of 2009.

The brew is named for the Taedong River that runs through Pyongyang.

And, in case you are wondering what the trendy topics are on Twitter today, they include Playing God (a video game), Green Lantern, and (of course) Prince William and Kate Middletown.

Other trending topics include Oden, which we learned does NOT refer to a Japanese winter dish named Oden but rather Portland Trailblazers star Greg Oden who has apparently suffered a major injury, and Joly, which is an apparent reference to British tv comedian Dom Joly, who is very popular on Twitter.

Things We Learned on Twitter Very Early This A.M.

For those who have been keeping track of our entry over the years, you may recall that we have periodically blogged about the beloved late sixties children's tv show "H.R. Puff N Stuff" (pictured here) which through some research on our part has revealed to be a show that was allegedly about the wonder of smoking pot!

This leads to our story of the story which stems from the seaside village of Paphos, Cyprus, in the southwestern Greek portion of the island nation which has been politically divided since war broke out between Turkey and Greece over the conflicting ethnic groups' residential status in 1974.

(It should be pointed out perhaps for the 105th time that I am a Turkish-American, but if you read below, you'll see this entry has nothing to do with ethnic politics------we promise!)

According to an early morning tweet stating: 'Teenage boy arrested for cannibis in Cyprus' from "The Cyprus Mail," which I saw at 4:30 a.m., American east coast time as I was battling insomnia, an 18-year-old male from Paphos was arrested by Cypriot police and charged with possesion and use of drugs with intent to pass the proverbial bong (not the way they actually worded it!) to a third person.

If convicted, the youth, who was not identified by name, could face a LIFE sentence?! And, I thought my father's country wasn't exactly progressive when it came to marijuana!

On a more serious note, I was very saddened to hear about the Israeli commando raid of the Turkish ship The Marmara which was carrying relief supplies to Palestinians. I will keep my political perspective out of this matter on this blog, but all of us in the Turkish-American are thinking about the nine people on the vessel, including four Turkish nationals, who needlessly lost their lives on Monday.

And, on a less serious note, The Seven's Turkish Grill located on 72nd Street in New York has just posted lessons on Youtube on how to fix the fabled Iskender Kebab dish that is the pride of Bursa, Turkey. Oh, we should mention that you can follow them on Twitter---http://twitter.com/7Turkishgrill for more details.

Lastly, this morning was not a good one for the Louisville Bats, a minor league baseball team from Louisville, Ky.

According to their Twitter site http://twitter.com/LouisvilleBats, the team fell to the Columbus Clippers by a 10-7 margine in a road game. All of this proves that baseball games (this particular game started at 10:35 a.m.) should simply never be played before noon!

Right-Wing Radicals Say the Darndest Things...

This comment was actually posted on Youtube against my fellow Turkish-American progressive Cenk Uygur, a talk show host with "The Young Turks" (he was once a Republican!). It is in reference to a segment that Uygur ran featuring Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller (he used to be sane!) discussing how President Barack Obama has been hypocritical with his policies:

"all I can do is laugh at that smug, dirty arab when HE calls oreilly smug."

The kicker here is that not only Uygur openly agnostic (as am I), Turks are NOT Arabs. We are completely different ethnic groups.

This illustrates one of my main points of contention with the right, especially the whacko tea partiers, they believe that racism and xenophobia in America are not a part of society.

While I would agree that there are times when the left cries wolf when there might be other factors to explain a situation like the Cambridge, Mass., incident between a police officer and an African-American Harvard professor besides racism, there are also times when it is very clear and very apparent. And, this is one such example.

Status Update- (A Short Entry Because We Need Some zzzzzzzzzzzzs!)

I am not going to stay up all night and watch Chilly Willy cartoons on Youtube tonight!

My 1,000th Youtube Video_ Frank Zappa's "In the Sky"

Jordan Green of "Yes Weekly!" in Greensboro, NC, recently reported that a band which performs covers of songs by Frank Zappa, who died of cancer at a young age, was coming to The Gate City. The problem was that Zappa's wife is not pleased with the band, so there might be no show!

I was a bit curious to hear some Zappa, which I have not listened to in a while. There was a video by his band Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention called "In the Sky," which was performed for a BBC show in 1968, on Youtube.

It is now the 1,000th Youtube video that I've watched since watching a Woody Woodpecker cartoon on the night of Oct. 22, 2006!