Image to Fill Space: Le Car

Tomorrow will start the official kick-off for a short blog week: Among the items, we will discuss are ways to contact your Congressional representative on Capitol Hill to prevent a government shutdown, results from college volleyball games across the nation and perhaps some international soccer scores.

For now, we leave with image of Le Car, a French car that was popular around the world some 30-40 years ago.

Greetings to our blog readers in Gabon, Guyana and Sri Lanka: These were the three remote countries that came to mind!

UPDATE: It just came to our minds: That if we mention "Breaking Bad," Bob Odenkirk and 'pink teddy bear' that our hits may increase somewhat.

Image to Fill Space: A Vintage VW Bug

It is hard to believe, but when I was a child circa 1977, my late father Mehmet Gokbudak, actually drove us from Frankfurt, West Germany, to Istanbul, Turkey. To my recollection, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria were among the countries we drove.

And, of course, we drove through the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia), where we encountered some very hilly roads.
http://www.vwclub.org/

Top 10 Things 2 Do List for the Next 2 Weeks (or so...........)

Here is a look at ten things that we must do or ought to do within the next two weeks; for those of you in Dubai, Tax Day here in America is April 15th (that will be on a similar list on my sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" http://wwwpoliticscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

This is not to be confused with my sister's blog, well actually she doesn't have one.

Here we go:

1) Wheel alignment (that is the reason for the Model T Ford, though my car is considerably newer than that)

2) Watch the Chelsea-Rubin Kazan soccer game on tape (Gokdeniz Kazadeniz, is a Turkish player who plays for the Russian team Rubin Kazan based in the Tartar region of Russia)

3) Make hotel reservations

4) Go to North Carolina

5) Go to the state DMV

6) Read "Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss (pictured bottom, well if it wasn't obvious)

7) Go through the comic books

8) Pay the light bill

9) Buy groceries

10) Take a Body Flow or yoga class at the gym

The 20 Worst Films to Win an Oscar (in our view)

Yesterday, we listed our 20 favorite Oscar-winning films in the Best Picture category. Today, we look at the worst. We want to acknowledge that "Film Comment" featured a 20 Worst Oscar-Winning Films, but these are own ideas. Although, admittedly, several of the listed below (no pun intended) were on that list as well:


1) "Titanic" (1997, first image)

2) "Forrest Gump" (1994)

3) "Going My Way" (1944)

4. "Rebecca" (1940, amazingly enough, one of Alfred Hitchcock's worst films is the only one which won a Best Picture Oscar)

5. "Around the World in 80 Days" (1957, second image)

6. "Crash" (2005)

7. "Shakespeare in Love" (1998)

8. "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989, third image)

9. "A Man for All Seasons" (1966)

10. "The Sound of Music" (1965)

11. "My Fair Lady" (1964)

12. "Terms of Endearment" (1983)

13. "Braveheart" (1995)

14. "The King's Speech" (2010)

15. "Out of Africa" (1985)

16. "In the Heat of the Night" (1967, this film beat out both "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde")

17. "How Green Was My Valley (1941)

18. "Rocky" (1976)

19. "Oliver!" (1968)

20. "The English Patient" (1996)

Silly Picture to Fill Space- Model T-Ford (1908)

The town of Rocky Mount, Va., in Franklin County located between Martinsville and Roanoke, will be hosting an old car show this weekend. So, we thought we'd feature a photo of a 1908 Model-T Ford even though we have no idea if this particular car will be among those at the show. The area is most known around the state, and perhaps around the world for its many moonshine still though most are no longer in existence.

I must profess that as I drove through the area this weekend that I was wondering if the Franklin County Democratic Party was now outlawed as signs for far-right Tea Party Republicans were everywhere in view as were militant pro-life billboards. Similarly, many churches in the area (also in neighboring Henry County, Va.) had very overt, anti-Obama messages--so much for the separation of church and state along Route 220!

Apparently, the Franklin County Democratic Party in Rocky Mount does in fact still exist, but when we did an arbitrary web search for the organization we stumbled upon the web site http://www.fcdp.org

I got quite excited before I realized it was the web site for the Franklin County Democratic Party in Columbus, Ohio!