Top Ten Comics from Sunday, Jan. 25th Roanoke Times: Get Fuzzy Finally Comes in First

Greetings to our blog readers in Estonia, Wales and India.

The images above are of 1) Jeb Bush (for "Doonesbury) ; 2) Danny DeVito (the boss) and the late Andy Kaufman on the '70s sitcom "Taxi" (for "Pearls Before Swine) and 3) Warren Beatty as "Dick Tracy" (for "Funky Winkerbean").

Kudos to Stephan Pastis of "Pearls Before Swine" for having the guts and gumption to make fun of his boss comics syndicator John Glynn!

"Get Fuzzy" usually takes places second place in our comics survey, but today, it finally made it to the top slot.

Here is our top ten from the latest Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times:"

1) Get Fuzzy

2) Doonesbury (made fun of Jeb Bush)

3) Pearls Before Swine (made fun of Big Boss Man)

4) Speed Bump

5) Dilbert

6) Funky Winkerbean (featured 'Dick Tracy')

7) Agnes

8) Garfield

9) Jump Start

10) Red and Rover (featured Snoopy from "Peanuts"!)

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.gocomics.com/explore/comics


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Last Ten Movies We'Ve Seen: Catching Up with 2014

Greetings to our faithful blog readers in Afghanistan (well, maybe), The Bahamas and Poland.

Here are the last ten films we've seen (well, actually as of last week). We are still trying to catch up on the best films of 2014, some of which are listed in the IMDB as 2013 films.....yes, we are confused as well!

1) Night Moves (top image, film is about eco-terrorism.) 2013. Dir: Kelly Reichhardt

2) Palo Alto (center image, Palo Alto is where Stanford U is located). 2013. Gia Coppola.

3) Inherent Vice. 2014. Paul Thomas Anderson.

4) Post Mortem. Chile. 2010. Pablo Lorrain

5) Tabu. Portugal. 2012. Miguel Gomes

6) Drug War. Hong Kong. Johnnie To.

7) And, Now a Word from Our Sponsor. (bottom image, Ipana, originally an American toothpaste now only found in Turkey!)* 2013. Zack Bernbaum. (w/Parker Posey)

8) Museum Hours. 2012. Austria. Jem Cohen.

9) Lfe of Pi. 2012. Ang Lee.

10) Under the Skin. 2013. Jonathan Glazer (w/ Scarlett Johansson)

#- We learned that from Bill Griffith's comic strip "Zippy the Pinhead"


http://www.imdb.com

http://www.netflix.com

Last Ten Songs We've Heard on Simon-FM: Disco and the Hair Bands

Greetings to all of our fans in Norway, Slovenia, Moldova and Iraq and Iran.:).....I guess now thanks to modern technology you can listen to 98.7 (Simon-FM, Greensboro, NC) in those parts of the world just as well as you can from High Point, NC!

From the noon hour on Friday, we jotted down the ten songs they were playing; the stations features an eclectic mix of songs from the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s, but while they proclaim to 'play everything' we have yet to hear them play a song from Turkish pop star Tarkan (I guess one can call their hotline and asked for his popular song "Dudu" if they so choose, it can't hurt........well, I suppose!)......


Here are the ten songs they played during that hour in reverse order:

1) You Dropped a Bomb on Me. Gap Band. 1982.

2) Black Water. The Doobie Brothers. 1974.

3) Your Love. Outfield. 1986.

4) What It's Like. Everlast. 1998.

5) Good Vibrations. Marky Mark and the Funky Buns. 1991.

6)  Rock and Roll All Nite. Kiss. 1975 (pict. bottom)

7) Sister Christian. Night Ranger. 1984 (pict. center)

8) I'm Your Boogie Man. KC and the Sunshine Band. 1977.

9) We're Not Gonna Take It. Twisted Sister. 1984 (pict. top)

10) Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye). Steam. 1969.

Whew! We almost typed 1069 for that last song's release year. Now, we can't get the imagine of Vikings singing "Na Na Hey Hey" out of our skull!

http://www.987simon.com

http://www.visitgreensboronc.com

http://www.visitwinstonsalem.com

http://www.twistedsister.com

http://www.nightranger.com

http://www.tarkan.com

Noon Rush Hour Tweets: No More Garden Yeti Statues

Greetings to our blog readers in Canada, Kuwait and Japan........

We took down some tweets from the noon hour on the east coast, which was three hours ago, but perhaps those of you joining us from San Jose, Calif., have time to read this on your lunch break. Did you get Chinese take-out? Just wondering.

Congrats to Ghana for its 1-0 win over Algeria at the Africa Cup of Nations in Guinea, the winning goal came from Asamoah Gyan in the 91st minute. Our favorite Turkish team (well, we like Galatasaray too) Bursaspor also won 3-2 at the last minute, as Brazilian international Fernando kicked in the game-winning goal over Konyaspor in the 92nd minute.

The images above are of 1) Big Ben Clock in London, which actually has a Twitter account; 2) A Garden Yehti statue; and 3) Hillary Clinton, who is the current favorite to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016.

Here are the tweets:

1) Big Ben: BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG

2) WDBJ Weather (tv station in Roanoke, Va.): Snow now falling across the Roanoke Valley and Salem area. We'll see a mix with sleet this afternoon.

3) NPR News: Goodbye, Garden Yeti....in-flight catalog SkyMall files for bankruptcy

4) Karia Pacheo: Legitimately more upset about SkyMall than any celebrity death I've about on Twitter.

5) Sean Lemon (Guitarist for Room 94):........... (hashtag MakeSexAwkwardin5Works): Can my friends watch please?

6) Chris Cillizza (aka The Fix, a Washington Post political columnist): I am taking August off! DNC says Dem convention will be held week of July 25, 2016, back-to-back with GOP convention (Yea, this is the reason why we have an image of Hillary)

7)  What the F*** Facts: None of the menu items on the McDonald's menu are certified vegan or vegetarian. Even French Fries, which use natural beef flavors.

8) The Guardian (UK newspaper): Laura Deas takes World Cup skeleton bronze in St. Moritz (Switzerland).

9) Felix Salmon: I wanted to cover a protest event, but, it's scheduled to last 3.5 hours. No one has that kind of time in Davos (Switzerland).

10) Nona WillisAronowitz (contributor to The Nation): Sorry, old white Republican dudes; tweeting like a teen won't make us vote for you. (Perhaps, she has Cong. Bob Goodlatte in mind........we always make fun of him on this blog)

11) DCist: Maryland once again tops list of most millionaires per capita.

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.visitlondon.com

http://www.dcist.com

http://www.thenation.com

Our Favorite Comics from Sunday Jan. 18th Washington Post: Maybe Michelle and the Kids Like Foxtrot Too

Greetings to our blog readers in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.....

In the Outlook section of the Sunday, Jan. 18th edition of "The Washington Post," journalist Michael Booth made the bold proclamation that Scandinavia was over-rated. This made me rethink my foreign country travel bucket list in which Iceland and Norway are ranked second and third respectively after Liberia..........(perhaps, stand-up comic Gilbert Gottfried applauds us for making fun of Ebla, he might be the only one!).............

The images above are of: 1) Charlie Brown, but "Peanuts" is not our top-ranked comic strip, in fact, since the strip is in permanent rerun status, we disqualify the strip from our surveys, but Charlie Brown was the butt of a great gag in "The Argyle Sweater;" 2) A snowball fight in reference to "Foxtrot," which perhaps First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters found amusing; and 3) the old Flash Gordon serials with the late Buster Crabbe which is actually being used for "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy" (there is also a "Flash Gordon" weekly comic strip still in circulation)....

Here is our top ten, which also includes "WUMO," a Danish import that this week illustrated what it would be life if children said inappropriate things about fat people who eat too much fast food (Gottfried probably loves "WUMO" too):

1) The Argyle Sweater

2) Foxtrot

3) Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

4) WUMO

5) Lio

6) Speed Bump

7) Sherman's Lagoon

8) Knight Life

9) Prickly City

10) Pearls Before Swine

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Our Favorite Sunday Comics from the Jan. 18th Roanoke Times: Sorry, No Hi and Lois

Greetings to our blog readers in Germany, Thailand and Ghana..........and to those of you who reside in Cong. Tim Huelskamp's (R-Kansas) congressional district, which is most of Kansas (not an endorsement)..................

Here are our ten favorite comic strips from the most recent Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. As usual, "Hi and Lois" didn't make the cut, but some comic strips that we usually rank very low actually made the top ten!

The images are of 1) an octopus for "Speed Bump," this week Dave Coverly's single-panel strip focused on octopi flirting; 2) Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" for "Zits," which got a surprisingly high third place from us, in this week's strip the teenage title character is wearing something akin to a Dr. Seuss Hat and 3) Rain, which correlates with Stephan Pasits' "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip where (SPOILER ALERT) it starts to rain as Rat is showing Pig how accurate iPhones are; we imagine if the late Steve Jobs were alive, he may have liked this strip.

Here is our top ten, as has been the case for many weeks in a row, "Get Fuzzy" finishes second:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Zits (highest ranking so far)

4) Pearls Before Swine

5) Agnes (highest ranking so far)

6) Mutts (highest ranking so far)

7) Garfield

8) Dilbert

9) For Better or For Worse (it made the top ten)

10) The Family Circus (it made the top ten too!)

http://www.aqua.org/

http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/

http://www.tnaqua.org/

http://www.travelks.com/

SOTU Tweets: Right, Left and the Fog Machine

Greetings to our blog readers in Canada, Scotland, Luxembourg and the city of Yozgat, Turkey, where it will be 4:00 a.m. when President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address; you Canadians are perhaps just as aware that the Edmonton Oilers will be across town in America's capital where they will play the Washington Capitals.

There are reasons why we have images of Cong. Bob Latta (R-Ohio, his district is around Toledo), Donny Osmond and Vice President Joe Biden, but let's go ahead and present some tweets from the early evening hours here in les etats unis:

1) Cong. Latta: I applaud RepFredUpton and SenJohnThune for developing a proposal to establist clear, reasonable rules for the Internet.

2) Mormon Democrats (yeah, they are the reason we chose Osmond though he is a Republican): The GOP forgets that GW Bush's resolve didn't stop Putin from invading another country, nor did it prevent North Korea from obtaining nukes.

3) The Onion (a satirical journal): Biden Arrives Early to Set Up State of the Union Fog Machine.

4) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont): The typical middle class American family made less last year than it did 25 years ago.

5) Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia): Not only did Lisa drive from Botetourt County to be my SOTU guest, she brought cookies form Mrs. Rowe's in Staunton! (I actually went to high school with Sen. Kaine's guest Lisa Shutters Barnett; Botetourt County is four hours south of Washington, DC)

6) Ken Rudin (NPR political analyst): "It's 4 p.m. on the day of the SOTU and that only means one thing: Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) is already sitting in the House chamber."

7) The Baltimore Sun: SOTU preview: Obama calls for increasing taxes on the wealthy, free community college and expanding paid leave."

8) Joy Ulfelder (political scientist): Save an hour of your life and read the SOTU instead of watching it tonight. Most boring theater ever.

9) Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri): "RT if you agree every American deserves a chance to succeed.  Our top priority should be working together to create good paying jobs."

10) Martha MacCallum (Fox News host): "I will be hosting On the Record tonight_ see you soon!"

11) David Corn (liberal reporter): "Mitt Romney shifts his position on Climate Change_ Again!"

http://www.theonion.com

http://www.thehill.com

http://www.baltimoresun.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.c-span.org

http://www.rollcall.com