Olympics Cities Destination Quiz- Berlin to Stockholm

Though it has been a tragic day here in the United States, as all of us are mourning the shooting victims at midnight premiere screening of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" at a theatre in Aurora, Colorado, but we are going to go ahead with our plans to conclude this series.

We finish this series up with a look at the distance between Berlin, Germany, which hosted the very controversial 1936 Olympics, in which Adolf Hitler promoted Aryan supremacy, and Stockholm, Sweden, which hosted the more sanguine 1912 Olympics.

American track and field athlete Jesse Owens (1913-1980), a black man who is the subject of a folk song by Greensboro, NC, singer/songwriter Bruce Piephoff (a personal friend) entitled "Jesse" (2008), was able to prove the absurdity of Hitler's concepts as he won four gold medals in Berlin.

On a more tragic note, I learned from an exhibit about the 1936 Berlin Olympics at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, that Endre Kabos (1906-1944), a Hungarian athlete of Jewish heritage who won gold in Berlin in addition to his gold medal at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics was among the millions of Jewish people killed during World War II.

Kabos was sent to a concentration camp, but his death reportedly came on the battlefield after he escaped. His Hungarian teammate Attila Petschauer* (1904-1943) who won gold medals in fencing at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics was killed in a concentration camp.

Just this week, Hungarian officials detained Laszlo Csatary, 97, for alleged role in deporting Hungarian Jews to concentration camps.

On a lighter note, today's Berlin features stop lights, featuring little green men  and little red men, which are one of few surviving relics from East Germany. In 2004, several German cities, including Dresden introduced female counterparts for pedestrian stop lights.

As for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, among the gold medalists were Finnish wrestler Kaarlo Koskelo, Italian gymnast Alberto Broglia and Australian women's swimmer Fanny Durack. The above pictured dish is a popular one in Sweden during the holidays.

And, even though he has nothing to do with either Olympics, we will mention Bruce Jenner, the American 1976 Montreal Olympics track champion, since the mere mention of his name assures significantly more hits for our blogs.

So just how far apart are these two cities?

A) 454 miles

B) 479 miles

C) 504 miles

D) 529 miles

http://www.ushmm.org

http://www.jewishsports.net

http://www.washington.org


*-I happen to share a first name with the Hungarian Jewish athlete. My first name is Attila. My late Turkish father Mehmet Gokbudak chose to give me the Hungarian spelling as opposed to the Turkish spelling which is Atilla, which has assured that people in Turkey, including passport officials, do not spell my name correctly.

Quote of the Day/Week- Ingmar Bergman

Today, we continue to quote people associated with the 16 countries in the Euro 2012 Cup being played in Poland and Ukraine. And, we are going to quote the late, great film director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) who was from Uppsala. Bergman was known for many outstanding cinematic ventures, including "The Seventh Seal," "Persona" and "Fanny and Alexander."

The Swedish soccer team has the daunting task of facing a star-studded English soccer team in Kiev, Ukraine, tomorrow. The Swedes are in a virtual must-win situation.

Here is Bergman's quote:

"The theatre is like a faithful wife. Film is the great adventure_ the costly, exciting mistress."

SIDEBAR: Since we are popular in Slovenia, we thought we should congratulate the Los Angeles Kings for winning their first ever NHL Stanley Cup titles by defeating the New Jersey Devils four games to two.

Though soccer and basketball are more popular than hockey in Slovenia, Anze Kopitar, 24, who was one of the key reasons for the Kings winning the cup has made the sport more popular in the former Yugoslav republic. Kopitar is also the first Slovenian national to hoist the Stanley Cup.http://www.losangeleskingsinsider.com

Quote of the Day- Dan Quayle

If Bill O'Reilly is checking us out tonight, as are blog readers from Russia, Greece and Sweden, and he accuses of an arbitrary liberal bias, our response will be: 1) Ok, so what a tea partier is just Peppermint Patty in reverse and 2) our original choice was Charles Fairbanks, who was vice president under Theodore Roosevelt.

But, since no quotes from Fairbanks were anywhere to be found we went with a more recent Republican vice president in Dan Quayle, 65, who was veep under George H.W. Bush.

In spite of his now dubious political reputation, Quayle actually served in both houses of Congress for many years prior to becoming vice president. In 1976, at the age of 29, Quayle was elected into the House of Representatives and from 1981-89, he was a U.S. Senator for Indiana.

His son Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), 35, is following the family's political tradition as he was elected to represent his district in Arizona. Quayle is one of many freshman Congressional reps who were elected in November of 2010; a class which is now the subject of a book from seasoned reporters at "Politico" (we need to ask Javier the Intern* to bing the author's names when he gets back from the Salt Lake City Library**).

As for Vice President Charles Fairbanks (1852-1918), he had a similar background to Quayle as he once a U.S. Senator before becoming Theodore Roosevelt's veep, but he got stabbed in the back by his boss as Teddy decided to support William Howard Taft instead, and Taft did indeed become president back in....where's Javier? But, we do know that it was 66 degrees in Fairbanks, Alaska, today.

As for the photo, we are not sure what the context is. This salute in Turkey is for the far, far-right Grey Wolves political movement; and at North Carolina State University, nicknamed the Wolfpack, it is the school's partisan salute at athletic events.

Here is Quayle's quote, and we are NOT making this one up:

"A low voter turn-out is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."

Links: 1) Dan Quayle's official home page, 2) Politico, 3) NC State U, 4) SLC, Utah Public Library and 5) Turkishpoliticsinaction.com, a site which is not in any way linked to far-right political movements in Turkey or anywhere else.

http://www.vicepresidentquayle.com

http://www.politico.com

http://www.ncsu.edu

http://www.slcpl.org

http://www.turkishpoliticsinaction.com

*-Javier the Intern is a fictional person; one day we will have to post a Wikipedia entry about him

**- We are not in Salt Lake City, Utah, but we hear the city's public library is among the best in the country.

Things We Learned on Google Today- IFK Goteborg Lost to Another Swedish Soccer Team

NOTE: Normally, in this slot, we have our series dedicated to the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union. But, we thought it would be keen and neat to switch the entries around today with our other blog "The Daily Vampire"..........ok, we did sort of mess up and hence Javier the Intern has once again been fired.


Steven Levy, a writer for "Wired" magazine, has a new book called "In the Plex" which is about how Google shapes our minds and the ways we think. All of which has made me think that perhaps we should change the name of this series to "Things We Learned on Bing Today."

At any rate, we had high hopes that our feature soccer team of the week, IFK Goteborg, a Swedish powerhouse which has won 18 national championship titles, five national cup titles and two UEFA cups, would come through for us as they face Mjallby AIF, a Swedish soccer team in the southern Swedish fishing town of Mjallo, but alas they choked. Hence, the final result was Mjallby AIF 1 IFK Goteborg 0. The winning goal was scored by David Lofquist, 25, for Mjallby.

But, there are supposedly some good players for IFK Goeborg, including Stefan Sleakovic, 34, a Swedish national player who has been a star for the team, and IFK's captain Adam Johansson, 28, a fellow Swede.

Goteborg or Gothenburg is Sweden's second largest city as it ranks between Stockholm and Malmo.

SIDEBAR: In the "Gosh, We Didn't Get To It" department, we were hoping to rib Cong. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) as he is ironically a good friend to me personally, though I'm not sure if he shares that opinion of my blog. He is from my hometown of Salem, Va., and he represents the ninth district of Virginia from western Salem to Bristol, Va.

Apparently, Griffith, who should not be confused with an attractive young woman from Georgia on Twitter who shares his name (yes, this is actually true), addressed the need for deregulation so southwest Virginia could get more jobs in response to President Barack Obama's speech, yesterday.

We were going to say these minimum-wage jobs might well pollute the air and water, and they would be probably be shipped out to El Slavador or China so some Cuban cigar-chomping mine boss could cut living wages, but out of respect for Griffith and our time contraints, we are going to avoid making such a satiric claim which could easily be misinterpreted.

And, to actually be fair and balanced, we should add that we have yet to read what Cong. Griffith actually had to say as of 5:00 p.m., New Haven, Conn., time.

PS: The country we are featuring today in our series which will be on "The Daily Vampire" wil be Lithuania. If it wasn't obvious, Javier the Intern does not really exist!

Quote of the Day_ Stieg Larsson

Today's quote of the day comes from the late Stieg Larsson, a Swedish novelist/journalist who is known for the Millenium triology, including this book picture above "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

The ailing English contrarian Christopher Hitchens, who everyone has either agreed with or disagreed apparently has a negative essay about Larsson in a recent compilation that he has released. But, those opinions certainly don't reflect our's at all.

Here is the quote from Larsson:

"Crime stories are, as you know, one of the most popular forms of entertainment that exist. If you then try to have something to say...that I have, of course."

Status Update_ I Finished the Millenium Triology

I have ineeed finally finished the late Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson's Millenium Triology, which included "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," "The Girl who Played with Fire" and "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Test." I not only read the three novels, but I saw their film versions as well. In both mediums, "Dragon Tattoo" seemed to work the best.

SIDEBAR ONE: We have to wonder if the far right-wing talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will be coining the ridicilous term jihadist mango as Pakistani mangoes will now be available in American supermarkets, according to the NPR show "The World."

SIDEBAR TWO: Perhaps, this is a sign of the times, but while reading an article about a new book on the thriving '70s Scandanavian porn industry, but Danish 'actress' Louise Frevert is now a spokesperson for a far right group!

CLARIFICATION: We forgot to mention that with the $70 roast lamb dish at the Washington, DC, restaurant we talked about, you get the whole lamb!

Yes, We Have Experienced Distractions

Since I have used the test pattern image from TRT (Turkish Radio Television) in the 1970s when I lived there from 1977-79 (though my late father was Turkish, I was born in America) and watched American shows such as "Space 1999" and "Flipper" many times on this blog, I thought I would go with the test patter from Bulgarian-TV around that same time. But, I had to settle with this test patter from Swedish TV instead. Somehow, I don't expect there was all that much difference between test patterns back then. Curiously, I'm not sure how often the test pattern comes up in the modern age. It could yet be another Casualty of Modern Technology.

Speaking of which, I just had to get up and change sides on a vinyl record version of "Stop Making Sense," a 1984 concert album from Talking Heads. I am now listening to "Once in a Lifetime," which may have inspired the Coen Brothers to make their quirky, dark comedies where a man's leg goes through a wood chipper in Minnesota.

While vinyl is making a comeback these days, so are zealous extreme forms of the Christian faith here in America. I respect people's faith, but when they start saying the world will end on Saturday (and, yes, there is a pretty significant group out there which has made this gloomy forecast), I think the rest of us have a Constitutional right to say: "Hmmmm...yes, you are insane."

Additionally, more businesses have actually implemented religion into the names of their hotels and restaurants, in addition to those that put "He Lives," "The Tomb is Empty" or "He is Risen" on their store marquees assuredly driving any Egyptian gas station managers to decide they would rather have a Whopper at Burger King.

Amazingly enough, there is apparently a restaurant called Jesus Kitchen, in North Hollywood, Calif., of all places.

And, if you want to make sure 'God is spending the night with you," then the Christ the King Motel in Kingsport, Tenn., a place I have seen for myself, might be the place for you as long as there are no Jews, Buddhists, Muslims or Hindus in your party. There is another Christ the King Motel in Beckley, W.Va., but we could not find out if the two places with the same name had the same owners. Assuredly, they may kick you out of your room if you come to the front desk to ask where the Coke machine is as you are dressed in a Slayer t-shirt.

Special Quote of the Week- Gunter Grass

We love Gunter Grass, and this like the fourth time we've dedicated a blog entry to the German novelist/playwirght (b. 1927) who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999; his best-known work in America is the novel "The Tin Drum" (1959). It was made into an award-winning 1979 German film of the same name which was for some reason banned in Oklahoma (I guess you could check out the book at the public library in Tulsa; we assume the ban has been lifted. Yes, it is like something out of North Korea, isn't it?!).

Grass is also politically active, and he has made many enemies among German conservatives. In the 1980s, Grass also visited India for his months.

Here is his quote:

"The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open."

SIDEBAR: Germany was one of the four choices in a fun Internet quiz which asked which European country would you go to; the choices were A) Sweden, B) Germany, C) Spain and D) Greece. I am indeed the one in 100 person who chose Sweden! According to visitsweden.com, there is now an art exhibit in Stockholm of the illustrations by the English children's author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). She is best known for "Peter Rabbit," which many of us read often when we were children.

Strange, but True Things We Learned This Week...

All of these things have been verified through various sources, but if you don't believe me, you can spend hours and hours on Google, and leave a post on here saying: "Ahhh, but you are wrong." Let's get started, and we will get to the African pygmy goat when we can:

1. Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) actually liked many American western tv shows as a kid, including his favorite "Bonanza!" I first read about this in "The Week" magazine some eight years ago. But, this week, I also learned that the sinister terrorist leader also like Bruce Lee kung-fu films. But, none of these things are as disturbing as a report I heard from the TRT (Turkish Radio Television) right after September 11th, when I happened to be in Istanbul. A Turkish man who was a classmate of bin Laden's at a school in Switzerland when they were both children said that this future kingpin of terror was 'a quiet unasuming kid who usually sat in the back.'

2. And speaking of Turkey, as "Mental Floss" reported in a recent issue, one never wants to confuse a Greek with a Turk or vice versa. Since the hip magazine didn't mention the man's name, I had to check the BBC's web site for additional details. As it turns out, Athanasios Varzanakos, 77, who would have definitely qualified for our long, difficult names list, a Greek villager, had been mistaken for a Turk. The Swedish yogurt company Lindahl had put the image of Varzanakos on its Turkish yogurt products. So, the Greek man sued the Swedish company for $7 million; he 'only' got $270,000 in return. This leads us to the goat because if one wants to find Greek yogurt or goat milk yogurt, they can go to the Harvest Moon in Floyd, Va. Alas, they don't sell Turkish yogurt which is very hard to find in America except in New Jersey (where there are a lot of Turks and Turkish-Americans).

3. The BBC reported last night that there is a hip hop craze spreading through Yemen, of all places. There have been similar stories in the international media about this curious pop cultural trend. In 2010, Laura Kasinoff of "The Christian Science Monitor" reported that she had seen 'turbaned men dancing with daggers and rappers donning New York Yankees caps' taking the stage in the capital city of Sana for a hip hop fest. Hagage Masead, an American of Yemeni heritage who should not/never be confused with a radical terrorist in Yemen who grew up in New York state, has been at the heart of this movement.

4. "This American Life," a popular weekly NPR show, featured a story about a "Tuscaloosa News" reporter in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who was fooled into publishing a local story that proved to be false in the wake of last week's deadly tornado rampage in the area. Apparently, the story was that a local man from Tuscaloosa, which is also home to the University of Alabama, was killed at a local tobacco store and people walked all over him to get cigarettes. But, one can hardly fault the reporter as this story was verified by local government officials in Tuscaloosa! As a former newspaper reporter myself, I can see how this can happen all too easily for reasons which are far too complicated to explain here. Besides, the militant librarian here in Mount Airy, NC, (not really where I am) has warned that the Internet goes down in 22 minutes and 35 seconds!

Weekend Road Trip- Maryland to Tennessee (6 of 20)

Hi kids. Be sure to tell all your friends about out blog to make it worth our time. Hmmm, yes, we are beginning to sound like a PBS station.

Today, we focus on the distance between Hagerstown, Md, home of the Hagerstown Suns (if you left off the 's,' one might think it was the town newspaper!), and Chattanooga, Tenn., home of the Chattanooga Lookouts, which is a reference to nearby Lookout Mountain. But, yes, we were wondering what exactly a 'lookout' is too; is it like some kind of TSA agent? (We hope our friends at the ACLU like the joke, or that someone does!).

Currently, the Hagerstown Suns are in Lexington, Ky., where they will be play the Lexington Legends tonight. The team's next home game is against the reigning South Atlantic League champs the Lakewood Blueclaws, who play in Lakewood, NJ.

The Chattanooga Lookouts are also on the road in Alabama as they are playing the Birmingham Barons, a team that beat them 6-2 yesterday. The next home game for the Lookouts, who are in the Southern League (so they can't play the Suns) is on Monday against the Hunstville Stars from Huntsville, Ala., which should not confused with Huntsville, Tex., where they execute more people than they do in Saudi Arabia (I guess by now, it's obvious that I'm not exactly a right-wing Tea Partier).

To look at the distance between the two cities, we took the address of the Oasis Hookah Lounge in Hagerstown, Md., and the address of the City Cafe (Carter Street location) in Chattanooga, Tenn.

It should be pointed that we are using the Turkish shadow puppets of Karagoz and Hacivat, which are proudly from the city of Bursa, Turkey, instead of the image of a hookah pipe to be kid-friendly and because images of the pipes are surprisingly difficult to hot-link.

And, of course, the choo choo is because Chattanooga is famous for (I think everyone outisde of Tajikistan knows this) The Chattanooga Choo Choo.

So, what is the answer? If you know, I will give you either an eight-track tape of the Oak Ridge Boys' Greatest Hits or a vinyl record from Captain Tanille unless you are related to me, which disqualifies any siblings residing in Goteborg, Sweden (in-joke...hmmm...they may not get it either).

Is the answer:

A) 11 hours and 50 minutes

B) 12 hours even

C) 12 hours and 10 minutes

D) 12 hours and 20 minutes

The answer to last week's question was A) 12 hours and ten minutes. We have no idea which PBS station serves Chattanooga, and we are too lazy/tired to look it up. But, we do know that Maryland Public Television serves Hagerstown, and we wonder if they still show "Dr. Who" reruns on Saturday night!

Weekend Road Trip- North Dakota to Notre Dame (5 of 20)

Today, in St.Paul, Minn., a city we've never been to that is perhaps best known as being the place where most "Prarie Home Companion" broadcasts originate on NPR, is hosting the Frozen Four. Though they will not play each other unless both teams win, we thought we'd make South Bend, Ind., and Grand Forks, ND, where both Notre Dame and the University of North Dakota are respectively located the subject of our distance quiz today.

For the Fighting Irish, Calle Ridderwall, a senior from Sweden, has been among the team's top players. On the other side of the ice, the Fighting Sioux have been lead by the likes of Canadian Matt Fratin and Brett Hextall, who is the son of former Philadelphia Flyers' goalie Ron Hextall. The younger Hextall is the first player from California ever to play for North Dakota.

Notre Dame plays Minn-Duluth in about five minutes at 5:00 p.m., New York time, while the other UND plays Michigan, ironically Notre Dame's main rival in football, at 7:30 p.m.

For this crazy series, we looked at the exact distance between the Trio's Restaurant and Jazz Club in South Bend, where the Tony Mhoon Jazz Quartet performs on Friday night, and Sanders 1907, a fine dinning establishment in Grand Forks.

And, concluded that the places are this far apart:

A) 12 hours, 10 minutes

B) 12 hours 40 minutes

C) 13 hours, 20 minutes

D) 14 hours, 30 minutes

Either way, it is a longer time spent on the road than the amount of time Calle Ridderwall will spend in the air as he flies Scandanavian Airlines (or whicherver airline he chooses) to go back home to Stockholm!

The answer to last week's question was A) as Athens, Georgia, and Morgantown, West Virginia, are nine hours apart when driving.

Quote from The Composers- Edvard Grieg

Since we really like kitsch and all things Scandanavian (though I've never been to Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden or Finland), we thought we'd quip the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) for our entry in the series today.

Grieg is known piano miniatures "Lyric Pieces" and his piano concertos in A-minor; he was born in Bergen. The composer also drew inspiration from Norwegian folk music.

Earlier today, we learned that Norway is NOT one of the 27 European Union member nations (neither is Iceland) from our friends at "Mental Floss" (actually, we don't know a single person who works for that ultra-hip magazine, based in Birmingham, Alabama- of all places). I was able to name every member state except one: Cyprus. The irony here is quite well ironic because I have been to Cyprus (well, the northern Turkish part) and Greece and Turkey, the country of my late father, fought over the island nation in a short, but bloody war in 1974.

Getting back to Grieg, whose music is of course more relevant than silly ethnic squabbles (note to my friends in Athens: our yogurt is better than your yogurt!), here is a quip from the Norwegian master who perhaps just couldn't stand Swedes:

"Suddenly a mist fell from my eyes and I knew the way I had to take."

SIDEBAR: For those interested in classic music who live in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Utah Symphony will be conducting Stravinsky's Pulcinetta from Jan. 27-29, which we perhaps should have mentioned yesterday when we were quoting Russian composers!

DC Diary- I Ate a Whole Anchovy Pizza

Well, we were going to give our crew a long-needed and well-deserved vacation, but then I listened to a Newt Gingrich speech on C-SPAN and decided "Bah Humbug! These guys need to earn their $3.22 an hour."

We haven't run into the former house speaker here in Washington, DC, today, but there have been plenty of things to write about.

I've decided it's perhaps best to have a day of reflection, so I will focus on yesterday which was our first official day in the nation's capital.

Along with my mom, my sister Eva and her husband Sven from Goteborg, Sweden, we went out to dinner at Red Rocks, a Nepalese pizzaeira in DC, and after looking over the menu items carefully, I decided to make the most radical culinary decision I made since I ate goat kebab in Denizli, Turkey, some 25 years ago.

I decided to order an 11-inch anchovy pizza! My feeling was: "You know, I am on vacation, and this is one of the few times I've been able to get out of Virginia and North Carolina all year (I live between the two states), so why not get an anchovy pizza?"

It was surprisingly delicious. The pizza also had several cheeses and peppers. And, I drank it down with some tangy pineapple juice.

But, anyone who has gobbled up an entire 11-inch pizza, irregardless of topping choices, should know full well that he or she will pay the consequences for it later that night. Sure enough, I was stuffed and I felt like a walking Sumo wrestler as we walked back to our hotel in Bethesda, Md. (forgive the DC humor which may not go over well to our readers in Tajikistan!).

Incidentally, I saw a guidebook for the remote former Soviet Republic of Tajikistan today, but that's enough for tonight's entry.... I need to go watch some "Sanford and Son" reruns on TV Land, a network I don't get at home!