The Top Ten Countries Where We Are Most Popular

We used to jokingly brag that we were the most popular American blog in Bergen, Norway, and Samarkand, Uzbekistan, but it appears that our blog hits are not coming from those countries. However, they are thankfully coming from lots of other places.

For this entry, we chose to go with an image of Syd, Ollie and Millie, the mascots of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where one of my all-time favorite collegiate gymnasts Yvonne Tousek of UCLA competed for Canada; the reason for this is that Australia is in our top ten for this blog as well as 'the other blog,' which is "The Daily Vampire."

Here is the list of the countries that really, really like us:

1. USA 66,460

2. Canada 6,543

3. UK 5,222

4. Germany 4,918

5. India 1,774

6. Brazil 1,567

7. France 1,313

8. Australia 1,269

9. Netherlands 1,040

10. Indonesia 613

SIDEBAR: Our friends at Triad Stage in Greensboro, NC, are set to open a new play in their UpStage Cabaret space when "The Mystery of Irma Vep" debuts on Sept. 29. The stage production will run through Oct. 15. If you are reading this at a cofffehouse in Hamburg, Germany, you should go ahead and take the 12-hour flight to North Carolina just to see this play!

Whoops, We Forgot Belgium

Well, we are posting this simply to balance this blog with our other blog "The Daily Vampire," where we made an error sending an entry meant for this blog on that one.

But, we were thinking about taking a day off from blogging tomorrow to go wash dogs at an animal shelter in Lynchburg, Va. (that is a joke, but we understand there is a great animal shelter in that city).

Alas, an image we hoped to post of Borat at the rodeo in Salem, Va., which is my hometown, as featured in the film "Borat" fell through in our Kazakhstan entry due to technical problems or perhaps a block from that particular site. (By the way, the answer is B for the question in that entry).

And, earlier today, I was able to name 24 of the 25 cities that have hosted or will host the summer Olympics in mentalfloss.com quiz. We forgot about the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. I have even been to Antwerp, Belgium, (back in 1993) but I completely forgot that the city was an Olympic host. Our apologies to Tintin, and everyone else in Belgium.

Yvonne Tousek, a former Olympic gymnast and UCLA stand-out competed for Canada, who I get to chat with every now and then, competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She is curently performing with Cirque du Soleil.

I would say that I competed for Turkey (my late father's homeland) in greco-roman wrestling at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when I would have been 22 years old, but I imagine the actual members of that team would not care for the joke.

Road Trip (2 of 20) March Madness Journey from LA to East Lansing

Today, we continue our Road Trip series with a special look at two teams who will be facing each other in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness, on Thursday night. The UCLA Bruins will face the Michigan State Spartans at 9:20 New York time for a game in Tampa, Fla.

The two schools have rich basketball traditions. The Spartans won the 1979 NCAA championship thanks to Magic Johnson who became a legend for the Los Angeles Lakers.

As for UCLA, they have won more NCAA men's basketball titles than any other school as they 11 in their trophy cases. According to mentalfloss.com, UCLA is also the most popular university in the country as the school gets about 60,000 applications each year.

UCLA also has a strong women's gymnastics program, which has won several NCAA titles. One of our favorite college gymnasts of all time Yvonne Tousek was a member of a 'dream team' squad that won many titles some eight years today. But, today UCLA maintains a strong gymnastics team thanks to the likes of Tauny Frattone, a junior who was named specialist of the week by the Pac-10 recently.

The Spartans are also among the 18 schools with gymnastics teams. Tragedy ensued the team right before the season started as gymnast Kathryn Mahoney was paralyzed after a horrific fall on the vault. But, the team has continued on, as Spartans gymnast Jackie Berg scored a 9.8 on bars recently at a meet in Norman, Okl.

So, today, we are asking just how far apart these two schools are. Instead of focusing on the campuses themselves, we will explore the distance between Sofra Kebab Express, a Turkish restaurant on Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles and the studios of the award-winning WDBM college radio station for Michigan State.

If you happen to wish for a Korean pop song, you can listen to 'Asian Invasion' on WDBM and tell the host Elsie that we were the ones who told you about the station. Their request line is 517-884-8989. Of course, if they get mad at us, we will deflect all responsibility!

So is the distance between Los Angeles and East Lansing, Mich:

A) 32 hours even
B) 33 hours and 20 minutes
C) 33 hours and 40 minutes
D) 34 hours and 30 minutes

The answer to our last road trip between Spartanburg, SC, and New York was B) 11 hours and 49 minutes.

Oscar Predictions Teaser

Tomorrow, we are hoping to post some of our Oscar predictions on this blog as well as our sister blog "The Daily Vampire." This is, of course, on the presumption that the rest of the week will be less whacky that today has been so far. But, hey I did find the car keys so I can't complain!

Today, we are featuring an image of an Oscar the Grouch t-shirt with this entry, assuming that the hot-link works! We had an unusual problem last year when we were trying to put up an image of the Bill Griffith comic book character "Zippy the Pinhead" on one of our blogs, but we still love the strip even though it took quite a while to fix that mess!

I actually watched "Sesame Street" as a kid in the 1970s on Blue Ridge Public TV (WBRA) in Roanoke, Va. Alas, these days arch right-wing Republicans are trying to cut PBS and NPR funding as either a measure to cut federal funding or make Bill O'Reilly happy (political bias: We presume the later).

Tonight, WBRA is showing "The Secrets of the Dead" at 10 p.m., which focuses on a 2004 discovery of headless Roman skeleteons in York, England.

And, we also want to wish a happy birthday to former UCLA gymnast and Canadian Olympian Yvonne Tousek. She was part of a team that included standout Olympic gymnassts like Kate Richardson, Kristen Maloney and Jamie Dantzcher. The Bruins are also the current reigning NCAA champs in women's gymnastics. Last night, junior Taunty Frattone score a 9.95 on vault in a win over North Carolina State.