Larry Roibal

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Edwards backs Obama.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Modern Artist, Robert Rauschenberg died at his home in Florida, He was 82. He said of himself that he worked in the gap between art and life. He saw no medium - from painting and collage to photography, printmaking, stage design and performance - as beyond his artistic reach. He even was convinced by a group of Art Students turned musicians to do an album cover that won a Grammy Award for best packaging.

Album cover for Talking Heads, Speaking In Tongues

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Saturday Night Live alumni Jimmy Fallon will replace fellow SNL alumni Conan O’Brien on Late Night when Conan moves over to Tonight and Leno is forced out. I guess NBC executive Lorne Michaels thinks the formerly not ready for prime timers are ready, but I’m not sure even Fallon agrees. At the Press conference Fallon said to Michaels “You started my career, you might as well end it.”

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

I don’t believe in punishing anyone for the sins of their fathers. Congrats to Jenna Bush and Henry Hager who were married this weekend in Crawford, Texas.

Ball point pen on the morning, somewhat wet, newsprint (raining here in NJ)

We talk about elections in the US using war metaphors, battleground states, fight to the end, war room strategies, but in Lebanon they do more than talk. Hizbullah is an opposition party. It’s leader, Nasrallah claimed this week that recent crack downs by the Lebanese government were a declaration of war and Shiite gunman have taken to the streets of Beirut with automatic weapons and grenade rocket launchers. Kind of puts things in perspective.. While our election process seems to go on for ever and is sometimes contentious, eventually there will be a winner and a peaceful transition to a new administration.

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The grocery store’s the super mart, uh huh
Gasoline prices break your heart, uh huh
And men still keep on marching off to war
200 points down on the floor
and
The beat goes on, the beat goes on
La de da de de, la de da de da

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Yesterday Senator Clinton won a battle in Indiana but lost the war for the Democratic nomination to become President of the United States. It’s over.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Ted Key, creator of Hazel, Mr. Peabody and Sherman cartoon characters passed away at age 95. His cartoons ran in the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s before I was born, but I spent hours of my youth watching Hazel in syndication and Mr. Peabody and Sherman on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

This weekend, long maligned New Jersey had its first inductees ceremony to the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Among the inductees were Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Yogi Berra, Buzz Aldrin, Clara Barton, Bill Bradley, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Malcolm Forbes, Robert Wood Johnson II, Vince Lombardi, Toni Morrison, Norman Schwarzkopf, Meryl Streep and Harriet Tubman….Not too shabby. Springsteen said “I always said that Sinatra owned New Jersey, but he’d rent me a little bit of down the Shore”

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Sport has often been used as a metaphor to describe battlefields, strategy and competition. It was in this light that the Clinton campaign first started to draw the parallels between the horse, Eight Belles and Senator Clinton. Leading up to the race the campaign started to talk about the only woman in the race, an underdog, a tough filly that had the stamina to go the distance. The story line was almost too perfect to ignore. If Eight Belles had won, it would have been the campaign’s battle cry going into tomorrows contests. But Eight Belles didn’t read the script. While she did make a valiant effort, she finished second to Big Brown (the actual winner). Then things went from bad to worse, when seconds after the race Eight Belles collapsed with two broken ankles and had to be euthanized on the spot. While Hillary is not in any mortal danger from this weeks primaries, I think many on the Clinton team fear that the Kentucky Derby is a closer metaphor for this campaign than they would like to admit.