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.”

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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”

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.

If you plan on traveling to China to watch an olympic event, be prepared to have your access to information censored. The Chinese government has the largest surveillance and censorship operation in the world, and have even been known to imprison bloggers.

They are placing internet filters in hotels that might even restrict this humble little blog for harmless content like this and this.

Ball point pen on the morning newsprint

Last night my brother Dan asked me to a Yankee game. We had great field level seats, about half way down the first base line. Andy Pettitte was on the mound, but after taking the lead in the first inning, Jeter and the boys sleep walked the rest of the way to a 6 to 2 loss against the Detroit Tigers.