DRAWING on OBSERVATIONS

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A fame hungry woman dreams of breaking from her boring hubby. A glitzy starlet arrested for double homicide when she discovers her hubby sleeping with her sister. The Fame hungry woman shoots a sleaze ball who made false promises. Enter the smooth talking charlatan who gives everyone the old razzle dazzle. No, it’s not a preview for an upcoming Jerry Springer Show. But it does seem fitting that Springer is starring as Billy Flynn in the London production of Chicago and hopes to play the role on Broadway this August.

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Frank McCourt passed away yesterday from complications of melanoma. He was born in Brooklyn, New York during the Great Depression and would return years later and become a New York City public school teacher. What happened in between was the horrific tale of his childhood and the basis for his Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, Angela’s Ashes. He was 78.

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The “most trusted man in America” has passed away from complications of dementia. Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. His trusting delivery and presence informed America during one of the most turbulent eras in our nation’s history – from the Vietnam War to the assassinations of  JFK, RFK and MLK. He was 92.

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While most reporting in Hollywood seems to consist of puff pieces written by those rubbing elbows with celebs on the red carpet, Nikki Finke is a tough reporter who keeps her distance from the limelight and her elbows sharpened. Her blog Deadline Hollywood Daily has made her a modern day Walter Winchell that execs fear.

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Natalya was a mother, lawyer, journalist and Russian human rights activist. She worked and reported on Russian civil rights abuses in Chechnya. Yesterday she was kidnapped from her home in Grozny. Her body was found dead nine hours later, dumped by the side of the road with two gun shot wounds to the head. She was 50 year old.

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Sonia Sotomayor will be the next Supreme Court Justice, as soon as those on the Senate Judiciary Committee are though showing off how much they know about the law.

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Ron Bloom will become the Obama administration’s top auto adviser. Bloom attended Harvard Business School, spent ten years at investment banks as is known for his negotiating skills.The position is being vacated by Steve Rattner, who is leaving under a cloud of suspicion for his alleged involvement in NYS pension kickbacks.

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After conflicting accounts of what was or was not said during a House Intelligence Committee briefing, Leon Panetta has instructed a senior CIA officer to take a look at what happened and to explore what the CIA can do to improve it’s reporting to Congress.

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The Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Silvio Berlusconi is hosting the G8 Summit. This doodle goes out to my son Andrew, who is studying abroad and today is probably baffled by all the traffic and congestion being he’s in Rome, Italy along with eight of the most powerful men on the planet. Enjoy Capri this weekend Andrew!

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At the age of five, both his parents were imprisoned in Soviet forced labor camps, He was taken from his grandmother and raised in an orphanage as the son of an enemy of the people. From that nightmarish beginning, he went on to earn a medical degree from Leningrad Medical University. He worked as a doctor while he pursued his interest in writing. He wrote of jazz and fashion instead of the misery of the Gulag, publishing more than twenty novels. Aksyonov … Continue Reading

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The eighth and perhaps the most influential Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara has passed away. McNamara served as Defense Secretary for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968. He was the architect of the Vietnam War, instituted policy analysis, expanded the influence of the Defense Department, and played a large role in the Kennedy Administration’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was 93.

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President Obama is in Moscow talking to Putin’s puppet, Dimiri Medvedev.

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With yesterdays win at Wimbledon, Federer has now won more Grand Slam titles than any other player in the history of mens tennis.

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Wha-Wha-What? I have to admit, I didn’t see that coming.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

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California is broke. For the second time since the Great Depression, California is paying it’s bills with I.O.U.’s.

Happy Independence Day Everyone!

Karl Malden passed away yesterday, Malden was extraordinary at portraying the ordinary man. In 1951 he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor portraying Blanche’s suitor Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire and he was nominated in 1954 for his role as a tough dockside priest in On the Waterfront. Growing up I watched him play Lieutenant Mike Stone opposite Michael Douglas in the television series The Streets Of San Francisco. He was 97.

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The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of Al Franken, making him the next Senator of Minnesota. The SNL alum earned a BA degree in political science from Harvard College, graduating cum laude. Prior to his run for Senate, he wrote and performed for Saturday Night Live for fifteen years, penned five NYT best-selling books and had his own talk radio show. The victory gives the democrats a filibuster proof majority in the US Senate.

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Madoff was sentenced to 150 years. Here are some other sentenced notables, From top to bottom: Shalam Weiss was sentenced to 845 years for bilking $125 million from National Heritage Life Insurance. Bernard Ebbers got 25 years for taking WorldCom for $11 Billion. Jeffrey Skilling is serving 24.3 years for fraud and conspiring to mislead investors of Enron.

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TV pitchman Billy Mays passed away. It seems we’re loosing all our pop-culture icons. He was 50 years old.

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Yesterday marked the first military coup in Central America since the end of the Cold War. The president of Honduras had been attempting to lift presidential term limits and expand the powers of the president. The Honduran Army stormed the presidential palace, arrested the president and placed the pajama clad Zalaya on a plane to Costa Rica.

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Yada yada yada…. misdirection, private matters….Who paid for the trips to Argentina?

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The sidekick to which all others are compared, Ed McMahon passed away yesterday.  A  gracious man who was content not being the center of attention. He was 86.

Ed circa 1962

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There is no debating that these are tough times for auto makers. But of the big three, one appears to be in a positioned to survive this economic downturn. What’s the variable that separates Ford from the others?… Family.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, David Rohde was abducted and held captive by the Taliban for seven months. The Times did not report on the incident before now, believing it would place him in greater jeopardy. After weeks of planning, Rohde and Afghan journalist Ludin succeeding in tiring their captives with a board game before scaling down a wall with a rope they had kept hidden from their captives.

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Weather permitting, enjoy the barbecues, the US Open and the day with your children.

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Do we need less Obama? That’s the question put forth this week by a number of Obama supporters. That inspired me to attempt a dots and dash portrait, devoting a lot less ink to the president.

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The faux president of Iran is looking over his shoulder as the media clampdown is expanded to include blogs.

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Ahmadinejad’s days as President of Iran may be numbered. Yesterday top cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri said the vote was a fraud.

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Here in the north east, it has rained or been overcast every day for two weeks. Crops are suffering, rivers are cresting, mold is growing and meteorologists are predicting more of the same.

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Yesterdays win over the Magic gave the Los Angeles Lakers their fifteenth NBA championship in franchise history. Once again, hard work and determination proved to be the most important variables to success. Kobe Bryant worked harder than any other player in the league in route to winning his fourth NBA championship and the MVP award.

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Ordinarily I don’t blog on the weekend, but this is an important date in history. Not because 82 years ago, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City, or that 74 years ago James Braddock became boxing’s heavy weight champion by beating Bax Baer. It’s not even that the US space probe Pioneer 10 was launched 37 years ago today and became the first spacecraft to leave the solar system when it crossed the orbit of Neptune. Yes, those are all important events, but they pale in comparison when you consider that my father-in-law, Charles Edward Hilyard married Joan Marie Opdyke 50 years ago today. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad.

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If you’ve never heard of Ilya Repin, blame it on the Iron Curtain. Repin enjoyed more fame in his lifetime than any other Russian artist in the nineteenth century. A book on his life and work, Ilya Repin, Painting * Graphic Arts, translated from Russian by Sheila Marnie and Helen Clier is one of my prized possessions. When the cold war ended I had the great privileged to see his Barge Haulers masterpiece at the Guggenheim.

Recently The Russian Museum, in order to increase art appreciation, is placing replica masterpieces like Repin’s “Reply of the Zaporozhian to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire” around Moscow and St. Petersburg. What a great idea! I’d like to see that in the New York subways.

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Most days I work at home, so my mornings consist of finding the paper on my front lawn, doodling a portrait or two over my morning coffee and heading up to my studio to start my day. But occasionally, on days like yesterday, I have to commute to New York for a model reference photo shoot. On those days I wake up early, do my morning doodle, blog, then head to New York. I always buy another paper because the New York tabloids always have more fodder for me to doodle. The excursion is a bumpy ride on overcrowded trains with poor suspensions. I guess it is an obsession because I still draw. It’s about a 35 minutes ride… This is how I passed the time. A bakers dozen doodles on yesterdays paper.

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A Picasso notebook was stolen from a glass case at the Picasso Museum in Paris. The red notebook containing 33 drawings by the Spanish artist was discovered missing Tuesday. It is worth is estimated to be $11 million.

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President Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan supports merit pay for teachers by linking raises and bonuses to student performance. The former professional basketball player said “To somehow suggest we should not link student achievement to teacher effectiveness, is like suggesting we judge sports teams without looking at the box score.”
That seems logical. So, why hasn’t it been done before?…Well, in Washington, lobbies and interest groups have always trumped logic, and there is no lobby more powerful than the teachers union, who opposes merit pay…That’s Change.

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Laura Ling is a journalist who crisscrosses the globe reporting on major stories shaping our world for Emmy award-winning, independent media company, Current TV. Laura has covered subjects including the avian flu crisis in Asia, slave labor in the Brazilian Amazon, China’s booming sex industry, and marijuana cultivation in California’s national forests. Prior to joining Current in February of 2005, she worked as a series producer for Channel One News where she produced reports from over two-dozen countries. Laura co-created “Breaking it Down,” a documentary series on MTV that aired between 1999 and 2001. Her work has also appeared on ABC’s “Nightline,” NBC, PBS and the WB.
She and fellow journalist Euna Lee are currently being detained by North Korean for having allegedly crossed the border between China and the rouge nation. Yesterday they were convicted by the Central Court of a vague “grave crime” against North Korea and each was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

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A talented actor sometimes crafts a character so convincingly that we, the audience, begin to project that persona onto the actor. In the case of David Carradine, a calm, centered, spiritual man. At least that was my perception of him, which is a credit to his great gift as an actor, because the reality was not always so. The star of the seventies TV series “Kung Fu” and movies “Kill Bill” 1 and 2, is believed to have taken his own life in a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand. He was 72.

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