This is a Ken Culotta gag. Ken wrote this and, as usual, it is brilliant. We’ve been working together since being in high school. Recently, living in two different parts of the state, work and family issues, we have worked together considerably less unfortunately. We got together Saturday for a short while and came up with some material. Above is one of those bits of material.
Created a group caricature. I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but I’ve worked with the family before and decided to do it. I drew the whole thing in their house. Below is Sheila Austria who is also Mom of the quintet and playing a violin in the picture.
The Supreme Court pulls Washington, D.C.’s gun ban. Now the criminals will need to think twice before causing trouble.
Guess who supports the kid? North Korea (Kim Jong-Il) joined the party Monday. Worse, these are the same folks the kid wants to sit down and have tea and crumpets with. What the kid needs is a bit of military service and a few years of history classes.
Below is the pencil drawing, prior to inking.
I always love another dinosaur discovery! It occurred to me that where there’s dinosaurs, there’s oil! Thus the cartoon. I’d be more like the fellow with the bone, more interested in the dinosaur than the oil.
Well, after four and a half weeks of being sick, I made a third trip to a doctor’s office. The doctor pointed to medicine, but primarily pointed at me and said to pull the plug and start resting. I’ve been struggling through work in the last few weeks through runny nose, groggy mind and persistent cough. I guess I’ll listen and put down the pen for the next couple of days to be stronger next week. Above is a sketch of items in the doctors office.
Sandra is currently on another trip, this time in South Carolina. She’s feelign better. Her ears have been clogged for nearly three weeks. She told me they just about opened up finally today.
As I was working on the Glenn Beck cartoon for Tuesday, I had Turner Classic Movies on. ‘Teachers Pet’ was on and as I tried to figure how best to depict All Gore’s latching onto presidential candidate Obama, I started sketching Gable. I thought I’d post it here.
If I don’t have political programs on, I have Turner Classic Movies on. I just love older films and their more realistic depiction of life instead of the melodramatic and action/adventure fantasy world depicted today.
Sandra, myself, my brother, Jeff, and our father made our way to Lakeland to the Florida Air Museum. I was feeling lousy, the illness still godding me. We purused the various planes and the history of air flight in Florida. This is a great historical compliment to combine with a trip to Fantasy of Flight. I did what slketching I could. There’s a plane above.
We had some time before dinner and wandered into Downtown Lakeland and settled for a bit in the Black and Brew coffee shop set in an historic building. Above is the inside doorway I sketched while we were there. We then went to dinner at Louie Mack’s Steakhouse.
Below is the inked version. I added the lettering using Photoshop.
Glenn has been barking alot about drilling for oil in Alaska and off the Florida coast. I just figured that Glenn has just way too much free time. He’s just doing a radio show, an hour long TV show (What’s wrong with a three hour TV show, too???), a live comedy show all over the country (Cleary snubbing the rest of the planet), a monthly magazine, finishing one book and working on others…oh, yeah, and there’s that whole family thing….Certainly he could pursue other endeavors. So, here’s an idea I had.
Our Saturday morning started with Mindy Bianca, public relations director of Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, who had specially shipped for the SATW group the hot out of the Hershey chocolate ovens the above Reese’s bat shaped candy. It’s a promotional tie-in for the new Batman movie coming out in a month. Funny, they tasted nothing like a bat.
The Saturday speaker was Shel Holtz, an expert on multi-media communication. This was an extremely good talk that spanned three hours. I was floored by the amount of travel writers not yet plugged in to the internet.
Later we went on a culinary tour of Little Rock. Above is plant life in a restaurant named ‘So’.
We were up the next Sunday morning for a 4:30am bus ride for a 6am flight home.
The SATW chapter group was carted off to Garvan Gardens, an extention of the University of Arkansas, near Hot Springs. It’s quite an expanse of natural Arkansas. Loys of hiking trails and waterfalls. Above is a sketch of a smaller waterfall.
We were next taken into Downtown Hot Springs. There we toured the Fordyce Bathhouse historic site of what we would call today ‘Spas’. A photo of it is above.
Above is an early version of human steam cleaning. The head of the person would stick out of the hole on top. The sink beside it is to clean whatever someone wants to clean of ones self.
Here is the men’s steam room. An elaborate place and quite the opposite of the ladie’s area. It seems men more used these places than women. Notice the elaborate statue that is a center piece of the room. The dolled up lady was our period guide.
We ended the day taking a ride on the Arkansas Queen, which provided food and music. Above is a sketch I did at the top of the Queen of a bridge we went by. While there a nearby table had the last members of a WWII group of Navy veterans. There were three of the naval USS CAPPS reunion. Apparently there are five left of this submarine crew who, according to member Al Saunders, had eight missions and saw plenty of action. The action is subsiding now that time is taking the crew away. Saunder’s commander was there across from him. Appearing to be in his 90s, you could still see the seaman in him. I did a drawing of the two with Saunders, who has a great sense of humor, bumbling in front of his commander on a sub. They loved it! I’m sorry i didn’t get a phot of the drawing or them. The commander’s wife told me this would be the last gathering of this CAPPS group. They were getting to old to travel so far to meet. They are a tribute to our country and all should be better educated to understand the importance of our military and their maintenance of our liberty.
Above was our entertainment for the evening. That rounder fellow sure can play a banjo!