ItsOnlyBob

1. If 30 miles is how much I hate this commute, then 150 minutes is how glad I am that I don't do this commute regularly anymore. 2. If 30 miles is how glad I am that I don't do this commute regularly anymore, then 150 minutes is how much I love visiting Bolling Air Force Base and hearing the Air Force Band play stuff I wrote for them. 3. None of which alters the fact that I gotta pee. 4. Like, bad. 5. But yes, I really DO love hearing the Air Force Band play stuff I wrote for them. 6. By the way, you should plan to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly VA (the "companion facility" of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC) this coming Tuesday at noon. 7. No, really, you should! Just sayin'. 8. Sequels might be like, y'know, "Jaws II" - but then again, they might be like "The Godfather II," in which Al Pacino plays a killer English horn and Robert DeNiro beats the holy snot out of a bass drum. 9. We, as a s...

Every Election Day, I mourn a friendship killed by political “discourse.” I met this friend in college. He was brilliant and intense, with a finely tuned sense of humor steeped in Monty Python and Firesign Theater. He was also kind and thoughtful. When I came to Washington, DC, in 1993 for a job interview, my friend—by then a bureaucrat living in Northern Virginia—offered me a futon to sleep on. One evening, our conversation veered into politics. I mostly just listened as he talked—and talk he did, with breathtaking ferocity. At one point, his phone rang: “Hello? … Oh, hi, Mom. Hey, can I call you back? I’m in the middle of a tirade.” He hung up and jumped right back in. I’d never given my own political opinions much critical thought before then—like many people, I just followed my parents’ lead. My discomfort at that moment had less to do with the fact that I found myself disagreeing with my friend's views, and more to do with my feeling suddenly trapped in a conversation I wasn...