ItsOnlyBob

Cleaning out my work emails recently, I came across one I'd been saving for years. It was a mass email from some guy off in middle-management somewhere who was a big fan of a weekly email quasi-blog called "Thoughts While Shaving."  The author, Len Fuchs, compiled his emails into a book called " Thoughts While Shaving: Common Sense Leadership Principles ." The concept is pretty clever - you picture the guy standing in front of the bathroom mirror, raking the stubble off his chin and experiencing daily epiphanies about leadership and management ("Leaders are influential, even when they are not the number one person in the organization"), and even about thought itself ("Ideas that initially appear to get in the way often lead you to someplace new and better"). Then he jots down these epiphanies in the form of a quasi-random list of principles (#170 - "Leaders know that success is not random"), and starts cashing the royalty checks....

Remember 2009, Florida State fans? The college football world debated: Should Bobby Bowden  stay for one more year, as his contract promised? Or should he  get the hook after 32 consecutive winning seasons, two national championships and a grinding 10-year slide into the competitive netherworld?  By Week 6,  the Noles were 2-3 following a hard-fought loss to Miami, a humiliating upset at the hands of South Florida, and a road loss to Boston College. Georgia Tech, ranked #23, waited in the wings. Seminole Nation was surly. I tried to imagine what might happen should FSU President T.K. Wetherell decide to yank Bobby then and there in favor of the Heir Apparent....  Jimbo Fisher Fired at Halftime in FSU Head Coaching Debut By Bob Thurston Easily Amused TALLAHASSEE, Oct. 10, 2009—The Jimbo Fisher era of Florida State University football was brief. Fisher—FSU's "head coach in waiting" for three seasons, who finally replaced Bobby Bowden this week ...

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I love the Florida State-Florida football game. It's one of the great rivalries in college sports — a game in which emotions and intangibles can wreak havoc with rankings, records and statistical trends. Even in a year with a clear favorite and underdog — one team mowing down every opponent, the other just trying to avoid another embarrassing loss or season-ending injury — shocking things can happen. Like all great rivalries, FSU-Florida can bring out some pretty uncool behavior, not just among players and coaches, but also among the fans. I try to keep that behavior in perspective. I suspect every team in the country has a fringe group of obnoxious fans who get more attention, headlines and YouTube views than the highly likable ones who far outnumber them. I won't pretend that Tallahassee is completely devoid of garnet-and-gold-clad idiots, nor will I completely write off any other school's fans because of the few drunken halfwits I've met along the way. ...

So I'm watching ESPN tonight and I see the Capital One commercial with Samuel Jackson. I've seen it before, and noted the rarity of a mainstream commercial using a phrase like " every damn day ." The first time I saw it, I even rewound it to be sure I heard right. Then I thought, hey, it's Samuel Jackson. Good for you — push that envelope!  But wait  ... this time  the ad is slightly different. This time he says the card delivers on its benefits "every single day." Really? Not as effective, to my ear. Certainly not Jacksonesque language. A quick google search reveals there was (shocker!) public backlash . Apparently some people's ears went up in flames when they heard the dreaded "d" word. They complained, so the company went with a blander version that could as easily have featured Beaver Cleaver.  Two commercials later, a couple of high-school girls at an arcade  check out a shy boy standing nearby, out of earshot. "Lewis ne...

Let's all thank Thomas Jefferson for donating his text messages to the Library of Congress. (Click the pic to see it full-size.)

Several years ago my friend Becky Gjendem solicited entries on the subject of "What Memorial Day Means to Me" for her blog . She was kind enough to post my entry:  To some military musicians and ceremonial guardsmen, every day is Memorial Day. I'm a military musician in Washington, DC. Where I work, the main mission is rendering final honors to the dead at Arlington National Cemetery. Though performing is not my primary duty (I'm usually off in the corner where they keep the creative types), I am occasionally called on as an extra or substitute drummer for a funeral.  Even for a stand-in like me, it is all too easy to regard the job with a sense of routine. A military funeral is, after all, a ritual that has changed little over the centuries, and the troops who perform it are professionals whose principal job is to perform it as many as four times a day.  Services are virtually identical from one to the next. It is rare for members of the ceremonial unit ...