Live Q&As

Gee, you went to all the trouble of scouting for parking spots A WHOLE HALF BLOCK from your home?  Exactly where in Woodley Park do you live that parking is ordinarily so plentiful?   I sometimes have to park five blocks from my house.  And the city has approved a big shopping/condo development just two blocks away that is probably going to make things a lot worse.  The developers have grandly told us that their parking plan is to provide NO NEW PARKING so people will learn not to drive there but to take the Metro.  Thanks, guys. 

There will be torches and pitchforks. 

I have a theory for why nice people like you become Republicans.  It's actually the same as Steinbeck's theory for why socialism never took hold in America:  “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Ignoranus.  An excellent word. 

Andyour argument for use of the c-word is precisely the point of the most controversial moment in "The Vagina Monologues."

You make an interesting observation that I'm not sure others have made: that so long as the c-word is allowed to be so offensive, women are allowing themselves to be enslaved by it.  

Very nice.   I wonder why it is in English?   And why they did it in Paris?   

Twice in my life I have expensed a hooker, for stories 25 years apart.  The first time was in NYC during the 1976 democratic convention.  I was doing a piece in which I was posing as a rube delegate from Iowa, on the theory New York would take me to the cleaners.   They didn't, which made for an excellent story.   At one point I engaged the services of a hooker while leaving my bag "checked" with the folks downstairs.  It contained $100.  They didn't take it.   The hooker was stunned that I just wanted to talk. 

Well, wait a minute.    I never said they were SIMPLY and ONLY the byproduct of luck, I said they were too often the byproduct of luck.  When that is true, and if luck is generally evenly distributed, the otherwise better teams will win most often. 

Hey, even lovers of the game concede there's too much luck in hockey.   It's self-evident.  You just have to go to a game and watch this stick-flailing scrums from which the puck shoots out and into the net under a goalie whose leg happens to be an inch off the ground at the moment.   

Defenders of the game admit this -- they just say it's not that bad, and, in the long run, evens out.   To me it just creates a sloppy, sloppy game. 

I admit to prejudice, in sports.  Basketball is probably the loveliest game, featuring the best athletes, but I just don't feel it.    My biggest problems with basketball are 1) intentional fouls  2) the importance of free throws  3) the fact that the whole game so often seems to be played in the last two minutes. 

I acknowledge that the previous is immature and probably wrong.   But I'm not wrong about hockey. 

I like the font!    My feelings about telegraphic sarcasm can be summarized here.

Nice.  I'm assuming you are male.   And I'm also guessing that this is not related to coffee.   You've got some change in your sphincter, and believe it or not, there are drugs for this.  Something called proscar, I think.    See a urologist. 

For me, rooting is connected with ego: I tend to particularly follow the exploits of people whom I recognized as really good right from the get-go, even before the general public realized what was there.     So, over the years: Maris, Guidry, Willie Randolph, Mattingly, Robinson  Cano, David Robertson.  The guy I am currently considering investing some fandom on is ... Eduardo Nunez.    He learns to field, he may be a worthy successor to Jeter. 

I would just like to observe that the guy with the two pee streams should read this and consider himself lucky. 

You know, there IS a point where doctors basically have to admit that you need to wait for some condition to either go away or get worse.    Sounds like you are there. 

Googling this is unhelpful, alas, because most of the common explanations have been ruled out, for you. 

This is very weird.   I have never heard of such. 

Here are the B&C's in question. 

Thank you.  This prompted a memory from my yoot, and I checked, and yep, still around.   Even better than bread.   

You make an interesting point: The age of the girl is not given (and the actress looks to be a young-looking 17, maybe) but we are encouraged to consider her an adolescent.   Why?  Mostly because Mom appears to be 39 or 40, and because she is still taking care of the girl's health care.   I just asked The Rib to look at this for the first time, and asked her to guess the age of mom and daughter.  She said: 40 and 12.    Then she asked why I was asking, and I said that I considered the lingering takeout on the girl's behind to be in bad taste.   She hadn't NOTICED the girl's behind. 

I'm telling you all, this is insidious. 

In researching this, I came upon this long but vapid blog post taking exception to the ad for the most bizarre reason.   

Well, clearly you have a big problem involving trust.  But I always urge parents of young children:  Do everything within reason to avoid divorce.  It sounds to me as though you are nowhere near "everything within reason."  

I don't know you, so I have no idea if you are the type of person to build suspicion out of nothing -- but I do understand your point about not-knowing being more pernicious than knowing.   I wonder what would happen if you told your husband:  "If you tell me, we can deal with it.   I will not leave you."      You know, if you did that, I think it would increase the chances of his telling the truth, whatever the truth is.    I think if you told him that, in a way he believed, and he still denied it, there's a good chance he is telling the truth. 

I'm not Hax.  This might be bad advice.   

Noted. 

You think Democrats are hornier?  More promiscuous?  Given to abandoning children?   

I'm not saying no.   I wonder what the numbers show.   Anyone know? 

I really liked the story.   I think it was a worthy winner.   Is sent him an email saying "Finally, the feature category got one right." 

The story had one odd feature that you could call a weakness, or you could even call a strength:  It was limited entirely to coverage of a trial.    An unusual call in a Pulitzer category that tends to reward depth and breadth of reporting.    The defendant didn't testify, for example, so we learned nothing about him. 

So, a very narrow definition of "story."  But within that stricture, he did beautifully.    He wrote it with muscle.  

Mostly, they're all dillweeds, or worse.   It's ironic.