Friday
Alex and I flew from LAX to DCA on Alaska flight 6. The woman across the aisle from me had a horribly annoying whiney voice. Thank you, Mr. Bose, for those great headphones. Thank you, Mr. Dylan, for the live version of “Shelter from the Storm.” It can drown out even the most nasty voices.

Our apartments at the Watergate were waiting for us. I love them so much but I doubt if I can afford to keep them much longer. I am looking to downsize my life. That’s really important. I cannot have the overhead that I did ten years ago.

Bob Noah, driver and pal, and I went to the Safeway, then to Five Guys, got our usual delicious hot dogs, and then home to sleep. I am really tired. Air travel.

Saturday
A visit to a sushi place in Georgetown. It is a delicious place at 31st and K, NW. We (Bob and I) met up with my staggeringly beautiful Mongolian pal, Solongo. She is just a knockout. Very ambitious. Wants to be a successful business woman. I am positive she’ll do it. If she could come to the USA from Ulan Bator at 14, learn perfect English, swim at the Olympic level, and work at a great job and be outgoing and articulate, she can do anything.

She brought with her three lovely friends. All blond. The one closest to me was a “lactation consultant” and generally teaches mothers of newborns how to behave.

“What do you tell them?” I asked her.

“I tell them they’re going to screw up a lot, and everyone does, and the world will go on. The world had been run by idiots from day one and we’re still doing okay.”

Brilliant. Her comment reminded me of one of Pop’s favorite quotes. “Observe, my son, with what little wisdom the world is run.” Baron von Oxenstierna, author.

True enough, but what about Thomas Edison and Messrs. Marconi and Von Neuman and Nixon? I guess she might have said that the world is run by a lot of idiots and a few geniuses.

Then, to see Skyfall for the 11th time. By the time you read this, it will just be a memory in all but a very few theaters. Sad. It is a work of genius on so many levels I can scarcely count them. I now think that Bond and Silva, the “villain,” are really two halves of one personality, displaying different, but still loving attitudes of children towards their mothers.

Then to Five Guys for hot dogs. At 3 AM. It was packed. Mostly Georgetown students. They love me and chant my name. Great stuff. That makes me feel like a cool guy, like the coolest guy ever to go to Montgomery Blair High School and I like that a lot.

Nice to be liked.

Sunday
The Washingtonian Inaugural Ball. Air and Space Museum. We were invited because they were honoring TAPS, our favorite charity, which helps the families of men killed in our military.

On the way over, we passed the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. He was a genuinely great human being but the monument is hideously hulking, menacing, ugly, ugly, ugly. Across the Tidal Basin is the most beautiful small building in DC, the Jefferson Memorial. Light. Uplifting. Inspiring. Yet he was a driver of slaves. A great man but a driver of slaves.

The Ball was a quiet but pleasant affair. Way more subdued than the Bush Inaugurals I hosted in 2001 and 2005.

Everyone was polite. I saw my pal Bonnie Carroll, world’s most effective human, head of TAPS. I saw my pal Bill Dean and some of his beautiful girls and his pal Michael Saylor. All charming people.

Everyone was charming but I keep thinking of what Mr. Obama said about gun control. He said we need to do everything possible to keep people from killing our children — and I agree.

But the entity that kills by far the most of our children is abortion. Gun violence kills hundreds. Too many, for sure. Abortion kills MILLIONS. If we seriously love children, let’s stop killing them when they are fully human — i.e., in utero — but also totally helpless and vulnerable.

It is crystal clear at that point that a fetus is a baby is a fetus is a baby. Why do we allow them to be killed at will? It is just plain hypocrisy to think that it is other than homicide to kill a baby. Why don’t we stop the violence against babies?

Why is the lobby against human life so strong? I just don’t get it.

I also wonder why we don’t stand up to the Hollywood violence machine. Just look at coming attractions at any theater. It is all about people using guns to kill other people. That’s what kids are taught to do with their anxiety.

Why don’t we stand up to the video game industry, which coaches young people in mass killing and desensitizes every decent virtue about life and death? It is amazing, really incredible, that when a Newtown happens, we blame guns, which are neither good nor bad by themselves — and don’t even touch the mass culture “killing is kool” Hollywood propaganda machine..

It is amazing that we will make hunters and gun collectors who have never committed a crime seem like menaces — and treat abortionists as folk heroes. What the heck is wrong with us? Well, time to go home and sleep it all off. Bob took us to Five Guys but it was closed. Never mind, It will be open tomorrow. Mr. Obama will have millions cheering him and I will have a great hot dog. A good day.