As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends and I grew more restless and adventurous with every passing year.

Seven-11 is the pulse-beat of America. I think that Bruce Springsteen should do a song about a 7-11 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but write it in such a way that American's youth can identify and slurp along with the Boss. Hail the Boss! Hail 7-11!

The best compliment I get every year is that a band will write me and say, 'We were just on tour, and we had people coming to our show saying they had never heard us before they heard us on your show.'

I'm a professional food eater.

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is.

Conservatives are winning offices, and champions of big government are cleaning out their desks right now.

Democracy, of course, requires strong demands from the public.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.