I've been playing on Christmas for the last 10, 11, 12 years. So just got to get up early with the babies, and give them their toys and try to get a nap in and just come to play.
My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.
Christmas always rustled. It rustled every time, mysteriously, with silver and gold paper, tissue paper and a rich abundance of shiny paper, decorating and hiding everything and giving a feeling of reckless extravagance.
It was, you know, probably 80 degrees out in L.A., and my dad took me outside and there was snow. At the time, I thought, 'Every kid doesn't have snow in their backyard on Christmas?'
Classic Christmas cookies are really time-consuming. Instead, make a bar you can bake in a pan and just cut up, like a brownie or a blondie or a shortbread, which still has that Christmas vibe.
Dad's cancer experience included periods of relatively good health as well as bouts of hospitalisation as he coursed his way through a variety of different chemotherapy treatments.
My dad would always tell me, 'When you meet a man, look him in his eye and shake his hand,' and that's just something I've been doing for a long time.
When I was little, I grew up in a place called Hertfordshire, which is just near London, but out in the country, and I visited Pakistan in the summers to go and see my family on my dad's side.
My mother had very humble beginnings - to put it mildly. Her dad built their home out of timber that he cut down on their land. No heat, no air-conditioning - 'no foolishness,' as he would call it.
Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.
I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, 'Go buy a postage stamp in London,' I'll go and do it.
Going to the theater is such a joyous experience. My dad would take my sister and me to plays when we were very young, like six or seven years old.
My dad said that if it's part of the character, I'm allowed to say bad words, but if it's not part of the character, and I say it at home when I'm not acting, that I won't be acting anymore.
My parents' marriage was already shaky when I came along. They split up when I was five, and I didn't see Dad all that often after that - four or five times a year.
I grew up in such a musical family, and my dad was the first chair in the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and my mom was a piano teacher and a painter, so it was kind of a creative environment, and it was kind of in my DNA.
I don't sit in the corner waiting for death: death has to pursue me. I'm going strong. I hope to reach 100 and ask for an extension, just like my grandmother did.
Design, whether it's on your body or in your home, is the same thing. It's mixing different colors, different textures, and unexpected patterns - elements that you wouldn't often put together in an interesting way.
The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.
I was 17 and just learning what high fidelity was, what good sound was, and learning the mechanics of tape machines. It was a real education, going right from the consumer end to the record factory.
I do work very hard. I have been very colored by that education. I spent six days a week, seven hours a day training. That will always be the foundation of my work.
For me, I was somebody who was a smart young guy who didn't do very well in school. The basic system of education, I didn't fit in; my intelligence was elsewhere.
