I'd seen so many people become stagnant in New Jersey - I had this fear I'd just stay there. They'd come out of high school, get a job, get married, have kids and die in Jersey. I wanted more.
Columbine was so frightening. And the media took off with it, like everything else, so it instilled more fear in people. You're looking around at school for kids like the ones who committed the shootings, and you feel wrong for doing that, you know?
I'm a Christian. I go to church when I can. I was raised Baptist. I went to a Lutheran school. I'm a nondenominational practicing Christian. I have a lot of faith.
Faith is part of who I am, yes. I was raised Christian Scientist. The most important thing I saw every single week on the wall at Sunday school was the Golden Rule.
But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.
Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.
Children are free moral agents and have a right to be exposed to a range of beliefs well beyond the rigid doctrinal confines of their parent's faith, and we have an obligation to insist that they be so exposed, at least in public schools, if not else...
Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.
In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.
I was just a goofy little funny kid, who was always getting sent to the principal. It wasn't serious because I was smart. I wasn't like a true troublemaker, just rambunctious - like, talkative and trying to be funny. That was me in middle-school.
It's quite funny in that I once won Rear of the Year at my school! I was about 17 in the sixth form and we used to have an end of year celebration and give out different awards. I even got a little trophy!
I really like 'Gladiator.' I like 'The Dark Knight.' I really liked, when I was a kid, 'U.S. Marshalls.' I like funny movies, too. 'Old School' and 'The Hangover.' 'The Hangover' was up there; I liked it.
Why don't we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they'd also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.
The public schools tend to teach little kids from when they are very young about the whole universe without God and that God cannot be in science. They are indoctrinating children in an atheistic religious view of things.
Almost every college playwright or sketch or improv comedian was sort of aware of Christopher Durang - even kids in high school. His short plays were so accessible to younger people and I think that was inspirational to me.
I was raised in Arizona, and I went to public school, and the extent of my knowledge of the civil-rights movement was the story of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder how much my generation knows.
Basically I was a rebel growing up. I got kicked out of six schools. But I don't think that it makes you less of an intellect. You know, if you ever crave knowledge, there's always a library.
Just because someone has gone to an elite school and college does not make him smarter than the person who has grown up on street knowledge.
I live a very normal life. I have friends, and I've always gone to school. The part that's not normal is that I've been working since I was 9 months old, but at the same time, it's completely normal to me.
I had a very simple life growing up in the farm country outside of Perugia, and biscotti and warm milk with a tiny bit of coffee were a big part of my morning ritual before walking to school.
That's my advice to all homosexuals, whether they're in the Boy Scouts, or in the Army or in high school: Shut up, don't tell anybody what you do, your life will be a lot easier.
