My first job, actually, was a Chicago Bulls commercial. I was a ninja. I walked with a limp for a week afterward and got paid 500 dollars 6 months later. Thanks, guys.
We could see the Teamsters coming in from New Jersey, the AFL-CIO from Chicago. You could see all of the people being bused in.
After that, I started going downtown and doing a lot of theater shows in Chicago. When you go downtown there, it's like you're in New York, it's like going to Broadway.
I began acting on stage when I was 7 years old. My first role was as Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' at Chicago's Center on Deafness in Northbrook, Illinois.
I've been proud to be a lifelong Chicago Cub and still be with the Cubs. That's always been important to me and I think it's always been special.
In 1986, human nature in America started to change. That year, 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,' based in Chicago, became nationally syndicated, and the country entered the beginning stages of a quiet cultural revolution.
The very first video experience I had was in high school. They brought a black-and-white closed-circuit surveillance camera into the classroom. I will never forget, as a kid, looking at that image.
Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.
My family moved a lot as a kid. We started in Colorado, where I lived for five years. We moved to Chicago for two years, to San Francisco for one year, Connecticut for seven, Oregon for a couple years, and then I went to school.
I actually didn't grow up in a household that loved Chinese food particularly, and it's not really my go-to food or anything... We were more a pizza family, being from the Chicago area and all.
When you're a Chicago artist, to play Lollapalooza, that's not a normal thing. It's artists on a path to a certain place that do that. Chief Keef did it; Kids These Days did it; Cool Kids did it. And I'm the next Cool-Kids-Chief, if you will.
Wherever you go, things change you. I mean, obviously moving to Miami and becoming part of the NBA has given me a different perspective on style than I had when I lived in Chicago or Milwaukee.
I believe the way I describe the problems in Chicago is that it's a metropolitan area. I've said that everywhere. The uneducated child is not just my problem, it's the state's problem. It's also the federal government's problem.
When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn't setting the terms of the competition.
I think I'm pretty smart on what I spend my money on. I still don't have a new car, I drive my old car that I've had forever. But I bought a house in downtown Chicago.
They greatly respected scholarship in itself, but they also impressed upon us that there were great opportunities available for those who were well educated. I received my primary and secondary education in Chicago.
We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago. I'd like to send him back to Kenya, back to Indonesia. We have to unmask this man. This is a man that seeks to destroy all concept of God. And I will tell you what, this is classical Marxist philosophy.
As a citizen of the great city of Chicago, I find it impossible to root against the White Sox. The White Sox organization has been much more consistent, in my lifetime at least, at putting a winning ballclub on the field.
I had never been to the playoffs, and it was exciting. The fans went through the roof. They were excited about the whole team. It was great to be traded to a city like Chicago, which was a lot like Boston.
I do feel strongly that we have got to do a little brand-positioning work. Wouldn't it be great to have something that everybody could say: 'Yep, that's Chicago.'
First of all, I'm a Midwesterner, being from Kansas, and Chicago is basically a big Midwestern cow town. It was built from the stockyards, and everyone is very friendly, and it's at the edge of the tallgrass prairie. There's just a good feel to it.
