Los Angeles is a really strange place. I grew up there like a normal kid, but it was not until I experienced other parts of the world that I realized how really and truly bizarre to the core it is - inside the homes of the powerful and damaged.
I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right.
I believe in Father Frost. But not too deeply. But anyway, you know, I'm not one of those people who are able to tell the kids that Father Frost does not exist.
It's a way of clearing the palate. Kids come into the classroom with all this other stuff in their hands. If they write it down for 10 minutes they become much more available for whatever it is we want to do in the class.
I'm of African descent and my sister looks completely black, but I didn't look black. I was the super-nerdy kid who was also willing to fight.
I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.
People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I'm very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.
I had my Olympic gold medal cut up into eleven pieces. Gave all eleven of my kids a piece. It'll come together again when they put me down.
You can meet somebody at a club. You can meet somebody at a restaurant. But maybe that person is not on the same page. Maybe that person is like, 'I'm starting out, I don't want to get married now.' Or, 'I don't want to have kids.'
Distrust won’t do good to you. But still if you ever do. Doubt you husband, Maybe doubt your wife. But never suspect, your kid’s father, or the mother of your child.
I feel that there is a decision people make to either engage in a legitimately ridiculous process to get your kid into school, or choose not to engage in that so much, and end up finding a nice local school that fits.
I should be getting photographs of me with my arm around these people like restaurant owners do, because eventually I am going to have to prove to my kids that once I was an actor!
I wasn't afraid of anything until I had a kid. Then I was terrified because immediately I could imagine a hundred ways in which I could not protect him.
The school plays needed kids that were big and bold and weren't afraid to be on stage, and I fit that bill, so I was expected to do it. And then I went to college, and the exact same thing happened.
In Los Angeles there's, like, this awful image because the girls are so skinny. I don't think it's attractive whatsoever, and I also think that it gives a bad image to kids that are in their early teens. It's not healthy.
That's what I paint, I paint people. They're portraits, but you won't always be pleased with the way you look in my paintings. Which is fine, I guess. Unless you're buying it, and it's of your kid!
Governor Romney has said nothing about preschool. I think that giving the poorest kids in America wonderful preschool, and three years of it, starting when they are two-and-a-half, is absolutely crucial.
Owners who buy aggressive dogs for security may be kidding themselves: The chances that the victim of a fatal dog attack will be a burglar or human attacker are 1-in-177. The odds that the victim will be a child are 7-in-10.
What I'd like to say is that I think the lives of every one of these little kids who are trapped in these unsafe and failing schools are too important, and I'm willing to take the abuse in order to help them.
The mass culture of childhood right now is astonishingly technical. Little kids know their Unix path punctuation so they can get around the Web, and they know their HTML and stuff. It's pretty shocking to me.
When I was a kid, my father would go to our school in the summer to sweep, mop, and wax the floors, room by room, hall by hall, week after week.
