My brothers and sisters, may the spirit of love which comes at Christmastime fill our homes and our lives and linger there long after the tree is down and the lights are put away for another year.
So we're considering doing a new Christmas album, because there's been Christmas episodes since then, and maybe finally do the version of 'The Most Offensive Song Ever' with lyrics intact.
Every Christmas now for years, I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular, it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood.
I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.
After school, my mom would pick me up and I would just go to visit my dad in the recording studio, and I would see him working with Mark Hamill or hear him doing the 'Transformers' or a 'G.I. Joe' or the 'Rugrats.'
My off-the-field heroes, the people who gave me the values to live by and who inspired me with their hard work and unselfish dedication to their family, were my mom, Catherine, and my dad, William.
I was at Home Depot with my dad looking for paint when I got the call to open for Taylor Swift. That was wild, because I was crying in Home Depot, and people were looking at me funny.
I got really bad grades, so I'd hide my report card from my dad. My mom was in on it, too, because she knew he'd be furious. I probably would've gone to boot camp. Seriously.
My mom is in the navy and my dad works for the army, but I never called them 'sir' or 'ma'am' or anything like that, and we never really moved around a lot because both my parents were stationed in D.C.
My mom and dad were divorced, and although they got along very well, my mom thought American television was reprehensible, so I was raised on the BBC. I kind of agreed with her. We watched American news, though.
You do need parental guidance and I was in a great position with both my mum and dad. They split when I was a baby but even though I stayed with my mom they were both very much involved in my upbringing.
My dad signed me up for some acting classes at a place in Honolulu, and there I got to audition for some L.A.-based talent agents. I got a few 'callbacks' and so my mom and I decided to fly to California and check it out!
Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad.
I was born in Japan, so for me, Uniqlo is a family brand. My granny used to wear Uniqlo. And my Italian dad wore Uniqlo. I wore Uniqlo, of course.
When you grow up on a dairy farm, cows don't take a day off. So you work every day and my dad always said, 'No one can outwork you.'
My dad, being a jingle writer, and my mom, being a jingle singer, they hooked me up with some people when I was a kid that worked with children's jingle singing groups. I used to sing jingles as a kid.
My mom and my dad are still together, but so many of my friends who got married just a few years ago aren't. Maybe it's that we compare ourselves to our parents' generation, thinking, 'Who's still together, and are they happy?'
My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, ...
The emotions triggered by fiction are very real. When Charles Dickens wrote about the death of Little Nell in the 1840s, people wept - and I'm sure that the death of characters in J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' series led to similar tears.
My first western was 'Death Hunt' with Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin; that was where I learned to ride. The movie was based on a true story about a guy that eluded the Mounties in Canada. We were in Canada for six weeks riding horses.
Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their w...
