I was a very sickly kid. While I was in the hospital at age 7, my Dad brought me a stack of comic books to keep me occupied. I was hooked.
My dad is an engineer and works on green energy, so I'm very aware of what it takes to keep a modern home running and how we can simplify.
I was born and raised in East Los Angeles by a single mom who had three biological kids and adopted four more. I never met my dad.
I worked at a jewelry store to pay the bills when I first moved to N.Y.C., and I always loved the phrase 'Semi Precious.' So I wanted to just call the band Semi Precious, but my dad told it was kinda sissy, so I added Weapons.
Dad worked in the same shop, behind the same counter, five or six days a week, for 38 years, and hated it.
With 'The Sixth Sense,' my dad and I discussed how this was not so much a horror story as a story about communication. I understudied with my dad, in a sense. It made a huge difference.
I've been a skier since I was 2 or 3, skiing with my dad in northern New York and Vermont.
Dad met Mom in 1983 during the lead-up to the 1984 games. She was an Olympic downhill skier. In those days, the winter and summer games were held in different cities but in the same year, so there was more intermingling of winter and summer athletes at social functions.
My family is all obsessed with comedy. I grew up watching a lot of comedy in the house. I used to watch Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy with my dad. But my mom is more into slapstick stuff.
When I was young, I was the kid who would call my dad from a slumber party to beg him to come pick me up.
One of the things that I first remember wanting to be was a 'geolisty' - that was the best I could say when I was a kid. That was right after I stopped wanting to be a fireman or a truck driver. Because my dad is a paleontologist who worked with the Smithsonian, I got to see the bones up close and the exhibits behind the scenes there.
Dad bought me a toy drum one Christmas, and I eventually destroyed it. I wanted a real drum and he bought me a snare drum. Dad continued to buy me one drum after the other.
I thank my mum, dad, and home for keeping me in touch with my own country and my own land. I can be in the studio with Snoop Dogg or singing for Oprah, but I'm still me.
My dad was a soccer player. He didn't know anything about basketball - nothing.
By the time I was seven, I did a sonnet at Shakespeare's Globe theatre for Shakespeare's birthday because my dad had been at the first season of the Globe and was friends with the artistic director. Somehow, that lead to me doing a sonnet!
I can't tell you how many letters I've gotten where someone showed 'Sordid Lives' to their mom, dad, or family and used it as a tool to come out.
I grew up listening to a lot of rap music. My dad's a DJ from Brooklyn, and he's a very soulful guy, so he always spun a lot of hip-hop, and that's where I get a lot of my hip-hop influence.
I grew up in the South Bronx in the 1970s. My dad worked in IT, and my mom was a teacher.
My parents were farmers' kids from South Dakota. My dad was an engineer. I wanted to be responsible and major in something pragmatic.
My dad didn't want me to listen to Zeppelin, I think because it reminded him of his wilder days, and now he's a retired Southern Baptist minister.
