The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren't any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood.
My father works for Xerox and fixes those gigantic copy machines that are about 10 feet wide.
If I was in love with someone, I would get their picture out of the school yearbook and do portraits. If I was curious about sex, I would draw pictures of it. There were no books for me to look at. Then I would go find my father's matches to burn the paper.
The biggest problem was convincing my father that organic food was worth eating. All he could think of was the nut loaf with yeast gravy that my mother made in the Seventies.
My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'
The young man, born to rule England, which his dying father commended to him. Once his father is dead, London will cavil. The kingdom is taken back from his son.
My father was an actor. Both of my older brothers are actors. My younger sister is an actress. For me, that's my job; that's my craft. But then all through school and through drama school, I was gigging and running nights and playing in bands, and I just didn't want to let that go.
My father was a particularly zealous Christian Scientist, but young Christian Science children, who have little choice but to believe what their parents are telling them, are taught that illness originates in errors in their parents' and, eventually, their own thinking.
