I was working on the farm to get in shape, about a mile away from my parents. You know, I did everything as a kid to stay in shape - jogging, work on the farm, driving the tractor. I'll never forget.
Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
My parents were Democrats, and I was a Democrat. And John Wayne was a Republican.
To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.
I still do lots of gigs where I'm the support act and people are chatting through my set, but I've got better at grabbing attention. I mean, my parents would play on bills with people like Judas Priest and get booed all the way through. But they stuck it out, got tough.
My parents, I don't know about 'strict,' but I would say they were fair and judicious, you know?
I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
Everyone from my high school and junior college are now doctors and lawyers. I came from that kind of environment, but I chose to go on another path, even though I did promise my parents that I would get a degree. After that, I could do anything I wanted; that was the deal.
My parents are doctors, both my sisters are doctors, so I figured I'd just be a doctor too. Sometime in my junior year, I had this sudden realization that maybe that wasn't for me. I was sort of lost at sea.
I dropped out of college my junior year to do Saturday Night Live, and I didn't even consult my parents. They were very supportive because they had no choice.
My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. But I don't think I would have been very happy. I'd be in front of the jury singing.
I want to make music and songs about things that real musicians and artist aren't able to make songs about - you wouldn't hear Justin Bieber making a song about homework, or, like, you wouldn't see someone make a song with their parents on the track.
My parents split up when I was nine years old, and I started taking karate lessons at that point. I was very dedicated to my karate, and I looked up to my karate instructor kind of like a second father.
I told Miss Kay we need to make sure our children don't turn out like I turned out, so they were raised up around biblical instruction. That mixed with discipline - the discipline code, I call it. They just had a lifestyle of seeing their parents do good things.
One important reason to stay calm is that calm parents hear more. Low-key, accepting parents are the ones whose children keep talking.
In publishing 'JFK: Reckless Youth' almost twenty years ago, I had gotten into trouble myself with the Kennedys. Not because of my portrait of JFK - which was highly laudatory - but because I had described his parents, Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, in less-than-flattering terms.
I was under 18, and to leave Kenya to come to the United States, to get a passport, you had to be 18. So I lied and said I was 19 to get the passport, because otherwise, I had to have permission from my parents, and my parents would never have let me come.
Growing up in New Jersey, teen clubs were your life. I'm not kidding! That was it. I was literally tied up five days a week with teen clubs; my parents would drop me off. Like, I didn't even drive.
When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.
