I enjoyed a cartoon show called 'Recess' throughout my high school career. The target audience for that show was 8-11 years old.
If you can reach people in their pockets, on their lunch breaks, on their commutes to and from work, on recess at school, and make things they want to see, that's an amazing thing for a show like ours.
When I first arrived, I likened Congress to being back in school again as a freshman. Well, just like school, we have an 'August recess,' but don't let the name fool you - it's not even close to a vacation.
I took dance from a very early age, although my first recital, I remember refusing to go onstage. I think I was three. It's funny because that stage was also my high school theater stage.
When I think about it, I was working very hard the summer before I applied to graduate school. I was going to the library every day in the summer. I read a play a day for about three months. I was taking audition classes, and I was reciting lines to myself and acting as my own scene partner. But I was having fun.
I remember how as I kid I would love stories of every kind - whether they were narrated in school or what I read in books. Storytelling would always appeal to me, I would take part in poetry reciting, dramatics, choreography and debates. There was this fascination for performance, which finally culminated in a professional sphere.
I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well.
When I was eight or nine, I wrote a new version of 'Peter Pan' for the school play. They didn't use it - I imagine it was unperformable - but as recompense for not doing my script, I was offered any role, and instinctively went for Captain Hook. I came on trying to be terrifying, but everyone laughed at me.
I didn't own a record player when I was younger. I just played every day after school and then started gigging around town. I heard bands and songs through friends of mine, but a lot of what I picked up on was learned by traveling through college towns.
There was a recording studio in my school, and I knew this kid who had a key, so I'd write lyrics in school while I was in class, and then, in a 10-minute break, I recorded the song 'Hurt' in one go at the school studio.
If I miss coaching that much, I could go to some little school where they didn't recruit, where all the kids wanted to go. I believe I could find somewhere to coach.
As a boy in school, I already had the drive to be No. 1. If I achieve my goals, OK, but if not, I always ask why and try to rectify myself.
As an ardent supporter of the Nietzschean conception of the eternal recurrence, I firmly believe that one cannot validate the totality of a life unless one accepts and embraces all the experiences that comprise it. That said, I sometimes wish I'd gone to film school.
I'm in the middle of my own 'Project Runway' challenge given to me by my daughter's preschool. All the parents have to make an outfit for their kids, for school pictures, made entirely out of recycled objects. I can not believe I have homework.
I got a feeling I had loads when I was in primary school, 'cause I had red hair; you know, like Duracell.
I check Facebook to see how everybody from high school's doing. I go on Reddit to see what my weirdos are talking about. Then I go on Tumblr to see what my feminists are talking about.
Going to school, sort of not realising that caring about things was going to make me stand out and make me weird, and I think also being a redhead and being tall, bigger than the other kids... Anything that makes you different at school makes you a target.
In British culture, redheads get teased at school. But I've grown up enough to realize I love my hair.
I've been recognized a couple times. I get people staring at me, and I think in their heads they're thinking, 'How do I know her? Did I go to high school with her?' I think it's not registering yet.
I moved to New York for school right after I turned 18, but I started getting into trouble - so I went home to L.A. to regroup.
