I was eight years old when Miley Cyrus made her debut on Disney Channel's 'Hannah Montana' and beginning my senior year of high school when she delivered the VMAs performance that single-handedly butchered the teddy-bear industry.
Why was I so single-minded about acting? Acting wasn't in the family; no one went to the theatre in my street. It wasn't encouraged in my school.
Andy Stasiuk was a newsman of the old school of front-page journalism - tough, knowledgeable, cynical, single-minded and fun. He covered the news as a happy warrior in an era of cutthroat editorial competition.
At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.
People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I'm very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.
I definitely tried to skateboard in middle school, and being from San Diego, surf and skate culture is a big, prevalent thing. But I was not that good - I was kind of a chubby kid and didn't totally master skating.
I quit high school to be a pro skateboarder out of Ohio, which is just asinine, but it was meant to be.
Punk rock and skateboarding took the 'school' out of living your life, and I related to learning as I went, doing a lot of different things that I liked, when I liked. Consequently, I'm mediocre at all of the above, but still stoked on being a lifetime student of music, skating, painting, writing, etc.
So I majored in Drama, did all the plays that were possible to do, skated through school in order to be in every production on stage or backstage in whatever capacity and I came to New York looking for work in the summers.
I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.
I spent my childhood in the country and started reading even before going to school. There was nothing else in my life but sketching and reading.
I learned the truth at seventeen, That love was meant for beauty queens, And high school girls with clear skinned smiles, Who married young and then retired.
I'm an OG. I was an OG when I was 16. I was an OG when I made the decision I don't want to go to school anymore and start skipping to make music.
I was at the Apollo Theater all the time, skipping school, and I worked in a barbershop. That's how I started with doo-wop. Now I've come full circle. I did all kinds of music. I used to work on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.
You're in high school, and you're telling your friends that you're skipping lunch to go write poetry, and they were all questioning my sexuality.
I probably lived more of a rock-star life when I was 15. I got in trouble a fair amount. I cared more about hanging out and skipping school than studying.
I was a mad, impressionable kid, and every skit from 'The College Dropout' was telling me how I didn't need school.
My dad was fine about me doing modelling at 16 because I always said school was important to me. I always chose my jobs carefully so I wouldn't have to take too much time off. It got harder toward the end with my A-levels; there were sleepless nights, and I was doing my homework on the plane coming home, but I pulled through.
When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause.
Even when I was a kid, I always showed up late for school every day. It got to the point where they had my late slips filled for every day of the school year in advance, so all they had to do was fill in what time I got there.
