I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.
I have prevented my kids from watching MTV at home. It's not safe for kids.
Don't send your kids to Baylor. And don't send your kids to [Texas] A&M... Texas A&M used to be a conservative university. It's lost all of its conservatism.... My daughter went there. You know, she had horrible experiences with coed dorms and guys who spent the weekends in the rooms with girls.
If you look at movies with Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart and all the rest of it, none of them looks like a boy. They always looked like mature men. The audience didn't want to go and see kids.
I travel around and hear from so many kids. Their parents say they were always very picky but they watch the show and they want to try stuff. The show is entertainment, but I think it has done so much for the public perception of what food can be.
I think the patterns are set very early when the kids are young. But at the same time, there are some flavors kids just don't like.
I even got letters form kids in hospitals saying the music is what keeps them going, and that really touched my heart.
This is the period from ages 60 to 90 in which many people have a new sense of freedom, kids grown up, retired from formal work etc., about their possibilities. They can either crown a career, start something new, or launch themselves into a meaningful social enterprise. A phase of life that was once seen as an end can now more accurately be enjoyed as a beginning.
Historically different groups find different things in each comics, as with *X-Men*. Gay readers find parallels to living a closeted lifestyle or choosing to come out and be openly gay. Black readers find a relevance to their lives growing up in America as a black guy. Picked-on brainy kids find a metaphor for being an outsider. It's a simple enough, and direct enough metaphor that it has different shades for different people. And so each reader to some degree gets out of it what they bring to it. That's one of the things I think that makes *X-Men* such a strong property.
As for hobbies, I don't really read or watch TV. I'm very active. I like surfing, skiing, riding bikes with my kids, and working out with my friends.
Kids are very visual, and they might not eat a food just because of its colour.
I have an elaborate wind-down ritual, which combines reading, ESPN, movies, and jamming the blues on my keyboard. There's still a part of me that's a little kid who is psyched because I no longer have a bedtime!
I don't have a formula. Every time an actor wants me to hold their hand, I hold their hand. If they say, "Stay," I say "Okay, respect." You know? "I'm right over here." A kid, if I need to give a line-reading, I'll start acting out the part for the kid and just mimic the kid. You know? Whatever it takes.
It's hard to transport myself forward in time, and the scarcity of opportunity back then kind of fueled my ambition. But back in my day, every family I knew had a Super 8 camera, and that's what I first picked up. We adapt to the technology we have available. But for the kids of today, they can really make something great with what is available.
You want everything for your kids that you didn't have, but that that very desire can pollute and corrupt the good, basic American pluckiness, resourcefulness and down-to-earthness that we like to pride ourselves with, and result in aspirations of wealth and high culture.
When you really do feel like an alien, and you really do feel like a space creature, and you really do feel you want to experiment and dress up and be different every day, to find what looks best but never stick to one thing... Just the fact that that was offered to those kids during that time is pretty remarkable.
You gain all of the rights and privileges and respects that are afforded the majority, and that's ultimately what matters for your kids, or anybody - because we're all innocent of the fact that we are the way we are. But it also means the ways that you coped, and the languages and narratives and points of view that you had no choice but to make from the sidelines - and that often carried with them really acute readings of dominant society - those no longer have the same need.
I liked to act in plays when I was a kid, and then in college. But that's the last time I really acted. I always loved it. But my interests were more in looking at the whole, rather than getting completely swallowed up in a single part of the whole.
I think by around the time I was about 8 or 9, the idea of filmmaking probably took hold. I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of Romeo and Juliet, and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.
Rich countries don't need as many children. We used to need kids to work in the fields as farm hands, to crawl on their bellies into coal mines. Well, kids are more like luxury objects now.
You know, throughout the world, throughout history, when countries get rich, they stop having kids.
Like anything, you don't force kids to cook. It just becomes part of life - have them be around it, keep them informed - talk about it. I try to relay my passion for it in these ways. The second you try to force anything on your own kid, they rebel.
What I do with my kids is I tell them I love them every day, but also I tell them the truth.
I want people raising my kid that see along the same lines of values and issues as I do.
The kids are really smart. They are sharp and they're not yet bent over by the system. I think there's a wonderful intelligence in today's youth, and it's a part of growing up.
