I was never the kind to throw parties for my birthday. I remember how embarrassed I used to be when they'd make me cut a cake on the sets, and the unit would sing 'Happy Birthday.'
I can sing 'Happy Birthday' to you in twelve different places, but one of them is going to make you feel a certain thing, maybe it's a vulnerability, maybe an innocence, maybe another way is sexy and soulful or bluesy whatever it is, but with singers, exploring keys, I think, is important.
When I did 'Happy Birthday,' I wrote the treatment for the video before I wrote the record. And once I wrote the video, I had a clear understanding of what I wanted; I created the soundtrack to that video.
I began seeing certain things happen in my life and other people's lives and getting inspired by it and writing about it. And that's where you get 'Happy Birthday' from and 'Ross Capicchioni' from or you even get 'I'm Sorry' from.
When I was in elementary school, I used to write letters to myself. I'd write letters and go 'Dear Kristen-at-16-years-old, happy birthday. I hope you're doing something.'
Anybody can have a birthday. It requires nothing. Murderers have birthdays. It's the opposite of anything that I believe in. And I don't like at work where you stop everything to sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone. I feel like that's for children.
If I have the power to post 'Happy Birthday' on someone's Facebook page and make them feel really good, it feels really good to make other people feel really good. I love it. I'm a huge Facebook and Twitter person. And I love talking to my fans. It's fun.
Facebook lets me be lazy the way a man in a stereotypical 1950s office can be lazy. Facebook is the digital equivalent of my secretary, or perhaps my wife, yelling at me not to forget to wish someone a happy birthday or to inform me I have a social engagement this evening.
I turned 40 on the set of the reunion show for 'Sheer Genius,' so it wasn't a hideous birthday because I had everyone on the cast and crew sing 'Happy Birthday' to me, and I won $10,000 for being the fan favorite. It was really liberating to turn 40 and realize that I felt very comfortable with myself and knew who I was.
A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa on. But novelists, damn us, still need true natures - so we can give them to our protagonists. And so readers can vaguely predict how they'll behave when we trap them in 'situations' that they can't IM their way out of.
