You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.
The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings.
On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.
You always have to be on at times, and occasionally people get upset if you say no to a picture when you're eating dinner or something, and that's kind of the hard part. Or if you get crazy rumors that swirl around you from time to time that are just silly.
I'll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it's really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.
My mom was on welfare and the occasional food stamp, but I have never participated in any of those governmental programs, even the ones that kind of work like education, scholarships and whatever, and I managed to do just fine.
Of course on air I use occasional hyperbole to tell a story.
'The Wonder Years' family was the kind where everything seemed to be bubbling and simmering with the occasional explosion. There were a lot of things that went unsaid in that family. In my family, everything is said - on the surface, you scream and yell about it, and three minutes later, you're all friends.
To be a white kid into hip-hop meant you'd sought it out and you practiced the art. Which meant dedication and diligence, as well as removing yourself at least occasionally from your own comfort zone and circumstances, and from people who looked like you.
My wife is pretty geeky and will occasionally quote 'Anchorman' at me.
