'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.
My mentor was Clara Ward of the famous Ward gospel singers of Philadelphia. And my dad was my coach. He coached me. And just my natural love for music is what drove me.
New Year's Eve, we're going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section.
When I was in high school at Northeast Catholic in Philadelphia in the late '30s, I found that drawing caricatures of the teachers and satirizing the events in the school, then having them published in our school magazine, got me some notoriety.
I've always been intellectually restless, but it is the building part of it that most interests me. It is the constructing of the team that is my favorite part. Anyone who is familiar with the history of the A's franchise, even dating back to Philadelphia, knows that every five or 10 years, you have to tear it apart and rebuild it.
I grew up in Mount Airy, a middle-class enclave in the Northwestern area of Philadelphia.
I have quite a few good friends in Philadelphia who were police officers.
We were in Philadelphia when Manager Pat shifted me from third to short, and right off the bat, I knew I had found my dish. Footwork was more a part of the new position than it had been at third. I suddenly felt I had sprouted wings. A world of new possibilities opened for me.
I've seen with my own eyes what the effects of Israeli neuroscience research is. It was in my congressional district in Philadelphia that ReWalk, the Israeli company that makes the exoskeleton suit that enables paraplegics to walk, carried out their trials.