I grew up producing hip-hop music, actually. I was producing for my friends, who were all rappers in upstate New York, where I'm from. But in the eighth grade, we had this songwriting contest in our school, and I got really excited about it and actually won. After that, I just kept making music forever.
I started a feta cheese company, Euphrates, in upstate New York in 2002.
I started doing repertory theatre in upstate New York when I was 15, went back when I was 16, and by that time decided that I really wanted to study drama seriously and go to an acting conservatory called Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
I do all I can to maintain good health. I eat mostly plants, as Michael Pollan would say. I get a lot of exercise. I lead a purposeful daily life. I stay current with the dentist. I made the formative decision of where to live over thirty years ago when I settled in a 'main street' small town in upstate New York.
Rest assured that my support for any eventual reform package will be based firmly upon what is in the best interests of the people of Upstate New York, not any party or president.
At ABC Cocina and Kitchen, 90 percent of our produce and vegetables come from Union Square, and that's all from upstate New York farmers. We are simply committed to this idea of local, organic food.
I don't shoot guns. I don't know how to do that. I grew Upstate New York, so I fought with my fists.
Carnegie was a life-long dream because I was a born New Yorker. I was born in upstate New York, and we've played Radio City, and we've played The Beacon, but Carnegie was this mystical place, you know?
When we were kids, my favorite thing was coming to upstate New York where my family is from and hanging out with my grandparents' friends pre-Internet and them asking if we had stores or 'Do you have TV in Alaska?'
We had moved cross-country from upstate New York to Kansas in the heat wave of 1980, with two cars, no air-conditioning, and a black dog. I can still see the infernal temperature of a hundred and nineteen degrees on a bank sign somewhere near Ohio.
