[My parents when I was a kid] would go, "It's a nice hot day. Why are you inside watching the TV?" And you go, "Well, 'cause it's better?"
We're seeing how the videos translate to the live shows and how the technology is really reaching kids.
I remember being in Atlantic City once when I was 18 or 19, and a sea of people were screaming and pulling their hair because I was there. It was weird. Nobody deserves adulation like that. I tried to explain it to my kids once. I said, 'Mommy used to be kind of cool, kind of like a Britney Spears.
Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them, she told us. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.
I was always a thin kid; I was an athlete.
Italy is hard to beat. It's a family-friendly experience, they like to see kids in restaurants, and at dinner you see all the adults at the table and all the kids at the other end of the table. Maybe they run off and go play.
I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa.
I was a huge fan of this band called Sparks. It was a pretty good inauguration to music since their music is quite complex. They were a little glammy, and me - being a kid and not really understanding the complexity of grown-up lyrics - I took the best out of it. But at the same time, it was mysterious enough and too far away from me for me to really be able to reach it. But they were my first love affair in the world of music. I loved that band.
Somebody saying something offensive to you, or insulting to you, is not pleasant, but it's part of life. And my belief is we need to shore ourselves up, and our kids up and our younger generation up to understand how to deal with that unpleasant reality, because we won't always be there to protect them. And you know, I for one want my own kids to know how to handle that.
When I was a kid, I looked at art as a way of blending everything. One of my favorite composers is Wagner - who coined the term "gesamtkunstwerk," or "total art work. " That's what was going on in the 19th century, and the 20th century just kept it going.
I wasn't even a theater kid in high school. I studied classical piano, and I ran track.
I never got on the course with my dad, but to be playing golf with my kids - that's a dream.
It's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go. You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. . . You have to let people see what you wrote.
I grew up a big comic book reader, as a kid, and I love the whole fanboy crowd.
America fell in love with the innocence of a kid who just was honest, saying, I did the best I could, and I had no formal training.
If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.
Each one of us has to take responsibility for reality, and present it so that kids will grow up familiar with that and say, OK. I've seen that before. I'm not afraid of it.
I have a completely worthless degree: a BS in Photojournalism from Boston University (BU). With this degree, I suppose I could have gotten a job teaching grade school kids how to photograph their relatives, but knowing about B&W photo processing and developing and how to shoot a picture story is good basic info that every photographer should have.
I've deliberately tried to calm myself down because eventually I want to be a good role model to my kids.
I do feel a lot of times like I'm out of my league with my kids in terms of what my responsibility is.