It's rare that you cut out something that is really good. You screen all of it, and when the audience doesn't respond, you cut out whatever is holding the story down.
As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us.
After watching my first World Series in 1977, I wanted to be Reggie Jackson. I bought a big Reggie poster. I ate Reggie candy bars. I entered a phase during which I insisted on having the same style of glasses Reggie had: gold wire frames with the double bar across.
In the end no segregationist scheme has withstood the force of a simple idea: equality under law.
If half-black Barack Obama had decided years ago to call himself white - which his genes certainly entitled him to do - his story would have carried very different meaning. If millions of part-black people had followed him into whiteness, then the N. A. A. C. P. would be in true crisis.
What we should celebrate more than diversity is what we do with it. How do we bring everyone in the tent and create something together? In a twenty-first century way that activates our true potential, we all need to become sworn-again.
When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've been the equivalent of a fastball pitcher - trying to use blazing speed and brute force to wow the people around me.
It all boils down to this: A person has only two options in life, to do something or to do nothing.
Chowder breathes reassurace. It steams consolation.
The perpetration of a crime is accompanied by illness!
Six months is the most you can ask of any fan in this day and age, with the Internet and all these new artists. I understand that my music is in a lot of mediums. Some people want me to make an R&B album. Some people want me to never sing again. I just don't want people to be able to draw comparisons between my old songs and my new ones.