When I found out I was going to be on CBS every morning, my first phone call was to Jenny Craig. Ten days later, I'd lost nine pounds. Now I even take the plan's popcorn with me to the movies.
Craig T. Nelson, who played my grandfather on 'Parenthood,' gave me a lot of advice at the end of the show. I'm really insecure, and I get uncomfortable with things, and he gave me a lot of advice about that.
My main goal is to connect with the crowd. I leave room for improv. Whatever happens, happens. When I bring my band with me, it turns into the Craig Robinson comedy dance party.
After years of begging, I got my parents to get me a little Craig tape recorder, a reel to reel. Then I started recording voices, or recording Jonathan Winters off television and stuff like that.
Writing plays supplied for me everything that painting didn't, which is the ability to tell stories in real time, in a real space, in three dimensions, in flesh and blood. I realized I had been trying to cram all this narrative into my paintings, but ultimately painting was a static medium. So it just opened up this whole new door.
To me, basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.
I have a pathological terror of falling through ice. I nearly drowned once. I fell off a boat and got a cramp, and was rescued by an oil-rig diver, a great bear of a man who simply leant into the water and scooped me out with one finger.
There are only three things that stop me sleeping: hunger, the odd bad dream and cramp in the arches of my feet - it's crippling, as if somebody's trying to tie your foot in a reef knot.
My parents were always pretty free with me. They were of the school of thought that if you really cramp down on someone and tell them not to do all these things, it's gonna become like forbidden fruit.
People like 'Crank,' some people like 'Redemption.' I'm just happy to do things that satiate a different part of me, that test me a little bit.
I love how it feels to go into the gym, crank all my favorite music and literally sweat out all of the things that stress me out.
I run everywhere I go. You wake up, and you do it, and you make the time. I bring my son, Duke, with me on a lot of the runs. I have this great jogging stroller, and he loves it. It's a great time for the two of us. We'll crank out a run, and he has the time of his life.
My first single I was nominated for a Grammy with 'Crank That,' and I lost a Grammy to Kanye West, but it was still such a big deal for me to be nominated anyway.
Music to me was never something that I could listen to while reading a book. Especially when I was studying music, if I was going to listen to music, I was going to put on the headphones or crank the stereo, and by God, I was going to sit there and just listen to music. I wasn't going to talk on the phone and multitask, which I can't do anyway.
Without Metallica, I wouldn't be doing what I am doing. I have every Metallica record, of course, and I would spend hours on drums in my parents' basement with the stereo behind me, cranking those records and learning Lars' drum beats, beat by beat.
I'm old enough and cranky enough now that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I'd tell them where to put it.
December used to be very difficult for me. For many years, I fought the transition to the new year, was generally exhausted at the end of the year, and just wanted to hide. I described myself as a 'cranky Jewish kid who felt left out by Christmas.'
Nobody else took what I was doing seriously, so nobody would want to work with me. I was thought to be a bit eccentric and maybe cranky.
Girls are scary. Large groups of girls scare the crap out of me.
I grew up poor in crappy situations... various crappy situations. What kept me sane was reading and music. I had so many different literary tastes growing up, be it fiction like Stephen King or Piers Anthony or non-fiction like reading Hunter S. Thompson essays or reading the Beats. I was a huge fan of the Beat movement.
