When it's your will versus another person's will, the worst thing you can do is smile in their face when you're competing. That's what I tell our guys. Go have fun.
It's just that fun atmosphere, working on the car, being with the guys. This is exactly what I needed.
The kids look at me, 'Ah, you're my hero.' I want to teach those kids. 'Hey listen, God is my hero. He died on the cross for my sins, and He's the one. That's how I wanna live - like Him - and I want you guys to do the same thing.
My message to a lot of guys is, if you like school and you like education, baseball is gonna be there, and you can get some of the same great competition in college that you do in the low minor leagues.
I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit.
Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I'd play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes.
I am a big car enthusiast. I totally understand guys like Jay Leno who have a thousand cars. But asking me my favorite car would be like asking my favorite song or favorite food - it changes everyday.
You have to give guys tools to win with, and if they have success with them then they believe in you. If you don't have anything in your bag to work with, then they won't believe.
I seem to get cast as one of two extremes. Either I play the butch heavy or totally nice guys.
I approach serious subjects, and I like to have the good guys win and have the parents among the good guys.
You think about when you're kids and see these guys on TV, and now you're in the same clubhouse as Chipper Jones and Bobby Cox.
These guys were the best. They were the best at their positions and made playing the game easier. And at the same time it made it so much more enjoyable.
As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think 'actor' and see some easy money.
Some guys work 125 to 130 rodeos a year. They're just goin' all the time.
I was also very lucky to be a teammate of two of the greatest players to have ever played the game. I learned very early on by playing for Frank Robinson and with Henry Aaron that even the greatest players in the game were just one of the guys.
I've put in 63 years now in the big leagues as a player, coach, manager. And now just being around these young guys, it keeps you going pretty good.
I think I felt compelled in a way because if I hadn't written the part, I never would have been offered the part. There are at least 10 guys who would have been offered the part before me.
I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut, nice guys. So it's strange.
When you think about little league football, high school, and even on to college even more so, you're dealing with a lot of guys that are prideful, that think they're the best - a lot of alpha males. So, typically, you've got to have a guy that can control those guys, and, when he talks, they know he means business. He's a serious guy.
To put it simply, as a black man, I started watching films at the age of six, and I've since seen the bad guys changing race - between the African savages, to the Native Americans, and then the blacks and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Look at 'Rambo': it's exactly that.
I have arm-wrestled here and there... guys seem to want to test my strength.
I'm not a fast, stream-of-consciousness lyricist at all - I know some guys who are, and if there is one skill I wish I had, it's that.
I think sometimes you can study guys and build them into giants that they are not.
When people ask me what I miss most about the game, it's being in the locker room and getting to know the guys. Back in those days, we had roommates. We had to talk basketball and that was a great way to understand the game itself and form those lasting relationships.
I love clubbing - the abandon of it, the release of dancing, and being with my friends and the people I love. For me, it's never been about going out to meet guys or to show off my latest dress - it's the music.
I think you're a product of your influences, your environment. You see guys with so much talent, but they got the wrong people around them telling them the wrong things. They wind up going down the wrong path.
But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.
But when you're a working actor - and that's what you keep saying in your head, how blessed you are to have a job - and you are working with heavyweights, working with the best guys in TV, it's pretty cool. Exhausting, but cool.
I loved the idea of how all these guys always are stealing other guys' girls and I was like, 'There's no female anthem for a girl stealing another guy's girl,' and that is the coolest thing ever.
I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.'
I'm very happy to have been a one-club man, but I wouldn't shoot down guys who have gone off and played in multiple clubs either because, essentially, it is an earning that people are after.
You know, sometimes guys work with other guys because they're buddies off the track, not necessarily because they're buddies on the track. Sometimes you've got that going against you or for you.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida, and I did what most little kids do. I played a little baseball, did a few other things like that, but I always had the sense of being an outsider, and it wasn't until I saw pictures in the magazines that a couple other guys skate, I thought, 'Wow, that's for me,' you know?
I mean, it's not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden. It's the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time - thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.
I started acting in junior high. I was in 'Guys and Dolls.' I was Stanley Kowalski. In my head, before coming to Hollywood, I thought, 'I can play anything.'
Guys are so not into high-waisted things. I love high-waisted jeans. We all think that high-waisted things are flattering and awesome and beautiful and we're rocking it, and guys are always like, 'Ugh, she's wearing those high-waisted pants.'
