I did some modeling here and there but nothing really big. There was a time when I simply bummed around, waiting for offers.
I flew fighters for the Navy in San Diego for three years, went and did my post-graduate education, and then I was a test pilot in Patuxent River, Maryland, for a few years. I was back in the fleet in the Navy when I was selected to come back here to NASA to become an astronaut.
Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.
The history of the past, a hundred years from now, won't be the history of the past that we learned in school because much more will have been revealed, and adjectives we can't even imagine will have been brought to bear on what we did learn in school.
Even if I wrote a song about math or animals or whatever, there would still be the question, 'Why did you write about that? And what does it say about you?'
I think that the continuity of what I do as an editor with what I did when I started out 40 years ago is very direct. The delivery system is changing and will continue to, but the actual interaction between publisher and author is exactly the same.
You put as much effort as you can when they're young into trying to teach them to be good people or make them the best they can be, and they're older now, my kids. I'm at that stage where I let them go, and you just hope that all that nurturing you did earlier on sticks, and you launched good people out there.
I was with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, really in the middle of nowhere, about 80 miles south of Baghdad. And it was almost midnight, and I got a computer message from the home office of the Washington Post asking me to call them. I did call them and was told that I'd won the Pulitzer Prize.
I feel the same magic about 'Angel Falls' that I did with 'Twin Peaks' and 'Mod Squad.'
I really did sneak into Broadway shows, starting when I was 12.
We were given clear concrete tools. The course did a great job demystifying the art of fiction writing and fostering confidence. The instructor brought complex concepts down to earth. I will miss coming here every week.
My family wanted church to be a place where we all went together. My dad was always traveling, and my mom was always working. School is where I did Bible classes and studied God.
One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit.
In sports, you play up to the level of your opponent, and I did some of my best work with Chevy, and I'm so grateful to have worked opposite him. He was a handful and a challenge, and he made me step up to the plate.
I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth.
We had four guys in the family, so somebody was always hitting somebody or chasing somebody or getting mad or fighting or wrestling - that was just what you did. So when you're the youngest, it's good for you. You figure out real early how to get out of headlocks and holds.
As a child, I used 'gay' as a bad word, as in, 'That's so gay.' All my friends did.
I did 'Othello' at the Oregon Shakes - I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two and a half years. That's where my training is.
I moved to New York - I attended NYU, did a BFA in Acting at NYU. I was really into hip-hop, so I started battling, like '8 Mile.' I used to rap battle.
I've been fortunate in life to benefit from family, educators, work colleagues, and a set of mentors and sponsors, all of whom did not hesitate to offer and support me with every opportunity to achieve what I set out to do.
I was an early reader, reading even before kindergarten, and since we did not have books in my home, my older brother, Alexander, was responsible for our trip every week to the public library to exchange books already read for new ones to be read.
It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.
Anything I did with the WWE was not therapeutic by any stretch of the imagination. The reality is that nobody's going to tell you that, because they have an umbilical cord hooked to Vince McMahon. I, ladies and gentlemen, do not.
I was born at home in rural Kentucky, in 1942, in a house that my father Howard had built. He did most of the construction himself and built it on land that his father had given him when he married my mother Faye.
Music was always the distraction, so it was the obvious choice to pursue. My dad always said to find a job I love to do, that way it wouldn't feel like a job. So I did that.
I know that Daddy had an important job. He was working to change the world so everyone would love wildlife like he did. He built a hospital to help animals, and he bought lots of land to give animals a safe place to live.
In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.
I can't imagine doing anything cooler or better than what we did on 'The Stage' and felt like we're firing on all cylinders.
My kids have never seen me scream at anybody. They've never seen an argument. There's never been even a cold silence. And those are things that I grew up with because my parents did end up divorcing.
I felt obligated to change music to art, the same way that Galileo proved the Earth was round to the world and that the Sun did not stand still.
I did a lot of acting, funnily enough, unprofessionally, as a kid. From when I was 10 years old until I was about 19, I was always doing little sketches with my friends, and doing different accents and voices.
Particularly in my early days, I did very little rewriting.
You see somebody on a football field make a great, athletic 70-yard run, but the athleticism is immeasurable. It's undoubtedly athletic, but compared to somebody else who did something else, how do you compare it? That's the great part of track and field. It's a test, but with results that you can compare to others.
If we lost, then who won? Did Al Qaida win? When on the floor of the House of Representatives they cheer - they cheer - when they pass a withdrawal motion that is a certain date for surrender, what were they cheering? Surrender? Defeat?
I never had any desire to defend myself, and never did I seriously think about it.
I did once answer the question 'What would you say on your tombstone?' I know what I would say: 'Mario Cuomo, 1932 - dash,' and, 'He tried.' That's it.
