Something happened in the nineties. There was a shift. I don’t want to blame it on grunge or the rise of indie – but that was basically it. It was seen as dirty and kind of ignorant to have these ambitions, to want to be a big band.
You learn real early to make a film and then duck, and basically that’s how I go about it.
Basically everything I’ve done in art, I was in possession of when I was 20 years old. I use a waste retrieval method of working. I’ll go back and use something that disgusted me 15 years ago but that I had enough sense to think about. Some artists change dramatically. I see my work more like history being written.
I was actually under a lot of heaviness when I was younger. I thought of myself as an old soul. I was very obsessed with death. Basically, I didn’t really have a youth – I sublimated all that into my identity and my music.
I’m talking to you and it’s basically a direct communication, whereas if I’m writing a letter to you and you read the letter, there are like 12 extra deconstruction and reconstruction steps in the communication.
Well, I refer to ‘Celebrity Jeopardy ‘ as the short-bus ‘Jeopardy,’ because it is a lot easier. Like, there was a whole column basically naming stores in New York.
I enjoy just showing people other sides of me, especially everyone always sees me in my helmet and ski suit. It’s nice to just show everyone me, just me in my everyday clothes or just me in high heels or just me not in my ski gear, basically.
I wasn’t that wild about that. I told them basically if they were really going to want to bring back heavy metal to a program on MTV, then they are really going to have to get in touch with what real heavy metal is.
Let’s be real, I’m basically a drag queen.
You’re basically the sum of all the experiences you’ve ever had, and they’re sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.
General revenue – what taxpayers are willing to give government, what they think is fair to give government – is not going to grow at the same amount that the federal government basically forces us to spend on Medicaid.
I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‘Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?’
I was a hot-dog stand lady, I was an orphan housemother, I was a waitress 3 or 4 times. All of those jobs did not have good bosses. They basically told you what to do, when to do and when to hop. And I just didn’t like that very much.
Things that go on at Happy Times are very funny this year, and if you were watching last year, some of the people you saw then as basically extras emerge as real characters in their own right this season, at least to some degree.
Basically, I’m always coming up with ideas for mixing the things I want to draw with things targeted at children.
My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.
I’ve never once in my life had a tan – I’m basically a ghost!
I usually describe myself as an engineer; that’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.
I was in Kansas for about a month, and we worked most of the time in a very small town, so it felt like the production basically took the whole town over. In a way, we were the Martians in Kansas.
There is a song called ‘I Refuse,’ and I get a bit scolding, I suppose, in a way. But it all comes back to elements of hope, and in the case of that song, it’s basically, ‘Okay, you’re trying to suck me into this world of negativity, and I’m not going to go there. I’m going to live my own life.’
So basically it’s very simple: to start with, if you want to win the match, you shouldn’t be afraid of him. There are still many, many things to do, but above all this is the most important: Don’t be scared of him!
Sin is basically a denial of God’s right of possession.
I have a friend in New York who’s a stylist and I went over to her place because she’s got a lot of clothes. I basically ended up wearing most of it. So it’s all stuff that I brought over.
I have odd thumbs that are extremely flexible. I can bend them quite far down the back side of my hand, basically the opposite side you’d even try to attempt bending your thumb. Because of that, I’m a very good thumb wrestler.
I grew up in Oxnard, CA, and I went to a church called St. Paul, where I was playing drums. My mom had a strawberry company. The whole town of Oxnard is basically built on produce, and more particularly, strawberries.
Growing up on a farm, I saw that if I didn’t go to the military or go to school, and I knew my mom and my family wasn’t going to be able to send me to school out of their pocket, so it basically came down to athletics. I knew I didn’t want to work on a farm. I knew I didn’t want to do manual labor the rest of my life.
Cricket is basically baseball on valium.
What would we be without the fans? They’re more important than me, because they make our sport great; they make things happen. We put on the show, but if people don’t react to it, we are nothing. So, the fans, basically we should roll out the red carpet for them.
Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.
My role in the Mamas and Papas was basically just to sing.
Basically, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person’s taste, and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator.
Basically the school system sets you up with what it wants to set you up with. They’re really good at it. I think they’re too good. Problem is, what they’re doing is conditioning kids to merely accept the culture at hand. But the rebels won’t accept it.
When I’m writing film music, I feel like I’m more a filmmaker than a composer. It’s more about what the film needs. I’m basically part of the team that’s creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it’s just one part of many.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They’ve heard it on the radio. They’ve seen it on the Internet. They’ve seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
In Camden, it’s just the atmosphere that gets me. It’s simple. It’s nice. It’s real. And it’s the people, too. I like to interact with them because they are normal and I am normal. People probably don’t expect an Arsenal player to come to Camden Lock and, basically, be a normal guy.
Certainly I’m still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it’s no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?
My youngest son has a very clear idea of what he wants to be when he grows up: he wants to be Indiana Jones, Batman and Jack Sparrow. Yes, all three at the same time. So he basically wants to be an archaeologist who wears tights and fights crimes on pirate ships. That’s pretty cool, huh?
The U.S. basically wrote the rules and created the institutions of globalisation.
Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.
I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.
I have a lot of cultures within me – I’m basically chop suey.
It’s a very naive idea to think that the chef is cooking everything, and, on top of it, is irreplaceable. That would mean that basically he is the only genius, and there are idiots all around him, which doesn’t make sense.
I basically left Texas with no money. I was making $3.50 working in some mall, so I didn’t have a lot of cash. I took $1,000 and headed to California. Along the way I stopped in Vegas because I had always wanted to see Caesar’s Palace. So I stopped there and won $2,500 on a slot machine! It was amazing.
I was always a character actor, basically, that sometimes looks like a leading man.
I tend not to really think about what other people say. I’d rather just try and focus on what I’m doing, try and win basically.
The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It’s a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.
Sometimes you think about the job that we, as actors, do. I take it very seriously, and I care very much about it, but I’m paid to make believe. When you’re a kid, you go to your friend’s house, and it’s, ‘Let’s pretend we’re both cowboys!’ Without belittling it, that’s basically what I do – I tell stories.
I believe in pan-Africanism. This means that in many things – the judiciary, sports, economics and trade – we want Africanism to be involved, which is basically more freedom for the people.
Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.
A fun pair of earrings is basically the finishing touch to any outfit; a nice watch is both practical and decorative, while the perfect unique bag is not only eye-catching but also timeless – it can be passed on to future generations.
