The only interaction I had with my brothers is like negative attention where I'd basically egg them on into beating me up - which was delightful! Otherwise, it was me with a video camera jumping on a bed pretending to be the Ultimate Warrior or setting up my robots making a Transformers movie because I was a lonely kid.
No one was jumping up and saying, 'Yeah, let me give you money.' I had never held a camera in my hand - a home video camera, nothing. I had not directed.
As a kid, growing up, my heroes all had the Intercontinental Championship. Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Mr. Perfect, Ric Rude, all of them. And they were the people I looked up to and wanted to be like.
I have nothing against Sean Penn. I don't even mind that he ended up divorcing Madonna. I mean, I still like Shia LaBeouf even though he chose to star in Transformers, which turned out to be a movie about robots from space. That Talk. Which is just as bad as choosing to divorce Madonna, if you ask me
My brothers are so amazing. My older brother Ryan, he is probably the most generous person I know in my life. He's the one that kind of helps me and guides me. All of my brothers help me to be grounded, so I really try to be like my brothers because all of them are so nice and very kind, and I look up to them.
My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.
One day in Auschwitz I became so dispirited that I couldn't carry on. They had given me a beating, which wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. It was on a Sunday, and I said: 'I can't get up'. Then my comrades said: 'That's impossible, you have to get up, otherwise you're lost'. They went to a Dutch doctor, who worked with the German doctor. He came to me in the barracks and said: 'Get up and come to the hospital barracks early tomorrow morning. I'll talk to the German doctor and make sure you are admitted'. Because of that I survived.
My brother was probably one of the toughest kids from my neighborhood and he didn't make it easy on me. He made sure I was getting beat up as much as possible growing up. If he wasn't beating me up, he was making his friends beat me up.
One of the coolest moments for me is still when Kenny G came back to a venue to find me and personally tell me that he loved my song "Void of a Legend" and had watched the video several times. It's the ultimate feeling to get feedback like that from an artist you look up to
In the back I see many potential legends, some of them with warrior spirits. And you will do the same for them. You will decide if they live with the passion and intensity. So much so that you will tell your stories and you will make them legends as well. I am Ultimate Warrior. You are the Ultimate Warrior fans. And the spirit of Ultimate Warrior will run forever.
I just got an apartment here in Nashville, and I invested in a Queen-sized bed because I'm like, "I haven't had a big bed since I was a kid." I woke up this morning on one side, like, in "coffin position."
Right now, I think robots are where it's at. And yes, I'm biased. Robots and space, because with home rocket kits and Lego Mindstorm sets, people can get involved. I was raised on Transformers and GoBots, so I can't imagine what kids who are building real robots are dreaming about.
London cabs always dis me. I purposefully give them a good tip because I'm trying to straighten up the image where they don't want to pick up some shady-looking, bummy kid like myself. I'm trying to teach them that if you pick up the bummy-looking kid, you still get tipped, man. But they still jerk me around.
I check my phone first thing when I wake up in the morning. I usually take it up with me to bed so it's on the floor next to the bed, although not actually in bed with me, because I really do not want to be the person who sleeps with their phone.
My parents preached so much about Christianity and my mother thinks Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to the world - which he is - and God found a way of making examples for me. Like, just growing up, bullets would hit my partner but not me and I'd be right there. Or my Dad had a thing where he would make me play for the sorry team during football and make me go up against all my friends. It built a certain kind of character and a humble factor into me because I knew I had to work for it. And then to be able to beat them or be just as successful at so many things.
My background is in painting but in school in the sixties, like many artists of that time, I believed that painting was dead. I began to work in collaboration with other artists in the creation of performances and installation works. Soon after, I started making video and photographic works and in the process became fascinated with the media itself. Before long I was setting things up just for the camera. In l970 I got a dog and he turned out to be very interested in video and photography as well.
But you know, I'm the negative-Nancy, curmudgeon, glass-half-empty-with-a-leak-in-it guy - which is basically the fuel that fires me up anyway. Without that, we wouldn't have me.