I grew up in Davenport, Iowa, but I moved to Santa Clarita, California, when I was 6.
No, there are some location shoots in Vegas, maybe four trips a year. It's shot in Santa Clarita, CA.
I attended College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, Calif., for a year, but college wasn't for me. I was curious about life beyond Los Angeles.
That money was for working eight to twelve hour days ... it was not a welfare check.
I owe my discovery of the Hot Club of Cowtown to Kinky Friedman, leader of the Texas Jewboys. When I saw that Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were headlining the 2003 Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, I thought it my duty to check out the band that had inspired the Texas Jewboys.
I have an idea for sweatshops: air conditioning! That's simple. 14 year old boys working twelve hour days? "Yeah, but they're comfortable!"
But I made no efforts to organize my supporters to hold on to the apparatus. Consequently I was soon expelled and my followers, who did not change coats overnight, quietly left or were expelled from the party.
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
I had a sense that my mother was struggling, when I was a kid, working twelve hour days, making $12,000 a year with two kids in a trailer park.
I worked for a breakfast catering company on commercial shoots, which meant getting up at 3 or 4 A.M. and loading up your car with a bunch of food and driving out to some set in Santa Clarita and making breakfast for a bunch of people.
In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.
I always liked my teachers, and I was in a lot of after-school projects. I was a Girl Scout until my senior year, when I couldn't be a Girl Scout anymore. I was in clubs like Junior Achievement, and I ran track and field. My grades were good, but then toward 11th grade they were nothing. I always went to summer school.
I remember arguing with kids on the street who were talking about Santa Claus. I said don't be so daft - Santa Claus doesn't come down our chimney. He's an economic Santa Claus; he goes down chimneys where they've got money.
Except for a short period at the end of World War II, I attended an elementary school affiliated to Kobe University from ages six to twelve and then moved on to Nada Middle and High School from ages twelve to eighteen. I enjoyed many out-door activities in my youth.
The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl's sense. ("The North")
Back in the old-school days when I learned back in the '60s, the psychology of our business back in those days was totally different than the psychology of the young kids today. They're rushed. They don't have their timing down. Us old-school guys, we'd go 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour.