The standard across Europe is set by Lyon. We're so far ahead of so many teams. In training every day it's 11 internationals v 11 internationals, so I'm having to defend against the world's best strikers every day.
I think back to the day I drove Michelle and a newborn Malia home from the hospital nearly 11 years ago - crawling along, miles under the speed limit, feeling the weight of my daughter's future resting in my hands. I think about the pledge I made to her that day: that I would give her what I never had - that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father. I knew that day that my own life wouldn't count for much unless she had every opportunity in hers.
The wiping out of millions of homes took away Black and Brown wealth. It drove poverty, it drove unemployment, it drove people to food stamps.
I remember my father used to wake up at 4 A.M. He woke me up as well. We would leave home together, he was going to work and I continued my walk to catch the bus. I had my training session with Sao Paulo in the morning. I had to take two buses to the point I could take the club bus.
Since I was 18, I have swum for 50 minutes every day, missing less than one day a year except for a two-week stint when I was training as a cosmonaut in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in March 2009.
When I started going to training my father used to take me. But that meant we had to buy two bus tickets and it was not easy for us, you know.
My father was unwell when I was 11, had a stroke at 14 and died when I was 18. My mother going to work at seven in the morning and coming back to look after him and me and my brother left its mark on me.
It took me 11 years to struggle through one dumb book, and every day you just want to give up. But you don't find out you're an artist because you do something really well.
I'd see the bus pass every day… But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.
My father, Fukujuro, drove a cab and my mother, Itsuko, was a homemaker. My parents often took me to see Impressionist exhibits. At home, I would paint pictures in a similar style.
I drove around New York when we did the upfronts and when we premiered 'Fargo,' and they crocheted a sweater for a double-decker bus and drove it around.
If you ask me what I think about going to work every day, it's 9/11 and preventing another 9/11. There were too many people I knew.
If someone robs a 7-11, they took $500 and they were able to settle the next day for $50 and no admission of wrongdoing, they'd knock over that 7-11 again.
The real test of an anchor is when there's a very big event. Sept. 11 is the quintessential example of that, and that day it took everything that I knew as an anchor, as a citizen, as a father, as a husband, to get through it.
I've really been trying to go back to when I was 18 and rediscover the things that drove me, and my passions. How do I get back to being that strong? Because I feel like as I get older, I'm not as fearless as I was when I was 18.
Iraq is sort of a situation where you've got a guy who drove the bus into the ditch. You obviously have to get the bus out of the ditch, and that's not easy to do, although you probably should fire the driver.