You had one guy who was a slave, and another who wasn't. And I actually know what happened to them. [Juan ] Garrido ended up getting good jobs and a pension in Mexico which was the center of New Spain, as it was called. Esteban ended up being killed by the Zuni Indians.
The first slave came to Florida in 1526. The first one we know by name, Esteban, which means Stephen, came a couple of years later. So, we start with the stories of Juan Garrido and Esteban to show that African-American people have been here a century longer than anyone thought, and that the diversity we see in the African-American community today has existed since the beginning.
My mom, you know, took off when I was about 6. What ended up happening is I ended up being with my grandparents.
That cowboy had heartbreak written all over him and she'd be damned if she knew why every time he blew into town she ended up naked before he ended up gone. Reed always ended up gone.
After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
In another universe I probably came out OK, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead.
I know that if I had got educated, I might have ended up as a call-center employee.
I ended up [doing video] meeting Gillian [Grassie] at the same time that we were getting together a book. We ended up working on it, and she recognized that I had a flair for certain things, and we've worked through it together so that the writing could be really good. It was the perfect partnership, just finding my literary voice and figuring out how comedy translates to the written word.
The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding.
Growing up in rural Utah had a lot of benefits, but in an environment that prized conformity, fit wasn't one of them. I ended up in my senior year with a 0.9 GPA, which I think you actually have to work pretty hard to get. In the exact same month they kicked me out of school, my girlfriend - still my wife today - told me she was pregnant. So, it was an interesting start to life: working 10 or 12 minimum-wage jobs; getting bored really quickly and quitting; having my in-laws - rightly - in full panic mode and thinking I had some kind of character flaw.
I had wanted to be a dentist, but ended up being a chef. I think I've always had a fascination for jobs that have white jackets.
I actually wanted to become a model agent, and went into what ended up becoming my first agency for a job interview. They ended up suggesting I model instead. I guess I sort of fell into it.
As a chess player I learn to adapt to new situations and always try to make the best move without looking back or asking why and how I ended up in a situation I ended up in.
I was just a guy who ran away from home at 16 because my parents were getting a divorce and the judge was making me choose which parent to live with. I didn't want to make that choice. I ended up in New York City.
My uncle Lionel ended up being a bug guy at 20th Century Fox, which my father had been - and, of course, my cousin Randy - you know, one of the great American songwriters. It was a storied family and, in many ways, very tough to emerge from.
I tried to download a jazz album this week and ended up getting some tracks four times, some once, some three times; in total I ended up with 50 tracks. I don't know how I did it.
I wanted to be an architect, and I ended up at my job in San Francisco, and if you would have asked me then, that was one of the greatest jobs that had happened to me in terms of my career.