When I first started the show, I was known as the 'cop nerd.' I was in the 9th Precinct in the East Village every day. I'd be at work wearing a fake bulletproof vest with foam in it, then I'd leave and put on a real one to ride around with these guys.
A guy came to the shop every day. A lot of guys put the foam like stuff that forms to you, kinda like the Indy car guys run. He fitted it up and it felt real good, so we're going to try to run it.
I rode with four street-clothes cops in the East Village. I spent six weeks riding with them every day - in street clothes, with a vest underneath.
The bulletproof vest--'bullet resistant,' technically--is made of two double panels of a synthetic material called Kevlar, inside a cloth carrier that holds it around your torso like a lead X-ray smock. One cop wrote phrases from the Bible on his, 'Yea, though I walk in the valley of the Shadow of Death...' Other cops wrote their blood type.
When guys leave - whether they decide to leave or they're forced out - there's usually this period of time we see them around the world, and they can ride that WWE wave and use it, and then it goes away. It loses its luster after a few months.
A lifevest protects you from drowning and a bulletproof vest protects you from getting shot, and a sweater vest protects you from pretty girls.
I was beaten by police and sat in their precinct holding cell, certain that my future was already decided. And now I will be the person in charge of that precinct, and every other precinct, because I'm going to be the mayor of the City of New York.
I exercise every day, whether it's weight sessions in the gym, runs wearing a 20kg weighted vest, or going for long walks.
Yes... a bulletproof vest.
That's the beautiful thing about my show... It's truly different every week. We get to pick and choose. Every morning, the girl from production comes to me with 100 different items, and I go, 'Fake, fake, fake, fake... that's cool.'
But if the strength ain't real, I recall thinking the very last thing that day, before I finally passed out, then the weakness sure enough is. Weakness is true and real. I used to accuse the kid of faking his weakness. But faking proves the weakness is real. Or you wouldn't be so weak as to fake it. No, you can't ever fake being weak. You can only fake being strong. . .
As a founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, I would often police the streets in a bulletproof vest one day during the high-crime 1980s and 1990s and protest bad behavior by cops the next.
One of the very few things that I do every single day is put on fragrance. If I'm not wearing make-up, if my hair's not done, if I'm walking around in pyjamas - I still put my fragrance on. I will brush my teeth and put on my perfume.
The world of art, I have suggested, is full of fakes. Fake originality, fake emotion and the fake expertise of the critics - these are all around us and in such abundance that we hardly know where to look for the real thing. Or perhaps there is no real thing?
Normally, I always had a machine gun in my car and a bulletproof vest.
I'd spent my first 12 years in New York in an East Village walk-up. The upstairs neighbor was the cowboy from the Village People.
Put in the work in every day, put in the work in training, and it will show on the field.