I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.
I was kosher until I had my Bar Mitzvah, and I parlayed officially becoming a man into telling my father I wanted to eat cheeseburgers.
I read the Bible when I was 12 while studying for my bar mitzvah. I was also reading a lot of Dilbert comics at the time, and I guess the two kind of got fused in my mind. I've always imagined God as an irrational, distractible boss. It's my best explanation for our planet.
I was Jewish, through and through, although in our house that didn't mean a whole lot. We never went to synagogue. I never had a Bar Mitzvah. We didn't keep kosher or observe the Sabbath. In fact, I'm not so sure I would have known what the Sabbath looked like if it passed me on the street, so how could I observe it?
Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.
I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.
You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.
I had been coming to New York, pretty much once a month, to dance on Broadway. I was offered a huge Broadway show but couldn't do it because my brother was having his huge Bar Mitzvah.
I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.
If a girl comes to me first for a prom or a bar mitzvah and she likes the way she looks and her boyfriend likes the way she looks, she'll come back.