August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one's endurance, sanity and stamina.

To my ears, jazz sounds better in warm weather and after the sun has gone down. While I will listen to some of my favorite jazz records in cooler weather, it's the warmer nights that really make them come alive. Something about those sounds and the heat of the night really makes it happen for me.

I always took quite seriously the things that Chuck D. of Public Enemy had to say. He's always been someone I've learned quite a bit from and someone I pay a great deal of attention to.

Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore.

I am very ambitious in a way, in that I'm not trying to be the richest guy or whatever. I just really like my work.

I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures. It puts my mind in a different place than October. It is a month for a quieter, slightly more subdued celebration of summer's death as winter tightens its grip.

Young, gay and stuck in Arkansas? Sounds like a horror flick.