"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together.

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.

"I heard you were a player , okay , lets play a game.

Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.

I'm stuck babysitting turtle eggs while a volleyball player slash grease monkey slash aquarium volunteer tries to hit on me.

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.

The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other.

And it hurts as a player that you put a lot of hard work in during the week and at the end of the week Sunday when you get on the field that's when they acknowledge about the hard work that you put in throughout the week. That's actually a disappointment.

Some scenes you juggle two balls some scenes you juggle three balls some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

Because Microsoft seems to sometimes not trust customer choice they salt XP with all these little gizmos and trap doors to get people to try Microsoft stuff. But the reality is that we're downloading more players than we ever have on a worldwide basis.

The first few weeks football players look at you like you are speaking a foreign language. My job is to get them to trust me trust the system. I ask them to run in a way that makes no sense to them.

One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it's making cold calls to strangers. Actually it's the people who already have strong trust relationships with you who know you're dedicated smart a team player who can help you.

As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4 000 times trust me I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing you're doing stuff that your body's not used to and so you start to aggravate those old injuries.

If the players don't trust the coach it is a problem and vice versa.

So if the players trust the coach it's not a problem. If the players don't trust the coach it is a problem and vice versa.

Something goes wrong I yell at them -'Fix it'- whether it's their fault or not. You can only really yell at the players you trust.

Golf is growing and there are more good young players but you don't see them going abroad. It's so expensive to travel.

It's very expensive to be a professional tennis player with all the travel and the flights and the hotels and everything.

A lot of the players are not involved with any NHL team so to play and travel around with the Oldtimers' it's a kind of gift that the players really appreciate.

Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists and there are natural piano players and I think guitar implies travel a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.

I stepped away to find out more about myself which I was having difficulty doing as a football player. I got a chance to travel the world. I studied Eastern philosophy and I've grown as a person so much.

I like ice hockey but it's a frustrating game to watch. It's hard to keep your eyes on both the puck and the players and too much time passes between scoring in hockey. There are usually more fights than there are points.