I was born and raised in the high desert of Nevada in a tiny town called Searchlight. My dad was a hard rock miner. My mom took in wash. I grew up around people of strong values - even if they rarely talked about them.

My dad's a bodybuilder. My whole life I've been taught to train the hard way. I believe in earning strength not buying it. My grandfather raised me old school: In baseball you work for whatever you get.

So my dad raised me and he's a huge football fan.

I was a sickly baby and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say the third time's a charm because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love.

My dad's sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal - his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.

People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European born in Copenhagen Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe met my dad fell in love and then moved back to Rome where I was raised between Rome and Hamburg.

My mum was raised Jewish my dad is very scientifically minded and my school was vaguely Christian. We sang hymns in school. I liked the hymns bit but apart from that I can take it or leave it. So I had lots of different influences when I was younger.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather and by my mother.

I was born and raised in East Los Angeles by a single mom who had three biological kids and adopted four more. I never met my dad.

My mother raised three children on her own and my dad was a doctor working 16 hours a day.