So the brother in black offers to these United States the source of courage that endures and laughter.

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring.

I grew up around hip-hop so I didn't think it was about being cool or being black or being white or whatever.

White people couldn't do black music back in the day because they weren't funky or bad enough. They weren't from the ghettoes but hip-hop and R&B changed all of that because white kids want to be down with it. They wanted to learn it so they studied the culture. It's kind of a cool thing because we shouldn't be so separate.

So when I got to be about 13 or 14 I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time which was Aerosmith Cheap Trick Black Sabbath AC/DC Ted Nugent and all that and that's just where I came from.

My parents were vegetarians. I'd show up at school this giant black kid with none of the cool clothes and a tofu sandwich and celery sticks.

I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.

You don't have to be a certain thing to be cool. If you're white you don't have to act black or whatever. Just be you and know who you are.

Now I'm way into suits that I can put on whether I took a shower or not and wear barefoot and paint my toes black or whatever color the suit is. It's very cool to wear suits like that. Roll up the sleeves and just say yee-haw.

Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix lose our stuff and on occasion they crash producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.