My father went broke when I was a young teen. I listened in terror as he muttered for hours, walking up and down the hallway, "we're going to end up in the poorhouse."

I have had a lifelong fear of ending up living under a bridge.

And yet, and yet, I've always had a greater fear of living a boring life.

I sent myself to do theater and improv at the University of Cambridge in England largely because of Footlights - the sketch society that birthed Monty Python, and where I got to experience luminaries like Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson as teenage hopefuls on the same stage. Monty Python was my spirit animal throughout high school and I got to speak my most raucous inner voices as Co-owner, Program Director and On-Air Host at National Lampoon Radio.  

That raucous, transgressive voice lives within me, alongside voices of depth and wisdom absorbed and cultivated during 2 years in Jerusalem immersed as a student of comparative religion and talmudic study, during Indian, American and Nepali buddhist retreats as well as during feral paradigm-shattering Amazonian shamanic experiences. 

Sometimes these two voices - lampoon and wisdom - converge into what the buddhists call "crazy wisdom."

Much of what I’ve learned about life and love has been from the many painful, hurtful choices I've made along my journey. I've said things I'm terribly ashamed of - and done things I'm even more ashamed of.

But fall down 7 times, get up 8 and make amends when you can -  I continue to learn from those mistakes (and new ones).

Best of all, most of all, happiest of all, I am father to two highly creative, happy, successful, reflective young men -  and I just became a father again to a dazzling baby boy who told us before he was born that he is coming to Earth for - and so his name is - joy (Asher, which is “joy” in Hebrew)