The crowd might be larger this year. There may not be much else around here to do.

We decided to go ahead and have it anyway. The kids look forward to it, and that's the main reason we started it.

My favorite thing to do in L.A. is to be in a car with friends listening to music. The perfect time is twilight, when the setting sun is filtering through the palm trees. Back in the day, we'd be listening to the Vandals, X, or Farside. Now it would be L.A.-based bands like Dum Dum Girls, Foxygen, or Ty Segall.

Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.

I've written a detective series myself, set in an imaginary, and slightly futuristic, Chinese city. The novels have an extremely tenuous relationship with the real world, since the hero is the city's Hell and ends up with a sidekick who is a demon.

On Christina Aguilera: She couldn't be in the Kittens, no way! Not with those outfits. Her stylist wants to have a word.