I've always said, if everything was equal, from money to retirement to endorsement opportunities - all that stuff - if everything was equal, I'd play Arena football over the NFL. It was built for quarterbacks. It was just backyard football.

When I was a kid growing up, we had a cherry tree in the backyard, 100 years old. I climbed it, and it gave shade in the summertime and excellent cherries in the late summer. Having cherry blossoms around gives the best springtime vibe ever.

I grew up in northern California, where it was consistently in the hundreds in the summertime. My dad didn't think he should have to turn on the air conditioning when we had a swimming pool in our backyard; it was our built-in air conditioner.

Every evening, I would excuse myself from playing in the backyard and go inside to watch the evening news... I wanted to get out there and see the world, and as a kid, I knew that Peter Jennings had a thirst and hunger to travel the world, too.

Steven Adler and I played football in the street when we were 12. I remember rehearsing in my bedroom with my first band, and some kid climbed over the fence of my backyard and peeked his head in the window to see who was rocking. It was Slash.

I had many boxing matches with my brother in the backyard when we were younger, and I guess while other people abhor boxing for its brutality, I also have to admire anyone who climbs into the ring to face up to what could be the ultimate defeat.

Christmas Day we get all the dogs and the cats and make breakfast and open presents and then go to the backyard - because it is always like 100 degrees in L.A. - and we get a speaker and play fun '80s music and dance outside with all the animals.

The new age of terrorism isn't on the battlefield: it's in your own backyard. Whether it's at a concert in France or a restaurant in the United States, terrorism doesn't have to happen in a military installation by any stretch of the imagination.

My parents moved to American Samoa when I was three or four years old. My dad was principal of a high school there. It was idyllic for a kid. I had a whole island for a backyard. I lived there until I was eight years old and we moved to Santa Barbara.

Talk about songs that make me cry: Track 7 on the 'Phineas and Ferb' soundtrack, 'Summer (Where Do We Begin?).' When you get to the part about sitting with your brother underneath the shade of a big tree in the backyard, ohmygod. Turn on the waterworks.

Learning can take place in the backyard if there is a human being there who cares about the child. Before learning computers, children should learn to read first. They should sit around the dinner table and hear what their parents have to say and think.

The first sort of big present I remember getting from Santa Claus was quite a small telescope that I remember going into our backyard with my parents and figuring out how to assemble, and staring at the night sky, just for hours, with both of my parents.

I loved to watch cartoons and even made little stop-motion films in the backyard. At the time, I never really thought that it was something you could do for a living; it never actually hit me that people do that sort of thing or I would be capable of it.

I lived somewhat of a nomadic life, even when I lived in Ohio. We spent time in rural areas, in suburban areas, never really city areas. We rode four-wheelers. We had pigs and ferrets. And creeks. We had a creek in my backyard. It was like 'Huckleberry Finn.'

I've had 12 amateur fights, 18 professional fights and I've come to Russia, not just to Russia but to Chelyabinsk, home of Sergey Kovalev who has an impressive resume. The fact I've come to his backyard means I feel it will go down as one of the best results ever.

I do have a personal life. I spend half of the week at home. One of those nights, I'll go out with some friends and have a good time. I have a day and a half at home, and love to just sit on my backyard by my pool, read a book, or do some writing. That's my vacation.

As happy as we were in our backyard jumping on trampolines, it was the same general feeling, often euphoria, on the picket line, because we felt like the way our lives were falling on to us contorted with the people of God and the scriptures. It all felt very normal.

Growing up with four older brothers, we were into everything! They started snowboarding when I was just a tiny button, and I loved watching them shredding in the backyard. After seeing them compete in a few contests, it was all over. I idolized the sport from day one.

If I found a healing tree in my backyard, and it grew some sort of fruit that was a healing balm for people to repair what was damaged, I'm not going to just harvest all of those fruits and say, 'You cant have this.' If I have a cure for people, I'm going to share it.

Kristina, my wife, and I thought about this one day when the kids were, of course, watching television. And we took a big blanket and put it in the backyard and said, 'Let's go out on our back and look at the sky and call it sky television.' We saw all kinds of things.

We never had the most money, but my parents always did their best to take care of me and my brother. I had a real small but tight group of friends, and we would just ride our bikes all day after school and play video games, or we would actually wrestle out in the backyard.

I fully believe in ghosts. I have, my entire life. The first house I ever lived in was haunted. There was a grave of a man in the backyard. I was just a baby then, but my parents would tell me that every night, at the same time, they would hear someone walking up the stairs.

When I retired from the military, I come home. And the reason why I got into politics is, you know, I spent a lot of time away from my wife and my kids. And I come home, and I found out I have kids in my backyard that have it worse than the children I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I love living in L.A. It's quieter. It's much more relaxing. I'm living in a house for the first time ever. I have a backyard for the first time ever; a dog for the first time ever. So it's a lot of firsts, and I love it so much. It's just so different. It's a nice change of pace.

I had one of the most outdoorsy childhoods you could imagine. I basically lived in the woods until I was 13. My dad and I built a huge treehouse in our backyard in Chesterfield, about 30 feet in the air. And we'd vacation on an island in Michigan, where I hunted a deer that we ate.

It's incredibly important to my spirits and mental health that I come back to Minnesota and not be surrounded constantly with Hollywood life. Spending time in the backyard, helping out in the garden, going out to the lakes, reminds me of what's important and allows me to realign myself.

The beauty of Test cricket is all about playing an opponent in their backyard or defending home turf under challenging conditions over five days - dominating each session, dominating each day, picking 20 wickets to win a contest. That's historically been cricket's most fascinating gift.

I actually did my first tour at the age of 10 with my dad, and it was as a country singer. We toured through Alaska, and he took me to sing at places like county fairs, hoedowns, backyard barbecues, you name it. We were usually passing around the hat for gas money to get to the next gig.

My parents wanted us to be pool-safe, so I had lessons when I was 18 months old. I would like to share with all the parents out there that I was that kid who cried during every one of my lessons. But it wasn't an option for my parents; we had a backyard pool, so I needed to learn how to swim.

Maybe our best family trip started at Victoria Falls, which drenches you with spray and is so vast that it makes Niagara Falls seem like a backyard creek. Then we rented a car and made our way to Hwange National Park, which was empty of people but crowded with zebras, giraffes, elephants and more.

There's a rich family culture in South Central. The block that I grew up on, all the kids were best friends. They hung out at each other's houses. I can knock on the person's house two doors down and grab some food and just hang out or go into the backyard and play basketball when they're not there.

Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard - or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.

I wanted to be a pro wrestler, but my mom didn't let me. I used to make videos and stuff in the backyard. I had a buddy named Daniel Decker, and we used to have a tag team called the 'Deck Garra Era.' We used to make video after video. We were the tag team champions, but then we turned on each other.

Baseball always gets credit for the foundational part of masculinity - the father thing. The eternal game of backyard catch, 'Field of Dreams', the Ripkens, the Griffeys, the Bondses, so on. But football is the real paternal game, because it's a conveyor belt of father figures, in the form of coaches.

I'm sorry - I know America is supposed to be the land of the dreams and hopes, but it's like, when was that actually a real thing? I think from the very beginning it was all a lie, and it still kind of is. Stop trying to sell the picket fence, because there's another backyard here that you haven't looked at.

Before I started Brainfeeder, there were rumblings in our own circle about creating a label for us all. Then I started to see all these other ones from Europe try to capitalise on the scene. It didn't make sense to me that there were all these people who were trying to build on something that was in our backyard.

Forrest Mims is the author of the famous book 'Getting Started in Electronics,' published by RadioShack for many years. I bought the book in the 1980s and had a blast making the projects in it. When I was editor-in-chief of 'MAKE,' I asked Forrest to write a column for the magazine, called 'The Backyard Scientist.'

At Standing Rock, we experienced, first-hand, people coming together in their communities and trying to use the levers of representative democracy to try and say, 'We don't want this in our community; we don't want this in our backyard,' and corporations using their monetary influence to completely erode that process.

We came from a neighborhood that was kind of older, so we didn't have that many kids that would go out and play. We moved into a neighborhood that has, like, 50 kids in it. There are 12 houses where we kind of all share a big backyard, and we're all circled in there. If one kid goes out there, they all go out and play.

I have such an eclectic taste in music. Come to a backyard BBQ at my house, and I will run the gamut from Skynyrd to Sinatra to '90s grunge, rap, R&B, and classic rock. I have issues. If I had to pick one, I love this country artist named Craig Morgan. His music and his songs are so relatable and tell such vivid stories.

My costar James Lafferty, and his little brother Stuart Lafferty, and another buddy of ours, Ian Shive, are working on this project called 'Generation Wild.' It's about getting people to realize that being outdoors is not scary - you can go on adventures like we do, in national parks, and practically in your own backyard.

Momma told me, 'I'm going to town. Don't touch the trash in the backyard,' because we used to burn our trash. So I'm going to do mama a favor. I light the trash and go back inside to watch Ohio State and LSU play. And something said, 'You know what, at halftime, go check on it.' And fire is about 8 feet from the back door.

It's very different doing a food show in America and doing one in Britain. I did a 20-part series for the BBC series called 'Eating With the Enemy.' The budget for all 20 episodes was probably the budget for a single episode of 'Top Chef.' It's the difference between making a home movie in your backyard and going to Hollywood.

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street, we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas, my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.

My parents had a gardener when I was growing up, and he and I would dig in the dirt together - my mom and dad were definitely not digging with me! When I was 5, he helped me plant some corn in our backyard, and I remember how fascinating it was to watch it grow. Little did I know that 50 years later I'd be growing corn in a different way.

We didn't have a backyard, so as I child, I would turn the coffee table into a stage and put on shows. But it was just a fun thing to do; I never thought about it as a profession. That started as a fluke; my mother had a friend who was an artist with a theater company, and I started going there after school because my mom knew I'd be safe.

You don't really see tight ends out here doing dances in the end zone. But if you see me at night out on the town, I'm having a good time - I'm always dancing. It started in the backyard, not to necessarily showboat - but to be a showman. It's part of how we grew up, how we played the game, and now that I'm in the NFL, why not break it out?

When you're at a public pool or in your friend's backyard, knowing that your kids can get in and out of the water and protect themselves can make all the difference in the world. Something as simple as being able to flip over and get to the ladder can save a life. You can start your kids in lessons as early as you want - it's never too soon.

When you're in the backyard as a kid playing and falling in love with the game and you crush the ball? You do a celebration. You stand and watch it like Ken Griffey Jr. You put your hands in the air like Manny Ramirez. You don't hit the ball and put your head down and run as fast you can. That's not fun. It's okay to embrace that part of a game.

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