Since it's Fathers Day, I thought I'd ask. Who was like a father figure to you besides your own, while growing up?

My dad was a racist, misogynistic, and homophobic asshole with a bad temper when I was growing up. He wasn’t a very good figure.

My early days gifted me a kind, old black man (I’m white) who taught me a lot about just being a good man. I was young, so I didn’t understand until much later, but I credit him with a lot of my kindness and patience.

Later in my teen years, after the aforementioned fella vanished, it was honestly George Carlin as weird as that sounds. His stand-up did a lot to help shape my views and break away from the bigoted programming my dad tried to force into me. He wasn’t perfect, but he did have a lot of pretty progressive views and ideas, especially for the times the material originally released.

After losing him, I just learned from people. Right wing and/or heavily religious rhetoric continued to push me left and eventually satanic.

my grandfather. he would take me to work with him doing construction/repair. we would run red lights and drink lots of coffee.

he taught me not to take shit from anybody and that you’re only as capable as you let yourself be.

oh yeah, he also taught me that when you have nothing left to lose you grab the world by the balls and take what you want. he wanted to rob some banks when he got sick. we had to watch over him in shifts when he was terminal or he was going to sneak out and go on a bank robbing spree at 80. His reason, "what are they going to do? lock up an 80 year old dying man and pay for his medical bills?”

he was probably one of the most positively influential people in my life. he came from nothing and built a small empire with personal connections that spanned from common folks all the way to mob ties and politicians.

he was owed some favors that he never had to cash in, but it’s far better to have the mob owe you rather than the other way around.

My old girlfriend’s dad and I got along well. He was a real independent guy. We played a lot of chess, I’ll tell you what. When I was staying with him sometimes we’d wake up and play chess from sunup to sundown.