I grew up on Michael Jackson, Pat Benetar, and Van Halen - all the things coming out of the television.

Making your band your career just seems like a pipe dream when it's not happening, and when it does, it seems so surreal.

It's never been about what we want others to see: it's about what we want to see; it's about what we want to do. We only have a career because of our fans, but we have to keep making music for the reason we started making music.

I was a bicycle messenger when Alkaline Trio was formed as a way to make ends meet before the band became a career, and I've just always been a cyclist - I BMX'd, and then I got really into - through messengering - I got really into road bikes and fixed gears, which I still have.

If you just do a Google search and type in 'smoking' or 'lung cancer', you will be barraged with never ending facts and numbers, like how one in every three Americans is affected by lung disease and how COPD is the third leading cause of death and if you get lung cancer the odds are 95% that you will die.

Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A.; if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.

As spokesman for Lipitor, I have been an advocate of preventive medicine in addition to my work with the Jarvik 2000 Heart, which has rescued people from death and sustained a patient with a normal, mobile lifestyle for seven and a half years - the longest in the world.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.