According to Howard, Mark Wahlberg recently told him "there is nothing better than for someone to reach a place that everyone's been hoping he would get to." "He said the amount of goodwill I have had has been great," says Howard. It seems that goodwill already extends to those around him in Philly.

Do you live inside or outside Philadelphia? I live outside the city, in a little area right past Blue Bell called Abolitionist Hill. The people there were part of the Underground Railroad movement. They provided sanctuary and safe housing for slaves escaping from the South and on their way to the North. Because the bounty hunters would come to retrieve these slaves, the residents built true underground tunnels that led from one home to another home and into a field. And I bought one of those homes. I'm trying to find out who traveled through. I bought a 250-year-old carriage home, and there is a stone tunnel, maybe five feet under the ground, made with fieldstones that are there, about three or four feet in diameter. I don't know what was at the end of it, but it was the greatest discovery of buying that home.

How many people can say that they have a house that literally was part of American history? It's nice, unless you're trying to renovate.

Where did you first live when you arrived in Philadelphia in 1998? I lived in Wissahickon, which is right near Fairmount Park. Before that, I was in L.A. I was trying to make it the Hollywood way, but I just didn't fit. I tried to. I did all the things that I thought I was supposed to do. I was running around and trying to be friends with the earth shakers and oftentimes found myself shaken up by it. My uncle said, "You have a mean streak of conscience running down your spine, and until you get rid of that, you're not going to have any fun here." I guess I never had any fun there.