Why did these people bother with me?

Dave Sublette. The man, the mystery, the pinto...

To quote one reliable source, namely him, "Was born in a small town. Grew up in a small town, and some other cool stuff happened along the way, beeeeeeeeotch!"

He drove a pinto. We used to amp my guitar through the 15 inch woofers in the back and cruise down main, blasting noise rock and bass at pedestrians. Obnoxious and all hip as hell, sure.

Dave is one of my friends (I have them). My friends are all nutfucking crazy bastards. I dug most of them up in the ditches of Ogema when I was a young boy, trying to get my head out of my ass, and now they dominate my life with their cries of horror and shame at the hideous ghoul mask visage I carry at the tip of my neck. And you haven't even met my family yet.

Of the people I still get to think of as friends, I go back furthest with Dave. He was in my older brother Jeremy's class, and he and Ben Walther were always visiting and shit. This isn't counting Carmen Hochstetler, but I've never forgiven her for skipping out on us in the 2nd grade and going to that private school for whatever reason, but that's alright.

McElrath and myself drove down to Mexico for spring break, that was like what, '96? '97? Some fucked up year like that. A week-long ride in a car. We dropped by Tuscon and visited Dave at his airforce base. We saw Hail-Bob at 3am in the middle of Colorado someplace, it was huge. Everything was. We sat down by the ditch and smoked pipe for a while. Tell me that isn't exciting. Go ahead, say my name bitch.

Annie was somebody who spent too much time with me. I'd say that she's probably one of the most eccentric people I've ever known if I were being honest, but of course I'm not. So anyway, we don't like to admit to the fact that we like eachother. That would ruin our hip image. We'd no longer be able to sip mocha and tea at Kaffein and participate in alternative grunge culture. We couldn't wear our GAP clothing with a commercially viable face of teenage perplexity and angst. Annie is rad.

I used to get digs with a guy named Rob Horvick during art class in the 9th grade. We golfed together once, which puts us on the level of proffesional collegues or something. He now sells Instant Freedom and monkey-love in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Rob Horvick is my nominee for Man of the Year, 8 years running. He's ace.

Dave Kidder is another of a long list of Daves in my life, it is he to whom I owe what Caleb Burroughs has called my masterpiece, The Charge of Captain Dave. I met Dave and Chad about 100 million years ago, we used to sit around in Dave's basement with Kelce and Matt Sandau, and Horvick before he got hitched, playing Dungeons and Dragons and freaking out Matt's social worker by forcing him to practice works against the state in a concubine with satan at my parent's resort. Kidder is a goddamn pyromaniac too, never let that guy near a can of WD40 and a lighter. Crazy fuknot. He'd start burning frogs and shit making chanties about Sparficus, Roman God of Feces, dancing naked in the woods and eating posies. He was a helluva dancer too, I might add.

Johnny "Doc" Stern and I pass a few words of encouragement or a "Beckett is a cool hip-ass motherfucker, wouldn't you agree" along to eachother. He also does some important work for the navy, so I figure if I have a link to his homepage, maybe I can get a small percentage of all the chicks he that does.