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I entered this world to little fanfare in a quiet town nestled somewhere in the Northern variety of the Carolinas. By age three I was travelling across the country with my head out the window, the wind blowing my then-curly, dirty-blonde hair into the near-controlled mess that it is now, singing whatever song was in my head, usually "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" or "Under The Boardwalk". I got started early on singing songs about sex and women, even if I didn't know it at the time. Nor did I know then that I could not sing and I can't sing now, but now that I know it, it still doesn't stop me from singing embarassing songs while the wind tears at my hair.

We criss-crossed the country and wound up in the quaint town of Louisville, Colorado. It was somewhere between being a suburban town caught between the clutches of Denver and Boulder and being a farm town. My extended family was already well-established, having helped settle the town a hundred years before my arrival, and the local hardware store still carried the family name and legacy. I attended Coal Creek Elementary and then, after a few months in Memphis, Tennessee (St. Luke's), meandered on over to a private, Catholic school in Boulder, Sacred Heart of Jesus. I became a construction worker, building tree forts in the valley below our house; a cartographer, mapping the terrain visible from our terrace in the trees; an explorer, discovering ruins of long-forgotten houses and coal mines known only to the dusty records of the town library; a reporter, running down leads and hot stories for the neighborhood newspaper I founded; a government representative, reporting to the President and Vice-President with my opinions, presented on the floor of the US Senate (no, really).

With time, suburbia won out over the farm town and progress took away what lifetimes had accomplished. The family store was boarded up a few months after the big hardware chains moved into town, friends discovered sports and girls and moved on, and eventually my family and I moved on. A big house was built in Boulder a few blocks from my father's dermatology clinic and I was sent from the Catholic school to a college-prep school, The Alexander Dawson School, in Lafayette, Colorado. At this point, I was a geek, making web pages in the seventh grade, hobnobbing with the founders and creators of some of the most important video games of our time and telling them what to change about their games. I discovered music, shedding some of the computer geek and replacing it with music geek. My first concert was Chumbawamba, followed shortly by the Offspring and other bands. Without warning, my one and only friend became three friends, both of them girls. They multiplied further until I had my own clique of sorts -- smart guys, smart girls, interesting conversations, good music, summer nights on trampolines and hammocks, floating quietly down the Colorado river under the unrelenting desert sun until it sank into the Utahn mountains to the west while the canoes remained afloat, nights under the stars singing oldies spontaneously, singing the entire Weezer blue album at the top of our lungs (and screaming appropriately at the "... and I DIE!" part), discovering alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, and always pining for a girl I would never have.

Girls and romance were the inevitable next step in my oddysey. I, like everyone, always struggled with trying for a girl, but for me it took me longer than most to find my footing. My first kiss wasn't until I was just weeks shy of graduating high school, but I'll be damned if I didn't make it worth every minute of waiting. After one drunken night that shall forever be known as "The Steamshower Incident", rumors spread far and wide, inside and outside my small school, as to my endowment (and I refer not to my family's financial stability). It piqued the interest of a girl named Erin, whom I romanced for a bit and wooed her from her boyfriend's clutches. I was enamored and, after dinner one night, we drove up a winding Flagstaff Road towards the top of the mountain overlooking Boulder. It had been snowing and the branches of the evergreens sagged under the pure, heavy snow, creating an endless maze of white and green walls that held any sound prisoner. The stars were bright and below us we could see thousands of people huddling in their warm houses and cars. Towards the horizon you couldn't make out which lights were signs of civilization and which were members of the untouched cosmos. My music geek knowledge in hand, I played her the song that fit the best, "Close Your Eyes" by Jump, Little Children, and then sang it acapella... without even trying, even I was impressed by my voice. The kiss was sloppy, given my inexperience, but I didn't know it at the time and it was wonderful. For a guy who never got to partake in the traditional events of growing up (never having a real birthday party after age 11, missing my senior prom, never having a high school sweetheart), that kiss made it all worthwhile. Funny how they can do that.

When I surprisingly managed to graduate high school (it's a long story), I wound up in a small, liberal arts school in southern California. Whittier College had been attended by the likes of Richard Nixon, and there are many there who apparantely intend to follow in his footsteps, and I don't mean that they aim to be president of the most powerful country in the world, I'm implying that they're douche bags. But in a desert of grains of sand, there are diamonds. I met Justin Hand, a funny, articulate guy with enough similarities to me that it facilitated the nurturings of a new friendship. That friendship grew quickly and he became my best friend. We're like childhood friends, in a way, doing things and playing games that nobody else will ever understand, but will nevertheless inspire us to hilarity every time we do them. I met Eric Dresch, a fat, jolly hippie kid who always had a smile on his face, one last cigarette or joint to share, and good tones emanating from his dorm room. He confounds me to this day, how someone could be so damned happy all the time and always share anything he had, even if it meant he would have nothing. Eric warped my music geekdom and put it in a whole new direction, but he also changed my outlook on the world and showed me what being a hippie actually means. I met Angela Banken, who showed me how to party so-Cal style. I met GMoney, who turned me on to South Park and the laid-back life. These are the people who forever changed my life.

The passage of time is inescapable and it molds and scars us all. I wouldn't be who I am today without the wonderful and terrible people in my past, but I am happy the wonderful ones influenced me the most. Thank you all.

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