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| Unindicted Co-Conspirator |
John Maxson was the designated hitter and back-up
catcher for the 1984 South Lexington Connie Mack baseball team, hitting
.324 with 3 HR and 37 RBI's en route to the
Connie Mack World Series
where
they were defeated in four games despite Mr. Maxson's 2 for 2 performance
in the final game. He is an expert in something called "layer management",
which he hopes will become the latest management-wonk buzzword that no
one really understands the meaning of but will still be willing to shell
out big bucks to high-powered consultants to run seminars on. Although
he swears like a sailor, he claims to never have been to sea. Mr. Maxson
has a trick elbow, several small children, and a pronounced fear of spiders.
His favorite cymbals are Sabians and his least favorite basketball player
is Christian Laettner.
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| Last of the big time solitaire players |
Jonathan Patch is the co-inventor of the ground-breaking board game Phæcia, where players vie to master the physical and magical geography of the mythical island. He has proxied numerous base stations, authored a number of the original series of SUPER-GEEK!™ comics, and is the proud owner of 0.62 lifetime master points from the American Contract Bridge League. (Only 1999.38 points to go to Grand Master status!) He is well known in his Denver neighborhood for his consistant failure to mow his lawn. Jonathan's favorite song is "Thick as a Brick" and his least favorite ice cream is coffee.
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| Perhaps a little too strongly influenced by H.R. Puffnstuff. |
Rod Switzer
is alive today due to the diligence of some unsung, faceless
bureaucrat within the
Federal Aviation Administration who delayed Rod's
flight from Washington DC to the Twin Cities due to fears that the plane
might be struck by a stray chunk of
Skylab, which was in an advanced state
of orbital decay at the time. This individual appeared years later on the
Jerry Springer show with Nancy Reagan. The theme: "Former Air Traffic
Controllers and the First Lady of the President who fired them," resulted in
a somewhat bitter, yet ultimately tearful reunion. In 1991, Rod entered
the Twin Cities Marathon and posted a time which narrowly eclipsed Oprah
Winfrey's personal record. (Just to show you how things tend to even out in
this world, Oprah earns more money in the time it takes her to eat a
sandwich than Rod will ever see in his life.) Rod's favorite Monkee is
Mike, his favorite piece of legislation is the Goldwater-Nichols Department
of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 and he has a newfound respect for
Shaggy of Scooby Doo fame.
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| The guitars of Patch are perpetually ready to be employed in the service of God and Country. Just so long as there's nothing really good on TV. |
Jonathan Patch and John Maxson met
at a Denver area software company in early 1995. Large portions of the
next several years were devoted to Mr. Maxson's repeated attempts to finally
break through and beat Mr. Patch in a five game match of table tennis.
Day after day, Mr. Maxson would stride boldly into the rec room just down
the hall from their offices and fire a series of stinging shots across
the table, only to discover in horror that the ball was coming back at
him with even greater velocity, spin, and elegant placement. I'm telling
you people it was glorious! Then the ping-pong table was removed and the
two had nothing better to do than play guitars and stuff.
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| Jonathan's songwriting has been described as "depressing", "completely undanceable", and "too damn long", as well as a variety of other, much more complimentary phrases which, of course, he is unable to remember. He laughs off his reputation as the "Evil Genius" of the group. "Actually, I'm really not all that smart." |
The two of them conceived a common musical mission to warn the world about the evils of venture capitalism, which, by the way, is bad. Their first drummer, Jeremy St. Austwell in the Moorglade died in a freak parasailing accident just weeks before the band was to enter the studio for their first album. Causes of death of subsequent drummers include: plane crash, boat crash, car crash, choking on his own McVomit after an all night binge at a fast food establishement which, for legal reasons, we are unable to mention here, drowning, drug overdose, Hanson overdose, dispepsia, and spontaneous human combustion. In an effort to stabilize the band structure, the surviving members decided to screen drummers based on actuarial life-expectency data and were about to launch to an exhaustive database search when their consultant on the project decided that it would be easier to just join the band himself. So far, Rod Switzer's list of freak accidents is limited to a single broken hand from a Tae Kwon Do class which is really nothing by comparison with his predecessors.
At long last putting an end to an utterly humiliating string of defeats at the hand of Mr. Patch, Mr. Maxson recently achieved a stunning 3-0 victory that set the Denver area table tennis world on its head, provoking shocked reactions from followers of the sport. Subsequent matches have seen a dramatic return to form, with Mr. Patch re-establishing the utter dominance that has been the hallmark of their many meetings over the years.
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John's guitar sound has been called "shrill and piercing, like a wailing baby." It was later discovered that John's seemingly powerful amp was being drowned out by his daughter. |