8 Jan., 2002
So, I was laying on the couch, trying to take a nap after work when the phone rang.

"Hey, Nick, we can't get ahold of Paul, and we're in town. Mind if we come over?"

"Um, no..."

And thus it began.

See, Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's, had passed, and Craig, Sean and Courtney had all ended up at Wendy's posing in front of the big picture they had there. That was sort of the thing that started it all. After they showed up at my place, we spent about 45 minutes leaving obnoxious messages on Paul's answering machine. Well, he finally answered, so we swung over there and along the way happened to see a sign.  That sign was to be the start of a crazy evening. See, while we were all sitting in Paul's living room, we decided we needed a picture of the sign. But, in true Nuthouse style, a simple picture was deemed to be not enough.

So, we decided to run to Hobby Lobby and get candles. We got the candles, made enormous asses of ourselves, and got in line, all the while chanting "Who do voodoo? We do voodoo!" like Druids. That got us some extremely weird looks. Those looks were nothing compared to what came next, though.

See, as I wasn't getting a candle (being broke and also being the one taking pics), Courtney asked me to run back to get her another candle to replace her broken one. Well, I took off at a dead run, and Sean decided to yell "Schnell, juden!"

Everyone kinda whipped their heads around to look at him, and then we all took the time to explain to Sean that, in German, "juden" does not mean "youth" but, instead, "Jew." But we amazingly lucked out and didn't end up with the Hobby Lobby personell calling in a report of anti-Semitic voodoo-practicing Druids, and made it out of the store without further incident.

We then headed over to KFC. We got out the candles, and everyone posed.  While we were shooting pics, the head shift guy from KFC comes out and asks what we're doing. We explain that we're shooting pics for fun. He says, "Oh. I thought you were having a candlelight vigil." *lightbulb*

"Oh, yeah... that, too." Next thing you know, I'm scrawling a "Honk" sign on a piece of notebook paper with a brown Sharpie and we're screaming "HONK FOR DAVE!" at passing motorists.

So, somebody gets the bright idea of calling the news. I give Channel 6 a call and forget all about it once the KFC guy brings us free drinks. We sat there calming our throats with free pop, and waving the sign, and making sure the candles didn't go out. We had a good amount of people drive by, and most of the folks had their windows down, thanks to the unseasonably warm weather. Lots of people honked, a few hung out of their windows to yell that we "rocked," and a minute amount of assholes gave us the finger.

Then, the cool shit happened. Channel 6 News showed up, shot us, interviewed me, and then headed back to the studio. We stayed around long enough to make it look real, and then decided to go warm up over at the Java Break.We all got far too wired on coffee, went and made like asses over at Borders, then came home to wait for the news to come on.

All in all, it was a really cool fucking day.

Thanks to Trish Ayers for putting us on Channel 6 News, the guy at KFC for the free drinks, and Dave Thomas for making that yummy food.

"Today is the day Dave Thomas died. We went to Wendy's. We're all sad. Sad we are. Sad are we."
                                                                                                            -Courtney Keith