Birthdate: October 9, 1972

Musical Influences: The Beatles, Badfinger, highway construction sites.

Early Life: Skipper's first 13 years were spent in Athens (pronounced Ay-thuns), Illinois, where his father, a second generation emigrant from India operated the local Dairy Queen in this small town of less than 2000, just north of Springfield.

In 1984, the family moved to Champaign where's Skipper's father had just bought a new DQ franchise. In his first year at Champaign's Dick Butkus Middle School, Skipper was named as Student of the Year and got to attend a local Chamber of Commerce function honoring the top students from the Champaign-Urbana area.

"It was like hell", according to Skipper. You had to sit at this table with all these adults and teachers and dweeby students and act like you were having a good time. Then there was the speaker who spoke about 'the troubled youth of today, blah, blah, blah, and how we represented the hope of tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. I knew I never wanted to come to one of these things again. Fortunately, I was just starting to become friends with Juan, virtually guaranteeing that I would never again be Student of the Year."