For a long while, my single favorite page in literature is the front matter from Mark Twain's HUCKLEBERRY FINN, which goes a little something like this:

"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

THE AUTHOR.

HUCKLEBERRY FINN
SCENE: The Mississippi Valley
TIME: Forty to Fifty Years Ago"

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Now, having read THE DIRT by Motley Crue, I might have a new one:

"I remembered that Angie was always talking about her old boyfriend from Indiana, a guy named Nikki Syxx, who used to play in a Top 40 cover band and later with a surf-punk outfit called John and the Nightriders. I loved his name, but I couldn't just steal it. So I decided to call myself Nikki Nine. But everybody said it was too punk rock, and punk was now too mainstream. I needed something that was more rock and roll, and Six was rock and roll. So I decided that anyone who thinks surfing has anything to do with punk rock doesn't deserve such a cool name, and I soon applied to have my name legally changed to Nikki Sixx. It was like stealing his soul, because for years people would come up to me and say, 'Nikki, dude, remember me from Indiana?' I'd tell them that I'd never been to Indiana, and they'd say 'Come on, man, I saw you with John and the Nightriders.'

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And, really, that's just the tip of a gnarly metal iceberg. So. I have read THE DIRT. If EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS was about four dudes and four dudes only, and was about nine times as fucked up, you'd come close to THE DIRT.

The only real downside, as far as i can see it, is that the book gets Motley Crue songs stuck in one's head.

He's the one they call Dr. Feelgood. He's the one that makes you feel all right. He's the one they call Dr. Feelgood. He's gonna be your Frankenstein.