THERE AND BACK AGAIN: A KENTUCKIAN TALE
by Adam "DoomMullet" Bojak
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2007
So there I was, awake at 5:30 in the morning to head down to Kentucky to meet with Smogon's overlord: none other than the legendary chaos, aka Christopher Monsanto, aka Bear chaos, aka barkers-kun, aka... well, you know who I'm talking about. I swung over to the RIT campus and grabbed my friend N who was going to ride down with me since we have a mutual friend who lives outside of Cincinnati. It's a wicked long drive, and she wanted to meet up with J (the friend) before 4pm because they had plans. So, we left Rochester at about 6am and head west with reckless abandon.
So, yeah, to make a loooooooooooooong trip short, we met up with J at about 3:30pm and I said hi, checked out her sweet company-paid hotel room and left N and continued on my way to the true Mekkah... Lexington, specifically, Transylvania!
On the way from J's to Lexington, I decided to chronicle my journey with some videos in the car. You can see my sanity deteriorating on the harsh highways of central Kentucky. I mean, it started out so positive and upbeat...
VIDEO 1
But then... well, everyone knows what happens during the summer and how it can affect driving times.
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
While I was sitting there, I looked to my left a noticed a huge, beautiful horse farm. Obviously the picture doesn't quite grasp its true nature, but I was bored, and you get the idea.
Urgh... the traffic finally started moving again.
VIDEO 4
Finally, I had arrived in Lexington. Due to some wonderful dumbfuck directions I got from Google, I ended up on the complete wrong road (turns out there are two Broadways, and they bisect. What the hell.) After a quick call to chaos, he got me back on the right track and was nice enough to stay on the phone and talk me right into the parking lot. I got my first glimpse of the legend himself, and I was overcome by emotion. After I finished weeping, I hopped out of the car to a warm greeting (and a much needed stretch of the legs). He requested a picture right there on the spot, and I was only too happy to oblige.
I grabbed my bag and guitar and we headed in to his dorm building. Just like in meeting past Smogoners, it took us absolutely no time at all to begin talking like we had known each other outside of the internet for years. After I dropped by junk off in his dorm room, I took a quick stop in the bathroom. The layout of the urinals and showers intrigued me, how the urinals faced the showers and vice versa. I decided to snap a picture of the wondrous washroom layout.
I rejoined chaos out in the hallway and we went outside and crossed the campus to "the Pineapple," which is a little gazebo type structure with a pineapple sitting on the top. (Don't ask me.) It was here that I met Nathan, Amanda and Alex, who was just down from Frankfort for the night. We talked briefly and hung out, Nathan and Alex were really awesome guys and warmed up to me right away, but Amanda was still a little wary of me because of how I acted on chaos's Facebook wall (not to mention our phone conversation a couple weeks prior). Anyways, I let them know I was basically famished, and when chaos heard I'd never been to a Sonic we easily decided that that was our destination, so we split ways with Nathan and Amanda, who were going to go get us some cigars for later.
Needless to say, the Sonic was a big hit.
VIDEO 5
On our way back to campus, we stopped at the liquor store. chaos had never had Captain Morgan's spiced rum before, so I grabbed a bottle of that, as well as some wine for Nathan and Amanda. We got back to campus and Nathan and Amanda were still out, so chaos suggested a jam session. Well, I'm always down for some jamming, so I grabbed my guitar and he his trumpet and we headed across to the band room. Turns out they trust chaos enough to give him a key to the damn place! So, after we spent about a half hour dicking around with every possible instrument we could get our hands on (from timpanis to triangles), we finally settled down and got down to business. And hear ye, Smogoners, what happened in that room is musical history... but only the following recordings made it out of that room intact.
VIDEO 6
VIDEO 7
VIDEO 8
Content with our musical undertakings, we left the music room and headed back to chaos's dorm room to meet up with Nathan and Amanda. We went upstairs to make some rum & cokes, then went back outside to puff away on the cigars that Nathan had gotten for everyone (and Amanda with her cloves). As you can see, chaos is even more manly (if it was possible) puffing on a stog.
In true Smogon fashion, we shared the moment.
Amanda had said earlier that she would be leaving us shortly before midnight to go to a bookstore and pick up a copy of Harry Potter right when it went on sale. No matter how much the rest of us got on her case about it, she was steadfast, and while we were hanging out in chaos's dorm room, Heather showed up to take Amanda to the bookstore. Interestingly enough, I asked chaos if JManCool was going to come and hang out with us (of course, I referred to him by his real name), and the second I mentioned "Josh Sparks" Heather's eyes lit up and asked me if I knew him. Turns out JMC is her best friend! Small world, I know. So, after leaving him a semi-drunken phonemail from the two of us, Heather and Amanda head out to get their Harry Potter.
chaos took us all on a quick tour of the campus. It really is a beautiful place, even if the panties incident in the empty fraternity dorm was a little unnerving. After the tour, we went back to the dorm room to hang out and drink some more. Alex wasn't drinking because he had to head home and work in the morning, but chaos, Nathan and I had been drinking all along. chaos was tearing it up on his laptop DDR-like game, which is a testament to his typing skill that he can do so well even after a few drinks.
VIDEO 9
Alex left soon after we made some loose plans to hang out in Frankfort the next night. By the time the girls got back around 2am, I was three sheets to the wind, and chaos and Nathan weren't very far behind. I will say, though, in their defense that it didn't take either of them long to catch up, and pretty soon I'd say Amanda was the drunkest of all of us. If you can't tell it from this picture (Amanda, on the left, and Heather) then you're completely oblivious.
We started having a bit of a party in chaos's dorm room, just the five of us. We were rocking out his iPod through his desktop speaker setup and just generally having a good time. For some reason, when Frou Frou's "Let Go" played, the girls felt the need to start dancing. With each other. In a VERY alluring way.
VIDEO 10... missing??? (heh, not for lying or prying eyes)
I'm not exactly sure when it was, maybe sometime around 3:30am, but we headed out for some greasy, nasty, disgusting drunk food. I had asked chaos even before I got down there about gross drunk food, and he told me of Tolly Ho's. Apparently it's to Lexington's what Nick Tahou's and the Garbage Plate is to Rochester, so I had no trouble agreeing to go there. Man, was I ever NOT disappointed.
Yes, that is THE burger. I believe it was called the Tolly Burger, and no, I couldn't even tell you everything that was on it. Cheese, lettuce, onions, mayo, ketchup, I'm sure tomatoes and some sort of meat sauce... whatever. It was ungodly amazing. But what topped even the burger were the FRIES. A heaping mound of crinkle cut goodness, drowned in nacho cheese sauce and topped off with not chips, but full chunks of strip bacon. Oh wow, just thinking about it is making my mouth water.
It was a great place to be drunk. We had played the Penis Game on the walk there, and chaos and I decided (much to Amanda's chagrin) to play the game inside the restaurant. Even screaming the word "penis" at full volume in that crowded place didn't garner us a second glance from any of the other drunken people, in some cases not even a first glance.
After the delightful meal, we all made our way back to chaos's dorm room and went about the business of passing out. Nathan and I set ourselves up on the floor and the girls went downstairs to the room of a mutual acquaintance (I'd say friend, but... that'd be stretching it) to sleep.
SATURDAY, JULY 21, 2007
Nathan's phone rang at about 10:30 or so, waking us all up from what had already been a pretty restless night on the hard tiled floor. It was the girls downstairs, seeing if we were awake. Nathan told them that he had set the alarm on his phone to go off at 11:30 and to leave us alone until then. Thinking that was that, we went back to sleep.
Naturally, we were brutally awoken a half hour later when the girls got in to the room (left it unlocked... whoops) and jumped on us to wake us up. We booted them out so we could wake up properly and get ready for breakfast at IHOP, which we had all agreed upon the day before. We got there and got seated quickly by the black host, who was WAYYYY too peppy and friendly for me. Anyways, we scarfed down a fuckton of food until we were satisfied with our full stomachs and decided to go see a movie in the afternoon. chaos and I split off from the others to go get some booze for the night and let them head to the theater to choose a movie and showtime.
Once we got to the theater to meet up with them, we began to have a debate over what movie to see. It middled on Die Hard and Ratatouie, but in the end the other three somehow decided to go see Hairspray. Meanwhile, chaos noticed Knocked Up was also playing at about the same time, and he and I wisely chose to see that instead by ourselves. Let me just say now, if you haven't seen that movie yet, do yourself a favor and go as soon as possible, it's the funniest movie I've seen all year. Both movies didn't start for about an hour, so we went in to the theater lobby and dicked around in the arcade. Naturally, there was a DDR machine... so naturally, we had to play it! chaos was a crazy man, doing each song on a much harder difficulty than the rest of us. We finally got Heather to play, but she quit about 30 seconds into the song, so to save the quarters chaos jumped on and saved it right before it was about to fail and brought it back to win.
After the movie, we drove over to a nice little suburban neighborhood so chaos could drop in on an old friend of his. Turns out she wasn't home or answering her phone, so he and I just walked around for a while and talked about the state of Smogon. It was really cool to discuss the community with the Big Admin himself and to get his point of view on certain things. After he decided it was pointless to hang around waiting, we went back to campus to meet up with the others.
They were all on the floor below chaos's room in the dorm of that friend I had referred to earlier. Kathleen was her name. Now, I wouldn't say she was FAT per se... but she was a little... well, fat. We hung around there briefly while Nathan and Amanda got started on another bottle of wine-ish stuff that we had picked up for them again earlier. We all decided that we were hungry enough to go get food, plus Nathan and Amanda wanted to go to this strange store called Sqecial to do some shopping, so we headed out and left Heather and Kathleen, who were going to some coffee shop.
Sqecial was... pretty sqecial, to say the least! (Heh, see what I did there?) Books about sex, sensual oils, hippy garments, and books of all sorts could be found there. Oh, and how could I forget the extensive collection of pipes and bowls? Man, I love shops like that. While the others were getting what they wanted, I sat and read through the Penis Book. Fascinating!
We all wanted Mexican food, but chaos wanted to take me to a different place than the other two, so we hoofed over a couple blocks, right past the University of Kentucky campus to a place called Qdoba. (Apparently, this is YET another great chain we don't have in NY.) I got a humongous wrap-type thing loaded to bursting with awesomeness, but since it didn't photograph well I just snapped a picture of chaos and his... plate of stuff.
We met back up with the others and headed back to campus. On the way back, it was decided that none of us were really up for heading to Frankfort for the night, so chaos called up Alex and gave him the bad news. Once back in chaos's room, I mixed us up some vodka/Sprites. He took a couple sips of his and said that he wasn't feeling too well, probably due to the hedonistic night of excess that we had previous.
Saturday night was basically spent in recovery; I myself had a bunch of vodka/Sprites, but nowhere near enough to get more than a simple buzz. Nathan finished off the bottle of nasty booze we had gotten him, but it was mostly sugar so he was in a very sober state as well. Mostly, we just played music on chaos's iPod and joked around and shot the shit. When the girls came back later that night, chaos was already asleep so they went downstairs to do the same. Before I went to sleep, I went down and said goodbye to them since I would be leaving the next afternoon and I figured I wouldn't see them. I got a hug from Heather and Amanda (heh, I KNEW she'd come around) and went back upstairs for sleep.
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2007
We woke up pretty late again, due mostly just to staying awake for no reason the night before. chaos was feeling much better, and I began to pack up all my junk. chaos asked me if I wanted to go get some food with them before I left, but I unfortunately had a very long drive ahead of me, plus I had to pick up N by 1pm, so I had to decline. I said goodbye to Nathan (an all-around awesome guy, I really hope I get to hang out with him again) and chaos helped me carry my junk out to my car. After the usual handshake and hug goodbye, I pulled out from Transylvania University and headed back north. I picked up N right on schedule at 1pm and after dropping her off on the RIT campus I was back home to my apartment at about 10:30p. Le sigh.
EPILOGUE
One short weekend was not nearly long enough to spend down there. In just that short time, I fell in love with Kentucky, the city of Lexington (well, aside from the driving around that area), and chaos's friends. Obviously I was already in love with him, why else would I drive 9+ hours just to meet him face to face?
Anyways, I told him when I was leaving that I'd be seeing him again soon, and those weren't empty words. I really do plan on visiting Transylvania again, especially sometime during the school year when I can see the school bustling at its fullest capacity. Until then, though, I'll just have to settle for talking to my Christopher through #smogon, and occasionally AIM.
THE END
by Adam "DoomMullet" Bojak
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2007
So there I was, awake at 5:30 in the morning to head down to Kentucky to meet with Smogon's overlord: none other than the legendary chaos, aka Christopher Monsanto, aka Bear chaos, aka barkers-kun, aka... well, you know who I'm talking about. I swung over to the RIT campus and grabbed my friend N who was going to ride down with me since we have a mutual friend who lives outside of Cincinnati. It's a wicked long drive, and she wanted to meet up with J (the friend) before 4pm because they had plans. So, we left Rochester at about 6am and head west with reckless abandon.
So, yeah, to make a loooooooooooooong trip short, we met up with J at about 3:30pm and I said hi, checked out her sweet company-paid hotel room and left N and continued on my way to the true Mekkah... Lexington, specifically, Transylvania!
On the way from J's to Lexington, I decided to chronicle my journey with some videos in the car. You can see my sanity deteriorating on the harsh highways of central Kentucky. I mean, it started out so positive and upbeat...
VIDEO 1
But then... well, everyone knows what happens during the summer and how it can affect driving times.
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
While I was sitting there, I looked to my left a noticed a huge, beautiful horse farm. Obviously the picture doesn't quite grasp its true nature, but I was bored, and you get the idea.
Urgh... the traffic finally started moving again.
VIDEO 4
Finally, I had arrived in Lexington. Due to some wonderful dumbfuck directions I got from Google, I ended up on the complete wrong road (turns out there are two Broadways, and they bisect. What the hell.) After a quick call to chaos, he got me back on the right track and was nice enough to stay on the phone and talk me right into the parking lot. I got my first glimpse of the legend himself, and I was overcome by emotion. After I finished weeping, I hopped out of the car to a warm greeting (and a much needed stretch of the legs). He requested a picture right there on the spot, and I was only too happy to oblige.
I grabbed my bag and guitar and we headed in to his dorm building. Just like in meeting past Smogoners, it took us absolutely no time at all to begin talking like we had known each other outside of the internet for years. After I dropped by junk off in his dorm room, I took a quick stop in the bathroom. The layout of the urinals and showers intrigued me, how the urinals faced the showers and vice versa. I decided to snap a picture of the wondrous washroom layout.
I rejoined chaos out in the hallway and we went outside and crossed the campus to "the Pineapple," which is a little gazebo type structure with a pineapple sitting on the top. (Don't ask me.) It was here that I met Nathan, Amanda and Alex, who was just down from Frankfort for the night. We talked briefly and hung out, Nathan and Alex were really awesome guys and warmed up to me right away, but Amanda was still a little wary of me because of how I acted on chaos's Facebook wall (not to mention our phone conversation a couple weeks prior). Anyways, I let them know I was basically famished, and when chaos heard I'd never been to a Sonic we easily decided that that was our destination, so we split ways with Nathan and Amanda, who were going to go get us some cigars for later.
Needless to say, the Sonic was a big hit.
VIDEO 5
On our way back to campus, we stopped at the liquor store. chaos had never had Captain Morgan's spiced rum before, so I grabbed a bottle of that, as well as some wine for Nathan and Amanda. We got back to campus and Nathan and Amanda were still out, so chaos suggested a jam session. Well, I'm always down for some jamming, so I grabbed my guitar and he his trumpet and we headed across to the band room. Turns out they trust chaos enough to give him a key to the damn place! So, after we spent about a half hour dicking around with every possible instrument we could get our hands on (from timpanis to triangles), we finally settled down and got down to business. And hear ye, Smogoners, what happened in that room is musical history... but only the following recordings made it out of that room intact.
VIDEO 6
VIDEO 7
VIDEO 8
Content with our musical undertakings, we left the music room and headed back to chaos's dorm room to meet up with Nathan and Amanda. We went upstairs to make some rum & cokes, then went back outside to puff away on the cigars that Nathan had gotten for everyone (and Amanda with her cloves). As you can see, chaos is even more manly (if it was possible) puffing on a stog.
In true Smogon fashion, we shared the moment.
Amanda had said earlier that she would be leaving us shortly before midnight to go to a bookstore and pick up a copy of Harry Potter right when it went on sale. No matter how much the rest of us got on her case about it, she was steadfast, and while we were hanging out in chaos's dorm room, Heather showed up to take Amanda to the bookstore. Interestingly enough, I asked chaos if JManCool was going to come and hang out with us (of course, I referred to him by his real name), and the second I mentioned "Josh Sparks" Heather's eyes lit up and asked me if I knew him. Turns out JMC is her best friend! Small world, I know. So, after leaving him a semi-drunken phonemail from the two of us, Heather and Amanda head out to get their Harry Potter.
chaos took us all on a quick tour of the campus. It really is a beautiful place, even if the panties incident in the empty fraternity dorm was a little unnerving. After the tour, we went back to the dorm room to hang out and drink some more. Alex wasn't drinking because he had to head home and work in the morning, but chaos, Nathan and I had been drinking all along. chaos was tearing it up on his laptop DDR-like game, which is a testament to his typing skill that he can do so well even after a few drinks.
VIDEO 9
Alex left soon after we made some loose plans to hang out in Frankfort the next night. By the time the girls got back around 2am, I was three sheets to the wind, and chaos and Nathan weren't very far behind. I will say, though, in their defense that it didn't take either of them long to catch up, and pretty soon I'd say Amanda was the drunkest of all of us. If you can't tell it from this picture (Amanda, on the left, and Heather) then you're completely oblivious.
We started having a bit of a party in chaos's dorm room, just the five of us. We were rocking out his iPod through his desktop speaker setup and just generally having a good time. For some reason, when Frou Frou's "Let Go" played, the girls felt the need to start dancing. With each other. In a VERY alluring way.
VIDEO 10... missing??? (heh, not for lying or prying eyes)
I'm not exactly sure when it was, maybe sometime around 3:30am, but we headed out for some greasy, nasty, disgusting drunk food. I had asked chaos even before I got down there about gross drunk food, and he told me of Tolly Ho's. Apparently it's to Lexington's what Nick Tahou's and the Garbage Plate is to Rochester, so I had no trouble agreeing to go there. Man, was I ever NOT disappointed.
Yes, that is THE burger. I believe it was called the Tolly Burger, and no, I couldn't even tell you everything that was on it. Cheese, lettuce, onions, mayo, ketchup, I'm sure tomatoes and some sort of meat sauce... whatever. It was ungodly amazing. But what topped even the burger were the FRIES. A heaping mound of crinkle cut goodness, drowned in nacho cheese sauce and topped off with not chips, but full chunks of strip bacon. Oh wow, just thinking about it is making my mouth water.
It was a great place to be drunk. We had played the Penis Game on the walk there, and chaos and I decided (much to Amanda's chagrin) to play the game inside the restaurant. Even screaming the word "penis" at full volume in that crowded place didn't garner us a second glance from any of the other drunken people, in some cases not even a first glance.
After the delightful meal, we all made our way back to chaos's dorm room and went about the business of passing out. Nathan and I set ourselves up on the floor and the girls went downstairs to the room of a mutual acquaintance (I'd say friend, but... that'd be stretching it) to sleep.
SATURDAY, JULY 21, 2007
Nathan's phone rang at about 10:30 or so, waking us all up from what had already been a pretty restless night on the hard tiled floor. It was the girls downstairs, seeing if we were awake. Nathan told them that he had set the alarm on his phone to go off at 11:30 and to leave us alone until then. Thinking that was that, we went back to sleep.
Naturally, we were brutally awoken a half hour later when the girls got in to the room (left it unlocked... whoops) and jumped on us to wake us up. We booted them out so we could wake up properly and get ready for breakfast at IHOP, which we had all agreed upon the day before. We got there and got seated quickly by the black host, who was WAYYYY too peppy and friendly for me. Anyways, we scarfed down a fuckton of food until we were satisfied with our full stomachs and decided to go see a movie in the afternoon. chaos and I split off from the others to go get some booze for the night and let them head to the theater to choose a movie and showtime.
Once we got to the theater to meet up with them, we began to have a debate over what movie to see. It middled on Die Hard and Ratatouie, but in the end the other three somehow decided to go see Hairspray. Meanwhile, chaos noticed Knocked Up was also playing at about the same time, and he and I wisely chose to see that instead by ourselves. Let me just say now, if you haven't seen that movie yet, do yourself a favor and go as soon as possible, it's the funniest movie I've seen all year. Both movies didn't start for about an hour, so we went in to the theater lobby and dicked around in the arcade. Naturally, there was a DDR machine... so naturally, we had to play it! chaos was a crazy man, doing each song on a much harder difficulty than the rest of us. We finally got Heather to play, but she quit about 30 seconds into the song, so to save the quarters chaos jumped on and saved it right before it was about to fail and brought it back to win.
After the movie, we drove over to a nice little suburban neighborhood so chaos could drop in on an old friend of his. Turns out she wasn't home or answering her phone, so he and I just walked around for a while and talked about the state of Smogon. It was really cool to discuss the community with the Big Admin himself and to get his point of view on certain things. After he decided it was pointless to hang around waiting, we went back to campus to meet up with the others.
They were all on the floor below chaos's room in the dorm of that friend I had referred to earlier. Kathleen was her name. Now, I wouldn't say she was FAT per se... but she was a little... well, fat. We hung around there briefly while Nathan and Amanda got started on another bottle of wine-ish stuff that we had picked up for them again earlier. We all decided that we were hungry enough to go get food, plus Nathan and Amanda wanted to go to this strange store called Sqecial to do some shopping, so we headed out and left Heather and Kathleen, who were going to some coffee shop.
Sqecial was... pretty sqecial, to say the least! (Heh, see what I did there?) Books about sex, sensual oils, hippy garments, and books of all sorts could be found there. Oh, and how could I forget the extensive collection of pipes and bowls? Man, I love shops like that. While the others were getting what they wanted, I sat and read through the Penis Book. Fascinating!
We all wanted Mexican food, but chaos wanted to take me to a different place than the other two, so we hoofed over a couple blocks, right past the University of Kentucky campus to a place called Qdoba. (Apparently, this is YET another great chain we don't have in NY.) I got a humongous wrap-type thing loaded to bursting with awesomeness, but since it didn't photograph well I just snapped a picture of chaos and his... plate of stuff.
We met back up with the others and headed back to campus. On the way back, it was decided that none of us were really up for heading to Frankfort for the night, so chaos called up Alex and gave him the bad news. Once back in chaos's room, I mixed us up some vodka/Sprites. He took a couple sips of his and said that he wasn't feeling too well, probably due to the hedonistic night of excess that we had previous.
Saturday night was basically spent in recovery; I myself had a bunch of vodka/Sprites, but nowhere near enough to get more than a simple buzz. Nathan finished off the bottle of nasty booze we had gotten him, but it was mostly sugar so he was in a very sober state as well. Mostly, we just played music on chaos's iPod and joked around and shot the shit. When the girls came back later that night, chaos was already asleep so they went downstairs to do the same. Before I went to sleep, I went down and said goodbye to them since I would be leaving the next afternoon and I figured I wouldn't see them. I got a hug from Heather and Amanda (heh, I KNEW she'd come around) and went back upstairs for sleep.
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2007
We woke up pretty late again, due mostly just to staying awake for no reason the night before. chaos was feeling much better, and I began to pack up all my junk. chaos asked me if I wanted to go get some food with them before I left, but I unfortunately had a very long drive ahead of me, plus I had to pick up N by 1pm, so I had to decline. I said goodbye to Nathan (an all-around awesome guy, I really hope I get to hang out with him again) and chaos helped me carry my junk out to my car. After the usual handshake and hug goodbye, I pulled out from Transylvania University and headed back north. I picked up N right on schedule at 1pm and after dropping her off on the RIT campus I was back home to my apartment at about 10:30p. Le sigh.
EPILOGUE
One short weekend was not nearly long enough to spend down there. In just that short time, I fell in love with Kentucky, the city of Lexington (well, aside from the driving around that area), and chaos's friends. Obviously I was already in love with him, why else would I drive 9+ hours just to meet him face to face?
Anyways, I told him when I was leaving that I'd be seeing him again soon, and those weren't empty words. I really do plan on visiting Transylvania again, especially sometime during the school year when I can see the school bustling at its fullest capacity. Until then, though, I'll just have to settle for talking to my Christopher through #smogon, and occasionally AIM.
THE END
