This is the story I wrote after I came back from the JAA finals in New York City back in August of 2006. This story used to be on the website on the JAA page, but back when Smogon upgraded the page was lost and this story has been in limbo ever since. (Jumpman has been bugging me especially.)
The motivation after being in Indianapolis for the weekend has brought me to completely re-format the story, re-upload all the pictures and videos, and re-post it the way it originally was. I'm excited to get this thing back out in the eyes of the public for everyone's enjoyment.
DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind that this was written four years ago. I haven't fully re-read the entire text to check for spelling or grammatical errors, so bear with me on those. Also, the viewpoints that may be expressed either in the story or in the videos are OLD viewpoints. A lot has changed since I first wrote this.
Without further ado, here it is. It's in two parts because Smogon is gay and doesn't allow more than 100 pictures in one post. (Yeah, it's that big.)
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There and Back Again: A Mullet's Tale
by Adam Bojak
PREFACE:
The following is as accurate as I can remember it. It's hard to remember exact events from 5 whole days, especially once you've been home from the trip for a while. For instance, I'll remember what was said word for word, but I have trouble remembering who actually said it. Also, I tried hard to include all the phone calls that were made to Smogoners on the trip, but all I have to go on is my cellphone's call history and my memory, and neither are 100% correct. So when you compare my story with others who experienced the same events, take your own truth from it if they differ anywhere. But I will say this: nothing in this story is made up or embellished in any way.
The Hero of our story:
Adam "DoomMullet" Bojak
Occupation: Protagonist
Description: Goofy, amiable, and incredibly lazy. At the time he was there, he was the best-looking male in all of NYC. Has the uncanny ability to finish all the food on his plate, no matter how full he already is. Is really a 12 year old in a 22 year old's body. When drunk, turns into a slobbering blathering idiot.
The Men of Room 3360:
Jason "Articuno64" Wynja
Description: As tall is he claims online. As friendly as he seems online. And funnier then he could ever let on. Also, due to time spent in shower, might actually be natalie in disguise.
Jason "Fish" Fisher-Short
Description: Patient, chivalrous, and hilarious. The patience comes from his daring feat or driving in the heart of Manhattan/Times Square... on a Saturday evening... with a stick shift. Skills include well-placed funny comments and gooofy poses/faces for pictures and videos.
The Others that our Heroes met in their journey:
Tekky "Jumpman16" Andrew-Jaja
Description: It's not just a quirky internet handle... this dude can JUMP. Incredibly friendly, very knowledgeable about pokemon, and allergic to seafood. Give him a 7-foot bar and he'll high jump it, but a laptop keyboard is too much of an obstacle for him to conquer.
Dre Cardinal
Description: Went to Harvard with Jump, for those who remember that hilarious series of events and pics. She's a free spirit, always up for anything (*cough*bathroompartypic*cough*) and is interminably upbeat and positive. If she gives you directions on how to get somewhere... go the opposite way.
Judd "Kongler" Price
Description: The bio may say he's 38, but from the way he lives you'd think this dude isn't a day over 25. One of the friendliest people I've ever met, if more people in this world were like him it'd be a much better place. Has a sexy accent.
Justin "jeps" Epstein
Description: Much shorter than I expected. That might be due to the fact that he's 17, which is much younger than I thought he was. A cool kid all around, I see a great future for him in the art of binge-drinking.
Spencer "Roy" Horne
Description: The Best. A cool dude, represented Smogon like a true champ. Likes to talk very loudly during free viewings of new and unseen pokemon movies.
Justin "Justin8649" Hill
Description: Talks softly, and carries a big pokemon stick. The Champion of many things, not limited to Skip-Bo and making me lose. After spending a lot of time with him it's hard to believe he could be so angry online. (Until I remember some of the people around here.)
Jamie "Bertha" Svehla
Description: "Bertha" gives you the image of a gigantic fat woman who might live in a trailer. Or, maybe a wonderful, expensive driver that's hit about 300 yards. She is neither of those, fortunately for us and especially Justin. I'm sure she felt a little overwhelmed due to being surrounded by gigantic nerds, so didn't talk much, but she was cool and funny when she did. Claims everything she ever says about Justin in #smogon is 100% true.
Carl "Nobie/SDShamshel" Li
Description: An old schooler from Azure Heights, among other places. Quiet and shy at first, but he quickly warmed up to us and was a real cool dude. A dancing MANIAC. Likes to make magician-like disappearances after spending a whole day with our Heroes.
Ian "EeveeTrainer" Garvey
Description: Anyone who knows me knows I'm not an angry or vindictive person. But those people would also know that I've hated ET for about 3 years. But when I saw him at JAA, I dunno, it's just different meeting someone up close. I made amends with him, and I consider him to be an awesome guy... just needs to work on his internet persona a bit. Should go into business as a tour guide. Not a big fan of surprise hugs.
Chris "Amazing Ampharos" Immele
Description: Bumped into him at JAA. Was nowhere near the short fat person I had envisioned him as. Knowledgeable about pokemon. He and our Heroes had a great time mocking most of what was going on during the final battles, but unfortunately didn't see him after they left.
Jason "Black Leather Jacket" Frank
Description: Shorter than I expected. Didn't talk to us that much, I think it's due to the fact that we kept approaching him in groups of about, oh, 10 or so people. We probably intimidated him, which led to the somewhat cold response we got. It would've been nice to hang out though.
Charles "chakka khan" Horenstein
Description: Hung out with Roy and jeps most of the time. I didn't get to talk to him too much, probably due to the fact that he seemed a bit shy and I was starting to get pretty drunk.
Jose "RonnyMcD" Gonzalez-Conseco (but really just Gonzalez)
Description: His little brother was in the 12 and under, so he came with him. Came up with Roy/jeps/chakka khan and hung out with us, is an awesome dude. Has already popped up on the forums and in irc, I see a great Smogonic future ahead of this kid.
Kevin Nguyen
Description: Kevin was Kongler's guest for the trip. As you might guess, he was quiet at first because he didn't know anyone, but he hung out with us for a while he opened up, played some video games and drank some booze. A great guy, another awesome addition to the group.
Stephen "Imawario" Shotwell
Description: I only talked to him briefly, unfortunately. His JAA picture makes him look like kinda standoffish, but he's very nice in real life. A huge Dallas Stars fan, he was wearing the same hat as in his JAA pic. I would've liked to hang out with him, I'm sure he and I could've had a wonderful argument about the No Goal of the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals. Did not get a picture, regrettably.
CHAPTER ONE: Saturday, August 5th
I had originally planned on driving down, but once I was convinced that it would be cheaper to fly, I booked a flight that left at 3:50pm from Buffalo and got into New York City's La Guardia airport at 5:30pm. So, I lazily woke up around noon or so and slowly packed up. I read the forums, hopped on #smogon one last time to say my goodbyes, and at 2pm I hopped into the car and my dad drove me to the airport. Of course, I was incredibly early for my flight, so I stopped off at a bar near my gate for the most expensive Bud Light I've ever had.
$6 poorer and 20 minutes later, I went to my gate and sat down to listen to some music. Finally, my flight began to board. Since it was just a dinky little flight across New York (not even two hours long) we got a piece of shit plane that wasn't even good enough to make it to a jetway. I, of course, snapped a shot of my outbound pokemon.
The flight was boring as hell, as you might imagine. I only had one CD, and I'd already listened to the whole thing twice through. So I grabbed those pathetic travel magazines they make specially for their seatbacks and started reading. Lo and behold, there was an article about the elevators in the hotel I was about to stay at, so naturally, I had to document it.
But what is this! As I looked longingly out the window at the earth below, I caught a glimpse of everyone's favorite Smogon Bengali, Dougun Mia. I waved happily, but he was too preoccupied with his friend to wave back.
All the water I had been drinking all day had finally caught up to me, so I made a trip to the bathroom. Little did I know that the bathroom in this plane was actually a converted overhead compartment. Here is me standing at full height, just a bit put out by having to piss under such conditions.
After a bunch of pictures of cloud formations that I thought were super neat, we had arrived at our destination. During a slight right-hand turn, I was fortunate enough to catch a wonderful shot of Central Park in all its glory.
We landed, and I sent a text message to Articuno64 (hereafter as Arti) saying so. When I got to the baggage claim, I got a call from him saying that he had also arrived and had scheduled himself a shuttle to the hotel and that we'd meet there. After grabbing my luggage, I also scheduled a shuttle which ended up showing up 15 minutes early. I hopped in and was on my way.
Now, for those who have never experienced New York City, let me say this... if you can at all avoid driving, for god's sake DON'T. More than that, DON'T be a passenger in any vehicles. My testicles were in my stomach for the entire trip from La Guardia to the hotel, due to the fact that the driver liked to go from 0 to 40mph in a matter of seconds, and stop just as quickly. If there is a god, he was watching over our van that day, because he saved about 20-25 pedestrians from being run over and dying horribly.
We made it to the hotel in one piece, a miracle that led to the $5 tip I gave the driver. I entered the hotel at the ground level and rode the elevator up into what I thought was the lobby.
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Turns out I was impressed for basically no reason at all, because that was just one of 7 floors devoted to bars and restaurants inside the hotel. After asking a nice hotel attendant where the damn lobby was, I rode the elevator up to floor 8 to check in.
But, ahhh, my unending incompetence. Every single trip I take, no matter where, I forget something. Big or small, I never remember everything I'm supposed to bring. This trip, I decided to forget the most important thing. When skarm got us our discount on the hotel room, he mailed me a form with his signature as well as his superior's. He made it a point of telling me that I couldn't forget it, that I needed to present it upon check-in.
So I forgot it.
On top of that, they want me to pay for the entire trip up front on my credit card. That was a joke, considering only two nights would've already gone above my credit limit, let alone three. But the attendant was incredibly patient and helpful, he agreed to only charge me for a portion of the first night; when I told him the paperwork I was supposed to have was at my house, he said as long as I had it faxed to the hotel before the next night I could keep the rate. (I got a hold of my dad and he saved my ass.) After all that was taken care of, he gave me three keycards to my temporary home, Room 3360. I punched 33 into the elevator keypad and was on my way. Nothing, though, could have prepared me for the luxury that I would be treated to for the next three nights.
Right after I had scoped out the room and put my bags down, I got a call from Jumpman16 (hereafter as Jump). I had talked to him earlier, so he knew when and where I'd be, and he told me that he was at my hotel. I told him I'd meet him in the lobby and started on down, but not before getting a video of the view from the edge outside the door to the room.
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Jump was right there waiting when I got off the elevator, and we introduced ourselves to each other. It's odd meeting someone you've never met before but have known for 4 years online: it was as if we were old friends, because there was a handshake and a hug right off the bat. Jump was the second Smogoner I'd ever met, first since Dweedle in July 2005.
Arti's recurring shuttle problems had begun at this point, I called him multiple times and he had still not gotten anywhere near the hotel. After a quick conversation, Jump and I decided just to walk around outside until Arti arrived. It was during this little jaunt that Running Theme #1 for the trip was established: shouting out random pokemon names. Here's some media of the two of us checking out the Times Square area.
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We didn't get too far, luckily, because Arti called us shortly after and said he had arrived. We headed back to the hotel and up to the lobby, finally finding Arti and proceeding with more handshake-hug combos. Arti grabbed his bags and we went up to the room to help him get settled in before trekking out into the city.
When we got into the room, the sun had begun to set and looked amazing out our window, so I did my best to capture it. The first picture is better just for a general view from our room, but the second with the zoom grabbed it a bit better.
We figured, at this point, that it was time to attempt some video game nerdery. Arti opened up his bag and showed to us one of the most delightful surprises of the trip... Twix bars. LOTS of them. Yum. I was elated, to say the least.
As you can see, the electronics started coming out as well, so I went to check the TV for audio/video inputs. The TV set was on a sliding shelf, so I pulled it out to look behind and... Oh! What is this? Looks like some little kid lost his Hot Wheels car behind the TV. God knows how it got there, but I thought it was funny. Jump mentioned something about the car being the mascot of the trip, and I immediately took to the idea, formulating the idea to take pictures of every person we met with the Red Corvette, starting with Jump and Arti. Running Theme #2 established.
(It's ironic now, I looked at car when I got home last night and realized it's a Pontiac Firebird. Nonetheless, it shall forever be known as the Red Corvette.)
Unfortunately the TV was guarded against any sort of A/V inputs, basically because the hotel wants their guests to have to pay them for everything. We lamented the fact that we wouldn't be gaming, but as the trip unfolded we noticed how much it didn't really matter, for we always had something to occupy our time.
At this point, we realized we were all hungry so we set out to find someplace to eat. At this time, somewhere during this walk, Running Theme #3 of the trip was established: walking incredibly long distances for absolutely no reason. We didn't know it would be a theme at the time, though. It would solidify itself over the next few days. On the way, we bumped into an interesting advertisement on the side of a phone booth, so Arti and I posed next to it.
We ate a place called the Art Cafe. It was awesome food and a fun time (compounded by the fact that Arti got breakfast), but what was even better was the server. She had a strong accent and was absolutely gorgeous, so Arti struck up a conversation with her about it. Turns out she was Russian and had only just recently come over to NYC. Jump jokingly told me he'd pay me $20 to ask her out, so after we were all done I asked her what she was doing when she got off work. Unfortunately, she didn't get off until 1:30am, and it wasn't even 10pm yet. So I reluctantly said goodbye to my future wife and we headed out.
Around this time, Jump's friend Dre was getting in contact with him about meeting up with her, so she gave us a corner and we started off. On our way back through Times Square, we bumped into this lovely lady who was out there making a buck the best way she knew how. Naturally, Jump seduced her into taking a picture with him.
We finally met up with Dre, an awesome girl. We didn't really have a plan for the evening or anything. I had been in contact with Fish, who was unfortunate enough to be driving into the city, and he was stuck coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel. We figured he'd be in soon and we wanted to be able to meet with him and not leave him waiting, so we headed back to the hotel. Dre immediately fell in love with the blankets on our beds in the room, rolling around in them and rubbing her feet on them.
I talked to Fish again and found out that he hadn't gotten any closer, so we decided to start wandering around the area. But not before I snapped a fantastic Red Corvette shot with Dre.
Okay, it's about time I explain the elevators. They're brand new technology, which is why they're so special. They're set up in a circular fashion, lettered up to P. There are about 6-8 number pads spread out near them, and what you do is punch the floor you want into the pad and it will tell you which letter elevator to go to. This way it can group people by the floors they're going to, supposedly saving 30% on wait time. They're also incredibly fast, and you can see the whole inside of the hotel out of them.
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We went back to the check-in desk to take care of the rest of the bill for that day, and Dre decided to put makeup on Jump's face. I, being the paparazzi that I am, didn't let the opportunity for blackmail slip by.
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We walked around the lobby floor aimlessly, not really having any direction. I took a great picture looking up the outside of the elevator shaft from the bar area.
Being in the Times Square area, we were surrounded by shops and stores of all type and persuasion. So, the first one we went into was a hugeass porn shop, obviously. We walked around, laughing at all the wonderful gadgets that were displayed, as well as having our eyes fall upon some of the most disturbing and hilarious pornography DVDs ever to grace the earth. Dre, being the cool girl that she is, took it all in stride.
Continuing on our walk, I noticed another phone booth advertisement that I found amusing, so I snapped a picture of Arti next to it. The concept in my mind was that pokemon battling was his secret, but it ended up just being a humorous picture anyways.
I finally got the call from Fish that he'd be there in a few minutes, so I gave him the address of a 24-hour parking garage we had seen earlier... except I had forgotten the right street number and got him a bit lost. As we walked to the garage, I stayed in touch with him as he dealt with the horrific traffic on Broadway. He finally got out of it and met us the garage. We grabbed his bags out of the trunk and waited for the attendant to take care of his car, plus the two cars ahead of him.
Of course, the lot turned out to be completely full, but that didn't stop the attendant from not telling anyone for about 10 minutes. Finally a big black dude in the car ahead of Fish went over and bitched at him, which was when we found out that Fish wouldn't be parking there. So we put his bags back in his trunk to go looking for another lot. Fish, though, was so fed up with driving (he had been on the road all day) that he gave me the keys. It was no problem... until I saw the stick shift. I hadn't driven stick in about two years, and I was incredibly nervous about doing it in NYC. So, I proceeded to stall it out twice in a row trying to get out of the garage. Fish said if I stalled it one more time he'd drive instead of me... but then I noticed the freaking parking brake was still on, so I snapped it off and we took off into the night.
Well, that sure was fun. I was a little heavy-footed, and I kept minutely squealing the tires, and every time I did Dre would let out a little shriek from the passenger seat and make me even more nervous. I was getting tailed and honked at by about 10 different taxis, accidentally cutting people off everywhere, and basically just sucking at life... until I randomly noticed a 24-hour lot and pulled it in. We sat in the car about 15 feet away from the attendant, waiting for him to come over, but he never did. So Dre and Fish started calling out to him... and he ignored us. Other people were coming up and getting their cars, but we just sat there. We finally decided to just get out and talk to the guy, Fish gave him the keys and everything was cool. We were about 8-10 blocks from the hotel, so we started hoofing it back. The only thing that stood out from the walk back was some guy across the street from us with his face in a garbage can, not moving. Was he puking? Was he sleeping? Was he eating? We'll never know.
Finally back at the room, Dre went to go play with the blankets more as Fish settled in. I snapped a Red Corvette pic of him, and established Running Theme #4: Fish + camera = comedy.
Fish was, as you might imagine, ravenously hungry, so we headed down the street to a pizza place we had seen and got some slices. See, everyone talks about pizza in NYC, but the one thing they don't tell you is that all the pizza places are run by Italians... and they're all assholes. "Customer Service" to them means not taking a dump on your slice. The pizza wasn't bad, I thought the crust was a bit burnt, and Jump had to take matters into his own hands.
After the food, we went back to our hotel room and hung out for a little bit. Not long after, Jump and Dre said goodbye for the night and Fish hooked up his laptop to the room's internet and we popped in #smogon to say hi. natalie was nice enough to give us a call, and we all chatted with her for a while (I can only imagine how expensive that call will be for her). I also received a brief call from Acura. At some point, I realized that I hadn't even gotten a Red Corvette picture with myself, so we got that out of the way.
At around 4am, we finally decided to sleep. Three guys, two beds, so I volunteered to sleep in the armchair the first night. No real solid sleep, but it got the job done.
CHAPTER TWO: Sunday, August 6th
After a very restless night in the armchair (and the alarm going off a bunch times), we all finally started to wake up a little before noon. While we were all showering and preparing for the day, I got a call from Jump and he said he was on his way over. By the time he got there, we were all basically ready to head out, so we grabbed some breakfast at another diner we randomly found. Jump wore a very special shirt that day, a shirt which many people passing by him would point and smile at. A couple times people even talked to him about it, it was a great icebreaker. Here's him with the shirt taking a picture with this buddy.
The only real plan we had for the day was to stop by Nintendo World, so we started to wander in that general direction when we stumbled upon a street festival. 6th Avenue had been entirely closed down and people and vendors stretched along its sides as far as the eye could see.
We grabbed some ice cold lemonade and started walking, doing our best to avoid the crazy people scattered about. I took a picture of one stand's food that made my mouth water like you wouldn't believe... of course, the picture became a metaphor for the trip in a way.
I saw that we had walked right up to the famous Radio City Music Hall, so I figured for the purposes of tourism I should take a picture of the marquee... until I saw what was on it. This picture now has dual purposes: one for tourism, and the other to show how far down our pathetic culture has fallen.
Speaking of the crazies, there are always people that are trying to hand you garbage every step that you take in the city, whether it be their new "super hot" hip-hop CD, or some nice words about how God is our Lord and you're going to Hell if you don't think so, or even weirder stuff than that. We had been talking before about trolling someone in real life sometime during the trip, and now we would get the chance.
So, as we're walking, this old guy walks up and hands out a bunch of little cards to us, gives some quick shpiel and walks away. (I found the card when unpacking, it says: "Thank God that the earth is NOT moving!! www.cabotia.com") So we all look at each other and decide to troll him back. Jump gets elected trollmaster.
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My favorite is the response of "I really don't come... I only come on weekends." Well, with that accomplished, Jump starts trying to get in touch with Dre again. After talking to her friend Gretchen, it turns out that Dre struck out on her own to find us... only she doesn't have a cell phone with her. So, basically, if we don't wait for her where we said we would, she won't find us. Plus, she won't be able to get back to her friends. We started walking through the crowd looking for her, luckily she walked right up to us. (She almost walked right by Arti, he didn't recognize her right away.)
With Dre in tow, we continued on to Nintendo World. I figured that since we were going into the nerdery capital of NYC I should mark our arrival with a video. Poor Fish thought it was a picture at first.
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As you can see, it's bright, fun, and full of nerds. I ended up playing this TetriMario game where I would play Tetris on the bottom screen, and on the top screen was Mario going through levels from SMB and SMB3. I don't even know what system that was, I guess a Game Boy Advance? Anyways, after a few minutes we went upstairs to see everything else. There were a bunch of Gamecubes set up with numerous games you could play on them. Only thing is that they reset themselves after about 10 minutes. There were three nice big screens set up with Gamecubes that didn't reset, but they were of course monopolized already. We were watching some Mario baseball game when Arti and I saw this kid watching us and sidling over to our area. So he went in for the troll.
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Turns out the kid's name is Roberto, and he's a little... odd. I wish I had kept the camera rolling, because when we introduced ourselves to him and I said my name was Adam, he clapped excitedly and hopped up and down and said "Adam! My cousin's name is Adam! He lives in Florida." I said, "Well, he's cooler than me." To which he replied, "Yeah," and stopped paying attention to me. We didn't let him go without a group shot. (In retrospect, I probably should've had him hold the Red Corvette, but... I dunno, he probably would've thought it was a gift and kept it.)
Roberto was a good kid, but very talkative. It wasn't long before we realized that our trolling had gone horribly wrong, as he had reversed it on us. So at that point I went over and started watching some kids playing Super Smash Brothers Melee. When a controller opened up I hopped in, and immediately self-deathed myself until I lost. The others had come over and Arti and Fish jumped in to play too. I don't quite remember how the conversation started up, but a kid named Devin started talking to Jump about pokemon and Smogon was inevitably brought up. The kid recognized Jump's handle, said he had visited our website many times but had never registered. I pointed to Arti and said, "You know, this is Articuno64." Well, let me tell you, this kid's eyes just lit up as he slowly extended a hand to shake. (I told Arti he is the true Face of Smogon.)
After we got tired of SSBM, Devin let Jump rate his team. Oh, the poor kid didn't know what he was getting himself into.
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We went back downstairs a little later and watched Devin battle some kid in a wheelchair and just really mop the floor with him. Arti and I bought some Mario energy drinks, and we went on our way to find something else to do. On this walk, we noticed a really cool glass building that was reflecting everything on the other side of the street, so we all snapped a picture of it.
While still in Rockefeller Center, I recognized a building as one that we had all been given coupons for earlier in the day. The coupons were for a 10% discount to ride to the observation deck on the building. Of course, I was the only one who didn't throw mine away, but that didn't matter because once we saw the price to go up, we said to hell with it and kept walking.
A little later I saw Madame Tussaud's wax museum and suggested we go in. It was another great idea that was foiled by kinda outrageous NYC prices. But, on the way out, I did get to meet Samuel L. Jackson, and he was nice enough to stop screaming about snakes to let me take a picture with him.
Right next to Madame Tussaud's was an Iron Chaos. If you look closely, you can see that the sign cuts it off, but they have grilled Feebas!
At this point we were just wandering around aimlessly, nobody had any real ideas of what to do. Someone suggested eating, but none of us were hungry enough. Dre suggested we go watch a movie, and then eat afterwards. We went into the theatre we had just walked by and checked the movies. "Talladega Nights" was out since Jump had just seen it, and I said no to "Descent" because I wasn't in the mood for blood splattering. We settled on a new Robin Williams movie called "The Night Listener" and went in.
The AMC theater was huge, there were about 8 floors or so to it. We were in theater 19, so we got to ride tons of escalators to the top. After each escalator there were balconies you could walk out on, so we snapped pictures from each one. The first here is the hand that hold the Madame Tussaud sign. The second is from the highest balcony looking down whatever street we were on. There's a really goofy building on the right.
This isn't the place for a movie review, so I'll just say this: it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great by any means. It was just incredibly BIZARRE.
After the movie let out we went off on another ill-advised search for food. This Dre-led search last for about a half hour, taking us all the way to 5th and 30th before coming back up to 35th and finding a great little oriental place where we were the only diners. Dre chastised me for ordering chicken fried rice with such a huge menu to choose from, but she ended up forgiving me when the two of us went to town on the little bowls of (appetizers?) that they brought out: seaweed, salmon, sprouts, it was all awesome. Arti ended up with 4 chopsticks after he contaminated Jump's with fish, so he made the best of the situation.
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Our stomachs full and our morale high, we stopped on the way back to the hotel to grab some beers. (WOW expensive.) We got back and started hanging around and somehow we got onto the subject of the photo album, specifically the bathroom party pictures. We showed her ours and explained the concept behind them, and she seemed quite amused, so we asked if she would take one. Naturally, she was down for it. She asked, "Do you have to be topless?" to which we obviously replied, "Yes." I let her use my toothbrush, we helped put the towel and Red Corvette on her head, and then we just started snapping shots like a bunch of cameramen on a red carpet, telling her to do this, do that, look this way, look that way. She picked this picture off mine as the one she liked, so I present it to you now.
Dre offered to give Jump a backrub. I thought that the way she put him right out was pretty funny, he was putty in her hands.
After she was done with Jump, I said I'd give her a back massage. I used some techniques I learned in a massage therapy class in college, and she seemed to enjoy it. Of course, she said she'd give me a back massage in return, but I never took her up on the offer, so she still owes me that.
Jump said he'd have to head back, so we played poker to keep him from leaving. Dre had one Corona before falling asleep on the bed behind us. When Fish, Arti and I were almost done with our first beers, we went into the bathroom to film a dedication.
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Fish went out of the poker game first (a couple hours later), crippling himself when he played a hand entirely without even looking at his cards. He went over and hopped on #smogon, and it wasn't long after that Arti joined him. I was winning at the start of heads-up, but Jump wasn't far behind in chips, and he doubled up early on and really put a hurt on me. I was down to nothing, it was approaching 4:30am or so and I just wanted to end the game, so when he pushed me all in I called with 5-2 of clubs. He flipped over pocket Aces. I was glad that the game would be over soon... but would it? The flop came out with absolutely nothing, but there was a club. The turn was also a club. I was now looking at a flush draw. I remember saying something along the lines of "there CAN'T be a club on the river," so of course the King of clubs came out and won me the hand. Jump's disbelief was rivaled only by my own. I was still losing though, and I pushed all in a couple hands after that, and while I don't remember the specifics of the hand, I know it was another bad beat for Jump, I think I had like a 7-9 and picked up a 9high straight or something. We decided to quit playing after that and called it a draw, and Jump and Dre left for the night. We once again dicked around on #smogon before hitting the sack ourselves. All the JAA competitors were getting in the next day, and we were pretty excited.
The motivation after being in Indianapolis for the weekend has brought me to completely re-format the story, re-upload all the pictures and videos, and re-post it the way it originally was. I'm excited to get this thing back out in the eyes of the public for everyone's enjoyment.
DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind that this was written four years ago. I haven't fully re-read the entire text to check for spelling or grammatical errors, so bear with me on those. Also, the viewpoints that may be expressed either in the story or in the videos are OLD viewpoints. A lot has changed since I first wrote this.
Without further ado, here it is. It's in two parts because Smogon is gay and doesn't allow more than 100 pictures in one post. (Yeah, it's that big.)
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There and Back Again: A Mullet's Tale
by Adam Bojak
PREFACE:
The following is as accurate as I can remember it. It's hard to remember exact events from 5 whole days, especially once you've been home from the trip for a while. For instance, I'll remember what was said word for word, but I have trouble remembering who actually said it. Also, I tried hard to include all the phone calls that were made to Smogoners on the trip, but all I have to go on is my cellphone's call history and my memory, and neither are 100% correct. So when you compare my story with others who experienced the same events, take your own truth from it if they differ anywhere. But I will say this: nothing in this story is made up or embellished in any way.
The Hero of our story:
Adam "DoomMullet" Bojak

Occupation: Protagonist
Description: Goofy, amiable, and incredibly lazy. At the time he was there, he was the best-looking male in all of NYC. Has the uncanny ability to finish all the food on his plate, no matter how full he already is. Is really a 12 year old in a 22 year old's body. When drunk, turns into a slobbering blathering idiot.
The Men of Room 3360:
Jason "Articuno64" Wynja

Description: As tall is he claims online. As friendly as he seems online. And funnier then he could ever let on. Also, due to time spent in shower, might actually be natalie in disguise.
Jason "Fish" Fisher-Short

Description: Patient, chivalrous, and hilarious. The patience comes from his daring feat or driving in the heart of Manhattan/Times Square... on a Saturday evening... with a stick shift. Skills include well-placed funny comments and gooofy poses/faces for pictures and videos.
The Others that our Heroes met in their journey:
Tekky "Jumpman16" Andrew-Jaja

Description: It's not just a quirky internet handle... this dude can JUMP. Incredibly friendly, very knowledgeable about pokemon, and allergic to seafood. Give him a 7-foot bar and he'll high jump it, but a laptop keyboard is too much of an obstacle for him to conquer.
Dre Cardinal

Description: Went to Harvard with Jump, for those who remember that hilarious series of events and pics. She's a free spirit, always up for anything (*cough*bathroompartypic*cough*) and is interminably upbeat and positive. If she gives you directions on how to get somewhere... go the opposite way.
Judd "Kongler" Price

Description: The bio may say he's 38, but from the way he lives you'd think this dude isn't a day over 25. One of the friendliest people I've ever met, if more people in this world were like him it'd be a much better place. Has a sexy accent.
Justin "jeps" Epstein

Description: Much shorter than I expected. That might be due to the fact that he's 17, which is much younger than I thought he was. A cool kid all around, I see a great future for him in the art of binge-drinking.
Spencer "Roy" Horne

Description: The Best. A cool dude, represented Smogon like a true champ. Likes to talk very loudly during free viewings of new and unseen pokemon movies.
Justin "Justin8649" Hill

Description: Talks softly, and carries a big pokemon stick. The Champion of many things, not limited to Skip-Bo and making me lose. After spending a lot of time with him it's hard to believe he could be so angry online. (Until I remember some of the people around here.)
Jamie "Bertha" Svehla

Description: "Bertha" gives you the image of a gigantic fat woman who might live in a trailer. Or, maybe a wonderful, expensive driver that's hit about 300 yards. She is neither of those, fortunately for us and especially Justin. I'm sure she felt a little overwhelmed due to being surrounded by gigantic nerds, so didn't talk much, but she was cool and funny when she did. Claims everything she ever says about Justin in #smogon is 100% true.
Carl "Nobie/SDShamshel" Li

Description: An old schooler from Azure Heights, among other places. Quiet and shy at first, but he quickly warmed up to us and was a real cool dude. A dancing MANIAC. Likes to make magician-like disappearances after spending a whole day with our Heroes.
Ian "EeveeTrainer" Garvey

Description: Anyone who knows me knows I'm not an angry or vindictive person. But those people would also know that I've hated ET for about 3 years. But when I saw him at JAA, I dunno, it's just different meeting someone up close. I made amends with him, and I consider him to be an awesome guy... just needs to work on his internet persona a bit. Should go into business as a tour guide. Not a big fan of surprise hugs.
Chris "Amazing Ampharos" Immele

Description: Bumped into him at JAA. Was nowhere near the short fat person I had envisioned him as. Knowledgeable about pokemon. He and our Heroes had a great time mocking most of what was going on during the final battles, but unfortunately didn't see him after they left.
Jason "Black Leather Jacket" Frank

Description: Shorter than I expected. Didn't talk to us that much, I think it's due to the fact that we kept approaching him in groups of about, oh, 10 or so people. We probably intimidated him, which led to the somewhat cold response we got. It would've been nice to hang out though.
Charles "chakka khan" Horenstein

Description: Hung out with Roy and jeps most of the time. I didn't get to talk to him too much, probably due to the fact that he seemed a bit shy and I was starting to get pretty drunk.
Jose "RonnyMcD" Gonzalez-Conseco (but really just Gonzalez)

Description: His little brother was in the 12 and under, so he came with him. Came up with Roy/jeps/chakka khan and hung out with us, is an awesome dude. Has already popped up on the forums and in irc, I see a great Smogonic future ahead of this kid.
Kevin Nguyen

Description: Kevin was Kongler's guest for the trip. As you might guess, he was quiet at first because he didn't know anyone, but he hung out with us for a while he opened up, played some video games and drank some booze. A great guy, another awesome addition to the group.
Stephen "Imawario" Shotwell
Description: I only talked to him briefly, unfortunately. His JAA picture makes him look like kinda standoffish, but he's very nice in real life. A huge Dallas Stars fan, he was wearing the same hat as in his JAA pic. I would've liked to hang out with him, I'm sure he and I could've had a wonderful argument about the No Goal of the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals. Did not get a picture, regrettably.
CHAPTER ONE: Saturday, August 5th
I had originally planned on driving down, but once I was convinced that it would be cheaper to fly, I booked a flight that left at 3:50pm from Buffalo and got into New York City's La Guardia airport at 5:30pm. So, I lazily woke up around noon or so and slowly packed up. I read the forums, hopped on #smogon one last time to say my goodbyes, and at 2pm I hopped into the car and my dad drove me to the airport. Of course, I was incredibly early for my flight, so I stopped off at a bar near my gate for the most expensive Bud Light I've ever had.

$6 poorer and 20 minutes later, I went to my gate and sat down to listen to some music. Finally, my flight began to board. Since it was just a dinky little flight across New York (not even two hours long) we got a piece of shit plane that wasn't even good enough to make it to a jetway. I, of course, snapped a shot of my outbound pokemon.

The flight was boring as hell, as you might imagine. I only had one CD, and I'd already listened to the whole thing twice through. So I grabbed those pathetic travel magazines they make specially for their seatbacks and started reading. Lo and behold, there was an article about the elevators in the hotel I was about to stay at, so naturally, I had to document it.

But what is this! As I looked longingly out the window at the earth below, I caught a glimpse of everyone's favorite Smogon Bengali, Dougun Mia. I waved happily, but he was too preoccupied with his friend to wave back.

All the water I had been drinking all day had finally caught up to me, so I made a trip to the bathroom. Little did I know that the bathroom in this plane was actually a converted overhead compartment. Here is me standing at full height, just a bit put out by having to piss under such conditions.

After a bunch of pictures of cloud formations that I thought were super neat, we had arrived at our destination. During a slight right-hand turn, I was fortunate enough to catch a wonderful shot of Central Park in all its glory.

We landed, and I sent a text message to Articuno64 (hereafter as Arti) saying so. When I got to the baggage claim, I got a call from him saying that he had also arrived and had scheduled himself a shuttle to the hotel and that we'd meet there. After grabbing my luggage, I also scheduled a shuttle which ended up showing up 15 minutes early. I hopped in and was on my way.
Now, for those who have never experienced New York City, let me say this... if you can at all avoid driving, for god's sake DON'T. More than that, DON'T be a passenger in any vehicles. My testicles were in my stomach for the entire trip from La Guardia to the hotel, due to the fact that the driver liked to go from 0 to 40mph in a matter of seconds, and stop just as quickly. If there is a god, he was watching over our van that day, because he saved about 20-25 pedestrians from being run over and dying horribly.
We made it to the hotel in one piece, a miracle that led to the $5 tip I gave the driver. I entered the hotel at the ground level and rode the elevator up into what I thought was the lobby.
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Turns out I was impressed for basically no reason at all, because that was just one of 7 floors devoted to bars and restaurants inside the hotel. After asking a nice hotel attendant where the damn lobby was, I rode the elevator up to floor 8 to check in.
But, ahhh, my unending incompetence. Every single trip I take, no matter where, I forget something. Big or small, I never remember everything I'm supposed to bring. This trip, I decided to forget the most important thing. When skarm got us our discount on the hotel room, he mailed me a form with his signature as well as his superior's. He made it a point of telling me that I couldn't forget it, that I needed to present it upon check-in.
So I forgot it.
On top of that, they want me to pay for the entire trip up front on my credit card. That was a joke, considering only two nights would've already gone above my credit limit, let alone three. But the attendant was incredibly patient and helpful, he agreed to only charge me for a portion of the first night; when I told him the paperwork I was supposed to have was at my house, he said as long as I had it faxed to the hotel before the next night I could keep the rate. (I got a hold of my dad and he saved my ass.) After all that was taken care of, he gave me three keycards to my temporary home, Room 3360. I punched 33 into the elevator keypad and was on my way. Nothing, though, could have prepared me for the luxury that I would be treated to for the next three nights.


Right after I had scoped out the room and put my bags down, I got a call from Jumpman16 (hereafter as Jump). I had talked to him earlier, so he knew when and where I'd be, and he told me that he was at my hotel. I told him I'd meet him in the lobby and started on down, but not before getting a video of the view from the edge outside the door to the room.
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Jump was right there waiting when I got off the elevator, and we introduced ourselves to each other. It's odd meeting someone you've never met before but have known for 4 years online: it was as if we were old friends, because there was a handshake and a hug right off the bat. Jump was the second Smogoner I'd ever met, first since Dweedle in July 2005.
Arti's recurring shuttle problems had begun at this point, I called him multiple times and he had still not gotten anywhere near the hotel. After a quick conversation, Jump and I decided just to walk around outside until Arti arrived. It was during this little jaunt that Running Theme #1 for the trip was established: shouting out random pokemon names. Here's some media of the two of us checking out the Times Square area.

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We didn't get too far, luckily, because Arti called us shortly after and said he had arrived. We headed back to the hotel and up to the lobby, finally finding Arti and proceeding with more handshake-hug combos. Arti grabbed his bags and we went up to the room to help him get settled in before trekking out into the city.
When we got into the room, the sun had begun to set and looked amazing out our window, so I did my best to capture it. The first picture is better just for a general view from our room, but the second with the zoom grabbed it a bit better.


We figured, at this point, that it was time to attempt some video game nerdery. Arti opened up his bag and showed to us one of the most delightful surprises of the trip... Twix bars. LOTS of them. Yum. I was elated, to say the least.

As you can see, the electronics started coming out as well, so I went to check the TV for audio/video inputs. The TV set was on a sliding shelf, so I pulled it out to look behind and... Oh! What is this? Looks like some little kid lost his Hot Wheels car behind the TV. God knows how it got there, but I thought it was funny. Jump mentioned something about the car being the mascot of the trip, and I immediately took to the idea, formulating the idea to take pictures of every person we met with the Red Corvette, starting with Jump and Arti. Running Theme #2 established.

(It's ironic now, I looked at car when I got home last night and realized it's a Pontiac Firebird. Nonetheless, it shall forever be known as the Red Corvette.)
Unfortunately the TV was guarded against any sort of A/V inputs, basically because the hotel wants their guests to have to pay them for everything. We lamented the fact that we wouldn't be gaming, but as the trip unfolded we noticed how much it didn't really matter, for we always had something to occupy our time.
At this point, we realized we were all hungry so we set out to find someplace to eat. At this time, somewhere during this walk, Running Theme #3 of the trip was established: walking incredibly long distances for absolutely no reason. We didn't know it would be a theme at the time, though. It would solidify itself over the next few days. On the way, we bumped into an interesting advertisement on the side of a phone booth, so Arti and I posed next to it.

We ate a place called the Art Cafe. It was awesome food and a fun time (compounded by the fact that Arti got breakfast), but what was even better was the server. She had a strong accent and was absolutely gorgeous, so Arti struck up a conversation with her about it. Turns out she was Russian and had only just recently come over to NYC. Jump jokingly told me he'd pay me $20 to ask her out, so after we were all done I asked her what she was doing when she got off work. Unfortunately, she didn't get off until 1:30am, and it wasn't even 10pm yet. So I reluctantly said goodbye to my future wife and we headed out.
Around this time, Jump's friend Dre was getting in contact with him about meeting up with her, so she gave us a corner and we started off. On our way back through Times Square, we bumped into this lovely lady who was out there making a buck the best way she knew how. Naturally, Jump seduced her into taking a picture with him.

We finally met up with Dre, an awesome girl. We didn't really have a plan for the evening or anything. I had been in contact with Fish, who was unfortunate enough to be driving into the city, and he was stuck coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel. We figured he'd be in soon and we wanted to be able to meet with him and not leave him waiting, so we headed back to the hotel. Dre immediately fell in love with the blankets on our beds in the room, rolling around in them and rubbing her feet on them.

I talked to Fish again and found out that he hadn't gotten any closer, so we decided to start wandering around the area. But not before I snapped a fantastic Red Corvette shot with Dre.

Okay, it's about time I explain the elevators. They're brand new technology, which is why they're so special. They're set up in a circular fashion, lettered up to P. There are about 6-8 number pads spread out near them, and what you do is punch the floor you want into the pad and it will tell you which letter elevator to go to. This way it can group people by the floors they're going to, supposedly saving 30% on wait time. They're also incredibly fast, and you can see the whole inside of the hotel out of them.
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We went back to the check-in desk to take care of the rest of the bill for that day, and Dre decided to put makeup on Jump's face. I, being the paparazzi that I am, didn't let the opportunity for blackmail slip by.
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We walked around the lobby floor aimlessly, not really having any direction. I took a great picture looking up the outside of the elevator shaft from the bar area.

Being in the Times Square area, we were surrounded by shops and stores of all type and persuasion. So, the first one we went into was a hugeass porn shop, obviously. We walked around, laughing at all the wonderful gadgets that were displayed, as well as having our eyes fall upon some of the most disturbing and hilarious pornography DVDs ever to grace the earth. Dre, being the cool girl that she is, took it all in stride.

Continuing on our walk, I noticed another phone booth advertisement that I found amusing, so I snapped a picture of Arti next to it. The concept in my mind was that pokemon battling was his secret, but it ended up just being a humorous picture anyways.

I finally got the call from Fish that he'd be there in a few minutes, so I gave him the address of a 24-hour parking garage we had seen earlier... except I had forgotten the right street number and got him a bit lost. As we walked to the garage, I stayed in touch with him as he dealt with the horrific traffic on Broadway. He finally got out of it and met us the garage. We grabbed his bags out of the trunk and waited for the attendant to take care of his car, plus the two cars ahead of him.
Of course, the lot turned out to be completely full, but that didn't stop the attendant from not telling anyone for about 10 minutes. Finally a big black dude in the car ahead of Fish went over and bitched at him, which was when we found out that Fish wouldn't be parking there. So we put his bags back in his trunk to go looking for another lot. Fish, though, was so fed up with driving (he had been on the road all day) that he gave me the keys. It was no problem... until I saw the stick shift. I hadn't driven stick in about two years, and I was incredibly nervous about doing it in NYC. So, I proceeded to stall it out twice in a row trying to get out of the garage. Fish said if I stalled it one more time he'd drive instead of me... but then I noticed the freaking parking brake was still on, so I snapped it off and we took off into the night.
Well, that sure was fun. I was a little heavy-footed, and I kept minutely squealing the tires, and every time I did Dre would let out a little shriek from the passenger seat and make me even more nervous. I was getting tailed and honked at by about 10 different taxis, accidentally cutting people off everywhere, and basically just sucking at life... until I randomly noticed a 24-hour lot and pulled it in. We sat in the car about 15 feet away from the attendant, waiting for him to come over, but he never did. So Dre and Fish started calling out to him... and he ignored us. Other people were coming up and getting their cars, but we just sat there. We finally decided to just get out and talk to the guy, Fish gave him the keys and everything was cool. We were about 8-10 blocks from the hotel, so we started hoofing it back. The only thing that stood out from the walk back was some guy across the street from us with his face in a garbage can, not moving. Was he puking? Was he sleeping? Was he eating? We'll never know.
Finally back at the room, Dre went to go play with the blankets more as Fish settled in. I snapped a Red Corvette pic of him, and established Running Theme #4: Fish + camera = comedy.

Fish was, as you might imagine, ravenously hungry, so we headed down the street to a pizza place we had seen and got some slices. See, everyone talks about pizza in NYC, but the one thing they don't tell you is that all the pizza places are run by Italians... and they're all assholes. "Customer Service" to them means not taking a dump on your slice. The pizza wasn't bad, I thought the crust was a bit burnt, and Jump had to take matters into his own hands.

After the food, we went back to our hotel room and hung out for a little bit. Not long after, Jump and Dre said goodbye for the night and Fish hooked up his laptop to the room's internet and we popped in #smogon to say hi. natalie was nice enough to give us a call, and we all chatted with her for a while (I can only imagine how expensive that call will be for her). I also received a brief call from Acura. At some point, I realized that I hadn't even gotten a Red Corvette picture with myself, so we got that out of the way.

At around 4am, we finally decided to sleep. Three guys, two beds, so I volunteered to sleep in the armchair the first night. No real solid sleep, but it got the job done.
CHAPTER TWO: Sunday, August 6th
After a very restless night in the armchair (and the alarm going off a bunch times), we all finally started to wake up a little before noon. While we were all showering and preparing for the day, I got a call from Jump and he said he was on his way over. By the time he got there, we were all basically ready to head out, so we grabbed some breakfast at another diner we randomly found. Jump wore a very special shirt that day, a shirt which many people passing by him would point and smile at. A couple times people even talked to him about it, it was a great icebreaker. Here's him with the shirt taking a picture with this buddy.

The only real plan we had for the day was to stop by Nintendo World, so we started to wander in that general direction when we stumbled upon a street festival. 6th Avenue had been entirely closed down and people and vendors stretched along its sides as far as the eye could see.


We grabbed some ice cold lemonade and started walking, doing our best to avoid the crazy people scattered about. I took a picture of one stand's food that made my mouth water like you wouldn't believe... of course, the picture became a metaphor for the trip in a way.

I saw that we had walked right up to the famous Radio City Music Hall, so I figured for the purposes of tourism I should take a picture of the marquee... until I saw what was on it. This picture now has dual purposes: one for tourism, and the other to show how far down our pathetic culture has fallen.

Speaking of the crazies, there are always people that are trying to hand you garbage every step that you take in the city, whether it be their new "super hot" hip-hop CD, or some nice words about how God is our Lord and you're going to Hell if you don't think so, or even weirder stuff than that. We had been talking before about trolling someone in real life sometime during the trip, and now we would get the chance.
So, as we're walking, this old guy walks up and hands out a bunch of little cards to us, gives some quick shpiel and walks away. (I found the card when unpacking, it says: "Thank God that the earth is NOT moving!! www.cabotia.com") So we all look at each other and decide to troll him back. Jump gets elected trollmaster.
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My favorite is the response of "I really don't come... I only come on weekends." Well, with that accomplished, Jump starts trying to get in touch with Dre again. After talking to her friend Gretchen, it turns out that Dre struck out on her own to find us... only she doesn't have a cell phone with her. So, basically, if we don't wait for her where we said we would, she won't find us. Plus, she won't be able to get back to her friends. We started walking through the crowd looking for her, luckily she walked right up to us. (She almost walked right by Arti, he didn't recognize her right away.)
With Dre in tow, we continued on to Nintendo World. I figured that since we were going into the nerdery capital of NYC I should mark our arrival with a video. Poor Fish thought it was a picture at first.
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As you can see, it's bright, fun, and full of nerds. I ended up playing this TetriMario game where I would play Tetris on the bottom screen, and on the top screen was Mario going through levels from SMB and SMB3. I don't even know what system that was, I guess a Game Boy Advance? Anyways, after a few minutes we went upstairs to see everything else. There were a bunch of Gamecubes set up with numerous games you could play on them. Only thing is that they reset themselves after about 10 minutes. There were three nice big screens set up with Gamecubes that didn't reset, but they were of course monopolized already. We were watching some Mario baseball game when Arti and I saw this kid watching us and sidling over to our area. So he went in for the troll.
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Turns out the kid's name is Roberto, and he's a little... odd. I wish I had kept the camera rolling, because when we introduced ourselves to him and I said my name was Adam, he clapped excitedly and hopped up and down and said "Adam! My cousin's name is Adam! He lives in Florida." I said, "Well, he's cooler than me." To which he replied, "Yeah," and stopped paying attention to me. We didn't let him go without a group shot. (In retrospect, I probably should've had him hold the Red Corvette, but... I dunno, he probably would've thought it was a gift and kept it.)

Roberto was a good kid, but very talkative. It wasn't long before we realized that our trolling had gone horribly wrong, as he had reversed it on us. So at that point I went over and started watching some kids playing Super Smash Brothers Melee. When a controller opened up I hopped in, and immediately self-deathed myself until I lost. The others had come over and Arti and Fish jumped in to play too. I don't quite remember how the conversation started up, but a kid named Devin started talking to Jump about pokemon and Smogon was inevitably brought up. The kid recognized Jump's handle, said he had visited our website many times but had never registered. I pointed to Arti and said, "You know, this is Articuno64." Well, let me tell you, this kid's eyes just lit up as he slowly extended a hand to shake. (I told Arti he is the true Face of Smogon.)
After we got tired of SSBM, Devin let Jump rate his team. Oh, the poor kid didn't know what he was getting himself into.
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We went back downstairs a little later and watched Devin battle some kid in a wheelchair and just really mop the floor with him. Arti and I bought some Mario energy drinks, and we went on our way to find something else to do. On this walk, we noticed a really cool glass building that was reflecting everything on the other side of the street, so we all snapped a picture of it.

While still in Rockefeller Center, I recognized a building as one that we had all been given coupons for earlier in the day. The coupons were for a 10% discount to ride to the observation deck on the building. Of course, I was the only one who didn't throw mine away, but that didn't matter because once we saw the price to go up, we said to hell with it and kept walking.
A little later I saw Madame Tussaud's wax museum and suggested we go in. It was another great idea that was foiled by kinda outrageous NYC prices. But, on the way out, I did get to meet Samuel L. Jackson, and he was nice enough to stop screaming about snakes to let me take a picture with him.

Right next to Madame Tussaud's was an Iron Chaos. If you look closely, you can see that the sign cuts it off, but they have grilled Feebas!

At this point we were just wandering around aimlessly, nobody had any real ideas of what to do. Someone suggested eating, but none of us were hungry enough. Dre suggested we go watch a movie, and then eat afterwards. We went into the theatre we had just walked by and checked the movies. "Talladega Nights" was out since Jump had just seen it, and I said no to "Descent" because I wasn't in the mood for blood splattering. We settled on a new Robin Williams movie called "The Night Listener" and went in.
The AMC theater was huge, there were about 8 floors or so to it. We were in theater 19, so we got to ride tons of escalators to the top. After each escalator there were balconies you could walk out on, so we snapped pictures from each one. The first here is the hand that hold the Madame Tussaud sign. The second is from the highest balcony looking down whatever street we were on. There's a really goofy building on the right.


This isn't the place for a movie review, so I'll just say this: it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great by any means. It was just incredibly BIZARRE.
After the movie let out we went off on another ill-advised search for food. This Dre-led search last for about a half hour, taking us all the way to 5th and 30th before coming back up to 35th and finding a great little oriental place where we were the only diners. Dre chastised me for ordering chicken fried rice with such a huge menu to choose from, but she ended up forgiving me when the two of us went to town on the little bowls of (appetizers?) that they brought out: seaweed, salmon, sprouts, it was all awesome. Arti ended up with 4 chopsticks after he contaminated Jump's with fish, so he made the best of the situation.

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Our stomachs full and our morale high, we stopped on the way back to the hotel to grab some beers. (WOW expensive.) We got back and started hanging around and somehow we got onto the subject of the photo album, specifically the bathroom party pictures. We showed her ours and explained the concept behind them, and she seemed quite amused, so we asked if she would take one. Naturally, she was down for it. She asked, "Do you have to be topless?" to which we obviously replied, "Yes." I let her use my toothbrush, we helped put the towel and Red Corvette on her head, and then we just started snapping shots like a bunch of cameramen on a red carpet, telling her to do this, do that, look this way, look that way. She picked this picture off mine as the one she liked, so I present it to you now.

Dre offered to give Jump a backrub. I thought that the way she put him right out was pretty funny, he was putty in her hands.

After she was done with Jump, I said I'd give her a back massage. I used some techniques I learned in a massage therapy class in college, and she seemed to enjoy it. Of course, she said she'd give me a back massage in return, but I never took her up on the offer, so she still owes me that.
Jump said he'd have to head back, so we played poker to keep him from leaving. Dre had one Corona before falling asleep on the bed behind us. When Fish, Arti and I were almost done with our first beers, we went into the bathroom to film a dedication.
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Fish went out of the poker game first (a couple hours later), crippling himself when he played a hand entirely without even looking at his cards. He went over and hopped on #smogon, and it wasn't long after that Arti joined him. I was winning at the start of heads-up, but Jump wasn't far behind in chips, and he doubled up early on and really put a hurt on me. I was down to nothing, it was approaching 4:30am or so and I just wanted to end the game, so when he pushed me all in I called with 5-2 of clubs. He flipped over pocket Aces. I was glad that the game would be over soon... but would it? The flop came out with absolutely nothing, but there was a club. The turn was also a club. I was now looking at a flush draw. I remember saying something along the lines of "there CAN'T be a club on the river," so of course the King of clubs came out and won me the hand. Jump's disbelief was rivaled only by my own. I was still losing though, and I pushed all in a couple hands after that, and while I don't remember the specifics of the hand, I know it was another bad beat for Jump, I think I had like a 7-9 and picked up a 9high straight or something. We decided to quit playing after that and called it a draw, and Jump and Dre left for the night. We once again dicked around on #smogon before hitting the sack ourselves. All the JAA competitors were getting in the next day, and we were pretty excited.