JOURNAL: SUBGENIUS: X-Day 2009 (12X-Day) report – day 1 (20090701)

Read about day 2 here. Day 3 here. 4 here. 5 here. 2008 (11X-Day) X-Day review here.

As always, click through to comment on any picture individually on flickr, or to see the full-size…
… High quality pictures of X-Day by George Burgyan here: photos.vec.com/gallery/8832367_rTsLi#585168776_zkJgA

We went to X-Day again this year. It was a totally different experience than last year. It rained for the first three days we were there, but then it got really nice for the weekend. It was never overbearingly hot.

Soooo…

We left our driveway at 7:15AM, ready for the 8 hour drive. (We arrived at Brushwood at 3:20PM, 8 hours and 5 minutes later.)

On the way, we stopped in Breezewood to grab some food, bathroom break, and a driver trade-off. While we were driving out of the town, we noticed the clouds were cool at the horizon. The picture doesn’t do them justice, but we’ll share it anyway:

they were cooler in person

We also saw a “classic diner” Denny’s, which we suspect was just a failed Silver Diner re-bought by Denny’s:

Weird “Classic” Denny’s.

Eventually, we got to Pennsylvania. I managed to snap this at 65MPH. My GE camera could never pull this off. Go Canon!:

Pennsylvania Turnpike
Home of those weird service plaza things.

Eventually we got into the quote-unquote “town” of Sherman, NY. Now this “town” is literally one square block, and then country roads. It’s the least happening “most happenin’ place” I’ve ever seen in my life. But they do boast a general store with a bunch of different kinds of cheap ice cream, which you can buy and then eat at the lakeside:

ice cream lake view – we’ve done this 2 out of 2 X-Days

Of course, once you leave Sherman proper, you go towards Brushwood Folklore Center. You leave the one block “normal” town, drive through strange Amish country (streetsigns for horse drawn carriages AND snowmobiles, which apparently are the only way people get around in the winter), and eventually get to Brushwood, where things are even more strange than in Amish country:

stump girl
This was the first weird thing we saw this year.

We did what we didn’t bother to do last year: Drove around to explore all the driveable paths in Brushwood, as far as we could take our car without fear of getting it stuck. We were exposed to lots of seasonal / semi-permanent camps that we had never seen. There was this one, which seemed to have this:

This statue reminds us of Aku from Samurai Jack! Too bad it’s blurry!

The bus that we noticed last year had now been painted:

STAY AWAY, OR FACE WHINY PAGANS (click through to see what I’m talking about)

What lurks inside? I see a water jug, at least. Why is that there? On a bus?

When we arrived, it was gray and dreary, and it rained at some point.

Tiki, Dr. Agonfly, Dr. Legume, Galaxina

This was around the time that Orpheus Stain predicted the sky would goatse…. And it did! (Also: The moon is a hemorrhoid.)

tent success
Just in time for the rain!

We found out Brayneleeke is Eggplant’s son
Brainleak models the umbrella hat right before we hightailed it out of there.You can see our cooler and stuff in the background. A few cooler packs in a plastic bag, and a few more plus a frozen gallon water jug in the cooler. Our beers were still cold on day 5, despite purchasing NO ICE OUTSIDE OF VIRGINIA. Clint drank from the bag, as the ones in the cooler were PAINFULLY cold, and it was cold outside during the rain. The bottle of Lunazul Tequila was completely killed within the first 5 hours there.

Around 5PM, the sun came out and teased us. It was HOT!! Like, sweating, need-to-be-in-the-shade, feels-like-burning hot! Like the beach!

Clint is already a pretty cold-blooded guy, often going from an overheating to sweat to shivering in 10 minutes… But Sherman, New York, is an even more cold-blooded place than northern Virginia! I recall last X-Day, when it was this hot, and I went to the pavilion. Within 10 minutes, the winds forced me to put on a long sleeve sweater so I didn’t start shaking. So I left the pavilion, and was sweating again in 10 minutes. I felt like a lizard moving in and out of his heat lamp.

The “missing” Spirit Shrine we didn’t see last year.

Carolyn actually changed her shirt from the agent orange t-shirt to her purple tank top. The next day or so, in the pavilion, there was a slide show, and Carolyn’s picture of her with a gorilla from last X-day was featured.  A bit after that, Carolyn realized she wore that same purple tank top on the first day of last x-day and the first day of this x-day.  Score one for consistent thinking.

from the previous year, X-Day 2008

Just like last year, they had movies:

Carolyn saw the TimeCrimes poster at some point, and tried to find out when they were showing it, but nobody knew for sure and so she ended up missing it, because she never thought to go check out the movies at dusk. She did check out about 5 seconds of one of the movies the first night. Strange that all these SubGenii (Doktor Dark, Us) are watching TimeCrimes within a few weeks of each other, despite the movie not being super new.

Triple-breasted alien whores. The best kind:

blow-up doll

Around 7ish, the rain came back.  Carolyn, Clint, and Orpheus Stain high-tailed it to our tent.  Carolyn drfited off to sleep to the sound of rain and Clint & Orpheus chatting.

“Taj Mahall” means “very fucking impressive gathering space.”
–Orpheus Stain

X-Day – GEDC0194 – Clint, Orpheus Stain
The beginning of Clint’s downfall. Orpheus was all about the Joose.

Later, Carolyn woke up, and the tent was empty.  It was still raining, but she decided to get up and track down everyone.  She got a poncho, and went off to the main pavilion.  Clint was there with Legume and some others.

Clint asked Carolyn if she got the cigarettes, and she said no.  So Clint decided to get them.  He left and Carolyn chilled with the people.  When Clint came back, he had two beers, the That’s So Raven bobblehead … but no cigarettes!  So  Carolyn decided to get them at that point.  So she went to the tent and back and when she got back, nobody was at the pavilion anymore.

what’s going on, Orpheus?

This was around the time that the mystery pictures that Clint has no memory of taking appeared on the camera. Carolyn didn’t see Clint coherent until the next day. A whole bottle of tequila disappeared. Bad things happened, which won’t be repeated here. This made the absinthe bender look tame by comparison. That’s one of our beers in Orpheus’s hand, too, haha. We also lost our camping chairs, and didn’t find them the next day — in a place that Clint had no recollection of ever having been in his life.

Clint was nice enough to leave her beer next to the bobblehead on the table.  A nice man was walking along and stopped by to chit chat with her for awhile.  He was staying in an RV up the hill towards the north pavilion.  After a bit, Carolyn was like, “I guess he’s not coming back” and so she parted ways to go find him.  She walked back towards the tent and eventually she was talking to Brainleak and Clint walked up.  Carolyn said “There he is!”  Clint was talking in tongues.  Words were coming out of his mouth, but there was no semblance of any sentences.  Carolyn asked “Are you drunk?”  She thinks he said yes.

drunk photography, not remembered – my GE camera looks like this even when I’m sober

Clint’s drunkeness made his 2008 absinthe bender look tame by comparison. That’s one of our beers in Orpheus’s hand, too, haha. We also lost our camping chairs, and didn’t find them the next day — in a place that Clint had no recollection of ever being in his life.That little house in the background is where our chairs were the next day. Clint was like, “Look at those little houses.” and Carolyn replied, “Dude, those are our chairs!” Clint had no recollection of being there. Or ever having seen the houses.

Anyway, back from the flash-forward to the present:

Clint said he needed to pee and went to The Four Flushers.  That was the last anyone saw of him until 1-2 am.  When he came out of the flushers, he collapsed on the ground.

Technically, Clint had passed out in a road. A road with barely any light. Granted, it was a 5MPH dirt road, and most people who had arrived already had…. But this was definitely no place to pass out. Dr. Agonfly was unfortunate enough to have been talking to Carolyn when this happened, and he was trying to help get Clint not to pass out by the “shitters”.  Popess Pantiara Evokovitch walked by, so Carolyn, Dragonfly, and Pantiara were attempting to move Clint from right in front of the flushers.

We got him across the road, and then some other people joined in helping. Clint actually remembers a few seconds of this: He remembers waking up and cackling maniacally at the fact that it took 5 people to move him from being passed out in a road.

Carolyn was freaking out quite a bit because she had never seen Clint like this without absinthe involved, and at least then he wasn’t collapsed on the ground, but instead rampaged.  So the 5 people helping to move Clint was a blur.  However, there was one guy who really took the situation to hand and made sure Clint was taken care of, and then escorted Carolyn up to the pavilion to get some official help. At the time, he wouldn’t give her his name, but later she found out it was Rob/Rev. Teeters.  He had made sure to put a trash bag spread out under Clint, and gave him a roll of paper towels as a pillow, and he made sure the sleeping bag was over Clint.

dramatization (actually me passed out from another camping trip)

So, Clint was passed out in a puddle by Modemac’s tent for hours.  Carolyn kept going back ever hour or so to make sure he was ok.  She spent most of the night hanging out with Dr. Agonfly and Rob, and some others.  She spent some time with Dr. Agonfly and Legume, who called Dr Agonfly “Jiffy Pop” because he was hyper from an energy drink (JOOSE).  Later, Legume opened up his trench coat to show his speedos and invite Carolyn to his bed. It didn’t happen, haha.

Dr. K'taden Legume: World's Scariest SubGenius. Survived a quadruple bypass between then and now.

Tiki and Dr. Agonfly were there at that time too. Dr Agonfly and Carolyn then decided to go up the studio to check out the movie.  The movie had people talking and moving a lion head and making it talk, and that was enough of that.  Jim Jones was passing out gin & tonics.  So Carolyn chatted with Jim Jones, Orpheus Stain, Ivan Stang, and Dragonfly for a bit.  Cloves were smoked (since banned by the Obama administration, now called “cigars” to get around the ban).

Dragonfly and Carolyn checked on Clint again and then went back to the movie.  After a bit, dr agonfly went to bed, but Carolyn stayed with rob and Orpheus Stain.  Eventually everyone was going to bed.  Princess Wei R. Do was going to bed with a large Lord Of The Rings promotional glass (we have one!) of Riesling.  Stang is like, “you better finish that, I have to be up in 12 hours”. She said it’d be gone by the time they got to bed.  Carolyn still don’t know if she finished it or not.

At some point, Modemac went to bed, but since Clint was passed out in front of Modemac‘s tent, Modemac was trying to get him to move.  So Dr. Agonfly and Carolyn dragged him away towards the car.  We tried to get him to go into the car, but it was impossible. Clint vaguely remembers that. He also remembers waking up to find himself in running water, as it started raining, and he was basically in a puddle on a slight incline, water running by all the time.

I’m proud to provide everyone a counter-role model of how NOT to behave. I was the standard that all other X-Day activity was judged by. When Brayneleeke later had his “episode”, and Carolyn went and found his parents, they asked, “Is he passed out in a mud puddle? No. Then he’ll be fine.”

After everyone went to bed, it was just Carolyn & Orpheus who said that he’d help get Clint into the car.  Carolyn was skeptical because it took 5 people to move him that far, and dragonfly and Carolyn could only drag him 5 feet away from the mud puddle to the car.  But when they got to the car, Clint had come down enough to be coherent again and was actually able to stand himself up and head to the flushers to pee and get himself into the tent.  Yay! [I never did remember the sun going down.]

Since Clint’s sleeping bag was wet, and Clint was soaked to the bone, Carolyn gave him a new shirt and her sleeping bag, and then climbed in with Clint’s sleeping bag.  Then she found out she didn’t understand how to get into it, or even which end was the top and which was the bottom.  Her feet were also wet and cold and soaked.  It sucked that the tent was leaking and the zipper was broken.

Meanwhile, Carolyn left the Canon camera in soaking water. The 9 year reign of the camera came to an end. It had been submerged in a cooler for hours before, but we didn’t turn it on until it sat with dessicate for a week. This time, Carolyn tried to turn it on right away. Any wet circuits were short circuited. The camera never worked again. It had recently had some problems — we thought it died, but it hadn’t — so we’d already bought a $100 G.E. camrea which is a PIECE OF CRAP, and the worst purchasing decision ever. However, because we’d brought it with us, this meant we had a backup, and were still able to take pictures for the other 4 days of X-Dya. Yay!!

I look forward to having a Canon camera again sometime: But 7/1/2009 was the time the shitty-quality pictures started. A year later, we’re still cursed with this P.O.S. camera.

To view all the pictures of this set on flickr, go to my 20090701 tag on flickr.

Read about day 2 here. 2008 (11X-Day) X-Day review here.