Mission Accomplished?

So I totally accomplished a mission before I even set out to start working on it in the first place.  Guys, this puts me ahead of James Bond!

This time, it all started with Taylor.  Not only is he a friend, but he’s one of my Guitar Men; while I'm still learning to play something on my guitar without five-minute pauses between chord changes, I rely on the musical prowess of these guys to accompany me when I wanna sing something to a guitar accompaniment.  Open mics and household jam sessions alike, it’s a neat arrangement for all.

Naturally, when I told Taylor about my project, he gave some thought and decided, “We’re gonna record a song.”

This is no big feat, not for Taylor.  He’s got a ton of recording/mixing equipment on hand – and a knack for working with it.  He could dubstep the shit out of Mozart if he wanted to, and it’d still sound good. Presumably, the hardest part about recording would be writing the song in the first place.

Now, I have a notebook filled with song lyrics – but I wrote most of it between the ages of 12 and 19 – so the gist of the songs ranged from “You were the one that got away, how am I ever going to enjoy high school now?” to the slightly more down-to-earth “All I want is a nap and a FroYo at the dining hall.” 

I may have also referred to my frozen yogurt as “FroYo Baggins” during that time.  The world really, really doesn’t need my perspective circa late 90’s/early aughts.  

So my mission was to re-master one of my teen classics, or write something from scratch.

I lost sight of that idea for awhile, but it started to resurface after I stumble upon a good concept for a song.  It always starts as a concept or an idea for me; little by little, words piece together into verses, adopt a rhythm, and when I can finally get to a pen and paper, a song is born.

But in the past, that “concept” had always been something to do with romance or something otherwise serious and profound (to a teenager).  This concept was different.  Imagine me, if you will, milling around for days on end, singing over and over…

”Your penis is a republican, I’m not saying that it’s crooked, but it veers to the right…”

To be honest – I think this was actually more profound than anything I came up with in my teenage years.

So I wrote the song and told Taylor we needed to get together ASAP – this song needed a guitar, and also needed to get posted online.  After a few rehearsals, we came up with something nice.

Being that it wasn’t the caliber of music that I think either of us were expecting from Taylor’s “mission” more than it was me just wanting to have fun and blow off some steam, we agreed that this was NOT going to count as a mission accomplished.  But we liked where this was going, and by the time we put that video together, I had about ten more concepts for song ideas.

So we came up with a name for ourselves (Face Basement!), started work on our sophomore hit (coming soon!), and called ourselves a band.  I brought up the idea of recording a song still – for purposes of what Taylor wanted to do in the first place – but it’s kinda settled that starting a band is infinitely cooler.

Plus, we will definitely make way for Taylor to do a little mixing on our songs, too.  I intend to learn how to do some of that myself as well.  

And when that time comes, I will dubstep the shit out of “Your Penis is a Republican.”

Weird NJ Next and Final Stop: The Spy House

Our last and final stop, guys!!  This is the end to that story I’ve been telling since JUNE!!!!  What’ll I do now????  (probably make a video out of it)

So after hitting up Whipporwill Valley and the Dancing Jesus, we decided to check out the Spy House while we were in the area.  Not an official Weird NJ site if I remember correctly, but, shut up.

Cliffsnotes for those of you who don’t wanna click on the link: Spy House, historical, haunted (but high-end haunted…their selection of ghosts includes Captain Morgan!), was once a museum but now closed to the public. 

While the house itself was closed, we still wanted to take a stop on the grounds and check it out.  See if we could get a read on either of our EMF readers. 

Now about those EMF readers!  I mentioned in my original overview (where, by the way, I also mentioned that I’d go over the stories one by one “within a week or two”…whoops.  I can’t even justify that one with dog years) that we each downloaded a different EMF app on our phones.  Hers was more scientific and respectable.  Mine was “Ghost Radar Classic” – and while its accuracy may have been questionable, it was certainly entertaining. 

Here’s how my app worked – you’ll need to understand this in order for me to wrap this up quickly.

So you fire it up, and it’s got blank-face at the moment…

The numbers mean something.  Damned if I remember.

And then something starts to show up!

Oh so THAT's what impending doom looks like!

And then, top and center, the app will spout out a word.  Any word.  Like it’s doing a fucking crossword puzzle on the side.

Ok, 5 letters, show that you probably only remember airing on Nick at Nite if at all: Green ______.  GUYS I KNOW THIS

And you’ll never have any idea what it means.

So our trip to the Spy House didn’t last long.  We got out of the car, turned on the apps, walked toward the house, and not thirty seconds later something shows up on my radar.  And then when it was random-word time, it said “escape.”

We knew what that meant.  WE KNEW WHAT THAT MEANT.  I didn't even care if his crossword clue involved Finding Nemo.  We just did an about-face and got the HELL out of dodge. 

~fin~

All in all though, it was a cool trip.  We didn’t hit every stop on our list – mostly because of my little episode – but we made it to six places, saw a lot of cool backroads thanks to the GPS, got at least one accurate reading from our EMF apps, re-discovered my ghost-hunter eye, scared the crap out of each other multiple times, and whether or not we were creeped out at any given moment, all the exploring we did, on several ends of the state, was fascinating.  We’ve been looking to plan another one – when the weather gets warmer – so, probably as soon as I make a video and go “Hey guys, I’m finally done posting about this!” we’ll be starting another one.

Weird NJ Stop #5: Dance, Jesus, Dance!

So down the street from Whipporwill Valley Rd. is the Mount Olivet Cemetery…

Home of the Dancing Jesus!

(and a few deceased loved ones, I’m sure)

So this stop was quick and easy…

Step one: Enter the cemetery and find the Dancing Jesus statue.  Check.

Step two: Flash your headlights at him.  This is not a euphemism.  Check.

Step three: Not sure? 

Some say flash them twice real quick and then wait.  Some (including someone’s account published in the Weird NJ book) say flash them and then turn them off after 10 seconds and wait for Jesus to dance.  Across the Internet there’s a whole slew of mixed stories, which is why there’s still a bit of a question here.

Step four: Profit.  Obviously.

Real step four: Jesus is supposed to do a dance for you.  Voila!

So here’s the reality of the situation.  No matter how many times you flash your lights, or for how long, when your headlights are off, it’s pretty effing dark in that cemetery.  If you can see anything dancing, you might not pass a drug test.

In the defense of some – if you strain, you can see the shadowy figure of the Jesus statue.  And if you’re straining that hard to see it, then yeah, maybe you’re sober and your eyes are just playing some tricks on you.

And with that, we turned around and drove to our last destination for the evening…and I was singing “Dance, Jesus, Dance” to the tune of that song from Labyrinth…which is still in my head…to this day…help.  me.  

Update on Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 11:38PM by Mollie

Next and final stop has been posted: The Spy House!

Remember that time I took a holidatus?

A holidatus - you know, a hiatus around the holidays?

Remember that time back in 2011 when I said "I'm not writing here until after the new year, see you then"?  And did exactly that?

And then remember that time back in 2012 that I didn't say anything about taking a break and took one anyway?  

Yep.

So let it be known that every December, you probably won't hear from me, but I always come back in January.  Pass this along to EVERYONE EVER so that nobody is surprised next December as I'm sure they were this year.

So I have a few plans for the upcoming year...

You'll FINALLY hear the conclusion of the Weird NJ roadtrip!

You'll get to see more videos!  Weird NJ, Tough Mudder, and more!

More missions!  Skydiving!  Beekeeping!  A few that are so mysterious EVEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE YET!!!!11!!

And later in the year a top-secret goal of my own to accomplish WHHAAAAAAAAT?

I'll let the details unravel when they unravel.  But for now, stay tuned so that I can first finish that story I started to tell back in June.

Weird NJ Stop #4: Whipporwill Valley Road (yeah, remember how I never finished these?)

So it's occurred to me that I never finished writing about that road trip I took with Loren over the summer.  That's what happens when I get distracted by mudplay.  

But if I could take 5 or 6 months to post a bunch of zombie videos, I can take that same amount of time to finish my stories that I started in June.  I've been keeping you entertained in the meantime, haven't I?

So, after we took our dinner break and I was able to see again, we went down to Middletown to make a few stops.  Whipporwill Valley Road was the first one - and now that my eyes was back in proper shape, my car gave me the scare this time.

WHIPPORWILL VALLEY CLIFF NOTES: Creepy dirt road, history of witches being burned at the stake and hexes being set on the farmers who did the murdering.  Cue several centuries' worth of stories, mysterious bumps in the road, mysterious unexplained deaths, and being followed (mysteriously) while driving down the road.  And whatever else bored high school kids feel like doing to mess with you.

I tried to get footage, but at night, a bunch of photos like this are all you're gonna get.  Also because we made an executive decision to not get out of the car.

So basically, it was just a dark, creepy dirt road as far as our trip was concerned.  Nothing weird really happened to us.

Except for that part where I made a left turn off the road, the GPS flew off my dashboard, and while going to grab it Loren knocked my car into neutral.  What happened after that was a symphony out of my mouth, sounded something like...

"OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD MY CAR WON'T GO!  I keep hitting the gas, it's not going anywhere!  It's in neutral!  YOU KNOCKED IT IN NEUTRAL YOU DICK!"

Unfortunately, that happened right after we shut the video off.  Womp womp.

Update on Monday, January 28, 2013 at 08:58PM by Mollie

Click here to read about stop #5 - Dancing Jesus!