Y

Tyler Nebeker, Man of Mystery

I've mentioned Tyler Nebeker in a couple previous posts, but I was reading some junk over on ProvoPulse.com and was reminded of a great Tyler story (who lives in Portland and still won't return my calls).

Tyler had a little red Honda Civic Sport, and was constantly doing road trips -- most often back home to Corvallis, Oregon. He loved that little car, from what I remember, and often took it to the limits of its ability. One day I hitched a ride with Tyler and two female passengers - who were in the back seat - from campus back to our dumpy apartment at Raintree (notice their low 5.2 rating). It had snowed again the previous night, and the roads were slick and icy with slush. We were waiting to turn left in front of the Marriott Center and head down the hill past the Colliseum....you know the road. Anyway, we were last in a line of cars turning left, with many cars lined up to our right and left waiting for the lights to change.

Just as we begin to turn, Tyler kind of slows down and mumbles to me "hang on," and then smirks. We enter the 3-way intersection well behind the last car, and all of a sudden Tyler jerks the wheel hard to the left, putting us into a full spin right in the middle of the intersection. The girls started screaming, the waiting drivers sat in awe, but Tyler and I started shouting "wooo hoooo!" The car did a complete 360 -- it was quite a show for the cars waiting for the lights to turn, many of whom honked at us. The car slid around and ended up facing the right direction - as if nothing had happened, and Tyler quickly sped down the hill toward home (home crap home). It was hilarious.

The Mullett Family

Alright, I was glancing at the picture of Dave when it sparked a hilarious memory. We were cruising the backroads of Provo and Orem in Preston's black 280Z, and decided to check out the dark alley behind the Carillon Tower, which, of course, is across the street from the Orem Mall. As we drove through the alley, we noticed a huge garbage bin right behind the picture studio (Olan Mills or the like). We stopped, jumped out, and took a gander into the bin. We found hundreds of reject photos of individuals and families, are grabbed a pile of them.

We made our way back to our dump of an apartment at Raintree, rifling through the pictures and laughing at many of them. People are so funny looking. When we got home, we decided to build a sort of shrine to the unknowns -- and began taping random pictures of people all over our living room walls.

Our roommates had learned long ago not to ask questions about some of our odd behavior, and Kirk Hedman and Tyler Nebeker came out, watched what we were doing, and just admired the work. One picture in particular caught our fancy. It was an 11" x 17" portrait of a mullett family -- mom, dad, and two boys. White trash city. We made this photo a centerpiece to our collection, and oft admired that picture above all others.

People who visited our apartment were often confused, asking if these people were our relatives. Preston claimed all non-white photos as being his relatives, and we told everyone that yes, they were our relatives. But what makes this story complete is that one day we were out and about in Orem somewhere, and we saw the mullett family -- all of them -- and recognized them instantly. We laughed, followed them for a while, and may have even attempted to get their picture from afar without them knowing.

We created a fun game of sorts -- find the geeks from our wall. They were all from the Provo/Orem area, so our chances of seeing others was not impossible. We came across one other person at some point -- a teenage girl. Once again, we recognized her instantly.

While most of the pictures came down over the next couple weeks, the mullett family remained until we moved from that dump to another dump (thank you BYU Approved Housing)

Worst Movie Ever

Thinking back on my life at the dumpy Raintree Apartments, I seem to remember escaping over to the dollar theater all the time. I can remember when they opened the place and it was new and clean, with the not-yet-so-common drink holders in the arm rests. I think it remained a dollar theater for about a year, and then someone figured out "Hey, we're not making any money" and they raised the prices.

But back in the salad days of crappy apartments and silly cheap movies, Verda Rae Hogg (pronounced ho-wg, not hog) and I used to spend a lot of time partaking of second rate films, and then usually wandered over to the Pie Pizzeria or Caddy's or somewhere where we could watch people and mock them silently. But one day in particular stands out in my memory because of the trauma we lived through. For some bizarre reason we decided to subject ourselves to My Stepmother is an Alien with Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger. We should have just taken a punch to the groin and been done with it.

I don't even remember the storyline -- after my nose started bleeding and my brain was sucked out of my ears, I lost consciousness. Actually, Verda and I were so disgusted with the film that we walked out and asked for our money back.

The thing was, we had found and used a 2-for-1 coupon for this particular film, and so they didn't want to refund us our $1. We didn't fight it. We just left.

Truly, it is the worst movie ever made.

Radio Free Provo

Like so many other poor people forced to live in dumps like Raintree Apartments, I upgraded during the summer. After my sophomore year, I decided to hang around Provo and find some work, and moved into a nice little place down on condo row south of campus. The job I found is another story, but during my off-time I loved to listen to my meager vinyl collection, of which I was very proud. I had a few rarities. I was also just getting into Ultravox and a couple other synth bands (I was late on the synth bandwagon), many of which you could only find on vinyl.

My friend Mark Allen was cleaning out his garage or something, and mentioned the fact that he had a small radio transmitter. I eagerly requested to borrow it, and after weeks of begging he finally brought it over and showed me how to use it. Basically, it was a tape deck with a long wire antennae. For those of you thinking about Christian Slater, disguised voices, and clever intros to the latest tunes on the radio -- don't get too excited. There was nothing glamorous about the whole episode. The signal was poor, at best, and was only capable of transmitting line of sight. Even across the street the signal was weak, and yet I was overly paranoid that the Feds would come crashing through my door at any moment, just like they did to Christian Slater. Alas, I doubt triangulation (neither equilateral nor isosceles) could discover my signal.

Even more pathetic was that I had to record music and voice snippets onto cassette tapes, which could then be broadcast with the transmitter and its killer 5 watt output. It was a total waste of time that kept me occupied for hours each day. But in my mind, the folks I mentioned the station to still thought I was pretty cool to have a pirate radio station.

I rode my bike all over Provo to check for a signal using my walkman, and found that while it permeated condo row and the immediate area, it barely reached main street, and could not get up onto campus save only the lower handful of buildings - but if you went inside any of them, the signal was utterly lost. So basically -- no coverage.

And here's a newsflash for those of you who may be thinking of doing this yourselves: people don't exactly stumble across your wimpy little signal of their own volition -- I made flyers, posted them all over my signal area, and told everyone I knew to tune in. How pathetic, seeing how the broadcast died as soon as the tape reached its end. I wasted a ton of time recording mixes just to sit and listen to them being broadcast on a crappy little signal which didn't even come in clear across the room. In short, what a freaking waste of time.

At least Christian Slater got the babe. All I got was a loser roommate who stuck me with a huge phone bill.

About Sewage

Yes, yes. Everybody and their mother calls someone named Susan "Sewage" at some point and thinks its funny. And then there's Suey (hog call). Ok, that one is maybe kind of funny.

But I digress.

Heleman Halls during my freshman year was a veritable cornucopia of bland slather. It was boring, I tell you. Which explains why I have a dozen or more pictures of me alone or occasionally with other people up in trees in the parking lot. What the crap was I doing? I have no freaking idea. But someone who was always entertaining was Sue Brady. She sometimes had the funky hair that reminded me of Thomas Dolby or the chick from Thompson Twins, but she got over that by our sophomore year. I loved it when I came across Sue during dinner in the Cannon Center, because there was always some peculiar story to be told, or some complex analysis of somebody's lack of fashion sense.

So....about this picture, taken winter semester of our second year. Susan lived close to Raintree at some dump of an apartment (although not as much of a dump as Raintree) across from Reams or something, and called one day -- bored and looking for something to do. I can't for the life of me remember anything about this day except that I borrowed Astrid's scooter, as always, and we met up near her place. On the side of the road we found a couple peculiar snow sculptures, and Sue just really wanted her picture taken next to one. But I don't think I ever gave her a copy of the pic. Thinking back, I'm not even sure why I had the camera in the first place. Man, my memory sucks. (except when it comes to really bad 80's music trivia)

My family had dinner about a week ago over at Sue's place in Concord, CA. She and her husband Chris and their two kids just moved up to the Bay Area from SoCal. I was so excited to finally have them up here close to me -- they've been here a month, and now I'm moving out of state. I guess that's how it works. She made this freaky watermelon lime drink which tasted suspiciously like a lime bloody mary mix. But I liked it. We called it 'bloody melon'. Mmmm, yummy.

Pentagram My Butt

Ok, this topic needed to be addressed. We've all heard the silly stories about the late night co-ed encounter on what was inevitably a dreary, possible foggy late night in mid-town Provo with a cloaked, hooded, and eerily suspicious individual thought to be "guarding" some sort of secret ritual going on over at the old, dilapidated BYU Academy, which was, of course, the original home to what is now BYU. Anyway, the rumor continued by those who dared venture inside at night was that the upper rooms of the Academy, as well as throughout the main building, were strewn with books and papers (ghosts of homework past?), but that one room in the old attic contained satanic scrawlings and supposedly a giant pentagram -- and that evil rites were carried out in this space each year. I've been told the room was painted blood red, while others claim it was black (yeah, well, when I tell the tale, I tell people it was teal). Oh, and the place was haunted, too. Yep, gotta throw that one in for good measure.

Forget the fact that nobody had actually seen any of these activities, nor had the hooded individuals thought to be guarding these secret rituals ever been substantiated. No, don't let proof get in the way of a good story. And the little fact that when they went in to renovate the buildings, they found no such room full of paintings. Or maybe part of the ritual was to paint over all the evil stuff and dust it up and make it look like it hadn't been touched in 50 years.

All I remember is that it was a great place to go if you wanted a girl you really liked to hold you tight while walking through the dark. But the place kind of stank.

Dave the Dog

As I've mentioned previously, one of my favorite pastimes throughout my time at BYU was entering a building just before the 10pm lockdown and exmploring the halls. And of course, the Harris Fine Arts Center was one of the best building to explore, as it holds a vast array of classrooms, hallways, theaters, and hidden passages (not that I condone this kind of activity nowadays). One numerous occasions we came across bins of pictures and projects in one of the basement hallways. As I also had classes in the HFAC, I knew that these were items that had been left behind by students, and had never been claimed. One night Preston and I were going through the bins, and we came across a picture of a happy looking dog, seen here:

We named him Dave, and his image became legend. Well, at least in our minds. We made zerox copies and threw up missing dog posters all over campus, we often displayed the picture prominently in our living room, and we even added his image to our Robbie Sorenson shrine (who, by the way, was mentioned in a semi-famous poem by P. Donald Green).

Popsicles: Manna From Heaven

My diet during the freshman months consisted of Apple Slice, Cannon Center cream puffs, Life cereal, and missle pops. I always seemed to have a couple of the pops stashed away in my jacket, ready for any occasion. I usually stocked up at dinner time, and had perfected the process of slipping them into the sleeve of my trench coat, sliding them down my arm and into the deep, inner pocket. An average night pulled in 30 or more, where they were hidden away to my already stuffed freezer in my room. I'd eat them 5 or 6 at a time.

By the way, never do this with a popsicle, because apparently it made this guy perky. Just don't go into that dark place. Please don't.

Funky Brigham

Do people still run through the main quad between the library and the ASB, watching the Brigham Young statue do the funky chicken as they run? Maybe not, now with the library extension and the statue moved from the left side of the fountain (when facing the ASB) to the center. But oh, what a jolly good time it was, running about, frolicking near the whale tail (which I hear has been moved down south of the Kimball Tower), or -- my favorite -- sitting on the shoulders of the little girl holding the hands of her parents in from of the Kimball bldg. All in good fun.

To be honest, I only did the BY funky chicken thing once, felt foolish when I did it, and afterwards mocked anyone I ever saw attempting it.

Heritage Hall Surveys

My, would we ever get bored. We pray and ponder and figure out what the hell we should do to alleviate the boredom of being stuck in Provo. Hey, let's go randomly knock on doors and ask people for crackers. Sounds great, let's go. We'd head up to Heritage halls which were apartment like dorms up the hill from Helaman. Mostly it was lived in by a variety of females, so it was a good fit. We decided we'd tally a number of things. First how many people would actually let us in and give us crackers? Second, what type of crackers would we get. Third, were the chicks hot, thus requiring follow up surveys. If memory serves correct, we'd be let in about 95% of the time. The remaining 5% would look upon us as serial rapists or that they didn't speak English or some other bizarre trait. Mormons tend to be overwhelmingly friendly so we entered into the households with glee. The types of crackers were for the most part saltines. Not stale, but rather dry and bland. Occasionly, a wheat thin or ritz would show up from the top of a fridge where the majority of crackers were stored. Why does humanity feel that crackers need to be stored on top of a refridgerator? A study should be made on this phenomena. For the most part, the third issue of hotness was answered relatively easily. Most were your basic average BYU coed, cute for the most part, but no super models. They were left for either Helaman or Deseret Towers. Heritage tended to be the UTAH/IDAHO friendlies that were fun loving and cool. We met a lot of people this way, staying friends with many through out the years. Hell I dated one for several years. She was great, ending not so well, but no ill will. I think she married a Spanish major named Bill and moved to Missouri. Not sure.