Needless to say Joey and I were enthusiastic about hanging out at the ER till 530 in the morning the morning we were leaving to return to Tennessee. It was dandy!

So on this trip I informed everyone from the get go that if they were planning on jumping from any second story windows not to call me or request any assistance from me because I would not be providing any sympathy. Praise God all the students kept windows closed and did not pull any escape tactics out windows…that I know of anyways.

Here are some highlights from the trip…

-12 people + 12 passenger van + 2 snowboards/2 sets of skis & everyones luggage = a very congested and personal space invasion-ish 6 hour ride. Thank you Jesus for deodorant.

-SHEETZ!!!!

-The students crashed with current Liberty Students for the weekend. On the whole trip up there Tyee was hopeing that their roommates would be huge World of Warcraft Nerds. His dreams came true. But they were cool nerds. With a Ukulele.

-Jordan & Jonathan were not so lucky, they were greeted by half naked roommates who were dead asleep at 5 o’clock in the evening. J&J were not to thrilled with this, however their roommates turned out to be pretty cool dudes in the end.

-The girls roommates…didn’t hear much about them except one of them was like a 6 foot 4 redhaired chick that made them sleep on the concrete floor…life is so hard.

-SHEETZ!!!

-Dr. Erugan Caner spoke at Chapel on Friday and it was stinkin’ awesome! Worship was pretty beast as well. I really enjoy Dr. Caner, I’d like to hang out with him some day.

-Tyee won a free Wii just for filling out his application to Liberty. He filled it out in like 2.5 minutes. That was pretty sweet.

-Although no students were injured on the trip I did have to make one trip to the Hospital. Liberty has this thing called SnowFlex. Its the equivilant of the rough side of velcro, with sprinklers in it that you can ski and snowboard on year round. Apparently it takes some getting used to, and also their are apparently some dry spots on the run. I found one, caught the toe side edge of my board and jacked up the knee pretty good. All in front of about 200 folks chillin at the lodge who decided they would laugh and clap for me as a source of encouragement. Thank you for that encouragement. It really made me feel good about myself….

-SHEETZ!!!

-Got to introduce some of the students to my good friends Salvation Army and Goodwill. While Jordan and Jonathan introduced all of us to fake mustaches from 50 cent machines(50 Cent Gumball machines not 50 Cent the Rapper). I believe thrifting will now be  a weekly youth outing for anyone who wants to join!

-Skillet put on a killer show on Saturday night, I wish I could say the same for TobyMac, but I think he wore himself out playing 1 game of basketball a few hours beforehand. It seriously took him 40 minutes to get his show going after the Skillet show. So we heard one half of a song before we bounced back up to SnowFlex to check out the Mt. Dew Rail Jam and Big Air Comp. Those guys were much better than me on the VelcroFlex! Kudos!

-SHEETZ!!! I think we ate at SHEETZ at least 8 times during our 3 day stay. Its amazing. If you don’t know SHEETZ, Get to know them.

-We left with about half of our students interested in possibly attending Liberty University to further their education. Pretty pumped about that.

-Oh Yeah. How could I forget! Katie made Danielle wear her yellow rain jacket all week so that we could keep up with her and she would not get lost! It worked we didn’t loose her once. Good Job Girls!!!

There are some pics up on my Facebook if you are interested in checkin em out.

Time to be Outie Five Thousand.

I’m Outie 5

Right now it is 2:21 a.m. as I write this post in Microsoft Word which will then have to be saved, then copied and pasted into my blog dashboard in the morning because here at the Van Hook household we do things a little old skool…no Internet connection and Dollywood is just a tad bit out of reach to “share” a signal.

Anywho, over the past few days I have shared two stories with the blogging world about myself and my “Goodfren”, (remember drop the D and roll the crap out of that R) Ben Fair. There are many stories from the past five years I could write about for this last post. For instance; the time Ben saved my life by beating a copperhead snake into unconsciousness with a boat paddle only to allow me to put it in the live well where the devil snake came back alive in the middle of a lake; or the time our college baseball coach slammed on the breaks in the 15 passenger death trap van traveling at an approximate speed of 50 mph somewhere in the northeastern states while I was sleeping, causing me to fly into the seat in front of me, occupied by Ben and almost resulting in me saying unholy words; or the time Ben told me he would give me 5 bucks if I bean dipped our assistant baseball coach during a game; or the time we all shared a hotel room in Philadelphia on a baseball trip and I stuck him sharing sleeping quarters with “That Guy”; or the Dairy Queen day and the Blizzard; or the night at the Mt. Leconte lodges with our Alive group and a group of over 65 Wine-Os who disliked us very much; or the Halloween we spent at my house in the FAY where while carving pumpkins took graphic pictures of what appeared to be Ben getting his finger tips cut off and pumpkin guts squirting forth from the nubbies; or all the times he trimmed the nub nail in my face, or left it on my keyboard in the room; or the nights our neighbors played Halo with the volume set on Jumbo Jet 747 engine; or the ol’ softball days with pug; or the shirt I was rockin’ the first time we ever met; or the prank wars between Old Man River and myself; or the time I preached in our homiletics class and was challenged to somehow insert the words bulge and comb over in the sermon (I was victorious);or the French Broad River fishing days where we got showed up by two real life crack head hillbillies; or the time I chased a cat because I was pretending to be Alf; or the late nights of MLB 2006 playing with our stacked Jolly Green Giant custom players; or the time we were attempting to set the TV up on my dresser but could not stop laughing and both almost peed all over the floor; or the days hunting Easter EGGGGGS out at the new property while learning random Spanish phrases.

You see, I could do this all night long but it is now 3:00 a.m. and I believe that this last story/memory can be summed up in about 5 sentences and a picture, so here goes…

You see back in the fall of 2008 (I think 2008 maybe 2007 idk) Dunbar, Ben and I had the great privilege of taking a Scuba Steve Johnson Bible College Science class together, it was absolutely terrible, but somehow we always made it through each class session and made it interesting. I never brought anything to class, except for a 2007 Wal-Mart road Atlas and a pen, Dunbar sat to my right with a Toronto Blue Jays Fifty9Fifty ball cap pulled down over his eyes and his arms folded across his chest in a comatose state all class while Ben sat on my left and read Bass Fishing magazines.

Throughout our years at Johnson, whenever Ben and I had a class together he always had one request, that I would draw some kind of ridiculous picture portraying some kind of current event that in some way related to one of us or one of our friends. Then again sometimes the ideas were simply randomly thought up by Ben or myself and then translated into cartoon-like sketches. Many pictures were masterfully created during our time in Science class. So, instead of telling a long story again I decided it would great to share some artistic creations from the minds of Ben and me.

So below you will find a collage of artistic expression from over the years as well as a new, world premiere, never before seen sketch of a dream that was recently conveyed to me by Ben. This was just a dream, no one was actually harmed in real life, just the dream. This dream is not a dream I had, please understand that, this came from someone elses head. The parties in the picture will remain nameless although many of you may recognize those pictured.

Without further ado I present to you “Collage a-la-Salsas” and “Waybos Heard a Dream”

Enjoy.

out.  

The Infamous Sketches

So here goes…

Once again it was in the year 2004 and once again the event took place in the dorms at Johnson Bible College in our RA’s room.  It was the end of the week, a Thursday night. We had just completed our weekly hall devos (probably on loving others) when Jason Koster entered the room. As soon as Koster walked through the door our RA Charlie aka “Cheddar” lit up like a 3 year old girl receiving a pound puppy on Christmas morning (in the 1980’s). Cheddar then proceeded to force Koster to return to his dorm room to retrieve his boxing gloves and face pad helmet thingy’s.

While Koster was gone Cheddar proceeded to put a bracket together of who would be fighting who in that little 15×15 foot dorm room. This was serious.  By the time Koster returned to the second floor, furniture was moved, breakable things were removed and stuffed into underwear drawers and a crowd had gathered to watch Fight Night 04 @ Brown Hall.

I don’t recall all the match-ups for the evening, I know Mapstone looked awesome, more like a bear wrestler than a boxer, but still pretty awesome, T-Dub could barely fit is fro in the helmet pad thingy, DJ MD looked like ButterBean on the Atkins diet and Cheddar was stinkin’ fired up to fight Koster(who boxed on a regular basis and blackened peoples eyes for fun). Cheddar got some good blows in during their bout, he is a little competitive.

As for myself, I was paired up to fight the one, the only, Taylor Brown. Back then I was still kinda skinny and Taylor was a pretty little guy as well, but we boxed like rabid seizuresk kangaroos. Yo Son, the second Cheddar blew that intramural flag football whistle it was on. Forget floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee we went after each other like two tasmanian devils, kicking, kneeing, swinging carelessly, punching spectators(I think one punch may have been landed the entire fight)! It was nuts, you would have thought Taylor and I hated each other. I think the fight lasted about 13 seconds before we were out of breath, laughing with stomach cramps and passed out on the coffee table and Goodwill couch. Right then at that very moment MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) was invented, bet you didn’t know that. But this was not even close to being the best part of that night.

Next up on the bracket was none other than my man Ben Fair aka Father Time vs. Jesse “The Nicest Soft Spoken Guy on the Planet” Watkins.  From the time they laced up their gloves and squeezed their heads into those soft shelled helmets I could see on Ben’s face that he was confused. From the look on his face, the questions I saw running through is head were, 1. “How the crap did I get paired up against Jesse?” and 2. “How in the world am I going to bring myself to try and kick the crap out of one of the nicest soft hearted guys I know?”

As those questions probably ran through his mind Mapstone walked across the middle of the dorm room with his super short Umbro shorts and a string bikini top on holding up the round 1 sign signaling the upcoming whistle that was quickly blown.(he really didn’t do that, but anyone who knows Mapstone could see him doing that)

Both  men came out of their corners with the look of “What do we do now?” on their faces. Sweating and panting with the confusion of who would be the first to throw a punch they stood looking at each other. The crowd began to grow restless from the lack of action, they demanded bruises, busted lips and bloody gloves. Giving into the cheers and jeers for blood from the crowd of future Bible College Graduates, Youth Pastors and Senior Pastors something snapped in Jesse. Take all the deep thoughtful poems and soft heavenly pictures from Jesse’s photo portfolio of peace and throw them in a wood chipper! Jesse ment business and Ben didn’t even see it coming.

If you blinked you missed it. But even if you eyes were closed you could still hear the sound of Ben’s neck snapping backwards.

Jesse had pulled a fast one on him. Without a blink of an eye Jesse sucker punched that fool square in the nose. The entire room gasped anticipating uncontrollable rage to erupt from Ben’s brain and be released through his eight and a half fingers that were balled up tightly into fists inside the Everlast gloves. But there was nothing, just red watery eyes and the look of “Where am I?” on the face of Ben. Jesse stood there dumbfounded not knowing whether to smile because he just punched someone in the face and it felt great or apologize because he is a super nice guy.

All I remember after that jab to the face was laughing until I thought I was going to puke! I don’t even know if there was another punch thrown in that bout, but I do know I have never seen a room full of 20 college guys laugh so hard in my life. Oh what I would give to have that sucker punch on video somewhere (if anyone videoed that please get it to me ASAP).

It was an incredible moment in Ben’s boxing career, his record stills stands at zero punches landed one sucker punch to the face received.

Once again I hope you enjoyed another tail from the life of Chuck and Ben, and once again if you did not enjoy it, I guess you had to be there. (No honestly no amount of words and descriptions can ever describe in full the events of the famous “Jesse Sucker Punch”…sorry)

Outie 5Thousand

One friend in particular, (Ben Fair) left yesterday to spend 3 months in Africa serving in the Mathare Valley, Kenya. I know God is going to use Ben to full capacity while he is serving this summer. Ben is a true example of what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ, putting others before himself and sharing the love of Christ with everyone he comes in contact with.

Last night I decided it would be fun to give you all an insight into a fun memory for each month he will be gone (3) from the past 5 years Ben and I have known each other. So here goes fun memory numero uno.

The year was 2004, I was a 19 year old college sophomoreand Ben was a 24 year old college freshman, again. Our dorm rooms were on the same hallway, we were approximately two doors down from each other.

In this day and age there was certain gaming website that was fairly popular entitled PartyPoker.com. On this web-site you could create a player name and participate in some online FREE (no real monies or gambling involved in the games we played) Texas Hold Em. In our circle of friends this was a pretty happenin’ place to be around 2 a.m. any given night of the week.

This particular night, myself, my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) and our good friend Tony White aka “Tweet” aka “T-Dub” aka “T-Dub-Fa-Sho!!!” (insert arm pump) were playing a friendly game of Party Poker with our Party Poker grandma friend JJGrandma and 6 other strangers online.

This particular night, was the night we introduced Ben to the magnificent PartyPoker.com. He was quickly intrigued, created a player name (Bob Marley) and searched for our table on the web site.

Quickly Bob Marley aka Ben found the three of us at a table and attempted to join our table, but in the attempt to join he found that the table was already full. So Bob, aka Ben had to wait for a seat to open up. While he was waiting patiently for someone to leave the table, he discovered the chat room box at the bottom of the screen where you could exchange words with other players.

Our circle of friends began conversing on the chat board and following about 20 minutes of waiting for “Bob Marley” to join the table, Rachel, T-Dub, Bob Marley and myself began to grow impatient that no one would give up their seat for our buddy Bob. 

So what did we do, being the mature Bible College Students we were? Ask people nicely to depart “our” table? Let everyone know it is better to share and give than be greedy and stay at the table? Give up one of our seats for Bob?

Heck No! we all reverted back to our 3rd grade minds and began ridiculing the players that would not leave so “Bob” could play. We were like a pack of sumo wrestlers on a box of Twinkies! (don’t really know what that means) But we were cracking ourselves up. It wasn’t like dark ”I hate you” ridiculing, more along the lines of that one annoying kid in class that does and says everything he knows is going to drive everyone to stabbing themselves in the eyes with pencils.

I don’t think I have ever laughed that hard in my entire life, T-Dub and I were roommates at the time, we were both in tears, I might have wet myself a little bit. Ben was burning incense which was a No-No at Johnson and the whole hall was filled with smoke. Rachel was on speaker phone with us from her dorm room crying with laughter. JJGrandma was crackin’ jokes with us, they were mostly old lady lame jokes, but that made it all the funnier. Our RA was ticked because we were so loud and Ben smoked us out of  the hall, “They smellin’ whatcha burnin’ Mon!” I kept yelling at Bob aka Ben.

Holy cow it makes my stomach hurt now just writing about it. That night it felt like I just got finished doing 775 sit-ups to improve my abs to put a picture on another popular website at the time hotornot.com. Lame-O

Dang man, that night was stinkin’ awesome I think we stayed up till 4am trying to kick these people off the table so Ben could play with us…no one ever left the table so somewhere around 4:30 am we started our own table. But it just wasn’t as fun with only us 4 playing and no one to trash talk.

Party Poker always made for great times. This night was no exception.

Hope you enjoyed the sneak peak into one of the many fun incidents from my past with Ben. If you did not enjoy it, here is where I insert the phrase “You had to be there!” There you go that should make it funny now.

Im Outie

A day late, but definitely not a laugh short. Just another video I stole of someone else, but get real, what video on the Internet has not been stolen from some other person? Oh wait I know one, how about the video of Rachel having a fall of a time at graduation and me taking fake phone photos with the President of our college along with rubbing an important bald guys head on stage in front of 1,000 or so people.

Anyone got that one?

No you say?

Well stay tuned, its in the mix!

But for real, Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mommies out there…the next day.

My bizzle, I have no Internet at the hizzle.

gone

1. Put your MP3 player on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS! DON’T CHEAT OR YOU’RE LAME

IF SOMEONE SAYS “ARE YOU OK” YOU SAY?
“Make You Feel That Way” – Blackalicious

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
“Tell Me” – Sara Evans…ahhh FACE!

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“More or Less” – Talib Kweli

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
“Put The O Back in Country” – Shooter Jennings…even I could not script this answer any better.

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“Christmas Time” – Backstreet Boys…no seriously…Backstreet Boys

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
“Bamboo & Cross” – Outkast…I like Pandas

WHAT IS 2+2?
“I Turned Your Picture To The Wall” – Norah Jones…ok?

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
“Falling Off The Face Of The Earth” – Matt Wertz…sorry, kind of morbid.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU Love?
“Godspeed” – Anberlin

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Jingle Bell Rock” – Bobby Helms…apparently I like Christmas a lot.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU Love?
“Time To Play” – Pillar…for real, I did not cheat, promise.

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Two Bottles of Beer” – Lonestar…really?  Where did all this Country Music come from?

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
“Rastaman Chant” – Bob Marley…perfect!

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“In My Arms” – Jon Foreman…great song.

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Happy Home” – Talib Kweli & Madlib

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
“Masquerade” – k-os…does that work?

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“Shakin’” – Rooney…not stirred, hahaha I crack myself up. I really did just laugh out loud, loser.

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
“10,000 Chariots” – Damian “Jr. Gong Marley”…that’s a lot of chariots

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
“Waiting” – Matt Wertz…that sucks!

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
“Kingdom Come” – Hillsong…this is one thing I look forward to!

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
“Build Me Up Buttercup” – The Temptations…love that song!

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
“Rock For a Pillow” – Ryan Long…better than having no place to lay my head.

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
“When In Rome” – Nickel Creek…I have never been to Rome, but I am married.

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
“Life In A Glass House” – Radiohead…I like to throw rocks, literally, I like to throw things.

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
“Party Foul” – Family Force 5…I guess not, not even my wife and kid? Super Party Foul!

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
“A Whisper” – Coldplay…a horse whisper to be exact, is that movie good?

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
“Papercutz” – k-os…I hate paper cuts, I would rather be stabbed in the leg with a fork!

There it is folks, hope you enjoyed that.  Have a blessed day.

I’m Outie

Please make note of how excited the guy with the Gold Michael Jordan earring is at the beginning, the guy with the theory’s pinkie nail, the woman’s purple sweater and the amateur sketch.  It does not get much better than this for St. Patrick’s Day.

Leprechaun In Alabama

Let me know what you think.

I’m Outie

Take a minute and absorb all the spectacularness of the shorts and then I will do a little explaining.

The Shorts

Now, if you know much about me, I like colors, different kinds of colors, my clothes and shoes must always match and I am not much for “flodgin” (word from my middle school days referring to clothes and/or outfits which do not match up correctly. i.e. wearing a Nike shirt with Reebok shoes, brown belt with black shoes or vice-verca, Timberland boots with shorts or thong sandles with socks, basically when your outer garments are not all flowing together, then you be “flodgin”!)

Many times the clothes I wear reflect the mood I am in, t-shirts and jeans equals chill, stone washed/acid washed jeans and fluorescent colors results from watching Saved By the Bell or Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, collar button up shirts usually means that attire is required and I have to, then there are the days for bright checker shorts, yellow shirts and loafers.  This represents a day at the beach or, a desert, which explains why these garments were worn last Saturday Night.

Here is the context surrounding last Saturday Day,in a nutshell,  Face in the dirt, butt in the air, playing with sand and water, decently warm temperatures, no clouds, no sunscreen which results in sunburn.  Sounds like a day at the beach right?  Wrong !  It was day one of sprinkler chasing, but I tried to trick myself into believing it was a day at the beach, in turn causing me to decide to dress as though I was at the beach all day,(loafers, checker shorts and yellow shirt, the whole shebang)!

Last thing, the shorts did not come from anywhere near San Fransisco, they were a Christmas gift from my wonderful sister-in-law which were purchased at a store called Dawhares (don’t ask, I don’t know) up in Kentucky somewhere.  Never heard of the place, but I like their shorts, they also say “Vintage” on the tag so that has to add some points to their greatness!

I am not exactly sure what was spoken against my shorts last week, all I know is that Pastor Gene did not want me going to meet one of his Coon Dog buddies in the middle of the woods wearing bright checker shorts last Saturday night.  I am not sure if Pastor thought his buddy would love the stupendousness of the shorts so much, causing him to beat me up to steal them, or if Pastor was protecting me (a brightly dressed man with crazy hair) from the biggest hillbilly beating in Sevier County history, but I thank you for looking out for me Pastor! 

I cannot believe I just wrote a post about shorts.  I am going to put on my PJ’s and house slippies now.  Hope you enjoy my shorts, they will be seen again in the near future.

Outie 5.

Buenos Noches