UN-BUH-LEE-VUH-BULL

"Unbelievable."
-- muttered every few minutes by someone or other


As Experienced by Matthew Wilburham

Thursday, May 28

Ivy Alumni Dinner

Once again, my tux is ruined.

The Ivy Club alumni dinner predictably opened with abuse of the open bar ("two please - one for me, and one for my girlfriend"), progressed to heckling the alumni speakers, then Robopound, and finished with dancing on a sea of broken glass in the Ivy tap room. I have tried to recreate my itinerary below:

-- 7:30pm --
Club photo. Pose with Mr. Monner

Street & Degeneration

-- 12:05-2am --
?

-- 2am --
Go to DEC and Cloister with Hinny.

-- Sometime after 3am --
Pass out on bare mattress in Brown.

Friday, May 29

Recovery Day

Dawn
I was awakened by Beet, Prenner and Bert getting up to go golfing. I then lay in bed listening to the entire Steve Miller Band Greatest Hits album blaring from the 20th reunion out the window and tried (successfully) to avoid booting.

Afternoon
I spent all day walking around with Mares discussing best places to take a dump on campus. For a variety of reasons we settled on Firestone lobby bathroom.

Dusk
We ate Chinese food and chugged cans of beer at a table outside YY's (now Tiger Noodles) in the middle of a thunderstorm of Biblical proportions.

Impromptu Helmetfest

We returned to our room in Brown to find ourselves locked out of 311 by Yori Teager. We stole Kristin Hibin's stereo, which, pushed to its limits, inspired mayhem: robopound, impromptu chugging and the throwing in the air of beercans, trash and frisbees.

After an hour of this, someone pointed out that we were in the middle of one of the most jubilant and intoxicated mass gatherings on earth, with thousands of girls and scores of live bands, and we were choosing to lock ourselves in a filthy, completely unfurnished, poorly lit room and have a helmet fest.

We moved on.


Beet post-pitcher chug

Casualty

I must have gone out to the street, but my next memory is of returning to Brown to find Beet passed out in the fetal position on the lower bunk.

"Hey Beet!" No movement. I shoved his shoulder. He rocked a little but felt heavy and inanimate. I slapped him in the face. Nothing. Not even a grunt.

Damn.

I found his pulse on his neck and tried to read my watch in the dark of the room. Holding the second hand in my blurry vision was too difficult, so, satisfied that his heart was faintly beating, I climbed up and went to sleep.

Amazingly Beet (and Ponch) made it to the boathouse and went for a row at 10 the following morning.

Saturday, May 30

P-Rade & Fountain Battle Royale

Standing in the sun drinking beers for hours and hours. Exactly like Preakness, except capped off by a Battle Royale in the Woody Woo fountain. Highlights included Bert urinating, Wizzmar displaying his ass in graduating seniors' photos, condom hackey-sack, and Fife breaking his nose on a swan dive into the 15 inch deep water.

Post P-Rade, Pre Battle RoyaleGordo scores a takedown


Aaron Wizzmar posing For graduating seniors' parents

Reunion-hopping

After the Fireworks, we made our way to the open bar at the 20th (outside Dada).

Off to the 25th. We breathed some fire into an otherwise frigid dance floor, with Bert leading the charge on-stage (and being told by the band to get off), and Limba stage diving. In a moment of sheer party genius, Wizzmar and Wease turned the crowd-surfing Limba into a human limbo stick. At this point (11:45pm) Stone, suffering from a stomach sickness developed from the previous night's strenuous party schedule, called it a night.


Dance Mania at the 5th

As always happens in the 5th, I was completely lost, roaming around in the dark looking for a friendly face. I peeked in at the dance floor, gasped, and then broke into a run. It was mania. A crowd of sweaty, shirtless bodies, packed dangerously tight, hugging each other and bouncing. It looked like salmon spawning. Front row center was Bert. The heat hit me like the opening of an oven door. I peeled off my shirt and joined the dance. Within seconds I was pouring sweat, I slipped and slid around on the oily skins of my neighbors. Bert, Beet, Wease and I made a protective cocoon around Karrie Iceberg and her cute friends. "Come on Ilene" and we touched another level.


Beet in his element

My heart was screaming in my chest, I could barely breath the steam that surrounded us. I looked into the eyes of the proctor at the front of the stage and I saw absolute terror. I was hugging people I barely new and jumping and jumping as high as I could. "Dancing with Myself" and the dancefloor had ceased being a party and was now a civil disturbance. Police and proctors stood shoulder to shoulder at the front of the stage, the band was invisible, but loud. I felt like I was flying. I looked at the bouncing Bert and from his blank stare it was obvious that his higher level brain functions had been drowned in animal pleasure.


Encore at the Street

The energy from the 5th carried over to Ivy. Some people never put their shirts back on.

After hours of non-stop dancing, I took a break. I sat with my head in my hands on a black wire chair on the back porch of Ivy, breathing hard, and concentrating on stopping sweating. When I looked up I saw a scene I wouldn't have thought possible in a Protestant country. Some alum in his early thirties, with multicolored strands of mardi gras beads around his neck, was ballroom dancing with a pitcher of beer. Through the foggy walls of the solarium, which was pulsing like an enormous glass ventricle to the beat of "Boom Boom Let Me Here You Say Eh-Oh", all that was visible was flushed sweaty pink flesh.

This was going to be a marathon. Applying lessons learned at Preakness, I continually rehydrated, filling cups up from the tub of ice by the bar. Bert did not. Bert danced for 8 hours straight. Bert is unbelievable.

"That guy is unbelievable," Prenner said, "He never stops dancing - not to get a drink, not to go to the bathroom, not to rest, he stops for NOTHING."


"That guy is unbelievable"

At 5 I went to fill up with more ice to see Grog Wopell booting into the ice tub. Sunrise came and went. We partied on.

At 6, Ivy closed with "Pour Some Sugar on Me." Incredible - the club had raged for hours despite having absolutely no beer. I staggered out into the sunlight and Prenner's video camera. I can't believe we are still partying! We are the most unbelievable partiers of all time! No one parties like us!


Post-bird-chirp Partying

Unbelievable

Wrong.

Out of habit, we swaggered over to TI, confident in our status as the hardest core at Princeton. Entering the taproom, we were floored to see a live band blaring away for a sizable audience of helmets.

"I want to thank you all for coming out tonight. This will be our last song," the singer said.; The band launched into "Disco Inferno" - "BURN BABY BURN!!" It was 6:15 in the morning. In the corner somebody was chugging a pitcher, an appropriate exit cue.

We walked home on sore feet. With our hoarse voices and blown eardrums we didn't talk much. Every few minutes someone or other would mutter "Unbelievable."