Stop #5: Brownsburg, Indiana (#299)

Date: February 25, 2011
Time: 0130 hours
Location: Steak 'n' Shake, Brownburg, Indiana
Crime: We're not sure ... but only true gangsters wear fedoras and look so fly. And gangsters commit crimes.


The fifth stop in the Steak 'n' Shake Quest brought us to Brownsburg and gave us a guest (as you have surely noticed, the handwriting on this sign was clearly done by a hand other than the hand that has handwritten all the signs so far in this quest). As you also have surely noticed, I just squeezed the word "hand" into that sentence in some form four times. I challenge someone to top that, and sound sillier doing it (but still make logical sense).

Also, we battled a blizzard -- and not the Dairy Queen kind -- in our venture.

But before I delve too much into that: details! As there was logic behind the choice to visit the Brownsburg location on this particular night, almost on par with the details behind our decision to start with the Nora location.

These details start with a story of a boy who played basketball at Butler last year. And that boy's name is Gordon.

See Gordon.

Gordon played basketball fantastically. He was also smart. He was also pretty. He was also my newest crush for a period of time there, and the source of a lot of tension with my then-roommate, who decided she wanted to be Mrs. Gordon and went to some games with me with hopes that he would meet her in "Historic Hinkle Fieldhouse!" and sweep her off her feet and carry her into the sunset, where they would get married on a sandy beach because isn't that every girl's dream wedding?

Okay. I'm overexaggerating a bit there at that end. Not every girl dreams of a wedding on a sandy beach in the sunset. If I had to have my wedding on a beach, I'd prefer one on a muddy beach in drizzling rain, personally, so that we could play Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" and laugh at the irony of rain on our wedding day, except more laugh at the lack of irony everyone credits Alanis with having.

As just one example.

At any rate. Gordon played basketball at Butler. And he was good at it.

See Air Gordon.

He was so good at it that he helped to get the team that year to the NCAA Championship game against Duke University.

See Gordon shoot the ball. Shoot, Gordon, shoot.

Actually, maybe don't see Gordon shoot that ball in that clip. It's almost too painful to watch. Scratch that, it's not almost too painful, it IS too painful. Especially when watching it once means you're going to push replay as soon as it's over and hope that maybe this time it'll go in, 'cause it is so damn close, after all. I bought the DVD of this game, and I wonder why 'cause I'm either never going to watch it all the way to the end, or I'm going to set myself up for a lot of nights of a lot of tears.

So instead, we'll change up the story line a bit. Or skip quickly to the next part, which is that Gordon was so good at basketball, that after that year, he didn't have to play at Butler anymore. Gordon was picked up in the NBA draft, and waved good-bye to the Dawgs.

See Gordon switch teams. Jazz, Gordon. Jazz.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with the Steak 'n' Shake quest, and I promise I'm getting there.

You see, Gordon was from Brownsburg. This became well-known "trufax" following the release of the hit-single (at least, around Butler itself, and likely in Mid-Majority circles, based on what websites are returned to you when you Google it these days) "Too Big Yo," in which Gordon rapped, "Yo, yo, the name's G-Time; big frame, big game, call me big time; ball hard, every night and every day; from the 'Burg, I rep it in a big way." (Emphasis -- as we typically put in scholarly articles, which this post is far from -- mine.)

And on February 24, Thursday evening, Gordon returned to Hinkle for a fundraiser event benefiting the Jukes Foundation for Kids.

So you see, avid readers (and you really must be, if you've made it this far in this post), the selection of the Brownsburg Steak 'n' Shake on this particular day was in honor of Gordon's awesome accomplishments.

It was also because I was kinda sorta hoping maybe there was the smidgenest of a chance that he would think, "Hey, I'm in Indy again, maybe since I'm in town, I'll hit up my home-town SnS. At 1:30 in the morning. When I will be unlikely to be swarmed by adoring fans."

Little did he know, he was in for an ambush. By yours truly.

Then again, maybe lot, that he did know. 'Cause he didn't show.

But that's okay! We had a different awesome visitor. And that was the visitor whose handwriting makes up the sign for this week's quest. And that visitor was ...

Mizener!

Who brought a fedora. Because I've been wondering if I could pull it off.


Clearly, I should buy one. Though, as I've explained to several people already, when I get one, I'm definitely going to go for a more 1940s-gangster-named-Mugsy fedora, and less of an Indiana-Jones-carrying-a-whip fedora. Mizener explained the differences, which include brim width, and we be friends, so why would Mizener lie to me about such details? Exactly, he wouldn't.

Wait, is he giving me the bunny ears and ruining this otherwise fantastic photo? ...

It's okay. I got him back. Or, rather, Steak 'n' Shake did, as the anagram puzzle on the back of the placemat was clearly a "Your mom!" joke directed at him.

For

ZEN LBE MOO TAF SEAMRYMIZ

surely must unscramble to

SAFE TOYZ ABLE MIZENER MOM!

Wait a sec. Damn it all. It's a cryptogram.

Oh well. I'm sticking with our anagram. I can't imagine Steak 'n' Shake wanting us to pull any other message from that game, and especially not one like "Try our all new breakfast!" That's just absurd.

Although, now that they mention it, I haven't tried the all-new breakfast ... in fact, I never tried the all-old breakfast. I imagine I will have by the end of this quest. At least, the all-new breakfast. I probably can't find, nor would want to find, the all-old breakfast at this point.

While Mizener and I worked on the crypto-turned-ana-gram, Brett remained unamused and totally impervious to our antics.

Or it could have been that he was watching the weather. Because, though it was not three hundred kinds of disgusting outside when we came to the Steak 'n' Shake, by the time we left, it was like the Snowmageddon one would have expected when the term was incorrectly used for what was in reality an Icepocalypse just a few short weeks ago.

A quick refresher on your world-devestation weather patterns:

Snowmageddon

Icepocalypse.

While the first looks a lot scarier from the single moment in time that the camera captured, the ice was far worse to experience.

And so, following the our fedora fun, our anagram antics, and our comida conquests (a Frisco Melt and fries for me), we braved the blizzard and were Butler-bound, then homeward-headed.

And thus ended a mostly successful -- save for the absence of one basketball player sighting -- Steak 'n' Shake adventure.



EDITED TO ADD: For the record, the Gordon Hayward photos come from AP, AP, and ESPN, respectively. The video comes from YouTube, and based on the quality, I'm gonna go ahead and assume it was random person taping from a cell or something while watching on the TV in their home-type-place. But I think it's an awesome random person, because I'm going to assume they were cheering for Butler, like pretty much everyone else in the entire country was. Don't argue with me, it will make me cry.