Young Mary's Record

Q&A with Park Mammoth Resort’s Nick Noble

Young Mary’s Record is delighted to welcome Nick Noble, the owner of Park Mammoth Resort and Hotel - the hosting venue of this weekend’s much-anticipated Stucky Music Festival !  Nick was sweet enough to give us the skinny on his own history with Park Mammoth, the many neat offerings at the resort, and special rates for Stucky Music Festival attendees. 

Young Mary’s Record: Hi Nick.  Introduce yourself to the YMR gang and tell us about you and your resort, Park Mammoth Resort and Hotel.

Nick Noble: My name is Nick Noble and my brother, Nate and I purchased Park Mammoth 3.5 years ago.  It is a beautiful 2,000 acre resort that we fell in love with the second we stepped foot on it.  For the first 14 years of our careers,  we were in corporate America and worked our way up the ranks to become sales and marketing executives.  We got sick of the corporate life and decided to set out on our own.  We weren’t sure what we wanted to do, but felt that we had some very  valuable business experience under our belt.  Our main goal was to develop a business around our passions.  Having grown up in the mountains of Colorado we knew that our next business venture would have something to do with the outdoors.  So, we took an inventory of our passions and built a business plan around developing a world class shooting sports resort.  That’s how we found Park Mammoth.

YMR:  You mentioned that you bought Park Mammoth with your brother – that’s a big investment, what did you fall in love with about the place or the area, or both, or neither that convinced you on the decision?

NN: Park Mammoth is an amazing place.  It was built in 1964 as a golf resort and we fell in love with it because of its amazing infrastructure.  It is very nostalgic and is like stepping back in time.   The 100 guest room hotel sits up on a ridge 150’ above the Mammoth Cave Sink Hole Basin.  The view from our Lookout Restaurant is unbelievable and would rival any restaurant view..anywhere.  You can see for almost 20 miles; sometimes it’s like eating lunch in the clouds.   We serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week and we are famous for our “pan fried chicken.”  Ms. Clara has been frying chicken at Park Mammoth for over 40 years! 

YMR: We are all about some fried chicken.  Count us in.

NN:   The hotel not only has a great restaurant, but also three conference rooms for meetings, banquets, reunions, etc.  We also have 18 holes of golf at our Cave Valley Golf Club.  75% of our golfers come from Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio and most of the groups have been coming for over 20 years.

NN: We founded the Rockcastle Shooting Center in 2010 and it has quickly become one of the premiere shooting range facilities in the world.  We have been featured on national TV over 15 times and are most famous for hosting major national and international level shooting competitions.  We will host over 50 shooting competitions in 2013 and will have visitors from all over the world.

 In 2011, we founded the Cave Valley Winery.  Edmonson County was dry and we challenged it and won.  We have a 2 acre vineyard and will start producing our own wines this year.  Currently in our Wine Bar at the hotel we feature several Kentucky Small Farm Wineries.  The whole Kentucky wine scene is a neat story and we are proud to be part of it.

YMR: What’s different about Park Mammoth than other chains that you might wheel into from the Interstate?

NN: When is the last time you checked into a hotel and got a three inch brass key?  This world has gone so corporate cookie-cutter that you can get off any exit of any interstate in America and get the same vanilla experience.  Not so at exit 48 on I-65 in Kentucky. 

YMR: For folks attending Stucky Music Festival and being introduced to Park Mammoth for the first time – what do you hope that they’ll take away about your resort?

NN: There is a lot more to do here than just this festival. Lodging, restaurant, winery, shooting sports, and golf.  We host a ton of weddings and will continue having live music at the winery every Saturday evening through the summer.  It’s a great place to hang out.  We very close to Bowling Green, just 30 minutes.

YMR:  Are you a music-lover yourself?  What’s a favorite artist or record of yours?

NN: I love music.  Growing up in Durango, Colorado one of our favorite summer trips was the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.  Two of my favorite bands are from Boulder, Colorado, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and The Samples.  My all-time favorite band is U2 and I listen to all kinds of music from country to rap.

YMR:   We’ve been listening over and over to this Johnny Cash cover of One for the last day, so U2 is a great choice.

YMR: Tell me about the special rates for Stucky Music Festival and pertinent information for folks attending the music and also staying at the hotel rather than camping.  Is there a shuttle?  A far walk? 

NN: We are offering a special rate of $69 for a room at the lodge during the Stucky Music Festival.  We will have a shuttle that will leave on the hour and take folks to the hotel. 

YMR: What do you love about being in the hotel industry?

NN:  I love delivering a unique experience.  That’s what we try to do at Park Mammoth.  It is great to meet people from all corners of the globe and our goal is for them to leave saying…. 

“That was just like staying and Nick and Nate’s house, everyone treated us like family.”

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Interested in drifting off into dreamland after a long wonderful day of music and festivites in a warm king size bed and starting your next day with a refreshing hot shower?  That’s where we’ll be.  To book at Park Mammoth, their official website is HERE and you can ring them up at 270.749.4101.  

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The Pop Cult: The End of The Office as Well as My Twenties

THE POP CULT  is a Young Mary’s Record series dedicated to observing the very best ( and worst, when bad is oh-so-good) of current and retro pop culture.  Provided from the brains of our wise and completely enigmatic Pop Cult leader Kyle Sanders, this post is dedicated to the end of the popular, much-loved television series The Office and it’s finale.

You know how some people refer to “historical events” when discussing a particular moment in their lives? Well, I refer to television series when detailing the many chapters of my storied life. I was born when Hill Street Blues died on the air. My first year of grade school witnessed the last-year runs of The Golden Girls, Cheers, and The Cosby Show. My teen years weren’t as funny without the likes of Roseanne and Seinfeld. I was saying goodbye to Friends a year before I’d say goodbye to my own friends when I graduated high school, and I was finding my way through graduate school as I bid adieu to LOST. In other words, I see the end of a television show as an end to an era. I recall particular times in my life based upon the TV lineups of yesteryear. When you spend five plus years or so welcoming characters into your living room on a weekly basis, it’s hard to watch them leave. It’s perhaps the closest thing I’ve come to “empty nest syndrome” (and yes I DO recall the series finale of Empty Nest!).

So it’s no easy transition to witness the series finale of The Office. The Americanized version of that saucy Ricky Gervais show from England made its debut mid-season in the spring of 2005, right before my transition to college life. Much like my first experience at WKU, the first season of The Office was awkwardly funny and did not see much action. Like most freshmen seasons, the cast of characters needed some time to grow, including Steve Carell’s in-the-history-books-of-television character Michael Scott, the “American David Brent” if you will. He was certainly a buffoonish jerk, but had yet to gain the lovable persona his character would evolve into. Even the supporting cast was a little one-dimensional. The will-they-or-won’t-they relationship between Pam and Jim (Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski) was sweet but not sizzling, and the bizarro Dwight Schrute (the incomparable Rainn Wilson) was just that: bizarre. But like all green sitcoms, these characters would ripen into fully developed personalities that would eventually gain my love and support.

And this is where it gets good. As I finally busted out of my teen years into my twenties, The Office was at its humorous peak. My Thursday nights, while expected to be reserved for “Thirsty Thursdays” and late-night trips to Waffle House, were (at times) replaced with NBC Thursday night comedies. Of course, the nineties brought an end to “Must See TV,” but this was the 2000’s, the era of “Comedy Done Right.” I’d set my VCR (because a DVR was still about TWO YEARS away from taking over) for My Name is Earl, 30 Rock (another show that took its final bow a few months ago—STILL getting used to that absence), and The Office. I had my own dorm room at the time, so I could watch these shows over and over without any lip from an annoyed roommate. It probably seems pathetic and a bit sad that my Thursday nights relied on watching TV, but it didn’t matter to me because this was what made me happy. Yes, of course there would usually be a visit to the local bars from time to time, but regardless I would make time for The Office.

By the time I was getting ready to graduate with my Bachelor’s, I’d come to love ALL the characters on The Office: Phyllis, Angela, Creed, Toby, Meredith, Kevin, Oscar, Stanley, Kelly, Ryan, Daryl, Gabe, Erin, Karen, Jan, and Andy were ALL irreplaceable to the show. Each was special and unique to the status quo of the office and provided personalities that can be found in most office workspaces (I’ve worked with a few Angela’s and Creed’s in my days of part-time job living). I couldn’t imagine the show without either of these characters, so when it came time for Steve Carell to leave the show, as you can imagine, I was livid.

Of course, Steve Carell had been starring in some big-hit comedies while on The Office. His career was blowing up so fast that his time spent with the sitcom was holding him back. Yes, some actors on television unfortunately can’t make the big jump from TV to films (Paging Shelley Long and David Caruso!), but Carell was a different story. It was inevitable, but still heartbreaking. As I was wrapping up my second year of grad school, and about to pass a quarter-of-a-century on this earth, I (along with the rest of the world) had to say goodbye to Michael Scott. Carell’s last episode marked the second time I cried at the ending of a TV show (the first being the final episode of LOST a year earlier). After all the unsuccessful pranks, the rude remarks, the inappropriate gestures, and after all of the sub-par “That’s what she said’s,” I found myself weeping over that pompous bastard. But you know what? I had grown to love him.

With Carell’s departure, most viewers like me were left wondering “what’s going to happen to the show?” Well, as expected, The Office suffered. They replaced Michael Scott’s position with the intimidating Robert California (played by the sexy/scary James Spader) who was eventually replaced by the buffoonish Andy Bernard (the-truly-funny-but-only-in-supporting-roles Ed Helms). The chemistry between the characters ran a little colder; the atmosphere seemed to have taken a dark side. But like any loyal, doting, Tammy-Wynette-of-a-housewife, I stood by my show. Yet while I watched with dedicated eyes glued to the screen before, I now sort of watched the show as white noise, recognizing the television was on but not entirely paying attention. While the show had grown stale, I must admit some of the storylines were still bitingly funny. The whole Angela-Oscar-Senator love triangle was quite fun to see unravel, and the addition of Catherine Tate’s Nellie Bertram brought a little British pizzazz to the cast. But without the glue of Carell, The Office was falling apart and indeed looking at termination.

And now it’s happening. We are down to the last few episodes and I’m finding myself in my late twenties and at a crossroads. With the end of this show, I’m saying goodbye to a near-decade of my life filled with quirky network comedy TV shows (yes, there’s still Parks and Recreation and Community, but they are just successors to the kingdom that The Office built), as well as to my twenties. Yes, I still have a few years left, but I’m approaching the dawn of my “thirties” when most people my age have found their niche and have married and started families and settled in for adulthood. I’m not ready for that and don’t plan to be for many years to come. Yet with the end of The Office, I do find myself taking the next big step to finding my calling. Perhaps the end of The Office is the beginning of a new chapter for me, of moving on and starting over. I’ve had so many good memories with The Office: I witnessed Michael’s “acceptance” of Oscar’s homosexuality with that forced awkward kiss; I was there for Pam and Jim’s YouTube-inspired wedding; I anxiously awaited the premiere of “Threat Level Midnight”; I remember Michael serenading Toby on his (supposed) last day at the office; and I was there when Michael proposed to Holly, whom he left Scranton for. There are so many memorable moments from this show, it would require another blog to list them (which some have already jumped the gun and have provided you for your perusal). I’m not exactly sure how NBC will say goodbye to the folks at Dunder Mifflin—it’s already been confirmed that Steve Carell WILL provide an appearance though no word on exactly how—but I’m sure it’ll be bigger than I could possible imagine…annnd that’s what she said.

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Buffalo Rodeo releases single, Treehouse

Buffalo Rodeo - a band that is always on my short list of the next Bowling Green Breakout Bands — has released their new single, Treehouse.   If this track is any indication - this gang is hitting the ground running.  It’s fresh while staying “Very BR” — and I think I love it.  

 Why do I think I love it?

- It’s a two-and-a-half-minute, barn-burner, spring-is-here, young and restless track that’s actually over 5 minutes long.  

- I’m pretty sure they are chanting “We’re Never Coming Down” — Goddamn right, we’re not.

- At about 3:05 mark, I hope it is Jordan Reynold’s consistently beautiful and strong backing vocal I’m identifying entering the mix.  I listened to an interview of Thom Yorke at about 5am this morning that he did with Alec Baldwim — and he spoke about singing from the top of his forehead, that both Yorke and Bjork do this.  That’s what I think Jordan’s doing there.

- They’re just great.  Some of you won’t like them when they get famous or resent them because they’re cool and weird and are just being themselves.  But I will.  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that if I had a million dollars, I would buy them all the cut-off denim, guitar pedals, and pretty dresses (For Jordan) that they wanted and sign them today.  

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