TS
11-24-2006, 03:49 AM
Hella long. Hella late. As advertised. For those of you not getting any sleep for the morning of Black Friday, something to kill time with.
(This was written a little while ago, hence the elation over S.O.A.P.)
I was going, son. F the BS. I tried to bum a ride from someone else, but that fell through since I didn't have his cell #, and he didn't have internet access since he'd left already.
Greyhound, bitches.
Yeah.
Yeah, son. Let it never be said that I'm not hardcore (or not retarded). Fifteen hours, counting rest stops. FIFTEEN HOURS, guy. Yeah. ....yeah. On the bright side, there was a hilariously gay dude at the Los Angeles Greyhound station. Dude had on purple slacks, a see-through purple shirt (with sparkles, kids. Sparkles)....and was carrying around...a magic wand. Like a fairy might have. Yeah. Tight.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Sacramento, the Greyhound station is shaaaaady. The weird thing about Sac is that the center of the downtown area...let's say around 10th and J streets, has usually been a bad part of town. All of the homeless druggies and politicians used to hang there, not to mention the fact that all of the people coming in/out of town via Greyhound are jumping bail or dodging child support payments, or are otherwise shady characters. Downtown not nearly as bad as it used to be, but the phrase "it smells like K Street" won't be leaving my vocabulary any time soon. Years wroth of homeless urine baked into concrete by summer sun. Mmmm. Again, not a bad area now, but you should smell K Street when it rains. It's like R.Kelly's laundry basket.
Anyway, I don't live far from downtown, though thankfully in a somewhat nicer area. So I get a ticket that same day, and then in the afternoon I got on our commuter train local transit thing, walking two blocks with a backpack full of stuff, and my super-heavy bag with all kinds of shit in it. I get the train for about 20 minutes, then walk another 4 blocks, carrying the weight of a dead body on my back and in my hand. I need some shit with wheels on it... Shit.
Normally, I'd be worried about someone trying to steal by bag, since I'd spent hundreds of dollars on the stuff inside, but if anyone tried to pick it up and run away with it, they'd have pulled their arm out of it's god damned socket trying to move it, so I wasn't concerned.
Shit was heavy. For real.
So I get on the bus and I'm on my way. We pass through Stockton, CA, which looked surprisingly nice. Or maybe it was just relatively nice compared to the Sacramento Greyhound station. Stockton isn't far, but I've never really been over there. Just one of those things.
Then we eventually passed through Fresno....you could get raped in Fresno. Maybe it's like the Greyhound station in Sac, and I just saw a bad part of it, but god damn. Amber Alert.
On the hella long trip, I dick around with my new camera a bit, but I didn't get anything on tape since I didn't have time to charge my battery (bought it that day). I listen to NPR on my radio/CD player (trouble in the Middle East....!?! Wow....!), and try to catch some sleep, since I hadn't slept for like 2 nights before then, and actually still could catch some more Zs right now. I'm a sleep scrub anyway, but you don't get the best sleep sitting up on a bus. I couldn't even tilt my seat back, since there was some random chick behind me, and I didn't want to be a douche. I brush up on my terrible Japanese a bit and the rest is a blur of boredom. I listened to CDs and I looked out the window, I guess.
For those of you who've never taken a trip by automobile from L.A. to Vegas, let me describe what I saw through the window during that leg of trip...
Rocks, sand. Rocks, cactus, sand. Sand, dirt. Dirt dirt. Cactus dirt, dirt Neon lights, adds for strip clubs.
Hella big signs for casinos, and strip clubs, and random celebrities who perform at casinos or hotels or whatever. I get to the Vegas Greyhound station and walk outside. There was porn on the street. Like, in one of those newspaper machines on the corner. But with bitches, instead of news.
Welcome to Las Vegas.
------------
The original plan was to kick it at a Motel 6 (5085 S. Dean Martin Drive...had it Mapquest-ed and everything) and take a cab back and forth from the Red Rock casino/spa/hotel, but Bacardi had a little bit of space in the hotel room he had reserved (luckily for me, some other folks canceled), so at the last minute I ended up staying with him and like 94 other people. Not complaining at all, it beat the hell out of a $25 cab ride to/from the Motel 6 daily, and was a hell of a lot more convenient.
So I step out of the Greyhound station to take a
cab to the Red Rock, an I immediately spot a
crackhead. Welcome to Vegas, for real. Well, to
be fair, "crackhead" is too harsh a term. He was
maybe a Crack Enthusiast. He looked like the type
of guy who enjoyed some "Classic Rock," if you get
what I'm saying. I carry my heavy-ass bag to a
taxi, where I get a ride from a slightly insane
African cab driver.
The Red Rock. Dumb nice. They have a casino,
random restaurants, a spa, a big ass pool, and a
movie theater...in the fucking casino. Wow. WTF.
See, I'm hella broke. I don't stay at places like
this. Even if I had money, I might kick it
Motel-6-style anyway. Even the view was sick. I'm
sure it'll end up being in someone's post in the Evo
Pics thread in the Evo forum, if not already.
So I enter the Red Rock and use about $3.50 in
quarters to call Bacardi, who I'm rooming with
(because I'm a scrub with no cell phone, and I
didn't get a phone card before I left). Which is
retarded as hell, since he's at the hotel
on the 14th floor, but that's what I get for not
having a cell phone. I get the money for my share
of the hotel room at the little ATM machine by
the pay phones...service charge was like a hundred
thousand dollars, nice. True Tech comes down to
bring me up to the room, and I see the other
people who are staying there, though hella random
people crashed there. It's Friday and like 7:45
in the morning at this point, so everyone is
pretty much dead. I wasn't tired enough to
actually sleep, since I half-slept at some point
during the 14-15 hour bus trip there. I hit the
shower (almost stepping on Potter, I think),
change clothes, and then head down to register
for the tournament. I'm only entering Marvel this
year.
It's weird how people are sorta famous. Seeing
John Choi and James Chen and Valle and the
Cannons is...weird, almost. Anyway, the
registration line is pretty small, so I have time
to mill around and see what's up. The conference
room that Evo was in was pretty god damn big. Not
only was there more than enough room for two
actual cars (The new TOYOTA Yaris...buy one, I
guess), but like 24 or more TVs, a
moderately-sized stage and two big projector
screens which hung down from the ceiling. There
was more than enough standing room, even during the
finals. Oh, and giant masked wrestler balloons.
Man, between the nice hotel (in Vegas), the
Toyota sponsorship, and the whole caliber/scope of
the event, someone was blackmailing someone, or
something. For real. I don't know if Ponder has
tape of some Toyota exec blowing a pony, or what
the hell was going on behind the scenes, but man...
Someone was breaking the law, I know that
shit. The owner of the Red Rock got some world
class nose-candy, and ink got to run his loud-ass
tourney. ... I guess they got a good referral from
the Green Valley place they held Evo @
previously, and maybe promised they would sell out
all of the Evo reserved hotel rooms (which they
did) or pay the difference, and also combined that
with A+ quality smack and child pornography,
secured both sponsorship (after agreeing to buy a
fleet or Yarises...or ...Yari?) and the hotel.
Anyway, I brought my SEGA Saturn (WHAT SON, WHAT)
and some games down with me in my backpack, so I
find a free TV and start some SFA3. One guy plays
a couple of games with me... And then, nobody. Me
vs CPU for 45 minutes, tight. To be fair, I only
had one joystick, and one Saturn pad...not the
second version controller, the third one, the
bulky analog NiGHTS controller. And my stick
sucked. It was like $12 on eBay, so meh. Didn't
use micro switches though, same way as most of the
other sticks I've owned, it actually used
springs. ...? Sensitive and cheaply made. I
actually kicked myself when I got back home,
because it didn't even occur to me to grab one of
the 2 Virtua Sticks I have, the OG Saturn stick
They're not great, but they beat the hell out of
the chunky pad.
So whatever, about the BYOC stuff (the Bring Your
Own Console area). SNK fools repping so hard.
So...HORD. SO hord. Fools busted out
Fighters History Dynamite, even. Of course
SSTenka, KOF, etc were in rotation....good shit.
And actual people were PLAYING. OMG.
F you guys, btw. For real. Later on, Saturday
afternoon sometime, I spotted someone playing SFA3
on SF Alpha Anthology for PS2. I singled in on
True Tech with fucking laser beam vision,
wave dashed over to him to ask if I could borrow
his stick. RAN to the elevators, Honda running
animation FTW, ran back to play. I remember
bumping into an old lady at some point during the
weekend, this could very well have been it. I
hate you all. Anyway, SNK reprezizzled, etc.
Registration was actually quick and painless(!),
they let me know my pool number (or letter...I
think I was in bracket "B"). It didn't' start
until 2 PM, so I have time to screw around. I
see SRKGD's very own Ronin Chaos and say hi. RC
later tells me that there was some stupid fight
going on between some people in the Thinking Out
Loud thread on SRK, and that mofos were actually
calling him on his cell about it. His actual,
real-life phone. Wow. What? Dude wasn't even in
town and was getting calls from Atlanta. The
Internet: Serious Business. Whatever though, he
mentions that he and a bunch of the other people
are gonna go see the first screening of (mother
fuckin') Snakes on a (mother fuckin') Plane later
(mother fucking) on.
I looked around @ noon for some Alpha, since
JeRon was going to have a Hyper SFA tournament
that started then, but I didn't see anyone with
the game set up, so I milled around and recorded
stuff.
MvC2 pools were that same day, Friday... Yeah, I
sucked. Went 2-2. Before my tournament matches
started, I played a total of like 3 matches. Bad
plan. Evo regret #2 would be not practicing; It
didn't even hit me until Sunday night after the
event, I hadn't played MvC2 for like 3 months,
and even then it was like 3 matches. The fact
that I was playing on the green DC Agetec didn't
help, but it's not SO bad (I actually sorta like that one).
I spent so much time trying to find a way to get
there, that I forgot about the part where I
actually play in the tournament.
If anyone was wondering, Evo regret #1 was not
interviewing Viscant about N.O. A.S.S., his
national anti-sex group (now international?). It
didn't even hit me until days after I got back
home, and I had the camera and everything...
I think I won 2 matches and lost 2 straight in
that order. Big thanks to MegamanDS for recording
my second match, btw, I appreciate it.
The two I won basically involved me playing odd
characters/teams and people who weren't
super-heavy into Marvel not knowing how to
counter. (I was the guy who ended up playing
Spiral/BH/Charlie a couple times, if anyone
reading was there and played me. I play the
team because people don't know how to play
against Spiral- it's actually pretty fair,
considering I don't really know how to use
her- and Charlie and Guile's anti-air assists
will hit flying Sent pretty much anywhere on
screen. I could have subbed
Guile/Colossus/Cyclops in for Charlie, but I
guess I was feeling Charlie that day. I'm better
with him than the others, except Cyke, but
Charlie has the better AAA vs Sent. You can also
use Charlie's AAA in simple BH combos, but I
fucked all those up, IIRC.)
My first loss was to the guy who's hella good on
the regular Dreamcast pad who was playing Team
Combofiend, who's name I can't remember. If you
know who I'm talking about, you know. First game
I got owned up pretty bad, OCV even (I had a chance
to take out Magneto, but I fucked up that and
many other things). Second game I was playing
Doom(B)/Storm(A)/Ryu(A) same as the first, but
this time I didn't start Doom like the first (I
figured he'd start Iron Man and leave Mag as
backup- hella wrong).
I'll make a post about the match later, since I
actually have a vid of it that I'll eventually
YouTube or something. Long story short, I lost
(retarded Storm air fireball move, WHY DO YOU
ALWAYS COME OUT??!)
My fourth (and final) match was a bit more
dramatic, since I won the first game pretty
quickly- more quickly than someone like myself
who isn't really good at the game, even with
practice, is used to- and then as the second
match starts, the other guy lets me know that I
accidentally turned my damage up by a point. And
says "...I think it was up last game, too." ...uh
oh. Of course, I'm coincidentally not recording
THIS match, so it's not like I can just review
the tape. I end up asking him if he wants the
replay the first match, because I'm gay,
apparently, I don't know. But I'll still take his
word for it. I would have lost either way, since
I lost 1-2, but damn that sorta sucked. I also
wish I had the match on tape just to watch it,
since matches you lose are always more
informative than the ones you win. Ah well, GG.
In other "looked like cheating, but actually
wasn't" news, after watching the first match I
lost again, I noticed did an accidental pause
during HSF. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal,
except that the pause happened on the last row,
which is what killed my Doom. I'm not sure why
the fuck I was still mashing at that point, wtf...
anyway, at first it looks like I totally cockblocked
the guy on an unblockable by pausing, but watching
more closely, he still had time, and more importantly,
he didn't look like he was going for one anyway,
since I was playing Storm. Still a really bad
fucking time to pause, though, sorry about that.
Some of the MvC2 pools matches on the big screen
were too good, Evo DVD is definitely worth
getting this year if it's priced reasonably.
I look over to the opposite side of the room, at
like 3PM and catch people playing HSFA. The
tournament has started! But...I'm too late. Damn.
Not too many people signed up, so they made it a
round robin. Hyper SF Alpha is....doesn't look as
solid as A2 or A3. Looks interesting, though.
What I saw was mostly A1 domination, but I think
a few of the new modes may be interesting.
Regular A3 characters mostly suck. Not good.
A2/Gold characters seem OK, though I noticed CCs
seem shorter(?) and Rose can't combo after her
Alpha Counter anymore...?!! Sad. Guy redizzy
isn't 100% stun like in A1, but combo -> overhead
seemed to dizzy, even though there's a break in
between.
The rest of the day is a blur (recording random
HSFA matches and Marvel stuff, I guess), but at
9PM my lack of sleep catches up with me and I'm
suddenly tired as HELL. I resist the urge to
crash in the hotel room, and survive until about
midnight.
Snakes on a Plane.
I'm not really into internet fads... The Chuck
Norris thing, the Vin Diesel thing, All Your
Base, Myspace, etc. I mostly just stick to SRK,
and just visit a few other sites.
...people have been talking about Snakes on a
Plane forever (long, long before the movie came
out, or was even finished), but I didn't know wtf
they were really talking about.
Great movie. Seriously. Oscar-worthy.
Let me kick some spoilers your way if you haven't
seen the movie yet...if not, go see that shit
NOW.
Snakes on a Plane is about an airplane, with
snakes on it. Or, in it, really. Let's go
deeper...
Some stupid surfer guy who's name I don't care to
remember witnesses a murder in progress, wherein
some dude who looks like BAS ties some lawyer guy
upside-down and beats him to death with a
baseball bat.
Yeah.
In the first ten minutes, we have some dude who
looks like BAS painting some dude's fence with
blood.
Then Sam Jackson pops in to save dude later on,
and they get on a plane to L.A. to testify
against dude. BAS-dude. So they hop on this plane
, and... ....!
BAS sends out snakes like Vega's CvS2 win
animation, and it just gets great.
The best scene in the movie...in ANY movie in my
opinion, is when some guy is using the airplane
lavatory. He whips it out and is peeing in the
toilet, eyes closed in RELIEF. That piss feeling.
You guys know what I mean. But...
There's A SNAKE IN THE TOILET. Oh yes. Oh,
YES. The snake rises up slowly...and strikes!,
grabbing the guy's dick with it's jaws.
...and the struggle begins.
I'm out of my seat by this point, applauding.
Seriously. I've totally forgotten about the 2
kids in the seats in front of me in the movie
theater with their dad, IIRC. And then, the best
line ever, as his man is struggling...in a
heated battle with the Serpent, the Beast himself
as far as this guy is concerned, thrashing wildly
around the bathroom with a snake on his DICK, he
says the line:
"FUCKING SNAKE, GET OFF MY
DICK!!!!"
Excellence. Excellence. SNAKES ON A PLANE,
everybody. Snakes on a Plane.
Yes.
After the movie, Psycho Gorath says that the
movie took itself a bit too seriously. I reply
that snakes on a plane is a very serious issue.
Ah, also during the movie, myself and I have no
clue how many other people said aloud in unison
with a completely serious and URGENT Samuel L.
Jackson: "That's it! I have had it with these
motherfucking SNAKES, on tis motherfucking
PLANE!!" Again, not thinking at all about the
two kids directly in front of me. Sorry, kids. So,
yeah, I head back to the room to sleep, because
by the time I got up there it was like 2 AM and
I'm low on sleep for a week by that point....and
after seeing the movie, it was pretty much all
downhill.
So on Friday night, I crash on the bathroom
floor, since the hotel room has like 8 people in
it, and there's nowhere else to stay. Most
everyone is asleep at this point, except for about
two of the guys who are up and watching Seed of
Chucky on the hotel room TV. I stay up for like
an hour, patiently waiting for Jennifer Tilly to
take her shirt off or eat a sausage or something,
but it never happens, and I eventually pass out at
like 2:45 or 3 in the morning.
I wake up and mill around like a zombie for a
while.... Yipes asking to us he shower in our
room later on that morning was the funniest shit.
I dot know what was up, I'm guessing much of EC
had like 97 people packed into one room, and the
shower was getting a train run on it. The highlight of
the whole thing was Yipes saying something like,
"Man! Come on. I just need to hop in the shower for
like FIVE minutes. You can TIME me. My balls are
itchin' like I got CRABS, y'all."
Everyone else: "......" Dead silence. Eventually,
one of the guys (Lucien think, says
"...yeah....you can get in LAST."
Yipes: "IT WAS A FIGURE OF SPEECH."
<3
Saturday....there were like 400,000 people
crowded around a TV during money matches. Someone
mentioned later on that Golden Nismor(?) didn't
replay his match with SmoothViper in the
tournament...SmoothViper accidentally hit Start or
some other retarded shit happened, and so he
ended up having to forfeit the match, since
Golden Nismor wasn't going to let him replay it.
If you were around for the Smoothviper vs
Cableguy money match, though, you might have taken
the W also. Shit was rough. Smoothviper getting
hella loud, and even got up in Cableguy's face at
one point, if I remember right, and they were some
people getting real loud during the match, mostly
of them EC people.... Whenever Cableguy would
fuck up, he old catch shit for it, and LOUD. You
guys have probably seen the match at Preppy's site,
I haven't seen it since it happened. He was red
in the face after the match, but fortunately no
real drama happened (ie. fighting), so I didn't
take a 15-hour bus trip just to have shit get
shut down early.
But I'm saying...I don't know Golden Nismor, but
if the thing about his match with Smoothviper
were related to that (or SV's generally "hyphy"
personality), I could see that happening.
...especially if he knew Cableguy, and/or if he
wasn't aware of the antecedent history- Cableguy
getting loud and saying plenty of retarded
shit himself last year. I won't bother linking to
anything, but I think most of you know what I
mean.
Whatever though, too much drama. Less
dramatically, there was some dude walking around
with lipstick on, Saturday night. I don't know.
I'm gonna assume he was a Guilty Gear player,
because....well. I mean, come on. Why kid
ourselves? Maybe he wasn't really wearing
it, maybe he was just kissing all over some girl
who had lipstick on, and I missed that part.
Yeah... Yeah, that sounds better...yeah...
Speaking of these matters, here is The Ricky
Ortiz Report for Evo 2k6.
(This was written a little while ago, hence the elation over S.O.A.P.)
I was going, son. F the BS. I tried to bum a ride from someone else, but that fell through since I didn't have his cell #, and he didn't have internet access since he'd left already.
Greyhound, bitches.
Yeah.
Yeah, son. Let it never be said that I'm not hardcore (or not retarded). Fifteen hours, counting rest stops. FIFTEEN HOURS, guy. Yeah. ....yeah. On the bright side, there was a hilariously gay dude at the Los Angeles Greyhound station. Dude had on purple slacks, a see-through purple shirt (with sparkles, kids. Sparkles)....and was carrying around...a magic wand. Like a fairy might have. Yeah. Tight.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Sacramento, the Greyhound station is shaaaaady. The weird thing about Sac is that the center of the downtown area...let's say around 10th and J streets, has usually been a bad part of town. All of the homeless druggies and politicians used to hang there, not to mention the fact that all of the people coming in/out of town via Greyhound are jumping bail or dodging child support payments, or are otherwise shady characters. Downtown not nearly as bad as it used to be, but the phrase "it smells like K Street" won't be leaving my vocabulary any time soon. Years wroth of homeless urine baked into concrete by summer sun. Mmmm. Again, not a bad area now, but you should smell K Street when it rains. It's like R.Kelly's laundry basket.
Anyway, I don't live far from downtown, though thankfully in a somewhat nicer area. So I get a ticket that same day, and then in the afternoon I got on our commuter train local transit thing, walking two blocks with a backpack full of stuff, and my super-heavy bag with all kinds of shit in it. I get the train for about 20 minutes, then walk another 4 blocks, carrying the weight of a dead body on my back and in my hand. I need some shit with wheels on it... Shit.
Normally, I'd be worried about someone trying to steal by bag, since I'd spent hundreds of dollars on the stuff inside, but if anyone tried to pick it up and run away with it, they'd have pulled their arm out of it's god damned socket trying to move it, so I wasn't concerned.
Shit was heavy. For real.
So I get on the bus and I'm on my way. We pass through Stockton, CA, which looked surprisingly nice. Or maybe it was just relatively nice compared to the Sacramento Greyhound station. Stockton isn't far, but I've never really been over there. Just one of those things.
Then we eventually passed through Fresno....you could get raped in Fresno. Maybe it's like the Greyhound station in Sac, and I just saw a bad part of it, but god damn. Amber Alert.
On the hella long trip, I dick around with my new camera a bit, but I didn't get anything on tape since I didn't have time to charge my battery (bought it that day). I listen to NPR on my radio/CD player (trouble in the Middle East....!?! Wow....!), and try to catch some sleep, since I hadn't slept for like 2 nights before then, and actually still could catch some more Zs right now. I'm a sleep scrub anyway, but you don't get the best sleep sitting up on a bus. I couldn't even tilt my seat back, since there was some random chick behind me, and I didn't want to be a douche. I brush up on my terrible Japanese a bit and the rest is a blur of boredom. I listened to CDs and I looked out the window, I guess.
For those of you who've never taken a trip by automobile from L.A. to Vegas, let me describe what I saw through the window during that leg of trip...
Rocks, sand. Rocks, cactus, sand. Sand, dirt. Dirt dirt. Cactus dirt, dirt Neon lights, adds for strip clubs.
Hella big signs for casinos, and strip clubs, and random celebrities who perform at casinos or hotels or whatever. I get to the Vegas Greyhound station and walk outside. There was porn on the street. Like, in one of those newspaper machines on the corner. But with bitches, instead of news.
Welcome to Las Vegas.
------------
The original plan was to kick it at a Motel 6 (5085 S. Dean Martin Drive...had it Mapquest-ed and everything) and take a cab back and forth from the Red Rock casino/spa/hotel, but Bacardi had a little bit of space in the hotel room he had reserved (luckily for me, some other folks canceled), so at the last minute I ended up staying with him and like 94 other people. Not complaining at all, it beat the hell out of a $25 cab ride to/from the Motel 6 daily, and was a hell of a lot more convenient.
So I step out of the Greyhound station to take a
cab to the Red Rock, an I immediately spot a
crackhead. Welcome to Vegas, for real. Well, to
be fair, "crackhead" is too harsh a term. He was
maybe a Crack Enthusiast. He looked like the type
of guy who enjoyed some "Classic Rock," if you get
what I'm saying. I carry my heavy-ass bag to a
taxi, where I get a ride from a slightly insane
African cab driver.
The Red Rock. Dumb nice. They have a casino,
random restaurants, a spa, a big ass pool, and a
movie theater...in the fucking casino. Wow. WTF.
See, I'm hella broke. I don't stay at places like
this. Even if I had money, I might kick it
Motel-6-style anyway. Even the view was sick. I'm
sure it'll end up being in someone's post in the Evo
Pics thread in the Evo forum, if not already.
So I enter the Red Rock and use about $3.50 in
quarters to call Bacardi, who I'm rooming with
(because I'm a scrub with no cell phone, and I
didn't get a phone card before I left). Which is
retarded as hell, since he's at the hotel
on the 14th floor, but that's what I get for not
having a cell phone. I get the money for my share
of the hotel room at the little ATM machine by
the pay phones...service charge was like a hundred
thousand dollars, nice. True Tech comes down to
bring me up to the room, and I see the other
people who are staying there, though hella random
people crashed there. It's Friday and like 7:45
in the morning at this point, so everyone is
pretty much dead. I wasn't tired enough to
actually sleep, since I half-slept at some point
during the 14-15 hour bus trip there. I hit the
shower (almost stepping on Potter, I think),
change clothes, and then head down to register
for the tournament. I'm only entering Marvel this
year.
It's weird how people are sorta famous. Seeing
John Choi and James Chen and Valle and the
Cannons is...weird, almost. Anyway, the
registration line is pretty small, so I have time
to mill around and see what's up. The conference
room that Evo was in was pretty god damn big. Not
only was there more than enough room for two
actual cars (The new TOYOTA Yaris...buy one, I
guess), but like 24 or more TVs, a
moderately-sized stage and two big projector
screens which hung down from the ceiling. There
was more than enough standing room, even during the
finals. Oh, and giant masked wrestler balloons.
Man, between the nice hotel (in Vegas), the
Toyota sponsorship, and the whole caliber/scope of
the event, someone was blackmailing someone, or
something. For real. I don't know if Ponder has
tape of some Toyota exec blowing a pony, or what
the hell was going on behind the scenes, but man...
Someone was breaking the law, I know that
shit. The owner of the Red Rock got some world
class nose-candy, and ink got to run his loud-ass
tourney. ... I guess they got a good referral from
the Green Valley place they held Evo @
previously, and maybe promised they would sell out
all of the Evo reserved hotel rooms (which they
did) or pay the difference, and also combined that
with A+ quality smack and child pornography,
secured both sponsorship (after agreeing to buy a
fleet or Yarises...or ...Yari?) and the hotel.
Anyway, I brought my SEGA Saturn (WHAT SON, WHAT)
and some games down with me in my backpack, so I
find a free TV and start some SFA3. One guy plays
a couple of games with me... And then, nobody. Me
vs CPU for 45 minutes, tight. To be fair, I only
had one joystick, and one Saturn pad...not the
second version controller, the third one, the
bulky analog NiGHTS controller. And my stick
sucked. It was like $12 on eBay, so meh. Didn't
use micro switches though, same way as most of the
other sticks I've owned, it actually used
springs. ...? Sensitive and cheaply made. I
actually kicked myself when I got back home,
because it didn't even occur to me to grab one of
the 2 Virtua Sticks I have, the OG Saturn stick
They're not great, but they beat the hell out of
the chunky pad.
So whatever, about the BYOC stuff (the Bring Your
Own Console area). SNK fools repping so hard.
So...HORD. SO hord. Fools busted out
Fighters History Dynamite, even. Of course
SSTenka, KOF, etc were in rotation....good shit.
And actual people were PLAYING. OMG.
F you guys, btw. For real. Later on, Saturday
afternoon sometime, I spotted someone playing SFA3
on SF Alpha Anthology for PS2. I singled in on
True Tech with fucking laser beam vision,
wave dashed over to him to ask if I could borrow
his stick. RAN to the elevators, Honda running
animation FTW, ran back to play. I remember
bumping into an old lady at some point during the
weekend, this could very well have been it. I
hate you all. Anyway, SNK reprezizzled, etc.
Registration was actually quick and painless(!),
they let me know my pool number (or letter...I
think I was in bracket "B"). It didn't' start
until 2 PM, so I have time to screw around. I
see SRKGD's very own Ronin Chaos and say hi. RC
later tells me that there was some stupid fight
going on between some people in the Thinking Out
Loud thread on SRK, and that mofos were actually
calling him on his cell about it. His actual,
real-life phone. Wow. What? Dude wasn't even in
town and was getting calls from Atlanta. The
Internet: Serious Business. Whatever though, he
mentions that he and a bunch of the other people
are gonna go see the first screening of (mother
fuckin') Snakes on a (mother fuckin') Plane later
(mother fucking) on.
I looked around @ noon for some Alpha, since
JeRon was going to have a Hyper SFA tournament
that started then, but I didn't see anyone with
the game set up, so I milled around and recorded
stuff.
MvC2 pools were that same day, Friday... Yeah, I
sucked. Went 2-2. Before my tournament matches
started, I played a total of like 3 matches. Bad
plan. Evo regret #2 would be not practicing; It
didn't even hit me until Sunday night after the
event, I hadn't played MvC2 for like 3 months,
and even then it was like 3 matches. The fact
that I was playing on the green DC Agetec didn't
help, but it's not SO bad (I actually sorta like that one).
I spent so much time trying to find a way to get
there, that I forgot about the part where I
actually play in the tournament.
If anyone was wondering, Evo regret #1 was not
interviewing Viscant about N.O. A.S.S., his
national anti-sex group (now international?). It
didn't even hit me until days after I got back
home, and I had the camera and everything...
I think I won 2 matches and lost 2 straight in
that order. Big thanks to MegamanDS for recording
my second match, btw, I appreciate it.
The two I won basically involved me playing odd
characters/teams and people who weren't
super-heavy into Marvel not knowing how to
counter. (I was the guy who ended up playing
Spiral/BH/Charlie a couple times, if anyone
reading was there and played me. I play the
team because people don't know how to play
against Spiral- it's actually pretty fair,
considering I don't really know how to use
her- and Charlie and Guile's anti-air assists
will hit flying Sent pretty much anywhere on
screen. I could have subbed
Guile/Colossus/Cyclops in for Charlie, but I
guess I was feeling Charlie that day. I'm better
with him than the others, except Cyke, but
Charlie has the better AAA vs Sent. You can also
use Charlie's AAA in simple BH combos, but I
fucked all those up, IIRC.)
My first loss was to the guy who's hella good on
the regular Dreamcast pad who was playing Team
Combofiend, who's name I can't remember. If you
know who I'm talking about, you know. First game
I got owned up pretty bad, OCV even (I had a chance
to take out Magneto, but I fucked up that and
many other things). Second game I was playing
Doom(B)/Storm(A)/Ryu(A) same as the first, but
this time I didn't start Doom like the first (I
figured he'd start Iron Man and leave Mag as
backup- hella wrong).
I'll make a post about the match later, since I
actually have a vid of it that I'll eventually
YouTube or something. Long story short, I lost
(retarded Storm air fireball move, WHY DO YOU
ALWAYS COME OUT??!)
My fourth (and final) match was a bit more
dramatic, since I won the first game pretty
quickly- more quickly than someone like myself
who isn't really good at the game, even with
practice, is used to- and then as the second
match starts, the other guy lets me know that I
accidentally turned my damage up by a point. And
says "...I think it was up last game, too." ...uh
oh. Of course, I'm coincidentally not recording
THIS match, so it's not like I can just review
the tape. I end up asking him if he wants the
replay the first match, because I'm gay,
apparently, I don't know. But I'll still take his
word for it. I would have lost either way, since
I lost 1-2, but damn that sorta sucked. I also
wish I had the match on tape just to watch it,
since matches you lose are always more
informative than the ones you win. Ah well, GG.
In other "looked like cheating, but actually
wasn't" news, after watching the first match I
lost again, I noticed did an accidental pause
during HSF. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal,
except that the pause happened on the last row,
which is what killed my Doom. I'm not sure why
the fuck I was still mashing at that point, wtf...
anyway, at first it looks like I totally cockblocked
the guy on an unblockable by pausing, but watching
more closely, he still had time, and more importantly,
he didn't look like he was going for one anyway,
since I was playing Storm. Still a really bad
fucking time to pause, though, sorry about that.
Some of the MvC2 pools matches on the big screen
were too good, Evo DVD is definitely worth
getting this year if it's priced reasonably.
I look over to the opposite side of the room, at
like 3PM and catch people playing HSFA. The
tournament has started! But...I'm too late. Damn.
Not too many people signed up, so they made it a
round robin. Hyper SF Alpha is....doesn't look as
solid as A2 or A3. Looks interesting, though.
What I saw was mostly A1 domination, but I think
a few of the new modes may be interesting.
Regular A3 characters mostly suck. Not good.
A2/Gold characters seem OK, though I noticed CCs
seem shorter(?) and Rose can't combo after her
Alpha Counter anymore...?!! Sad. Guy redizzy
isn't 100% stun like in A1, but combo -> overhead
seemed to dizzy, even though there's a break in
between.
The rest of the day is a blur (recording random
HSFA matches and Marvel stuff, I guess), but at
9PM my lack of sleep catches up with me and I'm
suddenly tired as HELL. I resist the urge to
crash in the hotel room, and survive until about
midnight.
Snakes on a Plane.
I'm not really into internet fads... The Chuck
Norris thing, the Vin Diesel thing, All Your
Base, Myspace, etc. I mostly just stick to SRK,
and just visit a few other sites.
...people have been talking about Snakes on a
Plane forever (long, long before the movie came
out, or was even finished), but I didn't know wtf
they were really talking about.
Great movie. Seriously. Oscar-worthy.
Let me kick some spoilers your way if you haven't
seen the movie yet...if not, go see that shit
NOW.
Snakes on a Plane is about an airplane, with
snakes on it. Or, in it, really. Let's go
deeper...
Some stupid surfer guy who's name I don't care to
remember witnesses a murder in progress, wherein
some dude who looks like BAS ties some lawyer guy
upside-down and beats him to death with a
baseball bat.
Yeah.
In the first ten minutes, we have some dude who
looks like BAS painting some dude's fence with
blood.
Then Sam Jackson pops in to save dude later on,
and they get on a plane to L.A. to testify
against dude. BAS-dude. So they hop on this plane
, and... ....!
BAS sends out snakes like Vega's CvS2 win
animation, and it just gets great.
The best scene in the movie...in ANY movie in my
opinion, is when some guy is using the airplane
lavatory. He whips it out and is peeing in the
toilet, eyes closed in RELIEF. That piss feeling.
You guys know what I mean. But...
There's A SNAKE IN THE TOILET. Oh yes. Oh,
YES. The snake rises up slowly...and strikes!,
grabbing the guy's dick with it's jaws.
...and the struggle begins.
I'm out of my seat by this point, applauding.
Seriously. I've totally forgotten about the 2
kids in the seats in front of me in the movie
theater with their dad, IIRC. And then, the best
line ever, as his man is struggling...in a
heated battle with the Serpent, the Beast himself
as far as this guy is concerned, thrashing wildly
around the bathroom with a snake on his DICK, he
says the line:
"FUCKING SNAKE, GET OFF MY
DICK!!!!"
Excellence. Excellence. SNAKES ON A PLANE,
everybody. Snakes on a Plane.
Yes.
After the movie, Psycho Gorath says that the
movie took itself a bit too seriously. I reply
that snakes on a plane is a very serious issue.
Ah, also during the movie, myself and I have no
clue how many other people said aloud in unison
with a completely serious and URGENT Samuel L.
Jackson: "That's it! I have had it with these
motherfucking SNAKES, on tis motherfucking
PLANE!!" Again, not thinking at all about the
two kids directly in front of me. Sorry, kids. So,
yeah, I head back to the room to sleep, because
by the time I got up there it was like 2 AM and
I'm low on sleep for a week by that point....and
after seeing the movie, it was pretty much all
downhill.
So on Friday night, I crash on the bathroom
floor, since the hotel room has like 8 people in
it, and there's nowhere else to stay. Most
everyone is asleep at this point, except for about
two of the guys who are up and watching Seed of
Chucky on the hotel room TV. I stay up for like
an hour, patiently waiting for Jennifer Tilly to
take her shirt off or eat a sausage or something,
but it never happens, and I eventually pass out at
like 2:45 or 3 in the morning.
I wake up and mill around like a zombie for a
while.... Yipes asking to us he shower in our
room later on that morning was the funniest shit.
I dot know what was up, I'm guessing much of EC
had like 97 people packed into one room, and the
shower was getting a train run on it. The highlight of
the whole thing was Yipes saying something like,
"Man! Come on. I just need to hop in the shower for
like FIVE minutes. You can TIME me. My balls are
itchin' like I got CRABS, y'all."
Everyone else: "......" Dead silence. Eventually,
one of the guys (Lucien think, says
"...yeah....you can get in LAST."
Yipes: "IT WAS A FIGURE OF SPEECH."
<3
Saturday....there were like 400,000 people
crowded around a TV during money matches. Someone
mentioned later on that Golden Nismor(?) didn't
replay his match with SmoothViper in the
tournament...SmoothViper accidentally hit Start or
some other retarded shit happened, and so he
ended up having to forfeit the match, since
Golden Nismor wasn't going to let him replay it.
If you were around for the Smoothviper vs
Cableguy money match, though, you might have taken
the W also. Shit was rough. Smoothviper getting
hella loud, and even got up in Cableguy's face at
one point, if I remember right, and they were some
people getting real loud during the match, mostly
of them EC people.... Whenever Cableguy would
fuck up, he old catch shit for it, and LOUD. You
guys have probably seen the match at Preppy's site,
I haven't seen it since it happened. He was red
in the face after the match, but fortunately no
real drama happened (ie. fighting), so I didn't
take a 15-hour bus trip just to have shit get
shut down early.
But I'm saying...I don't know Golden Nismor, but
if the thing about his match with Smoothviper
were related to that (or SV's generally "hyphy"
personality), I could see that happening.
...especially if he knew Cableguy, and/or if he
wasn't aware of the antecedent history- Cableguy
getting loud and saying plenty of retarded
shit himself last year. I won't bother linking to
anything, but I think most of you know what I
mean.
Whatever though, too much drama. Less
dramatically, there was some dude walking around
with lipstick on, Saturday night. I don't know.
I'm gonna assume he was a Guilty Gear player,
because....well. I mean, come on. Why kid
ourselves? Maybe he wasn't really wearing
it, maybe he was just kissing all over some girl
who had lipstick on, and I missed that part.
Yeah... Yeah, that sounds better...yeah...
Speaking of these matters, here is The Ricky
Ortiz Report for Evo 2k6.