Today was a good day. Eli went to the airport to fly to Seattle for his interview and stuff this morning very very early. He took the car to drive to Morewood to save the 20-minute walk. At 9:30 Justin called me and I woke up and got ready and dropped off the Royal Tenenbaums tape at C. Video, and walked to Morewood, where I found the car (whew) and found Mike (whew) but found no other people. Within 5 minutes we had ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rkane and fleaplus too and Justin. There was some confusion but we just put all 5 of us in Eli's car and got on the way.
We got to BVM around 11:20 or so, way early. We weren't the first people there though - Adam from Bethel Park was there at that point, and two people I never caught the names of. We played a whole bunch of warmups. I was actually rocking my warmups pretty well - I felt kind of confident (considering I played last Sunday, and then IMSO Tuesday and that was it for this week). After a while the Beeler car showed up (withnickjong, alibash, cdinwood, and Charlie), and Bink and onetwolittleb showed up a bit after that, and sorakirei with Bayani, and Arcade Chris and his wife and kid (man, they have a CUTE kid), so signups and paying could start. With your signup and payment you got a ticket for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich, so we decided to warm up for a bit and then go get lunch around 12:30 and have time to digest before the tournament, which we did. That was fun. Charlie made people play bridge and Christina made people play Set. This was a recurring theme for the day.
We came back, played a little more, noted the horribly low numbers - at that point there were 11 people in Basic, 7 in Trick, and 4 in Maniac. Around 1:55, a SLEW of people from IUP including the legendary J.D. showed up. So, Bayani had to rework the roundrobins and brackets all over again. Eventually when the tournament started we had 12 Basic, 7 Trick (Justin moved up to Maniac) and 7 Maniac. So Basic was going to Single Elim, and Trick and Maniac were going to be round robin.
Note - most of this will just be about my matches because I don't remember everyone else's well enough - I think the only other people I paid major attention to the matches of were Rebecca, Mike, and Justin (well, and I at least cheered on the CMU people, but I don't remember much of their actual songs and opponents, except that Krispy placed third in Basic, and his first round he beat Nick, and the second round he beat Neil, and after that he had to actually beat strangers. Heh.). And most of what I remember of those other matches were things like where Rebecca and Bayani *both* failed Saints Go Marching (serves him right for trying to ace her with a cata like that), and when Bayani and Mike played and Mike owned him, they played Think Ya Better D as their third song and jumped and spun around like idiots - quite amusing. And then there was the deathmatch with J.D. versus Mike, but I'll get to that later.
So, my first match in Trick was againstrkane, who was like "Oh god, I have to play you first?" Okay, what happened: I won the coin toss, said I wanted to pick 1st/3rd songs. He picked Players Best as the category. So... I picked B4U as my first song (this time I was going to start strong, not build up to it). I won by like 10. Then he picked Trip Machine Climax. He won this one (I had never played the song before. Go figure...). So as the tiebreaker I picked My Summer Love. The look on his face totally reminded me of the look on MY face when Rebecca picked that song at the first DDR tourney Jan 26. Heh. Anyway, mean as it was, I won that song and the match. To Mark's credit, today was his first time ever on an arcade machine and I think he did really well for someone who had only played at home before, and if he was more familiar with the arcade he would have probly whomped Trick.
After that they did a round of Basic and a round of Maniac or something like that. There was a lot of playing, at any rate. In the meantime, Crystal (she won Basic back in March and wasn't at the last one or something) showed up (she works at the airport). She was entering Trick. So Bayani (who was already frazzled) rewrote Trick to be Double Elimination for 8 people, and had Crystal go against the guy who had sat out the round, Diceboy Alan, who beat her. So there was a loser's bracket. Mark had to play against Crystal though, and she beat him. I'm trying to remember who else was in Trick - Me, Mark, Cat, Adam, Blake, Crystal, Alan, and some Ben guy. Cat played Ben and won in the second round for loser's bracket, but Alan beat her the next round. Blake played Adam in the second round of winner's bracket and won.
I played Alan in the second round of winners bracket. I forget who actually won the coin toss, but he picked category. So he picked Pops A. I picked Sung Suk as the first song and won by a decent margin. So he picked My Summer Love as the second song. I'd seen him totally own Crystal so I was nervous as hell. GET THIS - I got 161 perfects. I GOT 161 PERFECTS! He got 158. I won by 3. 3!! Oh my god. I can't even begin to tell you how much I was in shock over that. I've never gotten higher than 143 or so on that song. EVER. It was so insanely close. But I won. Wow. Wow. Anyway, we played Tell Me Tell Me as the third song on Maniac for fun after that, and stuff. Wow. He seemed honestly bummed by it, but hey, double elim meant he got to get up there again, after all.
So then there were a few more rounds of stuff that happened and I was up again against Blake. Blake, for the record, is a 12-year-old kid who won Basic in the May tourney that I wasn't at. He's really good for a 12-year-old and he won his first two matches pretty squarely. So I was all like "Oh man, I'm going to go up there and he's going to kill me." His mom was there taking pictures and she was even like "You're up against my son next. Good luck," or something. Anyway, he won the coin toss and said "Juan! Which should I take?" and everyone advised him to take the two songs as opposed to category. So, I picked Pops A. Man, was he pissed off. (Heh, Rebecca picked Pops A against Mike and nearly walloped him as a result. He was like "I'll never underestimate the value of picking category again!") Anyway, his first song he picked was inevitably Dub-I-Dub. Now, those of you who have been to my other tourneys know that Dub-I-Dub Trick gives me nightmares - I have lost two tournaments with it now. And I still never play it because I like the song on Basic for freestyling. Well, get this - I FULL-COMBOED IT. I have never ever ever done that before. Usually I totally lose that song. Holy shit. So for my second song I picked Sung Suk. I full-comboed and won this one also (I had a really good ratio. I also looked like a dead monkey robot playing it, but hey). So then he picked Bumble Bee as a third song and I also full-comboed it. Man. He was really pissed off at me. Even after I was saying how good I thought he was and everything. Sigh.
Anyway, at that point I was the single winner of winner's bracket, which meant that basically I would be either first or second place in the end of the tournament. Wowie. And at that point I sat down and hung out with people because there were a lot of matches happening. Eh. I can't remember when I went walking around the mall with Nick, but I stopped by a Claire's and I bought some bracelets for a possible DDR costume. Maybe that was before playing against Blake. Anyway, I tried to get my mind off of things because it was just getting me all freaked out. Fortunately, I had all of these excellent friends around to hang out with and goof off. Neil and Mark had gone and bought this K'Nex mechwarrior model and they were assembling it with Krispy and I think Shelby (the 11-year-old girl whose birthday is today and who is a decent DDR player) was helping them too. So that was pretty amusing. There were also some exciting Maniac matches to watch, and the Basic playoffs and other things.
Eventually I was up again, against Crystal. I don't know who beat who exactly - I think Crystal beat Alan and then Crystal beat Blake. I do remember that she played Drop Out Maniac as her third song with whoever it was and they both failed. Then when she heard she had to play against me she was like "So what's your favorite category?" and I went "Oh, I like them all..." not wanting to give anything away. So we were the Trick finalists. I won the coin toss yet again and told her to pick category. She picked... Konami Originals B. The one with all of those damn Paranoias. The one I never ever play. Yeah. But I was picking songs. And fortunately, B4U was in this one. I'd seen her get 203 on it earlier so I was a little worried, but I did pretty well with a 210 and beat her on it by a few. Then she picked Paranoia something-or-other-not-Rebirth (sorry, they are really all alike to me) and totally kicked my ass, winning like 220-172 or something insanely humiliating like that. So I picked the only other song on Konami B that I'm decent at - Super Star. I beat her by 20. I won Trick. I won Trick! Holy shit.
Eh, so after that J.D. and Mike faced off for Maniac, and somehow J.D. beat Mike at La Senorita Virtual, and then Mike was walloped at Orion.78 AmEuro. So I guess it's the end of an era in some ways, of Mike's reign over Pittsburgh. Eh, I still think he is one of the finest players this area will ever see. Whatever.
So I got $20 for winning Trick and Crystal got $15 for second place. Whee.
We were all starving by this point and I was having weird luck getting in touch with my friends in Oakland, so we decided to get food at Chi-Chi's in the mall (which was a step above fast food, but a step below finding a real place). We had 9 of us; basically my car of people and Nick's car of people. I sat next to Mike, and it turns out he's left-handed too. YAY LEFTY DDR PLAYERS! It's funny, unlike something like volleyball, you would never really find out a DDR player's handedness unless you went out to eat or something. I think dinner was a lot of fun, and I was really really happy obviously, and I think that was the best part of the day, having so many great people around to hang out with. I'd brought a book to read and some games, but I never had to get them out because I always had people to talk to and stuff. And we cheered each other on the whole day. I really do feel bad for Mike in that everyone cheered a lot when Rebecca beat him on My Summer Love (THE most overplayed song of the day - I guess that's better than Dynamite Rave or Drop the Bomb), but I think he's kind of used to it. Someone who wasn't quite as cool as him would probably have gotten a lot more frazzled about it. But, it was cool to be able to cheer people on, which was possible except when two of my friends would be playing against each other, but that didn't happen much. And to be cheered on.
It was just a great day. Let's leave it at that.
Anyway, after I got back to Oakland, I got a phone call fromtesposit, and I went home to shower/change and then went to Gullifty's with him and mrpeck and dvarin and dlatimer for dessert and light food and hanging out, since they had been playing D&D all day, but I was at the DDR tournament much later than I thought I'd be, and I wanted to see Tim while he was in town (though rkane, if you were serious about the Sopranos, maybe I'll take you up on that sometime before I leave Pittsburgh). So it was pleasant and we had good food and talked about random crap. It was somewhat short of real hanging out, but I was really zonked. Still am, but I wanted to get this all out before I forget it. Eli called me when I got home and I talked to him for a while, and I called my dad, and I'm still debating on going to Philly tomorrow. Probly will. We'll see.
rkane and fleaplus too and Justin. There was some confusion but we just put all 5 of us in Eli's car and got on the way. We got to BVM around 11:20 or so, way early. We weren't the first people there though - Adam from Bethel Park was there at that point, and two people I never caught the names of. We played a whole bunch of warmups. I was actually rocking my warmups pretty well - I felt kind of confident (considering I played last Sunday, and then IMSO Tuesday and that was it for this week). After a while the Beeler car showed up (with
nickjong, alibash, cdinwood, and Charlie), and Bink and onetwolittleb showed up a bit after that, and sorakirei with Bayani, and Arcade Chris and his wife and kid (man, they have a CUTE kid), so signups and paying could start. With your signup and payment you got a ticket for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich, so we decided to warm up for a bit and then go get lunch around 12:30 and have time to digest before the tournament, which we did. That was fun. Charlie made people play bridge and Christina made people play Set. This was a recurring theme for the day.We came back, played a little more, noted the horribly low numbers - at that point there were 11 people in Basic, 7 in Trick, and 4 in Maniac. Around 1:55, a SLEW of people from IUP including the legendary J.D. showed up. So, Bayani had to rework the roundrobins and brackets all over again. Eventually when the tournament started we had 12 Basic, 7 Trick (Justin moved up to Maniac) and 7 Maniac. So Basic was going to Single Elim, and Trick and Maniac were going to be round robin.
Note - most of this will just be about my matches because I don't remember everyone else's well enough - I think the only other people I paid major attention to the matches of were Rebecca, Mike, and Justin (well, and I at least cheered on the CMU people, but I don't remember much of their actual songs and opponents, except that Krispy placed third in Basic, and his first round he beat Nick, and the second round he beat Neil, and after that he had to actually beat strangers. Heh.). And most of what I remember of those other matches were things like where Rebecca and Bayani *both* failed Saints Go Marching (serves him right for trying to ace her with a cata like that), and when Bayani and Mike played and Mike owned him, they played Think Ya Better D as their third song and jumped and spun around like idiots - quite amusing. And then there was the deathmatch with J.D. versus Mike, but I'll get to that later.
So, my first match in Trick was against
rkane, who was like "Oh god, I have to play you first?" Okay, what happened: I won the coin toss, said I wanted to pick 1st/3rd songs. He picked Players Best as the category. So... I picked B4U as my first song (this time I was going to start strong, not build up to it). I won by like 10. Then he picked Trip Machine Climax. He won this one (I had never played the song before. Go figure...). So as the tiebreaker I picked My Summer Love. The look on his face totally reminded me of the look on MY face when Rebecca picked that song at the first DDR tourney Jan 26. Heh. Anyway, mean as it was, I won that song and the match. To Mark's credit, today was his first time ever on an arcade machine and I think he did really well for someone who had only played at home before, and if he was more familiar with the arcade he would have probly whomped Trick.After that they did a round of Basic and a round of Maniac or something like that. There was a lot of playing, at any rate. In the meantime, Crystal (she won Basic back in March and wasn't at the last one or something) showed up (she works at the airport). She was entering Trick. So Bayani (who was already frazzled) rewrote Trick to be Double Elimination for 8 people, and had Crystal go against the guy who had sat out the round, Diceboy Alan, who beat her. So there was a loser's bracket. Mark had to play against Crystal though, and she beat him. I'm trying to remember who else was in Trick - Me, Mark, Cat, Adam, Blake, Crystal, Alan, and some Ben guy. Cat played Ben and won in the second round for loser's bracket, but Alan beat her the next round. Blake played Adam in the second round of winner's bracket and won.
I played Alan in the second round of winners bracket. I forget who actually won the coin toss, but he picked category. So he picked Pops A. I picked Sung Suk as the first song and won by a decent margin. So he picked My Summer Love as the second song. I'd seen him totally own Crystal so I was nervous as hell. GET THIS - I got 161 perfects. I GOT 161 PERFECTS! He got 158. I won by 3. 3!! Oh my god. I can't even begin to tell you how much I was in shock over that. I've never gotten higher than 143 or so on that song. EVER. It was so insanely close. But I won. Wow. Wow. Anyway, we played Tell Me Tell Me as the third song on Maniac for fun after that, and stuff. Wow. He seemed honestly bummed by it, but hey, double elim meant he got to get up there again, after all.
So then there were a few more rounds of stuff that happened and I was up again against Blake. Blake, for the record, is a 12-year-old kid who won Basic in the May tourney that I wasn't at. He's really good for a 12-year-old and he won his first two matches pretty squarely. So I was all like "Oh man, I'm going to go up there and he's going to kill me." His mom was there taking pictures and she was even like "You're up against my son next. Good luck," or something. Anyway, he won the coin toss and said "Juan! Which should I take?" and everyone advised him to take the two songs as opposed to category. So, I picked Pops A. Man, was he pissed off. (Heh, Rebecca picked Pops A against Mike and nearly walloped him as a result. He was like "I'll never underestimate the value of picking category again!") Anyway, his first song he picked was inevitably Dub-I-Dub. Now, those of you who have been to my other tourneys know that Dub-I-Dub Trick gives me nightmares - I have lost two tournaments with it now. And I still never play it because I like the song on Basic for freestyling. Well, get this - I FULL-COMBOED IT. I have never ever ever done that before. Usually I totally lose that song. Holy shit. So for my second song I picked Sung Suk. I full-comboed and won this one also (I had a really good ratio. I also looked like a dead monkey robot playing it, but hey). So then he picked Bumble Bee as a third song and I also full-comboed it. Man. He was really pissed off at me. Even after I was saying how good I thought he was and everything. Sigh.
Anyway, at that point I was the single winner of winner's bracket, which meant that basically I would be either first or second place in the end of the tournament. Wowie. And at that point I sat down and hung out with people because there were a lot of matches happening. Eh. I can't remember when I went walking around the mall with Nick, but I stopped by a Claire's and I bought some bracelets for a possible DDR costume. Maybe that was before playing against Blake. Anyway, I tried to get my mind off of things because it was just getting me all freaked out. Fortunately, I had all of these excellent friends around to hang out with and goof off. Neil and Mark had gone and bought this K'Nex mechwarrior model and they were assembling it with Krispy and I think Shelby (the 11-year-old girl whose birthday is today and who is a decent DDR player) was helping them too. So that was pretty amusing. There were also some exciting Maniac matches to watch, and the Basic playoffs and other things.
Eventually I was up again, against Crystal. I don't know who beat who exactly - I think Crystal beat Alan and then Crystal beat Blake. I do remember that she played Drop Out Maniac as her third song with whoever it was and they both failed. Then when she heard she had to play against me she was like "So what's your favorite category?" and I went "Oh, I like them all..." not wanting to give anything away. So we were the Trick finalists. I won the coin toss yet again and told her to pick category. She picked... Konami Originals B. The one with all of those damn Paranoias. The one I never ever play. Yeah. But I was picking songs. And fortunately, B4U was in this one. I'd seen her get 203 on it earlier so I was a little worried, but I did pretty well with a 210 and beat her on it by a few. Then she picked Paranoia something-or-other-not-Rebirth (sorry, they are really all alike to me) and totally kicked my ass, winning like 220-172 or something insanely humiliating like that. So I picked the only other song on Konami B that I'm decent at - Super Star. I beat her by 20. I won Trick. I won Trick! Holy shit.
Eh, so after that J.D. and Mike faced off for Maniac, and somehow J.D. beat Mike at La Senorita Virtual, and then Mike was walloped at Orion.78 AmEuro. So I guess it's the end of an era in some ways, of Mike's reign over Pittsburgh. Eh, I still think he is one of the finest players this area will ever see. Whatever.
So I got $20 for winning Trick and Crystal got $15 for second place. Whee.
We were all starving by this point and I was having weird luck getting in touch with my friends in Oakland, so we decided to get food at Chi-Chi's in the mall (which was a step above fast food, but a step below finding a real place). We had 9 of us; basically my car of people and Nick's car of people. I sat next to Mike, and it turns out he's left-handed too. YAY LEFTY DDR PLAYERS! It's funny, unlike something like volleyball, you would never really find out a DDR player's handedness unless you went out to eat or something. I think dinner was a lot of fun, and I was really really happy obviously, and I think that was the best part of the day, having so many great people around to hang out with. I'd brought a book to read and some games, but I never had to get them out because I always had people to talk to and stuff. And we cheered each other on the whole day. I really do feel bad for Mike in that everyone cheered a lot when Rebecca beat him on My Summer Love (THE most overplayed song of the day - I guess that's better than Dynamite Rave or Drop the Bomb), but I think he's kind of used to it. Someone who wasn't quite as cool as him would probably have gotten a lot more frazzled about it. But, it was cool to be able to cheer people on, which was possible except when two of my friends would be playing against each other, but that didn't happen much. And to be cheered on.
It was just a great day. Let's leave it at that.
Anyway, after I got back to Oakland, I got a phone call from
tesposit, and I went home to shower/change and then went to Gullifty's with him and mrpeck and dvarin and dlatimer for dessert and light food and hanging out, since they had been playing D&D all day, but I was at the DDR tournament much later than I thought I'd be, and I wanted to see Tim while he was in town (though rkane, if you were serious about the Sopranos, maybe I'll take you up on that sometime before I leave Pittsburgh). So it was pleasant and we had good food and talked about random crap. It was somewhat short of real hanging out, but I was really zonked. Still am, but I wanted to get this all out before I forget it. Eli called me when I got home and I talked to him for a while, and I called my dad, and I'm still debating on going to Philly tomorrow. Probly will. We'll see.
