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Today I went down to Paradise Bowling Lanes or whatever it's called for Yet Another Seattle-Area DDR Tournament. I got a ride from Tanya, (aka SaeNoDa for those of you who read the Seattle DDR BBSes) and we got there about right at 11am, when the thing was starting. Signed up... waited around... watched qualifiers... warmed up on the DDR Solo 2000 machine (the only other DDR machine there except the one MAX2)... said hi to a lot of people... waited around... eventually Becky (Sniggy) asked if I'd want to go qualify with her, since they were doing qualifiers in pairs. So we went up. As expected I got two B's for my qualifiers. It sucked actually - I FC'ed freaking LTR until like the last 10 notes the second time and just totally lost it. Oh well. I qualified 27th out of 32. Whee. Only 32 people showed up so it actually ended up being seeding rather than qualifying.
Yeah, so seeding-qualifying-whatever took like 2+ hours when it came down to it. At some point there was like a half hour break while they were fixing sensors... so a bunch of us (Derick, Howard, Kuni, me, Shiguma, Sniggy, Rayna, Robby) went out to the parking lot and did Para Para moves in a big circle. It was really funny, it looked like the hokey pokey at points (you put your left arm in and you shake it all about!)... we did a couple songs and then went back inside because it was COLD out. Qualifying continued... Gaffect did his qualifier like five times. They were letting people redo theirs too, because of the sensors on the right side pad... something about people missing arrows. Lith and Jedi also had to do a tiebreaker eventually because they both got 3 greats... what was funny is that Kevin got 4 in his redo, and then Jedi walked off the pad after he got 5... but it turned out they counted Kevin's miss, so Jedi actually seeded first... and... shrug. It was all weird.
Things got underway. My first round I was up against Keevon, and he was having a REALLY good day. We were supposed to pick 3-4 foot songs for the first round, lower seed picks first. So I picked .59 for my song. I got 19 greats, he got 10. Then he picked Exotic Ethnic. I got like 13 greats? He got like 3. Daaaaaaamn. I never ever play that song on any level, so that was pretty good relatively.
Not much to say about the first round, really. Almost every match went according to seeding; that is, higher seed won. After the first round they announced a lunch break. At that point it was already like 3pm. Tanya and Gaffect and Keevon and I went to get food from Subway before the first round actually ended. We got back around 4pm and they were still having the lunch break. Some people were goofing off with the microphone for Karaoke-like stuff. So some of us sang random DDR songs and stuff, for fun. I helped be a backup singer for Laura's rendition of Petit Love.
Yeah, so what sucked was also finding out that the bottle of DayQuil I brought along had semiexploded all over my stuff in my DDR bag. Blah. So I spent a while in the bathroom cleaning out the bag... and all my stuff... and of course later it turned out that wetting the bag meant getting the cough drops moist and then THEY got all sticky all over my stuff. I think I need a new bag. Sigh.
Anyway, eventually things got underway again. They did a round of winners bracket and then two rounds of losers bracket. The winners bracket was scary, and the losers was less so. I played my second match against Darren aka SleeplessOne, a guy from Portland who's about half a year younger than me. It was funny because I picked Candy Star Standard as my first song... and he was like "huh, I don't think I've ever played this on standard before!" But then he proceeded to get like 15 greats and I got like 30. Oops. Then he picked CSFILSM Standard as his song. And get this, I got 40 greats and he got 44. WOOT! So I actually DID win a song today! wheeeeeeee! Then we had to choose which songs to eliminate from: Max 300 Light, Let's Groove Standard, and Drop the Bomb Heavy. Since Darren and I were like "why the heck is everyone playing Drop the Bomb so much?" earlier, I just said "I don't want to hear Drop the Bomb again, so I eliminate that." He thought for a while and decided to eliminate Let's Groove, so we played MAX 300 Light. Needless to say, I got stomped. It was fun anyway.
What was really funny is that in Darren's next match, against Gaffect, he picked Candy Star Standard as his song. :) He got 11 greats and Steve got 4. Whee. Then Steve picked a song, but I forget what it was. Either way, they tied on it. Then they did a tiebreaker; eliminating DTB and MAX to do Let's Groove Standard, and they TIED ON THAT TOO with 11 greats each... so then Travis just went "Dude, do Groove 2001". And they did. And Steve beat Darren by ONE GREAT. 13 to 14. Wowie. It was insane.
I'm trying to think of other notable matches... Becky actually managed to last pretty long, she eventually was beaten by Clint, but it was REALLY close. Shiguma was defeated by Clint in the first round. And Clint and Robby had to play against each other, too... "GO TEAM SEATTLE!" Oh, so the other notable match was Jedi vs. Mechdragon. Jedi is like, the defending 2nd place Northwest person, for the last several tournaments. He's REALLY good, and from Portland. So he and Mech played... I forget which songs exactly, but the first one, Mech won 2-4; the second one, Jedi won squarely, and then they played a tiebreaker and Mech won again, like 7-10. It was insane. I remember Pete came back and was like "so what did I miss?" and I said "Well, Mechdragon beat Jedi.." and his jaw just dropped and he was like "NO FUCKIN' WAY!" Oh, yeah, so Pete is one of the guys I met in Portland yesterday, and he's REALLY good, I mean, he was still in the game when I left... it was funny because a friend of his drove him up here, and they intended to stay until he failed out and then go do Seattle stuff, except that he kept winning! Heh. Hmm, and PrincessD and Jedi actually tied one round; both had 1 great on Cowgirl Standard. Scary stuff.
Oh, yeah, so a notable thing is probably that more people of Team Infinity showed up than anything else, including Team Seattle, etc. Well, I'm not sure who was from the team per se, but Portland totally represented: Jedi, Joelle (scoregirl), Mechdragon, ShakespeareOne, PrincessD, SleeplessOne, Trunks, Zombie, Mr. Bubble, etc. Whereas TS only had Kevin, Tanya, Clint, and Robby. Team Metricks had Derick and Howard and I think this one other guy whose name I didn't catch... but overall the real force there was the Portland crew. They're all nice folks, too.
The other Bemani at Paradise was basically a Beatmania CM2, a Percussion Freaks (aka Karaoke Freaks) machine, and a DDR Solo 2000 machine. I had fun playing Typical Tropical on the Solo 2K machine. But other than that it was pretty silly... I like Narrows and IZ tournaments better since there's so much to do while waiting around.
Anyway, there was a real Karaoke competition at some point, except only Tanya, Pixxiy, and Joelle entered. Tanya sang Ordinary World and won, pretty easily... Pixxiy goofed off with the mike a lot and tried to get Kevin to enter, but it was all silly. I wish I'd finished writing my Para Para lyrics to Waka Laka, I bet I could have at least gotten some good laughs.
Anyway, eventually Tanya and Steve were playing, and he picked On the Jazz and won it by a little, and she picked Sobakasu and AAA'ed it! Whee! That was the first (and only?) Heavy AAA of the evening. Then they played .59 as a tiebreaker and she got 11 greats and he got 9, so she was out. So she wanted to go home... which was understandable, since it was 9pm at that point. Jeez. So I said goodbye to everyone, and we took off. It was really neat that I finally like, have people I see at tournaments and talk to, and say goodbye to, and all. DDR communities are so cool.
Anyway, we drove home, it took like an hour... in which time Tanya was going to go pick up Charlie except it turned out Charlie drove down to Tacoma to see her... what a mixup. So she took me home. I had fun talking to her in the car... she's pretty nice and cool, I guess I just found her a little unapproachable in the past since she's so totally good at DDR and all. But it was good.
I got home, and Eli made chili, and I played some IIDX (otherwise maybe this entry would have been done before now) and goofed off on the computer, mostly chatting with people. Eventually the tournament ended at like 12:30 and people got home and stuff. The final results are, AFAIK:
1 - Lith (big surprise there)
2 - Keevon (whoa! an upset! But he was having a REALLY good day and I am WAY happy for him!)
3 - Mechdragon (scary tech player anyway)
4 - Shakespeare (well-deserved)
5 - Jedi (poor Jedi)
6 - Mr. Bubble (damn scary Portland player too, like the above 3)
7 - Gaffect (yay for him too!)
I guess I could babble more about specific people and conversations but it's probably not worth it. Allan and I were going to go bowling at some point but didn't do it because the bowling alley was way smoky and besides, he fell asleep at one point. Hmm, and Dylan and some other Meitricks guy showed up at one point and missed the others, so they all went to Narrows, then came back, then left, then... yeah, and I guess I finally met Kuni, and boy is she weird. Her and Pixxiy get along pretty well, go figure, I think it's the pink hair. I finally did talk to Lith a little - he was like "You went to Carnegie Mellon? That is WAY COOL!" or something. I talked to Robby a lot. He has quite the fanclub of 15-year-old girls. :) Talked to Pete, he turns out to be really cool. Same for most Portland people. And Keevon and Gaffect. It was convenient that Tanya was my ride, because it meant I got to hang out with the cool kids, as it were. I know that sounds highschoolish, but it's kinda true.
Bleh, I've babbled enough. It's not like anyone really needs to know about this all... and I'm sure I've forgotten most of the details I'll want to remember, of course...
Yeah, so seeding-qualifying-whatever took like 2+ hours when it came down to it. At some point there was like a half hour break while they were fixing sensors... so a bunch of us (Derick, Howard, Kuni, me, Shiguma, Sniggy, Rayna, Robby) went out to the parking lot and did Para Para moves in a big circle. It was really funny, it looked like the hokey pokey at points (you put your left arm in and you shake it all about!)... we did a couple songs and then went back inside because it was COLD out. Qualifying continued... Gaffect did his qualifier like five times. They were letting people redo theirs too, because of the sensors on the right side pad... something about people missing arrows. Lith and Jedi also had to do a tiebreaker eventually because they both got 3 greats... what was funny is that Kevin got 4 in his redo, and then Jedi walked off the pad after he got 5... but it turned out they counted Kevin's miss, so Jedi actually seeded first... and... shrug. It was all weird.
Things got underway. My first round I was up against Keevon, and he was having a REALLY good day. We were supposed to pick 3-4 foot songs for the first round, lower seed picks first. So I picked .59 for my song. I got 19 greats, he got 10. Then he picked Exotic Ethnic. I got like 13 greats? He got like 3. Daaaaaaamn. I never ever play that song on any level, so that was pretty good relatively.
Not much to say about the first round, really. Almost every match went according to seeding; that is, higher seed won. After the first round they announced a lunch break. At that point it was already like 3pm. Tanya and Gaffect and Keevon and I went to get food from Subway before the first round actually ended. We got back around 4pm and they were still having the lunch break. Some people were goofing off with the microphone for Karaoke-like stuff. So some of us sang random DDR songs and stuff, for fun. I helped be a backup singer for Laura's rendition of Petit Love.
Yeah, so what sucked was also finding out that the bottle of DayQuil I brought along had semiexploded all over my stuff in my DDR bag. Blah. So I spent a while in the bathroom cleaning out the bag... and all my stuff... and of course later it turned out that wetting the bag meant getting the cough drops moist and then THEY got all sticky all over my stuff. I think I need a new bag. Sigh.
Anyway, eventually things got underway again. They did a round of winners bracket and then two rounds of losers bracket. The winners bracket was scary, and the losers was less so. I played my second match against Darren aka SleeplessOne, a guy from Portland who's about half a year younger than me. It was funny because I picked Candy Star Standard as my first song... and he was like "huh, I don't think I've ever played this on standard before!" But then he proceeded to get like 15 greats and I got like 30. Oops. Then he picked CSFILSM Standard as his song. And get this, I got 40 greats and he got 44. WOOT! So I actually DID win a song today! wheeeeeeee! Then we had to choose which songs to eliminate from: Max 300 Light, Let's Groove Standard, and Drop the Bomb Heavy. Since Darren and I were like "why the heck is everyone playing Drop the Bomb so much?" earlier, I just said "I don't want to hear Drop the Bomb again, so I eliminate that." He thought for a while and decided to eliminate Let's Groove, so we played MAX 300 Light. Needless to say, I got stomped. It was fun anyway.
What was really funny is that in Darren's next match, against Gaffect, he picked Candy Star Standard as his song. :) He got 11 greats and Steve got 4. Whee. Then Steve picked a song, but I forget what it was. Either way, they tied on it. Then they did a tiebreaker; eliminating DTB and MAX to do Let's Groove Standard, and they TIED ON THAT TOO with 11 greats each... so then Travis just went "Dude, do Groove 2001". And they did. And Steve beat Darren by ONE GREAT. 13 to 14. Wowie. It was insane.
I'm trying to think of other notable matches... Becky actually managed to last pretty long, she eventually was beaten by Clint, but it was REALLY close. Shiguma was defeated by Clint in the first round. And Clint and Robby had to play against each other, too... "GO TEAM SEATTLE!" Oh, so the other notable match was Jedi vs. Mechdragon. Jedi is like, the defending 2nd place Northwest person, for the last several tournaments. He's REALLY good, and from Portland. So he and Mech played... I forget which songs exactly, but the first one, Mech won 2-4; the second one, Jedi won squarely, and then they played a tiebreaker and Mech won again, like 7-10. It was insane. I remember Pete came back and was like "so what did I miss?" and I said "Well, Mechdragon beat Jedi.." and his jaw just dropped and he was like "NO FUCKIN' WAY!" Oh, yeah, so Pete is one of the guys I met in Portland yesterday, and he's REALLY good, I mean, he was still in the game when I left... it was funny because a friend of his drove him up here, and they intended to stay until he failed out and then go do Seattle stuff, except that he kept winning! Heh. Hmm, and PrincessD and Jedi actually tied one round; both had 1 great on Cowgirl Standard. Scary stuff.
Oh, yeah, so a notable thing is probably that more people of Team Infinity showed up than anything else, including Team Seattle, etc. Well, I'm not sure who was from the team per se, but Portland totally represented: Jedi, Joelle (scoregirl), Mechdragon, ShakespeareOne, PrincessD, SleeplessOne, Trunks, Zombie, Mr. Bubble, etc. Whereas TS only had Kevin, Tanya, Clint, and Robby. Team Metricks had Derick and Howard and I think this one other guy whose name I didn't catch... but overall the real force there was the Portland crew. They're all nice folks, too.
The other Bemani at Paradise was basically a Beatmania CM2, a Percussion Freaks (aka Karaoke Freaks) machine, and a DDR Solo 2000 machine. I had fun playing Typical Tropical on the Solo 2K machine. But other than that it was pretty silly... I like Narrows and IZ tournaments better since there's so much to do while waiting around.
Anyway, there was a real Karaoke competition at some point, except only Tanya, Pixxiy, and Joelle entered. Tanya sang Ordinary World and won, pretty easily... Pixxiy goofed off with the mike a lot and tried to get Kevin to enter, but it was all silly. I wish I'd finished writing my Para Para lyrics to Waka Laka, I bet I could have at least gotten some good laughs.
Anyway, eventually Tanya and Steve were playing, and he picked On the Jazz and won it by a little, and she picked Sobakasu and AAA'ed it! Whee! That was the first (and only?) Heavy AAA of the evening. Then they played .59 as a tiebreaker and she got 11 greats and he got 9, so she was out. So she wanted to go home... which was understandable, since it was 9pm at that point. Jeez. So I said goodbye to everyone, and we took off. It was really neat that I finally like, have people I see at tournaments and talk to, and say goodbye to, and all. DDR communities are so cool.
Anyway, we drove home, it took like an hour... in which time Tanya was going to go pick up Charlie except it turned out Charlie drove down to Tacoma to see her... what a mixup. So she took me home. I had fun talking to her in the car... she's pretty nice and cool, I guess I just found her a little unapproachable in the past since she's so totally good at DDR and all. But it was good.
I got home, and Eli made chili, and I played some IIDX (otherwise maybe this entry would have been done before now) and goofed off on the computer, mostly chatting with people. Eventually the tournament ended at like 12:30 and people got home and stuff. The final results are, AFAIK:
1 - Lith (big surprise there)
2 - Keevon (whoa! an upset! But he was having a REALLY good day and I am WAY happy for him!)
3 - Mechdragon (scary tech player anyway)
4 - Shakespeare (well-deserved)
5 - Jedi (poor Jedi)
6 - Mr. Bubble (damn scary Portland player too, like the above 3)
7 - Gaffect (yay for him too!)
I guess I could babble more about specific people and conversations but it's probably not worth it. Allan and I were going to go bowling at some point but didn't do it because the bowling alley was way smoky and besides, he fell asleep at one point. Hmm, and Dylan and some other Meitricks guy showed up at one point and missed the others, so they all went to Narrows, then came back, then left, then... yeah, and I guess I finally met Kuni, and boy is she weird. Her and Pixxiy get along pretty well, go figure, I think it's the pink hair. I finally did talk to Lith a little - he was like "You went to Carnegie Mellon? That is WAY COOL!" or something. I talked to Robby a lot. He has quite the fanclub of 15-year-old girls. :) Talked to Pete, he turns out to be really cool. Same for most Portland people. And Keevon and Gaffect. It was convenient that Tanya was my ride, because it meant I got to hang out with the cool kids, as it were. I know that sounds highschoolish, but it's kinda true.
Bleh, I've babbled enough. It's not like anyone really needs to know about this all... and I'm sure I've forgotten most of the details I'll want to remember, of course...
