June 13, 2008: It was a dark and stormy night...

As I type here, my face lighted only by the soft glow of the computer monitor, my heart a-flutters with fear. Yes, fear. For tonight, my boss's Xbox 360 has suffered the accursed RED RING OF DEATH.

*ominous music plays, then needle is yanked off record*

But perhaps I should start from the VERY beginning...

The last couple of days here at the Players' Village haven't been too interesting. The seriousness with which the players are taking their gaming means that there is much less chance of random hilarious encounters. Which is fine by me, as I've been content to sit in Kat's room, blog, write, and generally be a helpful little staffer. The mundane and the usual have been the norm, with laundry and bathing and delicious food. Kat's been trying some new stuff out, like a live cam whenever the players are practicing. This has resulted in the revelation that Grt is totally in love with being on cam. He basically monopolized the camera for a good half hour, much to the delight of his 3 fans watching.

...Ok, he has 6 fans, but who's counting?

Anyway, the team was preparing in earnest for their rematch with LA compLexity. It was gonna be a tough matchup, as they basically have nothing to lose. They're willing to do practically ANYTHING short of real life hostage situations (move over cs_office!) to get their first win. Even though I've only met Jason Lake once, and hung out with him for maybe an hour, I know he's all torn up inside. The man has taken so much crap for the less-than-stellar play of his team, and is content to heap all of the blame on himself. A lesser person would have quit, or flipped, or something. Come to think of it, perhaps Jason HAS flipped, and none of us realize it yet...interesting. This may warrant more research, and I'll get back to you guys on that.

Back to the story at hand. It's match day, hooray! I take the time to don nicer-than-usual clothes, as I'm expecting coL staffer Loki to be there, and I want to make sure I don't look dumb. The guy wears a freaking suit to all of LA's matches! A SUIT. Only the GMs can hope to out-do him! But much to my dismay and chagrin, Loki is not among the people who leave on the LA bus/van/transportation vehicle to the EA studios (now with electricity!). In the end, though, it's not like I could complain; I looked snappy!

We board our vehicle, and off to the EA studios we go! Arriving, we chill in the backstage area while New York and Chicago finish their franchise match. Much props must go out at this point to Tanya "coolsvilla" Underwood, for staying calm and picking up the franchise victory in overtime! We were joined by Dallas DoA Female Phoenix for this match. I make my usual introductions to Swoozie, Dr. Dogg, Landodger Mike, and Redeye....wait a minute, I forgot! I had the pleasure of meeting Paul "Redeye" Chaloner! He was in jeans and T-shirt, and jetlagged to the point of zombification, but meeting Redeye is meeting Redeye! I also got to take pictures with Craig "Torbull" Levine, who runs ESEA, as well as Method from 3DNY, and my GM Kat Hunter!

The match got underway, and for the first time, CSS led off the battling. I will admit that I was too nervous to stand up with the rest of the team for the match, so I was content to pace a la Jason Lake behind everyone, hoping and praying for a win for Optx. While the CSS team lost (again), it was a much better margin, a mere 10-8. And with Vanessa coming up next, I began to calm down a bit. She was playing belle, and started with a Greatest, which is the first I think I've seen from 'Ness this season. Belle answered right back with a round win, which got everybody talking. I talked with Phoenix whilst the match raged, being that pretty much everyone in the room knew more about Dead or Alive than I did, and we cheered on Vanessa as she beat belle 5-1. FIFA was next and stermy did not disappoint, beating Kreegan by the slimmest of margins. I think this new hyperaggressive style suits stermy. Let's hope he doesn't get figured out too soon!

NinjaCW and PL were up next, and after some amusing Vanilla Ice references (GO NINJA GO NINJA GO!), Phoenix and I both agreed that it would be a 5-4 score for someone. We were wrong, as PL took it to Chris for the 5-3 win. That meant that Forza would determine the winner. LA NEEDED to win just to tie, and needed to win at least 5-2 to come from behind in franchise points. Thank goodness for Sack, who was able to get a big lead on the LA racers and win it for us in the end.

The ride home was nice. A win is a win, so everyone was feeling pretty good. Kat didn't join us, as she had secret stuff to do. I return to our room to get started on writing the match recap, the Dallas preds article, and this blog. See how much I work to give you guys what you want? Isn't it just awesome?! I know it is.

I finally take a look at Kat's XBox and say to myself, "Self, you're gonna play some XBox." And so I did, busting into some Dead or Alive 4. No worries, NinjaCW, I'm terribad at DoA. Just awful. Kat returns about 2AM after a random hilarious encounter with 3DNY (some gals get all the luck!), and admonishes me for not beginning with Kasumi (see?). I decide, as Kat goes to sleep, to do Kasumi's storyline, having gone through her movelist so that Kat can get some neat unlocked stuff. Unlockable stuff is always neat, that's why its in video games.

*ominous music resumes*

I play through maybe an hour or two of DoA, and just as I get settled into watching Kasumi's ending cutscene, the game locks. So I, with no small amount of nervousness, turn off the XBox 360, wait about 10 seconds, then turn it on again...and I am greeted by the Red Ring of Death. I turned off the XBox again, and have not touched it since. I'm hoping that it's a flaky RRoD, the kind that only happens if you play for more than like 2 hours and then you need to stop so the machine doesn't overheat.

*ominous music abruptly ends*

There's no point crying over this, though. I'm sure that everything will turn out all right in the end. Besides, we have another rematch against brawwrski and the Venom(nomnomnomnom), and I'm excited! Hopefully we'll be in second place when the season goes to live TV. Meeting Redeye was a big highlight, along with getting some nice pictures with Kat and Torbull. So I suppose today was a good day, RRoD notwithstanding. A quick note before I end: I make it a point to try and use interesting words when I write, because it amuses the living daylights out of Kat. So expect more fun words you may need to look up in the dictionary! Happy fragging!

Update: Crisis averted. The 360 is alive and well, no rings of fiery red in sight.

Previous Blogs!

June 10th, 2008 - I suck at Guitar Hero.
June 9th, 2008 - Rebound meets Jason Lake, plus Team Staff Adventures!
June 8th, 2008 - Mario Kart with Fatal1ty!