The 2008 Chicago Lan Wrap Up

The infamous Bubba (FreynApThyr) once again takes the time to sit down and tell the tale of a LAN past as only he can tell it. What to know what you missed out on? Read on!

And then there was LAN

Chicago squats on the fetid verge of a turd lined pond called Lake Michigan. Lattices of streets look like sutures from skin grafts that cover the burn scars of the Great Fire. O’Hare and Midway airports were recently brought up to full staffing levels through an employment program that works in conjunction with Chimp Rescue. The liberated chimpanzees have been so addled with experimental drugs and electroshock therapy that it can take four full business days to clear security. After the Summer of Love, the O’Hare area was completely paved over and has been baking in Midwestern summer heat, and blistering again during the polar winters. Most of the service workers in this blacktop steppe were formerly doctors, college professors and Premiers of Soviet-bloc republics. The fall of the USSR and the return of the Cossacks sent them scurrying to the Heartland of their sworn enemies. There they were forced to take jobs getting me extra towels and yet another patty melt. The label “disgruntled employee” only scratches the surface of their murderous rage.

It seems like an obvious place for a party.

Every year the alumni of classes ‘84-’91’s chess teams, school newspaper editors and AV squad presidents pack their Xboxes and cargo shorts and hole up in some squalid hotel. There they deprive themselves of sleep, the company of those with “social skills,” sunlight, family, vitamins C, A and B complex, fiber and hygienic concern.

So, for the fourth time- I booked my flight early.

Doodi, DSmooth, Smoke, NoGame, Rau, Phreak and a cast of thousands worked like rented mules to pull together a three day party that celebrates- once again, the growth of the website that unites (and occasionally divides) us all. The first LAN of 2005 was only mythologized, not really recorded. For the LAN trailblazers, the flavor was distinctly different. Think comfort food of mac and cheese instead of restaurant style penne in vodka sauce. A couple dozen of us that had spent thousands of hours playing Halo 2 together spent a weekend nervously testing our ability to not pass out in public and split a check. It was nothing like the crowd that would come together in year two and provide a template for the years to come.

At the LAN of 2006, Dantez Inferno, aka Janks Morton, put his feet on a path towards filmmaking greatness with a short video that captured that flavor beautifully. All you visual learners should check it out. For you verbal types, read Drost's writeup. When the fledgling communities that started at 2o2p came into their own it was at the year two LAN. What we condescendingly still refer to as the “Flagship Clan” saw at once that the site had grown well beyond us.

Something changed in year three, 2007. I always enjoyed the LAN as an opportunity to get together with friends I now considered “real-life” friends rather than internet acquaintances. I’ve seen doodi, BC, TMAN, Drewsky, Kung Fu, Smooth, the Dead Doctor, Taxi, Mike James and Bliz more in the last four years than I have many of my cousins (even cousins I like). Year Three taught me that the LAN could do a lot more then just that. Clan Profanity, amongst others, reached out to me and made me welcome amongst relative strangers. Drost’s writeup did an awesome job of delivering the flavor of a gathering of tribes that was like a modern-day-culturally-co-opted Iroquois League. When taken apart they are vital communities, but pulled together by the site and an annual gathering, it’s a sum greater then its parts. It’s so much harder to take personally an argument about the BR when you’ve shared stuffed pizza with the guy on the other side of the forum. Hearing the voice of another person over the dinner table lends their posts the inflection required to turn rampant dickheadism into dry wit and subtle humor.

With my new sensibility and grandiose notions of a world made harmonious by one big LAN party, I prepared for this Year’s LAN with a lot of enthusiasm. It did not disappoint.

I want to make sure that credit goes where credit is due. In order to be sure of that you have to do things like “help” and “get involved” and “research.” I’m not real good at those things so if you are reading this and deserve credit and didn’t get it, kick Markus in the bag. Although, on second thought, a more productive solution might be to add a comment and give your own shout outs to those I forgot. You may also feel free to make fun of my poor memory and preparation skills at that time.

When handing out kudos you obviously have to start with Derek “DSmooth” Nolan. He invented the internet, the Xbox, first person shooters, social graces and once placed second in a spelling bee. Don’t forget he knows Kevin Smith.

He is also remarkably easy to make fun of and I can hardly resist the temptation to do so. He helps by willingly putting himself out there for the flack. By “out there” I mean at point, dealing with hotel employees, mundane detail, a thousand things I don’t want to do and never could fathom. No matter what it sounds like in print or via podcast, I have huge respect for the work he does to make the LAN possible. I also, for some odd reason, really like the guy. I have said things about him in front of him and behind his back that would have cost me a swirly or a locker-stuffing in High School. Derek and I laugh about it and continue to trade shots. Well done Smooth, well done. Now that I have sufficiently stroked his ego I will go back to ridiculing him in public.

The generosity of XSSmoke (and his completely-over-his-head wonderful wife Ice) is nearly impossible to overstate. Just putting it in terms of dollars and cents does not illustrate the far reaching effects that his contributions made to the LAN. Attendance peaked because of the incentives he donated out of pocket. An incredible $2,000 dollars in cash was giving out to the top leaders of the tournament in cold hard cash! His leadership in our online community translates in full to the LAN and he’s handles it like a rockstar. His ridiculous contributions to kids with cancer will help to make them happy in a time when they should never be anything but. When helping kids with cancer no longer gets you a free pass through the Pearly Gates, send me straight to hell. A thousand thanks are in order so make sure you fill his PM box with them.

Take your hats off for a moment and bow your heads in silence for the swift recovery of NoGame and Rau. Rau finally succumbed on Sunday to nervous exhaustion and was committed to the Adult Mental Health Services Department at Chicago Methodist. NoGame was taken directly from the LAN to a 28 day rehab program that declined any "further publicity." Both incidents were quite obviously brought on by the strain of dealing with the humungous egoism, immaturity and drunken antics of a bunch of people who press plastic buttons on toys rather then actually learning an instrument. All kidding aside, NoGame worked his ass off before, during and after to pull off a triumphant Rockband competition that kicked ass. Prizes got donated, setlists were painstakingly made out and NoGame took all the bitching that went with that. He also was kind enough to pester me 37 times to make sure I "also give props to Rau and TMX for all the hard work in setting up the rules, timing out the songs, etc...” but gave me zero good ideas on how to do this in a funny way…So thanks for that too! *please note that sarcasm detection software is not yet available*The concerts went off late like all good concerts should. By a stroke of "good fortune" NoGame had drank himself into insensibility by show time. Fake musicians bitched about the brown M&M’s in the dressing rooms and Drewsky sabotaging equipment everywhere he went. Anyone else would have taken a plastic Gibson and bashed in our skulls and feasted on our grey matter. Rau stepped up, kept the competition going and he and NoGame get my nod as the Fake Lollapalooza Promoters of the Year.

Taxi made an Excel Spreadsheet with colors on it and then talked about it like he did the coding for the Mars Landers. Thanks a lot. And while we’re at it, thanks for only kicking one Chicago senior citizen in the spleen. Smoke once again gets mad props for crazy effort in pulling together a triumphant Halo tournament that married MLG krazy killahs and Big Team fancy pants. For those not acquainted with this weird subculture, that’s a little like getting the Palestinians and Israelis to agree to the rules for a slap fight without the tanks rolling to the border. Both of them deserve a ton of credit for organizing that logistical nightmare.

Gaius (that’s pronounced Gay-us, not that there is anything wrong with that) Caesar didn’t even come to the LAN. That didn’t stop him from lending a beautifully crafted, psychologically scarring, preternatural twist that turned the raffle from a magnificent gesture of altruism for a noble cause into a Freudian nightmare. I can see by looking around the site that some of you are violating the first rule of surprising-a-hapless-victim-who-just-wanted-to-win-a-copy-of-Peggle-into-being-the-proud-owner-of-a-metal-dick-club. That rule, of course, is “you do not talk about surprising-a-hapless-victim-who-just-wanted-to-win-a-copy-of-Peggle-into-being-the-proud-owner-of-a-metal-dick-club”. But since the cat/metal dick is out of the bag, we get to acknowledge the generous, magnificent, and disturbing craftsmanship of the guy that made it possible. He also turned Lbsutke into a ravening Barbarian War Chief (big stretch, I know). Way to go Caes. Next time send cheesecake too please.

Hey! Chicago Marriot O’Hare! Thank you for finally getting it! Three years, three different hotels, and walking into what they had set-up for us on day one was like walking into a cathedral. The set-up was flawless. The staff was solicitous and showed us how to control our own lights, temperature and posture-pedic vibrochairs. The fountain of blood on the sacrificial altar was refreshing and not too gooey, and the breakers didn’t go out once- except for the guys that brought the 46” Plasma, their plug-in Real Girl, and three toaster ovens for “even browning of Pop-Tarts.” Additional ‘thanks’ for making the $5.00 price tag on the 20 oz. bottle of Evian big enough for me to read. If I had gotten charged for that I might have beaten the desk clerk like a red-headed step child, or (more likely), gotten my ass kicked by her.

Microsoft, Gearbox, Bawls and PopCap Games filled two tables with swag. Harmonix donated grand prizes of Full Rockband kits. You can spell it Micro$oft if you want. You can giggle like a three year old as you make “Bawl sack” jokes. You can make disparaging comments about “casual gamers” and Bejeweled 2. However, before doing any of this, remember their generosity helped those same kids we are applauding Smoke for helping. So tip one out for them at least, or even better, hit the donate button with what you can and match their spirit of generosity. Then we can all go back to condemning the Great Satan Bill Gates with a clear conscience.

Mike James is the heart of 2old2play. I don’t have any jokes or smartass remarks to add to that- it is just the case. The number of members that started at 2o2p because of his efforts and the efforts of those he brought represent most of the 14,000 people that have found our gaming sanctuary. Even more importantly though is that quality he possesses that is so clearly evident at the LAN each year. He Is Mike James- Bitches. As he moves through group to group, rarely playing anything, never sitting down, always tying us together, he weaves people into a community. In a year when it would have been easy for him to stay home and nurse some of the rough wounds that life can dish out, Mike came again and showed us all you’re never Too Old to Play.

As I’m typing this next bit, I’m anticipating the response it will get. Mark, Tammy and I have entered into a little enterprise together known as Phreaks on Geeks. In the process of hours of “effort” putting a podcast together we’ve become a lot closer then I would have deemed possible. Hopefully before Christmas, you will get to hear TDrag say some really nice things about the chemistry we have. Explaining out loud to her the handful of times Phreak and I have met in person, and that this was the first time I’ve ever met Markus, Markus Jr., Markus III and Markus IV in the flesh, just brought home how unlikely it really is. I’m not sure just how pathetic it comes across, but I stopped worrying about that a long time ago. I made friends at 2old2Play. Based on what I saw at the LAN, I’m not the only one.

Both of them put a lot of effort into getting to the LAN. Tammy packed up like a Grand Canyon burro guide, drove 5 hours each way, filled requests for special deliveries, target runs, Airport shuttle service, ran a youth hostel out of her hotel room, spent untold money on special hardware, software and raffle supplies, coordinated delivery of said-metal dicks, and generally made sure none of us starved or passed out in the bathroom. Mark overcame more personal demons and baggage then any man of his age and intelligence should be saddled with, endured my feeble attempts at humor and sacrificed a weekend with a saint of a wife and the cutest two-year old to ever throw crabs on cue or ambush a Hooter girl. He also has a secret switch none of us knew about that turns him from a miserable sad sack into the chattiest bastard on the planet. It seems to be activated by some unknown quantity of Sierra Nevada Pale Ales, so after some careful experimentation in the off-season we’ll get him pre-gamed for next year.

None of the three of us takes compliments very well and we would all rather look out for others then take care of ourselves the way we should, so I have total confidence that they will take it like I mean it when I say to them both- Sukadik.

There were people I missed at this year’s LAN. That says a lot about what has come before, but while I’m thanking people it only seems right that I shout out to them. I encourage you to add to the list in the comment section.

TTB, Knaab, Ebola, the west coast crew Sugar, Lotus, Rich and swoosh, Fade, Bijiks, Defasum, Coolarrow, CP and his entire family of the funniest people I’ve ever played Halo with. Tri, Sha, Wilderz and Pimp and everybody else whom I have misplaced only because it has been too long, you were gone but not forgotten. Make your plans earlier next year bitches.

I don’t know what doodi does with his days- other than dailies and raiding I mean. He doesn’t post, blogs quarterly, quit playing Halo and only uses his 360 to run pr0n. This year I had to explain to him how to put a monitor in a box, use a powerstrip, tie his shoelaces and where the bathrooms were in the hotel after an unfortunate incident with the Lutherans. I found out he has a brother because before SubT got married to a hottie and started thinking straight he played Halo with us. I found out he has a sister because she was appointed by the state to move in and take care of him after Bliz had to move to Florida. It certainly would never have occurred to doodi to have mentioned them because of the perpetual fog.

Despite the shroud of mystery, obfuscation and general laziness one thing I know is true. None of this happens without him. If Mike James is the heart of 2o2p, doodi is the soul. As unlikely a candidate as a chubby twelve year old Amish girl named Lisa is for that role it’s still true. He had a vision of never letting anyone tell him or his buddies the right way to do things and that vision of obstinate, obnoxious, fiercely inappropriate tribal loyalty lives on at 2o2p and every year in August we kick it in the ass to make sure it’s ready to pounce.

Thank You Doodi and Long Live the LAN!

I love epilogues. It seems like every time I write anything for the site it has some goofy post-script. It usually gets tacked on when I look over at the page count and say to myself “holy shit wrap it up, everyone stopped reading ages ago.” In that spirit here is my cry for help. Each year everyone talks about documenting the LAN and doing a write up (or a video) and at some point a week or two afterwards some poor schmuck finally puts it together- and then it gets treated like a Gutenberg Bible. Nobody writes a sequel, nobody completes the thought, nobody expands on what was missed. Don’t let that happen this year. Let Dantez' video be an inspiration to you. Follow Pearly’s lead and blog about what went on. Throw your own shout outs up in your Clan forums. Write some more news for the front page about what actually happened. At the very least hit the comments button and thank who made your LAN special to you.