A memory that will forever be indescribable Pt. 3

Stephen Reid and I slightly inebriated. Slightly. Also, game face.

Saturday

Have you ever had a day where you wake up and you have no idea something great is going to happen to you? If you answered that question with anything other than "Whhaaaa...?" This place called the internet is not for you. So just... go.

Anyways. The point is, this day rocked my socks so hard. We start the day with waiting in line around 9 AM which means time for some MAGIC! Nothing passes time on a concrete floor like playing Magic on it. Luckily, this passes time quite nicely. We race to the Magic section to get ourselves into a Mini Masters tournament. So we sign up for the 4 PM tournament and go do some more things around the Expo Hall.

We (Will, Sara, Brian and I) finally caught up with Chris and Dirk who were already playing Tribes: Ascend. Brian somehow weaseled his way into the game that barely just started. So as Will, Sara and I watched on, my brother and I turned right around to see Super Monday Night Combat just wrapped up. Now if you haven't figured out by now, my brother and I have some kinda ESP when it comes to just knowing when to step up to the plate and kick ass at a video game. So we sit down next to each other and get instructed real quick like. We chose our classes (I was the Soldier and Will was some tank kinda dude) and the game begins. We pretty much rolled into there all noob like and eventually figure out whats going on. For a while it was just my brother and I talking. Which seemed to be doing just fine. Finally another team mate of ours caught on and started to talk with us and that's when the game changed and fast. We pushed real hard on all fronts. I followed my brother closely behind and as he took the brute of the damage and threw in some DPS from the back as any true DPSer should have. Before we knew it, we wrapped up the match. Now when you win a game at PAX, do you think you win anything? Well, when you conquer in SMNC you get to walk away with... BACON BRACELET. I rocked that thing for the rest of the weekend like a kid just won a huge stuffed animal at the bottle throwing booth at a fair.

We go right back to Tribes and find out that game is over with so we decide to jump into that game now. Of course Will and I were on the same team and of course, we know how to rock on a team. It's just the Foley way. Get used to it. I'm sorry but we were birthed with such a...burden.. Sorry, that was tough to come back from... So we played around with all kinds of classes and for me the Infiltrator was my candy in this candy shop. I have to say. Nothing is more fun than going faster than all hell and blowing your opponent into the sky. If I remember correctly we covered the field pretty damn well in this conquest kind of game-mode. Unfortunately, we did not win anything from Tribes. But, we did get to find out this game was F2P. When I heard that I was floored. I really enjoy that game and it is one of my all-time favorite first person shooters. What’s that TF2? Nooo! No no no no no! You will always be my favorite FPS... I swear on how bad Call of Duty is! C'mon... Who's my favorite turret builder! You are!

Ahem...

From there we wandered for some decent food that this place has to offer. Found some chicken fingers or something and made it to where the Magic: The Gathering panel was. We (Will, Sara, Brian and I) were there WAYYYYY early. But after about another an hour and a half session of playing Magic on the floor we make it in. We got to hear about the story behind the Innistrad block. I'll admit. I never got into the story of Magic but this was pretty awesome. We got to see the new mechanics behind Avacyn Restored and some spoilers. We all got one basic land (RIP AVR Swamp from PAX) as well as Return to Ravnica! Yeah! I have no goddamn clue why, who, what and where Ravnica is in the Magic lore but yeah! The room exploded when they announced that was the next block. I am sure I will enjoy it though.

From there we had about an hour until the tournament so we just head down there and settle in. Figure out our table and wait for our match ups. Brian and I were on the same team but it was not two headed giant. It was a pretty cool game mode. We get our boosters, pulled our uber crap rares and build our decks from the pool. Brian had a better run than I. The guy I faced had Bloodline Keeper and every zombie token generation spell in Innistrad and Dark Ascension. I went 0-2 and Brian at least held up 1-2. I honestly forget the deck I ran but it clearly wasn't anything to ride home about. Will and Sara didn't make it past the first round either but they decided to stick around and trade and what not.

As I call it, "The grand fucking finale of all grand fucking finales to the best Saturday... ever."

I'm doing this Memento style. The last 10 minutes of the night ended with Dirk, Chris, Brian and I, hauling ass down 20 floors of stairs. At 2 AM. In our PJ's.

I also forgot one small piece of information. After we got out of the Magic panel I call Dirk to see where him and Chris ended up. They went to the Star Wars: The Old Republic booth for a Q&A. They said there might be a Q&A open to the public when the Expo Hall closes. Also, open bar. Being caught up in what we were about to do, it doesn't faze me.

So when Brian and I left the tabletop area I call Dirk again. It sounds like he's in a tunnel with a thousand people. All I hear is Star Wars..... Q&A.... OPEN FUCKING BAR! I finally remember him mentioning that and I ask what room and we race to it. It's almost packed so we run to the bar grab some beers and wait for the Q&A to start. Dirk and Chris are already buzzed and have new friends from different servers and factions.

Turns out alcohol and a room full of people don't mix with being quiet. So they give up on the whole Q&A thing and just decide to come down into the mix of people. I pull aside Stephen Reid and ask him some things about community management and how he deals with it and eventually we start talking about Star Wars. So let’s review. I'm in a room full of Star Wars enthusiasts, drinking free beer, pretty damn buzzed, and talking to the SWTOR developers. If there is a heaven I hope it is exactly like that. I was so damn happy. We talk to a couple other developers but not about The Old Republic. Mostly about Star Wars and what are our favorite video games of all time and what our favorite platform is to play on. This night cannot get any better. So it's that time. We all got ushered out with free t-shirts! We were about to part ways with 2 guys we met from Florida when they ask where we were going to go. We simply reply with, "Probably go back to our hotel, the Radisson, and crash." Then the 2nd best thing happened.

They ask us if we want to go to Curse.com's after party with... open bar. I have a quick 10 second meeting with my liver and tell it how I appreciate it but tonight it's going to work overtime. We answer faster than the speed of sound with "YES!" We gather the troops and head over to their hotel where it was hosted. We talk in get some more free stuff and get in line for drinks. We find out the line we are in is the place to be if you want to double fist the night away. Oh. Hell. Yes. What could go wrong? After getting sick of carrying two drinks around I pound down one. Let me say, that bartender is a good man and a scholar. I was half a drink away from drunk. I knew this. I achieved this. And I danced on this. I am no man to go dancing, but holy crap I danced my ass off. So here, Dirk, Brian, Chris and I are, 4 best friends, hammered, at PAX. We toast and continue to get obliterated.

We were able to see some awesome cosplay, including the face model of Samara, and met some really awesome people. Including this guy Adrian, who said he could get us in early tomorrow at PAX. Awesome! We take down his number and continue on. This was the kind of night you wish wouldn't end. At one point during round 2 of double fisting drinks, I have this revelation. We are in a part of Boston that we don't visit much, all four of us are hammered, and we only have walked back to the hotel once with GPS. I immediately drop my drinks off at the closest table and Dirk sees me do this. He comes over and asks, "Why are you not drinking? It's free drinks!" I lean in real close to him and just say, "We are all hammered Dirk. I don't want to die in Boston tonight..." Before I finish my dramatic realization with him he is already full sprint to the bar for his 3rd round.

Now, this event had a sign at the bar that said "Please refrain from tipping." If I had a dollar for every time I saw that. I would have only a goddamn dollar. Dirk, being the generous person he is, pulled the first piece of currency out of his pocket and immediately folded it into a perfect paper airplane. So perfect people who are paper plane enthusiasts (Paperplaneologists?) would be floored on how well this was made. Also, it was a 20 dollar bill. Dirk finally makes it to the bar asks for his drinks and then proceeds to hand over the paper 20 dollar airplane. The scholarly bartender points to the sign that says, "Please refrain from tipping." Dirk would not leave this defeated by some crappy sign. He looks at this man like hes about stare into his soul and said, "But it's a fucking 20 dollar airplane!" and then he threw it at him. The bartender asked where he was from and Dirk replied with "New Hampshire." and they proceeded to talk about some NASCAR shenanigans. Riding on cars! 

After a while we finally agree it's time to go home. So we embark on this epic journey. Well, at least at the time it seemed like it was going to be epic. Surprisingly, we all navigate really well drunk. Dirk had to do some parkour on the way and ended hurting his foot, but didn't get to realize this until the next morning. We get to the hotel. Start to settle in. I just got out of the shower and into bed, and the fire alarm goes off. We were on the 20th floor. If you have ridden in an elevator more than twice in your life, you get the fact that if the fire alarm goes off, they stop working. So to the stairs it is. I think we went down 20 floors of stairs in like, 2 minutes. I'm pretty sure we should be in the Guinness Book of World Records or something.

After this resolves we finally get to get back into bed at 2:30 AM and get some much needed rest. Simply to just wake up the next morning buzzed and drunk at 6.

I will save you some time and just say that Sunday was filled with recovery and watching some panels then eventually heading home. Nothing crazy. So this will be the end of the line here. Thanks for embarking on this real-to-literate journey with me.

Stay Classy, Internet.

-EF