Event: AG LAN - [S]ummer [s]LAN 2005 Event Date: 07/30/2005 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 02/11/2026 (adapted from notes written in August, 2005)

It was July, 2005 and TMC converged upon the Ascendancy LAN in SF, and proceeded to play games, act goofy and win prizes. This is definately in my hall of fame as my favorite AG LAN event, and one of the better LANs I have ever attended.  

The first TMC victory came in the form of raffle prizes. Metalslug won TWO nerf guns of somekind. Which was perfect, because no one would get more enjoyment out of something like that then Metalslug; and enjoy them he did. There were nerf darts flying in every direction the entire night, and on into the next day. 

Next TMC entered two teams into the 3 v 3 Counterstrike (CS) tournament... but it actually really ended up being just one team, because our second team was made up of members who didnt even play CS. We dubbed them The Newb Squad (thats spelled: "t3h n00b Squad"). The main TMC team was made up of myself, Metalslug and Kuyaglen.  The first match was pretty intense, as we got behind by about 5 rounds, and then in an amazing feat of we came back and put the tournament into overtime and then won the round. Metalslug, being the gracious winner and ever so humble guy proceeded to shout words of encouragement to console the losing team. Things such as "yeah bitches! TMC owns your noob asses!" and things generally along those lines. Good times. So after the other team was suffeciently bitter and pissed off at us, we went on to the next round. 

Next we were scheduled to play our own TMC newb squad, but they surrendered to speed things along a little. The final round was against the Ascendancy Admins. They ended up being too much for us in the end, BUT the admins were not allowed to win the grand prize.  Instead of just giving it to us for the valiant effort we put forth, they decided to spin the "Wheel of Consequence".  This ended up being a lot more fun than just winning straight up. 

The Wheel of Consequence said that we were to shoot eachother with paintball guns in order to win our prize. We were all given AG LAN T-shirts, and told that from across the room, one of our team mates had to hit us somewhere on the AG LAN logo that was on the shirt. First up was Metalslug shooting me. Lukly he is a good shot, and hit right on target the first try.  Next it was me shooting him. I ALMOST got him the first try, but was low about a milimeter. Unfortunately I overcorrected on my next shot, and got him in the neck.. but the third shot.. that one was good. Next, we had Metalslug shooting at Kuyaglen, and that took two shots. So we all got our prize which was a gig of RAM for each of us (worth about 100 bucks)... not bad. 

At some point, I think it may have been before the Wheel of Consequence, we decided to make a Burger King run. Me, Metalslug, and Kaffiene were accompanied by former TMC member Offspring and some random guy that I didn't even realize was there till about halfway though the trip.

It was about 2 am, and we headed off on foot in what we guessed must be the direction of the Burger King (this was before everyone had GPS and smart phones). Somewhere along the way we realized we werent in Kansas anymore, and actually had no idea where we were. We stopped on a corner to try and decide where to go, or what to do next. There were actually a lot of people out for being so late at night. There was a club across he street that seemed to be pretty active. We noticed down the street there was a store selling some kind of unusual leather wear. It was about that time we started noticing all the people that were out were guys... and a lot of them were wearing chaps. Some of them had large chains around thier necks, one was wearing some kind of leather straps in place of a shirt, and we even saw some people wearing capes... yeah... CAPES! It was like we had somehow stepped into a different world. 

After a few minutes some guy from the club across the street noticed us and came over and gave us free passes to get into the club... he noticed our TMC uniforms; which consisted of black BDU shirts with nametapes of our gamer handles and a TMC patch. He looked at us very curiously and was like "hey, who are you guys? Whats your deal?"  At first I kind of just brushed him off and I was like, "oh yeah, don't mind us" because I didnt really want to have to explain to him the concept of a gaming clan, LAN parties, and all that. That wasn't enough for him though.. he really wanted to know.  It was too late in the night and we were too hungry to really want to have this conversation, but the guy was obviously intent on finding out more about us. He kept asking us questions and we kept deflecting with unserious joke answers hoping he would just accept it and move on. To this he responded with "No really... this looks cool.. who are you guys?" It was clear our deflect and make jokes stratagy was not going to work, so we eventually just told him we play video games. To my surprise this actually made him even MORE interested. He said, "Cool! I love video games! where do you play video games at around here??? Hey.. whats your shirt say... Metalslug... I LOVE that game! Hey do you guys-" at which point Metalslug cut him off with the reply "Dude, do you know where Burger king is?"

So, we found out where Burger King was and headed over there. I went to get a drink and came back to find metalslug talking to some crazy homless woman. It seemed she was big into guessing things, because when I walked up, She had apparently guessed his birthday the first try, which was pretty amazing (or Metalslug just told her she was correct as a Joke, I didn't stop to find out). I was wondering if this was her hidden talent, but then she tried to guess his zodiac sign, and I think she pretty much named all of them before she got to his... so yeah.. no hidden talents there. 

The Burger King trip turned out to be quite the adventure, and I think we are all better people because of it. Lets go to Burger King at 2am at every lan! 

The rest of the LAN was also a lot of fun. We played paintball at around 4am. Then I sat with Aftermath and Metalslug and we played around the Google earth program, which had just been released by Google the month before. Google earth is a search program that lets you look at sattelite photos of the entire earth, which was pretty advanced at the time. So, we explored the site of the chernobyl disaster... and various other sites of interest around the world. Then, we came back to the USA and discoverd even more amazing things. The most amazing of which was what appeared to be a corn maze in the middle of Arizona that was laid out to look like Oprah Winfrey's face. Keep in mind, this is visible from SPACE. We had been up so long we were all getting a bit loopy; for whatever reason at that time, a cornfield in the shape of Oprah’s face was absolutely the most hilarious thing we had ever seen. Then again, it was also that time of night when EVERYTHING seems hillarious. Things like that are really half the reason for staying up that late in the first place.  Aftermath had a knack for finding these types of random things on the internet late at night at LANs; he also had a real gift for really bringing out the absurdity and the comedy of it.

A few hours later and it was getting to that time when everything seems blurry and hazy and all you can think about is sleeping... anywhere. A lot of guys just collapsed facedown on the floor, and it was like a crime scene with bodies everywhere.  I crawled into my tiny car and curled up and attemped to sleep for about 2 hours. It was most uncomfortable. 

I got up and there were more raffles... for the good prizes. Metalslug ended up being the big winner here. He got a longboard and I think some other stuff. Glen won a bunch of stuff too, I think he has an extensive collection of Bawls bags now (we called them Bawl Sacks).

For the ultra grand prize of the lan there was yet another wacky paintball contest.  This involved getting into teams of two. Each team was positined behind a podium with a waterbottle on it. One guy had a gun, and was blindfolded. The point was to shoot the other teams waterbottle off thier podium. The team member without the blindfold was supposed to shout at the guy with the gun and tell him where to aim.  Since both teams were standing directly behind the target that the opposing team is aiming for, it meant you get to eat all the stray shots.  It was good times. Me and Metalslug ended up winning.  We had to face eachother in a final match too. Since hes a crazy mountain boy with mad shootng skills, he got me between the eyes, but not before I gave him two to the chest!  

Another legendary AG LAN contest that took place at AG’s [S]ummer [s]LAN 2005 was the dance competition. In this competition, contestants were brought on stage one by one and given a few seconds to show off their best dance moves. Whoever was judged the best would win a prize. As you would expect at a LAN party, most everyone was pretty awful. A few guys actually had a move or two, but nothing to write home about, and most just did their best to flail around and look as stupid as possible in hopes of winning by providing the best laugh, and laugh we did.

It was then that Mameman took the stage.  Mameman was a regular LAN attendee, and known for being... unique. Mameman had the physique of “Rufus” from Streetfighter IV, and generally wore sweatpants on a daily basis. Most attendees were familiar with him in some way or another, and I'm sure there were some doubts as to if he had ever even tried dancing before.

Expectations were low, when Mameman took the stage as the techno music began pumping. Mameman immediately launched into a series of surprisingly graceful yet bizarrely out of context ballet style dance movies. He was pirouetting, and doing arm flourishes and a whole bunch of other moves no one would have thought possible for Mameman to pull off. Equally perplexing, was the fact that he didn’t appear to be making these moves up on the spot, it was a routine! He had clearly done this dance before; where and for whom, we could only imagine.  Mameman’s dance routine was so surprising that we all had to laugh, clap and cheer him on as he danced.  

Not to be outdone, The Deionionizer also busted out a very napoleon dynamite esque dance performance. He had clearly been practicing in his bedroom or something, and while a lot of it was flailing around madly, it wasn’t a half assed type of thing many of the other contestants had done. Both The Deionizer and Mameman had performed completely non-ironic dance routines. What set The Deionizer’s performance apart was that he clearly put his entire heart and soul into it. He clearly did not hold anything back; and for that he ended up winning the competition. 

Of course, Kuyaglen was on hand to record the whole thing, which resulted in a video that was replayed many times in the wee hours of future LAN events when some entertainment was needed.