Day 4: "Shock and Awe"

I don't know how many times in your life that you're able to witness truly touching moments, but when Karel saw Guillaume walk through the doors of the venue it looked like he was seeing his long lost brother for the first time in years. They also hugged and laughed about having to keep Guillaume's presence a secret for such a long time for that moment to happen exactly as planned. Glad I could be a part of that experience, if only as an outsider looking in.

After we got settled in at the venue, we had a quick moment to load up on caffeine. I would like to take this time to offer my gratitude to the great people at Mountain Dew for allowing me to stave off exhaustion for at least a fleeting moment.
Mountain Dew: "Don't let the color of piss fool you."

Anyway, the organizers of ASMKC (the "Kartel," which is a terrific name that I wish I had though of myself) opened the events by thanking everyone who traveled either great distances to be there (Karel, Martin, Sami, and Leyla), or endured the bomb cyclone in Denver and still made it on time (Nes, me, Clark, and our surprise guest Guillaume). With the opening ceremony now complete, it was time to go into a world championships absolutely cold. You'd think that we would have practiced at least a little bit, right?

Day 1 of the event consisted of Time Trials and Match Race. In the interest of full disclosure, the last time I had done anything SMK related was to try to beat Karel's 11"65 on GV1, only to come up short with 11"69, which I was still really proud to drive. This being said, Time Trials is a one-try contest and not a lengthy grind trying to max out a particular time, which is a totally different mindset. You get one chance on every track and you just cross your fingers that you keep making the cut.



I was paired with Martin, whom I had met in 2015 briefly, although we didn't really talk to each other during that CDM. I had the misfortune of going first, which didn't really bother me because I really had no expectations of doing anything of note. If there's one thing to gather from these two lengthy posts is that actually playing Super Mario Kart is secondary for me; it's the laughs and the beers and the experience in general that really makes me love this community. I struggle through the majority of the races, with a few being downright awful, but hey, what can ya do? Martin goes second and shows me the proper way to do one-try racing, which taught me a good lesson about being conservative.

They announce the cuts and to my surprise, I made it. We do another few tracks, I struggle, but it wasn't the worst. When I was done I kinda took a lap to see where others were stacking up against me, and I shrugged a bit and just hoped for the best. They announce another cut: I made it again. Wow. Now I'm in the running for the top half at the very least, so that was pretty nice. We do another two tracks (I forget which ones exactly), and I drive pretty consistently but very, very conservatively. I wrap up the tracks and do another lap around to view the competition. Karel was over by the stream TV, but I didn't know who he was partnered with at the time. I look at their sheet of times and noticed that I had beaten whomever times the other person had driven, at which point I say to Karel, "Welp, at least I beat whoever that guy is, right?" That guy turned out to be Sami, which absolutely floored me. Sami had missed the zoom start on both tracks, and I had barely edged him out (despite me getting both zooms). They announce the final four: "Karel, Guillaume, Martin... and Joe." The surprise on my face could be seen for miles...

Karel and Guillaume were seeded 1 and 2, so it was up to Martin and me to decide who would be taking home the bronze. They put me on the stream TV, despite me begging to be put on a different one. Nervous throughout the entire three tracks (KB1, CI2, and RR I believe), I made a fool out of myself and crashed about 27 times on Rainbow Road. Martin was on a different TV but I walked over to him immediately and congratulated him on a bronze medal win. I took home 4th place, which is considerably better than I ever thought I would do at the event, so already this tournament was a success in my eyes.

Karel then wins a coin toss and opts to play first on the stream TV, while Guillaume was put in quarantine in order for him to not know what Karel's times ended up being, which is a good system. KVD is a goddamn pro (or "machine," if you will) and showed the world what a real champion drives like, getting very good times on all of the tracks. Guillaume then shows the world what another champion drives like, getting very fast times on all of the tracks as well, but narrowly losing to KVD in the end. Guillaume crashed on CI2 once, and that ended up being the deciding factor.

Gold: KVD
Silver: Guillaume
Bronze: Martin
... distant 4th: Yours truly. Europe wins the podium.

This would end the part of the competition that relies solely on you and your driving ability. Match race would be next...



Now, I have never played Match Race, to which I believe Clark and Karel both said that they also have never seen me play that mode. Really I've only played Time Trials and GP throughout my entire SMK career, but hey, how bad could Match Race be? Well, I would quickly learn.

Truth be told, I don't really remember a lot of Match Race because at this point I'm riding high on a 4th place Time Trial finish and I'm also running on fumes at this point. More Mountain Dew was in order. What I do remember I'll put into bullet points.

- I got matched with Leyla a few times, and Leyla is one hell of a player. Our history goes all the way back to CDM 2015 where she beat me in a barrage match in GP on the main stream TV. It was close, but in the end she's just a better player than me; no doubt about it.
- Match Race is also a mode where item luck is also pretty key, so there are some sandbagging tactics which absolutely annoys the crap out of me, but I refuse to take part in those shenanigans. I'm a pure driver, so I'm just looking to do the best I can do. I don't know high level strats and even if I did I'm not talented enough to put them on display during a competition, so my expectations for this event were very low (as with all the others).
- I think I hit every fenner on every track.

Fast-forwarding, I believe that I came in either 5th or 6th, which again surprised me. But I totally knew going in that I wouldn't beat about 5 or 6 people in any event, so that's pretty much where I belonged throughout the whole weekend.

The day came to a close and we headed back to the Kartel's place to drink and stave off exhaustion for another couple of hours. They had sleeping arrangements for everyone beforehand, which was awesome! They really, really took care of us throughout the entire weekend, and for that I'm forever grateful. They also had gotten two pony kegs of an Amber Ale and a Kolsch, which were both very good. I called Dave Smith around 11 and he talked with Clark, Karel, and Guillaume for a little bit before we ended up passing out.

Day 5: "Handstands and Fenner Vids"

The second day of ASMKC featured GP 150cc and Battle Mode, the latter of which I truly hate and thought about scratching my name off the list entirely. But I love GP even though I have a reputation for not using items (also known as "The Gentlemen's Agreement that nobody else agreed to"), even ones that would only help myself (like feathers on Choco Island).

Grand Prix 150cc

Again, my expectations were low because the Europeans at the event are seasoned CDM veterans and know every single nook and cranny that can be done in the game, and I just like to drive really, really fast. Some highlights:

- I got paired with Leyla yet again, and now I'm starting to think that they're doing this to me on purpose  . We like to talk to each other during our matches, and she admitted that NTSC is completely foreign to her for some tracks, specifically Special Cup, where the speed can really affect your driving lines. I ended up winning that cup, but that would be the beginning and end of my victories over her for the weekend. She battled through the rest of the players and ended up facing me again, this time with her coming out victorious and knocking me out of the competition. Before playing her for the second time I played Clark and won, and I also went up against Guillaume on the main TV.
- Playing Guillaume was both fun and tough. He's the type of player where you know that one small mistake against him can be completely devastating. I had the fortune of getting all of my zoom starts and won a few races/cups, but in the end he overpowered me. Our KB1 race was solid, and our VL2 race was very, very close, with me getting red shelled on lap 5 and taken out of contention for the cup. He shook my hand after Rainbow Road and told me that he understands now that GP is my best mode and that I really pushed him to play at his very best, which is nice to hear from a legend like Mario86 .

Case in point: It's probably a good idea to both practice beforehand, and also practice good strategies on top of that, like using red shells to hit your opponent. I have truly horrendous item luck as it is so it probably wouldn't matter anyway, which is partly why I mostly rely on solid driving to try to beat the field. That can only get you so far though...

Took 5th or 6th again, can't quite remember off the top of my head. The real story here though is that Leyla was on her last leg of the triple elimination system and ended up going through a crew of heavy hitters and took home the bronze medal, making SMK history in the process! Much congratulations to her on becoming the first ever female to win a medal in an official SMK competition!



... sucks and no one should be forced to play that mode.  

If I had low expectations for previous modes, then I can't stress how low my expectations were for battle mode. I absolutely hate it and I was just happy to be done with it as soon as possible.

Oh, but there was another surprise that I had yet to touch on: Drew Blumfield ended up making it to the second day of the tournament after having a rough trip as well. He had gotten to Dallas from Los Angeles, but the car he rented ended up shitting the bed on the highway and he was stuck there for a couple of hours. I'm sure he'll post something about his own adventure...

Without glossing over too much, let's just do more bullet points:

- I took 12th, which is 4 better than I thought I'd do.
- I either won 3-0 or lost 3-0 for every single match I had.
- I went on a string of 27 straight non-red shells, which was initially thought to be impossible...
- This mode still sucks, but I will work on my 1p battle mode skills for the next world competition.

Drew won gold, which was amazing since he used Bowser throughout the entire run. Bowser isn't exactly the greatest character to use (arguably the worst), but Drew is Drew and he'll do whatever he damn pleases. That's what makes him a legend.  

The festivities were then over, and overall placing was announced.

1st: Karel Van Duijvenboden
2nd: Guillaume Leviach
3rd: Sami Cetin
4th: Martin/Leyla
5th: Matt Ballard
6th: me
7th: Chris Clark

Matt took first place for Team USA, which is where I thought he'd go (battle mode pretty much derailed my chances of a high overall finish). I don't remember the last half of the standings, but it was good to have the players that were in my car all finish in the top half of the rankings. Pretty fucking cool indeed...

The After Party

We didn't end up getting back to the Kartel's place until around midnight, where we drank and watched Fenner vids and handstand tutorials until 3 in the morning:



It's these kinds of things that I enjoy the most.  

Day 6: "Whataburger and Buc-ees"

With the event being over and our trip back about to start once again, I decided to take Clark and Guillaume to two southern/Texas staples: Whataburger and Buc-ees. For those who don't know, Whataburger is a fast food burger joint with above average but typical American fare (great fries, burgers, patty melts, spicy ketchup, self-serve soda fountains), and Buc-ees is this MASSIVE highway truck stop with 100 gas pumps and their own shopping center, complete with Buc-ees brand everything. And I mean EVERYTHING... I bought my fair share of merchandise, and the Europeans wandered the store completely in awe at the size of the place.
Guillaume: "This place is probably twice the size of my local super market. Holy shit..."
Clark: "Why on Earth does a place this big need to exist?"
Me: "This is the United States, my friends. Go big or go home, right?"

So after stocking up on road essentials: chocolate covered walnuts, sweet kettle almonds, Buc-ees shirts, blankets, iron-on patches, etc..., we make it back to my parents' place in Granbury to drink like it's the end of the world. My parents are very welcoming, so we were able to drink all of their beer and my dad was able to show Guillaume his collection of records on his juke box, his 1931 Ford Roadster that he's in the process of restoring, all of my childhood sports pictures which embarrassed the shit out of me... you get the idea.

After we were done drinking in the outside shed/shop/second garage, we go back into the house where my dad says the line which Guillaume will probably remember forever:

"Hey Frenchie, wanna drink some cognac?"
Of course he does. He's French...

We hit the road the next morning after we all have a good long sleep and the coldest showers of our lives, but we decide to take a different route than the one we took to get to Texas (Clark and Guillaume had already seen that shit, no need to put them through that misery all over again). We opt for the direct route north through Oklahoma and west through Kansas, which was a much, much better drive for all parties. We make it back to Denver around 10 pm after leaving at 8:30 in the morning, which is pretty good. I take them to our local Waffle House, and in doing so I completed my task of getting the most out of this part of America that it could offer.

Total number of states visited: 7* (* - Clark and Guillaume have a different 7th state).
Colorado
New Mexico
Texas
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Kansas
* Washington/Nevada (the only variant)




Left to right: Martin, Matt, Guillaume, Kyle, Clark, Stinson, Karel, Me, Chris













Many, many thanks to the Kartel for all of their hard work in putting together this amazing event! Many thanks to Clark and Guillaume who braved the open roads of the Western United States with me and Nes. Many thanks to all the players around the world who made this first edition a huge success! Many thanks to the fine people at Mountain Dew for helping me stay awake for what seemed to be 36 straight hours. Many thanks to everyone who read through all of this and hopefully smiled along the way...

I love each and every one of you who I met throughout the weekend. May this be the first of many more to come!  

At first I thought it was a little weird to see Matt in a Britney Spears T-shirt, but Britney is a Louisiana native after all...

...Why isn't Eric in any of these pics?  

If I’m honest, it never actually occurred to me to write a ‘bilan’ about the American Championships, especially since I haven’t been on this forum in goodness knows how long. But once I’d read Joe’s fantastic reflection (you’re a legend, man!), I knew I had to jump on the bandwagon- after all, us English students will take any opportunity we can to write something long  

Pre-event:


When I first heard about the event early on, I couldn’t get over how awesome the opportunity would be. Because I knew I’d still be at uni when it would take place and things were pretty difficult at home, I just assumed that I wouldn’t be able to attend. In a meeting with my personal tutor at uni the following week, I briefly mentioned the event and must’ve been beaming about the whole thing for countless minutes because of his response. My tutor, an American himself, asked me why the hell I wasn’t going. Well, I’d have to miss a week of classes, I said. He basically told me to screw the classes and just attend because I’d being working hard all year and a short break wouldn’t kill me. So that’s what I did.


Arrival to the US:


Fast forward a couple of months to Thursday 14th March, when Sami and I made our journey to the US, flying first to Atlanta. My first experience on American soil in around 16 years was an extremely intimidating experience- let’s just say that the US Customs Officer certainly took his job very seriously!   When we eventually landed in Monroe in the late afternoon, we were surprised with Matt and Eric welcoming us in the gate and suddenly the trip felt so much more real. Holy shit. We were in Louisiana!   That evening, the four of us were joined by Kyle and shared a meal at Olive Garden, stuffing ourselves silly and confirming my mum’s warnings about the excessive portions when compared to the UK. I mean, the box of my leftovers alone was of greater quantity than my meals at home so America truly is ‘go big or go home’. Main topics of dinner conversation were Joe, Vanessa and Clark’s disastrous start to their road trip (obviously at this point Sami and I had zero idea that Guillaume was also involved), the hilarious antics of Drew and whether Terrence Fenner would ever make an appearance at a championship. Obviously, the latter is something that EVERYONE WANTS TO SEE! *hint-hint Terrence*  

Friday was dedicated to ‘sightseeing’ at mine and Sami’s request, which ended up being exactly what Matt meant when he mentioned “the two things” in Monroe Kyle drove us to Black Bayou, the Monroe ghetto (Croydon’s is better, sorry) and the main street of stores in West Monroe where for every store we entered, Sami and I had to relay our life stories and reasons for being in this sleepy neighbourhood once the shopkeepers had caught wind of our alien accents. Suddenly we felt a lot less Croydon and a lot more RP Queen’s English   While the constant repetitive conversations started to get pretty boring quite quickly, the kindness and hospitality that was extended to us made up for it and that Southern charm I always heard about felt real and special. That night we went over to the Kartel HQ, being reunited with Karel and Martin and spoiled with our first taste of Southern cuisine- crawfish! Despite Alex’s best attempts to teach me how to dissemble the shells etc, I pretty much butchered every crawfish I ate but it tasted so damn good and I’m proud to say that I tried the brains too. It’s safe to say that if I ever return to Louisiana I’ll DEFINITELY be having more crawfish!


Saturday- Day 1 of competition:


When we had returned to the hotel on Friday night, Sami and I discussed the identity of the event’s ‘mystery guest’ and we opted for some pretty wacky guesses which couldn’t have been further off from the truth. But suffice to say, the moment that Guillaume entered the venue with Joe, Clark and Vanessa on Saturday morning, I remember beaming with happiness as I said my hellos. At one point it looked like they wouldn’t even make it on time but thank god they did because the event wouldn’t have been the same without them!

After finally meeting members of the community like Nathan Stinson and Andrew Koltz for the first time (which was really cool!), we got down to the Time Trial. Due to my hectic uni schedule I hadn’t played SMK itself since the CDM last August, let alone NTSC which hadn’t been touched for over a year. My only training for this championship was a single one-try TT set, a few tracks in MR, around 4 maps of BM and a solitary Mushroom Cup GP round the week before. I had never played multiplayer on NTSC until this point so I really wasn’t expecting much at all in terms of performance but TT started off well…key word there being ‘started’  

In the group-stage equivalent round I think I placed 4th or 5th which was great, until the first knockout stage occurred for the fight into the top 8. GV1 was first and I drove a clean 1’06. So far, so good. DP2 was next and my lack of familiarity with NTSC haunted me as I missed my zoom start and pretty much guaranteed the end of my TT participation. Well, at least Sami missed both zoom starts and given his reputation, this was a much worse situation for him so as the wonderful niece I was, I just reminded myself of his shame and instantly I felt better   Congrats to Karel for taking the gold there and for awesome performances by Guillaume, Martin and Joe!   Also an honorary mention to Clark who took the UK #1 title at NTSC TT one-tries; FUN FACT as of now, Sami doesn’t hold the #1 spot for TT one-tries in both NTSC and PAL   Although he’ll very likely take the PAL one back from me when we return to the CDM this year lmao

Match Race came next along with my first experience of a triple-elimination bracket setup. Amidst the confusion I’ve unfortunately forgotten who I played throughout the evening but what I do recall is losing 2 of my 3 lives earlier than I thought I would. This meant that my chances of achieving a strong rank were incredibly slim as I’d have to wade through a sea of heavy hitters while ensuring I no longer lost a match. But against the odds, it all somehow worked out quite nicely in the end and I managed to take 4th place right behind Guillaume, Sami and Karel. Once again, congrats to Karel for taking the gold there!


Sunday- Day 2 of competition:


The final day of competition began with a headache and on/off sickness spells which plagued my body   But at least I was playing my two favourite modes, right? Wrong. GP 150cc was the mode I’d arguably been dreading the whole time. 150cc on PAL does NOT work well with me, let alone 150cc on NTSC! My first match was in fact against Matt and after discovering that our designated cartridge (as well as a couple of others) didn’t have 150cc unlocked, we both admitted to each other that we actually preferred the slower speed and very happily played a 100cc GP while everyone else struggled   I can’t remember the next opponent again (I think it may have been Karel or maybe even Martin?) but it ended in an unfortunate loss.

Following this, I was thrust into the loser’s bracket where I faced Joe for another great game. Everything seemed to be going well by my side until we got to Rainbow Road, which ended up being a complete and utter DISASTER. I was ranked out and narrowly lost, once again putting me in the less than ideal position of having 2/3 losses early on in the bracket. By this point I was in and out of feeling okay and needing to throw up (sorry for the TMI  ) so I dragged my feet to Chris’ table, declaring my giving up in a ‘Camille Batier-esque’ manner. All I had to do was lose my next match then I could stop playing and lie down. Easy enough, right?

Wrong again. For some godforsaken reason (Sami and I always joke about this), I seem to perform BETTER when I’m not feeling 100% and I managed to replicate my performance from the day prior to reach the final four. At least my headache then disappeared! Anyway, I had to face Guillaume in a first to 3 cup wins and the winner of this match had at least a guaranteed bronze medal, while the loser took 4th place. Statistically I was to lose this match, after all, I’d never knocked out Guillaume in a final phase of anything and my bloody hands were hurting after all the bloody playing. So you could probably understand my bewilderment when I was 2-0 up on cups and needed only to win the Mushroom Cup to take that bronze. That was when the nerves kicked in. Guillaume had a great two cups and with my stupid mistakes he brought it back to 2-2. At this point I’d half accepted defeat and thought well, at least you had a good run  

Our final cup was either Flower or Star because I know it ended with either MC3 or MC4, which of course was the deciding track for the match since the fourth round had left us on equal terms: 30-30. Nobody can say that I don’t like to challenge myself! Anyway, I got my zoom start but Guillaume was left behind and I knew that all I needed to do was drive and JUST NOT CRASH. It’s a shame that I can barely stay on the bloody road with the 150cc speed and if it wasn’t for a very devious Yoshi egg on the final lap forcing Guillaume into a wall, I wouldn’t have narrowly sustained my winning position. In all honesty I have never been so thankful for Yoshi   Guillaume was awesome and gave me a lovely hug which was highly fitting given our earlier conversation regarding our tournament history. My newfound success was so unusual and surreal that I forgot I had to play again, this time against Karel, which ended in my third and final defeat. This was a very welcome loss because I did NOT like the idea of playing any more GP and I much preferred getting to watch the finals instead. Congrats uncle on the gold!

As I’d played my final match against Karel, we both joked at having forgotten that we needed to play Battle Mode after all the tiresome GP games. Once again my mind has unfortunately blocked out 95% of what happened that night in terms of competition so I have nothing really to say here; although, this isn’t because of the whole ‘Team UK sucks at BM’ thing, trust me! I actually prefer playing BM to GP which is why that medal makes no bloody sense at all   my final rank for BM ended up at either 7th or 8th but the funniest thing for me was knowing that TT was unexpectedly by far, my worst rank of the championship   You can’t make this stuff up sometimes! Anyway, it was fantastic to end the night watching some awesome BM skills on display by Drew, who kicked Europe’s arse and took the gold for the US- we’re hoping you can replicate this at the CDM!


Highlights/Things that stick in my memory:


-Winning a bronze medal for a mode which drove me bloody mad all day!!

-Getting to have my first proper experience of America (not when I’m 4 years old and high on sugar in Las Vegas!)

-My many conversations with Guillaume, who is honestly one of my favourite people in this community

-That hilarious moment when I was sat chatting with Guillaume and Clark, and as Guillaume was mid-sentence, Karel mischievously pulled his chair backwards and he disappeared from sight out of nowhere. What made this super funny in that instance was the intensity of the conversation we were having, where Guillaume was literally in the middle of saying something like “What you said really touched my heart” only to be whisked away unexpectedly  

-The endless bants with Clark- again one of my favourite people in this community!

-My constant attempts at trying to get out of being streamed, much to the semi annoyance of Kyle and Chris. This ended up becoming a running joke between the three of us all weekend

-The great many matches I had with Joe- I told Vanessa that you’re hilarious and I genuinely love playing against you so I’m really hoping that you guys will make CDM this year!

-Andrew Koltz revealing to me that in the US a double bacon cheeseburger pizza is actually a thing! Absolute madness, you don’t get that sort of thing back home!

-Being reunited with my dear friend Crystal after nearly 3 years <3

-Getting to enjoy a trip away with my dear uncle Sami- this may surprise all of you but with our family difficulties at home, I barely get to spend time with him anymore and this was a welcome change

-The entire closing ceremony segment: the Trump coin, the Trump video…I guiltily laughed way too much at that!

-Spending a lot of wonderful time with the Kartel who took the BEST care of me in this very unfamiliar place- Matt, Kyle, Eric, Chris, Alex, Heather. I really feel like this event brought Sami and I even closer to you guys and I can’t wait to see you all again <3

Just wanted to end this lengthy bilan with a MASSIVE thank you to everyone that helped to organise this event and those that took part! I’m so thankful that I attended because upon return to uni this week, every time someone mentioned the event, I was left smiling from ear to ear. That’s down to you guys. August can’t come quickly enough and I hope to see many of you again at the next CDM <3

…unless I fail my exams and coursework, in which case I won’t be seeing any of you  

Nice write ups so far.

That for sure was a event \ trip of a life time Joe.

The "I Love Finner" T-shirt is awesome!  

I watched some of it on twitch which was cool as hell. Will the CDM do that this year?

Thanks Nick! To be honest I hadn't really thought of making a return to the forum but now that you mention it, it's something I could very well do  

As for returning to NTSC PRs, I've got a hectic couple of months at uni starting now but once my exams/the academic year finishes in May I'd definitely love to start playing again. This championship certainly reignited my love for the game, that's for sure!

KVD wrote on 03/24/19 at 10:42:02:


Thanks Karel! I think it would feel really weird calling these reflections anything other than a 'bilan' haha. And honestly the timing of your banter was indeed perfect, I replay that moment in my mind a lot and it never fails to make me smile 

On behalf of the Kartel, we are touched by everyone’s words here  .
Joe, I just finished listening  to the karthritis episode that you posted on here and my god, easily the best/funniest episode to date  .  Everything y’all said in the episode concerning ASMKC really hit close to home for Kyle and I, unfortunately  .  I apologize for the blatant unprofessionalism prior and during the tournament.  There wasn’t any promos or updates whatsoever prior to the tournament which in all honesty was mainly due to laziness.  So you all had every right to express concern going into the tournament.  It was nice however to hear echoes of optimism from Karel during the episode  .  Not sure why he had so much confidence in us but thanks a lot buddy  .  While being professional and organized (unfortunately) isn’t our forte, we feel that the tournament was a success considering that we achieved our main goal which was for everyone to have a good time.  

My first interaction with this community was meeting Neo in Strasbourg in September 2015 followed by Karel in Utrecht the following month.  Unfortunately Neo couldn’t make it to ASMKC’s year one but thankfully Karel (and Martin) did.  When I first met Karel and Martin back in late 2015 I would’ve never guessed that a little over 3 years later that I would’ve been hosting them in Monroe, LA for a NTSC world championship  .  Life can be super shitty at times but this community is fucking awesome and I consider myself blessed to be a part of it.  It was refreshing to see so many familiar faces from CDM as well as finally meeting some fellow American karters that I’d never met like Joe and Nathan Stinson.  

My personal favorite highlights from ASMKC:

- Receiving Harvey’s console and handwritten letter in the mail.  Thanks again Harvey  
- Eating crawfish with Sami and Leyla.
- My BM matches with Zarkov.  He is the perot (or pedro?) king  
- Seeing Karel’s reaction to Mario walking into the venue.
- Karel winning the overall title.
- Drew winning BM with Bowser.
- Leyla winning a medal in GP.
- And the hilarious drinking game festivities that ensued after the tournament  .

Bloody good, damn good time everyone that was only made possible because y’all decided to take a chance and come to a tournament that by all means seemed pretty sketchy at first but actually turned out to be a huge year one success.  Thank you all  


P.S.  In regards to the picture of me getting baptized last month in the Jordan River.  I’m 0% religious.  I was visiting a lady friend of mine that lives in Tel Aviv and pretty much got to see all the sites the country has to offer considering how small the country is.  While I was touring Nazareth/the Jordan River our tour guide asked us if anyone would like to get baptized in the Jordan River.  It was unseasonably cold so no one volunteered at first except for me because why not?  The Jordan River is literally the most epic place on Earth to get baptized.  Also, the tour guide said that he would never get baptized because he is Jewish but that he gets satisfaction from watching other people getting baptized  .  I ended up convincing two Christian guys (one from Brazil and the other from California) that they would regret passing up this opportunity so we all got baptized together  

Quote:


It wasn't our intention to make anyone feel badly about the work that was involved in making the ASMKC a reality, we were just expressing our viewpoint as outsiders for the show. I personally never had any real doubt that you guys weren't going to pull it off spectacularly, so that should be known first and foremost. I also understand that it's a massive amount of work involved, so I hope I didn't sound like I was being pessimistic at any point. I knew we'd have a great time and that's all I was hoping for from the very start.

We can't thank you guys enough, honestly. Everything was brilliant as soon as we made it to the venue, so my hat's off to you and your crew. Much respect!  

Going off on a tangent, but I think syntax accuracy in language is grossly overrated. It has always kinda (kind of  ) irked me.

Language is about conveying information. Personally, I rate someone's creativity with language higher than their ability to write 100% according to the existing grammar, spelling, etc. rules.
Of course I perfectly get that some structure and rules are needed so everyone shares the same framework, it makes communication a lot more efficient obviously, but that doesn't justify the language OCD some people seem to be possessed with (I'm talking to y'all grammar nazis  ).




It reminds me of these stupid arithmetic puzzles that go like '90% of people fail to answer this' or 'if you solve this you're a genius' that people share on facebook.



I mean congratulations, you've learned in which order mathematical operations are supposed* to be done. I'm sure that's very impressive, but there is a lot more to math than that**.  

*That's just human convention btw. If some bozo decided for all of us (back when the rules were made) that substraction had precedence over addition, we'd all be using that system instead and all our answers to these kind of problems would be wrong now.  

**and no, I am not particularly good at math. Not even the best one of my floor of the house. There's an inside joke in there somewhere.  

/rant over.  

Everything that everyone has already said is true, however, reading the comment section on Facebook and seeing all the baby-boomer Americans destroy the English language still makes me laugh.

But, let's try to get back on topic, shall we?  

And probably a lot fewer Dumb and Dumber gifs...  

KVD wrote on 03/27/19 at 10:28:01:

You mean one Torah.

Just wondering, was there any kind of local media coverage of this event? I've been curious about whether or not the ASC ever got the attention of any Monroe-area news outlets. If any of you Kartel members have any links to an online News-Star article or better yet, a local television news story on the ASC (especially if some of you were interviewed by reporters), I'd love for you to share it with us!

As my own local news might report on something random like this, especially if it's a slow news day, I can't rule out the possiblity that the ASC was at least a footnote in local news, but in all seriousness I doubt there was any sort of news coverage at all.