Awww yeah baby, I’m chillin’ here in the Press Room at the Autodromo in Monza Italy, home of the Italian Grand Prix AND this year’s World Cyber Games Grand Finals. My badge has Press on one side and Sponsor on the other, so I am a VVIP with dual citizenship. What has my laminated bling got me? So far not a heck of a lot, though I’ve had a couple cups of coffee, a Pepsi and two cookies.
Although the WCG Opening Ceremony is still a couple hours off, the players are out in force, and there is plenty for them to do. The Xbox/Games for Windows booth is jampacked and well on its way to smelly. The most popular attractions are Gears of War, Double Agent and COD 3 on the 360, and Halo 2 and Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs on the PC.
Players have also been busy smashing the crap out of each other in bumpercars, playing basketball, and engaging in some bizarre gladiator game on an inflatable platform.
The whole world is here, it seems. I’ve seen teams from Canada, Austria, China, Mexico, Spain, Khazakstan, Switzerland, Croatia and Vietnam. There are two booth babes here who besides myself appear to be the only females.
Ran into chompr and DOA Master who I met in Vegas last month, and I was very pleased to see Paultemps from Canada, and TTR McLaren F1 –the Swedish kid who won the PGR 3 tourney in June. He’s about a foot taller than when I last saw him in Bologna.
Trixieland 
Khazakstan? Any sign of Borat?
Borat will be disappointed you misspelled Kazakhstan
I had/have no clue how to spell it and honestly didn’t bother to look it up. I cut and pasted TriXie’s spelling of the word. First, my Mac won’t let me put line breaks on posts on Xbox.com and now this! Argh!
Larry might need some major (no pun intended!) support, TriX. His blog is getting hammered by bitchers and whiners about Live still being down. Is that going to affect the finals over there, or is it all on system link 360’s?
Trixie, hope you took some Febreeze…start spraying that on all of the sweaty guys, especially on the ones whose cultures don’t require frequent showering. Keep up the good work.