« Back to dmbrandon's blog
Alex Strife is running *another* APEX!
posted to the public at 11:08 AM on Friday Jan 13, 2012
Weird, because he actually hasn't run one yet.

In 2009, Alex didn't even find the venue.  Inui found the venue.  Inui ran the tournament.  Inui hired people to do the layout, to do the electronics, and the commentary team was made up of people who we thought were a good idea, including myself.

In 2010, Keitaro found the venue.  Me and Chaos Marth ran the brackets (along with RJ) and VGBootCamp ran the overall experience.

In 2012, I beg the question: Where the **** was Alex Strife?

For the months leading up to Apex, we as a group silently decided that Alex was incapable of running this event.  Privately, I've been told by pretty much everyone that I was the creative mind behind this event.  With that said, it's important to know that Alex had three main duties as a host behind this event.  Collectively, it was understood that Alex wasn't hosting anything.  We gave him jobs specifically to do so that we, the actual staff of Apex 2012, could focus on the actual events' success.

  1. Ensure that there were enough setups.
  2. Make sure the out of country players were accommodated.
  3. Not get in anyone else's way.
You would be extremely hard-pressed to find that any of these three points were met with satisfaction.  Let's go through the list:

1.  Setups.

For 5 months, we determined that we needed 104 setups.  We worked on the floor plan and schedule for this event for almost half a year.  In December, Alex made the point that he would not be able to get 104 TVs, so we lowered that to 89--a feat absolutely obtainable since we've had more than this in the past.

Alex's lack of preparation and overall laziness led to there not being enough setups.  You've seen me take the heat for a lot of stuff, but I can absolutely guarantee that 90% of the problems stemmed from Alex Strife claiming that he could do what he could not.

Anyone who was threatened with DQ for playing a friendly, you have my sincere apology (as well as Doom's), but it was the only way that Doom, Chaos Marth, Fats and Chibo would be able to actually get through the bracket, since Alex Strife was unable to do one of the three very easy tasks that he was required to do for this event.

2.  Out of country players.

I am so utterly and completely embarrassed about how the Japanese were treated.  I received a phone call from Vinnie the morning of January 3rd at 12:15 AM.  That previous morning, Vinnie was tasked with guiding the Japanese (on his own dime, mind you) around New York City.  This was because Alex's plan for housing the Japanese fell through, and they were unable to stay where they were.

That night, Vinnie called Alex to say that the same situation was going to happen the next morning and they would have nowhere to stay.  Like a good host, Alex responded quickly, said "I'll get back to you in 15 minutes," and went on to make extra plans for the Japanese.

What actually happened is that Alex turned his phone off and went to sleep.

Cristin was actually the one able to figure out what to do after she called Alex Strife's landline over 10 times.  She was also the one to find the Japanese proper housing; Alex had nothing to do with it.

Alex also had the Japanese riding in the back of a U-Haul van along with their luggage and the scant amount of TVs he was able to procure.

3.  Not get in anyone else's way.

I would rather re-hammer Christ to the cross than EVER work with Alex Strife again.  He is a danger to himself and others.  Late night phone calls of threatening suicide, a host who constantly says he is unable to run the event and threatens to quit, and a creative mind that has been drained of the juice that people so often flock towards.

The only actual work Alex Strife did that weekend was getting on the mic and making all of the rest of the staff look like fools.  While I was using my commanding presence to ensure this tournament finished on time, Alex Strife used his stage time as the center ring in a circus.

Conclusively, it's important to know that Alex Strife does not do this for the money; Alex Strife does not do this for the community.

Alex uses Apex as a means to make people like him.  Not in a social networking way, not in a way to make a career out of it.  He just wants to be a spectacle.

Recently, Chibo and I have began talks about having Apex signed over to us so that we may continue running this event to the level that you'd expect.  Alex Strife has taken it upon himself to post publicly that he has declined our offer.  Since I will not be a part of Apex next year as of this moment, I think it's important to know that despite my taking of the spear, I am no martyr.  I did this specifically for the sake of the event that I hold so dear.  If that means I have to publicly blow up Alex Strife to ensure that everyone out there knows the truth, then hey--that's what I gotta do.

Just like last year's introspective from ChiboSempai, I'm explaining the faults of the person you all think is the best TO in the country.  He doesn't organize anything. 

Comments

1 2 3 4 5 7
Black Mother wrote at 12:40 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I based my response off of information given from this blog. I never added any extra information in my post. I didn't assume anything. Not to say that you said I was assuming anything but I felt you were directing that at me, Chibo.

dmbrandon wrote at 12:43 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Cristin worked incredibly hard, but she doesn't know how to delegate responsibility, and she lacks experience to actually control an environment this big.

She's great at what she does, and that is what she should be doing.

Keitaro wrote at 12:43 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Uh oh!

Ill post back soon. And I was gonna start looking for another venue for Alex *Keitaro good at finding venues :P*

Luigisama wrote at 12:46 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I'll boycott that apex 2013.

Eddie G wrote at 12:53 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I am extremely disappointed to see that the Japanese were treated this way. What the hell man...

wWw Dazwa wrote at 1:08 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
dmbrandon wrote at 11:33 AM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Like when he left the Venue for almost 3 hours on Friday after chibo asked him to get headphones. My man left to go to staples for "supplies." Supplies no one needed or asked for. No headphones, either.

I was the one who actually suggested that trip, ftr. Not sure why he grabbed the mechanical pencils, but I told him that the stations were improperly labelled (had insanely small stickers and thus, insanely small handwriting), so I suggested we go to a nearby Staples to get larger stickers. For w/e reason our GPS wasn't finding this Staples, so we got lost for a bit until we spotted it manually. Trip wasn't 3 hours, more like...30 minutes at most.

(and for the record, I don't usually recommend stickers, but I don't recommend signs either unless they're at a eye-level, such as http://i.imgur.com/Az0Ux.jpg which I think you guys should look into for your next major)

BC Chris wrote at 11:49 AM on Jan 13, 2012 :
And apparently Alex and JV had a cluster**** of a "conversation" which ended up having JV say "who the **** are you?" It was something about Alex running MLG for Brawl or something equally crazy. People like Solid Jake had to apologize for the host of the ****ing tournament.

JV was one of the reps who came down, but there was another (who Alex had the...."conversation" with) who is even higher up on the MLG ladder than JV is, but less familiar with the Smash community than JV (JV asking "who the **** are you?" would be rhetorical, this other rep was legit asking who Alex was). As a result, JV and Jake, who both hung out with the other rep that night, profusely apologized. After hearing about it, I asked JV for the contact details of this person just so I could apologize for it, but he assured me it wouldn't be necessary.

wWw Dazwa wrote at 1:08 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Also I personally apologize I wasn't able to help out more this weekend. I was volunteering as a referee but I couldn't even communicate with players (as my voice didn't work - it just returned as of this morning, yay :D) so I had to bail on that task. That's why I was so eager to volunteer for food court security, and it's why I went all-out helping with the Sat->Sun setup (would have stayed even longer if my ride didn’t want to leave), because I felt pretty worthless as far as staffing went <_<

If you guys can’t get the APEX name, diem, you already know your alternative, keep in touch if you do :D

dmbrandon wrote at 1:09 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
We asked for headphones, and he left. that was about 1:30. We didn't see him again til 4.

Where he was before and after that is beyond me.

Tairbear wrote at 1:11 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
for real
the only thing I saw alex running was the 1$ sticker booth.

The Truth wrote at 1:27 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Who's idea was it to get the internationals, the sponsorships, invite the FGC, etc?

The Truth wrote at 1:28 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
And who organized and drew together the staff in the first place?

Alessandra wrote at 1:29 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
o.o Wow. That all sounds terrible. I can't say much more since I wasn't actually there due to David just barely getting out of the hospital... but just an fyi, if you guys ever have an emergency like that again where you need to house someone you guys can always call David and I. It's really not a problem. I know Vinnie tried to contact me for the Japanese but he did it via facebook chat, which I was not on at that time. A phone call would have been better and believe me, David and I wouldn't leave anyone on the street. Also, David is a good tour guide :)

Best of luck. I think you guys should just run your OWN tournament, and when people hear how well it has been run, it will gain the same fame as Apex. And you know you can count on David and I for, well, anything you may need, really.

-MAC- Miguel wrote at 1:29 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Time to run your own tourney, you obviously have the means to succeed.

Sean wrote at 1:29 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Sky and myself was looking at everything going on and we was just like...

"What the **** is alex doing? DM and doom are doing EVERYTHING"

For basically 2 people doing so much, you guys did A LOT. Too bad 2 people can't make this possible and you need a team of people for a tourney of that caliber. It sucks that a lot of people weren't doing their part. =(

Side note: I know there was a lot of people doing **** that DM and doom weren't doing like the live steam and all that jazz, but lets be real.... They were doing a lot more. LOL

SYS Kennen wrote at 1:48 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
dmbrandon wrote at 11:38 AM on Jan 13, 2012 :
It's not, at all Chibo. alex already publicly posted that he and cristin are running 2013. that was this morning, meaning they're planning without us.
--------
This is absolutely ridiculous about how Apex went, especially the way that Alex treated everyone. Thank you dm and Chibo for preventing it from a disaster, you guys are great.

Alex hosting Apex next year without you guys is terrible.

LordXav1er wrote at 1:53 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I think you should try just making your own tourney =D

The Truth wrote at 1:54 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
^ not trying to troll btw. I ask because this isnt anything abnormal. Often times with any business/event/process people fill different roles. Some people bring ideas and concepts; some people talk to the customers,bring people together, advertise, build a reputation, are a figurehead; and some people are good at administrating and doing legwork.

Just because Alex was bad at things he was assigned to do doesnt mean he didnt fill an integral roll for the event. it just means next time he shouldnt be doing them. I doubt the event wouldve hit the numbers it did without his name, which is why you probably waited till after the event to make this blog.

Sean wrote at 1:55 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
They do LordX.... They are the concentrate tourney series...

pulse131 wrote at 1:56 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
who ever said he was worth anything at all? not anyone ive ever met :/
id be damned if i ever thought anything of him

ANTi wrote at 1:57 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Well Apex 2009 was the best one @ that was when Inui hosted I think.

Bring Inui back =D

Singles grand finals ended like @ 9PM.

HyugaRicdeau wrote at 2:02 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
wWw juice.Dazwa wrote at 10:08 AM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I was the one who actually suggested that trip, ftr. Not sure why he grabbed the mechanical pencils, but I told him that the stations were improperly labelled (had insanely small stickers and thus, insanely small handwriting), so I suggested we go to a nearby Staples to get larger stickers. For w/e reason our GPS wasn't finding this Staples, so we got lost for a bit until we spotted it manually. Trip wasn't 3 hours, more like...30 minutes at most.

I can confirm this.

I'm not going to comment on Alex Strife but I do want to say that despite dmbrandon's rather...off-putting nature on AiB/boards sometimes, he was very helpful and knew what was going on during the whole tournament, at least to me.

Keitaro wrote at 2:10 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
You guys know how the working system works? There are managers, and there are people who are told what to do by managers. I'm a firm believer in this.

If Strife organized and got people to slave around for him, then it is good managing on his part, since he won't have to do anything. Inui is great at this. At his last event Doom, DM, and myself ran around doing stuff while Inui sat back for the most part chillin.

I am not sure exactly what Strife was supposed to do, actually running the event the day of is A LOT less work than planning for it, especially big events like this. So it doesn't matter if Strife was jerking off in a hotel room the entirety of Apex, if he managed his workers to get this and that done and it worked, he did a great job.

TO means tournament organizer not guy-who-runs-around-doing-a-bunch-of-****. In my opinion that's what the staff is for. Do you think the head of MLG was running around calling matches and doing bracket crap? No, he had Alphazealot, Halo people, and others doing that for him. He may have not even been at the event besides to do a speech where he possibly forgot to mention one of the events going on that day cause he didn't even know.

BUT, that is for a properly ran event. For Apex, I knew this was going to go way off schedule, so overall the planning made for the scheduling was pretty much ***. Plans to get better with the FGC community failed pretty badly so I'd suggest dropping that before they drop us themselves. Payment for the event was pretty iffy. Main reason I wasn't jumping around as much as DM or Doom was because I know I was being payed possibly 1 to 5% of what they were being paid. I was also really only told to run All Brawl but I still helped out quite a bit on the 2nd day.

All I'm really trying to get at right now is that the main TO isn't supposed to be doing the most work the day of the event.

Keitaro wrote at 2:15 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
As for Strife regarding hosting, I don't even know how good he is with that cause most events he held had someone else doing the hard stuff for him. One thing I know he is good for is getting people to come to his tournament and finding staff to do the work for him. Props on that.

For everything else......yeah lol. I also know a lot of other stuff that could be said that would make people go "OMG WTF ALEX" that even DM doesn't know but I'm keeping quiet. I refuse to put people on blast like that unless they shot me in the *** or something.

dmbrandon wrote at 2:16 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Apex 2009 had 500 people compared to Apex 2012's 1300. Inui or not, this would have happened given the pathetic setup count.

Prawn the Blackguard wrote at 2:29 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
BRING BACK INUI

BRING BACK INUI

BRING BACK INUI

The Truth wrote at 2:32 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
100% agree with Keitaro. Alex was already taking the blame for everything that didnt run well at Apex because it was his name attached to the event.

Mentioning the work others did for previous successful Apex events just tell us hes great at pulling together a staff of people to run successful events, and that he wasnt successful pulling together as many people as he should have for areas that fell short this time.

Almo wrote at 3:47 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Setups were clearly the main issue, but there was a lot of poor planning behind it. Especially when a week or 2 before Apex, after VGBootCamp had been "dropped" for streaming or whatever, the issue had been brought up if there would be enough setups, and Diem responded, and I quote, "Yep." Bizkit responds, "Well, you know, the whole VGBootCamp dropping setups and everything" to which Diem said "Oh no, we don't care about that."

Clearly some miscommunication with this and how many setups you were actually going to have, and perhaps with better planning it could have been run a bit smoother. Not blaming anyone for the planning, since I had no idea who was actually in charge of this.

D1 wrote at 4:30 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
This is actually the stupidest and most immature thing I've seen Dm do. There's a lot of things one wouldn't do in a business relationship, and this is definitely one of them. You have a problem with someone? Stop dodging them, and take the matter to them straight up. That is how a real man does it. Me and Alex, and many other people have had problems in the past, but instead of putting all the dirty laundry out there on social media networks I'll talk to them face to face because I'm an adult. I was a firm believer that you my good friend wouldn't stoop so low, but after reading this I beg to differ. I'm not going to continue to comment on this thread because it almost seems like someone's vying for attention, and that my good deserves a dip without a smile.

dmbrandon wrote at 4:34 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
D1, I tried. I talked to Cristin, I talked to Alex. After they said we'd talk about it, Alex went public behind my back making all kinds of claims.

Alex only cares about one thing: ATTENTION. So, if this is the way I'm going to get his, then so be it. I've exhausted my efforts, and I'm goddamned tired of being put on the back burner.

dmbrandon wrote at 4:35 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
@almo: Jon made those decisions ALONE. He made a new friend in Jaxel, and liked him more, so he fed VG to the dogs. Granted, I was trying to get VG to up their ****, but I had no vote. I was the PR, so I was in charge of making people trust Apex.

I don't want that to hurt my reputation when Alex ****s up again. He's out of people who trust him entirely, and I'm not going down with his sinking ship.

-Mav- wrote at 4:37 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Pretty knew most of this already, when diem and I were only 2 of maybe 8?(Correct me if im wrong dm) staff people at the venue at 8am, when the venue was supposed to open.

aisight wrote at 4:37 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
diem: Out of curiosity, where exactly did Alex go public? I didn't see it anywhere on here or Smashboards.

Phil Nye the SCIENCE Guy wrote at 4:39 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Somewhere, in Lynwood, WA, Chris of GC is shaking his head, wishing all those people took his tournaments seriously because of his amazing TO skills.

dmbrandon wrote at 4:41 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Posting on someone's facebook, telling them that he and cristin are definitely in charge and are planning things. No word of this to anyone.

OffDaChain wrote at 4:47 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Alex also had the Japanese riding in the back of a U-Haul van along with their luggage and the scant amount of TVs he was able to procure

I could understand this is they were just brought here to make controllers and T-Shirts but this is just insane D:

-Mav- wrote at 4:47 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Also diem, I definitely see where your coming from here especially since i worked with you all weekend, but like chibo said, maybe you guys should of tried to settle this behind the scene more, and if that failed, this should of been less of a personal attack on Alex. Its really harsh. This blog could of been a lot more professional.

However at the same time, I know a lot of the details, but not all of them. And without all of them I can't criticize/commend you for making this blog. I'm not going to bite off more than i can chew here.

Atomsk wrote at 4:50 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I'm prepared to be thrown in the back of a milk truck on my way to sunrise.

Kain wrote at 4:51 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Shoutouts to you and Doom btw, I actually figured this out by watching how he acted during the event and said it constantly that it didn't seem like he was actually doing...anything?

dmbrandon wrote at 4:53 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
I'm not writing this to get you guys to believe in me or some ****. Those who were there know what's up.

I'm writing to show the world what actually happened. I'm not blasting him, and nothing I've said isn't 100% fact. (Cept the jesus thing.)

Sparta Kick wrote at 4:58 PM on Jan 13, 2012 :
clowsui wrote at 11:49 AM on Jan 13, 2012 :
Sounds like Alex Strife is the Daycia of the East Coast. Hopefully everyone gets the message, because when I tried to blast Daycia it blew up in my face

lmaooooo

1 2 3 4 5 7