Desert Bus for Hope X: The 'X' Makes it Sound Cooler!

[Jace]

Watch the stream on twitch!​

That time of the year again, for me to blatantly copypaste from last year! Again! It's time for the tenth Desert Bus for Hope, which will start in 24 hours from when this was posted.

Spoiler: Good explanation of the event by Al Jazeera

Or in a nutshell, a charity marathon where a bunch of people (mostly from the comedy group Loading Ready Run) play one of the worst/most boring games of all time while auctioning off unique (often geeky) items, singing, performing any challenges watchers give 'em and will have call-ins from people all 'round the world and so on. Good times and sleep-deprivation all around!

There's a schedule of guest call-ins and a constantly updating wiki page for the event.

You can find info about all the drivers (the people who'll do the actual driving of The Bus in eight hour shifts) over at The Drivers Page.

For what you might walk off with from the stream, have a look at the live auction items (These tend to go to several thousand dollars per item), silent auction items (which'll just be auctioned on the webpage, off-stream, tend to be sold for cheaper) and giveaway items which usually are randomly given away for people who donate an exact amount (or multiple thereof) during a certain time period or for drawing/writing challenges (very budget-friendly, but you'll need plenty of luck and/or talent).



Public behind the scenes info?! What's this madness!

I and some other member of the Video Strike Crew are collecting all sorts of data of the stream itself and everything that goes in the chat.

There are several people who capture snippets from the stream and post them as gifs, usually within 20 seconds of it happening on stream. They're all automatically collected over here (with thumbnails!): http://greywool.com/desertbus/10/gifs/

Mike Lunsford has been making a poster of each Desert Bus for Hope since the third one (I believe). This year is no different. Here's a tracker where you can follow the progress of this year's poster: http://greywool.com/desertbus/10/posters.php

Last but not least, here's a collection of all sorts of things, like

• 30 last gifs posted in the chat
• 30 last clips of the stream the VST has uploaded to youtube
• 30 last entries of the What happened and when? timeline, which logs EVERYTHING happening on the stream.

http://vst.ninja/live/latest_data.php

All sorts of other data collection can also be found at http://vst.ninja/, including ones from previous years.




We've also had threads over here of the previous years' DBfHs!

Desert Bus for Hope 9: The Joy of Desert Bus
Desert Bus for Hope 8: The Year of the Crash
Desert Bus for Hope 007: Deserts are Forever
Desert Bus for Hope 6: Desert Bus 3 in America
Desert Bus for Hope 5: De5ertbus
Desert Bus for Hope 4: A New Hope

 

[Jace]

So joyed to see all the action in this thread!

But, as a nutshell:
We managed to raise this year: $694,410.00, which is over $17,000 more than last year!
Lifetime total, in the last decade DBfH has been going for: $3,813,526.15

Some highlights I'd like to share:
First off, there was one member of Loading Ready Run, the comedy troupe who runs this every year, who died earlier this year. Bill Watt. He'd been a friend of theirs since decades ago, the whole group had been playing in his basement for years. Bill's mom has become a mother to all of them.
Bill's Memorial
Bill's Mom speaks of her year

And more entertaining parts of the last week:
"To Be Continued" montage, as inspired by JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Jerry "Tycho" Holkins (of Penny Arcade) gets lost on his way to Victoria and on a bit more serious notes, How did Child's Play start?
Lip Sync Battle: LeeLee, Tara, and Emily to "Mr. Bear" by The Doubleclicks, Ashton to "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys, Graham to "Right Now" by PSY , Ian and Fugi to "History Maker" by Dean Fujioka , Serenity Darkmoon Raven and Jer to "In The End" by Linkin' Park and Alex sings "Kill V. Maim" by Grimes

For people who know about Magic the Gathering:
The room cannot handle Ben's Planeswalker descriptions (AKA origin of Zippotricks McEdgelord[/url]
Several rounds of "Magic card or metal band?": 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6

Also, there were call-ins by:
Grant Imahara
Penn Jillette
Kris Straub for a Spooky Hour
The McElroy Brothers



There's literally a hundred hours more,  you can find all the clips uploaded to youtube over here.



Even if none of you actually posted here, I'm hoping at least one of you tuned in, if even for a moment. Any attention counts, be it donating to the cause, sharing about it to other people or just watching it. Thank you all, if you did! <3

 

[Temuzu]

I'm saving my pennies for AGDQ myself, but good to see they keep increasing the amount they make every year.

 

[Jace]

For the most part of the stream, it looked like they wouldn't reach what last year had. But in the last few hours, things went **** wild.

Blue: 2016
Green: 2015
Red: 2014

Oh yeah, couple things I forgot to link:
"This is the video I'm going to show anyone who asks what Desert Bus for Hope is. Thank you Alex, thank you all, for everything you do." This video has all the feels and explains perfectly what Desert Bus for Hope is all about.

Also, the group has had a documentary film crew following them for a year now, they've filmed over 8 terabytes of footage. The documentary will be free for everyone's watching spring 2017. But, there's a three minute trailer for the documentary up already:

 

[Leifr Eiríksson]

I hate this thread J. It comes around every year and feels exactly like it only happened last month.