During the final Night Watch of 2021, we all – together, chat and crew and everyone who’s come along for any part of this wild ride – we ALL reached the amazing milestone of $8 MILLION raised over the lifetime of Desert Bus for Hope!

Opening Credits

Special thanks to dostrow_ whose $20,000 winning bid on the pair of Mass Effect guns got our evening off to a high octane start, and heronblademaster who donated $4,626 to cross the final threshold to this incredible milestone.

Thanks to everyone’s combined efforts and support, we have achieved what some thought impossible. Yes, that’s right. The Q judged us ferior.

The crew of the USS Tucson very much enjoyed getting visits from special guests, like Ensign Matt from the runabout Duck Creek.

Admittedly, we got a little frightened when Matt threatened to arrest us for illegal weapons sales. Us? The crew of the USS Tucson? Why, we are perfect angels who would never engage in illegal weapons sales!

And we DEFINITELY wouldn’t do it again tomorrow.

…Moving on. We also got a power Serge via the Telepresence Robot. Serge was an expert at piloting the robot.

Plus, Ensign Ben FINALLY found his way back to the USS Tucson today, which meant that Ben and Serge were able to reunite!

All in all, a truly heartwarming night! We were in such a good mood that we didn’t even blow up Zeta today. After a full week of destructive loops, we realized that together, we could make this the best timeline!

If you want to commemorate the antics of the USS Tucson and its crew, you can buy the USS Tucson playmat or poster! Proceeds go to Child’s Play.

For one golden, glorious moment, Team Order achieved their ultimate limit break: seven sevens, or $7,777,777 earned across Desert Bus history. But for the rest of the evening on Night Watch, Chaos reigned.

Opening Credits

Ambassador “Andrew” Rae Jepsen seemed strangely perturbed to find out that he’s not the only ambassador aboard. Apparently nobody told him that the mission of the USS Tucson is to boldly shuttle ambassadors across a barren stretch of space! But many ambassadors and otherworldly beings joined us tonight.

For starters, our perpetually lost Ensign Ben has apparently morphed into a being called ZorBen and he’s recruiting teenagers Night Watch to help the children.

We got a return visit from Ambassador Joe, who was kind enough to help drive the bus for a bit.

Then a being calling himself Skeletor invaded our bridge BUT FORGOT TO TURN ON HIS MIC.

Even Harry the Creepy Doll, who has always been here silently watching, took inspiration from all these visitors to throw an impromptu dance party. It was… viscerally disturbing.

Literally: viscerally disturbing. Harry’s guts started to spill out.

Naturally, we attempted to report all these strange visitations to Starfleet Command. Our call went straight to an automated answering machine apparently called What the Dub, but we waded through multiple sci fi clips with great patience. When we finally got a real person on the line, they told us “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.” No wonder Command hasn’t been answering our hails!

So we guess we’ll just go back to watching TikToks and eating from dump trucks.

To Be Continued…

My, my, my. What didn’t happen this Night Watch! We had Holodeck failures, a banger auction, a marriage proposal, a Hamfather cameo… we were even on Canadian TV!

Opening Credits

You know that awkward feeling when you show up to a Halloween party and you’re in costume but no one else is? Yeah, we’re having the opposite right now. All of us showed up to the Holodeck only to find out we’d all reserved it at the same time and overloaded the system, so it broke!

After last night’s giveaway (which by the way, turned out to be a birthday gift! Awww!), we were ready to go live with a 3D Felted Totoro and Friends auction. And just like last night, we got to see another record broken: at $16,384 this live auction went for the highest amount in Desert Bus history! Thanks so much to all our participants for helping the children, and also being incredibly good-hearted and supportive as the bids rolled in.

Of course, we had to celebrate this milestone so cue the Random Dance Party! Sheer, glorious luck landed us on the Kidz Bop version of Montero – and then a marriage proposal happened!

“During Kidz Bop, really?!” -Chief Boomer

No sooner had we recovered our breath from that wild ride than a well-dressed gentleman apparently known as “The Hamfather” entered the room to accompanying violin and approached Graham with a proposal. “Ham?” “Please.” Over the course of the next few minutes… and then next few minutes… and then quite a while after that, actually… the Hamfather laboriously shoved pieces of steak into a grinder and made a hamburger for Graham’s delectation.

Graham seemed to enjoy it.

You’d think that was the whole six hours of adventure, but no! Here are just a few more of the silly situations into which the crew of the USS Tucson was thrust:

• Watching ourselves on Canadian TV
• Invading the Engineering room to cause problems, then being invaded by Alpha Flight’s Jacob who also invaded the Engineering Room only to be chased out BY Engineering
• Hearing the tale of how Ambassador “Andrew” Gax acquired a $250 globe for $20 from a Russian dealer of Ketracel-white
• Sending our heads into space
• Another visit from the Q, who might just be pitting half of us against the other half

We also continue to be overrun by Thwomps, to such a degree that we invited the Chat Continuum to send us art of Thwomps infesting the USS Tucson. We were also delighted to receive a fan-made video of the Wii Shop music (as played by Thwomps) and find a link to an N64 Everything is Thwomps video.

In short: we will never be using the Holodeck again. Let’s just blow up Zeta and get out of here!

At this point, we’re about to slap a communicator on these thwomps and make them part of the USS Tucson crew. We hosted an art contest to show just how far this infestation has gone!

Winner: Sierrmo

Thanks to everyone who sent in art! We had a lot of entries that made us laugh, and made it hard to choose just one (or heck, even narrow down the Honorable Mentions). Congratulations to Sierrmo, and we hope you enjoy your Desert Bus shirt!

Honorable Mention: RueBloodletter

Honorable Mention: Discordant Creations

Honorable Mention: Tichtac

Honorable Mention: TowerSlayer Note: we couldn’t get the gif to play in WordPress, but if it did you would see an avalanche of Thwomps fall down and fill the screen!

We’ve had <URGH!> a bit of an ongoing problem here on <URGH!> Night Watch. They were cute at first but <URGH! URGH!> these Thwomps have really started to get out <URGH!> of <URGH!> hand <URGGGGGGH!>.

All styles of Thwomp are <URGH!> welcome!

But we’re all about making the best <URGH!> of things, so let’s have an art contest! Please send us <URGH!> your rendition of a room on the USS Tucson being overwhelmed by Thwomps. You know, like <URGH!> Tribbles!

Send your art to [email protected] with the subject line “Thwomps” before 11pm Pacific Time. In the body <URGH> of the email also make sure to include your <URGH!> Desert Bus For Hope username, your chat name, or whatever <URGH!> else you’d like to be called out loud on stream! We’ll pick our <URGH!> favorite to win a free Desert Bus t-shirt! <URGH URGH URGH!>

Transmitting all the way from Rigel 4.5, longtime friends of the bus and consummate performers Andrew Cownden and Madeleine Suddaby are currently live with the crew of the USS Tucson.

They’re taking challenges from the chat and the singing has already begun, so hustle on in to the Night Watch stream to catch them while you can!

Our journey through the stars continues, even though today we were beset by an Invasion of the Q. As if the Chat Continuum weren’t enough lovable chaos! The crew has begun to act… oddly.

Opening Credits!

Despite these irregularities, we were able to raise the Grand Nagus on Comms to introduce our new silent auctions.

In true Starfleet fashion, we chose to maintain our neutrality in the Kindness War.

We had a very artistically fulfilling evening, beginning with Lt. Cori reciting her favorite poem!

The crew also rejoiced when we received a new Holodeck program from The Garages, which we immediately activated to view their performance. The Chat Continuum expressed their approval of this performance by helping The Garages hit #1 on Bandcamp!

We’re positively spoiled for good music on this ship. Max played their fiddle for us again – and broke the mic again. Their power is over 9000!

Ensign Ben also provided us with a broad artistic review of Thwomps over Time. It was a most edifying lecture.

We also found out where our lost crewmate, the King of Spades, has gone through an art contest! It seems he’s been spotted all over the galaxy, so we assembled a document of notable sightings.

And then this happened.

We made slimes and then threw them at things. Like Ian’s face! For the record, the crew of the USS Tucson is 99.9% certain that no changelings were harmed in the yeeting of these slimes.

We’ll see where our adventures take us tomorrow!

Last night, the USS Tucson lost a crew member. Well, maybe “misplaced” more than lost. We wouldn’t want to be misleading. The point is, we don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. But maybe you do? Hence tonight’s art contest: show us what the King of Spades has been up to!

He looked like this when we last saw him, but he may have adopted a new identity by now.

How it Started | How it’s Going – A King of Spades Story

Once you’ve finished your piece of art, please email them to us at [email protected] and have the subject line be King of Spades. Make sure we RECEIVE the email by 10pm PST!

In the body of the email also make sure to include your Desert Bus For Hope username, your chat name, or whatever else you’d like the be called out loud on stream. Thanks in advance for letting us see what the King’s been doing!

This time, on Night Watch…

Our discussion of the merits of root beer somehow led us to crime.

We enjoyed our visit from Tabitha Sheehan (via the Telepresence Robot), who joined in our Star Trek poker game.

Max fiddled. Then fiddled again later in the evening, this time so hard they broke the mic! 

We also played “What animal are you” for every Desert Bus Shift.

Finally, as we all say: Ajony.

During our FINAL Night Watch of 2020:

We had our daily dose of Night Watch News!

We cleared Alpha Flight’s remaining challenges!

A Desert Bus Poster live auction appeared!

We looked at Mike Selinker’s very special Desert Bus-themed Apocrypha adventure!

Ben gave us a very special rendition of This Year by The Mountain Goats, raaaaah! <3 (cw: mention of suicide):

POINT GET!

We had a Liz visit!

Arby’s is with you, forever:

Can we ever escape from the Sea Kingdom?!

Night Watch Voltron!

We hit $800K AND finished the RDP list!

Thank you all SO MUCH for watching, your support is what makes Desert Bus what it is, we could not do any of this without you!

Remember, for the latest updates, stay tuned to desertbus.org. You can also catch up on the latest #DB2020 happenings around the web…

• Submit your bussing from home photos at yourphotos.desertbus.org.
• Tweet about what Desert Bus for Hope and Child’s Play means to you using the hashtag #DBToMe.
• Visit youtube.com/user/DesertBusForHope for the latest video highlights from the Video Strike Team (VST).
• Be our friend on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• And, of course, the live stream is always available at desertbus.org and twitch.tv/desertbus!