If you live in Southern California, Spike TV is looking for outgoing 18-30-year-old men and women who are crazy about Halo. Hmm… More details can be found in Konrad’s forum post.

synide sent along a clipping from yesterday’s USA Today newspaper about the Halo 2 soundtrack. There’s one thing you gotta say for adding high-profile musicians to your soundtrack – it gets you mentioned in a newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 2.5 million copies.

Interesting. There’s a charity dinner being hosted by the Entertainment Software Association to raise money for a non-profit foundation that supports children’s groups – and this time around, they’re auctioning off a large number of items for the cause. There are a lot of items, so sorting out the Halo-related ones might be rough… but look around, there’s everything from an autographed Halo Special Edition Xbox, to a Halo 2 Sergeant Johnson Personalized Outgoing Message for your answering machine, to a roto-molded fiberglass Master Chief figure standing more than 3 feet high. Remember – the money all goes to charity. Lots of folks sent this in – looks like Dusty was first.

To all the folks sending word that the Fan Fiction and Dialogue Databank sections have stopped working properly – we know. The tool that used to fix that problem has somehow broken – until we can get it fixed, these sections are spotty, at best. Sorry. (To stave off the inevitable offers – there’s no way to move these sections to machines at other sites; we appreciate it when people try to help, but we’ve got to fix this one ourselves. Thanks!)

IGN continues its countdown to Halo 2 with an article about the competition – games coming out the same week as Halo 2. Games like Mario Tennis, and Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Challenge. Hmm.

Took MUCH longer than I’d anticipated, but the aspect-corrected QuickTime versions of the Weekly Update movie are now available for download; your best bet is to snag one of the BitTorrent links for the Hi-res version, or a direct download for the smaller one. Thanks to all the hosts providing bandwidth here – this community ROCKS!

Bah. I was hoping that the QuickTime versions would generate quickly… but nothing ever goes as planned. Earlier today, Bungie released ‘Bungie Weekly Update: Sexy Girls Gone Wild Video Edition’ – which isn’t nearly as racy as it sounds, though it IS a nice walk through the Bungie offices. Bungie.net is swamped at the moment, so we’ve put up a mirror list of both direct downloads and BitTorrent seeds for grabbing this movie. If you don’t like WMP9 format (or you’d rather that the aspect ratio be correct) you might want to wait until the QuickTime versions are done – they’re both 16:9 (the way the movie was intended to be) and should be online shortly. Meanwhile, if you’re mirroring these files, feel free to send us links; we’ll add them to this page. Thanks!

Bali has noticed a new Newsflash on Xbox.com – a story about the Halo 2 Launch Party, which will take place on November 8th at the Toys R Us in Times Square, in New York City. Special guest appearances, prizes for gamers, and some pre-release playtime for a limited number of lucky folks. Details at both Xbox.com and ToysRUs.com.

Sketch sends word that Halo 2 is Gold. This means it’s done, certified, in the box; time to start duplicating. There are far more details, if you’re into that kind of thing, over at B.net. The critical piece, though, is that it’s DONE.

Wow. It took way too long – but I’ve finally cleared out most of the Dialogue Databank queue – there are 157 new entries today, including an entirely new Multiplayer section (really clean – thanks, Captain Spark!). There are large swaths of new Jackal and Elite sounds, as well. Go see what you can find!

A brand-new cut from the Halo 2 soundtrack, by Breaking Benjamin, has been released on nilerodgers.com. Thanks go to WRATHofGOD, of halo-zone.com, for the heads-up. It’s still not clear how (or if) this is actually used in-game. Update: Although we’ve known about the 2-volume soundtrack, today it’s been officially announced by Sumthing Else Music Works. More details can be found at TeamXbox (thanks, MiD33) and DailyGame (thanks, GoogleAlerts).

Missed this yesterday – there was a story at TeamXbox about Team Compete, a group which is firing up a couple of leagues for Halo 2 competitive play. There’s an Open League, free to everyone with a XBL account, that will have a $2500 cach prize purse for their inaugural season… and a Pro League, which will require a fee for membership, but will have a $25,000 cash prize purse for the season. More details will be forthcoming, as the season gets closer (play will start on November 9). Thanks to HaloPlanet for the heads-up.

BOLL went to the trouble of importing a Halo 2 MC from Singapore – then he took it outside, and had a photo shoot. Luckily, there are no bikini shots.

Today’s One One Se7en was inspired by a forum conversation with Dave Candland, interface designer for the Halo 2 HUD. Poor MC…

We’ll start you off this Monday morning with 11 new pieces in the Fan Fiction section. Read with your coffee…

Couple of notes from Jonah yesterday – lots of stuff slipping through the cracks. First was an interview with Matt Leto, better known in the Halo community as Zyos, over at Gamespot. There’s a video interview that goes with it; streaming for the masses, 52.3 mb of QuickTime goodness for Complete members. Cool fact – in the past 12 months, Matt has won $55,000 in Halo tournaments. (He’s 20 years old!)

Ms Man has once again shown that there’s more to Halo than you knew. This time, he managed to get a Banshee outside AotCR. Completely outside the level. To the point where you’re looking at the map – as an enclosed space. And you’re not in it. The video is 4:36 long, and 16 mb in WMP9 format. We’ve mirrored it, and created a QuickTime version (16.9 mb). Thanks, Juggertrout, for pointing out another jawdropper.

DocOctavius stopped by the forum to point out the new Yayap.com Halo CE dedicated server, running ‘most of the best Halo CE maps in various gametypes’. The entire map collection can be downloaded from the website – if you haven’t played many of the Halo CE custom maps, here’s a chance to see a whole bunch in one place!

If you’re Canadian, go visit your local Blockbuster video; i fyou pre-purchase Halo 2 or Halo 2 LE before November 9th, you’re entered to win one of four life-sized Master Chief statues. Details on this Promotions page. (I could find no similar page for US-based Blockbusters.) Thanks, D_BRINGER.

Yaksha points out Sponsors vs Freeloaders Episode 2: Freeloaders Strike Back, a movie parodying the relationship between Red vs Blue sponsors and those who want hi-res versions of the videos without paying for them. It’s 9 minutes long, 12.7 mb large, in WMP9 format. There’s some explanation of what this is about (and links to the first episode) on their website.