i probably shouldnt waste the time to post this, but my gf told me (I burned the disc on my lunch break) that when she put it in, it showed the matrix-esque intro (just the scrolling w/ "media x menu") and then went to a black screen (no bg as she tells me) with the screen shots on the right, and text listing of the games on the left.
apparantly, my idea didnt work yet...(using mxm to load a menux theme)
I used craxtion to make the iso with menux and the "kojak" theme, then extracted the iso, copied the mxm xbe file over the default.xbe file, and recreated an iso.
so, I will have more details once I get a chance to test the game loading (which I dont think will have problems)...I still wonder why the theme didnt work...