Author: Heather

September 23 was the fourth night of Season 23 which means that we finished the rotation between banks 4 and 5, known as Democritus and Heraclitus after two pre-Socratic philosophers. Their traditional epithets are “the Laughing Philosopher” and “the Weeping Philosopher” respectively, but whether the night left someone laughing or weeping didn’t seem to correlate with the bank. For my part, I had a much better time with Heraclitus than Democritus, which suits me fine, given that Heraclitus is my favorite pre-Socratic. Heraclitus is also known as the philosopher who said that fire was the fundamental principle of the universe, so that must be why I had a hot streak.

At one point I got called over to Monster Bash to resolve an issue in which the right flipper button was getting stuck. I did what I have seen other TDs that I respect do in this situation. I hit the button 100 times to see if the problem recurred. Since it didn’t, I said “play on” and left. Minutes later they fetched me to say it happened again and this time I was able to reproduce it. I expressed reluctance to bother Derik about it, and Peter said that he thought it was just gummed up with something sticky. Joseph suggested he could clean it with his hand sanitizer if he had a cleaning tool, so Peter went and got a napkin and folded it up. Peter stood there working on jamming the folded up paper in the crevice around the button, and reported that it was working. He did not notice Derik creeping up behind him and then standing there with an amused “WTF” expression on his face.

Speaking of WTF, the B division on Tuesday Night Smackdown stole the spotlight from A with a much longer game and a very dramatic finish. Joseph (as player 2) had finished the game on James Bond with 626.7M, and Jason (as player 4) looked almost certain to overtake him. When Jason drained through the left outlane, everyone watching (including, probably, Jason) thought he had won on bonus. The score display was interrupted by a prompt for player 2 to enter initials for the high score board, which I assumed would be followed by a prompt for player 4 to enter them also. Instead, after Joseph finished putting in his JFN, it went to a match screen. A couple of stunned beats followed as people registered what had happened. Jason had finished at 625.8M, less than a million short. Danny, meanwhile, had destroyed everyone with a big game of Ghostbusters in the A division.

Having completed League Night #4, we are now at the halfway mark of the season. Brian laughed off his rivals with a win in Democritus (bank 3), while Tim triumphed and left the competition crying in Heraclitus (bank 4). In the overall standings, Brian is at the top with a mere single point lead over Tim. Danny is another three points behind Tim. The cut-line for A division is currently between Joseph in eighth and Devon in ninth, with only two points between them. With half the season left, no one can feel secure. We’ll be starting the second half tonight, and this will also be the last chance for any new joiners for Season 23. After Night #5, new players can still attend but will be recorded as guest players without official standings.

When I showed up for our last league night I was looking and feeling quite scattered. Unfortunately, this year I am serving on Academic Senate at CMU, and the meeting dates all this semester coincide exactly with league meetings, including the times that additional weeks get skipped. As a result, I will only be able to make it just in time for the start of our league meetings and Joseph will have the responsibility of setting up the Smackdown and checking people in. When I arrived and started trying to double check Joseph’s attendance sheet, I found that he had missed a few people and I got a little frustrated and complained that he isn’t very good with names. Linda said it sure sounded like I was throwing Joseph under the bus and I joked that Joseph is always happy to go under the bus for me. Then I felt bad for being a bit of a jerk and made clear to everyone that in fact, Joseph is an invaluable league assistant without whom it would be impossible for me to keep the league running!

Last time was our third night of Season 23, so we started a new pair of banks. The current set are known (by me and possibly Joseph, if no one else) as Democritus and Heraclitus. These two pre-Socratic philosophers make a natural pairing for a bank rotation, because there is a tradition of referring to them as “the laughing philosopher” and “the weeping philosopher.” Baroque painters loved to depict them representing those opposite attitudes. In reality, they didn’t quite live at the same time. Heraclitus was already gone when Democritus was born. Heraclitus is known mainly for various cryptic aphorisms (hence his other nickname, “The Obscure”) and for his belief that fire, representing change, was the fundamental principle of nature. He’s also my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher. Democritus is best known for having the most developed early theory of atoms.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that I played bank Democritus, because I can only laugh at a night in which I managed to both set a personal best on Godzilla, have probably a personal top 5 game on Indiana Jones, and then also struggle to eke out 5 million on Metallica. Meanwhile, Tim was also in my group and managed to competely tear up Godzilla and then have a great game on Indiana Jones too, so those games were treating us well.

With only half of everyone having played each bank, the results aren’t too meaningful yet, but as things stand, Mike has the lead so far on Bank 3 (Democritus) and Danny on Bank 4 (Heraclitus).

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Ghostbusters, and the B division played James Bond. Danny won with a walk-off on Ghostbusters (which he then didn’t actually walk off, but finished playing, because it was a great game) and I somehow managed to win on Bond, a game that frequently kicks my ass, including this past Friday when I got completely pulverized on it at RLM Amusements’ weekly tournament in Grand Rapids.

I’ll be seeing everyone soon, though don’t forget that I won’t be around until shortly before the start of league due to my Senate service. We’ll have a Smackdown game TBD, which Joseph will get started for everyone when he arrives about 6 pm. See you soon!

It was our second league night of Season 23, so we finished the first full rotation of banks 1 and 2, which are named (for reasons best known to myself) Anaxagoras and Aristotle. We were also joined by a few new pinball seekers. The first was Brian, who was invited to join the proceedings late but who decided to just watch and hang out instead. (I kidded him that we already had a Brian/Bryan quota, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t why he declined to compete.) Brian had noticed an unusually large number of pinball players a couple of weeks previous when he had dropped into the Avenue to get a few games in, so he tracked down the league’s Facebook page and figured out how to find us again. Unfortunately, his schedule will prevent him from playing as a regular member, but he did put in a game for our Tuesday Night Smackdown side tournament on Attack from Mars.

The second was the mysterious, pseudonymous Hayley Hyena, who did not join the league but whose name showed up on my Smackdown score sheet. Linda was able to point out Hayley in the bar, and I got to break the news to her that she had qualified for A division of the Smackdown with a 3+ billion AfM score. She ended up coming in second, not bad at all for someone’s first ever official IFPA tournament.

The third new player did actually join the league properly. Christy’s friend Jonathan, who has often spectated league in the past, and has played in one of the charity tournaments, decided to take the plunge and pay dues for the season.

I can’t resist writing a little bit about my own modest accomplishment of the night, which is that I set the top score for the league on Medieval Madness with about 67 million. There was a time when that wouldn’t have been expected to give you a first, but it seems to play tougher in recent times. I got about halfway through beating down the King of Payne’s castle when I drained my last ball. I haven’t finished the final castle in years so I fell to my knees with disappointment, but overall I really could not be sorry about that game!

Now that we have finished a complete rotation of banks 1 and 2, we can see the true winners of each bank. Danny took first on bank 1 with a whopping 494/500, giving him a 6 point lead over Tim. Over on bank 2, the winner was Brian K. with 492/500, giving him an impressive 14-point margin of victory over runner-up Joseph. At this point there is no way to say who is winning the league, because everyone drops the two lowest nights and we have only had two. After the next bank we will begin to see people break away from the current 25-way tie for first place.

League ran a bit late due to having to switch out Star Wars (the substitute was Tales of the Arabian Nights), then we had our Smackdown finals on Attack from Mars and Black Knight: Sword of Rage (the B division game). Devon was the night’s champion, and Jason won the undercard.

That’s it for my recap of the good times! See you again very soon.

The second Tuesday in August marked the beginning of Season 23 of the venerable Lansing Pinball League, after a two month summer break. Everyone was anxious to start again, although we did have quite a few events to tide us over during the break. First we celebrated the end of the season with a league pizza party at Peter and Abi’s house. Then in June came the Rocket Robin round-robin charity tournament (won by Brian K. after a tiebreaker with Joseph) and the King Kong Launch Party (also won by Brian). The women’s club also had two tournaments during June and July, a King Kong launch party (won by me) and a July regular tournament (won by my longtime rival Karen C. from Grand Rapids).

We had three new joiners so far this season. Chris A. is a Detroit-area player who has previously attended one or two of the charity tournaments but hasn’t played in our league before. Craig is new to competitive pinball (but not to pinball). Abi has played in the Lansing Lightning Flippers tournaments and some of the charity tournaments, but not in the league before. We also had a couple of players returning after an absence of a season or two: Curtis (the director of the Royal Scot League) and longtime league member Mike.

The banks have been rearranged and given a new naming scheme this season. I decided rather than trying to group them by theme, which is getting harder and harder unless you want two banks called “movies” and “bands,” I would just group them spatially to make sure the crowds are as spread out as possible each night. That way we won’t have two groups playing side by side if it can be avoided. I then mostly arbitrarily named each bank after an Ancient Greek philosopher, although in each case there is one game in the bank that connected with the name. So far no one except me knows what any of the game connections are (and some of them are pretty thin).

As in past seasons we will be randomly assigning players to one of two banks on odd-numbered meetings, and then they will play the other bank on the next meeting. The two meetings’ banks were named Anaxagoras and Aristotle. Anaxagoras was a pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher who believed in Nous (mind) as the fundamental cosmic principle. Like many pre-Socratics, he was also trying to explain nature and the heavens, and came up with a correct explanation of eclipses and meteors, among other insights. Aristotle you probably already know. He was a student at Plato’s academy who went on to have the second most distinguished career of the ancients, especially in creating an ethical theory that was extremely influential on subsequent periods of philosophy (and still is).

Oh yes, but back to pinball: I got to play in the cool kids’ group with Devon and Linda, though I didn’t exactly start the season by covering myself in glory. Getting into A division is going to be very tough with it capped at 8 people again so I expect a few of us are going to fight over the cut line all season. With only one night in the books it means we have not completed a full bank rotation so the overall standings don’t mean too much yet, but the first-half winner in bank Anaxagoras was Danny (surprise!) and in Aristotle was Brian (shocker). Tonight we will finish the rotation and then we’ll have the final positions.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Elvira’s House of Horrors and my random drawing for a nearby B division game happened to hit on Scared Stiff! Curtis was the champion for Elvira’s HOH and our B division “undercard” champ was Peter. Peter also generously provided the streaming rig for league play and for the Smackdown finals again.

Looking forward to seeing you all tonight for our second meeting and finishing up the first two banks! And if you didn’t make it to the first night it’s not too late to join as we drop the two lowest nights from everyone’s score, and allow anyone who has attended at least four of the eight nights to play in the final tournament.