Author: Heather

Tuesday, November 4th, was the sixth meeting of eight for Season 3 of the League.  It was also the eve of my birthday, so I was looking forward to a celebratory night of pinball as consolation for turning a certain milestone age.  No, not 21.  Flattery will get you nowhere.

The original plan, dictated by Matt’s random selection, was to play Attack from Mars, The Addams Family, Indiana Jones, and Junk Yard.  Shortly before the league meeting, Addams went down and was slated to be replaced by Austin Powers.  By the time the meeting actually began, Addams had been repaired, so it was placed back into the schedule.  During practice games, however, Mike “the Gremlin” Stewart slam tilted Junk Yard, showing that it was still oversensitive to nudging (the trouble that knocked it out of the rotation last league night).  Chris declared that he wasn’t about to risk having his game slam tilted into oblivion by “King Kong Stewart,” so Junk Yard was removed from the roster once again and Austin Powers came back in.  It’s a shame that we haven’t been able to play Junk Yard as a league game in a very long time, since it’s a game I’ve been warming to.  I hope they will get that tilt sensor straightened out before next league night.

Just because it was almost my birthday did not mean anyone went easy on me, and that includes the games.  I had an especially catastrophic Attack from Mars, scoring something like 240 million, which you can get just by sneezing at that game.  Maybe I should have sneezed a bit harder.

I wasn’t alone in having a dismal night.  Jake was also in my group and repeatedly had to threaten to rough the machines up to teach them a lesson for insulting him.  In the end he did beat me out this week by 1 point, which he later thanked me for letting him have, saying that it showed I was the bigger person.  He then added a complaint that I had not worn the “Luke Perry” hair.  Sadly, due to my Tuesday work schedule and having trouble getting my carpool mates out the door in a hurry (somehow I just don’t think they realize the great urgency of getting to pinball league, despite my attempts to impress this upon them) I usually don’t have time to fully transform from “professor” to “pinballer” before getting over to the Avenue.

We had a new joiner this week, Matt’s friend James.  I had previously met James at the Avenue on Halloween, but I had to introduce myself nonetheless.  The last time he saw me I had been in a rabbit costume that completely covered my face.  I probably should have worn it again, because despite the costume giving me only a few inches of blurry visibility around the flippers, my scores were no worse and possibly slightly better than some of my league night results.  (Have I mentioned I had a bad night?)  It’s great to have another new member of the league and James seems to fit right in.

Tuesday was Election Day as well as league night, and James was frustrated that they would not let him change the channel on the bar’s TV because people wanted to watch election returns.  He really could not see the point of watching, since, as he put it, “Someone is either going to win or not.  There’s nothing to watch!”  I avoided looking at the returns myself as I figured it was not likely to improve my night.  That was almost certainly for the best.

To the best of my knowledge, besides the Junk Yard slam tilt sensitivity, no one broke any games during league play this time.  During a non-league game, however, Aaron managed to get a ball irretrievably stuck above the Bazaar scoop on Tales of the Arabian Nights.  I overheard someone spreading the news about this and adding, “I’ve already got a picture.”  Congratulations to Aaron in joining the honor roll of famous stuck balls, including Joseph’s ball on top of the castle tower in Medieval Madness and Chris’s ball stuck inside the slingshot of Indiana Jones.

Despite ongoing rumors that he may reappear, Russell was still absent tonight.  When I demanded to know where he was, I was told that he had chosen to go to yoga instead as he “needed to find his center.”  Suuuuure.  I think he was afraid to find his center – the one right between the flippers!

In the current standings, Chris is still far in the lead at #1 and Rodney’s #2 position still looks secure.  The real battle continues to be for third place.  Thanks to a rough night, Aaron has dropped three places to #6, and Mike has passed him, moving up one spot to #5.  Joseph recovered a bit of lost ground, moving up from #5 to #4, and Matt moved up  from #4 into the coveted #3 position.  The distance between third and sixth is only 14 points, so with two meetings to go, anyone in this cluster could still take third.

Complete results and standings are available, as are more photos.  Our next league night will be Tuesday, November 18, at 7 p.m.  I hope to see you all there!

Tuesday’s league night, the fifth of Season 3, saw slightly lower attendance than the previous meeting, so we returned to playing four games.  Matt had previously randomly selected Junk Yard, Getaway, Addams Family, and Monster Bash to be the night’s games.  The best laid schemes of mice and Matt go oft awry, so that is not quite what happened.

During an early round of Junk Yard, Mike “The Gremlin” S. slam tilted.  The usual League penalty for slam tilting is having to buy everyone a round receiving zero points for that game, but Mike was lucky, since the rest of his group believed him when he said he barely touched it.  Matt decided to throw out Junk Yard due to its hypersensitive tilt and replace it with Tales of the Arabian Nights.  Later, my group was up on Getaway when the launcher broke again, so that ended up substituted with Indiana Jones.

The etiquette tips I posted last week provided one of the evening’s recurring themes.  Whenever someone was missing when it was his or her turn to shoot, Matt would declare the absent player “on the clock,” and at one point Matt finished a ball by packing three f-words into one outburst then turned to me and asked whether he’d broken any of the rules.

I seemed to be a popular target for guff this week.  Jake had not seen my hair in its “weekend” style before (I never wear my bangs combed upward when I am at work, and often don’t have time to restyle my hair between arriving home and heading out to league) and was overly delighted by it.  He called me “Jason Priestley” and then demanded that I never wear it any other way again.  Later on, I heard someone on the other side of the room saying “FunHouse, FunHouse, FunHouse.”  Of course, this is the equivalent of blowing a turkey caller for me so I walked over to see what was going on.  When I got over to the group who had been talking, there didn’t seem to be any conversation about FunHouse so I started to leave disappointed.  Chris said, “Sorry, Heather, FunHouse false alarm.”  I said, “I love FunHouse!”  He said “I know you do” and then added that it is “a piece of junk.”  If his intention was to get a rise out of me it worked as I began defending Rudy’s honor with great ardor until he laughed at me.  Someday I will have my revenge…

Jake seemed to be having issues with video modes on Tuesday.  I have heard that he attempted to complete the video mode in Getaway by driving at 5 MPH.  I didn’t see that myself, but I did witness his Indiana Jones fiasco.  He started Mine Cart mode and immediately pulled left to crash into the very first barrier.  This provoked unabashed laughter from the rest of his group.  He began using etiquette-incompatible words to describe everyone present.  When he turned to swear at me, I objected (I had not been one of the worst offenders, after all, though I confess I may have chuckled) and he patted me on the head, saying, “I’m just kidding, I could never hate you, Dylan.”

At this juncture I feel compelled to point out that Dylan was Luke Perry, not Jason Priestley, whose fine thespian abilities were instead devoted to playing Brandon.  I didn’t go to high school in the early ’90s for nothing.

There seemed to be a lot of pain going around on Tuesday.  A number of upsets occurred, particularly in that several people overtook Chris.  I also finished ahead of Joseph for the first time ever.  This was actually a good night for me, in large part due to a great Arabian Nights game (great by my standards…), one in which I hit the replay score and, in my excitement, yelled “YEAH, THAT’S ME!”  I honestly hope that I don’t annoy my league mates too badly with my noisy enthusiasm.  When I like something, I really like something, and these days I really, really like pinball.

The night’s results found Aaron tied with Alex for first, just one point ahead of Danny in third.  The third, fourth (Rodney), fifth (Chris), and sixth (Mike S.) places were also each one point apart.  In the overall standings, though Chris is still comfortably at first and Rodney at second, third place has gotten a lot closer.  Joseph’s bad week cost him his lead and then some, though he is still part of a close cluster of people battling for third: Aaron at 204, Matt at 203, and Joseph at 198.  Mike (MWS) and Jake are also in range at 190 and 186, but will need to do some catching up in the remaining three meetings.

The complete results and standings are up, and some new photos have been added to the gallery.  That’s it for my recap – but I will give the last word to Chris, who delivered the Quote of the Night:

“I like pinball.” – Chris T.

The third season of the Lansing Pinball League has reached its halfway point, as meeting 4 of 8 took place on Tuesday.  It was a meeting that saw one heck of a performance from the night’s top-scorer, Danny.  It was a high-scoring night in general as the increasing membership of the league led us to play five games instead of our usual four.  More machines and more players mean more points are available to score.  As a result, Danny managed to earn an impressive 72 points, taking the victory from Chris by a margin of 6 points.

The league also saw a new player this time, Chris’s friend Jamie.  Jamie is a novice but I have to imagine she won’t stay one very long with Chris as a coach.  “Shoot the genie!  Shoot the genie!”

Matt had previously selected our night’s games randomly and they were slated to be Indiana Jones, Junk Yard, Lord of the Rings, and World Cup Soccer.  As the night began he made the decision to add Tales of the Arabian Nights because of the large turnout.  Unfortunately, shortly into the night, Junk Yard decided to start double-dispensing balls again and was replaced with Simpsons Pinball Party.  Then during the first game of S:PP, it also double-dispensed, so it was replaced again with Medieval Madness, to the delight of its many fans and the chagrin of certain people who think MM involves too much shooting up the middle.

Lord of the Rings seemed to be the really big scorer of the night, with at least three people getting to (though not completing) “Destroy the Ring.”  Needless to say, I was not one of those people.

Clearly some people had a very good night, though my own group didn’t share very much in this bounty.  I ended up in an all-female group with Christine and Jamie, leading Matt to ask, “What are the odds?”  I mean literally: he asked one of our resident mathematicians, Joseph, to calculate the odds that in a minority-female league a randomly-selected group would end up with all women.  (Russell is the original resident mathematician, but he’d better come back soon or he’s going to be eclipsed.)  Anyway, there was a lot of pain in my group.  Jamie took to guessing how many seconds she had actually managed to keep her balls in play, and Christine seemed to be in a frustrating slump.

For my part, I felt utterly betrayed by Medieval Madness.  I have a rule that I won’t warm up on a game that we’re going to play that night since it so often results in having a great practice game and then a disappointing league game.  I warmed up on MM this time not realizing we would be playing it – and my 30M practice game was followed by a horrendously bad 1.5M league game.  And that’s supposed to be my best table!  Jamie, though, had a stunning finale to our group’s night.  Despite being unfamiliar with the rules and not having played at all in years, she knocked down two castles and started a multiball, netting her over 13 million.  I was green with envy since I practiced the game for at least a month before ever achieving a score over 10 million.  Clearly she’s something of a natural.

Terry returned this week, but wasn’t able to clean up as he did last time because the night started late and ran long, so he had to leave for work before playing his game of Lord of the Rings.  Matt has suggested that Terry could be allowed to play a makeup game the next time he’s around to rectify this.

When all the groups had finally finished, the top five high-scorers for the night were Danny, Chris, Rodney, Jake, and Sarah, in that order.  The biggest change there is Sarah, finishing six positions higher than at the previous league night.  The top four overall positions for the season so far have remained the same since then, with Chris, Rodney, Joseph, and Matt still occupying them.  Aaron, however, has dropped from 5th to 6th, with Jake moving up to take 5th, just one point behind Matt.

Despite missing out on 1st this week, Chris still has a very comfortable lead over Rodney that seems unlikely to be eroded at this point.  Rodney, in turn, has a buffer nearly as large between himself and Joseph. The most competitive position right now is 3rd.  Joseph leads Matt by a dozen points, which is substantial but easily surpassable.  Matt, Jake, and Aaron are all clustered very closely together.

The Battle for Third will continue at the next league night on October 21.  I suggest that a good strategy might be for Joseph, Matt, Jake, and Aaron to pool their money to buy Rodney a weekend trip to Vegas.  Meanwhile, you can check out the complete results and standings and see more photos in the photo gallery.