Lansing Pinball League

I feel motivated now, how about you?

September 8th was the fifth meeting of the fifth season of the League, and was the first meeting Chris has missed since he joined during Season 1.  In response to this historic non-event, some mysterious prankster posted a Chris-themed motivational poster in the downstairs alcove.  “We can’t all be Chris Tabaka,” reads the poster, “but if you can be Chris Tabaka, then by all means, be Chris Tabaka.”  The poster was already present when everyone showed up to start practicing, and the accusations soon started to fly.  Several people seemed to think I had done it (I didn’t, and didn’t know who did, though I did take the photo used in it).  Sarah floated the idea that Chris had done it himself, since he had the opportunity to put it up when he pre-played his “makeup” games the previous evening.  Chris, via texts, vociferously denied it, and most people agreed that self-aggrandizement to that degree wasn’t his style.  Since everyone accepted Matt’s contention that it was much too nice to be his handiwork, popular suspicion moved to Mike S. and stayed there for quite some time.  Mike, for his part, insisted that he would not be able to keep something like that a secret for long.  I admitted he had a point, since during the infamous Arcade League disappearing-FunHouse stunt of 2014 he wasn’t even able to go an entire night before confessing.

Ally learns some moves from James.

Chris was the most notable absence of the week; the most notable presence was Allyson, AKA Ally, a newcomer to the league.  She was put into a group with me, James, and Sarah, so I had an opportunity to get to know her a bit.  She told me that her boyfriend had gotten her interested in pinball and that the two of them had both just been starting to get involved in competitive play.  Her boyfriend didn’t come to the league meeting, but I heard from Mike S. that he played in the recent Pinball Pete’s tournament in Ann Arbor and did extremely well, so we’ll have to hope he stays away joins the league!  I was on my best behavior and definitely didn’t do any rage tilting this time so I hope Ally had fun and will keep coming.

I confess I didn’t have much reason to rage tilt this time as it was probably the best league night I’ve ever had.  I started Monster Bash during my game of… well, you know.  I think that’s only the second time I’ve ever done it at all, so having it happen to me during a league game means that the pinball gods Matt often speaks of were smiling on me.  I got so over-excited that I jumped up and down and did the Pete Townshend windmill strum during the starting animation.  Then I managed to get 4.5 million on The Simpsons Pinball Party thanks to a frankly lucky break starting Itchy & Scratchy.  Believe it or not, Matt said that my score was something like the second highest in the league; Aaron almost doubled it, but I saw a lot of scores in the one millions.  That really tells you how ludicrously brutal The Avenue’s Simpsons is.  Sarah had extremely unfair bad luck as two of her three balls hit the center post upon launch and then drained immediately, resulting in a 10K score on each.  There should be at least a brief ball saver on that game to stop the skill shot from being instantly fatal.

Mike B. reflects solemnly on the direction of his life in response to some straight talk from Russell.

Evan returned for his second league night as I thought he might, despite saying he was just going to drop by once. Once you go Lansing, you don’t go… uh, dancing? Nevermind. The point is, our league has a charm all its own and has a way of bringing people back.

After league, several of us went over to Theio’s for the traditional league night breakfast-dinner (brinner?) and then Mike, Joseph, and I went back to the Avenue to play a round of the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill.  Over the summer, we had been in the habit of arriving early on league nights to play, but as of this meeting I could no longer do that.  Sadly, class has started up again for me, which prevents me from getting to league meetings more than a few minutes early.  So we hung around until the Avenue closed playing Betrayal interspersed with pinball.

Sam shows off his pinball muscles.

Chris had a great week (I guess without our hijinks to distract him during his makeup games) and Alex had a not-so-great one, resulting in Chris closing some of the gap between his second place and Alex’s first, but he still has a ways to go.  As for me (hey, offer to write a guest update and you can talk about yourself too), I managed to pull 1 point ahead of my frequent league rival Jake (at 9th and 10th) but am still outside the magic number 8 that will get to play in A division.

For more detail, check the full results for this week.  I didn’t take so many photos this time (not ones that came out, anyway; my clearest shots were of the bumper pool table), but there are a few more in the gallery for your viewing pleasure.

The league night of 8/25 was the fourth meeting of Season 5, putting us halfway through the season.  League Night #4 also had the most players of any meeting yet this season (and, I think, any meeting for quite a while), 19, though some of those people were absent from the actual meeting and did makeup games.  That brings us to 21 total players on the roster this season.  The games of the week were Lord of the Rings, Iron Man, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Junk Yard.  Fortunately, no one slam tilted Junk Yard during league play this time, though I believe Mike S. did it during a practice game and then somehow acted surprised.

Bumper pool: the love child of pinball and pool.

Some recent rearranging in The Avenue has resulted in the bumper pool table, formerly located on the mezzanine, being moved into the downstairs pinball alcove.  Conversations around the bumper pool table usually go something like this: “What’s that?” “It’s called bumper pool.” “Oh.  How do you play it?”  “I have no idea.”  This time, however, Jimmy offered to explain how to play, and started setting up a game to demonstrate.  This was quickly quashed by Matt cracking the whip and telling all of us to get to our league games already.  (The next time we came to The Avenue, Joseph printed out some instructions he got from the Internet and left them sitting on the bumper pool table.  I hope that helped someone.)

Mike G. made a surprise reappearance.  Despite being one of the original members of the League and the source of a previous tagline of this blog (“The same thing as in every game: shoot the farthest target and every ramp three times,” the all-purpose strategy advice he once gave me), Mike had not made it to a league meeting in quite some time due to his work schedule, and it was great to see him again.  For some reason he seems to have decided not to play any official league games.  I think he may have decided he’d started drinking too early, but that doesn’t make sense.  After all, it never stopped Aaron.

Mike G., Aaron, and Jimmy gather around the cocktail table – I mean, bumper pool table.

The other surprise appearance of the night was Evan, whom I know from The Arcade League in Brighton and the tournament he ran at Pinball Pete’s in Ann Arbor.  This was his first visit to the Lansing Pinball League; he said he was just dropping in for the night.  I hope he’ll be open to coming back sometime.

Chris repeats his mantra: “Don’t slam tilt… don’t slam tilt…”

The results for the night included a surprising three-way tie between Chris, Greg, and Mike S., for ninth place.  Speaking of Chris, at the halfway mark of the season he is in fourth place after Alex, Mike S., and Joseph.  Longtime members of the league may recall the days when Chris was an unstoppable force, nearly always taking an early runaway lead and staying at the top all season.  Those days are certainly over as the reigning champ now has serious competition, both from newer members of the league and longtime members who have leveled up their games.  It’s certainly going to be exciting to see how the rest of the season plays out.  Since we now (as of last season) settle the final rankings with a tournament, the biggest battle in the second half of the season is really going to be who will make the cutoff for A division.  If the same rules used last season apply, the top eight players will play in A and everyone else will play in B.  Right now, Matt is ranked unusually low at eighth place, but has a healthy lead (17 points) over Jake in ninth.

Mike gives me and my camera the the hairy eyeball. Or, as it’s called in his case, the ginger eyeball.

After league play finished, Jake, Sam, Mike S., Joseph, and I had our after-party at Theio’s.  It had been quite some time since our last visit, since at the two previous meetings folks had gone once each to the two Chinese restaurants on the block.  If the Theio’s staff were offended by our infidelity, they didn’t show it.  After we ate I tried unsuccessfully to convince people to come back to The Avenue for more pinball.  I just wasn’t ready to give up my last league night before the start of school.  Now that school has begun, I will arrive later (no more pre-league games of Betrayal at House on the Hill with Mike S. and Joseph) and leave tireder.  Alas.

The next meeting is coming up very soon (Tuesday).  In the meantime, you can have a look at the results from meeting #4 and some more photos.

I was not present for the league meeting of August 11.  Instead, I was just wrapping up an amusement park tour of New England, with visits to six parks in Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.  At the end of the trip we drove to New Jersey in order to visit a couple of our old familiar haunts before I flew home and Joseph stayed behind for another week to call in at his workplace in Trenton (he has worked from home since moving to Michigan).  So on the very evening league night was happening back home in Lansing, we were at the Silverball Museum in Asbury Park, New Jersey.  We even played make-believe league games on all but one of the night’s chosen games.  (We could not do a dry run on The Walking Dead, as the Silverball Museum doesn’t have that one.  In fact, they have only two Stern games: The Simpsons Pinball Party and The Sopranos.)

A street in Belmar, New Jersey. Joseph and I had just eaten dinner near here and were about to travel to Asbury Park to spend the rest of the evening at the Silverball Museum.

So all of that is just an explanation for the lack of a League Night Update for meeting #3.  I wasn’t there, and probably shouldn’t do another attempt at writing a recap of a meeting I didn’t attend.  It was apparently a rather small crowd.  I know that at least Alex, Sarah, Aaron, Joseph, and I were all missing.  (Joseph and I did makeup games after Joseph got home.)  And the standings show a shakeup in the upper echelon.  Chris, though the week’s highest point earner, is still wounded from his slam tilt of Junk Yard during the league season opener, and Alex was set back by the missed week.  As a result, Mike S. is number one in the overall standings for the first time ever, with a 13 point lead over Chris.  Joseph is currently third, trailing Chris by 10 points.  The season isn’t half over yet (though it will be by the end of the night), so there is still a lot of possibility for further position swapping at the top.

The selected games for the second meeting of Season 5 were Fish Tales (new at the Avenue), World Cup Soccer, Medieval Madness, and Getaway.  Chris was so excited about the prospect of playing Fish Tales’ video mode that he kept saying “I want to shoot waterskiers!” in, for some reason, a Marvin the Martian voice.  I asked him, “Why are you Marvin the Martian?” and he replied, in the same voice, “I don’t know.”  If he doesn’t know I certainly don’t.  It will have to remain one of the mysteries of League Night #2, alongside why I’ve forgotten how to shoot the castle and whether anyone has ever successfully used the Magna-Save in World Cup Soccer.  (Joseph did in fact try to use it, which is more than I have ever done.  Aaron once again asserted that he only ever uses it ironically.)

“Come hither, WCS, and I’ll whisper to you just what I think of you.”

Greg was absent this week, due to having moved from the area.  Word on the street is that he will be coming to league meetings irregularly from here on out.  I ended up running into him when he made up his league games the following week.  (No, not literally, even if sabotaging his scores would have helped my awful performance.  I swear, I wasn’t even tempted.)  Mark, on the other hand, made a reappearance after missing the season opener.

After my rage-tilting during last League Night, I had pledged to show better sportsmanship henceforth.  It took exactly one ball of Getaway to break that resolution.  My group had begun with Getaway.  I stepped up as Player 3 to play my first ball, and had an amazing ball by my standards, including a multiball jackpot and several consecutive upper loops.  I thought I was on top of the world.  When I drained I turned to my group, about to remark on my good fortune… to be told, “You realize you just played the third ball of a single player game, right?”  Apparently, the first player accidentally started a single game, and no one (including the second player, and me) noticed until I was midway through my ball, at which time everyone was afraid to interrupt me to break the news.  I was so crushed by this revelation that I shouted “What?” and then turned around and began shaking Getaway.  Marrying Joseph certainly did not grant me any share of his stoicism, to my regret.

There’s never a dull moment at the Lansing Pinball League.

The last game of the night for my group was Medieval Madness.  We had to wait a while for the prior group to finish.  Eventually they were down to their last ball and the final player, Jake, was nowhere to be found.  Someone looked around for him and eventually found him hanging around out back with a crowd of folks whose games had finished.  It turns out he had pulled a Mike S., thinking his game was over when he actually had a ball left.

Chris had a strong first place finish this week, despite being cheated out of a ball of Fish Tales by a mechanical failure, but he still has a long way to go to make up the ground lost by slam tilting Junk Yard during the first meeting.  Aaron and Mike S. tied for second, with Mark at fourth and Alex and Joseph tying for fifth.  In the overall season standings, Alex is still on top, but with Mike S. only four points behind.  Joseph has narrowly pulled into third, one point ahead of Sarah at fourth.  The reigning league champion, Chris, has his work cut out for him at seventh.

Would you buy a used car from these men?

Instead of the traditional Theio’s visit, Jake and Mike S. wanted to go to the Chinese restaurant next door to the Avenue, so that’s where they ended the night, alongside Joseph, Sam, and me.  There was some concern expressed that the Theio’s staff might have hurt feelings over our absence, but somehow I suspect they weathered any disappointment with grace.

The complete results from the meeting are up, as are some more photos.  Mark your calendars: due to the new semi-monthly format, the next league meeting isn’t until August 11.