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October 8 was our penultimate (that means 7th, in case you aren’t counting) league night of the season. Although Polyhymnia is traditionally our ad hoc bank, comprised of all the games we haven’t played yet plus the rest determined by vote, this season Polyhymnia ended up completely filled with as-yet-unplayed games due to the many lineup changes this season. This necessitated the creation of a new leftovers bank, which I titled Terspsichore (the Muse of dance), containing Batman ’66 and four games chosen by popular vote.

Although we tried to once again balance the bank to have two long games, a medium, a medium-short, and a short game, over the course of the season, how long a game is has ended up somewhat skewed. For instance, Guardians of the Galaxy started off as a medium game because people didn’t know it that well yet, but has blossomed into a longer game. We will use scores from the season to reconsider all the games next season, just as we did between last season and this one. Anyway, we ended up with several longer playing games in Terpsichore, because that was how the popular vote went. That made for another longer league night. At least this time my group ended up cleaning up credits instead of leaving them behind. Sometimes you get lucky that way.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game had been randomly drawn as Ghostbusters, an announcement which was met with varying reactions. Josh outright stated that he refused to play it, even with the new code, and he kept to that. Mike, on the other hand, responded with the classic “everything’s coming up Milhouse” GIF. Maybe because it was Ghostbusters, maybe because the long night left people unenthusiastic about an extra tournament, we had a low turnout for the Smackdown this time. Mike won the championship medal, to no one’s surprise. Bryan played against his dad, Jim, in the B division and showed the old man who’s boss by winning the division. Mike pointed out that it was another dual redhead victory. Looking over the results, I see that as of this Smackdown, Jim is now a rated player! Congratulations and condolences! Jim now has to pay the dollar entry fee with everyone else.

I randomly drew a bank for week 8 (the upcoming Tuesday) and very appropriately hit Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, or in our case the comic horror bank. Since our Elvira’s House of Horrors LE has arrived at the bar, we will be randomly drawing a game from Melpomene to replace with it, except that we will not replaced Scared Stiff because I like the cool factor of keeping them together. Now if only we had an Elvira and the Party Monsters to complete the trilogy.

Our final qualifying night is Tuesday, your last chance to improve your seeding for the final tournament. Remember that you must attend at least four nights to qualify to play in the final tournament. See you at 7 pm on Tuesday at The Avenue!

The league night of 9/24 – our sixth of the season – marked the return of an old joke. In the Matt era, we – usually Matt, but sometimes Mike – would bring our own lightbulbs to replace the dead ones or empty sockets around the Avenue. It was so dark in the bar in those days that a strobe going off in a game would leave players standing there like jacklighted deer. Matt would bring the (then-expensive) LED lightbulbs home with him after league because if they got left behind by accident, they would tend to get appropriated into other use around the bar. On one occasion we were able to retrieve a few of them, but one disappeared never to be seen again. The rumor is that it got put in an office. Anyway, I started the joke that Lansing was a BYOB league: “bring your own bulbs.”

So we returned to being a BYOB league last time, as Josh brought a package of bulbs and put them up anywhere he could. He did have to give up on one light fixture that turned out to have the wrong type of socket (I’d guess it takes a mogul base), but not before sustaining an injury trying. This happened before I arrived, so I just saw the aftermath in the form of a Band-Aid on Josh’s head. Apparently he bled quite a bit after hitting his head on the fixture (the scalp is full of blood vessels so even minor scalp cuts bleed dramatically) but he was able to get it to stop by the time I saw him. Someone did remark on the fact that you could barely see the Band-Aid on his head because he turns out to be the person with the exact skin tone that Band-Aids are designed for. People started bugging me to take a picture of the light fixture and put it in the league update. Why? Because he left behind a piece of skin on it. I was disgusted by this and refused to look at, let alone photograph, it for most of the league. Finally, in the end, I caved in and took a quick shot. It’s grainy but it will do. Here, you jackals.

We played bank Polyhymnia, named for the Muse whose name means “many praises,” which was intended to be any miscellaneous games that had not been in a previous bank plus games we voted on as favorites. Instead it was all miscellaneous games because of the large number that have been added over the season, and it didn’t even account for all of them, which is why tonight’s bank, Terpsichore, is the “new Polyhymnia.” Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance, is made up of Batman ’66 (do the Batusi!) and four games chosen by popular vote.

This turned out to be a dangerous league night, since in addition to Josh’s accident, I nearly choked. I inhaled so much Diet Coke thanks to Mike that I had a genuinely scary moment of coughing for dear life, and continued coughing intermittently for at least ten minutes. We had been waiting for a group of people to finish a game of Puzzle & Dragons so we could get on Road Show, and when we did go up to play, Mike said we needed to “do a Chris Tabaka stance” in order to keep away any other Puzzle & Dragons players. He then did an imitation of Chris getting ready to play that caused pop to go into my windpipe. Chris has not been seen for a few sessions, I should note.

The “worst score” award has been determined for the season. After one season of no slam tilts (which made choosing the worst score ribbon a bit more involved), we’re back to having a zero score. The award (presuming no other slam tilts occur this season) goes to Derik, who rage tilted on Willy Wonka, causing a tilt through that cost Danny his extra ball. Danny got a compensation ball but he was not pleased at his loss of bonus.

This was the longest night in a while with a lot of high scores both in league and in SmackDown qualifying on Medieval Madness. Nevertheless, the actual SmackDown ended with the highest score at a mere 19 million, a victory for Pat. The B division (including me) played on Ghostbusters, and my best moment of the night was probably pulling off a skill shot plunge of an extra ball that got me 10% of my score and won me the match. I got to take home one of the “fall leaves” medals that I was rather proud of, my first time experimenting with using colored pencils instead of markers.

I’ll be seeing you soon! 7:00 pm, The Avenue Cafe, tonight; be there!

I’ll just give everyone some time to get all the cracks about how OMG EARLY!!11!!!1 this league recap is out of the way.

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Ah, Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Always worth another listen. Anyway, I’m back with your semi-monthly league update. Our last meeting was the fifth of Season 13, meaning we’re over the hill, and I’m not just talking about those of us old enough to understand the superiority of analog clock faces. We finally have more of Season 13 behind us than ahead of us. It just feels like we have been playing Season 13 forever because of the July hiatus.

We played bank Melpomene, named for the Muse of Tragedy but actually made up of the “comic horror” themed games. When I arrived (a bit later than I would have liked, due to work-related delays), everyone was clustered around the new Stern Jurassic Park instead of waiting in line to put in Smackdown games as usual. I ended up having to enlist someone with a louder voice to get people to gather for the night’s festivities. Mike pointed out that we would be having a very nostalgic league experience, since all of Melpomene’s games are currently located in the alcove. In the early days of the league, we had few enough games that all of them were in the alcove. It may have been nostalgic, but it was also very crowded, and we were constantly bumping into each other or having to beg pardon for sliding past.

Our Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Guardians of the Galaxy, or as Joseph insists on calling it, “the Rocket Raccoon game.” Joseph really likes procyonids. I had been so busy with school that I had forgotten to make the Smackdown medals, so I called home from work to ask Joseph to make them again. He colored them with the design of a wrapped gift, explaining that it was in honor of his niece Sasha’s birthday that day. And what do you know, but Joseph ended up winning the Smackdown medal, taking the Sasha’s birthday medal back home with him. Over in B division, Mike said he would defer playing in the tournament unless the game randomly chosen was Jurassic Park. That’s exactly what happened. I was less thrilled, as I haven’t gotten a feel for Jurassic Park yet. “Pretend it’s the Beatles,” Mike said. I said that I still wanted The Beatles back and Mike said we should get a Beat Time instead. Derik asked what Beat Time is, so we got to be the first to fill him in on that delightful chapter of pinball history.

This was my first night in Joseph’s group this season. He was having a very bad night and got unusually frustrated. At one point he responded to a drain on The Munsters (a game he normally likes, believe it or not) by grabbing the game and rage-shaking it so hard it rocked on its legs. This was followed immediately by the voice of Derik: “I’m standing right here.” I told Joseph he had better cool it before Derik threw him out. Joseph said, “Well, you saw what it did to me.” Later on, Derik did the same thing to Munsters, causing a “See? See?” reaction from Joseph.

Jason won the Undercard (B division), and was more excited about it than I expected. It turned out that this was his first-ever Smackdown medal of any kind, to my surprise. Not present was Jim, Bryan’s dad, who once again left too early, because he would have qualified to play in B. We’ll get him one of these times.

See you all tomorrow at 7 for another exciting chapter in the annals of Lansing pinball history, league night number 6!

There are no pictures this week (that is, the recap for Season 13, meeting #3), and for a change it’s not because I forgot to take any. No, I have pictures, they’re just inaccessible. This is because the exciting news I got Monday morning, which is that my computer had been stolen from Capitol Macintosh during a break-in. Apparently the burglars grabbed two display computers (one of which was a 2002 iMac for some reason) and two computers that were on the workbench being worked on. One of the latter was mine. Capitol Mac has written me a check for the rather pathetic value of a 2012 MacBook Pro, but nothing can compensate the life disruption that happens when someone who is glued to her laptop approximately 75% of the waking day is deprived of it. And the day before I went back to school, too. My new one won’t be in until September 11 so I really hope I don’t crack up before then. My 2007 MacBook – the only other option I have at home – is really not cutting it in this fast paced modern world. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying “I have nothing in the house right now that can read the SD card from my camera.”

I was able to recover my league night notes from my backup drive, so here goes. We played bank Clio, the “magic” themed bank. I started off the night by just about taking apart Tales of the Arabian Nights. I had something like 45 million, very easily my personal best (or “peanut butter” as the cool kids call it) and this without even getting close to rescuing the princess because I really don’t play for modes most of the time. On my last ball, having already played two really good multi balls earlier in the game, I had lamp value raised and a lot of bonus multipliers so I decided to forget lighting locks and just spin the ever-loving hell out of the lamp at every possible opportunity. I rarely get to win the night on a game but I managed it this time. I’d say I stopped Mike from having another perfect night, but I heard that Theatre of Magic nipped that in the bud anyway.

We spent a long time waiting behind a backup on Lord of the Rings. I’m sure more than one person was responsible for that, but I did hear that Joseph had an especially killer LotR game. Meanwhile, Medieval Madness was slaying people left and right with its sneeze-sensitive tilt bob. I saw someone in my group tilt for literally nothing, most likely because it was still swinging from a previous player’s tilt. Lots of people complained to me about the MM tilt but hey, it’s not my game, I just play it (reluctantly). I actually had one of my better MMs in a long time, though, I have to admit.

Danny finished up the night on a huge game of Black Knight: Sword of Rage. We were the last group still playing and he was player 4, so he would not have been able to get in a qualifying game for the Smackdown. As a result he instructed me to plunge his Ball 3 and ran upstairs after Ball 2 to play Star Wars. Despite this, he still had the highest score on BK:SoR. He also went on to win the Smackdown, so I guess it was a good trade. Mike won the B division “Undercard.”

I’d probably be remiss not to mention some other league news even though it is a little bit of a sore spot for me. The good news is that The Avenue now has a Jurassic Park (the new Stern game). The bad news is that The Beatles was moved out for it. As that is a rare game on location and one of my favorites, I am not happy about it. I did go out to the Royal Scot to visit it at its new home where it is in the bar area. I hadn’t been to the Royal Scot in a while so I hadn’t realized how many of The Avenue’s past games were residing there. It’s like The Avenue in Exile over there. Despite my nose being out of joint, we will still be having a Jurassic Park launch party on Wednesday, September 18.

Cue the cracks about how I’m always “right on time” with my league updates. Done? OK, let’s move on…

Our third league night of the season was a snowy night. So much so that we worried Mike wouldn’t make it (but of course he did, the thought of missing two meetings was too much!) and Todd (a prospective new player whom we met at the Munsters launch party) sent apologies and a promise to come next time. We did have a new player this time, Jon, who has recently moved to the area from New York, where he lived in Brooklyn and Queens. Jon has previously played in a team league in NYC as well as the Sunshine Laundromat league. I chatted with him a bit about Brooklyn as my brother has lived there for around 15 years now.

When I was having people draw for groups for the night, I came up one slip short, and realized there was one more person present than I had accounted for on my list. I was being driven crazy trying to figure out how the count was wrong, when suddenly I realized who I forgot to count: myself. It was also a fairly cramped situation trying to get league started because they were in the midst of noisily building a bar upstairs, plus I was told we could not have the “good table” (you know the one) because a D&D group wanted it. As a result I had to set up operations in the alcove. I got the groups sorted out and was just sending people off to their games when the aforementioned Jon arrived. I added him to my own group, which is lucky for him, because we were traveling behind Danny’s group and got to farm his credits all night, making for a cheap session.

Unfortunately I had to work while trying to keep up with league. I had my laptop with me and was grading student reflection papers online in between balls. At one point I thought (it turned out incorrectly) that a student had plagiarized something, and that got me temporarily so upset that I tanked on Medieval Madness as a result. I swear that’s why.

I was due to have a sleep study later in the week, and began explaining to my group what that would entail. Everyone agreed that no one would be able to sleep normally under those conditions. I can now report back: I didn’t. I got probably an hour of sleep over the ten hours they gave me to try to do it, falling far short of the minimum time for the test to mean anything, so it was a big expensive waste. I’m about as happy about this as you might guess.

The Tuesday Night Smackdown was held on our brand new Munsters, which really and truly was drawn by the random number generator. I’m not sure everyone believed me about that. The smack was laid down by Mike in A division and by Pat in B division (his first hardware, locally at least). The B division played on Medieval Madness, which (to no one’s delight) has been drawn as tonight’s Smackdown game.

League night is, of course, tonight at 7 and I hope to once again see all of you there.