Lansing Pinball League

Tag: recap

League Night Recap for 2/11/19

Hello all you pinballers out in Lansing League Land. I hope you’ll forgive me for the brevity of this recap for the league night of 2/11, as I was first under the weather and then had a huge pileup of exam grading, all of which has left me short of time. Last time we played the bank Ceryneian Hind, which commemorates the labor in which Hercules (or Heracles if you’re old school) had to chase down and catch a deer sacred to Artemis. I went into the attic and dug out a pair of home-made Bambi ears that I wore to a costume party wedding reception (the theme was “The Movies”) back in the mid-2000s. I already have a deer hat (famously used as the sorting hat for league) and a pair of light-up antlers with ears lying around, but I thought I had to be a hind specifically, which is a female deer, so I couldn’t wear antlers. I later learned that a peculiar characteristic of the Ceryneian Hind in mythology is that she had antlers. Oops.

Joseph asks Guardians what its deal is, anyway.

I went to both school and league despite being well into coming down with some sort of cold (which later turned quite nasty). I desperately wanted to avoid giving it to anyone, so I had planned to wipe down the flipper buttons and lockdown bar after each of my balls using some sanitizer wipes the upstairs bar had lying around. Unfortunately this backfired almost immediately. On Star Trek, it started registering switches as I wiped over the flipper button, then eventually fired the ball into play for no apparent reason. Our new player Jay rushed to take control of his ball, but unfortunately he drained quickly and the phantom switch hits had killed his ball saver. I called Joseph over for a ruling as I thought I might have to be DQ’d for playing out of turn since it may have been my actions that caused the ball to go into play. Joseph studied the rule book for a long time before coming over and saying that he believed it to be “accidental interference” rather than playing out of turn since it could not be expected that touching the flippers would launch the ball. We also could not be sure that touching the flipper was related to the switch hits because it seemed to continue after I was no longer touching the game at all. Joseph ruled simply “play on,” meaning I may yet avoid getting the “worst score” award again this season.

Brian trying for the Smackdown championship on Jurassic Park.

In any case, I was afraid to touch the game after my ball after that, so I switched to rubbing my own hands down with the sanitizer wipes after that. This turned out not to be the wisest idea either since that night I looked down at my hands and suddenly realized my knuckles had a red rash all over them and one spot was even cracked open and bleeding. Yes, I gave myself a chemical burn using surface sanitizer to disinfect my own hands. I really hope no one got the damn cold after that. I ended up getting so sick by Wednesday night that I cancelled my Thursday classes.

This league night saw the return of a long-ago familiar face, Rick of Nomad Kitchen (the bar’s old restaurant). We used to all love his fries with Nomad Sauce! Apparently Rick is going to start playing in the league. I can’t recall if he ever played in league before (in the Matt days) or just played with us casually. I know a couple of times he ran his own equivalent of Tuesday Night Smackdown before we started having those, which awarded a free burger from the kitchen as a prize.

Donny proudly showing his first pinball medal.

We had a lot of other stuff going on this night including qualifying for Destrier of Death (the Black Knight tournament designed mainly to let people put authorized scores up on Stern’s leader board), the Stranger Things launch party, and the usual Tuesday Night Smackdown which was on Jurassic Park. I put my two Stranger Things scores in knowing I would not have time on the next league night, and I ended up ranting much too angrily afterward about how I never should have tried to do scores while sick (they were not good). This broke my New Year’s resolution not to get angry about pinball, which I have mostly been pretty good about, but I think being sick tends to make me more emotional and my bad behavior can be forgiven. Joseph did a new leader board-eligible score on Black Knight, though it has since been knocked totally off the board by a last minute rush of high scores in a tournament that got barely any attention for most of its run. Mike has also lost his first place standing and is in the middle of the pack.

Danny with his Smackdown medal.

The Tuesday Night Smackdown was on Jurassic Park and our champion was Danny. Joseph had designed the medals since I forgot to do it before work, and I think he put candy hearts on them. Donny won the B division on Guardians of the Galaxy and was well pleased to get his plastic medal since it was his first pinball hardware. I definitely remember how excited I was to win my first trophy (a Zen tournament, with Joseph) and in fact it is still in pride of place on my mantel.

Tonight we will be vying for the Girdle of Hippolyta, commemorating the time Hercules persuaded the Queen of the Amazons to give him her magic girdle (which unfortunately ended in tragedy due to a misunderstanding of his intentions by the other Amazons). We will also have Stranger Things qualifying before league and finals afterward, plus a Smackdown on Star Trek: The Next Generation. See you all soon!

February 25, 2020
League Night Recap for 1/28/20

I was very proud of the work I did creating banks this season. I had to balance having only a certain number of games designated “long” (based on looking at average scores from the previous season, or guessing in the case of new games) in each bank, along with trying to keep to having vaguely thematic sets. I spent hours switching around games to make them match 7 of the 12 Labors of Hercules. One of the banks with the tightest and most obvious themes was the Lernean Hydra, for which I chose games with dragons or serpents in them (including Black Knight which literally has a hydra in it). Unfortunately the bank may have been more thematic than intended. The hydra, with its regenerating heads, represents a seemingly never-ending task. It also lives in a swamp. And this league night threatened to never end, and we were all crammed into the morass of the alcove together.

Biff practices his avoidance skills during the Giant Alcove Clusterfluff of 2020.

I was looking at themes and lengths, not at where the games were physically located, so I accidentally made a bank that all takes place in the alcove. It was pointed out to me that I had done this last season too. Further, a game that had been designated as merely “medium” (Monster Bash, which used to play a lot tougher) had decided it would be “very long” this time, in no small part due to Mike having a game in which he got to Monsters of Rock on his first ball. We also had to contend with Danny putting up a huge, huge score on Black Knight, incentivized in part by wanting to make the leader board in Stern’s “Ransom” tournament. It took so long for the first round of games to finish that groups ended up stacked three deep waiting for Monster Bash. Everyone was also in each other’s way due to the cramped space, with people accidentally elbowing and kicking each other. We had a few new members this time (Alicia, Jay, and Donny), and I felt awful thinking they might never come back after this especially crazy night. I hope they took it in stride! I know people were trying to tell them that, no, league night doesn’t normally involve this much waiting. This bank will definitely be reconsidered next season. Keep in mind, though, that it’s getting hard to find enough “short playing” games anymore due to everyone in the league getting better and the introduction of more long-playing games into the lineup.

Donny playing in the Smackdown Undercard battle on Guardians of the Galaxy.

We had a Tuesday Night Smackdown as usual, and for a change Biff actually stuck around to play in it. Why? Because it was Batman ’66! Biff won the Smackdown medal (a Bat Signal logo on a bat-themed ribbon) and Pat got the Undercard win on Guardians of the Galaxy.

Lexi played an animated game of Guardians in the Smackdown Undercard finals.

After league we continued to have qualifying for Destrier of Death, our Black Knight tournament designed mainly to let people qualify for the Stern leader board (Ransom) tournament. Mike put up an even higher score than the one Danny did during league, and as of this writing has the top spot in Stern’s tournament.

Pat and Biff showing off their Undercard and Champion medals, respectively.

Shortly we will be reconvening to chase down the Ceryneian Hind. I think this should be a more chill league night than the last one, if only for being upstairs instead of in the alcove. We will also have qualifying for the Stranger Things launch party and Destrier of Death, a Tuesday Night Smackdown on Jurassic Park, and of course Royal Rumble (but that’s always going on and needs no supervision). See you soon!

February 11, 2020
League Night Recap for 1/14/20

The first league night of Season 14, and also the first of a new decade, saw two new members joining, Travis and Erik. Lexi and I had both been trying to recruit some new members on Facebook but were not ultimately successful. There’s still time yet to join, though! You only need to play four nights to qualify to compete in finals. We noticed the absence of Tim, who later let everyone know on Facebook that he will be unable to attend league this season. He’s become one of the big powers in the league so I hope he will be able to return soon.

I never include pictures of myself in league updates, so this time I tried a selfie. I never take selfies and I guess it shows.

League night started terribly late and I was very flustered when I arrived. Through most of this season I have arranged alternate activities for my evening class for when I need to attend league, but I could not do so this time because it was the first day of classes for me and I needed at minimum to go over the syllabus before dismissing class. Normally Joseph would start league for me in that situation but he was out of town on a work trip. Fortunately, Mike stepped in at the last minute and got attendance taken, groups organized, and the Smackdown running so that when I arrived things were all ready for me to just give the signal to start. That was a great relief as I was imagining there would be total chaos when I arrived. I tried to get out of class as early as possible but of course a student stopped me with questions, so I didn’t arrive at the bar until about 7:30. Despite this late start, we finished around the same time as usual, at least compared with our longer running nights.

This season we have a new set of banks, which I laboriously organized to take into account new games, changes of some games’ designation as “long” playing or not, and an attempt at a theme. Some of the banks are more thematic than others but there is at least some rationalization I can give for every game’s placement (even though I was constrained by not putting too many epic-length games in the same back). The theme is the Labors of Hercules, and this week was the Nemean Lion, probably one of the better known labors and also one of my more tightly themed banks. All the games had felines in them, sort of. The Simpsons (Scratchy), Deadpool (Sabertooth), Theatre of Magic (Tiger Saw), Kiss (Catman), and Batman ’66 (Catwoman).

Danny was in a jolly mood and began telling me an epic story about the time he and a friend got detained at the Canadian border returning to the US after a casino trip, for 16 hours. Just as he got to the climax of the story, I realized randos were walking up and about to start on the game we needed to play next, so I had to cut Danny off and rush over there. The rest of the night I kept wondering how the story ended.

The Smackdown game was Medieval Madness. Danny was the top qualifier and I sent Josh to find him. Josh came back leading Danny slowly down the stairs, as by then Danny was really in his cups and couldn’t really walk straight. I put up a pretty decent qualifying score but got smacked down in actual play, once again. Danny, on the other hand, completely ran away with the game, playing for ages while intermittently closing his eyes during slow moments in play. He got the catapult animation and I thought “Oh, no way he’ll hit that” and instead he got the 500K award easily on the first time through.

Danny, eyes seemingly closed, playing Medieval Madness.

In between two of his balls, I thought this might be a chance to ask for the end of the story. I opened with, “So Danny, anyway, you really needed to pee and then you farted and it smelled bad…?” indicating the part of the story where he left off. He just stared at me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I realized that I probably should have given him a little more context for that sentence.

Danny ended up winning the Smackdown, with the only person who came close to making a run for him being Lexi. This was Lexi’s first appearance in a Smackdown finals but it probably won’t be the last. Meanwhile, the B division played off on Ghostbusters, causing Josh to concede and let someone else play because he hates Ghostbusters so much. The winning score set by Derik was something like 12 million, which offended Jon so much that he later dragged me over and forced me to look at his 50 million score to prove that he could have easily beaten Derik.

After league I was tired, I hadn’t eaten dinner, and I wanted to get home until someone said the magic words “dollar games.” So, I hung around playing dollar games with people on Stranger Things (and for some reason Derik and Mike each made me do a shot with them). I put up 96 million for my last game, my best ever, but Mike still beat me. Too bad I didn’t designate that as one of my launch party games. I got home, looked in my purse, and realized the dollar I was going to pony up was still in there. I sent Mike a message on Facebook telling him I realized I forgot to put in my dollar and he immediately replied with a money request for $1. I laughed for about five minutes, and then laughed again when I told Joseph about it later. I did finally pay up when I saw Mike in person, saying, “I don’t want it to be said that I don’t pay my gambling debts.”

Our next league night is tonight, of course, and this time I should be there by about 6:30. Joseph will be present from around 5 on to take scores on our various running tournaments including Destrier of Death, Stranger Things Launch Party, and our Smackdown game, Batman ’66. See you soon!

January 28, 2020
Zen Night and Other News from the Break

We’re about to come back after over a month off league, with a new theme for our banks (the Labors of Hercules) and a new game (Stranger Things). By the time of the Zen tournament we had an exciting development: The Beatles was back! And other games too, but mainly The Beatles, that’s the important thing. This was made possible by the fact that our pinballing was so awesome and powerful that it blew down a wall at The Avenue. Or maybe someone just knocked that wall down but it was definitely a consequence of the league wanting more room for pinball, so that’s close enough.

Zen champions Josh and Mike, by the game they won on. (Edited: apparently they did not win on this game but did play it well. I guess we just shot the photo there for the great lighting in the alcove.)

During the break we had the Zen Night, AKA Super-Ball XIII, with the traditional “give me the cheesiest thing you have” trophies, a tradition started by our former director Matt. I still just call them up and say “give me the same things again” and they give us a different winged victory/Olympian athlete/star/whatever they have lying around. I paired with Joseph again, which despite the fact that Matt once claimed it was unfair for me to pair with Joseph since we have intuitive couple communication, did not pay off once again. We won our first Zen tournament playing together and never since.

Pat and Biff check on something (a stuck ball?) during a Zen game.

Despite the powerhouse pairing of Derik and Danny, Mike took home his fourth (I think?) Zen trophy (edited: he tells me it’s his fifth and that he really wants to make sure Chris knows it), this time with partner Josh. Mike is the most common Zen champion in the league.

Derik and Danny on Getaway.

We also had a Tuesday Night Smackdown on The Simpsons, though it had low participation due to some people still playing in the Zen tournament. I threw a last minute game on just because Joseph thought I should do that to lick my wounds after being tossed out of the Zen tournament, and surprisingly I ended up with a really good score. Tim, however, won the tournament (I got 2nd).

Tim celebrates his victory on The Simpsons Pinball Party.

We also had the fifth annual Silver Balls in the City charity tournament, which was well attended and took in over $200 for the Capital Area Humane Society. It was my first Saturday tournament, and though the Avenue was not able to let us start early (unlike at Stewie’s Strikes tournament), it still worked out, despite the late news that an album release party would be playing that night. We ended with a win for Mike Stewart and a three-way tie for second place between Jared, Derik, and Caleb, who along with Lupe was in town for the holidays. I hadn’t thought of the fact that a tie would be possible in a strikes tournament so I gave them the option of playing it off or just deciding how to split up the trophies and they chose the latter, which had the side benefit of allowing us to get done before the bands started playing.

I hope to see you tonight at 7 for the league opener!

January 14, 2020
No bad luck here: Danny wins Season 13

Derik (third), Danny (first), and Mike (second), in front of the tournament-ending game, Deadpool.

Thirteen must be Danny’s lucky number as he emerged from November 12’s final tournament as the victor of Lansing Pinball League’s Season 13. In fact, since things wrapped up after midnight, that added another 13 – November 13 – to the count. And another three, since Danny is the league’s third-ever champion, taking the crown from two-season winner Mike (who in turn wrested it from 10-season winner Chris). Mike joked that, like Chris (who took a season off after his first loss), this means he can now quit the league. I don’t think anyone really expects that to happen, at least not as long as The Avenue still has Ghostbusters.

Danny finishes putting in his GC initials after his tournament-winning Deadpool game.

Seventeen people qualified to play in finals, but Jon didn’t attend (we miss you, Jon!) so we had an even eight people in the A and B division brackets. I had squeaked into A division with a one-point lead over Biff, and my reward was having to play top seed Mike in the first round. Surprisingly I got him on one of his choices, which tipped the balance of power and should have made it possible for me to win. Unfortunately, I lost on his next choice and then again on my own ace in the hole, Medieval Madness (despite a strong start). In the ~~loser~~ second chance bracket I faced Josh, again won on one of his choices, lost a heartbreaking game of Batman in which I put up a personal best of something like 680M (he responded by nearly tripling that on a third ball rally from around 300) and then, demoralized, completely choked on Medieval Madness. I went out like I went in: 8th place.

Winner Jason and second-place Biff with their plaques. Jason also wants us to see his Jurassic Park flyer for some reason.

Meanwhile, we had a very heated B division battle. No one was looking forward to facing Jason, who is frankly too good to be slumming it down in B but was knocked there by missing too many league nights. Although Jason did end up winning the bracket, it was only after a very tough, two-round fight against Biff. The B bracket took so long that third place Lexi had to leave before the winners’ photos were taken.

Lexi with her third place award.

The A division took even longer, of course. In the early hours of the morning, Mike had to slog it out and see if he could win two rounds against Danny. Fortunately for everyone’s bedtime though not fortunately for Mike, it ended after one round, on a game of Deadpool. Danny walked away with over a billion and Mike, as player 2, had to try to beat that on what would have had to be an epic third ball rally. Mike didn’t give up and did start to creep his way up with a lot of work on Ball 3, but ended up draining somewhere in the 200 millions.

Biff playing in the final match against Jason. This is my favorite cheap camera trick…

I had predicted a win for Tim this season, but maybe next season will be Tim’s, since this one only got him a 5th place (“only” – I’d sure trade for it). Mike predicted “the season of Derik” but Derik went home with the third place plaque. My own nemesis Josh got fourth. If you’re going to knock me out of a tournament you could at least have the courtesy to go all the way!

A less arty picture of Biff in B finals.

Everyone who did not get a plaque took home a Lansing Pinball League “LOSER” ribbon. Matt had originally had those made for a past season and found his stash of the remaining ribbons when he was moving to Kalamazoo. He passed them on to me and then I proceeded to forget where I had stored them, causing Joseph to go home during the tournament, fail to find them, come back, then go home again because in the meantime I had remembered where they were and couldn’t raise him on the phone (I mean the landline, Joseph does not generally carry his cell) because he was already on his way back to the bar.

Danny and Tim, hard at work in the pinball mines.

The night wasn’t all disappointments for me either. At the start of the night, Tim announced that he wanted to present something to thank me and Joseph for the work we do for the league. He then pulled out a plastic cut-out of Rudy from FunHouse that he picked up at Chicago Pinball Expo. They used to cut these “keychains” out of the unused parts of the game’s plastics to give away as promotional items. I was really touched. Everyone knows I am a huge fan of FunHouse. A lesser known fact is that it is also Joseph’s favorite game. He’s the one who got me into it.

My Tuesday Night Smackdown medal (designed by Joseph) and my plastic of Rudy.

The other thing that happened is that I won Tuesday Night Smackdown for the first time. I was sulking from being knocked out of the tournament and had not done any qualifying on Scared Stiff. Joseph encouraged me to go put a game on so I grumpily stomped over and started a game with a few minutes to spare in qualifying. I ended up getting to Scared Stiff and nearly but not quite finishing the Stiff-O-Meter. I hadn’t looked at the qualifying scores and it turned out I had the #2 seed. It didn’t matter much because it turned out that (even though Joseph made medals for two divisions) we only had three people qualified who weren’t either gone or still playing in the main finals. Thus I won a three-person game of Scared Stiff against Joseph and Bryan to take the title of Tuesday Night Smackdown Champion. In addition to this being my first ever Smackdown win, it is technically my first ever open IFPA tournament win. I have won an open tournament before (the non-IFPA-sanctioned first Fear and Trembling, which only three people showed up to) and I have won several women’s tournaments. But this means my IFPA record no longer has “0” in my “wins” column. No, I now can proudly display a “1” there for having one a single three-player game of Scared Stiff. It’s both sad and funny in equal measures that my longtime earnest desire to win an open tournament has been fulfilled by that. This is why the philosophers say that life is absurd.

Tonight is the traditional split flipper tournament, Super-Ball XIII (AKA the Zen tournament). Teams have the chance to win a pair of spectacular trophies from our friends at Prime Time Awards. We will also have a Tuesday Night Smackdown and will give out the (so far secret) Most Improved award and the (not so secret) Worst Score ribbon. I hope to see you all tonight at 7 pm sharp to start the tournament!

November 26, 2019
League Night Recap for 10/22/19

Ages and ages ago, back in the mists of time, we had the final league night of the regular (qualifying) season. It was our closest league night to Halloween this year. In years past, we used to have a Halloween costume contest on the closest night to Halloween, but as the calendar has caused league night to drift further from Halloween we started having minimal participation (read: Joseph and I) so the costume contest was put on hiatus. There may be an explanation besides the calendar. At the first league night two different people (Jake – who should get his flippin’ fingers back to league – and Matt) both showed up dressed as former champion Chris. Matt won the contest by virtue of the fact that he was dedicated enough to shave his head, or at least the middle of it. Many people felt that the costume contest had peaked early and it could only be downhill from there.

Jason being Jason.

Anyway, since this was the closest night to Halloween, I found it fitting that the random number generator chose bank Melpomene, the comic-horror bank. We also had to randomly choose a game for Elvira’s House of Horror to replace, and the bumped game was Monster Bash. Given the misbehavior of the scoop lately, most were not disappointed, though I thought it was a shame to break up the monsters theme. (I would have rather seen Ghostbusters go, for more than one reason.) I made a joke to someone that I thought Jason should wear his Jason mask, as he did on his first night in the league years ago. Little did I know that Jason actually did have his Jason mask ready, and showed up wearing it once things got underway. Later, I got confused when Jason walked up and went to play a ball on a game I was playing because he was not in my group. I went to stop him, and people laughed. “She really has no clue, does she?” said Jason. Except it wasn’t Jason. It was Derik wearing another Jason mask. To my surprise, when Derik saw Jason wearing a mask, he declared that he was going to do it too, and got one out of his car. “You have a Jason mask just sitting in your car?” I asked, incredulous. The answer was yes, because he was given one in an Andy tournament he played in. Giving weird prizes is kind of an Andy trademark (ask Mike sometime about the penis keychain) so I had to accept this.

Both Jasons in profile (Jason in front, Derik behind).

I was in a desperate race to finish the season ahead of Biff in order to play in A division at finals. He was only 10 points behind me, and while he kept reassuring me that he had been playing like crap recently and certainly had no hope of catching me, I was not so sure. I had two really good games (notably a boffo Ghostbusters, of all things) and three bad, including a truly terrible Munsters. I think Biff had more good games, so I waited anxiously to see if he caught up. In the end he did not. I finished the season one lonely point ahead of Biff, guaranteed to play in A and face Mike first round. Hooray? And, uh, thanks Ghostbusters?

As has become common this season due to my work schedule, Joseph made the Smackdown medals. He always makes them relate to a current event or “this date in history.” This time he went with a Halloween theme, making one of them a jack o’lantern and one a piece of candy corn. I finally used up a black and orange ribbon I had randomly been gifted with at a furry con and had been saving specifically for a Halloween tournament. The Smackdown championship was on Indiana Jones and the undercard fight on Road Show. Derik won the Smackdown and Josh (not pictured) the undercard.

Derik with his (sadly reversed) Smackdown medal. I believe it has a jack o’lantern drawn by Joseph on the front.

Assuming everyone shows up for our double elimination finals, Mike will face me in the first round of A as the top and bottom seed, respectively. The other matches will be Danny vs. Joseph, Tim vs. Pat, and Derik vs. Josh. The B division will be very dependent on who shows up (as will the A, for that matter) but nine people are qualified so if everyone shows up there will be a play-in for the eighth seed position. Mike, the reigning champion famous for having ended Chris’s 10-season run, has declared that this is “the season of Derik.” I am going to put my money on Tim, though I consider Danny also a strong contender.

See you all very soon! Go for glory!

November 12, 2019
League Night Recap for 10/8/19

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.

I was happy that Indiana Jones won in the poll, though less happy that I ended up having a soundly mediocre game on it. Here Biff is playing.

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.

The Undercard Winner and Smackdown Champion, Bryan and Mike.

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!

October 17, 2019
League Night Recap for 9/24/19

But soft, what light o’er yonder pinball breaks?

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.

A good source of DNA for any murder investigations involving Josh. I may listen to too many true crime podcasts.

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.

Pat with his Smackdown Champion medal.

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.

My fall leaf medal, a commemoration of the equinox.

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!

October 8, 2019
League Night Recap for 9/10/19

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.

…

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 spent all night in the alcove, so none of my photos were taken in the alcove. It’s too damned dark in there.

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.

Brian playing Jurassic Park in the Undercard bout.

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.

Joseph looks happy because he won the Smackdown tournament, or maybe just because he’s Joseph.

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 shows off his first Smackdown medal. Also, happy birthday, Sasha!

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!

September 24, 2019
League Night Recap for 8/24/19

League newcomer Jett watches Danny play Attack from Mars (and probably wishes he were in another group).

On 8/24, for our fourth night of the season, we played bank Urania, the “stars” bank (named for the Muse of Astronomy; this was an easy one). First, a sob story. I had expected by now that I would be settled in to my new computer, all my data migrated so it looked like home, back into the normal swing of things again after my traumatic computer theft incident. Instead, my new computer, while shiny and pretty and sleek, has turned into a new source of frustration and disappointment. For some reason my data refuses to migrate, even though I did the responsible thing and ran a backup almost every day and in two different places. I went to the Apple Store and spent three hours watching them frantically Google stuff I had already tried, culminating in their declaration that my backup just didn’t contain key user data such as my mail messages for unknown reasons. I didn’t believe this (correctly) and dug around at home and found where those things are stored in a Time Machine backup, but unfortunately I cannot figure out how to get them copied back into Apple Mail so I can read them. Anyway, that’s my latest excuse. I do have pictures this time, at least.

Danny hard at work on his craft, or in this case, spacecraft.

Well actually… pictures are pretty much all I have, since I didn’t take notes as I should, at least not where I can find them. Again, my computer situation has lots of ripple effects, since I normally keep my league notes in my Stickies.

I started out with a bang, having a 15 million or something Junk Yard score, which amazingly didn’t even win my group. I think everyone in the group was over 10 million. I remember when Junk Yard was the shortest playing game in the joint, but now that people aren’t scared of slam tilting it, I guess this is what happens. The rest of the night I did not play so well. At least, not until the end of the night. There was a credit on AC/DC (the Smackdown game) and I hadn’t played yet. I looked around and asked and no one wanted it, so I started up a game and ended up with something well over 100 million, which put me into A division and pushed Joseph out. I guess I’m good at AC/DC now? Huh. It wasn’t even a one off, because in the actual Smackdown fray, I did another 100+ million score that I thought was going to land me my first ever Smackdown A division medal. Danny dashed those hopes with a big third ball rally. Meanwhile in B division…

Who is that masked man?

Yep, that’s Jason in lucha libre attire, which to the surprise of spectators (mostly me), he donned prior to his Smackdown Undercard game. If I remember correctly he was victorious, though I’m sure someone will come along and correct me if that’s not so. I don’t have the records on me as I’m at school scrambling this together before driving home. A previous Jason stunt involved showing up to league after a long absence wearing a hockey mask, which spooked Derik but correctly clued me in that Jason had returned. I wonder what other masks Jason will show up in? It can’t be a chicken mask, because that one is my trademark.

Derik lets me know he sees my lens while Danny, Joseph, and Jon play.

Tonight we are playing bank Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, which in our interpretation means “the comic horror games.” That’s The Addams Family, Ghostbusters, Monster Bash, Scared Stiff, and the league “favorite,” The Munsters. This is going to be our fifth meeting, so keep in mind that it’s the last chance for new joiners to get in the four league nights needed to qualify for finals. See you soon!

September 10, 2019