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!
I’m proud to announce this season’s tentative banks. New year, new theme! Some of the banks have a tighter theme than others but I swear I have a rationale for every single game’s placement. And now without further ado, behold…
Season 14: THE LABORS OF HERCULES
Nemean Lion (1/14): The Simpsons Pinball Party, Deadpool, Theatre of Magic, Batman ’66, Kiss
Lernaean Hydra (1/28): The Munsters, Metallica, Monster Bash, Scared Stiff, Black Knight: Sword of Rage
Ceryneian Hind (2/11): Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Getaway, Star Trek, Iron Man, Road Show
Girdle of Hippolyta (2/25): Tales of the Arabian Nights, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Addams Family, Lord of the Rings, Terminator 3
Stymphalian Birds (3/10): Attack from Mars, Elvira’s House of Horrors, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Iron Maiden
Apples of the Hesperides (3/24): The Beatles, Willy Wonka, Medieval Madness, Indiana Jones, Game of Thrones
On 4/28, we will play any games that have not yet been played plus games from a randomly selected bank to be announced after 4/14. 5/12 is finals night and 5/26 is Super-Ball XIV: Zen Night.
It’s pinball time in the city (is it ever not?). We will be having our traditional after-Christmas, holiday-themed pinball tournament, Silver Balls in the City, at The Avenue Cafe in Lansing on December 28, 2019. This is the first-ever Saturday edition of Silver Balls in the City and we’re hoping for a record turnout and lots of money raised for the Capital Area Humane Society. This will be a 9-strikes (progressive strikes) tournament (exact number TBA based on opening time of the bar) with the usual sparkly, holiday knick-knack crowned trophies that are a trademark for this tournament. There will also be translite and other prize giveaways. The cost is $10 plus coin drop. $9 of each $10 entry fee goes to the Capital Area Humane Society (the other $1 covers the IFPA tax).
The start time has been changed to 3:30 pm. Please note that the bar does not open until 3 pm, so don’t arrive too early. For more updates, please join our Facebook event page, or email heather@lansingpinleague.com for more information.
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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!
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.
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!
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!
The annual Fear and Trembling pingolf tournament is returning to the Avenue Cafe in Lansing on November 6. This nine-hole course will have a unique twist, as usual: each hole will offer two objectives and you have to choose in advance which one to swing for. Hit the other one in the process? Tough luck, only the chosen one counts! The holes will all be objective rather than score-based to encourage you to learn new ways to play the games. This is the only tournament in Michigan with this format (and maybe anywhere).
Fear and Trembling, as usual, will be a charity tournament supporting the Capital Area Humane Society. The cost will be $10 ($9 to the charity, $1 to the IFPA) and players will be responsible for their own coin drop. There will be custom trophies and probably translite giveaways. This will be an official Stern Army Circuit event, too.
The tournament will open at 4 pm with players allowed to start a scorecard anytime between then and 7 pm. If a player’s first scorecard isn’t going well, they can toss it out and start a new one at a cost of $5 (all going to charity), provided they start by 7.
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!
