Tuesday’s league night, the fifth of Season 3, saw slightly lower attendance than the previous meeting, so we returned to playing four games. Matt had previously randomly selected Junk Yard, Getaway, Addams Family, and Monster Bash to be the night’s games. The best laid schemes of mice and Matt go oft awry, so that is not quite what happened.
During an early round of Junk Yard, Mike “The Gremlin” S. slam tilted. The usual League penalty for slam tilting is having to buy everyone a round receiving zero points for that game, but Mike was lucky, since the rest of his group believed him when he said he barely touched it. Matt decided to throw out Junk Yard due to its hypersensitive tilt and replace it with Tales of the Arabian Nights. Later, my group was up on Getaway when the launcher broke again, so that ended up substituted with Indiana Jones.
Mike had not yet broken anything when this picture was taken.
The etiquette tips I posted last week provided one of the evening’s recurring themes. Whenever someone was missing when it was his or her turn to shoot, Matt would declare the absent player “on the clock,” and at one point Matt finished a ball by packing three f-words into one outburst then turned to me and asked whether he’d broken any of the rules.
I seemed to be a popular target for guff this week. Jake had not seen my hair in its “weekend” style before (I never wear my bangs combed upward when I am at work, and often don’t have time to restyle my hair between arriving home and heading out to league) and was overly delighted by it. He called me “Jason Priestley” and then demanded that I never wear it any other way again. Later on, I heard someone on the other side of the room saying “FunHouse, FunHouse, FunHouse.” Of course, this is the equivalent of blowing a turkey caller for me so I walked over to see what was going on. When I got over to the group who had been talking, there didn’t seem to be any conversation about FunHouse so I started to leave disappointed. Chris said, “Sorry, Heather, FunHouse false alarm.” I said, “I love FunHouse!” He said “I know you do” and then added that it is “a piece of junk.” If his intention was to get a rise out of me it worked as I began defending Rudy’s honor with great ardor until he laughed at me. Someday I will have my revenge…
Jake seemed to be having issues with video modes on Tuesday. I have heard that he attempted to complete the video mode in Getaway by driving at 5 MPH. I didn’t see that myself, but I did witness his Indiana Jones fiasco. He started Mine Cart mode and immediately pulled left to crash into the very first barrier. This provoked unabashed laughter from the rest of his group. He began using etiquette-incompatible words to describe everyone present. When he turned to swear at me, I objected (I had not been one of the worst offenders, after all, though I confess I may have chuckled) and he patted me on the head, saying, “I’m just kidding, I could never hate you, Dylan.”
At this juncture I feel compelled to point out that Dylan was Luke Perry, not Jason Priestley, whose fine thespian abilities were instead devoted to playing Brandon. I didn’t go to high school in the early ’90s for nothing.
Joseph just after losing a ball in Monster Bash.
There seemed to be a lot of pain going around on Tuesday. A number of upsets occurred, particularly in that several people overtook Chris. I also finished ahead of Joseph for the first time ever. This was actually a good night for me, in large part due to a great Arabian Nights game (great by my standards…), one in which I hit the replay score and, in my excitement, yelled “YEAH, THAT’S ME!” I honestly hope that I don’t annoy my league mates too badly with my noisy enthusiasm. When I like something, I really like something, and these days I really, really like pinball.
The night’s results found Aaron tied with Alex for first, just one point ahead of Danny in third. The third, fourth (Rodney), fifth (Chris), and sixth (Mike S.) places were also each one point apart. In the overall standings, though Chris is still comfortably at first and Rodney at second, third place has gotten a lot closer. Joseph’s bad week cost him his lead and then some, though he is still part of a close cluster of people battling for third: Aaron at 204, Matt at 203, and Joseph at 198. Mike (MWS) and Jake are also in range at 190 and 186, but will need to do some catching up in the remaining three meetings.
The complete results and standings are up, and some new photos have been added to the gallery. That’s it for my recap – but I will give the last word to Chris, who delivered the Quote of the Night:
“I like pinball.” – Chris T.