It was an exciting week-plus for the league as we had League Night #6 on 3/26 followed by March Hare Madness, the Stephen T. Kendrick Memorial Pinball Tournament, on 4/2. (More on that second one in another post, I hope.) We would be playing Polyhymnia, the bank created to account for the fact that Munsters gave us our 26th game, disrupting the plan to have five banks of five. For Polyhymnia, league members got to vote on their favorite “short,” “medium,” and “long” playing games (according to the categories created prior to the start of the season to fill out the initial banks). The chosen games plus The Munsters would make up bank Polyhymnia, whose name means “many praises.” Next season, there will be a new vote, so the bank will probably change.
For some reason, enough people voted for South Park to secure it a place in the bank (partly through luck, since I had to randomly break a several-way tie). Worse, some of those demented individuals didn’t even come to the league night where the rest of us had to play it! And worst of all, the random bank I drew for Week 7 (tonight) is Clio, which also has South Park in it. Thanks, guys. The other games chosen for Polyhymnia were Attack from Mars, Indiana Jones, and Iron Maiden.
Speaking of Iron Maiden, my entire group tore up Iron Maiden, with 9-digit scores all around and me earning my first 300+ score ever. Then we all got beaten up by The Munsters. I think no one broke 100M on Ball 1. Bryan asked, “Did someone do something to offend it?”
Attendance was light, a stark contrast with the previous night’s record attendance. We were missing the Chad/Tyler combo and the Caleb/Lupe/Lexi nexus. I believe the K12 schools’ spring break had something to do with this. (College spring break is always a lot earlier.)
At one point Todd asked me why I hated South Park, having noticed all my cranky remarks about it in league Facebook posts and being relatively unfamiliar with it himself. I can’t remember what reason I gave beyond “it’s South Park,” but later in the evening Todd came up to me and declared, “I love South Park!” Apparently it treated him well. I started out bad on it and complained, but Tim said, “Doing well on South Park is a mark of shame.” Tim went on to put up over 300 million and get the first high score entry anyone in the league has ever done (the defaults are ridiculously high). Later, Joseph beat him, and ran over to me pointing at the game angrily and complaining, “Look at this! Look at this!” as though he were dismayed by doing so well on it. I ended up having a not-terrible game after all with a third ball rally. I won the video mode, and without any exaggeration, I was out of breath afterward. (Postscript: Tim went on to take the high score on the game back away from Joseph a few days later. Joseph says he would congratulate Tim, but “it means he played a lot of South Park, or at least a game of South Park.”)
On Attack from Mars, someone noticed the initials “DAS” and wondered who that is. Mike suggested that Derik had put his real initials in, rather than his standard “RED.” “Derik Allen Schimberg?” someone asked, and this set off a string of guesses: “Alex,” “Arthur,” and so on, until Mike came up with “Derik Amadeus Schimberg.”
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Road Show and the undercard was Star Trek. Joseph bulldozed his way to a Smackdown championship medal. The Undercard went to Mike. It was our first time having an upstairs game in Tuesday Night Smackdown in a while, and I think people were relieved to get out of the alcove for a change. (I’m sentimental about that alcove, though. That used to be where all our games were, in the early league days.)
Tonight we’re playing bank Clio, the “cartoons and comics” bank, and will have our Tuesday Night Smackdown bout on Iron Maiden. I hope to see you all at 7 pm (or hopefully a bit earlier so you can start laying the smack down)!