Remember our last league night before the July hiatus? Almost two months ago? Yeah, neither do I. Let me check the photos from the night to jog my memory… er, oops? I somehow didn’t take any photos. What the heck? I can’t explain that. But wait! This is what I keep notes for! Let’s see what my notes say.
Well, first of all, the one thing I did easily remember is that a historic event occurred: the first ever perfect score. Someone had the top score on every single game for the night, and that someone was Mike. This is certainly the first time it has ever happened under my era of the league. I don’t recall it ever happening during the Matt era either, although since I don’t have records of that, it might have happened early on (and if it did, the winner-spinner-chicken-dinner was probably Chris). Mike’s achievement was unlocked on bank Calliope, the “movies/TV” bank. This means that one of the games he had to blow up was South Park, and as Tim once pointed out, that’s a game you really feel more ashamed than proud to put a good score on. Luckily this is the last time we had to play it in league, since it (along with Elvis, which I’m a bit sadder about) left for Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman ’66.
Aha, my notes also remind me that we had a few new members joining this time, namely Biff, Jett, and Logan (I swear those are real people and not extras from Captain Scarlett). At one point Logan came up to me to ask who that guy in his group was, the guy who’s really good. I figured out that he meant longtime league member Chris “Dr. Turtle”. I said that we have a lot of good people in the league now but that Chris is rather legendary for having won the first 10 seasons of the league before his winning streak was finally broken by Mike.
After league we had Tuesday Night Smackdown, as usual. The Smackdown champion, on Black Knight: Sword of Rage, was Danny, but my notes say the real excitement was in B division, where Josh ran a huge score up on Deadpool. Speaking of Deadpool, the Deadpool BOOM! tournament from Stern ended during our hiatus with Danny, Mike, and Josh in the 4th, 6th, and 7th places, respectively. That’s right: our little old Lansing Pinball League owned 30% of the worldwide leaderboard.
After the Smackdown tournament, some folks hung around to play for fun as usual. This led to an instant-classic LPL moment. Derik, while playing Metallica, began complaining, “I feel like I’m playing with a tiny little pinball here.” I asked him what he was talking about (I assumed he thought the game was too low on its legs or something). He insisted that the ball itself was “tiny.” Everyone started laughing at him because none of us could tell just by looking at the ball that anything was wrong with it. Derik got indignant and said he was going to prove it right here and now, and he opened up Metallica and laid all the balls from the game on the upended lockdown bar. We all had to admit he was right: one ball was perhaps 1/16″ smaller in diameter. I could see it when they were all lined up together, but I’m amazed that Derik could see it when they were in motion. As a result of this incident, Derik has been given the nickname “Caliper” by Russell.
We’re just about to resume the season with meeting #3 tonight at 7. We will be playing Clio, the “magic” themed bank, consisting of Black Knight: Sword of Rage, Lord of the Rings, Medieval Madness, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Theatre of Magic.