During our last league night, we started a new set of banks, “Corvus” and “Canis Minor.” When I reminded everyone of the names of the banks (as though anyone but me cared about the names I always insist on picking out), I explained that they were “Corvus, the Crow, and Canis Minor, the Little Dog.” When I said the name “Little Dog,” that prompted an “Aww!” out of Cyndi, so at least that bank name has one fan. By the way, there is a specific reason that I used Canis Minor instead of the better-known and brighter Canis Major, and it has to do with Guardians of the Galaxy being in that bank. If anyone besides Joseph can correctly guess why I put Guardians in a bank called Canis Minor, I will buy their games for an entire night. Good luck!
Before the night started, I had let everyone know that Black Knight: Sword of Rage would be the backup game if Elvira’s House of Horrors was still having issues. I knew it had been having a switch firing nonstop the previous week which had caused us to have to pull it from a Lightning Flippers tournament. Derik told me it should be good to go, but just before league started, Dan N. said to me, “Derik says he’s 90% sure it’s fixed.” It’s apparently a recurring problem; Derik says sometimes he thinks it’s fixed and then he walks away and it immediately starts doing it again. Unfortunately, that’s what happened during league play. The first group (fortunately) to play it had the issue start again, and despite asking if they could just leave it going awhile and keep the score, I pulled it in favor of Black Knight. It seems like Elvira just doesn’t like us this season, since we also had to pull Scared Stiff during a previous bank.
Longtime but intermittent league member Jim, Bryan’s dad, made a reappearance, and everyone was happy to see him. He isn’t sure how often he’ll play this season but he did pay a full season’s dues, so I assume he’ll be coming back.
Black Knight was very unkind to me as is typical, so I was sorry for the substitution. Still, I would have had to play it eventually. I like the art and the music, I just don’t like how it slaughters me in competitive play. I didn’t have such a good night game-wise, but I did get several compliments on my new “Pinball Witch” shirt (which I got from the Stern merch store) so overall I’ll call the night a positive.
Our Smackdown tournament was a good old fashioned castle-off on Medieval Madness. Despite some other high scores, Danny blew it up on Ball 3 and as player 4 he got to walk off. The Undercard game was Attack from Mars, AKA the other Medieval Madness, and the winner on that one was Ethan, who is starting to get a collection of Smackdown buttons.
That’s about it for my league recap but before I finish this post, I wanted to remind everyone that we have an upcoming charity tournament, “Fear and Trembling,” on October 19. This is our annual pingolf tournament, with the unique format of allowing a choice of two objectives on each hole. It supports the Capital Area Humane Society and we will also be raffling three valuable gift baskets donated by local businesses. Everyone will get one raffle ticket with their $10 entry fee and can buy more for $2 each. I’m hoping this will be our biggest pingolf tournament to date, so please encourage your friends to come and make a golf foursome with you!
