Flyin' like an aeroplane

[austin_dern]

This Tuesday was March Hare Madness, one of the quarterly charity pinball tournaments bunnyhugger holds. This was also the first pinball event cancelled by the pandemic, back in 2020, back when it was public policy to discourage mass sickness and death. You know, the good old days.

For the first time I was coming to a tournament straight off work. (Silver Balls, back in December, came a week that I was working from home that day.) Not quite straight; I needed to get some money, and got very annoyed that the ATM kept reporting I had the wrong PIN when I knew I did not. Finally I realized the problem was I was using the card for our joint account, which has got a different PIN from my personal account. When I got home the credit union sent an e-mail noting I was having trouble with my PIN and telling me how to get it reset, an event that made me worry my card was suspended until I saw someone in a credit union branch. It turns out no, no trouble there.

bunnyhugger was running late on making trophies --- she was finishing touches as I got home, a bit over an hour before the scheduled start, and was not happy with this --- and she hadn't had the chance to get something to eat. Pinball league nights usually run late and this tournament always runs even later, despite starting even earlier. So between that and the delay in making something to eat we got to the hipster bar terribly close to the tournament start, and knowing that one person was coming but would arrive late, and we had no way of knowing whether the web site used for the tournament would be able to handle a player who joins in the second (or later) round.

The format was to play rounds of four (or, if need be, three) players, scoring based on how many people in your group you beat. The twist, and what makes this madness, is the use of the ``Critical Hit'' cards. This is a deck of cards, approved inexplicably for International Flipper Pinball Association sanctioned play, that let players inflict mischief on others. You get cards by whatever the tournament rules are. bunnyhugger's were simple: two cards given to everyone at the start of the tournament, plus one card given when someone earns an extra ball. Some cards are relatively benign: you 'heal self' and get to play an extra ball at the end of your game. Some are mischievous: cover the score display, a thing that's become more serious as games have gotten video screens carrying considerable information on them. Some can be defensive: knock a game out of the tournament. Some are outright evil: force a player to stop right away, or to swap their score with you. And there are a couple cards to cancel someone else's card.

bunnyhugger would get eighteen people attending, her second-best turnout (and the best since we took up the Critical Hit format). And got to show off that she'd mastered the QR Code Generator thing well enough to have a code people could scan to get to tournament results, or to enter group results as they happened. Very smooth and efficient. As tense as the build-up to a tournament always is, this was starting smooth enough.

And then in the first round, the media showed up.

Trivia: With the building of the Empire State Building, New York revised its safety codes to allow elevators to travel up to 1,000 feet per minute, up from the previous 700 feet per minute ordinance. (700 feet per minute had been considered the maximum speed a human could safely control; improved automation and safety design increased safe control.) Source: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City, Jason Goodwin.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 20: Popeye in the Navy Part III, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Noelle warns that the book has depictions of natives that are, ``well, you'll see. Reader discretion is advised''; it's worse than you think. It's a depiction of your classic (ugh) Jungle Cannibal Tribe, with the only alleviating factor being that they're at the North Pole for no clear reason, and there's no concession given to, like, they should be wearing heavy jackets and stuff. So it has absurdism buoying the premise. If it weren't for the racism of the depiction it'd be a funny gimmick. As it was, they couldn't get out of there fast enough for me.

Comments

[selki]

And then in the first round, the media showed up.

Cliffhanger!