What else have we been up to? The most noteworthy thing would be last Friday when we returned to Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. It --- the third league we ever joined --- was the last big pinball thing we did before the pandemic began and while they'd returned to their usual monthly events we hadn't joined back with them. But between the pandemic, yes, getting less bad despite every effort being made to sustain it, and my having a source of stable income again, and oh yes the news that the mall they're in is redeveloping and they're being kicked out after the end of the calendar year? We were ready to go back and certainly to not miss the last(?) season of Marvin's as we knew it.
Marvin's itself had changed not so very much from how we saw it last, at least in the coin-op and novelty attractions. There were some different video games and some minor rearrangements of things --- mostly creating more space near the pinball games, actually --- but it didn't seem like more than might have happened between any two monthly visits. Barnum's Cardiff Giant maintains its vigil way back by the redemption counter, curiously obscured for a historic piece of bunkum like that seems to be. The King Cobra striking-cobra nerves machine had the cobra in physically good shape --- its rubber skin restored and intact --- but once more the snake only swung itself back and forth, forever, never getting around to striking. Even when I gave up and walked away the weaving didn't stop. It's been like that before.
What had changed were the pinball machines, almost all of which were different from our last visit, as you'd expect for a four-year gap. Games that remained included Deadpool --- the guy running the league told me it was never leaving as it's by far the most popular game there for some reason --- and the Monster Bash and Attack From Mars remakes, plus the Revenge From Mars game that somehow still had my grand champion score on it! (Pinball machines normally reset high score tables after some large enough number of games played, so that players feel like they have a chance, although Grand Champion scores are typically preserved.) Had I known I might have picked that for my night's game, although given my performance that would probably have been a mistake.
For in the league --- five games, every player in the four-person group taking one chance to pick a game and one person getting two picks --- my play was not good. My finish looked good, but that was because I was put in a group with people new to pinball or new to playing in a league. (I spent a good bit of time explaining the rules about how the scoresheet explained who got to pick the game and what order we were supposed to play in, and I'm not sure I was believed or just acquiesced to.) And at that, I was struggling to keep up. I may be out of practice on these specific tables but, c'mon, anyone can put up a billion points on Attack From Mars except, apparently me.
And maybe ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger, who had an even worse night. She and I were put in the bottom-most seeds. The league seeds you for the first night based on your finish last season and we didn't play then. But whereas I got lucky and hit a bunch of people who were new to the league, bunnyhugger was put up against people who were experienced players like us (including one of the people who played for the Women's State Championship) but happened not to have played last season. I don't know that we played any of the same tables so we can't compare our scores directly but her standing for the night --- with no first-place finishes --- was worse than mine entirely on her playing a tougher field.
All nice, though, despite some annoyance getting to and from Marvin's through the blockade of construction. On the way out I did look up as this was the night of the aurora and while I could see the crescent moon, I also saw mostly clouds. I did try taking some photos of the moon, mostly to see if I could convince my camera to set focus at infinity. Some of those have a purple glow for the night sky, but there's an excellent chance that's the light from Marvin's in the ready-to-rain atmosphere.
Though we stopped at White Castle on the way back, they had already stopped serving Impossible Sliders for the night, so we continued our stretch of not eating there.
Back to the Gilmore Car Museum, to see something not diner-related particularly. You ready?
Besides all the classic cars they had some classic trailer homes, like this 1938 model year thingy.
The logo on the left reads 'Mt Clemens Michigan', which had been a big resort town for the rich of Detroit back in the day before the rich decided to sell Detroit for scrap.
A view inside the trailer, which looks like an adorably small home but where are the bookshelves?
See, I could totally imagine sleeping on that couch but again, bookshelves: where are they?
Here's a car which seems like it's too fancy to be hauling a trailer like the one we saw there, but you never know.
Also, hey, look at that, a genuine Packard coin-change mechanism to dispense quarters for pinball! That's great!
Trivia: John Witherspoon, representing New Jersey, was born in Scotland and first travelled to the colonies in 1768 to take charge of the College of New Jersey (Princeton). By 1774 he was publishing articles calling for complete independence. Source: Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence, Denise Kiernan, Joseph D'Agnese.
Currently Reading: Sign Painters, Faythe Levine and Sam Macon.
