austin_dern | One day leading to another

While bunnyhugger had her better-but-not-enough second half of the Women's International Pinball Tournament, what was I doing? Milling around some, naturally. Having a little bit of popcorn and regretting I hadn't stashed more bagels or doughnuts while they were out earlier. Movie theater popcorn is nice but, c'mon, you can't make that a meal. Occasionally I even talked to another guy there, agreeing about things like Mystic having great sounds or Whitewater playing well or stuff like that. And then ---

They had a couple brand-new games in the free-play area, ones that had been for the Battle Of The Burgh side tournament or alternate games for New Pinburgh. Among them, Jersey Jack's Toy Story 4, which I got to play enough times to start feeling like I had any idea what the rules are. This served me well next time we went to Marvin's League, as the Marvelous Mechanical Museum has a Toy Story 4 in its lineup. But they also had a real boutique pinball company's lone (to date) game ... Labyrinth, based on the 1980s Studios movie.

Having been a kid and having had cable at least in the back half of the 80s yes, I saw Labyrinth a good number of times. Not so much since then. So all the props and playfield art and the considerable video shown, plus the modes going on, were all vaguely familiar and grew moreso the more I saw them. It did highlight how I need to rewatch Labyrinth sometime, though. I could not play it well, mind you. The game seems like it's designed well enough, I just never got a handle on what to shoot for, or why; cluing people into the rules is very hard on modern games where the different modes keep changing out from under you. (This is also why I wanted time to play Toy Story 4 on free play.) But it feels good, it feels like something I want to play more. Hope somewhere near me gets one.

bunnyhugger would play a couple games of this, after qualifying ended and she was not among the players-off. She too found the game appealing, and beating me a couple times can't have hurt. There was a mode with the Fireys that I got started somehow and that was looking like a lot of fun, that I drained out of too soon. Interested in something more.

I was able to coax her into playing a couple of the other games that I'd liked. Rolling Stones, with its late-70s chimey version of Satisfaction, was also fun and my discovery of how easy it is to get the 1-2-3-4-5 target sequence will surely matter if we ever encounter this in tournament play again. (The game, like many in that era, has a bit where if you build up the bonus enough it resets, not to zero, but to a higher tier of bonus, a touch of rich-get-richer play that you can't help loving when you're rich.) Mystic and its weird haunted music and also sounds lifted from Tri-Zone or Meteor. Some simple fun, while the many-way tie for 16th went on in the tournament area.

We would not stick around for the playoffs. bunnyhugger worried a little bit about looking like a sore loser. But not too much, as she also didn't want to stick around where she felt so disappointed. She offered that we could stay as long as I felt like playing more, but I also felt like I had probably had about enough. Had bunnyhugger made finals, or at least done something like finish on a perfect round so she could end the night feeling good about her performance, I'd probably have felt more like sticking around. But, if I really feel like doing all day at a pay-one-price arcade, hey, there's Brighton, there's Fremont. I could even go to the Sparks museum where the games may cost 50 cents but I can play them pretty long outside tournament play. Plus get bread sticks. We could go.

Briefly we considered getting Starlite admission into Kennywood. But the park expected to be open only to 9 pm, and there was little chance we could get there before 7:30. Never mind; then. We should find something to eat.

And now, it's time to get to the end of the Electric Light Parade. But don't worry, Silver Bells isn't quite finished yet!

There were fewer marching bands than usual --- I think only eight or ten, compared to a dozen in past years --- and they're all hard to photograph, but here's at least some flag-twirlers.

The local Roller Derby teams have merged and so we've lost the Lansing Derby Vixens and the East Lansing Mitten Mavens, which have joined to become just Lansing Roller Derby. Here's the float for the combined team and yes, they should have named themselves the Mitten Vixens or the Vixen Mavens or something good like that instead.

I think these might be some of our Maven Vixens, but I'm not sure.

Cows leading a stairwell of people not looking at cows.

And here's Big Lug, the dragon-ish mascot of the local minor-league baseball team!

Finally the stars of the show arrive, Santa Claus supported by Quaker Martha Washington.

Trivia: In 1950 Lansing State Journal columnist Ted Foster cashed in on the trivia that Detroit used to be in the National League; readers protesting who sent ten or 25 cents in were shown his proof, an 1887 advertising bill by Lansing clothing merchant Charles Broas, which on the back side showed pictures of Detroit players in street dress. Source: The Bicentennial History of Ingham County, Michigan, Ford Stevens Ceasar. Ceasar doesn't explain how this worked or why it was either 10 cents or 25. But yes, Detroit had a team in the National League from 1881 to 1888, and in 1883 set a Major League Baseball record for surrendering the most runs in a single inning (18), to the Chicago team.

Currently Reading: Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd.