Last night we made our return to RLM Amusements for one of their weekly tournaments. We hadn't been able to get there a couple weeks running, because of other committments, but this looked like a perfect chance except for the winter storm advisory. A storm that would be starting in earnest around 11 pm would drop three to five inches on us and a similar amount on Grand Rapids, out where RLM Amusements is. However, as the week went on, the forecast snow kept starting later and later, and with a forecast of the snow not reaching a 50% chance of starting before 11 pm it seemed like maybe it'd be okay to go after all?
As with the previous time, qualifying was fourteen head-to-head matches between a randomly drawn pair who hadn't played each other before and on a randomly drawn machine. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger and I both took losses our first round, an annoying start. But after that? I settled into a nice little winning streak, taking four wins in a row against players who, must be admitted, weren't playing very well. But that's all right, since a convincing win counts as much as a squeaker does, and I wasn't putting up very good games anyway, except for one Iron Maiden that I managed to pull out at the end. For a while, I was sitting on top of the rankings and though, wow, even if I just play 50/50 the rest of the night I'm a shoe-in for the playoffs.
Dear reader, I did not play 50/50 for the rest of the night. I lost the next five rounds in a row. I began to make a comeback, with wins on Jim Henson's Labyrinth (not his personal game, understand; the pinball machine just entered production last year) and on Genesis. That Genesis, though ... now, the weird mid-80s Gottlieb game Genesis is one of my pocket games, something I can almost always pull out a win on, and something I play extremely well. While I did win, it was not a good win; it was a bare minimum win, squeaking it out at something like 250,000 points, and if I can't put up 300,000 on Genesis you know I'm playing rotten.
Next round I was put on Baby Pac-Man, the weird hybrid pinball and video game and I got stuck against someone who kind of knew how to play; he managed to clear one whole board of the video game which is astounding. (Baby Pac-Man's maze does not have energizer pellets unless you do well enough on some deadly shots in the pinball game, and the monsters --- and Baby Pac --- all move faster so the maze is very challenging.) And, like, all the points of the game are in clearing mazes; the pinball is good for getting energizers and fruits, useless unless you gather them in the video game. I managed what was probably my best-ever Baby Pac-Man game, clearing like three-quarters of a board, and that might have beaten anyone except this guy who somehow knows how to play it.
And then my last round --- moot, as I had too few wins to make the playoffs --- was a loss, and on Torpedo Alley, a late-solid-state game I usually don't have three instant drains on.
What of bunnyhugger, after her first-round loss? I plan to tell you of that tomorrow.
Today, though, I plan to show you some more Dollywood pictures. Tomorrow too.
I assume that, this being February and me being in Michigan, texting DWPARK to 41274 won't get me any special offers anyway. But it's nice of them to invite me. Kids, this is what we used before there were QR codes on amusement park signs.
Looking up at the Firechaser Express launch station. I'm sorry not to have waited for the train launching. Still, this picture more than anything else loks like a screen grab from Roller Coaster Tycoon.
Your average walkway at Dollywood. Note how hard the misting spray is working to cool down anyone, because it was somewhere like 180 Fahrenheit out there.
Now here's that giant metal eagle statue previously seen by night.
Another angle on that eagle; it's quite broad and a natural thing for people to photograph themselves in front of.
I think I took about this same photograph by night before of Wild Eagle and of the Firechaser Express station from the other side.
Trivia: A 1523 decree issued at Nuremberg complained that over a hundred tons of ginger and two thousand tons of pepper had come into Germany from Lison alone, and that ``the king of Portugal, with spices under his control, has set ... prices as he will, because at no manner of dearness will they rest unsold among Germans''. Source: Food in History, Reay Tannahill. Tannahill doesn't say if the decree specified what time frame this was in, but it can't have been more than a quarter-century since the first Portuguese expedition reached India.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 53: Pturkey Island, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.
