This year for the first time I took two days off work to go to Pinball At The Zoo. Before the pandemic began, when I was working for the company in New Jersey, I wouldn't work for the two days of the tournament, no, but my hours and my responsibilities were so vague that I didn't feel the need to say anything to anybody there. But since then? Well, 2023 I didn't feel I had enough of a savings cushion to take the time off. 2024 I believe ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had some commitment or other keeping her busy that Friday so there was no sense my going to Kalamazoo without her. We did go after I finished work for the day, though.
But this year was different. bunnyhugger had no commitments, and I feel flush with enough capital to spend time off instead. bunnyhugger was surprised I did this; she'd supposed that I would take maybe one day off if that, for qualifying, and I was late in making clear to her my plans.
(There was one late hiccough, when I realized I had a dentist appointment for Thursday. This was easy to reschedule, though.)
Pinball At The Zoo is a show, at the Kalamazoo (County) Expo Center, although the thing that gets us going several days in a row is the pinball tournament there. Tournaments plural: a Main tournament, this year on 15 games; a Classics tournament, on six older games; a Women's tournament, also on six games; and Daily tournaments, on four games. You buy entries for a charitable donation. Your best scores in a bank go into your ranking, with sufficiently high rankings going on to playoffs. In the main tournament, the top 32 players would go on to the A Division, and the next 16 --- more than ever before --- into the B Division. In Classics and in Women's sixteen players, twice what had in previous years, would play off.
In the Daily tournament you get one try on each of the games, which I think is a new restriction. I'm pretty sure in the past you could try as many times as you liked, time permitting. With people discovering the daily tournaments could be as good for generating International Flipper Pinball Association rating points as the Main and Classics tournaments for people who don't make the playoffs, focusing on that became a strategy and I think they might have wanted to head that off.
So those were the basic stakes. Also appearing at the show, besides everyone who's anyone in Michigan Pinball? (Not actually true; there were a bunch of absences, some expected --- GRV has just had a lot of issues with, well, everybody who runs tournaments --- and some that surprised us even though, like, CST hasn't actually competed in this since before the pandemic began.) A lot of the big names in competitive pinball, since Pinball At The Zoo has solidified its place in the pinball Pro Circuit, a set of a dozen or so really major events.
And Stern Pinball sent people there, because they used the show and the tournament to debut their newest game, King Kong. Like the movie, but also not like the movie, because to save on licensing expenses they're officially basing it on the novel, which you recall was officially ruled in 1976 to have been acquired by the public domain so that Universal could do its remake without paying anyone for anything. When we walked into the hall the center was dominated by a giant inflated vinyl gorilla, just like you'd make if you were doing a bit about a King Kong promotion at a pinball tournament. It was wonderful; I'm sorry I can't share enough pictures of it all.
Anyway, as said, since this was what we would do instead of AnthrOhio, we just had to make it worth missing a big exciting furry con. As said the other day, no pressure.
Also no pressure? Hanging out at Marvin's back in July, as seen in photographs.
``Anyone know where to get an electric jolt around here? No, no, without power.''
Sign up top promising a steam carousel, which Marvin's does not have, although theirs is a small three-figure model like this. It goes the other direction, though.
There's the Marvin's sign: 'Marvin Yagoda - Amusement Machines - Specializing in Rare and Interesting Diggers', with a candy-crane-type device in front of it.
Former Chuck E Cheese animatronics on perpetual display.
More of the Chuck E Cheese animatronics plus some more Charlie McCarthy musicians, behind the fan.
bunnyhugger with a dollar coin to make the identification medal for Roger. But the machine was out of order (see the tape over the coin slot, upper right), so we had to try and remember to keep the coin for next time.
Trivia: Actual footage of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 did poorly in movie theaters compared to recreations produced in New York City by the Biograph Company. Source: The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America, Kevin Rozario.
Currently Reading: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich. Translator Ayça Türkoğlu.
