We drove down to Kalamazoo on Thursday, and would on Saturday, with FAE, a pinball friend nearby who doesn't (can't?) drive to out-of-town places on their own. No trouble there; we like them and like spending time with them, and also had fairly high hopes for their placement in the tournament. FAE's an absolute champion competitor at league and local events, playing in that way where you know if they travelled more and got to more high-value tournaments such as Pinball At The Zoo, they'd be in the running for state championship.
When we got in, maybe fifteen minutes after the show opened, there was a long line for buying entries to the games. Also, to a lesser extent, for registering. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had registered before the expo began, but I never figured out how. I'd assumed the Pinball At The Zoo web page would say, but the official page is less informative than the Facebook page, which didn't have what I needed in the space viewable to people who don't have Facebook accounts. In hindsight, I should have thought to go to neverdrains.com, the site used to manage the queuing for events and tracking of everyone's positions, but it didn't occur to me. Or just asked bunnyhugger when she mentioned she had made an account.
Anyway, while in line to buy entries, they let me and anyone else not registered duck over to the other person with a computer and officially sign up. I failed to actually hear what my user ID was --- they give a three-digit ID, plus a four-digit PIN, all the user account this sort of event needs --- and so had to ask when I bought my entries.
I figured to put an entry in on all the Main and Classics games to have some initial standing and then figure what to do when time allowed. But first, how to warm up? There was the Thursday daily tournament.
So, cocktail pins. Of all the odd attempts at making variations of pinball, this was one of them. Made in the 70s/80s these are short, small tables well-made for people to sit at and I guess you can rest your cocktail on the glass. I think cocktail arcade games make a little more sense but maybe that's just familiarity talking. Not sure; it seems to me you can have a two-player video game going with your date in a way that you can't do with a pinball machine. But someone brings some cocktail pins every year and I always play them and enjoy them. This year, the Thursday Daily tournament was putting up your score on three cocktail pins. This would be great, a nice little warm-up.
Reader, it was not great. I had so many house balls, balls launched into the outlane, or balls that ricocheted off something and raced to the center drain. And with only one attempt on the games, I would never be able to improve. I had the 83rd-highest score of 86 players on Caribbean Cruise, 88th of 89 players on Night Moves, and on Eros, a Zeus-and-Athena-themed game ... well, OK, there I had the 13th highest score of 94 players. Still, not a good showing; I ended up in 76th place of 95 competitors. Given that finals were the top twelve, well, it was not my contest to win.
Friday, with four games, I would somehow manage to do even worse. This time there was only one cocktail pin --- Night Moves --- with the other three being more normal pinball machines, from the electromechanical or early solid state era. On Time Fantasy --- a game I really do like, and that at the end of Thursday night I had put up the four-million-plus-point high score, I managed three fast-draining balls and a mere 54,020 points, the 105th best showing out of 111. On Night Moves, despite nearly doubling my Thursday entry, I finished in 90th place of 116 entrants. Snow Derby, a surprisingly pleasant skiing-themed game, saw me in 66th place of 101 entrants. Ah, but the last game ... Egg Head, a 1961 Gottlieb with a robots-playing-tic-tac-toe theme, that went well. I had been able to play it a little on Thursday and figure out a little bit of how to play it, and came within a whisker of breaking a thousand points. This had me at fourth-best of 115 entrants. So overall I finished in 83rd place of 115 people who played at all, not a risk for making the 12-player finals. Too bad.
But the daily tournaments are just side shows. There were still the big tournaments to get to.
Now to close off visiting Marvin's from July:
Here's what they tell us is the P T Barnum fake Cardiff Giant, still curiously hidden in a spot obstructed by the redemption counter and stuff like that.
And they were refilling one of the change machines! So here's what it looks like from the top. ... Kind of what you would guess, I suppose.
Restocking the coins. It looks hilariously like pouring water into the goldfish tanks in the basement.
``Excuse me, does anyone know where to find any Pop around here?'' This hangs (hung) in the back of the building, near the Cardiff Giant.
More redemption prizes including world-flag soccer balls and big green plushes. Also a regular feature of the last year of Marvin's, the status update poster. The Cardiff Giant is on the right.
Far back corner where they have a 'Dance of the Fairies' display that as far as I know doesn't do anything, and a collection of flags. The thing in faux neon reading 'MARVIN'S' at the lower center is a coin-op bumper-car miniature.
Trivia: W C Fields's first professional appearance in vaudeville --- as a juggler --- was in spring 1896 at an Atlantic City beer hall. (He had been entranced at the age of fourteen by a circus clown's juggling and followed that path.) Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide.
Currently Reading: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich. Translator Ayça Türkoğlu. I know I'm taking forever to read this but I've had less time available than I would hope and also it's really really good, just full of interesting observations about slime, not just scientifically but also culturally, looking at how people have thought about slime and fascinating little corners of cultural history like Victorian scientists freaking out over carnivorous plants because those just flout All the Rules.
