The run-up to the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship had two major pinball-relevant threads for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger. One was in her role as the International Flipper Pinball Association representative for the state. That is, the business of running the tournament. The easy part was picking where to hold the tournament; as she did last year, she used the same venue that the open, coed tournament would the day before. Easier to be sure the games are up to serious tournament state. And this year, held in Grand Rapids, not unbearably far for the players from the eastern Michigan scene. Home venue for most of the western Michigan players, but that's a risk of putting the tournament anywhere.
Sending out invitations to everyone who was qualified, and getting replies, and getting a safe number of alternates is the sort of administrative work bunnyhugger is good at. Getting people to actually commit was ... less bad than you'd think; most of the people who were in range knew they wanted to play, and it's just the couple of last-minute withdrawals that scrambled things.
Media relations turned out to be a solved problem. RLM, the proprietor of RLM Amusements where both coed and women's tournaments were held, tried getting any press he could interested in things. A Grand Rapids station was up for the coed tournament. For some reason the women's tournament got a camera guy from Kalamazoo, which is a whole different metropolitan statistical area, but, all right. He also set up Facebook event page thingies that among other things set the time for the women's tournament. I had thought the IFPA dictated the date and time for the start of the tournament but it turns out no, just the date. The time ended up being noon, which bunnyhugger was fine with, and we assume it was what the coed tournament used. (We don't know if RLM singlehandedly set the time for that or if he was going by what PH, the state coed IFPA representative, wanted.) Going to have to jump on it next year to make sure it's declared by bunnyhugger, or the IFPA, though.
And then there's things to award the winners. The big thing was the official plaque from the IFPA. That arrived early last week, in time, though weeks after the coed tournament plaques went out and a week or more after some states got theirs. Last year, bunnyhugger pressed and gave out buttons to everyone participating and she figured to do the same --- including fancier buttons for the higher finishers --- but tragedy struck. After a year plus of button-making the supply that came with the original button-pressing kit ran out. She tried getting some blanks from Michael's, but these ones were just barely different enough in size that they didn't press convincingly. Or after having got button-pressing down to a rhythm she fumbled the process three times in a row. All she could do is make buttons for only the second-through-fourth finishers and hope nobody from fifth through 16th felt cheated.
Oh, and there's cash. IFPA-sanctioned coed events have, for years now, all paid one dollar per person excise, forming a pot of money to award the state and national champions. (The thinking here is that having money on the line will make the competitions grow. I agree with this principle, but we are headed for a major scandal now that there's thousands of dollars to be had.) Starting with 2024's tournaments, the IFPA is extending this to women's tournaments, so there should be more money given as awards in January 2025, all going well.
But for now, the money paid out would be from what the women attending paid going in, $20 per person times 16 players. The top four players would split this $320 pot. bunnyhugger, flush with cash for reasons that need not concern you, figured it was easier if she made up the envelopes with the payouts ahead of time and repaid herself with the entry fees. She even saw this as a great way to use up a hundred dollar bill that's been a minor white elephant since someone used it to buy admission to one of her paid tournaments. The first place finisher was getting $128, so this made a conveniently slim envelope and the overlarge bill could be someone else's problem.
So that's all the couple days leading up to the tournament, in her role as tournament director. What about in her role as player?
Going to continue that second trip in the Ghostwood Estates. Sad to say this is still with my camera on bad settings that cause everything to be more blurry than should be for the 2020s, but what choice do I have except to share what I have and be ready for the next walk-through tour at KennyKon 2038?
Some more of the second but worse-photographed Ghostwood Estates walkthrough. Here's a suit of armor embedded in the wall; I think that it drops down toward the car when the target is hit. Not positive.
At that turn-around spot, with the emergency exit and with the wheelbarrow, there's this music case. Not sure if it has an instrument inside; I didn't feel like it was safe messing around with the props.
And this time I did think to look on top of the hearse and found it doesn't have a top!
One of the last props is this video screen. Notice the 'PLAY' text on its side there.
And back outside already!
A farewell picture, from the level of the platform as I went downstairs. Boy, imagine this photo if anything particular in it were in focus, though. Too bad.
Trivia: George and Richard Cadbury laid the first brick for the Bournville factory, four miles outside Birmingham, in January 1879, though building only started in earnest in March, and steady rains left the construction site a muddy quagmire for a long while. Source: Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between The World's Greatest Chocolate Makers, Deborah Cadbury.
Currently Reading: The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts, Loren Grush.
