Second game of March Hare Madness finals. This was Stern's Kiss, a game I'm unaccountably fond of and that treats me well most of the time. FAE blew the game up, getting over a hundred million points, outstanding even for me. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had an okay game on this, using her second ball to start Demon Multiball --- the three-ball multiball you get form shooting Gene Simmons's head a whole bunch --- with Detroit Rock City and ended up with a respectable 27 million points. Everyone besides FAE finished at or below 28 million, so that when she started the third ball she had to do at least a little something to come in second. While her ball ended too fast, she did hit enough, and get an impressive four million points bonus, giving her second place.
So this time around, FAE finished in first, bunnyhugger in second, DMC in third and DG in last place. Which, if you have a long-term memory, you remember as the exact opposite of everyone's placement the first round. And if you have an even longer-term memory you remember this hitting bunnyhugger during playoffs at an RLM tournament a couple weeks ago. Everyone had either four or three points going in to the last game, Godzilla, which was the one of this set that DMC really wanted to play. Whoever took first place on this game would take first place in the tournament. It wasn't quite guaranteed that whatever their order last game was would be the order of the tournament finish, but it was leaning that way. And, remember, the cards were still in play. Shenanigans like what happened on Getaway, where two cards for swapping positions were played --- leaving the effect that three players rotated their positions --- were still in effect.
And yes, after ball one --- uncharacteristically weak for everyone, DMC included --- someone played the card to restart the game from scratch. DMC had a weak first ball the second time around too, weird enough you might wonder if he was demoralized. FAE had almost as bad a ball, as did DG, and bunnyhugger with a meager ten million points was ahead at the start.
It didn't last; DG played a card letting him swipe someone else's ball so she had to work from his lousy score. And DMC, maybe finally riled up, put up 100 million points or so. It wouldn't be surprising for anyone to catch up with that, though. Everyone else finished ball two at ten to twenty million points, and nobody played any cards to steal another's game at this point. Also nobody played the card that makes you stop right this second (getting a compensation ball as consolation). Still, DMC finished his third and last ball at about 130 million, solid but not unbeatable on one ball.
And indeed, FAE, pulling a Kaiju Battle into Godzilla Multiball ... did not beat that. Got up to almost 90 million points, so was within striking distance of taking first place, but not quite there. bunnyhugger got a bad bounce off of the Building that center-drained, leaving her --- never having recovered from DG stealing her first ball and the Kaiju Battle ready to go from it --- in fourth place. And while DG played a decent number of combos and made progress on starting multiball, he flopped at about 40 million points and third place.
The night before the tournament bunnyhugger cursed herself that, after making the first three trophies, she had a fourth she had yet to do. But she doesn't feel right giving out only three trophies when there's to be a four-player finals and, she told me now, she had a premonition that she'd be taking home the fourth-place trophy for the second year in a row. She'd made it using the only rabbit figure left over, a small hare in resin that we'd gotten a couple years ago but not used for a trophy, and which had been hanging around our home as a tchotchke. She resigned herself to losing that by reminding herself being a trophy topper was why we ever had it, and, have to admit, I felt a little relief that it was coming back home with us.
Fourth place advanced bunnyhugger a little bit in the rankings for women's state championship (open); not enough to get her above the top-eight cut, but enough to lift her above the person who's (at the moment of writing this) in 11th place. Third place --- taking DG's position --- wouldn't have got her above the cut either, although DMC's first place would have. And there's more open tournaments to come. Pinball At The Zoo is next month and is everyone's chance to upset everything.
I tried to close off my pinball-stream commentary by saying that for the CBS radio network I was Ray Goulding reminding you to hang by your thumbs, and turned to PCL saying he was ... not aware we were going to be making up names for this. I told Chat (nobody was chatting) to tell PCL who Bob and Ray were, and also for Chat to look up who Bob and Ray were. I know I got the line wrong but I also figured nobody was going to call me on it.
We got home past midnight, needing to eat quickly and pass out.
Back now to the Kings Island postscript to our trip.
Banshee was closed as expected. Here's the start of the hilariously long queue to The Bat, made in a fashion that can only be described as ``Roller Coaster Tycoon player getting the hang of the queue system''.
Here's the path going down the hill and leading over to the launch station.
And here we are looking up at the braking run; the station's up those stairs in the foreground on the left.
Noticed underneath they had not just a boom but an Ultra Boom.
And here's The Bat doing that swinging that makes suspended coasters like it and Cedar Point's Iron Dragon and Chessington's Vampire and Canada's Wonderland's Vortex so much fun.
And here's a good look at the track above The Bat's train, and how it's held on tight and there's little bags to scoop any grease or whatever that might be squeezed off the track by the wheels.
Trivia: After local Boston radio, Bob and Ray appeared on NBC, then ABC, then Mutual, then CBS, then NBC's Monitor, and finally on NPR, a circuit of all network radio Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning.
Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.
