austin_dern

Closing out the Lansing Pinball League season is a cute little tradition we call the Zen Tournament. Or the Split-Flipper Tournament if we're being a bit less vaguely casual. It's a team event, pairs versus pairs. Each person in a pair controls one flipper. The Zen Tournament name comes from a loose, vague allusion to the sound of one hand clapping. In past years the league has arranged teams by regular season standing: the highest-seeded person there gets matched with the lowest-seeded person, second-highest gets paired with second-lowest, and so on. The thought was this made the team skill level as nearly equal as a rule could. But after a lot of requests for ``couldn't we pick our own pairs'' league president bunny_hugger decided, yeah, let's give it a try. This let the two of us pair up once again; last time we were a team together, we won. And of course an odd number of players showed up. We took volunteers and picked one at random to play on two teams. This is a scheme we've used before. We've also used ``get someone who just happened to be in the bar to play'', in the past.

For tournament format bunny_hugger picked double-elimination. This is the format used for the main league finals, two weeks before. Every team plays until they're beaten in two matches. Each match was best two games of three. Previous years have used different formats, including a round-robin among all teams that ended up in all but one team tied for second place. Double-elimination promised to give plenty of play time and a chance to see all kinds of weird head-to-head matches play out.

So how did bunny_hugger and I do? Well, we were the second-highest seeded group, so we got a first-round bye. In our first competitive match, we ... lost, two games to one. We had some good play, including a game of Attack From Mars that would've been a respectable league night game from either of us. But we were dropped down to the Loser's Second Chance Bracket and would have to carry on through that.

And we did! Our high seeding meant we always got choice of the first game. And we found games that we could play extremely well. The Addams Family, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Junkyard particularly. On all of them we put up some scores that would have been good regular play. Arabian Nights and Junkyard we were almost too good on: we played well enough to win free games. There were a couple groups we expected to smash right through us, and they just didn't, including improbable results like both our teams in a race to the bottom on Lord of the Rings. bunny_hugger and I lost that race to the bottom, and --- to our amazement --- we were put up against MWS and his partner for the finals.

To our amazement, also, we won the match, two games to one, thanks in big part to a game of Ghostbusters that went far better for us than we could have counted on. It had been one of MWS and partner's aces all night. This didn't win us the tournament, since MWS and partner were in the Winners Bracket; we would have to play them a second time. And this second match in a row we again went to three games. And, unfortunately, lost the final game. After an astounding run through the Loser's Second Chance Bracket we just came up a little bit short.

Further amazing: it was 1:00 in the freaking morning. We started a little bit later than the usual 7:30 hours, as bunny_hugger was delayed getting out of work. But we didn't start that late. The Zen Tournament, with fewer players, somehow took two and a half hours more than the actual league finals.

It's a mystery why. The player who'd had to double up is part of it, surely, since it was so easy for one of his groups to just have to wait for him to finish playing for the other. But no other groups directly had to wait for that, and one of his groups was knocked out relatively early in the night. I think the problem might be all those ten-million-point games bunny_hugger and I were putting up on Arabian Nights and Junkyard. Well, not just us. I think it might be that after eleven seasons of this, the Lansing League players have figured out how to play Zen Tournaments well.

(Zen tournaments don't count for pinball rating points. The International Flipper Pinball Association admits it can be great fun to play weird like that, but won't sanction anything that isn't, at heart, one person at one table playing at once.)

Anyway it's a shame for us to have played so well, for so long, and to just barely come up short. Our egos will recover, though, at least in time.

Trivia: Woodrow Wilson sailed to Europe from New York City on the George Washington, starting the 4th of December, 1918. The launch was accompanied by Army planes and dirigibles. The ship was escorted to France by Navy destroyers and battleships. Source: Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret Macmillan.

Currently Reading: Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World, Editor Kathleen Ragan.

PS: How November 2018 Treated My Mathematics Blog, the easiest yet most tedious thing I write all month in my mathematics blog!

PPS: Think you've seen everything Kennywood offered us in 2017? We're not even close to done.

Another angle on that garden with George Washington ready to attack the Johnny Rocket's.

Li'l Phantom! The roller coaster in Kiddieland. It's a Molina and Sons oval and it's been at the park only since 1996. And it turns out they let adults on, even unaccompanied.

The Kiddieland carousel, at speed. It's a tiny model that we see in a bunch of parks, including Conneaut Lake Park and (in New Jersey) Keansburg.

I wrote a bit ago that the Baby Food Festival was the last major points-gathering opportunity for Michigan Pinball. The current ranking rules by the International Flipper Pinball Association only let every competitor's 20 highest-value events in the state in the year count. So I expected the positions of the top-ranking people to freeze up; they could only move up not just with high-place finishes in high-value events, but by doing that much better than they had previously. I made some miscalculations.

One is that some of the top players hadn't even done twenty events yet. Everything they played the rest of the year would add to their standings. The other is that there was a good high-value event left on the calendar year. This was the November charity tournament run at MJS's polebarn. This was to be a twelve-round tournament, all groups of four players going against each other. By IFPA rules this would let it generate many ratings points. Even more, the more high-value players come. And with it being the last really big high-value event on the calendar ... So, 48 people came. I don't think it quite had everyone who'll get an invitation to the 24-person state championship tournament. But it got close.

Also it would be a chance for bunny_hugger to bring the repaired dolphin to MWS. And a chance for her to show off her new SDTM licence plate off. Unfortunately the large crowd, and the snow, and having to park on the snow-covered grass, spoiled the chance to draw people out to admire the new plate. People loved pictures of it, though. And it was a chance to play at the polebarn, which had hosted the state championship two years running (though not this coming year). It's a great place to play; around forty games, including electromechanicals, solid-state, and modern-era games. Also the TV showing a series of football games. University of Michigan beating Rutgers by less than I figured. Michigan State playing someone or other. That kind of thing, of interest to people who care about college football. I went to Rutgers, so, I don't.

And how were the tournaments? Well, I started weak, on The Shadow, a 90s game. Finished in third place. But the next game was the electromechanical Bronco, luckily one of the games I'd practiced on before the tournament started. And I took a first place. This started off a great run for me: I'd finish first or second in each of the next six rounds, even playing against people like AND --- two-time state champion --- or JRA --- third place in the state right now, and a good candidate for champion. For a little while I was even on top of the standings. Then I started to flop; got a third place, a fourth place, and a third place finish. And then ...

Now to bunny_hugger. She started well, a 2nd place finish on Attack From Mars, and that against JRA. It was close, though; one bad bounce and she'd have gotten third. But one more good bounce and she'd have gotten first. Second round she got a first place, on Tommy, with maybe her best game of that ever. Then a second place on Banzai Run, this crazy late-solid-state with a second, vertical playfield. And then she started to skid, with three third-place finishes, many of them by close margins. She felt herself sliding out of the tournament altogether. I finally got her to go outside and shake herself out, shaking the bad out of her play. That worked: she got a first place on the next game. Then a second place, losing to RLM by a whisker that she was upset about the rest of the night. Then a first place. And then ...

So that bit in it feels like every tournament where I play bunny_hugger? That was our eleventh round. Everybody finds it funny when we're set to play one another directly. Thing is, it's stressful. She's certain she can't beat me; but that's just not so. And if I do beat her, then I have to be consoling even when she's blaming me for not playing worse. Well, 11th round, on the solid-state game Royal Flush --- one of the few she doesn't feel like she understands --- I beat her, and everyone else. She got a third place finish.

So she was declaring herself knocked out of the A Division, the top 16, the people who might get a decent IFPA ranking bounty from the tournament. But there was one round left. And yes, we got put up against each other again. This time on another solid state game, the single-player Super Star. I put up a lousy game, finishing last. She beat me, but only by getting third place.

For all the rounds that bunny_hugger spent envying my alleged superior skills, we ended up one point apart. I was in a three-way tie for 10th place. bunny_hugger was in a four-way tie for 14th. We'd be among the many people having playoffs to work out our seeding. And, for her, whether she'd be in the A or the B Division.

Well, my playoff, on Fish Tales, dropped me into 11th place. Hers, on Super Star again, put her into 17th place, the top of B Division.

This launched us into finals. For both of us, three four-player groups, the top two of each moving on. Those top players were ... not me: I put up pretty mediocre third-place finishes on three games straight and left the tournament in 13th place. bunny_hugger had two mediocre and one lousy game, tumbling to 23rd place. MWS finished with the same record bunny_hugger had, but beat her in the playoff so went to the A Division; he finished tied for 15th place. So we had an evening of trying to tell ourselves that we didn't actually suck and that it wouldn't sink any of us in the state championships.

Which might not be so. The tournament ended up being incredibly high-valued. AND, who ultimately won, took 28.67 rating points for it. For scale, I've earned 84.36 points all year. Even fifth place --- which is usually where the points totals get negligible --- took 10.58 points, more than the winner of the Lansing Pinball League is getting for this past season. The result of the tournament didn't make much difference to the highest-ranked players, like, the first through fourth place. But it dropped me two positions, and bunny_hugger a couple too. We're both still in the running. But now there's three, maybe four, events left on the calendar that could give enough points to move people in the standings. And we have reason to think some of the folks who cleaned our clocks here are going to go to them. One of them bunny_hugger will run.

Trivia: After local ministers protested the name of his ``Heaven and Hell'' dark ride at the Omaha International Exposition of 1898, Fred Thompson advertised his request for a new, acceptable title; within ten days he was advertising its new name of Darkness and Dawn. Source: The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements, Woody Register. (It's not clear to me whether Thompson figured to seed controversy or whether he took skillful advantage once it was there. It's also not clear to me whether he had a new name ready to go or whether he did take one of the many suggestions.)

Currently Reading: Was Superman A Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed, Brian Cronin.

PS: My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Quadratic Equation, an essay that ended up like four times as long as I figured it would.

PPS: the arcade closes!

Backglass of the 1969 Williams game Miss-O which caught my attention for being crazy angular even for an era that liked crazy angular art and also for having the name Miss-O. Yes, it's Christian marche art. The pinball database says Williams wanted to call the game Miss-Q, punning on 'mis-cue', but changed when they heard this was something dirty in French.

But ReplayFX was over, at only 5 pm. We left for the last time for the year.

Leaving the convention center: a waterfall feature and a wavy sidewalk run underneath the convention center and between the access roads.

This past week I used one of my Pinburgh photos on my mathematics blog. Which one? Which entry? It's one from this set. Hint: it's a photo I used on this very blog within the past week!

• Reading the Comics, November 5, 2018: November 5, 2018 Edition
• My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Oriented Graph
• Reading the Comics, November 7, 2018: Shorthand and Reruns Edition
• My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Pigeonhole Principle
• Reading the Comics, November 9, 2018: Standing For Things Edition
• Reading the Comics, November 11, 2018: November 11, 2018 Edition

And in the story strips? A special out-of-sequence recap. What's Going On In The Amazing Spider-Man? Who's Now Writing Spider-Man? September - November 2018 plot update.

With no scheduled pinball competition for Sunday we could just take in a show or do something else at ReplayFX/Pinburgh 2017.

Sunday concert by Super Thrash Brothers, who play music while dressed as video game ... characters ... I guess villains? I don't know because I don't know video games.

Guy that I've seen fan art for on guitar while guy who's maybe not in costume? I don't know? plays drums.

Serious photographer with heavy-duty gear photographing ... musician with a nice space helmet type thing.

Musician dressed in some kind of spikey-glasses face mask performing as part of the Super Thrash Brothers.

Someone in the audience who's either two weeks late or fifty weeks early for Anthrocon.

Among the home arcade games: Atari's video pinball, for people who want to play something so vaguely related to pinball as to not satisfy an urge to play at all. But don't you love that old-fashioned styling and the mystery of how to play pinball with a dial?

Panoramic photograph of the main venue, taken from up on stage and showing off the audience seating and some of the floor competition areas (to the right) .

Floor competition sets as seen from up on stage. bunny_hugger was coming to love Big Guns --- the tall game to the left of center there --- back in 2017.

And on stage. Person playing Jersey Jack Pinball's Dialed In!, the phone-themed pinball game. The ramp to get on stage is to the right. The far background is backup games for the main tournament. Also tables reserved for tournament officials to rest.

Trivia: For the shipment of the orbiter Columbia from Palmdale, California, to Kennedy Space Center in 1979, Styrofoam temporary tiles attached with double-backed tape took the place of about seven thousand not-yet-installed thermal tiles. (There were about 34,000 tiles altogether.) Source: Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972 - 1981, T A Heppenheimer. ... So what happened to the temporary tiles? Like, yeah, surely at least some were destroyed but some must've been kept in case of future need or sent to museums or something?

Currently Reading: Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, Don Fulsom. Wait, Nixon was in Dallas the day Kennedy was murdered? That's something freaky-for-no-clearly-definable-reason enough I'm surprised not to have heard it before. I'm not surprised to learn Nixon was working for Pepsico, though. That feels somehow, yeah, about correct.

So before we get to pictures from the last day at Pinburgh 2017, here's what turned up on my humor blog this past week. You can put it on your reading page, and get articles as they're posted. Or you can add it to your RSS feed, and read articles at your leisure and in your preferred format.

• How To Remember A Fact which was last week's big essay and which I feel kind of like coming back to and rewriting because I think there's a good idea in here that should be presented better.
• Update On The Non-Despairing Auto Car Place Sign
• Statistics Saturday: Why Nerds Stop Telling A Joke which is a prank as nerds have never stopped telling a joke.
• What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Who Was That Incompetent Mugger? August – November 2018
• I Don’t Know Who’s Officially Writing Spider-Man Now in the wake of official author Stan Lee's death.
• The Stan Freberg Show: the tenth show, as things fall apart most of which are musical instruments.
• Who’s Writing and Drawing Alley Oop Now? Who Is Li’l Alley Oop? some comic strip news.
• Everything There Is To Say About Keeping Your Hands Warm as written by someone whose hands are never warm.

Sunday morning: bunny_hugger admires the view our last morning in the suite.

This is the kind of view we had from the hotel, which occupied the top couple floors in a skyscraper.

Peering down: our hotel casts shade on an old Pittsburgh church.

Main lobby. The topmost floors are the hotel and half the elevator banks are restricted to those floors.

One of the local birds who caught our eye as being particularly interesting and personable.

See what I mean? That's a pigeon interested in the world around him or her.

One of those shops we kept passing, and hoped we'd finally have time to visit on Sunday. They were closed.

This front door photo proves it was taken in 2017.

Back to ReplayFX! Here's somebody doing what I guess is Star Wars cosplay? I don't know. At the risk of sounding sour I've reached the point I don't feel like I need to know Star Wars stuff anymore.

Trivia: In 1913 Lieutenant Commander Milton Rosenau of the Chelsea Naval Hospital won the American Medicine Gold Medal for proving that stable flies transmitted poliomyelitis. In 1915 Simon Flexner would prove this was wrong. The men stayed friends. Source: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, John M Barry.

Currently Reading: Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre, Jack Zipes.

PS: Reading the Comics, November 7, 2018: Shorthand and Reruns Edition, featuring one of my favorite cartoonists doing some silliness.

Speaking of Rougarou, subject of our hand stamp from when we left the park for a few moments: we hadn't ridden it yet this visit or, possibly, this year. It's a low-priority coaster for us. It hadn't been comfortable when it was the stand-up coaster Mantis. The conversion to a seated coaster should have worked great, but the over-the-shoulder restraints are too likely to bang our heads, boxing our ears. But the ride was right there, on our path, and with no line to speak of. Why not ride it? And there was no line: we walked up, getting to the platform --- to the front row --- just as the gates were opening. It's impossible to get more literally a walk-on than this.

All this would be great except that it did start to drizzle again. Not hard enough to make the ride one that blasts skin off our faces. But hard enough. The over-the-shoulder restraints did their best to box my ears, but I think the hat helped soften the blows. And it didn't fall too far forward, building my confidence that I could wear this on an intense roller coaster and just enjoy the ride rather than worry I might lose it.

We were walking towards the back of the park again, following the Frontier Trail when in an unforeseeable development it started raining again. Lightly, but still. We were past most of the shops on that trail, which had closed, but noticed something we just had never paid attention to before. It's a grist mill, complete with waterwheel --- and, above the building, waterfall --- and a lot of cogs and gears and a roped-off upper floor. Also bags of old Ohio and Michigan grist mills. And an aged poster with a ``Cut-A-Way [sic] Drawing'' that helped us roughly figure out what we were looking at inside this. bunny_hugger has felt the loss of some of the secret, secluded areas of the park as they've renovated and rebuilt places recently. This could be a new little secret quiet spot. bunny_hugger tried to take a long-exposure picture of the dark upstairs. I tried to take a flash photograph while, it turned out, her shutter was open. So that should be an exciting result in plays of light.

With the rain still not just leaving already we darted back to the base of the Frontier Trail. The Red Garter Saloon there has music shows and we would take in the next-to-the-last of the day, and season. It was dubbed Eternal Jamnation, playing late-70s/80s rock. I spent nearly the whole show worrying that the barrel of my camera had gotten fogged up and it would never take a clear picture again. But that seems to have been an effect of the dark room and bright, colored stage lights: pictures after the show when house lights were on were just fine. Still, I did drop my camera once over the weekend and that's got me worried.

One hour left in the season! So we walked in the direction of Gemini and had to pause a moment because ... yeah, there was a Dippin' Dots ice cream stand that was still open, even though it was like 40 degrees out and 7 pm on the 28th of October. All right.

The one important roller coaster we didn't have the chance to get to yet was Gemini. In past years late-closing-day rides on Gemini have been slightly hilarious affairs, with the train getting stopped in the braking area because they don't have enough people to dispatch the other. We've several times had what are technically walk-downs, going from the braking area to the launch station. But we wouldn't this time. Gemini was closed, as it had been --- far as we could tell --- all weekend. Probably not a malfunction, just a closure for the weather. And we'd been on it earlier in the season. It's just a shame to miss a chance on it.

But that did give us a compelling answer for what to make our last ride of the season. Steel Vengeance was right there, and with a promised wait time of ... well, 3/4 of an hour. But that's the shortest wait time their sign can show. It can't have been twenty minutes. We were out quickly enough we were able to make another go-round, increasing the margin by which we've ridden this at night compared to the day. I think we're at four night rides to two days rides. Something like that. We were there late: the ride operators were warning the next load of people that they were about to enjoy their last ride on Steel Vengeance for the season. I'm not sure if we had the time to rush back to the entrance and get one further ride in ourselves, but we weren't quite up to three back-to-back rides on that particularly intense roller coaster.

And so that closed the season. We enjoyed the short walk back through the rain-painted pavement, and bade our farewells to Cedar Point for the year. We hope to get there early next season. Perhaps even do a May trip. We can hope to.

Trivia: The Plasma Analyzer instrument (among many others) on Pioneer 11 was switched off for its encounter with Jupiter in 1974. It finally restarted in late 1977. Source: Mission to Saturn: Cassini and the Hugyens Probe, David M Harland.

Currently Reading: Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre, Jack Zipes.

PS: My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Oriented Graph, some of the fun of graph theory without the pictures that actually make graph theory fun. Hrm.

PPS: And let's close out the arcade, Saturday night, 2017.

A Williams Beat The Clock, a title that actually has only been used twice, once for this game with its variety-of-sports theme. It's from 1963.

bunny_hugger getting ready to cream me on Jive Time, a game we've mostly played in simulated version on the Wii, wherein she regularly creams me.

Laser lights provide evidence that there's some musical act or something going on the other side of the room.

I didn't quite have something on my mathematics blog every day this past week. Here's how close I came:

• Reading the Comics, October 27, 2018: Surprise Rerun Edition
• How October 2018 Treated My Mathematics Blog
• My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Manifold
• Reading the Comics, October 30, 2018: I Spot An Error Edition
• My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Nearest Neighbor Model
• Reading the Comics, November 3, 2018: Arithmetic Is Hard Edition,
• Reading the Comics, November 5, 2018: November 5, 2018 Edition

And story strip news! What's Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Who Was That Incompetent Mugger? August - November 2018 plot recap, right here for you.

So! I'd won second place! What now, now that the competition at Pinburgh was over?

Somebody looks barely capable of processing having (a) a perfect round and (b) second place championship, D Division, at Pinburgh. (This is as good as I have ever looked, besides my wedding picture.)

Meanwhile among normal people. Couldn't tell if these were people cosplaying or just hanging out.

Meanwhile among normal people. Couldn't tell if these were people cosplaying or just hanging out. The extremely long hair suggests, but there's so much I don't know.

Meanwhile among normal people. Couldn't tell if these were people cosplaying or just hanging out. What do you make of a Nathan's Hot Dog hat?

My hardware. There's nothing on the back of the Perfect Round medal. The back of the D Division medal says everything it must.

We went back to our hotel room to recuperate a little, and then saw --- and mostly heard --- this wedding(?) party, even though it was more than a block away and several storeys below ours, so that my picture looks like the graphics on the Sims has really got detailed.

bunny_hugger warning the wedding(?) party they better not be making a racket like that when we need to get to bed.

And then way, way, way down in the plaza just before the hotel was this person trying to manage two dogs.

Abandoned plush doll in the street as we walked back to Pinburgh.

Meanwhile among normal people. Couldn't tell if these were people cosplaying or just hanging out. But hey, nice colored tails, that's always great.

bunny_hugger enjoying a bit of free play on Black Knight, which she didn't yet understand but would come to appreciate the charms of.

The bouncey attractions, all worn out for the evening already.

Trivia: In the summer of 1965 four third-year mathematics students at the University of Waterloo developed WATFOR, Waterloo Fortran, a compiler that let the school's System/360 model 75 run around six thousand jobs per hour. It reduced the cost of running a student's program from an estimated ten dollars to about ten cents. Source: A History of Modern Computing, Paul E Ceruzzi. (Ceruzzi isn't clear to me whether that's ten dollars American or Canadian.)

Currently Reading: Lum and Abner: Rural America and the Golden Age of Radio, Randal L Hall.

By the time we were back to our hotel, and feeling warmed up, and had got some necessary work done, it was already twilight. We thought about eating in one of the handful of enclosed restaurants, but also thought we should maybe let the crowd thin, possibly in the drizzling rain. But then indoor restaurants would be crowded too. We took a chance, trying the Raptor roller coaster, and waited through a line that occasionally got rained on, and that took just long enough to worry us that we'd miss one of the indoor shows.

We do like getting to shows, not just because they're indoors and dry when the weather gets bad. The one we went to, and got to within a minute of its starting, was the Midnight Syndicate. They do spooky-sounding music, along with these strange, eerie performances. Last year, for example, the show set up that there had been supernatural events happening and the Sandusky Paranormal Researchers Society was investigating. So while they played music people in Dopey TV Paranormal Reality Show outfits prowled around and unleashed some ghosts or demons or stuff. This year they acknowledge that (and past performances) as some strange things of past years. The performance this year included video of a guy working out the meaning of occult symbols, also shown on the actual performing stage, and getting obsessed with and haunted by ghosts of Cedar Point amusement-park-goers of ages ago. And racing to the theater we were in, ultimately pounding the door and racing inside while ghosts pursued him. It's a fun performance with a nice blend of music and fourth-wall-breaking tricks.

Since we were up front we went to the carousels next. bunny_hugger thought to make it a point to try to ride every mount on the Michigan's Adventure carousel, a modern fiberglass construct like ones at many parks. But it was natural to extend that to Cedar Point's three carousels. We made more visits to both the Midway and the Kiddie Kingdom Carousel than we might ordinarily make thanks to this project. And I guess I'm part of it too, since I normally sit beside her.

The project seemed stalled by the upsetting sight of the third carousel. That's Cedar Downs, the racing carousel. It actually goes fast, and each file of horses can move forward or back relative to each other. But Cedar Downs wasn't running. There was no ride operator, the lights were off, the ride looked abandoned. bunny_hugger feared the ride was closed for the season, since if it were something so bad they weren't going to fix it Saturday, why would they fix it for the final, eight-hour, day of the season? I didn't think that likely, but I never think that sort of thing likely, even though it would make perfect sense if exactly that happened.

Now it was late enough we figured to eat. We went to Melt, an indoor restaurant near one of the kiddie playland areas. It used to be the Joe Cool Cafe, and before that a macaroni-and-cheese place, and so on. Apparently Melt is a regional chain of fat-sandwich-based diners. Our server warned us that the macaroni-and-cheese sandwiches we were ordering were quite large. We did not understand what she meant. She meant that they sliced out a cubic yard of baked macaroni and cheese, breaded the outside, deep-fried that, slathered it with any kind of extra cheese you wanted, and then put it between two slices of bread, and then brought it to your table, using a Ford F-350 to manage final delivery. So this was maybe too much for us to eat, even given how much walking around we'd be doing. But it was awfully filling.

Anyway the real appeal of Melt wasn't the food. Cedar Point, it turns out, has saved many of the signs and posters and bits of decoration from past incarnations. Some of it is in the Town Hall Museum. Much of it --- especially, much of it from the 80s and 90s, bunny_hugger's formative years --- is here. Before about 2000, Cedar Point's ``you must be this tall'' signs included custom-made characters warning you in word balloons and holding out a hand or a sword or a tail or something to say how tall you must be. Several of them are set out as wall decorations. More are shown in picture form, as concept art got printed out and colored and framed. There's more, too. Old promotional art, like art for the Magnum roller coaster showing the ride far above the sky in a pose reminiscent of the backglass of the Comet pinball game. Obsolete signs from shops or attractions that have changed names. A complete park map from sometime around 1965, including the interesting item that Blue Streak (then their only roller coaster) was named just ``Roller Coaster'' on the map. We could have spent hours there just looking at the graphic design evolution of Cedar Point.

Also on a TV there I noticed a campaign ad. It promised that if the Americans took back the House of Representatives, the Democratic Party would obstruct Trump's agenda, allow asylum-seekers, have the government take over health care, raise taxes, launch investigations of the future Disgraced Former President, and maybe even start impeachment proceedings. And the crazy thing is the Republican Party paid for this! Anyway, in my local Congressional district the Vichies lost --- to my great surprise --- so I'm looking forward to calling my new Representative to ask how she's doing living up to those promises.

When we were finished, and full, it was already 10 pm. But the drizzle had mostly stopped, and it had been cold enough that people were leaving the park. This made for good riding chances, with short lines. We tried to go to Gemini, but found that roller coaster closed. We got back to Corkscrew, our old friend. And we decided to brave Millennium Force. We'd feared the seat belts, given the experience at the Mine Ride. And having eaten an estimated 22,874 pounds of fried macaroni and cheese two hours earlier. But it was all right: sitting up carefully, and with jackets unzipped, we were able to fit our seat belts on and snap the restraints into place. Millennium Force is a fast and exciting ride and it's great at night, giving a fantastic view of the whole point lit up. And we could get a few quick looks at where the dinosaur animatronics had been, but no clear idea of what was there, or what was going in there.

Also remarkably, Millennium Force had a short enough line we could get one further ride in. We dashed over to Iron Dragon, waiting for the front-seat ride on what turned out to be the last right of the night. Iron Dragon's always a good night ride and there is that extra little thrill in being on the final ride for the day.

On the way back we stopped in the Sweet Shop, which hadn't quite closed. We got some fudge for bunny_hugger's father, consolation for my screwing up our getting any when we passed through Mackinaw City in August. Also in the adjacent Snoopy Place store, bunny_hugger mentioned how in the old days when Cedar Point had the Berenstain Bears license there was the Bears' Treehouse as a performance spot inside that building. And we realized, oh, that's got to be it still there. It's relabelled the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, because kids don't know what a puppy farm is, and it's got T-shirts and sweatpants and stuff like everything else in the shop has. But that's got to be just barely touched from Berenstain Bears days.

We got back to the hotel room, and it seemed quiet enough. And it did stay quiet enough through the morning, glad to say. We could have as well-rested a final day of the amusement park season as possible.

Trivia: After the discovery of Pluto it was found to have been photographed, but unnoticed, by the Mount Wilson observatory in 1919 and, faintly, by the Lowell Observatory in 1915. Source: In Search Of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Universe, Richard Baum, William Sheehan.

Currently Reading: Lum and Abner: Rural America and the Golden Age of Radio, Randal L Hall. The book is copyright 2007, but mine is the first stamp on the check-out page and the book seems un-used. (The university library sticks to stamping.) I can't find the acquisition date but I'm really hoping it's only been in the library for a couple months. Eleven years is a heck of a wait for something to be taken out.

PS: My 2018 Mathematics A To Z: Nearest Neighbor Model, which comes as close to my actual area of expertise than anything I've ever written, if I'm not mistaken.

PPS: Drawing closer to the big moment when I got to play and faced three rounds of the highest-stake pinball I've experienced.

More repairs! For once it's not Cirqus Voltaire that needs the help. Note the metal bar, set on a hinge on the main cabinet, that fits into a circular hole on the underside of the raised playfield. Yeah, it's held up just like the hood of your car.

Meanwhile, looking over at the A Division finals, which can't possibly have got organized yet if people are just camping on stage with a lot of things that could spill on their carpet.

Finals back under way. Note that Jungle Queen being played in the center. It'll come back to me.

Saturday at Cedar Point we started by leaving Cedar Point. We always visit the Merry-Go-Round Museum in downtown Sandusky. Since everywhere to eat in downtown Sandusky closes at about 11:15 am in 1984, we didn't go downtown to eat. We went to Route 250, and the start of the strip mall district, to eat at Jolly Donuts. It's a real proper little diner that, we overheard a waitress saying, was actually a railroad-car diner. They'd found a picture of it being wheeled into place fifty years ago. Which is neat but also seems late in the game for a railroad-car diner. Maybe it was relocated? Besides lunch we also got a couple of the very few doughnuts they had left (they were near closing), to be a snack for the next morning.

And then we drove away from the Merry-Go-Round Museum, to the nearest Meijer's. We figured we could get needed motion sickness pills from them (we could) and also a cheap scarf bunny_hugger might use for the weekend (we could not). So we went to the Sandusky Mall, where they had a JC Penny's and, ultimately, a scarf that seemed all right. Also more expensive than bunny_hugger thought she could get at CVS, which we knew was near the Merry-Go-Round Museum. I proposed we get this and, if CVS had a cheaper one, fine, return this scarf at the Penny's near us. CVS had scarves, although not so much cheaper than this. Also motion sickness pills, so, time-wise, we'd have been better off skipping Meijer's and Penny's altogether. Well, we also picked up some canned chilled coffee and pop, to take back to the hotel room. This revealed to the CVS cashier and some friends there that they make Diet Coke with weird flavors now like Blood Orange and Death Cherry and some other stuff I can't get quite right, so, glad to bring them that joy.

Ah, but the Merry-Go-Round Museum. That was ... surprisingly busy! There was a pack of maybe two dozen people there. We weren't clear on exactly what was going on. But there was some kind of special event going on in the evening. As we wandered around they were setting up tables with two layers of tablecloth. And the woman in the gift shop, who somehow remembered(?!!) that we were from Michigan asked if we were there for the Spartan baseball event at the sports complex Cedar Point owns. While we understood each of the individual words in that sentence their combination was beyond us, and we explained we were just there for Halloweekends and our annual visit to the museum.

The size of the crowd brought benefits. We could overhear the docent explaining the museum exhibits and appreciate the thrill of people learning cool stuff about carousels, and new-learning energy is always great. Also this was the first time we've ridden the carousel they have --- nearly all animals that they've carved --- when it was nearly full. It's nice to have a carousel to yourself, but to have people everywhere? That's also wonderful.

For the nearly-full ride the band organ played the Alfred Hitchcock Presents theme. The docent asked if we recognized it, and sure, but what we didn't recognize is that it was actually a classical piece, the Funeral March of a Marionette. The band organ there is set up, for October, to play Halloween-ish themes and so we have rarely heard it playing normal carousel music. We did stick around for another ride and wondered what it would play that time around. Some of the choices are good music for this, like the theme to The Addams Family. Some are a bit of a stretch but makes sense like Chopin's Funeral March. (It might not be Chopin's. But it's a funeral march at least as good.) What we did hear? The theme to Batman '66. The Halloween connection is vague. It's also kind of a dumb band organ tune. It gets musically interesting in the stuff that isn't the na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na part everyone remembers. You know that thing where sitcom music gets padded out with a middle section so that it can maybe get airplay. I'm not saying the added section is the best part, since na-na-na-na is so infectious and gleeful. But it's better band-organ music. And they did do some clever arrangement to try to get the feel of the song given the constraints of how a band organ plays.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum has had some reorganization since we visited it last. Some things were off exhibit. New things were moved in, though, so the museum doesn't look any less full. They've currently got exhibits organized much more strongly by theme, so that, for example, there's a whole stand of nothing but deers. I'm not sure whether that's a better organization or whether it's just different. They've also moved to putting the explanatory panels on free-standing plastic mounts, rather than painting them onto the walls or display shelves, so that it should be easier to reorganize exhibits as fashions change.

What does seem diminished is the gift shop. No carousel music CDs this time around, for example. And no carousel calendar for 2019, although nobody has printed one of those in years. They had older calendars though, including one from (I think) 2008 sitting unopened. They did have some new Christmas ornaments, tempting bunny_hugger successfully. We put in our traditional 18 entries to try to win the horse they're raffling off this year. (They're a dollar each, 6 for $5, so bunny_hugger buys ten dollars' worth and I buy five dollars'.) And we learned why last year's raffle horse was still at the museum: one of the carvers won it, and decided to leave it at the museum where it could be shown. I'm not saying we'd do that, were we to win. But it would solve the problem of transporting it from Sandusky, at least.

This took us until pretty near 4 pm, when they closed and when they were setting up for the night's event. So we headed out, stopped at CVS as mentioned above, and then went back to the Hotel Breakers to figure out our night at Cedar Point and just how warm we would need to dress.

Trivia: In its first year the Empire State Building earned $1.05 million in rents. The observation decks earned $1 million. Source: Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, Daniel Okrent.

Currently Reading: Popeye, Editor Mike Higgs.

PS: Reading the Comics, October 30, 2018: I Spot An Error Edition in a comics post with a bunch of new tags.

PPS: Discovering in finer detail what would wait for us in Pinburgh 2017 finals.

bunny_hugger with the other 23 competitors in the second round of playoffs, listening to her instructions and group assignment and all.

Play! There were six groups playing, on the three banks of machines. The first four games on the left are the ones I'd spend three rounds playing, by my choice.

Meanwhile I wasn't needed anywhere, so I looked at other stuff around. Here's a pretty fun-looking backglass with improbably-dressed women and after a bit of a lopsided match. But this era of game, especially from a European game maker, could have wildly unpredictable scores.

We walked towards the front of the park, through the Frontier Trail which in past years had been a steampunk-themed walk-through haunted performance area. No more. Apparently steampunk has passed. They had a Haunted Barnyard Or Something theme, with Frontier Trail people dressed as monsters and I'll admit we were so focused on ourselves I don't think I even noticed the thing the first time through.

But we found the most important thing, the Cupzilla grease truck with the Korean barbecue. It's got really really good tofu-and-noodles and spices. We brought it over to one of the Coke Freestyle machine stations and answered people who wanted to know where we got that since it smelled so great. With food and drink we went into the Colosseum, to eat in comfort and in sight of ... the ... pinball ... machines ...

Which weren't there. The whole back row of games, mostly 1970s tables that had been at the park forever, was gone. Nothing but empty space there. Even the two Hercules tables, giant-sized slow pinballs set for the amusement park trade, were gone. The tables had been in increasingly bad shape --- the last time we played them, two months ago, in our visit with MWS only the Pioneer and the Hercules tables even worked --- and some had vanished, but this was something else. They all disappeared, all at once. A bunch of the mechanical attractions, strength-testers and love-provers and the like, were also gone.

We took photographs. The next morning posted pictures of what we termed the Cedar Point Pinball Massacre, until we heard about the law-abiding gun owner in Pittsburgh who decided to stop abiding and instead share his Republican ideals with his victims. I deleted my tweet about that quickly. bunny_hugger edited her Facebook post, although after a casual friend nudged her about her wording.

Still, the pinball machines. We thought we might know what happened to at least one of them: the guy who runs the pinball league at Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum had mentioned about two months ago he bought an Abracadabra. One of the games Cedar Point lost since about two months ago was a severely worn out Abracadabra. We asked. No; that was coincidence. Cedar Point apparently did auction off the games, though, and we have no idea to whom. But at least this suggests the games went to people who appreciate pinball and that's something.

We did circle the colosseum, to see if any pinball games survived or if they moved or if any new games were put in. No, but we did verify their vintage, full-size Skee-Ball alleys were still in. We also went to play Whac-a-Mole, with some of the ancient machines still working, although they didn't give out tickets.

Now it was after 10 pm. We had missed the Kiddie Kingdom Carousel. We did venture out to Blue Streak, which was running and had very little line and I think this is the ride where an operator recognized bunny_hugger's Stitch kigurumi but as a hat. Next to the lone wooden roller coaster is ValRavn, the dive coaster, and we noticed that one reported a line of about 15 minutes. It was maybe a bit longer than that, but still, pretty good short wait time. We had a back-row seat. It's not the best view --- the point of a dive coaster is being held at the top of a vertical drop, facing down, and the back seat is more nearly horizontal --- but it might be a better ride. You sit waiting, in suspense, at the top of the ride and have the chance to appreciate the scenery before suddenly plummeting.

Now we went to the back of the park, where the line for Steel Vengeance was on the sign as 3/4-hour. But that's the smallest increment their sign can show. The park seemed fairly empty ... we figured this was our best shot at it. The park employees at the entrance asked if we had cell phones on us and we answered, honestly, no. We had cameras, but those weren't phones. But you're not allowed to have a phone in the ride queue. This to make sure people don't take phones out during the ride, which is intense and full of abrupt changes of direction. They don't pat you down or anything, but they do ask you up front and have people walking the queues to make sure any phones taken out are put in lockers. The same would probably apply to our actual cameras. Which is a shame, as the wait area has a lot of signs talking about the characters and background story they've created for this area of Frontier Town. Steel Vengeance is a roller coaster that comes with backstory, and it'd be nice to get down just what the backstory is. But this is how Steel Vengeance came to be one of the rare roller coasters we've ridden more at night than during the day.

So last winter bunny_hugger's mother knitted me a roller-coaster-riding hat. It's a regular cap, yes, but it has long straps that can be tied under the chin. bunny_hugger's had one for a year-plus now and it's great: all the enjoyment of riding a roller coaster in the fall, without your ears being chewed up by the wind. I did not forget to bring my hat. What I did, though, was feel horrifically unsure that my feeble knot was going to actually keep it on my head. This was nerve-wracking enough for Blue Streak, which is a relatively gentle ride of hills and valleys. ValRavn made me nervous and I kept putting a hand on my hat. For Steel Vengeance I was terrified the hat would blow off, so I tied it tight enough I couldn't get it off later. And trying to hold the hat on encouraged it to slip forward, covering my eyes and if anything making it more likely to slip off. (It didn't.) But the ride photo for this, and for all my roller coaster rides through about Saturday, would be this hilarious thing of me, but with a red knitted cap of a face and what of my mouth you can make out looking nervous instead.

To our wonder we finished Steel Vengeance --- a great ride, certainly the most intense of the steel roller coasters there --- before the park's close at midnight. So we went to Maverick, which always has an enormous line during the normal season. The wait for this roller coaster was only about twenty minutes, time enough for bunny_hugger to notice a bit of theming left over from White Water Landing, the log flume ride torn down to put up this roller coaster. Also for the park to officially close. We waited for a front-seat ride, since it seemed likely to be our only ride on it this season. We got lucky, too: they declared they were only running three more train cycles when we were in position to ride the second of those. So we got nearly the last ride of the night, in the front seat. Great fun even if I did shove my hat into my face again. Some of the lighting in the ride's tunnel was working now, too, which makes the experience more fun.

With the park closed we walked back to the hotel. Not too fast; no reason to hurry, since we weren't that cold, and the puddles on the sidewalk meant that everywhere we looked was this beautiful complicated play of light and color and dark. It was a really good end for the night.

Trivia: After the elections of 1863 the number of anti-administration representatives in the Confederate House of Representatives rose from 26 to 41 out of 106 districts; in the Senate, from 11 to 26, out of 26 members. Source: The Confederate Nation, 1861 - 1865, Emory M Thomas.

Currently Reading: Popeye, Editor Mike Higgs. Some kind of review of Popeye's place in the pop culture, published around 1989, when he had left it. Some overlap with the Bud Sagendorf Popeye: The First 50 Years book so important to me and bunny_hugger, but not entirely. Also some weird casual bits where the writer didn't care enough about something he was sneering at to get its points right. Bad form.

PS: How October 2018 Treated My Mathematics Blog, the easiest yet most tedious post to write all month!

PPS: Now to look at the third day of Pinburgh 2017, when playoffs happened.

Why we play: the trophy for first place, A Division, for Pinburgh 2017. Also around it are some of the medals given out to those who finish top four in the lesser divisions.

People checking in for the playoffs, Day Three. Not many yet, but we were there early because we were in the playoffs for Pinburgh how could we dare miss that?

bunny_hugger getting in a little practice on the pool-and-casual-sexist-joke themed Breakshot. Our pinball bestie MWS is beside her there.

We got to the Hotel Breakers later than we originally wanted, of course. We didn't have to wait through a long line checking in, though, something bunny_hugger had feared. We did have to wait, since apparently everyone went on break just then, but we were the entirety of the line most of that wait. Also we had a third-floor room just off the center rotunda, which seemed to promise a nice quiet room since there's no fourth or fifth floor except it turns out at the center rotunda. It turned out we were in a wing just far enough off the rotunda that we didn't have anyone running around above us. But we didn't know that right away. And bunny_hugger worried about it, and my assurance that we could change rooms if it were noisy Friday night didn't reassure her since last year's room wasn't really loud until Saturday night.

We settled into the room a while, though, and I think bunny_hugger had to deal with some annoying student problem. So we ended up getting into the park after 7 pm, not just after early admission but also after regular admission. The good side: it was non-rainy enough that bunny_hugger felt comfortable wearing her Stitch kigurumi inside. The park doesn't allow people to wear elaborate costumes --- I think stuff that conceals the face or that might fly off on rides is the issue --- but kigurumis are the sort of casual thing we've seen in the park the last few years, and she finally was courageous enough to try. I failed to bring my red panda kigurumi, but definitely should next year. (Unless they do finally make an Angel kigurumi in my enormous size.) As a bonus, the fleece outfit with its pull-up head was warm enough around the neck that she didn't miss her scarf. The down side is that underneath a jacket it was hard to tell what she was dressed as. One ride operator noticed, but thought it was just a Stitch hat.

There was already too long a line for Steel Vengeance and for Maverick for us to ride. But we were close to the Mine Ride --- sad to say not dressed up as Mystic Mine Ride in repeat of last year's Halloween stunt --- and that was a good start. Also I was surprised it was running, given that Halloweekends Fridays don't usually have all the rides running. Possibly it was open because some ride like Top Thrill Dragster, more sensitive to the wind, was closed.

The trouble came when they pulled the restraint bar down. Each of the three seats in a Mine Ride car shares a restraint bar mechanism, so it has to fit everyone or no one. And bunny_hugger, between her long underwear, Stitch outfit, and (buttoned) jacket, came precariously close to not fitting. We think the restraint went down farther than usual this time on this ride, but still. This caused her to fear what would happen on rides with tighter constraints, like Millennium Force, the seat and restraint for which don't fit female body shapes well to start with.

And I'm sorry to admit I lost my temper. The day had been a series of things bunny_hugger worried about --- her back, the mail, our late start, the Halloween party we were missing, my galoshes, a scare about whether she'd left some medicines behind, the weather, her scarf, the check-in queue, her students, and now the ride constraints --- and me insisting that it would all be okay. And I have a terrible manner for answering this kind of anxiety. I tend to be the sort of person, faced with a problem, who'll say, ``it's all right, it's not like anybody's arm fell off.'' And then bunny_hugger will hold up somebody's loose arm and say, yes, yes it is, here it is. And then I answer, ``Fine, but it's not like his head got chopped off.'' And then she holds up his detached head and says, yes, it's right here. And then I answer ``All right, but nothing worse is going to happen to him now'' and then somehow this isn't consoling. And then we have several more go-rounds until everybody is angry. I didn't have anything left, and I should have had, and I'm sorry. Which left us in the Town Hall Museum, beside the gryphon statue and this great scale model of Steel Vengeance that promised to be working someday, feeling at our worst.

Also while there I realized there was a great picture to be taken, with the gryphon in foreground and the carousel horses on display in deep background, but the line of sight was never clear of people walking around to take it. bunny_hugger suggested we come back on a less-crowded day, and we forgot to the rest of the weekend. We also forgot to come back and visit the carousel horses.

But then this was also the worst the weekend got. After that nadir, after the wringing-out and talk about it, we could go back out and have a better time.

Trivia: The captive balloon for the 1893 World's Fair was named the Chicago; it held about 100,000 cubic feet of hydrogen. Source: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Erik Larson.

Currently Reading: Popeye, Volume 1. Editors Justin Eisinger, Alonzo Simon.

PS: Reading the Comics, October 26, 2018: I Am Overloaded Edition as there were a lot of comic to write about last week.

PPS: What was so exciting for me on the second day of Pinburgh 2017.

It was all worth it. Ready Aim Fire! got to be working very well, by my count. My score on it was twice anyone else's and with that ... you can see ... I had a perfect round, 12 wins. This launched me to the top of the D Division and I never really sank from there.

Final scores on the final game of my perfect round. Since I got last pick of place this game, I don't know how I ended up Player 3. Typically people pick the last position available so I would expect to have been Player 1, but it looks like one of the other players had a preference for going first. Which happens; I have an idiosyncratic preference for second, given the chance. Most modern games let the operator turn off extra balls; older games, though, they can't, or it's hard, and the tournament just deals.

And the Ready Aim Fire! layout, which I got to like so. It's an early solid state game, but plays very like an electromechanical: hit sets of the same-colored target to collect bigger prizes. I had that rhythm where I could just keep sending the ball to the nice safe targets up on the top there and what a nice arrangement that was.