austin_dern | Entries tagged with women's north american championship seri

June 2025

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When JL beat bunnyhugger for the Michigan State Women's Championship this year she unknowingly did us a favor. This because it turns out that the Women's North American Championship series was this weekend, out in New Hampshire. Also this weekend: Motor City Fur[ry] Con, in Ypsilanti. While the finals were on Friday you see the issue in getting to both events at once. We're having a hard enough time accepting that Anthrohio's move to mid-April --- something we hope is temporary --- puts it the same weekend as Easter (admittedly, not something going to repeat soon) and Pinball At The Zoo. The latter threatens to happen all the time, if the convention doesn't move back to late May or any other time of year. Really hoping it does. It's bad enough to lose one of our two conventions to pinball and Easter, but to lose both of them to pinball competition would be unbearable.

Meanwhile, at the Women's North American Championship Series, JL did nicely in winning her first round, but was knocked out in the second. So bunnyhugger has got a claim yet to having the record for getting farthest in the North American Championship, with having got through two rounds to be knocked out in the third. And last year's champion, AMK, had a first-round bye and then lost in her first match, which shows again how fickle being a champion is. Or just that there's 54 people there and 53 of them will not take first place. You know.

And back in June, here's some more pictures from Jungle Jim's. The place is kind of overwhelming and it's hard to know everything work photographing.

I'm told that when he was at Chuck E Cheese's Elvis here had only implicit connections to the more famous Elvis. Jungle Jim's is not shy about saying exactly who this lion is.

And nearby is a jellybean portrait of ... uh ... uhm ... I'm going to say the Fourth Doctor as Paul Gaugin or maybe the Skipper?

Back to Elvis, with a bit of view of the mechanism on his feet.

I include this shot for your 70s-style pictures of the singer seen from two camera angles at once.

bunnyhugger looking over her stamped penny in front of Elvis.

There's a lot of custom signs too, or at least I don't recognize this as any particular established squirrel character.

Traffic signs directing people around the ice cream. Yes, that's Graeter's ice cream there. Told you we were in WKRP-town.

Some penguins above the frozen foods area. There's stuff like this all over the grocery.

So where do you imagine the honey's kept?

And this would be the aisle for flying bicycles and also ... I guess soup, on the endcap there?

A whole bunch of fake storefronts put above eye level. I assume they all reflect brands or product lines, but that's just going by the fact I know that Hodgson Mill is a thing.

Toys and clothes get here under the Blue Q kangaroo.

Trivia: Family sources say that Paul Terry offered Paul Robeson the chance to do vocals and singing for TerryToons. But as no voice credits were on the finished films --- and Robeson's hiring would have been kept secret after his investigation by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities --- it is unknown when, or what films he might have worked. Source: Terrytoons: The Story Of Paul Terry And His Classic Cartoon Factory, W Gerald Hamonic

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

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So, yet another major hurricane is bearing down on Florida, just as climate scientists have been warning would happen. As the whole state tries to flee back to its native Michigan what has me worried is: my sister and her family are there. They were confident about the last hurricane all of, what, 25 minutes ago, and turned out okay. This time they've been texting the family group with confidence, saying the storm is on track to pass south of them.

They know their location and the track of the storm in greater precision than I could, and what level of evacuation recommendation or order they're under. But I'm also wondering how much is whistling past the graveyard. Also how much of this is driven by it being too hard to evacuate their horses, and too irresponsible to abandon them and hope they can come back afterwards. I guess there was never anything to do but hope, but you hate to face it.

And now, closing out the pictures of the Wizards World arcade.

Custom plunger on the Taxi game which thought of something to do with the taxi theme: show a taxi.

The impenetrable barrier keeping me from any pictures of the backmost row. Recycled from the North American Championship Series the day before.

While bunnyhugger played in the women's weekly tournament alongside, mostly, other state and province champions who weren't in the Women's World Tournament, I played games on my own. Here, I figured out something about the game Lectronamo and put up a high score!

It was barely the work of a moment to tell the staff, and they verified, and put up my new score and nearly got my name right!

Poster of 'Pinball Knowledge' that was either inside or next to the bathroom. The upper left corner is a 1954 patent application; the right, backglasses from what's billed as the top ten machines. I imagine this is from the Internet Pinball Database's list at some time in maybe 2004 or so. And beneath are tips to how to play pinball and a short history of the games.

Custom plunger for Stranger Things is a nice glowy d20.

So on the Old Stern machine Lightning I realized: this game is (isomorphic to) Black Knight, a game I'm good at in simulation form. Once I realized that I started playing it as if it were Black Knight and what do you know but I hit another high score.

This time they let me write the high score on it myself.

Then I went over to Skateball, a circa-1980 Bally game which, as you can see, is a 70s Pornstache-themed game. Would I hit a third high score in the day? ... No. But I got closer than I would have expected, especially as Skateball isn't one of the circa-1980 games I know well.

Meanwhile going on were both the Women's World Championship and the women's weekly tournament. (There was also a kids tournament going on somewhere too.)

That row of games where they'd had to swipe the Stars out, and put Harlem Globetrotters in its place. Also, that Creature From The Black Lagoon teased me all weekend with the idea I might hit the super jackpot, and I could not.

And a last look at the Wizards World arcade, peeking behind the staff counter. There seem to be a lot of varieties of Wizard's World drink mugs there. Despite all the merch they had on sale the only thing I picked up was a little tube for holding quarters that I think I haven't yet actually used.

Trivia: The first chemical compound with xenon was formed in 1962; the first with krypton in 1963. It was not until 2000 that a compound with argon was formed. Source: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, Sam Kean.

Currently Reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L Frank Baum. Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shanower, Skottie Young.

PS: What's Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why did The Phantom suddenly happen in the 40s? July - October 2024.

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Once long ago there was a French carousel-maker named Bayol. Among the animals they made were hares. bunnyhugger owns one of them. They sometimes mixed these hares --- and cats, and other ``menagerie'' figures --- with horses on their rides. But at least once, they made an all-cats carousel. And at lease once, they made an all-bunnies carousel.

Early this year bunnyhugger found a postcard showing one of these all-bunny carousels, from a French seller. It was but the work of a moment to buy the card and wait for its delivery, after which, among other things, she planned to scan the picture on it at the highest resolution possible, as pictures of this carousel are almost as rare as information about it (including what happened to it and was there more than one all-bunnies merry-go-round). Can you spot the fatal flaw in this plan?

Yes. Whether the problem is the US Postal Service's commitment to fulfilling boss Louis DeJoy's plan to demolish the US Postal Service, or the problem is Customs loathing the transport of goods across national borders, the card never arrived. I am more suspicious of the post office on this point, because this was also a while when bunnyhugger could not get her package of Mrs Grossman stickers-of-the-month, someone on the way apparently deciding to steal the original shipment, and the replacement, and the second replacement.

While I continue to nag the post office to at least look for whoever swiped the card and the postmaster promised these things sometimes turn up, bunnyhugger fumed a long while and then found another copy of the postcard online. This was not in as pristine a condition --- the card was tinted, and partially painted --- but, with several months of Mrs Grossman stickers coming through fine, she gave it a try.

And just as we were starting to wonder if the Post Office or Customs had stolen this one too, it arrived! In good shape, too. The picture has writing on it, something that based on the message of the postcard appears to be naming people in the card-writer's family (or friends). The text, reasonably but a little unluckily, doesn't have anything to do with the carousel. The start of it is apologizing for not writing back sooner even though they've had plenty of time. You know how that is.

There may be a better bunny-carousel postcard out there, or even better, a proper picture of one. But for now, there's at least this, secure in the hands of someone who knows what it is.

And now? The last day we were in Fort Wayne. We only stuck around until mid-afternoon, but still, some fun stuff happened there. Let's watch.

bunnyhugger getting into the place for the women's weekly tournament, which would have considerably more people than the previous weekend but which she would not win. Also, the U-Haul was still there but had no new pinball machines to deliver, so far as I saw.

Sign warning that the back row was closed off for the Women's World Championship.

Ah, but from here you can see the Road Show and its custom plungers that here ... well, you just see the construction helmets, but there's Red and Ted there, I promise.

The 1970s Kiss pinball has just the plunger head you'd expect.

The Stern Godzilla meanwhile has a plunger that ... I guess is an egg? Maybe a Mothra egg? Or something? I don't know the Godzilla canon, sorry.

Strikes and Spares here gets a custom plunger, a big disc with a couple bowling pins in the air.

Trivia: Between 1430 and 1436, when the English occupied Paris, there were at most two hundred English soldiers in the city. Source: Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, Jean Favier. Paris's population had likely fallen below 80,000 at the time, with some sources claiming it to be under 50,000. Still, not much of an occupying force.

Currently Reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L Frank Baum. Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shanower, Skottie Young. I forgot Emerald City of Oz was the one with Bunnybury and I could make bunnyhugger read the story of the saddest king other than Blozo.

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And today, I close out pictures of the Women's North American Championship Series. bunnyhugger did not win, but did acquit herself very well, as you'll soon see.

Her prize! After making it through two rounds she took place in the tie for 9th through 16th (the tournament chose not to break these ties), getting real actual cash reward of $25 for her play.

That special moment of getting a selfie ready for her social media friends. For once, the non-Dutch-angle is the more interesting shot.

Local news came in and interviewed ... someone ... about women's pinball.

Reporter checking the, I don't know, microphone? Light levels? Anyway this angle lets you see where the TV camera was, unlike the previous but more interesting picture.

We saw boxes of these as ... not sure if they were door prizes or free-to-take or what, but it did seem like something to make a glowy light icon could be fun.

Peering into the player lounge, with friends and supporters of the players ... checking their phones.

Big Game is a circa 1980 game from Old Stern that I don't think I'd ever done this well on before. Note that this was my score after a single ball, and I thought it was conceivable that I might break a million points. I would not.

Other people's victories! They're getting the trophy-presentation ready here.

Top four finishers in the Women's North American Championship Series. The grand champion (third person, the one with the smiling open face) had said she'd retire from competitive play now that she had won this. She played in the tournament Sunday.

This is a blurrier picture but the expressions seem more spontaneous and fun here.

Players Lounge put to bed for the night.

Aftermath. The tournament's done, the podcasters have stopped streaming, all that's left is to clean up stuff, which we did not help with.

Trivia: The United States abolished the import duty on coffee in 1832. It was reintroduced during the Civil War and abolished again in 1872. Source: A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L Frank Baum. Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shanower, Skottie Young.

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We haven't adopted a rabbit. But bunnyhugger became aware of a compelling rabbit in need of a home, a bunny down in Jackson, Michigan. Not a Flemish Giant, or even a New Zealand, a rabbit almost as big as a Flemish but, you know, pretty big yet. (We think Sunshine was likely a Flemish/New Zealand cross.) This would be a more average-size rabbit, like, eight pounds or so.

The distinctive thing, though: his ear. Something attacked it, so the poor thing's almost half chewed or burned away. And ... like, lengthwise, so the part of the left ear that touches the right ear is there. It's the outside of the ear that's gone. The rescue didn't have information about how it happened. A fight with something seems most likely.

We like large rabbits, yes, but there's something compelling about a rabbit that's had such a life already, and bunnyhugger kept coming back to his page. And Jackson isn't far away; we could meet the bunny and maybe bring them back any afternoon.

The rabbit was adopted, but not by us. Have to suppose it was by someone looking forward to caring for a rabbit who'd had a previous life that hard already. Hope they're what he needed.

Going to share pictures of the Women's North American Championship Series at Wizards World arcade, much like the last couple days. But there's a big surprise coming this time ...

I think every time I see a Grand Lizard I photograph the backglass. It's just such a good example of this kind of art, you know?

Also my, but this grand dragon has a look, what with the ... harness that seems to be support for her cape of tiny skulls? Also pretty sure she's not kneeling on top of a squat, wide creature with that face (above the 00 and 40 readouts) but I can't swear to it.

I stepped outside for a snack and then noticed something happening out front. What's this?

Yeah: it's a brand-new pinball game being delivered!

It would not be entered into the tournaments, of course, but it would be open for playing in just a few minutes after this and become the thing everyone had to try at least once.

Installing the game. You can maybe see the scoring is three seven-digit LEDs; the game is deliberately retro with the look of a mid-80s game but, of course, modern play style.

Getting ready to put the glass back on and open it up to general play. In an ominous move the game defaulted to being five quarters --- $1.25 --- a play, although they soon changed that to a dollar a play.

And now, a game's getting moved out to be put in tournament play. I had written it was Nine Ball earlier but no, it was Stars getting swapped out.

The move. ... Sure hope that guy works for the arcade.

Here's what they needed that Stars for. The epic alphabet battle between AB and BC.

Jacket left behind on a stool, which struck me as the sort of thing that shows the tournament advancing and people getting tired and maybe also figuring that it's not that cold inside the venue. (It would get a bit warm, possibly because of a hundred games all turned on and there being no windows.)

Some of this stuff is free giveaways meant for anyone who wants it. Some of it is door prizes for people who are in the tournament. Choose wisely. (The Godfather is a Jersey Jack pinball game I saw at one (1) Pinball At The Zoo and nowhere else. I saw more Grand Lizards at the Women's Intergalactic Pinball Tournament in July than I have ever seen Godfather pins.)

Trivia: In June 1893 the British battleship Camperdown collided with Admiral Sir George Tyron's flagship Victoria because of a faulty signal Tryon issued, and that no one had courage to countermand. Tryon and 358 officers and men died in the collision. Victoria's second-in-command, John Jellicoe, survived. Source: To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman.

Currently Reading: The Emerald City of Oz, L Frank Baum. Marvel Comics adaptation by Eric Shanower, Skottie Young.

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Last year after we tossed out the decorative gourds that had passed their prime some squirrels (most likely) cracked them open. And at least one took seeds from them and did what squirrels do, burying them in our side yard. bunnyhugger discovered this a couple weeks ago, when she saw a small but growing pumpkin-class plant growing there. She set up some plant jail cages, to avoid the leaves and vines getting attacked by either our growing wildlife population or by the neighbors who just moved in to the house next door. And hoped that the flowers might get pollinated. Years ago she'd tried to grow pumpkins, but the flowers all came up the same sex.

This time? There were at least a couple of both sexes. And we even had a pollinator we didn't know could do the job. It turns out ants, while not as good at it as bees are, will help plant sex along while going about their business. This took a bit of the edge off this unfortunate stretch a couple weeks ago where we had a swarm of ants in the dining room and spending too much time on the table. (That, we handled by getting very rigorous about crumbs, washing the tablecloth a couple times, and damp-mopping Dr Bronner's Peppermint over the floor several times, and also getting lucky.) Before long there weren't just blooms but actual gourds growing.

Yesterday bunnyhugger harvested one. It's a decorative gourd, the kind we get two for a dollar this time of year, three and four for a dollar in a month or so. It's small, compared to the ones we get at the store, likely the result of having little sun and no fertilized soil But the shape is great and the colors nice. And, most wonderful, it just happened without our specifically arranging anything. Some nice squirrel just did their business and we came out well for it.

Back now in photos: here's the Women's North American Championship Series under way in Fort Wayne. Note that I did not sneak past the lines where the public was forbidden.

People gathering to be ready for the first matchups. And, on the right, non-players just playing around.

Standee for the Women's North American Championship Series. The image on the banner is the backglass for the electromechanical game Centigrade 37, a name which makes sense because ... future women in tubes?

bunnyhugger facing her immediate destiny. (This is one of several killer photographs this roll.)

Sometime later (see it's past 10:30 already), folks sit around waiting for their next matchups.

Picture of some of the games not (yet) in the tournament. I believe the Nine Ball would get swapped in for something that broke --- I think it was missing later in the day, a shame as I'd wanted to play more.

Matchups being made, I believe. Also, on the back wall, we see that the Wizards World arcade was getting Stern banners for pinball games way, way before Lansing League was. The Star Trek pinball dates to 2013, for example, and the Ghostbusters pinball came out ... uh ... I want to say 2016? It was the last dot-matrix pinball Stern made.

bunnyhugger faces her challenge this round: the electromechanical game Pinball, named by someone at Original Stern who was being cheeky and wanted the game to be impossible to look up online and also wanted to do a backglass of a city being crushed by a kaiju sphere.

On to friendlier territory, and Road Show. Since the dot matrix display has only a single score on it and is labelled 'Free Play' it must be after she and her opponent had taken their 30-second practices but before they played. Note the left plunger has a little Ted head, although it just looks like a craggly blob here.

Oh hey, Wizard, nice Arcade. Saw your scarecrow brother outside.

The venue has this poster on the wall, nice basic advice for anyone hoping to play pinball. The bits about nudging and the 'advanced flipper techniques' are particularly good to know.

OK so now, like, as soon as she reads this blog entry, bunnyhugger is going to yell at me because I did have a good game of FunHouse but still came up short of the grand championship, which you'll recall was a factory-default 15 million.

And I got back just in time to see her being streamed playing Jurassic Park! Unfortunately the stream joined her just in time for her to have a walk-off win so she didn't get to do much.

Trivia: Johannes Kepler built a camera obscura with a convex lens to improve image quality. In 1620 English diplomat Henry Wotton, travelling in Germany, described the camera obscura in a letter to Francis Bacon. Source: Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution, Lisa Jardine

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 12: 1950, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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This week on my humor blog I was reminded that I did something a little silly with the plot of Air Bud and turns out that got someone angry with me. Also I had a great time writing up the Mary Worth plot so I hope you check that out. Here's this week's menu of stuff to see:

In the photo roll we're back in March and the Wizard's World arcade for the women's North American Championship Series of pinball. Here's how that looked:

Clipboards getting all ready for tournament play, with scorecards printed up and even the sheet of instructions on how to pick games for this. I note that they had a black-and-white copy, unlike the color print bunnyhugger did for the Michigan Women's State Championship.

The barrier which would keep me from getting close-up photographs: flyers warning me not to come in.

bunnyhugger getting some last-minute practice in on a game outside the tournament banks. I took this picture from the space between two pinball machines the next row over, so don't think I was being a jerk and sitting on top of her playfield to get this shot.

They're calling people together to make sure everyone is registered and seeded correctly.

Peeking into the side room where they'd have the tournament stream and seats for spectators. Note they have the Illicit Fonzie Eight-Ball on the screen.

Announcements! I got this picture from the door into the side room.

The side room had a nice lineup of pinball machines, but they were all turned off, I assume for repairs. The side room had the vibe of the workshop room.

Competitors heading out the door for a group photogram and to be taken aboard the Close Encounters Of The Third Kind spaceship.

I join the migration. Here's bunnyhugger looking even better than usual in the jacket she got from the Stern Company Store.

It's so weird taking this kind of photo when nobody is in fursuit and there aren't like a hundred more of them.

Here's the crowd, moments after the big cheese moment. Also unlike a furry convention group photo, you can see bunnyhugger in it.

Oh, and here's a decoration outside the Wizard's World Arcade: it's the Fort Wayne Wizard!

Trivia: Tracking of Sputnik 1 during its three weeks in operation served as the live ``dry run'' test for the six major Minitrack stations built for the purpose of tracking the United States's Vanguard satellite. Source: Project Vanguard: The NASA History, Constance McLaughlin Green, Milton Lomask. NASA SP-4202. After some hasty reconfiguring as they were designed to listen at Vanguard's 108 MHz and Sputnik 1 transmitted at 20 and 40 MHz.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 12: 1950, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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Oh yeah, so one stray exchange from Michigan's Adventure on Sunday. bunnyhugger's dragon kigurumi had, as mentioned, gotten a lot of positive comments from other people at the park, attendees and staff. I got a couple nice comments too about the vintage-style Kings Island The Beast t-shirt, which I'd thought had a nice Halloween-ish vibe (the shackled paws of a mysterious but large creature) and hadn't worn yet.

So at one point getting on Mad Mouse a couple of teen(?) or young-adult women looked at us and said our look was great, calling us ``sigma''. We smiled and thanked them and then settled into debate about whether whether that was a good thing or a bad thing they were putting over on people they'd just assume were Boomers. Granting the true answer is that you should not, as an Old, attract the attention of any teen/young-adult person. But we think(?) maybe that it's more positive than negative?

Well, we accepted it as a compliment and if they were laughing at us for that, it doesn't hurt us any. And if they were debating whether we acted sincerely happy to be called sigma or saw through it and were humoring them? That'd be hilarious. That, at least, did not happen.

So, settling back in to quiet days here, let's look at more pictures from the Wizard's World arcade. The tournament ended without our advancing to finals, which, all right, but we still hung around and played games, bunnyhugger hoping to gain advantage for Saturday, me just trying to have fun.

And here we go! I had fun on this game of Memory Lane, putting up a killer score that's about half the highest recorded score. That'll cheer anyone up.

Oh yes, they had a FunHouse too. It was tough playing at first, but --- wait a minute. Computer, enhance.

Yes. Many of the pinball machines at Wizard's World have novelty plungers and those for FunHouse are two Rudy heads. (Road Show, in many ways a widebody FunHouse with two heads, has two plungers and theirs have heads of the two characters, Red and Ted.)

But look at that: the high score table was completely blank, and you could get the grand champion with a mere 15 million points, a thing that we could surely attain, right? We did not.

The night wearing on, and number of people dwindling. You get some idea how dark the place could be, like it's trying very hard to be a pinball arcade or just not have glare on the glass covers while people are playing.

Last picture for the night. I did a bunch of holding my camera up high as I could and shooting blind and now and then, it worked.

And that wraps up Friday night. So here's Saturday, the day of the tournament and all the action that I would not be allowed to get up and close on. But I could take pictures anyway and here's what it looked like.

bunnyhugger, like all the competitors, got a goodie bag full of Wizard's World-provided stuff; here she looks oer some of it.

Logo from a completely different Belles and Chimes group than she plays in! (The name is franchised.) Also a wristband in case she ever visits The Colbert Report again and wants to fit in.

And an establishing shot from outside of the main door in. I wonder what they do here.

And now for the lonely sight of guys at a pinball tournament where it's for women to play and nobody's even asking them for advice.

This is what you see as you go in the door. Note the James Bond 60th Anniversary pinball on the right, a limited-edition table with totalizer-wheel-style scoring. It's a fun table, designed to be retro style without being pinned down to a particular year and you can change the sound effects to be, like, 60s chimes or early-70s chimes or late-70s chimes or so on. And yeah, early-70s and late-70s chimes are totally different.

Guy out there probably thinking it shouldn't be this hard to get on the FunHouse high score table, what's going wrong here?

Trivia: After Robert Fulton's North River Boat reached Albany on its first paying expedition in August 1807, Fulton hung out a placard advertising the return trip at seven dollars, more than twice what sloops charged for the trip to New York City. Only two Frenchmen took passage on the steamboat. Source: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G Burrows and Mike Wallace.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 12: 1950, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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So our Michigan's Adventure trip, only the good parts since they far outnumbered the bad. First, the leaves. We discovered last year that the park is an autumn park. The leaves haven't yet reached their peak but they were in fine form, providing shade while still being all sorts of browns and reds and orange and everything. It's amazing how beautiful it makes the park. I mentioned the weather; it was once again a cloudless sky, helping it be quite warm. Though the wind was often enough to take the edge off that heat, most of the time.

The park was decorated much as it was last year. But they had a bit more, like they saved everything from last year and put a little more in. They also had a bit more programming. Particularly in what used to be the petting zoo they had set up a One-Room Ghoulyard, with a small stage and a couple of seats set up to look like school desks, and at some point a guy in zombie makeup was telling a story.

The most amazing thing, though, was the carousel. Sorry, the Scare-ousel. Because --- while it wasn't decorated --- it was running backwards. Like, instead of turning counterclockwise (as seen from above), it was going clockwise. Cedar Fair never runs rides backward, not even ones like a Musik Express that are designed to run backwards. And nobody runs a carousel backwards, not outside Something Wicked This Way Comes. The carousel didn't run any faster backwards, but it didn't run any slower either, and it's amazing that they have the gearing to run backwards at four rotations per minute. We would have guessed it was possible to run one backwards but at full speed?

Two disappointments. One is that they did not have a Halloween, or even a different, soundtrack for the carousel. It was the same CD of carousel music they always play (and that Cedar Point's Midway Carousel used to play all the time). I can't swear that every time we went past it we heard ``How're You Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm'' but it felt like that. (At one point I quipped it was ``How're You Gonna Keep 'Em Down In Paris Now That They've Seen The Farm'' which comes close to scanning.) The other disappointment, of course, is that riding the carousel backwards did not make us years younger in body.

While walking past the costume show we stopped a moment to see the lineup of little kids in outfits. Three siblings(?) were all dressed as the Three Blind Mice, complete with sunglasses and canes, tapping around together. At that point I had them pegged (correctly) as the winners. A woman dressed as a fox (we had assumed she was a furry) pointed us to a girl dressed as a creepy goth-y doll and asked us, if we stuck around for the judging, to applaud for her as no one had the last time around. We were horrified that any crowd would refuse to clap for any of the kids, even if one particular outfit wasn't to their taste. We did applaud, certainly, and probably would have anyway. When the contest was done the kid came up to the fox --- our first real proof that the woman was the doll's guardian and not just a person offended by injustice --- and we gave her thumbs up and said how we liked her look. We did, too.

Now the Three Blind Mice we saw while in the queue for Mad Mouse. Which was the biggest surprise of the day: the Mad Mouse roller coaster didn't have a tremendous line. In fact, it was as near a walk-on as the coaster ever gets, a line just a couple minutes long. We would go around for three rides before the day ended, and while we didn't get the last ride of the day we were able to get a ride after the park's close. The Three Blind Mice, less their canes, were ahead of us the last two times.

Also a happy surprise: the food. Michigan's Adventure actually had some this time around. And Halloween-themed. We ate before we got to the Wagon Pizza to discover they had 'mummy pizza' --- an oval bread like you flattened out a French Bread pizza, tomato sauce, strips of mozarella and two olives for the eyes --- that we might go for next time. What we did get to eat was the Dessert Sweet Potato Fries, which I think we got last year also. Fries with marshmallow and crumbled Heath bars and there might have been honey. Something sweet and sticky. So very satisfying.

And if that weren't enough, the kettle corn stand was open! And we got some, even if it was only the middle of the day and we nearly finished it before even leaving the park. They also had some Apple Cider Kettle Corn which we didn't attempt this time. It was triumph enough to actually get some kettle corn successfully. We would go home feeling really good except about the train ride mistake.

In photographs we're back to the night before the Women's North American Championship Series, getting ready to play for fun and maybe a ranking in Indiana's championship next January. (We will not rate.)

Oh yes, I should put some focus on the trophy for the Women's World Champion, which as you see comes with the Key to Pinball, capable of opening any coinbox anywhere in the world.

bunnyhugger patiently waiting her turn to go up and play in the side tournament.

The back row of pinball games, including on the near end the modern Kiss and on the far right of the picture the 1970s Rolling Stones, which I didn't know how to play then but do now.

bunnyhugger waiting around on some other games. We got to play that Stars in the side tournament and it was kinder to me than every other game of Stars ever has been.

So did you know there was a Queen pinball? It's from one of the boutique manufacturers and it's pretty fun. My first game you can see I put up 118 million, which is strikingly near the (non-pro-player) high score of 365 million. I thought I might be able to make a go at that. I could not.

Detail of the playfield for Queen, which has your traditional sort of fanfold layout for the basic shots. It also has some fun stuff like if you hit your flippers in time to ``We Will Rock You'' you get extra points, which is the sort of funny whimsy that pinball thrives on.

Trivia: East India Company records pinpoint 1806 as the year when British imports of opium into China finally exceeded in value the tea exported from it, and the balance of trade reversed from bringing silver into China to one that extracted silver from it. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped The World, William J Bernstein.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 12: 1950, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: Don't you want to know What's Going On In Mary Worth? Is Stella still working for Ed? July - September 2024 Plus secret bonus furry content in a very indirect way!

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While we didn't do anything particular on my actual birthday, we did plan a trip for something. The Sunday after --- that is, yesterday, as I write this --- we went to Michigan's Adventure, where their second year of the Tricks And Treats event, a low-key family-friendly Halloween event, was going on. They expanded it a little bit this year, opening a couple more of the flat rides like the Scrambler and the Thunder Bolt, and having open the drink stand with the park's Freestyle machine. (It didn't have any non-sugar drinks.) Not the big roller coasters of Wolverine Wildcat, Shivering Timbers, or Thunderhawk, though, and not the long walkway around the central lagoon that would let you walk past the shuttered water park. Which, Sunday, might have been a missed opportunity for them as it was sunny and in the 80s. But you can't go planning on that.

The disappointments first. Since it was so warm there was no chance I'd go wearing my kigurumi; it's fleece and while I look great as Stitch's girlfriend Angel, I was hot enough wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt (a vintage-style Kings Island 'The Beast' shirt, that a couple people stopped to compliment). bunnyhugger was able to wear her summer fleece, a short-legged, short-sleeved Asian dragon that people loved. Over and over folks told her how they liked it and more than one park employee thanked her for wearing it in. This part I should emphasize was not at all disappointing.

No, the real disappointment is that we --- I --- chose to ride the Timbertown Railway to Patch's Pumpkin Patch. This was set up on the far side of the park, near Thunderhawk, and as last year they had a bunch of hay bales and tiny decorative pumpkins set up for kids to take, on the far end of a ride through the woods while the audio rolled off a story about the Gorgeous Gourds facing off against the Gross Goblins again. That's all pleasant enough but what we did not realize was that the line to get to the patch was three train cycles long. There wasn't a huge crowd in the park, but they were apparently all going for pumpkins. There was such a big crowd that we had to wait two cycles to come back, in the heat and sun --- the shade just missed us --- and this after we were already a bit thirsty when we set out in the first place. Overall we sank maybe an hour and a half into this one expedition, and we didn't even try taking pumpkins back from it, not after our experience last year.

There were nice things about it. It's fun that the park is able to use their miniature railroad winding through undeveloped territory for something thematic. They added a blast of pumpkin spice scent at a plot-critical moment of the train ride. And we got to see kids enjoying that weird freedom where they're allowed to just run around and grab stuff and nobody's even upset with them. We even had some fun discovering how the park does things, as I discovered the little trail the park had set up to bathrooms off by the patch. (They'd made a thin gated trail through part of the queue for Thunderhawk, and to the bathrooms nearest it, so people with an emergency didn't have to wait for the train.) Had it not been for the tremendous wait, it would've been lovely.

Over and over we wondered why they were running only one train when the train ride was the most popular thing they had. with two trains they'd probably have no significant wait at all. We did go past the other train and I realized I didn't recognize its livery at all. I think they might have only the one functional miniature train, which leaves them stuck on an event like this. Michigan's Adventure only opens for a couple of Halloween weekends --- I think their last one is going to be the 12th and 13th of October --- but it's looking like it might become their most popular time of year anyway.

Next on the photo roll? The important thing is the Wizard's World Arcade, in Fort Wayne, which we rolled into the day before the Women's North American Championship Series --- where bunnyhugger represented Michigan --- to get a little time in on the actual games and also to play in a side tournament. Spoiler: we didn't come close to winning the side tournament.

Wizard's World Arcade, which turns out to be most of a strip mall on the north side of Fort Wayne. Not quite the whole building, at least not yet, but you could imagine the different small businesses that might have been here at one point. I think older google street views show a Subway here, for instance.

The upcoming schedule! Also, look at that winner of the previous week's competition, against ... well, two other players brought in so there would be a tournament. But she won, still, and got her name on the board of honor for seven days.

The broadcast booth! The Women's North America Championship Series would be livestreamed with the support of the Ypsi Pinball Podcast. The tower in their logo is the famous Ypsilanti, Michigan, water tower. I don't know why the flippers read 'No Fun - All Salt' but suppose it makes sense to them.

Here's the official list of the banks. Every competitor would have to pick one game from the early, one from the mid, and one from the new games each best-of-seven-game round, although not necessarily would have to play all three choices. A couple of these would be pulled, mostly for breaking down, during the weekend. F-14 Tomcat is indeed a pretty mid game.

Prizes! Some of these were door prizes to be awarded at some point during the weekend. Some of these, like stickers, were free for any to take. And then you'll also see there were some of the really big prizes.

The plaques on the right were for the North American Championship Series. On the left, trophies for the Women's World Pinball Championship, played the day after the North America series. (And not seeding from the same data that the Women's North America Championship Series was playing from, but there was overlap as you might expect in who qualified.)

Trivia: At least 102 reforms to the Chinese calendar are known to us. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Comic books.

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The 7 pm Friday tournament that bunnyhugger made with, no exaggeration, literal seconds to spare was a ``target matchplay'', a format I never heard of before. It seems to be an attempt to square two constraints of tournaments: everyone wants lots of rounds so they can get come back from a rotten first couple rounds, but they also want the tournament to at some point end. So in this format you play in three- or four-player groups, the winner getting seven points, second place five, third place three, fourth place one. (Other scoring schemes are possible.) And the tournament goes on until someone --- any player, anywhere --- reaches or exceeds a target number of points. 30 is apparently a popular target. My naive analysis suggests this means there's between five and eight rounds possible, depending whether anyone is running away with the tournament or everyone is going hot and cold.

The Women's North America Championship Series was still going on and so this side tournament had to use the other two rows of games, ones not needed by the eight, then four, then two players left in that. These were also open to the general public, so competitors might have to ask people like me to shoo. The games were also picked to be older and generally faster tables; I think the most modern game was Jokerz!, from like 1987 or something.

And who was competing? Any woman who wanted, naturally. This would be largely women who had been knocked out of the North American Championship Series and wanted something to do. But also would include some women competing in the Women's World Championship, scheduled to play all day Saturday and Sunday, not all of whom were in the North American Championship Series. (The criteria for invitation were not identical.) So, a tough group with 57 players, many of them the best competitive pinball players to be found.

bunnyhugger started in a three-player group, on Catacomb, a 1981 table which includes a backglass gimmick of a little pachinko target that can score points. Enough points to tip a game, which can be particularly mischievous if nobody's all that familiar with the table, as no one has been since 1982, and all the scores are low enough. bunnyhugger took second place (good for four points) here, my recollection being that it was through fortuitous use of the pachinko.

She did worse in her first four-player group, on Captain Fantastic, one of multiple Elton John-themed pinball games, this one from 1976, and had a third-place finish. Then on to Viking, a 1980 Bally table from the era when nobody knows what the rules of Bally tables were. But she had Hagar the Horrible on her side, getting first place and lifting her up in the tournament standings nicely.

Next game? Vector, which we kind of know a little about because MJS had it in his pole barn for a year or so and we got a couple tournaments in on it. This 1982 table has some neat-looking Future Sports art to it but everything she, or I, learned about the game had since evaporated. She got third place in her four-person group, remembering it's something about the drop targets too late to use the knowledge.

And then, Cheetah. Not the one that I'd played on Thursday night and that was still in use for the Championship Series tournament; a second edition of this 1980 Stern game they happened to have. Everyone has an okay first ball; then, bunnyhugger, remembering mostly that the game is about hitting the numbered drop targets, has a runaway second ball. Like, one that puts up somewhere around a million points, while everyone else is hanging around in the 100,000 or 200,000 range. People clap when she finally loses her ball, as will happen when a person is just that good. There's another ball and she adds to her lead, but she's just crushed it.

And then comes the sad news: someone has beaten the target 31 points. AVA, a player from Boise, Idaho, has finished the tournament, and snagged first place for herself. bunnyhugger, with 24 points, has secured 12th place all to herself. She is, correctly, delighted: 12th place in a group of 57 is a great finish to start with, and in a group including some of the toughest women, and toughest general players, in North America and a handful of the world?

We go back to our hotel room, gleeful about what a great day this has been. There's finally no room for questioning whether she's a solid, serious pinball player.

With the Jackson County Fair finally seen, what's there to do but see the Calhoun County Fair, the other show where bunnyhugger submitted pictures? Let's watch, maybe, if LiveJournal's image server will work today.

Ah, our first vendors of the fair! Pop and t-shirts, everything you need.

Oddly, this year there was not an epidemic of bird flu so they could bring in ducks and geese and other birds for the showing.

That's not to say there were no geese put in Goose Jail after what I imagine was a fair Goose Trial in the Goose Courts.

``Yeah, well, just wait until my Goose Lawyer gets here!''

Pretty sure this bird is marking me for punishment.

Alas, some of the birds were hastily assembled and already falling apart under the strain of a bright summer day.

Trivia: In 1851 Augustus De Morgan noted in his The Book Of Almanacs that the formula for calculating Easter provided by the British calendar reform of 1752 was wrong in two ways --- describing the ``day of full moon'' where the ``fourteenth day'' from the new moon was wanted, and from using the ``moon of the heavens'' instead of the ``calendrical moon''. The published dates of Easter by the Anglican schedule however were ``correct'', matching the Catholic Easter, as they would not if the dates were calculated by the calendar reform act. The error has even yet not been corrected. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel. That is, Parliament went to such great lengths to avoid saying they were using the Gregorian scheme that they introduced errors that they never noticed. (The ``calendrical moon'' is a notional moon used for Easter calculations that behaves a bit more reliably than the actual Moon does.)

Currently Reading: Cosmonaut: A Cultural History, Cathleen S Lewis.

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When bunnyhugger was finally knocked out of the Women's North American Championship Series, we had a couple hours. We spent some of it sitting together and being amazed at just how great she had done, and then figured to go get coffee and maybe a snack before the next event. That would be the Satellite Target Matchplay, a women's-only tournament starting at 7 pm. And we ... spent longer decompressing than expected. I figured, we've got 40 minutes, that's plenty of time to get to McDonald's or something.

So. There was a line of approximately 174 cars in the drive-through lane. I suggested we go inside where there might be fewer people and we'd be able to be served without waiting for the delivery window. (Also on my mind is several times recently when drive-through service got stuff wrong or forgot about us.) And here, I was wrong.

First, they didn't have cashiers, just those annoying touch-screens and a weirdly vacant cash register area. All right, but at least this did let me know they still, a week after Saint Patrick's Day, have shamrock shakes so I could get that and fries. But for bunnyhugger's ... I forget what she ordered, so let's just say it's a latte. After about two hours of us pacing nervously someone came out from the kitchen to apologize, they didn't have whatever was needed for the latte, would a regular coffee be acceptable? And, sure, yeah, that's disappointing but the important thing was getting a hot drink sometime before the tournament started at 7 pm. (bunnyhugger also worried about me getting a refund for the difference between fancy coffee and normal coffee, and if I weren't making a buck a minute at work these days I'd be worried about that too.)

Still, it's not like it's hard to put on a pot of coffee, right? Or it shouldn't be? It shouldn't take another six hours of us pacing around and resolving that when it got to 6:45 pm we were heading out, coffee or no. Right as we were ready to walk out they finally brought out the coffee and we thanked them, hopped into the car, and wondered what the heck is it about Indiana that you can't get coffee after about 11:15 am? They need to work on that some.

On the drive back --- bunnyhugger checking her phone for our estimated time of arrival, despite my insisting we'd make it --- we got a bit snippy with each other about whether we could make it. I had assumed bunnyhugger had signed up for and paid her dollar entry fee before leaving; she had not, and had not known anyone else was doing that. (I'd seen some women doing that.) I also assumed that they would do a last call for signups at 7 pm; bunnyhugger assumed they would do the last call for signups a few minutes ahead so that tournament play could start at 7 pm. You see how this was not something we needed to deal with after a really simple McDonald's order went wrong.

We pulled up to the venue right at 7:00 and I let bunnyhugger out so I could park, for the second time in the day. She was in time for the tournament, for the second time in the day, but immediately after she signed up they made the last call for competitors so we had perhaps seconds to spare.

You know what I have here, now? My last pictures from the Jackson County Fair. Do you get to see them? Depends how fussy Livejournal is being today. Wish us all luck ...

A couple more cartoony animals, including a parrot who seems pretty sure that pudgy gator is going to stay asleep underwater.

I guess the bird's supposed to be outside the water and the gator inside but I'm not sure the camera angle of the cartoon makes strict sense.

More cartoon stuff on the sides of funhouses. I'm not sure what the sheeps' story is or why it's got a guy caught in the cop car distressed like that.

Not sure at all about this Superchicken remake.

Closing up for the night! Here's someone takign down the cheese fries overhang.

And a different, shuttered, French fries place with the label there looking like that thing where they write out 'AMBULANCE' backwards for drivers seeing it in their rear mirrors has gone wrong in several ways.

Trivia: Four electric automobile companies showed offerings at the 1898 Madison Square Garden electrical show. Source: 1898: The Birth Of The American Century, David Traxel.

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When the third round --- the Round of 16, they called it --- bunnyhugger and AMK disappeared to somewhere within the competition aisle. I went back to the stuff I'd been doing (more on that below) and occasionally checked in on the Matchplay brackets. These, the people running the Women's North American Championship Series tried to keep up to date at least on how many wins each competitor had. (Annoyingly, the web site doesn't track which games were played, never mind what order, but at least some information beats nothing.) When I did look I saw ominous news: AMK was up two games to one. It's the first time she's been down in a match, so far as I know.

Worse, she stayed there for a long while. I'd keep coming back to the site and refreshing and find that they were sitting there at two games to one. I supposed that they had had more games and the results just hadn't posted. I also supposed that since bunnyhugger hadn't come to me with disappointment about being knocked out --- or joy about moving on --- that there hadn't been any decision yet. Not so; turns out, they were just in a line for games and had to wait for a table to be clear. The format adopted this year, with everyone picking three games each, also commits people to playing the first game named, so there's no changing your mind if there's too long a wait for Road Show or whatever. So there was just a lot of waiting.

Still. AMK was good. One game stands out as an example of this, Stern's 2018 game The Beatles. Set as it was to the hardest possible tournament settings (no ball save, multiball isn't unlocked just by playing a third ball, rubber posts on the outline guards removed so it's easier for balls to drop out of play) bunnyhugger was generally putting up scores of a half million points or so --- a quarter her usual --- and doing pretty well by that. AMK put up two and a half million points. This would not be the only time in the tournament AMK put up such a preposterous score on this game played this tough, either.

bunnyhugger manages to win a second game that round, but that's all. AMK wins, four games to two. In some consolation, AMK goes on to win the whole tournament --- never being taken to more than six games in a round --- and declares she's not going to compete in the Women's World Championship, an independent event she's slated to compete in Saturday and Sunday, because she had promised to retire from competitive pinball if she won. She is eventually coaxed out of this decision (and does not win the Women's World Championship.) She hasn't been recorded in another International Flipper Pinball Association-sanctioned event since then, but it has only been a couple weeks.

bunnyhugger is disappointed, but, you know, not heartbroken. She's still getting congratulatory texts rolling in from friends and, after all, she really did only want to win one round. Winning two just proved to herself, if not everyone, that she really is a good player, able to at least make it interesting for the pros.

In the meanwhile, what was I up to? Sometimes stepping into the VIP lounge to watch the streaming or snag some Oreos, sure. At some point I went back out to the car to eat some breakfast buffet stuff I'd stashed away. On the way back in I saw guys rolling a brand-new pinball game out of a U-Haul. This would be Pulp Fiction, based on the movie, a brand-new game that's designed to have the look and feel of a mid-to-late 80s table as much as possible. Among other things it has a segmented LED screen, and not the LED televisions of a post-2017 game or even the dot-matrix displays of most any pinball machine since 1991. They would set that up and it would join the venue. I don't know if it was entered into the side tournaments or the Women's World Championship; there is something bold in putting a game literally nobody has touched into your contest, though.

But otherwise I was playing pinball games. Wizards' World Arcade does not operate as a pay-one-price arcade, so every game cost from 25 cents up to a dollar, a condition bunnyhugger had warned me about, so I was ready. And while they had a fair number of the newer games, like, I can play Foo Fighters at home. I was more interested in the older games, like Creature From The Black Lagoon, or the rarer games, such as Lectronaimo or the James Bond 60th Anniversary table.

What catches my eye, and keeps getting my quarters, is their FunHouse. Everyone loves it and it's regarded as the start of Williams's murderer's row of awesome pinball games of the 90s. Wizard's World has tricked out their FunHouse, particularly in putting in LED bulbs. These have great benefits in power savings, of course. And in being less stressful on games, since they don't force the wooden playfields to endure nearly as much heat. But they have drawbacks, including that they are much brighter than the incandescents they replace, and they will shed light at voltages which the incandescent bulbs wouldn't. (Or would be only partially lit.)

And, oh, but the high score table is low. All but one of the scores on it are the default round-number scores that indicate nobody's gotten on the table since it was last reset. 15 million would get the grand championship. That's a bit of a climb, but ... I could do that, surely? I've beaten that on location pinball games, getting over twice that multiple times. The games here are set up harder, but all I'd really need is to get two or three jackpots and I'm in.

Well, dear reader, I failed. I could get a bunch of good games together, and could get to averaging five or six million points a game. But I could not beat the 15 million grand champion score. I got the hang of some good, tough shots --- I've come to realize the Gangway shots are an under-appreciated part of the game --- but I can't claim the grand championship the game.

Something I can claim? The ability to photograph stuff at the Jackson County Fair. I can't claim that Livejournal's servers are going to serve the pictures, though, so good luck to us all.

While the carousel's your basic travelling fairground ride with fiberglass horses, they were painted nicely, including on the interior, non-romance side, like here.

The outside half of the above horse and oh, yeah, I guess there is less detail on the side where it doesn't show, although not dramatically less.

So is a zebra a purple horse with black stripes or a black horse with purple stripes?

This next picture makes me realize there are a lot of purple horses on this carousel. Someone must have had a paint bucket.

It was the last night for the carnival and they were winding down the ticket booths and everything.

I like how nice and bright the fries and the interior of the Ferris wheel are against the night sky.

Trivia: The income tax passed in the Civil War raised about 60 percent of its revenue from New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Source: A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

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Second round, to the delight of everyone except the people who lost in the first round. bunnyhugger now faces the Delaware representative. She's not from Delaware; she's from Washington, DC. But it's easy to get ranked in multiple states around there, and with the district not having enough of a women's pinball scene to send a representative to the Women's North American Championship Series, she took a state that was open.

bunnyhugger does not know this until after, and is glad she did not: the player --- SST --- was very highly rated. As in, a top-250 player in the world. Open, not women. As in, has played in the International Flipper Pinball Association open world championship multiple times, including as recently as this January. bunnyhugger, planning to use the same games, is outclassed and doesn't know it.

And here's the amazing thing. bunnyhugger wins. And not just one game. She keeps winning, once again with a third-ball-rally that takes her from behind. It's attracting interest, as people following the brackets being updated on Matchplay notice a big upset is possible. Sadly, they don't get on stream. ... At least, I think, until the end when they have a game of Jurassic Park that bunnyhugger wins with her second-ball score, where the streamering started just for the last ball, so bunnyhugger didn't even get to play. And, I may have mentioned, got misidentified during the stream.

Anyway, the amazing thing is that this happens: bunnyhugger beats SST, four games to one, and soon is getting texts from friends congratulating her on what a great finish this was. I don't know that she got retroactively nervous about the match, but she was amazed she beat a top-250 player in a best-of-seven match.

bunnyhugger has gotten into the Round of Sixteen, as they call it, and has some time before the next round will start. (The tournament had every match in a round finish before the next round started, even if two competitors for the next round were available. This made the tournament last longer, but avoided the confusion of who should have first dibs on a game, people in round 2 or round 4.)

Her next opponent, AMK, is there from Ohio. Columbus area, so we might theoretically have met her if we had ever used Anthrohio to go to some pinball event nearby. (We've never found one happening when we could go.) She made a couple of jokes about the Ohio-Michigan rivalry and asked whether Ohio State University was the one with the rivalry with Michigan State. (bunnyhugger gave the correct but complicated answer, Michigan State has this rivalry with Ohio State, but Ohio State hasn't yet noticed, so it's easier to just be rivals with University of Michigan.) From there it's just waiting for the second round to finish, so the third round can start, and try to not think too hard about what if bunnyhugger makes it through one more round? If she could beat SST, why couldn't she go all the way? Dangerous to have expectation crowding your game.

Now for some more of the Jackson fair:

Cliff Hanger, nice little paraglider-style ride that looks attractive with how it's set in the grass.

Got our tickets! And I photographed some of the tickets for the sake of being able to better counterfeit them later. Looks like they're all number 23-265007, which should help.

Swinging chair ride, the Sky Screamer, that's looking good.

More art on the sides of rides: a buck with some bucks.

Now, finally, we get to the carousel. Here's the blue horse.

Another angle on the blue horse. I'm surprised to see it's on the inner row here. It is nice to see against the bright red and yellow of the center post.

Trivia: G.I.'s in World War II were issued a clear plastic envelope to hold their paybooks. Similar plastic covers would protect maps, blueprints, repair checklists, and other frequently-referenced papers. Source: The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meaning of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes, Thomas Hine.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby. (I am really really interested in this, I just had my reading time eaten up this week.)

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So bunnyhugger's first round would be against the New Jersey champion and ... oh, would I love to give you the game-by-game results. But as a non-competitor, I wasn't allowed back into the one aisle (of three) reserved for the Women's North American Championship Series. There was a streaming rig set up, and people for a Ypsilanti pinball podcast (``No Fun --- All Salt'', according to their logo, which features the Ypsilanti water tower) were explaining the game on-screen best they could. But that was only one rig, and with eight matches going on at once, there was only a small chance of bunnyhugger being on screen. In fact, for all the time she was there, she'd only be on the stream once, for the third ball of a game she won on the second ball. The streamers mis-identified her during it.

Though I couldn't watch in more than the occasional glance if she were on one of the few games in line of sight from the next aisles, that probably wasn't too bad, really. bunnyhugger has the idea that she plays better when I'm not watching, or at least where she can't go between balls to rail about how outrageous and unfair whatever just happened was. I was relieved when she won their first game, though; a best-of-seven series gives you a lot of time to recover, but better than recovering is being in a dominating position.

And, happy to say, she won the second game too, leaving her in the enviable spot of having beaten her opponent on one of the opponent's choices. After that, I wandered over to the VIP lounge where competitors and their family got to wait in-between rounds and watch the stream and also grab snacks. I am not too proud to eat a bunch of Oreos I really didn't need to, here. Also, to see that they weren't streaming bunnyhugger and didn't look likely to anytime soon. When I went back out I saw that bunnyhugger was pacing around and figured that meant the worst, that she'd lost one or even two games. Not so; they were just waiting behind a big line for, I want to say, Road Show. I'm not sure if that's one I saw her come from behind on the last ball to win, or if that was a game in a different round, but she did do that, always a good feeling. The day would see bunnyhugger make a specialty of third-ball rallies to win the game, reinforcement that she's getting better as a competitive player.

After three wins bunnyhugger started entertaining the idea she might sweep her first opponent. She would not. New Jersey took a win, I forget on what. Let's say Jurassic Park, a game people kept taking her to and that's hard to master. It was not the dreaded reversal of momentum, though, just the other competitor having her high-water mark. bunnyhugger would get back to winning, taking her fourth game and winning the match.

For months now, she said that all she wanted to do was win one round. She'd done that now. What would she do next?

I'm feeling like Jackson County Fair rides. But the photo gallery thing seems to not want to load, let alone upload things, so those will just have to wait a while too.

Trivia: It was on dives number 713 and 914 in 1977 that the three-person submersible Alvin spotted the deep sea 'smokers', with the first known extremophiles. Source: Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers, Simon Winchester.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

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Despite my trouble with the law, bunnyhugger got into the Wizard's World on time and paid her $20 entry fee. There were a couple surprises in the morning announcements. Some of them were the ones we'd expect, a couple games being swapped out because they were behaving flakily the night before. One that was very welcome: a donor was putting a couple hundred dollars into the prize pool and now instead of the top four getting payouts, the top 24 would. They would figure out an equitable deal later on. (I was curious about the 24-person cutoff since given that they weren't playing out ties --- so everyone eliminated in the Round of 32 would be tied 17th through 32nd --- but supposed they would figure it out. I did not learn what they did.)

The unwelcome news: someone or several ones had not shown up, so they were redrawing the brackets, and a lot of people might be affected. In a tournament like this, where almost everyone plays in completely different communities, it's hard to get a scouting edge on your competition. But bunnyhugger, facing the New Jersey champion, had done her best to figure something out. She had the vibe that the New Jersey representative was a relatively weaker player, giving bunnyhugger confidence. (Basically, most of the stronger players she'd expect to be pulled into the New York City pinball scene and indeed, turns out something the New Jersey rep did this year was hold finals in Morristown, relatively near the City, while the New York finals were upstate, in Saratoga or somewhere. Made it more appealing to play across the Hudson like that.) But also, from as best bunnyhugger could figure from venues where New Jersey's representative had played, she probably didn't have a lot of experience on electromechanical or solid state tables. These are already one of bunnyhugger's relative strengths and she liked her chances on those tables against someone who maybe didn't play them much.

That advantage would always be limited, yes. Tournament rules this year had every competitor pick three games --- an old, a middle-age, and a modern table --- before they ever started playing. (In case of a 3-3 tie, the deciding game goes to the top seed to pick anything.) Wizard's World has relatively few electromechanical games, particularly in the tournament venue, and you know, there's middle-aged games and there's middle-aged games. There's an incredible difference between (say) Stern's 2014 Kiss and Bally's 1986 Pin-Bot, and one of those would likely be better for bunnyhugger than the other. (And the Beatles, while a 'new' game, plays mostly like an old-to-middle one.) So she wanted to play New Jersey's representative and was annoyed she was losing the chance.

Except she did not. When all was done, and the groups called --- her group, somehow, the last one to be called --- she was playing New Jersey, just exactly as she had hoped and loosely prepared. Now all she had to do was win four games in the next seven.

And now back to the Jackson County Fair and the rides ... but after dark!

Getting a bunch of rides in at once with this picture, although the centerpiece is a Scrambler. Note that the carousel gets to serve as the logo on the fence for rides.

And here's a Tilt-A-Whirl where the cars feature that 90s disposable paper cup design all the kids are so excited by.

And a portable Miami/Moby Dick-style ride, near the top of its arc. Can't make out the name through all this light, though, sorry.

We're too large to go through funhouse attractions like the Traffic Jam here, but we do like the art on them. Also we like pondering where one might be that different lanes might go to Selma, Albany, and Winsor. Selma suggests Alabama, of course, and that's compatible with Albany Georgia, but if there's a Windsor in the deep south that's big enough to have traffic signs pointing to it I can't figure what it is.

Oh hey, they do have a roller coaster after all! How about that?

Kidding aside this half-pipe or whatever it's named is one of those fine things to challenge your concept of what a roller coaster is, since there's no element in it that isn't satisfied by one or more kinds of things that are definitely roller coasters, yet the whole thing sure doesn't feel like a roller coaster to me. And yet we counted the Half Pipe that's very like this ride when we visited Elitch Gardens in Denver.

Trivia: In 1476 Girolamo Strozzi bankrolled Venice printer Nicolas Jenson's printing of 1,025 copies of an Italian translation of Pliny. A thousand copies were printed on paper, largely for sale in Venice; 25 were printed on vellum, aimed at export to London. Source: Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, Lisa Jardine.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

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Our leisurely waking and breakfast-getting Friday threatened to be cut short when bunnyhugger realized she wasn't sure: did the tournament starting at 10 am mean she had to be at the venue by then, or was that when the first round was to start and she had to be there and check in before 10 am, the way state championships required? And she couldn't find the instructions e-mail so had to turn it over to the Discord. They confirmed that she had until 10 am to get there, so we were able to raid the breakfast buffet --- better-stocked than bunnyhugger remembered from the week before when she'd gotten up closer to the end of the breakfast service. I grabbed a lot of bagels and omelettes.

It was easy getting back to Wizards World; it was basically a left turn out of the hotel, drive a while, and make one left turn. While getting into the lane for that left turn, a truck blared its horn at me and bunnyhugger demanded to know what happened. While trying to get into the turn lane I put my thoughts together: the truck decided my turning the turn signal on and moving over into the left lane was no reason it shouldn't try to power through my car. Annoying but, hey, drivers, right?

Then came the police car.

As we rode the last eighth of a mile or so, from the turn to Wizards World, a cop car with flashing signals followed me and, given the traffic, no question about who they were looking for. bunnyhugger worried this was going to make her late for the tournament check-in, and I said, you know, just leave the car. I'm the one driving, after all. They don't need passengers. She wasn't satisfied with that.

The cop asked if I knew why I was pulled over. I said, truthfully, no. He said that my turn back there had forced the car behind me to stop pretty short, and bunnyhugger apologized to the cop and said she had to get in to the tournament, and took off. The cop didn't care.

Well, I acknowledge that I knew the car had had to decelerate, but I'd checked behind me and checked my mirrors, had my turn signal on before I started changing lanes, kept my signal on throughout the change. The cop acknowledged my version of events, checked my driver's license, and said I should be careful when changing lanes. Can't argue that. I'm sure he wasn't sulking that there wasn't anything to fairly ticket me for in this.

Set free, I parked in a space that was right in front of the door to an adjacent storefront, and wondered if it might be reserved for customers only. I didn't see a sign, at least, but it felt like there might supposed to be. I also figured I'd risk it. I wanted to get in and see the tournament start.

Now here I want to share pictures of the Jackson County Fair again. But, after several days of the thing behaving, images aren't working and I don't want to deal with getting through the Livejournal photo gallery. Pictures tomorrow or whenever.

Trivia: Bananas grow eight to twenty fingers per hand, and five to ten hands per stem. Source: Bananas: How The United Fruit Company Shaped The World, Peter Chapman.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

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On with the Thursday night tournament. For round 5, bunnyhugger was set on Harlem Globetrotters, a late-70s table that chimes a little of ``Sweet Georgia Brown'' when you start it up. Despite the table's charms and its being of exactly her era, she takes a strike, I forget whether from third or fourth place. The table would be fussy over the weekend, though, and be removed from the slate of games for the women's championships. On Monster Bash, she gets through without a strike and gets valuable intelligence about the state of the table. (Mostly, the scoop in the center tosses the ball dangerously close to the drain, and the game's set so scoop shots are always worth a measly 75,000 points instead of sometimes giving good rewards like multiball.)

And then she gets called up on Viking, from 1979 but one of a mini-genre of games with surprisingly complicated playfields (like Volcano and Flash Gordon) and obscure rules. Worse, she's in a three-player group, meaning she has to win on this not to take a strike and be knocked out of the tournament. It's a tough spot to be in, especially as one of the people in her group is RGK, the 25th-highest ranked woman in the world. RGK wins, and bunnyhugger fumes a bit, taking the fact that I hadn't been eliminated from the tournament yet as her chance to go taking her daily exercise.

Me, I have a happier time in the fifth round. I'm in a group playing on Stars, a late-70s Stern table that I keep thinking I'm good at without having an actual good game. At least for the one they bring to Pinball At The Zoo and other Michigan tournaments. This table, though? It's treating me nicely, particularly as I discover it's not all that hard to hit the little standing star targets, which make the spinners --- which spin with crazed abandon --- extremely worthwhile. It's certainly the best game of Stars I've ever had and then when I drain --- my 6x bonus doesn't count down.

It's a fluke that happens sometimes, particularly on older games designed to have only one ball in play. The ball rocketed down the center so hard and fast that it actually bounced through, back into the shooter lane, without ever registering the drain. Nobody's quite sure what to do --- do I plunge and play again, enjoying a beneficial malfunction? Do I pull and plunge without playing? --- so I go get a tournament official. He plunges, softly as he can so I get at most one spinner score out of it, and I go on to win the game.

Then on to round six, Medieval Madness, and my ideal of taking one strike every three rounds is sounding pretty good. I've been playing Medieval Madness more, lately, at our local barcade and it's been worthwhile. The top players have lost the habit of playing the newcomer-friendly game, since the optimal strategy is the somewhat boring one of shooting the castle, but you have to find the castle to do it, and the table on tournament settings is a bit hard. Also there's no ball save, cutting what should be a long-playing game down. I also learn that the mystery scoop on this game is giving out the good awards, not the standard meager points of Monster Bash, and pass that information on to bunnyhugger.

Round seven, and still on two strikes; I'm feeling happy. I feel a little wary coming up on Gorgar but I feel good about my chances after the first ball. Like, I'm behind, but not sunk. Then a weird thing happens: the first player tilts, and the second player's ball is dead. Like, the backglass says Tilt and the flippers don't work. First player is disqualified for the tilt-through (as this is called), but what to do for the second player? The tournament official called over makes what seem like baffling rulings, first turning off the game and saying the non-disqualified players need to replay the whole match. Good luck for me, there. But then one of the other players --- correctly --- asks if we shouldn't instead play two balls and add the scores to our first-ball scores, which she had (wisely) photographed. The official, maybe reminded of the more correct procedure, tells us to do this.

Also it's very likely that all this was unnecessary and that had the second player's dead ball been plunged it would have come back and given player two the chance to play, properly. Not sure, though, and games can misbehave.

Anyway, the surviving players just kill it, and I get my third strike. One more and I'm out of the tournament, but still, I'm looking good for finishing the tournament well.

Round eight puts me on Big Guns, a mid-80s Bally bunnyhugger was fond of for the three weeks that The Grid arcade had the machine in good working order. I roughly remember what to do. What I can't do is do it, which is getting multiball started and puttering around a while. I'm good at locking the two balls needed to qualify it, but the last one eludes me, and I go down to a last-place finish and am knocked out of the tournament.

Well, I finish the tournament in the big tie for 33rd place, which out of 87 is pretty high up. And it's worth enough that with that single tournament I'm ranked (as of this writing) 118th in Indiana's 2024 ranking. This may not sound like much to you, but in Michigan --- with more events and a league season to my credit --- I'm only at 174th. Granting, Michigan has a more competitive scene than Indiana has.

Not bad for dropping in a place I never saw before and playing, though.

Back now to the Jackson County Fair, and pictures of bunnies.

Rabbit knows how fabulous it looks to have that much ear dangling so casually.

And here's another Californian, or maybe the same Californian all over again.

Catching this rabbit in the act of chewing up their 'Thank You' sign.

We did not only look at rabbits, tempting as it was. Here you see bunnyhugger leading me through the horse barn, and do you notice something about the place?

That's right: in an exuberant moment they decorated the horse barn with a mock medieval castle theme, including heraldic banners by each horse's pen. I'm delighted seeing this again.

Don't know why this horse gets all the red panda pictures and facts on their pen but, who am I to dispute it?

Trivia: The inaugural game of the American Association, in May 1882, was at Sportsman's Park in Saint Louis, which had a field outfitted with lawn bowling and handball courts --- sometimes open to spectators --- and a two-story house converted into a beer garden. Balls hit into the beer garden were in play, requiring fielders to wade through patrons. Source: The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association --- Baseball's Renegade Major League, David Nemec. (The ball was not hit into the beer garden in that game. St Louis beat Louisville, 9 - 7.)

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

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87 people, all told, would come to play in the ``WWC OPEN Satellite tournament'' tournament, to use its elegant name. The format? Four strikes, match play, with the bottom two people in a group of three or four getting a strike each. And the only person I really knew there was bunnyhugger, so how long would it be until we were matched? ... Turns out, we never would be. There were enough people that we weren't put against each other before we each had gotten four strikes.

My first group was in Aerosmith, Stern's first game with a video screen instead of dot matrix display, and coincidentally one that was brand-new when bunnyhugger went to the Women's World Championship back in 2017. It's vanished from every venue around here, but I felt oddly confident. The table is one that's punishing if you miss your shot, but I've been getting better about aiming, and I've gotten to understand valuable things like how a Stern game signals that a particular shot in the mode is worth double what every other one is. (It's typically the flashing red shot, as opposed to the solid red shot, and it's typically either the leftmost or the rightmost shot not collected yet.) So I felt like, hey, I could at least get into second place with oh sorry, ball drained, no ball saver, a common constraint on modern games. This got a lot of people, in my group and over the night. Kept the game moving, at least. I would end up struggling into third place, barely. First strike.

Next round was on the Gottlieb game Wizard, which was the object of surprise and speculation because the games list for the women's tournaments just listed it as 'Wizard' and everyone expected this was the Bally Wizard game of the mid-70s. Nope; this was the early-70s Gottlieb game nobody had ever heard of. bunnyhugger discovered this when she went the weekend before, and --- letting her sportsmanship win out over the hopes to have an informational edge --- informed people about it, with I think only one person telling her she was wrong about the games at the venue.

The staggering thing, though, is that I had a killer game on this, rolling past the 99,990 maximum that the scoring reels can show so quickly that I didn't realize it at first. All I knew at first was that I'd had a long game but somehow had 10,000 points less than the person who went first. This because the backglass light reading 100,000 was obscured by a sign posted on the single-player game, warning about tilt ending game or something like that. It was when another player similarly rolled past 99,990 that I realized what the stray light visible in the picture recording my score meant. I moved the sign to somewhere it wouldn't obstruct anything.

Next up: Future Spa, a game set in Extremely 1980 Future. Admire here the art and then ponder which ``Because My Tears Are Delicious To You'' book that backglass represents. The goal here is just rolling over the lanes that spell out the words 'Future Spa' a lot, and maybe hitting the drop targets for a bonus multiplier. Also, avoiding this nasty little thing where there's a gap on the lane that feeds a ball to the right flipper, and a bumper over top that gap, ready to deliver death to people who thought they were bringing the ball under control on the right flipper in two distinct ways. I had a magnificent game on this, though, taking my first first-place of the night, and I got to thinking if I could keep up this pace of one strike for three rounds? I might finish on top of this tournament.

Fourth round and the first one where someone could possibly be knocked out. I'm on a group on Cheetah, an early-80s Stern that I know from playing at MJS's polebarn. I know the things you're supposed to do are knocking down this set of numbered drop targets in order --- hitting one out of order doesn't count, it jumps back up --- and something something something bonus lane. I can't get that together any but do discover that the ball really likes spending time in the pop bumpers and this little bank of three drop targets up top there. I feel like I'm doing all right here, but come in third, losing to one woman who'd the next day take fourth place in the North American Championship Series, and to another woman who'd go on to win that night's whole tournament. Any other group I'd ... probably have landed second or third place too, really.

bunnyhugger had a worse time of it, by a little bit. She came in first or second her first two rounds, taking no strikes, but then taking strikes on her nemesis Gorgar and then again on Flicker. That last hurt because Flicker --- an old-time-movies-themed game --- is just a reskinned version of Boomerang, a game she's gotten to know from its haunting of Pinball At The Zoo and other Michigan tournaments. But she recognized that identity too late, and couldn't capitalize on the strategic knowledge. (If it would have helped; the game played differently enough from the Michigan Boomerang that I couldn't put anything together when I played it just for fun.) Also we couldn't recognize most of the figures in the art. Take your own try and see how well you do on them. Also note how in the backglass the 'i' is lowercase while the rest of 'Flicker' is capitals and ponder why that choice was made. She was despairing about her fate and grumbling about how I always do much better than her, prompting me to repeat the statistics I had gathered after the Jackson tournament where from January 2023 to that point we were tied in outcomes. Didn't help.

On to the back half of the tournament!

You're getting some more bunnies on show here. I didn't think you would mind.

Uh-oh. Bunny has noticed me and seems to be deciding what response is appropriate.

Oh! Retracting all legs and turning into a loaf of bun is the chosen response. I got off easy that time.

Loafing bunny approaches the state of being a disapproving orb.

Californian rabbit up front: ``I'm right behind me, aren't I?''

Californian rabbit in the middle: ``Oh no, and now I'm right behind me too, aren't I?''

Californian rabbit taking the chance for a little makeout session with the rabbit next door regardless of where their front-of-cage self wants to be.

Trivia: In January 1567 Queen Elizabeth dissolved the English parliament, in part out of irritation with its insistence on having the succession settled, such as by having the Queen marry and bear children. She advised the Commons, ``Beware however you prove your prince's patience, as you have now done mine! Let this my discipline stand you in stead of sorer strokes, and let my comfort pluck up your dismayed spirits. A more living prince towards you ye shall never have.'' Source: The Life Of Elizabeth I, Alison Weir.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby. Most staggering thing I've heard in ages: we know people to be descendants of Confucius, with the (as of the book's publication) 79th generation in the main line and 86th in a subordinate branch. Right?

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Though I sat out bunnyhugger's field trip to practice at Wizard's World arcade, I always figured to be there to support her when she competed. But the tournament was scheduled for a Friday, and so I needed to take a day off work. This would be the first day I took off work since the transition between offices, so that I wasn't sure precisely who to ask. But everyone supervising me seemed content with my not being there a little. And the people I actually work with were delighted by the idea of competitive pinball and wished her luck.

We figured to drive out Thursday evening, since the Women's North American Championship series started at 10 am Friday and driving from two hours away made that really unattractive. It turns out it would have been worse than that: Friday saw a snowstorm in Lansing --- it seems to have given around four inches, bringing the season up to 4.1 inches total --- and it would've been snow all along the drive. The real question was whether to set out the minute I was out of work. The advantage of later is that bunnyhugger, bringing our pet rabbit to her parents' for bunnysitting, would have more time to enjoy being around them, and more time to pack and prepare. The disadvantage: Wizard's World would have a tournament at 7:00, their only open-to-all tournament the whole weekend. If I wanted to play competitively, we had to jump in the car and get down there.

Since the pandemic I just haven't been doing much competitive pinball. For all that we drove ourselves crazy in the late 2010s we didn't really do that much, just Lansing, Marvin's, and Fremont leagues, but we cut all but the Lansing league out as a regular thing. bunnyhugger goes to more women's events, but I often stay home, giving her the space to shine on her own and myself the time to putter around not doing much. bunnyhugger has felt bad about limiting my competitive pinball life like that, but she's not limiting me at all. I was content to just hang out at the arcade and play recreationally.

But then ... it turned out that the Thursday night tournament would be on the games used in Friday's tournament. If we didn't play, bunnyhugger might not get last-minute practice in, and on the games in as close to tournament condition as possible. And, you know, it would be nice to drop in on a tournament and see if I still have the old skills.

We got started late, of course. Thursday at work was spent trying again and again to get a quality-assurance database push to work, and it kept on throwing annoying little bugs. At 4 pm I thought I finally had a version that would run, and it crashed partway through. In the hope that this was a fluke I tried to get the database guy to reset the database from the backup and run the script again, but he had something pulling him away for a while and by 4:30 we still hadn't been able to try again. I gave it a few extra minutes as bunnyhugger finished loading the car and then gave up, to learn only on Monday whether that work succeeded. (It was done by the end of the day Friday, but I never got clear whether the version I had succeeded or whether they had to do more fixing.)

Well, one thing and another and we were on the road about 4:45. If nothing went wrong, we'd make it, but one solid patch of construction or traffic jam and we'd miss the start of the tournament. But we didn't encounter any construction or traffic jams, and didn't make any rest stops either (the ride's about as long as that to Fremont, or Sparks Pinball Museum, or Michigan's Adventure, all trips we don't need a break for), and got there with right about twenty minutes to spare. Just what we could have hoped for, especially given that we needed to use the bathroom. We paid our dollars and signed up for our first open tournament in Indiana.

We're almost to the tournament! So let's go back to looking at the fair.

Turkey enjoying a dignified repose and ignoring all the rest of us.

Different angle on the same disinterested snood.

bunnyhugger enjoying another chance at touching a turkey's knobbly head.

bunnyhugger discussing with the turkey the chances for getting an award-worthy photo for next year's county fair?

This sign was now almost too old to appear at the 4H/FFA barn under the rules it promulgates.

The Rabbit sign is correct! See bunnyhugger going in the side?

Trivia: On the 16th of December, 1896, after fourteen months of debate, the city of Buffalo contracted the Niagara Falls Power Company to deliver to the city's Cataract Power and Conduit Company some 10,000 horsepower of electricity on or before the 1st of June, 1897. Source: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes.

Currently Reading: The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, From the Ancient World to the Modern Age, Andrew Whitby.

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Page Summary

A Little Bit of All You Got Can Never Bring You Down
Everybody talks; nobody really knows
And you know you're going to fall
You've brought me fame and fortune
They had a hi-fi phono, boy did they let it blast?
It's pumpkin soup and masked potatoes, that's for my Halloween tea
Chances are your chances are awfully good
She's the sweetheart of Sigma Chi
And who the deuce can parlez-vous a cow?
See them long trains runnin' and you watch 'em disappear
How straightforward the game when one has trust in one's player
The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte (Sad)
Did I plan doing all this for the love of a man?
Get to the point, begin the beguine
Listen, I hate to break up the mood
The game our one true guiding light
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?
And yet I feel I haven't won at all
What's going on around me is barely making sense
Now I'm where I want to be

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Resources: Yusuke Kamiyamane and Atle Mo