Went down to Allentown

Brr neer neer ner
Went down to Allentown
Brr neer neer ner
And I played pinball
Brr neeeer neer ner
Oh I went down to Allentown
Brr neer neer ner
And I played a bunch of pinball
Brr neer neer ner
And yet I am so white that I can't sing the bluuuuues.
Bwah wah wah wah wah wah!!!!!
Yeah

Actually, I went up to Allentown, but that doesn't sound like a good blues song. Saturday was my day at Pinball Wizards, and it was generally pretty fun. The GPS performed very well so I didn't make any wrong turns. I left about an hour late because the puppy is extremely high maintenance... a fact which hasn't seemed to have changed much in the last week (btw: the puppy now has a name. My daughter suggested Darwin, because he's a beagle. I'll pause her for the hails of derisive laughter that will no doubt ensue).

Anyway, the drives up and down were largely uneventful. The show itself was good, though I was a little disappointed in the merchandise. I did pick up a handful of things, but not much I truly needed... I found only one of the electronics parts I needed, and I ended up paying too much for it. I think I only spent about $100, which is an all time low for me at a pinball show. I thought about getting a Lost World populated playfield, which is on the medium short list but they wanted $80 for it and it was pretty badly worn. I kept an eye on it to see if they would drop the price, but they didn't so I let it go.

I don't know if it was just me, but it seemed like there was more crap than usual... games without working flippers, games than reset when you hit both flippers, etc. But what was there... I totally spanked Future Spa, the futuristic 70's exercise porn machine. I recognized a Close Encounters from the White Rose show because it had indians on the slingshots. I played a game called Sky Kings which was totally a single player version of the second game I ever owned, Champ. I finally got to play X's & O's, which I believe is the only Visual Pinball game that I did (of about 20) that I had never actually played... sadly, the upper flipper only worked sporadically (hey... I don't pay tribute to my storied VP/VPM past... here's a screen shot of the game... I did the script, and another guy did the art and table design). Played a Doctor Who that had bad flippers, but over all had more stuff working than mine (and right after my game somebody reset it by hitting both flippers... yeah, I'd buy that... and sadly, somebody did. I hope they got a crappy game discount). There was a Creature from the Black Lagoon that had a really cool custom day-glo playfield. And at the very end of the day I waited and got to play Family Guy. Boy, I love Pat Lawlor games. The game itself was pretty fun, but Stewie Pinball ROCKS! That tiny little playfield with tiny flippers, a tiny pachinko sized ball, and even a little plastic ramp! Also saw some ads for the new Stern Spider-man table, which hopefully is better than the first one, which in my tiny brain is significant only because it was the first game at UCLA in the 80's that was two games for a quarter instead of three (rip!).

I did pick up a flyer for a new show: The Mid-Atlantic Coin-op Show, Sept 21-23 in Timonium, which is about an hour away. My guess is that it's being organized by Mike Frasca, the guy who runs MD's Pinball Palace, since I think the flyer was at his table and it says to contact Pat or Mike (not Pat and Mike, hyuk hyuk). I'll give anything a shot once, especially if it has "Quality Catered Food" like it says on the flyer.

Of course, there's no DIA this time because I have no DW or playfield-related sales. We've been selling on eBay... my wife is selling some fabric for some pretty good cheddar, and I've been selling old Star Wars and Barbie toys for a guy at work. Most of that is going towards paying for the puppy and our upcoming trip to visit my dad in the ancestral homeland, Santa Monica, CA. I did earn $135 for rating 1,100 songs in a focus group for a local radio station (summary of my ratings: 80's New Wave == Awesome! Everything else == sucks).

Since the electronics scene was poor at the show, I put in an order from Great Plains for SCRs for the Eight Ball Deluxe lamp driver board and a replacement U20 chip for Doctor Who. I also picked up a $5 parts kit for high voltage section of the DW display driver board.

A part that I bought for DW is selling on eBay for about twice what I paid for it... I'm thinking about listing mine and see if I can get in on some of that boodle, then just buying another one. yoink!

I don't anticipate any pin work this weekend... my daughter comes home from her first year in college tomorrow, and the house has been declared a superfund site because Darwin is leaving us no time to clean.