Doing Things! To Pinball Machines, Even!

OK! I've actually done stuff to pinball machines lately, so here they are:

One of the projects I've been working on has been replacements for the missing Who-mobile stickers on DW. I scanned the one on the ramp from the parts game, double teamed it with Photoshop and GraphicConverter, and went through about a zillion printing tests. The photo at right shows an early test for size and color. I finally arrived at one I'm satisfied with, so I printed a bunch on the nice glossy paper. This weekend I plan to run some endurance tests on them, possibly give them an extra seal depending on the results of the tests, turn them into stickers, then cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. I plan to make a few extras and share my bounty on eBay and/or Mr. Pinball. When I have something worth showing, I'll post a pic or two.

While I had the glass off, I decided to take care of a few odd cabinet-related jobs that have been sitting around for a while. I replaced the molding in back that holds the playfield glass, because my original one was cracked and I had two to replace it with (I had forgotten about the first one when I bought the second). I put a lock on the coin door... not because it swings open like my Black Knight's does, but more because it should be there. Both of these items got me thinking about other things I need, and while browsing around Marco's site for tangentially related things, I was stunned to find a backbox lock assembly. Since mine is completely missing, yoink! I think I had searched for the backbox lock on Illinois Pinball's site, but nowhere else. I ended up buying the lock plate (I have a spare lock) from Bay Area Amusements... it was $1 more than Marco, but BAA had the playfield glass switch in stock so I went with the dealer who had a quorum of items. More toys!

Like Stephen Colbert, I have been a strong advocate of Wrist Health in pinball since discovering that doing squeeze ball exercises reduces the amount of wrist soreness after pinball shows. Lately, though, I fell off the wagon because I was let down by my tools. I had an awesome balloon filled with sand, which was great until it broke. Then I had a green ball filled with little green beads, which was fantastic until a hole opened up and the green beads started emigrating... I tried to re-patriate them, but like the INS found that it was a losing battle. I got a free gel-filled ball from a vendor at my company's user conference in May. It started off feeling like a breast -- the squeeze ball's Hellenic Ideal, imo -- but a few weeks of hard-squeezin' segmented the insides, which left it unpleasantly mushy and definitely non-breast-like. Then I tried a foam ball someone had at work, but after two weeks the painted exterior disintegrated and I ended up with green flecks on my pants. Finally I tried an inflatible dog toy, but it deflated under the constant pressure. Plus it was ribbed for a dog's pleasure but not mine, and it hurt my hand. So at last I decided to lay down sheckles for the real deal, and after a fruitless retail search I found one at Amazon that I kind of like. It's egg-shaped and comes in five levels of firmness. I chose medium, and two weeks in it is holding up pretty well. My only complaints are that it is a little smaller than I would like and it can be very cold after a night in the car with the temp in the single digits.

All for now, hopefully more sticker news soon.

MLK + Barack Obama = 4 Day Weekend!

Today is Martin Luther King Jr Day, and tomorrow our office is closed for the Obama Inauguration because we're right across the river from DC. It's a four day weekend! Thanks, Black People!

It kind of got me thinking about how white pinball is. Black people are not well represented. I can think of a handful of black sports stars (Ali, Shaq, Michael Jordon, Frank Thomas), a few movie stars (Wesley Snipes in Demo Man is the only one I can come up with off the top of my head), and I think there's a guy who could be on the Funhouse backglass. That's about all I can think of. I really don't see a lot of black guys at pinball shows, either.

There are a couple of Asians (San Francisco and Chinatown are a few I can think of). Arabs ostensibly have a few games like Ali Baba, but most of the "Arabs" are white women in harem garb. Forehead dot Indians are pretty much gross parodies, like in Ace High (and again, surrounded by white women). Feather Indians were popular in the 50's and 60's, and they were mostly benign portrayals, surprising given the number that cowboys were shooting on TV and in movies. There were a couple of Noble Savages like Totem in the 70's, but nothing particularly modern. Hispanics have a few EM games maybe... all the ones I can think of (El Toro, Spanish Eyes, Toledo) are more Spanish than South or Central American. Australian Aborigines have Boomerang. That's about all I can think of. With the exception of Totem, all of these are EMs. In general, a pretty poor representation of the world's people.

Enough of that silliness. We took my daughter back to school last week so I snuck over to Pizza House for a game of NASCAR. They had fixed the ball lock switch, but now the switch for the hole at the top of the playfield is broken. My ego is gratified that my high score is still there, though.

I was watching the extremely terrible Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and that featured two pinball machines in supporting roles: Black Knight and Vector. When I see pins in movies, I always like to see what machine it is... I'm still trying to figure out what the EM game is in My Name is Earl. I think the solid state game is Dragon.

Today I took advantage of the Federal Holiday and finished up my Montgomery County pinball tour. I went to Beltway Chevron and played Funhouse, but the kickout was weak which caused some pretty bad drains and something seemed to be blocking the ramp entrance. I was doing OK, but then I locked up the machine: I got a two ball multiball and suddenly the flippers stopped working and it wouldn't do the ball search. After waiting I turned it off and on again. Then I went up to Max's Kosher Deli to play The Simpsons Pinball Party, but both lower flippers were dead. I did have an OK but expensive hot pastrami on a kaiser roll, though. And people wonder why no one has pinball machines any more... anyway, I was so annoyed at my bad luck that I stopped in and played a few games of Family Guy on my way home.

OK, you say, but what about fixing up games, which is what this blog is supposed to be about? Well, I'm using this weekend to work on some projects, so next post we should have something worth reading.

Roman Numeral Two

Yes, it's my second post of the month. My reader Lunchbox asked if the last week's entry meant I would be posting more often; clearly, the answer is Yes! So far!

Today I attempted another pinball mini-break after work. During a lengthy compile I started checking locations near work, and thanks to the FSPA I found two available in Falls Church, about a mile or so apart. First I went to a Bowl America where they had a very dirty Sopranos for 50c per game. Unfortunately, the only Big Pussy to be found was me... I sucked pretty heavily so I only played once. My second and final stop was at the Lazy Sundae Ice Cream Shop, which not surprisingly was closed. The Simpsons Pinball Party therein taunted me silently. In all, somewhat disappointing, but look at life as a journey it's not so bad. In this case, it was an almost pointless journey that included taking the wrong freeway during rush hour, but it was a journey nonetheless.

I've been pesimistic about the future of pinball in general lately... partly it's bad economy scenarios playing out in my head, partly the Stern layoff news, and partly thinking about CSI. Everybody has been trying to be encouraged by the old saw that pinball traditionally does well when the economy goes south, but here's my problem with that: In past recessions, pinball was in a lot better shape than it is now. There were multiple manufacturers, there were fewer distractions to the potential player, and you didn't need to spend 20 minutes on the Internet and drive for half an hour to find a game. So I don't think the current recession is going to revive Stern, and I honestly don't expect Stern to make it through 2009. Obviously I'm not happy about that, but I don't see another outcome. Plus, CSI? It sounds like the genius who thought Wheel of Fortune was a bankable idea was working overtime. It doesn't help that my opinion of the show is not high... Mrs. Entropy and I watched one at her sister's house and it was one of the dumbest things I've seen on TV for years.

Luckily, after years of being a capital-I Iconoclast, I'm used to the things I love failing miserably.

But enough moping! Let's have some reasons to be cheerful, part 3!

Um. I can't think of any. Sorry.

Well, let's address this: Lunchbox states in his comment that he doesn't have time for his pins and is thinking of getting rid of them. I respect your right to decide the fate of your games, sir, but I beg you to give plenty of serious thought before selling. I have been a pinball owner lo these 23 years now, and there are times when my collection has lain fallow for incredible stretches of time. When I'm distracted -- any shiny object will do -- months will go by when I don't even think about my games. I think between 1987 and 1990 Quicksilver was parked in my parents' garage on a dolly. Even when I'm in a non-playing stretch or when it seems like all the games are acting up, I'm frequently comforted by the fact that I could play them. Potential pinball can keep me going through rough patches. So just think about it.

Happy Holidays!

Yes, it's happy holidays Chez Entropy, as you can probably tell from the festively decorated Quicksilver in our living room. It's hard to see, but I even made a little Santa hat for the backglass lady... since she isn't wearing a stitch of clothing, the hat should keep her warm as temperatures plummet.

This year the holidays consisted of me and pinball not quite seeing eye to eye. There was the usual amount of panicking and throwing things around, then my brother-in-law from Indiana came to visit with 12 hours notice, then I got sick, then I had to compress all of my vacation chores into about 4 days, and then it was January 2nd and I had three days before I went back to work. About all I'd done so far was more basement cleaning, which hasn't yielded a usable work area yet (though having to beat a path through our basement for a new washing machine did help a lot). It's getting there just not fast, and at this point I'm kind of at an impasse. When I go down to clean I wander back and forth trying to figure out what to do next and after 45 minutes of puttering I give up. I'm going to make an attempt at building playfield storage and I hope that will break the stalemate.

So today was the self-declared pinball day. At first I was going to give a little love to the pinball operators of Montgomery County by touring all of the known games on location (except for the Creature in Montgomery Mall that is inside a theater which requires admission). Then I cut the NASCAR at Chuck E. Cheese because I didn't feel like being treated like a pedophile when I went in. Then I cut out the Funhouse at Beltway Chevron because it was too far south. But finally I got some action. I played Pirates at Dream Wizards and did OK even though the auto plunger wasn't working. I stopped by Max's Kosher Cafe which is walking distance from where I used to live in Wheaton but they closed at 2 today, probably because of that darned Sabbath. The I went up to Sole d'Italia and played Family Guy, revelling in the fact that the sound was turned up and the restaurant was empty, so I could actually hear all of the game's sound effects. Since two pins was a pretty pathetic showing, I fired up Paragon and Black Knight here at home and played a few forgettable games.

Another location story: A few weeks ago my group at work went out bowling, and there was a NASCAR there. The game was filthy, but you couldn't tell because the gameroom was not well lit and the GI was out.

For Christmas, my wife decided she was going to surprise me with a pin-related gift and got me cabinet stencils for Eight Ball Deluxe and Black Knight from a guy who seems to be the stencil-kit king on eBay. It was a nice gift, something I need, but also in line with her agenda to make the games look nicer. As usual she got me another big gift so I felt like she spent too much on me. It's also a huge time suck, and the cabinets on those games don't look that bad... the game that really needs it is Quicksilver, which has a bunch of dings and strapping tape damage. But since it's my lowest production game (only 1,200) that's not going to happen. I could also use one for Lotta Fun, since it's been painted over, but I've resigned myself to making that one myself. So at some point when I do a huge overhaul of the games I've got the stencils for those two machines ready to go.

And while 2009 may not be the year I get around to stenciling, it will be the year I get off'n my butt and fix up those games. It's resolved and everything, along with a couple of other project that have been waiting in the wings. So if my next couple of posts don't show some real movement in that regard, feel free to kick my ass. Hard. With, like, boots and everything.