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.