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.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

Don't kid yourself: Blogging is a lot of work for something you don't get paid for. I'm only doing it now because I'm at the end of a week of vacation and I got a lot of stuff done around the house, so I feel like I earned some non-productive blogwork.

It's also tough because I just haven't been doing a lot of pinball lately. I have been slowly pushing stuff back and forth in my basement to try to get my wife and I separate but equal workspaces. Getting those spaces up and running is one of the goals of my vacation (including both the week that just past and most of December... we've been trying to get a project out at work this year, so I haven't taken a lot of time off). I did a big push in my wife's space this week, because in order to clean out the dining room for Thanksgiving I had to transport a lot of the stuff into the basement. Remember when I said that cleaning our house is like playing Sokoban? Well, this is case in point.

Currently I'm at an impasse with the cleaning. I'm out of space in the bedroom that will become my wife's space, and when I moved all of the pinball stuff into my corner I ended up with almost no space there. The best solution would be if every room in my basement were about 5 feet wider, but for now we'll leave that for my next vacation in a week and a half.

But this is a blog about Pinball, things related to Pinball, and things largely unrelated to Pinball... I've covered the latter pretty thoroughly, so let's talk about the first two.

I went to the White Rose Pinball Show in York, PA in October. Usually I complain about the overpriced junk, the non-working junk, and the just plain junk at that show, but the Hershey show caused me to reevaluate just what a crappy pinball show is. By contrast, York was great. I had fun, played some interesting games, and had a good time. Surprising fact of the day: I barely spent any money. Being dormant in the pinball department has put me in a position of not needing any parts, so I didn't have anything to buy. I think I spent about $40 the whole day, a new record for me.

One fun bonus thing I did in York: I left the show around 8 and was hungry. Usually I end up stopping at an Arby's or something on the way home, but this time I made up my mind to try something different. Right about that time I passed a burrito place about a half mile from the fairgrounds called Roburrito's. I negotiated a series of right turns and went in. It turns out it's like a punk rock burrito place... as a child of the '80s L.A. music scene, it's just the sort of place I would eat burritos at if anywhere around Derwood had the temerity to be like that. It was a good burrito, made better with the selection of hot sauces they had available. Yay!

One of the big pinball auctions showed up at the MD state fairgrounds in the last week of October, and since it happened to be on my birthday I got a free pass to see what was up. The last auction I went to -- in the same building that the York show is in -- was not so much a game auction as it was a crap auction... they had 4 Gorgars in various states of repair and about a hundred beaten down cabinets from late 80's and early 90's D-List video games. This show was much better. A bunch of pins, mostly Stern and 90's games, but a smattering of EMs and early 80's games. There were also a lot of reasonable quality vids from the past 30 years. I took advantage of the games set to free play and left a little before noon. There was nothing I really wanted to buy, but I had a pretty good time.

So, we're up to date. Hopefully I will make progress on a workspace and be able to start fixin' pins and workin' on some of my secret projects before the end of the year.

November Will Be Magic Again!

Why settle for Change when you can have Transfiguration?

Not as poignant as Republicans for Voldemort, I admit. I made this sign a few weeks ago as more of a Dada Art Project than any kind of real political statement. I had it next to our first actual political yard sign, but my wife forced me to move it because she felt people would think we were making fun of the real candidate. Re-elect Fudge was out for a week or so, then we got two inches of rain and it turns out I didn't properly seal the sign, which turned it into abstract art. ^_^;

* Hero of the Beach *

Forgot to mention two instances where I saved the day for pinball.

When I first went to find info on the Hershey Gameroom Show, the street address on Mr. Pinball was missing a letter, making it unfindable on all of the mapping programs I tried. So I emailed Mr. Pinball and he corrected it.

And way back in August of last year I blogged about the IPDb not having the correct lamp pages for Quicksilver. Well, last month I finally got a response:

Changes you submitted to the Pinball Database for the game
titled 'Quicksilver' have been accepted in whole or in part
by an editor!  Thank you for your submission!

The following changes were made because of your submission,
and may include additional corrections and listing changes
made by an Editor:

add new file Stern_1980_Quicksilver_Lamp_Driver_Schematic.jpg
 - Lamp Driver Schematic []  [#3643]
add new file Stern_1980_Quicksilver_Solenoid_Driver_Schematic.jpg
 - Solenoid Driver Schematic []  [#3644]
add new file Stern_1980_Quicksilver_MPU_Schematic.jpg
 - MPU Schematic []  [#3645]

You can see these changes at http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?1895

I am remiss in my blogging duties

Yes, it has been two months since my last confession, but honestly there hasn't been a lot going on. There's been some progress on the work area, but not so much that I can really brog about it (brog == my neologism of the day: blog+brag). Ditto on the games... most of them are buried under the detritus of the cleaning effort.

I did go to the Hershey Gameroom Show two weeks ago. Whereas previous shows had multiple vendors and were more gameroom-oriented and not pinball specific, this show turned out to be nothing more than the Pennsylvania Gameroom Warehouse parking lot sale, albeit in a dumpy old agricultural fairground building. Lots of pins, mostly 90's but a few before and after, and one or two vendors that might have not been PGW front organizations, but that was about it. The flea market consisted of two vendors, both of whom were most likely guys who shovelled out the PGW dumpster. It was like going to the Republican National Convention.

Here's my problem with the pins that were there: Most of them has been lovingly restored cosmetically and were achingly beautiful, but most of them couldn't play for crap. Bad flippers, non-working switches, bad displays, games that rebooted, and so on... and all priced a few hundred dollars below PGW's showroom prices. Would I pay $2300 (marked down from $2700) for a Black Knight 2000 that spit out all of its balls? How about the T2 with one of the plastics on the playfield? Or Hurricane with a bump where the lower ramp connects to the upper that slowed down the ball and caused it to drop off the ramp SDTM? They obviously spend all of their time getting the games to look good at the expense of basic functionality. IMO, you can't have one without t'other.

However, it was worth the trip for one thing: They had a working Lotta Fun. I played that a bunch of times so I could experience what my game will be like when it's fixed up. I also got plenty of cell phone pics of the backglass so I can try to reproduce it -- at least so I know what numbers correspond with what lights (I wish I'd taken a real camera, though). I was also surpised to find a modern Gottlieb game that I actually enjoyed playing, Title Fight. I has some fun in the old school section playing Centaur, Xenon, and Silverball Mania, all canted at bizarre angles on the uneven exhibit hall floor... Xenon was so far off kilter that the ball would stop in the tube.

I didn't buy much... my biggest purchase was a copy of Mad Dog and his Art, Gene Cunningham's somewhat amateurishly made love letter to pinball uber-artist Dave Christensen. I'd been meaning to buy a copy the next time I made a Illinois Pinball run, but it was there and I wasn't buying anything else so I went for it. It's a little disappointing... I'd like it to be about twice as long with more pictures, especially of the playfields. Maybe not worth the ~$35 price, but it's not a travesty, either.

Moan moan moan. I don't have a lot of good things to say about anything, do I?

Next weekend is the York show, which should either wash the bad taste out of my mouth or poison my perception of pinball shows forever.

Another example of how my life juxtaposes rather nicely: I was listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the ride, and that same week I had Netflixed the first season of Pushing Daisies, both of which are narrated by Jim Dale. As my mind wandered during the drive, I kept thinking Jim would say, "The facts were these: At this point Harry Potter was 16 years, 51 weeks, 3 days, 5 hours and 23 minutes old."

Here's the thing that I noticed about Pushing Daisies after watching all 9 episodes in a two week period: The costume designer loves the cleavage. 'nuff said.

I also don't think I've mentioned my latest acquisition (aside from the usual small pin parts that I've picked up here and there when eBay exudes them): After looking for ages online, I finally got a pachinko machine from a local garage sale in July. My wife alerted me to it, so I stopped in and took a look. They were asking $25, and it had no balls and was missing parts. While I was looking they offered $15. I thought I'd make them sweat, so I left and ran some errands, and when I came back they asked $10 and I took it. I bought a load of balls on eBay, but I want to clean it up before I set it up. Another wonderful project that will fill my copious free time!