These drinks are something warm and watered down

To everybody's surprise the Pinball Pete's stand in Ann Arbor hosted a pinball tournament. It's not that they don't have enough machines, but that the machines tend to be in mediocre shape. The Lansing league may complain to Pinball Pete's a lot about the shape of machines in our hipster bar, but they do their best to fix the machines up and put them in tolerable shape. A tournament, though, that invites machines to break down, even ones in good shape, and Pete apparently wasn't willing to have someone with key access to the machines on site for the contest.

So, while it was really well-meant, the sad fact was more than half the machines were turned off, to rule them out of tournament play. Others went down in the middle of play. The worst case of this was the 2013 Star Trek, which had its left flipper die in the midst of bunny_hugger's last-ball rally in a head-to-head match. They went on to another machine, Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure, on which she made an even more dramatic come-from-behind last-ball win.

Between the large number of players, and the best-two-of-three matches, and the need to wait for functioning games, the contest ran way long. bunny_hugger and I had time after being eliminated to pop out and discover a Pacific Asian-style tea and snacks shop across the road. We'll have to remember that for future visits.

The pinball centerpiece of the tournament was a debut of the release of Whoa Nelie! Big Juicy Melons, a breast-themed pinball machine that escaped from boutique production into a real production run. It's retro in design, so that it looks and plays much like a circa 1960 pinball, although more sexist. Now, it was great playing something with that era's styling yet all-new and clean and responsive. And it has nice sounds, and audio call-outs. Some of them are tolerably amusing fruit-based jokes. Some of them are, well, a DJ saying he's broadcasting from station W Double D. GET IT? Anyway, I even figured out how to make the highest-point shot fairly reliably, early on. I'm not sure how long the old-fashioned play stays fun and fresh, though. I basically played it for a couple warm-up games and then when it was my opponent's pick.

Our friend MWS was one of the contest finalists, and when the last rounds finally came they agreed to playing Whoa Nellie because with its 1960-style play you could get through the games pretty quickly. MWS would come in second, which is still admirable.

The social centerpiece of the tournament was our friend CST who was there with a female acquaintance we hadn't seen before, and who seemed to be taking this introduction to the world of competitive pinball well enough. We did notice that he left immediately after being knocked into the consolation bracket. It was a double-elimination contest so he could have won his way back into the finals ... or go off with his acquaintance, apparently. Well, that's being a gossip.

Trivia: By April 1946 the Rockefeller Center renting department had 400 firms on its waiting list. By July potential renters wanted a million square feet of office space more than they had available.
Source: Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, Daniel Okrent.

Currently Reading: Out Of The Shadow: The Story of Charles Edison, A Biography, John D Venable.