I think I'll get down on my little ol' knees and pray, thank you Lord

Tuesday night was a pinball league event, the Zen Tournament that traditionally ends our seasons. Once more bunny_hugger and I paired up, she playing the left flipper and I the right, in a series of best-of-three matches against other teams. Ten people from league came out for this just-for-fun-and-a-trophy tournament, a not-bad turnout. Gave us five teams who could compete. It's a bit against tradition that we didn't have an odd number of people playing, but these are strange times we live in.

bunny_hugger and I would not win another set of Zen trophies. We would finish fourth, it turns out, of the five teams. Possibly we're just in a slump. But it's also hard to beat some of the teams that come together. The winning team of RED and ACE were the people who finished second and third in the league regular season, after all, and that's a tough load of pinball talent to beat.

The complication of having to play only one flipper, and to communicate with your partner what your intentions are, isn't as complicated as it used to be back when the league was smaller and the talent pool more shallow. The contest wasn't over until about midnight. That's a lot of long, tough play considering nobody could play at their best.

The next league season's scheduled to start in two weeks. bunny_hugger needs to reorganize the 37 (!) games into new banks, for the eight weeks of scheduled play. She's been thinking of picking things to spread out the games by their production dates, which caused us to learn there's a lot of games from the 90s, and from the 2010s, and even four from the 2020s. There's just two games --- Lord of the Rings and The Simpsons Pinball Party --- from the 2000s, though. It seems like a weird gap. I also put together a list with the game locations (so we don't have everybody crowded in to one place anymore) and their themes. There's a lot that are movie-or-tv licenses. And a bunch that are the weird freeform world of pure pinball creations, like Junkyard or Getaway. And some that defy clear classification, like, the two Elvira tie-in games. I guess that's a TV tie-in but it feels different from how, like, the Munsters is a TV tie-in. Fortunately, though, I don't have to make decisions about these games, just support bunny_hugger in carrying them out.

Putter a little bit more back at Motor City, if you'd be so kind.

The rabbits nestle together and agree that was altogether plenty of everything.

And then here's a quick action shot of the rabbits not wanting to deal with me.

Whoa, giant inflatable Eevee? I didn't know there'd be celebrities here!

Trivia: The international designation for Apollo 16's CSM on orbit was 1972-031A; the S-IVB booster was 1972-031B. After undocking at the Moon, the LM ascent stage would be 1972-031C, the descent stage 1972-031E, and the particles and fields subsatellite 1972-031D. Source: Apollo By The Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029. (I know, this looks out of order to me too.)

Currently Reading: The Sensational She-Hulk: John Byrne: The Return, John Byrne, many artists. She-Hulk snarking about the immaturity of the boys who write and draw her doing these cheesecake-y poses: it looks like satire if you don't look too closely.