My fascination with Pinball is now validated after reading Sherry Turkle's article in the New Media Reader about gaming systems from way back in 1984. She calls pinball the grandfather of video games and discusses how gaming affects adults and children. She states "Being in a relationship with the game means getting recentered on yourself." I love that. Here's another good one: "There is a sense of a force at work, a 'holding power' whose roots are aggressive, passionate, and eroticized." Wawaweewaa! She speaks my language! Finally, academia has touched me at a deep and profound level.
I've been a pinball junky for some time now, with astounding results! I drink too much beer and it's done nothing to curb my cigarette consumption, I've managed to keep up with my US state quarter colleciton, and I am a legend in my own right. I always master the game. Fishtails, South Park, Lord of The Rings, The Simpsons, Theatre of Magic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sopranos, Elvis, and now...DRACULA!
Empire, the punk bar a couple blocks from us, has Dracula pinball. I found it accidentally a few months ago, taking a different walk home from class. On my first time in the bar, first time playing this machine, I won a ton of free games (CRACK!) and got a high score of 600 million and change. The bartender was amazed: "I dump 20 bucks worth of quarters in here a week to get a score like that!" Sucker.
On my second time back, I beat the high score with a whopping 1 billion 38 mill plus. My moniker, KTX, graces the screen along with KTX as the loop champion with 21 loops.
On Wednesday, I popped in again for a quickie. As opposed to Detroit, where I played obsessively and almost exclusively at Jumbo's, I've really curbed my consumption of flippers and balls. But since I've been so good, I thought, why not, I'll pop in for a beer and a couple games.
Nice that it's 3 plays for a dollar. I'm doing okay, crack a few free games, no earth shattering scores, but some games in the millions. Go to get another dollar in quarters. There's the bartender, Cutie McPunky and two neophytes at the bar - both of them ignoring me, though the bartender pays a little interest in my successes. When I ask for the next round of quarters he says "Yeah, it'll hook ya" and chuckles. I chuckle back and say softly
"I've got the highest score"
and wink at him.
He looks at the dudes at the bar and says
"That's her?"
and they grunt with such sheer hatred for me. Fatty McFat and Coughy McCough must be real burned up that some girl came in and blew them away. Some stranger from out of town with no track record of loss, no sense of shame, no bruised ego. I don't even brag about how good I am, in fact when people play me, I encourage them and teach them tricks of the table. I'm not very competitive about it, I just love it. And to these guys, I'm suddenly notorious, an enemy. Come on fucker, I'll take you on any day.
So I play my last dollar as best as I can. I score two free games out of it. My track record is really like 5 games for a dollar. That's the best deal in town. I finish up, smile and wave goodbye - and only the bartender bids me a good evening.
