Archive for November, 2009

Voodoo II Tournament III

DOUGHNUTS &

Road Show
T2
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Fish Tales
Jurassic (be smart with your Smart Missile) Park

Voodoo Doughnut Too
1501 NE Davis St.
Portland, OR 97232

$5, head-to-head, double elimination. Starts at 7pm.

CFF Meeting – Slingshot

The meeting is at Slingshot! It’s Shelly’s birthday, so come and celebrate your brains out.

5532 SE Center
Portland, OR, 97206

Addams
IJ
LOTR
Star Trek: TNG

Portsmouth Mouthball Tournament

Yummy pizza, pinball and Jar Jar.

The Lineup –

Attack From Mars
Bram Stokers Dracula
Pirates of the Caribbean
Star Wars Ep1

5262 N Lombard St. Portland, OR 97203
Phone: (503) 289.4644

$5, head-to-head, double elimination. Starts at 7pm

Shorty’s 12th: Total Success!

Once again we drank, we ate dogs and we played pinball.  However, this year we seemed to be better at the latter.  The event was kicked off (set-up weeks in advance) with our own Deathsave against good friend Carlos on Medieval Madness.  Jeff maintained his confidence, even though Carlos dropped twenty credits into the machine as the doors opened, and took his first win with Strongbow in hand.  Looking back now I probably should not have told everyone in the joint I wanted Cayle round 1 on TOTAN.  Well I got my wish, kinda.  We played TAF and let’s just say he hit 65+ bear kicks, toured the mansion 7+ times to put his score around 1.8 Bil and never even looked at ball 3.  Those numbers may actually be a little low considering I had found myself more interested in the heated battle between CAP and some dude on Fathom next to me.  And like most matches PDX pulled through.  There weren’t too many games on day 1, I think only 3-4 hours was how long it lasted.  Fred had the unfortunate fate of playing 3 matches, 2 of them back to back while others only played 1 match.  Sadly, he did not survive. Neither did Kickback or Emma, to my knowledge.  So with day 1 over at 7:00pm  we all headed to Deathsave’s for his half working line-up, including Flash Gordon, Centaur, Johnny Mnemonic, Firepower and Medusa.  The rest of the night gets hazy for some while others dozed off, some drank all night, some ate acid, some ate cheeseburgers, and I heard Mortal Kombat was even busted out.

Come Sunday morning with fresh donuts in our bellies (thanks Davis’s’s’ss’) and even more Strongbow in others our confidence was high.  Jake, Noah and myself all felt we had a long day ahead of us knocking people to the curb before we would fall fate to that which would happen to us all.  But for the most part we were unscathed:  Soundcard, Videomode, Rob “just call me JT” Timberlake, Slam Tilt, Zoe, Deathsave, Sauce, Eric and DannyB wer all still on the winners side.  Early in the day Zoe put a hurting on this guy 2-0 who may have seemed a little to confident on Speakeasy.  And when I mean a hurting I am talking doubling the score and if you remember those funky little outlanes she was nudging those draining balls back into play.  About this time the battle of the giants was taking place on TAF, however this time we weren’t so fortunate as Todd MacCulloch took down Autofire.  There was also some questionable play on IJ4 between Sauce and Eric.  The culprit was those pesky bangbacks,  there was no mention nor was it written that they were illegal and I witnessed Trent use a few as well.  Sauce prevailed.  Later in the day DannyB and Zoe both had monster wins on IJ4 as well.  Trent Augenstein knocked out the youngest and one of the strongest players in the event, Robert Gagno on IJ4 too.  Those matches were well into the 2, 3, 400 mil range.

Unfortunately DannyB lost to Robert Gagno’s mother Kathy (who is a solid player) on Evel Knievel, eliminating him completely.  At about this same time Soundcard was facing Lonnie Langford on TAF.  On this particular TAF the GC was 6.6 Bil with LWL right beside it.  Oh and Mike hates this game, so he’s fucked right, especially since Lonnie put up 400 mil to take game one.  Well you’re dead wrong, Soundcard won, call it luck, call it skill give the cred to the intimidation of the colors but CFFs own Soundcard has moved on to be one of the only 8 still undefeated. Rev-Tests untimely departure came at the hands of Noah on TOTAN.  It was a well fought 3 game series but the mighty Rev struck out. And I lost a friendly fiver on it.  Actually the next few big matches all happen on TOTAN as well,  Zoe fought hard and lost to some dude from Australia.  If she had only skipped the skill-shot and went straight for the lamp like she did on her battle against Sauce 3 matches later she too could have been primed for the top 8 in the winners circle.  But prior to Sauce and Zoe, Slam Tilt, Deathsave and Cayle were mowing down the field.  Rob was next to face one of Seattle’s favorites Lonnie on Fathom, after splitting the first 2 games and a malfunction on game 3 it was moved to Surf Champ.  Once again PDX prevailed and another big hitter was eliminated from the tourney by our own hands alone.  Soon after Rob faced Kathy Gagno on TOTAN.  At the same time Zoe was playing IJ4.  Both being in the losers bracket at this point and both being the only females left made this a huge match.  Zoe won 2-0 and Rob battled it out and won the 3rd game to clinch the top female prize to Portland’s own Zoe Vrabel.

We were getting down to the nitty gritty, Mike played STTNG and at one point he looked frustrated but upon looking at the score and watching him make 7 straight shots and easily clinch the victory I was able to walk away to watch the big match-up going on between Trent and Eden on Fathom.  Trent won game one, Eden won game two and Trent put up 4+ mil on game three to seal the deal.  Maka was next on the list, and he still owes Soundcard and myself lots and lots of drinks for setting this one up.  For some reason (only a few still know why) he got to play Trent on Evel Knievel which everyone thought had been removed from the tourney but now was somehow back in.  Well, Maka is a machine, and what do machines do?  They produce! At this point I would like to apologize to Trent’s wife, Karen I believe it is, on behalf of Seattle from Portland.  It’s a shame and disgusting that amongst all our very friendly battles for the title there was a thief that rummaged her purse leaving things everywhere with no wallet to be found.  Her ID’s and credit cards were found later under a booth and I am hoping her flight was not missed because of this.

Zoe’s strong(bow) run finally came to an end on TAF, she won game 1, lost game 2 by a 4 mil bonus with scores in the 80 mils.  Very hard loss, and on game 3 Andy Pettersson got 2 EB’s and was just to much.  Soundcard played Elijah on TOTAN which was described by both as ugly ugly pinball, well more ugly for Seattle than Portland.  So Soundcard’s next opponent was either going to be Deathsave or Cayle.  Slam Tilt beat the guy who owns the Tiger Lounge on Champ Pub to make it to the finals and on game 3 Deathsave was playing split flipper with Cayle on his EB’s on Monster Bash.  So it was Soundcard and Deathsave on Champ Pub, very bad draw for Sound.  He conceded the second game to fellow CFFer stating the only money he had ever put in to CP was the 4 quarters to play those two games.  Also at this time Slam was getting beat by Cayle on MM.

And then there were 4. Deathsave and Andy on Speakeasy could be arguably the closest game of the tournament.  It came down to game 3, Deathsave got screwed by subtract-a-ball but then got 4 jokers to get it back but then lost it again.  He was up 400 thous to under 200.  Only Andy had 2 balls to his 0, Andy also got an add-a-ball and on his final ball he drained 48 thousand short and with 36 thousand bonus….but….he drained down the outlane and that means a free spin which landed him 15 thou and gave him a 3 thousand point win.  So next up Andy v Slam on Surf Champ.  Slam won game one and Andy won game two on his 5th ball double bonus.  It all came down to game 3, after ball 3 Slam had a strong lead, I told Fred all he needed was to get it up to 30 thou and he got it to 40 thou.  And two balls later the place went nuts.  CFF had finally made it to the finals at Shortys and we had our shot to take down Cayle once again.  Everyone got a beer and a smoke and after 5 we all gathered up front around Barracora.  It was going to be a single game match, which means Slam still had to beat Cayle twice.  Cayle opted to go second and watch how it played first.  After ball 1 Cayle had Slam 65 to 52 thousand.  After ball 2 even more bad news  Cayle had him 364 to 113.  But just to refresh your memory, it is a 5 ball game.

On ball 3 I witnessed some of the finest 2 ball multiball flipper skills in my life.  Slam was slaying and he brought his score up to 783,000 by the end of it.  With 2 balls left Cayle fought back and made it close.  Going into Cayle’s 5th and final ball Slam was at 1.3mil to his 1.0 and when the bonus settled Cayle came up short with his 1.2 mil.  Which could mean only one thing.  Cayle’s veins turned to ice.  He chose to go first on this match and tilted his first ball, so things were looking good.  However, I later thought about it and am assuming he tried to tilt it to see what he could get away with.  I also forgot to mention during game one Cayle was slowly mastering the game.  He found the way to lock 1 ball and if his newly plunged ball drained the locked ball would be released essentially giving him an EB.  Oh and mentioning EB’s he figured that one out too.  Slam had no chance. Not even a lucky pecan was going to stop Cayle.  At 3.4mil on ball 2 with the ability to get an EB on every ball, not to mention locking 1 or even 2 to get the 3 ball multiball, the question of whether he would roll it or not was circling the room.  However, to many cheers and some boos, including from myself (for not rolling the machine,) Cayle won his unheard of 3rd straight Shorty’s Annual Pinball Tournament.  Congratulations to Cayle, you truly are a Pinball Wizard. There were many prizes given out.  Zoe won $50 plus a shirt or something.  Noah also got a shirt along with Soundcard who took 5th (one spot shy of cash)  Deathsave took 4th and won a roll of quarters and a hat/shirt.  Andy/birthday boy won something and a shirt but I can’t remember, I think it was $50 though.  Slam Tilt who battled so hard to come up just short won a pair of long john underwear.  For second place.  What a joke! Oh wait it was, he also received $100 and a PBR snowboard.  The long johns are just to keep those skinny little legs warm this winter.  And of course the grand prize.

So in short recap CFF had 3 in the top 5.  PDX probably had 8-10 in the top 25 or 30. Strongbow is good.  Kitty burgers should never be eaten.  Cayle will beat you.  Eden still has lightning bolt burns AND failed to bring me Molson.  For how much we all bitch about Shorty’s and said we will not go back next year, you all know we will. And if you are 135 yards out, use an 8 iron!

A word from our sponsor

If our sponsor was me… which, in a way, maybe it is?

Howdy Gangsters,

The best and the brightest are off at Shorty’s this weekend (I got a little tipsy last night, and totally failed to join with the ride that was available to me at like 7am this morning). Hopefully we’ll get some news from the front, to see how it’s going. But in the meantime, let’s reflect a little bit on some stuff that’s been hurting my brain to think about (full disclosure: thinking about anything hurts my brain). Shall we?

When playing pinball, whether you’re competing against the other initials on the board, or against the replay score, or against player 2 in a heated $competition$, or just against your inner demony things, you ARE competing. It’s difficult to remove that factor when playing pinball. If you care at all about how you play, then somewhere in you is a competitive drive. During the last year, we booted up the laptop and harnessed that drive. Nearly every week we’ve had around 20 people compete against one another at one of Portland’s many great pinball venues. Many of us have had shiny moments where we did well; ALL of us have had crappy moments where we totally flailed. But however we fared – it’s always in good fun. We respect one another as players, we accept newcomers to the fray, we keep egos in check, and we learn from mistakes. I have little doubt that all this organized play has allowed us to progress as players. And it’s also helped to strengthen the pinball community in Portland.

So I hope you represent well in Seattle!

Anyway, I totally forgot to post this winner’s picture from the Slabtown weekly that was a few weeks ago.

But it’s an awesome picture! And worth sharing, even if it’s late. l-r: Emma (3rd), Steve (1st), Videomode (2nd).

That was a fun tournament. Good turn-out. We played on some fresh machines – Dr Who, Swords of Fury, and F-14 (in addition to all the others that were already there). Congrats to Steve for winning. I believe he’s now off in Hawaii, soaking it up at a 5 star resort.

This just in: News from the front!! Cayle vs Dropshot in the first round at Shorty’s. Holy cow!

CFF Meeting “BOG”

CFF Meeting @ “BOG” 10pm. Feel free to show up earlier line-up is IJ, IJ4, Dracula, POTC.