So to cut to the end: as it turned out I didn't need to worry about bunnyhugger's finish. She would win the B Division, and handily, not just never losing a best-of-three round but only once, in finals, even needing the third game of a round. It would overstate things to say she dominated the division --- a couple of times she won in what we call ``losing the race to the bottom'' --- but a win by some nonsense counts the same as a win by playing like a pro.

Speaking of nonsense. There was one time that I, as backup tournament director, was called in to make a ruling and that was of course for a game bunnyhugger was playing. She and her competitor were on Godzilla, her competitor had finished ball three, and she was taking her last ball facing the uphill climb of beating the 130-or-so-million of player one. And the game just went and reset, like someone had powered it off and on again.

This sort of game interruption is provided for in the rules of pinball tournaments, of course. Normally the procedure is if you can recover the scores as they stood, give a compensation ball and add that to the interrupted game's score. This is unfair if the interrupted player had been about to start, like, the Super Multiball, but what else can you do? But, in this case, the game had reset weirdly enough that it didn't preserve any of the scores, as though it forgot it had been in the middle of a game when it took a quick nap.

My inclination was that since everyone agreed the opponent had about 130 million points, give or take, let bunnyhugger play a whole game --- since nobody knew just what her score was, the game's screen somehow not being big enough for an always-on score display --- but I don't like making that the official ruling until I can back it up with the in-print rules. And I found that the actual printed rules we had were more specific; in the event of a catastrophic malfunction (the term of art here) all players are to replay. (If the game catastrophically malfunctions again it's kicked out of the tournament and a new game gets drawn.) So --- bunnyhugger's opponent a bit disappointed to lose a decent score against a tough competitor --- they replayed.

This turned out as well as we could have hoped. bunnyhugger's opponent had a better game than she'd had the first time around, so could not feel cheated of a decent score she'd already completed. But bunnyhugger had an even better score yet, taking a win and going on to the semifinals as cleanly as possible.

Fortunately that was the only ruling I had to make all night, as bunnyhugger, not being directly involved in any other games, could handle the rest. And most of those amounted to ``direct where the stuck ball's to be placed'' and ``take out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because it is, once again, broken''. TMNT may be an enjoyable game --- granting that nobody's figured out how to enjoy it yet --- but it keeps having issues of throwing random numbers of balls into play in the middle of tournaments.

Anyway, bunnyhugger won, and the second- and third-place finishers were also delighted, and we just had to worry about whether the A Division would finish by any reasonable hour.

But now, in pictures of Le Grand Huit, I have to share ... pinball! It wasn't a surprise that pinball was there, to us, as I'd gone looking on a pinball map to see if anything might be in reachable range, but the games that were there ... well, when I saw them on the pinball map I thought, that can't be. And yet, here they were:

Williams's Riverboat Gambler and ... Class of 1812! This was a wild enough choice that we had to photograph it, and also bunnyhugger had to tell people on Facebonk that it was there.

Besides Riverboat Gambler and Class of 1812 they also had in this area Party Zone, which I think I've once ever seen on location, and Lethal Weapon 3 which is, eh, that's a game all right.

Class of 1812 is a wild game, though, with a definite vibe of ``we have The Addams Family license at home'' and that gruesome-humor vibe that's always fun.

bunnyhugger had, like, three really good games in a row of it. Here she pauses to wait for her score to come back.

Pinball router calling cards: the universal language? Apart from the grouping of telephone digits you could slip this under the glass of a game in the United States and not really stand out.

A nice thing about Gottlieb games of the early 90s is they had this map of what was on the playfield and what you got for it. I didn't know they made it in multiple languages, though.

Trivia: The second Howard Johnson's opened in 1935, ten years after the original; by the end of the year there were 39 of them. By the end of 1939 there were 107. Source: The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, Earl Swift.

Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.

I felt a slight disappointment when I got to our hipster bar Tuesday for pinball league finals and saw MWS there sitting at the bar. Not because it's ever unpleasant to see him, but because he was one of the eight people in the higher, A, Division for playoffs, and bunnyhugger was in ninth place. Anyone not showing up would get her into a place where she could only improve her standings. Coming in seeded at the top of B, she had to win the bracket to finish right where she started. MWS seemed my candidate for someone to stay home; it was not quite snowing, yet, but it was going to snow and heavily enough that all sorts of weather alarms were being announced, and MWS had even expressed to bunnyhugger his fears that the weather wouldn't let him drive back to Flint. As he was coming from farthest way, I thought he was the most likely to bow out for weather.

In the hour or so before the finals would start --- and bunnyhugger would arrive back from a work meeting that could not be postponed nor switched online --- I walked around, getting as much attendance as I could logged early. Also testing the machines I thought I might have to pick, or get picked against me, in finals, the only time during the season that Lansing League players choose what they play. And saw more of the other six players in A arriving. Around fifteen minutes before the official moment of finals beginning someone mentioned that MAG had not yet appeared and, oh, yes. He had missed last meeting too, and his postal job sometimes means he just can't get to league. And it is the busy season for mailing things, so he moved up to my second choice for plausibly likely to miss. He walked in a few moments later and the whole of A was accounted for.

I missed the last couple of people checking in by going around the whole bar looking for people who might belong in league finals. But I had everyone rounded up and ready to receive instructions just as 7:00 rolled around and bunnyhugger rolled in, fresh from work and from picking up the trophies, having driven through the early parts of the storm that MWS was afraid he'd have to drive back through --- I hadn't been able to the day before because my car was getting its service --- and looking ready for action.

She took the roll --- giving one late player just the margin needed to not miss his part in finals --- and gave the instructions as quick as possible, as if that could help the event not run until dawn. And she was still there at the top of B, having to defend her position against everyone.

I told her I wasn't playing. Placing highly in the league, or even the state, just isn't that important anymore, and she would be happier bottoming out in A than I would be taking first (if all the really good players somehow knocked each other out). And one of our big problems with these events has always been traffic management, as players just do not understand who they're supposed to play in a double-elimination seeded bracket. They always try to enter their own finishes and make up their own ideas about how to play things out after their first loss, and it never goes right. Having someone at the post continuously, entering results right away and sending people where they should go, would help avoid confusion and keep things moving swiftly.

bunnyhugger wasn't having it. I tried to lay out the good reasons for this, and to stand on it, and she refused every one of them. Even the prospect of, you know, if she flopped in B Division she might see all her play this season --- which was generally quite good and just foiled by a couple other people, me included, having killer last nights --- gone to an 19th place (or whatever) finish. After she swore she would be fine with it even if she had a catastrophic night, I relented, and agreed to play. And she told other people, fairly, how she could not believe what I was trying to do there.

Finals were ready to start.

And now in photos, we're back at Le Grand Huit and drawing closer to what we went there for ...

Crane game that for all I know could even be played, although mostly I liked the chrome styling of all the important parts.

And here's a different crane game that still looks nice and metal and substantial.

The hand-cranked record player on top of the crane game was up way too high to actually touch but still, interesting to look at.

And a Wurlitzer jukebox! We didn't have the spare coins to see if that worked either but aren't the buttons stylish?

Took a picture of some of the records on offer here. Yes, they have Kool and the Gang. And Stars On 45. (I'm not actually sure about the attributions here because The StarSisters were a spinoff group that --- look, it's all weirdly complicated.)

``Why not come sit comfortably on the Long Pig Couch?''

Trivia: The United States produced 400,000 brass clocks in the year 1855. Source: The Age of Capital, 1848 - 1875, Eric Hobsbawm.

Currently Reading: In The Shadow Of The Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965 - 1969, Francis French and Colin Burgess.