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There's a new Pokemon pinball game --- amazingly, the first-ever licensed Pokemon pinball game --- and RLM Amusements out in Grand Rapids got one yesterday. So, not entirely coincidentally, we went there for the weekly pinball tournament. I was never called up on the game during the tournament, which was randomly-picked pairs for the fourteen-round qualifying session and then games picked by the quartet's highest-seed player for playoffs. But I did get one game in late, past 1 am, and it went pretty well. Along the way I caught a Stufful, which bunny_hugger --- who understood what I meant by saying it was a ``Stuffit'' --- explained on the drive home to be kind of a plush red panda, so at least the game knew who was playing it and what they'd look for. (I mean given the weird ongoing failure of Pokemon to make a good raccoon-based creature.) Also since I've never played the video games or the card games or any other spinoff of the intellectual property, this means that the 7th of March, 2026 saw me catch my first Pokemon ever and it was this.

Otherwise, well, this was the first time this year I've made it to an RLM tournament. Since my last visit they've put Scorbit data-gathering things on many of the tables. These allow for the results of matches to be logged automatically. And since the games are logged to Matchplay.events, we can go back afterwards and look at score versus number of balls and score versus ball time, and also just how long each ball was in play. Other than logging the results automatically, this isn't actually useful but I suppose will someday make prop betting easier.

bunny_hugger went in and put up what's got to be her best performance in qualifying, winning 12 of her 14 matches and coming in tied for second. The only person to beat her --- with 13 wins --- was a guy who's the 12th-highest ranked player in the world. She did great in the semifinals round, taking first-place finishes in two games (which is always going to let you move on) and a third-place finish on the other (for a little bonus). Unfortunately in semifinals (in a group led by that 12th-place-worldwide guy) she had a worse time of it, taking last places on everything and finishing the night in 8th place, just as she would if she'd decided to go home rather than play the next round. But there's never knowing that before you play.

And in every regard she did better than me: in qualifying I put up a mere eight wins, enough to get into playoffs, and the last win coming against JTK. In the quarterfinals I was playing RLM (top seed) and a woman I'd noticed all night --- CP --- wearing a shirt with what looked like a 50s-children's-book-watercolor-picture of a deer with a huge safety pin through its body. She would explain that it was the logo for a metal band. Anyway in this group I took last place on Harry Potter, and second place on Getaway. RLM had won both games so was assured to move on, and the rest of us were tied for the other advancing slot. RLM decided to toss a bit of chaos into the mix and deferred choice of game to JJL.

JJL picked Fast Draw, an electromechanical, and one of my pocket games that I can always pull out a good finish on. Reader, I did not. My first ball got a mere 10 points, the lowest possible. My second ball got five times that. It wouldn't be until the fourth ball that I got anything together and it wasn't much of that. Fifth ball drained without my touching it too, and I went not just to a last-place finish but a dismal one, literally a hundred thousand points behind CP.

So that came out dismal. But on the bright side we got to talking with CP and her wife --- bonding first over all of us wearing N95's or KN95's --- and quite liked them, and they seem to like us too. So hey, maybe new pinball friends? That's always nice to see.

In pictures, I'm going to spend today focusing on a specific aspect of the former bumper cars pavilion at Glen Echo Park. Why? You'll see momentarily.

Carving of a bumper car that's one of a bunch of sculptures hanging on the pavilion's walls.

Here's two people crammed into the bumper car.

And a picture of a car also being a Dutch wooden shoe.

And here's the fourth bumper car design seen in this array of pictures.

Finally, some cars bumping!

And one last design of bumper cars. I have no information about which of these body designs were ever on the ride here.

Trivia: After his first experiments with X-rays showed their ability to see through solid objects --- including seeing the bones of his own hand --- Wilhelm Röntgen locked himself in the lab for seven weeks to find what possible mistake he was making and to try to find a more plausible explanation than ``X-rays can see through solid objects''. At some point he joked to his wife that ``I'm doing work that will make people say, 'Old Röntgen has gone crazy!'.'' Source: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements Sam Kean.

Currently Reading: The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, Matthew Gabriele, David M Perry.

You may, dimly, remember that a couple years ago we snagged some fallen tree limbs after a heavy storm knocked them down all over the neighborhood. And last year we even got a chainsaw to cut them down to the roughly footlong installments that would fit well in our fireplace insert. What we had not done is split the wood so there'd be both bark and exposed ... you know ... wood innards to make for good fire-having.

A couple weeks back bunnyhugger got something that promised to simplify the wood-splitting trade around here. It's a gadget that holds a blade upwards, so that you set the wood on top and hit it with a sledgehammer over and over. The advantage of this over the splitting maul we had is how this lets you save intermediate progress. Only split the wood a couple inches? That's fine, it'll stay there, balanced in place, ready for the next hit. bunnyhugger tried this on her own a couple days ago and was able to split several logs that she would never have been able to do by maul.

Now I finally had the chance to try it out and, you know, it works quite nicely, especially on wood that's been sitting in the driveway two years or whatever it is now. It can take a fair number of starter taps to get it wedged enough to stand upright on the blade. And it can take several reasonable swings to start it going. But once the wood starts splitting it just cracks apart like you're Popeye punching a cinder block or something. Very satisfying. After I'd cut enough for the night's purposes I had to restrain myself from doing just one more log.

Now in our extreme tour: after a full day at Six Flags America we would need to be driving on, hoping to meet up with my brother and then get to HersheyPark. But first ...

The view from our hotel! At least, from the window beside the elevator. We were a whole ... twelve? ... floors up and this was the highest up we'd been somewhere in a while.

And here's the view outside in Cinerama!

So our first visit was to Glen Echo Park, once upon a time an amusement park and now a National Park, with echoes of the amusement park still there. Also, the place was next to New Jersey heroine Clara Barton's final home.

Neat wooden bridge leading to what I imagine was always the back side of the amusement park. Don't worry, I have photos of the front.

Coming up to it we passed the Glen Echo Park Aquarium, closed when we visited, but with such let's say folk-art signage that we were enchanted and hope the animals are kept well.

Also ran across this sign hidden deep in the woods as we got closer to the former amusement park.

Trivia: George Washington was sworn in the 4th of March, 1793, to begin his second term as President. John Adams was not sworn in until the Senate met the 2nd of December, 1793. Source: From Failing Hands: The Story of Presidential Succession, John D Feerick. Adams, you of course recall, had in 1789 begun serving as Vice-President nine days before Washington was sworn in, although it would not be until June that there was even an oath of office for the Vice-President to swear.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 20: 1958, Tom Sims, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: If you read about What’s Going on in Rex Morgan, M.D.? Wasn’t _Rex Morgan_ Supposed to Start Looking Weird? December 2025 – February 2026 I'll explain the rules of beloved childhood game Punch Belly Blue!

Back in 2014, seeking even more pinball than we could play in Lansing, we went to the Arcade Pinball League in Brighton, not quite an hour away. It was a fun venue packed with pinball machines from the 60s through the present, and it solidified us as people taking competitive pinball way too seriously. But around 2015 the owner got tired of the venue as it was and moved or sold or both almost all the games, and the league evaporated. For a monthly pinball league about as far away we could play at Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum instead.

Marvin's has been closed for a bit over a year now, far exceeding the five months or so they figured needed to move to their new location and despite their posting a proof-of-life video to Facebonk the desire for a monthly league in that area remained. And, what do you know, but the Arcade had picked up more pinball machines again. We've been there a couple times, for furry meetups, but despite thinking how nice it'd be to just go there and play all day on pay-one-price terms we haven't.

And this is how last Thursday we were at the rebirth of the Arcade Pinball League. Or the creation of a new Arcade Pinball League; identity for groups is a difficult concept to make precise. I even got out my original Arcade Pinball League shirt from twelve years ago to wear, delighting the couple people who noticed.

The format was like what Arcade League had used before, no surprise as Marvin's used the same format: you get in a group of three or four people and take turns picking five games, getting points based on your finish. The first week we were put in ``random'' order, which turns out to be how we checked in for the night, and in future weeks we should be put with players who have about the same standing. This it was by a one-in-four chance that bunnyhugger and I were not in the same group. I ended up in a group, instead, with the guy we'd seen at Pinball At The Zoo last year who was wearing a full rubber strap-on face mask, and waved ultraviolet sterilizers over the flippers before his every ball.

And how did I do? ... To use our old slang, I hit for the cycle on the first four games, getting a first, second, third, and fourth. The third place hurt as it was on the game I'd picked, Whitewater, and while the sterilizer guy had an insurmountable lead by the third ball, all I needed was a couple million points to take second, and I fumbled the ball rather than make a safe shot. I'd picked Whitewater partly for historic reasons: it was one of the games they always had at The Arcade in the old days but back then I didn't know how to play it at all. (This game is either a new instance of the table, or is a heavily refitted one, as the toys on the playfield, originally Bigfoot themed, were replaced with after-market Abominable Snowman toys.)

The first place came on the Jersey Jack game Elton John, which just in case it wasn't destiny enough for me picked as my starting song ``Pinball Wizard''. Other people had to change their song to get to it. In that case I was doing all right, chopping wood, making a lot of shots that weren't exploding in points and then on my final ball the game gave me several distinct multiballs right in a row, like it didn't want me to stop playing.

The fifth and final game of the night was my choice again and I went for Creature From The Black Lagoon, partly because I don't have many chances to play it. And it turned out to be a great choice for me because I was able to try going for Super Scoring, a mode I learned recently from playing the game in simulation. Shoot the right ramp twelve times (seventeen on some games) and then the Snack Bar and there you go. Well, dear reader, I got it, on my third ball, and I could feel my quartet staring at me as this mode they'd never heard of before came up. By the time I could see the score again I had embarrassingly overwhelmed everyone else. Two firsts, a second, a third, and a fourth totals out to a slightly better-than-average night, this format. I finished a little bit above bunnyhugger, who had a night with no first places but more seconds.

After playing we got to talking with MWS, and some of the many people who know him and chat with him. Also with the woman on the venue's staff, who had come in to oversee the place on what was otherwise a closed night for The Arcade. (This explained the mystery of why league isn't Friday night: add the general public to the fifty or sixty people there for league and the crowd would be unmanageable.) Turns out, she's also the person who runs the furry meetups, when those are held, so we got a fresh angle to talk about as well as vinyl stickers of her snow leopard. bunnyhugger offered back in trade a Lansing Lightning Flippers sticker, with her Thumper Bumpers rabbit mascot, and this got talk going about whether The Arcade could get a snow leopard mascot.

It will not surprise you at all that we closed the place out; they were shutting games off as people finished them, and we would get only one last game of Twilight Zone in at the end of the night.

And now, we come to the last pictures of our Wednesday at Six Flags America, our full day at a park that's since been closed and probably will be doomed to become a plaque in front of a condo soon. What comes next in my photo roll? Do you remember?

Looking up at Superman: Ride of Steel's lift hill (left) and return path (right) while focusing on just how dark the clouds could still make the evening sky.

On the right is the Joker's Jinx ride, and in the distance, The Wild One, over in the Mardis Gras area.

Noticed the gates to a stadium-seating performance venue open and I was curious how close I could get to it without being yelled at.

Didn't actually get this close but I did use my zoom lens and see, mm, seems like the area hasn't seen heavy use or maintenance love in a while.

Block party also didn't show much signs of having happened, but maybe it cleans up fast.

Here's a picture creeping up on The Flying Carousel's rounding boards, my last interesting picture before leaving the park. And what could come next?

Trivia: In the months following Thomas Edison's 1891 victory in lawsuits over the light bulb patent, Edison General Electric stock dropped from $120 a share to $90. Source: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, Jill Jonnes. Finalizing the decision took time, and Westinghouse had held onto its money well and was actually coming out of the patent fight stronger than anyone expected.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 20: 1958, Tom Sims, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Closing Ceremonies. We'd missed opening ceremonies because they were inexplicably early on Friday, like 10 am or something, and there was no fursuit parade, so this was the first big everyone-at-the-convention activity we were at. This is where I finally got to know anything particular about the charity --- Wolf Creek Habitat, for the second(?) year in a row --- and that the 2,525 attendees raised a total of like $35,000. We were wrapped up enough in our own problems to have missed them, wherever they were.

With the convention officially closed we had a couple hours of unscheduled time and spent some of it in Hospitality --- bunnyhugger finally got some alcohol from the free bar; I missed it altogether --- and somewhere around here we picked up the rumor that depending on just when the Renaissance Center renovations start, if they start next year, then Motor City Furry Con might be forced out into some other venue, if one fits.

bunnyhugger used the time to take her daily half-hour walk. I went back to the video game room where they were once again playing Wreck-It Ralph on an overhead projector. They were always playing that or Tron Ares I think because it didn't look like what I kind of remember from Tron Legacy. I finally got some time in on Quick And Crash, the target-shooting game with a fun exploding mug as the final target, and I managed one time even to shoot the mug. I wasn't doing very well. I also stunned bunnyhugger by playing the Crazy Taxi video game --- how often do I play arcade games? --- because it was right by the pinball and it had looked like a lot of fun. It is pretty fun, yeah, have to say.

And the pinball games? Surfers was still working, doing better than it had last year, although the flippers were sorely weakened by three days of heavy use. I'm not sure it was still possible to make the candycane shot that's the real points mine. Bow And Arrow was still going strong, though, apparently unfazed by all its attention. bunnyhugger and I got a last couple games in just before the close of the gaming room, with bunnyhugger once again putting up just over 100,000 points. She was eerily consistent on the game all weekend. I was more erratic at it, but the final game, after two bad balls, discovered just what happens if you max out the bonus, which you can collect mid-ball with the right shot: you can light an extra ball, and that let me get to enough points to collect another extra ball, so I ended up coming achingly close to properly rolling the game.

bunnyhugger got into her Cerberus kigurumi --- while she'd had some time fursuiting Saturday it was just too much to bring the suit from the car to the Headless Lounge and back again --- and got appreciative congratulations for having chosen to wear a neat three-headed outfit. And we went to the Dead Dog Dance, taking in the last hours of a convention that wasn't really our thing. The DJ brought the songs to a stop at 10:00 and then rolled out one more song to close things out that I couldn't tell from what came before. And then the guy in charge of the AV came out and did two or possibly more songs before bringing the Dead Dog Dance, and the last event of the convention, to an end. They did not play the ChipTunes version of Toto's ``Africa'' that had finished Closing Ceremonies.

We did a last check of lost-and-found and careful examination of the path back to my car --- and to the next floor up in the parking garage, where we'd parked for a few minutes before discovering the pedestrian-overpass-level was free --- without finding bunnyhugger's hat. Can not recommend losing precious gifts from family members, would not do again.

Our full day at Six Flags America got interrupted by rain, most of which I didn't photograph. We just waited stuff out in the food court. But ...

It really was raining, though, as you can see from the raindrops coming out of the trees.

The steampunk-themed midway with a fresh coat of water. Not bad, is it?

Here's Steamwinder, the ride we most wanted to get on in Steamtown besides the roller coaster. So, each of the big levers rotates, with the seats staying horizontal, and all four of the levers is in time so they always just miss the others, but keep looking like they are on the brink of contact. Meanwhile the whole base rotates around a vertical axis. It's a much more intense and fun and delightful ride than we expected.

This is just the sign for Roar, which doesn't put the A in a separate color the way the logo posters in the station do.

Did you know they had character meet-and-greets? Neither did we until it was too late.

Here's that picture of a white polka-dotted chef alligator mascot that you were asking about.

Trivia: An Ottoman Financial calendar, or Marti calendar, was in use in Islamic border countries (like Turkey) from 1676. These years began on 1 March, and had a 29-day February in Julian leap years. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 85: Dragon or Overgrown Lizard?, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.