I really don’t like Seattle. No, don’t cry already my Emerald City Emo Kimosabe’s. I like y’all fine. Seattle has proven to have some great drinkers, hellraisers and pinball lovin mother fuckers, and that’s cool. Jeff Gagnon don’t fuckin play around, he throws down hard and is not afraid to travel to your home court to show you what time it is. Jason Hatch , Cheeseboat, Carlos, Crazy Jamie, the ultra-sexy Nicole (dang) and even “That Chopstick Mother Fucker Diamond Phillips” give it there all and with flare. I don’t mind sharing flipper stink finger with any of ya.

But what the fuck is with all the preppy sweater wearing wimps, gutless music scene (Earth does rule) and crackheads with machete’s? Your town is too expensive. It shut’s down too early. Your drinks are weak. I didn’t get laid! What the fuck!

OK, so maybe the last one can be blamed on flawed nature. There is no excuse however for not doing so well in the NW Pinball Expo. No excuse for not getting laid. No excuse for having so much fun. That’s right I said it, I had a lot of fun. We all did. Thirsty Jeff is a great host and tour guide. And thanks to some dipshit with a collared Izod shirt, even DDT left happy. I doubt the preppy dude is eating solid food right now. Too bad! Don’t threaten DDT ever!

Thw NW Pinball Expo was a success. Maybe some tickets floated around in a nepotistic fashion, maybe someone blatantly put his scores at the top of the pile to be recorded first. The top finishers were no surprise. These guys can play some fucking ball. They may be without personality and charm, but I have enough friends.

CFF represented well enough. I think all 8 of us were top 30. Replay and Rom busted ass enough to make it to the second round. They kicked some major ass. As time goes on, we will see higher placements from everyone. For now, we take the lessons and move on down the road to glory.

Everyone of us left on a high note. We all agree that the venture was a success (maybe not fiscally). Despite the prejudices and misunderstanding that surrounds Portland and CFF, I don’t think we want to be understood. We don’t need anymore people to move to our city. We just need to rock and be awesome.

Mission accomplished.

Rom
Replay
DDT
Jackpot
Slamtilt
Orbit
Combo
Kickback

Written by Kickback.

Second photo stolen from cheeseboat.

Here is the same type of article that seems to be written over and over by outsider journalists, however, maybe it’s a good point that the constant threat of extinction has galvanized pinheads into vociferous supporters rather than just casual fans. What do you folks think? There’s definitely a fatalistic element to pinball, since you know you will always eventually drain; does that impulse define our relationship to the game as a whole? Maybe…

Last night 18 of the World’s Most Undesirable Pinball players met at the Ship Ahoy Tavern on SE Gladstone to battle it out for the title of the World’s Most Unsavory Shit-Kickin Pinballer. To avoid the hassle of the unnecessarily long and emotional double elimination triple complication 46 round quadruple bypass bracket conundrum style tournament, CFF organizers opted for a more simple approach: Last Man Standing Shit Kicker Texas Death Match Pinball Battle.

The rules were simple: players had two hours to get the highest multiplayer scores on 4 pinball tables. The top three scores for each machine at the end of the battle earned points. The games were Indiana Jones (Williams), Star Trek TNG, Sopranos and a Scared Stiff with a dangling, snapped left flipper rubber.

At the end of the night only one baller was left standing: CFF’s very own ROM. ROM is a total TEXAS SHIT KICKER. He put up a score of 1 billion on STNG on his very first quarter and it went uncontested for the remainder of the battle. To secure his victory, he maintaned respectable scores on Indy and the badly crippled Scared Stiff. Congratulations ROM, you have officially earned your pick of the breeding pool. Get humpin…

A tie for for second and third was decided by an overtime shootout on Indy. Second place was earned by non-member and pinball afficionado Mark. He was rippin some serious pins all evening. Third place went to non-member Jake who totally dropped the hammer on some Sopranos. Congratulations and respect to both of you.

Honorable mention goes to CFF’s All-Star baller and veteran ripper REPLAY. REPLAY put up the obnoxiously high score of 700 million on the meanest, most vengeful Indiana Jones on earth. It was truly a pintabulous sight to behold. The entire battlefield of warriors stood momentarily defeated and mesmerized by REPLAY’s flipper skills. REPLAY has earned his moniker time and time again.

CFF would like to thank all the participants who showed up for our battle. We would also like to officially thank Anna at the Ship Ahoy Tavern for putting up with our slam-tilting, beer-spilling ways for all these years, and also for rewarding the final contestants with a free round of drinks. You are an honorary Texas Shit Kicker in our book.

There will be more pinball battles in the future, so keep your fingers juiced, your mind loose and stay tuned…

Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, Pinballers and PinBrawlers: Crazy Flipper Fingers is proud to announce the arrival of our Member Profiles section. Now you can finally figure out who that guy or girl is who keeps beating your Grand Champion on Pirates and Star Trek the Next Generation.

Extra Special Thanks to our members Tank, for his genius photo snappery, and ROM, our in-house technical wizard, for making this all possible.

So I found this in one of my various inboxes this morning:

If you’ve played pinball at just about any bar in the metro Portland area, you’re familiar with the work of Mike Mahaffey. As head of route operation for Quality Entertainment, he decides which games to operate, where to place them, and how to adjust their scoring and features. He’s also responsible for ensuring that all of Quality’s tables are clean and working properly. Now’ s your chance to tell him what you think: he’s agreed to field questions and comments from Portland Pinball League members. Want to tell him what he’s doing right or wrong? Got a question? Post here on or before Monday at 5PM, and I’ll compile the responses and send them to Mike at that time.- Anthony– Anthony Ramos, Co-OwnerGround Kontrol Classic Arcade * 511 NW Couch St. Portland, OR 97209p: (503)796-9364 * e: anthony(at) groundkontrol. com

So my dudes and dudettes, let’s get some discussion flowing. We speculate and ruminate enough about the goings on of pinball operations here and elsewhere, but now Mike’s agreed to have some direct open discussion about it, which is awesome. Post some Q’s here and then be sure to pass them along to Anthony to pass them along to Mike, and then stay tuned.

A few I’ve been thinking about to kick things off:

1. Is there a standard maintenance schedule for quality games? For example, are they cleaned a minimum of X times weekly/monthly/yearly? Are all the games routinely played and tested for problems, or does the company rely on notices/reports from users to identify problems?

2. What can dedicated players do to establish a better rapport with their operators and pinball providers to keep the ball rolling as well as possible? Should players keep a list of problems they find with games and submit them regularly, and how would you recommend doing this? We have some clear ideas on what we’d like from our operators– what would operators like to see more of from their customers?

(more…)

CFF’s been getting a fair amount of press lately. At each meeting we seem to take in, for a few precious hours, a fresh batch of concerned journalists and confused sociologists. They follow us around with pens in hands and cameras on shoulders, asking us about our goals, inspirations, and designs for life. We get drunk and start yelling things about crushing initials, racking up sick bonus multipliers, and how some quarter machines don’t take the new five dollar bills.

With this increased attention, we’re going to soon be having way more people navigating to this site to check out what we’re all about. And since none of us have set up a press packet, or even a page that displays photos and member profiles (but I swear to Kickback’s Mars God of War machine that a page of this sort will be up soon, hopefully before the Current TV and NPR stories see the light of day), most visitors won’t be able navigate their way to enlightenment.

So in the spirit of some dead guy who was really accommodating but whose name I can’t remember, I’m going to award your brave questions and concerns with an exclusive glimpse into the bowels of the gang - a glimpse into something that radio can’t reveal, and that video cameras will only graze past within the flurry of activity. Here, my friends (or whatever), is a rare photo, caught by Spinner at last Sunday’s meeting at Good Foot, of Slam Tilt living up to his namesake.

This basically sums up what we’re all about:

In keeping tabs on “retro gaming,” the NY Times yesterday printed an article about the Stern manufacturing plant. The article, for some reason originally titled, “Tilting at Pinball Machines,” but then changed to, “For a Pinball Survivor, the Game isn’t Over,” (no joke; they changed it between then and now) gives readers a brief tour of the plant, and touches upon, with little detail, the fact that real human people spend many hours constructing and testing these machines before sending them out to distributors. Little is said about innovation and ideas, nothing about upcoming titles, nothing about some of the reasons why Stern is the last manufacturer (except I guess they hint that the main reason is user demand, and that just ain’t true), nothing about pinball hotspots such as Portland.

Basically, I’m just not very into skimpy articles like this that only serve to perpetuate the angle that the supersport of pinball is on its deathbed. Sure, it’s interesting to get a glimpse into the plant, but a more in-depth piece about the state of pinball is needed. The common perception is that pinball is too simple an idea in this day of complex, interactive, jacked-in games. But, as our hero Brian Eno advices, turn off the options, turn up the intimacy (I was actually looking for another article from Wired about how consumers are in fact turned off by systems that are too complex… and so on). Pinball is where it’s at, man; but there’s a problem in communication, i.e. advertising, distribution, and so on.

On another note, a friend of mine just got back from Thailand, and he arrived bearing a “Wii” game called “Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection.” It has ten games on it, including Taxi, Funhouse, Gorgar, and Jive Time. And maybe I shouldn’t put quotes around Wii, since this actually looks sort of like a legit title. At any rate, here is your next article, NY Times!

The fate of the World rests in the tips of your fingers.

Danny “Backglass” Belrose was the undefeated winner of the Portland Pinball League tournament Saturday at Ground Kontrol classic arcade.

Backglass, who has been playing pinball for over 20 years, finally ended his streak of poor performances on the tournament level. He defeated all comers on Haunted House, Kingpin, Pirates of the Caribbean, Road Show and then ended his reign of terror by putting his initials on the board during the championship round of the Simpsons.

“When I got to the final round, all I was thinking about was Michael Jordan, Albert Pujols, and Wayne Gretzky,” Backglass said. “I even went to look at Jordan’s picture on Space Jam, but apparently they got rid of that piece of shit months ago.”

Backglass would like to thank all the members of CFF for their support, as well as Kashi Vai, Sid Vicious, Eddie Van Halen’s striped guitar, and Douglas Jeffers.

Polaroid by Herb.