Shorty’s 12th: Total Success!

Posted: November 16th, 2009 by dropshot

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.

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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.

p10002622Unfortunately 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.

p1000257 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.

p1000269And 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.

p1000272 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.

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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!


Categories: CFF,CFF Friends,Pinball

Comments: 13 comments



 

13 Responses to 'Shorty’s 12th: Total Success!'

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  1. dropshot   16 Nov 09 at 5:06 pm

    I am also very well aware of many typos after reading it after I published it. I guess that is why their are editors. I’m not Rom and you are bummed you didn’t come up and you know it!



  2. Dannybackglass   16 Nov 09 at 5:24 pm

    Nice recap. I love Shorty’s. Best bar in the world. I love the format. LONG LIVE BRIBES AND EXTRA BALLS! And Team 8 Iron!



  3. cAyle   16 Nov 09 at 6:56 pm

    Good write up, was great to play with and see all of you.

    Hope to see ya guys soon! :)

    -cAyle



  4. Noah   16 Nov 09 at 7:04 pm

    Aaron – how the hell did you remember all of that??? Great write up and thanks again for the text updates for the car ride home.

    Noah



  5. dropshot   16 Nov 09 at 7:14 pm

    Strongbow helps fight against memory loss and considering I was one of the first out and was then ‘coaching’ a few players I was able to watch. Also, I knew someone needed to do a write up. All the pictures were taken when only 16 or so were left so sorry if you aren’t in one, also sorry if I forgot how you got beat or when you won. Cuz like Larry said you’re all losers.



  6. ROM   16 Nov 09 at 7:23 pm

    Yeah, I know. Sounds like it was fun. Ah well.

    Congrats to everyone on their showing. And great write-up!

    (I only have some minor edits in mind – and they all have to do with “your” “you’re” and such. You dudes never get those right. But grammar matters, man!)



  7. dropshot   16 Nov 09 at 7:32 pm

    Feel free to edit it all of it, i just noticed a bunch more. i didn’t have the mental capacity to edit it after I wrote it. It only took me like 25 min to type it all so my brain was shot.



  8. fred   17 Nov 09 at 10:19 am

    Nice recap! Yeah, that tournament was fun as all hell. Even though I went out early it was definitely worth staying to the end to watch Cayle tear up that Barracora! Plus it was a blast hanging out with all the Seattle folks!! Thanks for having us!



  9. deathsave   17 Nov 09 at 12:17 pm

    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.
    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.
    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.
    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.
    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.
    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.
    i thought i was good at mortal kombat.



  10. fred   17 Nov 09 at 1:02 pm

    Ha! I think I saw like 200 fatalities in a row. Elijah was definitely destroying that game, despite his near inability to stand!



  11. Maka   17 Nov 09 at 4:25 pm

    You fuckers! I’m still not sure how “drawing” Evel was in my favor, but I did smoke him on it, so I owes yous guys. Shots of lukewarm gin all around!



  12. Eden   18 Nov 09 at 7:22 pm

    EXCELLENT write-up Aaron… and SHIT, I DID forget that beer… I wish you had mentioned it (or reminded me before I went down actually)…

    I still owe you some!! Next time!! : D



  13. bounceback   21 Nov 09 at 2:11 pm

    it won’t be TOTAL success until we take the top 3, but nice job everyone. way to represent portland! makes me regret i didn’t take soundcard’s ride offer, but you can’t change history, and maybe me keeping a spiritual foundation in PDX sent you strength. yeah… that was totally it…

    anyway, awesome work, hope to see Eden & Cayle back our way soon.




 

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