vier.sieben

[cosmolinguist]

Last night reminded me that it's actually been quite a long time since random strangers thought I was on a date when I wasn't. For years I've been noticing the tendency of people in restaurants and movie theatres to treat me and n weirdly, where n is any friend of mine who happens to be male. I don't like it when the guy is expected to pay for everything (which is true even on the few actual dates I've had), but otherwise I am amused.

And last night the random friend who happens to be male paid for the movie (Hellboy, of all things, and we even enjoyed it) and food (at Perkins) anyway. Not out of chivalry so much as him having more money than I.

He even gave me quarters for three games' worth of pinball, since we got to the movie early and were waiting for another person to show up anyway. I apparently impressed him with my pinball skills, though I thought I was hardly in wizardly form. (He plays all kinds of video games. But this is my kind of game; give me any modern console or computer game and I'll suck, but with pinball I can actually achieve some success!) It's been ages since I played pinball on anything but other people's computers or my cell phone, and consequently I didn't think I was very good. I did enjoy the experience of getting to actually see flashing lights and feel the machine rattle under my touch, but I'm romantic and cheesy and old-school about that sort of thing.

The other thing I enjoy about real pinball is that the scores are always outrageous; you get millions of points for everything, so you feel really good about yourself. So I ended up with eight hundred million points once (only three or four hundred million, or so, the other two times) and felt really good about myself.

Comments

Pertinant question

[xsilverfox.livejournal.com]

What pinball machine was it?

I haven't played pinball since last summer, a billards place in Hopkins that has about 20 machines. I think you'd enjoy it.

Re: Pertinant question

[cosmolinguist]

Just the one in the movie theatre in Alex. I commented that I'd barely noticed it was there at all before, but then realized that it was probably because I'm probably not used to getting to movies there half an hour early. It was a good one; I liked how the game was set up.

[tragicallyjulia.livejournal.com]

Pinball is the best arcade game EVER. My friend Laurie and I used to play a pinball game at a pizza parlor when we were in high school. I don't remember what the theme of it was, but they later replaced it with a Guns 'n' Roses pinball game and we were seriously pissed off. We tried playing it some, just for the lack of other pinball machines, but it wasn't the same, so we stopped. :-)

[photomoviegeek.livejournal.com]

I love real pinball games! Problem is the cool ones are generally too expensive. Sometimes when I'm driving home to my folks' (5 hours) I'll stop halfway in Watertown & play at a truck stop. but sometimes i'll just buy a porno mag instead. Pinball on a computer screen just isn't as cool.