International Pinball Day

After featuring Wednesday in this space a few weeks ago, I went down an MJ Lenderman rabbit hole. A founding member of the band, Lenderman no longer tours with the group after ending a relationship with lead singer Karly Hartzman before their most recent album was released. Since then, I discovered his presence on Waxahatchie’s sublime 2024 single Right Back to It (I like this so much I’m gonna drop it as a twofer in our SoTW playlists) before indulging in some of his solo work, particularly this week’s Song of the Week, Wristwatch, off of the album Manning Fireworks, also from 2024. I also discovered I’m about a year behind major music outlets in recognizing the talent on display here, but this is a pinball newsletter, after all. With that in mind, there is a pinball tie-in here. A profile on Lenderman published in GQ from February of this year features a photo of the artist in front of a Whirlwind pinball machine. It looks like his bedroom or perhaps a studio space, so maybe he’s one of us?

Today marks the first official International Pinball Day (aka Roger Sharpe’s birthday). National Pinball Day, as it was previously known, was a movement started in 2019 by Joe Ciaravino. This year, he’s taking it global and to commemorate the occasion, Joe has dropped by our lovely website to share his thoughts on the day, plus a new quote from Roger himself.

I’ve been exchanging notes back and forth with Max and zap for months now about their incredible homebrew project, Hypnotron II. We finally connected for an international live chat this week, and this is the result. I’m proud of how it turned out. As a bit of a peek behind the curtain, I’m dreadfully bored by the standard question/response interview format. You know the one. It goes like “Kineticist: thoughtful question, Interviewee: sculpted response”. Like any tool in a kit, there’s a place for them, but I’m so much more interested in exploring interview formats like the Hypnotron II piece moving forward.

Ask and ye shall receive. Jack Danger started ramping up his community engagement fodder with a Facebook post asking for public domain pinball theme ideas. It just so happens we’ve been tracking community theme requests for 3 years running in our Hype Index. I’ve never published the complete list before, for reasons, but what the hell. It’s not state secrets. Some of these are dumb, some are cool, and some are just funny. All I ask is if you make anything fun that was inspired by this list, let me know!

As an aside, for International Pinball Day, check out this archived licensing report that Roger Sharpe put together for Williams in April of 1996, archived by Louis Koziarz. I wish I could read more!

In what might be a first for pinball, The Electric Playground released an officially authorized pinball topper extension. This add-on for the included official topper for DPX’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland adds an interchangeable archway with thematic quotes (more on this in a second), integrated light shows, and a motorized Jabberwock figure. I saw a preview of it last week, and I was really impressed with the work and how well it integrated with the machine. As I told Rob of TEP, it felt like an OEM piece.

So on the thematic quotes - I find this to be hilarious in a our-society-is-so-cooked kind of way. But, the default quote used in promotional materials and as the installed option for the archway is “Not all who wander are lost”, which sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland. I mean, Etsy schlock is filled with it. It’s even used prominently on the rules card for the game. But as was pointed out by others in the community earlier in the week, it’s not a quote from Alice. It’s from Lord of the Rings. Anyway I pointed this out to Rob, and we had some fun with it by publishing our Discord DMs on the topic. If it’s something that bothers you as a prospective buyer, they have 8 additional quote options to choose from.

Since some of our readers aren’t on Facebook, here’s the whole bit in screenshots:

Ryan and Scott from Pinball Map run a regular series that highlights one new or interesting pinball location each week. This week, Ryan writes about District 82.

I used to frequently gamble on pinball games. Our preferred method was to (gently) slap a U.S. Presidential dollar coin, which were gold in appearance and so we called them “goldies”, onto the playfield glass. When this happened, my companion became my opponent, and they either needed to call the bet or sit aside on the stool of shame, if there was a stool nearby. Some presidents were, for unknown reasons, more exciting to us. For example, the James Buchanan coin, while not exactly rare, was considered a more desirable dollar than, say, a James Madison. If a “buke” was plopped down, it meant a high stakes match. But in the end the stakes were always the same and never very high - just a dollar - and that helped keep this gambling in the realm of good ol’ American fun.

I have Roger Sharpe to thank for allowing me to gamble on pinball. Without him and his skillful plunge that proved once and for all that pinball is not a gambling game, the titans of NYC may have ascended to the thrones of U.S. politics and issued a nationwide ban. And then I wouldn’t be writing this. Fact is, I might not even be alive. But instead, he proved pinball isn’t gambling, so now I can gamble on it.

Happy birthday, Roger. Also, happy birthday to my sister, Mandy, whose birthday was last week. I forgot to tell her. I wonder if she’s reading this. To celebrate Mr. Sharpe, for this week’s Location of the Week, let’s find a cool place that has one - no, two! - of the machines he designed. That lands us at none other than De Pere’s District 82. District 82 is not exactly the diamond in the rough type of place we often feature in this series; it’s more like a monstrous cauldron overflowing with galleons and shining brightly on a hilltop, like the Jesus Christ of pinball locations, that we’re pretty much all aware of and happy to prostrate ourselves unto. Whenever someone submits a questionably-public location to Pinball Map, they say, “It’s like District 82!” and we’re always supposed to know exactly what they mean. D82 is that famous.

District 82 is preserving Mr. Sharpe’s legacy by housing both Barracora and Stingray. Stingray makes me smile because we’ll never again live in a world where “stingray” is the theme of a new machine. I used to surf a lot, and I have stepped on many stingrays (or one stingray many times?), though luckily I’ve never been actually stung by one. There was a small sandbar, during certain times of year, on the inside left at Coral Casino, and they liked to tuck in under the sand there. Stepping on one was like stepping on a giant pancake that panicked and flew away. I bet Mr. Sharpe was like, “hell ya” when they decided on this machine’s theme. Maybe they even flew him to Tahiti to research the topic. We’re fortunate that great spots like District 82 maintain such history. Wish I could say more about the place, but we’re out of space, and this is Roger’s day. And ours. Happy International Pinball Day.

District 82
800 O Keefe Road, De Pere, WI 54115
Website

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