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I sat down for a long interview with Steve Ritchie Pinball designer extraordinaire at Pintastic NE 2022 day 1 in Sturbridge ma at the Sturbridge Host Hotel
The greatest thing about the man and this interview is the joy he clearly has in the hobby and the game that has no diminished over the decades.
Here are a few shots and interviews from day one of Pintastic NE 2022
There is one in the extra ball lounge but the line to get to it is always long
speaking of the extra ball lounge
The Weird Al game was here too
of course not all that is here is pinball, there are some classic video games and memorabilia here to wit:
Like me the folks from the Bottomless pit of treasures have not missed a pintastic
Speaking of someone who is at every Pintastic
Gabe noted I looked a tad tired as well. He must be right because I crashed in my room and slept like a log for 10 hours
I’ll be putting up individual posts of my interviews with Steve Ritchie and Todd Tuckey but lets close this post with the coolest image of the day
You don’t get cooler than a designer playing one of his own games
By John Ruberry
“There’s no law west of Dodge and no God west of the Pecos.”
James Pepper (Ben Johnson) in Chisum.
“The devil in hell, we’re told was chained
A thousand years he there remained
He neither complain nor did he groan
But was determined to start a hell of his own
Where he could torment the souls of men
Without being chained in a prison pen
So he asked the Lord if he had on hand
Anything left when he made this land
The Lord said yes, there’s a plenty on hand
But I left it down by the Rio Grande
The fact is ol’ boy, the stuff is so poor I don’t think you could use it as the hell anymore
But the devil went down to look at the truck
For after lookin’ that over carefully and well
He said this place is too dry for hell
But in order to get it off his hands
The Lord promised the devil to water the land
So trade was closed and deed was given
And the Lord went back to his home in heaven.”
Johnny Cash, Mean As Hell.
Earlier this month Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I spent ten days in Texas, mostly West Texas. And yes, there is law there and there is a God west of the Pecos too.
I covered my economic and political observations of our Texas trip, including what I noticed in the boom towns on the Permian Basin, Midland and Odessa, in a post at Da Tech Guy that is available here.
Our first stop on note was on the oil producing basin, Monahans Sandhills State Park, where we found the type of dunes you’ll encounter on the Sahara.
Our first West Texas overnight stop was west of the Pecos, in Fort Stockton, home of what was once the World’s Largest Roadrunner, Paisano Pete.
Then of course we had to visit Marathon, after all, I am the Marathon Pundit. Parts of a sadly overlooked movie, Paris, Texas, were filmed there.
Then it was on to Terlingua, a former mercury mining settlement, turned ghost town, which is now the closest thing to a tourist gateway town to our main destination, Big Bend National Park, where you will discover desert, mountains, and lots of thorns, Cash discusses “thorns” later in his spoken word Mean As Hell piece that I excerpted above.
Big Bend was our main destination for this trip, a gorgeous but little-visited national park because of its isolation. Perched on the border with Mexico on the Rio Grande, it is a seven-hour drive from Dallas and a five-hour drive from San Antonio.
To the west of the national park is Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas’ largest state park, where we kayaked and spent our last day in the Big Bend region. It’s a beautiful park too and well worth at least a day of your time.
The biggest dud of the trip was our attempt to witness the Marfa Lights. Well, we were in Marfa, where much of the George Stevens’ classic Giant was filmed, and the lights, which some people compare to the will o’ the wisp, were not to be found, as is usually the situation every night, despite a viewing stand. Marfa is a leftist outpost where we encountered a human thorn. When picking up a pizza, Mrs. Marathon Pundit was scolded by a cashier in because she was not wearing a mask. In Texas! But my wife held her sandy ground.
On Easter Sunday it was on to pentagon-shaped Jeff Davis County; yes, it’s named for Jefferson Davis, the president of the confederacy, where we toured historic Fort Davis, a frontier fort that seems to be a time capsule from a John Ford western movie. And we drove on the Davis Mountains Scenic Loop, among the sites of worth there is the McDonald Observatory.
On our way back to Dallas-Fort Worth, we met a Facebook friend in Sweetwater.
The next day we were back in the Chicago area, the home of grifters, high taxes, and high crime.
And many human thorns.
Related post:
Texas is success and Illinois is failure.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
Despite having never used drugs in my life I have a penchant for breaking into incontrollable laughter if I find something funny. It’s happened a few times at inconvenient movements in my life and last Friday I just ducked the situation at the daily mass at the convent.
On Friday’s I take a former co-worker Claire to morning mass at St. Leo’s in Leominster. During the wintertime the mass is moved to the convent so the elderly sisters don’t have to go out in the cold., I had been running late and we got there just as the sermon was starting.
I have a pet peeve about nuns who don’t wear the habit and none of the nuns there do (which is why I suspect it is populated only by elderly nuns with no new vocations mixed in but I digress.) I never forgot when I was a 9 year old kid and my mother came to pick me up at St. Anthony’s just as the the whole “not dressing like a nun” movement got started there was a young pretty sister who was leaving the school and a guy in a coverable saw her and tried to pick her up. She shot him down in a hurry and then made the mistake in the heat of the moment saying something to my mother about it who had pulled up behind the guy who hit on her.
My mother wasn’t one to volunteer her thoughts but when the sister expressed her outrage she replied in the most blunt terms I had ever heard; “If you want to be treated with the respect of a nun then maybe you had better dress like one!” I had never seen anyone tell off a nun before and the shock was still on the sisters face as we drove off but I never forgot it.
So when Claire, and her sister who had the day off & I entered the convent chapel we had to split up due to seating and I found myself with a group of old women, in theory all of them might have been nuns but as not one of them were dressed as one, not even a wimple, to mind mind I had no idea who was a nun and who was not.
That was until communion.
At communion one of the older ladies went to the alter to get the consecrated hosts out of the tabernacle for the priest. After giving her communion the priest was about to leave the alter when suddenly the lady abruptly stopped him pointing to his shoes and noting that his shoelaces were untied not moving out of his way until he tied his shoes and then proceeding to the back of the chapel where she would give communion.
It was the only time I’ve been glad that I was wearing a mask because all I could think of was this scene from the Classic Three Stooges Short Three Little Pirates:
The stooges are shipwrecked off deadman’s Island a place that has not changed since the 1600’s they are brought before the governor [Vernon Dent] who looks at their sailor’s outfits and says:
Governor: I never saw sea faring men dressed like that, I don’t believe they’re sailors!
[His betrothed [Christine Mcintyre] walks in and the stooges all immediately turn and wolf whistle at her together.]
Governor: They’re sailors all right!
That lady wasn’t in a habit so I didn’t believe she was a nun, but once she stopped the priest and made him tie his shoes I thought: That’s a nun all right.
Struggling to keep from laughing out loud is likely not the best disposition to be in when receiving the Body of Christ but it was the best I could do and I was very happy to get out of there quickly before my inappropriately timed mirth became too apparent.
I still can’t vouch for the other ladies there but from this point on I’ll know that at least one of them is a nun.
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