Medieval Madness

There have been pinball machines at the office since before I started here. But they stayed in disrepair until we moved to the new office and a couple of pinball-minded coworkers (like Aaron here) hired a repair guy to come work on them. Now they see regular maintenance, and there’s a bit of a pinball subculture around the office. Medieval Madness is the table of choice for most, and so whatever motivation drove me to master the unwieldy pipe car in Mario Kart made me want to get good at our other table, Star Trek: The Next Generation. That game is capricious and cruel, but once you get to know it, it can be quite exciting. As I’m the only one who’ll put up with its sadistic, seemingly random ball drainage, I currently populate its high score lists all by myself. There’s something else that draws me to the TNG machine: when I was a kid, visiting my cousins in St. Louis, they used to eat dinner on trays in the living room while watching Star Trek TNG every evening. I was so impressed at how they knew all the lore, recognized the recurring side characters, and recalled the outcomes of reruns. I wished I’d followed such a detailed show, and had someone to enjoy it with me to the same degree. They even had the Star Trek Technical Manual. Now I’m trying to line up some time to borrow my friend Nathaniel’s DVD sets and watch TNG myself.