{"id":24768,"date":"2017-05-17T21:10:27","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T04:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/frustration\/"},"modified":"2017-05-17T21:10:27","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T04:10:27","slug":"frustration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/frustration\/","title":{"rendered":"Frustration"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have no hobby that causes me greater frustration than\u00a0pinball.<\/h3>\n
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Photo by Bill Guerriero<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve spent hours working on making the perfect cake for a dinner party, only to see it crack and turn out miserably dry on the sides and perilously undercooked in the center. Even if I took my spatula and attempted to remove the cake in one piece, I\u2019d instead end up with a plate of chocolate crumbs.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent an enormous amount of time writing a show with a writing partner, toiling over the thankless logistics of booking a space, auditioning a cast, and directing pages of material, only to end up opening to a house with three\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

But nothing in my life has ever compared to the Sisyphean torment that is\u00a0pinball.<\/p>\n

Pinball is?\u2014?from every angle?\u2014?immensely frustrating. If you\u2019re a new player, it\u2019s a confusing overload of flashing lights, loud sounds, and impossible controls. You just pushed start, and your game is over in less than 30 seconds. If you\u2019re a skilled player, the game could exhibit a mild lean in one direction?\u2014?or it might not recognize when the ball rolls over a switch, preventing a key objective from being triggered, or the flippers could be weak. The lights could be burnt out. The rubber could be just not bouncy enough<\/em>. You could be doing everything right, and aiming the ball at everything perfectly, and then see the ball leap over your flipper <\/em>and down the center. Most of us believe that pinball is a two dimensional game and when the ball decides to disagree, it feels as if the machine is voiding the implied contract we have with it but they\u2019re entirely indifferent to our\u00a0woe.<\/p>\n

Owning your own machine might make you more familiar with a table\u2019s quirks, but then you could have just potentially spent in the neighborhood of seven thousand dollars on a luxury entertainment item that constantly breaks<\/em>. The very objective of pinball is to beat the machine down into its component parts. Any pinball game involves you firing a large steel ball bearing at remarkably high speeds at softer, weaker, objects. The ball could snap through the plastic, run dents into the soft wood that makes the field, or pick up dirt and turn your formerly shiny pristine piece of pop art into a sludgy, murky\u00a0mess.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re one of the few manufacturers that survived past the Pinball Boom, you\u2019re dealing with obsessive nerds who are extremely peculiar and justly want their several-thousand-dollar expenditure to feel like it was worth it. The machine breaks too much, it\u2019s too hard, it\u2019s not hard enough, the construction is cheap, the toys are weird, you didn\u2019t work hard enough on it, it\u2019s overworked. Every time someone stops by the factory, they marvel that you still exist, reminding you that you\u2019re constantly on the knife\u2019s edge of obsolescence. Why wouldn\u2019t you be? Isn\u2019t pinball just too frustrating?<\/em><\/p>\n

So, why waste your time with the above? Why throw your precious quarters (or, increasingly, dollar bills) towards that feeling of acid rising up your gut? Why spend your time and money to just feel bad and powerless? Isn\u2019t the world enough of a\u00a0bummer?<\/p>\n

I have long held a theory that pinball succeeds not in spite of this litany of problems, but entirely because of it. There\u2019s certainly joy to be had in the old-timeyness of it, the baked-in nostalgia if you happened to grow up playing it, as I did?\u2014?the tactile nature of balls and bumpers and bells in an increasingly sterile and digital\u00a0world.<\/p>\n

But, for me, and I suspect many others, the real joy of pinball is the joy of those few moments where you\u2019re able to impose a sense of order on a world of deep chaos. When you\u2019re able to take those two clumsy flippers and somehow make them sing, despite their deep suspicion towards your intercession of their rest. To triumph over electronic entropy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an old saw to say that you climb a mountain \u201cbecause it was there,\u201d but the true joy of pinball is that the machine exists only to frustrate you. While pinball has some vestiges of victory?\u2014?high scores and wizard modes?\u2014?ultimately it will beat you. Chaos defeats order. The ball has to go down the center, or the left side, or the right. The frail plastic pieces will yield to the impossibly fast metal ball. Yet, for a moment?\u2014?and perhaps a moment is all it will give you?\u2014?you\u2019ll have understood that progress can win over the cruelty of the elements, the esoteric rules can be understood despite the din, and frustration can yield to ecstasy, however fleeting it may\u00a0be.<\/p>\n

This is the first of potentially many stories where I write on thoughts I\u2019ve held on the deeply weird hobby of\u00a0pinball.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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I have no hobby that causes me greater frustration than\u00a0pinball. Photo by Bill Guerriero I\u2019ve spent hours working on making the perfect cake for a dinner party, only to see it crack and turn out miserably dry on the sides and perilously undercooked in the center. Even if I took my spatula and attempted to… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":24769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t