Pachinko

Why would one stand pinball on end and call it »Pachinko?« Equally, why would one lay pachinko flat and dub it »Pinball?«

It's a pretty cool game with flashing steel balls and metal pins that make satisfying sounds when they collide. It's almost like the name pachinko was based off of these sounds. A neighbor of mine had a pachinko game, but I think it would be more fun to play one of the games in a pachinko parlor in Japan.

when i was growing up, we had pachinko in our dank, moldy basement. it was there when my parents bought the house. we's spend hours sending those little metal balls dancing down in their erratic patterns. the noise must have driven my mother mad. it was installed on the wall outside a little storage room. if you were to go into the storage room, you could see all the inner workings of the pachinko, the balls moving through innumerable plastic pathways, ultimately dropping down to the wooden ramps where they would roll down, plunk to the next level, roll down again, plunk, roll and plunk till they landed in the bucket of balls, which we would grab eagerly and pour back into the pachinko machine endlessly.

Al Pachinko, fading toughguy movie star of generic slavic descent, found himself alone at night more and more often as his hair thinned and his waist thickened. It happens to a lot of guys, but Pachinko had thought somehow he'd be spared. Had he not starred opposite the luscious and lovely Lola, rescuing her from the sadistic grip of Rimm Grieper just in the nick of time, thereby earning her sweet and sweaty favor, audience acclaim, and what was then a record per-film salary for his next 2 movies?

alas they were failures. it was not long after the second was declared DOA that his hair began to fall. Soon after that, a long-dormant fondness for kielbasa, piroshkes and dumplings reasserted itself, with predictable effect on his waistline. Now he's offered are roles for old fat bald guys, and he'd rather die.

Sooner or later, of course, he'll get his wish.