*Tommy's game in the Who's rock opera "Tommy"

Usage examples of pinball.

Lenz had, freakishly enough, ended up her human pinballing with her bare and unspeakably huge backside wedged tight in the open window of the potty, so forcefully ensconced into the recesstacle that she was unable to extricate, and the bus continued on its northward sojourn the rest of the way up 24 with Mrs.

Downtown, in the Greyhound station, Zoyd put Prairie on top of a pinball machine with a psychedelic motif, called Hip Trip, and was able to keep winning free games till the Vineland bus got in from L.

Within two or three successive seconds, millions of people in widely separated areas-factory and office workers, farmers, housewives, shoppers, salesclerks, restaurant operators, printers, service station attendants, stock-brokers, hoteliers, hairdressers, movie projectionists and patrons, streetcar motormen, TV station staffs and viewers, bartenders, mail sorters, wine makers, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, pinball players .

There were so many other magazines hungry for fiction that the mar­ket for stories was like a pinball machine.

In the submarine sanctum of the club itself you will find a Playboy pinball machine (the artwork depicts Hef flanked by two playmates in their nighties), a video game with a handwritten Out of Order notice taped to its screen, some backgammon tables, a wall of framed centrefolds, and an oval bar where two or three swarthy loners sit slumped over their drinks, staring at the waitresses with an air of parched and scornful gloom.

I beat Jim at the pinball machine for a quarter, then emptied the buckets in the crapper and got fresh water.

The radically redesigned playfield apparently went against the grain of the company that traditionally has been the most conservative of pinball manufacturers, and after a brief run it was dropped from their line.

From the diner they went to the Pinball Pit, an amusement arcade that was one of the chief gathering places for young people in Santa Leona.

Pinball increased in popularity through the 30s and the manufacturers vied with each other to give the game more action and greater ball control.

They have twelve lanes of candlepin bowling with cranky automatic pinsetters that usually take the last three days of the week off, a few ancient pinball machines, a juke featuring the greatest hits of I957, three Brunswick pool tables, and a Coke-and-chips counter where you also rent bowling shoes that look like they might have just come off the feet of dead winos.

Before I had left on this trip I had lain awake at night in my bed in England and pictured myself stopping each evening at a motel in a little city, strolling into town along wide sidewalks, dining on the blueplate special at Betty's Family Restaurant on the town square, then plugging a scented toothpick in my mouth and going for a stroll around the town, very probably stopping off at Vern's Midnite Tavern for a couple of draws and a game of eight-ball with the boys or taking in a movie at the Regal or looking in at the Val-Hi Bowling Alley to kibitz the Mid-Week Hairdressers' League matches before rounding off the night with a couple of games of pinball and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Although widely franchised and primarily located in suburbia, Shakey's did not truly qualify as "fast food" because most of its business was eat in, as opposed to carry out, attempting to replicate urban pizzerias, albeit with player pianos and pinball machines for the customers' entertainment.

Because old Mr Keene was a grouch and wouldn't let kids under twelve eat their stuff at the soda fountain (he claimed the pinball machines in the back room might corrupt them), they took the frappes in two huge waxed containers up to Bassey Park and sat on the grass to drink them.

An almost endless mushroom forest of tables covered the shiny main floor, with silver-clad figures speeding between them like pinballs off bumpers-a thousand waiters and waitresses, two thousand, more, all moving swiftly and frictionlessly as beads of mercury.

With studied gracelessness he shuffled around his four-room office — televisions, hi-fis, a pinball machine, De Palma film posters, curved white tables, orderly work-surfaces.