Foosball Fanatic Gets Update

I decided to try TypePad software recently and liked it so much that I've moved my old blogs there. I wrote Foosball Fanatic over ten years ago, before blogs and blog software even existed! Back then I used to post the stories to a place called Usenet. Old time Internet users remember Usenet as kind a giant forum shared by ISPs. Today, very few people read Usenet, although you can still find remnants of it at Google groups, instead it is much more common to post to blogs or forums.

I started playing foosball on Johnny Lott's tables at the Bull N Mouth in Riverside California. Terry Blanco ran tournaments in Hemit and that's where I first tried the Tornado table. After a year or two of drunken double rum and coke bar play, I thought I was pretty hot and challenged a lad to a game at a place called Foggy's Notion in San Diego. That man's name was Sparkey Lylle and let me just say that Sparkey spanked me seven games in a row. I might of been lucky to score three points. He had just started using a shot, that Terry Moore had just started using called the "roll over". Very few people had even seen the shot and I was lucky that Sparky showed it to me and I was also one of the first players in the Inland Empire to start using the shot in tournaments. Back then we called the shot the coil-snake or coiler or snake. Lots of people said it was cheating, but at the end of the day, it helps give foosball a boost and grew the sport.

In the early 90s I used to play three or four times a week at places like Long Beach, James Games, Events, and Rack Em Up. At one point I had 15 tables on location in Cucamonga and was running a couple tournaments a week with noobie young hackers. Terry Blanco helped out and we had a very successful and fun points race quarterly for six months to a year. I also enjoyed hitting most of the tour events with my young partner at the time Joey "Circus Master" Smith. Who do you think named him "Circus Master"? I also enjoyed playing several mixed doubles or amateur events with Missy Baker.

I believe Jim Stevens and Christina Fuchs attribute me as the person that gave them their first computer on which they wrote many an Inside Foos newsletter on. I had a spare Macintosh at work and traded Jim a Mac for several years worth of their awesome Inside Foos vhs videos. Jim recently sent me a dvd!

I'm "A.D." Dunn and these are my foosball adventures from the mid early 90s.

Comments

[quesokid]

cool looking site. Quick question: What table do you prefer? Dynamo or Tornado?

[Andy Dunn]

I like Tornado tables since they seem to be most popular in US based tournaments. Dynamo makes a nice table as well. I own an old Tornado Coin Op. :)

[Farid]

nice site/blog/whatever!
anyway, been to www.foosball.com.my before?
we play on Tornado mostly...

[FriskyPirate]

Your site looks awesome Farid and I dig the software you're using! Noce work. :)

[Russell Love]

A.D!! Get the spelling right! It's "Sparky Lyell" and for the record Terry got the shot from me! He made it famous because he had a better 5 bar then me as I was a rookie playing pits for him.