# PNP 664- American Pinball SOLD, What NEXT?!+ Top 5 Tips To Play A Tourney

**Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2026-01-15  
**Duration:** 57m 51s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/pnp-664-american-pinball-sold-what-next-top-5-tips-to-play-a-tourney

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## Analysis

Orby discusses American Pinball's acquisition by J.B. Vincent LP, emphasizing the new ownership's manufacturing expertise and commitment to licensed titles and quality. He expresses cautious optimism about the company's future while critiquing past game designs like Barry O's Barbecue Challenge. The episode also covers Kiss pinball confirmation, Twippy voting plans, and personal reflections on Orby's holiday special podcast featuring Roger Sharp.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] American Pinball was acquired by J.B. Vincent LP (San Angelo, Texas-based company) — _Official press release read verbatim on show; J.B. Vincent LP announced acquisition marking new chapter for American Pinball_
- [MEDIUM] J.B. Vincent LP has experience acquiring undervalued companies and improving profitability through manufacturing excellence — _Orby's research: 'This company swoops in and they grab undervalued companies and they try to figure out a way to make them profitable, basically'_
- [HIGH] Kiss pinball is confirmed happening (not ACDC) — _Jason Knapp (NAP Arcade) reported confirmation; Orby notes 'Jason Knapp is write like 95% of the time'_
- [MEDIUM] American Pinball's Houdini is potentially the company's best game ever made — _Orby's opinion: 'I still think is their best' with praise for the melt cannon mech_
- [MEDIUM] Oktoberfest had persistent flipper power and geometry issues with the left ramp that made it difficult for top players to hit — _Orby: 'even top players in the world had a lot of problems hitting that stupid left ramp. There just wasn't enough power in the flipper'_

### Notable Quotes

> "This investment is about the future... Both American Pinball and Orbit Games have some elements we can build on. However, our top priority is building trust in the company."
> — **J. Brian Vincent**, ~25:00
> _Core statement of new ownership's strategy emphasizing trust-building after American Pinball's communication failures_

> "If an idea is really bad you gotta take it out behind the barn and shoot it... Barry's Barbecue, you gotta take it behind the barn and shoot it."
> — **Orby**, ~32:00
> _Orby's harsh critique of American Pinball's Barry O's Barbecue Challenge game, suggesting it should be discontinued_

> "The machines were built like a tank... pre David fixes era, the machines were built like a tank."
> — **Orby**, ~30:00
> _Praise for early American Pinball manufacturing quality before perceived design/build decline_

> "2026 is the year of peace. I want to have absolutely no pinball podcasting drama this year."
> — **Orby**, ~38:00
> _Personal goal statement indicating previous year drama with community members (Jengas, Don)_

> "I have this renewed vigor this renew, I have a speck just a speck of optimism that maybe maybe maybe after reading all morning about what JB Vincent has done with other companies."
> — **Orby**, ~28:00
> _Qualified optimism about J.B. Vincent's acquisition prospects based on their track record_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| J.B. Vincent LP | company | San Angelo, Texas-based investment/manufacturing company that acquired American Pinball Inc. and Orbit Games; focused on turning around undervalued companies |
| American Pinball Inc. | company | Pinball manufacturer being acquired; known for games like Houdini, Oktoberfest, Barry O's Barbecue Challenge; less than 50 employees |
| Orbital Albert (Orby) | person | Host of Pinball Nerds Podcast and Poor Man's Pinball Network; Canadian podcaster based in River Hibbert, Nova Scotia; competitive IFPA player |
| J. Brian Vincent | person | Managing partner of J.B. Vincent LP; new ownership figure for American Pinball; described as seasoned investor with brand imaging and manufacturing expertise |
| Roger Sharp | person | Pinball historian; featured on Orby's holiday special; Orby called interviewing him 'the highlight of my pinball podcasting career' |
| Kerry Hardy | person | Pinball content creator; interviewed on Orby's holiday special year-end review |
| Jason Knapp | person | NAP Arcade operator; highly credible pinball industry news source; confirmed Kiss pinball announcement |
| Glenn Wechter (Glenn the Skateboarder) | person | Pinball community member; appeared ~10 times on Pinball Nerds Podcast; has a dog named Oakley with health issues |
| George Gomez | person | Pinball designer; featured in JBS show and Roundtable year-end reviews; disputed cost assumptions about game development |
| Retro Ralph (Ralph) | person | Pinball content creator; co-host of Roundtable; hosts Flipside Podcast; appeared in Roundtable year-end review |
| Kale Hernandez | person | Co-host of Roundtable podcast; advocated for parsing long content into segments |
| Jamie | person | Host of JBS Show on YouTube; featured in year-end review podcast roundtable |
| Enzo | person | Top Patreon supporter of Pinball Nerds Podcast; featured in holiday special extended interviews |
| Rachel Risto | person | New Patreon supporter mentioned; appears to be pinball community member |
| Don | person | Pinball podcaster/content creator; had previous conflict with Orby; reconciled during Christmas special episode |
| Orbit Games | company | Also acquired by J.B. Vincent LP alongside American Pinball |
| Kaneda | person | Pinball podcast host; previously interviewed Orby |
| Barry O (Barry Oursler) | person | Legendary pinball designer (deceased); created Barry O's Barbecue Challenge; Orby respects him but criticizes the game concept |
| Eric Menyer | person | Pinball designer; created Pirates of the Caribbean mech praised by Orby |
| Seven's Pinball-O-Rama | organization | Pinball arcade venue with 40-50 unique machines near Charlottetown; operator known for machine reliability |

### Topics

- **Primary:** American Pinball acquisition and new ownership, J.B. Vincent LP's manufacturing and business track record, Kiss pinball confirmation, American Pinball game quality analysis (Houdini, Oktoberfest, Barry O's Barbecue)
- **Secondary:** Orby's holiday special and Roger Sharp interview, Twippy awards voting and year-end reviews, Pinball podcast community dynamics and drama resolution
- **Mentioned:** Content creation logistics (video streaming, equipment)

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.62) — Orby expresses cautious optimism about American Pinball's acquisition and new ownership direction, citing J.B. Vincent's manufacturing expertise and commitment to quality. However, he maintains criticism of past American Pinball games (particularly Barry O's Barbecue Challenge) and acknowledges the company needed this intervention. Overall tone is hopeful but measured, with significant caveats about execution and trust-building required.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** American Pinball needed intervention; company had been struggling with communication, game design quality, and market viability prior to acquisition (confidence: high) — Orby praises new ownership for priority on 'building trust' and notes 'You really need [this], American Pinball' in response to trust-building statement
- **[business_signal]** American Pinball Inc. acquired by J.B. Vincent LP, a San Angelo, Texas-based investment firm specializing in acquiring undervalued manufacturing companies and improving profitability (confidence: high) — Official press release announcing acquisition; J.B. Vincent LP described as having experience scaling manufacturing operations and improving company performance
- **[sentiment_shift]** Orby declares 2026 'year of peace' with zero tolerance for pinball podcasting drama; previous year conflicts with Jengas and Don have been resolved (confidence: high) — Orby: '2026 is the year of peace. I want to have absolutely no pinball podcasting drama this year' and notes reconciliation with Don on Christmas special
- **[community_signal]** Jason Knapp (NAP Arcade) confirmed Kiss pinball is happening instead of ACDC; Orby cites Knapp as ~95% accurate source (confidence: high) — Orby: 'Jason Knapp over there at Knapp's Arcade... Jason Knapp is write like 95% of the time... Kiss is for sure happening it's the real deal'
- **[design_philosophy]** Oktoberfest had persistent flipper power and geometry issues with left ramp; even top competitive players struggled with hittability (confidence: medium) — Orby: 'even top players in the world had a lot of problems hitting that stupid left ramp. There just wasn't enough power in the flipper and the geometry... wasn't very good'
- **[personnel_signal]** Ron is new public-facing voice for American Pinball (YouTube videos, customer communications); Orby notes improvement from previous radio silence but suggests more media-savvy hire would be beneficial (confidence: medium) — Orby: 'Ron is the new guy doing like the YouTube videos and kind of being the voice... His videos seem pretty good. I'd probably like someone a little bit more media savvy to get in there, but he's pretty good'
- **[product_concern]** Barry O's Barbecue Challenge should be discontinued; Orby advocates for discontinuing the game and not investing further resources in marketing or support (confidence: medium) — Orby: 'Barry's Barbecue, you gotta take it behind the barn and shoot it... don't spend another penny on that i wouldn't even spend penny on marketing or advertising for it'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Cautious optimism about American Pinball's future under new ownership; Orby describes 'a speck just a speck of optimism' based on J.B. Vincent's track record (confidence: medium) — Orby: 'I have this renewed vigor... I have a speck just a speck of optimism that maybe maybe maybe after reading all morning about what jb vincent has done with other companies'
- **[business_signal]** New ownership prioritizes trust-building with customers and employees after period of radio silence; focus on licensed titles and quality manufacturing as differentiators (confidence: high) — Direct quote from J. Brian Vincent: 'Our top priority is building trust in the company while fostering a positive and engaging culture for employees and customers'

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## Transcript

 All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Myth to syrup and honey Homestead life with his family in a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 664 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's show, the first one of the new year, I'm going to be talking about American pinball getting sold. That's right. But before that, I just want to thank everyone who took the time and energy to listen. And I do emphasize time and energy, okay, to listen to my holiday special. You know, I did say happy holidays and such, but also, more importantly, I kind of did a year-end review with a lot of people, including many, many, many ones that did end up behind the Patreon. I didn't expect for this to happen, but at the two-hour and 20-minute mark, it's as if the pinball gods themselves, during a very untimely moment, I might say, Glenn the skateboarder, Glenn Glenn Waechter himself, was talking to us about his dog Oakley, who unfortunately was not doing very well, telling us a really cool story. And for one reason or another, Audacity just stopped recording. And I had to, like, wait for Glenn to finish explaining his paragraph to tell him I'm so sorry it didn't get that whole last paragraph. and um you know i thought well this is this is a good opportunity i was thinking maybe maybe maybe just the carry hardy interview at the very end of the year-end review podcast i would put behind the patreon wall but i thought well what everyone's got to hear glenn you know uh you know on the show i think probably three four times in the last year what they and they i think glenn's been on the show at least 10 times now first 10 timer congrats to glenn thank you so much buddy shout out to oakley by the way, his dog. I'm not going to paywall that information. The dog is doing better. The dog has lost some weight, but they've kind of figured out what's going on. I think it's some type of autoimmune or something like that. So I'm not, I'm not paywalling the end of that story. Oakley is doing better. So shout out to Oakley. But I did end up doing another two and a half hours. I know I'm crazy, right? I ended up doing another two, well, two hours and 10, two hours and 10 minutes and two hours and 20 minutes. So it's a four and a half hour podcast. including, I forgot, my top Patreon, Enzo, I did not talk to after I ended the show, because I might have had a couple too many beers, and let's be honest, four hours into podcasting, anyone's brain could turn to mush, that's just too long for a pinball podcast, I get it, but I had to, I had to talk to Enzo, and I knew it, Enzo was like, a couple people I reached out to, and they're like, oh, it's just too late, it's just too late, it's just too late, I get it, even people in California were like, Orby, it's 3 a.m., man, what are you doing? So I started podcasting at like nine o'clock my time and i think i stopped podcasting at 5 30 because i had to like 10 a 10 minute break and maybe a 20 minute break to try to have some drinks and some food to prevent myself from getting too drunk which it did not work i will say this the first two and a half hours or so that the um it's well well over 400 probably getting closer to 450 of you that listen to that uh happy holiday merry christmas uh happy hanukkah because we did have roger sharp on shout to Roger Sharp. Thank you so much for being on the show. That was honestly, I'll say this, that's the highlight of my pinball podcasting career. And I'm not even going to say so far, I'll say just probably ever. It doesn't even matter. Even if I interviewed Roger Sharp again, five, 10, 20 years from now, I don't think it'd be as magical and fun and interesting. And you can hear it in my voice in the podcast, how excited I am to be calling him and talking to him about it. But this is all to say, thank you, thank you, thank you to my 22 paid Patreons. I know I lost – I thought honestly after doing such like – I don't think it's a revolutionary podcast. But after I did such a fun, cool, interesting podcast, I thought that there would be a lot of people in the next few weeks who would want to listen to the other two and a half hours plus behind the Patreon with Enzo, with Kerry Hardy, with Joe Chervino, with the other half of my conversation with Glenn the Skateboarder, and even a really fun heart-to-heart conversation I got to have with my son Hayden. so you know I thought a lot of people would want to listen to that and I'd get in a lot of patrons and I do want to give a big shout out to the one patron who I did get who's Rachel Risto thank you thank you thank you so much Rachel um she I'm sure she just was very curious to hear the end of it Rachel was also on the show that is not paywall though so to the 450 or so of you who have uh listened to the first episode please consider going back and listening to our year end reviews it's only we're only two weeks into January okay we just got the year end reviews uh kind of from Jamie and Kale and Rad Ralph, as I call him, or Retro Ralph, as you might know him, over there on the roundtable. We did hear, unfortunately, there's not going to be any roundtable awards. So I might try to talk one, two, or three of those guys into doing the square table awards. That's right. Invite a fourth in, have four sides, invite the fourth in, not for this year, but maybe for next year, right? Because I know I have an annual award show each year, but I usually do it after all the other award shows. I don't think I want to wait all the way to after the Twippies because I think the voting ends for the Twippies on the 20th. I do want to do a show where I tell you guys my Twippie votes. I usually do that each year. In fact, I might do that at the very end of this show. There has been quite a bit of news since I've been out here. But like I said, I've been so, so, so – I was hungover probably for five or six days. I can remember – this was December 23rd. I remember on Christmas Day, I could only have half a beer. I never leave half a soldier. I only had half a beer and I started to get gut rot and I remembered how bad my headache was for two days and I went, nah, no thank you. Thank you, but no thank you. So I think I had one Long Island iced tea as I do every single Christmas usually. I like to have one. It used to be Long Island iced tea and screwdrivers depending on the day. That was my jam. That was my jive. That's mostly what I drank until I became a craft beer nerd. And now I avoid hard alcohol like the plague because for me, hard alcohol is the plague. I essentially am a reformed, not weekend alcoholic. That's the wrong term. Binge drinker. I'm definitely a reformed binge drinker who's somewhat reformed. You know, I fall off the wagon from time to time and have a few too many. As you heard, I put life, limb, liver at risk to do that podcast. And instead of me getting a net gain from doing this awesome four and a half hour podcast, that was so fun and put my liver at risk for a future failure. What ended up happening was I ended up losing like four patrons, but two of them were paid and gaining one. So I had a net loss of one patron from doing that. At one point, we were up to 25 paid patrons. I'm down to 22 now. And you know what? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all those 22. I'm just here to say I bet one of you listening rate meow would like to go listen to uh let's be honest when I called Kerry Hardy it was probably about two hours after I said I was going to call him and I swear to god to you the the 22 patrons who have heard this who loved this show would be able to tell you this is my impression of Kerry Hardy answering I should have had the clip ready but this is my he's like hello I'm like hey Kerry how's it going he's like not bad I'm sitting on the couch watching a movie with my family and I was like oh okay well I won't keep you for long and anyways Kerry Hardy was very gracious he stayed way longer than I thought he would I did just want to wish him a happy holidays but also do a quick year-end review honestly I did uh I did go in maybe maybe because of the beers I went in a bit harder about uh how rough how tough the questions were for George Gomez but I wasn't as tough to Kerry Hardy as Kerry Hardy was to George Gomez. Mind you, Kerry Hardy thought he was just in for a light-hearted conversation and Orby was a bit drunk, so I apologize, Kerry Hardy. But please, to the 400 and some of you who have listened to this, the show, and not got to hear the second half, do what my man Kale just said. They released like a four-hour pod almost as long with George Gomez or a three-and-a-half-hour pod, which was awesome. Make sure you go listen to that. That was so cool. The last roundtable show, the JBS show, make sure you go like, follow, subscribe to Jamie on YouTube. But they released a almost four-hour, I believe, or three-hour-and-something-minute podcast with George Gomez, and they said that they got a lot of complaints that's too long. And Kale said the smartest thing that I've been saying on this show for the better part of a decade, guys. If the show is longer than you like, listen to part of it. In fact, this morning, the JBS show was almost two hours, so I listened to about half an hour, 45 minutes of it. Then I went and walked the dogs outside in the stupid freaking freezing rain here. It's like zero degrees and we're getting like rain slash hail slash freezing rain. And I almost wiped it with the dogs, but that's fine. My feet are still a little damp. I took off all my other clothes, but well, okay. I am reclothed, but I got rid of the wet clothing. I should have got rid of the socks. I thought, oh, they'll dry soon. Here I am hours later. They're still a bit damp. But anyways, I digress. Let's get back into it. Here today, if my show runs too long, parse it out into 15 minute or 20 minute. It doesn't really matter if I do five shows in a week where I do five 20-minute shows or I do one show that's an hour and 40 minutes. It shouldn't. So to one, if not two, if not three, four, five of you, because I'm your fifth favorite pinball podcast, go join Patreon. It's less than $5 a month. It's $4.20 a month. It's a buck a week. It's the cost of one game of pinball and one modern game of pinball, not an EM or a solid state. In fact, there's many pinball arcades here in Canada where it's $2 per play, especially on a new pin when they get it in which totally makes sense when you're spending you know 14 to 18 grand on a premium or god forbid an le and putting it on location you deserve to be getting two bucks a play right but anyways i am here today to talk about american pinball i just wanted all of you to know that like i honestly didn't ever feel like i even needed to for like a week i was like i don't even know if i want to come back and pinball podcast imagine if your claim to fame was like, I put fame in brackets because it's pinball podcasting. Okay, I get a couple hundred listens per show. All right. Even with Roger Sharp, I can't even break half a thousand. So now if I had had video for this, wow, I kept thinking, you know, I've gone through Orbeez Arcade. I thought somewhere at the very back of my closet in there with the end of my collectibles, I would find my three cameras I had for live streaming. I could not find them. The good news is I did some research on the two web cameras I had, and they're so freaking outdated. The one sells for like 30 bucks now on eBay and the other one for like 55 bucks. So even if I wanted to replace the best one in there, which I don't think I should do, I think at the very least you need like either a much, much, much, I think I have like a seven year old phone. I think it's like a 2018 Samsung Ace 4 or Ace 3 or something. I don't know. It's horrible. I have a very, very, very old crappy phone with a bad mic and poor camera quality. For some reason or another, I have a really cool gaming computer, which I'm using to record on right now and talk to you guys. This Acer, okay, it was, again, it was a good computer for live streaming and such back when I got it like six or seven years ago. It is a Nitro 6 or Nitro 5, I think it says. See, I need my glasses on when I do these shows. But I really want to start video recording. That was one of my things for this year. I'm still looking into it. And guess what? Now that I have this Patreon money, I'm going to take half of the money for the month as promised and spend it on family, spend it on groceries, maybe a cheeseburger or some craft beer, who knows, or some gummies. But the other half of it will go back into making the show better. So I'm either going to save up two or three months worth and say, wait till I have two to three hundred dollars and get a better camera or look into it to see if it's just a better option. And I'll talk to my oldest son, Hayden, there again, not on the show, of course, but just privately and ask him. He's really good with tech stuff. What is, like, by far the best camera I can get and what's the cheapest mic I can get to sync my audio and my video to look really good, to sound decent? You know, what can I come in for under $200, $300, $400? And if you're listening to this right now and you know what type of camera I should get, because honestly, it was such an entertaining episode. I had to bring a toaster out at one point because I couldn't find a lighter so for any keen listeners or audiophiles listening if you heard a toaster going down three or four times in the third or fourth hour I had lost both lighters I could find at the start of the show and I was in need of some stabilizing fresh air because I had a couple too many wobbly pops they were wonderful craft beers don't get me wrong but I had a couple too many and the thing is I have like this new rule where I go like beer water food beer water food you can't eat on a podcast it's like the number one rule you don't want you don't want to be listening to someone rant and rave about pinball and all of a sudden they're going and they're like or god forbid chips Eric I'm calling you out I love you buddy I didn't get to end up calling you I don't think on that show my good buddy from back home Eric sometimes when we're playing fortnight this man is eating chips and so matt and i have you have to mute yourself if you're you well but what if i'm what if all of a sudden you need a medic or what if i need help or what if i spot some people then swallow your mouth full of chips and unmute yourself you know what i mean i just i can't deal with it so i know you guys wouldn't want to have to deal with it it's bad enough even myself when i can hear from time to time me vaping or taking a puff of whatever in the background that's probably bad enough i try to pull back from the microphone so it's quiet But I thought this was so funny, and I was actually shocked by this. While I was watching the roundtable, Retro Ralph pulls back, and the picture goes off, and all of a sudden when they pull back and they cut it and Kale says something to him, and it cuts back to him and you just see a big pluff of smoke come out I like wait but retro Ralph doesn do the uh he doesn like I thought I heard him say he doesn really like nicotine Cause he tried doing those What are the mouth lozenges that have nicotine, whatever, whatever he does. The, uh, it's not school, it's not tobacco, but it's like a little pouch. I'll remember halfway through it. But anyways, you guys know what I'm talking about. They've taken off. They're very popular. A little thing you put in your mouth, uh, for nicotine releasing. But I heard that like Retro Ralph said one time that he had a little bit too much and it caused him anxiety because he hardly ever has nicotine, if at all. That's the that's the gist of it that I had got anyways. So it turns out, though, that he's vaping. But from what I understand, he also doesn't partake in the devil's lettuce. And from what I understand, he also doesn't partake in nicotine. So I guess my question would be, what the hell are you vaping over there? Is it like some relaxation blend of like lavender and rosemary and like, I don't know, like all that kind of stuff, like it's some herbal thing? Or do people just do like just for fun, just for the flavor, just for like just to get a pull? I don't know. Anyways, I should, I'm going to try to remember to message Ralph and be like, what were you vaping? I'm so curious. Anyways, let's beep, beep, beep, back up the Orbi truck, and we're going to just get right into talking about American Pinball being sold. Okay? Okay, so American Pinball had this release, and I do want to read it word for word. And the reason for that is because sometimes when I summize or summarize, summize, summarize? I think you can say it both ways. ACDC, both ways. Oh, yeah, we got to talk about that too. Kiss is coming instead of ACDC. Now, musically, I like Akadaka slightly better. I do not hate Kiss like I have traditionally disliked Aerosmith I like Kiss even better than Iron Maiden I like Kiss even I would say almost as good as ACDC but from a gameplay standpoint thank you thank you for bringing us this good news Jason Knapp over there at Knapp's Arcade oh my god he let us know that Kiss is for sure happening it's the real deal I mean Jason Knapp is write like 95% of the time. There's some other people in pinball that when they say it, it's like, nah, it's a coin flip. It's a 50-50 or something, right? But I want to read this American pinball announcement word for word. Let's, you know, I will spend more time talking about why I'm so excited about KISS later, but I've got to stay on track. That was one of my goals for this year's show is to stay on track slightly, slightly better and be a little bit less of a rambling man. Says a guy 15 minutes in that hasn't even talked about. The headline of the day, I woke up this morning at 6 a.m. bye elowen see you in a bit uh luna just went upstairs for her little morning nappy so cute but she dried off me got her feetsies a little dry before she went up there thank you toons uh all right luna tuna elowen agar there she is my favorite person on planet earth besides my wonderful wife my children my best friends my dad my cousin my niece my nephew and all my former co-workers of course but here we go for immediate release this came out just uh like now american pinball do not put out a press release at midnight eastern standard time come on but anyways for immediate release jb vincent lp announces acquisition of american pinball new ownership signals long-term investments in innovation brand growth and american manufacturing excellence now apparently this company has ran out of san Python Anghelo texas i don't even know if i've heard of San Python Anghelo. I'm sorry to 75% of the show who are Americans listening to the show that I haven't heard of it, but who knows? If it's anywhere near Houston, I'm sure that, well, I don't know. I only know like, wait, I was just watching the Houston Texans, right? The highlights. Who is everyone going for in football? Can I just say, I don't, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I was, I think I'm going for San Fran, the 49ers. I think, I think because I was J-Law and the Jaguars and they lost, right? So then I'm supposed to take over. I was originally going for the Eagles. Then I was going for the Chiefs and I think they're both gone. So I think I'm San Francisco. But back that truck up. Come on, Orby. Stay on track here. San Python Anghelo, Texas, January 15th. Okay. J.B. Vincent LP today announced that it has, I'm going to read a little quickly here, that it has acquired the assets of American Pinball Inc. marking a significant new chapter for the company. The acquisition positions for American Pinball for renewed growth, expansion, expanded innovation and a strengthened commitment to delivering licensed titles. Licensed titles. I'm going to slow it down there. This is good. Licensed titles paired with the highest quality manufacturing in the industry. So something I've said forever. I know even my buddy Seven there, and I'm glad to hear his health is doing better there at Seven's Pinball-O-Rama. They got about 40 or 50 fricking pinball machines there just outside of Charlottetown. Make sure you go visit them if you're on the east coast of Canada whatsoever or make a trip out there just to visit it because he's got not 50 sterns it's not a sternament when you go there he's got like 50 unique interesting different pinball machines you don't see hardly anywhere else but the most common one you that you that you'd see other places would be hot wheels and i know he's gone on record for saying after 20 000 plays he finally had to rebuild the flippers and that was it like flipper rubbers maybe a little bit of cleaning obviously but like you know the odd light i'm sure went out that he didn't mention but no mechanical issues so you know the the whole pun okay dad pun of the day i get one of these a day uh gtf gtf galactic tank force was made like a tank like even though there's air balls everywhere you never hear about it having very many mechanical issues actually that's not entirely true i think gtf did have some mechanical issues but pre david fix in minecraft i'm sorry david fix don't get mad at me but pre david fixes era before he took over the team there or whatever he was doing there, the machines were built like a tank. Every machine from my personal favorite by far, which is Houdini. How many pinball machines, how many pinball companies or manufacturers, their very best pinball machine is their first pinball machine they ever make? That's got to be so rare. Like America's Most Haunted. Imagine if every spooky pinball machine they made since America's Most Haunted was worse than that. Oh, my God. Think how bad that – it would make Blues Brothers look like a freaking masterpiece, man. Like, come on. Usually, pinball companies get better, better. But then, you know, October 1st, Oktoberfest, which for years and years and years – I actually remember being interviewed on Kaneda's, and I called – I accidentally called Oktoberfest Beer Fest because I loved the movie Beer Fest, by the way, by that whole team, Broken Lizard, I believe, that does, well, they most, you know, the schnozberries taste like schnozberries. You guys will hear me say meow from time to time. That's actually from Super Troopers. They're supposed to see how, and I know a fan of the show, Nick Greenan, even said to me, like, why do you always say meow instead of now? And I said, it's from Super Troopers. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. Like, I was right in that age from like, I don't know, 15 to 20, where movies like just imprint on you so heavily. And as a dude who liked extracurricular activities like chugging maple syrup, chugging alcohol, chugging beers, I loved watching Beer Fest and I loved watching Super Troopers. So I always thought, like, what a missed opportunity. If you were going to do a funny one-off that was only going to sell a couple hundred, it should have been about the funny Beer Fest. Now, Oktoberfest had some issues, the biggest of which was even top players in the world had a lot of problems hitting that stupid left ramp. There just wasn't enough power in the flipper and the geometry of the – like how they made it wasn't very good. So very similar to Walking Dead Remastered when they fixed that left ramp and just made it far more hittable. I would think if this new company, this J.B. Vincent LP, okay, if you are buying it and they're going to re-release their old titles because, you know, it – I don't care what George Gomez says. I love you, George Gomez. I don't think it costs half as much as making a brand new pin. I would say it might cost, especially if you don't have, you know, good pinball designers or very many of them are good pinball coders. They could revamp some of their old titles for very, very, very little money. Houdini has one of the coolest mechs, maybe the coolest mech I've ever seen outside of the Rockin' Ship and Pirates of the Caribbean by Eric Meunier. Okay. It has that melt cannon that shoots from the apron, from inside the apron to all the way to the back left corner, almost hitting the cab in the frickin' face. and it shoots it with oomph. So maybe they're, you know, and so Houdini, I still think is their best. Oktoberfest was all right, I guess. It played long. It was a very, very, very long player. So they need to do two things at once. They need to make it a shorter player, update the code, make the left ramp more hittable. Now, these are all things that probably aren't going to happen, but this is all to say, Barry's O'Barbecue, I'm sorry. I got to use my fellow Canuck. I don't always agree with him, even though I hear he was incredible in Marty Supreme, by the way. but mr wonderful okay kevin over there mr wonderful are you listening um he he basically said if an idea is really bad you got to take it out behind the barn and shoot it and i'm sorry american pinball are you listening but you gotta take barrio's barbecue behind the barn and shoot it not barry not barry o himself barry o i love you rest in peace awesome dude great designer but just the idea that machine just don't spend another penny on that i wouldn't even spend penny on marketing or advertising for it to be honest they have been running these wild sales which hopefully has been helping them sell a little but i guess what i'm i guess what i'm saying is i have this renewed vigor this renew i i have a speck just a speck of optimism that maybe maybe maybe after reading all morning about what jb vincent has done with other companies and they've won business awards most of them were small business awards from six or seven years ago But, you know, American Pinball is a relatively small business and, you know, in the grand scheme of things, right? They've got less than 50 employees. So they are considered still a small business, I think, to most of us. But it sounds like this company has some experience in manufacturing. They also have experience in taking companies that are not doing well and kind of like seeing a net positive and buying them that are undervalued. That's what they do. This company swoops in and they grab undervalued companies and they try to figure out a way to make them profitable, basically. So if what this company has done, I know Ron is the new guy doing like the YouTube videos and kind of being the voice. I don't know if he's customer service or marketing or relations or communications, that sort of thing. His videos seem pretty good. I'd probably like someone a little bit more media savvy to get in there, but he's pretty good. It's definitely better than the radio silence we've had from the last year from American Pinball. So before I expand into this too much, let me just finish reading this as quickly as possible. Expanded innovation and a strength and commitment to delivering licensed titles, that's important, paired with the highest quality of manufacturing in the industry. J.B. – sorry, J. Brian Vincent is a seasoned investor with a proven track record in brand imaging, product development and innovation, as well as scaling high-quality manufacturing operations. Under the direction and leadership of J.B. Vincent LP, the company will focus on building out a best-in-class team, enhancing product design, intellectual property, and building long-term value with honoring the craftsmanship and creativity that the pinball community expects. I don't know. Is this written by ChatGPT? GPT, sorry. I don't know why. I said it wrong once and I can't stop saying it wrong once. It's my dyslexia. Dyslexia? I don't know. I don't even know if I have that. Maybe a little. Maybe a touch. Maybe a touch of the tism, a little bit of the dicks. Who knows? All right. This investment is about the future, said J. Brian Vincent, managing partner of J. B. I'm not going to say, I'm just going to say J. B. for now on instead of J. B. Vincent Bryant LP Incorporated. Okay. So I'm just going to say JB. When I say JB, that's JB Vincent LP to you. All right. Both American Pinball and Orbit Games. Okay. They acquired Orbit Games as well. Both American Pinball and Orbit Games have some elements we can build on. However, our top priority, I like this. I like this. Our top priority is building trust in the company. That's something you really need, American Pinball. Thank you for saying it. while fostering a positive and engaging culture for employees and customers. Now, wow. Okay, didn't know if I was going to go down this route. I'm not going to spend much time on it because for me, 2026 is the year of peace. I want to have absolutely no pinball podcasting drama this year. I tried very, very hard last year, and I only made it a couple shows in until I had the mini beef with Jengas and Don. Thankfully, Don and I have quadruple squashed that, and hopefully with Jenga's as well. I know I had Don on the Christmas show, and that was so cool to talk to him, and I did get to let him know just, you know, I think privately I had said it to him a couple times, but, you know, awkwardly we hadn't actually talked about it in like six or seven months. So me, like a big doofus, put my foot in my mouth and apologized to him live on air. So there's another reason to go listen to that, because I'll tell you, Don was handing out the rumors left, right, and center on there, just boo, boo, boo, boo. He's like, Orby, I feel bad too. here's this nugget here's this nugget here's this nugget so go listen to that show if you guys haven't um and i i will say this as well i do apologize because i know there was one person on the show that i guess they didn't read my message to them that well where i said i'm going to be calling and interviewing you for the show for my podcast my annual call-in show and i think they just skimmed through it quickly and thought i was just calling people to say merry christmas and i feel so bad when they answered they were working and they kind of put me on hold to do work stuff a couple times and oh my God they Anyways anyways long story short uh i apologize to them they uh i think agreed with me they came to the conclusion it not a big deal only a couple hundred people listen to this show and i think rereading the comment uh so but next year i'm gonna do this happened actually a couple years ago i called ray day on my annual christmas thing this might have been three four years ago and we're talking for a while and he hadn't said anything bad it's not like ray day ray day is way too smart to like give away any intellectual secrets from like Stern and he's just too much of a good guy to say anything negative or rude about anyone there so he hadn't said anything like in bad taste whatsoever he's like oh this is for the podcast and I was like yes I'm sorry I I said in the and I'd only said in the poor man's pinball podcast chat and even though quite a few people had seen it I didn't let him know before I called so for any future podcasters out there listening or current podcasters when you're calling someone on a live stream, make sure you let them know it's live and being recorded. So I let him know during the show, but I think he was only half listening because he was dropping off DoorDash stuff. So to that person, I humbly apologize. But I think everything's all good because we worked it out and we talked about it. It's all good. So thank you so much. But go listen to that. The even cooler part is, to many of you who don't know, I'm pretty sure the second part of the Todd Tuckey interview is paywalled because Todd Tuckey was on the show and him, much like maybe the other person didn't quite fully read it. And I think maybe he thought I was like editing the show and it wasn't live because a couple of times he's like, excuse me, young man. And just, man, getting to talk to Todd Tucky and say, you know, happy holidays, Merry Christmas. What were your favorite pens of the year, Todd? Like that was, that was, that's, that's a, that's a peak. That's right up there with like getting to interview Jack Danger. You know what I mean? Like for me personally, like that's right up there in those, one of those moments. I would have loved to have talked to Ray Day. I didn't get to talk to him. He was one of the people. I did really want to talk to Mike from the Smoke and Popes and the Punk Rock Pinball podcast and his partner Stephanie. I believe it's his wife. Can I call you Steph? I don't know. I don't know you that well. I've never heard anyone else address her. Oh, my gosh. I should have called them. Oh, sure. It's always my dad. Don't say anything on the answering machine. Hey, how's it going? That's good because I'm live on the podcast right now. I just didn't want you to give any information on there. Can I call you back after the show? I didn't want you to say anything on the answering machine you didn't want. Good. Okay. Well, just say very loudly through the – I'll hold the mic up. Say, eat, sleep, breathe, pinball. See you later, nerds. Three, two, one, go. Eat, sleep, drink, pinball. Later, nerds. Bye, Dad. Okay, sorry about that, guys. I thought that was maybe my wife calling who normally calls around this time, and I've totally screwed it up because I should have turned off my phone and put it in the other room. The other issue is if someone leaves personal information on the answering machine, an audiophile could pull it up and listen to it. But where was I? Thanks, Dad, for distracting me, an already easily distracted person. All right, I'm going to get back into reading this so I can get through it quickly. We are hitting the ground quickly and already in the process of securing valuable licensing agreements for the upcoming games. J.B. Vincent is committed to providing the liquidity and every resource available to make American Pinball a market leader that is passionate about serving the pinball community. Okay. And Orbit Games, top priority. Okay. All right. So it goes on and on and on. You guys can go read it yourself. There's like three paragraphs left. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pinball is a uniquely American manufacturing story. Our goal is to ensure American pinball is positioned not just to survive but thrive by building a community-orientated culture that attracts people committed to building the best pinball machines that are innovative, beautiful, and exciting to play. We believe pinball is an adventure, and we invite our customers to play the adventure with us. Is that like their new term? Not only have they had seven or eight frickin' logo changes in like the past week. There he is, Ron Lindman, president. Okay, Ron Lindman is the new David Fix, basically. He's also the media content. So Ron and whoever is listening from over there, you may want to go out of your way to get a media-trained person to do all your stuff. I'll even just say it right there. If you, American Pinball, need a communications dude, I'll do it for you. I'll do it. I'll go on all the podcasts. I've got to get a better camera, obviously, for doing video interviews. But I will do it if I have to. I'm just putting it out there. I'm not volunteering my time. This would be a paid position. But, I mean, how good would it look on American Pinball when their first new hire is a Canadian? Come on. No, no. You can pay me in maple syrup, guys. You can pay me in translates. You can pay me in Houdinis. How about after I stack up to 1,000 hours worth of working at, I'll say, $5 over minimum wage wherever your state or province is. or mine, thankfully, it's going up another buck this year, woohoo, 17 bucks an hour, or like 16.50, but I will work for $5 over minimum wage, but I want you to bank 100% of my money until I get to enough for a new-in-box Houdini, hell, I'll take a show game, okay, print me up one of those show games you got over there, all right, hook me up with one of those 88 show games, No, I'm just kidding. Wow. OK, so it does say here J.B. Vincent is a family office. I don't really know what that means. They're trying to say like it's a smaller company, I guess, with investments that range across. Across a range of investment classes has a particular focus on building out operational operating companies to be a leader in niche markets. OK, so all of this sounds really, really good, but we've heard this before. We've seen this before. Even when David Fix himself took over, we started hearing and seeing things like this. So I am on Brian Vinson. I mean, it is showing like I'm on Brian Vinson's LinkedIn. OK. It says here, though, that he is the chief executor at the Combi Packaging Systems LLC. I think this is the same gentleman, the way it talks about strategic leadership and business improvements, streamlining processes. This is, and when I Googled him, this is the one that came up. So I must, I've got to assume this is the same guy, but you know what? It might not because it says Canton, Ohio. So it's very confusing, but let's go back here. Yeah. Okay. LLP. So patents by inventor, patents, patents by inventor, giant. Okay. Let's, let's look at his patents here. I don't know. I don't know if that's the right Brian. Let's just assume it's not because it's the wrong city, but it could be because it sounds like this guy has helped multiple companies so i wouldn't be shocked if it's the same but just a patents okay uh so this is on patents just a dot com just a patents patents uh that have gone through by the inventor so he is an inventor i mean that sounds pretty cool sounds pretty good um one two three this one sounds funny a disclosed downlight eyebrow includes an elongated l-shaped structure with the first wall and a second wall that may form an angle at the approximately 90 degrees the downright eyebrow eyebrow so this is a a led downlight eyebrow okay he designed an eyebrow we've got an eyeball designer in a pinball pocket or a pinball wow okay low ventricular attenuation i think that's how you say that word attenuation and lateral euformity all right i don't know what these are pass-through apparatus for wall-mounted sign assembly one two three four five okay he's got five pounds of patents and he's helped a whole bunch of companies streamline their services so it's i mean overall i think it i've got a glimmer of hope i've never been this hopeful let's just say this even when we heard david fix go on a lot of pinball podcasts when he took over as president i was never this hopeful i was a little hopeful i had a scrounge of hopefulness i try to be a hopeful glass has full you know i i tried i sometimes have the negative nancy debbie downer on my one shoulder just you know being negative or rude and you could be negative or rude about this press release it does seem a little bit ai written it does seem a little bit like holier than thou and like oh we're going to be perfect now it doesn't really apologize and address the issues before somebody on the post though somebody on the facebook post did say hey for the last month i've had a lot of help every time i've had an issue with one of my american pinball machines so it sounds like they are writing the ship over there listen is a hundred percent of what was wrong with american pinball just david fix and the team he picked i don't think so but is it possible that david fix steering the ship towards i don't want to say it's 100 him because obviously there's bigger decisions from people higher up at ametron which now have apparently nothing to do with this they've sold it off so that also might be good because if everything Ryan McQuaid had said uh about you know american pinball being really hard to work with and the higher-ups there being difficult, it might be really good that this Ron dude is the only dude who sounds like he's coming over. I don't think all of Ametron was sold. I think Ametron just said, we don't want American Pinball anymore, and JB came in and bought her all, right? Good. Can we call you Brian? Can I call you Brian? No, I'm just kidding. But this is really cool. So Ron, if you're listening, maybe I'll reach out to Ron to try to have him on the show. So, you know, I've got provincials, also state championships, provincials in less than two days. I shouldn't have spent all this time doing a show today, but I love you pinball nerds and I missed you. It had been three weeks. Like I said, for the first week after I did that holiday show, I thought, I don't even know if I need to do another show ever again in my life. Like I got to talk to Todd Tuckey and Todd Tuckey and I, it was so cool. We got to hear Todd do his little sales pitch. I did tell him we were live, but whatever. He did this little sales pitch. I think he was trying to sell the guy Metallica Remastered or something. I can't remember. You guys would have to go back and listen. But I was like, wow, I felt like a fly on the wall because that's what my whole Pinball podcast is supposed to be, is you being a fly on the wall listening to like Enzo and I shoot the shots just like we would even if I hadn't hit the record button, listening to Glenn and I talk pinball, right, or any of the other people I've had on the show multiple times. You're just supposed to be a fly on the wall kind of hearing what we're doing. That's why I don't call what I do interviews. I call them a chat because I'm not an interviewer. I've never gone to podcasting school. I interrupt people all the time, just like when two regular people are talking. They interrupt each other. They don't perfectly wait to the end of the sentence and go, and what do you think now? And now you talk five minutes and I say nothing. Of course not. So if you like that type of, and I like the type of podcast that Joe Rogan has. I don't agree with all of his views, of course, but I like the type of podcast that he has where it's just a conversation. He says, I've never interviewed anyone ever. I just have a conversation. um the sean who does the uh the hot wings right or hot things or hot stuff or what was it called when they ate the hot sauce and they put a like a one hotter wing one just one the final dab sean evans i think there you go sean evans um you know he calls it just a chat it's not an interview it's a chat we're just talking and i find that you know i can couldn't do a great interview if i wanted to even uh we just heard on the round table jamie was a little bit nervous about having George Gomez on there. Oh my God, think about me with horrible sound quality and not really knowing what I was doing and actually getting a response from Roger Sharp. Like I think I messaged 30 people and I heard back from 15. And thank you to every single person who wrote back. Even I know I was talking about Punk Rock Pinball. I really want to talk to Mike and Steph about their new pinball league that they're doing. That's a little bit less formal and it's a little bit less competitive. I really wanted to just, I wanted to honestly tell them, I think they're the best new coming pinball podcast of the year. And I didn't get the chance to talk to them. So I felt so bad for that. Jay Hall, Brian Cause, a couple other tribe members I never got to talk to, didn't get around to. And I feel so bad because I was hoping to get to all of them. But, of course, you get Todd Tuckey on the phone. You get Roger Sharp on the phone. You get Todd Tuckey twice. This is where I was going with that. We got to hear Todd Tuckey try to sell to Metallica. And then he calls back later, I believe, behind the paywall. or I called him back because he said, I can speak, talk now, young. Kept calling me young fella. I was like, I'm 45. Thank you for calling me young fella, Todd. I guess the Todd, I probably am a young fella. But, you know, I'm feeling older these days. I'll tell you that. And along with that, I am going to give a couple tips for everyone doing state provincial finals in less than 48 hours when I've done this really quickly. But there's so many things I wanted to talk about. I know on the roundtable they were also saying, what is better, Goonies or Gremlins? I want to talk about that as well. That's another show that I want to bring you guys next week. So there's a lot of stuff cooking. There's a lot of stuff going on. I did just want to get out here and give you not too long of a pinball podcast, says the guy who hasn't checked how long it's been. All right, we're at 41 and a half minutes. Let me end by saying this. Let me put a little bow, okay, on the gift that keeps giving us pinball podcasters American pinball. Maybe they don't have Dave Fix and Ron Howlett's awesome voice. It was nice to hear him do that again, by the way. Shout out to Bruce and Ron. We did get to hear him bring back the David Fix, baby. No, I can't do it. I can't do it. Again, I'd have to hear him do it. It's just the best. It is the best. But David Fix, I want to let you know if you're listening, which I'm sure you're not because you already said you don't listen to any pinball podcasts. But David Fix, if you're listening, I forgive you for any mistakes that you made. I think your heart was actually in the right place. I just don't think you were quite the right guy to be the director of sales. I think it'd be good to run all the shows. Like if you wanted to tour around, Dave Fix tours around and he shows all the American pinball games at Expo and TPF and Pinball at the Beach and all these places. If you wanted to do that that seems to make sense That would be good for Dave Fix I just don think the job that he had there was the correct job for him per se so I love you Dave Fix um and please someone give I know there's like a minor beef going on between Kaneda and obviously we don't want to be putting up private messages he says he doesn't know it's private by me looking at that it looks to me like like maybe I just am on Facebook I am on Facebook chronically I can tell by looking at it 100% that's a private message. There's no shot that that was written on like a Facebook comment or a share or a post. There's just no shot. Me personally, Kaneda wasn't sure or apparently he said he thought it was just he couldn't tell. So anyways, Chris will be Chris. Kaneda will be Kaneda. He'll do his thing. I'm not starting any beefs this year, but I did want to say that anyone who has sent me any private messages, I'm not going to be airing them, including Ryan himself has specifically said, don't share this, this, this and this. And I will just say that I hope American Pinball is ran better than it was before. And I hope if they're smart about it, they consider hiring back Ryan. I don't even know if Ryan would go back. But Ryan, if they consider hiring her back, maybe go talk to them. If the management is it sounds like it's going to be managed far better. It sounds like they're going to treat their employees better. So they're saying this. It sounds like they want to have better communication with the community and build back trust. If even half of what they're saying in this press release is true, Ryan probably would want to go back there and work again and finish Cuphead. Why wouldn't he? Let's change some of that yellow, though. I do agree. It's a bit too yellow. But besides that, Cuphead looks incredible. I've seen the video. I've seen the pictures. It looks incredible. It looks fun. Out of all the video, this is the year of the video games. We've got people always forget about this. Pokemon is primarily known as a video game. It was a TV show for like a couple years, but like it's mostly known as a video game. And then eventually it's second most known, probably not even as a TV show, but it's second most known as like a card game, right? A card game and also an investment tool or whatever, however you want to call it, right? I don't know. I don't like calling it that because for some people it's just not. It's just cards and you're having fun and looking for your favorite Pokemon like you would with Pokemon Go when you're opening packs. But for someone like me, I'm on the hunt for a card that can grade a minty fresh PSA 10 and can 10 or up to 20 times my money. Probably the best example of this I've ever done was I had someone trading me a $40 card. I looked it up and down. I got my son Owen to look it up and down. We both thought it was a 10. The card is clearly worth $40. It sells all day for $40. This was a golden celebrations Mew. not that any of you guys care but he was like the junior version of the mewtwo which is like the most powerful freaking pokemon other than the pokey gods but now i've gone hard cornered let me just put on my glasses here and go hard cornered no i've gone hard cornered but the point is we bought this card for we bought this card for 40 bucks actually 40 in trades i think so he just took 40 of cards off our table we sent it in that day and it came back three months later and we sold it for $385 Canadian. So we got 10 times our money on it. It's very hard to do that. Now, had it came back at PSA, and it did cost $36 to grade, and we did have to wait some time and yada, yada, yada, take the risk, trade $40 in other cards, etc. But the point is, is that for me and most people who are either baby booners or Gen Xers who are into Pokemon are doing it for the investment part of it that they enjoy doing. Sure, you're going to have your favorite Pokemon. Sure. Do you do it because you also like playing Pokemon Go or you've played some of the Pokemon video games back in the day on Game Boy or even the modern ones? Yes. But you're probably primarily doing it because you like the idea that you could just be walking through Costco. And right now you can go buy two $69 Costco boxes and sell them for double on eBay. Like just you can just do that. Now, most Costco's are only letting you do it for like two. You can go sell them on your Facebook marketplace within an hour for almost twice as much for maybe like 1.75 times as much. So anyways, this is not a Pokemon podcast. I'm very excited for Pokemon coming out. I'm really excited to see where American Pinball goes. At the very least, it's going to give us lots of content. Are you like me? Do you agree? Let me know. Do you agree that you're excited to see where American Pinball goes from now? Could American Pinball actually do a full 180? Look, I don't think they're going to be competitors for Spooky Pinball or even Barrels of Fun anytime soon. I am interested. This is really interesting to me. This is kind of like when you think about like two big people dominating any sport. OK, so in tennis, Andre Agassi and Pete Sanfras were like big rivals for many, many years. I'm excited to see who's going to come out bigger and better from 2026. Will it be barrels of fun or spooky? Because like they're both just sorry, Franchi, knocking it out of the park like their last two or three releases for all of them is just getting better and better and better. and like Labyrinth was, you know, maybe like a, I don't know, David David Van Es, don't get mad. He did agree to come on the show. So David David Van Es wants at least 24 to 48 hours notice and he is going to come on the show. So I will give you guys that little tidbit. I did invite David to come on the epic Christmas show, the epic holiday show, as I will call it, because we weren't just celebrating Christmas. There was also Hanukkah. Come on, don't forget about those eight crazy nights, guys. Come on. And we were also celebrating just all the holidays. And so unlike myself, an ordained Judas priest, I'm more likely to celebrate, What was the thing on Seinfeld with the tree, the pole, the metal pole? I'm just rambling, guys, now. I'm just rambling. I'm going to let you go. But thank you so much for everybody. Thank you for everybody on Patreon. Thank you so much to Rachel Risto for joining. And please, if you're listening right now and you think you'd love to hear the second half of me chatting with Todd Tuckey, really the good part where he wasn't doing, you know, where he wasn't actually selling a pinball machine live when he had to go do the paperwork, right? If you wanted to hear Kerry Hardy, sound like he just doesn't care. He's like, dude, I don't want to. I'm tired. It's late. Why are you calling me? You know what I mean? Because I had told him it's just a quick call. I just said it's like a five to ten minute call. And that's probably how so many people said yes. And then me, I'm time blind. I don't know if it's my ADHD or possibly other tisms, but I will tell you this. I definitely, definitely, definitely am time blind. And when I talked to Roger Sharp, it felt like it was a ten minute call. I think it was 35 minutes. When I talked to Todd Tuckey the second time, I thought it was a five minute call. I think it was 25. When I talked to even Joe Chervino, the doe, we talked for a good 20 – Enzo and I talked for like 40 minutes and that was like at 2 a.m. my time and I probably shouldn't have been talking at all. But if you want to hear the Enzo interview, the Joe Chervino interview, you want – or the chat. I'll call it a chat. If you want to hear the second half of Todd Tuckey, if you want to hear Kerry Hardy just basically being like, oh my god, this guy is so shmammoed. He was like, Albert, I have two or three drinks, not like 15. No, I probably had eight or nine, maybe ten. Who knows? It was more than six or seven. I'll just say that. So, everybody, I do plan on coming back with a show next week. I want to do Is Gremlins Better or Goonies. I also want to do my live voting for the Twippies. Hopefully, I still have time to do that. I'll have to double check on the kineticists on Facebook, but thanks for calling for saying that up. I will say this, not to be too controversial. Colin, I love you. You're a patron. You support the show. but uh i really really really wish there was some content creator stuff in there i i wanted to bump up to 19th guys last year i was 20th there's like 50 pinball content creators so even to get 20th is like cool i'm just barely in the top half i'll take it but i wanted to bump up to okay in all honesty like 15th or 10th or something i don't think it was going to be that maybe with that epic christmas call if more than 20 people had listened to it oh my gosh all right pinball nerds I love you. I'm in love with you. Have a rad day. I'll be back next week. Here's my five quick tips. Topics and tip time. Here's my five quick tips. Prioritize your sleep for the next two nights leading up to states or provincial finals. And these tips, by the way, if you're not the 16 to 24 people, if you're not in a super state or super province that has 24, you know, if you're not playing, because only so many people are going to be playing this, These five tips, they actually go for playing any pinball tournament and actually really doing anything important. Whether it be, this could be advice for like going to a wedding, an important wedding, a family friend or member or someone important. This could be advice for an important job interview. These things, these are non-pinball specific, so let's just get into them. Number one, put your sleep on a pedestal. Prioritize it for two, three, four days leading up to the event. number two don't eat like crap for a couple days and i would highly recommend that you prepare all of your own meals in house if possible and why is this because when you go out to a restaurant it's proven a very very very large percentage of i'm not talking about food poison when you get food poisoning you're like really sick no you could do that at home as well like where you undercooked your freaking uh i don't know your puffer fish or you didn't uh you didn't cook you're chicken enough and you got salmonella no i'm talking about foodborne illnesses like cold like flu like like all this kind of stuff that's going around right now if you don't go to anywhere with prepared food for three days you have no chance like the average meal at mcdonald's that you get like between the person scooping the fries and the person scooping uh everything else that is drop target danielle i will call her back oh she joins the show uh on the paywall and behind the paywall a couple times on that show as well. But when this many people are preparing your food, without a doubt, either the person who hands you your food, the person who's doing your french fries, the person who fried your McNuggies, if you're like me and you're grabbing a Happy Meal, or just like someone somewhere somehow preparing either your dip or your other stuff, she never, ever leaves a voice message, dear Lord, honey, don't say anything important. All right. um just i would i would eat healthy don't eat fast food don't eat fried food don't eat stuff that's going to potentially give you gut rot eat healthy eat clean fresh prepared foods think soups salads sandwiches i call it the four s's think everything that's going to like be good nutrition to your body so that there that's simple take your vitamins kids take your vitamins that's number two number three is the only thing worse than not studying at all for all the games you're going to play and this okay i know this is more pinball specific but this could be for any job interview this could be for anything like that as well the only thing worse than not studying at all or not like learning the machines enough or like learning enough about the company that's interviewing you what have you the only thing worse is doing it too much if you burn yourself out and that's all you think about and you spike your cortisol leading up to it then you've ruined it for you and that leads me into number four make your life low stress if it's a very very if it's just a freaking one-off pinball tournament or it's just like your buddy from college getting married who cares right but if it's like your son or daughter's wedding or your own wedding god forbid or like it's a very important job interview that you actually really want or it's a big pinball tournament like states or provincials okay and you really want to do well for three to four days leading up to that prioritize yourself for having a low stress life don't take on any big chores don't take on any big home projects even tell friends and family i'm sorry if you don't hear from me or talk to me i felt bad glenn the skateboarder called this morning and i'm just in like a zone of like i'm staying mellow i'm staying calm i'm gonna do this one pimo podcast i owe the nerds and then from there on out all i'm gonna think about all i'm gonna consider all i'm gonna do is just prioritize my mental health and keeping my cortisol low and i know not all of you have the option you don't all work from home like me or work seasonally at a market that may or may not, Angry Alpaca may or may not have packed it in. We're not sure about the hiatus or not. Enzo, when you get your coffee from us all the way there in Australia, it might be the last pinball nerd to ever get coffee or tea from us because we're not sure if we're going to sell the company or just close it up or maybe just minimize our presence at markets this year. But there's some big changes coming. We're finding it more and more difficult to make money. And like when 80% of our online sales are to the United States and tariffs are too difficult, I don't want to go political today, but it's been a very big challenge to lose. I mean, even Jason Forbes, Jason Forbes himself, some years, he was putting in three or four orders of two, three, 400 bucks of coffee, keeping us afloat there. Thank you so much, Jason Forbes, and just everybody who's ordered coffee. Other than Joe Cherovino, the dote, really no one orders coffee or tea in Canada, and you can't really, it's not really affordable to order it from Australia, unless you're a Patreon, and you're going to get some. Cheers, shout out to Enzo. But I'm just rambling now. Now, the fifth thing on this list, the fifth thing on this list comes from my buddy Chris here. He used to play with me at Pinball for Change in Toronto and such. But Chris says, Albert, it's just pinball. It's just pinball. So if I start to get too excited or I can't fall asleep at night and I'm thinking about the games or my competitors or the tournaments or the rounds or should I have a beer or not have a beer. I haven't had a beer since Christmas Day, by the way. So there you go. I'm almost hitting three weeks. Yeah, I'm almost at three weeks. So that's pretty good. I always try to take a month off in January, but the toughest part of that, the toughest part of that, first world problems, the toughest part of that is every January, every January for the last four or five years, I've qualified for the New Brunswick Pinball Championships, I think at least four years straight. And so I like to have two or three beers to calm my nerves. I don't like to get shmammoed at it, but I like to have enough beers to like calm my nerves because as I get to each round, I get more and more nervous. and by that third or fourth round when you got to play, you know. So I guess my final tip is do what you have to, whether that's have a beer or two the night before to fall asleep. I would avoid alcohol leading up to it as much as you can. But don't eat anywhere unique. Don't go to, you know, a party. Don't go to the movies. Don't just do nothing the night before. Get into bed early. Prioritize your sleep. Don't have caffeine too late in the day. Good luck to everybody out there. I've got to go. I am so late for everything I have to get done today on the homestead. But I love you guys. I'm in love with you. I can't wait to chat with you again. happy holidays, happy new year, all the joyeux, all that French stuff. And I just, I can't wait. 2026 is going to be a super exciting year. Are you excited for it? I hope you are. Until next time, pinball nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Gremlins or the Goonies. Hey, you guys.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 2dab400f-be8a-4ca0-aec1-7ea7da4e710d*