# Big Announcements --- you knew this was coming, right?

**Source:** Punk Rock Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2025-12-14  
**Duration:** 23m 10s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://share.transistor.fm/s/aba06b89

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## Analysis

Punk Rock Pinball hosts a bonus episode covering merch announcements, upcoming tournaments, and the launch of the Punk Rock Pinball Association (PRPA), a companion leaderboard system to IFPA designed to reward participation and grinding across multiple events. The hosts discuss new t-shirt designs by artist Brent Mosser, critique AI-generated pinball merchandise in the community, and announce three upcoming events: Poor Bros tournament (Dec 14), their HQ tournament (Dec 19), and a pinball high-score contest at Bottom Lounge in Chicago (Dec 28).

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] PRPA is designed as a companion to IFPA, not a competitor, focused on rewarding participation and grinding across multiple events rather than determining the best player — _Host explicitly states PRPA's purpose and how it complements IFPA's existing ranking system_
- [HIGH] Multiple tournament directors and locations across the country are already lined up to host PRPA events, including Jay's Silver Ballroom in Iowa — _Hosts mention Jay and Emily Gross and other venues preparing to host PRPA tournaments_
- [HIGH] There is widespread use of low-quality AI-generated art in pinball merchandise by content creators and t-shirt makers — _Hosts express frustration about AI art being used for pinball merchandise and criticize the community for this practice_
- [MEDIUM] Punk Rock Pinball has already spent approximately $2,000 on merchandise and swag distribution — _Host states 'we probably sent out like a couple thousand bucks worth already everywhere'_
- [HIGH] Stern Pinball's Michael Grant provided giveaway prizes for the Poor Bros tournament — _Host thanks Michael Grant from Stern Pinball for sending goodies for giveaways_

### Notable Quotes

> "There's so much AI bullshit art in pinball with the shirts and stuff people are doing. stop it it's so gross knock it off"
> — **Mike (host)**, ~7:30
> _Strong community sentiment against AI-generated merchandise in pinball; calls out hypocrisy of criticizing Jersey Jack's AI art while wearing AI-generated pinball shirts_

> "If you want to make merch and things like that, find a real artist. Pay them money. Give them your ideas, and have a real artist make real art for your stuff."
> — **Mike (host)**, ~9:00
> _Clear advocacy for supporting human artists and legitimate design work in pinball community merchandise_

> "PRPA is really about fun and recognizing and rewarding folks who are grinding it out and participating in all kinds of events."
> — **Co-host**, ~17:00
> _Articulates the core philosophy of the new PRPA system—emphasis on participation and engagement rather than pure competitive ranking_

> "We're not real content creators. A not-cast. Yeah. We're just doing our thing."
> — **Mike (host)**, ~20:00
> _Self-aware commentary on their podcast approach—informal, conversational format prioritizing community engagement over polished production_

> "You can run a Punk Rock Pinball tournament and have it not be IFPA and you could just do 7 rounds and be like, after that, whoever won, they won."
> — **Mike (host)**, ~15:30
> _Demonstrates flexibility of PRPA system to work independently or alongside IFPA-sanctioned events_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Punk Rock Pinball Podcast | organization | Hosts hosting bonus episode; launching merchandise, tournament infrastructure, and PRPA system |
| Mike | person | Co-host of Punk Rock Pinball Podcast; tournament organizer; managing PRPA development and merchandise |
| Brent Mosser | person | Artist commissioned to design Punk Rock Pinball logo and merchandise; also works with Smoking Popes band |
| Nick Greenup | person | Developer from Kansas City who built custom plugin for PRPA leaderboards; operates arcade in KC |
| Michael Grant | person | Stern Pinball representative; leads Stern Army; provided giveaway prizes for Poor Bros tournament |
| Control Freak Coffee | company | Milwaukee-based specialty coffee brand offering customizable caffeine levels and grind options; host is doing SEO work for them |
| Poor Bros Arcade | organization | Arcade venue in Bloomington, Illinois hosting Punk Rock Pinball tournament on Dec 14 |
| Punk Rock Pinball HQ | organization | Venue hosting monthly tournaments; hosting Dec 19 monthly tournament |
| Bottom Lounge | organization | Chicago venue hosting ska show (Dec 28) with pinball high-score contest; owner Mike providing free play setup |
| Jay's Silver Ballroom | organization | Iowa-based venue owned by Jay and Emily Gross; committed to hosting PRPA tournaments |
| Winter Bash | event | Major tournament at Atomic Pinball Arcade; hosts mention following streams of friends competing (Joe Sharp, Raymond Davidson, CJ, others) |
| Zach McCarthy | person | Number one ranked pinball player in the world; competing at Winter Bash tournament |
| Joe Sharp | person | Friend of hosts; competing at Winter Bash; currently in top 27 of tournament standings |
| IFPA | organization | International Federation of Pinball Associations; PRPA designed as companion system, not competitor |
| Punk Rock Pinball Association | organization | New leaderboard and tournament system launched by Punk Rock Pinball; focuses on rewarding participation across multiple events |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; Michael Grant representing in support of Punk Rock Pinball tournaments |
| MXV | person | Referenced as calling PRPA points 'poppers'; appears to be community member familiar with the system |

### Topics

- **Primary:** PRPA Launch, Merchandise and Design, AI Art in Pinball Community, Tournament Organization and Events
- **Secondary:** Community Growth and Participation, Sponsorship and Brand Partnerships, Winter Bash Tournament Updates

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Hosts are enthusiastic about tournament announcements and PRPA launch. Strong positive sentiment regarding artist collaborations and community engagement. Negative sentiment expressed only toward AI-generated merchandise, but framed as constructive criticism rather than personal attack.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Punk Rock Pinball actively seeking sponsorship and brand partnership support to fund tournament prizes and merchandise distribution; indicating growth aspirations and resource constraints (confidence: high) — Hosts explicitly request experienced sponsor/partnership professionals to contact them; mention spending ~$2,000 on swag distribution and seeking ways to expand prize packs
- **[community_signal]** Widespread use of low-quality AI-generated art for pinball merchandise by content creators and casual t-shirt makers; hosts express frustration at community hypocrisy regarding Jersey Jack's AI art while wearing AI merchandise (confidence: high) — Hosts criticize AI art use extensively, noting hypocrisy of community members criticizing Jersey Jack while wearing AI-generated pinball merchandise from various creators
- **[community_signal]** Punk Rock Pinball launching PRPA as companion tournament system to incentivize broader participation and grinding across events rather than pure competitive ranking (confidence: high) — Hosts explicitly state PRPA is designed to reward playing more and more, with simpler points calculation than IFPA, available through punkrockpinball.com
- **[community_signal]** Stern Pinball's Michael Grant providing giveaway prizes for independent tournament organizer Punk Rock Pinball, signaling manufacturer support for grassroots tournament infrastructure (confidence: high) — Host thanks Michael Grant from Stern for sending goodies specifically for Poor Bros tournament giveaways
- **[market_signal]** Punk Rock Pinball positioning itself as grassroots alternative to formal competitive infrastructure; emphasizing fun, participation, and community building over elite competition (confidence: high) — Hosts state PRPA mission is 'about fun and recognizing and rewarding folks who are grinding it out,' explicitly not about 'determining who in fact is 100% the best player'
- **[event_signal]** Multiple pinball tournaments and events announced across geographic regions (Illinois, Iowa, Chicago) for December 2024 and beyond, suggesting active tournament season and community growth (confidence: high) — Poor Bros tournament Dec 14, PRPHQ Dec 19, Bottom Lounge high-score contest Dec 28, plus multiple locations already committed to hosting PRPA events

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## Transcript

 You know who likes that new song? Marshall. Marshall loves it. He doesn't like when I snap my fingers. I snap my fingers to know where I'm going to start chopping this audio. And I do the snap, he's right here, and then he goes away. Now he's under the pinballs. Afraid of the finger snap. You'd think he was an abused dog at one point, and he never was. Oh, my gosh. It is like 7 o'clock on a Saturday night. I'm having my second cup of coffee. 8 o'clock. 8 o'clock. 8 o'clock p.m. Saturday night. It's freezing cold, 5 degrees. But I'm doing half-calf. Doing half-calf? Control freak? Yeah. Control freak coffee? Control freak coffee. This one's free. Then we'll talk nickels and dimes. But it's pretty great. I don't know. Does anybody else drink like half-calf coffee? And if you do, I would love to know what your favorite is. I'm kind of digging this. If you like mixing the half-calf and things like that, Control Free Coffee is this Milwaukee coffee brand. I do SEO for their website. It's a brand new website. So don't judge me on their keyword rankings yet because it's brand new. It's just been indexed by Google just like a week ago, two weeks. So like don't get on me about their keyword rankings because it's going to rank. But they got 25% caff, they got half caff, they got 75% caff, they got 100% caffeinated coffee. And total decaf also. And decaf. I don't know, it's pretty great. I ordered some and what I thought was actually super cool, and I feel like we're doing like a commercial for Control Freak, but they're little guys trying to do it. So like we like to support the underdogs. But what I thought was really cool, you're not a coffee drinker, But when you order from them, not only do you choose how much caffeine you want in your coffee, but then they also ask you, like, how are you going to brew it? And there are like eight different options on how you brew and they grind the coffee specifically for how you brew it. What? That's a thing? Fresh roasted beans, custom grind, custom caffeine level. It's great coffee. So if you're a coffee drinker, it's pretty badass. This is not a paid advertisement. They're not paying us for this. first one's free first one's always free then we talk nickels and dimes well if you so choose to purchase from control freak tell them that your friends at punk rock pinball sent um sent you yeah because we we we do know those guys and yeah they are a client of mine so i i do work for them but this is not a paid endorsement and stephanie really enjoys the coffee yep and they're nice people. That wasn't planned. No. Sorry. I have my notes here. I've got notes. Control Freak wasn't part of it, but it's cool because you are drinking the half-calf because it's 8 p.m. on a Saturday night. Yeah. This is a bonus episode. It's not getting a number. It's a number-free episode. We just got a few things to talk about, one of which we've got some new merch. It's really cool. So lots of people have commented on the logo. They love the logo. We had Mike commissioned an artist to do this logo. What's his name? His name is Brent Mosser. He's awesome. Very talented. Super talented artist. A true artist. If you saw the Smoking Popes Born to Quit live record, he did that art. He did the t-shirt when we toured UK and Europe last year. He did that t-shirt. He did the bowling t-shirt? Oh, yeah. When we did the show at the Tivoli Bowl, the bowling. Very talented. Real art by a real human who made the art, who we paid to make the art. It's not some AI bullshit. No. There's so much AI bullshit art in pinball with the shirts and stuff people are doing. stop it it's so gross knock it off i just it makes me rage because people like freak out about like oh my god harry potter has ar i a i art yet they're like all wearing this bullshit ai art from like different content creators or just like people making bullshit t-shirts that are garbage yeah and it's not even like the good ai that you have to pay for it's like the bullshit one that You could just go on your computer and say, make me a shirt of this famous pinball guy, and it's a spit you out this crap. It's gross. If you want to make merch and things like that, find a real artist. Pay them money. Give them your ideas, and have a real artist make real art for your stuff. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Brent also did that shirt. Not that front design right there. It was by Eli. Oh, Eli. You like caterer. We've used that on a bunch of things, but the pinball on the back. That's a Brent Mosser design as well. I can't get enough Brent Mosser. Talented dude. He's great. And I don't think he's really super into pinball. I don't think he's into pinball at all. But he did a great job. Yeah, thank you, Brent. and I would encourage any of you if you want to make pinball t-shirts and sell them call up Brent or find a guy there graphic designers there probably in this Facebook group there probably 50 of them So if you are a graphic designer in this group and you watching this video put a link to your stuff If you've got a website and you're a designer, link it in these comments. Yeah. Because I love Brent. I don't have an exclusive agreement with Brent to do Smoking Pops and Punk Rock Pinball art. Like, this will forever be our logo. It's going to be a Brent Mosser logo. but we can do other things with other artists. Our budgets are not huge, but we pay for the designs. So do the Smoking Popes, and there's other bands in this group that might need some designs. So if you're a designer, put your link down in the comments here. Yeah, and... I'd love to look at your stuff. I would love to look at it. And so Brent did... Brett or Brent? Brent. Brent. Brent did a few other new designs, so we've got this cool... I'm going to put it up right here. We've got this cool Chicago Bulls ripoff. Yeah, we're ripping off licensing. Yeah, I told them to do it. Because, you know, Bulls. And that's pretty awesome. And we've got a lot of Chicago people who watch this. I mean, who doesn't love the Chicago Bulls? Yeah, Bulls. And then we also have the Jaws ripoff. I mean, until we get a cease and desist. Yeah. Screw it. And that's pretty badass. Just kind of a take on Jaws with a pinball eyeball. Yeah. Kind of great. Yeah. Yeah, so that's our art. That's our merch. Last night and today, like right now today, many of our friends I posted in the group earlier, they're playing down at Atomic Pinball Arcade. Great place. They're playing in the Winter Bash. It's a big-ass tournament. The Who's Who. Who's who? Zach McCarthy, number one player in the world, is down there kicking everyone's butt. Our friend Raymond Davidson is down there. Raymond Davidson. I saw him on the stream. He's kicking everyone's butt. I'm going to pull up the standings. Eric Stone, who I think is very funny. The meteorologist from Tampa, I think, or somewhere in Florida. He's down there. And then a bunch of our friends, Joe and Shelly and CJ and Chris O'Brien and the Pierowskis. Peter Rowski, Corey Grimm. Corey Grimm. Lily. Lily's down there. Eric Stone is right now in third place. He's really good. Yeah. That Carlos guy, I don't want to try to pronounce his last name. He's great. He was the 2023 champ. Joe is up in 27th place currently. Keep it up, Joe. Right on, Joe. Keep it up, Joe. 27th place. Even though Tom Graff wasn't featuring you, we've been watching all day. and refreshing match play to see how you guys are all doing. CJ's up in the 60th place. There are 118 people here. Shelly's having a tough time. That's okay. Lily's having a tough time. It's a tough, tough crowd. Corey was up there for a while. Now he's a bit lower. But Joe, you're up in the finals cut right now. I hope you stay there. Good luck. Yeah, keep on pushing. Watch that Fox Cities stream. I think the finals are tomorrow. Yep. A and B. A and B finals tomorrow. So we won't be watching that all day because why? Because we are hosting our very first tournament at the Poor Brothers in Bloomington. Poor Bros, Bloomington, Illinois. On the coldest day of this winter, the end of 2025. I guess it's still technically fall. But it's going to be like, I think, single digits, maybe negative, definitely negative with the wind chill. But you know what? We're tough cookies. Yeah, we'll be there. I hope your local folks can make it out. We just got dumped on with snow. Roads are probably, they'll probably be cleared by tomorrow. Just drive safe. Drive safe. Come out. We're going to have some cool giveaway prizes. Michael Grant from the Stern from Stern Pinball he leads the Stern Army he sent a bunch of goodies for giveaways so thank you Michael you're probably not watching but thank you anyways and Mike Vinikour please tell Michael thank you and I did send him an email then we also have some PRP giveaways that we're going to have as well and I really hope we see some a lot of the newer faces that we met last week at league yeah 14 people in the league we did pretty well you were like second i was tied for third yeah and um you know this is going to be really fun because it's a it's a different operator it's not our friend cj who owns these machines so it's a different operator that has them and it's he he is new to running tournament So he asked us to help out with this and it definitely aligns with the whole reason why we started this podcast and the Facebook group was to reintroduce pinball to people. Yeah, because it's so fun and we're having so much fun. We just want more people to come in and play in in tournaments and special events. So we're very happy to to partner up and to go to poor bros to do this and meet new people. And we also have another event coming up in a couple of weeks right after Christmas Well before that Oh yeah Sorry Before that you skipping our HQ Yeah we have December 19th Friday December 19th Yeah Friday Our monthly tournament at the Punk Rock Pinball HQ. Most future monthly tournaments are going to be on Saturday. This one's on a Friday because December is tough and weird. It's probably I'm not expecting a big turnout for it. Yeah. Holidays are hard, but it's going to be fun. And Fridays are hard also, especially for anybody that is traveling a distance. I get it. Fridays are hard. So it's probably going to be a smaller tournament, but still going to be fun. Yep. So looking forward to that. So, yeah, tomorrow, the 14th, we've got Poor Bros. The 19th, we've got PRPHQ tournament. And then on the 28th, we're taking the show on the road. Going to Bottom Lounge. We're going to Bottom Lounge in Chicago where there is a ska show happening. Yep. Mustard Plug. Mustard Plug. Devin K and the Solutions. Yep. Jay Navarro. Yep. And his band, I can't remember. It's Jay Navarro and the somethings. Jay Navarro is from the band The Suicide Machines. Yep. So ahead of that, we're doing a pinball gimmick. TM. Because they've got like, what, 10 or 11 games up in their restaurant, kind of lobby restaurant area. And Mike, the owner of Bottom Lounge, is going to put them on free play. Thank you, Mike. Which is super cool. And we are going to do a high score pinball contest. Yep. There is an official PRP event where you can come and participate. If you want to enter into the contest, it's a buck, and there are prizes. It's a buck per play. Per entry. Per entry. So I think we're going to run the high score challenge on at least two machines, maybe three. And you can enter that, and you can play multiple times if you want to improve your score. Yep. So long as everyone else has played a turn. Yes. So if you're new, if you're walking and you haven't played yet, you could jump ahead of like somebody's waiting to play their second turn. And what kind of points can they earn in the standings? Well, they can earn PRPA points. As MXV calls them, poppers. Poppers. You can earn popper points. What is a PRPA? It's the Punk Rock Pinball Association. What? Yeah. Tell me more. So I made all the landing pages today. The leaderboard is not live. It's about to be live. Thanks to our great new friend, Nick Greenup. I don't know if that's exactly how you pronounce his last name. Outta KC. Outta KC. Thank you so much, Nick. He built a custom plug-in for these leaderboards. The results from these single game challenges that we're doing at Bottom Lounge will go in there. The results from our tournament tomorrow are going to go in there. If you're a tournament director or have a location, go to punkrockpinball.com and there is a landing page in the main navigation called Punk Rock Pinball Association. Click on that. It has all the information that you need to be able to become a venue and a host for Punk Rock Pinball Association in tournaments so that your players in your scene can compete and earn points. You can run them concurrently with your IFPA tournament. All you would do is, we decided we don't like finals all the time. So if you had like five rounds of match play and then a finals for your IFPA, you would take your five rounds of match play, upload those results to the Punk Rock Pinball Association website which is punkrockpinball.com upload your results there that's your finals for the Punk Rock Pinball tournament it's just your qualifying because if people played 5, 6, 7 rounds that's enough they grinded you could run a Punk Rock Pinball tournament and have it not be IFPA and you could just do 7 rounds and be like, after that, whoever won, they won. Boom. You could also make it IFPA, and you've got to do the finals for that, and you carry on, do your IFPA thing. That's all good. Yeah, they fit together. This is a companion. It's not really a competitor. It's meant to be a little more casual. The points system, how we calculate them, it's on the website. Way more simple. it's not totally designed to totally figure out who in fact is 100 the best player it's about rewarding playing more and more and more the more points you can get for fun for fun more fun more points yes and everyone likes more points everyone that's why we're playing pinball and the leaderboards will probably be up in just a few days as soon as the plugin works i'm just afraid until Nick tells me I can put the results in. I don't want to do it. We're just a couple days away. He's busy today. I texted him this morning. He runs an arcade in Kansas City. I'm leaving Nick alone to do his thing, but I'm excited. He's excited too. He excited too but I like just doing all I can to just leave Nick alone today Yeah Nick is really the real hero on this Yeah he created this plug from scratch Awesome. Yeah, so it's super badass. Punk Rock Pinball Association leaderboards are going to be up. You can go on the website. I'm repeating myself, but go on the website. If you host tournaments, there's a link to a Google form, real simple. We'll fill that out. That will come to me and we'll get it going. Yep. And we've got a few different groups across the country who are going to start doing this, which is very cool. And yeah, it's, like you said, a companion to the IFPA. We love the IFPA. It is an awesome organization as far as determining who is the best in the whole world. and they've spent a lot of time on their calculations and the statistics behind it and all that great stuff. PRPA is really about fun and recognizing and rewarding folks who are grinding it out and participating in all kinds of events. Yeah. So those folks that you see, I'm sure in every scene there's somebody, a couple people are like, they're at everything. Those people are going to really benefit from this. those people that play everything. They're everywhere. And we do have Jay and Emily Gross with Jay's Silver Ballroom up in Iowa. They're going to be hosting some of these tournaments. One of Jay's friends wants to host some, so we've got some people lined up that are going to start hosting these already, and we hope to grow it and get more and more TDs and locations. Yeah, and we're certainly building the plane as we're flying it on this. So any kind of feedback is totally welcome or ideas that you might have. Like, definitely let us know in the comments or email Mike at livefromtherockroom.com. Yep. Um, and eventually like we want to be able to, um, you know, arm these events with prize packs and all kinds of goodies too. So we may not be able to pull that off right away, but that's, um, that's in, in the works too. Yeah. So for that, cause we would love to be able to send a bunch of punk rock pinball swag to anyone hosting these tournaments. thing is this punk rock pinball swag costs a lot of money we probably sent out like a couple thousand bucks worth already everywhere so if you buy the merch that we talked about earlier that would help we also need to try to find some sponsors for this uh if you have and Steph and I do a lot and we're capable of a lot but we also could use some help because we don't have all the time in the world so if you've got experience as somebody that like sells sponsorships or does like brand partnerships for things like a pinball organization like get in touch, we'd like to talk to you. Could definitely use some help on that end. We know how to make the deck and we know how to talk to people, but we're also building a website and we're hosting all of these events that we just talked about and we're having artists design the merch and we're dealing with getting the merch made and shipping it around so a little more help other than just the two of us would be good. We're kind of looking for somebody for that. If you've got those skills, Yep. If you've got skills and experience doing brand partnership kind of work and things of that nature, definitely get in touch with PM, Steph, or me, either one, or email me. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's longer than we meant for this episode to be. It really is. But, I don't know, half a cup of coffee? 21 minutes. I thought this would be 10 minutes But like we just yap our traps Just like Kevin Jones says You get on there and just talk and talk and talk Sorry, can you join me? It's like that's what a podcast is Well, that's how our podcast is I think What is a podcast if you don't talk and talk? I don't know We're not real content creators A not-cast Yeah We're just doing our thing Yeah, I like to say We're not content creators we just have a podcast. So I guess thank you guys for all, if you've made it this far, thank you so much. Yes, thank you. And keep warm out there. Yeah. Drive safe on those roads. Yeah. And maybe we'll see you tomorrow. And let's go down at the Winter Bash. Joe Sharp, keep it up. Kick some ass. Joe. CJ too. CJ too, but Joe's up there, so he's got to stay up there. I don't know if the other folks, there's only like one round left. So I don't think the other folks can make it. Well, then they're going to the B finals and they're going to kick ass. Everyone kick ass in the B finals. Joe, make the A finals and go. Yeah. Even though you're going to miss out on PRPA points. You're going to not get any PRPA points at that Winter Bash this year. It's all right. Which is just unfortunate for you, Joe. But still, make those A finals and get them. Go get them. All right. That's all we got. All right. Toodaloo. Bye-bye.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v1)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 47d136bf-f3e7-4285-8bca-904bdac87672*