# Tribe Multiball with Rachel and Tim, Episode 19: Toppers and Expo

**Source:** Poor Man's Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2021-11-18  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/tribe-multiball-with-rachel-and-tim-episode-19-toppers-and-expo

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## Analysis

Ari Jones joins Tim and Rachel on the Tee'd Off Tribe Multiball Podcast segment to discuss his pinball hobby, custom topper creations, and experiences at Pinball Expo. The episode covers Ari's journey into pinball (starting with virtual pinball), his collection and machines owned, custom builds including DIY toppers for Iron Maiden and Batman 66, and detailed recounting of Pinball Expo experiences from Wednesday through Thursday, emphasizing community connections and shared experiences with fellow tribe members.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Ari created a custom Iron Maiden topper using a 3D-printed Eddie head with integrated LED lights in the eyeballs, tied into the game electronics. — _Ari directly describes the topper creation process and Rachel confirms it's 'by far the coolest Iron Maiden topper that I have witnessed.'_
- [HIGH] Ari has owned approximately 8-10 pinball machines including Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, Dialed In, Jurassic Park, Medieval Madness, The Shadow, World Cup Soccer, Iron Maiden, and Batman 66. — _Ari explicitly lists these machines when asked how many he's owned._
- [HIGH] Ari discovered pinball through virtual pinball (Zen Pinball) on vacation, then experienced real pinball for the first time at UpDown playing Attack from Mars. — _Ari provides detailed origin story of his pinball journey starting with Zen Pinball and transitioning to physical machines._
- [HIGH] Ari is actively looking to acquire F-14 Tomcat or Baywatch machines and has Cactus Canyon, James Cameron's Avatar (Limited Edition), and Godzilla Premium Edition coming in several months. — _Ari states his current acquisition targets and upcoming orders when asked what he's looking for._
- [HIGH] Rachel became recognized in the pinball community to the point where strangers at venues and multiple podcast listeners know her from Ladies of Wisconsin and District 82 streaming. — _Tim describes encountering IFPA-ranked Pittsburgh players who knew Rachel but not him; Rachel confirms this recognition happened at Pinball Expo during the Super Series._
- [HIGH] Ari offered to help locate and ship a Jolly Roger (Spanish amusement game) from Kansas City to Tim, demonstrating community support and character. — _Tim directly thanks Ari for retrieving the Jolly Roger game, bringing it to his garage, and shipping it._
- [HIGH] Rachel double-tilted a Mouse Around game at Logan's Arcade during Pinball Expo, then won the game despite the tilts and also won Bad Cats. — _Ari gives her the nickname 'Double Tilt' after witnessing the dual tilt; Rachel confirms she won both games._

### Notable Quotes

> "I only have room for a couple or three, so I have to be very selective and the market's really crazy right now as you guys know."
> — **Ari Jones**, early in interview
> _Reflects current pinball market constraints and pricing challenges affecting collectors._

> "It's like, oh, this is, I don't know if you guys ever get into something or hear some music and you're like, oh yeah, this is for me. That's what it was like when I played Attack from Mars."
> — **Ari Jones**, discussing entry to pinball
> _Demonstrates the transformative 'aha moment' many collectors experience discovering physical pinball._

> "I want the attention for Ladies of Wisconsin. It's just weird for me to get the attention as Rachel Lilge, you know?"
> — **Rachel Lilge**, discussing recognition at Pinball Expo
> _Reveals community awareness of Rachel's streaming work and the distinction between personal and content creator identity._

> "The podcast is great, but he's [Drew] built something really cool here with a group of people that kind of be friends for life probably."
> — **Ari Jones**, discussing tribe community value
> _Emphasizes that the primary value of the podcast community is social connection, not just content._

> "You're like part of the pinball zeitgeist now. You're everywhere."
> — **Tim Dan Lee**, discussing Rachel's recognition
> _Indicates rapid rise in Rachel's visibility and influence within the pinball community ecosystem._

> "I just really liked it. Maybe it was the layout, but I think it was the art and the colors that were on the table that really spoke to me for Cactus Canyon."
> — **Tim Dan Lee**, discussing Cactus Canyon gameplay
> _Highlights the role of aesthetics and visual design in game appeal alongside mechanics._

> "Houdini Master of Mystery is still my favorite game. It's completely loaded. It's got everything you can imagine. It has deep code. There's lots of strategy involved."
> — **Ari Jones**, discussing favorite games
> _Identifies depth and strategy complexity as key characteristics valued by experienced collectors._

> "Drew, the cheap bastard, brought the cheapest game he could find just to get in free."
> — **Tim Dan Lee**, discussing Pinball Expo entrance strategy
> _Humorous characterization of Drew's cost-consciousness in the community context._

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Ari Jones | person | Guest on Tee'd Off Tribe Multiball Podcast, pinball collector from Kansas City, custom topper builder, pinball accessories vendor, member of We Are Pinball tribe community. |
| Tim Dan Lee | person | Co-host of Tee'd Off Tribe Multiball Podcast, organizer of Pinball Expo trip, pinball enthusiast, collector. |
| Rachel Lilge | person | Co-host of Tee'd Off Tribe Multiball Podcast, Ladies of Wisconsin streamer, District 82 stream commentator, achieved recognition as pinball personality at Pinball Expo. |
| Drew | person | Host/organizer of We Are Pinball tribe and Poor Man's Pinball Podcast, brought homebrew Firepower game to Pinball Expo, organizes community events. |
| Billy YJ | person | Tribe member picked up by Tim at airport for Pinball Expo, participated in vendor area exploration and gaming. |
| John | person | Collector from Kansas City with 12 high-end machines including Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, Rick and Morty; has alter ego 'Steve'; scheduled to receive Celts machine via Haggis Pinball courier service. |
| Joseph Hood | person | Tribe member from Kansas City, reached out to Ari when he became tribe member, plays at 403 Club, becoming friends with Ari. |
| Zach Sharpe | person | Owner/operator of Flippin' Out Pinball, met Tim at Pinball Expo vendor area. |
| Tony 'Scoot' | person | Operates Scoot's Deli, a pinball community gathering spot; gave tour of fire station to Billy YJ during Pinball Expo. |
| Rachel (Rachel Lilge's wife reference - Amy) | person | Tim's wife, initially hesitant to play games at Pinball Expo but participated in vendor area gaming with Drew and Billy. |
| Jeremy Packer | person | Referenced as contact/friend, visited Helicon Brewery where Pittsburgh Pinball League members recognized Rachel. |
| Andy Baird | person | IFPA-ranked pinball player whose wife approached Rachel at Pinball Expo to praise her Super Series commentating. |
| Lauren Gray | person | Co-host of Backbox Pinball Podcast, recently had Rachel on show. |
| Rebecca Salem | person | Co-host of Backbox Pinball Podcast, recently had Rachel on show. |
| We Are Pinball | organization | Podcast network and community organization that Drew hosts, Poor Man's Pinball Podcast is part of this network. |
| Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Network | organization | Podcast network containing Tee'd Off Tribe Multiball segment, hosts community-focused pinball content. |
| 403 Club | venue | World-famous pinball arcade in downtown Kansas City, known for good machine selection and tournaments. |
| Logan Arcade | venue | Pinball arcade destination visited by tribe members during Pinball Expo week, location of Rachel's 'Double Tilt' incident. |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major annual pinball convention/show where tribe members gathered; Ari's first show experience; ran Wednesday-Sunday. |
| Pittsburgh Pinball League | organization | Local pinball league with IFPA-ranked players who recognized Rachel at Helicon Brewery. |
| Haggis Pinball | company | Distributor/logistics company that expedited Celts machine delivery to John by air freight. |
| American Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer whose representative offered Billy and Tim opportunity to play Legends of Valhalla at Pinball Expo vendor area. |
| Zen Studios | company | Developer of Zen Pinball virtual pinball game that introduced Ari to pinball gaming. |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Custom pinball toppers and modifications, Pinball machine collecting and acquisition strategies, Pinball Expo 2024 experience and venue activities, We Are Pinball tribe community and social dynamics
- **Secondary:** Entry pathways to pinball hobby (virtual to physical), Pinball market pricing and availability constraints, Content creator recognition and visibility in pinball community
- **Mentioned:** Pinball accessibility and learning curve for new players

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.92) — Episode is predominantly warm, enthusiastic, and celebratory of community connections. Ari expresses genuine appreciation for the tribe experience; Tim and Rachel praise the community-building aspects of the podcast. Pinball Expo is portrayed as a successful, joyful gathering. Only minor self-deprecating humor and light ribbing present (e.g., 'Drew Sucks at Pinball' shirts). No negative criticism of games, manufacturers, or community members.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** We Are Pinball tribe community is functioning as meaningful social connector beyond podcast content, with members meeting at Pinball Expo, helping each other source games, and developing friendships. (confidence: high) — Ari stated: 'The podcast is great, but he's built something really cool here. Yeah, the community is unbelievable.' Tim picks up Billy from airport; Ari helps source Jolly Roger game; Joseph Hood reaches out to Ari upon tribe membership.
- **[content_signal]** Rachel Lilge has achieved significant visibility in pinball media ecosystem and community through Ladies of Wisconsin streaming and District 82 commentary, with recognition crossing into casual venue settings. (confidence: high) — Tim reports: 'Rachel, I have to tell you, you like every podcast I listen to in the last couple of weeks has mentioned you.' Pittsburgh Pinball League members at Helicon Brewery recognized her; multiple podcasts featuring her; Backbox Pinball Podcast invited her as guest.
- **[personality_signal]** Community members develop in-jokes and humorous group identity (e.g., 'Double Tilt' nickname for Rachel, 'Steve' alter ego for John, 'Drew Sucks at Pinball' merchandise). (confidence: high) — Rachel earned 'Double Tilt' nickname after double-tilting Mouse Around; John called 'Steve Hemsworth' when drinking; Drew acknowledged merchandise joking about his pinball skill.
- **[collector_signal]** Pinball market characterized by high prices and selectivity for serious collectors; Ari describes market as 'really crazy' and says having multiple machines requires careful curation. (confidence: high) — Ari: 'The market's really crazy right now... I only have room for a couple or three, so I have to be very selective.' His wife's reaction to new machine costs suggests pricing shock.
- **[design_innovation]** Aftermarket custom toppers and electronic modifications enabling integration with game electronics represent significant DIY/maker activity in collector community. (confidence: high) — Ari built Iron Maiden topper with integrated LED eyeballs tied into game electronics, Batman 66 LED bat symbol connected via solid state relays, offers topper creation as service for machines he's owned.
- **[technology_signal]** Open-source and community-designed solutions for display upgrades (colorized DMD boards, Tilt Audio alternatives to Pin Sound) are available and being adopted by collectors as cheaper alternatives to official solutions. (confidence: high) — Ari describes community-based colorized DMD versions: 'somebody designed a board... you can order the parts... It's just that, but for those Dungeons & Dragons-style scoreboards.' Mentions Tilt Audio as free/open-source alternative to Pin Sound.
- **[venue_signal]** Kansas City pinball community features active 403 Club arcade with good machine selection and tournaments, plus collector's homes (John's 12-game collection) serving as social gaming hubs. (confidence: high) — Ari describes 403 Club as 'world-famous' with 'great selection of games, good tournaments.' John's home collection includes Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones (restored), Rick and Morty, and pending Celts delivery.
- **[event_signal]** Pinball Expo 2024 successfully facilitated tribe member meetups and served as venue for recognizing content creators' community impact. (confidence: high) — Ari's first show was positive experience; Rachel received compliments from Super Series viewers; tribe members coordinated logistics (picking up Billy, setting up John and Joseph's games); vendor area was accessible to players for informal gaming.
- **[supply_chain_signal]** Specialty pinball distributors like Haggis Pinball offering expedited air freight for machines to overcome port cargo delays and backorder logistics. (confidence: medium) — Haggis Pinball 'went ahead and put [Celts] on a plane for him, spent a little extra himself, and put it on a plane to get it to John. Sooner because, you know, the logjam of cargo ports.'
- **[gameplay_signal]** Houdini Master of Mystery regarded as deeply complex game with steep learning curve but high replayability and strategic depth once shots are mastered. (confidence: high) — Ari: 'It's completely loaded. It's got everything you can imagine. It has deep code. There's lots of strategy involved.' Tim: 'a quarter of an inch from being a phenomenal game' due to shot difficulty; acknowledged as location liability due to difficulty.
- **[product_strategy]** Cactus Canyon remake generating positive reception among playtesters for art package, flow, and overall fun factor despite lack of familiarity with original game. (confidence: medium) — Ari played at MGC and 'thought the game was just a lot of fun. Really cool art package. Just a lot of flow.' Tim played at Pinball Expo: 'I can't pinpoint why I like it, but I just really liked it.'
- **[entry_pathway_signal]** Virtual pinball games (Zen Pinball) serving as effective gateway to physical pinball hobby, with players graduating from digital to physical machines and discovering structural depth/rule complexity. (confidence: high) — Ari: 'I started to play a little bit more... went on YouTube and figured out, oh, this is how you start a mode... oh, there's actually structure and rules and there's a goal.' Then transitioned to Attack from Mars at UpDown venue.

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## Transcript

 Hey, Poor Man Tribe and listeners, this is Glennie Rogers, and you're listening to the Tribe Multiple Podcast with Rachel and Tim. Poor Man Tribe's the thing, that is who we are. It and Drew. They're not in this thing, so how could it go wrong? Flip away with us, to an old blockade, and then we'll learn about each other. From two pennants to another Rachel and Tim, who do we have on the show today? Hello everyone, welcome to Tribe Multiball with Rachel and Tim A podcast segment on the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Network Where we get to know the Tribe members just a little bit better and see some of the awesome things they're doing in pinball and in their lives. I'm Tim Lee, and I'm here with my co-host, Rachel Lilge. And we're here to bring you another awesome and great episode with another really cool guest. Rachel, how are you doing today? Well, Tim, I'm doing pretty good, but you know our podcast could also be a little sloppy today. You never know. We'll just see how it goes. How are you? I'm doing well. We like sloppy. I mean, we are on the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Network. Yeah, I don't even want to say the T-P-P-P-N. Yeah, yeah, lots of P's. So Rachel. Yes, sir. I think we're going to mix it up a little bit today. I think that sounds like a good idea. Yeah, yeah. You and I and our guest, we all kind of share the same personal pinball news. So I figured we would bring them in early, talk about them, and then share our personal pinball news at the end. How about it? Sounds like fun. Let's give it a whirl. All right. So welcome to the show, Ari Jones. Hey, what's up, guys? I'm good. I've arrived early. Nice. Welcome to it. All right. So you're doing well? Yes. Doing great. I'm happy to join you guys. I've been listening to every episode of the podcast. I really enjoy it, so it's great to be on. Nice. So you have low expectations. We like it. Oh, so do you guys, because you had me on. Thanks for being a loyal listener. We're just really happy to have you here today with us. Of course. Always support my tribies. Yep. And I don't want to spoil the fun, but we all met up at Expo, and that's what we're going to talk about at the end of the episode. But I'm glad you made it. You survived. Oh, I did. My compadres barely, but I made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. we can talk about that later. Let's jump right into it. What we like to do is just tell us a little bit about what you're doing in pinball, whether you're just playing somewhere, what you're playing, how you're playing, who you're playing with. So what are you doing these days? These days I'm doing quite a bit of pinball machine hunting, looking for a good deal all the time, a good machine I want to bring in. I've only got room for a couple or three, so I have to be very selective and the market's really crazy right now as you guys know yeah so um i do have a couple games on order but they're not going to be in for several months so what do we do in the meantime i've got one game in there and it needs a buddy so i've been looking around i tinker in selling pinball accessories a little bit um i build little pinball scoreboard displays called pin to dmd build those send them out to people who need them okay i uh do some other things i build like little stadium lights just my own version of them that uh i make for people and i make toppers you guys might have seen some of my toppers yes i'm always tinkering with just i love the games but i love the fact that you can add to them a little bit absolutely yeah let's rewind a little bit do People still use the term rewind, or is that just me with my VCR? We're using it. Oh, no. Yes. All right. So that's a lot. So that's pretty cool. But what's the one game? I've got an Iron Maiden Premium. Okay. Yes, you do. It is beautiful. Oh, I love that game. Talk about the topper. The topper, yeah. So I looked around for a topper for it, and it was nonexistent pretty much, or it was a billion dollars. So I started looking into something I could do myself. on Facebook marketplace I saw this like 3D printed it's like a it's just a big eddy head and it's made to put your headphones on like your beats headphones it's just something to hold them so I got it and I started painting it a little bit and I added lights in the eyeballs and like a little light to shine up on it and I tied it into the game so it's and I threw it up there and it looks great. I got like a real big chain around it like one of the eddies in the game and it turned out really cool. It is by far the coolest Maiden Topper that I have witnessed. It is so, so neat. Yeah, it really is. Good job. Yeah, it turned out really good and I was pretty proud of it. You also had a Batman 66 for a while that you had a custom topper too. That was really pretty. Yeah, I did. That one was just an LED bat symbol like wall light that I bought. It wasn't cheap. It was like this collector's edition thing. But I was able to tie that into the game using relays, solid state relays and stuff. Crazy. It really turned out cool too. It interacts with the game, fades in and out with the GI. It was really nice. Yeah, I wish I could do those kind of things someday. I'm just so jealous. You'll have to share maybe a photo or video on the fan page. Yeah, totally. Yeah, please do. I know somebody that has a Dark Knight that needs a topper. Maybe I'll have to put you on the payroll. I know somebody that has, you know, an Iron Maiden that could use a topper. You know, hey, it's me. Yeah, I'd be happy to make them. Yeah. So do you do that? Do you actually, I mean, can somebody contact you and hire you to make a topper? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it would have to be one of the ones I've done before because I kind of need the game to test, you know, tie it in, test it, make sure everything's connected in the right spots. But, yeah, if it's a game I've had, I can probably make a top of four. What about a Drew Sucks at Pinball topper? Stop it. Oh, it's in the works. Have you seen the T-shirts? Friends, fans, listeners, have you seen the T-shirts? Drew Sucks at Pinball versus the Tim Sucks at Pinball T-shirts on Silver Swag. Pretty amazing. I haven't ordered one yet, but I think I'm going to have to order one of each just to make it even. So I have a surprise there, and I'm going to bring this up. I've been holding this until we do the show. So Ari did a really nice thing for me, Rachel. Did I tell you what he did? No, you didn't tell me, but he's a nice guy, so I'm not surprised. Yeah, so I have a friend who's a pinball technician, and he collects amusement park games. And a Jolly Roger came up for sale. It's a Spanish game, and it came up for sale in Kansas City. And Ari was nice enough to go get the game, bring it to his garage, and ship it to us. Oh, that was really nice. Yeah, really nice. That tells you the character of Ari. So as a thank you, I got Ari – I was going to do something for him at Expo, but it actually fell through, and we won't talk about that. They canceled what we were going to do. So I would at least like to get you a Drew Sucks at Pinball shirt or whoever sucks at Pinball shirt. So if you want a couple of those, let me know. Which one would you choose? I want to know. Oh, man. I would have to say Drew. Oh. Because he does suck at pinball. Yeah, yeah. So send me your shirt size. I've been excited about this since Drew announced it because I'm like, what can I do as a thank you? It was a nice thing that you did for me and my buddy Dan. I appreciate it. So when Drew said he was going to have the shirts printed, I'm like, all right, I'm going to get Ari one. So let me know your shirt size and we'll get you out a Drew Sucks at Pinball shirt. Excellent. Appreciate that. That's really nice. So that means that I have to actually just buy a Tim Lee Sucks at Pinball shirt to even that out. Well, I saw the first Tim Lee and the Tim Sucks at Pinball shirts and I wasn't too pleased. Oh, man. Oh, man. It's all in good fun, all in good nature. Yep. Yep. Yep. So let's get back to these. you said you make a a dmd like a color dmd type of system tell me a little bit more about that sure it's just um you've seen the color dmds uh yep that they sell it's just the kind of um open source community based version of that somebody designed a board and you can buy the led panels to put on the board and someone a lot smarter than me came up with it but you can order of the parts you have to have the boards made in china typically and okay it makes sense to order them in bulk that's why it's hard just to buy one just kind of one off and put it together yourself so i make those and there's another there's one for audio you've heard of them pin sound yep but pin sound is something similar they that's a company that designed their pin sound board and their speaker set and all that stuff. Okay. There's a community-based version of that called Tilt Audio that does essentially the same thing. Put it in your game, load a sound package, and you get, like, CD-quality sound. You can put it in any game there is. Upgrade your sound package. So it's just that, but for those D&D-style scoreboards. Okay. I never knew those kind of things existed. That's cool. It is cool. And people will author colorization, so they'll actually get the dots, and they'll color a whole game themselves like an Addams Family or whatever. And you can acquire those color files, and now you've got a color DMD in your game for a lot cheaper than a color DMD. Again, don't know how happy they're going to be hearing this. Well, it's free and exists. It's called the internet, so whatever. That's true. People are going to do it if they can. Yeah, that's why they have open source platforms. That's exactly right, Tim. You want to take the time to do it yourself or you can – they offer a service where they're doing everything for you and you could buy it, but it comes at a cost or you can do it yourself. That's exactly it, yeah. That's right. Very cool. Awesome. I know somebody that has an Addams Family that needs one, so we'll talk. Oh, sure. And a demolition man over here. Hello. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that's some pretty cool stuff. Where are you playing pinball these days and who are you playing with? Mostly here at home. If not here, I go to the world-famous 403 Club downtown Kansas City. Okay. Where they have a great selection of games, good tournaments. If not there, I go to my buddy John Steve's house where he's got 12 really nice games, a lot of rare games, a lot of expensive games. He's got Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones that he completely restored. It was unbelievable. Really? Rick and Morty. He's got some Zacharias. He's got a great selection over there. I had no idea he had that many games. I did get to meet him at Expo. He's an interesting character, for sure. That sounds like a nice collection. Fun to have friends that have fun games. He's got a Celts coming real soon. Oh, wow. Oh, nice. And Damien went ahead and put that thing on a plane for him, spent a little extra money himself, and put it on a plane to get it to John. Wow. Sooner because, you know, the log jam of cargo ports, right? Right. If you exist in this world, you should know all about that right now and everything in the back order, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for our listeners, his name is John, but Drew called him Steve on Drew's Expo recap, to which I immediately sent Drew a text and said, you know his name is John, right? And Drew was like, oh crap, I knew I was going to screw something up. So Drew offered a public apology, which I thought was hilarious because having met John Steve, I don't think he would care that Drew called him Steve. He did not care. No, and I think that we all should call him Steve Hemsforth, don't you? Yeah, yeah. It's his nickname. Yeah, like Steve is John's alter ego because John turned out to be a super nice guy. I felt like at any time at Expo he wanted to rip my head off, but he just has these piercing eyes. He does. He really does. He's a little on the intense side, right? Yeah. You get a couple beers and John, he turns into Steve. Yeah, the alter ego. He becomes this fun-loving guy hugging everyone. Yeah, he was a pretty cool dude. Joseph Hood was pretty cool too. Yeah, those guys are great. It was really cool. I met, I don't know if Joe told this story. I think he did. But when I became a tribe member, Joe right away realized that I was in Kansas City and reached out to me and said, hey, let's go to 403 and play some pinball. And I was like, sure. And we met up and we hit it off right away. He's a super nice guy. And he was friends with John, who I had met previously when I was selling Dialed In. He came over to possibly give it a flip and maybe buy it. He didn't. He said it was too expensive. But can't help that he's cheap. But yeah, we became fast friends. And yeah, we hang out all the time. Actually, Joe and I are going to see Louis C.K. tomorrow. Yay, fun. So you became friends with Joe because of the tribe. That's so awesome. Yeah, yeah. So cool. I was telling Drew, if nothing, you know, the podcast is great, but what a cool thing to have put together a group of people that, you know, our own little community and people who get along so well and kind of be friends for life probably. I mean, what more could you want out of that than anything else? The podcast is great, but he's built something pretty cool here. Yeah, the community is unbelievable. Well, we'll have to talk about that once we get into the expo portion of that and all the hugging and so forth. Yeah. So, yeah, we got some good stories. So, Ari, how did you get into pinball? Where did it all start? Well, I remember distinctly. I was on vacation with my family, and it was really boring. I was bored. And I had my tablet, and I downloaded the Zen pinball. You know, it's got, like, the sorcerer's lair. Yep. And I'd done that a few times before, but I – you know, pinball never really clicked with me. It was all these flashy lights, and I could – it was kind of like going up to a crafts table. I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. Sure. But then I started to play a little bit more. Like I said, I had a lot of time, and I started to go on YouTube and figure out, oh, this is how you start a mode, and this is what you're supposed to do. And I'm like, oh, there's actually structure and rules and there's a goal. And really kind of became addicted to that game for a little while. And then I was like, is real pinball like this? You know, it's like virtual is cool, but is real pinball kind of got the same complexity and structure? And it was like, so it does. And I started to go to UpDown. And the first game I walked up to was Attack from Mars. And that just blew my mind. And I'm like, oh, this is, I don't know if you guys ever get into something or hear some music and you're like, oh yeah, this is for me. That's what it was like. It was kind of that type of experience. It was like, oh, okay, well, I guess I'll be doing this for a while. We were building a house at the time and there was a game room. Like I had no idea what I was going to put in this game room. It's like in like a pool table or something. But I'm like, oh, can I buy a pinball machine? and started looking into it and they had these attack from our attack from mars remakes got one i got one and my wife just couldn't believe how much it cost and i couldn't believe how much it cost you know if you don't know you don't know right oh it's so gorgeous and we got it and the family really enjoyed it and so i got a what i get next a monster bash that went right next to it for a while and pretty and yeah it just took off from there just kind of fell in love and then started to obsess about it a little bit found that there was a podcast about it couldn't believe there was a podcast and actually there's 15 podcasts about it you know and then there's oh there's one with these two guys that drink a lot and have this dark sense of humor like i do and you know that's kind of how you get and how i got to this niche so you did Did you play as a child or was this really the first time you played pinball when you went and played Attack from Mars? I don't know about you guys. I would go up – like I'd be in a pizza bar or something and there would be a pinball machine. And I'd go up and just – I'd flip it around with no real idea what was going on. Yeah. So there was that. Yeah. Yeah, it's just – and some of them were like the EMs and it would be like bing-bong, jing-jong, real slow, kind of floaty stuff. Yeah, sure. And then now your modern pinball has got explosions and rock music blasting and lights everywhere, and it was just a completely different experience than what I remembered. Yeah. So how many machines have you owned over the years? I think probably eight, around eight. It was what? Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, Dialed In, Jurassic Park, Black Knight, Shadow, World Cup Soccer, Iron Maiden. Yeah, and Batman 66. So, yeah, around $10. What are you looking for? You said you're kind of in the market. The pinball prices are crazy. But what are you trying to keep an eye out for to put next to your Lonely Maiden there? I've been looking for a really nice F-14 or a Baywatch. Oh, interesting. And I've got Cactus Canyon LE and Godzilla Premium coming. But, like I said, it's just not for several months. Yeah, you've got time in between to have something else to play around on. Yeah. Yeah, and that Cactus Canyon is a really cool game. Did you get a chance to flip it? At MGC I did. I didn't at Expo. I didn't have time. But at MGC I did. And I was like, I've never played the game ever, so I never played the original. And I thought the game was just a lot of fun. Really cool art package. Just a lot of flow. I like the game a lot. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I thought so as well. I flipped it at Expo. And I probably put five games on it. I can't pinpoint why I like it, but I just really liked it. Yeah, I don't know either, Tim. I agree with that. Maybe it was the layout, but I think it was the art and the colors that were on the table that really spoke to me. It was just a heck of a lot of fun to play. Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. All right, so Ari, what was your favorite game? That's tough. Gosh, maybe – oh, I'll tell you. My favorite game, I forgot to mention I had it, but Houdini. It's still my favorite game. yes and i am still missing that game uh yeah for real i loved it it's got so much it's completely loaded it's got everything you can imagine it's got deep code there's lots of strategy involved yes and people complain about the shots but really once you once you get a couple games on it and you've got those dialed in not hard to hit houdini it's a lot of fun i enjoy that game too uh do you think that if you're missing it that much that you would like to own it again you know i always hear about people having repeat things coming through john's done it a lot and uh i never thought i would but man if i if i had more room for sure i'd bring it back okay well i hope that it does come back your way again i have one one set of friends that have that game and every time i play it i fall a little bit more in love with that game i like it almost as much as hot wheels I think that's their best game right now, in my opinion. But Houdini is a heck of a lot of fun. That's cool. That's a cool favorite game. Yeah. My buddy Justin had Houdini, and I helped him sell it. And I always said that it was a quarter of an inch from being a phenomenal game. I had a really hard time with the shots, but it was a really fun game. But you had to play it. Once you got it down in, you know, just like any game, once you started to learn to hit the shots, you could do really well with the shots. yeah I imagine that was a really bad location game just because you can't just hop on it even another Houdini you know if you want a Houdini you can't go hop on another one and have a good time with it you really gotta dial that in and get your muscles twitching right and then it's a lot of fun yeah alright so anything else you want to talk about before we get to our expo review anything else we haven't mentioned that you're doing in pinball or who you're playing with or where you're playing I can't think of it. had you on yet and we kind of wanted to break down expo from wednesday through even sunday so overall did you have a good time at expo oh i had the best time now it was my first pinball show so i don't have a huge frame of reference but i mean how could it not have been a great time with uh everything that was going on and seeing all the tribe members was really looking forward to that for a long time so yeah didn disappoint it was also my first show too so i don have anything to compare it to but let me tell you I think I was living my best life Tons of pinball hanging out with friends It was just really what a great long weekend that was. Rachel, I got to tell you, you like every podcast I listen to in the last couple of weeks has mentioned you. You're like part of the pinball zeitgeist now. Oh, gosh. You're everywhere. Oh, gosh. I'm going to tell a story about that. It has nothing to do with Expo, but I was at Helicon Brewery on Thursday with my wife and daughter and a few guys from the Pittsburgh Pinball League, a couple of them that are ranked really high in IFPA, came in and they asked if I wanted to play pinball. And we played some games. They had no idea who I was, but every one of them knew Rachel. And just – yep. Everyone – they're like, oh, you're Rachel's co-host. And they were going crazy. They watched the District 82 stream. A couple of them had listened to the podcast. A number of them were very familiar with you from Ladies Flip Wisconsin. So you're kind of the bomb in pinball. I love it. She's pinball famous. Yeah. Oh, gosh. It might almost make me cry. That's a lot to take in. I will say the Expo, one of the things that happened at Expo, because I'd just done the Super Series, is that I had so many really kind and wonderful people that came up to me and said such nice things about my commentating and announcing on the Super Series. So much, in fact, that it made me cry. I had one gal, Andy Bagel's wife, came up to me. I wish I could recall her name. She was so sweet. She came up to me and said the nicest things about my voice and about all of that. It just brought tears to my eyes. It's just neat when people reach out and say something, when you're passionate about something, which I am, obviously, passionate about pinball, and have people come up and say nice things about it. It's a little overwhelming, and how do you figure out how to take that, you know? I'm just so thankful, and that was my response to you when you told me that these fellas at a place you play knew me. My response was, shut up, Tim. Because it's like, you know, like, I appreciate that, but it's also, again, like, how do you absorb that as Rachel? You know, I want the attention. We've talked about this. I want the attention for Ladies of Wisconsin. It's just weird for me to get the attention as Rachel Lilgey, you know? I want to say one real cool thing that happened, though. if you haven't listened if you don't do not listen to backbox pinball podcast you need to go back and listen to lauren gray and rebecca salem the nicest gals they had me on recently and i have the best time so thank you so much for that just want to make sure that i mentioned that they're just such cool chicks i'm just so lucky yeah well rachel it's it's like a lot of things in life i think it's you get out of it what you put into it and you've really made a big contribution to the hobby and yeah you know i think you're reaping the rewards it's very nice Yeah, just having fun. It was a good time. So let's think about Expo here, right? So that Wednesday, I was able to get down there on Wednesday and I picked up Billy YJ from the airport. So that was cool. I had to make a thousand loops waiting for him, but it was worth it because he's such a nice guy. So I got to pick him up and we went to Scoots Deli and that was amazing. We got a tour of Scoots. What is his real name? Tony? I can't even think about it. We just call him Scoots. We got a tour of Tony's fire station. That was a lot of fun. Billy put on the gear. It was really cute to see that. He flipped on the truck lights. It was just a really fun time. And then we went and checked in at the hotel, and we ran into some other friends. Okay. Yeah, Billy looked like a five-year-old at the firehouse. It was funny. He had a huge smile on his face. Yes. Yeah, we'll talk about scoots when we get to Thursday with us. When did you get in, Ari? We got in Wednesday. Okay. And we went and set up Joe and John's games in the Expo Center, and then we went to Logan Arcade, which was kind of a destination for me. I'd always wanted to go hang out there, and it was a lot of fun. That place is great. And then we went back to the hotel, and I guess he was Steve at that point. Threw up everywhere, so that was great. That was our first night. Perfect. Billy and I did join you at Logan's Arcade and we maybe should just talk about that for just a second because Ari has a new nickname for me what game was that was that Mouse and Around oh my gosh so Rachel and John and a few other people were playing Mouse and Around and I'll be damned if she didn't tilt the game but she didn't just tilt it it flipped to the next player and the next player got tilted too so So we started calling her Double Tilt, the rest of Xbox. Yeah. That's funny. Well, that mouse around, here's the thing. Like, I slid it a little bit, and the game didn't even give me a danger. I'm like, well, what the heck? So if I can slide it a little bit, I'm going to push the, you know, envelope and see how far I can bump the game. But that was the first time I've ever double tilted. But it was really funny. I was impressed. I still won the game. I still won the game, and I won Bad Cats, too. Nice. Double tilt. I'm playing with you guys. Yeah. And later in the week, Rachel actually – and this wasn't on purpose. She kicked me while she was playing. I don't know if you remember that, Rachel. No, I don't even know I did. She bucked you. Yeah, you were playing with a bunch of the tribe members, and I was standing behind you, and you literally kicked me. Oh, Tim, I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah. So then you kicked me twice. So I'm like, Amy, we got to back up here. I was saving that one. I didn't bring it up then because I wanted to bring it up in the podcast. I didn't realize I did that, Tim. My gosh, I'm so sorry. that happens that happens frequently i tell people when they stand around me if i don't play against them like i do kick sometimes the gentleman gets going and i do my pinball aerobics you know all at the same time um so that's funny yeah yeah you you were intense and i loved it i mean you were definitely into the game well you know the thing is with that is like i can just push it off and i can stop it and tell my body not to move or whatever but then i'm thinking about that right it's just better to let my body react and just do whatever it's got to kick and flail and whatever in order for me to play then we just do that so it's fun yeah yeah let's flip on over to thursday so i did not get in well wednesday i got in at like seven in the morning on thursday i was supposed to get in later in the morning like 10 11 ish but they moved my flight up to 6 a.m So I got in and we found a bunch of folks and we all went out to Scoots Deli for lunch. I think it was – I don't know who it was. There was a bunch of us, a bunch of tribe members who were there. Yep, Drew. Drew picked us up. Now, let's rewind. Drew brought in – what game did Drew bring in? He brought in – it was a home pin. A little guy, just a little pin. Yeah, Firepower, home pin? Maybe. So Drew, the cheap bastard, brought in the cheapest game he could find just to get in free. He called me, and then I met him in the back in the loading docks, and Billy came down. I called Billy to come down, and we carried in Drew's game. But before we get to Scoots Deli, I don't know if I told you this. Drew, Billy, and I just snuck into the vendor area. Really? Yeah, they let us there to unload Drew's game. So we went over. I met Zach for the first time from Flip N Out Pinball, and I met his wife. And we're kind of there, and one of the dudes from American Pinball said, do you want to try Valhalla? So Billy and I were like, sure. So we just played about five to ten games on Valhalla. So I'm like, okay, let's go over and we'll play Godzilla. So we started to play Godzilla, yeah. So anyways, we went through all the vendors' games for about an hour and a half, and play them all. It was like our own little private expo and nobody kicked us out. Wow. And my lovely wife, I forgot to mention this. How could I forget this? My lovely wife, Mr. San, well, actually it was Amy. She wasn't Mr. San until later in the evening. She showed up. She was a little hesitant to play the games, but Drew and Billy and I were playing them all. So we kind of got an hour and a half where we played by ourselves. So that was a lot of fun. That kind of made my memory. Yeah, I'm so jealous you had that. Yeah. That's too funny. Just walk in like you own the place, huh? Yep. It's all right. Thursday, what did I do? I qualified. I tried to qualify, or I did qualify into Maine, and I think you have 12 entries, and I only had enough time to do seven or eight. You had to do, I think, a minimum of six. It was just standing in queue and stuff. It was a whole different type of tournament style for me to play. So I also tried to qualify for women's, which I did not complete. I even tried the next day on Friday to do it, but there was a game that I tried to qualify on that busted and so forth. So I only ended up qualifying into Maine. So I spent a lot of time on Thursday doing that, but it was a lot of fun meeting people. I also hopped on Fox Cities Pinball Stream for a little bit while he streamed some of the qualifying games. And then what did we do Thursday night? Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. So let's back up because we got to give Scoots some due for his lunch. Oh, yes, please. Yeah, yeah. So a few of us met up and we got to talk about the tribe meetup later in the evening. But I want to give props to Tony Scoots. Yes. We went out for lunch and he rolled out the red carpet at his restaurant. We had pizza. we had the timley tuna melt which he put on special and i am forever indebted to scoots for having a sandwich named after me we had desserts we had pastries we had the single best cannolis i ever had in my life and we stayed there for about two hours where he just stuffed us full of food and one thing i noticed rachel you had to notice this every single person who came through that deli door he got up and hugged he did he's the guy yeah he's the guy he's the guy in the neighborhood it's his deli it's his family's deli it was his food is fantastic uh scutieros is that correct yeah yep pronouncing correctly yeah thank you so much that meant a lot to me and to the other tribe folks that were able to get there yeah yeah we uh we we love you scoots and you know it was a fantastic time amy still talks about it you're just a stand-up dude everybody in the tribe was just exactly how I thought they would be. But I wanted to give a shout out to Scoots. The Tim Lee Tuna Melt, I heard a rumor he sold 2,000, maybe 3,000 sandwiches over Expo. I might have added a zero or two, but I don't even like tuna. For our listeners that didn't hear the show, Rachel talked Scoots into making it a tuna melt. I don't even like tuna, but the sandwich was fantastic because it had all kinds of stuff on it besides tuna we ended up going back friday amy nine a couple of folks but it was just fantastic thank you i didn't mean to cut you off ari so how did your thursday start out ari it was not as eventful as yours for sure i think we i think we went and got you know the the expo hall didn't open until like 6 p.m or something like that so everybody was just trying to find something to do. Yep. We went out. Joe wanted to get some Italian beef, so we went and got some Italian beef. It was great. Okay. And then we went to a bar and proceeded to get hammered for like five hours. And that's when I think we had our tribe meetup. Right after that, we met everybody upstairs there by the restaurant, which was great, and met Drew for the first time right there and all that. and then we proceeded to go downstairs to head into Expo and that's when Joe said we need to refill this backpack and he never came back and he never came back we went back there that night about you know 1am and he's laying down in all his clothes diagonal on the bed with the backpack right next to him he just didn't make it like hands in his pockets It's like cartoon style. Hands in his pockets just like he just fell, dying on the bed, and that was it. Yeah. Joe had this backpack, listeners, and it was never empty. I don't know how it got refilled during the day, but he just had – yeah, he had random magic beers appear in this backpack. And I probably had five or six beers from his backpack, and people were just stopping him and getting a beer out of the backpack. And I think for every one beer we drank, Joe had one as well. Probably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. When he was loving life, when we had the tribe meetup, Rachel, talk to us a little bit about the tribe meetup, because, well, I'm going to pause it right there. You and I shared a hug. And I will tell everyone that when we first met, I was sitting there, it was earlier in the day, it was Amy and myself. And Amy gave a look and a big smile. And I knew exactly who it was. I didn't have to look. and you gave me a double hug, man. You got both sides. Way better than Drew's hug. Now, Drew's hug came with an ass grab and I'm not making that up. I got a little bit of an ass grab from Drew, but you gave me a nice... Amy said the same thing. You gave us an awesome hug. It was everything that you built it to be earlier in one of our shows and we had a couple of tears in the eyes when we met up. For sure. Tim, you've been such a good friend to me over the past year or whatever we've been doing our podcast. And I just really appreciate you. And getting to meet Mistress Anne a little bit later in the evening, but getting to meet Amy was amazing too. I'm so glad that she could feel that love in my hugs because that's what it's all about, just loving each other and being kind to each other. And I'm just so glad we finally got to meet. That did come up a little bit later too, later on an expo that a couple of people recognized that was our first time meeting was at expo, which is just crazy. so crazy. Ari, I gave you the man hug, the kind of half pat on the back. I went up to Rachel and I threw my arm around her and gave her a squeeze and she's like, oh, that's not good enough. And she squared me up and gave me a big old bear hug. That's right. And then Timmy gives me the Heisman. He kind of rejected me. I gave all the dudes the half bro hug. Yeah. It's okay. Not everybody's a hugger. Not everybody's a hugger, so I respect people's space. So if you say, I don't want to hug you, you just want a fist bump, that's fine too. But just know that, you know, we can work on the hugging thing too, because not everybody is good at hugging or didn't have a lot of hugs growing up. So I'm happy to help you hug. I'm a half hugger, but Rachel, you got, I couldn't avoid it. You were getting the big hug and I got the double. Now, Ari, you mentioned that we had a tribe meetup. We took a fantastic picture with all the tribe members, and Drew came up. I got to talk smack on Drew. Drew, I appreciate everything you said on your Expo recap. I consider Drew one of my best friends now. His wife said we're now allowed to call each other friends since we hung out twice. But Drew had this idea for a tribe meetup, 5 o'clock, in front of the doors, and we're all going to walk into Expo like we own the place. We actually did that. We all walked into Expo like we owned the place, but Drew disappeared. I don't know if anybody noticed that. Everybody walked into Expo except for Drew. He completely disappeared. He went and talked to somebody. So we all walked in like we owned the place, and Drew didn't show up for a half hour. That's funny. Drew style, right? That's totally Drew. Yep, yep. We all had a nice meal together on Thursday evening. That was great. The Tribe meetup on Thursday night was so much fun with the dinner. I was trying to go up to change clothes after doing my qualifying and I could hear everybody in the lobby yelling at me Rachel Rachel come over here I'm like I just put my finger out like listen people I need to go change clothes and I'm gonna come down and sit and it was great and I uh Ari actually sat next to you and Tish and it was really so much fun just hanging out and just all the laughter that was going on at the table and people just talking about nothing and everything I just loved and absorbed all of that just meant so much to me to be able to do that I loved breaking bread with people you know no doubt and yeah there's a there's a lot of chemistry for sure built into the tribe i think it's pretty cool yeah so thursday evening i think everyone just kind of went into the vendor hall and played pinball or didn't or tim you said you actually didn't even play that much pinball over the whole course of expo you did much more chit-chatting right no i did a lot of talking thursday night was the night that i met most people I talked to everybody in the tribe everyone was exactly as I expected them to be you know nobody was you know they were just who you thought they would be just all great people everybody loved my wife more than me I told you that was going to happen she drinks more than me she is more fun than me and I have to tell you with all the Drew sucks at pinball stuff that I've been dishing out Drew kind of got the last laugh on Thursday night I don't know what happened, but Amy disappeared. Drew disappeared. And I'm down in the expo vendor hall. I got to meet Zach. I got to meet all the folks from JJP. I got to meet the folks from Stern. I was hanging out with the loser kids. I want to give a special shout out to them. Josh and Scott, fantastic people. I was just enjoying life and talking and talking. And I get this text of Drew hugging my wife, and all that it says is, Tim Lee sucks at marriage. And I laughed so hard because I'm like, I just wrote back, touche. Yeah, Amy hit it off with everyone. I love the tribe, every single one of you. Thursday night was a blast, just that first night getting to meet everyone. Joseph, I loved you for the half a day we got to hang out. We hung out the rest of the week. You disappeared. My wife is talking shit on Joseph because we'll get to the pinball Olympics, but she said Joseph can't hang, and she can. So, I mean, hey. This is true. I can confirm. Yeah. So, all right. What about Friday? What did we do Friday? Friday. Let's see. Friday for me, I qualified into the B division, and I had eight bye rounds, so I didn't have to play until, I think, three. I can't even remember what I did the rest of the day. I probably, you know, the normal things. I probably played pinball. Yeah. But I qualified, and I ended up playing my first round. I lost my first match of three games, and then I went on and proceeded to win the next four on Friday. So that was crazy. So I ended up starting my last game to playing off in B Division on Friday night at 8.45, It was supposed to start at 8, but because other people were on Jurassic Park, we had to wait. And so I ended up winning that game. So that was really cool, meaning that I could wake up on Saturday morning and play again. So, yeah, it was nuts. I played really well. Okay. Yeah. I'm really thrilled. I'm not going to lie. Really, really thrilled at how well I played. These are brand new Stern games that came right out of the box. There's not a lot of adjustment on them. So they were really pretty games. But it was hard. I always find it difficult when you've got to wait a very long time between quote-unquote rounds. So I had to wait usually like about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour before playing my next match. So I don't like that cool-down period. So I did try to go into the rest of Expo and tool around on some other games and try to stay fresh and warm. But yeah, I'm super thrilled with how well I played. Super thrilled. Rachel, were those mostly sterns in there? so the main tournament were all brand new sterns um the including a couple of godzillas which was really awesome and then the classics were all old older games and i want to say those were provided by the folks at run expo and then the women's tournament were different games where the i've got a couple things to say about the women's tournament there they need some that need some love. Kate did a really great job running it. She did a fantastic job running the whole women's tournament, but there just wasn't a lot of support in other ways. And there are some issues I've talked to you a little bit about the other with some other tribe members. I'm not going to say all of that here in my podcast, but if you are a gal that was at Expo and you want to chit chat about the women's tournament, please reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk to you about that and see what we can do to make it a better experience for next year for women's. But anyways, the cool thing about women's tournament the games that were there two of those came out of jack danger's lair and the beatles that was there had the pizza mod on it the pizza spinner so it's like sergeant pepperoni you know nice and some sergeant peppers you know so it's it was a that was really cool to play that game uh and the gnr that was provided by jersey jack was really cool too um that's a fun game but yeah that's how kind of how the games worked there yeah i got to watch you play uh jen ruper yeah i i really enjoyed watching you two play what a fantastic lady i mean she was super nice i really enjoyed my conversation with both of you it was fun to watch you two duke it out i mean you two are both really good players i i enjoyed it fantastic player a really great player out of columbus ohio and it was funny too because i i because how it worked out i won i got to call the next game and I suggested the Beatles and she knew I was going to pick the Beatles Now I will mention if you have listened I normally crap on the Beatles game and because I feel I feel it kind of like a reskin or whatever At Expo I had the opportunity to play a ton of the Beatles and it was such an enjoyable game I'd actually think about putting that in my collection if the price wasn't so outrageous. So every time I want to mention is every time that I had an opportunity to pick a game, and usually it was the rubberneck match, meaning that we had both won one. I chose the Beatles I went and played it and won so I'm like okay we're doing good I'm digging this game so anyways Jen and I got to play on that as well together we also got to have the opportunity to stream that game I thought it was important that folks on stream got to see that because pinball obviously is you know heavily dominated by men that there are a lot of women that play we just don't get the opportunity to always be on stream so I asked Tom I'm like hey can you stream Jen and I because here we are, we're both playing very well. You know, she qualified pretty high. And just to have two women go against each other and just to see what that kind of environment is like. So Jen, if you do listen to this, thanks so much. I'm so glad we met. You're such an awesome gal. All the gals that I played against were just so kind. It's a whole, it's kind of a different thing. Like when women play against each other, there's, it's sometimes more like it's a, we've Tish has talked about this too, about more of a relaxed environment. A lot of times it's like, you know, let's have a hug. Let's hug it out, a good game or like a high five. And it's a lot more like that. Just a lot more encouraging. Or it can be, hey, that was great. I know you had your multiball lit, but it was still a really great game, even though you drained, you know, things like that. So anyway. Yeah. So she actually told me when you were playing that you were going to pick the Beatles. Yes. She knew it. I think she had observed what I had picked earlier in the day, and I did end up beating her and bumped her out. But it's hard, actually. I actually played several different people that I knew during that tournament, and that's hard. I always go into the game, especially when somebody I really like, man, I want them to have a really good game, but I want my game to be just a little bit better. You know, that's the thing about competitive pinball. Yeah, and I'm glad you two got to stream. I met Tom in the morning, and I told him to talk a little smack to you, but what a fantastic guy. We talked for about five minutes Thursday morning, and he was just a great dude. Yes, Tom is a really fantastic guy. Big kudos to him for streaming Expo with Fox Cities Pinball. You can go back and take a look at that as well. Good job, Tom. Yeah. Hey, I'm all over the place here, Rachel. Yeah, it's okay. Thank goodness we're the second sloppiest show on the internet. Are we still on Friday? I lost track of time. Well, I got something to say about Thursday. I forgot to mention one of my wife's favorite parts of Expo was Drew and I agreed to go pick up – and Billy was with us. We agreed to go pick up Skateboarder Glenn from the airport. And dear Lord, we might have circled the airport just like you with Billy 5,000 times. And Glenn's like, I'm here. I'm here. I'm coming. It was like a 40-minute wait. And I'm like, thank goodness. I love Glenn. So we picked him up. But when we got back to the hotel, Glenn came up to meet everyone, and he pushed me out of the way and hugged Amy. And she absolutely loved that. He just pushed me right out of the way. And she still talks about it. She's like, yeah, Glenn hugged me and pushed you out of the way. But I'm all over the place here. Back to Friday. Hold on. I want to talk about Glenn, too. Oh, yeah. As soon as he saw me on Thursday evening, because I've been playing and, you know, all this stuff. As soon as I saw him, he gave me the biggest hug. The best hug that I got at Expo was from Glenn, hands down. There you go. I'll talk about Glenn. On Friday, in the tournament area, we were playing some games late at night when a lot of people had cleared off. And we were playing Beatles. And I like Beatles, too. I just never got a lot of time on it. He took me through that game. And he showed me all the nuances, all the different rules. On top of being an excellent musician and a skateboarder, he's an excellent pinball player. And he knows the rules of all these games like the back of his hand. It's unbelievable. It's really impressive. Yeah, I was giving Glenn crap because he kept telling everyone the rules to every game we played but me. And finally on Saturday night, he started telling me the rules. I'm like, it's about time, but I was giving him crap. I gave him crap right away. So of course he did it the rest of the weekend on purpose. But yeah, what, you know, Glenn and I talk twice a week on the phone, usually on the way to work we talk and he's everything I thought he would be. I mean, it's, we talk so much that, you know, we just had to meet in person. Great dude, knew everything about the games. We'll talk about Expo, but man, I love you, Glenn. Thanks for coming out. You know, he was on the fence about coming out, and I didn't tell him this because I don't like to make people feel bad, but I really wanted Glenn to come out. And when he came out, I was thrilled, and he just made the week – every one of you made the week just a lot more special. Absolutely. Yeah. So Friday, what did you do, Ari, on Friday? I think Friday was kind of a lot of the same, if I remember right. We went to the bar. We started drinking a little bit. We went to the event hall. And this is the time we went into the vendors section and hung out most of the time. And we kind of rubbed elbows with all the pinball industry folks. I met Zach and his wife for the first time. Great dude. It was nice. Yeah. Great lady. Yep. And we hung out with Steven Bowden for a little bit and played some Valhalla. I hung out with Dennis Creasel for a little bit and played some Houdini. Okay. And Joe and John are actually friends with Eric Menear, so we went back, and I hung out with Eric, and he was talking me through my Guns N' Roses game, which was surreal. You got the guy who made it telling you what to do. Wow. And I was blowing it up too. I ended up winning the scorebit contest for that. Because of that? Because of him – while he was coaching you through the game? Yeah. That is so awesome. Good for you, Ari. It was cool. And in fact, when I went back later to collect my T-shirt prize, they didn't have any. Ken Cromwell had packed them all up. So I sent him an email, and he sent me my shirt, and then he sent me two more Jersey Jack shirts and a Guns N' Roses patch. So thank you, Ken Cromwell. Appreciate it. Nice. Jersey Jack pinball. I also got to meet Ken. What a nice guy. I got to thank him in person for all the swag that he has sent me for Ladies Flip. I also had that mission I was able to do that at MGC with Spooky too just wanted to say thank you so much for sending me all those awesome things and I also want to say Zach Sharp at Stern has also sent me another package of really nice goodies for Ladies Flip just wanted to get that in there sorry Tim I'm all over the board today we all are I love that they all support you and support the Ladies Flip I actually met Ken as well he took a good 10-15 minutes and talked Amy and myself. Eric did as well. Amy got a picture with Eric in front of the guns. He signed her a nice little card for our guns and roses. I forget what it said, but Amy, it went on the machine as soon as we got home. She loved talking to Eric. She loved talking to Ken. Wasn't that great to just meet all these pinball folks? Just celebrities, streamers, designers. Just a fantastic time. It was fun. I do have one story. Drew and Joe and I went outside to smoke a cigar and we were joined by uh kerry hardy which was i talked his ear off for a guy and uh zach and a few other people and we're out there drinking for a while and we're we're getting after it pretty good and after a little bit uh emoto hardy comes out and i kind of i kind of grab her and start talking to her but at this point i'm not speaking very well i'm slurring words. I can't put thoughts together. And this poor girl's like, I'm going to go over there. She walks ten feet away and just starts smoking her cigarette. We were just laughing. It was hilarious. Joe's like, oh my god. Yep, yep, it happens. So, Emoto, if you're listening, I need a do-over at some point. Aww. Alright, Emoto, so give Aria another chance. Oh my god. When he's not drunk. It was hilarious and embarrassing. We've been laughing about it since. Those things happen, too. They happen. I have to – Friday was the same for me. Somebody, I think it might have been Billy, grabbed me and said, we're going to Galloping Ghost. So we ended up going to Galloping Ghost at the invite of Todd Tuckey. Thank you, Todd. But in poor man's style, we went to the wrong Galloping Ghost, and apparently they did this YouTube series at the arcade, and we were at the pinball location. And we're all like, maybe we should go to the other one. And we're like, no, no, no, they're going to come over here. They're going to come over here. So we were at Galloping Ghost for about an hour and a half on Friday. It was fantastic, but it was just – I think it was Glenn, Amy, Drew, Billy, Cause. Shout out to Cause. My wife absolutely loves Cause as well. We haven't talked about Cause yet. He actually ran right up to Amy Friday and said, Amy, it's me, Cause. And she's like, who in the hell is Cause? But he had seen – yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he had seen the pictures of her on Facebook, and he did it on purpose, but she ended up loving Kaz. We went to Galloping Ghost. We went to Scoots Deli again. We came back, and we just talked to people. But I want to give a shout-out. I went to dinner. I was invited to dinner with the Loser Kids, Josh and Scott, Joel Engelberth from TPN, and Jeff Teolis, tournament player and pinball podcast host. and Amy, Billy and I, we all went to dinner and talk about just fantastic people to go to dinner with. Super fancy. That's super fancy, Tim. Yeah. We got some Chicago deep dish pizza. Jeff came over and he interviewed you and I for his show afterwards. Never met him before. Great dude. Yeah. That's one guy. That's one guy I wanted to meet and didn't get a chance to. I I didn't even realize he was there until after it was over. But yeah, I really enjoy Jeff's podcast. He's really funny. He's got my same sense of humor. Yeah, that was me with Dennis Creasel. I didn't know Dennis was there until I heard his recap. And I'm like, what? Dennis was there? So I didn't get to meet Dennis Creasel. But Jeff was fantastic. He did a really fun interview with Rachel and I and Rebecca Saleem. He put it on his show. I thought it was fun, didn't you, Rachel? Oh my goodness. It was crazy. I had Billy YJ came over to me. He's like, hey, Tim's over chatting with Jeff. And I look, I'm like, well, this is my opportunity because I really wanted to meet him because he is just such a cool guy. Just really, really nice guy. And that was so fun. Rebecca has some of the best questions, too. You'll encourage people to go back and listen to Pinball Profiles, a little expo recap so you can hear that conversation. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Yep. I concur on their recap. I listened to it yesterday. The ladies did a great job. Thank you, Jeff, for having us on the show. And then just Joel. I listened to Joel. He streams on Wednesday evenings through TPN. He always gives me a nice shout out. Everybody knew me as Twotort. I would say Tim Lee. They didn't know me. As soon as I said Twotort, oh, hey, Twotort. and Joel was great. We had a lot of fun conversation, but that was Friday night. I could go through a thousand people that I met on Friday night, but it was just so fun, so enjoyable. Steven Bowden got to meet Steve. Dave Jeff Brenner was there, got to talk to Dave again. You know, just so many, just great people that we got to hang out with. I don't want to leave anyone out, but it's not intentional. It was just a heck of a lot of conversations. I think on Friday night, I played Baywatch, which was the best game that I played on just playing for fun. But Glenn was standing right next to me telling me everything I needed to do about Baywatch, and I blew that game up with over a billion points. And I turn and I look at Glenn, and I'm like, man, I need to wear Google Glasses and have a little earpod so that you can talk to me while you can coach me through every game. I know. He's like a database of pinball rules. Yeah, man. It was amazing. I had the best game ever because he's chit-chatting to me about it. It was amazing. Yeah, that's the game in which you kicked me. I remember that. Well, that's pretty animated. It was a really fun game. Yeah, it was a beautiful machine too. Yeah, it really was. Yeah. All right. So anything else on Friday? Did we do anything else? Were you there for the great meeting on the hill? Yes. I thought you were. Yeah, yeah. So I was there. I took one of the pictures of the infamous meeting between Kaneda and Zach. Yep. And I don't know how this happened, but it ended up – it was like – I explain it as one of those old 1980s wrestling matches where Zach and Kaneda were in the ring. And all the tribe members – we didn't do this on purpose, but we were all standing around them like if one of them left, we were going to throw them back into the ring. And God bless Drew. I don't know what Drew was thinking, but he's like, hey, I got to go mediate this. And Drew, Kaneda, Zach, and his wife, Nicole, just standing there for like an hour. And I talked to Chris throughout the week. He wasn't that bad, but it was an interesting conversation. If you want to hear about the conversation, hop on over to the Pinball Show from their expo recap, and they talk a little bit about it. But it was just fun, and Glenn was just chugging whiskey the entire time watching. We just stood there in amazement listening to Drew. It was kind of – Drew was like slapstick comedy during the meetup. And then I was talking to Steve Beattie, another shout-out, great dude, really liked that guy. And we were trying to figure out how to caption the conversation. We never did come up with a good caption. And that was an interesting thing to watch. but yeah yeah i got to witness it 10 feet away oh i don't know i don't even know what to say about that yeah yeah all the people the thing is is with pinball i don't understand why people are unkind or people like they get into these like social media frustrations you know talk crap about each other why that's there's what waste of energy is that so to me i'm kind of like about all that kind of stuff i'm glad that they seem like they resolved whatever their issues were between the two of them But how did we even get there in the first place? Just be kind people. That's it. Yeah. Love each other. It was a very cordial conversation. I ducked out about halfway through and I went and talked to some folks, one of which was Steve Ritchie. Steve Ritchie came walking through and Jersey Jack himself came walking through. And I grabbed Steve and my son loves, you know, Black Knight, BK2K. So I grabbed Steve, told him how much my family loves his games. We talked for about two minutes and Billy was – or no, it was Cause. I think Cause or Billy were standing there. And after I talked to him for two minutes, Steve said, yeah, I didn't hear a damn thing you said. He's like, I'm deaf. And I'm like, oh. He's like, yeah, I can't hear really well. But he laughed and for a full minute he talked like the Black Knight. And then he walked away and it was priceless. It was like – He did a little bit for you. That's nice. Yeah, he did a little bit for me. I apologize, Steve. I forgot that you were hard of hearing. but at least he he he made you know he made it fun right he's like yeah did you hear a damn thing you just said he laughed and talked like the black knight and moved on so i forgot about that yeah i met Steve Ritchie at like 12 30 a.m yep wow see i would i would have had him say finish him like he does in mortal combat i think that's yeah yeah i didn't know that was him yeah i think it is that's crazy so rachel i wasn't gonna bring this up but something else i think happened friday I have no idea. What else happened Friday? Two people might have played Spider-Man together. Oh. Tim Lee and I finally got to play pinball together. And I think we tried to play. We had a couple of misfires, right? A couple of games that were junk and didn't work. So we did find a Spider-Man. And I'm not going to lie. Tim Lee whipped my ass, especially on ball three. I think he just blew the game up. But congratulations, Tim. Yeah. We'll have to do like a little mini tournament of like five games or something next time we get together. To your credit, I did want to pick on you a little bit because I had the ball of my life. Like it was probably the best single ball I've ever had. Yeah. But fast forward to Saturday night, you kicked my ass on some of those older machines. You really did. So you got me back. Well, you know, I was still – I think on Friday night I was still – because I just finished all my tournament stuff. So I think I might have still been like a little bit in tournament mode and not in relaxation mode. And Saturday, I was a lot more relaxed because after, well, we can get into Saturday. Yeah, Saturday. Yeah. So Saturday, I ended up playing. So I won four in a row the day before. And so on Saturday at 10, I played my friend Daryl Vandenlight. I ended up getting matched against him of all people to play. And I beat him in two games. And then I cried. Nice. I seriously did. I cried. And then I saw his girlfriend and I cried to her because it's really hard when like Daryl has been one of my first pinball friends that I met. And so to be matched up against him and then just to cream him on Turtles and Leds Up, we decided once we realized the night before we're going to be matched the next day that we're going to play two games or three games that are fairly unfamiliar to us. And we both suck at because we thought that might even the playing field. so that's what we chose and i think that was actually an interesting agreement that we had i could have gone and played iron maiden he could play guardians which he owns and we could have both had these big blowout games against each other or maybe not but i thought that was fun so i beat him and then i ended up playing emily sweeney next and she whipped me and i bumped finally bumped out after two games so but the unfortunate thing is because how everything ended up lining up time-wise and with pinball olympics i didn't get to go um i gave my ticket to kaz and i'm glad that he had such a great time i will say um i didn't realize you know time-wise how everything was going to happen was my first expo event i'm a little bummed out i didn't get to pinball olympics but that is number one of my books for next year yeah so that's a pretty cool story that you got to match off with him you know and i like the fact that you two said all right let's make it an even playing field yeah and congrats for winning thank you i played incredibly well i think i came like i don't know maybe top 50 in the b division we'll see i have pa the stuff isn't up there yet so i'm interested in seeing how i really did overall but it was a really cool experience playing a different style of tournament both that and the women's pump and dump it was a lot of fun nice uh our saturday ari um you gotta explain this one i there are no words to explain what happened on Saturday. Yeah, there really are no words. And I've been trying to think of how I'd even talk about it. Because one thing that, so Joe and John went to this two years ago. Okay. So they knew what was going on. And they never, they just told me it was cool. They gave me an idea of what was going on. But they didn't spoil anything. So when I got in that place and saw it for the first time, it was something else. And so I want to be careful what we do say, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone else if they haven't gone yet and might go in the future. I just say that it's what Banger J has done over there is unbelievable. He's made these games kind of crazy to play in all different ways, some benign, some a little more risque. We'll just put it that way. But what a blast. And he provides the food and the drinks. And it's just a ton of fun. It's just a blast. I had a smile on my face from the time I walked in there to the time I left, and my cheeks hurt from laughing so much. It was great. Yeah. So Kaz took Rachel's ticket, and then Skateboarder Glenn went with us, and then Amy went to the Olympics, but Mistress Anne returned from the Olympics. And I will just say this. We'll give a couple of pinball machines that are more famous. like everybody knows about they put you in a chamber and they shoot ping pong balls at you while you play pinball and we won't talk about some of the other ones because you have to go experience it but they're they're just neat and there was one where you walk on a treadmill and you play pinball those are you know those are just two examples and there were what 30 to 35 of them I think total and you play as a team and it made my week. I won't spoil it. You know, I gave you kind of a mini spoiler. It was neat to play. The games are created by Banger J. They they have a mechanical engineering presence. You know, everything was kind of done professionally. You have to you have to go there. I all that I know is there were these two dudes walking around without their shirts off dressed like Chippendales giving out jello shots. Amy had 10, at least Glenn and I think, and she probably had at least 12 uh white claws and my wife got lit She passed out on the way home We went to a Starbucks, and she doesn't remember it. She doesn't remember anything. I got her up to her room, and this is where she was talking crap on Joseph. I tease her that she kept getting the drinks because the dude had no shirt on, and he just kept coming around, but she had the time of her life. She went to bed for four hours and came back at 10 o'clock that night and was ready for round two. I could not believe that. I could not believe that because after I heard all the fun adventures that she had, and then all of a sudden here she is, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to go. It was awesome. Way to recharge. Way to reload, girl. And she is a very fun drinker, so everybody loved her at the Olympics. She was having a good time. But the light switch went off when we got in the car. We got in the car and she was out cold, so I got her back to the hotel and I came back down for a few hours. She's a real trooper. The tacos there were fantastic. Those were the best tacos I've ever eaten. Yeah, really good. I think – did the video get shared in the fan page of the TNA game or of Glenn running on the treadmill? Yeah, that was me recording Glenn. Oh, so funny. I have a photo from him later in the evening after he came back from Pimba Olympics, and he has his TurboGrafx-7 t-shirt on, now with the sleeves ripped off, with a headband made out of the t-shirt material. I should post the photo because it is so funny. So funny. Yeah, I looked over, and I think I might have been standing by Joseph at the time, and Glenn was asking somebody to cut his shirt sleeves off, and I'm like, here we go. I said, Glenn's going to get crazy, and Glenn got crazy. Yep. He did it. He did a challenge where he ran. They had like a mini tournament of eight people where they had to run nine miles per hour on a treadmill and play pinball. That's really fast on a treadmill. And I will share a picture of Glenn afterwards outside catching his breath. But props to Glenn. He finished in second, I think. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. And there was there was the infamous photo of cause Glenn and myself cause did not drink. He was the driver. He might have had one early on or two, but Glenn and I had quite a few. And while the record player was going around with the pinball machine, we might have been doing some fun dancing with Glenn on the machine. So it was a good time. I'm coming back just to experience that with Rachel next year. Yay, Tim. Yay, I love that. Absolutely. Yeah. If I did nothing else at Expo, it would be the Pinball Olympics. I'd be happy just doing that and going home. I mean, Expo's great, but it was nothing compared to this event. It was unbelievable. Now, like you said, he probably had 30 to 40 modded games, but how many other games did he just have there? I mean, he had, of course, his house was full of them. His basement was full of them with rare games, unbelievable games, upstairs full of them. But then he built like a barn that's just reserved for that and more. And he probably had 200. Holy cow. It was crazy. And the upstairs had a full bar of the barn. Yeah, yeah. I feel like he had three bars in his house, one in the barn and two in the house. That's pretty epic. Yeah, and he – God bless him. And he has really good neighbors because none of them complain. You know, it was a good time. Good. I am a little sad I missed out. But again, next year it's going to happen. In fact, I decided next year I'm going to skip playing in the main. I'm just going to play the women's tournament and do pinball Olympics. Those are the only two things I'm going to do. And scorekeep. I did volunteer to scorekeep too. And I will say if you do attend any type of pinball event, most likely they need scorekeepers or people to volunteer. So if you have it within yourself to even donate two hours of your time, that's incredibly helpful. A lot of fun, but definitely a need that's there. Awesome. And I do have to give one shout out to Mr. San. She is very proud of her two trophies at the Pinball Olympics. They are hanging in the pinball room. She won silver on the TNA game. Rebecca Slane beat her by just a little bit, but she's very proud of her silver. and then she won bronze on the Metallica game. And she's very proud of it. So I love you, babe. I love that you got smashed and came back for round two like nothing ever happened. Joseph can't hang with you. Sorry, Joseph. Maybe Amy's badass. Maybe we need to take the title from badass from Joseph and put it on Amy because he – You can safely do that. Yeah, he was laying diagonal. Yeah. Steve? Steve and Ari, they never backed down, but Joseph, he went to bed early. That's so funny. Okay, so that's my Saturday and your Saturday during the day. What else happened? I don't even know. You know, I just went back to the vendor area. We played some dollar games. I got hustled. I beat a lot of you during the day on Thursday and Friday, but as soon as money was on the line, I lost every single game. Rachel you kicked my ass in all those old games everybody kicked my ass and took all my money like dollar games aren't a lot but I feel like I lost 50 bucks in dollar games well we didn't but I didn't there was no money on the glass between you and I I just kicked your ass yep you just kicked my ass flat out ass whooping you got vengeance you got vengeance on that spider man game that's right I certainly did it was so much fun I wish we lived closer we could just get together and flip all the time yep no I agree It's all my tribe people. It's all my tribe. Yeah, what was your Saturday night like, Ari? Saturday night I think was mostly playing Godzilla, just playing the hell out of it. God, I love that game. Me too. I had gotten a little bit of time on the pro at a location around here. That premium is something else. Yep. Yeah, I was convinced I was getting one right then. It's just great. Fantastic. I may have come home and bought operator friend Mike's Godzilla. Oh, do you have it? Congratulations. Yeah, it's in my basement. Love Mike to death. The limited edition. We're going to do it. You know, Tim's going to do it. Mike is one of my best friends. It's not going to be in my house a long time. He got one. He did not want to route it. He offered it up to me. He's like, you're one of my best friends. I'll give it to you. You got to sell it back to me if you ever decide to sell it when you're tired of it. He brought it over for a trial run. I sold turtles. I sold my Black Knight topper and taxis leaving. I don't want to spend any money on it, so I sold those items to pay for it. Keith Elwin, I tip my hat to you because it is the best turn ever made. The best turn ever made. Wow. That's a really big praise. It really is an amazing game. The flow on it is great. I love the little, I don't know what to call them, like the little side lanes. I want to call them the Mata Hari lanes. I don't know what else to call them. I love those little looping lanes on the side, the floating clipper. It is just so much fun to play. One of the cool things about X-Fo is I got to play the Pro, the Premium, and the LE of Godzilla all on the same day. How about it? That will never happen again, ever. So, yeah, but the premium, the LE is absolutely beautiful, too. Saturday night, the other really cool game I got to play, and I played, I believe it was the last one that was there until they shut it down, I got to play the GNR, the really beautiful collector's edition, slash edition on Guns N' Roses. That's gorgeous. Holy moly. That game, no, I've only got the chance to play a really crappy GNR that's at a bowling alley in milwaukee that is like really beat up and so sad right so going up and playing this game holy cow i know i really actually like to own that game not only was the music and all that fun but it's just a cool layout and a long playing game i don't mind that so neat thank you jersey jack for bringing that you also had an mgc and i played just one game on it there too it's just so beautiful yeah it really was that was the purple one right Yes, it was a mirrored cabinet, and it also had like a glitter on the map on the play field. It was just so pretty. Rad cows, really gorgeous. Yeah, you got to play with Eric watching you and helping you with the game, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then Saturday evening, I think I finished with streaming. I think that's how I ended up my evening. I went back into the women's, had their finals, and they were streaming it at the time, and we streamed, I think, until about 1 in the morning. and then a couple of nice guys that i know helped um tom graph carry some stuff back to his room and hung out helped him tidy up that was nice because it was a long weekend for him too with all that streaming so thanks guys awesome yeah anything else saturday night i think that's it for me well let let's do this so there was a lot there so cactus canyon let's all give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the new games cactus canyon two thumbs up yep thumbs up for me as well no thumbs because I stood in line for about an hour to play it. Dude in front of me was just blowing it up, and I think I was drinking the whole time. I had my little flask, and I can't remember playing it. So it may have been good. It may have been good. I can't remember. Yeah, that is poor man's style. That is fantastic. So thumbs in the middle. Yeah, to be determined. Okay. Now, Legends of Ahala. Rachel, I don't know if you played. We've talked about this. I chose not to play it, and the reason for that is because of the art that is on the cabinet, that there is a slain dead woman. It's only one woman standalone. I understand the story that goes along with that game, but I just think it was an incredibly poor choice of art on the cabinet when they could have just omitted her, or they could have had, it's either you can't just have one. You have to have multiple dead people, I think is the issue there, or it just can't just be one female because it just gives you, I don't know, it's a bad connotation there. So I actually refused to play it, and I don't know if I will play it because I'm kind of irritated by that. American Pinball, if you're listening, I really love you and I appreciate you and your support of Ladies Flip and all that stuff. But the problem is that I think that you need to have, I don't know, a group of people across the pinball spectrum, of men, women that are able to give you a little bit of feedback on some of the art that you're putting on your games and what you're doing there. You know, we are in 2021. You can be a little bit more socially conscious. With that said, the art looks really cool, but I'm just not going to flip the game. So that's how I feel about that. So to me, thumbs down. Yeah, I totally respect that. I actually agree with the ladies on Backbox. They kind of summed it up and said, hey, You either have to have no dead people or a lot of dead people. I agree. I did play it. I told you on Thursday they'd ask Amy, Billy, and I to play it. I enjoyed it. I think it's a partial thumbs up. To me, it's like a really good Stern Pro. You put it up against the other premiums, the GNR, the limited edition, and the Godzilla premium. I don't think it compares, but I think it's like the best of the best with a Stern Pro. We enjoyed it. Amy and I played it. I did play Max from the TurboGrafx-Stream. Rachel, your one friend was there. I forget his name. I asked them to play. Daryl Vanley? It was Daryl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was Daryl. And I played with Max, and I'm like beating Max, and I'm beating him pretty good on ball three. And I'm thinking, I'm going to go on the turbo stream and talk some crap. Max had a 15-minute ball and wiped the floor with me, completely destroyed me. And now I know why Max doesn't suck at pinball and Tim Lee sucks at pinball. No kidding. Yeah, Max is an unbelievable player to watch. Were you playing a classic game or were you playing Valhalla? We were playing Valhalla, and neither of us really knew the rules, and he wiped the floor with me. Yeah, he's a really cool guy. Ari, did you get to play it? Thumbs up, thumbs down? I did. I got to play it, again, with Steven Bowden kind of over my shoulder telling me, do this, do that. And I liked it. It was kind of not real memorable for me, and I was actually sober at the time, so it wasn't because of drinking. But I remember that a lot of people complained about it too, was that center ramp was very difficult to hit off the flippers, maybe because they were either set too weak or they were just played a lot and kind of worn out or hot or something. But it was actually impossible unless you caught the ball at just the right angle from the opposite side of the play field. It was very difficult to get it up there, like especially off the end line. Yep, yep, from the left flipper for sure. Yep. All right, so Godzilla. I think we're all thumbs up, right? Oh, my gosh. Thumbs and big toes. All my thumbs, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thumbs, toes, whatever is up, it's up. Yep. In fact, I don't know what you guys think, but I feel like Godzilla, maybe I'm talking, maybe I'm giving it too much praise, but I think it kind of resets the market for pinball because you've got this great game that's, right now it's number one on Pinside's top 100 for whatever that means, but it's priced where it is. It's better than most any other game. I find it very difficult for a person to play that game and then walk over to another game from maybe another manufacturer that's more expensive and choose – it's like you get Godzilla and then you get other games. I think it really kind of resets the whole thing. It's on its own pedestal kind of. Yeah. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, the bar has been raised. I really, really, really love that game. This is the only issue I have with all the new Stern games as a player. They're all beautiful games, right? and Godzilla Godzilla wow that game was just smacked so hard but my issue is is the action button can I just harp on that for just a tiny moment like the action button doesn't do much in most of these sterns it's a distraction from you playing yes it's your heat ray gun or it um or you know you're collecting your pizza you know on turtles but to me I think that the action button is just kind of dumb I'm just gonna say it I think it's dumb it's like there's no point in it that's why I love my maiden doesn't have one. So maybe there's some folks out there that can tell me about your love of the action button, but even on Godzilla, I'm like, well, that's kind of a waste. But what I will say is the Stern insider stuff. Now that's cool. That's a really cool feature. Yeah. I think that's going to be highly adopted. I think everyone's going to be on that. Yeah. Yeah. I have to eat a little crow. I had told you Rachel that I wasn't a big fan of the Stern insider, but now that I got to use it and I'm also using score bit on guns and roses i like it i i don't i it's cheaper than i expected at 200 the stern i i like the price of the score bit one with you know just a little dongle on jjp i still think 200 is too much money highway but yeah but i liked it i enjoyed it yeah that's cool i really hope they find a way to kind of uh marry those two for tournament play where you can have a live leaderboard pulling from both systems yeah that'd be awesome i didn't even think about that as an option that'd be really cool to see all right so last game we're gonna wrap this up one more uh we're not gonna we talked about guns and roses in the past but heist from p3 was a game it's not new but it's the first time i got to play it so i give it a thumbs up i really enjoyed the p3 it caught me by surprise did either of you get to play the p3 yes and i had i had never played heist either in fact i think i was listening to your podcast with Stephen Silver yes that day right before i played it and it kind of gave me a different view of it so i went up to play it and boy that crane is the coolest mech in pinball hands down how about it it was unbelievable it was unbelievable just how it moved and how quickly it moved and it wasn't like some like little slow takes forever to get going thing it's it's doing its thing real fast and it was just a blast really cool to see that was my first time playing it as well playing a p3 and heist was really cool what i liked about that so much is that the i didn't realize that how interactive the play field is i forget there's like a special technology for that yeah but where the there's like a little smoke trail after the ball you know so you can see where the ball was and you're hitting the ball and it's collecting the cash that's like you know flying around on the play field it was just really really neat i i'm just my mind is so blown by that i'm i'm so excited that i had an opportunity to do that and i have a friend that has one so ryan i'm going to come down and you'll assume we're going to play that it's going to happen yeah i think when that system gets when they get like maybe five good hits under their belt and you can maybe buy it all as a package that's going to be hard for a lot of people to turn down just kind of get five games in one well and Stephen Silver said he's working on his dream theme right now for p3 so i'm very excited to see what that's going to be oh yeah yeah i i concur i enjoyed it i played it saturday night it's the only game i beat glenn on so glenn kicked my ass the rest of the week but i played it on saturday night after it had been played for four or five days straight and it was still kicking the flippers were still powerful We had a great time. Thumbs up to me on that one. Thumbs up for sure. Thumbs up. All right. So I think we'll wrap this up. I do want to give a special shout out to the tribe members that showed up at Expo. It was what? Me, you, Rachel, Ari, Joseph. I'm listing them. Steve. We're throwing Steve in there. Glenn. Tish. Billy YJ Kaz Doc Finley Martin and his wife were there Jeremy Jeremy Schmitz was there love that guy Drew was there but he doesn't count Scoots Scoots Scoots was there who else there was 21 of us I feel like I missed somebody I'd have to pull up a photo and look. But I agree with you, Tim. Everybody that I met was so kind. I'm so glad that we're pals and we're in the tribe together. And if you haven't been on the podcast, I can't wait to chat with you. Just like you are. It's so nice to have you here. Yep. Daniel Donnell, he was there. Yeah, Dan. Yep. Eric. Yep. Eric was there. Skateboarder Glenn was there. Mike Williams. Oh, that's so funny. Mike Williams was there. Yep. Matt, right before I went in to play on Friday to start my actual playing, Mike came up to me because it was the only time that he was there and we connected. And he's like, hey, and we had a shot together. And then I went in and I played and it kicked ass. So thanks, Mike, for the shot. Yeah, thanks, Mike. I was like, oh, this is awful. But it was great at the same time. So who else? It was just so wonderful. Everyone. Look at the picture. I think we got everybody. But I wanted to give a shout out if we forgot somebody. I apologize. Yep, we love you. I think we got everybody. Ari, I appreciate you coming on the show. You didn't ask the question yet, Tim. Wait, yeah. You almost screwed it up here. Ari, I have one really super incredible thing that we have to ask you, and Tim almost forgot it. It's the most difficult question for you to answer. Are you ready, my friend? Yes. How did you get into the tribe? I won a contest. which is kind of fitting because uh so the poor i used i've listened to the poor mints and say we're just doing audio podcasts and i'm glad they're going back to that but when they went to facebook live they would have contests all the time you know give us a give us a new segment for the show and or give us a theme you'd like or whatever and i'd always win i'd always win these contest to a point where they were saying okay Ari can't win anymore because he's winning all the time and then they had a contest where you wrote in to um like a little essay on why you should be a tribe member or something like that and I wrote this really stupid funny kind of skit thing and they liked it and that's how I got in I love that nice so out of your creativity I think that actually comes full circle talking about the toppers that you create and design and the things you do that and then you're just a creative guy overall if that's the way that you got into the tribe that's awesome yeah hey what i want to be i have my moments yeah you're not a wannabe you're a cool dude my book yeah you're a member of the tribe yeah um that's all i got rachel that was exhausting yeah yeah that was a great episode thanks everybody for listening to chit chat forever about expo being a little you know sloppy yep that's what we do we're sloppy that's right all right ari thank you for coming on we greatly appreciate it you got it guys anytime thanks a lot all right take good care thanks tim the tournament we love you yep love you all drew sucks at pinball happy flipping happy flipping © BF-WATCH TV 2021

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: a8dc544e-c276-41ff-94a9-b6d78bbf50c9*