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PNP Ep. 526- Cary Hardy Hotseat + Bruce vs Kaneda + Franchi Feedback

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Apr 19, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.039

TL;DR

PNP Ep. 526: Orby discusses Cary Hardy satire, Franchi feedback, and Bruce-Kaneda tensions

Summary

Orbital Albert (Orby) hosts episode 526 of the Pinball Nerds Podcast, featuring discussion of Cary Hardy's recent satirical video about Galactic Tank Force's airball issues, feedback from the Christopher Franchi interview, and commentary on the Bruce Nightingale vs. Kaneda dispute. The episode blends personal coffee business updates with pinball community analysis and defending Hardy's entertainment-focused approach to machine criticism.

Key Claims

  • Kaneda's episode reached nearly 1,300 listens while Christopher Franchi's episode exceeded 800 listens

    high confidence · Orby directly states specific listen counts for both recent episodes, comparing their performance metrics

  • Christopher Franchi episode generated three coffee orders—more than Orby has ever received from a single episode

    high confidence · Orby explicitly thanks the four men who ordered (Joe Farnsworth, Tony Scoots, Matt Scott V, Mike Harry Williams) and notes Franchi generated three orders after his episode

  • SaltScapes Food and Wine Pinball Expo in Halifax will feature seven breweries, four wineries, and three cideries providing free samples

    medium confidence · Orby describes the event logistics and vendor count, though he expresses some uncertainty ('I believe')

  • Approximately 40,000 people attend the Pinball Expo, which runs for three days

    medium confidence · Orby states '40,000 people attend this Pinball Expo. It's three days long' but does not specify which year or provide sourcing

  • Christopher Franchi is creating a custom label for Angry Alpaca coffee, which will be available exclusively to Patreon members

    high confidence · Orby directly states Franchi 'is also going Tee'd Off do a custom label for my coffee' and will reserve it for Patreon members

  • Cary Hardy's Galactic Tank Force satire video was focused on entertainment and humor rather than constructive criticism

    high confidence · Orby emphasizes that 'Kerry Hardy is first an entertainer and trying Tee'd Off have fun' and acknowledges Hardy's 'goal was Tee'd Off be funny'

  • Kaneda's recent live stream started negative but ended positively, and lasted approximately two and a half hours

    high confidence · Orby directly describes the stream as 'started with an epic live stream rant about Bruce, but then it ended much better' and states it was 'two and a half hour epic'

  • Glenn receives a portion of coffee sales: four dollars per large bag and two dollars per small bag

Notable Quotes

  • “Kerry Hardy is first an entertainer and trying Tee'd Off have fun and I love it when Kerry Hardy made fun of Deep Root Pinball”

    Orbital Albert (Orby) @ late in episode — Core thesis defending Hardy's satirical approach to machine criticism as entertainment-first, contrasting with literal design critique

  • “I don't discriminate. There is some tournament talk... You're welcome here. I don't discriminate. There is some tournament talk.”

    Orbital Albert (Orby) @ early in episode — Statement of podcast inclusivity philosophy welcoming both tournament and casual players

  • “The numbers don't lie. I do care about the numbers. When I just do a solo show, I'm very happy Tee'd Off get 300 Tee'd Off 600 listens, usually closer Tee'd Off 400 Tee'd Off 500”

    Orbital Albert (Orby) @ mid-episode — Orby's honest assessment of podcast metrics and what drives engagement (guest episodes vs. solo shows)

  • “I had Tee'd Off have a coffee order 'in there' or similar interjection a couple weeks. I was starting Tee'd Off get worried, going, wow, is everyone mad at me on the show?”

    Orbital Albert (Orby) @ mid-episode — Personal vulnerability about business performance and audience perception following Kaneda's non-endorsement of the coffee

  • “Christopher Franchi spent so much time and energy at the end of the show, staying much longer than I had anticipated he would be able Tee'd Off stay”

    Orbital Albert (Orby) @ mid-episode — Acknowledgment of Franchi's generosity and commitment to the podcast, leading to tangible business outcomes

Entities

Orbital Albert (Orby)personChristopher FranchipersonCary HardypersonBruce NightingalepersonKaneda (Chris Kooluris)personGlennpersonDrewperson

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Christopher Franchi episode performance significantly exceeds typical guest episode metrics; both Franchi and Kaneda episodes achieve 800-1300 listens compared to Orby's 300-600 solo episode range

    high · Orby explicitly compares listen counts: 'Kaneda's episode had, like, well, it's almost at 1,300 listens and Christopher Franchi's is well up over 800'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Kaneda's recent live stream response to Bruce Nightingale began negatively but evolved into positive territory, suggesting community discourse is being self-corrected toward constructive dialogue

    medium · Orby states Kaneda's stream 'started with an epic live stream rant about Bruce, but then it ended much better'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community divided on Cary Hardy's entertainment-focused criticism of machines; some American Pinball staff may feel offended by satire, but design quality issues appear legitimate

    high · Orby acknowledges 'if I worked on the animations of Galactic Tank Force and I saw that video, maybe I would be slightly offended' but defends Hardy's approach and confirms the airball criticism is valid

  • ?

    business_signal: Guest appearances on Pinball Nerds Podcast correlate strongly with Angry Alpaca coffee sales; Franchi episode drove three orders (highest single-episode conversion), while Kaneda episode with no coffee endorsement drove zero orders

    high · Orby notes: 'Kaneda said, oh, no, I haven't tried the coffee yet, Orby, that didn't really get people excited Tee'd Off order my coffee. And although 1,300 people listened, not a single solitary person ordered coffee'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.228

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, episode 526 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbiter, Orbital, Albert, also known as Orby, and today we're going to be talking about Kerry Hardy in the hot seat. As well, we're going to be talking about feedback from my Franchi episode and Bruce Nightingale versus Chris Kaneda. That's right. So we're doing a little bit of beefing today and I try to avoid the negative stuff when I can. You all know from that last episode with Franchi and even with Kaneda, there was some times it went into negative territory, but I tried to reel it back in and keep it positive and just show the pinball love that we all have for this awesome hobby, this sport, this recreation, this investment. It doesn't matter what you are, if you're just a tournament player or you're someone who just plays pinball at an arcade whenever you have an extra chance, I will tell you this. I love you. Thank you for being here. And I don't discriminate. I don't care if you've never played a tournament in your life and You're never going to play a tournament. And I also don't care if you've played 1,000 tournaments and you don't want to have any pinball machines at your house and you're just like a straight-up tourney player. You're welcome here. I don't discriminate. There is some tournament talk. Sorry, Franchi, I know you don't love that part. There is some tournament talk. I am going to briefly go over my Fundy Flippers 33. That was this last weekend at the Holy Bowly. And wow, wow, that beer there. Holy Bowly was incredible in good old Riverview, which is kind of the more French section of Moncton here on the East Coast. But I'm going to save that to the end, so don't worry if you don't love tournament talk. We're going to get into all the hot goss, the what's up and pinballs about to come and hit you now. Now, first thing I have to do is thank each and every mofo who has been awesome enough to make a purchase of my coffee from Angry Alpaca.
2:51
with Joe Farnsworth, and if I screw up the last name, I'm sorry, I'm a horrible pronunciator. I can't even pronunciate things that I've heard a hundred times before. I wouldn't say I'm dyslexic. I don't even know how to pronounce that. Did they make that hard to say on purpose? I feel like they did, but I mispronunciate a lot of things, and I know that's not great for a podcaster who partially makes their side hustle, at least anyways, is slinging coffee on their show. It doesn't make for a great show when I can't pronunciate things. So I'm sorry, last names. I'm probably going to screw it up. But this next one I can't screw up because I love this man, tribe member, Mr. Tony Scoots. Tony Scoots, thank you, thank you, thank you for your order. I also have to do a big shout-out to Scott Voight. And, again, I probably wrecked his last name. It's V-O-G-T, but Scott, I'll just call you Scott V. Can I do that? Scott, thank you so much for your order. Scott was the very first person to put in a large order after I made the promise about the awesome, rare Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchbox. It's probably going to cost me an arm and a leg to ship, but that's okay because I don't care if I just break even on these orders. I love getting my coffee out there into people's hands. I also love to give back to Glenn. And, of course, each and every one of the people I just mentioned will, of course, you know, will, I believe I mentioned, I'll have to double check, but each and every person who put an order through has helped Glenn get even more coffee because on 4-20, which is tomorrow, it's the hippie Christmas, really. It's the best day of the year. And it normally would be the best day of the year, but I have my largest show of the year on Friday in Halifax. If you live anywhere on the East Coast, you better damn well make it out to the SaltScapes Food and Wine Expo. By the time that you get way down to the farmers section where I am, you're going to need some coffee because there is seven breweries, I believe, that are going to be there giving out free quarter pint samples. These aren't your grandma's samples, okay? This isn't your great-great-grandfather's samples. These are like a quarter pint per sample. and it's unlimited. As far as I can tell, you could say, can I try that beer? Sure. Can I try that beer? Sure. Like I've, I've never got cut off now. Maybe it's, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure if you were too drunk, you'd get cut off, but there's going to be like four wineries and three cideries. So there's going to be like, by the time you get down to me, you're going to need some fricking, yeah, we're going to be blown out of all of our coffee and tea orders. Um, and, but the good news is I'll be able to set aside some for Glenn before that happens because also Mike Williams and I believe and I have to double check but I believe I'm giving Glenn four dollars worth of coffee from every large bag and two dollars from every small bag I believe that's what I said but I'm going to double check on that and then Mike Williams also very well known of course here on the poor man's pinball network he hangs out with the tribe at a lot of shows I'm trying to remember I think he's a tribe member I should know these I can't memorize all 50 tribe members. I'm sorry. But I know he's very tribe adjacent. I'll say that. Mike Williams just put through an order today. Mike Williams learned the hard way, and I'm really sorry this happens. He tried to put an order through with PayPal, which is really silly because Squarespace is obviously, Square is obviously an American company, and tons of Americans, even more Americans, order my coffee than Canadians. Shout out to all you Americanos out there. Chef's kiss. I love you. I don't know why I went to Bruce Nightingale's Italian there, but maybe because I got to talk about Brucey later with his little kind of, you know, little mini dispute there with Kaneda, I guess, or difference of opinion. And then Kaneda went on a two and a half hour epic live stream rant. Well, it started with an epic live stream rant about Bruce, but then it ended much better. So it started pretty negative and it ended pretty positive. So, you know, Kaneda has the ability to do that. And whether or not you like Kaneda, it probably depends on the day for me and the time.

medium confidence · Orby states 'I'm giving Glenn four dollars worth of coffee from every large bag and two dollars from every small bag I believe' with explicit uncertainty qualifier

Scott Ian
person
Matt Scott Voigtperson
Tony Scootsperson
Drop Target Danielleperson
Joe Farnsworthperson
Mike Harry Williamsperson
David Fixperson
Tim Dan Leeperson
Pinball Nerds Podcastorganization
Poor Man's Pinball Networkorganization
Angry Alpacaproduct/business
Spooky Pinballcompany
American Pinballcompany
Holy Bowlyvenue
SaltScapes Food and Wine Pinball Expoevent
Galactic Tank Forcegame

operational_signal: International shipping of specialty coffee to US distributors faces significant customs/regulatory friction; coffee delivery to MGC venue was delayed, prompting Orby to shift distribution strategy and consolidate with domestic partner

high · Orby details customs inspection delays that prevented coffee delivery, insurance claim denial, and announcement that 'this will be my last show for some period of time where I'm going Tee'd Off be slinging the coffee'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Orby planning Patreon tier at $4.20/month (lowest level) to monetize podcast audience without forcing coffee purchases; new half-caf product variant launching at SaltScapes Expo to address customer demand for caffeine-reduced option

    high · Orby announces Patreon strategy: 'the main level is going Tee'd Off be $4.20' and notes he and wife created half-caf packaging because 'my wife and I started talking about wouldn't it be cool if we had a half-caf'

  • ?

    event_signal: SaltScapes Food and Wine Pinball Expo (Halifax, April 20-22) positioned as Orby's largest revenue event of year; expects complete inventory sell-out across coffee product lines within first 1-2 days due to large attendee count and festival beverages

    medium · Orby states: 'I believe 40,000 people attend this Pinball Expo. It's three days long' and 'I probably will have no coffee left Tee'd Off sling as of Monday'

  • ?

    partnership_signal: Christopher Franchi (Spooky Pinball) actively collaborating on Angry Alpaca brand expansion beyond podcast appearance, creating custom label artwork as exclusive Patreon benefit

    high · Orby notes Franchi 'spent so much time and energy at the end of the show, staying much longer than I had anticipated' and 'he's also going Tee'd Off do a custom label for my coffee'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Scott Ian and Drew have re-established Poor Man's Pinball Network podcast activity after hiatus; third episode shows quality elevation beyond previous run, indicating renewed commitment and creative momentum

    medium · Orby praises their return: 'they've not only knocked off the rust, but they've elevated to possibly an even higher level than they were before. Well, I was wrong... they are back in the house'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Cary Hardy's approach to pinball content emphasizes entertainment and humor-driven criticism over constructive feedback; community debate over whether satirical tone vs. constructive tone is appropriate for content creator with large platform

    high · Orby defends Hardy's methodology: 'his goal 'in there' in that video was Tee'd Off be funny... Kerry Hardy is first an entertainer and trying Tee'd Off have fun'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Holy Bowly (Riverview, Nova Scotia) established as active pinball tournament venue hosting Fundy Flippers 33 event; venue features Korean barbecue food service as tournament amenity

    medium · Orby describes attending 'Holy Bowly. They always have... a guest restaurant. And the guest restaurant was Korean barbecue'

    • 7:01
    I am a club member now, so I am listening to his podcast. And I can tell you this. I always thought for the last year, oh, I hear his weekly live streams. I don't need the podcast anymore. Although that is at least partially true because most of what he would say in a podcast, he'll probably also say in a live stream. I can tell you his cadence that he uses and his editing and how direct he is and how to the point he is.
    7:25
    a 15-minute podcast than I can in a one-hour podcast. So I don't know. If you're looking for more content, come listen to the Pinball Nerds podcast. If you're looking for shorter, more condensed content, you can go over there. Now, to be fair, I'm sorry, Chris, 90% of what you say, you do kind of regurgitate both between the live stream and there. So you can get the just, but if you're trying to look for a more condensed version, and I think with better cadence, and maybe a little more on track. So it's kind of funny because Kaneda's live streams are a lot more akin to, like, my podcast, which are like a stream of consciousness, so to speak. And I do want to say this as well. Thank you, thank you, thank you to every person who's reached out. I have got the best feedback I've ever got. And even though, you know, Kaneda's episode had, like, well, it's almost at 1,300 listens and Franchi's is well up over 800. So catching up, of course, it was done a week or two later. So at least maybe a week and a half later. It was done quite a bit later. So I'm sure Franchise will get there as well. And the numbers, I don't want to lie. The numbers don't lie. I do care about the numbers. When I just do a solo show, I'm very happy to get 300 to 600 listens, usually closer to 400 to 500 nowadays if I have something actually to say.
    8:39
    But the important thing is that, well, I guess maybe not important to you guys, but important to me is not just how many people listen, but how many people are activated. And when Kaneda said, oh, no, I haven't tried the coffee yet, Orby, that didn't really get people excited to order my coffee. And although 1,300 people listened, not a single solitary person ordered coffee. And I had to have a coffee order in a couple weeks. I was starting to get worried, going, wow, is everyone mad at me on the show? Did I say or do something wrong? What's going on? Maybe everybody didn't get coffee for a while because they were waiting to buy it off Drew at MGC. and then the freaking customs were big jerks and they never got it over there. So anyways, Drew now has the coffee. So this will be my last show for some period of time where I'm going to be slinging the coffee because I want each and every one of you listening right now, if you had a chance that you thought you were going to order, please try to contact Drew. I have no clue if he's willing to ship it. My guess is Drew's too freaking busy to be like shipping out one bag here or one bag there. I know he also doesn't have access to the sampler bag so you can try all three or four coffees and see which one you like best he doesn't have access to any of that and that's totally fine if you really really want a coffee that Drew doesn't have even though he has two of our most best selling medium roasts and then he has the poor man's one which is awesome he has a dark roast, I think he even has some of City Lights he has a very wide array and I know that Tim the Lion Man Lee, shout out to Tim, he let me know he's going to be putting an order and getting some from Drew himself. I don't know if it's getting shipped or he's waiting until he sees him in person. But please, please, please, today is the last day because I had no clue that Drew was actually going to get this coffee this week. I already gave my word to Glenn that every coffee that's ordered before the end of, well, I'll even say until 420, but I'll say to the end of the business day tomorrow, So people will be listening from California, right, and lots of places over there, and even Australia. They might not even listen to this tomorrow. So anyone who orders, I'll even say by midnight my time on 420, so that's tomorrow, April 20th. If you order by then, then I'm going to be able to send Glenn a little bit more coffee. But please, please, please, if you're listening right now, screw Glenn. Help out. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, Glenn's awesome. Don't worry about me. I'm doing well. I will sell out of 100% of all my large bags and probably 90%, if not all of my small bags. I believe 40,000 people attend this expo. It's three days long. I'm going to be hustling as hard as I can. We'll probably even run out of all of our bags by the end of the first day. And if not, we have another huge show on Sunday. So we're going to be splitting up. One of us will be at the show here in River Hibbert. What a relief it is. I'm also going to have Cosmic Collectibles, which is my little collectible side company over at this one as well. So if you want to be able to get some coffee, some cards, and also some comic books, all three. Look at that, coffee, cards, comic books. They'll all be available right here in River Hibbert. So to some of my friends in Moncton who maybe can't get down to Halifax to visit me, you'll be able to see me on Sunday there. And believe it or not, Hayden will also be working with us, and him or myself will be at the Moncton Toy Show, which is also on Sunday. You can just look that up on Facebook, Moncton Toy Show. So we will be at three shows this weekend. It's going to be crazy. I probably will have no coffee left to sling as of Monday, and it's going to take another week or two to get custom coffees ordered. So the four gentlemen that I just mentioned who ordered, so that would be Joe Farnsworth, Tony Scoots. By the way, shout out there to Scoots Bakery. where the heck is that? I think it's somewhere in the Midwest but anyways, shout out to Tony Scoots, if you're in and around the area, make sure you go check out his bakery his cafe, I hear the cannolis are fantastic and I'm not going to do a silly Italian accent again, even though I really wanted to, I'll leave that up to Bruce, my buddy Bruce Nightingale there, Scott V thank you so much, Mike Williams, thank you so much, and so after having Franchi on, and then I had Glenn on, and I believe I did get that one order I think from Joe but then having Franchi on I ended up getting three count it, three orders, I've never got three orders after an episode, so to my man Franchi who spent so much time and energy at the end of the show, staying much longer than I had anticipated he would be able to stay thank you Chris so much he spent so much time and energy, he's also going to do a custom label for my coffee in the future, that custom label will probably be available only for my Patreon members, and I know what you're saying, Orby you're going to do Patreon on what about the coffee well I'm telling you this right now I know without a doubt there is tons and I've heard of some of the people tons of people who listen to the show who would love to support especially if it could just be like I'm gonna do four dollars and twenty cents a month you know how much I love 420 I don't know if that will be my lowest level I'm considering even having another level under that and I might have one slightly higher level but the main level is going to be $420, and I'm going to be able to give back, you know, like, I'm going to be able to give a lot for that amount. I know some people don't want to have to pay, you know, $25 Canadian, which I know it's only like $18 American or something, but they don't, some people just don't love coffee and tea, or some people have their other, their local company that they support that they love, or other people just, you know, they go to Costco and they spend $15 and they get like, you know, 150 cups for 15 bucks, as opposed to us, it's like $22 Canadian for 84 cups. So it's like 35 cents a cup. And some people like to spend about half that and get what to be fair is usually crap coffee. But you know, I've I've had the crap coffee. I'll drink it if I have to. I'll even go to good old Timmy Horton's if I have to. Now I will tell you this, if you have to go to Tim Horton's, get yourself a dark roast. Do not be getting any of the regular roast. The regular roast, I don't know what's up with it. It tastes like wood chips to me. I'm not really sure. But it's not organic, so yes, you should be panicking because that shit is like, coffee is sprayed with some of the most potent herbicides and pesticides.
    15:03
    Glucomate or something is one of the worst ones for it, which is highly used in coffee growing, so I definitely pronounced that one wrong. Speaking of, Orby sucks at podcasting! It's not just that Tim and Drew that suck at pinball, it's Orby that sucks at podcasting as well. Oh, also, speaking of Drew, Drew and Ian, my boys, they came out with, like, I think the day after the Franchi interview or something like that, or the day, you know what, it was right while I was doing my Franchi interview, their new podcast came out, and I purposely didn't throw up the Franchi interview the day of, I always try to let, to give, you know, the other network members at least a day for the new podcast to kind of marinate, so even though I had uploaded it, which took like an hour and a half for me to do, almost as long as it was to record the show. I saved it as a draft, which I wasn't sure if that would work, but it did work, and then I waited until the next morning until their pod had been out for at least 12 hours because the last thing I want to do is step on the feet of, you know, especially of Ian and Drew, my bosses over here at the Poor Man's Pinball Network, so to speak. I don't know who's the manager and who's the assistant manager. I think they're just both the managers. I don't really know. It doesn't really matter. The point is, I'm not worthy. Drew and Ian, I thank you all the time for having me over here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network. And your newest episode, I said it last time, like I was talking about how good their second episode was. It feels like they've not only knocked off the rust, but they've elevated to possibly an even higher level than they were before. Well, I was wrong. Stella Dunn got her groove back, okay? Like they are back in the house. Not only has Drew put people into houses, So make sure you contact Drew if you're wanting to buy, rent, or sell a house, especially if you're in that area where he lives. Is it Wisconsin, I think, the cheese capital? I believe that. I should know where Drew lives. I don't know where Drew and Ian live. I think it's somewhere in Wisconsin.
    17:03
    But please, please, please go back and listen to, I'm sure you probably already did, but in case you haven't listened to their third episode back, go listen to Drew and Ian, chat it up. It was really cool. I know they're going to have the Fuck It Friday coming out soon. I think they said they record it directly after that, so watch for that one. Maybe it will come out, who knows, maybe this Friday. I'm not sure, but I can't wait to hear that. And honestly, especially if you think there's any time, like we, my wife took the time and energy to, like, vacuum seal. Like, we used one of those heat presses to seal the top of every coffee bag. According to Google, you have 12 months to use up that coffee while it's still fresh. That being said, it's probably freshest in the first six months. I'm not going to lie. But same thing I already told Drew, before MGC still stands, any coffee, Drew, and I'll resend Drew a message just to affirm this, but any coffee you don't sell, Drew, please, please, please fire it back to me. I'm assuming the 15 bags of the specific, you know, the cool picture of Drew and Ian on the podcast, I think those will sell like hotcakes real quick. But, Drew, if you have any coffee left, I don't give a shit if it's five bags, 10 bags, 15 bags, I will take the heat on the shipping and I will buy it all back off of you. If for some reason customs, I don't know if they cut open one of the bags to look through the coffee to see if I put Canadian marijuana in there. Like, I don't know why they opened it up. I never, ever, ever smoke marijuana in my house.
    18:35
    I've done it like, like I think like the odd time once or twice a year if someone's over at my house, we have our separate office where everything like all my collect i would never smoke i definitely wouldn't smoke ciggies but i also wouldn't smoke weed in my house because i have tons of collectibles i have tons of funko's i have tons of star wars toys i have tons of uh comic books i have tons of so i just don smoke in my house so i vaporize in my house but you can barely even smell that shit from like two feet away so like you know the chances of them assuming I assuming that the customs thought for some reason or another, no clue why, that there was either, like, like, freaking black tar heroin, or ecstasy, or mushrooms, or, like, well, mushrooms aren't even hard drugs, but, like, they must have thought there was some hard drugs in there for some reason, because I really don't you know with marijuana being legal in like 80 of the freaking states who the fuck would try to ascend a legal like how could you even make money doing that so i don't even i'm assuming they thought it was either like freaking good old canadian black tar heroin i don't even okay i don't even know if that's a real thing i just like saying it but you know i don't know if they thought there was like hardcore drugs in there or like i don't know what the issue was because quite clearly we didn't break any laws. And so I don't know. Hopefully, you know, I saw in the package that Drew's wife posted that, like, it showed that, like, it was checked by customs and it was all cleared. But, like, I hope on there they somewhere said, we're sorry, it was late. And now the post office, I wanted to give the insurance money back to Drew, but because customs didn't reject it and send it back to me, Canada Post is, they're washing their hands of me. They're saying, well, we know we guaranteed it would be there in eight days, and you paid $100 to guarantee it would be there in eight days, actually $128 Canadian, they said, we're sorry. We got it delivered to the border within two days. It's not our fault that Customs decided to search it. So not only that, not only is Drew stuck with all this coffee to sell now, I'm not getting the money back. And like all the people at MGC who wanted to buy it couldn't buy it. So if you're like Tim Lee and you're buddies with Drew, please reach out to Drew. And, of course, if Drew doesn't have the coffee you want, say you really want decaf or even half-caf, our monster is just, it's literally had people who have tried decaf from around the world tell us it's the best decaf, the most flavorful decaf they've ever tried in their life. That's the only coffee I will drink past about 2 p.m. because somewhere around three or four cups of coffee, I start to get the jitters. In fact, at the pinball tournament this last weekend, because I had a show at the market in the morning, and I just have free coffee sitting there. I think I had three. I might have even pushed it and had a fourth iced coffee when I was leaving. And, oh, my gosh, I was trying to eat the Holy Bully. They always have, which is a really cool bowling alley with tons of great pins at it now, just outside of Moncton and Riverview. And they always have, like, instead of having, like, a guest tap, they have, like, a guest restaurant. And the guest restaurant was Korean barbecue. so I got this really good bulgogi I believe it's called and it's like you know pork that's been you know marinated in Korean barbecue and it's all on rice and everything and when I was trying to eat the rice between the rounds my wife was like do you have like on early onset Parkinson's or what because my hand was shaking so bad that the rice was falling right off the fork and it's like the whole reason why it was doing that was because I had way too much coffee so if you're someone like me that if you have more than two or three coffees, you start to get the jitters, but you just freaking love the flavor of a good iced coffee or a good decaf, we do have our monster. And that's one of the few ones I actually do have quite a few bags left. But which makes it even cooler, my wife and I started talking about wouldn't it be cool if we had a half-calf. So for those of you not available, a half-calf, and now part of the reason I was thinking of this because there's so much GTF talk with hitting the cow and everything else. And so I said, would it be cool if there was like just a half calf and she's like what a half baby cow I said no fuck that just take like the best picture you can get for free of a cow on canva cut it in half and throw it in a beautiful background with like sky and mountains and everything so within an hour my beautiful talented I was going to say the beautiful mind but she's also beautiful physically and mentally of drop target Danielle my wonderfully insanely patient uh incredibly versatile wife was able to come up with this absolutely beautiful art package. Look, it's not going to blow away Zombie, Yeti, or Christopher Franchi's art packages, but as far as if you're looking at a coffee, I would say I would go against the best packaged coffee in Portland, Oregon, California, New York City, any of these big towns. I would take their coolest, hottest coffee packaging, and you pour a delicious coffee in it and I still think that our packaging would be as good as if not better most of it so anyway she got done the half calf so this weekend at saltscapes I don't it's not even up on the website don't go look for it when you go over to angry alpaca on facebook and you hit the shop now button uh but I will say this Mike Williams ran into this issue as well shout out Mike thanks for your order if you are ordering any coffee don't order with paypal your bank will reject it because it's an international, whatever, pay with Apple Pay, pay with Google Pay, pay with Visa, pay with MasterCard, pay with any credit card that you're going to get like some points back on, because for some reason it sucks with PayPal. So, okay, I'm not going to mention coffee anymore. Let's get into what this episode was about. Obviously, this episode, first things first, we got to talk about Cary Hardy, okay? So, Cary Hardy's in a bit of the old hot seat now. We had everybody from Kaneda to, I believe now Bruce Nightingale to I believe now, or was Bruce only calling out Glenn? Or Glenn? Glenn himself was actually in a Pinball Enthusiast post kind of calling out Kerry Hardy. So I want to say for me personally, look, if I worked on the animations of GTF and I saw that video, maybe I would be slightly offended. If I was Zofia Ryan and I worked on making sure the balls don't go up in the air after hitting the targets, maybe I would. If I was Steve Bowden, if I was David Fix, maybe I would be slightly or even mildly offended by Cary Hardy's satire. But also, if I was someone who worked at American Pinball, and I saw Cary Hardy's satire, I would go, hmm, is he right, though? Is he right? Is there too many air balls?
    25:13
    Yes, he is right. Okay, wait, could he have been maybe nicer about it in the video? Yes. could he have maybe mentioned how awesome you know a couple of the other things on the machine are yes now to be fair Kerry Hardy did do a uh I've played it more like a catch-up video and he is far more complimentary in it look could he have been nicer during the video yes but his goal in that video was not to be nice to American Pinball his goal was be to be funny Kerry Hardy is first an entertainer and trying to have fun and I love it when Kerry Hardy made fun of Deep Root and the Mueller thing, Robert Mueller and everything. That was hilarious. And some of my favorite Kerry Hardy videos are when he's kind of, you know, he's kind of, he's using schtick. But I still think overall, Kerry is pretty freaking balanced. He's pretty freaking fair. He certainly isn't the most toxic person in pinball. He certainly isn't, you know, he's not putting up anything I would consider to be terrorism. Like, he's pretty well balanced, and I thought the video was spot on. Because when you were watching that, and it really, it really, I didn't say anything with Franchi on there. When someone comes on my show, I try to be respectful. I did tell Franchi I'm still confused about the storyline. And Franchi did a pretty good job, even though it was still fairly convoluted and fairly long to explain. I still think there needs to be some clarification about what the frick is going on in GTF. But for the most part, I'm starting to understand it. So I think that part's fine. So long as they fix whatever the hell was causing the tank, as long as through either A, through coding, and making it really well worth your time to hit that tank, and B, Zofia Ryan's fix on the air balls, if the fix is truly fixed, if it's been David fixed, and it's really fixed now, great, wonderful. Let's move on. Is GTF ever going to sell as good as Foo Fighters? No. Is it going to have deep code like, say, The Godfather? Absolutely not. But we have to give credit where credit's due. Is it the nicest looking American pinball machine ever? Yes. Does it have the best lighting or light show that we've ever seen on any American pinball machine? Yes. Does it sound like they've gone out of their way to do their best to have the best possible animations of anyone so far? Yes. does it sound like they're working hard to have kind of a more fun sound package? Yes. As Kerry Hardy mentioned, they probably need to continue to work on that because, like, the sound is cutting out during the call-outs, yada, yada, yada. But in comparison to Hot Wheels, let's be honest, GTF sounds like you're listening to a Scott Denise-y song. Am I right? So, David Fix, if you'd like to come on the show, I'd love to have you. I've reached out a couple times. Franchi was kind enough to give me her cell phone number. haven't heard back for a while but at the same time I've got to reach back out to him as well because I did say after the pin comes out so Franchi thank you thank you so much for coming on the show Kerry Hardy thank you so much for your funny content I was not offended by the first one even though I can see if you're someone who spent thousands of hours working on the machine that would be annoying I was frustrated by Steve Bowden who kept like people were just asking him about the code like we would during a Stern release like we would during a Jersey Jack release And we're just wanting the idea of you giving like, oh, the code's at 0.8 or the code's at 0.9. The idea of just giving us that feedback, the potential customers, the feedback, the idea is so we know what to expect. If Stern tells us the code is at 1.0 and then we go to play the game and the code seems really incomplete, they're going to hear about that and they're going to get feedback on it. But at the same time, if Stern tells you, guys, guys, guys, this James Bond is not fully coded. The code's going to flesh out in the next year or two. it's going to get better, we're going to Stranger Things this fucker we're going to, you know, Galaxy what is it, Galactic Tank Force, no, what is it, Game of Thrones no, I can see it in my head, the guy from Parks and Recreation Andy, the shoeshine guy what is that show with the orbs and Rocky Raccoon, or the raccoon oh my god, this is going to kill me I'm actually going to have a conniption fit Guardians of the Galaxy, sorry, Guardians of the Galaxy So Guardians of the Galaxy was renowned for having shitty code when it came out. And as the code got better and better, the sales just increased. So when Steve Bowden was being asked in chat during the live stream, hey, dude, like, whereabouts is the code? Like, are you guys still going to work a lot on the code? It seems like the code needs a lot more work. Like, that's basically the gist of what people were asking him. And he kept saying, like, I'm not foolish enough to tell you. Well, I think he's wrong. He's foolish enough to tell us he won't tell us. Like, that is foolish. when you're trying to imagine if you were going to buy any other product that was 10 15 20 000 especially in the old australian bucks or canadian bucks or for the all of my european fans over there in europe trying to listen or scandinavia sweden uh sweden denmark norway iceland whatever all everyone else not getting american prices that have to pay significantly more to get it shift shipped before we go spend as much as a brand new car or as much as a small like you know vacation property all we want to know is hey are you guys still going to work on the code how far along is it it does it still need a lot of work and when steve bowden says something like would i be i wouldn't be foolish enough to put a number on it can you imagine if you were at a car dealership Sorry for the car dealer, the car dealer, uh, uh, cargument. But if I was like my wife and I really, really want to get an electric or a hybrid electric vehicle now that we have solar panels so that we can pay even less because I'm cheap. It's not just because I love the environment. I am a bit of a tree hugger, but I also do just, I am even more so than a tree hugger. I'm just cheap and anytime something costs less and it's good for the environment, then I'm all for it. Right? So I've always said this before. I would never commission millions of people to just walk up and down the road and just pick up garbage. I think that would be a waste of the government's money. It would be great to have less garbage, and to those assholes that are still littering, especially along the side of my road here. I think right as people are getting out of River Hebert, they go, Oh, well, we're not in town. People can't see us litter. Here we go. Woo!
    31:43
    Now, I do end up finding about 20 cans of Bud Light there. We're not going to go into the Bud Light discussion. That's a whole other controversy for another day. but I do end up finding, I notice people drink in the craft beer or don't litter. I don't know. I could be wrong, but I've totally gone off topic. What else would you expect? I haven't done a non-interview podcast in well over a month, so I felt like I was missing you guys so much, but I've also gone off topic too much. So let's go back to this. I don't think Kerry Hardy did anything wrong, but I can see how that would have rubbed people wrong. Who, A, spent money on a galactic tank force, or B, you know. Now, I will just say this. American Pinball, next time you do a live stream, play test the freaking machine a little bit that day. Like Steve Bowden was like, we didn't have time to play it today. And then if you're going to do a live stream, balance the machine first. He was like, oh, we didn't have time to set up the machine. We just ran in last minute. It's like, you know, and then if you were in at a car dealership and you said to the guy, okay, well, like, how is it on gas mileage? And he goes, I wouldn't be foolish enough to tell you the gas mileage on it. Uh, okay. Could you tell us, like, what the financing rate is so I can figure out if I can afford it and it fits my monthly budget? Oh, I wouldn't be foolish enough to tell you if, like, like, knowing how good the code is is severely high on the list of things you need to know before you go spend 15 or 20k. So just tell us. And, you know, if you don't want to be foolish enough to put a number on it, Bowden, then just say, you know what, we think it's fairly far along. it's hard for me to put an actual number on it but like we want to do a lot more we want to code a lot more and we're going to make it so that even though right now during the live stream we're purposely avoiding hitting the tank at all costs even though it's the main mech in the game we're going to eventually once we Zofia finishes the fix for these air balls we're going to make it so that it's still extremely valuable to hit the tank because of the fact that it has a high percentage chance of going out an out lane or straight down the middle every time you hit the tank anyways So, yes, just hitting a cow thing going back for an hour and a half doesn't really seem like a fun thing to do. And I'll tell you what, of all the live streams I've seen in all my years, and this is saying something, no, I didn't see a live stream for Thunderbirds, but of all my years of seeing any live stream, it was by far the worst. And this is no knock on Jack Danger. I don't think he did anything wrong. I think dead flip, the stream looked great. I think you could hear the audio as well as was possible. Quite often, Steve Bowden was standing back. I don't know if he just partied too hard the weekend before or what, but he was standing back like 10 or 15 feet. I had the volume cranked on full, and I'm having to listen to like Technosaurus. I'm having to listen to like this dubstep hardcore techno, which I always hated dubstep, even though that song, I think it would grind on me pretty hard if I had to play it for a long period of time. Certainly near the end of the live stream, it was getting to me. But I like love raves. mind you I've never attended a rave without doing ecstasy so I'm pretty sure that has something to do with how much like basically if you do ecstasy all of a sudden like drum and bass sounds good to you or something I don't do hardcore stuff like that anymore I don't plan on ever doing it again maybe if Scott Denisey is doing like an after show somewhere I'll go check it out and tell you guys if I still like drum and bass or if I still like happy hardcore without the drugs I'm sure if I had enough beer in me and enough weed I would probably it would be tolerable, but never in my free time am I like, hmm, let me put on some dubstep. I just don't do that, right? But I've already said that the sound is better than any other sound I've heard in the other machines, so I will leave it at that. Kerry Hardy, I don't think you did anything wrong. The live stream was very, very, very disappointing. We weren't able to see very much code because they couldn't do anything with the tank.
    35:32
    You couldn't hear Steve Bowden most of the time. Jack Danger had to keep saying, Steve, can you come step up near the mic? So, Steve, maybe you're great at rules. We don't know yet because we haven't seen the rules for Raza and we don't really know what this code is. It doesn't seem far enough along to judge it. I haven't got to play it yet myself. It's not like people are saying to me like, oh, Orby, man, the code in GTF is so great. Wait till you play it. No one said that. I haven't heard anyone in the live streams talk about it. So, this was American Pinball's kind of last chance to really show us how good GTF was, and I would say it was a fail. I mean, at best, you'd say the live stream was mid, just because like, now that other newer dude there, I thought he did a decent job. Like, maybe Steve Bowden is great at doing the rules, but you need someone to do your marketing. You need someone who can do communications. You need some, like, I don't want to be rude, but even if American Pinball flew me in from Canada, boy, my arms would be sore after that. But even if they flew me in and they gave me, in honestly, like a two-hour talk, I could have done a better job selling that thing. At some point, someone even asked, how much is blah, blah, blah model? And they were like, we don't know. Go look at the website. That's not our job. We're not marketing. We're not communications. I'm like, well, if you're not marketing communications, why are you doing the live stream for AP? Why didn't they at least get Dave Fix there? who if, you know, say what you will about Dave Fix, he might have said to everybody, like, you don't know shit about pinball until you've been in it for five years or something like that. And, you know, he might have done some very controversial things in the past, and he seems to go on every podcast with every person from his show as opposed to letting them go on by themselves. But Franchi came by himself. Thank you, Franchi. And I would love to have Dave Fix on the show. Dave Fix was there. Dave Fix would have gave a better answer when people kept asking, well, how far along is the code then? I wouldn't be foolish enough to give you the information you need to buy this machine. He would never say something like that. He just wouldn't say, you know, he would say like, well, we're hoping it gets further and we've got the best people working on it. He would give you some, I would rather some used car, you know, car bullshit than someone just saying, I wouldn't be fool enough to tell you. Well, then I'm not going to be foolish enough to spend my fucking money on that game. You're not going to, you're not going to tell me if I'm able to hit the main toy in the game without getting air balls that are going to shoot back and hit Carrie Hardy in the frickin' eye. You're not going to be able to tell me if it's going to smash the glass or not. You're not going to be able to tell me if it a fun game to play because of the code You not going to tell me what the hell the storyline is and yet you want me to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the highest model of this Give me a break I want to love Galactic Tank Force I like weird wacky I am their target market. I like weird, wacky, wild, I'm like half stoner, half hippie, half hipster, wait, that's too many halves. I'm like their target market. I'm the guy who should be all GTAF. And now I'm just like, between your three failed live streams, being a little bit rude, condescending, and pretentious during the seminar, then being rude and a little pretentious and a little holier than thou. The weird thing is, like, Jack Danger just released, like, the most successful Stern pinball machine launched since an Elwin, or even since before. Arguably, it's way more successful than Bond 60th, but I'll say since Godzilla. And my man Jack Danger is more humble than any of the American pinball guys are. They should be in there going, hey, we're so sorry that it had issues at the show. We're here just to, like, let you guys know. You know, it should have been a lot more kind and generous. And before both my sons leave for school or work, the same thing I always say to them in the morning is be loving, be kind, and be generous.
    39:15
    And none of the people from that company were loving, kind, and generous. You know who was loving, kind, and generous? And you know the one person who's done the most to help Galactic Tank for sales in the public eye? I would say it's Christopher Franchi. Because when he was on this show, even though, you know, he's got some small beefs to squash with some people in the industry, for the most part if you go back and listen to my interview with Franchi from two years ago like half of our show was like you know negative I would say that there was the two times for maybe three minutes the one time and four minutes the other time where Franchi had a couple things to say about some other people in the industry and I didn't necessarily agree with everything Franchi was saying even though he had some points that were correct but I don't have to agree with everything Franchi says, to still treat him with respect and to be generous and to be kind and to be loving. But at the same time, I can say this in a loving way. I'm sorry that GTF livestream was an absolute fail. And I'm saying this because, American Pimble, I want you to succeed. I have said lots of loving, kind, and generous things about, you know, the artwork on the machine, about the light show, about the toys and mechs. I've said tons of awesome, positive stuff about it. but I'm sorry. I can't say anything positive about the code. I can't say anything positive now about the tank. And I really can't say anything positive about that live stream. So I hope and I wish for the best. The last thing I want is for all the boutique pinball machine companies to go away. So I have told people in the past, especially if you can afford it, you know, you don't have to be like stern, stern, stern, stern, stern. But you know, once in a while, yeah, if a machine comes out from Spooky, or American Pinball, or Fathom, or, sorry, not Fathom, Haggis, you know, or Pinball Brothers, if a theme comes out that you just love, and even like Queen, if you just, if you're a hardcore Queen fan, I think you'd be pretty happy with the game, probably. I probably wouldn't go buy a Thunder Turds, and I definitely wouldn't go buy that. What is going on with it? It makes Canadians look silly when they see all the stuff that Pinball Adventures is doing. And by the way, Pinball Adventures, if you listen to this, I will do free call-outs for you, so you don't have to have the guy from the Andy Griffith show. That show is, like, if you were to Google a list of the oldest television shows in history, it's in, like, the top 10 first-ever sitcoms ever. Like, ain't nobody under, like, I don't know, 65 who's like, man, I'd love Andy Griffith callouts in a pinball machine. Oh boy, Barney Fife, look here down by the pond. He doesn't even sound like a guy who works in a factory. I worked at Nestle at the ice cream factory on the Haagen-Dazs 8-wide line for years and years and years. I can imitate a guy working at a factory. Hey, Orby, the chocolate machine is overflowing again. What are you on the roof doing fucking getting high again? No, sorry about that, boss. I'll get it cleaned up right away. See, there you go. I imitated my boss yelling at me for, again, overflowing the chocolate machine, which, yeah, it happened a lot. I put a lot of hot chocolate down that drain. Sorry. Sorry, Haagen-Dazs. You guys are rich enough to afford Orby. But, no, I will do call-outs for free because you've got to get rid of those. I will do them all for free. I don't care if you give me a list of 100 call-outs. I will do them for free, and they would, within day one, be better than every call-out you have there. because you know what pinball adventures the punny factory it actually looks okay especially in comparison to you know what we're seeing in gtf it actually looks and with the price being so low it's it's looking better and better every day like if i was an operator and they're coming in so low of a price the thing is you're only going to buy i don't think a lot of people are going to buy punny factory for their house it's going to be like that raza factor it's going to be like that big Lebowski factor of something rare and weird that you don't see everywhere. It's going to have the same weird and wild wonky potential buyers as a galactic tank force would, right? Because the Punny Factory doesn't make sense. Why would there be a factory making puns about words? It's completely obtuse. But the one thing that would make it better, if you even advertise that Orbital Albert did all the call-outs for Punny Factory, I don't think that anyone listening to this podcast is like, oh, well, then I'm all in. But I think that it's an improvement from Barney Fife. Okay, I do. I think it is. I think it's a big improvement, right? So now I will say that the making of the Pinball Adventures video, that was decent. That was okay. It was relatively better than any videos we've seen from them in the past, which is saying something. And it does look like, you know, they're using the Canadian maple. I don't know really if the Canadian, when people say Canadian maple, I just think of my favorite donut, which has like a caramel glaze on top, and then it's got like a Boston cream custard in the middle. Can you tell I'm hungry and I haven't eaten yet today? I should have eaten first, but part of the reason I wanted to get this podcast out was to let everybody know to put in an order if you want to help me throw Glenn some more free coffee when I ship him out his order tomorrow night, or I guess it'll probably be Monday now since I'm so busy this weekend. And I also wanted to remind everybody that there will be almost zero selection of coffee on the website pass this weekend. So get in there now and do your order. And that is, of course, if you're not ordering from Drew, because if not, I'd much rather be, I'm sure once Drew sells all that coffee, even if he just sells it at a rate that he can break even on, he'll probably be much happier. He doesn't have like Ian joked about on Facebook, 80 pounds of coffee sitting there. Ian, it's not 80 pounds, but it is 30 pounds. And that's a lot of coffee. To be fair, we only go through, here in this house, we make a lot of coffee. My wife makes almost every day before she leaves for work. She's kind enough to brew. If she's making espressos, she makes them way better than me, so she makes those for us. But usually we just brew a big pot. The boys can each grab, like, an iced coffee to bring to school with them or work. I do want to give a quick shout-out to my son, Hayden Agar. Hayden is graduating his college course in road construction tomorrow. My man can now drive an excavator, a backhoe. He's done simulations with a crane. He actually really enjoys it. The professors in the class actually helped hook him up with a job with one of the top road construction and construction firms out here on the Atlantic Coast. I believe it's called, I don't remember what it's called. But it doesn't really matter. I get to go tomorrow and go to Hayden's graduation. And he doesn't have to graduate with thousands of dollars of debt like you would if you went for several years, which is nice. and because of all these awesome orders I got in the last week I'll be able to take them out for a nice dinner afterwards I'm not saying you know it's we're it's probably not going to be like taco smell or mcpukes or booger king it's going to be you know that somewhere slightly better than that we're not going to go down for like $300 omakasa or wagyu beef steaks for 500 buck meal but we'll probably be able to sit down and I might get them like a you know like a 10 or 20 dollar entree each kind of thing is what I'm talking about to congratulate him from graduating and then he might only have a week off until he starts working and that's it my boy's gone I'm gonna have a little tear my boy graduated college well he graduated a college program which you know that's good enough so really excited for Hayden big shout out to him what else do we have to talk about we talked about the Franchi uh we talked about oh Franchi feedback I really want to read this message, okay? Now, I'll read this, and this is from Craig Bobby. So, Craig Bobby, my favorite segment over there on TPS, keep killing it, bud. He said, hey, Albert, just finished. Can I do it in Craig Bobby voice? Hey, Albert, I just finished. No, I'm not going to try to do Craig Bobby. It's Canadian, too, so it would probably be very challenging for me to do, since I already got that Canadian accent, eh? Hey, Albert, just finished your Franchi interview show, and I wanted to say what a great interview I thought it was. You guys both sounded amazing, and I thought your questions and your tone with Franchi was great as well. Thank you for your kind words and shout-out for my segment on TPS. Keep on rocking it as only you can. I will. Thanks, Craig. Book your Expo trip ASAP. Just make it happen. You won't regret it, dude. Expo is where it's at. Cheers, buddy. And then we chatted for a little bit. Craig, thanks so much for the feedback. I had a lot of people who actually messaged me. I didn't get any feedback from the Canada thing. I thought maybe I'd get some negative feedback. I didn't get any negative feedback. I didn't get any positive. Whatever. It is what it is. I did call Chris out on not being humble enough. I did call Chris out on being a little bit too negative, a bit of a negative Nancy and a bit of a Debbie Downer and being a little too repetitive. If you listen to the show, you can hear that I did call him out on some of that stuff. But I did also congratulate Chris. I think for the most part he's been more positive. Now, that being said, he does, Chris does fairly quickly, fairly quickly, he does get, you know, Franchi and I both wear our hearts on our sleeve and we can get offended pretty easily sometimes. Let's just be honest. We're both what I would consider like, and I don't want to speak for Chris, but we're both like kind of type A personalities who kind of like to be the center of attention in any room or conversation or podcast we're on. We both like to probably over-dramatize things a little. And one thing I really disagreed with that Kaneda said in a live stream after that, he said, you watch Frenchy, I'll be back. He'll podcast again. You watch. You watch, everybody. You, and I thought, Chris, you got to take a chill pill. I thought Chris was going to have a freaking aneurysm or a heart attack. I thought he was going to, near the end of the thing, he was grabbing his chest. I thought he was going to stroke out. He did like a 12-minute, like, super aggro thing against Franchi. And the thing is, so fucking what, Chris? And to everybody out there who said, oh, Franchi will be back. Excuse me. So what? Is Christopher Franchi not human? Does he not bleed when you cut him? Like, can the guy just not say, hey, I'd prefer to live a more private life. For now on, please stop sending me podcast requests. I'm not going to do them. Please stop sending me interview requests, whether it be written, audio, whatever. I'm not going to do them. Please stop expecting the Super Awesome Pinball Show to come back any minute. I know it was a lot of people's favorite, if not second favorite, pinball podcast, and it's just not coming back any time soon.
    49:54
    Christopher did even say on there we're going to try to do like a little annual update with Christian Line and Jeff Parsons. He did say that that was going to happen, so that's good to hear that we're going to get at least once a year a little tiny update from Franchi. But it's never going to be like it was where they're having awesome guests on all the time asking the hard questions. It's never going to be again where you're going to get to hear like a weekly or bi-weekly show coming out from Saps. It's never going to be where like Franchi's, you know, joining my show, then a month later he's joining someone else's show, then a month later he's going over to Loser Kid or vice versa or something. No, he's not going to do that anymore. sorry I just had a ladybug crawling up my microphone I wasn't trying to provide ASMR there sorry okay sorry easily distracted huh anyways I just wanted to say for all the feedback that I got about Christopher Franchi's interview and everyone who loved it and the audio is getting better but believe you me sometimes people might have even thought is Orby even listening I am listening to what the people are saying when I'm interviewing them but I'm also watching two different screens with four different windows up on one and two windows on the other. I'm watching the audio. I'm seeing if it's peaking. I'm making sure quite often with Franchise, and this was probably my internet. This has nothing to do with his awesome microphone, but it would get louder for about 30 seconds to a minute and a half, and then it would kind of get quieter. I'm adjusting the audio the entire time I'm in a podcast because I don't do any type of editing. The closest thing I do to editing afterwards is I throw the whole thing basically through a compressor. And for those of you who aren't audio nerds, what it does is the audio file, basically the lows get higher and the highs get lower. So everything's kind of more in the middle. So I kind of cheat. I use a cheater code. I'm not as good as like a Jeff Teolis who works at a radio station who can go in and cut out the ums and the yas and the two or three seconds of dead air. I think the dead air kind of from time to time adds to it, actually, even though I get where you're saying I would prefer to have less filler words. I do try each and every show to have less filler words, depending on how drunk, high, sober, caffeinated, headache, tired, stressed, whatever's going on in my life, depending on what's happening in my life, there's probably going to be more filler words. If I'm super stressed, yeah, I'm just human. I bleed as well. Franchi and I are just humans, so be nice to us. Be nice to Franchi because all I can say is that his Godfather artwork package is incredible. I think it will probably win the Twippy for Best Art next year, or at least I wouldn't be surprised. It'll be right up there with, of course, Zombie Yetis, Foo Fighters. Overall, as a package, I like the Foo Fighters slightly better. But from a realism standpoint, the way that he drew everybody, I think, on Godfather, I think that's better. So it's like, you know, if you like cartoony type stuff, the zombie yeti stuff's way better. If you like realism in your artwork, then Franchi's is probably better. So I don't know which will win, but I wouldn't be surprised either way. I wouldn't even really be that surprised if Galactic Tank Force won for best art. I mean, okay, maybe slightly. But Franchi's artwork's incredible. Franchi just wants to step out of the limelight a little. He'll still probably go to shows. He'll still probably be part of live streams when a new pin comes out, right? And you're still going to hear from him from time to time on social media. but all he was announcing is that he's stepping back a little bit from the limelight. There was that very famous writer, J.D. Salinger, I believe, or something like that. I don't even know if he's a made-up character or not. I thought he was a real person, but they had him in the Kevin Costner movie, like the Seven Man Out something, Field of Dreams. Field of Dreams, that's what it is. And, you know, he has to go get this recluse. Franchi's not doing that. He's still going to go out to shows. he's still going to go do the coin taker thing I think I don't want to speak for him or put words in his mouth but to everybody that was like Franchi's being so dramatic so what who cares that's what makes a show entertaining on the one side you hear Chris of Canada's Bimbo podcast say oh yeah like you're so dramatic about it Franchi like uh blah blah blah and then on the flip side he'll say my show is just entertaining don't judge me it's just entertaining I'm not doing it for drama. I'm not doing it to be negative. I'm just doing it because it's entertaining. So why can't Franchi come on a show and be dramatic a little bit? Because he's feeling that way. That was straight from his heart. He had no ulterior motive to saying that other than just to set the expectation for all of his adoring fans that you're not going to see him out at as many shows. You're not going to see him sitting on very many, you know, like doing interviews, going on to podcasts, doing live streams, sitting in on Kaneda's Saturday Morning Spectacular. You know, that's what he was trying to say. Now, I will say this, and I've ran a little bit long, so I don't have as much time for it, but Mr. Bruce Nightingale, who I absolutely love, off Slamtail Pinball Podcast, over there with Ron Howlett, of course, a fame of Silver Ball Chronicles with David Dennis. Make sure you go listen to that as well. Gotta shout out my East Coast homie, David Dennis. Didn't get to see David at the last tournament. Before I talk about the last topic, I'm going to do one minute. I'm going to sum up my last tournament in one minute. On my very first game, I was playing Halloween, and when I was about to come back and win only like half a million away from the guy in first place right in the middle of that freaking hedge multi-ball which that upper head shot took me forever to start I was about to win the whole game I had one ball cradled up and two balls shot down into the trough at the same time and the game thought that all three balls had gone in the trough and it killed my flippers and a ball dropped down now the tournament director thank you, Tom, was kind enough to say, Albert, what do you want to do? Now, think about it in my position. Everybody was already waiting for us to finish because Halloween's the most modern machine there, so it by far plays longest. So everybody's waiting for us to start the next round, and then I'm the second to last player, and it's up to me if we play a brand new game or not. What am I going to say? I'm not going to be rude and make everybody play a brand new game and everybody wait again. More than likely, I would have got first, but it's only a differential of three points so I thought well that's not a big deal I ended up missing I bubbled out of going to finals by three points so I actually would have gone to finals so I'm telling you right now if you're in a pinball tournament and you think there's a chance in hell you could go to finals make us think about it Tom didn't do anything wrong he asked me what I wanted to do I said nah let's just pretend that the ball like I could have had one shot after that and the ball could have went straight down the right out lane and I my game could have been over and I could have not I may not have qualified for finals. I most likely would have with how well the game was going and how little points I had left to get, but I still don't like Halloween. I still haven't played Ultraman, but I hear they're similar.
    56:41
    Let's go over to Bruce Nightingale, though, for a second. So Bruce had said that he thought it would be a good idea if Chris from Canada's Pinball Podcast gave, and I have to keep saying that because we were talking about Franchi here as well. I don't want to get the Chris's confused. he thought it'd be a good idea if he gave that money to charity. And I totally agree with him. It be great It be great if every pinball podcaster at Patreon just gave all their money to charity But here the problem with that Bruce is if I just gave all my money from coffee to charity first of all I be broke and I wouldn be able to afford groceries and I wouldn be able to afford gas and I wouldn't be able to pay my power bill. Geez, they've been threatening to shut that one off. Geez, I've got to catch up on that. The solar should help with that next year. Power bills shouldn't be so bad in the winter when we're using mostly electric heat to heat. If you live as far north as me, do not use electric power to heat your house primarily because you will get burned. You will get burned a new arsehole. But Bruce was saying that he thought he should give it to charity. That would be something nice to do. Of course, Bruce, it would be nice if he gave all his money to charity. Of course it would be. That would be great if we all did that. But you know what would happen? If nobody had a Patreon for Pinball. And when I quit, and I learned this the hard way, for 490 episodes, I said, I'll never charge a penny. I'll never sell anything. People were asking me for that T-shirt that I had that said, Eat, Sleep, Breath, Pinball, the really cool Pinball Nerds podcast logo that was done for me. And I told them no. I said no. I only did three. Mark and City, who did Nightmare Before Christmas, Pinball Machine, which I just saw was at Pinbrewer somewhere.
    58:19
    That particular machine was, oh, little Orby Jr.'s home from school. Go say hi, Elowen. Go say hi. Sorry, if you hear Elowen come in, it's just because we're doing the show right now, so I'll be with you in a moment, bud.
    58:32
    So what I was saying is that if all of us, like after I did 490 episodes, I told my wife, Drop Target Danielle, if I go back to doing pinball podcasting, I'm using it to sell the coffee. I'm using it to promote my friends. I'm using it to promote products I want because I put thousands of hours for years into the show, and I did not collect back a red penny. And not all of my motivation, but like today when I have a headache and I'm tired and my voice still hurts and is a little bit hoarse from my cold, I wouldn't have done a show. but I had to come on here and I just had to thank Joe F, Tony Scoots, Scott V, Mike W and tell them thank you so much for supporting the show when I'm you know packaging up all their stuff and shipping out their stuff and adding cool comics and cards to all the stuff and the free lunch box when I'm doing all of that it makes me think geez I better how long has it been since I recorded a show and I look today and I thought oh it only been a couple days since I had Ed Franchion No, it's been a week since I talked to you listeners. You've waited a week. And I felt obligated to come on here and talk to you guys because of that. So Chris Kaneda went on a huge long rant last night.
    59:46
    It started out very negative about Bruce. It ended up being more positive in the end. He ended up doing a really cool, like, an interview with someone named Emily Anderson. And I actually reached out to her. She probably is going to come on the show. She says here, I would absolutely love that. Thank you so much for enjoying my quirkiness and love for the game. So she sent me this. Emily, thank you so much. So she was just on there last night. Kaneda, as we know, does not do interviews, so most likely we're never going to get to hear her over there, even though I think he might have her back for a spectacular. I don't think Chris is going to be pissed if I have Emily on my show. For those of you who don't watch Kaneda's live streams or you don't want to watch the full two and a half hours, fast forward until about an hour, I think an hour and a half in, Emily comes on there. she shows you her and her partner have this really really cool collection of pins it took her like half an hour to go through and then she was like oh yeah just one more room oh yeah just one more room some of the neatest upgrades and mods i've ever seen so even if you're not a huge canada fan go over and watch that just to see emily was such a joyful person and such a happy person and just she's the type of person we want in pinball to help expand pinball and she was so positive that She took the negative Nancy that Chris was being last night on the show while going overboard, talking about, you know, that, you know, Bruce did like a two-minute segment on Slam Tilt talking about Chris. Chris did like a two-and-a-half-hour podcast or live stream where he's mostly talking about that. But anyways, the point is, I don't agree with Bruce, but I also don't really agree with Chris when he says he's going to be more positive and goes off on them for the whole time. So it's a very tight rope that we walk. Even my boy Glenn, the pin turn slash Glenn the skateboarder slash Glenn Wechter.
    61:31
    Glenn, you know, Glenn did this long rant on pinball enthusiasts, and I believe it was actually taken down, which is crazy. Because all Glenn was basically saying was don't be a jerk, content creators. That's basically all Glenn was saying. And even Kaneda went on a huge rant on that. It's like, dude, he's just saying he wants the pinball content creators to be a little more positive because he's found a lot of them are being negative recently. And I can fall into that trap. We all know in our daily lives, if you're not a pinball podcaster, you might not realize this. But think about this. How much easier is it to a random stranger that you meet or to anyone that you're talking to to be negative? Like, oh, the weather's horrible. I can't believe it's how windy it is. And it's raining and it's storming. And, oh, the snow. And that's so easy. But how hard is it, even to someone that's maybe a family member or friend, to say, you know what? I'm having a really good day today. I'm just feeling great. Like, I don't know what it is, but everything is going right in life. You can't say that shit to people. They'll look at you like you're fucking crazy. Like, maybe, maybe, maybe, excuse me, maybe I feel comfortable enough telling, like, Glenn and Tim the Lion Man Lee, like, hey, guys, I'm so happy with the feedback I'm getting from this podcast. But it's just easier for all of us to complain constantly than it is to say positive things. and let's be honest if Kerry Hardy does a podcast and he goes and he lies and he's like oh man I love the shots in GTF oh man there wasn't a single airball I love that live stream um wow it was perfect they didn't have to take the glass off once if Kerry Hardy is way too positive and he's lying and he's being an inauthentic he no one would watch he wouldn't get any views he wouldn't get any Patreon. He wouldn't get any feedback. He would just get people going, are you on crack, dude? Like, did we watch the same fucking live stream? So instead of Kerry Hardy going on and just being negative and rude and toxic, he made a funny video about it. For those of you who haven't seen it, go watch it. It's hilarious. It's a tongue-in-cheek way of kind of sort of making fun of how bad the live stream was. And the live stream, it was bad. Kerry Hardy's been in pinball even longer than me and I've never seen him do satire about how bad a live stream is he had to do it this one time he had to I feel like he would have been inauthentic and a big liar and he would lose his so it's it and I said this on the pinball enthusiast thing before it's taken down in maybe a different number of words but the hardest thing you do as a pinball content creator is making sure that you're not too positive as I've been told I'm you know the most positive guy in pinball and after I went on Kaneda's someone like made fun of me and said this lad is so positive he's got rainbow shoot note is arse and then like which I think will be a hilariously funny shirt for my my top tier podcasters it won't be polo but it won't be a hundred dollars a month but it will have a funny picture of me bending over and a big rainbow shooting out my asshole and I've decided I wanted to say Orby sucks at pinball and at the bottom it says podcasting. Orby sucks at pinball podcasting. Because I do. I do suck. And I do suck at pinball podcasting, but for different reasons. But I really appreciate everyone who takes the time and energy to give me feedback, good, bad, or indifferent. If you think that you're going to give me bad feedback and I'm just going to go, ah, yeah, I've done 526 episodes. I don't think I'll, you didn't like my show. You know what I'm going to tell you if you give me bad feedback, but it's constructive? Thank you. You know what I'm going to tell you if you give me bad feedback and it's just being mean and it's just being rude. The guy at Pinball Nerd came up to me like, you called your show Pinball Nerd's Podcast? Of course it's about pinball. Don't you think Pinball Nerd's Podcast is the dumbest name for, you shouldn't include the name pinball in it. And I was just like, you're a fucking tool. You're glad I'm not like, you know, we weren't in a country where I couldn't get arrested for beating the shit out of you and it wasn't 15 years ago because I probably would have just spit in that guy's face and got in a big, giant fight. But the old angry alpaca here is trying to be more calm and chill in his old age, and I haven't had to get in a bad fight with anybody in a long time. I'd like to keep it that way. But my point is, if you don't like my show, I'll probably just tell you, if you don't like my show, just don't listen. Because that's the easiest way. Like, I don't give out any rumors on this show. I barely talk about pinball news on this show. I definitely don't talk about pinball news that you've got somewhere else. So there is zero fucking reason for you to listen to my show unless you like to listen to me rant. because I'm not ever going to say anything in here that you couldn't just get probably off of another bigger podcast that has 10 times the listeners. Am I right? So that's my whole shtick. If you listen to me because you just want to hear what's going on in my crazy head, if you listen to me because you like hearing completely unfiltered the truth about what I think about every pinball machine, every release, but I'm telling you the truth in the most positive light that I can, with trying to be, you know, trying to think if I were a designer, if I were a coder, if I were someone in marketing or advertising at this company, would I want to have this constructive criticism? So the same way that I would want feedback on my show is the same way that I would like to give feedback to other pinball companies. And I would like to think that especially since episode 493, I've been drama free. And I've been making sure that I give you guys the cold hard facts about what I believe you know how good a pinball machine is and I try to be semi entertaining semi truthful semi entertaining that's what I try to do it's I'm never going to be a top show I'm never going to do wild editing I'm never going to have the top pinball designers on here Keith Ellwin you're still invited and yes Jack Danger even though you're banned if you're willing to do the show live from the shower while you're taking care of all your social media stuff in the morning you can come on the show if you'll do it live while you're on dead flip you can come on the show if you're going to do it while you're live on your motorbike come on on the show but if not oh wait wait i should come up i like to come up with a new one each time if you're going to do it in person when i get to see you at expo cool come on the show but if not jack danger you're banned all right guys i've gone way too long i talked too long about nothing there you go you've got my feedback on the canada versus bruce uh you know update. You've got my feedback on everything else going, the Carrie Hardy hot seat and everything else. I hopefully you've been filled in. Hopefully I've entertained you. And I will say this. Sometimes you hear some people talk about, Oh, certain podcasts are too long. All you have to do is you listen for as long as you want to listen for, and then you go do something else. Today, I listened to the, uh, the new slam tilt podcast in like four bits. Like I listened to a little bit this morning when I was playing Fortnite a little bit longer when I was sorting out some cards for two of my shows this weekend, a little bit longer when I was setting out all the different coffee and tea for my most recent orders. And then I listened to a little bit I actually had, and this is a nice thing. I'm not financially wealthy, but I do have a wealth of pinball knowledge, as well as I'm probably the most time wealthy ever. I had a good friend actually reach out and say, I'm so sorry, I've never ordered coffee from you. Please don't be offended. I'm not offended when you don't order coffee. All I ask is that you come here and that you listen with an open mind and you'd be part of it. That's all I ask for. I do say that if you love organic coffee, sure, support me from time to time in the show, as opposed to like paying basically the same amount at your local store. I do often say, you know, I like this other podcast or go listen to this show or go check out this YouTube channel or give a shout out or something like that. But don't ever feel obligated. Like I am so lucky. I am so time wealthy. In the middle of my day, I had time for like an hour hot bath today. Like who else? Like 90% of the dudes listening to the show and dudettes, most of you out there listening to this show, you have to work probably 30 to 40, maybe even 50 hours a week at a job that many of you find rewarding, but some of you probably hate. And you go and do it because you love your family more than you hate the job. You go and do it because you love pinball machines more than you hate that job. I hated working for the man. I couldn't stand not being a small business owner. So now that's why I come and talk shit on here with you guys. But the reason I have so much time and energy to do so many shows and so many interviews, and I think I've done more interviews than any other pinball podcast this year, probably more than most of them combined, to be honest. And I think I work very hard on the interviews, and I should be rewarded, at least in a small token for that. And by the way, I did the math this morning. My Franchi interview put me well over 100 listens. 100 listens. 100,000 listens. When I came over to the Poor Men's Pinball Network, I had like 78,000 listens, I believe, from pinball nerds for my first 500 episodes, which if you do the math, that's not that many listens per show, I'll be honest with you. But the last couple hundred, I got a couple more listens than the first couple hundred, but it doesn't matter. What matters is I've now had over 100,000 listens. I've taken all the profit I've made since I started slinging coffee at episode 490, the last 36 episodes, I guess, and the total of my profit, my profit, not even including my own time, just my profit from selling those. Because when I sell a bag of coffee, it's not all profit. In fact, the margins are fairly slim after we take into account the loss that I get on the shipping. But it's still good enough for me to, you know, it's still good enough. I'm not suggesting it's horrible. But what I'm suggesting is that I did the math. I've now made six pennies. I've now made six cents per list. No, no, no. 0.6 of a cent. Because I did the math, I've made somewhere around $600 profit and I've had 100,000 listens. So if you take 100,000 or wait, if you take 600 and you divide it by 100,000, it works out $2.00 and 0 cents, 0.6 of a cent. So I've got paid less than one penny for each time someone turned on a show and had the enjoyment of listening to me or the irritation of listening to me, depending on how you look at it. It's cost them one penny, less than a penny that I've taken back. And again, that only includes my time and energy for the coffee. That does not include all the time and energy I put into well over an hour per show. So if you've worked that out in 500 shows, I make about a dollar and 10 cents per show profit. And I put hours and hours and hours into that. Well, even here in the Maritimes, minimum wage is $15 an hour. I probably put between five to ten hours per show. Even just trying to get the guests, they're slippery sometimes. Like three or four times I thought we were going to record with Franchi. It didn't end up happening. It's tricky, and it's hard. The hardest part is doing all the research. Once you get to sit down and just shoot the shots with someone, have them on your show, that's easy. Just sitting there and uploading it and putting in all the tags and putting in the titles and sharing it on your different pages and taking pictures and dealing with the feedback you get over the next few days. That's all easy. It's writing the show. It's coming up with the show. It's forming an opinion. It's watching enough Twitch, you know, things going on. And it's all of the things that take so much time and energy for me to formulate a proper opinion that I'm putting into this that I go over and above to do for the show. And that's why I unfortunately have to disagree with Bruce. And I think that people should use their Patreon money for themselves. And yes, if you can use that money to get a microphone, that's better. Great. Better camera for your live streaming. Perfect. That's probably the best use of funds. but who's to say that that money that I got in from this order that allowed me to go to the funny flippers this weekend and have fun there who's to say that that isn't worth it right I think it is worth it I think that the fact that I worked my ass off because I worked my ass off for the show I have a little bit of extra fun spending income to be able to get to go to a pinball tournament to be able to give my wife a massage to be able to spend a little bit give a little bit extra cash for my son to have just money in his pocket for gas or groceries or whatever, like when he's gone to college all week long. Those are the type of reasons why I do this show. I don't do this show just for the likes, just for the comments, just for the C-level pinball fame or celebrity or whatever you want to call it, right? I don't do it for any of those reasons. I do it because I love pinball. I want to help expand pinball, but also because I know if I work my ass off and I work this hard, you guys will therefore show me your appreciation for how hard I've worked by maybe the odd time buying some coffee or tea, or maybe like sharing my podcast with one of your friends, or maybe sending me a nice note like Craig Bobby did, because Craig Bobby's never bought any coffee off me and I don't expect him to ever do so. However, it's so freaking nice to wake up and see that order from Mike Williams this morning. It's so nice to have last night, like I was going through a bit of a tough time, and to get that really kind, like I respect Craig Bobby so much, and to get that kind message from him just means the world to me. So anyways, I've gone off topic. What else would you expect? I haven't got to chat with you guys for a long time. Thank you so much to each and every one of you who listen, who enjoy the show, and if it's too long, just come back and listen later. And when I do turn on that Patreon, which I'm not ready yet, I'm trying to figure it out here in Canada, it's a little bit different, but when I do turn on that Patreon. I hope that a couple of you, especially those who have never supported me by buying some coffee, I hope that a couple of you join on and help support at the lowest tier. And even if then you don't, I'm still not going to be mad at you for it. Because you know what? We all have different things that we're great at in life. I'm not great at being financially wealthy, so I can't go out there and I can't be patrons. I would love to be a patron for almost every pinball podcast out there. Like, I can't even think of a pinball podcast I wouldn't want to support. Okay? So, you know, I want to go out there and support more of them. And when you guys help me out, it helps me out more pinball podcasts, right? I just don't financially have enough money to support all of them. I certainly don't have enough to pay $100 a month for one, but I think we all knew that. But I don't even have any arcade. I don't even have a single pinball machine or arcade machine in Orbeez Arcade. I have to walk by it every day and be like, oh, it's so sad and lonely. I had to sell that shit so I could get my solar panels going, right? So anyways, I love you guys. I've gone on way too long. Most of you probably stopped by listening by now. If you're still listening, give yourself a pat on the back and make sure you tell yourself, the best part of waking up is Orbeez coffee in your cup. Until next time, Pinball Nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Carry hearty pinball.