Puff the magic dragon lived under the glass, and once in a while when the node board went out, he looked like he's smoking a bong. no, don't worry, there was actually no fire they say where there's smoke there's fire, but not always especially not when you have a vaporizer the safest, probably best way to ingest any type of devil's lettuce but also for that poor little dragon under the glass, this poor little guy down there don't worry, if there was even one video of this thing catching fire, it would have gotten the most views you've ever seen, none of them are catching fire but some of them of course, again this is a little bit old news I haven't been with you guys for a couple weeks. I missed y'all. Did you miss me? Probably not. Maybe. Hopefully. Alright, let's get back into it. Let's go back to the Twippies. I am going to talk about that little detour that the road trip pin went on for my last one. I might have been overly positive, but to be fair, I only had these beautiful pictures on Nap Arcade. I did not have any video, and let's just say my ideas and my thoughts, much like the game and much like the public's opinion on road trip, have gone for a little detour, a little old 180, shall you say, but we're going to save that for later on. Let's get right into the Twippies. That's the big news of the day. Now, I could not find that all of the numbers have been published, but thankfully I reached out to Colin, and he was kind enough, as busy as he's been in this last week, to let me know that I did get 144 points in the Twippies! That's right. I should have this pulled up right now, but to the best of my knowledge, I got somewhere around 20 first place votes. I'm guessing they're worth like three each or something, and I got like 14 second place votes, and like 24, maybe it was 24 first place votes. Yeah, that would make more sense. 24 times 3, 82, something like that. I end up with 140 some odd points. I don't know yet if that's like 28th of 28 pinball podcasters, or if it's like 15th. I don't think it's much higher than that. I doubt it'll be your fifth favorite pinball podcast, I'll tell you that, because, you know, Kaneda and I, won the same number of Twippies this year. We tied with zero. That's right. And listen, I always cheer on the little guy. You know me on the show. I've propped up every small new pinball content creator, every new podcast to come out in the last decade. Every new Twitch channel. Every new live stream channel. I tell you about all of my favorites whenever I can while I pump up the little guy. And of course, I was going for anyone but Kaneda. Not necessarily because I'm frenemies with Kaneda. Also because I just didn't want to hear him say for the next year seven times, Twipio. He talks about it more than anyone else. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I don't want to give Kaneda too much credit or too much time here. All I will say is, Kaneda, I was watching the live stream last night where Chris2Cool4Schoolress had the biggest meltdown I've seen him have in a very, very, very long time. And his poor wife Brenda was trying to save him. It was very entertaining. The only problem was the hundred or so of us, he was keeping a hundred people watching him have this meltdown. This was pulling away from the Twippies. And I could actually, because I had the Twippies open on YouTube through Wormhole on my giant television. Then on my little small laptop, I had going, so I could chat through Living With Albert, which is where I did my McDonald's challenge and a couple other cool challenges. You guys could always check out on YouTube, Living With Albert. but just like how it's spelled, just like how it sounds, no G, just living. But sorry about that. My washing machine likes to sing a beautiful little song when it finishes, which I love. But as someone with hardcore ADHD, I find it very distracting. So I did want to shout out everyone who helped do the twippies between Colin, I know Erica of Erica's Pinball Journey helped with like marketing and advertising, communications, social media, probably all that type of stuff. Retro Ralph did a great job as a host. Poor frickin', I could see him sweating there. Poor frickin' Jamie from Wormhole. It's fine. I wanted to just grab him and be like, bro, just finish. It's all good. He kept saying, like, am I going too fast? Am I going too slow? Boy, I'm sweating a lot. And it's like, it's kind of, you know, I did host a TV show for some period of time. You kind of just got to forget about all that and go on. Like how I just mentioned the washing machine. Probably shouldn't have, right? Squirrel. I'm not suggesting that I could have done any better. I'm just suggesting like he was squirming quite a bit and I just felt so bad for him. I just want to give him a big hug and be like, you're doing great, buddy. Keep pushing on. Like I know Jack Danger and Emoto had to push through like technical issues. Um, it's, it's really, really, really, really hard. There might be an argument for pre-recording it next time that there could be an argument for that. Trying to do it live is just so challenging. Like, I don't know. I would like to think maybe IE pinball, like the people in all of pinball who probably have the best chances would be like IE Pinball, Fox Cities Pinball, maybe Backhand Pinball. They just, they all have so much experience with like huge live tournaments and like switching the volume over to go to like, you know, instead of Ian Jacoby as their man on the street, it's usually Jeff Teola's doing the here, there, and everywhere type interviews and stuff. So maybe one of them could try to do the Twippies. I do think Wormhole could try to do it again and do even better next year. And I will say this, once they got their feedback, apparently there was like whatever internet they have there in Texas. Apparently it went down right around the same time. I don't know if it was that issue, if it was more on house issues. I know even when the internet was working again, and I did also kind of feel bad for my buddy there you just heard six minutes ago when I started this, Glenn the Skateboarder, who did all of the music, all of the music for the Twippies, which were great, the sound, the like the announcer call outs, all that kind of stuff. He did a great job with that. I did kind of feel bad because I would have to keep turning down the television over and over again every time that Glenn came on because it was so loud. And the commentators were, especially for the first like 10 minutes when they came back, were very, very quiet. And then all of a sudden Glenn would be there introducing the next category. No, Glenn, you sounded great. The music was wonderful. The dynamic changes between the two sort of sucked, but I think they figured it out. So if you absolutely are someone like me that like audio issues bug you, maybe jump to like 10 minutes into the wormhole. One says, we're back and it's working this time or whatever the second one was. So there was some confusion with all of that. Again, Colin definitely has never done anything like this before. So I put like zero on Colin. You know, he's trying his best. Jamie had practiced it many, many times. I was there for several of the practices. If you see Jamie doing wormhole interviews, he's dealing with people with several different microphones and audio ends and his editor does a great job of pairing those up and making sure the sound quality is good i saw wormhole do several tests uh they did several tests and mock um excuse me i need a little sip i need a little thip here of diet pepsi as a canadian i'm not supposed to admit i'm still drinking it but hey we had it in the fridge i'm not i'm not throwing it out i've seen people throwing out and pouring out like thousand dollar California wine do the tariffs and stuff. It's like, yo, I'm not that rich. I'm on the poor man's pinball network. I'm not that, I can't be pouring out. Like, I'm sorry if I have any good craft beer here, I'm not pouring it out. Like maybe I'm going to attempt to try a bit harder to buy more Canadian, but like, oh, anyways, let's not talk about tariffs. We were talking about how good the Twippies were. So let's go back to that. So I would say the moment when it all changed for me and I was like, yo, these guys are killing it. I guess this was Colin's idea. so shout out again to Colin of the Kineticists. But they had the idea to bring in Eric frickin' Stone, and my guy killed it. It was so funny. Even Drop Target Danielle just gave me the smile, the nod, the high five, and they call it the Shawinigan handshake, but the Americans probably won't know about that one. She gave me the thumbs up. Let's say she gave me the thumbs up. And Shawinigan handshake sounds bad, but it's really not that bad. Jacques Rétien gave it to a, well, he gave it to a, you know, a really nice reporter back in the day. So you think Canadians are nice? Go look at that prime minister. Less nice than the one we have right now, his son. Anyways, neither here nor there. It's very hard to not talk about politics right now. And I'm trying to not mention parties or specific people, but let's get back into congratulating who we have to congratulate. But first, I do want to put a little bow on the deal with Canada. What really bugged me, Chris, if you're listening, I don't care. I hope this doesn't put me back in the enemy boat. it probably does and I guess I mean if it does it does I'm just going to be honest with you bro instead of you giving your flowers to your buddy Kale from Electric Bat congratulations Rachel and Kale who win I think they're very deserving of it now do I think that maybe some of the votes you know to people they're having at the tournament saying by the way guys before after during the tournament I don't think they were buying votes or votes or getting people in Brazil or anything like that both Kale and Rachel seem way too moral ethical and like stand up awesome people to ever do something like that. So I really think the chance of that happening is extremely low. However, what I do believe might have happened is they might have just said, hey, if you love us and you love our podcast and you're a local player to us, we'd really appreciate your vote. And who knows, maybe they did have a laptop open. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You know what I mean? What I do think is immoral or unethical is, oh, asking, get your grandma who doesn't listen to my podcast to vote. And I even had one person once say, oh, do you want me to sign up with multiple emails but no no no no no no no like i said on my show if you like my show and it's your first second or third favorite and to the 20 or so of you that voted i was your favorite can i just talk to you for a second thank you it warms my freaking heart to think that of the 400 or so people that typically listen to the show which i am the le le le no other pinball podcast gets so few listens as me. Maybe no other podcast on planet earth with 600 episodes gets so few listens. So you're really listening to the limited, limited, limited edition of the Nerdio. So to the 20 or so of you who are nerding out on me hard and I'm somehow in your top three, that's incredible. Because my goal is just to be everybody's fifth favorite pinball podcast, as you know. I know I'm never going to have the best sound effects. I'm never going to have the best microphone. I'm never going to have the best interviews. I'm certainly not going to stay on traffic or on traffic. See, I'm not going to stay on topic or never use filler words ever again. However, to Kaneda pulling away a hundred people, like there was like 175 people, but then he, he actually was so entertaining at a certain point. I wasn't even, I had the TV muted there because I was like, it's like a, it's like a train crash or a car crash. And like, you know, even as a driving instructor, I had to tell my students often, I would grab the bottom of the wheel from the passenger side. I would tell them, please don't look over. Keep your chin up in the center of the lane and look far into the distance. And I had to do this. Imagine if it's your first time driving on a major highway, say on the 401 where I taught a lot of students, 14 to 18 lane highway, largest road in the world. Look it up. Most traffic per day. Okay. Going into the GTA, Greater Toronto Area, or Tirana. And some of these students, they've never driven on a road faster than 50 kilometers an hour, so like 30 miles an hour. And all of a sudden, they got to get up to 110 or 120 to squeeze in between all these transports. And there quite often is accidents, especially on that part of the road. It's very prone to accidents. There is some like evil name for it called like the, not like Tornado Alley, but like something like that, like Accidental Alley from London to chat them on the 401. So a lot of accidents there. And new students, quite often, there'd be a car in the ditch or a wipeout or a snowstorm or whatever. And I've got to tell them not to look over because if they rubberneck it their first time driving, A, they're going to let off the accelerator and we're going to have a truck so far up our freaking butt we can smell their shats from last night, right? And their poo 10. Or they're going to go out of their lane and then we're going to wipey wipe. So that's my issue with the whole problem is that... Anyways, oh, Franchi was in chat last night. Speaking of the dog waking up and being a jerk, Franchi was in chat last night. He's like, Albie, are you following me? He doesn't call me Orby, which I kind of like. But he's like, Albie, are you following me? Because I was in the Cary Hardy chat with him, post-Cary Hardy winning pretty much every award. Jaws or Cary Hardy won every single award, right? And then, on top of that, I was in the chat with him, obviously watching the Twippies. And then, on top of that, if you could maybe just put that by the kitchen thanks honey Draco Franchi woke up from his nap midway through the podcast what else would you expect but anyways I think Canada was really pulling away from the enjoyment and the fun of people watching this And you could see the Kaneda people coming back and bitching moaning complaining on YouTube And it like dude for one time once Kaneda even said for months if I don't win, it'll be because I didn't hardly barely ever ask or mention it. He only mentioned it maybe like twice in a week leading up to it. So it's like, dude, first of all, you said you didn't want to win again. Second of all, some people who even think you have the best pinball podcast would just not vote for you because you're too mean, you're too rude. And frankly, if you do win, you're just going to say it over and over and over and over again. And nobody wants to hear you brag about it for nine months. We'd rather, I don't really think he's ending his show. I mean, the guy does not need an extra award over the six twippies. He admittedly, like he said last night, makes $3,000 US. That's $5,000 pure profit because there's no expenses other than his tax, right? So he's making like, he's clearing like five to six K Canadian a month. That's never mind. That's if everyone only paid the $7.50 Canadian I paid or the $5 American. Tons of people are paying like $30, $40, $50 a month, even some paying $100 a month. Right? So, like, honestly, I don't make $5,000. I can show you guys my taxes. I do not make $5,000 of profit a year through my collectibles company. It's maybe getting close to that. And or the collectibles cafe and or Angry Alpaca. Like, I just don't. I probably am able to like save myself four or five thousand dollars from having each of those companies by adding to my pc or drinking my own coffee that saves a lot of money and you know I do get to have a part-time job for my son where I can pay him some money and work together and we do make some good money for like eight weeks in the middle of the summer but all those bumper months I'm lucky to break even like if I do 250 in sales after I pay Owen is 50 for the day and everything else, it's like, I'm lucky to maybe break even. So what I'm getting at is that Kaneda makes probably between two and a half to four and a half thousand dollars pure profit, like he bought his microphone years ago, you know what I mean, off of having this show, and yet he's canceling his show. He said last night before he left, I'm done, that's it, I'm done, and then his Facebook went down. So I'm sorry, I'm unsubscribing. When I'm done this show, I'm going and unsubscribing from Kaneda, and if he doesn't want to do public shows anymore, That's his prerogative. I haven't really been enjoying the shows that much. He hasn't really been saying he does talk. He does. He does call out companies, which I do appreciate. I don't think he does it in a very constructive, kind way, which, yeah, that's how he gets a lot of listens is from being contrarian. But if you listen to my show, I can be constructive, have criticism, and be kind and compassionate, and care for the designers and the creators of the product. At the same time, let them know, like, hey, yeah, like the same way I just did about the Twippies, okay? It was bad. It was messy. It was a mess when it started. The sound was all over the place. You were cutting in and out. There was lag happening all the time. The videos were starting. we heard the winner of the wrong like they they mentioned the winner of the when they were supposed to say expo was the winner they actually named the the owner and proprietor of expo who actually won the community award later on um carrie hardy did win a lot of things so i feel like i feel like i and i think even carrie hardy would be okay with this i think almost maybe not canada but everyone canada would probably be okay with this uh i think if you win in one category it'd be really rad if they gave it to the person who got second in the other category do you know what i mean just I I you just don't want to see like Kerry Hardy went like three or four times in a row now did I vote for Kerry Hardy in several of those categories of course my guy is like super duper interesting uh it makes probably he does he does maybe perhaps the best job of all the content creators of making content that is like fair but funny and that's so hard to do because you either go you go over the line and you're too rude and mean you you think that you hurt relationships with people who work for companies or even other pinball nerds who don't want to hear you being quite this critical. And then on the flip side of that, you know, on the flip side of that, really what ends up happening, I hope that my, I hope that my computer is, I'm getting, I'm getting a pop-up from McPhee right now. Let me just cancel this right now. I hope that overall, what we learned from this Twippies is that nobody is perfect, Hobity is nerfect. And honestly, if you try to do something like this yourself, what most likely will happen, okay? Oh, I'm just loving this right now. If you try to do something like this yourself, what you will most likely figure out yourself is that it is extremely, extremely hard to do and that you're going to run into some issues. And if you run into some issues, I hope that you yourself can say, I want the person judging this to be open and honest and give constructive criticism. I do think they did a lot of practice, but I do also think if Jamie and Wormhole decide to do the Twippies again, they'll probably do an even better job and research it even further. And I think that they will have figured out whatever bugs they ran into. Now, at the same time, I did see people like my buddy Don there of Don's Pinball Podcast. He was live streaming in between. a lot of other people I'm sure were live streaming in fact Don could see other people watching Don's stream and the Twippy's stream at the same time in the same room so I don't know if it would have helped to have asked absolutely everybody to make sure to just be on like don't be on our wifi network I don't maybe that is something they did Jamie made a joke about his insider connected auto updating if I were them especially if you could do it with the push of a button I would have had a dedicated router just for that one if possible or maybe even like an easier thing to do is just tell all the machines, the insider connected machines, have them turned off of auto update during that time. Because this is too important of a time to have auto updating. But that being said, I'm done being critical. I'm happy for everybody. I think everybody there had a blast. I get that some people in chat would have been annoyed and given up after 10 or 15 minutes. I get that. And if you're one of those people, I don't fault you for that. I'm not judging you for that. I was annoyed. I think if I wasn't a content creator, I might have just said to my wonderfully patient wife who was sitting there going, okay, like I don't mind watching the Twippies, but like what's going on? Like are they, even my son Owen said you better check their social medias. Is it going to start again? Hayden was looking around on Wormhole on YouTube and he ended up finding that they were live streaming again or else I wouldn't have known. I didn't see the comment till later from Jamie that they were. So I'm sure that hundreds and hundreds of people will watch the uploaded link today and go and do that because from, you know, and even go 10 minutes in if you don't want to have any sound issues. But overall, overall, I think it will go down in history as a learning experience. I'm hoping you can be like me and take the positives, which were, the Eric Stone thing was hilarious. Doc Monday, Ian Jacoby of Nudge Magazine did a great job. It was really nice to hear from Aaron of Fast Pinball. It was really neat to hear from, well, let's just go through the winners real quick here, okay? I'm going to have a little sip here because my throat has been sort of sore, so I couldn't even partake in any drinks last night while watching the Twippies. I had a couple gummy bears and a couple vapes, but don't worry. All the gummy bears, they were 100% multivitamin gummy bears. They're the only type of gummy bears I have. Well, you know, that and Flintstones vitamins, but they keep you growing. How'd that song go? That was so catchy, that song for the Flintstones. All right, no singing today. We have to congratulate people. Let's try to go in order here.