it's another pinball profile i'm jeff teals you can follow us on twitter at pinball profile email us pinball profile at gmail.com and subscribe on itunes you know there are a lot of jack dangers in the world there's one on brooklyn 99 there's a jack danger on twitter co-founder of absolutely.com but more people in the pinball world know this jack danger although Jack, is that your real name? I have to ask you. We'll never know. We'll never know. It's not John pushover or Jimmy featherweight or anything like that. It's actually Rodney danger. Tim, not to be confused with danger field. Well, Jack, you and I have never met. I appreciate you coming on this interview podcast. And also I want to thank you too. You've made some very nice compliments to me online and you've been forwarding my tweets and podcast updates to your big audience. I assume no one's listening so that means a lot to me fantastic you have such a great voice for all this radio podcasting whatever the crap you're doing you're doing it right yeah but i got a face like the elephant man so it all works out in the wash perfect you know i wanted to do these interviews kind of as a way for me and other people listening to get to know the people behind pinball when i started i didn't go on any forums i hadn't even heard one single pinball podcast ever now i listen to many there's coast to coast and bro spooky pinball podcast slam tilt many more i've adapted my style based on my classic rock radio show when i do interviews my theory is i'd rather hear from the guests than listen to myself so how did you get into live streaming and were there ones you followed and admired well when i first learned about twitch it was based on getting a key code for a video game very early on that no one had played before and my friends like to hop on Twitch. It's going to be great. You can stream it, show all your friends, blah, blah, blah. And I started streaming. My buddy's like, you should set up a thing so people can donate. And I'm like, that sounds really weird. And then instantly money started rolling in from people saying like, good game. Here's a dollar. Good game. Here's five bucks. And I thought something illegal was happening. So I shut it all down, deleted my account. I was like, I'm not messing with this at all ever again. But then I noticed that Papa had been streaming pinball on Twitch. So I was watching that and I looked over and my animation studio in the West loop, we had, I don't know, like 12 pinball machines. And I was like, this doesn't look to be that complicated to set up. So I used whatever garbage webcams we had laying around. We only had Macs, so we had to trick a bunch of different software to stream out to Twitch. And once we got it fired up, I was like, well, now I'm going to take my ability as an animator and a designer and try to make this thing look super sexy and got that thing going. At the time when I started streaming, there was only two people I knew that were streaming live pinball. And that was Papa, and that was only occasionally. and a gentleman named Lethal Frag, who was inducted into the Twitch Hall of Fame two years ago as Twitch's very first awesome, this dude's amazing, you should watch him sort of streamer. And he only streamed pinball very occasionally. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to start a stream, I'm going to do this every single day, and we'll see what happens. And that was two and a half years ago, and I'm still streaming Monday through Friday, sometimes on the weekends, for at least two hours a day, if not more. And I'd like to say it's made me a better pinball player, but I'm usually drinking a lot when I do it, so I can't really tell. No, come on. Yeah. You have a drink when you're streaming. This is a revelation. I'm guessing you watch my show. Well, you know what's funny? The first time I saw Batman 66 was the Dead Flip broadcast with you, Lyman Sheets, George Gomez, special guest Josh Sharpe. And even he said right away something about what's your drink of choice or whatever, and I thought it was kind of funny. So is it better for you playing wise and broadcasting wise to have a drink or not Does it loosen things up I just feel like it more of a sense of camaraderie that I drinking with the people that are watching me I try to make sure my show is as fun as possible. And we try to have a lot of people on every once in a while, but usually it's just me. I just don't want my show to be like, I'm standing there and I'm only talking about the pinball, and I'm only talking about the shots, and I'm only doing this. I try to keep it fun, lighthearted, because I couldn't watch a show that was only exclusively talking about the facts. I'd get bored. And Twitch is all about entertainment. So, you know, just try to keep it lighthearted and fun. I find you're very interactive with the people that are sending you notes on Twitch, too. So I think that is something they obviously like, too, when they're sending you the notes, that you're responding right away. If they're talking crap about me, you know, I give it right back to them. It's all good fun. We're talking about that Batman 66, which you did just before New Year's Eve. how convenient was that for you that you were already wearing the batman suit i just i was wearing it stern's like hey you want to come stream this and i was like i'm already in costume let's go do this thing amazon actually took that costume back because i had no use for it after that show a lot of the time the first chance we get to see a new stern pinball game it is on the dead flip stream i know you're in chicago very very good access how did you get this and do you have incriminating photos of gary or jody both and yes it's incredible uh i'm also in those photographs so they have crap on me no um the the way this relationship turned out was there was a at expo one year when they were releasing the walking dead i don't know how many years ago this was um probably two years ago i don't so i'm at expo and i have all my streaming gear with me and at the time my gear looked like the most ridiculous stuff ever. Everything was duct taped together. It was like poles clamped to poles with things taped on them. It was embarrassing. So I'm standing outside of the expo hall where Stern's getting ready to set up the big party that they throw so people can come play the games. And a big banner for Walking Dead comes out. I get up and I help sort of move it over. And Jody's like, hey, you're that like streaming pinball kid. And I was like, yeah, that's me. He's like, you want to stream Walking Dead tonight? And I looked over at my buddy, Nick, who was with me at the time. I was like, is this actually happening? Yeah, 100%. I want to stream this game that no one's played yet. So he let me in early. I started setting up my gear and it went off without a hitch. Stern loved it. And ever since then, it's like anytime they release a game or a big event happens that Stern's doing, they give me a call and I'm there and I set up my gear and just go to town. I've even had Gary Stern on my show at my studio to just have a few beers and bang around for a little bit. And yeah, it's been, it's a really awesome relationship. Well, whether it's Batman or Aerosmith, for pinball fans, it's got to be like Christmas many times a year for you with a new game every time it's launched. It is. I'm a little spoiled that I get to play a game before anyone else. It is a lot of fun, especially when I get to play it with the designer and the programmer and like the whole team, you know, the wiring guys come over. It's just awesome. Every time I'm there at the factory, they just shut the lights off, grabbed whoever's still hanging around what'd you think of batman 66 i finally played it and i love it i think it's great my my first impressions with games are always uh i'll have to wait because i get to play games in like their beta state and i i can't really make too big of a judgment on that because code goes so far on a pinball machine it's crazy but i did i i loved batman it shot well i love the call outs the animations and such there's been a couple new iterations of code that i have not played yet, but we do have one on location here in Chicago, so I'm going to have to run over there and give it another go. I'm going to wait for maybe one more update, and then we're going to stream it again to do a comparison to see how far it's come since I streamed it at the factory You have a harder job than I do because with audio I can record like this interview is probably going to be 45 minutes long I cut it down to 10 to 15 minutes because we take all my screw out But with video, you can't really do that. The chopping might not look so good. Oh, man. Yeah, let me tell you. I can have like a good four-hour stream where I was like, yes, this is great. And somewhere in the middle or towards the end, I say something maybe I didn't want to say and I have to delete the whole damn thing. And it's all that good content down the way, down the tube. But, you know, we try to keep it clean on the show. It has, over the years, gotten a little more sweary, if you want to put that in quotes. But when you're out in public, if I'm playing on location, I can't just grab a stranger and be like, you're going to play pinball with me, but please watch your mouth. You know, I know we're out here drinking. No, that's not going to happen. You just have to roll with the punches. Well, I do have to hand it to you. Watching some of the Deadflip Twitch videos, you've got some stamina, man. Spider-Man Vault. You did a solo play and you commentated for four plus hours. I love pinball. I like talking on these podcasts. I could never do four hours and you do it no problem. Did you see the 24-hour stream I did a year ago? What are you, Jack Bauer? I played for 24 hours straight. Every four hours, I would physically move a pinball machine out from underneath the camera and bring a new one in. The whole time I'm talking, chatting, drinking. I will never do that again. I lost feeling in my left big toe for a month or so. Gosh. I made it a point that I was not going to sit down the entire time either. So standing, moving stuff around, it was a nightmare. I don't want to ask, but that's something to watch for sure on your dead flip archives for sure. What's your favorite thing over the last few years when it comes to pinball? What's my favorite thing that's happened? Sure. Maybe it's a game. Maybe it's an evolution of something? Oh, geez, I don't know. I'd say my growing relationship with Twitch might be the coolest thing that's sort of come out of all this. Twitch now comes to me as the pinball guy, sort of like a mild community manager. They bring me places, you know, allow me to show off my stuff. I go on their shows, talk a little bit about what's going on. But more recently, they hold a yearly conference called TwitchCon. And last year, they gave me a spot. It was like a prime spot in the conference center that, you know, if a vendor wanted it, it might cost that vendor maybe $500,000, $600,000 to be there. And they just gave it to me. And Stern gave me eight pinball machines to put there, and it was just me sitting there, grabbing people walking by and playing pinball with them. I streamed it for a little bit, and they've been super, super supportive. both Stern and Twitch. And it's just been an awesome relationship for sure. That's a nice badge of honor to have from Twitch for sure. Yeah, I'll take it. Does that make you more competitive with other maybe streamers? No, when I developed my stream very early on, I made sure to take notes on how everything was built, how things are set up because streaming pinball, it's not just plugging in cameras because there's like syncing the cameras and color correcting things. And if you have more than one camera that's the same, and things become problematic and you've got to learn how to fix it. And lots of new pinball streams pop up, I'd say, every week. And I'm helping people with a little this, little that on how to get things set up. It's just a really awesome community of people and no beef. When people watch Deadflip, they can obviously see that you've got some skills behind the camera. You're not afraid to talk and you certainly have some great animations as well. But a lot of people don't know you're actually a really good pinball player. We see you at the launches and stuff, but you don't really play that many tournaments. Although you crushed Pinberg last year. 21st, I think you were? Oh my God yeah Dude I And you know the Pinberg thing was I only play pinball in front of the camera I given up going to tournaments just because my free time now is gone I have zero free time. I'm working as an animator. Then I stop that, fire up my cameras to stream. And when that's done, you know, that, that occupies my whole freaking day. On top of also, you know, I have an eight month old daughter, so there's just no free time to do anything. If I could go to a tournament, I might as well be streaming playing pinball. So the Pinberg thing, holy crap. That was just, I sat with the original Deadflip guys. Deadflip was a little pinball team that we started here in Chicago. It was me, my buddy Nick Campbell, Dave Kiss, and Brad Zac Stark. Everyone has since moved away. Brad still lives here in Chicago, but I don't see him that much. But when we go to Pinberg and Papa every year, we all get together, you know, try to cheer each other on. And usually when I go to big tournaments with my guys, they know that I need to be, and this is bad, I need to be pretty drunk to play well. Oh, gosh. Is what I thought, okay? We would just go out in the parking lot of Papa and maybe have a drink or two and then come back in and start banging around. But this was my first big tournament I ever played, ever, dead sober. Not a single drop of anything. And I ended up just killing it. When I made it into A Division, I thought something was wrong. It didn't make any sense. And then making it through the first round of A Division, that yeah it was it was mind-blowing um so i i think i have a i think it became like a weird it's like have you ever heard the hulk hogan three beer workout routine no please tell me that's on one of his uh videos that he's making millions on i don't know uh hulk hogan has a thing where if you drink like two or three beers before you work out you can work out harder and longer just because you're you're a little looser you know things don't hurt as much and i think that's what's happening when i'm playing pinball it's like i'm training and then when I sober up, it's like running with weights on. Now I can jump three feet higher than I usually could. I'm not endorsing drinking to get better at pinball at all, ladies and gentlemen. But it's done wonders for my game. Well, this just in, the IFP announced that there's going to be breathalyzers at all tournaments now, so you're screwed. That's fine. That's fine. I'm a sober player now, apparently. You only got in five tournaments last year. Are you going to try to do more, or again, is it just too difficult with the streaming? I think I'd like to hop back into chasing the IFPA Whopper Dragon soon. My concern now is when I followed IFPA and got a lot of points and I made it to Illinois State Finals, my first opponent was Zach Sharp, and I was like, this is stupid. You know, Zach is the guy that I call him coach. He taught me how to play pinball. I couldn't have had a better resource to learn how to play pinball. Now that Keith Elwin is moving to Chicago, yeah, it's just going to make life a lot harder. There's so many great players here in Illinois. It is bananas. And now that you're tacking on one of the best, if not the best, pinball players also, it's just, I'm going to have to do really well in Iowa and play the Iowa State Finals. Yeah. Jack, here's a little pinball tip and geography lesson. Go to Indiana. It's right there. Yeah, but now everyone's going to Indiana. Well, we will continue to watch you on Dead Flip and maybe catch you at some of these live events, whether it be Papa Pinberg and maybe at a beer store. Who knows? Oh, yeah, I'll be there. All of those. Jack, thanks very much for this. No, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. It's a great show. Jack Danger on Pinball Profile. You can catch us on Twitter at Pinball Profile, on our Facebook group. Email us at pinballprofile at gmail.com and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes. I'm Jeff Teolis. I'm riding through the danger zone