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#108 Pintastic 2023 debrief - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·3h 10m·analyzed·Sep 19, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Pintastic 2023 debrief: new game reviews and deep dive into custom EM restoration.

Summary

George and Dave debrief Pintastic 2023, discussing newly-released games they played including Galactic Tank Force, Pulp Fiction, Godfather, Venom, and James Bond. They interview Brian Hawkins, winner of the 1970s EM category, about his custom Team 1 to Wizard conversion featuring Abracadabra artwork approved by Gottlieb. The podcast covers tournament categories, venue experiences, and restoration/modification techniques in the EM pinball scene.

Key Claims

  • Pulp Fiction has excessive lag between players during bonus counting, making transitions slow and confusing

    high confidence · George describing his hands-on experience playing Pulp Fiction at Pintastic

  • Jersey Jack flipper design is overly 'swishy and squishy' compared to other manufacturers

    high confidence · George critiquing Godfather (Jersey Jack) at the show

  • Galactic Tank Force uses stand-up targets instead of drop targets for one of its banks, which George dislikes

    high confidence · George's direct gameplay observation at Pintastic

  • The Team 1 to Wizard conversion was officially approved by Gottlieb with copyright registered in 2021

    high confidence · Brian Hawkins explaining the licensing approval process through Steve Young

  • Ken Head commissioned 25 conversion kits, with Wade Krause handling the artwork, and Ken personally built conversions for customers who couldn't do playfield swaps

    high confidence · Brian detailing the conversion production and Ken's labor-intensive process

  • The original 1971 Valley Wizard was only sold in Italy and had a poor-quality playfield

    medium confidence · Brian citing Dave Marston as source; IPDB search did not confirm entry

  • Split Second (Stern 1981) won the early 1980s category at Pintastic, despite George's reservations about the overall quality of entries

    high confidence · George explaining the tournament award decision

  • Press was not allowed in Extra Ball Lounge at Pintastic initially, though the speaker was eventually admitted

    high confidence · George recounting his venue access experience at the show

Notable Quotes

  • “If you really want to go out and play all the newest games... come to Pintastic. I stood there and played like four or five games in a row.”

    George @ Early segment — Endorsement of Pintastic as the best venue for hands-on new game experience

  • “Whoever comes up with a mod to make those flippers less swishy and squishy, you'll make a lot of money.”

    George @ Godfather review — Specific, actionable criticism of Jersey Jack flipper design with market opportunity implication

  • “It's like, the ball ends, the bonus counts up. This thing's like... one of those deals where you're waiting for it to count up all the bonus and stuff?”

    George @ Pulp Fiction review — Detailed description of Pulp Fiction's gameplay pacing issue

  • “So he had 25 kits that he was going to sell... and like half the people bought his kits, and the other ones were like, I love this, but I can't do playfield swap.”

    Brian Hawkins @ Team 1 conversion segment — Evidence of market demand and Ken Head's service filling a gap

  • “When someone does it right, it feels like a factory finish where you don't feel any paint edge. And you did that in yours.”

    George @ Cabinet restoration discussion — Quality standard for professional-level restoration work

Entities

GeorgepersonDavepersonBrian HawkinspersonKen HeadpersonWade KrausepersonGabepersonSteve YoungpersonJim SwainpersonEric Sternperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Detailed coverage of Pintastic 2023, a major industry show featuring tournament play and new releases

    high · Extensive discussion of venue setup, games available, tournament categories, and attendee experience

  • ?

    product_signal: Mixed reception for recent Stern releases: Pulp Fiction criticized for UI lag, Godfather for flipper feel, Galactic Tank Force for target design choice

    high · George's detailed hands-on critiques of each game after extended play sessions

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jersey Jack flipper design identified as industry pain point; George suggests market opportunity for modification

    high · Direct quote: 'Whoever comes up with a mod to make those flippers less swishy and squishy, you'll make a lot of money'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Team 1 to Wizard conversion demonstrates advanced EM restoration expertise and market demand for high-quality artistic modifications

    high · Brian's detailed explanation of Ken Head's 25-kit production run, Wade Krause artwork, and Gottlieb official approval process

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Gottlieb actively approves custom pinball modifications through licensed representatives; 2021 copyright registration suggests formal process

    high · Brian: 'They probably had to sell them pretty hard in that, too, because they're sticklers for that stuff. So since I said 2021, I didn't feel too bad about putting a topper on it.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.572

0:00
I'm going back to Massachusetts. Ever since I was a young boy, I played the silver ball. From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all. But I ain't seen nothing like him in any amusement hall.
0:40
The deaf, dumb, and blind kids sure played the new pinball. And rolling. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave. Hello, Pintastic Dave. Hello, Pintastic George, my brother from another mother.
1:10
Good to be back in New England. A little weird. A lot of weird. Yeah, a lot of weird. Who was it on Masked Man? I don't know, George. Folks, you have to come to this show. I'm going to hand out the accolades only after one day. Gabe, you run a very, very fun show. I got to play everything. Last we left, Dave and I, we were pontificating about, well, I was pontificating. You were just listening.
1:44
I'm a good listener, George. Oh, I got a Dave check. You almost lost it. I never put that out. I know. I never put that out. I almost hit it again. He almost went down. Okay. George Foreman grill. I'm not doing that. Maybe use that chair. Use the Carol Merrill chair. No, no, no. I'll do the same thing. I'll sit forward and not do that. This is okay. Well, you don't have quite the size. Ah, okay. Gotcha. Anyway.
2:10
Where were we? Oh, so I was talking about the list of games that I wanted to play. I did pretty good. I played a lot of the games that I listed that, you know, here's the games that are brand new. I've never played them before. I even went back and played a couple. Ask me if I played anything, George. You didn't play anything. I know. That is correct. Give the boys the guard. You live nearby, so you're not even staying here, but you were out last night howling with the Wolves, were you not?
Dave Marstonperson
John Dayperson
Dave Matranoperson
Sterncompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Gottliebcompany
Valleycompany
Pintastic 2023event
Silver Ball Rumbleevent
Extra Ball Loungevenue
Galactic Tank Forcegame
Pulp Fictiongame
Godfathergame
Venomgame
James Bondgame
?

competitive_signal: Split Second (1981) awarded as early 1980s category winner despite weak field; George expressed reluctance about entry quality

high · George: 'They were all like, I could have put the ribbon on some woof woof dog, but it's like, why am I going to put a ribbon on a piece of...'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Pintastic 2023 organized multiple themed rooms (Extra Ball Lounge, Bells and Chimes, tournament room); selective press access implemented

    high · Discussion of venue layout with specific room names and access restrictions

  • ?

    historical_signal: Team 1 conversion reveals complex lineage: 1971 Valley Wizard → 1975 Gottlieb Abracadabra → 1977 Gottlieb Team 1; custom artwork bridges eras

    medium · Brian's detailed explanation of the connection between three games across different eras and manufacturers

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Ken Head successfully produced 25 custom conversion kits, personally building installations for customers unable to perform playfield swaps

    high · Brian: 'He had 25 kits... Ken actually built them for people... he was doing them like every two weeks or so'

  • ?

    design_innovation: High-quality cabinet restoration requires seamless paint edge work with clear coat and sanding to achieve factory-finish appearance

    high · George's technical discussion of paint edge elimination through clear coat and sanding methodology

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Pulp Fiction exhibits significant delay during bonus counting transitions between players, affecting game flow perception

    high · George's extended critique of bonus counting speed and player transition lag

  • ?

    community_signal: Show participants recognized George and Dave by voice/reputation at Pintastic; podcast has established community recognition

    high · Discussion of being identified by attendees and podcast visibility in the community

    • 2:37
    No, we went home relatively early. What, 11 o'clock? Oh, I heard that tournament went late last night. Which tournament? Oh, the main tournament, Silver Bowl? No, no, whatever. Rumble? No, the other one, the New Hampshire or the Vermont, whatever, or the Western Mass. one of them. I don't know.
    2:55
    They all kind of blur. No, I just don't know which one it is. There's a handful of them here, and it's good. If you're really into... I said this before, and I'll say it again. That's why I'm handing out the accolades. If you really want to go out and play all the newest games... I played Galactic Tank Force this afternoon before I saw you. I don't know. Three or four times in a row. Nobody's standing behind me. I'm like, okay. I'll play it again.
    3:20
    It's a fun game. I like playing it. Nothing you own. No, but I get the schtick, very colorful. My only issue is I don't like stand-up targets. I wanted a bank. They've got two banks of targets, one on each side, 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock.
    3:38
    Those should be, at least one of those banks should be drop targets. I know why they don't do it. I get all that, but that's what I would like to see.
    3:48
    Yeah, that makes sense, but drop targets cost money, George. No, and I'm fully aware of the cost and all the arguments against it, but I'm going to dovetail. A couple weeks ago, I've got to ask a question first. Did I send you a picture of Tankfest in Dokesville, Virginia? No, no. I told you about it. Were you like Mike Dukakis in a tank? Don't you say you were Mike Dukakis? Remember that picture of him running for president? He's in a tank looking ridiculous with a pair of headphones on. looking like a real doof? No. No, so I went to Tank Fest. I went to Tank Fest a couple weekends ago in Nokesville, Virginia. And the person who hosts this has 100 vehicles of his own. Now, there were at least 40 or 50 tanks. It was, here, I didn't send you pictures. Scroll through. Okay. There's some really cool Soviet tanks, Israeli tanks. Did you guys have a war out there? No, but they were running them around the track. They were driving around. I guess if you were like a VIP or, you know, like a special person, you got rides. The flamethrower, did you see the flamethrower picture with all the smoke? Oh, it's got some smoke. Yeah. Smoke. Wow. That was pretty cool. We weren't standing nearby. That was pretty cool, too. So that kind of fits with the galactic tank force thing and seeing tanks, and I get it. Very cool. So, yes, I'm into galactic tank force, but no, I would never own it. So no tanks. No tanks for the tanks. That's what I'm trying to say. Tanks for the memories. Should I keep going? Should I stop now?
    5:33
    Someone needs to make it stop. That's me banging my head against the table. Turn it off. Stop it. See, this is what happens when we don't see each other for a while. And we do it live. And live, in person. Right. We're much better. Okay, so that crosses off a couple. In color. Oh, do you want my review of the games I did play? Go ahead. A couple word answers. So I played Pulp Fiction. What do you think?
    5:59
    I get it, but I don't like the lag between players, the computer going, it's like, come on. Speeds and feeds. Ball ends, go to the next person. I mean, it went from like a solid-state standpoint. It's like, the ball ends, the bonus counts up. This thing's like...
    6:23
    And I'm like, I thought the game was broken. Wait, is it singing to you, or is it saying you won the bonus on this thing? No, that's me singing myself for how long it took to get there. So the game is saying, you won bonus for this thing, and a bonus for this thing, and a bonus for this thing. Total bonus is this thing. It's like one of those deals? You're waiting for it to count up all the bonus and stuff? It was so loud, I couldn't tell, but it just seemed like... It's like forever to go from one person to the next. So that's my only critique. The only, if somebody said, oh, did you get to hear the dialogue? No, I heard the game next door, and I don't have to tell you the four-letter word. It was barking. That was the only, you know, intelligible word I could hear from the game. You know what that word is, right? Starts with an F? D-A-M-F? No, just F. Oh, it's F. Okay, well. Just F. All right. Multiple time F. Okay, well, F. All right. Fire truck. Fire truck, yes. So, pulp, that's mine.
    7:17
    Godfather, no. That's a big no. Yeah, Godfather, I tried that. And you know what it is? What? It's those freaking flippers on those Jersey Jack games. Whoever comes up with a mod to make those flippers less swishy and squishy, you'll make a lot of money. Venom, need more time on it. Wasn't bad. Don't know anything about it. So it's like Spider-Man? Is it Spider-Man? He had some kind of spidery-looking dude that goes up like a hill. Yeah, but is it Spider-Man like the stern Spider-Man with new artwork? Is that all it is? Oh, I don't know. I'm not familiar enough with that game. It was okay. I need to play it, and I'll find out for sure. It was okay.
    8:00
    Galactic we talked about, and James Bond. Put a lot of time on James Bond. Okay. I don't know why. Which one? The LE, the Premium, the Pro? The one with the sky dude. Oh, the sky dude, yes. He's going across the sun. Whatever that is. Skywalker, sky hook, sky something. Right, right. You know, when he drops the ball on the tack and that thing. Yeah, that, and it's got the big dill in the back. Right.
    8:28
    I don't know. I just kind of like the game. It's not bad. I don't know what I'm doing. I was just more practicing the shots and saying, wow, it feels good. So nobody playing it. Again, this is why I tell people, if you want to play pinball, come to the show. I stood there and played like four or five games in a row. It was great. Okay. Earlier today, much worse. I mean, like 11 o'clock, it was like crazy town. Hey, we have a pull in a chair. Come on in. Do you do super secret clubhouses? Yes. Super duper secret clubhouses. Yeah, you can come on in. Come over here, Brian. Come with us. Oh, yeah. you're going to be on. Yes.
    9:09
    Is that a waiver? No, I'm talking about all the new games that I played. Oh, would you like? Well, you've got to come in closer. I don't think anybody would have looked. Right. Come over here. Exactly. They're all in a super, super piece of stuff. Double secret probation club. Oh, that doesn't work. Yeah, we have to kill you now. We kill you last. I can replay your game for a while then we'll kill you do you want a beer? yeah I would love a beer we have a guest that joined us yes a guest his name is Brian Hawkins and he is one of the winners of the best in play best in show here at the show hold that thought now I brought for you Dave is not a real New England IPA guy. Yeah, he lives here in New England, but no, he's a Westie. So the brewery near my home, temporary home, two silos, you've heard me talk about it before, they have a Westie called Stereophonic Tracks. So this beer definitely reflects Dave's taste in audio equipment. Oh, I like it. And beer. Oh, well. So. Very appropriate. Would you like some? Brian. Sure. He's got cups and everything. So David first. Thank you, sir. We always do something. It's gross. A little for you. Thank you. Okay, Dave, you first. You clink plastic? Yeah, we'll clink plastic there. Clink in here, everybody? I'll put those in. We're going to put some clinks in. Hit the bell. Okay. There, there's three clinks.
    11:05
    Here's the Brost. Nice. Not bad. That's a Westie. Yeah, that's good. Got a little back.
    11:17
    A little... Yeah, drinkable. I like it. Good job, Forrest. Forrest Gump Brewing. No, not... No, he's the brewer. Oh, that's Forrest Gump Brewer. What I call him, Forrest Gump. Bubba Gump Rimp. I call him Forrest Gump. You're going to have to edit that out.
    11:36
    So I'm calling it a Kaiser blade. I call it a sling blade. Anyway. So where were we? So last we left this podcast, Brian walked in the door, and he was the winner of? Winner of the 70s EM part of our show. He won it for the wizard art on a Team 1, a conversion of Team 1 to wizard. So tell us about this conversion and Wizard and what it all means and why you did it and so forth. From what I was able to glean on IPDB and inside research, it looks like there was a game in 1971 called Wizard made by Valley that I think was only sold in Italy. Yeah, that sounds right. And the back glass is basically the same back glass that you see on a later game that came out in 1975 called Abracadabra. But the play field on that early Wizard was not good. It was not a well-received game. It wasn't fun.
    12:35
    So in 75, Gottlieb reused that back last art, but then they redid the play field art and the play field design to a very well-loved game called Abracadabra, which is a standard wedge at EM, not at a ball.
    12:47
    So in 77, they made a game called Team 1, which reused the play field geometry, same play field, but they replaced the art with not as exciting soccer-themed. You figure a soccer thing would be great in Italy. Italy would like soccer. So Team 1 was only sold in Italy? Team 1 was sold everywhere. Oh, okay. And it was not a big seller. It was $650 or $700, somewhere in that range, I think. Oh, wow. Okay, that's kind of low. That's it? I think that's what it was. Well, it's the Adaball. That's why, because Adaballs didn't have big numbers anyway. And I don't know if there's an official name, but I think it was Adaball and Novelty Mode, which I don't know if that was common in that era. No, it wasn't. That's how it was a few games. The normal thing was you'd get 50,000 points, I believe, for each wow or whatever. So similar to a wood rail, there was inserts on the light board that would light up that would show 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, all the way up to a million. Right. So when your five-digit scores, actually there's four reels and then a fake zero. Right. So it's five-digit scores, so up to 100,000. When it would roll, then the 100,000 light would light up. Right. So then you're accumulating between 100,000 to 200,000. Then the 200,000 light would light up. And then your 200,000 to 300,000 and so on. And so the highest you can get is 1,800,999, which I don't know why they didn't go to 2 million or just stop shy of 2 million. But I don't know. Have you ever done it?
    14:13
    Have you ever done it? No. I'm not that good. Okay. I played your game. So what? Did you do it? No, no. I haven't had a question, though. before you continue, if you spell wizard, does that get you an extra ball? So what you have to do is you have to spell wizard, and then that enables you to collect the extra balls by hitting a lit drop target. So if you look, there's five drop targets on the left and five on the right, and behind each one is a light that moves. And when you hit the pop numbers, the light moves. I did it a couple times. I had no idea I was doing that, though. After you spell wizard, if you hit a drop target with a light behind it, then you get an extra ball. The red orb will light up on the back glass, indicating you have an extra ball. So can you do, what's the novelty mode on wizard? So novelty mode, you've got to do one or the other, except last year's fantastic. I forget who was doing the seminar with Dave Marston.
    15:12
    Oh, John Day. No. Oh, no, Dave Matrano. Yeah. He did a hack on his, I believe it was Neptune, where it allowed you to do novelty mode scoring, so the high scoring plus add a ball, like a combined mode. Oh, I like that. It was like a hack. It wasn't meant by the factory. What a great hack, though. Right. And Dave was like, you should do that too. I'd love to, but you have to add an extra stepper unit into your game. It's a little involved, and I'm kind of new to EM, so I would need his help to do it, but I was planning on doing that. Yeah. So from the factory, it's basically you put it in novelty mode or the add a ball mode. So either chasing points or chasing how long you can play if I keep getting extra balls. So in that backlash, there is $100,000, $200,000. There's lights. They'll light up. Yes. I got $150,000.
    15:58
    That's not bad. I never played it. Did it get a light to $100,000? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but to get to $100,000 in an avalanche mode, I think would take a long play time because the scores are less. I kept getting balls, so that's what was helping me. I'm not that great a player. And the other thing that was driving me nuts was, okay, drop targets are up, the drop targets are down, but why aren't they going up again? I don't know what I was hitting, but finally they would come up again, and I'm like, oh, okay.
    16:23
    It's not like the other games where... It doesn't auto-reset. You have to hit that center target or one of the side rollovers to reset. Okay, I didn't know that either. So you've got to do an extra step to reset it.
    16:34
    When the drop targets are down, this is different than Abercrombie. When the drop targets are down, there's one target behind the drop targets that's still there, On this game, it's labeled as a W and a D, the last two letters. I saw that. Even if you get all the drop targets down, you still have something to shoot up there if you want before they reset. That's an add-a-ball, too, because the red light behind it. If it's lit, you get that. That's standard on that game? That's standard on Team 1. On Team 1, it was 1 through 6. But when they did the conversion, they're like, oh, there's six letters in Wizard, so let's just replace 1 through 6 with W-I-Z-A-R-D so it fits. Okay.
    17:12
    Fun. I liked it. Yeah, I liked it too. You deserve the win. A lot of people love Adaball games. There's a lot of Adaball lovers, and they like Abracadabra. It's a really cool-looking game, great artwork. So when Team 1 came out, like, wow, it's just like Abracadabra, but the art is just horrible. I don't know if that made it not sell as well or other reasons, but whatever, a lot of people like Team 1, but almost everyone's complaining the art sucks. So Ken Head, the guy in Texas, had the idea, let's take the abracadabra artwork and put it on the team one. So we've got the edible additional gameplay that people like, plus this cool art. And he commissioned Wade Krause, you know, how many would I have to, you know, pre-commit to? And I think it was 25. So he had 25 kits that he was going to sell. So he had a playfield back glass, those little WD, I think you call them dip targets. WD-40s. We only got two, not four. Okay.
    18:14
    And a couple other scorecard things and other little tweaks that complete the conversion. Okay. And he had those available, and like half the people bought him his kits, and the other ones were like, I love this, but I can't do play field swap. I don't know how to do that stuff. So Ken actually built them for people. And amazingly, he was doing them like every two weeks or so. He was getting one done. Wow, that's a huge amount of work. That's a huge amount of work. Wow, amazing. Because when I do a play field swap, I rebuild everything first on the old junky play field. Then I swap everything rebuilt onto the new pristine play field. Then it's good to go. A couple of tweaks here and there you've got to do. And it's not just the swap. He's actually stripping the cabinet down, putting Africa Davis stencils on it. Oh, that's a lot. Oh, boy. Two weeks for all that? No way. Yeah, because it had the soccer stuff on the side. But you did your cabinet. Yeah. Okay. Get a nice job on your cabinet, too. A big pet peeve of mine when people do repaints on cabinets, stencils, is if you can feel a paint edge, run your hand along the cabinet and you can feel paint edge to paint edge. It's kind of, I don't know, it's just kind of cheesy. It's kind of bush league when I feel that. But when someone does it right, it feels like a factory finish where you don't feel any paint edge. And you did that in yours. It feels great. Oh, thanks. So how did you accomplish that? Just hand it when you're done, put some clear coat on it, like a nice satin clear, and then sand it down just to smooth it out. Nice. And there's actually two cabinet variations because some people who wanted to be as if 1975 Abracadabra had an Adaball version. So those people, they wanted a shallow cabinet, which is the size of the cabinet in 75. Coindor was a little bit different. A small Coindor. Different than Team One. Different legs too. Yeah, 31 inch. So 75 to 77 there was changes. So some people wanted their new conversion. I used that older cabinet so they had to source another cabinet besides the Team One. I just kept the Team 1 cabinet. So in my mind, I'm like, this is if Gottlieb made the game in 77, not 75. So Whizzer, how many Whizzers did they export to Italy? 100?
    20:14
    I don't remember the number. You can look it up on iTunes. I looked it up on iTunes. I didn't see any entries for Whizzers. This is what Dave Marston told me. So I assume he knew what he was talking about. Well, not necessarily true. Oh, he's the expert. Just ask me.
    20:30
    Dave listens to this show, so I'm sure he's going to like it. No, he doesn't. He does not listen to us. He does. I don't believe him. He says he does. I don't believe him. Have you had him on before? We have had him on before. I think he listens. Oh, yeah. You call him up. I'll ask him again. Yeah. I don't know how accurate IPD is. IPD is usually pretty accurate for their numbers and stuff. They are. But I didn't see any entry at all for Wizard at all. This gave me Valley Wizard. It didn't give me... Oh, I know why. I did see that there's a picture of the... You can see the artwork from that 71 game. And there's a really pixelated, low-res picture of the play field, so it's really hard to see the details of what is there. Maybe on Abracadabra and ITBD, you go down, scroll down, and then it says, oh, also made as Wizard. Maybe it's in that. No, because it was 71. It was like four years before Abracadabra. Oh, 71. Yeah. Oh, wow. And I don't even know if the play field designer of that 71 Wizard, which had the play field known, like, if he was the same guy who did the 75 Abracadabra. So Wizard is actually made in 71 originally, And then you had Abracadabra made in 74? Totally different game, but they used the same backless art as the 71. But the game play field is totally different, different design, much better. And that art's different too, but it's the backless is what they stole from 71. Like, hey, this is a game that had low run, limited run, whatever. Let's reuse this art because it looks cool. Okay. So it's a hybrid game then, right? It's not really a total conversion. It's more of a hybrid. So it isn't just taking a Team 1 and putting all new artwork on it. It's more like a hybrid of two different names. Yeah. And another interesting thing is this was, I guess, fully approved by Gottlieb because they still have license rights holders that have to approve things with Gottlieb's name on it. Which is Steve Young. Steve Young is part of that. So the back glass, you actually see copyright 2021. So it's a copyrighted Gottlieb product from 2021.
    22:19
    It's an official registered product. You didn't – They probably had to sell them pretty hard in that, too, because they're sticklers for that stuff. So since I said 2021, I didn't feel too bad about putting a topper on it. Okay, next beer is Object Oriented by Spyglass. Double IPA. Or Deepa. Here we go. Do it again. Ow! That's the wrong tune, buddy. Do it again. There you go. That's wrong, you dumb bunny! Try it again! Okay. There we go. Look at that little milky goodness. Now that's going to be an orange juice one, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I have more of the Westy, if you'd like another one. This is like the Anita Bryant special. This is here. Let me try on this.
    23:03
    Wow, that is orange juicy. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it looks pretty good. It's good. Cloudy. Would you like some, Brian? Sure.
    23:10
    Doing the taste testing. Wow, yeah, that's very citrus hoppy. Ooh. Yeah? You know what it tastes like? That tastes like a headache tomorrow morning. That tastes like me. You don't like that? I'm a Westy guy. I thought it had a good taste. You guys should splash in here What's that West End boys or West End girls The Pet Shop Boys thing No the National Lampoon one Oh that one too Honey That's wrong again honey Wrong again honey Go in the kitchen and get me some Horseshoes Exactly
    23:52
    Here, honey, try this. Mmm, looks like our regular orange-colored frozen substitute for artificial morning breakfast beverage with pulp-like particles added. Wrong, honey. But, but, look, pulp-like substances, just like the concentrates that taste almost like fresh. But doesn't cause like the concentrates that taste almost like fresh. You mean this natural-tasting morning breakfast beverage with a flavor almost like fresh squeeze that tastes better than frozen and better than those reconstituted substitutes for artificial morning breakfast drink is actually pennies less for serving than those concentrates that taste almost like fresh and have pulp-like substances? Wrong again, honey. Wrong again, honey. Why the fuck don't you stop saying wrong again, honey? and throw this fucking stuff in the toilet and get out there and get me some fucking orange juice.
    24:57
    Oh, and the topper. Oh, we're forgetting the topper. We forgot the topper. So the topper. Did that actually add points? That actually took away points. You asked me last night. That took away points. You asked me what I thought. And I said to Dave, I was looking at it from the side and I'm like, I don't know, it's like a B. He goes, you're not looking at it the right way. Get over here. So I looked at it and I'm like, oh, okay. Okay, I'm getting it. You went up to a B+, and then you went up to an A. I got it. I'm like, that's pretty cool. I said, George, these are actually red orbs that are coming out of 3D. No, that's not what you said. Well, no, then I modified it and said there also could be. You said that could be a Dolly Parton. There could be some boobies coming at you, George. Go ahead.
    25:39
    Oh, sorry. Thank you, Caramaro, for that. They do bounce. You know, they have a jiggle effect, which is very interesting. But you will tilt if you bounce them too much. Like in life, that's what happens. Well, I give you kudos.
    25:57
    Yes, well done. Thank you. Job well done. Very good, sir. Okay, next topic? Next topic? What is the next topic? Should I do more people at one, or should we run through the list? Why not? Let's run through the list, since we have this in here. So for 70s solid state, there was a Fonzie 8-ball. That's the one in the Extra Ball Lounge. Oh, that's the one Gabe said, don't forget to look at that one. Yes, Gabe said, don't forget to look at that one at Extra Bowl Lounge. They almost didn't let me in there. Your credentials, your special press, they wouldn't let you in, huh? No. Press was not allowed in Extra Bowl Lounge. No, they let me in. The guy was a cool man. Well, you know what? Did you go press, press? The guy behind you said pull? Press.
    26:39
    Press. Pull. Like in Three Stooges? Why do people have to come up? Why do people listen to our show anyway? Stupid joke. It's like, stop it, people.
    26:52
    It's a word. Do we have to go through this again, the word thing? I think so. Yeah, press what? Good thing. Yeah, press that. Be impressed. So, eight ball. So, yeah, it was very nicely done. It was a brand-new play field in there. It was essential to the cabinet. So, it was nice. It was between that. It was a tough choice between that eight ball and one of the, I think, New Hampshire Pinball Club had a nice Evel Knievel. They did a brand-new play from that, too. And that looked nice as well.
    27:25
    The only thing that detracts from both games that I didn't consider was all the freaking LEDs they use in these games, which I know you did in your Wizard, too, which it looks fine. But – The comments that I made in a restaurant tell me that it's meant to really look like a ball, but it's not, so it's intense. I know. I use them. Okay. But even on old school, it's like I was using it. It's like I kind of did a hybrid thing. But the other one I was looking at that was going to be in contention was Holland Globetrotters. Definitely.
    28:01
    Where was that? That was in Bells and Chimes' room. Oh, it seems like all the good games are in all the rooms. They were, yeah. Okay. So it was nice. I actually talked to them. And I don't know who the guy is, but the guy said, hey, Dave, he knows me, but I didn't know him. It happens a lot to me. It's like, I don't know, it's like a celebrity thing or a podcast thing. I don't get it, but it's kind of cool. Well, how about me getting identified? Exactly, by your voice. Two of the companies this weekend. I know, it's kind of cool. Hey, are you? Yes. Yeah, that's me. That's me. So, he's cleaning some glass in another game, and I said, this game plays really well. And I would think that, and I liked that we had real incandescent lighting on this game. You know, it's like, that was good. So, it felt very relaxed playing. But that being said, But, I mean, you know, some of these, especially if you use common LEDs in the retro, you know, warm LED lighting, it looks pretty nice. So that was 8-Ball. So 8-Ball got the $70. There was a really roachy one of those out on the regular. Yeah, I know. That 8-Ball did not win. I played it and then walked away. I couldn't even play the last ball. Yeah, I know. That was. And I think there was a Harlem Globetrotters out on the floor, too. I didn't play that. Yeah, the one inside the. Okay. Try that one. Now that you pointed it out. In fact, the one. That's why we do this show. Yeah, there were several of Harlem's to play, but the best one, even the one in the tournament room, the Silver Bowl Lounge, the Silver Bowl, no, sorry, Silver Bowl Turn, Rumble, that one, sorry. I'm thinking beers. I wonder why.
    29:31
    That was a decent player, but I still, he played tough, and I didn't care for that as much, but the bells and chimes would play really well. So speaking of the Silver Bowl Rumble, the early 80s category, there was really nobody that was coming close to winning that one at all. They were all like, I could have put the ribbon on some woof woof dog, but it's like, why am I going to put a ribbon on a piece of, you know, whatever.
    29:59
    I can't do it. I've got three games and they're all kind of barking. I can't do it. Do you have to pick a winner from every category? They're all dogs. I was debating that. Basically, it's the tallest midget in the room. He's still not tall. Let me... No, it's not. It is not. It's a word. Stop it. It is a word. It's bad intentions, not bad words. Right. Exactly.
    30:24
    We do this every show. Stop it. Okay, we'll just stop it. Who was the winner? Oh, the winner was Jim Swain, who runs the tournament. His split second is Stern, 1981, split second. Very nice shape. Where's that? That's in the tournament. Oh, that's why they get to play it. Did you play card? I played a card. I got to play it. I played it. Now, typically, I would not. I got to play that out in California when I was at Invis. This is the first time they actually awarded a game on a tournament row. While a tournament is being played, I'm awarding a ribbon on there, right? And usually they don't do it. Usually it's only free play games. But there was not a free play game to award it to because they were junky. So I had to give it to that one. I told Jim about it. I said, oh, just wait until no one's playing it and put it on there. So I waited until, you know. You didn't wait until Eric Stern got up? Oh, boy. Eric Stern was next door playing Funhouse. He's playing Funhouse. Oh, no. Yeah, and I really wanted to get it done. I had so much things to do. Oh, you're in the doghouse. Yeah, Eric's kind of pissed off, I think. But I'm probably going to hear from him later.
    31:28
    But Boo-hoo. He's number one contender. So wait a minute. I've got to correct myself from this afternoon. We were talking about, you know, I saw Eric in the hall. And he comes up. And what's one of, like, the second or third thing other than, you know, I'm here for the free food. Free food.
    31:45
    Where's the food? And where's the money? So I thought it said 414 for total. Now, what I don't understand is I went to the tote board in, you know, the area, and he only had 395 points. Oh, I know why. Because someone knocked him down. His Captain Fantastic score was so bad. People started beating his score so bad it knocked his points down lower. That's what happened to him. He had hundreds and everything else. He had hundreds. No, I know. He botched one game, he said. One game. So that's the game that people nailed him on, so that brought him down. That's why he went back and ran out of the card. That's because he was playing Funhouse, and I was awarding the game. Instead of going to the right to award the split second, I went to the left, which was next to Eric playing. And Jim Swain said, don't go on the other side, because he said, Oh, sorry, sorry. Tell people who Jim Swain is. So he runs the tournament. He runs the Sober Bowl Rumble tournament. He's not. The Sanctum. He runs the Sanctum. Okay, that's where people are. The Sanctum. Okay. So wait. Let me jump in here. I'm going to go back to Brian for a second. Right. Throw him in the mix here. So you asked me what I thought of the new games. Yes.
    32:59
    The one I played the most, because nobody was playing it, was James Bond. I don't know why. I just kind of like that game. It has a very interesting layout. It's different, which a lot of people like. It's not the same fanny layout. That might be it. The side shots there, the two. Well, I'm not going out and buying one, but that was a fun game. Much more fun than everything else I played. Well, didn't Stern just do the thing with the Jurassic Park? They just released a new super duper. Oh, we talked about that move. No, it's basically 500 more LEs, but they changed the color and they raised the price. We talked about that in the last show. I know, but they're going to do this with the James Bond, too. They already did it. No, they can do one more beyond that. They're going to call it Jane Bond.
    33:41
    Because they're very politically correct. We have to be, you know, let the girl win. Are they done talking? Who? You. Oh, me. I thought Jane.
    33:55
    Sorry. Oh, we're off the rails now. How do you like me now? Not very right now. Okay. get back to your get back to the winners we left less to our heroes so the tournament games are eligible too well yes usually no but this time I gave them special dispensation I rewrote the rules mid stream like we do at the show sometimes it's a learning process don't award the thing at all and keep the ribbon but this way that's what second played pretty darn well it's got a brand new backlash on it The cabinet's nice, and the play feels nice, and it plays well.
    34:37
    Why not? It's right there. So I waited until that guy was done. I think it's Brian O'Neill, maybe. Was Brian O'Neill on? No, he was top three. Yeah, but he's on. I talked to him. I was waiting for him to finish. Okay, he's your brother from another mother. Because he works in EMs, right? He's an EM guy? He knows how to work an EM? No, he's got a lot of... Okay, so it wasn't Brian O'Neill. No, you don't know him? No, but I recognize him, but I can't put up a face. He has like a scruffy beard and kind of long hair. No, he's got – That's not him, though. That's not Brian O'Neill. He's got Stern, old Sterns, old Dowies. This isn't him. Oh. We're a different guy. It's not him. I forget. I saw him in Allentown. I forget the guy. He almost made me tip over the chair. Yeah, don't tip over the chair. Don't tip over. So I wore it that way. So I got it done. And as soon as Eric said, Dave, you made me lose the ball, it's like, okay, Maureen, let's get the frick out of here. Let's hide you out of this room right now. Let's go. She's ready to, let's write this down. Let's take some time. No, I'm not taking any time. Let's get out of here. I don't want to get Eric's wrath on me. Let's just go. We have more things to do. Well, if you gave him some free food, he probably wouldn't be mad anymore. Hey, give me some free tokens, too, while we're at it. So then we go to late 80s. And that was between two games, Mouse and Around, really nice shape, and Earthshaker.
    35:56
    And Earthshaker, they both had shape. But after I played both, Mouse and Around for the win, Ashton won that. For late 80s. Which of the games, if you forget about Shape, which of those games do you prefer?
    36:12
    If it's like every other show, you're going to say neither. Thanks for playing. Gerard's looking for me. All right. You can hide in here if you want. Okay. Come back and hide. All right. Thank you. Come back and play anytime.
    36:26
    When do I get to hear it? Nice work. Soon. About a week or so. Not too soon. Maybe a month. I don't know. No, it's only, today's only the 8th, right? Right, yeah. All day? All day. Did you hear the arcade? I think so. A little arcade noise. Look at that. Look at the little thing on there. And the last one was a beautifully written. I think he was getting tired of us. I probably was. He had to go. Right. Well, you know, he was, you know. No, we're. Well, he did his little guest thing. He doesn't get it. He gets it, but he doesn't get it. He gets it. I think we're a little writer-centered podcast, and some people aren't as writer-centered, George.
    37:08
    Okay. I'm a little off-centered right now. If I have another coding session and another object, do you want another Westie? I want a Westie. Okay.
    37:24
    West and girl. So would you tell Forrest he did good? Yes. Run, Forrest, for president. I'm going to bring Forrest a couple of beers. I told him I would.
    37:40
    Forrest should have like a Bubba Gump shrimp beer. Just because. Just that. Keep it cold. Yes, cold. And the last thing was the runner-up for the 70s EM. So the one that was in contention with Brian with his wizard game was a 73, 71 Sheriff, Golly Sheriff, mint home use only shape, 12,000 plays on it.
    38:12
    My friend Stu brought that along in another game he brought, and he just basically just shopped it out real quick and just brought it in. Good looking game, but played a little tired. That's why Brian won. So if they threw some more time at it and kind of did a little more oomph to it, give it more oomph, maybe, but still, Wizard edged it out just a little bit. So what I did with the Sheriff game is I had no one in the antique category. There was no antique game here at all. It was supposed to be a 1947 game to show up called Ginger. It didn't show up, so it was just going to be an unused ribbon. So I was like, well, you know what? I'll just take the antique ribbon, and I put it on the sheriff. So he gets a ribbon for that. Okay. So that worked out because he's right there. He's one and two, and so that's where that goes. And it is kind of an antique. Executive decision. I made an executive decision. I made the thing happen, so there you go. I'm the boss here. So can I insert some? Be gentle. General. No, I'm going to be nice, actually.
    39:20
    All right. Go ahead, Jerry. I was able to go into, what is it called, the Extra Ball Lounge? Yes. Where Gabe, the person who is running this show, has, I guess, the majority of his games, if not all. All, yeah. So I played again, and I like this game, and it's probably a lot of fun. I would rent this game, I think, if I could. Now, I'm not close enough to Bushy anymore to do that, but I would rent the Elvira. I don't know. I like that game. I'm actually going to work on one of those pretty soon. I think down the cape. That's a fun game. I can see how that would not wear out soon with all the clips and all the sayings and everything. It is a 1950s horror movie vibe, right? So I played that a handful of times. So he's got a nice collection. You know, there was nothing else I really wanted to play in that room, but I played that. And one game I forgot that I played, and I played it again just to say, okay. So I understood the bookcase now in that Scooby-Doo game.
    40:22
    Nah. Yeah. Nah. Sorry. I don't think so. Nah. Oh, Foo Fighters. That's got to be the fastest game in the West. That's a fast, fast game. In Foo Fighters, you're fighting foo. No, you're fighting robots. No, it's supposed to be fighting foo. It's supposed to be... Who's foo? Foo is supposed to be alien invasion. It's supposed to be in fighter planes fighting UFOs. That's Foo Fighters. You're fighting foo.
    40:50
    I think. I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure. Wrong. Wrong again, honey. I'm not calling you up. You don't call me honey? No. Hey. Oh, hold on. It's Eric Stone. Eric Stone is calling you.
    41:09
    Your caller. Your caller number one. Your caller number one, Eric. You're on the air. What are you going to say to me? Did you eat yet? I did not eat yet. What, do you want to grab some barbecue? Yeah, we're kind of the mood for a nice Italian place, and you live in Marlboro, so you know where there's a really good Italian place. Do you want a nice barbecue place? I've got a really good barbecue place. It's better. Have a nice barbecue.
    41:36
    No, I don't want no barbecue. No barbecue. I want Italian. They want Italian. Hey, come over to the podcast first.
    41:45
    Hey, come over to the podcast first. We're doing a podcast live right now. Come on over. the meeting room across from FreePlay I'll come find you but go to FreePlay the left door we'll find you we'll send smoke signals oh boy we'll leave a trail of Cheetos well the good thing is though he's not pissed that's good Until I get to him. Until you freaking drill him.
    42:23
    But I could lie to him and say, we got free food. We don't. We got free food. We don't. You lose. So he's looking for dinner soon again. He wants Italian. There is no good Italian around here. Where? Nobody does it half as good as you.
    42:47
    Baby, you're the best. There he is. Wow, how did you find us so quick? I just went to the next room to go to the soda. Wow, all right. Come over here. Take a seat. They asked me if I work here, and I said, yeah. Yeah, you do work here. I said, yeah, I work here.
    43:04
    Grab some chairs. I'll grab a chair. All good. You sure? Yeah, come in. Come on in. Say hello. We're ready to go.
    43:15
    The stars are here. The stars are aligned. All right. You should have seen my last ticket. Oh, my gosh. How was it? How good was it? Was it better than mine? Yeah. My worst game was $427 million on Dirty Harry. Okay. That's pretty good. My next worst game was $380 on Paragon. My next worst game was a million on Centaur. Okay. 36 million on Funhaus, and 246,000 on Captain Fantastic. Wow, you finally redeemed yourself. That's fantastic. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, you own the freaking game since you're one year old. No, four. Four years old. Yeah, four years old. So did you... Wow. You're still at the top of the hill. Well, I wasn't at the top before this. I was third or fourth. Oh, last I looked you were. Well, now I am, yeah. But I dropped before that ticket. So who was at the top? Well, now I am. What's your number? Jeff Teolis was one, and Jason Zahler was. Are you at 440? No, no, 419. I'm the only one over 400. Jeff, you're into number one. Because he went to the Boston Red Sox game tonight. Yeah, yeah, he's not number one anymore. Are they winning, losing, or are they dead? Probably losing.
    44:22
    Does anybody here care? I don't care. The season's over, so I don't care. So what are we talking about? We're talking about how I put a. Bad ticket? No, I gave him. No, I did put one back to you. They did. Everybody here that listens to this podcast knows that I love giving him a hard time. Yes, he does. Because he's like, oh, you know what he says? Hey, everybody, listen to this. He says, oh, I got $900,000 on a pinball pool with five balls and extra balls on it. No, three balls. Three balls. With extra balls on it. With extra balls on you. Two balls, and I bet you loosened the tilt, didn't you? A little bit. Yeah, yeah. See, pin fest, I had $730,000 after two balls with a tight tilt and no extra balls. And he's bragging, oh, I got $900,000 with three balls. I think so.
    45:10
    I still try to remember everything he knows. I don't care what he says. Yeah, right. Hey, you know what? You going to bring pinball pool to pin fest next year? I might. Yeah. Don't bite. Just do it. Do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You going to kick ass some more? I hope so. I mean, it helped me, you know. It helped me getting out of the top eight. It's a different one. I won the tiebreaker. It's going to rub my head for good luck. Right. I need to. Right. I actually improved my pinball pool. I actually even have a better pinball pool. It's actually even super-duper good. Oh, so now I get $2 million on it. You probably could get $2 million on it. I love it. You'll do really good at that game. So when I awarded best in show or best in play to that split second next to you, I lost my head and went next to you and awarded. And Jim Swain said, no, no, do it from the other side because Eric's playing. and then so I did and all of a sudden you lost your ball and what did you say? Yeah, you know, I was on Funhaus and I just got a 7 million point jackpot the 8 million point one was lit and I missed it, but no, it had nothing to do with you As everybody knows I can tell you a whole life story while I'm playing a pinball game and it will cause me to do better, as you know Right, yeah I know with him as well You can shout behind his ear, clap your hands and stuff, and he will not be rocked at all by it. He's got his whole concentration.
    46:31
    It'll get me going even more. Right. So $36 million on that funhouse game. That's not bad. Wait, wait. Let's see what the second place score is. Let's go see. Do we have any bets that it's not even half of that? I'd say like $5 million. Give us an update. It's Friday night. All right. Silver ball. Hold on a second. Is it Friday night? It's Friday night. Yeah, it's Friday night. I know what day it is. What day are we on? Who are we? Okay. Oh, no, no, I'm wrong. So, I had $34 million. Alberto had $29. Nick had $24.
    47:01
    And your buddy Joe Lemire had $14. The lemur, $12. $14. Let's look at Captain Bowen. Where's Bowen? Where's he going? On Funhouse? Yeah. Because he likes Funhouse. Here's Captain Fantastic. $248, $211, $204, $200. Oh, Eric, yeah, he's right behind you. Yeah, Eric and Eric. Pretty far, yeah. Yeah. Right behind me? Yeah, right behind you. I'm bringing up the rear. That's okay. He likes that. Yeah. The introduction? Yeah, the sponsor. The sponsor. Well, yeah, but let's get into that in a second. Yeah, yeah. Let's finish talking about the tournament. Yeah, more Eric. Hold on a second. Forget the sponsor Hold on Eric wants to talk about Eric I a dog I a dog I am shocked I so shocked I so shocked about Eric of course I shocked I so shocked Whoa whoa no more ruffles
    47:48
    Shocking, shocking. I don't even see Bowen in the list here. More about you, let's talk about me. Bowen is, he's not even on the list. Where am I? No, no, I'm talking about... I'm in last place, I know about that, I'm pretty down there. I am way worse than you, you want to take it outside? Right now. Okay, let's see. Bowen's not on the list. He must have won. Oh, boy. Did you clap? You know what, Bowen's sitting fourth. He's in the tournament. So, let's see. He's got Dirty Harry, Foo Fighters, Weird Al. Of course, he's got number one on Weird Al. He works for the company. What do you think of that game being in the tournament? I don't like it. You're the second. Yeah, because there's only a couple people that really severe thunderstorm warning at your location. All right. What do you know? You're not a meteorologist. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, what are you talking about? That's all I do is weather. So Bowen wants to take you for $100 a game on Adam's family, he told me. Yeah. His Adam's family. Was it his own? Can I pick one around the other? No, his own. Oh, okay.
    48:54
    Anyway, so let's get the spotlight off me before I get in trouble. Thanks to you. Cheers. That's what he likes to do. Is this live or is this just? It's taped. Don't worry. We can end it. It's a memory. End it up. All right.
    49:14
    Hold on. I'm actually trying to do something nice here. Everybody be quiet. Go ahead. All right. So my friend Ted Tagvorian, who lives northeast of Orlando, he's been running these Flip Frenzy tournaments for at least five or six years. And they're free. and you get prizes if you win and it's mainly for amateurs. It's not worth IFPA points. So he has been trying to promote amateur pinball, especially with the younger generation. And he knows my story, and you know my story, about starting when I was four because the doctor said I wouldn't have hand-eye coordination. You told me the story on this program. In other words, he's saying, shut up. No, I have to say it again. So anyway, it's a good story. It's a great story. It glorifies God. There was a lot of God and praying that was involved in that. And we did an interview on it. I like it. And so I'll hand the floor over to my friend that sponsors me. And he paid for me to go to Germany. And he didn't even go. Wow. I couldn't believe it. I was so sad. Work got in the way. So I restructured my life. Pennsylvania, Milwaukee, here, North Carolina, Chicago, California. Who knows where the ends will be? Can you pay for me too? Have you won world championships yet? No. Oh, well, that's fair. I put a couple cards. No. We're done.
    50:41
    Okay, so I want to give the microphone the shiny red. It's like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It is. Yeah. Can this change colors or is this red? No, this is red. This is red. Okay, so Ted, go ahead and tell everybody who you are about your podcast and about a very interesting tournament. You had a podcast, too? Cool. It's a shame that you're not going to be because the name of the tournament is Beat Eric Stone. Oh, yeah. You can't even do that. It's fun. You'll never do it in a tournament. Oh, he's throwing it down now. Okay, go ahead. Come to my house. And you remember when you said, oh, let's play keyboard. I got $300,000 on it. $708,000 later. Okay, there you go. I wanted to play it to Eric's ego, so I named the game after Beat Eric Stone. Good thinking. I like it. You don't like it. I'm not really like that. No, not at all. Okay, go ahead. Whatever. So like you said, my name is Ted Tech Ward. I started playing pinball when I was nine. My dad bought my brother and I our first pinball machine because he wanted all the kids to come over to the house. Yeah, I hear that all the time. He wanted me to come over to his house until I went down the line beating all his high scores. And then he's like, get out of here. Get out of here.
    51:53
    And then I got so into it. And I even had like a pinball club. and then later on when I went to college and I got away from it but my brother continued and now he and I have over 70 pinball machines. All right. They're mostly up in Jersey. That's what I have, 70. Yeah. Cool, good number. And I know, exactly, right? So when I got into Florida there were like all these pinball places and I started playing pinball again and I noticed and I'm pretty close to like UCF, the college is there and I was talking to people and they were like pinball and they thought I was talking about paintball. Does that ever happen to you? Yeah, paintball, paintball. Yeah, like I was like, oh. In fact, one time I mentioned to this one kid, I was like, oh, I like playing pinball. And he goes, oh, I don't like paintball. It hurts. And I was like, how exactly are you playing the game? It does hurt. It hurts sometimes. So what I decided to do was I actually entered into several tournaments and I noticed two things. One, I really needed to dedicate an entire weekend to pinball when I went to any of these tournaments. And two, I kept seeing the same people going to the tournaments over and over again. They were at different people's homes, maybe they were at some establishment, but it was always the same people. And I was thinking to myself, I've got to find a way to get new people in. So I partnered up with Bill, do you know Bill Kurtz over at District Eat'em? I don't think they know. Well, at District Eat'em, but it's basically an establishment, pinball there. And it was like, Ted, look, if you want to do something to get amateurs in, so what I did was I started this free flip frenzy tournament. And originally I made it two hours long, and, you know, amateurs, nobody came to it. So I shortened it to one hour, and I started giving away ice cream. Okay. And then we started giving away, like, you know, game cards. It's free food. Eric's there. And actually, I was there a few times. I bet you were. So this place is like Dave and Buster's. Yeah. Except there's like 60. No, there's 60 or 70 pinballs. Well, that's great. Right. So, like, I would, it's a three and a half hour drive for me. So most of the time I wouldn't go. This is where you're in? In Oviedo. Oviedo, Florida. Yeah, so the winner would get like a $20 gift card to the place. Okay. So I would be able to get food and whatnot. So anyway, go ahead. So where is Oviedo, Florida? So it's northeast of Orlando. Just by like 20 minutes. Yeah. It faces the suburbs of Orlando. We've got people from all over the place. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're talking about a place. Yeah. Oviedo is rare. They're like, I've got to Google it. What's Oviedo? O-V-E-I-D-O. You were going to spell it. Oh, yeah. O-V-I-D-O. So then what ended up happening, now we have like 40 people almost every Friday coming to the tournaments. And I was like, this is great, but now I want to expand it into something online. And I tried a few scenarios, but I came to the conclusion that I can't entice people into pinball who never played it by offering them pinball. and so I said to myself what would young people and people who aren't interested in pinball be interested in and I was thinking about it and I was like game show, people love game shows they're fast they're quick so I decided to have a game show trivia based where the object is to get the most points your typical Jeopardy type of questions but throughout the game show you can get advantages and at the end of the game, the person who wins gets the most points, plays Eric one game, and if they win, they get $500. That's great. Oh, I like it. They still get $100. That guy's a defendant, and he's getting the greedy one. And, during the game, I'm going to come down there and kick your ass. During the game, they get advantages, such as he may have to pledge his first ball, or he has to tell them the rules. As they go. Oh, I like that. For example. Or maybe I get a tilt warning. Wait, can I hit Eric? Oh, I don't know. No, no, no. Are you another manager of me? Talk to me and heckle me with your voice the whole time. Oh, I like that too. That's a good one. Yeah. Eric won't care. Eric can still do it. Yeah, I know. He doesn't care. So that's the whole idea. The first taping is this coming Tuesday. And what we're going to do, we're going to edit it. I hired an editor from Full Sail, and then we're going to do advertising. And that's the whole goal. Where are we going to be able to see that? Tell them how they qualify. George, we should go down there and do this. We should be part of this. It's this Tuesday. Oh, well, maybe I'll make that time.
    56:57
    It's the first one. So you can watch it on YouTube, Taz Pinball, T-A-Z Pinball. That's the YouTube channel. It's just something I do on the side. I don't make any money from it, trust me. The whole goal is because I just want to have new people, kids involved in it. And the, I mean, we'll see. Basically, the game show is the draw, and pinball is kind of on the side. And what I'm hoping is that people start getting, they're like, ooh, look at this. This is, what is this pinball machine? It's kind of interesting, and that's the whole goal. I like it. You made a statement earlier that some of your pinballs are in Jersey. Where? in the northern Jersey area? I'm asking specifically. Oh. From Bergen County. Oh, okay. So, Oredell, Hackensack. Okay. Yeah. So, they're spread throughout my brother's house, my parents' house, and their business. Okay. And one thing is, my brother's really also into fixing the machines as well. And that's what I always tell anyone. If you have three or more machines, You really need to learn how to fix the machines yourself because it could get expensive. You guys are texting each other. No, no, no. Eric and I are texting each other. Let's do each other. No, no, no. I was showing him the fact that. Eric is saying you're so good. I was saying, no, Eric, you're so good. Back and forth. No, my 419. Now, in a ticket format, it's really hard, especially this late in the game, because we've had how many hours of qualifying now? 12, I believe, 13. But it goes until tomorrow. Right, but my number, my score of 419, which is a great score for a five-game ticket, hasn't moved in the past two hours. So, again, this whole thing is, so you get five games, 100 points per game, so 500 would be a perfect score. If you're in the 400s, you're doing really well. Because you need to get those all in a row. So that's what's hard, because if you have one bad game, it screws the ticket. One more point, and it could have been 420. Hey, you know what? To average 80-something points, 85 is a third place, right? Yeah. Times five is 425. Right. So I'm averaging almost 84 points, which is average of fourth place per game. So Dave said to me this afternoon, when you were at 414, that there is no way anyone would get a higher score than that.
    59:28
    Well, as usual, he's wrong. Wait, wait, hold on. Wait, wait. Oh, Eric, I could beat you on this game. I can't. You don't. Everybody kick your ass right now. Okay. Well, we're going to eat first before you kick your ass. Bring it back to my house and kick your ass. I like doing it on a full stomach. So just quickly, the YouTube channel, I interviewed Eric. I also do some news and views. I give you basically on just pinball news in general, but I did interview Eric Stone, and those interviews are up there. And then the game show, Beat Eric Stone and Win Up to $500, that'll be online probably in about two to three weeks. And then every show will be... This will be out just around the same time. You know what we should do? What? Every time they don't beat Eric Stone, the 500 rolls over to the next one. Oh, yeah!
    60:22
    I like it. So if we go four times without Eric Stone getting beat, that was worth two grand to be there. I'm like a lottery. I want to kick his ass. I'm coming down. You've been wanting to pretend to want to... So wait a minute. How do you prevent a ringer coming in? Oh, because qualifying. Eric is the ringer. He's the ringer. You do not. The first show, I had it where it's a flip frenzy, and you had to qualify for the game show by being good at pinball. Only amateurs came. But going forward, I'm bringing in, you have to qualify for the game show, be it doing bingo or other non-pinball related activities. I like that. Because the goal, again, is to bring people in who don't even know what pinball is. So I was like, that's crazy. Why am I having them play pinball? But aren't you worried that people come in that kind of caliber, they're going to go flip, flip, flip with both hands and flip the flippers and do that kind of, that kind of like cheesy flip, flip, flip with both flippers, you know, not like try it all. Well, that's where they get their advantages where Eric will help them with it. And that's why I said even if they lose, they still win money. So that's the whole goal. The goal is to introduce them to pinball. And then also we may, instead of like an Eric Stowe, we may have like a younger champion. The goal is pinball is kind of on the side. And even during the game, when a question comes up, it may be an advantage that maybe they have to play a game for 10 seconds to get a certain type of score. So people are now starting to kind of get into it. And you're watching like, oh, I hope this person gets 1,000 points. And then you say, Eric, okay, to get this, you need to hit this, that, the other thing. And so he asked me, he said, so he says, oh, so what do you want if you win? And I said, what do you mean? You paid for my Germany. You paid for this. I said, just give me an iced tea and a burger. No, not one iced tea. No, no, no. Ten iced teas. What are you talking about? He does leave. How many iced teas did I have that night? Like two gallons of Publix iced tea. No, no, no. That's right. Or Chick-fil-A. Exactly. I went week three, I think. That's what it was. And I said, Ted, all I want, I just want iced tea. So he gives me a cup, and I said, all right, where is it? And it was this big container. I said, all right, good, we're good. So, of course, I kept going back. I know, I know. But, no, I said iced tea and a burger, and that's it. So I sponsor Eric because he was the world champion and he's very good. He's not bad. I wouldn't say very good. He's not bad. He's exceptional.
    63:07
    And honestly, I was like, you know what? You look at other sports, football, baseball, those champions get sponsored or somehow they get recognized. So I was like, I want to recognize Eric. And my hope is that Stern and Jersey Jacks and the others start representing the great players in pinball. Yeah. That's my hope. That would be nice. That sounds like an ESPN commercial. Great players in pinball. Yeah, yeah. No, no, it sounds like an ESPN commercial. It does. I'm a weatherman. And I'm grateful. I'm very grateful to Ted and what he's doing. And then he turns around with a cape. Because you know me. I'm not like, you know, when people offer stuff to me, I'm like, oh, no, no, I feel bad. and this and that, but hey, you know what? He's doing it for a really good cause. Yeah, Ted's a really great guy. He's really hooked up with this guy over here, because I know about this guy. That's why he's a great guy. I remember me. Oh, okay. The very first time I even saw Eric, I was at the pinball lounge, and I was just playing, and I saw him there, and I was, they told me, that's the world champion right there. I think you had just won the state champion, maybe, and I was like, And, geez, I'd love to be able to meet them. And then I started talking. It was like the nicest guy. Yeah, I mean, you know, that's the whole thing. When I'm playing pinball, sometimes I don't appear to be the nicest guy. Maybe. I don't have any yellow cards today, knock on wood. But, you know, I get very passionate about pinball. And I either get a highs or lows or whatnot. And sometimes I say some stupid things. But, you know, outside of my emotions are pinball. I was making love. I could be pretty nice. Moat? I was making love to Rudy today. You were? Oh, yeah. Rudy? Yeah, yeah, because Rudy was – I had him screaming left and right. It was nuts. Well, that goes great. How much beer are you drinking here? A lot. Oh, my gosh. Are you even going to want to eat? Oh, God. We're going to float away. Oh, we're going to float away. Oh, my gosh. It's okay. Again, it's Taz Pinball at YouTube. And Instagram too, right? And Facebook? Instagram, Facebook. You know, like and subscribe. I always say the goal is not to, I'm not looking to make any money on it. It's definitely, I have my own company. I do not need the extra income. The idea is, again, to get as many people who don't know pinball into pinball. So it's kind of a challenge. Especially the younger generation. Yeah. So I'm, you know, I'm going on to TikTok, which TikTok I always thought was a place you go if you want to get a clock. You know, because, I mean, it's right. I mean, it makes sense, TikTok. Ha, ha, ha. Whenever I tell that to the kids. You should say, TikTok is where you go when you want to find out what time it is. Yeah, right. I mean, TikTok, TikTok.
    66:01
    What are you guys doing? You're like schoolgirls. I just got a message from my buddy in California. Oh, yeah? There's some giant horse show thing that goes on every year in Rancho Palo Verdes. Okay. Okay? Yep. That was Cuddy. No. No, but he sent me because he knows we like beer. He just made the comment that we're drinking beer. He's like, I'm having a sundog wet coast IPA called, from Smog City Brewing. I guess it's called Sundogs. Looks pretty good. It's a wet coast. Smog City, yeah, that makes sense. He must be in L.A. He is. See? Only a meteorologist would know that. No, no, next to the port, help me.
    66:46
    Port Ewing. No, no, no. The port. We're all the crap. Starburst. San Francisco? No. Outside of L.A. Not in L.A. Sounds like.
    66:56
    Team of. Stop. Team of. No, no, no. We're done. That's it. Next question. We're done. Port of L.A.? Oh, boy. But you know what? Port of L.A. Now listen. Port of L.A. I want to do something I didn't think I'd ever do. Win a game? Lose. Win a game. Lose. I've heard you say it in the tournament.
    67:16
    No, I. Lose a game. I want to give Fun Spot a little credit. You do? Because they actually, I mean, you know, we're not being out of the family for 30 minutes and being out in a snowstorm or anything like that. Yeah, oh boy, uh-oh. Uh-oh. Oh boy. Oh dear. But anyway, we're at 97,000 total. Anyway. So anyway.
    67:41
    So. No, no, no, no. On a serious note. Fun Spot finally is getting Stern games. Okay? For the first time in 20-something years. Monopoly was the latest game they had. Now they have Turtles, James Bond, and Mandalorian all premium. Wow. Yeah. They're spending the money. Yeah. You know what? His kids, trust me. I found out his kids like pinball, and they're into pinball. Dave Lott likes pinball. Why did they not have it before? Because of the money? I don't know. I listened to the episode we recorded with Eric when we went through all the games. And I'd say almost every one of them had an issue. And recently, and I know people say, oh, don't mention other people's podcasts. I don't care. So Hal was talking about going up to Fun Spot. And he did a whole five minutes on. They have a new room with new games. They're going to get a new game every year. they repaired all the old games in that upper arcade area. Well, not all of them. Well, it's a start.
    68:47
    Because when we were there, they were really... Yeah, some of the playfields, some took a belt standard in the playfields.
    68:52
    Yeah, Xenon has a new playfield now. Wow. Who did that? That's a lot of work. I don't know. But there's another... I think there's another guy named Dave up there that helps out. Yeah. And then you got Dave Lawton. So anyway, they're running an NEPL league up there. It was last night. Wow. They're also running monthly tournaments, too. Wow. Never thought that would happen, but the games downstairs at Fun Spot are actually spaced apart like tournament games. Okay. Instead of all crammed together. I like it. So they're really doing a good job with that. Now they've got to bring a token machine, another circus crate in there. No, that's not going to happen. So I can start getting into the six figures. You've already stolen enough token from five-year-old kids already. I didn't steal. Did you play doggy with me right there?
    69:47
    Okay, what can I get for 12? Count them, 12 prize tickets. Two thumbtacks and a mustache comb, or five rubber bands and an ice cube.
    69:57
    What can I get for 8,000 tickets? A BB gun or an EasyPay coffin. Hmm, hot food is tempting. but I just can't say no to a weapon.
    70:09
    No, because Fun Spot did what Fun Spot does. So because of me they No, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen, listen. Because of me they raised it from one token to three tokens and they lowered the prize from 500 tickets to 200 tickets. Because of you. Well, yeah, because they were watching me play it last year. They were watching me empty the machine, and that was it. The next week or so, it was done.
    70:40
    That's on another one of our episodes. Yeah. You said earlier. The program episode. Eric's a genius. You know, I've been on this show quite a few times. I'm like, yeah, you have. Yeah, well, who's more, John Day or Eric Stone? Oh, he is. Okay. Go ahead. As long as I'm number one, just like when I play you against pinball. Right. I don't know. I'm ready to take you on at something here. You've been ready for years. So, Eric. I've got a blackjack for you to play. Quick question, another question. All right. Were you really busy with all the crap that went on last week? With the hurricane? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was working nonstop Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Did you do remotes? No, I was actually on stream. I was on WFLA Now. I was on YouTube, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Twitter Live, everything for hours and hours and hours answering questions from people all around the world and doing weather hits with a hurricane.
    71:33
    Cool. Yep. And then Wednesday afternoon, the storm was above us. Tampa Bay flooded. This one road, Bayshore, had about two to three feet of water on it. But it did subside pretty quickly. Did the same thing happen like the last hurricane? Where all the water went out of the bay? It was the opposite, yeah. Water went out of the bay. This time it was pushed in. Okay. Yeah. That was with Ian. Okay.
    71:59
    Very good. That's the weather portion of our show. Yep. Can I do my animal portion? Go ahead. What's your animal portion? I hope we can hear you. We always do animals. Come on. Do you do animals? I try to. Because, you know, you're in Broadway. Well, you know what, though? You're in Broadway. Speaking of animals, at this show, we do have a resident mouse. Mickey Mouse? And he or she, I'm not sure what it is, is dressed up with a mask on its face with some mouse ears, and some cute little knee-highs. And it's, you know, kind of a mouse. Kind of a mouse. So, whatever that is. Can I tell my story? I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure what's going on with it. Did you hear? You know, who knows? So, the news... Who am I to judge? So, the news in Virginia is very interesting. Oh, no, you never judge. No, never. Just like me. Exactly, never. Did you hear the story of the bird bandit? No. Okay, so another parrot story.
    72:56
    A gentleman robbed a McDonald's customer at knife point while carrying three parrots on his shoulder and cowboy hat.
    73:10
    This guy's motivated. What? This story's for the birds. This is for the birds. Hold on, wait. Oh! Very nice. That's my line, stranger. Oh.
    73:30
    It hurts so bad, doesn't it, George? Was he lightheaded from all the feathers? Stop. I want to hear Craig's story. Stop. You've had too much beer. Stop. I want to hear Craig's story. I want to know what happened. Wait, wait. I want to know what happened. He just robbed the person he had a cowboy hat on with parents. When was the last time you saw that walking down? Did he flew the poop? Wait a minute. I know what's going on here. You've all become idiots. I get it. Oh, boy. Eric, Eric, Eric. See what you started?
    74:00
    You started it. Speaking of, where's PJ? I saw him. He was at the stand. He's around. PJ is around. I said, come on over to the podcast. Is he here now? Yeah. His wife let him? He did, yeah. Oh, he did. No, no, no. His wife let him. Not he did. She did. Well, he... Hey, come on in. Come on in. No, no. We're part of the podcast. Come on in. I want to hear... So, this is my friend, Chris. Hey, everyone. Hi, Chris. Hey, come over to this side. I want to get you on mic here.
    74:30
    Oh, my God. George is here. Holy crap. George is here. Everybody's here. Eric Stone, he's not a bad football player over here. He's here, too. Yeah. He's pretty good. Who does these guys? I dropped two fours. I'm a 4-7-2. You're doing terrible. You're doing terrible right now. Yeah. Horrible.
    74:45
    Ted. I'm crying. Ted's pinball. All right. Back on the shirt. Eric Stone. All right. Hello. How are you? I haven't seen you in ages. No? Yeah, they don't let me out of work too often. I think the last time was at Fun Spot. Oh, maybe. We were just talking about Fun Spot. Yeah, yeah. And how they're getting more people. And how they changed their whole model because, their whole business model because of Eric. Because Eric. Oh, wow. Well, no, no. They've been doing that since I was a kid. Because he won too much. It's almost like a gambler who wins too much, they've got to freaking do things about it. Well, but at least they don't throw me out anymore. That's true. But they can't. So I have a cool pinball story. All right. Over Labor Day weekend. Sure. I was a witness for four hours to a gentleman who beat... I wouldn't call him a gentleman. No? What would you call him? I'd call him a pretty cool dude. A pretty cool dude who beat the Guinness Book of World Records for longest time playing pinball. Oh, I saw that. What's that game? Yeah, Drew. The previous record was 48 hours. On a ramp game? On Stranger Things. Yeah, on a ramp game. You were in an old school game. He played it over in one game? No, no, no. One ball. It's over and over and over. You keep playing. You have to play. Just play pinball. It's nonstop pinball. You don't have to play pinball. It's a world record. Yeah, no. He played about 50 games. Wait, is it a hold your pee record? Can you go pee? So every five minutes, he can get a break. You can bank those hours. Every hour you get back. I'm sorry. Every hour. Yeah, you can bank it. So 12 hours, you can bank a whole hour. Yeah. And basically he had two stranger things in case there was a catastrophic issue with one of the machines. And then he banked as many hours as possible this way. And I think at one point that ramp that comes down had a little issue, so he took a quick break. Fifteen minutes later they fixed it, and he just continued on with no issues. He went, I think it's 62 or maybe 62. Yeah, 62 hours. What was the record before? 48 hours. All right. I got to know, like, he was exhausted. But why? Why would you do that? Well, Eric, you know the story behind that. Well, they wanted me to do it. And I'm like, no, I don't want to do it. No, why would you do it? What I want to do is, I played the bride of the pot. Listen. Wait, how about all the people that go to the sanctum for those 24-hour deals? I don't get that either. I don't get it. Everybody always says, I was miserable. I was this. I was that. If you're 20 years old. You'll never hear anybody go, oh, it was the greatest experience of my life. If you're 20 years old, it's great. It's like a sunrise. No, forget it. So I played Bride of Pinball for eight and a half hours straight on the same game. And I still had extra balls left. And I was like, all right, I got $28 billion. I'm done. We done? But what I want to do is I want to do a single game world record on Bride of Pinball. Which doesn't exist. To see how long. Yeah, which doesn't exist. So I think I could go at least 16 hours on the same game. So this is interesting. To have a new category for a Guinness Book of World Records, it only costs $5. Yeah, but you have to have all these stipulations and stuff. How long can you chop the ball? What's your tilt? No, no, I mean category in general. No, I know, I know. All right.
    78:07
    These guys are pounding on beers all the time. Yeah, yeah. I get why I'm going to an Italian restaurant. They're like, okay, great, we're going to Paris. Yeah. So much for that. You guys are having beer for dinner. Beer. It's one for dinner. Beer. It's not just for dinner anymore. It's not beef. It's beer. One for dinner is one for dinner.
    78:28
    Hey, George. What's the official podcast that doesn't want to have anything to do with us? You know, the podcast realm of... Do you want me to get my list out? The New Age Pinball Podcast? Yeah, the Lefty Podcast. It says the politically correct podcast. The Politically Correct Podcast. They'll swear their ass off. About pinball? No, they'll swear their ass off. You're not talking about... The TCP whatever podcast. You know, all the realm of podcasts.
    78:56
    That, you know... I don't want to put people's names associated with it. Not names. What are you trying to get? The network, the Pinball Network. Oh, right. That one. What about... Yeah, we aren't really allowed on there. Because we're not really part of... We've never been on there. We're not part of the club. Well, that's because the Pinball Network has good pinball players on there. Oh, yeah? Yeah, that's why. Okay. They might like this episode on, though. They did, well, because you're part of it. Right, exactly. Now you get it. Look at you.
    79:20
    I'm just being weird. We don't need that. We don't need no sticking buttons. We don't need no information.
    79:28
    We need no one. We're unauthorized is what we are. No, we're rogue. We don't take orders from anybody. You're like Taz Pinball. We are. Right? Yeah, we do our own thing.
    79:39
    Yeah, we're us. We're a little bit right of center. 107 episodes so far. Wow. What the hell? I've been on probably, what, five of them? Maybe six, seven? I'll let you know next episode. Yeah, let me know. I don't know about ten, because we did the Pinball Asylum one. That was a good one. You were on the shortest episode we ever did. Well, second shortest. We owe Eric money. With me? You do? Now, wait a minute. I like this. You owe me money. How much? I owe you $10 an episode, which we promised him, remember? Oh, really? No, we never promised him. You know how much iced tea I can get with that?
    80:09
    About as much beer as you're drinking. Tell you how much this guy loves iced tea. He showed up to the hotel last night at 4 in the morning with, like, a bag and a jug of iced tea. That's the two things he had. And the iced tea was almost gone. He must have been driving while he was there. You haven't seen the hotel. So, the cockroach. The O. Micro-tell over that one. The O. You mean oil? Yeah, oil. Oh, yeah, oil is bad. And even you say it's bad. If he says it's bad, it's really bad.
    80:46
    Oh, it was bad. It was bad. The water was green and there was a damn cat drinking out of it. Oh, man. And that was the hot tub.
    80:55
    Eric will take anything. If he says it's bad, it's bad. I had roach-infested rooms in Tampa that were so bad I actually had to switch rooms. Wow. Only when I saw them in my bed. Okay, wow. When I saw the bathroom, I was okay. Okay, but the bed... But then one time I see a big-ass cockroach in my bedroom, I'm like, all right, I need a bed. He's tapping out there. I still stayed there because it was 40 bucks a night. Of course, of course you did. Of course you did. Hey, you know, I'm staying in the nicest places I ever stayed in my life because of Ted, you know. Well, yeah. That's because I don't, I refuse to stay in places that Eric wants to stay. He said, in a very beginning, our first trip, Our first trip, he said, Eric, pick a hotel room. I said, I don't think you're going to want the hotel room. Do not do that. I said, well, the $50 special is the one I would pick, but if you want to pick a different one, go ahead. When did we stay the first time? It was a very nice hotel. And we had a nice pool. We had a nice pool. In Milwaukee? Yeah. You got to prove it. At the airport? Every rule. Exactly. They hate us when we talk about hotels. They hate us when we talk about food. Oh, the second hotel. Yeah, because we stayed one night in Milwaukee. Oh, yeah. We stayed at a really nice hotel.
    82:09
    I damn catch. I don't like them. I like dogs better. Hey, I got something for pinball. Chris over here.
    82:17
    I'll snake way. I will snake way. So, I was on the floor. I'm trying to find best in show, best in play. And I saw a beautiful Tron game there. And I thought, Mike and Chris, my friends.
    82:34
    Okay, Maureen was part of it. She's been trying to describe Marmina already. No, but she's trying to. Actually, if you're going to call my name first, that's what they want right now. I know. Then I said, well, I'm not sure. Then I looked at it further and said, this is a beautiful Tron game. This Tron had all the mods on it. It had a shaker motor, Invisiglass on it, colored DMD, and the rubber was all new, all clear coat rubber on it. It played really well. The price was right. And so I said, you guys left our Tron for a long time. you guys need to check this game out. You know? So they did look at it, and they were hemming and hawing, and I said, listen, the price is not that bad at all. I want to take a little bit less, but someone's going to pounce on this game because these games go for like, you know, 20 grand for a nice one. This one's extremely nice. It's, you know, around like 9 grand, $9,500. It's a decent game. So I kept saying, here's pictures. Here's video. Frickin' do something quick because you guys need to buy this game because it's right here, local. You guys can't do something. He likes spending your money, doesn't he? So finally, so Chris is a little more open with the wall. Chris is like, yeah, I'll go, but Mike is a little more tight with the money. So Mike is like... Mike is the one that really wants this game. But Mike is very tight. Mike wants to buy it for $500. It's not going to happen. Right. It's not going to happen for $500. And Chris is like, no, I appreciate quality. I'm going to pay for quality. So Chris is a little more that way. So you've got to kind of negotiate a little bit. Yeah. So Mike didn't want to come to the thing, but Chris did. So finally I said, here's the guy's number, here's the pictures, make the deal happen. You guys won't be disappointed with this game. It has all, I mean, I'm tempted to buy it. When was this game made? Have you seen it? 2011, I think. Okay, so. Yeah. Okay. It's a nice game. Not quite classic, but. It's one of the best games I did. No, I. Nice game. So it's the best modern pinball. It's actually Mike's favorite pinball of all time. It's a great game. all John. And you finally saw it, right? I did. I played it. Yeah. What do you think?
    84:37
    You went to a tee, described it perfectly. It was awesome. And what you said it needed, it needs rebuilt. Yeah. It's all it needs. Oh, the guy doesn't think it needs rebuilt. Of course he doesn't. You don't know. No, I don't. You know what? He doesn't understand. All these Stern games, they never tighten down the paws all the way they're supposed to tighten down and loosen up and they play like junk. They don't have a nice strong feel to him. It was smooth. It just needs very minor tweaks and it's great. It's all it needs. But he never buys anything for himself. He never splurges on himself.
    85:15
    You've got to do it. This is the game for you. This is the time. It's on a silver platter for you. Well, think about it. It's in your backyard.
    85:27
    Yeah. That's one of the biggest things. Oh, Eric said... Eric took a phone call. So do we want to... Oh, we were going to eat here. We were going to go to a really good barbecue place. Anything else we're going to say? We'll come back. We'll come back a little more later. You might not see me later. No way. Let's see. Where are we at? Come on. Come on, stupid thing. Are you here from the... We're at 1... Yeah, I'm here till Sunday morning. We're at 1.20, 1.5 right now. Now, how... What's the average length of your... Well, lately we've been doing like a two and a half to three hour podcast. Wow. But what do I want to... Oh, I got you. I don't have anything else, unless you want to talk about something you did in the last two days. Do we have any story? Oh, I know. A restoring story? No, I do have a restoring story. Yeah, I got you. I do.
    86:15
    Yes, sir. I've got to wait until he's done. When he's done, I can go. Do a... Yeah, yeah. Do a... Let me tell you. Okay. Do an opening and I'll do a... Do you want me to do a Dr. Dave? Yeah. Because I didn't do that in the last couple shows. Sure, sure. Yeah. I didn't do that. Okay. No problem. What's up, Doc? Exactly. Why? It's in my calendar. Before we go to dinner, I mean, if you guys are interested in doing your podcast at District before coming on to Taz Pinball, I mean, you know, or, you know, please, you know, welcome. Okay. Just let me know. Cool. Okay. And basically what's cool about District is, you know, the owner there, he has a dedicated there for pinball and he is very open to basically having people have different type of events there, not just pinball tournaments and also towards amateurs. So it doesn't have to be like a 12 hour. Right, yeah, too much. It's a lot. Okay, I'll go by the line of BS. Who's Jason's always dead. How's he doing? He's not doing well in qualifying, so he wants to eat something really quick. He wants a quickie. So you want to just wrap it up in a little bit? Yeah, we'll wrap it up and go. Maybe I'll do one more five-game set. Is that cool? Well, the place closes at what? Like 3 or 10? We've got time. We can go there. I just want to play the games I need to play. That'll be quick. Like Prime is, Incredible Hulk. I think it's just a... Yeah, I mean, as long as the place doesn't close. Yeah. No, I think we're okay. No, Fireflies is open, I think, until 10. Or more. It's like 8 o'clock. Well, okay, well... Google it. Let's see here. Let's see Fireflies.
    88:10
    Fireflies are all night. Fireflies. Barbecue. And it says... Close it at 12. Kitchen closes at 10. Yeah, 10. So we're okay. Yeah, we got plenty of time. So get her done. Yeah, so, I mean, I just want to play five games. I want to kick your ass in five games. Can I do that? Oh, come on. We'll play the games there. All right. Do you want to go on and sort of record? Yeah, I'll see if I can get any lower scores. Ah.
    88:43
    Keep Eric humble, will you? I am. All right. Okay. Let me get... All right. We're going to wrap up. Okay. We'll go. All right. That was Eric Stone coming on the show, doing his thing, and being Eric Stonish as he does. Okay. Let's... So do a... Where were we? Do a... Do a thing. Do a quick... No. Do a... Let me tell you I was out. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure. All right. So we were out in... Northern Mass.
    89:20
    And you've got to call for a Bally Blackjack. A Bally Blackjack Solid State. And I have the Bally Blackjack EM, which is rare. I played that today. The Blackjack. Over here. Yeah. So you play the Super Duper Colors. What do they call it? Fluorescent Colors. I like that game. Yeah. We talked about that. Right. So this game here was gorgeous. I mean, I'll actually show you some pictures if you'd like to see. So these are pictures of the game. Right about here. So that's the game there. It's like home. Oh, you just turned it off, George. Try again.
    89:52
    Oh, that looks nice. So nice cabinet. A real nice cabinet. You know? So it was a nice game. It was not stored in the best condition, so a little bit of humidity. It needs a connecterectomy. So we gave it a partial.
    90:09
    Boards okay? Boards were good. They worked, but a little bit of corrosion damage. So I replaced it, put a Weebly in there, put an Andrew board in there, and that was good. Rebuilt this on a gyro board. Did some other work on it. But even the flippers, the flippers actually, the links on it, those were still good from original, which is amazing. So, yeah. So I just replaced the coil sleeves, and it was fine. So I didn't even do that to it. It was actually very low plays in the game. And so she helped it. The stocks were okay? Yeah. Second owner. No, the first what happened was this owner it was from Baltimore and someone owned, the woman who owned this game, his father was a lawyer and someone owed him money for doing the lawyering. Of course they did. So here's a game. I can't afford you. Here's this game. Crankport. So it's a brand new Valley Blackjack. And they got that. So had it forever. It had some problems. So we fixed a bunch of stuff. Spent six hours on it. Spent some time on it. and it plays nice.
    91:14
    But actually, it was kind of cool seeing this blackjack versus mine. Because the EM game, if you match the dealer, like, say, 17-17, whatever, you win on the solid state. Not on the 4-0. No. Solid state, you can change that. You can change it so that, no, you don't win, and you do not get the win. Can we bring Chris back into the conversation? Yeah, I think I can. Sure. Freeman. So Janice has sent me pictures of your restorations.
    91:49
    Paragon. No, no, that's not a restoration. No, no, that's a shrine. No, no, supersonic and Paragon. Janice is like, did you see all this? I'm like, you know I'm not on social media, so no. Oh, look, look. if I didn't have her I would never know between her and Grant oh yeah exactly Grant's on the move I mean if we didn't have them I'd know nothing Pinside yeah exactly Pinside anyway nice job well done back to Dave back to you nice Valley Blackjack played great And, you know, actually I warmed up to the fluorescent colors on the play field, but I still like the EM colors better. I told you, Jack has a slab play field. There's nothing on it. Never been used. Black and white? Yeah, but it's, you know, you know how it gets that discoloration of the wood? It's like they're yellowing because they used varnish or whatever they did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But nice play field. It's just, you got to be into that. And I'm like, he's like, you know, get one. Well, yeah, should have, could have, did. They were giving blackness away. No, they were, but not anymore. No one wanted them. But not anymore. No, they wanted them. No, I know. That's why I don't have one. I think it was one of the first. And I was threatened by Janice.
    93:26
    Really? Yeah. Oh, I found a hot hand that was reasonable, like a thousand bucks. and then Janice no that's not well I'll wait but you know what Janice said what I want a baby grand piano who's playing piano who's playing that that's exactly the point I'll play that's exactly the point I'll come over and play that's exactly the point yeah I go Janice you don't play piano she goes I know just for looks no she's basically like if you're going to bring a big 350 pound wood box in. I'm going to bring one in. It's like... You're not getting a new pinball machine. I see. I'd say... You got it. I would actually say, okay, do that.
    94:18
    Did she really say that to you? She did. We went to a bed and breakfast. I'm like, you don't play... We went to Harps Hole Main recently. I actually delivered my pinball pole to Jeff. He loved the game. It's a perfect game. Great game. And we went to Harpswell, Maine afterwards. And part of this better... What? Harpswell, Maine. Oh. Harpswell. Okay. It's one of these peninsulas. Everybody knows where that is. It's an island. They still don't know where that is. Probably not. But it's really cool. And it has a bed and breakfast. And it's a beautiful Victorian thing. Nice rooms. Four-posted bed. Just picturesque. And a balcony. You go on the balcony. have a beer and look at the stars, a million stars out there, it's great. You walk down the street, you can go to your own private beach down there, go right in the water. The water was so super cold, but it was a hot day. I went in up to my waist or so and went in got the boys acclimated to the cold water Hold on All right But then after that I jumped right in I saw this old lady She said, you should just go in, young man. That's great. And she dove right in. It's like, all right, well, if you're going to do it, I'm going to. I'm not going to be showing up. So I went in. It's like, yeah, this is great. Did you wait to see if she came up first? No. I said, screw it. I'm going in right there.
    95:44
    Granny's going in. I'm going in. You know? I was with a bunch of old ladies out there, me and an old lady out swimming in the cold water. So what's the difference? It was great. I mean, after a while, I felt warm out there. The water was super cold, but all of a sudden, my body, like, it took a switch. Excuse me. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't pee in my suit. Oh, okay. There wasn't any pee involved. Don't worry about it. You said warm. No, there was not. It was just basically... Are we ending this soon? We probably should, but no, we won't. We'll end for another half hour. No, we're going to end soon. So anyway, it was very nice. so I highly recommend that swimming in cold water is good for your endocrine system so I'm not allowed to use this line but what have we learned today well we learned about endocrine systems and cold water is good for it and how about Eric Stone the most animated I think I've ever seen him it was like a cross between he's high on life he was like half Hulk Hogan and half Randy Macho Man Savage.
    96:50
    Let me tell you! Right? Let me tell you, Gene. I mean, he was, I thought he was going to start putting you in a full Nelson and then giving you a couple of throws for the... I'm just glad he wasn't pissed at me for, like, getting next to his fun house while he was putting the award on the other game next to it. I thought for sure he was going to give me a bunch of shit for that, but he did not, so that's good. So we'll see what this episode brings. This is a... I had no idea what we were doing today.
    97:17
    Are we going to add on? Because this is only Friday. We should add to it. We'll add more. Okay. We're at the, what marker are we at here? It's a marker. Marker is one, it's only one hour and 40. That's it? It feels about three.
    97:30
    No. I'm sure the audience says, yeah, it's around three. It feels like three here too. If they're even here. Yeah, they're probably gone. Anyway. What do you want to promote? Dr. Day's Pinball Restorations where we restore your game to play and look like brand new www.pinballdoctor.com all spelled out pinballdoctor all spelled out p-i-n-b-a-l-l-d-o-c-t-o-r dot com
    98:07
    and my YouTube channel Dr. Dave's Pinball on YouTube for tips, tricks, and cool you know Oh, I know what we have to do. What? We've got to talk about this real quick.
    98:22
    We have to do a show on the games that you actually like. I know you sent me You sent me the email, but we're going to do it the next. We've got to What's that guy's name? Minuto?
    98:37
    Metafee? Metcalf. The guy who sent us and said... Oh, that guy. Right. My pin sign. Yeah, yeah. Methos. Yes, Methos. Do you like any pinball at all? Right. What games do you like? Right. Well, you sent him a nice response. I wish I had... I don't have it. I got it. Hold on. I'll pull it up. Do you have it? I do. Yeah. Hold on.
    98:59
    Are any of those games here? Stand by. I bet you not one of those games is here. Not one. Oh, I'm offline. No, that's... That's right. No, no, tease. We'll do it next show. Do a tease? All right. Yeah, we'll do it. I meant to go on. Hey, you know what? You have late breaking from Grant. Want to hear some Grant stuff? Yeah, sure. All right, so Grant says. Do you buy that game?
    99:22
    No. Okay. That's a lot of money. A lot of money. Those poor bastards in Australia. They pay. They overpay. Oh, my God. And you know what? The problem is they're owned by the Crown and they're owned by China. Stop, stop. Let's not even go down that road. I say Grant, swim now. Swim to America. Start swimming. Get the frick out of there. That's what I say to Grant. Come to freedom. So anyway, Grant says, ah, I'm getting jealous here. Sounds like a great lineup over there at that fantastic show. I've heard several horror stories about the previous accommodations you guys had in Sturbridge. People saying it stunk and was in rough shape. Glad they got that sorted out. The new venue sounds like a much better setup. Hope you and George kill it. It's not hard to go from zero. Anything's better than that. Hope you and George kill it in the tournament. George, you kill it in the tournament. I don't think I'm going to. Put a card in. It's some classic games.
    100:22
    It's like a who's who of people that are here. You'll kick their ass. I might as well just take my 20 and give it to Eric. No, just give it to Eric. Give it to Eric Stone. So you can go buy some Amtrak. Exactly. Buy some Amtrak sandwiches. some Amtrak sandwiches sponsored by Amtrak no no don't do that Bill hates us hold on Bill hates us Bill hates that a lot woo woo Dolly Madison Zing sponsored by Amtrak oh my god now we're in trouble now save us Grant anyway that's it Grant hope you and George kill it in the tournament I want to see some trophies this time, gentlemen. Yeah, dog, last of the V8s. I could be the last V8. That's what you said about the Flash Gordon I'm going to buy. Could be the last of the remakes that they don't start selling some. Don't you feel bad? I do. I said to Janice the other day. You have the dregs of a cable. I said to Janice the other day. I said, let's just send them a game. And she goes, well, how much does it cost to send them a game? I go, well, by slow boat or air? Slow boat. Slow boat's the way to go. Right, but you might see that by the time the election starts. I offered to send him a restored game. I was like, this guy does not deserve it. I'm going to do it for him. But it's $1,800 to fly one over. That's a lot of money. How about slow boat? I was going to sell him the Rolling Stones and say, here's my Rolling Stones. You probably did it wrong. I told him. He said, no, no, no, it would be too much money. But I was ready to give him one. I was ready to say that my customer, you know. Well, it's going to get worse because the dollar is getting stronger.
    102:04
    So that means – How is it happening? It's amazing. Well, who knows? It's not a political show. We're not? No. Okay. No. Well. We're a little right of center, though. Right. A little bit. A little. Anyway. It is. You know what, though? So anything else? I will say, in the hallways here at the show, I did hear some clown music going.
    102:26
    Oh, what about tonight? Wait, wait, wait. We've got to talk about this. Tonight. The Foo Fighters. No, no, no. That's tomorrow night. Oh, tomorrow night. Oh, tonight's the... The band. The band that does video games. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
    102:44
    Is that what it's going to be? Yeah, marching band shit. I can't wait. Yeah, but marching band video game music.
    102:51
    Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, I don't know about that. Where's it going to be? Out in the atrium? Yes. Is that true? Yes. Someone said... You're on the staff. I am on the staff. I've got to be nice. Be nice. Thank you for reminding me. Oh, no, I wasn't saying it for that. I was just confirming that it was going to be on the H. Be nice. Oh, I don't care if you're nice. I was nice. I was really nice. You were nicer than me. I wouldn't have been nice.
    103:22
    Yeah, you got a press pass. How do you get a press pass? It's on the website. What are we doing? It's on the lower... I know. Can I tell you something? I'm grateful. Thank you.
    103:34
    He did a good job. I know. You got a tree. Of course you did a good job. Right. Of course you did. Everybody doing your press right now. Right. I don't know how much he's going to appreciate it. Well, we had a lot of fun. No, he actually said, hey, you guys doing your podcast? Oh, yeah, we're doing a live show right now. He said it. It's all happening.
    103:54
    Well, we have to shoot from the top. Who else can we roll with? We don't tell lies here. We tell truth. Who else could we rope in to come in? Maybe tomorrow. We'll do some more.
    104:05
    Let's see. Have a great time, you lucky buggers. I think I'll be, I think of you both smashing away those clipper buttons. Regards, Grant. I am so jealous. Eric Stone. Oh, he's checking in. Eric Stone said, I forgot. They have a free meal for us at 9 o'clock tonight. So we're going to do that. Bob will do it tomorrow. Of course he is. Free meal. Eric was going to say no. I want the free meal. Screw the freaking barbecue. I'm getting the free meal tonight. I'm known to be frugal, but holy crap. Eric. We've seen frugal and cheap. Where is the line there? It ain't Eric's time. No. I'm frugal too. I'm frugal. I can't believe Teal is bunked with him. I didn't know that. I think there's no way. We should get him in here. Yeah, we should get him in here. Yeah, yeah. Both of them. That'd be great. I'd love to hear those stories.
    105:02
    Would you agree to that? Not in your life. Would I agree to what? Going to a hotel? No, I would not. Would you agree? No, we'd stay in a freaking one-bedroom thing. There's a lot more to this show. And I was not expecting Eric to be as animated as he was.
    105:22
    He crazy. He crazy, man. He crazy. anyway so another one in the books next month do we do we've done it and it's been a good show but I just don't know what take yet do we do a horror show 3 horror show of which well last year we did a review of all horror themed games whether we liked them or not I don't know if I could top that people liked it yeah Yeah. Okay.
    105:56
    Like Rob Zombie? Oh, it's either going to be that or I'm going to do an interview. Or do you want me to do the interview? I'm not going to include you because you don't know him. You haven't been to the show. But Keith from the Houston Arcade and Pinball Expo that I'm going to go to in November. I could have him on. He's pretty funny. And he's got a crap load of... I told you. Didn't we talk? We did. He's got like 100 and something games in his barn in the backyard. Cool. He's like, oh, yeah, let me know. I haven't let him know yet. I've got to call him. So let me do a... Sure. We'll just insert that in the next show. Okay. Come up with something. Have you got something better than... We don't have to do horror shows, right?
    106:39
    We'll think of something. It sounds good. I don't know how I'm game for anything. No, we've got plenty of time. Anyway. So, episode 108 in the books, the Classic Pinball Podcast. Day one of Pintastic. Gabe does not hate me because I said positive things about this show. Yes, you did. You certainly did. I was not Nancy Negative. I was Georgie Positive. Georgie Positive, yes.
    107:03
    And this is Dr. Dave here at the Pintastic show, 2023. Having a great time here with George and company. We had a lot of good company here, and it was a lot of fun, I want to say. Wasn't expecting it. Then we're going to do, we'll do day two. So this is good.
    107:21
    Exactly. Anyway, my name is Dave. This is George. That was the Classic Pinball Podcast. Peace. Peace out.
    107:39
    Okay, broadcasting live from Tournament Central at Pintastic. It was our quest last time to go through the games that are here in the bank, and I'll give you a quick review on Saturday afternoon. We're at brunch time. Get your cards in before 2 p.m. So Primus, Hulk, what's that, Turtles, Hot Hands, Paragon, A Robo War, Harlan's Lobetrotters, Dirty Harry, Captain Fantastic, Spamtar. Okay, I don't know why that is, but it is. Hang on, Eric.
    108:19
    Then we've got Guns N' Roses, Funhounds, Split Second, and who's that weirdo? Like Fire Like Sun, huh?
    108:33
    Like Fire Like Sun, huh? You just had to do it? I hope you feel good when you go to bed tonight, man. That's Houston's dad, right? I got the highest score in the general. George, I met you at, Steve, what have you met before? I'm the one who told you that your son is going to glass for our stage. No, that your son is going to glass for our stage. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was right. Right, right, right. Okay.
    108:57
    Anyway, so what's your story? What are we doing? I don't have a story. Okay, well, you're in second year two. Jason's one. Yep. Keolis, did he come back from the game? He's in third place. Is he doing the Ted Carr thing too? No, what's that? Hey, just so everybody knows, I have the highest score on Centaur playing legit. No, but why is that? Because I didn't know. So explain to me why it's called Spamtar. Because all you have to do is hold the ball on the right flipper. Is that what his son did? And that's what he did. Yeah, they both did. Oh, you did it? That's what Stephanie's doing. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people do it. So you hold the right flipper, and you just flip it real quick, and it goes up the end, and you lay it down. So it's 10,000 points. And you do that for, what did you say, 40 minutes you did it? I think 40 or 45. Why did you give up? Why not just roll it? I didn't give up. You still have to, like, you will have to recover sometimes. Because sometimes it does roll too fast. Oh, really? So that's what happened to me. One out of 20? I had trouble recovering. Because I was listening to music. I was over here. Seven and a half billion. Well, 10,000 point shots and he had trouble recovering. Okay.
    110:03
    Stay tuned. Some more recording in a little bit. I'm going to do it in the finals. What brings two nice men like you to a place like this? Well, I'd say stupidity. Folks, I wanted to put a bow around the second day and the entire Pentastic experience. Dave and I are back at our respective homes. It's a couple days after Pentastic.
    110:27
    And I didn't want to be incomplete. The clip you just heard was me reciting all the games at the tournament and then having Eric Stone and Steven Zoller, who's Jason Zoller's father, behind me, talking about Spamtar. Isn't that what they called that thing? They did eventually. After people were getting sick of what they were doing, they said, Spam, Spam, Spam. I don't like Spam. Well, they were, anyway, they talked about not only the kid doing it, Jason, but the father did it and a couple other people. And he talks about it. So I wanted to put that in perspective. Who is they again? Who's talking about it? They is Eric Stone and Steven Zoller, who is Jason Zoller's dad. Now, where were they talking about it? They were just behind me when I was recording. And then Eric, you know, in his infinite way, you'll hear it in the clip. I'm like, Eric, wait a second, okay?
    111:31
    I didn't even know he was behind me. I wasn't really paying attention. I was trying to, you know, do a quick clip. I told you I would do that. Oh, you were doing a quick clip on your phone after the training was over? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, sorry. So then it got me to thinking, okay, I was pooped on Saturday night. I wanted to, you know, I knew we were getting up early to get back to Virginia. but you saw something in the tournament and I guess the setup would be the two finalists were Jason and Eric, correct? Yes. Two Titans warring on this stuff. And yeah. Yep. Now I don't know. Do you know the answer to the question? Had they ever played each other in a finals?
    112:19
    Yeah. Yes, they have. Yep. They play each other. Uh, I know at least in Allentown, I know that Eric has said of him he said, you know, he told me it's like, he is really good, I'm actually he can give me a run for my money, he said I think he's I didn't want to put Eric aside, I think he's better than me you know, better than him that's quite the statement out of Eric and watching Jason play like I was watching both of them play Captain Fantastic, and the one there was a little bit tired, you know you know, as most are, unless you totally restore them like I want to hear that Tully Restorton play is a lot different but but these players can play on anything tired well done or whatever because they can adapt any situation and both of them are the same so it doesn't really matter they can just deal with it so I saw Jason's ball control his flippers was better than Eric's I was watching how the feed from the upper left flipper on Captain Fantastic the ball would come down the lane upper I mean sorry upper right flipper upper right flipper, he'd just kind of move it out and move it out of the way as the ball went over it. It would easily feed to his scissor flippers in the left, right where he wanted it, every time, right to the right spot. When Eric would do it, it'd be a little high, a little low. It would not be consistent. So Jason definitely has consistency and very calm. And he comes into a tournament always with a hoodie on like he's some Jedi knight. You know, with the hoodie. But then afterwards, for a picture or whatever, and when it's all done, the hood comes off. But when he's in game mode, the hood goes on. Maybe it's some kind of weird thing. He feels like a Snuggie. I don't know. But, yeah, it's interesting to watch them both and the different reactions. Eric will be talking in the game. He'll be praying out loud, asking God to help him with the ball control or whatever. and then Jason will just be quiet as a mouse and just kind of sit there and, you know, just be quiet and stealthy. It's two different takes on how they play. Jason is not only a sharpshooter, but chill.
    114:33
    Yeah. Even Janice was commenting on him saying he's so nonchalant. He's, you know, like nothing bothers him. He just kind of goes his own way. He's a hell of a player. I've watched them quite a few times, but let's get to the point. Yeah. So it came down to, I watched the 30-minute clip because I was asleep. This thing ended around midnight, right?
    115:00
    Yeah, between 11, 11.30, right around there. Okay. So this thing started at 4 o'clock. So my first question is, before we get into the issue, is why was there no dinner break? That is a good question. Okay. I don't know. So that's one question. So the second question is, why does it have to be – I think I know the answer. Why does it have to be best of seven? Why can't it be best of five? Move things along a little bit. It usually is best of five. I don't know why they chose best of seven on this one. I don't know. No, because everybody wants a fair chance, and if they gaff two games, they don't want to sit there and be struggling. and they want to make sure that they have a chance to come back and tie it up at 2-2 and make it a 3-game.
    115:52
    That's the strategy, in my opinion. Well, I think best of seven works best if you're on all classic games that have fast game times, ball times, quick ball times. It works great. But if you start throwing in some ramp games in there where you can blow up the game, then best of seven is going to go on for a good long time. So it's good Jim has a good mix of old school in there, because that's mostly what they picked. Except for Jason kept picking some of the weirdo games, like Weird Al. Like, I just don't care for that game at all. Right, but he was up 3-1 when the issue happened. Yeah, exactly. He just knew how to blow that game up, and he was down until the last ball, and he blew it up with some weird weird Al point thing that, I don't know. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. Eric commented in the first part of this podcast that he didn't like the game. I thought it was an odd pick.
    116:50
    It's not a good tournament game. Whatever. It's not my tournament. You know, it's just my comment on that. Yeah. So get to the meat of the issue. They're playing Paragon, right? Here's what I didn't understand. All right. They're playing Paragon, and Jason was player one, and he was finished. Well, let me go through a little bit. So Jason, and I'm not sure who picked Paragon. I don't know if the winner picks or loser picks. It doesn't matter. They're playing Paragon. Okay, they're playing Paragon. Okay, and I think they both like Paragon. They're both good at it. All right, they're both good at these older games, too, and they're both good at new games. So they're very equally matched. Jason steps up ball one.
    117:36
    You know, ball one, Eric hasn't played yet. He's waiting for his turn. And he just starts to just carve through those in-line drop targets, you know, two times, three times, five times in the saucer, then goes in the saucer again for an extra ball, then scores more points, and he comes up with like 200-and-something thousand points, gets the – I think he might even have got the 20K holdover. I'm not sure if he got that as well. But, you know, decent foundation ball, as we call it in pinball. Now, a big sign in all these games. Now, before, I think in qualifying, some games were allowed to play extra balls. Some games you had to plunge extra balls, depending what the title was and what they considered. So they kind of mixed up a little bit. But during finals, they changed all of them, the big signs in all the games, plunge extra balls, which means you plunge the ball, you don't touch your flippers, and just kind of maybe try to do a skill shot thing to get the most points with your plunge ball. So now, wait a second. So the player who that happens to will need to pull the plunger. Correct. Yes. Okay. That's what happens. It's their ball. Right. So Jason does his thing. He scores an extra ball, plays a little more. Ball drains. He looks at the score and just walks away.
    119:00
    Okay? Now, he shouldn't have walked away, but he walked away. So then Eric comes up. Now, these people are tired, and, you know, it's a long day and no real food. That's why I asked the food question. Yeah, no food. So Eric comes up, plunges the ball, and I hear the people on the Twitch stream, the tournament saying, oh, no.
    119:29
    And then as soon as Eric was seeing the ball go across, you know, back on the arch there, he looked up at the score and saw player one flashing. He just said, I just said, he like totally got disgusted, and he shut the game right off because he knows he got DQ'd. He got disqualified on that game, which means that he forfeits that game. When you do that, when you punch someone else's ball, you forfeit that game. The other person gets a win on that game. Four to one, he loses. And four to one, he loses. If that was still, if he had another, it was like three to two. He was trying to mount the comeback, and hence the reason why I said what I said. He's down three to one. You know, he's got to make a miraculous comeback, but that's not unheard of, especially with him. Now, what I did is I studied the tape. So I said, you know what? Let me see. Now, not to put anything against Jason, but when people are really competing and looking for any edge they can get, and, again, you can't read Jason's mind or anything like that and nothing against him, but he was one of the first ones. I think his father was the first one and Jason was second to do the exploit on Centaur where you just kind of flick your right flipper and it keeps going back and forth on the inline feed, getting, you know, 5,000 points all the way up to several million points, sit there for a couple hours. They heard it at the beginning of this. Right. That Steven Zoller played for like 47 minutes or whatever it was. Correct. But Eric said, and if we have this on the tape too. Right. He had a really high score. Well, no. He didn't exploit the machine. No, no, no, no, no. What Eric said to Jason, did we get that? Did you hear that?
    121:14
    I don't know. This is happening. Eric walked by Jason. while he was doing it. And Eric said, dude, come on, man. You're better than that. You're a good pinball player. You don't need to do that. And Jason's response was, I need to take care of it. I need to do any edge I can to win this. You know? Anything to win this with. So, I don't want, you'll yell at me if I call it a conspiracy theory, but it's a theory. Theory. And he's not going to tell you, so it doesn't really matter. but again, it goes down into pinball lore. Did he in fact walk away from the machine to bait Eric to go over and pull it? To honeypot it. Is that what you call it? Yeah. I call it bait. Well, same thing. Bait, honeypot, same thing. You know, set the trap. It's setting a trap. So the way to really find this out is on the other games he played. Oh my God, you're not going to say Zabruder film, are you? Yeah, yeah, kind of Zabruder. Oh no, stop! It's been long! I know, but I want to know this stuff. I want to see... The wrath of the world is coming at us now. I want to, well... We're talking about this. I thought we were going to have a nice little... No, Zabruder.
    122:37
    But you know what, though? Even Zabruder, even that That thing is – not to go off – that's maybe as well. Don't do rabbit holes. Don't rabbit holes. That's a rabbit hole in itself, that whole thing. But anyway. We're not going there. We have to go there. So you were going to say – I was going to say when he plunged extra balls on the other games, did he walk away? Did he just plunge his ball? The other thing, what did he do when he – did he look at the game? Just the way he looked at the game, did he just see his extra ball? because the extra ball is right there in the middle of the play field. It says an orange thing saying shoot again. You know you got an extra ball. I don't know how you don't know.
    123:18
    Dave, I'm glad we talked about this. And especially on Paragon. Paragon is a tough game to get an extra ball. When you get in that saucer. Oh, no. Look, I've watched the film, too, and I've watched this kid play. There was a methodology to his play yesterday. Yeah. Or on Paragon. No question. He did exactly what you're supposed to do, and he just hammered it out. I mean, like I called him, he's a sharpshooter. He doesn't miss often. He is just dialed in, no pun intended. He knows how to shoot. No, he does. He knows how to shoot. He knows how to shoot, and he knows, you know, it's all fair and love and pinball kind of thing, and you can do anything you want to do within the realm of what you can do.
    124:04
    I have a good bow for this. But Jason, still, he might be innocent. This might be an innocent thing. It just happened. So there's always that. We'll never really know.
    124:14
    No, but it becomes part of pinball lore. Or at least you're going to attempt to make it part of pinball lore. But it is. I mean. It is. It was good to see those two guys. You know, it would have been good to see them battle it out. You know what? Without the controversy. It always seems to come up in this. You know, the whole Keith Elliland thing, walking away. I mean, it just needed to be part of, and that's going to be the phrase of this segment. The problem was that it was all part of the game. It was such a letdown, though. People really wanted to see this Battle Royale final game of Paragon. They wanted to see a slugfest. They wanted, you know, they wanted Eric jumping around and yelling, and they wanted Mr. Chill. I mean, it was like a perfect, you know, a perfect dichotomy, you know. two opposite forces. It's great. It didn't end with a shout, but a whimper. It's kind of just like... Yeah, sometimes it's not meant to be, unfortunately. Hey, we gave it its 15 minutes of fame. Yeah, I think it was going to be a great showdown. I really wanted to... I wish I could have, at the end of it, say, okay, guys, do it again. Almost like the Rocky movies, where at the end, where I think Creed came in and fought Rocky, you know, off the tape kind of thing at the end of the movie, you know, and they kind of, ready to ring the bell, ding, ding, and the movie ended. You know, you don't know how it ended. Yeah, well, it might be some time, you know, Eric isn't playing it as much as he probably would like, and, you know, that kid seems to be a whopperholic, so I don't know how the hell he does it going to college, but, you know, he's managed to make that work, so good for him. Actually, Jason is kind of like that fighter coming out. He usually comes out in the hoodie and that kind of thing. And he comes out in the hoodie like he's boxing. It's almost like that, too. So he's part boxer. He has a championship robe. Yeah, a championship robe. He takes the robe off. Champion on the back with a big pinball on it. Hey, Balboa. I am the greatest.
    126:26
    That's not his speed. No, he's a Jedi Knight. He's kind of like a Jedi Knight coming in there. Silent but deadly. Yeah, yeah. It's like a cobra. I'd like to host those two at my place, at my classic games here, my restored classics, and see what they can do.
    126:44
    I'll scrap with them. I don't know if I'm going to last that long, but I'll scrap with them. I decided not to make a deposit, so I did not play in the tournament this time. I just saw the audience, and I kind of think I've hung that up for a little bit. I made a deposit. I decided to throw $20 in, because typically in the past, this Super Bowl rumble was the first entry is $20, each entry after that is $10. They changed it this time around. Each entry was $20. So I was like, I can go two games for $30 or more. Right. But these guys wanted a big number, and do you know what they – Yeah, I do. First place and second place? Yeah. First place got, Jason got $2,250. Eric got $1,750.
    127:30
    Okay. $500 difference. No, it's $17.50 and $22.50. Okay. No, it's actually $2,200 and $1,700 approximately. Profitable. And they did a bunch of, I definitely like the classics they had. I picked a bank of five. I played split second Stern, kind of rare Stern, who I actually did award a best in play, best in show to right there in the middle of the tournament. I think I told that on the show, on our previous thing. I want to point one thing out on that game. I had the opportunity to play it out in California when I was at InVisca a number of years ago. That upper right play field, it seems like it's just like dead space. Upper right or upper left? Upper right. With a pop bumper. Bagatelle thing or whatever that is. No, no, there's no Bagatelle there. The upper right is, you know, a couple lanes and goes down to some pop bumpers. The upper left is where it's kind of elevated, and it's got some drop targets and stuff. Okay. Upper left. But the upper right was wasted space, but that's me. Yeah. I didn't play it, so, you know, I haven't played it, you know, I played it once. It's a different game. It's something I don't really need to own, but something that I like to play whenever I see it out there, you know? Right. So my card I played, these are the ones I played in my one card. I played early, too, right before, you know, maybe I was one of the first, I don't know, 20 players. I played Split Second, Centaur, Hulk, Paragon, and Globetrotters, which is a nice little card. Unfortunately Out of 100 On split second My rank was 98 Centaur my rank was 78 Which got me 10 points out of 100 Hulk I got Rank of 146 Anything over 100 you get 0 points Paragon a 175 So 0 and a Globetrotter was a 110 Which is 0 so I got 10 points Oh wow Now I'm really happy I didn't fall And PJ got the second highest score out of anybody. He got a... On what game? On Hulk.
    129:45
    He got 226,000 on Hulk. He even got mentioned in the Twitch feed of the finals with Eric and Jason when they were playing Hulk. When Jason put up, I think, a 220,000 score on ball one, the lady there said, And, oh, the only one that came close to that after a whole game of three balls was someone, was Paul Blumstein. He mentioned DJ, which is pretty cool. Yeah, there you go. So he got 226. He got the second highest score. The only one above him was, I think, Jerry Bernard. I think he got 530,000. Jerry!
    130:21
    Yeah, Jerry. So, I don't know. I could have gone in for another one. But if it came down to, like, playing these Titans at the end, I don't know, man. You know? No, that's what I said. I just looked at the, you know, when I first got there, I looked around, I saw who was there, and I said, no, thank you. This is a lot of competitive people. And it was pretty much the same crew as last year, missing a couple and adding a couple. the two guys that made it to the final four I had no idea who those two characters were they were newbies to me so congratulations to whomever they are I don't have them in front of me, it doesn't really matter anything else about the show on Saturday my friend Jim came up, played some pinball with me from Cape Cod that was a lot of fun, played all the new games, turned them on to everything couldn't play Pulp, couldn't play Venom there were just too many people wanting to play those games unfortunately. So never got around. Played a lot of Galactic again. I don't know if it was the game or the weekend but man it was like a tired EM when I played it. I was like eww. Which game? Galactic Tank Force. Oh. I still, you know what, I still never really got to play that game. I didn't get to play I missed my chance playing all that new stuff because when all that stuff can be played, I am too busy trying to figure out the best and show stuff, best and play stuff. So I'm working. By the time I'm working, then everybody's in the show and now I can't get to the games. Friday afternoon is really the time to do it. Next year, if I go, and I think I will, I will concentrate on playing the newer games in the afternoon on Friday. Saturday was just insane. We got to play some things, but it was just crazy. Even Friday was insane. Even Friday, as you get later in the day, that was... Yeah, mid-afternoon. I don't know when I was playing, but it was light, and I got to play a lot of games all at once. And then, like you said, the throngs came late afternoon, a lot of people. So it was a lot of fun. Somebody keeps pinging me. I don't know who the hell it is. The show did the best numbers ever from what I've heard. At the Marlboro location, it got a lot of people from around here, Boston. it got Maine and it got New Hampshire Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut yeah he seemed to pull very well I'm gonna you know I thought the week might be a downer for him and it was absolutely not he did a really good job Gabe congratulations I look forward to you know seeing a couple of improvements but overall you know I thought it was well done bands were good I know you didn't like the brass band as much as I did, but I thought they were good.
    133:14
    I happened to like them. I thought they were good. The Foo Fighter band was good. I'm not familiar with a lot of their songs. You know, a couple of the hits, but they were good. I mean, they brought a crap load of equipment. They were definitely a pro band, so congratulations to Gabe and all those who worked on the show. If you wanted to have a quiet dinner at the bar, that was not happening. no no no uh what huh but overall i mean the one thing that i really liked about the show was the fact that i got to uh private rooms whatever what's it called this extra ball lounge yeah what we're going to do about next time is get better signage up so people um know that stuff no i liked it that they didn't have any signage up i know because nobody was going in there yeah they had the bouncers outside throwing everybody out it was great. Right. Well, they're throwing them out of the extra ball lounge, but not out of the... Right, the extra ball lounge. So, I like that aspect of the show. But overall, congratulations. I think it was a show well-received. I think people had a great time, and look forward to it, like I said, next year. Alright, then the last thing is I'm working up a Valley of Playboy right now. So there. I don't think you talked about that. Nope. Nope. So, Valley of Playboy, I've restored this thing maybe 15 years ago, and it came back in for a little refresh. So I gave it a little refresh, and that's going to go out the door, and then he also ejects the open. I'm going to do that, get that out the door. And then I've got a bunch of other games that want to come in here, so I've got to get ready for all that stuff. But, yeah, that's about it for that for right now. I've got a lot more games for next episode. I'll have a lot more games to talk about. Okay, we'll go back to our regular program, I mean, this one was definitely different. We had, you'll probably hear it in this first section or have heard it already, called A Moment of Chaos. It was like championship wrestling and a football game rolled into one. My final thought on Fantastic was something for everyone, but more for others. Well done, Gabe. You can find me on YouTube, Dr. Day's Pinball Restorations on YouTube. You can also find me on the web at pinballdoctor.com. That's pinballdoctor, all spelled out. And I'm due to put, at some point, games for sale on there in the Restoration Queue, but I do have about 15 games in the Restoration Queue that you can put your name on, give a little deposit down, and I can restore that up for you, with a whole bunch of different titles spanning from the late 60s into the 90s. So you have that available. And we're heading into crunch time here, so I'm trying to get a couple games ready for sale for the Christmas time. Might have a Gorgar available. So good. By then, I know. And maybe a couple other little beauties, but we'll see what's going on there. Until next time. This is the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and his name is Dave. See you next month. Cheers, folks. Cheers. Boris Beecher.
    136:52
    excitement, and it was really cool to watch. So, hello, Eric. Hello. Yeah, I mean, it was a fun tournament. The one great thing was that the lines were really not long at all, considering there were 199 people there. You know, in previous years, you were lucky to get four or five cards in. The whole tournament, you know, wait lines were 45 minutes to an hour. And, I mean, I was able to get, you know, a card in within 45 minutes to an hour. It was crazy. Yeah, and how many players they have involved? How many players do you think? It was 199.
    137:28
    Wow, okay. Okay. So it's weird. When they were giving out your player number, I got player number 204, which I don't understand. How would that work out? 100. What's that? They start at 100. Oh, that's why. Okay. I was player number 172, and I signed up early, I signed up the day before on the Never Dreams and I wasn't even there Thursday night so I didn't come until Friday and then I did my how to play pinball seminar and then I started playing the tournament around noontime Friday Now I would have went to your seminar but I don't want to play pinball No, no, see And the reason that you're still not qualifying is because you don't go every single year because you think you qualify, but I never see you qualifying anywhere in there. No, I have qualified at Pentastic a couple years ago. I did make qualifying. Was that when I wasn't there? Yeah, last year, yeah, when you weren't there. Yeah, see, that's what I figured.
    138:42
    Nice. Yeah. And what happened? Were you out in the first round? First round? Yeah, I think first round. Yeah, actually, I was doing pretty well. I was taking the guy to all my classics, doing really well, and then he took me to some, oh, yeah, what's it, Meltdown 1 TNA?
    139:03
    No, it's TNA. Well, it's not a ramp game, but it is a ramp game. It's freaking nuts. There's no ramps on TNA. Yeah, but it sucks. TNA plays like an 80s game You got inline drop targets You got a loop like Sea Witch I mean come on Come on man Yeah I don't know That's all it was You should have watched my stream My Twitch stream on Batcave Pinball Where on my second attempt I destroyed all nine reactors and ended the game I probably should have In hindsight I should have done that Someday you'll let me teach you Yeah, go over to my house. You can try to school me. How many times have I done that?
    139:50
    I mean, I think I was kicked out, you know, like I was at other places for doing too well. I think I did kick you out. Yeah, I said, get out of here, kid. I did. You said, that's it. You got, you know, you got too many of my high scores. I made sure to order in a snowstorm, too, to make it official, kick you out of the snowstorm. Yeah, right. And I got nowhere to go. Terminant. Fantastic. Super Bowl rumble. So the points are in.
    140:18
    Jason Zoller sent me a message saying that he's number one in the world now, and he thinks that the tournament should be worth 200%, and it only shows 160. So maybe we'll get some more points from that. I'm not sure. But the points are finally in. Well, I'm just wondering about, you know, how all these tournaments are running. Again, Jim does a great job, but, you know, other tournaments, don't they turn the extra balls and specials into points? Like I did that in my game. I've never seen a Paragon where, you know, the extra – I've never seen a Paragon where extra balls were actually on, even in our league, like at the pinball asylum. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure why they left him on on that game.
    141:10
    I think there were – Captain Fantastic also had, like, points thresholds, like 135,000, 235,000. You automatically got an extra ball. And I'm like – You can easily change that. Why didn't they freaking do that? I don't know. I mean, Jim does – Jim runs a really good tournament, and, you know, he extended the hours. So, I mean, he did a lot of work. So I don't blame him for that, you know. But it is an interesting choice as to why, you know, like I don't know. I think Harlem Globetrotters' extra balls were points because specials were points. Yeah, that's how it should be. I think maybe because he was overwhelmed and didn't have enough help to get these things all set up the right way. Well, I mean, I don't know. I think he had a lot of help. I mean, he had a lot of guys that were, you know, helping him break down machines. I'm sure he had a lot of help, you know, setting them up, too.
    142:10
    I don't know, maybe in the sanctum where, you know, the paragon is, maybe that's how they have it. Like, extra balls are on. So, you know, I guess he figured, because the paragon was set up like the hardest setting, right? Like, the paragon letters were not in order. Yeah, that's how I had mine set up. Yeah, random. Right. And, I mean, but Harlem was the same way. Harlem wasn't in order either, yet the special gave you points, extra ball gave you points.
    142:40
    So, I don't know. I mean. It should be consistent, though. I would think if one Valley from the same time frame is doing that, the other one should do it, too. I mean, I don't know. Yeah.
    142:49
    The Allentown turning. Now, they had some plunge extra balls on that one, too, right? The Allentown one recently? I trying to think what games had extra balls on there I know my pinball hula had everything set for points Yeah I know the Incredible Hulk at the Pintastic had extra balls that were on because I wound up getting an extra ball.
    143:18
    You know, you get the one, two, three, and then you go down. I actually shot up the lane on the right to get the extra ball.
    143:27
    I can't remember if Pintastic had or Pinfest had anything that had that, you know, with extra balls on. I can't remember. I mean, when you're playing one – see, the thing is, it's hard to trust, right? If you're in a one-person qualifying and you're the only one playing the game, I mean, you know, look what people were doing with Pintastic, just holding the right flipper up. Yeah. Up and down the lane for 45 minutes straight. Right. You know? And I'm pretty sure I had the highest score on that game without, you know, without having to do that. Without doing stupid crap like that. And Centaur was actually the second ticket that I played that I qualified second. It was first.
    144:19
    Centaur was my last game. And I only had 50,000 going into ball three, and I wound up with a million. So imagine if I knew the trick. Oh, yeah.
    144:31
    I mean, I saw it happen, but I didn't think, you know, I figured that really wasn't, like, a legit way to get points. So, like, I didn't even try to do it. But I easily could have stayed there an hour, rolled the game a guy of 10 million. I would have had the number one qualifier before, and then I would have been way up there qualified in first. You know what I mean? The problem is with that move, it's just a cheap move. It's cheap. You know, it takes the – Yeah, I mean, I thought in pinball that any move that risks no threat of losing the ball yet getting points, I thought that was illegal. Like, you know, there's other games, you know, fireball too. Yeah. If you have the ball on the left flipper and you just flip the ball real fast, there's a gate. You could roll over that switch forever and catch the ball on a lot of fireball twos. Okay.
    145:37
    But, you know, I always was under the impression that if you could do something like that, that it's your legal way. You know, that's not pinball. You know what I'm saying?
    145:47
    Skateball, same way. Yeah, I was thinking skateball. But I've seen skateballs where they actually will cut the wire. Yes. So that it's only a one-way. Now, I don't advise that on Centaur because, see, Centaur was one of my strongest games. I could shat on that better than almost anybody. And I would have used Centaur as one of my main games in the finals had I was able to shat the inlays. But then they disabled it. It's like, oh, that stinks. You know? Yeah, that was too extreme. I was talking to Jim about it. It's like how I would have handled that, you know, it's hard doing the tournament or in between finals and qualifying. But ahead of time, all those class of 81 ballets, anyone with a linear flipper, linear flippers suck. They suck from a manufacturing standpoint. They suck as an invention just because they have way too much mass to move around. They wear out real quick. You can rebuild them. You can rebuild them quickly. there after a couple hundred plays, rebuild them again. So all that stuff there, I take that crap out of there, and I revert them back to a Paragon or a Mata Hari style version one, and it's way better. And on top of that, the flipper doesn't come up as high. So flipper, you only have much of a sweep. You cannot do that trick all day long with an in lane like they're doing if you revert back to an earlier style. And it's a way better, it's a way stronger flip too. But I've never seen on any Centaur, even with those flippers, that you could do that. You know what I mean? Never, ever, ever seen that. So I think the flippers started up a little too high. And that's why, because the shats was so easy on that. I've never seen a Centaur that I could shats almost 95 to 100% of the time. And, you know, I think the flippers being so close to being, you know, horizontal, straight across without you flipping, so that when you did flip, they stuck way up in the air. You know what I mean? Yep.
    147:53
    So I've been watching your, on Twitch, the backhand pinball, watching some of the highlights, watching you and Jason go at it on Captain and go at it on Tull. and then I really wanted to see you guys go at it on Paragon. That would have been like Battle Royale if that went off the right way. It would have been great to see. The whole crowd was like, oh, no, we were robbed of a freaking battle. Yeah, I mean, it's too bad nobody, like, yelled out, hey, he's got an extra ball. Well, you know what? I asked Jim about that afterwards. Hey, Jim, if I yelled out, hey, you've got an extra ball there, he told me, It's like, no, that would be considered coaching if I did that. So what would have happened? I don't know.
    148:43
    What would have happened? You would have been thrown out? I would have been thrown out because I didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. I might have been thrown out. Yeah. So what? I mean, I've heard that before where people say, no, no. And then, like, the player would look back and then be like, oh, there's an extra ball. Yeah.
    149:02
    So what if it was coaching? like I didn't ask for you to do it it's not like I'm asking you what shot am I shooting for on top of it if you think about some other strategy say the enemy camp if they yelled out hey don't shoot that extra ball don't do that that wouldn't be on you either because that could be the enemy camps trying to get you set up or something too so it wouldn't be your fault It wouldn't be your fault. Yeah, so, oh, big deal. You would have been kicked out of the room. Oh, big deal. Just put it on Twitch on your phone. Yay. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then I would have had to buy you dinner or something because you helped me out. Right. Yep. You know what I mean? Exactly.
    149:48
    So anyway. Yeah, that happened so fast. Well, and as you know, some people give me crap because I turn the game off, But I wanted it to be, okay, I screwed up. I'm not going to argue anything because I know the ruling. Let's get out of here. You know, we were trying to go eat dinner. And we got to TGI Fridays at about 1215. The kitchen closes at 1230. Wow. And they actually denied us going in. Really? Nobody's in here, so we're pretty much closed. and Jason's dad actually went back in after me and Jason and Ted, you know, my sponsor from Taz Pinball, we went out to the car.
    150:34
    And Jason said, my dad's going to try to get us in. And I'm like, well, I don't know how he's going to do it. But he went in there and he said, your hours are posted until 1 a.m. and your kitchen closes at 1230. And so, you know, we haven't eaten all day. We want to be served. and he got them to let us in. So if I would have spent the extra five minutes arguing about, well, you know, I plunged an extra ball and maybe the light wasn't on. I don't know if it was or not. It was on. The light was on. Okay, so whatever. So, you know, if I would have tried to argue the point, then we may not have been able to eat dinner, and then it would have been McDonald's garbage. You know what I mean? Right. So I turned the game off so that there was no question to anybody's mind that, okay, it's over, let's do the trophy presentation so we can go eat, so we don't miss out, you know what I mean?
    151:29
    Because, like you said, at the beginning of this thing, Jim actually went over the whole thing and said, I've seen this happen once every tournament, that someone's going to punt someone's ball, right? You told everybody that at the beginning? Well, I just wanted to make sure he wasn't a liar, that's all. I mean, you know, I'm just being a nice guy. That's all. Yeah.
    151:48
    Well, because, like, you're right, because if you did shut it off, what's going to come of it? The ruling's already there in the books that that's the way it goes. Right. And I wasn't mad. I was just like, darn, you know, what a stupid mistake. Yeah. So, I mean, everybody was very happy how I handled it, you know, and, you know, I didn't get upset or anything. I was like, oh, well, that sucks, you know. Right. But now it's over. We got to get something to eat, you know.
    152:17
    Things are closing, so now that it's over, let's go. You know what I mean? Let's get the rest of this done and over so we can, you know, we can try to eat before they lock us out, which, like I said, it was pretty darn close. I knew it was going to be, you know, minutes away between getting a decent meal and not being able to eat at all. So, again, I didn't want to waste any time. So I turned the game off and that was it. But, you know, people have done that. Esther did that to me in the World Championship on F14 Tomcat when I had $17 million after two balls. You know, you look back and you say, well, I could have put my initials on. But, I mean, it's not a big deal. If somebody concedes and they turn the game off, like, I don't get offended by it, you know? Right, yeah. Some people say that, you know, that you should get a yellow card for turning the game off. No way. No, you're just basically forfeiting the game. You're forfeiting. Who cares? But, you know, Greg Pavarelli, I was on Funhaus in the first game with $36 million and a multi-ball where my jackpot was $8 million, and he hadn't even stepped up yet, and he just said, Eric, I'm done. You know, I concede on the game. So, like, he did it the right way, although I was still in the middle of playing. So, like, I would never shut the game off in the middle of, like, somebody else playing. No, you can't do that. No, that's bad for him. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know. It's something I've always done. I've always said, hey, man, nice job, you know. And then, you know, I gave him a hug and congratulated Jason, and that was it. It's like there was no hard feelings. Right. So it would have been nice to see what would have happened because, you know, I played Paragon twice, and I think I got 380 both times, which is a pretty good score. You know, he started out with 100,000, but Jason's very good at Paragon. It seemed like Jason and I were controlling the ball on that game a lot better than a lot of other people when I watched them play. Are you both as good as Jeff Blair on Paragon, though? Because he's got over 3 million on Paragon. Well, with extra balls on, right? Extra balls on, yep. I mean, didn't I get 2.7 on yours?
    154:28
    I think you did. I mean, I double rolled it plus, and yours wasn't the easiest, I'll tell you that. No, mine was actually rebuilt nice with a new old stock playfield, clear-coated, and played like a nice new game. So, you know, you really ought to put a finished ceiling down there, basically, you know. Put a finished ceiling? Yeah, you like that? Yeah. Someday. Someday, maybe. Someday. I'm going to move out of here before that happens. Yeah, you know, I think you told me 20 years ago you were moving out of there. Yeah, I keep trying. I'm saving my pennies. Yeah, good luck in this day and age saving any money. You know, it's working. I think there's going to be a housing crash coming real soon, so I'm getting ready for that. I mean, yeah, maybe I could use that because I need a cheap house to buy. But anyway.
    155:21
    Pinball pool for you there. Oh, yeah, yeah, you better bring that to Pinfest. Well, again, I don't even know what my pinball is going to look like next year because of what work's doing to me. I know. I hope that works. I'm going to have to take three weekends off a year. I can't switch here. Can't do this. Can't do that. Have to take holidays off on the holiday. It's like, really? Like, come on. Everybody else can do whatever they want, but whatever. Yeah. You know, it's a shame that, you know, all these rules are being put for me.
    155:53
    But, you know, so I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Hey, check this out. So here's a game I'm working on right now. What's that?
    156:02
    Hold on a second. Oh, yeah, look at that. Yep, yep, yep. That's a brand-new play film there. I see that. Oh, that looks nice.
    156:12
    Oh, yeah, that's going to – For a night rider. I just – I played Charlie's Angels up in the league last night. You know what? I think that's my Charlie's Angels. That's the one I did a while back. They bought it for me. Oh, at the asylum?
    156:25
    Yep. Oh, yeah. So I put six I want to say 650 on it. Nice. Something like that. But the tilt's very loose on it. I wasn't going crazy with it.
    156:40
    But I believe it has a stick. I don't think it has the bob on it. You know what? I'll tell you the secret to these System 1s. Especially especially with the Pascal board in them. What's that game behind you? Oh, that's a 1958 nickel game.
    157:04
    Oh, look at that. I don't remember. Like here. You plug it. You know? You put the nickel back and forth and try the other way to the bottom. Oh, sounds like one of those fun spot games I used to win when I was a kid. I'll take you on.
    157:30
    Except they were tokens instead of nickels. You were playing against a five-year-old. So what games do you have in the main room now? Oh, the main room. Okay, hold on. I'll give you a quick tour here. Yeah. All right, the main room.
    157:54
    We have 8-Ball Deluxe. I've been there forever. Has that 8-Ball Deluxe been in that corner for 15 years? A long time. Since I got the 21 million on it? I think so. Is that little piece of paper still in there that has my score? I think I burned that. Let's see.
    158:14
    Because remember, I rolled it twice. No, I just see Dr. Dave. Oh, my gosh, man. There's 3 million on it. Unbelievable. So I'm pretty sure. 21 million. Okay, 21 million. It might be here. Let's see. It's a little piece of paper that I put in there like 15 years ago when I did it. It's probably still there. I still have, you know, Brittany's still in the back glass, so she's still there. It's probably still there. Fathom?
    158:40
    Fathom, you got Blackjack EM, Rare Game. EM? Yeah. They only made 120 of these. Is that like the Blackjack? Yeah.
    158:49
    Same Blackjack, but an EM. Wow, I didn't even know they made that. Yeah, it's rare. I like Blackjack a lot. Yeah, you'll like to play me on this one. It's a fun table. I'll play you on all those. I have a really nice centaur. Yeah? With a nice new playfield that you won't be able to do that stupid trick on. Can you shat on it pretty well?
    159:14
    I don't know. Not that good of a shat, sir. Oh, Gorgar. Oh, my gosh. I would love to play in a tournament on those five games. Get a real nice Gorgar. Oh, my gosh. I would chat Gorgar. I would chat Centaur. I would crush Fathom. Blackjack and Eight Balls of Lux. Oh, my. I've got to find something that I can kick your ass on here. Yeah, good luck.
    159:39
    It's not upstairs, I'll tell you that. Hey, I'm gorgeous, Captain Fantastic, downstairs. Yeah, yeah, let's see that. Let's see. Yeah. Yeah, you're liking this one. We're going to make you do some exercise in here. Yeah, exactly. For a day down here a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Over to my other section. Do you still have the fun house? I do have the fun house. Yeah. Maureen wouldn't let you get rid of that, would she?
    160:08
    No, I wouldn't mind parting with it, but I don't know. Yeah, she likes it a lot. She likes it so, you know. It's a great game, you know. What are you going to do?
    160:23
    All right, baby. Let's go on here. Let's try this one. I'm going to unplug my stuff. All right. So this guy is real nice.
    160:33
    Like all my stuff, real nice. Make sure the insulation doesn't get in there. Right, no insulation. So a real nice play field. Oh, yeah. You know, beautiful. So, like, I noticed when you were playing that tired copy at the tournament, like, these pump bumpers really have power to them. I know. The thing will hit them. I know.
    160:59
    Yeah. Plenty of action. Yeah, I see that. Definitely, yeah. So I was inspired by watching you and Jason play this game. It's like, you know, I got to play a couple of balls this game and see if I can do the trick of the upper right flipper, hitting a little bit, like a light tap over to the left scissor flippers. And that was fun. It actually made the game more enjoyable to me, trying to do that. I'm surprised you haven't done that in the past. No, I never really thought of it. I used to always use that flipper to freaking wail on the drop targets.
    161:35
    No. I mean, you know, a lot of times on that Captain Fantastic, You hit the drop target and you didn't even get points. You know, the drop target went down, but you never got the 500 points.
    161:47
    Well, that's if the switch is unadjusted right, you can do that. Yeah. You've got to get a real check on these things to make sure things are cool. I mean, you know, for the most part, the games played pretty well, though. No, they did. 20 hours qualifying, you know. Yeah. I had a fun time playing his games, and it was nice, you know. And, again, he does a nice job. It's a lot of work bringing the stuff over there. Yeah. Nothing broke down, you know. You know, I mean, they were hauling games out until at least 3 in the morning, you know, if not later.
    162:25
    Oh, yeah. No, he puts in quite a lot of time on it. And I think he usually has more help, but I guess some of the help couldn't show up or something. He has more people to help himself. I know. For tech stuff, I think he was it for tech stuff. He didn't really have anybody else to help. Yeah, I know Cliff was helping out for a long time because I was down there, I think at like 2, 2.30 in the morning, you know, packing my stuff up. And I saw them down there. And so, you know, there were several guys that were helping out. But it took quite a long time to get everything out of there. I've offered in the past, though, I never really heard back from them, offered in the past to say, hey, dude, you want, you know, I can bring one of my games in the lineup, you know, to one less game you're going to bring, you know. Yeah.
    163:17
    He wants to do it all. He wants all his stuff, you know. Yeah. Hey, I mean, at least in pin fest, you know, you can bring your game and they even pay to do it. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Which is good. So, I mean, like I said, I don't know what pinball is going to look like, you know, unless I win the lottery.
    163:38
    But, you know, and I got Ted that you met, Taz Pinball, that sponsors me and, you know, pays my way and everything. And it's like now I can hardly play any pinball tournaments. Why don't you work for him? They don't have to work again. Just work. What does he do for a living, you know? I don't know what company he actually owns, you know. I don't think what I, you know, I don't think I would know what to do at all. Well, your skill set wouldn't match up to what he's doing. Right, right, exactly. So, I mean, I think if it did, you know, he would have said, oh, Eric, well, just come work for me and then we'll. But, you know, it's funny. We did that Beat Eric Stone game show.
    164:21
    Okay. Which he, you know, he put on. And so it was five weeks of flip frenzy, and the top four point winners in those tournaments got to play a trivia contest. And then they did a trivia contest, and they had challenges that they could earn advantages over me. And so the winner of the trivia contest, you know, played one game with me for $500. so of course I won't say what happened because you know we just did it last Tuesday and he's going to put it up on YouTube and you know and what not under Taz Pinball but he wants to do this like in different places you know because his main goal is to you know get the younger generation and get non-competitive players into pinball and you know you put $500 of your own money and then if you lose you still get $100 And I told him, I said, if nobody wins, then the next time you should roll it over to $1,000, you know? Yeah. And you just keep rolling it over until somebody beats me, you know what I mean? So how many people participated in this? How many players did you get for this thing? Well, there was five flip frenzies. And I don't know, there was probably 20-something or so. There were probably different players in each flip frenzy. You had to play in three different ones. And the top three in net wins. So you know how flip frenzies work. If you go 10 and 5, your net is plus 5. So, you know, they counted every time you played. And whatever your plus whatever was, the top four contestants got to play in this trivia contest. So there were four pinball machines, and most of them were bands. and the trivia questions were based on the bands of the pinball machines or pinball itself. And then there were challenges like, you know, start a mode on Foo Fighters. And if you can do that in 60 seconds, then you get to pick some sort of advantage. Like, I plunged my first ball. I can only play one ball for two minutes.
    166:38
    You know, I tell people the rules of the game as they're playing and what to shoot at. they get an extra ball, they play four balls, and I play three. You know, just advantages like that that would help them out. And so, yeah. So it was pretty cool, you know. It was a lot of fun. You know, it took a few hours to get it all put together. But, you know, I mean, we had a good time with it. So, you know, I wouldn't mind doing it again. And like I said, he wants to kind of take it on the road that whenever we go to, different events, like Pentastic or whatever. He does the game show. So I think the next game show we're going to do at the Batcave.
    167:23
    He'll probably have qualifying at the District Eat and Play, which is in Oviedo, Florida. And then have the finals on one game at the Batcave.
    167:35
    Which is in Lakeland. That's pretty cool, you know? So I guess we'll see how it goes. This Pentastic came up so fast this time around, and I was trying to – the months flew by, but I was trying to line up, and I had actually some good support to do a tournament before the tournament. I do – you know, like on – Pentastic starts on a Thursday. I've seen him do a Wednesday night. as a place on the street here I'd bring a lot of my games to have a classics tournament which I'd run it and do the whole thing I even had backhand pinball had Mark I had him say oh yeah I'll help you dude so he was even going to bring his rig and so forth and do it so I was almost going to do it but then the problem is like someone like Jim has done it so much he knows exactly how to run it he has experience I don't have the experience to run it. I mean, I know how to run it. You know, I know how to run tournaments. But you'd be in it, though, so it'd be tough for you if you were going to be in it. Well, it doesn't matter. You know how many tournaments that people are in and they run at the same time? You know, I mean, you could always call yourself the tournament director and me the assistant. And whenever there's a problem, you just come over to me and, you know, I'll say what needs to be done. And so maybe next year, well, like I said, I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, hopefully I'm going to be able to go. Hopefully I'll be able to somehow figure a way to get off of work. I don't know what's going to happen. But it's definitely one of those that I want to go to because I can get back to work, you know, for Sunday night so that I don't have to take, you know, Saturday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night off. I only have to take two shifts off. So, you know, I'm planning on going there next April. and I guess we'll just see what happens, you know. But, you know, we could definitely do something on Wednesday night if you want. Yeah. And, you know, again, you know, you just have to, first of all, it's how many games do you want to bring. And based on how many games you bring, then I can set up whatever kind of tournament you want. You know what I mean? I mean, if there's only, like, three or four games, it's going to be very limited. Yeah, no, it would be more like at least six. I'm probably being between six and eight games. Okay. And are there going to be games there already? No.
    170:10
    You need more than that, huh? So even if you have eight games, say you have 64 players. Right. Eight times eight is 64. Yeah. Like eight times four is 32. The best you could do is basically 32 players on eight games. Okay. So if you want this to be like a pre-Fantastic tournament where people are going to come, you can't just have 32 players. What's the minimum? What do you need for players? How many do you think?
    170:43
    I'd say at least 64. Okay. Yeah, I mean, what I would say is if there was a place that already had some games and they let you bring your games too, it wouldn't just be a classic tournament, but it would be a good mix. And you could do a four-player match play, 7-5-3-1. You could do, you know, eight to ten rounds, and then do either a four-person or an eight-person final. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But basically, however many games you have times four people, that's like the max. And that's saying that no games go down. So if you have 16 games and you do 64 players and then one of the games goes down, great, you're screwed. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, exactly. That's 15 games times four is only 60. So you really want to have an extra game. I mean, it'd be ideal to have 20 games. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Even if you brought 10 and there were 10, say there were 10 moderns, what you could do is. I just came up with some ideas I talked to Maureen about it and I got a couple friends who have games and they could bring a couple games if I bring six they could probably bring maybe two a piece we could get to ten, would ten be enough? I still think you need at least sixteen because well Jim just said only fourteen there right?
    172:14
    right but that's a qualifying that's an you know, herb style or ticket style qualifying. You're not going to do anything like that. You're either going to do a three strike, a four strike, or a match play. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And a match play is going to be worth the most amount of points, and you're going to be able to do it on the least amount of games. So, like, again, if you did a two-player match play, that would be no good because 10 games you'd only be able to have 20 players. Right. So you want to do a four-player match play, and so you're really only going to max it out based on how many games you have. So if you have 10 games, you're only going to get 40 players maximum. Because if you have 44, what are the other four people going to do? They're going to be sitting around on their butts just waiting. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, yep.
    173:11
    You can't really do it that way. So, I mean, you really need to have however many games you have. You need to do four players times, you know, however many games you have. Because if I did this, you know, I could, like, I'm trying to think how many hours. If I was going to do it like the way that Pentaxi did it, qualifying and then the finals right after qualifying, there's not enough time. Well, yeah, I mean, you would have to start the tournament way, way early on Wednesday. Like 9 a.m. or something. well yeah I mean again people are working right you know what people want is something the night before the night before a quickie thing a little bit yeah I mean you know Pintastic doesn't open until what 6 at night on Thursday yeah you could almost do like some sort of qualifying Wednesday and then do the finals on Thursday like you could do something like that like open up open up qualifying, how late is the establishment open that you're thinking of putting your games in? I think they're open until midnight.
    174:19
    Well, that's not too bad. I mean, and when do they open during the day? I want to say hold on, let me just see. It's a local brew pub that... So they're probably not open until later in the day. Later in the day, yeah. See, you would want, like, say you did qualifying from when they open up until midnight, okay, on Wednesday. Okay. And then did the finals Thursday at 11 o'clock in the morning. You would want to get it done, Dave, before Pintastic started. I just found out the hours. On Thursday, they're open from 4 to 10. Yeah. Oh, that's awful. What about Wednesday? 4 to 10? 4 to 10. Yeah. See, you're not even going to be able to do anything.
    175:21
    You're not even going to be. Friday and Saturday are open until 11. Yeah. So, basically, everybody would have to be out of there by 10. Yeah. That sucks. Yeah. You're not going to get a big tournament in there.
    175:36
    I hate to say it. Yeah. I mean, unless you were friends with the owner and worked on something like, hey, after hours, have a private party there after hours. Well, I mean, just extend the tournament until midnight, but then the next day they would have to open up at like 11 in the morning or maybe noontime so you could hold the finals.
    176:03
    Otherwise, if you wanted to do like a four-player match play that started at 5 p.m. and set it up to where it would be done at midnight, then you could do that. You know what I mean? But again, 4 to 10, you're not going to get many people. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't think you're going to get many people. When does Jim start his thing on Thursday? He's talking Thursday, right, or Friday? 6 o'clock at night now. At night, okay. Yeah. So, I mean, the tournament would have to be, I mean, how far is the place from Pentastic? Not far at all. It's like maybe 10 minutes tops. So, I mean, the tournament would have to be done before 5 p.m. on Thursday. Yeah. For people to want to do it because they're going to want to get to Pentastic, get their badges, get everything they need. Right, right. Pedal into their hotel room and then get there at 6, before 6, so that they could be ready to start qualifying.
    177:12
    You know what I'm saying? So you could either do, you know, a long qualifying session on Wednesday night.
    177:22
    See, I do know, I have another option, too. I was trying to keep it local to keep it right nearby, Pintastic. I have another option. So I got a buddy of mine who owns an arcade, but he's like 30 minutes away.
    177:36
    I mean, it might be doable, you know? Yeah. Because I've seen, like, you know, three-play Florida is in Orlando, and, you know, it was 45 minutes away. We had Jeff Teola's had his pinball across the world, or I'm not sure what it was, pinball across America, those tournaments. And so, you know, that was 45 minutes away. And so, you know, people traveled the 45 minutes. You know what I'm saying? Okay. So, what, does he have pinballs at the arcade? He does. Yeah, he's got a bunch of basically late 80s, early 90s stuff. Oh, wow. Okay. How many games do you have in there? Oh, he's got a bunch. I'd say probably, I want to say 20. and what hours does he open Wednesdays and Thursdays? Let's see. I'll find out right now.
    178:35
    I think he's open late. What town is it in? It's in Worcester. Oh, closed at 2 a.m. Oh, look at that.
    178:48
    So, I mean, and what time do they open? They open at, okay, so So Thursday will be 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.? No, they don't open until 5? 5. Now, I might be able to – What about Wednesday?
    179:05
    Same. Okay, so – But I might be able to finagle something with him to open earlier, maybe something.
    179:15
    Maybe. I don't know. I mean, it almost seems like doing some sort of match play from 5 o'clock until 1 a.m. on Wednesday night would be probably the best. I just don't think a two-day thing is going to work. Not going to work. A match play is the way to go if it's going to do it. Well, another thing, it could be match play, even though a small amount of people, but if you sell tickets ahead of time, just like these clubs are doing, the clubs sell tickets ahead of time because they have very limited slots. to do what you do, right? And then they sell out and get put on a waiting list. Well, right. Well, that's what you would do. You would put, you know, 80 player, like if they had 20 games there, you know, you could say 80 players, four-player match play.
    180:07
    You could say the last match starts no later than 11 p.m. and then you have finals. So maybe you take the top eight. Right. And you do a three-player, everything's 7-5-3-1. And as long as the owner is okay, maybe sticking around after one to like 1-30, maybe two at the very, very latest. Yeah. And you know the guy that owns it? I do. And I know he does open on Friday night. He doesn't open until 2. Right, right. Well, I mean, he could close the rest of the place down. He can. Oh, yeah. Just keep the pinballs open until the tournament's over. So what I would do is I would do check-in, you know, see if the guy will let us come in at, like, 4. Okay. You know, and do check-in at 4.30. Tournament starts promptly at 5. And then we just do match play. And we do four-player match play. and we just do that for six hours. So once 11 o'clock hits, we won't start any new matches. You see what I mean? Yeah. And then we'll take the top eight and we'll do four-person, you know, 7-5-3-1 and, you know, the high qualifier gets to pick the game or position and then the eight will get drilled down to four and then the four, it'll be whatever. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Okay. And then we can figure out, you know, what prize money, you know, how much, you know, the entry is going to be. Maybe it could be like $30, $30 a person, $25, $30 a person. Yeah. and I mean I like all of usually so it may be Coindrop is it Coindrop there? it's not Coindrop, no pay one price get in play whatever so it's yeah I think you pay like 10 bucks to get in play whatever you want so that's good though right?
    182:23
    well it's good for him so I guess what we could do is charge $30 or $35. Well, charge $40. $10 goes to the arcade. $30 goes to the tourney. I want to get something out of this, too. Like every other tournament they get for their effort or whatever, they get something out of it, too. Well, we could get $5.
    182:53
    So basically it could be $40. $10 goes to them. five bucks goes to us for running the tournament and then $25 goes in the prize fund. So if there's 80 players that's $2,000 in the prize fund and then you and I would split $400 for running it. Right. Well, I wouldn't mind a little bit more for myself because I've got to bring the games and stuff and we're in tournament. I wasn't even thinking about bringing any games. Just play under 20. Just play all their games. I see. Yeah. Well, I was going to throw a couple of my classics in there as well, just for something different.
    183:37
    Well, I mean, you could, but you said he's got 80s games in there, right? He does, but they're late 80s. You know, they're basically Williams. It's all Williams stuff. There's nothing that's – Oh, all right. Well, there's no campaign. Okay, well, do you want to do 300 for you and 100 for me if you bring a couple games? Yeah, something like that. Sure. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. And then, of course, you and I won't have to pay to get in the tournament. You know what I'm saying? But if you do bring more games, then we can have the cutoff higher. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. Yep. Meaning, you know, so, yeah, so do $40.
    184:17
    I mean, I don't know if that's going to be too high for people. We may not get 80 players at $40. You know what I'm saying? well the tournament right now when they do this card thing they're paying $100 pretty much all the cards they put in right? for a tournament? no no it's $20 a card right but they're putting in 5 cards a lot of times but they're looking at getting $2,400 if they win you know what I'm saying? this one here is paying out 8 places so if 80 players let's see, if 80 players times 25 is $2,000 prize fund, you could have first place pay 1, 2, 3, 4 5, you could do like $750 for first $400 for second, $300 for third 200 for fourth, 150 for fifth, 100 for sixth, 75 for seventh, and 75 for eighth. So, just do – so, yeah, so basically you could win up to like 750.
    185:39
    Yeah, I thought that's a good ratio, 40 bucks to win 750. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's not bad. Even if you're going to get 75 out of it, you're going to make 35 bucks. Now, if your buddy was willing to either add money to the prize or only charge $5 instead of $10, we could lower it to $35, which I think will be – because it's the first number people look at, the three in $35. Right. Yeah, it's true. So, like, whether it's $30 or $35, they're not going to see a difference. Right. Same thing in weather with temperatures, you know? like 40 versus 39. 39 feels a lot colder than 40. True, yeah. So same thing with the prize money. Don't forget, we're going to have to give a dollar for every player to the IFPA. Okay. You know what I'm saying? For the state. So $80 of the prize fund will go to the state, right? A dollar per player. Now, why? Because otherwise you don't get the points? Is that why? Right. Yeah, yeah. And people aren't going to play if it's not IFPA sanctioned. Okay. You know what I mean? So anyway, yeah, I think that's good. All right. I'll talk to him and see what he thinks. I'll just kind of throw it out there to him. Yeah, yeah, see what he thinks. But I should get going.
    187:13
    Unless we have anything else. I'd like to see you and it sounds like you and Jason, he's a really good contender for you it sounds like he's of all the people you've played thus far in your career he's pretty much up there yeah, I mean I finished higher at Pinfest he finished higher at Pintastic he finished higher in Germany but again, not by much that's why his rating and my rating are in the 2100s and everybody else is way way below that, you know what I mean? Because our consistency is pretty good. Right, right. I'd love to see you two a nice full battle royale with no problems, you know? Right, yeah, exactly. That'd be good. I want to see the Paragon match. I want to see like a Rocky II Paragon match. Yeah, that would be something, huh? It would. You do it on my Paragon. and both of you come over here and war my Paragon. Oh, yeah.
    188:18
    I mean, if you want to put the money up, that's fine with me. I'll never complain about that. I'll have your buddy stake it. Your buddy there, he's got some dough. He can stake it. Oh, boy, I know.
    188:32
    Well, yeah, so it's been great talking to you and talking about Pintastic and the wrap-up and how the tournament went and so forth and talking tournaments and talking how to maybe make it a little fun tournament right in front of Pintastic next time around. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I look forward to it, you know. I'll make some inquiries, see what I can do to make something happen, you know. All right. That sounds good. Cool. Well, you have a good night. Yep. And everybody be thankful and stay blessed out there and be in health. Yeah, God bless. Good talking to you. God bless you. Thank you. All right. Bye.
    189:13
    Now you know the rest of the story. Thank you. They posted the next round for the tournament. What do we put? Yeah, yeah. Show us how it's done. Turn it off! Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave!
    190:18
    Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Right. But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. Jorge. This joke is not only stupid, he's a moron. Besides, I heard that. Thanks for the compliment. Hasta la vista, baby. Thank you.