All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mythic syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 565 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's episode, I am so happy to let you know that that's right, the founders of the Poor Man's Pinball Network, And of course, the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. Drew and Ian are going live tonight for the first time in a long time. I don't know how long it's been. I know we had the return of the Drew and Ian show at the end of last year and the start of this year, which is great. Can't wait to hear more of those. And I'm guessing this is basically the continuation of that, episode three, I guess. But really excited for that. That's going to be right over on their YouTube channel. I'm just going to bring it up here now so I don't make any mistakes. Yeah, it's just like you think it would. Poor Space Mans, apostrophe S, I guess, if you're worried about that kind of thing. Pinball Podcast, that's right. There's only 51 subs, so let's get some more subs on here, of course. They don't go live too often. So, boom, I subscribed live. 52. Go over there and subscribe to them, because once you're subscribed to them, you'll get a little notification, you'll know when they go live, and you never know what Drew and Ian are going to do. so um what else are we going to talk about on today's show we are also going to be talking about that's right i got a little bit of uh uh i won't call it hate mail i got one that specifically was not hate mail which i loved which i'm going to talk about later um not later today but later another day today though i did want to address um i'll call i'll call them kevin uh i don't want to say who it is uh per se but basically they mentioned that episode 360 is unlistenable and I blather on for three hours. And I completely agree. Now, to be fair, when you do 600 episodes of something, they're not all going to be good. They're not all going to be good. I mean, I love Back to the Future, but we've all seen the third of the trilogy, okay? It's fine. It is what it is. But it is not the masterpiece that the first two movies are, let's be honest. And even number two, even though it looks cooler, is just not quite as good of storytelling as number one. The original, the OG, is always best. In my particular case, my podcast probably peaked around episode 350 to episode 450, in which case you can go back and listen to those, even though they're not very relevant right now. However, I am going to go out of my way to continue to try to make the show better, which means that I'm going to attempt to go off topic slightly less often and leave, like, personal stories for the end of the show. That way, if you're someone who doesn't like that part of it, you just stop listening. That being said, I've got to do four awesome interviews. three of the four people I met of course at Nationals at D82 the holy grail of pinball meccas in the entire world well I haven't been to Europe so I don't know or Australia but we'll see as far as I know in North America D82 is the mecca and I can say without a lie now that I've been back for almost a month I can tell you that I want to go back and do pinmasters every single solitary year I don't care if I get in because that is the one time and place you can guarantee you're going to play with the gods of pinball and if you're anything like me and you probably are because you're listening to the nerdiest podcast in all pinball, you absolutely love getting to hang out with those people. Am I right? Or am I right? I'm also going to talk a little bit about the Ontario Open, which I leave for in just four short days. There's also like too many emergencies that kind of happened, but I'll leave those, of course, closer to the end. Everyone is okay. Let's just say that. I don't want to clickbait anyone. I was going to name this show like Emergency Surgery, but everybody is okay. Everything is all right. Everything has worked out. I'm going to get into details of both of those emergencies, both of those emergencies required first responders of whom I'm very, very, very, very thankful for. And first off-rails of the day, little Orby Jr. yesterday, have to give him a quick shout out. I spent the entire day in Turo watching a whole bunch of, so he plays badminton, loves badminton. I think he likes basketball a hell of a lot more than that, but he likes playing badminton a lot, and he's actually very good at it. He happens to be very tall for a kid his age. He's only 15 years old, and he's 6'1 already. He towers over his dad. I used to be 5'11 1⁄2". I'm down to about 5'9". I swear to God, maybe 5'8". Like, I am shrinking every day. I'm keeping my hairline. Thank God. That's important. But anyways, got to go watch Owen. And two weeks ago, he, of course, played in his, he had to win for his school. First of all, it was very competitive. Only one person gets to go from his school because of the size of the school for his age grouping from like grade nines and grade tens. So he managed to win the spot for his school. And then he went to the regionals. And at regionals, he managed to go 5-0 and beat everybody else. Thankfully, you know, he had some tough competition, but he managed to win that one. And then he went to the districts. And that was yesterday. and he had to get top two of the top six players, two from each of the closest counties who won their regionals, right? So he ends up being three and one, so three wins, one loss. The guy he lost who was one of the, I think, top two ranked guys in all Nova Scotia and has been playing for many years. He plays offseason as well. Owen only plays badminton. He only really seriously plays badminton for maybe two or three months a year, which is part of maybe the issue why, you know, he didn't beat this gentleman. But this kid, I don't want to take away from this kid. He's an incredible kid. His parents played for years. You know, he had on thousands of dollars of equipment, smoked Owen. But in the very last game, he was playing another kid who was 3-1, and whoever between them won got to win and, you know, go on to represent the province out of those four counties or three counties or whatever. So he ends up barely, barely, barely. The kid is up 20-18, but then he comes back and beats him 20-20. Owen, that was incredible that I got to be there. I'm so thankful that I don't have to have a 40 hour a week job because I may or may not have got the day off work. I know there was a ton of parents there who did take the time off work and thank them for doing that because obviously that costs them, you know, even more. But it was great to be there. It was great to get to watch the whole thing. Owen had told me like, you know, don't be taking a lot of pictures. Don't be cheering too loud. There's all these instructions your kids give you when you're at a game watching them. But But so now Owen is one of the top eight out of a million people in Nova Scotia. He's one of the top eight going to provincials. So he knows he's kind of like me going to nationals. I knew I wasn't going to do that well, but I was just excited to be on the ride. He's the same way. He knows he's probably going to go out first round, if not second round. But even if he gets you first round, he's basically top four in Nova Scotia, which is just incredible. And cheers to you, Owen. I salute you. That was crazy. He had some rallies that were upwards of 30 times going back and forth. And, like, I don't mean gently tapping. I mean, like, smashing, smashing, smashing back and forth. Incredible. So fun to watch. Had to give that quick shout-out to Owen. I had to go off topic briefly. I'm sorry, guys. See, I've done it already today. What else are we going to be talking about? I have been excited for this for a long time. For years and years and years, I was a hardcore punk rock guy, and then I actually got into metal for a while, and then I bounced around and listened to a mixture of, like, it doesn't matter. But for years, I did not love pop music. And just in the last few years, somewhere around when I turned 40, not only did my body start falling apart, I have pains and bones of my back that I didn't know existed, and my knees, and my hips, and my ankles, and everything else. And this jerk over here, who used to be a bit of an ageist, has now become the same old guy yelling on the lawn that he used to make fun of. But, oh my God. See? I went off topic, and I shouldn't have gone off topic. Let me just get right into this. This is what we ought to talk about here, right now. We got to talk about sponsors. I was talking about how I go off topic too much, like I did in episode 360. And I realized that many people didn't get to the end of the episode where I thanked all my awesome sponsors for the Nationals. And since I'm leaving for the Ontario Open in four days, I have to pull a Drone in and throw all my sponsors at the front. So let's do that really quick. I'm going to do it in less than a minute. I'm going to try. Here we go. gold sponsors phantom tilt pinball podcast go listen to it it's awesome um i'm almost caught up i love it i love hearing the perspective of like some newer pinball people he's kind of he's been buying pinball machines for a little bit of time uh him and kimba his partner kimba she's also on the show most of the time even though he's gone solo uh you know before as well uh he just mostly did a live stream so go over to phantom tilt pinball on facebook and make sure you like and follow them there because he did a really cool live stream and unboxing of getting don's pinball podcast stuff watch that because he's going to be opening another package coming from angry alpaca coffee and tea and orby and my wife and i and also pinball nerds podcast we got some awesome swag going he's probably going to hopefully do a live stream for that as well so go over there and like and subscribe he is our gold level sponsor as well as fast pinball you i don't even have to tell you guys you know that many many many of the best homebrews made in the last few years have all used fast pinball go over like them on facebook go read and watch some of their cool videos uh talking about what all their software does and everything else that you can get from them and all the help they provide and all that kind of stuff go check it out fast pinball aaron everyone over there thank you thank you thank you so much silver sponsors include antonio Verduzco. Of course, Drew. And I'm going to lump Ian in there. I think Ian was originally a bronze, but Ian, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, you get the bump because together, Drew, you've got to put Drew and Ian together. Together, they're a hell. They're almost in gold. They almost become a gold sponsorship. So tonight at 9pm Central Time, go over to the Poor Men's Pinball Podcast and watch Drew and Ian live. You'll see me there in chat. I'll probably be under Hummingbird Homestead because I don't actually have like a Pinball Nerds Podcast YouTube channel that I use or post to or can like, you know, comment from. But anyways, I'll be in chat there. I'll be there. Like I told, like I said on the Poor Man's Pinball Facebook page, go like that, by the way, if you haven't. Poor Man's Pinball Podcast fan page, I believe it's called. Go like that one if you haven't. No, you can't join the tribe members exclusive page. I'm sorry. You have to be invited to be a tribe member. And who knows? Watch live. Maybe they'll induct a brand new tribe member tonight. You never know. You never know. I have no clue if they're doing it. I have no insider information, okay? I don't know, but that would be great. Then we're going to go on to our bronze level, sorry, silver level sponsors, Antonio, Drew and Ian, and then bronze level. We got the Michaels, okay? First, Michael Williams, as well as, he's a tribe member, right? Or tribe member of Jason? I think he's a tribe member. And then we have Michael Henriksen. So thank you to the Michaels. Then we have Gene Pegg. Then we have Ari Jones. Thank you. Also a fellow tribe member, Ari. Thank you. Shout out. And then another tribe member, Stephen Silver. That's right. of P3 Multimorphic and recently the designer of the world famous, everybody's loving it from what I hear, everyone who plays it, even pinball podcasters who normally don't even go for P3, I hear them saying they didn't mind it or they liked it. So go play a Princess Bride and decide for yourself. I don't want to say it's incredible. It looks incredible. If it shoots half as good as it looks and they got, you know, the rad mech with the cliffs and just, it's magic happening. It's a 1990s world under glass shit happening all over again. Crap, I wasn't supposed to swear. I'm sorry. Oh my God. Not safe for work, Orby. All right. Also want to thank Jason Forbes. He's also ordered lots of coffee before as well. Jason, I really appreciate that. I will let you know, Jason, and thank you. Big, big thank you. I guess they're basically bronze sponsors or silver or by now gold sponsors. But Dan the Man, another tribe member and his awesome wife, Rachel, they just put in order for five freaking bags of Bean Me Up so thank you so much for that they basically bought up all our Bean Me Up there is still lots of our other medium roast the force up on angryalpaca.com or sorry just type angry alpaca into google because it's angry alpaca squarespace it's really long don't worry about it either go onto facebook and hit angry alpaca and click the purchase now button or just say Orby how the hell do I buy some of your coffee send me a Facebook link. Albert Agar on Facebook if you don't have me. Yeah, so feel free to do that. We have restocked. We've got our shows coming up. So Jason Forbes, thank you so much for that purchase. Stephen Silver, you rock. Keep doing your thing over there. And then Dr. John, who you would have heard at the start of the show, coming in with some of the Aussie instruments there. Dr. John, of course. Thank you so much, Dr. John, for that generous donation. And there was a couple other people too, but those are just our top three levels. I wanted to go through those quickly. And if somehow, someway I missed you, let me know, because it could be possible that maybe you transferred me money outside of sending money to angryalpacatee at gmail.com, which is where someone, if they wanted to donate, could. However, I'm not asking for donations for myself today, but we'll get back to that later. So today I'm also going to be doing the top five women, I would say more so modern pop stars but I'm also going to do an all-time pop stars list so I'm going to save that for closer to the end but for right now what I want to talk about is going back to the Ontario Open so many of us pinball nerds and I'm not going to spend too much time on tournament pinball because someone else did mention that they don't want to hear or maybe the same complainer said that they don't want to hear a lot about it to be fair the person did send a very fair email. They weren't like, they were being constructive criticism. And I get it was probably unlistenable. You have to remember when I was about to do episode 360, people have been waiting weeks to hear from me. And I was getting this pressure of like people who would help me out and sponsor me were like, well, where's the pod about what happened? And then on the flip side of that, I was like, my voice isn't working. I'm not getting along with my wife very well. It's hard for me to get back into home life here and being a homesteader. And, you know, I had so much fun out there on the road and I saw what like bachelor life was like again and remember being in my, you know, early twenties and parting it up and was kind of, it was, it was hard to readjust. I know you're thinking it's just a couple of weeks, but I don't know, man. I don't know. I've never, I've never, that's the first time like since I was a teenager for like two and a half weeks, I didn't really have to be a dad. I mean, by the time Hayden's 20, he's almost like, you know, he's almost 20. So he's basically, you know, well he is a man himself right here in Canada. You can vote at 19. You can legally drink alcohol. You can purchase marijuana. what can't you do? I'm trying to think of what you can't do. I think it very hard to get your full G by 19 unless you started right at 16 years old like the day you turned 16 like to drive cars But anyways very excited to go back to Ontario I'm leaving on the 4th. And although I teased, I might mention some of this for the end. I just wanted to be open and honest with you guys. My best friend, and only because he has made it now publicly social, my best friend, Melvis, I'll call him because that's what I do call him. he unfortunately um almost had his appendix burst and was rushed to the hospital and he was not only going to be my ride to and from the Ontario Open we were going to split a hotel room together in fact we had it down to only a couple rooms we were going to stay at and also the main reason I was going back was because the last time I was back there unfortunately um his he had a family member who passed away so he was very very very busy with that we didn't get to hang out much and I based and the times we did hang out, it was kind of sad. So he said to me, Albert, I don't want you to do your entire coffee season. He knows that, you know, we start at the markets at May 2-4, and I go right until October. Then October, I might have a couple weeks off, and then I go hard again all the way till the new year, right, to the end of Christmas. So that's kind of like my big, big season. And this year, I'm taking over being, I'm Mr. Manager. I feel like I'm in Arrested Development. I'm going to be the market manager for essentially the assistant the assistant to the regional manager and, uh, I'm going to be running. We're probably going to be at minimum two, if not three markets slash shows per weekend. So it's going to be a very busy summer. Uh, I may not be able to podcast as often, but you know me, I can't stay away from the mic. If some big news happens, I mean, it's been a slow news week. So I will say this, there's not that much pinball content today, but that's because it's just been a real slow, not even just news week, but like a couple of weeks. Like when was the last time we even had a new game? When was the last, like, like Jaws? that was a while ago. I still am loving Jaws and everyone who plays every new updated code update they seem to like Jaws more and more and more. I was shocked to see it's down to like, you know, it's not as high as you would think for an Elowen pin on pin side, let's just say that. Not that pin side is everything, for sure. Sorry guys, don't want to lose my voice on you here again, but I am going back to the Ontario Open. I'm excited to see Joe Chervino of course of the Pinball Degenerates I'm excited to see Mike Dimas of course of Pinball Shenanigans my old tournament director Julie Dorsers, Ian Haywer of course who makes games for P3 I'm excited hopefully I'll get a chance to at least chat with him a little bit about that we don't have to do a formal interview or anything but it'd be nice to just because since the last time I met him I saw him he started this whole thing with doing Birdwatcher and working on all the other games and stuff so that's really cool. Jeff Teolas, I haven't seen him since pre-COVID. He's probably going to give me a new game and be like, stop talking about me on the stupid show, Orby. I don't know. I have no clue. But no, it'll be nice to see Jeff. It'll be nice just to see how my pinball skills are, because I know when I used to play with all these same people in Ontario, I would be like the bottom 20, bottom 10, bottom 20%. That's where I think I'll be. I'm hoping. I surprised myself. And like, I would be just utterly shocked if one of the tournaments, probably not the main, but like, I know there's a classics tournament on the Friday and then there's, um, you know, finals for classics is Saturday morning, which, Hey, if you don't make finals, at least you can party a bit harder the Friday night. Right. What I do love is it's BYOB. And I'll tell you why, because when I go back to Ontario, I love you East coast. I love you Maritimes. I consider myself at least part Nova Scotian by now, even if the old Nova Scotianers, what are they called? Nova Scotian even if the Scotiers don't consider me uh partially Scotian I consider myself a little so just one percent can I be one percent Nova Scotian but the craft beer selection in Ontario is incredible it might not be as good as like Chicago or like California or even New York City but for Canada I would say probably the best scene especially like Montreal has some incredible craft breweries just making some awesome stuff but I'm saying to just walk into a liquor store like a random liquor store and just see the amount of Berliner Weisses or sours or IPAs or low ABV beers which is I'm I'm all about the sours right now so I'll be going in there for like I'll probably just be doing like water beer food the entire time I'm there so hopefully y'all don't think I'm alcoholic so they get to hang out with it the the good Ontario open but the cool part is it's not just the Ontario Open that's happening that's giving away this Pemberg ticket. It is a multitude. So if you did not snag yourself a Pemberg ticket, let me just say as someone who attended the last Pemberg, it would be my freaking pleasure, pleasure to get to attend the first Pemberg back. So I would love to do that. But if you have not snagged yourself a ticket, go look for one of these satellites, okay? Because wow, like wouldn't it be great to get, yeah, Especially if you're newer to pinball and you never got to play in one before. Because then maybe your expectations aren't quite as high. Because I guess there will probably be a couple negative Nancys and Debbie Downers who will be like, This pinball isn't as good as the last one. Yeah, it's probably not going to be. There's not going to be a quarter million people coming to the world's largest... For like, for four days, the intergalactic... What was it called? The intergalactic arcade or whatever that was there. It became the largest arcade, not just in the world. but in our galaxy, guys. So, like, it was incredible. And then you had 1,000 pinball players in one tournament and plus a whole bunch of other pinball tournaments. The Intergalactic, sorry, is the other pinball tournament there. I forget the name of the arcade show at the convention center in Philly. And I apologize. But, or Philly. I always do that. In Pittsburgh. I don't know why I confuse the two. So, anyways, I'm very excited to go to the Ontario Open. I'm also very excited to see everybody there. And I am going to attempt to because I understand where everyone's coming from. First of all, anyone who was excited to hear about how my thing went didn't care a month later, a good chunk of people. And at the same time, it wasn't relevant, like talking about who won or, you know, so it wasn't timely. So something new that I'm going to do, I'm not suggesting I'm going to end the podcast, but I might podcast a little bit less often and I am making it official here because I need to be edited, because I go off topic too often, because really my three-hour pinball podcast probably could have been 30 minutes and had all the same relevant information. And I don't want to waste your time, and I'm probably speaking too fast to even fast forward. So what I will say is that I don't want to talk about why and how and when, but I am going through some personal stuff that's going to make it so that that type of podcast most likely never happens again, so I can kind of focus in a bit better and deal with my obscenely off-the-charts ADHD, among a couple other things I probably struggle with. But instead of using that as an excuse or a crutch, I'm going to use it to say it's time for me to go get probably some good help and try to figure out if I need to be on drugs or, I don't know, counseling, something. Because it's got to the point that my ADHD has caused me to, you know, just in many ways, shapes, and forms of various things in my life, not enjoy life as much as I could. okay so for all of you if you ever wanted to hear a lunatic i don't want to say that because a lot of people deal with uh if you want to ever hear someone rant and rave and go off topic a million times and never finish one complete thought go over there and listen to my joker brain brain episode 360 but if you don't ever listen to it i don't care and that's all right because i mentioned all my sponsors in today's show which is really cool so i'm excited to go back to the ontario open i will not i will not be newly medicated yet i still have to get in to see my doctor but I'm going to be back in Ontario for a week if you are in around the Ontario area and you want to try to meet up with me I'll be in Mississauga from like Thursday till Sunday night I'll be in Niagara probably that same night Monday which you know I don't think I have too many listeners up there but I will be in London Ontario like Monday well four days from now like Monday the 22nd until the Thursday so if you live in around there and you want to try to meet up with me, feel free to reach out. I have a limited time. I don't have a car, but you know, worst case scenario, we can meet up and go for coffee and I can judge all the other baristas. No, I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that. Yes, I would. But I can judge the coffee on how good it is or how good it isn't. And over and above that, maybe we can go shoot some, I was going to say shoot some pool. I don't know why I was thinking of pool. I do love playing pool and I used to play in a pool league. I did not have a sharpshooting eight ball in the pocket podcast, but that would have been fun. See, I've gone off topic again. Okay, before I get into my list, I'm excited to see everybody in Ontario. If I had to guess, I would say there's a tiny chance I snuck into last place. I want to throw out a prediction. If I play very well and I'm not super stressed and everything goes la-di-da frickin' perfect, maybe I sneak into like the last or second last place of classics. like I think it's top 24 of 70 players or something and who knows usually one person's sick or something so like I would have to get top spot of 69 and you know me I'm used to top spot of 69 so it's you know it's it's the tops it's a good spot that's the one you want um no like but I if I could sneak into the the last spot of the top 24 that would be incredible um I think it's 24 but that would be great I don't know if that will happen that would be incredible then match play if somehow if the pinball gods, you know, if the clouds parted and Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler got together with John Borg, Keith Elwin, and Jack Danger, and they all said, let Orby go to finals and match play. And I snuck into finals. I've seen the people going, almost no chance of that happening. I'm one of the lowest ranked players going by far. And I've played with all these pinball nerds. And five years ago, they're way better than me. And they've all got better since then and I've had the pleasure of playing a couple games with Mike Dimas and Sean Russell I can't leave out Sean Russell of course and I've played a couple games with them even at Fork River since then shout out in London Ontario go play some pinball at Fork River Brewing Company up there at Clark Road and I can't remember the side street because I haven't lived in London in five years and yeah but yeah so that's end of the shout outs let's get into the top five and the reason I'm bringing this up and the reason I was really thinking about this is because not I'm a couple content creators mentioned it so I don't want to say not that many but like it was so cool to see at least there to be I'm not going to say it's a female led or a woman led pinball machine because only half the members of ABBA were women but it was really cool to see a band pin come out think about this Dolly Parton Dolly Parton was the last time we had like a woman singer or artist or band Like, you know, of course there's no TLCs chasing waterfalls. But, you know, that was the last time that we saw it. I'm sure I'm wrong. I'm sure there's got to be one band that I can't think of. I guess, to be fair, Guardians of the Galaxy did have at least two songs. Maybe it was just in the Cleveland sound package, the illegal one I had uploaded on my Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh, Ed, in the last show, I totally forgot Ed's name. That's who I sold the Guardians of the Galaxy to. There was a pinball tournament coming up there. If you're friends with Ed on Facebook, you can get the information. If not, you can message me and I'll figure out if he wants to make that public because I think it's a private pinball tournament. But that is coming up in a couple weeks as well. So if you're on the Maritimes, make sure you check with Ed. You probably know him anyways, but check with him. He's probably going to be advertising a little bit about that. Should be fun. You'll get to come kick my butt on my old ex-Guardians while we're there. All right, let's get into it. what I'm going to do real quick is we are going to go through the top five women. I think there should be more women in pinball. We're really happy about, I believe it's Elizabeth Elizabeth Gieske. I probably mispronounced her name, but she's really been coming up at Stern. Um, I know there's been lots of other like, um, is Anna Neal, uh, and, and, ah, see, I'm forgetting names. That's why I don't start naming names, but, and, and even over there at Spooky, I know there's lots of tons of really important women that are doing awesome stuff there. Content creators, we have a good amount of women. It would be great to see even more representation. But what we don't have is a single solitary pin since Dolly Parton. That's like a female or, I guess, woman-led, you know, pin. So before I do the top five modern, of which I am going to play a little bit of each song, because I know some of you will or will not, depending on your age and depending on what type of music you listen to, will not know them. But these five, these are, to me, my all-time. These are Orbeez' top five all-time that I think it would be incredible for them to get a pinball machine. Now, are these all that relevant right now? No. So that's why I'm not necessarily adding them in here. And you're going to think there's a little bit of Canadian bias here, because there is. And I promised I wouldn't sing this episode, but I lied. Because Celine Dion, probably the best singer on either of these lists, Yes, she happens to be a Canadian, but just remember, just like you pinball nerds, near, far, wherever you are, I'll be there playing pinball. Okay, that's all I'm singing. All right, so number four on the list is Shania Twain, I Feel Like a Woman. How can you not sing when you're, I know I'm horrible at singing. I'm almost as bad at singing as I am podcasting, but I just love doing both. So, oh well. Number three on the list, and now you really think we're Canadian biased, it's Alanis Morissette's It's Like Rain on Your Wedding Day. All right, number two is, and I'm going to have some people that disagree with me on this one, but too bad, because she's not even really pop. She's more like electro dance music. But number two is Bjerg, also known as Bjork, Icelandic's Wonderful. No one can say it's fully biased, because I didn't put a Canadian in the number two or even the number one spot, it's oh so quiet. Do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do. The number one spot is Like a Virgin's Madonna. Oh, touched for the very first crime. Okay, no more singing from me. Let's get into the top five lists that you were here for. I'm going to run it through real quick just for the people who sponsor me because I know a lot of people did not listen to episode 360, and I get it. Three hours, too long, too many times going off topic. Squirrel. Okay, here we go. Gold. We have Phantom Tilt Pinball Podcast. Gold. Fast Pinball. Silver. Antonio. Drew and Ian. Bronze. Michael Williams. Michael Hendrickson. Gene Pegg. Ari Jones. Stephen Silver. Dr. John and Jason Forbes. All right, there you go. Look how quick we can do that. Okay, good. So now, and I have to say this. Well, I say Drew and Ian, I just have to remind you, because marketing shows you, say it three times a better chance. Tonight at 7 p Eastern no 7 p no 9 p Central See go over to the poor men this is why you don listen to me You go over to Facebook and you go over to the poor men pinball podcast fan page and you click on the link instead, or you look at the time that it says, or you just go over to YouTube, and you subscribe to them so that you get the notification once they're live, in case they're a couple minutes late. Who knows? I know Drew and Ian. If I know Drew and Ian as well as I think I do, it could be possible that they're having a couple drinks and maybe being a little sloppy about it and trying to go live for the first time. It's not that easy. I do it whenever I'm doing the collectible shows. And a lot of you who watched me at the last collectible show, you will know that it just cut out like that. So, but yeah, let's get into this. So, number five on this list, and I probably have to reset up my Bluetooth, but number five on this list, oh gosh, I've gained so much weight, guys. I'm up to like, I weighed in at 240.8 pounds. and for a guy that's five foot seven or maybe five foot six right now to be 280 pounds or sorry not 280 geez oh my gosh not that there's anything wrong with that i am not fat shaming here today okay especially there is a lot of dudes that are 280 who are built like a freaking tank right so but um i'm just suggesting me myself and my little tiny petite frame and my five foot six five foot five height uh hairline king but still tiny tiny tiny like short king that i am um you know, I balloon out it at 240. Like, I just look like a bubble, and literally my big old belly just hit the play button on the laptop. Like, what are the chances of that? Give me a break. Let's see if I actually connected, and I'll say, no, I didn't connect. So, anyways, number five on this list is probably the person that there's the least chance that any of you have heard of. She does happen to have one song from three years ago that has 200 million listens, or could be, Two or three years ago, it doesn't matter. But that's not the song I'm going to play. I'm going to be playing my favorite banger buyer. This is Norway's Own, The Girl in Red. She's playing Serotonin. And yes, maybe that has to do with why I love this song so much, because she also does, similar to me, struggle with some mental health issues. But it sounds like she may have got help and has found a medication that works. So the song is actually more upbeat than I'm making it sound, but let's just get right into it. For now, we're going to hear, I hope someday, Dear Lord, it might be 5, 10, 15 years in the future, but Girl in Red, she's on the come up. Incredible young pop artist from Norway. Here is the Girl in Red's Serotonin. There's no depth to these feelings They deep can't hide From the corners of my mind I'm terrified of what's inside I've got intrusive thoughts Like cutting my hands off Like jumping in front of a bus Like how do I make this stop When it feels like my clippers tase me Please don't let me go crazy Put me in a field with daisies Might not work but I'll take a maybe I'm freaking breaking daily, but only you can save me. So I'm capitulating, crying like a fucking baby. I don't want to be Sabada. I don't want to be Sakada. I don't want to be... Okay, thank you, Girl in Red, Serotonin. Love that. I think it's like Falling in Love in October is her big hit. But let's move on to number four pins that I would love to see turn... turned, oh sorry, themes that I would love to see turn into pins, and I think they deserve it. We've done 1970s disco, we've done 1950s Dolly Parton, but where's my other women represented in pinball machines? Let's get some women-led music. And honestly, I'm coming around on country music slowly, okay? I even mentioned Shania Twain in here, so there you go um you know but I do think that pop is the most open to the most people and the flood gates will open eventually either stern or jersey jack or even american pinball will realize and I I love you Steven Bowden I don't know if I love the barbecue game but I want to try it I want to give it a chance I want to see more humor and pinball so those things are all good it doesn't look like a complete cookie cutter looks more like hot wheels but I really want to play that and I want to be positive but wow if one of these pinball companies if their sales are a bit slow and especially like that first the girl in red like something like her or this next girl I'm going to play who does happen to be Canadian one of these pop artists if you're especially able to get maybe even the top two or three on this list or any from my iconic last list now they would have been expensive but if you can get any of the even the top three or even top five on this list, maybe it's a long-term project, but wow, I think the sales would be massive. And they don't really get why the sales would be massive necessarily at the pinball companies, but it's the same way, like, good old, happy birthday to Zach Manny of, of course, This Week in Pinball. Wait, what, did I just do that again? No, The Pinball Show, sorry, formerly of This Week in Pinball podcast. That's where I started listening to him. Sorry, Zach, that wasn't a Freudian slip. And happy birthday to him. And also Travis Murray. So welcome to your 40s, but it sucks. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Mentally, it's been better for me. Physically, it's been worse. But the next song I'm going to play is by Charlotte Cardon and it's Confetti. Oh, sorry. Going back to what Zach was saying on the pinball show last week, he said that up to 50%, it seemed like around 50% of the people who ordered were either women directly or their partners typically saying you know what my wife has you know really said that she wants this pin and would love it and why not we've got all these like like let's be honest there's not and I'm sorry to say this like I don't want to be sexist here because I know there is some women who freaking love death metal and like rock and roll but if you go to a Metallica concert it's what like 75 85 percent men you go to a and actually I just ran into a shout out to a local River Riverhibbert friend here, Jessica, that I met last night, she's really cool, was hanging out with her at the Babington Tournament, and, uh, shout out to, uh, her, her daughter and their partner, who get to go on to the Co-Ed Mix Doubles Provincials as well, so, and everybody who was there from Riverhibbert, congratulations, especially everyone who went to Provincials, but she was saying how much she loves Iron Maiden, and I was telling her all the pins that are at Spin It Records there in Moncton, shout out, and, uh, I said that was, you know, one of my favorites that's there by, you know, the world class, one of one of the, if not the best, the GOAT himself, the GOAT of GOATs as far as pinball players goes, but maybe the GOAT of GOATs as well as far as designers go, we don't know. I don't think Jaws has put his potential legendary record on the life of Jaws, or on the Jaws of life, I should say, but anyways, I got to see Charlotte Cardon, she is from, I'm probably saying her name wrong, she is from Quebec, and she is Canadian, but like this song is a banger now her biggest song she ever had it's got 22 million it's called Dirty Dirty uh you could look it up you can watch it on there it's a great song I happen to like this song better it's also more recent it's from her new album this is called Confetti I got to see her do this live okay at the Junos this year and I can tell you this you think that there is a lot of confetti imagine a room with a mirror ball in the very middle okay spinning disco ball and then also 1000 jersey jack fully glittered up most beautiful pinball machine on planet earth elton johns christopher francie's are arguably christopher francie's masterpiece that art wow so think about how glittery that would be and charlotte cardone's confetti still have more glitter at the junos like i think they're still picking uh glitter out of there probably to the year 2030. So anyways, here is this freaking banger called Confetti. And again, for a smaller to medium-sized company, a license like this would probably be next to nothing. It probably would be cheaper than hiring tons of actors to do skits. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, GTF. Here we go, Confetti. I always feel alone in a crowded place I always wanna stay, wanna go, wanna stay, wanna go I don't know, I don't know I get sad on my birthday I wanna talk back in the worst way I always wanna stay, wanna go, wanna stay, wanna go I don't know what to say I want to throw it all away. I feel like a zombie. I'll die at the party. Yeah, you'll find my body fully covered in confetti. I'll try calling somebody to tell them come get me. Yeah, you'll find my body fully covered in confetti. Say, da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da. Okay, here we go. on to number three is Billie Eilish's Bury a Friend. Now, of all the people on this list, I dig and listen to not the five epic of all time people, even though Atlanta's more set back in the day, for sure. First two albums. Isn't that ironic? Come on, let's go. What do you know? I can't. Anyways. That would be my best friend, Melvis there, would be a little disappointed with me, but that's okay. I get to see him and hang out with him in four days. Can't wait. Hopefully going to get to see my sisters and my dad as well. Family first. Try to be, okay, pinball first, but family second. You know, that's how, that's how I roll. No. Extended family second, primary family, drop target Danielle, little Orby Jr. and Hurry Up Hayden all obviously first. But let's do a little bit of, I don't, I don't, I do like this song. I don't love most of her other music. I like it. I respect it for what it is, but wow, this girl has half a billion views on this one and she has other ones that are in the billions listens on Spotify so she like she is legit like very relevant very young uh has had enough albums under her belt that we know she's not just a flash in the pan and she kills it she's also a great musician she also has kind of fun vibey music which would be decent for a pinball machine whereas like Celine Dion let's be honest is that the best you know my heart would go on if it didn't happen I think she had like two kind of faster songs in the 90s but that was about it anyways here is billy eilish's bury or bury bury a friend what do you want from me why don't you run from me what are you wondering what do you know Why aren't you scared of me? Why do you care for me? When we all fall asleep, where do we go? Come here Say it, spit it out, what is it exactly? Your pain is the amount cleaning you out, am I satisfactory? Today I'm thinking about the things that are deadly The way I'm drinking you down like I wanna drown, like I wanna death Step on the glass, stifle your tongue bury a friend try to wake up oh okay that was probably my least favorite but there you go Billie Eilish hitting it up I know the young kids love her now I actually had this artist at number one partially because of my bias no she's not Canadian and I know you're all thinking that somewhere on this list would have to be the one the only T Swift but no do you know why she's not on here? Because Voldemort himself has said that he, I don't know how he would know, but has said that T-Swift has turned down all possible, and maybe this is, maybe there is truth to this, I have no clue, about 10% of the rumors end up being true in the long run, so similar to Voldemort, let's just not talk about him or say his name, but I can tell you here, right now, Voldemort, the head Death Eater, the negative Nancy Debbie Downer, has said that T-Swift has ultimately turn down every single solitary pinball company, which I don't know how anyone would know that information on planet Earth. But if that is true, well, first of all, Hayden hates T-Swift so much that if I were to play that in this house, he'd probably leave and wouldn't help me watch the dogs while I'm doing this difficult podcast. And then on top of that, we've all heard enough T-Swift, haven't we? And third of all, nearly impossible to work with her because everything that's licensed or merged by her is crazy, crazy expensive. So we're going to get to my favorite on all of this list, who I can't get enough of. Even her new song, I think it's Bloodsucker, is incredible. If you ever wanted to go see maybe like my favorite live performance, theatrical kind of performance in the last year, go watch Olivia Rodrigo on SNL, when she's got the cake and the American, I don't remember. Maybe she did Vampire in there too, but her performance, both songs were just incredible. She writes all of her own music. She's wildly talented. If you go watch her on NPR's Tiny Desk, you can see from two years ago to now, if you watch those two, you'll see how much her songwriting has progressed. I don't even like her big hit. Her big hit is Driver's License. I don't really dig that song that much. Like, it's fine for what it is, but I mean, she wrote it when she was much younger. She's still very young, but this girl is like, she is the next T-Swift she is the next Madonna she is the next I don't want to say who she is because I think she is maybe going to take over for the next woman who's number one but for now let's play a little bit of my favorite song by Olivia Rodrigo coming in at 101 million views already on YouTube it's Vampire I'm crazy God I hate the way I call them crazy too you're so convincing I'd be lying without flinching I'd be lying, I'd be lying, I'd be lying I'm mesmerizing, paralyzing, fucked up, I'm thrilled Can't figure out just how you do it And God knows I never will And for me and not her These girls your age know better I've made some real big mistakes She makes the worst one look fine I should have known it was strange You only come out at night Are you sick? I was smart but you made me look so naive The way you saw me from far Cause you saw you see they told me Wow Bleeding me dry. Like a goddamn vampire. just like all the gnats and the mosquitoes will here in River Hibbert soon. But for now, alas, over the last week, we still don't have very many no-see-ums, and I've got to get some sun, and that's been great. That was my favorite up-and-coming pop artist anyways, if not, you know, there's some other rock and roll bands like The Beaches and such that I dig more, but as far as a pop artist goes, there's very few that would come on the radio that would cause me to sing so loud in my car the poor people beside me would have to hear my unfortunate voice. But let's get right into number one, the number one woman, or should I say women? That's right. I couldn't choose between these two queens. So let's start with Lady Gaga. So not only is Lady Gaga still relevant, and in fact, the reason why I decided to bump her up, because I was going to have Olivia Rodrigo tie with the other queen yes girl i'm about to play but lady gaga was just in a brand new movie that just came out they're using her one of her old uh i think um poker face or something remember when poker face remember when gabe in uh the office dressed up like poker face that was incredible oh and when i was talking about the top five uh comedy shows and said the office should be one of them i think tim the lion man lee i believe he reached out was like oh you're so right orby it should be the office. So thanks, Tim Lee. Shout out to you. Shout out to Glenn the Skateboarder as well. Had some nice heart-to-hearts with him recently, which is really cool. It's good that, you know, I have some people within the tribe that I feel comfortable enough to, you know, kind of tell about all that, you know, all the other weird, crazy stuff that's happening in my life that I'm not oversharing currently on the podcast, right? So, but yeah, without further ado, you probably all know that Lady Gaga was seen actually playing pinball with Tony Bennett. So we know that A, she likes pinball. B, she knows what pinball is because some people nowadays think ping pong or I don't even know what, right? And then over and above that, I'm not going to lie because she has been as hot recently. Her brand and licensing probably cost slightly less. However, the one thing that she has and what puts her at number one on this list is that not only do young people know her, but not only do, like, you know, she's been having bangers now for two decades, right? So not only do young people know her, but older people know her, and everybody in between. I don't think there's necessarily people who are, like, 90 or 100 who are, like, putting on Lady Gaga, but even shout out to my Uncle Hans there in good old the Forest City, London, Ontario. He puts on Lady Gaga all the time, and Hans, I forget how old you are, I don't know, like, probably getting close to 70. Pretty sure I went to your 65th birthday party, so, and he still digs Lady Gaga. So, and, and he's a, you know, an old rich white dude, right? So, uh, you know, there's a whole mix of people who listen to Lady Gaga. Um, obviously a lot of women, also a lot of men, young people, old people, everybody likes Gaga. Who doesn't like Gaga? Even on The Office, Gabe, the most unlikable character on any TV show ever, he liked my mama, mama, mama, poker face. Anyways, here's Papa, Papa, Paparazzi. Leather and jeans, your body's glamorous Not sure what it means, but this photo of us It don't have a price Ready for those flashing lights Cause you know that baby I I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me Power, power, I see Baby, there's no other superstar you know that I'll be Your papa, paparazzi Promise I'll be kind But I won't stop until the boy is mine Alright, thank you Lady Gaga, thank you. I think we've all heard that song enough before. We don't have to hear it again. And although Hayden would probably get mad at me for saying this, We're going to do a little bit of the single ladies put a ring on it. That's right. The queen, yes, girl herself, Beyonce. When Hayden was younger, we have a video possibly of him singing this, which I will never show on social media. And if someone says this is true, I'll say in Minecraft only. In Minecraft only, I have a video of my now 19-year-old son, who only listens to hip-hop and rap, pretty much exclusively, and a tiny, tiny little bit of indie rock. rock, but there's somewhere, somehow, a video of him possibly being like two or three years old, I think maybe even in a diaper, standing in a pool of memory serves, singing a little bit of good old single ladies. So, shout out to all the single ladies, and fellas, what are you waiting for? Go put a freaking ring on it. Especially if she's into pinball. Come on. All the single ladies Now put your hands up Up in the club I'm doing my own thing Decided to dip him And I give him a trip Cause another brother noticed me I'm up on him Don't pay him any attention Just cry my tears Three good tears He can't think that of me Cause if you like it then you should've put a ring on it If you love it, you should have put a topper on it. Like the Foo Fighters topper, which is super rad. No, I'm just kidding. It does cost a lot of money. But if you can afford it, that is one hell of a topper. And that is the tops. It's Beyonce. So obviously, she's the queen. She's the queen of pop. Let's be honest. And I guess kind of R&B, kind of. So that would be incredible. that would be really cool to see Beyonce and or Lady Gaga. I couldn't choose between them. Don't make me. They're both incredible. And even though all those years that I did not like pop music, that I still was rocking a faux hawk, that I still thought I was like Mr. Anarchist, Libertarian, you know, far right of center, crazy punk rock, you know, Libertarian dude who just followed no rules, and yet I still found myself singing Beyonce all those years. her tunes are earworms that get in there like brain cancer just eat your brain like you cannot stop singing single ladies y'all are going to be single single ladies till i get back to you or mama mama mama poker face or papa papa paparazzi all right guys that's gonna be mostly it for today's show i did want to give you guys two quick opportunities number one and this one's less important but number one if you have not ordered any coffee from us since like last Christmas. There's probably a good reason for that. If you went onto the website, we had either very low stock or no stock of all of our large bags, and we have very, very low stock forever of our small bags. But because we recently got a nice size order actually from, believe it or not, a local town from here, they're trying to get more doctors and nurses and hospital staff to come out here to be local. And they've chosen our product as being, you know, looking, smelling, tasting, the coolest that they could find, or at least, I don't know, the best in one way, shape, or form. And so they've chosen us. So we got to do hundreds. And they're just little sample bags. We didn't make that much money. But we got to reorder all of our teas, all of our coffee to fulfill this giant order. So everything is fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh. Everything is restocked. And Danielle took about an hour and a half to update absolutely everything. There's even steeping instructions down to how long with which tea, you know, which temperature. If you want to nerd out about your tea brewing or nerd out about your coffee brewing, maybe you do pour over. I don't even care if you're like my dad and you got the little, what is the little Nespresso things? The little one serve, I don't know what you call those. They got the little pods, the thing with the pods. You know what I'm talking about. Even if you have those, you just go to any dollar store or Dollarama or whatever, 99 cent store. Wait, those ran out of business. See, they should have been $1.99. but anyways uh if you have one of those little things you can just grind up the coffee like normal and you just toss it you know you have your coffee for the week because you'll grind it up you'll have enough for six seven eight of those little pods and you just toss her into there so you can doesn't matter how you like your coffee or your tea we have an awesome coffee or tea for you i've only asked for money once since last november so in the last i don't know maybe you've been loving all the interviews i did i've done lots of interviews um got to speak to david elrod and that other awesome dude, I have it up right here, from Alaska, also known as The Godfather. Even if you don't like pinball tournaments, please go take a listen to that, okay? That's with Peter Barclay as well. Go take a listen to that. That's episode 564. In that episode, yes, we do talk a little bit about tournament pinball, but we mostly just talk about the Alaskan pinball scene and how they get more people out. And we talk a little bit about the music scene there. And we talk a bit about the difference between Anchorage, Alaska, and of course, Juneau. And it was just a really fun show. I had a great time. Both of those guys are awesome. Just people in pinball who have helped spread the good news, the pinball gospel out to people all over. And if you've appreciated any of those and you wanted to, you know, help sponsor the show, encourage me to do more stuff, please feel free to make a purchase from Angry Alpaca Coffee and Tea. If you type Angry Alpaca Coffee right into good old Google there, were the top link and the second link. One of those two is Facebook. If you click on that and click the Shop Now button, it'll bring you right to our Square store. If not, the second link is directly to our shop. Make sure you don't just look at the features items on the front page. Make sure you click on the coffee button or the tea button to see all of them. That way it doesn't just list a couple of featured ones that are up there that we may not have updated as often as we wanted to, but I think should be updated now. But anyways, the other thing I did want to say, because a lot of you just don't drink coffee or tea and you've told me that, or maybe you're like Glenn the skateboarder and you buy like, you know, you go get the bulk version. You know, you go to like some type of Costco or Walmart or something like that. You buy it, I get it. You get the inexpensive coffee and you know, life is expensive. So you just do it that way. And if you're one of those people who doesn't drink coffee or tea and you still wanted to donate some money, feel free to make a donation through my PayPal. The good news is not a single penny of this is going to go to me. 50% of it's going to go to my oldest son and 50% to my youngest son. My oldest son, I really wanted to congratulate him and thank him for everything that he's done. He just two days ago on Monday, so three days ago, he graduated from the certified personal training program. He is still waiting for his certificate, which is supposed to come in the next few days. And once that happens, he can start applying at like the YMCA and other places he wants to work at. So excited for him. but as a gentleman who unfortunately had his program canceled not once not twice but three times in September October November he finally got to take it December but that caused him for three months to because they told him you know don't have a job you're going to be so busy with this course for a couple weeks so he made sure he wasn't working at the time but of course for three months he didn't have income coming in it would be nice to as a little graduation gift he's not going to college university so it'd be nice as a little graduation gift to give him any money that may come in through there so again if you can't afford it don't do it but if you can it'd be nice if you could fire off a little bit of money and the other money is going to go directly to Owen poor Owen went to go fill his water bottle not this last badminton championship but the one before that the um the district one or the regional one and when he came back he did see there was two kids playing near there other than that there was just like there was no one really around there was two kids running back and forth on the benches and he thinks one of them may have tripped over his badminton racket because it was snapped right at the frame and even though now this was a pretty expensive racket from what i understand it was like well from what i from what i know was like 149 plus tax so like 180 and and change and um uh we had just paid to get it restrung so that's another 35 bucks and um so he ended up having to use a backup racket that he had that was not nearly as good and get it restrung to his particular whatever 28 pound tension or 27 pounds whatever he does it out he uses it super tight now I don't under I don't understand all that stuff even though I used to when I played tennis but anyways his racket got broke I would love to be able to tell him to give him some money to choose if he would like to he may not want to with only one tournament left but to give that money to do as he pleases but to choose if he would like to use that money towards putting it to a new racket because I'm telling you right now as his dad I'm like dude I'm not buying you a $187 racket right now for you to go play maybe one or two tournaments. But some of you generous pinball nerds out there want to donate. You can send PayPal to me. And not a penny of this will go to me. I'll show you all the receipts. It's going to angryalpacatea at gmail.com. PayPal me there. If you want that money to go to Hayden and Rowan. If you want Danielle and I to get to keep some of that cash and help support my trip, my trip back to Ontario. It's going to be super pricey. Thank God, my buddy, Melvis, I'm glad you're feeling better. Um, and I get to hang out with you and get to still, you know, get to have a hotel with you and everything else. The main thing is you're feeling better and your health is getting better. But of course, if you guys want to support for that trip and kind of sponsor it, like a lot of people did for my national trip, not as big of a trip, not as expensive, only gone for seven days, not 14. I get to fly there and fly home. Let's fingers crossed. Let's hope to God. I'm telling you right now, if this airline goes bankrupt before I fly Monday, I'm telling you right now, I'm not driving there. It's not happening. I'm sorry, Jeff Deolas. I'm sorry, all the Ontario Pinball Nerds. I'm just not coming. Some of them will probably be happy, to be honest. So, you know, to those of you who are haters of mine, you'll probably be happy I'm not coming. But I know that there's a good chunk of you that, you know, haven't hung out with me in a while and would love to see me. And for those people, obviously, I'm sorry, I'm not coming. If the airline goes bankrupt, I'm just not coming. But I'm blathering on as usual, so let's stop doing that. If you wanted to help support my sons, you could PayPal me. And yes, it works internationally. I don't have Vimo. You know, I can't do email money transfers internationally. So this is the only way you can support really me and my sons and the show is angryalpacatea at gmail.com. Or just simply make a purchase of Angry Alpaca Coffee or Tea. And then that would be supporting Danielle and I and my trip. And we'll make sure you get a shout out for doing that as well. So until next time, pinball nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Beyonce pinball.