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PNP Ep.529-Don's Pinball Podcast On Tunring His Foo Prem into An LE+ AI Affect our hobby+ Podcaster CHALLENGED!

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·May 24, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Don discusses his pinball journey, Foo Fighters Premium mods, and Harry Potter JJP speculation.

Summary

Don Garrison of Don's Pinball Podcast appears on Pinball Nerds Podcast (Ep. 529) to discuss his origin story in pinball, his recent Foo Fighters Premium customization project (creating a 'Poor Man's LE'), and speculation about the upcoming Jersey Jack Pinball Harry Potter license. The conversation covers his podcast journey, theme park knowledge applied to game design concepts, and the philosophy of modifying machines for enjoyment versus resale value.

Key Claims

  • IFPA membership is at 99,990 and will hit 100,000 by tomorrow or the next day

    high confidence · Orbital Albert checked the IFPA count earlier that day and projects imminent milestone

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has secured the Harry Potter license

    high confidence · Albert references Zach Sharpe and Dennis Kriesel from The Pinball Show as being 'pretty persuaded' and Joe Kamikow confirming he was serious about the license after Stern couldn't get it for Kapow

  • Don converted his Foo Fighters Premium into an LE-style machine by powder-coating metal parts green to match LE specs

    high confidence · Don describes sending parts to Pinball Refinery in Michigan for custom green sparkly powder coat matching LE color

  • Don added expression lights pulled from a Led Zeppelin machine to his Foo Fighters

    high confidence · Don states he found someone on Pennside from Pittsburgh who had Led Zeppelin expression lights he purchased

  • Don's Pinball Podcast launched in January with professional production (mixer, artist-created graphics, paid intro music)

    high confidence · Don describes his podcast launch process: 'in January, I'm like, you know what, I got the mixer, we're gonna do it'

  • Eric Seiden designed Pirates of the Caribbean (known for stop-and-go depth), Guns N' Roses (multiball), and Godfather (flow)

    high confidence · Both Don and Albert attribute these JJP games to Eric Seiden and praise his design consistency

  • Godfather is 'not completely flying off the shelf' in sales

    medium confidence · Albert notes Godfather sales are slower than expected despite Eric Seiden's design skill

  • Don got his first pinball machine (Dark Knight) about two years ago

    high confidence · Don states 'I got my first game I think about two years ago now it was a stern dark night home use only'

  • Albert's most-watched podcast episode was a Jurassic Park Pinball review recorded on a rollercoaster at Darien Lake

Notable Quotes

  • “I mean, like, I've always enjoyed pinball and arcades, man. I mean, like, I'm a child of the late 70s, 80s, right, 1979 and forward. You know, I remember playing fireball with my dad, and he was the one that showed me, like, yo, bro, hang on. Wait till the ball's in the end of the flipper, then hit it, and more cool stuff will happen.”

    Don Garrison @ early in episode — Establishes Don's origin story and foundational pinball experience with his father

  • “I back flipped through a portal into just this the whole purpose-built world of pinball, you know, just like right on my feet. Like I had no idea existed to this level.”

    Don Garrison @ mid-episode — Captures the shock and wonder of discovering the modern pinball hobby ecosystem after attending Expo Chicago

  • “I think I'm on Team Eric, too. I mean, now, you know, the trend that I'm hearing is, you know, the Godfather's not completely flying off the shelf. However, it's a theme that I don't think I would have picked out of 10 to make a pinball machine out of. Yet, the man managed to make a very interesting, flowy game out of a license that I don't think would translate well to pinball.”

    Don Garrison @ mid-episode — Praises Eric Seiden's design skill despite Godfather's slower sales, suggesting thematic mismatch with theme park design analogy

  • “they're meant to be played, they're toys for God's sake, right? You know, and I'm the type of guy that takes my new era hat and I rip the sticker off as soon as I buy it, you know, I don't leave that on there.”

    Orbital Albert @ late-episode discussion — Philosophy statement about enjoying products vs. preserving resale value; argues for active use over mint condition

  • “What you're doing is beautifying. So keep it up. I absolutely love that.”

    Orbital Albert @ Foo Fighters discussion — Validation of Don's Premium-to-LE customization approach as adding value through tasteful modification

  • “I was just trying to create the kind of thing that I would want to listen to, you know, so, you know, it may not be everybody's flex. It's not a 90 minute, you know, diatribe. I don't have all these industry connections that other people have made. But what I did have was something that the established people didn't have. And that was my naivete, right? My new perspective, my new vision into like this hobby from somebody who's like recently just like walked into a door at the convention center.”

Entities

Don GarrisonpersonOrbital Albert AgarpersonDon's Pinball PodcastorganizationPinball Nerds PodcastorganizationPoor Man's Pinball NetworkorganizationJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: IFPA membership approaching 100,000 member milestone (currently at 99,990)

    high · Albert checked IFPA count earlier that day and projects reaching 100,000 by next day; attributes previous COVID-related membership decline with 36-month inactive purge rule

  • ?

    event_signal: Jack Danger appearing at Madison launch party and signing machine components as post-release community engagement

    high · Don describes attending Madison launch party with Jack Danger present to sign apron; obtained personalized signed component for his machine

  • ?

    community_signal: Don's Pinball Podcast gaining rapid community acceptance and praise despite being new entrant with fresh perspective advantage

    high · Albert praises production quality, topic focus, and lack of over-editing on first episode; states 'This guy's on his first freaking episode. He's already way better than me'; Don describes imposter syndrome overcome by focus on audience value

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Eric Seiden credited with progression through design specialties: Pirates (stop-and-go depth), Guns N' Roses (multiball mastery), Godfather (flow)

    high · Both guests consistently attribute these design philosophies to specific Seiden games; describe his demonstrated ability to excel across different design paradigms

  • $

    market_signal: Philosophy of machine modification for enjoyment value vs. mint-condition resale preservation gaining community acceptance

    medium · Albert validates Don's Premium-to-LE conversion as 'beautifying' rather than 'bastardizing'; argues enjoyment value exceeds minor resale loss; both guests emphasize machines are meant to be played

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.232

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, episode 529 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and today I'm so excited I've got Donald himself, or as you would know him, Don of Don's Pinball Podcast, which I think is one of the best, if not the best, new and upcoming pinball podcast we've had come out for a long time. So all the way from the United States of America, welcome to the show, Don.
1:12
Good evening, everybody out there in hopefully not rain-soaked Nova Scotia. I'm coming to you through the airwaves from the Appalachian Mountain Range in West Virginia, Carolee. What's up, Albert, or little Al? Ah, not too much. I love that you're actually in Appalachia somewhere, the Appalachian mountain range, because believe it or not, the mountains I drive through sometimes daily to go to my farmer's markets and such is actually the end remnants of the Appalachia, which turns into Laurentia. But it's all, they're all connected somehow, or at least they were back before the continental drift. But I've gone off topic. What else would you expect on my show? I'm so excited to have you on here. we've talked about it for a while and just in case everybody knows you are currently working I don't know if you want to tell us about your day job but if we hear the phone ring we know that it's important and you've got to go so it could happen technically the Burger King I'm working on now can get pretty hectic it's not as bad as the Wendy's downtown but yeah occasionally the truck comes in and we need to unload a truckload of frozen bacon but it should be just fine thanks so much for the invite Man, I dig your content and the whole, like, poor man crew you guys, you tribe people do. That's right. Us tribe people, us people of the tribe. I was tribe number 26 here, and I'm just curious, now that you brought it up, would someday you perhaps, like, do long in your heart's heart to become a tribe's people?

high confidence · Albert describes recording the review on a rollercoaster and achieving 2,500+ views, shared by Steve Bowden

  • Elvira 40th Anniversary edition has a purple sparkly powder coat and couch piece exclusive to Super LE tier

    high confidence · Don describes matching Elvira Premium to 40th Anniversary specs; clarifies couch piece is Super LE exclusive

    • Don Garrison @ podcast discussion — Articulates Don's differentiation strategy: fresh perspective as advantage vs. established industry connections

  • “Within about five minutes of listening to your very first podcast, I literally said out loud to my wife, Drop Target Danielle, I said, wow, that's great. This guy's on his first freaking episode. He's already way better than me.”

    Orbital Albert @ podcast compliment section — High praise from established podcaster; validates Don's production quality and approach

  • “I think pragmatically, we're probably going to get one game maybe 30% wide body but 70% probably not... if you could take maybe just like the first 30% from Sorcerer, Philosopher's Stone to Prisoner of Azkaban, I think you could put in things that the majority of people would come away satisfied with.”

    Don Garrison @ Harry Potter speculation — Realistic speculation about scope and content approach for single Harry Potter JJP game

  • “I found an old Sharpie that barely wrote and that's what I used. It's all good.”

    Don Garrison @ Jack Danger signature discussion — Humorous response to mock concern about resale value; shows irreverence toward collectibility obsession

  • “So I sent it out back. I sent all the metal parts back to the pinball refinery. He's color matching me with the green LE. And I'm doing everything. The speaker grill, the coin door, the shooter housing, every odd leg, all that.”

    Don Garrison @ Foo Fighters customization details — Detailed breakdown of Premium-to-LE conversion work showing scope and effort invested

    • Eric Seiden
    person
    Joe Kamikowperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    Steve Bowdenperson
    Zach Sharpeperson
    Dennis Krieselperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Pinball Refinerycompany
    Steve (Pinball Refinery)person
    IFPAorganization
    Foo Fighters Pinballgame
    Elvira 40th Anniversary Editiongame
    Harry Potter Wizarding Worldgame
    Pirates of the Caribbean Pinballgame
    Godfather Pinballgame
    Drop Target Danielleperson
    Dark Knight Pinballgame
    District 1 (Stevens Point)organization
    Pat Lawlorperson
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball confirmed to have secured Harry Potter Wizarding World license after Stern could not acquire it

    high · Albert references Zach Sharpe and Dennis Kriesel from The Pinball Show as 'pretty persuaded' that JJP has license; Joe Kamikow confirmed and was reportedly upset Stern couldn't secure it for Kapow

  • $

    market_signal: Premium-tier pinball machines increasingly subject to high-end customization to achieve LE-equivalent features at lower price point

    medium · Don's Foo Fighters customization seen as viable alternative to LE purchasing; Albert encourages approach and notes tasteful mods can attract buyers seeking both quality and custom value

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Eric Seiden positioned as community frontrunner for Harry Potter JJP design

    medium · Don states 'I'm on Team Eric, too' and describes how Seiden's proven track record and design versatility makes him ideal candidate; both guests express hope for his involvement

  • ?

    announcement: Harry Potter Wizarding World confirmed for Jersey Jack Pinball with production timeline implications

    high · Don notes JJP games release on 12-18 month cycle and speculates Harry Potter could tie up company for 4 years; concerns about production capacity and multi-game licensing possibilities

  • ?

    product_strategy: Don converting Stern Foo Fighters Premium into LE-equivalent machine through powder coating, component swaps, and expression light integration

    high · Detailed description of sending parts to Pinball Refinery for green sparkly powder coat matching LE specs, adding expression lights from Led Zeppelin, fluorescent plastics, glow-in-the-dark rubbers, and obtaining Jack Danger signature

  • ?

    product_concern: Godfather Pinball sales slower than expected despite Eric Seiden's design skill

    medium · Albert states 'Godfather's not completely flying off the shelf' but acknowledges Seiden's ability to make thematic mismatch work through flow-focused design

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Harry Potter potential scope limited to single machine covering first 3-4 films rather than full franchise

    medium · Don speculates pragmatically: '30% wide body but 70% probably not' and suggests focusing on Philosopher's Stone through Prisoner of Azkaban as optimal content range for single machine

    • 2:45
    I mean, I think since I first spread a hair on my chest at eight years old, It's been a lifelong goal for me to join the Poor Man Podcast Pride Pinball Collective. But, yeah, the jump in initiation, though, I need to work myself up to. Well, they're a really good group of dudes, and I feel like I am part of the tribe, but I'm kind of not, because most of the tribe, originally, when they were getting into it, a lot of them hadn't met, and by now I feel like I'm the only person, like, with a tribe number under probably 30, that hasn't at least met Yin or Drew, you know, or hang out with Tim or Glenn or Rachel. So I haven't, you know, I have run into Ray Day, and he is over here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network on the Ray Ray Show, of course. So I have met Ray Day once at the Pinbergs there. But let's, I don't want to go too deep into the origin story, but I'm curious to, like, how long. Oh, dude. Oh, Ray Day is incredible.
    3:38
    Yeah, yeah. I just want to know, like, give us the Coles Notes version of kind of your origin story, and when did you maybe start buying them or getting back into them if you were more into them when you were younger?
    3:50
    Sure. I mean, like, I've always enjoyed pinball and arcades, man. I mean, like, I'm a child of the late 70s, 80s, right, 1979 and forward. You know, I remember playing fireball with my dad, and he was the one that showed me, like, yo, bro, hang on. Wait till the ball's in the end of the flipper, then hit it, and more cool stuff will happen. And I'm like, my God, this is amazing. I remember spending my pre-teen years in laundromats playing Diner and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. So I've always been like, you know, into pinball, especially, you know, at the family entertainment centers. You know, you go back, you walk by that huge lineup of 20 Valley William game. You're just like, I got three bucks left. How do I want to spend this? And always in the back of my mind, I was like, man, if I could find one of these things to rent and have it in my house, like for a month or something, how fantastic would that be? And then fast forward to, you know, adulthood and disposable income and oh, pinball dealers are a thing. People are bringing these into their homes. All the arcades are closed. It's COVID. Let's do it. and so I got my first game I think about two years ago now it was a stern dark night home use only thing was spotless and so I brought the thing home I was working on it the first day because one of the wires from the circuit to the start button had fallen off and so the button was flashing but nothing was happening when I was pushing it so from then on it's like man I can mess with these things I can upgrade these things they're 400 pounds and they're in my living room great the lights were on but nobody was home eh right yeah and I'm like okay this is probably the worst thing I could ever have but we got it figured out and then from then on it's just it's been you know a journey of discovery you know I went to my first expo which was expo in Chicago and uh you know I got to see you know like the full gamut of you know what Stern can bring to a convention you know and then people are working on stuff and people are podcasting and it's just it's like I back flipped through a portal into just this the whole purpose-built world of pinball, you know, just like right on my feet. Like I had no idea existed to this level.
    5:42
    Yeah, I mean, it is crazy to think about how, you know, someone who, I'll say 95% of just civilians in the United States or Canada or even Europe or Australia, they would have no, if you just threw them into TPF or Expo, they would be like, what the heck is happening here? Like, I didn't know they still made pinball machines. I didn't know they had tournaments. I didn't know people modded them. I didn't know there was homebrews. You know, people just have no clue how much is going on. And the cool thing that's going to happen tonight at midnight, now this is further down on my little list of things to ask you, but tonight at midnight, do you know what one thing probably, perhaps will happen at midnight on IFPA?
    6:24
    That I don't. Okay. So I checked earlier today. We are at 99,990 members officially on the International Flipper Pinball Association. So I had guessed... No kidding. Yes, I had guessed about six months before COVID that by the end of the following year, we would easily be at 100,000 people. Then, of course, the stupid pandemic came, and then people couldn't play tournaments for a long time. And so the numbers dropped way down as you get to 36 months. If you haven't played a game, a single tournament, then you know you drop off. So anyways, I suspect by tomorrow, if not the next day... I think I lost you there, Alfred, for a second. Oh, that's okay. I was just saying, I think tomorrow or the next day we will finally hit 100,000. So I think that's really cool. Do you play much tournament pinball?
    7:13
    Yeah, I play local tournaments at District 1 in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. I met a group of guys there. You know, there's a brew pub, which, you know, goes hand-in-hand with pinball. It's about 10 to 11 machines on a rotating basis. And we do monthly tournaments there. And, you know, when I first got into this, I'm like, that's it. I have to stand out somehow, and I can't do it because of my awesome flipper skills. So I was envisioning myself in like a denim vest that was sleeveless and I was going to get tournament player put on the back and I was going to wear some cool pit viper sunglasses, just walk around like I'm a big shot and then just like get out the first round and be like, it's okay. It's just a bad day, brother.
    7:48
    That would be awesome. I love, I like playing in the tournament, so it's fun. You know, it's a lot of standing around for me because like I drain balls fairly quickly and then I just go around and BS. But I mean, I feel like that's part of it. oh god the chatting in between was uh i would say 90 of the time you know sometimes i'd be like i'd want to hurry up and get my ball down to go back to my uh you know funny conversation or shooting the chats with whoever i was talking to you know so i think that's a big part of it um i was also curious too you seem to be uh also a huge we have a lot of things in common besides disc golf besides skateboarding, besides liking a lot of the same bands, but we also are big Harry Potter nerds. So now that you've had a couple days to let the news marinate, I've gone and listened to your episode, which was great. I think that's the same episode you called me the coffee queen, by the way, which was kind of pretty funny.
    8:43
    But what do you think? Now that you've had a couple days to marinate, and, of course, I don't know if you've listened to the most recent pinball show, but Zach and Dennis seem to be pretty – persuaded me anyways. I still thought maybe there was a chance it was just a troll post, but they seem pretty persuaded that Jersey Jack has got the license and they will be doing it, and that Joe Kamikow was not, you know, he wasn't bluffing. Like, he was serious. He was pissed off that Stern wasn't able to get it for Kapow and therefore have Stern make it. So, now you've had a couple days to think about Harry Potter. What are your thoughts?
    9:19
    You're a Harry wizard. Right, yeah. So, it's like, I'm pleasantly surprised that that's the consensus because my first take was like, okay, hack post, scam post, whatever. And then everybody's like, no, this guy's legit. And that makes sense.
    9:33
    Now, I got a pragmatic look at this and I've got the wishful fan look at this. I think there's three games of content within that Harry Potter Wizarding World universe, of course. But, I mean, I don't know that that can come to fruition. So, I think pragmatically, we're probably going to get one game maybe 30% wide body but 70% probably not. And are they going to do the approach where, this is what I don't know, I speculate, but it'll be one of two things, I think. Either they'll borrow from the atmosphere and the theme world and just kind of bring in bits of that without highlighting anything specifically and maybe not deep assets, or they go the other route and they get deep movie assets and clips and music and all of that. but I don't think you could take the eight films or seven books and stick them all in one machine. I think that would be a big ask and I don't think it would do any favors really to any one part of the lore but if you could take maybe just like the first 30% from Sorcerer, Philosopher's Stone to Prisoner of Azkaban, I think you could put in things that the majority of people would come away satisfied with. So if I'm putting my $5 down on what I'm expecting, it's probably going to be one game maybe barreling heavily from the first three movies and maybe some clips or wizard modes from the later ones, but that's probably how I would do it but I'm not a pinball designer and my game would probably be terrible so we'll see what they come out with but if they go ahead and bookend like two different versions or something or what if they went back to three trim levels but each trim level was a different game or a different theme, would that be a way to do it? I don't know. Would one company want to become, I mean this is Jersey Jack we're talking about, games come out on a 12-month to 18-month rolling basis, I think they've tied themselves up for four years being the Harry Potter pinball company.
    11:22
    I don't know. Yeah, it's going to be tricky. The thing is, I am, from a financial standpoint, I obviously, no matter who comes out with Harry Potter, I will probably have to buy it, or at the very least, rent it, lease it, or just live at the arcade near my house that has it. One of these options will happen. but for me personally at JJP and I love Steve Ritchie and I actually I think Eric Seiden his homebrew Metro I never got to play it but I watched lots of live streams of him working on it and him playing it I think he's very talented of course I'm probably the only person on the planet who still loves Pat Lawler somehow but I don't think he's going to come back to do this but I really really hope Eric gets it because I think that Eric was kind of figuring it out Eric became like, you know, when he did Pirates of the Caribbean, that's known as probably one of the best stop-and-go games with, you know, the deepest code ever. And then he kind of... The rocking ship, man. Yes. Oh, man, if the ship is a-rockin', don't come a-knockin', you know?
    12:26
    There's a ship battle in that game. Come on. Yes. Don't hate on pirates, man. That's fantastic. No, no, no. I love it. And then if you look at, you know, Guns N' Roses is probably, you know, the multi-ball masterpiece itself. and then now Godfather's being called like kind of the king of flow. So I think Eric's shown he can do all of it now and if he puts it all together and he has all the toys and mechs that he had in Pirates of the Caribbean mixed with some of the flow that he got from Godfather mixed with some of the incredible, the immersion that you had in Guns N' Roses from making it look like a concert and the drumsticks and the guitar head and all that kind of stuff, all the attention to detail. I really hope that Eric gets it. That's me personally. Who from JJP, or do you not care who does it?
    13:13
    I mean, I think I'm on Team Eric, too. I mean, now, you know, the trend that I'm hearing is, you know, the Godfather's not completely flying off the shelf. However, it's a theme that I don't think I would have picked out of 10 to make a pinball machine out of. Yet, the man managed to make a very interesting, flowy game out of a license that I don't think would translate well to pinball. So I think that shows his talent of being able to take, you know, kind of a theme that doesn't really speak to, you know, high energy, you know, flipping and flipping. And yet he's able to make like, you know, a very attractive, you know, fun, flowy game out of it. So I think they take, you know, that technical skill with, you know, whatever he drew on to come up with a ship battle in real time, you know, and put those together with this killer license. I think the dude has it, you know you know, just as like, like a tangential aside, like I'm also big into the theme park world. I've been doing that for 20 years now, you know, I've been on a thousand. I used to make content for that. Get out. Are you serious?
    14:10
    Yeah. The Universal Parks have landed a Harry Potter license. And they have two theme parks in Florida right now, both with huge themed areas about Harry Potter, but both from a different perspective. I mean, you know, one park has a whole Hogwart kind of thing going on, Hagrid's Shed, the hippogriff, all of that. And it's just like a fully immersive theme that feels like a complete story. Yet in the other part, they've got Diagon Alley, Nocturne Alley, Gringotts Bank, like a completely different setting, you know, from the same universe that feels completely different, you know. So, I mean, there's ways to really just draw on the content there. You know, I like roller coasters. I like rides. I like vehicles with tracks. I'm like, you know, what's a wire form but, you know, a ball and a track, man? I'm all about it. So, you know, if you can make, you know, I'm thinking like something loosely similar to, you know, Jersey Jack Pirates of the Caribbean, how it was kind of dark, had nooks and crannies, you know, but you can put Nocturne Alley in there. You can put Privet Drive in there. You can have a Hogwarts castle off a playfield area to explore. You know, maybe you can shoot balls off it like, you know, Harry's flying on his, you know, magic vibrating wand-y broomstick, you know. Yeah, the Firebolt 2000 or something, right? Maybe there's, how about the lights go down low, and then there's projection of Dementors on your ceiling flying around for a mode. I mean, there's so much that you could borrow from and do with this. Yeah, it's like the opposite of Fathom, right? Fathom had, like, the sea, enchanted sea going on underneath there. You've got to have the Dementors up in the sky. I'd love to see Quidditch for if they're going to do an upper playfield. If they're going to do an upper playfield, I'd love to see it be Quidditch, because that's probably one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. But now, how long have you been watching my content? Just out of curiosity.
    15:52
    I think just over the last year as I've been getting, you know, more and more into from just a casual observer to more of like a mainline hobbyist. The reason I'm asking this, I'm not just trying to stroke my own ego. The reason I'm asking this, my most watched podcast of all time that I ever did was I did a review for, I did like the same day it came out for Jurassic Park Pinball when it came out by Keith Elwin. I was in the United States and I was at Darien Lake Six Flags in Ohio.
    16:20
    And yes, and I went on a roller coaster. Now it was the most tame roller coaster there that I thought I could actually hold my cell phone in my hand and not get caught. Not because you're not supposed to do that. But, you know, and actually. Right. Well, allegedly. Allegedly, everyone, they know everyone does it. But like you don't, some rides are so wild, you'd be crazy to try to, you know, like you just. so this had like two loop-de-loops and everything and I timed out the ride twice in a row near the end of the night to see how long I had to do the whole review then I wrote a top five list then I tried to remember it because I normally just write down a couple little notes right but anyways it was so funny I like I know it was shared by Steve Bowden on Fun with Bonus and I don't think like no other it didn't matter like when my sons were born it didn't matter like uh you know when I graduated college didn't matter whatever else I did I've never got like two and a half thousand views, right? Like, people just kept watching the thing because it was hilarious. Because my head's jerking around and I'm going, oh, and Keith Owen did a great job with it. Anyways, I'll try to find it and share it to you. You recorded a pinball review on a rollercoaster. With a video. It was a pinball review. My man. Yeah, it was great. It was funny. Anyways, that's cool that you made that up. That's fantastic. I'm going to send it to you. Now, I want to do a bit of a pivot here. I could talk about roller coasters all day long, though, because I love them so much that I basically had a lifetime membership every year growing up to Canada's Wonderland, which became Paramount Canada's Wonderland. But anyways, if you paid like... I don't will. You've been there.
    17:51
    I've been everywhere. Oh, my God. Every theme park in North America, Europe, Japan. It's a little nuts. Oh, my God. Okay, well, every year I bought the stupid season pass, and I would try to go there every weekend if I could. It didn't always happen. But I'm going to do a little pivot here.
    18:08
    You recently bought a Foo Fighters, and you've kind of been, some people would say you're Frankensteining. I don't think you are. I love what you're doing. You bought a premium, and you're kind of trying to do like, I love this, being on the Poor Man's Pimple Network. You're doing like the Poor Man's version of the LE. Am I correct? I love it. I love doing that. Man, I feel like I'm getting like secret value or something when I do this, you know. It comes down to time or money. You can pay the money and just have the machine, or you can be a little scrappy and cobble together your skills and come up with a jalopy that looks somewhat similar if you squint your eyes and drink a little bit. Well, I thought it was so – my favorite touch that you've done so far, and I do want a whole quick list if you don't mind just telling us a couple of things. I know you've powder-coated and such, but I was actually in the Jack Danger deadflip stream where he was signing all the aprons for the LEs, and he's like, oh, my hand is sore. And I watched him sign all of them, and I was like, man, I guess if you got the premium, because I'm just too poor to ever afford an LE, maybe, maybe, maybe I could afford a premium. I guess if I can afford a Harry Potter from Jersey Jack I can afford a premium Stern right So if I ever get the chance to get a premium or even a pro I going to bastardize it like you man i going to try to just step it up and say what why not it kind of fun right like now did you power code with the exact same color as the original i can remember or is the le yeah yeah so um it was it started out of necessity right i i managed to get myself uh an elvira premium hot off the presses a few months ago and like i mean i've seen the uh you the signature 40th anniversary edition of Elvira in person. It's beautiful, right? It's got that purple sparkly powder coat. Yes. But looking at it, I was like, well, the play feels the same. The art in the cabinet is a little different, but everything else, I think I can approach something close to that. So I took my Elvira premium. I called up the guy at Steve at Pinball Refinery in Michigan because he does like a lot of high-end custom pinball designs and things. And he had been doing the coin doors for people that had the 40th anniversary Elvira in that same purple sparkly powder coat, and he got it to match. And I'm like, bro, can I send you, like, every metal part I can pull off of this machine and have you, like, dip it in your purply, velvety goodness? And he's like, sure, man, send it to me. So I did that, and I got, like, the chrome accents for the coin door. I found out how to do T-molding. It's actually fairly approachable. So I've got an Elvira now that if you squint a little bit, it looks just like the 40th anniversary sans the actual cabinet stickers. Oh, wait. So that set me off. Yeah. Oh, I was going to say, you're missing the most important part. you don't have part of her couch no that was from the limited edition the super le okay okay yeah the le which is even more limited than the four oh no are we losing him Don come back here 40 if that had a piece of the cap oh are you there yes I'm here you're cutting in and out a little but uh okay sorry you sound better there It must be the undersea cable. It is.
    21:13
    But fast forward to the Foo Fighters there. My idea was I was just going to get a premium. I was going to play it for six months. When the next game comes out, I was going to sell it and get another one. That's why I didn't go for an LE. And then all of a sudden, Foo Fighters is fantastic. So now I'm like, what do I do? So I sent it out back. I sent all the metal parts back to the pinball refinery. He's color matching me with the green LE. And I'm doing everything. The speaker grill, the coin door, the shooter housing, every odd leg, all that. Including getting the apron side. I happened to cross a post on Pennside from a guy in Pittsburgh who had the expression lights he pulled out of a Led Zeppelin. And so I've got expression lights in my premium now. And at the same time, I've been wanting to check out these Penn Stadiums. So I went in on some of those and then fluorescent plastics. And the whole thing is now just like a retina-melting, fantastic, mind-blowing game. Yes. And did you get the glow-in-the-dark rubbers?
    22:08
    Yes. Oh, man. Yeah, I put those in. I had to remove, man. There were too much. Just like a little post in some places, you have to remove like 10 different parts to get in there. But I did it, dang it. Oh, okay. I saw through to the end. And then I went to a launch party in Madison where Jack Danger was out, so I took out the apron and the little decorative plastic that's in there, and I had him sign it. So I've got a signed apron plastic now, just like the Alita. Oh, my God.
    22:30
    Now, listen, if you didn't do this, you've just blown your resale value, buddy. did you make sure that Jack Danger used the identical color of highlighter to sign your apron?
    22:43
    No, no, I totally based on that. You're going to lose dozens of dollars. I found an old Sharpie that barely wrote and that's what I used. It's all good. No, that's so, I love what you're doing. Some people would say, oh, that's, you know, I mean, to me, if you took like an LE and you tried to like make it look like a pro, that's bastardizing it. What you're doing is beautifying. So keep it up. I absolutely love that. I'm curious. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, go ahead. Oh, I'm just saying I have no idea if this is adding any resale value, if any at all, but it sure is fun to do. I think it does and even if it doesn't you know what you're not you're never going to get 100% return on you know typically anything that you enjoy and that you have fun with you know what I mean like if you if you bought like a brand new whatever basketball or something like that and you never played with it you left in the box maybe 20 years from now it might be worth slightly more but you would have had 10 times more fun actually playing with the basketball it's the exact same thing with pinball if you just left it there in the corner collecting dust and you maybe turned it on to show people once in a while and left a dust guard on it and you never played it and you never modded it and you never did anything fun, maybe it would have a slightly better chance of going up in value, but who cares because the value of your life was worse in between, so it wasn't really, you know, they're meant to be played, they're toys for God's sake, right?
    24:01
    You know, and I'm the type of guy that takes my new era hat and I rip the sticker off as soon as I buy it, you know, I don't leave that on there. Good, good. I reached in and grabbed the goodie bag and just ripped it out of the cabinet too, so it's probably had it's probably worthless now that's good though you gotta you gotta play with it and honestly i it as long as the mods are tasteful and it's not overdone you just have to find the right buyer and i'll tell you what right now if i was in looking for a premium i would much rather yours not only because it's you know it looks cooler than the average premium and it looks damn close to an le but i would want it just because it came from don's so i want to give you a quick compliment And within about five minutes of listening to your very first podcast, I literally said out loud to my wife, Drop Target Danielle, I said, wow, that's great. This guy's on his first freaking episode. He's already way better than me. Like the sound quality is great. You stick to your topic. You don't go off topic. Your editing is good. It doesn't sound over edited. You haven't added like too many extra sounds or anything. But at the same time, you can tell it's still there a little. So, you know, how are you feeling? Like, how many episodes are you at now in total, and how are you feeling about joining the podcasting world? Is it making pinball more fun for you? That's what it does for me.
    25:14
    Oh, God, it's been fantastic. Yeah, I was kicking this idea around for a few months last year, like, you know, October, November, December, thinking, like, you know, I kind of felt I wanted to do something creative in this space. But then I'm like, you know, who am I? I'm just some guy. I'm kind of newer into this. Everybody's already well established. So it's heaven and haunt. And I said, heck it. in January, I'm like, you know what, I got the mixer, we're gonna do it. And if we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it right. So I started like, you know, I found artists online, and then I had to do like my intro music, I paid people to do some graphics for me, you know, I found some, you know, a budget way to do it, you know, and I was like, Oh, man, it's almost like I'm a real podcaster doing this, you know, a little bit of that imposter syndrome. But I was thinking I was just trying to create the kind of thing that I would want to listen to, you know, so, you know, it may not be everybody's flex. It's not a 90 minute, you know, diatribe. I don't have all these industry connections that other people have made. But what I did have was something that the established people didn't have. And that was my naivete, right? My new perspective, my new vision into like this hobby from somebody who's like recently just like walked into a door at the convention center, like what the heck is going on in here? You know? So it's like, you know, a new parent discovers this, you know, your kids like, you know, 18 months to two years old. And then all of a sudden you're sitting on the couch and you're like, my God, this kid has never had a marshmallow. Child, let me show you this. It's going to blow your freaking mind. And then you watch your kid eat a marshmallow for the first time, and it's like that joy in their face. I'm trying to think that's what I'm bringing, this perspective to all this. And I may get some things wrong, get some names wrong. I still don't pronounce Minneapolis correctly all the time, and I get stuff for that. But this is super fun. I think the community is great. The people that reach out are fantastic. If I've got haters out there, they're not really showing me a lot of things. So I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing here. No, I don't think you're very positive. I have heard you do constructive criticism, though. So it's not like you're all, you know, sunshines and rainbows and cuddly bears or koalas or sloths or something cute. I don't know. You know what I mean? I think that what happens is, like, for me anyways, my first 50 episodes, I didn't even tell anyone I was releasing. I didn't want anyone that actually knew me knew who I was or what I was doing. And it wasn't until I actually got a shout-out on Slam Tilt, a pinball podcast with Bruce at the end, which ironically the shout-out wasn't even for me. Well, the shout-out was, but they always give a shout-out to whoever liked their Facebook page most recently at the very end. And so I guess I was the person who had most recently liked their Facebook page. So I was at a pinball tournament and Jeff Teoles came up to me and said, oh I heard about your shout out on Slam Tilt and I said really? I didn't even know they had a pinball podcast and Jeff was like you have a pinball podcast? and I was like no, like I literally was just talking to my phone on the Anchor app and I would just hit record and hit stop and sometimes it was a 3-5 minute it was all just about me interacting with pinball and what tournament was coming up and it was all just local and regional and I knew nothing about the other I was starting to listen to other pinball podcasts but I had never podcasted before that like I hosted a craft beer program on Rogers which is like our whatever like the equivalent to the whatever uh Wayne's World was on there in the states right PBS or something for you guys but I had never been the person producing editing behind the camera behind the mic so to speak I had been the person in front of the camera and I didn't have to worry about any of that BS and the guys with the microphones followed me around right or clipped one on me and I just talked so I didn't have to worry about all the sound issues and all that other kind of stuff but I think I'm slowly getting a little bit better. I stopped calling it a blog right around episode 500. I said, okay, I want to take it a little bit more seriously nowadays. Luckily enough, I never really have to think, oh, who can I have on next? I started chatting with you and I went, wow, I'd love to talk to Don on here. Then I talked to Franchi once in a while. I'm like, well, he's got new art, so I want to talk to him. I just interact with people who I would interact with anyways, most likely. But I get to have it on a forum where, you know, a couple hundred people get to listen as opposed to me just jibber-jabbing to myself. And I think the main thing this podcast does is it allows my wife not to listen to me talk about pinball as much. And my kids and my other friends and my neighbors and random people at the store and the person at Tim Horton's getting me a coffee. You know what I mean? Like, because I'm actually able to. All the blank faces. Right. And they're like, why is this guy still talking about pinball to me? Like, you know what I mean? So this podcast actually allows me to kind of get it out of my system a little and have, you know, fun, interesting conversations like that. While we're talking about pinball media, I'm just curious to hear what are a couple maybe of your favorite pinball podcasts or like YouTube or that kind of thing? Like what do you kind of dig? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you listen to everything or a little bit of everything or what?
    30:08
    A little bit of everything, but I got my favorites. Can I just say, though, real quick, recording 50 podcasts and releasing them and telling nobody about them is like the most punk rock thing ever.
    30:18
    Thank you. I want to create content and put it out and I'll tell nobody. It's going to be out there. I was just messing around. I was too afraid. But, you know, eventually you just got to say, here's me, world. It's not perfect, but this is what I got for you. Listen and love it or don't. I don't care.
    30:37
    Jump in. And yeah, I mean, you know, for me personally, as I was growing up, I was a kid that kept getting told, you don't know the difference between good attention and bad attention, you know, and I was always getting in trouble and things. And then I kind of figured out I had a little bit of this comedian gene where like, you know, some situation happens like the most inappropriate thing, but hilarious thing that you could possibly say pops in your head. And then as soon as you say it, you're in trouble constantly. So I wanted to stand on my tongue. You were the class clown. I saw an interview with Steve Martin and he was just being very candid about like, you know, performance and the comedian process and like the main point that he was getting across was like there's room for you here you know like don't be afraid to get out there and put yourself out like don't think that that the the area is so saturated that you can't possibly succeed you shouldn't even try it's like there's room for you up here like there's room on the stage and it's like i love it i love that that guy's brilliant he's got short storybooks i uh awesome um but yeah i found myself uh you know as i go on long drives and things or you know i'm just sitting at work I was listening to these podcasts because they were interesting. I love the new rumors. I love the speculation. You know, even if we're just kind of talking in circles and nobody really knows what's going on, that's fun for me. Like, what's next? What's new? You know, what's the drama? So, you know, I came across just, you know, Canada's live streams. And, like, I was like, who the heck is this guy, man? He's like ego on a screen, you know. And then, you know, I got a history and everybody seemed to have an opinion about him. And so I kind of started following him and then listening to his podcast. Same time I came across Pinball Show 2 and Super Awesome Pinball Show. And those were like my big ones. And, you know, I'd never miss an episode of those. And then now I'm going through the podcast catchers and Stitcher and things and starting to see like what else is out there. You know, I've been listening to more, you know, Slam Tilt. I mean, the Pinball Network makes it kind of easy because you can scroll through like all of their content that they have. And everybody's got their own perspective, you know, and so there is a spot for everybody. I love the speculation and just like covering, you know, given my what I'm thinking about when I see something pop up on Naps Arcade or if I go and play a new game on location, you know, one of the first Scoobies that was on public location play was at IO in Madison. It's an hour and a half from my house and I was able to be there and I live streamed it, you know, and then that became super popular. The episode I did was like number 20 and that was like the first one to get like over 100 listens and it blew up to like 260 or something. I'm like, my God, awesome. Right place, right time. Right. I kind of cover that component of it. Canada's got people feeding him rumors, and I love the juicy rumors, and I love the drama, just watching that and sipping and eating popcorn and watching that part of it. I love the industry-connective perspectives you get from the distributors that have the podcast. But then there's a whole realm of tournament coverage that I can't even fully appreciate yet, but that's out there, and people are just jammed. They just want to listen to that. or the people that watch hours and hours of live stream, you know. So there's something for everybody out there. There's definitely plenty of room on the stage, I found. Yeah, and you know what? It's funny because I would consider myself way more of a tournament player than I would consider myself like, you know, a pinball insider or an industry guy or something like that. But I really don't love, I will listen to them, and I don't mind a brief synopsis, but I typically don't like listening to like long pinball podcasts all about pinball tournaments. Like, I like pinball tournament talk kind of spiced in with other stuff, and that's why I myself, you know, like, I understand someone listening to me talk for 45 minutes about the nine games I played in a tournament. It's not that exciting. And during my first, like, 200 or 300 episodes, if I would do that, I would find tons of local people would be like, wow, I loved how you gave me that shout out, and you talked about this whole game and everything else. but the numbers were just so low whereas where if you know if I did a topic that more people would be interested in obviously then more people would listen surprise surprise even if I'm talking about ping clash where I'm talking about indisc or something like that right so um uh yeah it's kind of neat because I you probably don't know the history of this but Kaneda and I have had well we had one really really bad fallout about maybe three and a half four years ago and to the point of like we were it was very it got pretty bad we were yelling and screaming at each other for i don't know maybe a week or so and then one time he was a little drunk and i was a little drunk and we actually sat there and talked for like i don't know like it felt like like an hour and a half and somehow at the end of that since then we've decided to like if we're gonna disagree with each other to try to do it respectfully so i think i've got i think i've been on the band hammer on the edge of being banned on his show probably like five times in the past year since then but like not quite, you know, and a couple times I've been listening to his show and it's just for some reason, sometimes he just, you know, irks me the wrong ways, too negative or too repetitive. And I'll just, you know, turn it off or just not listen to it anymore or not jump into chat because I can tell, Ooh, I'm going to, this topic's too hot for me. If I even, no matter which side of this I go on, I'm going to get burnt. So I just decided, nah, I don't want to, I want to be like, I want to be able to be critical, but I don't want to be overtly negative because not only for the listeners but also for me because if I'm too negative too often then it's not it's not making my relationship and my hobby of pinball more fun so at the same time you can't just like like you said before you can't just say everything's really good but if you ever listen to all the pinball content and you're totally bored uh obviously go back and listen to uh every silver ball chronicles uh that's very very ever oh yeah um but if you're ever that's great that's that's very road trip content oh incredible incredible uh you know ron is a wealth of knowledge he's been around pinball longer than i've probably been uh out of diapers and then you know uh dave over there mr david dennis himself just does an incredible job researching the hell i don't even know where he gets half this information but if you ever run out of pinball content and i've gone back and listened to all the slam tool episodes when i was driving across canada but if you ever run out you gotta listen to coast to coast pinball they're very okay there it's you have to use the way back machine on the internet usually someone might have links to some of it but neil uh who actually who does it actually now works for stern and he only does exclusively the stern insider podcasts so and so he'll interview like uh after after like a new pin comes out but he i know he's like he's out of the country now I think he's over in Holland or something like that and he still plays pinball but he doesn't do the podcast and his podcast was a lot more like mine in that he would talk about going on a trip and he'd talk about the meal that he had and meeting the owner of the bar and the games that he played and he talked about in a really nuanced kind of like more like a blog and after he got to I believe 300 or 400 he finally decided he didn't want to do it anymore and that's when Stern pulled him up and now he just does two or three podcasts a year when like a new pinball machine comes out, basically. But his pinball podcast was really, really interesting. That was kind of what sucked me in originally. You have to remember, I've been doing this now for, not how long I've been doing the podcast, but listening to pinball podcasts, I'm on like year seven or eight or something like that. So like, you know, I was around before Special One Lit. I remember when that came out, way before the pinball show. And I don't know if you knew this, but I actually had one of the original shows on TPN back in the day.
    37:50
    Wow, an OG founder. Yeah, you didn't know that. No. That's new. That's new to me. It was a show called Top Three with Orby. It sort of sucked. I don't know. I tried to make it like, I tried to be all like proper and not swear. And like, I just, I had all this pressure because I went from getting only two or 300 listens to like over a thousand listens for every show. And I also felt like I'm not quite really part of this. I don't know. Like I didn't really feel part of the network enough. I don't know. They did. I wasn't one of the original founders. I think they brought myself and Crystal Gemnick on like, I don't know, like two months in or something or a month and a half in. Anyways, Ken Cromwell of Jersey Jack Pinball was my producer. He did an awesome job throwing in like background sounds editing long rants when I went off topic getting rid of background noise getting rid of ums yas Like it just it was probably my best three episodes of podcasting I ever done but of course it was with help right So you know anyways I gone off topic here What are your goals? Where do you want to get, like, what are your goals with the podcast? Do you want to just slowly grow up and have a nice base?
    38:53
    Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing about this is you can't really fake it, right? You can't be your non-true self and do this consistently. You can have a character that you're playing and you're trying to play up some angle, but you're going to exhaust yourself. You're not going to be able to keep that up. I think the best thing is to just be real, be yourself, let that come through.
    39:14
    For that, to you, is documenting every tournament finding and everything, then that's what you should do, boo. You do you, right? But I think as far as the personalities that are within the podcast space and the pinball hobby, I mean, as long as I think we're meeting each other with kindness first, I think that's probably the best approach. But I say these personalities, as grating as they can be and like the different interactions and things, that's not just exclusive to pinball. I mean, I call them the roller coaster hobbyist community. And there are exactly the same attitudes and perspectives of people. You know, there's somebody that owns a forum there that kind of lords over it and, you know, banhammers people that don't agree with every single thing that he says. the personalities that we know, especially the most notorious ones, that are in pin volume, the most passionate people, they exist in all of these fandoms, whether it's Pokemon cards or tabletop gaming or whatever. There's a Pokemon Kaneda out there that has it out for the Pokemon Network people, and they go back and forth. That's a thing, probably. But I think, just let these personalities breathe in their spot, but don't I guess don't harbor the grudges for too long, you know, but I mean, or at least make good content about it. Yeah, yeah. No, I like to address the drama, but I just like to try to look at it from like a best case scenario if possible, just because like you said, that's primarily my personality. I mean, you know, everyone has bad days or I can go into a funk, but for the most part, I try to be positive. So why would my pinball content not be this way? Now, I will say this. People have met me in real life, and they're like, well, you're not as hyper as, like, this guy you play on the podcast. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to come on the podcast and be like, hey, guys, how's it going today? Like, I'm not going to be the Eeyore, like, tired, like, grumpy. That's why I don't record until about 11 a.m. once I've had two or three coffees, right? Like, you know, you try to record when you're in a good mood, and you try to put forward the best version of yourself without being too far from actually being yourself, right? So... So, um, Oh, right. If you're not, if you're not feeling it, if you're not into it, it's going to come through and be awful. So just, yeah, it's better to just not unless you're, you know, in that zone. Yeah. You can't play music if you're not happy. If you're in a bad mood, how do you play music? It's not going to sound right. I hear you. I hear you. Now, uh, I wanted to challenge you to something. I'm just curious, uh, where, where, where's your FPA ranking approximately? I have no idea I have a number because I do see mentions I guess official tournaments but I have no idea where I'm at there I'm just happy to be there okay wherever you are it doesn't really matter I think it's funny because the average like for the next all the way until Halloween I may not be able to go to a single solitary pinball tournament part of the reason our interview got delayed is because my wife and I took over the lease of a brand new cafe it's thank god only open on Saturdays and the odd Sunday when there's big events at a new farmer's market. But when you're running two different cafes that are going to have 4,500 people at the one event every Saturday and about 3,500 people at the other one, you spend two or three days getting your supplies ready, pre-cooking all the food, like, you know what I mean? So the point is, every single tournament I have between now and Halloween, I can't go to because it's on a Saturday. There might be the odd tournament I don't know about coming up in July or August that hasn't been announced. But for the most part, I won't get to play any. So I'm curious to see if you want to take on the challenge just for fun. And we'll say maybe the other person can buy them a beer or a drink when we finally get to meet the person. Just one beer challenge. I want to see if you, being not in the middle of nowhere, can get your ranking higher than mine within a year. I'm currently ranked 6,700th. Honestly, you would only have to finish. Challenge accepted. Okay, challenge accepted. I don't even understand all the details, but I'm down. You buy me a beer or I buy you a beer if whoever is not ahead of each other one year from today, which is the good old 23rd. All right, perfect. Mark the date. We'll see where we're at. All right, I'm excited. And speaking of shows I can buy you a beer at, are you coming to Expo again in this fall?
    43:18
    All right, shake the – yeah, got to shake that undersea cable here a little bit. You dropped out. Oh, I'm just asking if you came to – if you're going to go to Expo this year.
    43:28
    Albert, come back to me. Oh, no. Guys, we're losing Don. I'll pack a coffee grinder. There you go. Don, can you hear me now?
    43:40
    We're back. We're back. Okay, we're back. Okay, good. I do apologize. It could be my internet. It could be your internet. I'm not sure. I hope it's probably my internet. But I'm curious. Are you going to Expo this year, and will I see you there?
    43:54
    One more time. I missed that last word. Oh, are you going to Expo? Expo. Come on. I'm going to Expo for sure. I've had to cancel a lot of these things because of work, but I'm at Expo. I've got the ticket spot, the Renaissance is booked, so I don't have to buy somebody else's room that they didn't show up to this time. So I'm down. I'm there, man. Dude, we are going to play some pinball. Are you a craft beer fan as well? I think you are, right?
    44:20
    I can be, yeah. Okay, okay. I see what you're saying. You're like, if there's a Bud Light and it's free, you'll drink it, but also you can have the good stuff once in a while. um we have some yeah yeah we have some other hobbies in common i found out about we both like to skateboard and you actually showed me your little quarter pipe or your little miniature half pipe that you have there in the garage i believe do you still actually skate that or no i do sir yeah i got a four foot high 16 foot wide 27 foot long mini ramp in my garage that i'm super blessed to have yeah i shred the nar nar out there occasionally wow okay i feel like um well i'm i mean i was conceived in 1979 born in 1980 so we've got to be close in age uh are you finding like i don't know if you just you eat healthier than me maybe you take lots of good supplements but like i was just walking at the ocean last fall and i slipped on a rock with a whole bunch of seaweed on it and i only fell from like three feet and when i hit the ground i i don't know if i broke it but at least i sprained my left wrist severely bad and since then i've been afraid to go to the skate park anymore. So I don't know, man. The injuries last longer. The recovery takes longer. The fatigue sets in. I was skating the other day over by Lake Erie in Ohio, and I just skated downtown through the streets and stuff like I used to. And I went about a half mile before the chest pain set in, so I had to take a little bit of a break. So it definitely hits different now.
    45:47
    My skills are definitely atrophied. I'm not throwing myself down any staircases anymore, But I love going to skate parks and riding those, you know, just like, you know, popping hair safely and such. But I don't huff myself down the huge ledges like I used to. Okay. Well, I will not skateboard with you unless I'm maybe, maybe really, really, really drunk and I have on all my pads. Like I will wear the wrist guards, the elbow pads, the helmet, the knee pads. I'll put on a jock strap. I'll do whatever I have to do because that's the only way I will skateboard. But what I will do with you is another thing we have in common is disc golfing. And that one I can still do. I can't throw the discs nearly as far, but I'm curious how hardcore into disc golf you got.
    46:28
    Oh, in college I was introduced to it, and, man, I got my Heisers, my Anheisers. I had 30 discs. I was going every couple of days, man. I was definitely not like pro circuit or anything. I was happy with a par, but I got – it's fun. I like it. It's like some of the same joy as like regular golf or bowling, but it involves a lot of walking around through uneven terrain and exploring the woods. and uh you know losing discs so who doesn't like that right oh god i think i spent uh the uh the disc golf course near me the front nine you'd never lose any discs it was very wide open but the back nine the the fairways were so narrow that if you didn't like i know the uh non-disc golf nerds listening are like anheuser heiser what are they talking about that just means your disc either goes basically turns to the left or turns to the right depending on if you four-handed it or backhanded it but long story short if you're just slightly off on your throw that freaking disc would if it starts going left or shanking or hooking you'd call it in ball golf if it starts hooking early it just keeps going and it could be two holes over three holes over in a river up in a tree down in a rat's nest or up here in Canada sometimes the beaver will get ahead of it on the wooden discs and just starting on away no okay I'm just I took it too far there but But, yeah, man, like, if we ever get to hang out at a pinball tournament, I will be sure to pack at least, as long as I have my putter in a good mid-distance, I can, you know, as long as I have two or three discs, I don't need my whole frickin' sack to come play with you. But definitely we will scope out a disc golf course near Expo, and we will go do that. And if you really want, I will videotape you skateboarding. But I kind of, like, I'm taking some time off of skateboarding. I don't know. We'll see. That's actually good. All right, I got a great idea. Okay, what's that? I got a great idea for Expo. We'll do pinball golf at Expo, right? We'll pick, like, nine machines, and those will be the holes. And then, you know, we'll battle at each one and then move to the next one. And then we'll add up the scores, and that's who wins each hole.
    48:24
    I love this. I feel like you're my American brother, okay? Now, I don't want to, like, I don't want to trap you into a question here at all. Either way, you know, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. You can plead the fifth. You're in America. You're allowed to do that, okay? But if you were forced and just twisted, for now, yes, yes, you might be coming up here to visit me in Nova Scotia. I heard that's awesome. But if you were given the option and you had to join either, now I think you should stay on your own, but if you were given the option and you had to join either the Pinball Network or the Poor Man's Pinball Network, which one would you join?
    49:00
    Oh, why not both? All right, I like that answer. I'd join both, so why can't you, right? that's honestly so hard to say because you'd have to look at what was on the table like does anybody even want me oh Zach will pay you way better than I will if there was something that I could offer where I could be in the space and contribute that I'd be happy to be anywhere well you're welcome here on the good old poor man's network with me anytime I was just trying to throw some shade there I was just trying to be a little cheeky but also a little funny I guess we're almost out of time here and I know you promised that you have other commitments there that you need to get back to so I have two other quick questions for you I'm curious if you I know you disc golf, I know you're into roller coasters like me, I know we skateboard I'm just curious do you have any other collectibles that you have like I kind of have a little bit of Funkos, way too many comics quite a few sports cards, non-sports cards, Pokemon, all that kind of stuff, are you into any other collectibles like that? Yeah, actually, also pins. I got two. I'm also, you know, technically a Disney adult. So I've got a Disney pin collection of about 500 pins that I've collected back when that really meant something. And they're all near and dear to me. Wait, wait, wait. They completely fell apart. It sucks now. But, man, yeah. What do you mean it meant something? I'm in love with Disney enamel pins. Like, did they start overproducing them or something?
    50:28
    So what had happened is people ended up going back to the source, to these factories in China where these are made, and buying in bulk the rejected seconds and then flooding the market with those and trading these, you know, kind of budget secondary gray market pins for like legit ones. And then Disney kind of pulled back on them, like their cast members trading high quality pins with the guests. So now the only pins that they trade at the parks are kind of these really generic ones. It's not fun anymore. But back before that all fell apart, it was fun to like collect things and trade things for rare, you know, things. The cast members were committed to trading with you. So that was fun, man. Just, you know, collecting all the different types And, you know, I'm into anything with, like, you know, an interesting theme or story or backstory to it. So, you know, it plays right into pinball just as it plays into theme parks, you know. I'm a fan of themed entertainment in general. So vehicles and tracks, you know, blinky lights, action, adrenaline, flippy balls, and that stuff. I love it. Well, I'm not going to lie. I think that collecting pins is even nerdier than collecting pinball machines. Absolutely. Who knows? I bet you there's a pins podcast that is like not pinball, but like pins. You know what I mean?
    51:39
    There's a dozen, yes. Oh, my God. Okay. I didn't even know that. All right. The last thing I wanted to do is I kind of want to run down a couple of the pinball companies. And I just wanted you to give me like, again, kind of like the Cole Notes versions. What do you think they're doing? What do you love about them? I know you buy mostly Sterns.
    51:57
    So maybe we'll start with the Juggernaut, of course. you know you don't have to go into necessarily price too much but I know you're very happy with Foo Fighters you know what do you think overall about Stern how would you sum it together to another person who is brand new into pinball they just walked into Expo and they see the big Stern set up, how do you just within a paragraph sum up all your thoughts on Stern, they're obviously the juggernaut in the biz but tell me your give it to me hard you know what I mean Two words, budget engineering. That's what I think they've been doing over the last few years, trying to find that fixed balance point of, like, how much can we charge for these? How much can we reduce the build of materials yet still hit our sales goals and numbers? And, like, they are riding that plane right there. You know, they have way more demand than they're able to come out with, even to the point that they're now expanding their production into a new facility. I mean, look at the lines for accessories, man. You know, I mean, people, the distros ordering the Stern Topper, the Rush Toppers are only getting like 10% of like what they're ordering, you know, and it's like there's people hungry for allotment. So they've kind of got this issue where, I mean, it's like the best problem you could possibly have. But I would like to see them, you know, continue to expand their production so they can meet everybody where it's at. And I think we're seeing a little bit of softening of the prices, especially on the secondary market for them, now that we are finally catching up on demand and maybe the market's cooling down a bit. But, man, the last few years, they've just been all about, much like all other companies have been, like, how can we reduce what we're putting into our products, reduce our costs, but, you know, potentiate the potential gains of it? And I think they've been riding that. And I think Jersey Jack, following suit, shot well past them, man, when they started charging $15,000 for Toy Story. But, yeah, Stern is killing it. I mean, they've got the talent. And they're large enough that they have all of the economies of scale working for them. And I think that's what you don't really see with any other company. Even, like, you know, Jersey Jackets, they're, like, number two by volume. I mean, it's like there's a big differential between, you know, where Stern's at and with their numbers, with their production, like where a Jersey Jacket is. Yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I think when I look at Foo Fighters, to me, I don't look at it and go, oh, it looks like someone tried to make this the most price-efficient way possible. To me, it looks like it's pretty freaking loaded, especially when you look at something like Led Zeppelin or, do you know what I mean? Like, even there's quite a few pins. Absolutely. Arrow Smith, Led Zeppelin. And, you know, to me, it looks like they've, and when I look at Godzilla, even especially the premium, I'm going, well, this is, this looks like there's some mechanical magic in it. Now, at the same time, as a business owner, my constant thought is, how can I make this more efficient? How can I do the same thing and have customers happy, but also so I'm profiting more money? And, of course, because Stern has done a good job, you know, padding their bankroll and making sure that they have enough meat on the bones, there's no chance of Stern going under anytime soon. In fact, they're probably ripe for getting bought up by a bigger company, you know, if they continue to be this much of a juggernaut that brings in this much money. On the flip side of that, if they expand too fast and then two, three years from now, there happens to be, I'm not going to say complete, like, economic collapse. But if for some reason there is a bit of a downturn in the economy for two, three, four years, you could eventually see some of the, you know, the prices continue to soften. and therefore you could see less demand for new pinball machines and then therefore what could also happen is they would have to you know you know basically they knew that there was the pig and the python that was basically covid which caused people like yourselves to stay indoors look at ways to entertain themselves and then they've got all those people getting through as the you know the python is swell swallowing the big now we've got to the other side of it they don't want to expand too fast either than then just have lines sitting open and then they don't of economies of scale anymore. So it's kind of like, it goes both ways, but I think that Stern is well aware that we're going to be, all of us pinball nerds out here, whether we're an armchair warrior who goes on pin side or you're just a podcaster, I think they're aware of that fact. And this is kind of an offshoot of that, but do you think that we're going to start seeing pinball companies, and it's actually a show I'm working on in the future, do you think we're going to start seeing pinball machine companies, and I think even Stern first, kind of using AI? Do you think there's a possibility that could start happening, you know, maybe not soon, but the next year or two?
    56:30
    I think maybe when it comes to, like, engineering shots to get them as close to perfect as possible, maybe having, like, an AI algorithm, like, over your shots and, like, adjust them, you know, or, like, you know, with art layouts or something, you know, more into, like, optimization. I don't know if you can really hit a button and say, okay, AI, create a compelling pinball layout better than, you know, our pinball designers can. But I think you could lay the groundwork. It's probably going to be a tool that the designers are going to use to achieve their goals a little easier. But it won't, like, replace them. I think you're right. It would be a – I don't – Jesus, I wouldn't want to replace them, right? You want that human feel in there. I'm just saying, like, the small things, like the – like, I was listening to on Party Pinball there with Jason. He was interviewing Mike Vinicorn. Great show. Yes. And Mike was talking about, that was probably my favorite interview he's had on there, Mike Vinicore was talking about programming the expression lighting, and he was talking about how monotonous it was, and like five seconds of a song could take him hours, right? So I'm thinking right future if you could say okay I want you to code this music pin to be like, you know, 60% similar to the coding on whatever You know Led Zeppelin or whatever rush or something like that I want it to be 50 like Foo Fighters or something like that or it would just fill in the gaps for like You know the changes in tempo to make the lights go this direction or that direction I think that they could actually again I don't know how many years down the road we're talking, but last Stern question, then we've got to move on because I know I've got to get you off here. Last Stern question, are you team? Because I think that maybe Elowen has a little competition in the future. It would be very interesting to see Jack's second and third pins. We don't know until he's got more than, you know, like it's like a band you can't just have one good album okay and he's kind of arguably had two now with the Jurassic Park home pin but are you team Elwynn or are you team Jack Danger so I'll say this Elwynn's never given me a bear hug okay there you go okay Keith you've got a challenge now but yeah I mean what a good problem to have right you know two great guys I'm playing a lot more Foo Fighters right now than I'm playing my Godzilla, but I'm not selling either one of them. So, you know, I don't know that I could really, you know, it's like with ice cream, right? It's like, well, I really want chocolate ice cream. Well, we have strawberry. It's like, okay, well, you're maybe a little disappointed, but you still have ice cream. So it's not like you're terribly disappointed. Well, as a man who grew up working at the Nestle ice cream factory, I sure love a good drumstick. So here's the thing is, and I think what you're saying is right, But I just love, it doesn't matter if it's a TV show, it doesn't matter if you're watching Survivor or if you're talking about even with skateboarding, right? There's always a good rivalry. And for years and years and years, people would be either Team Pat Lawler or they would be Steve Ritchie. And they're like, no, Pat Lawler's better. And then Steve Ritchie came out with Star Trek. And they're like, wow, that's the most flow of any game. He's better. And then all of a sudden, Pat Lawler would come out with a good game again. And then it would just go back and forth of who was the best. And I'm excited because even though I think there was some talk that maybe Eric Menier versus Elwynn, you know, they're kind of the two young guns that are killing it. I think now we might actually see a third name tossed into that mix. And I think it might be Jack Danger. And don't get me wrong. Like, they're not, you know, I'm sure they're buddies and everything like that. But they also kind of care about their legacy and wonder how people think. And, you know, I'm just curious to see where and when all the dust settles, where Foo Fighters will sit in comparison to Godzilla. I think it's going to be interesting. It's going to be a fun ride. Strap in. It's going to be great. Let's talk very briefly about good old Jersey Jack pinball. I know that you haven't purchased. Jersey Jack, buddy. Yeah, you haven't bought any in the past, but I know that's partially. I have. Oh, you have. You have. Okay, sorry. Who was I thinking of? I had a limited edition Guns N' Roses, buddy. Oh, how long? How long did you keep it?
    60:31
    About a year. Okay. And I would still have it today, but a good friend of mine just also is getting into pinball, and he came over to my house one day and he looked at me and he made me an offer. And I had, yeah. You know, it was a fantastic game. I loved the layout. That bass guitar wire form ramp was never boring. I loved every time I got a ball up there. But it just came to the point where, like, I wasn't playing it as much as everything else. You know, I've got a great lineup, but it was the one that I just wasn't playing as much anymore. And, you know, he was so enthusiastic about it and he gave me a good price and I did it for a buddy and I can still go over and play it when I want to. But, you know, the other thing is I can get it again in the future if I want. You know, I think enough of them are out there. You know, it's available. So I felt okay letting it go. But, yeah, it did have a completely different feel, you know, than the CERNs did.
    61:20
    Yeah, a different feel. But you had it a year. Like in a year you can figure out a pin enough. You know what I mean? So I'm glad to hear that you have had one and you will buy one again in the future. would you say that you're 100% going to get Harry Potter, or would you say you have to see the video first, or would you say you have to play it first?
    61:40
    Well, I mean, I was pretty much 90% going to get Toy Story until I saw it, and then I was turned off. So the theme and implementation could go sideways. So I'm not 100% on Harry Potter. JKP's not going to do that again to us, are they?
    61:54
    Yeah, if it's more pirates, even more dialed in than it is Toy Story, then I think I'll end up with one.
    62:04
    All right. Thoughts on Spooky? Spooky, man. These are some cool guys. I'm just a fan of Spooky in general. I love that. Yeah, their games hit a little different. I've got two of them now. We got Rick and Morty and Halloween. I love them both. I'm not looking to sell either one of them.
    62:21
    And I've got a Scooby-Doo on order. And I think these guys are primed for, like, a next big step in their evolution. They've got a new facility, a bigger facility they're coming up with. I saw their studio tour, and it looks like there's a lot of optimization opportunities for them. You know, it looks like they're still running up and down stairs when it comes to, like, you know, take this part to this next step. So I think if they can, you know, now that they've achieved the scale that they have, you know, really modernize the line, I think it'll be easier to hit those QC goals that, you know, people would like to see from them. So I'm very enthusiastic with how they're doing. They seem to be doing great. they're keeping their price points at a place that's palatable for me um and uh you know these guys would go after themes pretty hard that most other people may not think there's enough you know meat on the bone for them to get them with the amount of work that they have to put in you know but these guys have shown that they're willing to put in the work to get licenses so i'm excited to see like what three games they're working on right now in that little back room of theirs i think that you're right they're full of potential i personally i i really didn't love Halloween. I haven't played I've only got five or six games on it and it isn't allowed bowling alley. But for the most part so far I haven't loved it. But Rick and Morty I haven't got to play. I suspect I will love it because I love TNA and I love Rick and Morty and the animations are incredible. So be honest. What a game. What's better, Rick and Morty or Halloween?
    63:50
    Oh. Tell the truth. Probably Rod. I'd give the edge to Rick and Morty. It was a game that was just consuming my dollars to be arcade because it is a little bit brutally hard right there were some unfair uh you know rejects that you would get yeah but gosh when it when you put an adult mode and it's swearing at you with with rick and it's not much better than that in a home environment um with halloween i love that theme i love michael myers i love horror uh horror hip-hop i've been to two gatherings of the juggalos three i think so like michael myers has been with me my whole adulthood hood so that that theme plays a huge part into it um you know and it's not a flow monster by any means um but it is a monster pinball so um you know when you're alone in your basement and you're playing it it's quiet you hear everything in the rumble and uh you know the way that uh you know when the ball goes in the subway and then you're expecting it to come out of the scoop and then all of a sudden it plays that little that sound and here comes your ball and if you don't react you're dead and that's you know michael's coming out of the shrubs to get you and stab you in the neck Like, that was the integration for me, you know. And I know it's not most people's cup of tea, and that's totally okay, but, like, I love my Halloween, man.
    65:02
    It probably could grow on me, but I'm not a fan of it. I mean, I think I also just, when I was, like, in grade four or grade three, my babysitter made me watch all those Halloweens, and they scared the crap out of me. So, like, maybe. Oh, absolutely. And I never went back and watched them again. I didn't like, like, I can't, I'm really afraid of that, like, Child's Play and Chucky, and I don't watch any, like, horror. I have, like, a crazy enough, like, creative enough brain that freaks me out enough, and I also live, like, 200 meters from a giant cemetery, and then about 400 meters from, like, a 300-year-old one, so I don't know. I don't mess with any of that type of stuff. Come down to Universal to Halloween Horror Nights with me sometime. It's a freaking blast. And so, no, here's how I know that the theme matters to me a lot, and that's why I give that game much more of a pass than a show. Okay, okay. Because I played Ultraman, okay? Ultraman is exactly the same layout, and it doesn't do a whole lot for me at all. Like, I take it or leave it. But Halloween, I love it, and that's because of the strength of that theme for me personally.
    66:05
    I hear you. Well, theme matters. We know that. What have we got left? Like, I'm not going to talk about pinball adventures and all the small ones, but let's at least hit American Pinball and, I guess, CGC, unless I'm missing really any other big ones. But to me, American Pinball, their best game is Houdini. I'm sorry. But, you know, what do you think?
    66:25
    Walk me through this. Okay, so I played some Galactic Tank Force, two different locations, and I played about 15 games total. Okay, getting that ice cream.
    66:33
    It's a game, and it's weird. It's a game. Now, you know, $10,000 or whatever for their limited edition version, but they're trying to charge $6,000 more for the same effect game with a Translight and a Thermos and a Banner and a pint glass. What am I missing, Albert?
    66:51
    You're going to be missing about $6,000 if you do that. Does that sound reasonable? No, and I'm a fairly reasonable person. I even could, even when I had Franchi on here, I said, well, I can't, okay, you've explained the story much better than anyone has so far. okay, I buy the story about the ice cream and the tanks, and I buy all of that, but the game just doesn't seem like a fun shooter yet. Maybe, maybe, maybe they make it, but it doesn't, it seems like even if that big tank wasn't there, it still isn't, like, no one is raving about the gameplay, you know what I mean? And then above that, like you said, six grand extra for a thermos.
    67:27
    $5,000, and they sell the lunchbox separate, they sell the banner separate, the pint glass, you know? So it's a back glass and the thermos is exclusive. Here's what they should have done, I think. Okay. They should have had their limited edition version. The first 150 people that committed money to buy it should have got all that free stuff as an incentive to go ahead and then start buying this. I don't know whose idea it was to charge $5,000 to $6,000 more for $500 worth of stuff.
    67:56
    I've got to be missing something. This is bonkers. Well, for that price, the tank should frickin' move like it did at TPF. Am I right? I want to be able to drive the thing down my stairs itself, you know, for F's sake. Yeah, just in case, you know, the world's ending or something, you've got to get in your tank and take off, right? What a crazy game this is. I've played it. It's kind of fun. I think it's got a couple of, you know, flaws that code can't fix. It's very – it's just so strange. It's so unusual. I'm going to get a softbox for it for just how bonkers this whole thing is. I mean, the artwork's good, though. I agree. Houdini's fun. It's got a bunch of cool stuff in it. um galactic tank force feels well made in my hands like it's a solid game i think the the graphics on the play field look great the playful quality is good the the music speakers are great you know the shaker motors work and the lights are fantastic um there's some layout things that i think give it some fatal flaws and then what's the margining price i just don't understand it and where did david fix go are you hiding him out in your basement is he is he there skateboarding on the halfpipe because no one has talked to this man he was supposed to come on my show i haven't heard from him he was supposed to come on the show after franchi no one has heard from this man it's almost as if he said something bad about scientology or something got it disappeared and he's out there on their love boat floating in the ocean somewhere i don't know man where where is david fix where in the world is mr dave fix okay sorry sorry no singing no singing well listen we've done all of them but CGC, there's one left. Pulp Fiction really hit me hard because I thought there's no way on Earth I'm going to fall in love with a single level machine, and between the call-outs and the topper and the theme, you know, I used to be the biggest Quentin Tarantino fan. I actually had a limited edition Kill Bill 2 skateboard that was signed in blood. No, it had blood marks all over it, but it wasn't signed in blood. I actually had the exact yellow shoes, which were actually the uh i think south korea it was their 1984 olympics uh fencing shoes or those yellow shoes that the uma thurman's character has in kill bill so you know i used to actually like collect the stuff that's how big of a fan i was and then somewhere around django unchained i was like i can't do this anymore but i still have mad respect for the guy but you know if i were going to get a pin that was quentin tarantino i would love for it to be pulp fiction i just know that if i only have like you have several pins but if i only know i can only afford right now say one new pin it can't be pulp fiction because as much as i love that game i think that i would kind of like i think it would fit good in three or four pins uh because it's more of a classic one it's not really deep right like if you just played that pin i could see you getting sick of it in a couple months i could be wrong whereas like if you have avengers or godzilla or foo fighters there's so many different ways to play it and then there's so many different you know there's so many branches to go down of directions of playing the games that you you kind of you add new things on each time you play it and it could take like you said years you know to get used to it whereas at the same time you know tna you could figure out the rules in 30 seconds but it was still fun to play so maybe pulp fiction's got that going for it what do you think about pulp fiction yeah no i think i hit the same way i mean i had the screenplay in high school i read it forward and backwards i wore out that vhs tape i snuck into the theater to see it when i was 15 years old like like me and Pulp Fiction go back so when I heard the rumors that they wanted to be single level it was really like disheartening I'm like oh man that's that yeah why why with my team they're doing that now I watched the documentary I get what they were going for I think they achieved their vision and a lot of that was driven by Quentin um I hesitated a bit when they went on release and that's why I didn't end up getting one because I was like you know what I'm still I'm not convinced that I need to have it I didn't want to play it first they're going to make a thousand le's whatever and then you're sold out in two minutes so I totally misread the room there But so for now, you know, I'm not even in production yet. I didn't play it. I haven't played it yet. Oh, you haven't? Okay.
    71:52
    Yeah, but there's one on location now in Chicago, and in a couple of weeks I'm going to be there to go play it. So I'm finally going to get my hands on it. If I like it and I've got room in my game room, I can pick up a special edition and then an aftermarket topper, and I think that would be fine. I think it's priced very attractively, and I just have to see if, like, that gameplay talks to me. I don't know if that gameplay might talk to more, you know, someone who's more of a Valley Williams-ish fan, you know. But I'll have to see. I'm curious to see, like, the old school design with modern implementation and see, like, how it plays.
    72:24
    For sure. Well, the only thing I'd like to see you get in your collection is maybe an EM or two because I absolutely love EMs or some solid states. And I think that you've started the way that most pinball collectors do. They start with a somewhat, you know, affordable, like, Batman or something like that that's, you know, in that mid-range. and then they go oh my god i can get new sterns and then they get and then a new jjp and then eventually they start going well wait i kind of like these solid states and then eventually i i swear to god somewhere around the three to five year mark of a pinball collector they start getting this greater respect for even older pins that are just ridiculously fun to play like tna and they start throwing some ems in the mix and that will also help you for when you're you know playing in tournaments because a lot of tournaments that there'll be at least a couple solid states or ems right especially the big tournaments so um i'd love to see you throw that into your collection are you open to trying an em or like some older pins yeah i i won't i won't write it off and in fact the williams diner just got on pin side today it's 100 miles away from me right now in maryland for 4500 and gosh darn it it does look pretty that's um you know so i can see the appeal of that happening you know right now i'm just about to almost to hit my full build out later this year of 10 pins downstairs, which I thought I'd never do. So I'm going to like rest with that for a bit and then, you know, see what happens and, you know, and how games, you know, flow in and out after that. Yeah, I managed to find myself several side hustles that are funding my pinball hobby now. So that's why I'm always on the road for work, because I can turn days of work into new pinball. I love it. So beyond your regular job, you also got some cool side hustles. Anything as cool as like my coffee company that you do on the side? No, no, nothing nearly that great. You know, I am generating merchandise. I'm printing t-shirts. I've got stickers. I've sold it to people online and in person. I'm basically just taking back the money that I put into it, which is totally fine. I've just launched a new Patreon. For five dollars, you can buy me a beer once a month. But I've also put some, you know, more off-the-cuff kind of recordings on the Patreon there because I really want to reward the three people that have decided to commit five dollars to me. So I'm trying to like over-treat them, you know, with more personal insights than I typically do on the normal podcast. And so that's at patreon.com backslash Don's Fiddleball Podcast. Five bucks a month. I got one level and you can call yourself a baller. And then if you're at that level and you want stickers or something sent to you, boom, I'll get them to you for free, buddy. Wow. Well, everybody listening, please consider joining Don. No, I'm so proud of you for even doing it because part of the reason I haven't done it is because I'm always thinking like, oh, I'm only going to get one or two Patreons and you never know and because there is some large pinball podcast that like when i went to check out their patreon i was like wow they only have a few like like this is such a respected person in the pinball industry and they're they research their shows so well and how is it they only have like five or you know what i mean like maybe a little bit more but it's it's it's tough it's a tough road you're new you know you'll get there uh i think i also i want to highly recommend your shirt i can't remember the one i'm thinking of but i saw it a couple weeks ago it was like super like uh hippie dippy, like really, I think it was your second design maybe?
    75:35
    Yeah, I think I found a cool graphic designer. I took like a Fathom kind of inspired thing and did some mermaids and a pinball machine underwater and like with his trippy graphics man. The guy's over in Indonesia and he's fantastic. Wow. That was, see, I might have to grab one of those shirts off you. I'm sure the shipping up here to Canada would absolutely like probably double the price. But, you know, I'm going to see you at Expo and I hope to get to hang out with you someday. Is there any other shout-outs you want to give before I let you go, Don?
    76:03
    Just to everybody in the community that's inspired me. Hopefully I can serve as a source of joy and inspiration to all the pinball world, hopefully. I try to be approachable. I've got my email address at donstinballpodcast.gmail.com. Go ahead and email me. Follow the Facebook page. I'm trying to get to 1,000 followers. That would be, like, super dope. I'm up to 245 in just a matter of months. Dude, that's, like, more than me already.
    76:26
    You're killing it. But I'm trying to keep giving out content for folks, especially my Patreon people. I mean, I'm recording videos and extra podcasts I'm putting up there for them. Any kind of news that's breaking, any new graphics I get, I put them up there for them. And I'm trying to do more live streams, too. Yeah, you're killing the live streams. That's a fun way to interact.
    76:47
    Yeah, one of those live streams I want to see you hit the skate ramp, Don. But I'm going to let you go, buddy. Have yourself a rad night. Thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. absolutely buddy anytime thanks everyone really appreciate it awesome my dude have a great night we will talk soon until next time pinball nerds remember to eat sleep and breathe don's pinball podcast