All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our body, a load of your torpy Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Miffed with syrup and honey Homestead life with his family and a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast. Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 505 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. On today's episode, I'm so excited. All the way in Australia, I've never done an interview on the show with someone so far away. We have Rodden Osborne. did I say your name right? very close very close we'll give you a 9 out of 10 it's actually Roarers in Lion yes it comes with the access so it's just Roarden Roarden there you go there you go well thank you so much for chatting with me I'm going to do my best to get this audio working and try to make sure everybody can hear you, of course. I wanted to first say thank you so much for offering to do the pin turn duties. I didn't give you any specific things to do, but I figured because you're such a giant pinball super fan just like me that you would be the perfect person to be the pin turn. So I know you do. You sent me a really cool diary here, and the label, the big headline at the top is, The Greatest Pinball Week of My Life. And I will say this, when I heard that you were going, I got even worse FOMO because, of course, I've always wanted to meet you. And then you told me something that honestly broke my heart a little. You said that you probably weren't ever going to be coming back to Expo and this might be the only chance I could ever meet you. And then I was so sad, but now I hear that you had such a rad time at Pinball Expo 2022, you might just try to come back next year or the year after? Could I all be yet? No, definitely not. That's the third Expo I've done. And yes, I had told my wife that yes, it will be the last one. I mean, the sheer cost of it all and the week that it takes up, you can't justify a fourth time down the track. But since this one was so good, it was the best, yeah, I'll definitely be back and we'll definitely do a fourth one, but it won't be next year. That's three years since I've been, so I'm getting feedback. Anything you can say? It sounds okay over here. It's a little bit on the quiet side, but I think it's coming out okay. Okay, how's that? Is that better? That is better, yeah. You're speaking up a bit better there. Okay, I was just going to say, I don't know if it was me feeding back. That's probably just me farting here in Canada. Don't worry about it. Okay, where were we up to? Well, what I wanted to talk about was, I know we were just talking before I turned on the mic here. You know, I've joked about the Tim Hortons. My favorite donut is, of course, the Boston Cream. It's soft. It's pillowy. It has this beautiful cream custard inside. And I don't care what the Americans tell you. The Boston Cream is even better in Canada than it is in Boston. I've tried it in Boston. It's not that good. And you were so excited to be popping by Vancouver Airport, and at 8 a.m., Tim Hortons was closed. were you pretty upset? Absolutely. I couldn't believe it. I'm there, right, I'm walking through customs, I look to the right and I can see Hortons at about 50 people waiting on the other side of customs with the glass barrier. I'm not going out of there and I'm just walking through to get on the flight to Chicago and I come around the corner and I see a Hortons sign, right, there's one on the inside of customs on the international side, they come around the corner, it's 8am your time in Vancouver, the shutters down, I can see in, there's stuff inside, I can't see any donuts or anything, but there's no one there, and we've got an hour to get this place open so I can try that Boston cream, and I'm like a dog waiting for its master to get home, be home in a minute, but no, never opened. Got on the plane, I thought, right, I've got one more chance on the way home next week. So, missed out on the way there, but I was still hoping to get it on the way back. And did you ever get it on the way home? No, because I landed into Vancouver about 10pm on a Sunday night, and literally got off the plane and walked past it and it was still closed so horton's still no zero and one so maybe i have to come back by canada next time oh geez okay here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna take freeze-dried ice and i'm gonna get the freshest ready-made like 4 a.m tim horton's boston cream and i'm gonna send it to you and it will come there and it will no it that won't work that won't work. I can send you some coffee, but the Boston cream, not going to be fresh. That gives you an excuse to come back here, so that's okay. Now, I'm looking at your itinerary here. It says, Wendy, the nightmare begins. Oh, okay. So, whenever I fly, days before, I just know I've always forgotten something. Right. Something stupid. What have I forgotten? What have I forgotten? So, I get there three hours early at Sydney Airport ready to go ready to go go to check-in and Air Canada the lovely lady behind the camera have you got your ETA visa for Canada no I've got my ETSA for America but I'm not going to I thought I wasn't coming to Canada. I thought I was staying in the bonded area, so land, don't go outside of customs, get on the plane, keep going. The first thing I said to her, and she said, then I said, no, I don't. Can I still go? I thought, I'm waiting for her to say it's going to be 24 hours. And she said, no, no, we'll do it online, $7, two minutes, you're done and dusted. Sweet, sweet. So I've got the sweat pouring down the back. I'm still thinking, okay, good. I'm still going at this point, but it's still one of those forgotten. And so we have a little bit of chit-chat, bit of banter, where I'm going, what I'm doing. she said to me how about I give you four seats in the middle of the plane down the back and my eyes just lit up thank you, thank you, thank you so I'm going to have four sleeps, I'm going to sleep all the way to Canada this is fantastic, 14 hour flight, brilliant so I'm one of the last to get on the plane have a look around, see what's going on and I sit down in the far the first from the left of the four seats so there's three seats to the right of me vacant that I'm going to lie down in in about an hour's time so then we're just sitting waiting to disembark to start the flight I'm not going to describe Wendy because you can't describe Wendy in today's times so I just want you to think of a very unattractive woman in your life. And she's sitting one back, one over from the spare seats. And we're just all sitting there, come on, let's go, let's go, let's go. She gets up, grabs her stuff, to fight and says, I'm going to sit there. Well, like, beside you? Well, three over. Okay. Where my feet are going to be in about an hour's time. So she sits down, no eye contact with me, very happy with herself. I'm just laser beaming her. And I think, okay, what do I do? What do I say? And I'm just imagining myself being carted off the airplane as I verbally assaulted her. And anyway... It sounds like Wendy was a bit of a Karen. Oh, absolute Karen of the worst. Absolute Karen. I just called her Wendy, so I didn't know whether you were familiar with Karen. Okay, so it's Karen. So four hours into the flight, I get up to go and take a pee in the restroom, as you call it. Yeah. And anyway, the person before me, they're in there for like 10 minutes. I thought they were sleeping. I don't know. Anyway, I finally get back to the seat. So when we're flying, there's me. my backpack in the seat beside me, stuff in the next seat along, and her. I get back four hours into the flight. My backpack's now on the floor. Her head is now beside my thigh. She's now lying down sleeping in the free seat. Now, would this story be different if she was attractive? I'm sorry, would it be different if she... If she was pretty? uh i i i thought that i wondered that i'm just i'm just kidding i'm just kidding but let's yeah so how did it how did it all end because like we you know we're 10 minutes in here i've got to talk about the pinball okay four or five hours she waved up stretched and said oh what a lovely street sleep she just had and sat back up and i'm just there going you bitch you evil evil Sharon, you stole my gift from Air Canada. You stole it. Just, ah, what can go wrong now? And, you know, get off the airplane. I'm going to go to Horton's. And that was close. That was it. Well, maybe, you know what? Here, let's look at the bright side of this. I've been called the most positive guy in pinball before. I don't mind being called that. I try to be anyways. Not always, but I try. because your trip started so poorly, it could only go uphill, am I right? So let's jump ahead to Tuesday, October 18th. I guess Dave Fahlgren organized a trip to Galloping Ghost, which I've heard tons of awesome stuff about. It says here there's over 900 video games. Don't they have some of the rarest video games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s there, and at least another 30 or so pinball machines? That's right. so Tuesday morning, get up, what am I going to do? And it's cold. It's just the wind. It's a cold wind from the north you've caught. Anyway, Fowler couldn't reach me. What are you doing? I said, I'm not doing anything. And he said, right, Lenny's going to come pick you up. I want you to meet Lenny Lipcomb and Brian Merritt. They're going to pick you up and take you over the Galloping Ghost. And I thought, oh, I've heard of that. So waited out the front. They came and got me. we had the meet and greets, we went down to Galloping Ghosts, and it's all these old shops, all interjoining, and it's just rows and rows and rows of video games from day one, right through to all the fighting games of the 90s, and it's just unbelievable, like there's 900 video games, so we're just playing all the video, so it's $30, all the video games, and then there's We have 30 pinballs about two blocks away in another shop. So we're waiting till 3 p.m. to win the pinballs open. So we go play the pinballs. So we played a bit of videos, went and grabbed something to eat, then went back and went and played the pinballs for a couple of hours. Now, in this time, I speak to Eric Stone a lot. Yes. On Messenger. And he replies, and we've been talking for a couple of years, and he said he was driving up from Florida on that Tuesday going to come to Galloping Ghost, but he didn't get into like six o'clock, so he said, how about you just meet us at Logan Arcade? And, yeah, sure, sweet. So we finished up at Galloping Ghost about 5.30 and then we went straight to Logan Arcade. and just as we walked in I just texted Eric just arrived and as I turned around he walked in behind us so we get to meet and greet, he's exactly how I've seen him on television and exactly how he speaks on Messenger and he looks exactly like he looks in his pictures unlike some of us that put 10 year old photos up so anyway, he said look I want to play what do you want to do? What do you want to play? He said he wanted to play Mandalorian, just needed to brush up. He had some big tournament on on the Sunday because he's the reigning world champion. Yes. The champion. Was that the Stern Circuit Finals or something? That's it. That's it. That's exactly it. So we went and played the Mandalorian because he just wanted to brush up. and yeah it was the Stern Pro Circuit final on the Wednesday the following day yes and he did tell you who won but you can't tell us correct no no yeah I do know who won and oh you do know oh okay listen uh blink twice if it's Eric Stone um it was it was the fellow the next at Expo that had the green for me to hear in the tournament section let just say that okay well you heard it here first but I didn say it I tell you offline if you want later No no no no So anyway, so we start playing Mandalorian, and he is just setting this thing on fire. I don't know why he needed to practice on Mandalorian. And literally, Lenny went and played the machine beside him and played the whole game as Eric just played one ball. so we played that for about an hour wow oh well what do you want to do now and he said let's go play Elvira House of Horrors that's my go to game so Eric went first Lenny and Brian played and then I went last and first of all Eric tilted this thing obviously had a light tilt so he tilted oh no Yeah, so he didn't get much. So you had your chance to pounce on him like a lion and roar and maybe beat his score. Exactly, but that didn't happen. We all sort of stayed around the same score. And then the second ball, he got a house ball down the side and tilted trying to save it. So again, he didn't get much. so the third ball he was in survival mode so he ended up on Elvira where he normally gets probably hundreds of millions he only got 34 million now the other two fellas were under that score at the end of third ball and I'm sitting there on 29 million I needed 5 million points to beat reigning world champion Eric Stone and I'm looking at the scores, looking at the game going, I need five million. Don't find another way to stuff this up. You beat Eric Stone, you'll be telling your grandchildren this story in 20 years time. Yeah. So I'm shaking like a leaf, plunge the ball, just be the ball, be the ball, be the ball. And then about a minute later I look up and I'm five million in front of you. So then I just relax and play you the game and I probably beat him by about double. So I ended up about 70 million. Got the obligatory photo and I've been telling that story, it's now a week's time. I think I've told at least five people every day. I beat the reigning world champion, Eric Stern. Now, let's think about that for a sec. Let's think of another sport, hobby, where you can get access to the world champion, hang out with the world champion. And let me just start by saying, in between balls, there were people there coming up to him while he was waiting for us to play to get photos with him. So everyone in Logan Arcade knew who he was. Right. So let's just say the reigning tennis world champion, what, Novak Djokovic, I suppose. Imagine having a set with Novak Djokovic, just a warm-up set. It wasn't a tournament, see? And you winning one game against Novak, it's not going to happen. No. I mean, the closest to that I've ever got was I used to play tennis at a club in London, Ontario called Green Hills. And my coach was actually a gentleman named Jerome who qualified for the 1984 Olympics for Canada to play tennis, represent Canada. and one time once I did get an ace on my serve on him and he literally looked at me and was like never again Albert never again I didn't I never beat him in a game he was far far too good for that but see I've gone off topic again but what would an episode of pinball nerds podcast be without me going off topic well congratulations on beating Eric Stone we're going to jump ahead here to Wednesday it looks like you got to uh go in a little bit early and uh possibly use up a half-price exhibitor ticket from Dave Fahlgren. So that was awesome. Thanks, Dave, for that, helping out the pin turn. And that night you got to go to something. This is the first time of many times I got to see you on stream and in videos and pictures. I honestly felt like I was there with you, Rordan. I loved it. Wednesday night you were at Steve Beattie's house for the Flip N Out Pinball Tailgate Party, including a couple of greats like Eric Minyer, Dwight Sullivan, Keith P. Johnson, Jerry Thompson. You also jumped on the stream for a bit. But give us a real, I want to hop, I want to get into Thursday pretty quickly here, because I know you have to go to work in not too long, and there's so much more I want to talk about. We've got to get through your diary, and then I've got a whole page of questions here for you. So tell me just a quick story about what your favorite thing that happened on the Wednesday night, the Flip N Out Pinball tailgate party was. Oh, arriving there, and then that's the initial meet-up with all the Flip N Out Pinball people, Zach, Bill Webb, Steve Beattie, Eric Mignier, as you say, Dwight. I hadn't met, that was the first time I met Keith P. Johnson. Jerry was there. I speak to Jerry a lot. And then they were live streaming when I got there. And yeah, come on, hop in. And I got there, but I didn't really know. I saw your message right at the end because I was trying to squint and look at that. I was trying to get into, okay, what are we discussing? and it was just all too much. That's why I really didn't say that. Were you starstruck a little bit? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'm looking around going, okay, don't make any news of yourself, which isn't that hard. But it was a fantastic night. Steve Beattie's got a fantastic setup. Now, you can tell me if this was just on the stream or not, but it looked like Steve Beattie might have won the award for the guy having the most fun there? I think so, yeah. Absolutely. He might have had a little headache in the morning, but he had a great time. He didn't do anything outrageous. I didn't see him urinating on the pinball machines or anything crazy, right? No, no, no. But no, he had a great time. It seemed like he had a couple beers, and it's his house, and he was entertaining. Let the man have fun, right? So that was great. That was great. We got to see Bill Webb, of course, and then Amanda, of course, his co-host. Yeah, that's where I met Amanda. Yeah. So I got my first hug there at Steve's Place. He's got some fantastic machines. Yeah, I saw them. The collection is great. Yeah, it was nice and warm in there. That setup is fantastic. I mean, my game room would be half that size. Now, I've never been to a tailgating party, but I didn't see any tailgates here. I don't know what a tailgating party is. We don't have them in Canada. I don't think you have them out there in Australia. But you know what? I know what it is. I'm just, I'm kind of messing with the Americans here. I'm just messing around a little bit. Let's fast forward on to Thursday. Of course, here it says that you got to, this is the first time you ever got to meet Ian and Drew from the Poor Men's Pinball Podcast, among many other tribe members. And I just want to run through them real quickly here. some of the tribe members you met were of course Rachel Ristu, Brian Kosner, Jeremy Schmitz, sorry Jeremy Billy YJ, Tony Scoots of course, Jonathan Hall, Teresa Edwards, Eric Walker, Fulgorn Dixie Reinhardt I was going to mess that up but I think I got close, and Joseph Hood of course, so Mike Williams, Jennifer Scott Dixie Reinhardt, and Dave Jeff Brenner of course so wow, those are just the ones off the top of your head, I'm sure you met probably more of them. Probably, I'm guessing you got the most excited to see Ian and Drew, the two original founding members, if you would call them, the, of course, What's Inside Your Butthole fame dudes themselves. What was it like to meet Ian and Drew? How were they how you thought they would be, and how were they maybe different than you thought? Okay, well, I met Drew first. Drew was there. Ian came a bit later. But I remember Ian walking towards us, I was standing next to Drew, and I'm looking at him going, I'm sure that's Ian. He sounds a lot taller on the podcast. But I'd met Ian and Drew three years ago, back at 2019. How does one sound taller? I don't know, it was funny. He walked in, and I'm sure he's taller than that. So I'm looking at it, and that's Ian, that's Ian. And yeah, it was like, it was unbelievable. I mean, these two fellas have created, the tribe, every single person in the tribe fits in. And of all those people, there was no one near going, oh, they got that wrong, other than probably myself. No, it's just me, it's just me, not you. They were like, oops, why do we let in Orby? Well, everyone that was there was fantastic. It was just a fantastic bunch of people. Everyone just fitted in, and everyone wanted to just hang out and have a good time and tell stories of how they got there and where they've come from. It was brilliant. The tribe is probably the... Ian and Drew have created a group of friends that really would never have met if it wasn't for the Poor Man's Pinball podcast, and I thanked them for that. I mean, that's the main reason I went. I didn't really go there to play pinball. I just went there to hang out with people. Right. You didn't play in the tournament, correct? Wait, you did play in the Pinball Olympics. Did I tell you I beat Eric Stone on the Tuesday night? Yes. Trading work, I thought I'd remind you again. I don't ever have to play the tournament again. Not that I ever played tournaments. I get too nervous. Yeah, the adrenaline just flows and I can't play. You had more fun just meeting everybody. Didn't you play in the Pinball Olympics as well? Oh, that was Saturday. That was... I missed the Pinball Olympics 2019 and they said, you've got to go to the Pinball Olympics. Now, Friday night, we had a big drink, the tribe members. Yeah, so I wasn't feeling that flash. Right. I actually got up Saturday morning, stood under the shower to the hot water, ran out, and then got downstairs to the bus, and I made the bus by only a couple of minutes. And then when we got out there, I started seeing all these pinball games spinning around and going up and down. I thought, I can't do this. So I mainly went on the non-moving Olympic activities, like where you lay down on the ground and looked up on a mirror and played it via a mirror. or, yeah, that was... You missed out on an opportunity, though. You could have, since the room was already spinning for you, if you had gone on the spinny ones, the whole room would have just stayed still. It would have been perfect. Oh, it wouldn't have looked good. There would have been a bit of projectile. When I got there, Scott Denisey was there. oh you got to meet Scott too eh yeah so when I got there I'm going to sign in and oh there's Scott over there so I went over to say hi because I'd met him a couple of times at Texas and at Expo before and I'm looking at his chin and it's makeup it's not a goatee it's makeup and I'm looking going I thought he may have been transitioning him. There's nothing wrong with that. No. And Rebecca, who was playing Scott, as I found out quickly up, she never broke character. I saw pictures of, I saw a picture of them both together. I don't know if it was on your Facebook page or someone else. It's Scott together, and honestly, they must have coordinated that, because they were wearing the same jacket, the same pants, the same hat. Rebecca, of course, from the Backbox Pinball Podcast, you got to meet as well. I saw her at a lot of the events there. What would you say your highlight was from the Pinball Olympics? The highlight of the Pinball Olympics would have been... Meeting Scott and his twin? Is this family friendly? Oh, we're on the poor man's pinball network here. We're the sloppiest network in all of pinball. Go for it. Okay, so there was the triple X room. Right. Now, there was the Xenon and the Paragon. So, Paragon had Elmo with a you can't say it another way he had a strap on penis. Okay, okay. He's got a strap-on. Okay. Wait, is this a Tickle Me Elmo? Yeah, that's right. And then on the right-hand side was a baby doll, and it also had a strap-on penis. Dear Lord, I didn't know it got this crazy. Yeah. And so the flipper buttons were, you had to pull the penis to activate the flipper. Oh, my God. I'm looking at it going, how the hell, everyone else is doing it. That was very unusual. And then you had to go up to, it must be an American thing, and then you had to go up to Xenon, and it was two buttholes. Wow. This was designed for the poor men. Yeah, I'll send photos later. Please don't. No, I'm just kidding. Activate the flipper buttons for the Xenon. And surprisingly, a tribe member won, I think, both medals for that. Both gold medals are won by Dave Jeff Brenner. He was all over that. Well, of course a poor man would win. He already knew what was inside the buttholes. Flipper buttons. now my favorite moment I thought you were going to say the highlight was Brian Cosner did the treadmill game and he took a tumble did you see that live or no I only saw the video of that maybe yesterday or the day before Oh. Brian, I hope you're okay, cuz. And it's hilarious. They explained to me what he's got to do. And I think he started drinking when he got there. I was only drinking water. I was still shabby from the night before. And he gets on and it's moving. And when you've seen the video, he just takes a tumble. Oh, dear. That's got to be saved to the Poor Man's Tribe webpage. I'm pretty sure it's on the fan page, but it might be on the private tribe page. I'm not sure, but either way, message me with causes permission if it's not already on there. I mean, I could probably send it to you or at least send you in the right direction, but I think it's just on the Poor Man's fan page, but I'd have to check. So moving forward, I know that you did get to hang out with Mr. Ron Hallett Jr. Saturday night for an autograph session, it says here. Finally. He did mention on the Slam Tilt Pinball podcast that you talked his ear off, but in a good way it sounded like. Yeah, I heard that. I heard that on Friday when it dropped. No, I've been kind of, I've been listening to Slam Tilt Pinball for years. Years. I've always thought he was a very intelligent, quirky guy. I've got to meet Ron. Anyway, again, podcasts make you sound taller. I roughly knew what he looked like from the picture on the slam field. I'm looking around in the tournament area. It's the only place he's going to be. and anyway I couldn't find him I couldn't find him so I went back to Jeff Teola I said Jeff I can't find him he said he's there he's wearing a blue denim jacket well he wasn't so I went back and half an hour later I'm still waiting in there I can't find him and he says here he is and he's looking at me like a startled rabbit did you give him a big hug no no no don't do that to ron that's not nice do that to bruce and i forgot all about the hugging so i just shook his hand and he's looking at me and just uh okay where's this going so i just start talking which i can do very well and he says just there, okay, he's not going to shoot me, he's not going to drag me away and take me hostage. And I spoke, oh, I don't know, an hour and a half, halfway he said, look, I've got to sit down, my back's killing me. And yeah, so now I can tick that box. I've met Ron Howard Jr. Again, a fantastic guy. I never met a bad person. Well, I don't want to say a bad person. a person I walked away with, I thought, that person is not how I envisaged him. Let me just jump back to, I think it was the Friday. I'm waiting to get George Gomez. Have you seen George Gomez signature? No, never. I'll send you a picture. It is just the greatest signature you'll ever see. I'm waiting to get George's signature, and they said he just popped out and I had my Stern pinball book, 30 years of Stern pinball and that was one signature that I wanted and they said he's just out in his car to drop something off. Now this is the problem with shows in Chicago. All these people are juggling the show, the family and work. So they can come and go whereas down in Texas they're there, they're not going anywhere until Sunday. They're held captive. Exactly. So I'm waiting, I'm talking to Greg Freres, to talk to Craig. Now, every show I've been to, Todd McCulloch has always been in the, you know, he sticks out seven feet tall, seven X 76 was NBA player. Yes. You know, you see him a mile off. My favorite basketball team, by the way, shout out James Harden. Okay. So he's always got people sitting, milling around him. So I haven't ever bothered him. I don't want to be like a groupie or whatever. them. So me and Greg are there standing, talking, waiting for George to come back. And Todd McCulloch just comes and joins in the conversation. So I thought to myself, Todd McCulloch's beside me. This is my opportunity. So I turned to him and said, oh, hi Todd, my name's Roden Oswald from Australia. And he goes, yeah, no, I know who you are. I've heard good things about you. Now, then and there, I've never felt so good in my life. Colin McCulloch knows who nobody Osborne is. He said, yes, I know who you are. That just, my heart just grew. I just wanted to hug him then and there. That's awesome. So, the three of us are talking for a couple of minutes. Then Greg had to go behind the stern curtain, so to speak. Right. So I'm figuring Todd's now going to leave. I think I had another hour with him. He stood there and spoke to me only about pinball and Australia, about what he does, what I do. He's been to Australia. He came out, I suppose, in the 90s and played basketball. He's been to like every state, but they played a game against the local team and then went to the next state and the next state and then they flew home. But he's keen to come back out. And he was interested in me. Like, I just expect him to leave, but he didn't. He's such a humble, pinball-passionate person. Yeah, I just didn't expect that at all. So, again, there's another part of the trip that will never be forgotten. Todd McCulloch came up and said hi to me. So you're teaching me here that, I mean, I kind of already knew this, but I was, I'm not going to say I'm a shy person, but I saw Todd at Pemburg and I kind of wanted to go say hi and I knew he had played in the NBA and I had heard him on Jeff Teolis' as Pinball Profile among other pinball podcasts I believe and I knew exactly who he was and I knew how much he loved pinball but I was just too embarrassed to go up and talk to him so you kind of lucked out that he just kind of came over to you and then he already knew who you were and you got to meet Ron Howlett Jr. same kind of thing I saw Ron was playing in a group beside me at Pemburg but I didn't want to go bug him because he was in between turns and you don't want to take someone out of their, when they're in the middle of a pinball tournament you don't really want to take them if they're in their pinball zone but I did get to play a whole round with Ron Howlett Sr. and I'm pretty sure he kicked my butt on uh on at least a couple of the machines there I forget who won the round but uh I think I got second or something in the round but he was he's a terrific player he's also a big pinball fan as well um let's I have there's a really interesting story here that got me really excited you were at pinball uh at the expo hall of course and you went over to go say goodbye to zach from flipping out uh of course flipping out pinball can you tell everybody uh the story that happened there with zach okay so that's flipping out uh booth was right next door to the poor man's boo, a Jack Junk Sale. Oh, no. So, I mean, we probably cost him a few sales. I mean, I've met Zach at every show. He's a fantastic guy. Sorry, Zach. And he had the straight down the middle banner that you see on all his YouTube shows. One of my favorite pinball YouTube channels, of course, straight down the middle. So, if we had video on right now, you'd see it over my right shoulder in my games room right now. I jokingly said to Zach, Zach, you haven't had a clean-shaven face in over three years that I've known you. He's got that short, neat beard. Yeah, the stubble. He's a very handsome fella. You haven't looked like that in over three years. It's time you upgraded it. I'm going to take that sign home and I'll put it in my games room. So you can then say you've been to Australia. Thank you. And he looked at me. He said, you know what? I'm going to give that sign to you. Do you think you'll get it back on the airplane? I said, hell yeah. And so Saturday night, I went back there, and it was just one of those off-the-cuff, you know, remarks. Yeah, you just thought it was a joke. Yeah, I just went back. I said, oh, I've got to go get that sign, and I fully expected not to get it. and I said, oh, I've just come to get the sign, you know, ha ha. Oh, where's that sign? Go get that sign, we've got to give it to Rodney, he's taking it back to Australia. I've now got that banner behind me, this six, seven foot banner, two meter banner in real language. Yeah, that's going to be... Wow, that's giant. How did you get it on the airplane? Well, I carried it, so I put all my backpack, or everything. See, I brought a heap of stuff. I brought Tim Tams, I brought Violet Crumble, I brought Vegemite. Vegemite, biscuit, everything for the tribe to try. So all these little koalas, again, everyone loves the little koalas. All the tribe members got a little koala. Except for me. So all the stuff that came, stayed. so I had this room in my bag so I put all my backpack, so I carried we put in a cardboard box and I carried that as hand luggage and no one better than I had my laptop and I had the banner under one arm so I had to do three trips on the way home so it was Chicago, Vancouver Vancouver, Brisbane, Brisbane to Sydney, then train Sydney to the Central Coast. And I carried it all the way. So 30 hours later, here it is in my games room in Greenpoint, Australia. Zach, I love you, Zach. I really do. What a rock star. I can't believe that he gave it to me. Sometimes when you ask for stuff, you get it. Can I just say this? Mr. Zach Menny, of course, he's, you know, this show is not brought to you by Flip N Out Pinball not officially but today I would like to say Zach for doing such a kind thing for my pin turn basically paying him I guess for this one episode I'll say guys go to Flip N Out Pinball get your new pinball machines go in the vault get yourself an awesome old machine or of course get the new Mandalorian pinball topper there you go there you go there's a mini impromptu Flip N Out Pinball commercial. We won't send an invoice. But just special moments in the show for me. We're meeting people, you know. I finally got to meet Keith Elwin. Wow. How was that? Rockstar status. You know, nervous as all hell. Yeah, just, oh, Keith, could you sign my book? Could I get a photo? Of course you can. So I got a photo with Keith. And then Roger Sharp. I speak to Roger Sharp a bit on Messenger. Oh, really? Yeah, I was hanging out with Dave Bowdrin in his basement booth. And he had a white meteor. So there was only two ever made. It was for the Winter Olympics of 1981. And there's no artwork on it. It's just pure white. I saw that. It's gorgeous. So I was over there hanging out with Dave right when Roger Sharp came over to play it. And got to talk to Roger. Roger, it's Rodan from Australia again. I speak to you. You said, yeah, again, I know who you are. So we've got this reverse role now of don't you know who I am to yes, I know who you are. So it's fantastic. Who else did I get? I got to meet Zombie Eddie. Yes. He is just the most humble, unassuming person I've ever met. Okay, he spoke to me for like half an hour. Now, are you more of a Zombie Yeti fan or a Christopher Franchi? I know they're both incredible, but some people like one or the other better. Which are you? Two completely different people. Jeremy is very, very quiet, very unassuming. and Franchi's down my end of the spectrum, loud and opinionated. But I mean from an artwork standpoint, do you love them both equally or do you have a favorite if I had to put a gun to your head? I hung out with Franchi a bit. I've seen him at Expo in Texas before. So when I go up to, say, Franchi again, he knows. We chat, how you doing? Hang out a bit. His daughter Presley's always there. So, yeah, to compare the two, they're chalk and cheese. Yeah, but love both of them. And then I got to meet Scott Larson and Josh Root from The Loser Kids. Yes, they were doing Flip the Script, of course, which they successfully raised $25,000. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Again, very unassuming, no egos whatsoever. And I texted them. They brought some hats. some hats and again I've got the hat on right now the loser kid hat that is the cool coolest hat other than the four-man pinball tribe hat of course of course but uh to say it's a close runner up yeah and I said oh can I grab that hat before you run out these are going to sell out and they had the green stitching and the red stitching and I said I'll take the green stitching and Scott said to me as he grabbed it and he said, anyone that comes from Australia gets it for free. I sorry And he gave it to me Oh that incredible Just unbelievable moments in the week that just made the whole week just so memorable forever. You earned that hat, my friend, because you had to sit beside Wendy for 13 hours. Oh, don't start me on Sharon Wendy. Oh, evil woman, evil. You also got to meet a fellow Canadian, Craig Bobby I noticed here at the bottom. He was... How do I explain Craig Bobby? I'm Craig Bobby. I'll catch you on the... Say what? Say what? Oh, yours was better. Yours was better. Craig Bobby was totally not how I imagined him. No? Wait, was he taller or shorter? Oh, we connected instantly. We hung out there, I don't know, and we just laughed and we just bounced off each other. Like, I instantly met him and instantly connected with him. I love Craig Bobby. He is my new pinball bestie. He is, yeah, he's my man crush. Craig Bobby is a beautiful, beautiful person. I'll be hanging out with him again. I had him on the show and I immensely enjoyed chatting with him. I think I kept him about 45 minutes longer than I said I would. Absolutely. I'm glad you got to meet him. He just has this magnetic, fun personality. Yeah, Craig, Bobby, yeah. Got to hang out with him again. I met Todd and the twins from Sea Amusements. Yeah, Todd Tucky, of course, yeah. Yeah, it was just such a fantastic week. It was, how do I describe it? It was just a remarkable week that I'll never forget. Never, ever forget. Everyone was just so friendly, so generous with their time, generous with everything. I mean, that was nearly, I don't know, I think it's like 30,000, 45,000 kilometres or about 30,000 miles around trip. nearly 60 hours travel time, but it was worth every minute and every mile of the trip. Wow, that's dedication to go that far, and I'm glad you had such a great time. I guess my last question for you about the Expo, did you end up running into Cary Hardy? Yes, I saw Cary Hardy. I saw him a couple of times. I saw him when he first arrived over in the tribe booth. He came over and I gave him a hug. I really didn't expect Cary to go. And when he was there, yeah, went straight up to him. Big hug. I've met Cary a few times. Oh, you have? Okay, okay. Yeah, I met him in Texas, the first Texas. No, the only Texas. He had a row of machines he was looking after, I think, for the film stadium. guy or they were his machines i can't remember uh but then i'd met him at expo i think before because i didn't see you he um he posted a a really cool like if you guys haven't seen it yet go to carrie hardy over on youtube he put i think like 5 000 pinball nerds have already seen it in like the last week so it's a really cool walkthrough he shows every single part of pinball expo from the home brews to he actually stops by christopher franchi and watch the whole video but pay close attention if you watch it again at the 18 minute mark I'm watching in the live stream and I say to Kerry Hardy when he's at Franchi's table tell Franchi Orby says hi and he actually goes he had walked away from Franchi's table Kerry Hardy goes back and he goes hey Orby says hi and Kerry Hardy has such like a you know a thick southern accent which I love I love I love it but I'm just saying I think that Franchi was like who and you know and then and then he's like oh Orby and then he's like, hey, well tell him I said hi and tell him I want some tea. And I was like, what do you mean you want some tea? And I remembered when I had Franchi on like two years ago, I promised I would fire him off some tea, including the tea with his old Pentastic, like the really cool artwork from Pentastic that unfortunately was controversial for some reason or another. So I'm actually going to look into maybe doing a new run with that tea and try to get that out to Franchi, which reminds me, Rorden, you were awesome enough to offer to buy some of my coffee and I know the shipping was going to be crazy expensive there. What I'm going to do for you is we now have sample packs that are like 60 grams so they're big enough to give you like 12 or 13 Keurig size, like single cups or you can just roast a big pot with it but I can ship it off in an envelope and I'm just going to fire it off to you so I want you to give me your address and I'm going to send that off to you just for being on the show, buddy. how's that sound? fantastic no I mean I only thought of it when we spoke after the show I should have had you ship it to Chicago to the expo to my room or give it to someone else that was going and I could have we could have done it that way but yeah because I can ship up to three bags to the United States for $22 flat rate so that's why when people are ordering on the website I always say don't just order one because you're doubling you know your cost per cup like just order at least two bags But in Australia, the problem was, I think we, years ago when we had a soap company, we used to ship to Australia through Etsy. And we lost our shirt three or four times because we'd go to the post office and we'd say, okay, you know, X this weight, how much is it going to be to Australia? And they'd say, oh, yeah, it's only going to be $26. So then we would charge $26. Then when you get to the post office and whoever's working that day weighs it, whatever, it ends up being like 40 bucks. And then we were losing our profit margins, losing our shirt shipping there. You know how expensive it is to get stuff there to Australia, right? so um we get we get like we buy parts from america yeah it's it's it's horrendous i mean we've got to do the australian dollar the canadian dollar is roughly the same so you know that how much that pain is right and then to freight it it's it's whatever the american price is just double it so if a part's ten dollars it's twenty dollars landed so So, parts just become hideously expensive. So, I've sort of retired from buying parts overseas. I try and buy everything locally. Yeah. That makes sense. Now, I'm going to have to change gears here quicker than Steve Ritchie in the getaway. Nice. I've got to ask you this question. I thought of that one earlier. I'm not going to lie. I've got to ask you this question. This is just a hypothetical, kind of just for fun question, but of course there is the two pinball networks now. Have you ever seen the movie Anchorman? Yes, Anchorman, Ron Burgundy. Yes, yes. I met Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell came out for, it must have been the launch of, it might have been Anchorman. Say what? Yeah, 15 years ago. Yeah. When I was working on the Harbour Bridge, doing all the cameras on the Harbour Bridge, he turned up, that's what we call the rocks area. That's where Australia started, down under the Harbour Bridge. The sailing boats from Robert Englunds came in, Sydney Cove, set up shop there, and the rocks is the first town of Sydney. And there's a lot of old hotels there. And anyway, we're walking around to do some camera work down that end. Right. And these two blacked-out window vans turn up to this old hotel. Well, Farrell gets out of one. He goes into the... And there's like, outside on the sidewalk, there's tables and chairs to have beers. and he's suddenly just there having beers at this old hotel down at the Rocks in Sydney. And we're literally standing 10 feet from him. He was drinking beers. I thought he only drank milk. I was walking past. It was a bad choice. Yeah, and I'm just going, that's Will Ferrell. There's someone you don't meet every day. Wow. And so did you go over and say hello? And he said, I'm Ron Burgundy. It was just an industry nod. Okay, okay. Still pretty cool. I'll tell you another industry nod that I had, and that was a game down in Circular, well, just around. I was putting a camera up in a service station, in a Shell service, petrol station, gas station. Yeah. We know what petrol is. We know what petrol is here in Canada. Yeah, Russell Crowe walked past. Well, he's Australian, so that one makes even more sense, but that's pretty awesome. And he just looked at it like he was pushing the pram with, I mean, this again, this was like 15 years ago. And he just looked up at me changing the camera on the ladder. Okay, I know what you're doing. And I just looked at him and again, suddenly, that's Russell Crowe. And he just gave me a nod and I just nodded back and he kept going. So they're my brushes with fame. But anyway, get back to Ron Burgundy. Okay, so here's my big question for you. You remember in Anchorman when the two different networks got in a big fight, the news anchors all fought and beat the crap out of each other with Paul Rudd and everything, Steve Carell. I'm curious, if you think, what do you think would happen if TPN, okay, the pinball network and the poor man's pinball network got in a fight, which network would win? The tribe. Yeah, the tribe. Watch out, TPN. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Not that we would. No, I know. I'm totally just kidding. I just grab a couple of beers. I'm not a fighter. Hey, we got Josh Mudd on our side. They're in trouble. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah. I mean, he'd start wrestling. Josh Mudd would just walk into the room, and you'd hear Hulk Hogan sing. Do, do, do, do. So I'd just be watching from the sidelines. I'd hold your drink. You'd go, no, we're lovers. We're not fighters. No, I know. I'm totally just kidding. I think it's funny that there's two different networks in pinball now. We're obviously the sloppiest. There's no competition between us. It's all love. I mean, hell, the other two guests I had on before you so far since I came over to the Poor Man's Pinball Network were both from TPN. Of course, David Dennis there. Loved getting to chat with him. I do want to remind all the listeners this Saturday at Zero's Arcade in Moncton I will be giving everybody all the newbies that come out and the person who brought them I will be giving them a free sample size tea or coffee if they'd like more importantly than that just come out have a fun time hopefully David Dennis comes I haven't heard from him he's going to make it Dave if you're listening hopefully you're able to come I did want to say I know that Rorden didn't go to the tourney but I was correct. I made predictions on the last podcast that Carl D'Python Anghelo would get third, and he did. Now, I was wrong about who got first. ZMAC, congratulations. Zachary McCarthy won. Escher, I believe, got fourth or fifth, and I had guessed Escher was going to win. So, I wasn't too far off on that either, but congratulations to everybody who played in the tournament. And I just wanted to say before we finish up this podcast here that to everybody listening, if you haven't heard the new Ray Ray podcast on poor man's pinball network you got to go listen to that that of course is Raymond Davidson of Stern fame and I think now number two in the world but former number one pinball player in the world and of course Rachel Rachel Risto of tribe multiball and get over there and take a listen to that other than that is there anything else you want to tell everybody before we we end up the podcast here so I can let you get to work all I want to say is those that were hanging on the fence whether to go or not that was the greatest pinball week of my life you'll never meet a better bunch of people, I really didn't play that much pinball, I played all the new games but meeting all the people, hanging out with all the people, the friendships it was money couldn't buy that go go and hang out with your tribe buddies, go to a show they're brilliant the people there are fantastic and I'll be back I'll probably be I won't go next year heart makes you know time makes makes everything the heart grow fonder that's it it's too early I know it's 6am over there in Australia so what happened you know like that 2019 when I went Texas in March and then Chicago in October it was too soon I saw everyone a couple of months earlier. Right. Whereas this time, three years have passed. So going was just, it was, you know, made it so much more enjoyable. We hadn't seen each other for so long. And knowing that it was probably my last time. Right. But, you know, now a week out, coming home, I said, I'm going again. So it won't be next year. So what's next year? It'll probably be 24. Okay. Well, I'd like to go to every Pinball Expo from here on out, and any of them I can really afford to go to, I'll most likely be going. And maybe someday I'll even make it over there to Australia. But listen, Rorden, I know you've got to get going to work. I'm exhausted. I had a big show this weekend. I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who came to visit us at the booth. There was about 40,000 people came out to the SaltScapes Magazine Expo in Halifax. We broke every record for two days of sales. I think we did 1,300 Canadian and coffee and tea sales. We didn't even have any baked goods this time, so that was great. But I am exhausted. I'm sorry my voice is a little hoarse. I was drinking many free craft beer samples everywhere I went. The craft breweries were giving away free drinks, moonshine, cider, everything, seltzers. I had a great time. But, Rorden, I'm going to let you go to work, buddy. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It was great to chat with you. and from tribe member 26 to tribe member 22, have yourself a great day. And remember, say it with me if you know it, Rorden. Eat, sleep, and breathe pinball.