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PNP 582- Were RayDay & Tom Right About Pinburgh Taking It Too Far?! HOT TAKE ALERT!

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Aug 2, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Orby analyzes Pinburgh setup difficulty controversy and questions whether extreme machine hardness serves competitive pinball goals.

Summary

Orby discusses hot takes on Pinburgh's machine setup difficulty, specifically addressing claims by former #1 player Raymond Davidson and Tom Graff (Fox Cities Pinball) that modern machines were set up too hard with in-lane and out-lane posts removed entirely. Orby provides nuanced analysis of the tension between difficulty, gameplay fairness, nudging skill, and tournament logistics, while defending the organizers' intentions while acknowledging valid criticisms.

Key Claims

  • Raymond Davidson, former #1 player, criticized Pinburgh for removing in-lane and out-lane posts entirely from machines, turning them into 'luck boxes'

    high confidence · Orby citing Raymond Davidson's criticism of Pinburgh's machine setup approach

  • Tom Graff created a reaction video addressing pinball tournament setup difficulty, which was apparently taken down then re-uploaded

    high confidence · Orby discussing Tom's video and its view count (1,400 views at time of recording)

  • Removing out-lane posts negates nudging and shimmy techniques, disadvantaging skilled nudgers who rely on ball-saving mechanics

    high confidence · Orby's analysis of how setup changes affect different player skill types

  • Orby qualified for A division at Pinburgh by being in top 200 players out of ~1000 in Swiss pairing format across 12 rounds

    medium confidence · Orby describing his personal Pinburgh experience and qualification method

  • Pinburgh's previous format had five divisions (A-E) with 200 players each totaling 1000 participants

    medium confidence · Orby explaining historical Pinburgh structure before recent changes

  • Even with brutally hard setups, Pinburgh was criticized for running too long (12-14 hours per day)

    high confidence · Orby identifying the paradox of machines being both too hard and tournaments running too long

  • At Maple tournament, Orby had three of five balls as house balls and one one-flip game on Jungle Princess, causing frustration from luck-based outcomes

    medium confidence · Orby describing his Match Play Classics tournament experience at Maple

  • Tom Graff's video was described as 'extremely measured' and 'genteel' despite addressing setup concerns

    high confidence · Orby's assessment of Tom's tone and approach in the criticism video

  • Orby suspects Tom was 'gently nudged' or 'coerced' into taking down his video, though he expresses uncertainty about who was involved

Notable Quotes

  • “you're not even lowering them. You're literally removing them. So it's just a giant gobble hole. Like it's guaranteed to go out on that side pretty much. It's a complete luck box.”

    Orby (paraphrasing Raymond Davidson's criticism) @ early in episode — Core criticism of Pinburgh's setup approach - complete removal rather than adjustment of safety posts

  • “people like me who are very good nudgers, who suck at remembering rule sets and are not very accurate, are really, really, really at a disadvantage when it comes to something like this”

    Orby (paraphrasing Raymond Davidson) @ early segment — Identifies how setup changes systematically disadvantage certain player types

  • “if this was a hot pepper, this wasn't a ghost pepper, this was like the lamest like yellow sweet pepper on planet earth. That's how nice Tom talked about this”

    Orby @ mid-episode — Characterizes Tom Graff's criticism as remarkably restrained and diplomatic

  • “every single solitary time that you make a pinball machine harder, you're not doing that as a tournament director because you hate the player”

    Orby @ middle segment — Orby defending tournament organizers' intentions while acknowledging problematic outcomes

  • “I'm coming back here tonight after Maple closes, and I'm taking this pinball machine out behind the tournament, and I'm burning this thing down”

    Orby @ describing Jungle Princess experience — Illustrates emotional impact of luck-based defeats in tournament settings

  • “I think it's almost said with pride about Yagpin... because they play hard as hell. And it's for Canada's top tournament. They should play hard as hell.”

    Orby @ later segment — Distinguishes between difficulty as legitimate competitive feature vs. problematic luck-box design

  • “I think everyone can admit John Wick's mid at best, okay? It's perhaps possibly Stern's worst pin they've came out with.”

    Orby @ tangent section — Orby's assessment of John Wick game quality despite Keanu Reeves promotional appearance

Entities

Raymond DavidsonpersonTom GraffpersonOrby (Orbital Albert)personPinburgheventFox Cities PinballorganizationPinball Nerds PodcastorganizationPoor Man's Pinball NetworkorganizationLumberjack Johnny'sorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Potential censorship or pressure on critical voices within pinball community; Orby suspects Tom Graff was 'gently nudged' or 'coerced' into removing video

    low · Orby stating 'I heard from a little bird' and 'I don't know who I don't know where' regarding pressure on Tom; speculation about reasons for video removal and re-upload

  • ?

    community_signal: Birthday donations and community support for Orby's podcast operation; Glenn Wechter, Franchi, and others providing financial contributions

    high · Detailed thanks to donors including Glenn Wechter, Christopher Franchi, Brian Cosner, Death Save Pinball Streaming

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Growing discussion about tournament difficulty standards and whether extreme setups serve competitive integrity; multiple comments agreeing with Raymond Davidson's concerns

    high · Orby noting 'quite a few people in the comments' agreed with Raymond Davidson; Tom's video comments showing division of opinion

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong community support for Raymond Davidson and Tom Graff's measured criticism; Tom's video received positive reception despite apparent pressure to remove it

    high · Video re-uploaded with 1,400 views and recent comments; Orby characterizing Tom's approach as appropriately diplomatic

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Machine setup changes systematically advantage different player archetypes; removal of ball-save mechanics disadvantages nudge-skill players while emphasizing rule knowledge and shooting accuracy

    high · Orby and Raymond Davidson both noting nudgers at disadvantage; example of Orby's Jungle Princess performance suffering from luck-based failures

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.175

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 Miffed syrup and honey, hopes to laugh with his family And the random tangents, stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're going to get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 582 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about some hot topics. that's right not like the store i am not a fashionista i'm a farmer living out here in the middle of the sticks okay don't expect me to be wearing any gucci the only gucci you're gonna get from me is when i see you at pinball expo you listen nerds i'm gonna come up to you and i'm gonna go a gucci gucci goo a gucci gucci goo i know you're not supposed to just like go up to people and like tickle them it's not allowed you're not supposed to like you're not even allowed to freaking high five hug or like handshake from time to time but I'm sorry if I've known you from the tribe if you are a tribe member or a listener and I've known you for years online expect a Gucci Gucci Goo from Little Orby I can't stop thinking about Expo it's going to be so crazy I'm actually trying to work out a way that maybe maybe maybe if I can do well enough in my collectible sales between now and Expo that I could bring drop, that I could bring drop Target Danielle. Wouldn't that be rad? She honestly, she keeps me leveled. She keeps me balanced. When she sees I've had like 15 beers in a row, she'd be like, hey, maybe you should have a quick happy meal or like a bottle of water. Anyways, I'm so stoked to be going. I do have to talk about a hot topic today and I'm going to put on my little kitty gloves here. Okay. I'm just, I'm going to deal with it gently because I hear pinball podcasters all the time. They want level-headedness. They want measured responses. They want kind podcasters. Well, what if I was kind yet critical and actually had a take so hot, you better put down those kid gloves and get out some oven mitts baby because I'm going to shake it up right here right now so recently Raven Davidson himself the former number one keep this in mind the former number one player talked about how why have pinball machines of all eras at Pinberg which just recently happened this last weekend why have pinball machines of all eras if you're going to bastardize and I'm making up that name he did not use that term. I think he said it much more eloquently than me. But basically, you know, when you're pulling out all the in-lane posts, the out-lane posts, you're not even lowering them. You're literally removing them. So it's just a giant gobble hole. Like it's guaranteed to go out on that side pretty much. It's a complete luck box. You're essentially turning modern pins into,

low confidence · Orby speculating about pressure on Tom to remove video content

  • Keanu Reeves played John Wick pinball at San Diego Comic-Con, demonstrating nudging/shimmying technique

    high confidence · Orby referencing public video of Keanu Reeves playing John Wick machine

  • “do we really believe that those tournaments for them to be a good tournament do you have to bastardize the machine so much that even the rules and coding guy is like, guys, what is happening?”

    Orby @ late segment — Core question about whether extreme setup serves tournament legitimacy

    • Maple Pinballorganization
    Keanu Reevesperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Chris Stevensperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Escher Lefkoffperson
    Neil Graffperson
    Rachel Ristoperson
    Matt McGough (Melvis)person
    Yagpinevent
    Glenn Wechterperson
    Christopher Franchiperson
    Replay FXorganization
  • ?

    design_philosophy: Pinburgh's removal of in-lane and out-lane posts entirely on modern machines creates 'luck boxes' that negate skill-based nudging and shimmying techniques

    high · Raymond Davidson's criticism of complete post removal vs. merely lowering them; Orby's analysis that this disadvantages skilled nudgers

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinburgh tournament recently occurred with controversial machine setup modifications; previous Pinburgh (2019) had different structure with five divisions and longer match times for top players

    high · Orby's personal participation and comparison of 2019 vs. recent Pinburgh format; discussion of A division qualification

  • ?

    community_signal: Christopher Franchi recently appeared on Poor Man's Pinball Podcast as guest; demonstrates his engagement with community media beyond company affiliations

    high · Orby's thanks to Franchi for appearing and $100 donation; reference to interview earlier in week

  • ?

    product_concern: John Wick pinball assessed as poor quality ('mid at best', 'perhaps possibly Stern's worst pin'); Keanu Reeves promotion insufficient to overcome gameplay issues

    medium · Orby's explicit assessment and comparison to Venom; skepticism about promotional value of celebrity appearance

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tension between making machines difficult enough for top-tier play and creating fair, playable games; paradox of machines being simultaneously too hard and tournaments running too long (12-14 hours)

    high · Orby's core question: 'did Pinburgh take it too far?' and observation that both difficulty AND length were problematic

    • 3:26
    you have to be deadly accurate or you're screwed. So the other thing you're doing that no one is talking about is you're negating, or at least, you know, maybe not enough people are talking about So people like me who are very good nudgers, who suck at remembering rule sets and are not very accurate, are really, really, really at a disadvantage when it comes to something like this. And that's why it tends to be in match play or on pinball machines that don't have super tight tilts that I play better because I save the ball a whole bunch because I'm not super accurate. I'm getting better, but I'm not super accurate. But the point is that Raymond Davidson was suggesting that, and I don't know if Raymond Davidson tried to get into Pimberg and just didn't get in, or if he didn't want to go because of this reason, he suspected they might do this. I would assume he tried to get in, and if he were there, maybe he would have been more gentle in his response to it. Now, I will say this, to me, the two people getting heat on this, Raymond Davidson, and then, of course, the reaction video came from Tom over there at Fox City's Pinball. the reaction video I thought was extremely measured and when I heard from a little bird that Tom was asked or like kind of maybe um uh let's say coerced or in some way shape or form and again I don't know who I don't know where I can I suspect but at some point Tom was um gently nudged we'll say okay in the direction of taking down the video where he was mildly, I mean mild, like if this was a hot pepper, this wasn't a ghost pepper, this was like the lamest like yellow sweet pepper on planet earth. That's how nice Tom talked about this, okay. He was so genteel, he made sure not, he tried very hard not to offend any of the Pembert people, he tried very hard not to offend any of the other tournaments that set up the machines hard, he did acknowledge it is a time crunch, and for those of you, some of you listening, you don't even play in tournaments, and that's totally fine, you're just here along for the ride, and the good news is, I am going to pay you off at the end with a little story of a wild moose chase. That's right. You don't rewind it. Don't turn up the dial. Who's listening to me on a dial right now?
    5:37
    I didn't say wild goose chase. I said wild moose chase. So my awesome wife and I just came back from the Sea Glass Festival in Surrey, Prince Edward Island. And of course, I mentioned that on my last show with just Christopher Franchi. Thank you so much, Franchi, for coming on the show. Franchi also put his money where his mouth was, and he donated towards my show for all the time and energy I put into it. It takes a lot of time and energy to, first of all, get someone to agree to come on my show. Then second of all, more importantly, to find a time when they're not busy and I'm not busy, especially in the summertime. That is extra, extra difficult. And Franchi has a mad amount of respect for the fact that he can be sitting there and listening to my show while he's working on his artwork. And he enjoys listening to my show, and I appreciate that Franchi took the time and energy, and also as a little bit of a birthday gift, of course, but he fired off a $100 dono, which was incredible, and I just want to take a minute to also thank Death Save Pinball Streaming. Get out there and follow Death Save Pinball Streaming. Do it on Facebook. Do it on Twitch. I'm going to make sure to try to tune in and watch them the next time they are streaming. I don't know them that well other than just from Facebook and stuff, but they're very vocal in Facebook groups and commenting lots. And the other thing they did was they didn't just fire me off a bidet gift of 2652 Canadian. I'm guessing that's like 20 American or something, some flat number in USD. It only shows me a Canadian over here, okay? Sorry. It's got a little maple syrup bottle right beside it to prove it is truly Canadian. milliliters of maple syrup. Okay. But thank you so much for that awesome birthday gift. That is incredible. And then the one and only Glenn Wechter. Glenn, you are the last person ever expected. You and Franchi are the last two. And it is always the last two people that you think should ever, because Glenn and between Glenn and Franchi, they both done so much for my show over eight years here of hard work on the show. And they deserve a round of applause. Glenn, the skateboarder. Thank you so much. If you're a pinball company, a boutique pinball company, coming up in the ranks, and you don't have a guy doing your sound, your audio. Glenn has literally sold the farm. He has sold his favorite two pinball machines to have no pinball machines in his house right now so he could upgrade all of his audio equipment. So get over there and hire this man. He can work remotely. He'll do a kick-ass job. And I would venture a guess, with pinball companies having to tighten up a little bit right now, I would venture a guess. I don't know Glenn's rates, but I would assume he may cost less than someone who's been in the industry for a long time. So hit Glenn up over there if you need a sound engineer. He might even help you with your homebrew if you ask nice and provide at least some type of monetary exchange, I would assume. But hit up Glenn. He, of course, did the sound on Blood Bank Billiards, on Ian Hayward's machine, on P3 Multimorphic. And those are great. Make sure you give those a listen. And then he also did the call-outs as well as, you know, wrote all of the music and all of the sound effects and recorded them all for the award-winning homebrew saw machine that people love. And I also get to give a shout out to my boy, Brian Cosner. I don't know, like Brian Cosner and Jay Hall, I hope I didn't forget them in the 88 Most Influential because they are two of the tribe members who are, you know, always very vocal online and always willing to, they kind of, they're kind of like me. I think, well, especially Brian Kosner is like me. He loves all the pinball podcasters. I mean, not all of them, but most of them. And he's just a big pinball content creation super fan. And Brian, thank you so much for that. That is actually going to buy me my first birthday beer when I get to Fredericton this weekend for the Freddy Beach Comic Con. So excited for it. There's going to be lots of comics, lots of Pokemon. There's going to be everything you can nerd out on. Funko Pops, video games, all the things. That is in Fredericton, New Brunswick. That runs Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 5. I'm hoping to see a rare David Dennis. My comic book dealer, Don. Shout out to Don. Don's going to be there. My comic book dealer. He's going to pop in and the Don of Don's. He's like, Albert, I don't have a table set up, but I can bring it in for you. Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. It's like, because when you're coming into an event like that, you're not really He's supposed to be doing trades or cash buys, but he'll figure a way to slip in my... I feel like such a badass.
    10:14
    He's sneaking in comics to me. When I was younger in college, I was sneaking much worse things than comics. In and outside of the Fanshawe College business building, the Outback Shack, my party place, and I will tell you what. I made a tiny, tiny little profit selling things in Minecraft in college. It was excellent. and now I just talk about, you know, blacklegging, bootlegging comics. So anyways, let's get back to today's show. Thank you so much for everyone who donated for my birthday. I had a great birthday. I stayed home. I chilled. I haven't gone out. Glenn did put in a request to know exactly what beers. So don't worry, Glenn. When I get over to New Brunswick with all these awesome sours, I haven't got to try before. I'm a big freaking sour head. I'm going to be hitting the lactobacillus. I'm going to be getting hit up with the pediococcus. if you're not a beer nerd you don't know what the hell I'm talking about but basically lactose smells like hay soured hay and I know what you're thinking disgusting that's okay it's an acquired taste sort of like I am but hopefully almost 600 episodes in you've figured out that it's okay to hate me because you as a listener are supposed to hate me because Orbital Albert is a character which is very hateable in real life I'm slightly more likable look am I going to come on here and just be like, hello, how are you doing today? No, and I get people say, well, don't play a character. I'm just myself. I heard another pinball pod. I'm just always just myself. Well, can you not? Like, look, when you go to work, are you just yourself or are you the nicest version of yourself? Do you really love your boss? Or are you like, oh, how was your weekend? How are your kids? Do you really give a flying fuck about how your boss's kids are? Probably not. But you're gonna say that shit because it's kind of your job. And that might be the difference between a few of these other pinball podcasters and me is that this provides up to 33% of my income that I help bring into my family. Do I do awesome stuff for my family in other ways, like being a house husband, being a stay at home dad, being a homesteader collecting maple syrup, or like yesterday when I got my toe is still like freaking bleeding from it. I mean, not literally because like I put a bandaid and some rubbing alcohol on it, but I got stabbed by some blackberries that went right through my freaking shoe. It is blackberry season here in the homestead, and we collected several pounds yesterday. And even just little things like that save some money. Alas, let's go back to talking about today's hot pockets. I mean, hot topics. Okay, so, listen. I will just start by saying this. I recently played at Maple Pinball. And I'm not even kidding you. I think some of the pinball machines, including Rush, at Maple Pinball in Toronto, Ontario, where Mississauga, if we're going to get into the sticks about which suburb of GTA it's in,
    13:03
    that rush played so freaking brutal that I don't think that I had longer than a three-minute game on it. And I had just been given the tutorial from the rules dude himself, Mr. Raymond Davidson at Lumberjack Johnny's. Didn't spend like five minutes or ten minutes, I think for like 45 minutes to an hour, correct me if I'm wrong, Rachel Risto or Raymond Davidson, but but Ray Day gave Rachel and I the most rad awesome like like like showing us from the top view down like every single thing to do and what to shoot out while we were playing it's like we were live streaming and he was like commentating talking or you're telling us what to do it was incredible thanks so much Ray Day for that no I'm never going to stop talking about Lumberjack Johnny's go support either locations if you're somewhere there in Wisconsin because them cheese heads they know how to make pizza they know how to make pinball and they can throw some axes Speaking of axe throwing, I actually did that in Suri at the very end of the world. If you ever wondered what the very end of the end of the end of the world looks like, just go ahead on Google while I'm chatting away and type in Suri, which is S-O-U-R-I-S, P-E-I or Prince Edward Island, but just type P-E-I, it's much quicker, and click the images button. This place is gorgeous. They got the Singing Sands Provincial Park, which has like the highest amount of silica outside of the freaking Caribbean. so they have those white sandy soft beaches and they're so soft and the size of the particles and there so much silica the the sands actually sing like they go squeaky squeaky squeaky now drop target danielle might have got caught in a little bit of a fibby because she said oh I think they called that because when you walk on the sands, it sounds like you're stepping on a mouse, and it squeaks like you're stepping on a mouse. And it ended up turning out that we found later, during, like, this historical tour thing, that it's actually called that because they were overrun by, like, mice. There was some big, like, crazy thing that happened, and the mice just went nuts there, and there was no predators for them in town. And now it ends up that they just keep tons of foxes everywhere. So if you are in Surrey, you will see wild foxes everywhere. I mean, like three, four, five people who were staying in the shanty shacks with us, one of the 12 shanty shacks, old fisherman wharf sheds. One of these people had their flip-flops stolen, and they actually were getting the video, but they didn't want to go out and, like, grab the fox in case it had rabies or something. Like, I mean, who doesn't love a fox? I know Wayne's World does, right? Or at least Garth. But let me have a sip of the old angry alpaca here, and you have a sip of whatever you're doing at the same time.
    15:36
    All right. My voice is slowly coming back. I was supposed to have an interview for you guys this week. It's going to be coming next week. Both of our timelines didn't hit up. Plus, yesterday, there was, like, mad... Thankfully, you got rid of some of the humidity in the air. But there was, like, mad thunderstorms here. And the Elon Musk machine, even though it is much, much, much faster than our old dial-up internet. Yes, I had dial-up internet until recently.
    16:00
    Or I guess whatever runs through, like the slow one that runs through a modem in a phone. I think that's dial-up. Maybe it's not dial-up. Whatever it is. It's really, really, really slow. You can barely play Fortnite. You can barely do live streaming. Now I can actually do that with the Elon Musk machine, but when it's raining and storming that bad, it's cutting in and out and in and out and in and out. Because the satellites run through the sky, which are hella high up there, when there's surprise, surprise, giant rain clouds and thunderstorms. It doesn't run as well. So I did not. I was very excited to do this interview. I did not want to chance it cutting in and out constantly. So I'm going to be bringing you that interview next week, but I'll be off for, of course, the next few days. I do plan on bringing you a little bit more regular content, and I'm going to try to keep it shorter. F those two-and-a-half-hour podcasts. F even the two-hour ones. I'm going to try to keep it at an hour or less, even 45 minutes. Today is possibly even shorter because I'm rushing out the door, going to get my haircut. I'm so far due. I have not got my haircut since D82, and it is not looking fresh. It's looking homeless.
    16:59
    There's nothing wrong with people experiencing homelessness. I couched her for a couple weeks back when I was 19. Not that that's the same, but I want my hair to look fresh. It's got to pop. You know what I'm saying? I don't spend a lot of money on very much stuff.
    17:12
    I actually have like $260 to my name left in my TD Canada trust account, and I'm spending like $46 after the tip, probably closer to $55, maybe even $58, begrudgingly if it looks real good, $60 on going to get my haircut today and I'm going to House of Fade. It's probably the most expensive place to go in all New Brunswick. However, there's like one place more expensive for dudes to go in Halifax. So in Newfoundland, I highly doubt they have any, I could be wrong, but basically I'm going to one of the more expensive places because I value a really good haircut, super awesome, rather than just getting a meh haircut like every two weeks or two months like a lot of people do. However, I've gone off topic here. Let's go roll it back to Pembroke. So where my take gets hot. I believe Tom took this video down. I was sent like a secret link. I believe Tom took this video down, but he was considering putting it back up. But for those of you who saw it, let's see right now how many views it has. 1,400 views when was the last comment? the last comment was three days ago so I'm going to assume Tom put this back up good for you Tom I don't think Tom said anything too bad in this but go watch the video and even pause me right now and go watch the video it's only nine minutes if you haven't but Tom basically suggests pinball tournament setups how far is too far? now me only being you know Tom's in the top 150 200 his son's even higher up Neil there at Neil Graff so he and and he he go he basically lives at d82 and they're doing any live big events any live streams so he knows more than i would know and certainly uh you know raymond knows 10 times more than i would know but if you have one of the top players on planet earth who's formally the top player saying that the pinball machines were just the modern ones especially were just set up way way too hard and you actually can see that there is quite a few people in the comments uh in his comments of his post agreeing with him that they were set up too hard and then there's some people pushing back on that as well and this is not to throw shade at anybody at uh replay effects or sorry anyone at pinberg or any of the organized the tournament directors what pinberg was attempting to do is do what they did before where they had all the banks that finish in a certain amount of time. And as someone who was at Pembroke, I qualified for A division. Think about it this way. There used to be five divisions in Pembroke. There was A, B, C, D, E, right? You put 200 into each of the thousand. I qualified for A. So I was in the top 200 players according to 12 rounds of play in Swiss pairing with the top players on planet Earth. Now, how I managed to get into A, your guess is as good as mine, okay? But I managed, just sheer luck maybe and just not caring. It was my first pinball. And obviously, I'm a decent player, okay? I'm a mid-player, slightly better. Right, Nudge? Mid-player, slightly better. What a great article in Nudge. Go read that, by the way, about the mid-players. I'm going to talk more about that later as well. I want to do a little deeper dive on that. But every single solitary time that you make a pinball machine harder, you're not doing that as a tournament director because you hate the player. You're not doing it because you get a smile on your face when you see someone get three, which it could happen when the ball saves turned off and the out lane's gone you could actually get three balls in a row on a modern pin where you don't touch the ball and it goes out one of the two out lanes and you didn't even have a chance to shimmy it or nudge it back in because there's no post so you've now turned it into a complete luck box and one of the reasons why if not the main reason i didn't get to go to finals and one of the match play classics tournaments at maple was because I was playing Jungle Princess and three of my five balls were house balls and one of them was a one flip. So four or five of my, and so the people who beat me were very good players. Did they know Jungle Princess as well as me? I used to have three of the top 10 scores on Pindigo on it. I've live streamed it before. I've got very good at Jungle Princess. I know Jungle Princess inside and out. I'm very good at EMs. I can tap pass.
    21:15
    And I was playing in a classics tournament and I got last on it. And had I not got last, if I had either got second or third, I'd probably, and then after that I had one more game that I screwed up on because I was so angry. And I turned to everyone, and I probably scared the shit out of them, I scared me a little bit how angry I got. But I turned to them and I said, I'm coming back here tonight after Maple closes, and I'm taking this pinball machine out behind the tournament, and I'm burning this thing down. And everyone looked at me like, whoa, is this guy serious? but I said it like really angry, like stern rant angry. And then right away I saw it freaked everyone out, and I was like, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. But, you know, kind of half not, but just kidding. And, you know, they know, they're watching going, oh my God, this guy is just getting slaughtered for no reason. And nobody likes that. That's not the funnest part of pinball. The only thing less fun than getting slaughtered on a pinball machine out of all just bad luck is being in a pinball tournament that runs way, way, way too long. and remember I qualified for a division in the last pinberg in 2019 and yet even when my group of people we're so far off of the top like say three or four groups or even five groups the top five groups that had like the Escher Lefkoff's and Keith Elwin's and Raymond Davidson's of the world Chris Stevens right all those types of people those groups were playing so much longer than us no matter which bank they were on even though we're all randomly choosing banks those like you know, the teams of, say, there's four people on a team, I would say even the top 10 teams. One of those top 10 teams were taking so long that even me being in A division with really good players, I could play my round and I still knew I had 30 minutes to 45 minutes to waste. I could go down to Mike Dimas's, shout out, Pinball Shenanigans SUV and have a pinball beer with him. And then I could go with Peaceman Nick and go under the Peace Bridge and have a little more peace. and then I still had time to go to one of their famous, you know, wonderful, famous, I don't know, hot dogs, street vendors, and grab some street meat and then make it still back upstairs. And I knew that there would be at least one Escher Lefkoff or Keith Ellwin or Raymond Davidson still playing. And, you know, I could watch them on my phone to see the updates and I knew how many groups were left and such. But obviously, once you're down to one group, you get the hell back in there because you don't want to be late for Pembert. And as a guy who's late a lot, I was not late for Pembert once. I was close, but I was not late for Pemberg one time. So pretty proud of that. Where I'm going with this is that, who is right? Is Raymond Davidson right? Did they make it too hard? Or, and I think that Tom, you can hear Tom was basically, for the most part, agreeing with Raymond Davidson. Were Tom from Fox Cities Pinball and Raymond Davidson at CERN, were they correct? Did Pemberg finally take it too far? I mean, when you look at Rush and you see there's no, it's not that they moved the outline, it's not like they moved the post down slightly to make it harder, right? It's like they removed it completely. So now you have almost no chance. How is it even going to get in to the in lane if it's anywhere over there? So not only does shimmying not matter, nudging doesn't matter. all those beautiful nudges we saw freaking uh i will say keifer sutherland uh keanu reeves okay keep this busted 44 miles per hour bro i'm gonna go surfing at point break again man i got an english accent inside that the movie about the uh british uh vampires he sounds like this in great britain oh mate i am from great britain i'm just kidding it was probably the worst accent ever but it doesn't matter love you keanu so rad that he stopped at san diego comic Khan to play a little bit of it. That was neat. He obviously has some nudge skills he'd played before, but don't take this wrong, Keanu. It kind of looked like you were acting like you were a pinball player, because when you were shimmying at the end, it was like, but I think the ball's gone, my guy. But anyways, I love Keanu. It's so cool that they got that video.
    25:17
    I mean, I don't know if that helped sell many more John Wicks, but it couldn't hurt. I don't think it sold any more LEs. No one was on the fence about losing three to five grand on an LE and went, oh my god holy cow if Keanu plays it I gotta get it but I think a couple people who might have been on the fence about grabbing a pro or perhaps even a premium might have saw that went you know I can lose 500 bucks to a thousand on a fun toy Keanu played it who cares like if you have a location and you don't get a John Wick pro and put it in there I also think that's you know like I think that's probably your best bang for your buck on any John Wick is grabbing a pro sticking it on location your second best bang for your buck is probably grabbing a pro and just enjoying the hell of it at home, getting all those contracts whenever you can, having fun with the game. I mean, I don't think it's a banger. I think everyone can admit John Wick's mid at best, okay? It's perhaps possibly Stern's worst pin they've came out with. Some people are saying it's worse than Venom. Venom, Venom, Venom, Venom. No, it's not. There's no way it is. Okay, anyways, we're not going to... Go watch Enter Your Initials play Venom. You will be inspired like me. I cannot wait to play Venom. I think five years down the road from now, without a doubt, I will quit the Pinball Nerds podcast at episode 1500 if I'm wrong, okay? I will just get up and I'll drop the microphone into the Atlantic Ocean in the Bay of Fundy and I'll just keep walking. I'll be gone! I'll be doing the Pickleball podcast. I've been playing a lot of Pickleball and I'm really getting into it. Any other Pinball Nerds play Pickleball?
    26:46
    I'm sure they do. But let's get back to it. these pinball machines were set up brutal but even with them set up brutal a lot of people were complaining that it took too long so which is it are they set up so brutal that they're they're so brutal that's not even fun to play in it and that will be a question i'm going to have for someone that was actually at pinbird so i'm very excited to talk about it more I think that until one of two things needs to happen you need to be open and honest about every and we need to be open and honest with ourselves do we want pinball tournaments to run even longer than the 12 to 14 hours a day they're going or and do we think that a top tier tournament that really should be a stern circuit probably should be a stern circuit event do we really believe that those tournaments for them to be a good tournament do you have to bastardize the machine so much that even the rules and coding guy is like, guys, what is happening? No one wants to offend anyone who works at a pinball company, but also you want to run an event where people say like, that's kind of a thing. It's almost said with pride about Yagpin. And I have so much pride for Yagpin, not just because it's Edmonton and the Edmonton Oilers are my favorite and because I'm Canadian and because I love Derek and everyone there's everything they're doing. No, it's because they play hard as hell. And it's for Canada's top tournament. They should play hard as hell. But this is where I'm going with this is my friend, Matt McGough and my best friend in the entire world been best friends since grade seven. Okay. Also known as Melvis. He was at Maple, the Maple tournament with me. He admits he's not as good of a pinball tournament player as me. He's like 28,000th in the world before Maple. He moved up a hell of a lot after that. He's like in the top 10,000 now, but he scored higher in the pump and dump than me, even though I spent almost twice as much as him. And the reason was, is because the three modern pins, Black Knight, Sword of Range, AIQ, and Rush, all three of those, he's got more time on than me. But it was also because of the fact that he doesn require nudging that much And because he doesn require nudging often he relies much more on his rule set knowledge and he relies much more on his accuracy And to be fair the top players on planet earth, the Jason Zollers of the world, are not only incredible at nudging, but they can also adapt their play and they're incredible at being accurate. And they're incredible at adapting to a pinball machine that has had things changed on it. And that's the difference between maybe the top five players and like the top 25 players. Do you know what I mean? You have to be able to adapt your game. Now, do I ever want to go on location and play any modern stern with all the outposts removed? Absolutely not. That would not be fun. That would not be enjoyable. I guess my question would be if IFPA, if the International Flipper Pinball Association were to set out guidelines, they do not need to be followed. The tournament directors can do whatever they want. It's their pinball machines. It's their tournament. But if, I think this would be handy. And this is where I guess the hot take comes in. Okay. Everything I've said so far, mellow, mid, bland, boring, puts you to sleepy. Okay. But here, what I'm going to say, this is important. So if you taking notes, get out the notepad. The International Flipper Pinball Association either needs to come up with like guidelines for the recommendations. Hey, it would be better to take off the ball save than to take out. I'd rather have no ball save, but still have a chance at nudging when the ball's going towards an out lane.
    30:36
    Like no ball save, it seems to be like the easiest thing. And from what people were saying, some of the modern pins had like tons of things done to them. And some of them just seem to be playing out of the box, but then they remove the posts. So if I would just say that for the most part, if you can do everything to bastardize this machine and make it play quicker within the range of not turning it into a luck box and i think if there was guidelines set out by ifba or by the community as a whole if the community as a whole if the fox cities of the worlds the ie pinball the carl carls and maybe some people don't want to touch this i know that there are people right now that this is a hot button issue for but if we had some guidelines of hey for because there's only like 20 20 to 30 modern machines i'm sorry spooky pinball your modern machines are not played very often i'm sorry american pinball your modern machines are not played in tournaments very often okay i'm sorry hoping your your machines are never ever going to be played at or pinball adventures right so we have like a couple a couple jersey jacks which are okay for tournaments and then we just have tons of modern sterns and those 10 or 15 Modern Sterns, can we not all agree on settings that make it quicker playing without taking out the L-Lanes? Because I, to me personally, that's no longer pinball. That is no longer pinball. If I wanted to go play a slot machine, I'd go play Willy Wonka and listen to the sound of it while going on to the Nova Scotia gaming website. Sorry, that was a dig at the slot machine sounds on Jersey Jack pinball machines. But that being said, I love you, Jersey Jack. And I heard less slot machine sounds. Less. Still some in Elton John's. You guys are getting better. So let's go less slot machining, more pinball machining. If you had to replicate, replicate Bally or one of these other companies that now make slot machines, but replicate their old pinball sounds. Wouldn't that be incredible?
    32:30
    So if there was a set of guidelines, either, and I would prefer it to come out from the International Flipper Pinball Association. Maybe they think this is too hot and they don't want to touch it. But if we had a list of guidelines that Pemberg could have followed or should have followed on what they could have done to rush without taking out the outlanes, and they had followed those instead, I would assume Raymond Davidson wouldn't have complained about it, wouldn't have been that upset. Because there is ways to make a pinball machine more brutal and quicker playing without getting rid of the outlane post. Now, I don't know for sure, but I've never heard of anyone saying that at Yagpin. Maybe they do. maybe all the modern pins at Yigpin just don't have outlane posts and I didn't know that I feel like I've watched live streaming there and never noticed that, never heard anyone say that, but it seems like if we have Raymond Davidson and Tom of Fox Cities Pinball and obviously Triple Drain all saying, or at least suggesting, hey this is where we gotta draw the line, someone's gotta push back the pendulum swing will always happen on the flip side of that I've heard about tournaments that end at 4 I've heard Raymond Davidson himself, I love you Ray Day I've heard Raymond Davidson himself complain about tournaments that have finished at 4 or 5 in the morning when you have to get back there at 8 or 9. And that is ludicrous as well. So this is nuanced stuff, guys. I would like to hear Jeff Teo. Jeff, if you ever want to come on the show and dig deep into this, I don't know if I'm ever going to get a Josh Sharp to come on to talk about it. I'd love to. I don't know if I'm going to get Josh to come on to talk about it. Josh, you're also welcome. but I'd love to have he's the president of the International Flipper Pinball Association but I'd love to talk about it I'd love to talk to Jeff Teolis about it thankfully I am going to talk to someone who's more entrenched in tournament pinball than me coming up and we're going to dig into that a bit more next week but wouldn't it be great if there was guidelines just for the top 20 most used modern pins like something like an older pin it's more difficult because A they all play differently and there's like over 3,000 EM solid states made So it's very, very, very hard to say how an old pinball machine like that would play or could play or should play. There is obviously some guidelines you could follow for just general guidelines, but I'm just putting it out there.
    34:43
    The people who work at Pemberg are just people, right? It's Doug Polka, Elizabeth Cromwell, the gentleman who used to own all the machines. I'm sorry, my name, his name is, I'm forgetting, he used to own all the machines at Pemberg. Let me have a sip of the old coffee here for a second.
    35:04
    All right. I want tournament pinball to be successful. I love tournament pinball. For me, buying and selling a pinball machine, like a 2 out of 10 fun. Maybe a 3 if you get a really good deal and the guy delivers it to you, okay? And you don't have to go up back rating. Then the fun of, for me, like, and I like to give everything a number, okay? I rate everything. That's kind of what I do. You guys know that. I'm not going to do a deep top five here, but then being at your house and playing a really good game of pinball, and say you make it further than you've ever got, you've got a new GC or you make it to wizard mode or the mini wizard, or if it's a really hard pin, you get further in the game than you've ever got. To me, that's like a three or four out of ten fun. Now, you do that on location with a whole bunch of people watching. You're at a big record store, and people can hear just the, they can hear the knockers going off when you're getting the GC, the triple knocker. They can hear the multiball going. They can see you getting excited. And if you're like me, when I get excited playing pinball, this is actually a big secret that a lot of people don't know. There's like maybe four or five. I try to hold back at Maple a lot, like a lot, a lot, a lot. But I end up on the floor while playing pinball all the time. Like I play pinball violently. Like I'm jumping and spinning and, okay, not spinning. The one thing I get in trouble for a lot is I don't have my hands on the flippers very often. When I'm playing modern pins, anytime I can be stretching out my arms and stretching my back... Guys, I have spina bifida. Don't worry, it's a good one. But if you have spina bifida and you have a tight upper back, anytime playing pinball, when you're doing 12 to 14 hour days, that you can be stretching your upper back, the better.
    36:37
    I do want to see guidelines. I don't think Ray Day was wrong. I think maybe he could have approached it slightly differently, even though his post was kind of pretty mellow, it really was, and I don't want to offend the Pemberg people, because I hope to play in Pemberg next year, and I don't want to offend Yagpin, and I don't want to offend D82, that volley was set up way too tight, sorry, no, I didn't get to go on to the second round of Nationals because of that volley, and maybe something to do with Derek Thompson, you know, it could have been, or wait, was it Derek Price, who did I play in the, no, I think it was Derek Thompson, wasn't it, anyways, the point is, that volley there at D82, that is too freaking tight you couldn't nudge that with uh you couldn't you couldn't nudge that with like the tiniest feather from the smallest bird on planet earth without it just tilting out on you and until the end game on that volley so all right i'm tired i haven't had the fan on i'm sitting here sweating i'm off to go get my haircut then i'm headed out to fredericton we're going to be going to the comic-con my wife and i were recently in surrey and we did the sea glass festival but it was so stinking hot there that nobody was coming and people weren't staying. They had their worst numbers in years. It was like above 40 degrees Fahrenheit inside that building. It was probably 35 to 38 outside most days, but it was like above 40. We were 30 to 40 feet away from the closest fan. There was no air conditioning. I mean, this is the most northeastern part of Prince Edward island which is the final of all the atlantic or sorry the maritime provinces right you basically have to hit iceland to go further in that ocean um so you know we're kind of in the middle of nowhere like you think i'm in the middle of nowhere here like there there was just like i i could do a live stream inside for any of you who did see the live stream hey if you want a calm mellow live stream go watch me walk around a sea a sea glass fest uh if anything it's maybe uh it's maybe too too boring i did not get a lot of views for that i did get a lot of views for uh Danielle and I having free drinks at the Sea Shanty Shack. But if we went to leave the shack that had the waifu, or if we went to leave the Sea Glass Fest, gone, gone, gone. By the way, if you are like Christopher Franchi, and you don't like it when Orby goes into story time, you're dismissed. Get out of here. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. You heard my hot take about how I believe that either IFPA or the community need to come up with a set of guidelines, because the last thing we want is a former number one player in the world disagreeing with or, you know, kind of calling out the organizers and the tournament directors who basically did bastardize the machines. Did they over-bastardize them? Maybe slightly. But we need to, you know, I think that Pemberg is willing to take that feedback. They have always been willing to take that feedback. And although they were always known as one of, Papa was known as having the hardest machines out there, and they kind of still want to be known for that, maybe they did take it too far with Rush. Maybe they did. I think they did. And I will respect their decision, Pemberg. I will respect your decision either way. But if between now and the next PIMBURG, IFPA or the community comes up with a set of guidelines on, say, the top 10 to the top 20 most commonly used modern PIMs, that would not only help PIMBURG, that would especially help tons of small little tournament locations all across Canada, all across the United States, all across Europe, all across Australia. Hell, even though they're in New Zealand, it would help them out. Okay? Those Lord fans over there. It would help them because if we all knew the easiest, best, simplest ways to make a modern pinball machine play harder but yet fairer and we all follow those practices, you wouldn't have someone over here saying, but you didn't turn the ball save off. Why did you take off the out lanes? But you didn't make it steeper, but yet you did this. But you didn't do this. I think that there's a world where probably Raymond Davidson and Tom are correct. They took it a little bit too far. But I also think there's a world where Pinberg was trying to do everything within their power. And this is their first one back in five years. So let's cut them a little bit of slack. But if between now and next year, IFPA or the community comes up with a generally accepted set of rules. They're all going to be individual depending on the tournament and how fast you need to play. and what bank that game is in. I get it. But if we could come up with a general set of rules, this argument will never happen again. But if we don't come up with a general set of rules, this will continue. And this will be toxic and poison in the pinball community. And we don't want that. Because like I was saying earlier when I was 0-10-ing it, playing in a pinball tournament and winning the game with a whole bunch of your friends, or not even getting to that wizard mode, but just winning a game, a match play game at a small local tournament, that's like an 8-10 fun. But then winning a pinball tournament, a big pinball tournament, like in front of all your peers, like at a D82 or Nationals or Pinmasters or Pinberg, like that is life-changing and that is incredible. We know that all the players had to play on the same rush. If every time Jason Zoller came over to play, I mean, they have quite a bit of time between each ball, right? So if in between when Jason Zoller's waiting to go up to play his turn, they put in the outlane posts, they took off the glass, and they put the post in just for him, then there would be an argument that it wasn't fair for everyone. Of course it was fair for everyone. But was it fun for everyone? Not as much as it could be. Now, if it would have been more fun, but it would have played longer, which one would be better? That's not a question for me to answer. That's a question for the tournament directors. But at least I've put my tidbit out there. I think that, especially for people outside of the top 100 and for tournaments outside of the top 20 or the top 25 on planet Earth that give out the most whoppers that have the top players, we all want to know. we're all curious what is the best way to make these machines harder and play longer but in a fair manner without taking out the outlanes and turning it into a luck box or an em right and that's the question we all want answered and that's the question i want answered and i i hope that maybe you know i'm going to keep this ongoing discussion going i know it's a bit of a hot topic for people i'm not going to throw any shade because i as a tournament director i wouldn't know what to do. I would hope to God I could figure out a way in the adjustments to turn on, say, tournament settings, and I could figure out a way to enjoy playing the pinball machine without completely changing the way it was meant to play by the designers and the code makers, okay? And don't go at Raymond Davidson because he, although he is a stern employee, is also a tournament player and he is allowed to have his own opinion. And his opinion, just like my opinion on the show, his opinion doesn't always reflect upon obviously his employer and I don't think that he said anything that was bad anyways and it's the same thing with Tom if you were the person that was like pushing Tom to take that down like you know and I don't know hopefully god forbid it wasn't one of the sponsors of uh you know Pinberg going at him saying hey hey don't say anything negative about this because these conversations are important if we all want tournament pinball to grow and tournament pinball to be more fun and tournament pinball to be more welcoming then we have to make sure that we address the biggest issues which are some pinball tournaments many of the top ones are making the pinball machines so hard it just not fun for newer players But maybe that's how it's meant to be. So, I don't know. It is a conversation. I want to keep that conversation going. and please if you're someone that's considering going after someone's job going after their family uh telling them to take down their youtube videos because their opinion is slightly different than yours really rethink what you're doing because that's not the type of positivity we want to push here in pinball and i'm also joking around and laughing it up and gags but this is a serious topic and i take my freaking tournament pinball real serious okay this isn't like this isn't a stern tour invite me okay like yeah that'd be fun i'm on the steering tour like it's like a four out of ten maybe a five cool i'm on the tour like yeah let's really make a play field but like we're talking about tournament pinball here it's something i'm passionate about it's something that like if you were to ask me nine of my favorite days of the last five years i'm not going to go back to the days of where i got married or where i was having kids because obviously those are different but if you were to ask me nine of my 10 probably favorite days over the last year outside of maybe like Christmas day here on the homestead with my family okay outside of that nine of the ten of them were me being at pinball tournaments it doesn't matter if it was me winning the New Brunswick pinball championship doesn't matter if it was me at Lumberjack Johnny's d82 it doesn't matter if it was me even traveling down to St. John to go play in a little tournament there where you know I did make the finals but I didn't get a top three I didn't get a podium just in the little province where I thought, oh, I just won this province. I should be able to get a top three. Shout out to all the Fundy Flippers out there, by the way. I haven't got out to play in many this year. They're all on Saturdays. Saturdays is the last, the one day of the week that I go to make money typically. So I haven't been able to play in many pinball tournaments and I live in an area that just doesn't have pinball tournaments on Fridays or Sundays. So I don't get to play in many pinball tournaments. And for a guy who loves pinball tournaments this much, I get to live through watching Twitch pinball tournaments. so I'm going to end this up by saying a little story time about the moose here so this weekend I'm laying in the shanty shack around 5.30am drop target Danielle doesn't get up for about another two hours thankfully there was a fan in there because there was no television there was no AC, I was literally staying in a decommissioned fisherman's shack feel free to go on Albert Agar on Facebook and scroll back and watch us having some pre-drinks, it was kind of neat you can see me pull across the big barn door with no roof on it So that's where the bathroom is. And if someone's going to the bathroom, you get no privacy. But, you know, it's two of us staying in a small shack. We've been together for 20 years. We have two kids together, own two companies together. We're probably fine. But I will just warn you, if you're in Surrey, do not expect posh accommodations. But I still had a lot of fun. That being said, it was so freaking hot.
    46:43
    And people stayed so little that of the $1,100 we brought in over the two days, we spent about $600 on the trip, which left us with only $500, and I put it in quotes, profit. But of course, the cost of goods of the $1,100 is around 66% of that. So we actually lost $66 by going to this event all weekend. And it was supposed to be one of our biggest events of the year. We, in fact, are missing out on doing the market this weekend because of that, where we actually normally bring in $500 to $800. So we couldn't get someone to work both weekends. for us and it actually was so hot that we had one of our slowest days on our regular market of the Pugwash Farmer's Market. So alas, Orby's bank account is down to $262. But let's not talk about that. Let's go back to talk about my wild moose chase. I was lying in bed around 530 and I started hearing, but really far away. And I could tell it was a moose. I've heard moose before. I've tracked moose before. I've seen moose live not very far from me and heard moose very, very close to me in Cape Breton before on my honeymoon there. Great time at Fisherman's Cove. But I hadn't seen one now in about eight years. So I was so excited, so stoked. I thought, oh my gosh, I know there's wilderness just north of the town. So I grabbed my cell phone. I grabbed my watch. I grabbed a drink and I headed out the door to go chase down the moose. I wanted to get a picture on my phone of The moose, moose to me are majestic. I see deer here on the homestead a couple times a week, especially in the spring and the fall. Not so much in the winter and the heat of the summer. But a couple days ago, we saw a mum and two fawns. So we see deer quite a bit. I love deer, but I see them all the time. I saw them all the time growing up in southwestern Ontario. My dad was a hunter, so I saw them all the time hanging in our back shed quite often. Again, nothing wrong with that. It's, you know, especially where we lived in southwestern Ontario, deer were basically like vermin. and they were just spreading, and there's millions of them everywhere, and they're killing the flora and the fauna and the natural plant life. So they're especially there when you're hunting deer in a humane way. Very good for the planet. Very good for the earth. Probably one of the best things you could actually do, because then you're not buying all of your meat from the grocery store. Anyways, not going to talk about guns. I talked about enough hot button issues today. Not going to talk about guns. Not going to talk about compound bows. Not going to talk about all that kind of stuff today. Let's just get back to me hunting the moose with my camera, not a gun. so I leave, and on the way out, I see two beautiful foxes playing underneath one of the decks, and I wasn't even afraid, out here, I'm kind of, I've chased down a fox or two here, trying to kill our, these are different foxes out here, than those, the domesticated ones there, but anyways, got, I even got a video of them playing, coming out under our Corolla, under our car, and so then we, I end up, you know, and I can hear the moose, and as I'm, every 500 meters, that would be like, I don't know, 300, I don't know what you call them, yards or something like that, or 400 yards. Basically every five minutes I can hear one or two moose calls, and it's getting louder. It's like, argh, argh. And I'm like, what the hell? Is this moose, did he catch his antlers in a fence? Is this guy, was he trying to steal a cheeseburger from the garbage and he got his head stuck in it or something? I didn't know what these moose calls were. And finally, as I got closer and closer and closer, I finally got out to the edge of the ocean. And the ocean, the ocean was an angry beast that day. And I looked out to the ocean. I could still hear the moose calls, but there's no freaking moose. And now it's clear as day. So I go into the lighthouse gift shop right there in Surrey. And I say, I'm so sorry to bother you. And she kind of gives me this look like she knows what I'm going to say. Really, really funny local chick. and I say, what is that sound we're hearing? And she goes, most common question we get here. A lot of people think it's a moose. Other people, I don't know why I'm doing the accent like this. I don't really know how to do a good Prince Edward Island accent. They speak very quickly, though, on the island. Quickly and kind of like, you've really got to slow down their speech and understand it. Some of the people, most of the people, though, no problem. You can understand what they're saying. Love the Prince Edward Islanders. Don't come at me, redheads. Okay, so anyways she ends up explaining that it's the most common question they get there at the gift shop and it's this weird thing called a mile that's right even here in canada we still call them the mile marker buoys so if you're on youtube and you're super duper born bored you can look up a mile it's basically like the same as a foghorn foghorn leghorn no not quite the same as that uh make sure you do go listen to crafter sally and foghorn leghorn They just had episode 52 dropped yesterday. And normally there's no hot takes on that show. It's very measured. It's very calculated. Very, very level-headed. If you're into level-headed pinball podcasts, that's probably the most level-headed one out there. It used to be Tom from Fox City's Pinball. But recently, recently, he's grown. He's grown a little bit. He's getting a little spicy.
    51:45
    But, no, Foghorn, you leghorned me. When you said that you weren't going to drink at Expo, it's Expo. We're here in the Poor Man's Pinball Network. I'm telling you right now, if one of the tribe members sees me without a beer in my hand, if you see me with a bottle of water, you can walk right up and smash it out of my hand. If you see me trying to eat food, if anything that's not 40% alcohol or like at least a quadruple IPA at 14.5%, you smash it out of my hand and you tell me, bad Orby, you get drinking. If you do not uke in a urinal by the end of Expo, you did it wrong. So I'll be playing in all the tournaments. I'll be drinking all the beers. The only thing I don't do is tequila. Okay, don't be coming. I don't care if it's Jove's, blah, blah, blah, Blackwood. I don't want any tequila. Tequila at no point in time is yummy or good to me.
    52:39
    But something that is yummy or good to me is the Fox. That might just be a little, okay. Going upstairs? Tell them I'll call them back.
    52:55
    Okay. Drop Target Danielle is going upstairs to go talk to Little Orby Jr., which is great because it's good timing. Because what I wanted to say to all you pinball nerds, thank you to everyone who sent me a birthday gift. I really appreciate it.
    53:07
    Oh, my God. And now Draco Franchi got up because Little Orby Jr. called from basketball camp in the valley. We are going back to Fredericton. And my wife and I, on our honeymoon, went to a little place called the Snooty Fox. and when we came back from going outside and getting some very very very fresh air something that we did that was really cool was we came back to all of the food at all hold on one second you pinball nerds you we came back to sorry had to let Draco Franchi out there he heard the phone he got excited he saw Ellen go outside drop target Danielle followed them anyways one of the coolest things, dropped her at Danielle and I couldn't decide which hors d'oeuvres we wanted. And she really wanted a lobster roll. And honestly, we normally have no money, but we were given a little bit of cash for our honeymoon. And so after she left, I ordered everything. I ordered everything like the potato skins, the chicken wings, and even the lobster roll. It was like 30 bucks or something, but I ordered a little bit of everything. And we went outside, we got some very fresh Canadian Air. We may have had a vape or two. And when we came in, she saw the entire smorgasbord there. And I swear to God, she had a little tear in her eye. Drop Target Danielle, like me, is a mad foodie. And as you guys all know, I have a separate spending account that's for like everything that's not, you know, gas, groceries, they come out of our biz account or they come out of our personal account. But I have my own money and I would love to treat Drop Target Danielle to the Snooty Fox, go sit on the rooftop patio, go have a nice meal. It's not the most expensive place there, believe me. It's like number five, number six on the list. Alas, after I pay for my half of the gas and my table for the Comic-Con, I'm left with like 40 bucks. So that would barely be enough for me to get like granola bars from the grocery store, which is fine. I'm not too good to eat granola bars at the grocery store. Who doesn't love granola bars? Come on. I'm a freaking hippie. Of course I love granola bars. And you can go there and you get some bottled water and stuff like that but I would love to surprise drop target Danielle because I literally cannot do it without your help you could change a girl's world today if you thought maybe it would have been rad I did get money from four people which was really honestly more than I expected for my birthday but if you thought maybe it would have been nice you're still within the one week one week of Orby's birthday like hell it was only two days ago right three days ago sorry so if you could I would consider it a late birthday gift. The only thing I want, I don't want to go buy more Pokemon or more comic books. Okay, Glenn already gave me money for craft beer. That's earmarked, okay?
    55:42
    Franchi, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to use some of your money boringly for my gas money and for my table. And same with Death Save streaming. Sorry. Sorry, I have to. But wouldn't it be great if Saturday night, when we finished at the show, I could tell her, wow, I just looked at our angry alpaca tee at Gmail, which is where you want to send any PayPal. I looked at it and I saw that people were kind enough to say, you know what? I want drop target Danielle for all she does for pinball. And she puts up a lot with me with pinball, believe me, between, you know, me watching pinball tournaments, doing pinball podcasts, helping take care of the dogs. Like right now, while I'm doing a show, she does more than you guys know for the show. and this would be the chance that you could give directly back to her because I want her to get that lobster roll. Sure, I can take her out to McDonald's. She'll still eat a crispy chicken, the junior crispy chicken happy meal. She'll do it, but I would like to treat her and get her that lobster, okay, and just walk in and see the whole smorgasbord. I love that word. See the whole buffet display, chicken wings, potato skins, just like we did, and I'm going to secretly order it from, honestly, from the server. So if y'all would like to help make my weekend super special, make her weekend super special. If you appreciate, like, I've had almost 2,000 listens in the past 10 days. So if y'all appreciate all the hard work I've done, and I know there's more of you than just the three that donated. I do know, besides Franchi and the three that donated. Of the 2,000 listens I've got, there's got to be one or two of you out there. Fire me off, five bucks, 10 bucks, 25 bucks. If I could even get $50 total, so either $25 from two people, $50 from one person, this is Canadian so it's like half that American guys but if you wanted to help out it would just warm my heart I would appreciate it I know there's one of you guys listening who've always wanted to donate and now's the time none of this is going to Orby this is going for a nobody needs a $30 lobster sandwich but damn I think she deserves it and if you could help me give it to her I would be forever appreciative until next time pinball nerds remember to donate through PayPal to angryalpacatea at gmail.com. And you're going to get a shout out on the next show just like these people did. Until next time, Pinball Nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe.
    58:06
    Pinbird Pinball. And where the heck is my mouse?