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Albert Agar - Pinball Nerds Podcast - Episode 53

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 5m·analyzed·Jan 31, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Orbital Albert discusses 600+ podcast episodes, content philosophy, and removing controversial Stern rant.

Summary

Albert Agar (Orbital Albert/Orby) of the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast discusses his journey creating 602+ episodes of audio content, his philosophy on unedited, conversational pinball commentary, and his decision to remove a controversial Stern John Wick Media Day rant episode. He reflects on balancing genuine passion-driven content with responsibility to the pinball community, mental health awareness, and avoiding drama despite industry pressure.

Key Claims

  • Albert has produced 602 Poor Man's Pinball podcast episodes

    high confidence · Jamie states 'As of this recording, you have done 602 Poor Man Pinball podcasts' and Albert confirms the achievement

  • Albert conducted approximately 220 interviews over 10 years, with 2-3 per week during COVID

    high confidence · Albert: 'I've done, here's the thing is, I think I've done 220 interviews over 10 years. There was a time during COVID when I was doing two to three interviews per week.'

  • Albert took a full year off from podcasting to work as a marketing manager

    high confidence · Albert: 'I took off a whole year I took a full-time job as a marketing manager of a local town here and marketing communications manager'

  • Albert removed a controversial Stern John Wick Media Day rant episode from circulation

    high confidence · Jamie: 'Let's talk about the infamous podcast regarding Stern's Media Day for John Wick' and Albert discusses why it was taken down due to scaring people

  • Albert's solo rant episodes get more listens than carefully planned interview episodes with high-profile guests

    high confidence · Albert: 'I talked about nothing and 900 people listen' compared to planned Christopher Franchi interview getting 600 listens

  • Albert was not invited to Stern's John Wick Media Day despite believing he had connections at the company

    high confidence · Albert: 'I am bipolar and I've been mad all week that Stern did not send me an invite like I'm friends with people over there'

  • The nickname 'Orby' was coined by Zach Many from Flippin' Out Pinball

    high confidence · Albert: 'I think I have to. He's one of my top five frenemies, Mr. Zach Many over there, flipping out. He actually came up with the name Orby.'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's meant to be like a water cooler conversation between you and me, Jamie. I'm that crazy, weird, strange guy at work who won't shut up about pinball or honestly, whatever movie I watched, whatever TV show I'm into, whatever foodie, craft beer, burgers, whatever.”

    Albert Agar @ early segment — Core philosophy explaining his podcast approach as unscripted, personal commentary rather than journalistic coverage

  • “People only care when I rant and rave like a lunatic... People don't want to hear measured and calm.”

    Albert Agar @ mid-segment — Reveals audience preference for passionate, unfiltered content over polished interview format

  • “I am bipolar and I've been mad all week that Stern did not send me an invite like I'm friends with people over there.”

    Albert Agar @ later segment — Explains the emotional trigger that led to the controversial Stern rant episode; demonstrates vulnerability and transparency about mental health

  • “I've tried to be drama-free since episode 493. I've messed up once or twice.”

    Albert Agar @ mid-segment — Shows deliberate shift in content philosophy toward responsibility after reaching episode 493

  • “Call me a shill for pinball I don't give a shit right that's just what we want to do.”

    Albert Agar @ closing segment — Demonstrates commitment to promoting pinball community over controversy or drama

  • “I would spend 20 to 30 hours a week with Jack Danger. If I was home and not at a pinball tournament, yes, even when I was parenting, yes, even when I was hanging out with my wife.”

    Albert Agar @ mid-segment — Illustrates depth of community engagement and consumption of pinball content

  • “I don't really like to, I'm lazy. I don't really don't like, like, I will do the odd thing around my house. But like, I kind of like homesteading... But like, as far as working on my car, and like, same with working on pinball machines, I just don't love it. I love playing pinball.”

    Albert Agar — Explains why his content focuses on playing/discussing pinball rather than restoration or mods

Entities

Orbital Albert (Orby)personJamie BirchallpersonPoor Man's Pinball PodcastmediaChristopher FranchipersonJeff TeolispersonRetro RalphpersonZach ManypersonJack Dangerperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Albert plans to launch Patreon subscription tier ($2-3/month) featuring previously restricted/controversial content including the Stern rant episode

    high · Albert: 'would you ever put it on patreon for two bucks of course yes yes yes... I do want to do a patreon just like joe chervino'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern John Wick Media Day created tension when Albert was excluded, triggering emotional episode and controversial rant podcast that was subsequently removed

    high · Albert: 'I am bipolar and I've been mad all week that Stern did not send me an invite' and discussion of removed episode scaring people

  • ?

    community_signal: Albert's podcast has evolved from 30-40 listens to hundreds, with growth accelerated by word-of-mouth in pinball community circles (initial discovery via Slam Tilt podcast shout-out)

    high · Albert describes initial discovery: 'Bruce always shouts out to the newest person who joined. And, of course, that was me.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Internal drama within content creator circle regarding Stern media access; perception that controversial creators (Kaneda, Franchi, Carrie Hardy) get more engagement than measured voices

    high · Albert describes week when Kaneda, Franchi, Carrie Hardy all went 'off' on various topics, getting 3k-6k listens each

  • ?

    community_signal: Albert took year-long hiatus from podcasting (2023-2024) for full-time marketing manager position, then returned to content creation

    high · Albert: 'I took off a whole year I took a full-time job as a marketing manager'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.195

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamie Birchall, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today, I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today, I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello, my name is Jamie Birchall, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. And today I'm very excited to be joined by a very special guest, Albert Agar, of the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast on the Poor Man's Pinball Network and your fifth favorite pinball podcast. That's right. Welcome to the Wormhole Virtually, Albert.
0:47
Well, thank you so much, Jamie. really stoked to be here on Wormhole of course I've watched not everything you've done because you've done so many but I've watched a lot of them and enjoyed them I do actually like that you do the video part it's fun for me to be able to watch the person and see what's happening in their background and that sort of thing, see all the cool pinball machines so that's what I've done is I've changed it up a little Albert and I'm going to be putting this video on the Spotify as well thanks shout out to Cale Hernandez from Electric Pat showing me over the weekend how to do that. Shout out. You know, we don't get a lot of views on the YouTube video, but by putting it up on the Spotify, if anyone that watches Spotify will be able to watch this video or listen to the audio, whatever they choose. So shout out to Cale Hernandez, who's become a very good friend of mine. As of this recording, you have done 602 Poor Man Pinball podcasts. That is incredible. Well, congratulations on not only 600, but the success of your podcast.
1:49
Thank you. I prefer to call it like a blog, you know, more of an audio blog. For years and years and years, I was a big fan of Casey Neistat on YouTube and a lot of other people that did blogs and vlogs and kind of did daily updates on what was going on in their life. And so originally, I had unfortunately broke my arm BMXing skateboarding. And it was actually skateboarding that time, but I had broke it previously, BMXing. And I was just bored sitting at home. I had, of course, Jeff Teels. If you can bring Mr. Franchi. Draco Franchi is a wonderful dog, but this man is so excited. Obviously, he knows I'm with the world-famous Jamie at Wormhole Pinball. I almost called you Jeremy at Wormhole. No, it's totally fine. No, I really love doing the show. It's kind of a labor of love. I know at the time I was playing in a league with Mike Dimas and his co-host from the Canadian Pinball Podcast. Theirs was a lot more like mine, off the cuff, unedited, kind of just joking around. Only a few local people listened. And in fact, I had done 15 or 20 episodes, and I was never going to tell anyone I had ever started this pinball podcast. Like, I had been to Pinball League. I had told no one but my very best friend, and I asked him to tell no one. And Jeff Teolis turns to me at league, of course, from Pinball Profile and such, and he says, Albert, you're famous. I said, what do you mean, Jeff? And I didn't want Jeff at the time, you know, was still very well known, didn't have as many pinball podcasts as he does now, of course. But and he said to me, I just heard you on the Slam Tilt pinball podcast. I thought Bruce and Ron from Slam Tilt have heard of me, my little blog that gets like 30 or 40 listens, you know, and that was if I was lucky. And he kind of said, what? You have a podcast? I said, what do you mean? I got a shout out. And he said, oh, yeah, you must have joined their Facebook group recently because at the very end of the show, Bruce always shouts out to the newest person who joined. And, of course, that was me. So then the cat was out of the bag. He said, you have a pinball podcast? I said, well, it's more like a blog, Jeff. And then Jeff kind of told everybody and then it was out there. And then I had to try to actually pretend to kind of know what I was talking about a little bit. But the way I've always explained it, it's meant to be like a water cooler conversation between you and me, Jamie. I'm that crazy, weird, strange guy at work who won't shut up about pinball or honestly, whatever movie I watched, whatever TV show I'm into, whatever foodie, craft beer, burgers, whatever. So I'm that guy. And that's what it's meant to be, because I've never been on the radio. I know like Teolis, of course, growing up where I grew up in southwestern Ontario, Teolis, I heard him on the radio all the time. He's just big red, right? Like like the oldies station my parents would listen to in London, Ontario. we always got the Kitchener Waterloo station. So like, you know, he's, he's a TV radio guy. He's done it for years. You know, and even Franchi, of course, Christopher Franchi's done radio for years. You mentioned with when, with Cool Toy, the gentleman from Cool Toy was on your last show, how you always wanted to be in radio. And I always kind of wanted to be in radio, but was way too afraid. I mean, I did radio Rams at Laurier High School and, you know, in high school, but that was about it. I had no other experience, but I had hosted a craft beer television show on the Rogers TV network. And that kind of gave me the confidence to go, well, if I could do that edited, maybe I could do it off the cuff. And the rest is 600 episodes later. Do you write a script for your podcast? Do you write like down notes that this is what I want to accomplish or? Sort of. I mean, not really. Okay. The reason I ask that. You know, just something like that, like just a guideline. I find it amazing that you specifically can talk for 50 to 60 minutes, right, and have a cohesive conversation with your audience without any editing. How do you do this? How do you do this without any editing? somewhat somewhat cohesive i rarely get back to some of the topics i make but i think my whole life i've been paid to talk i was a driving instructor i work for td canada trust like one of the largest banks up here and and i i did like 160 to 180 clients per day through easy line which was just that little thing you call in the back your thing whether you're renewing a mortgage doing a gic if it mutual funds i didn't touch i sent over to the professionals thank god who made a lot more than me. But everything from just like the bank machine ate my card, all the way to being a driving instructor, to being a small business owner, to doing customer service, I've really always spoke for a living. I'm not very strong. And I don't really like to, I'm lazy. I don't really don't like, like, I will do the odd thing around my house. But like, I kind of like homesteading. I love homesteading. That's pretty hard. But like, as far as working on my car, and like, same with working on pinball machines, I just don't love it. I love playing pinball. I love driving the car i don't like working on it and that's kind of in my perspective that's why i usually talk about actually playing pinball as opposed to like fixing it or doing mods and that sort of thing it took me it used to take me three to four hours to edit each particular podcast right and and then another two to three hours of writing prior to the that so now i have a video and a podcast editor his name is ryan greg shout out to ryan greg uh i send him the zoom link and And he edits the podcast. And he's fantastic. And anyone that is willing to hire this young man out of the University of Texas, Albert, hit us up at warmupinballatgmail.com. I'll hook you up with Ryan. Because I was listening to aforementioned Jeff Teolas. He just interviewed Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey. And it was a good interview. And they talk about editing itself and what a pain in the staking process it can be. And I'm lucky so much to have Ryan now. I can write, record, and promote. and those are my favorite parts. So there you go. All right, question for you. Let's start it out. These are very informal interviews, as you can see, right? Yeah, no problem. And you already kind of explained where it came from, but where did the nickname Orbital Albert come from?
@ early-mid segment
Kaneda
person
Stern Pinballcompany
Ryan Gregperson
Cale Hernandezperson
Poor Man's Pinball Networkorganization
Wormhole Pinballvenue
  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Albert has deliberately shifted from controversial/edgy content toward 'drama-free' approach starting around episode 493, showing conscious community responsibility evolution

    high · Albert: 'I've tried to be drama-free since episode 493. I've messed up once or twice.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Ryan Greg (editor) working with Wormhole Pinball; Albert offering to help recruit him for other creators, indicating valuable freelancer in pinball media space

    medium · Jamie: 'Anyone that is willing to hire this young man out of the University of Texas, Albert, hit us up at warmupinballatgmail.com'

    • 7:47
    Well, do you want the PG answer or the real one or a little bit of both? Give me the real answer. It's your podcast. Okay, well, no, no, I'll give you the real answer. We're up here in Canada. where thankfully marijuana is very legal. And I was always a bit out there. But let's just say at my pinball tournaments, I would get yelled at quite often for being gone between the games, maybe getting some fresh air up here in Canada. And people all the time would say, wow, you're really out there, dude. Like you're constantly like, you know, I'm a chatterbox, as you might imagine. You know, the only man maybe in all pinball who could talk more than me might be this beautiful man right here, Mr. Roger Sharp. Of course, but I mean, besides him, you know, maybe Teal's could out-talk me. I don't know. We could have a 24-hour marathon someday. We'd see who'd win. Probably him. But definitely Roger Sharp. I don't think so. I think he would win. I'd kick his butt.
    8:39
    But I think I like Orbitz more than Ramps. Ramps are just so overrated. Don't you think? It's like a Ramp is so boring. When you hit a Ramp, okay, Ramps are starting to get better. X-Men, a couple other, you know, since Elwins came around. But back, this is 8 to 10 years ago when I kind of was coming up with this Ultra Eagle of Orbital Albert, who's a little bit more hyper than me and probably a little bit more opinionated than I am typically. Less of a dad and more of a crazy out there guy like I kind of was in college or university. And I try to tap into that. So I do usually like to have a drink or two or what have you. And honestly, Orbits are great because I was even just playing High Speed 2 this last weekend. And when you hit that left Orbit, if you're a newer player, you don't know if that ball is rushing back at your flippers, which is so much more exciting than, oh, here you go, I'll drop you off here to your flipper. There you go. They're your little baby gloves. No, no, no, no. We don't need ramps. Orbits. No, no. We need orbits because they fly back at you. Sometimes the ball gets lost. Sometimes it leads into a ramp. Sometimes it goes to a diverter. If you're playing Godfather, you head in orbit. You don't know where the ball's coming out, right? So I always kind of like orbits a bit better. People have always said to me, you're really out there. And so I just kind of shorten it. Actually, I think I have to. He's one of my top five frenemies, Mr. Zach Many over there, flipping out. He actually came up with the name Orby. So I got to shout him out and say thank you for that name. Probably the nicest thing he's ever done for me, to be honest. Well, there you go. He used to be Orbital Albert. And then, of course, if you're Canadian, he just calls me Orbiter Albert. And like right before I went on air for my interview with him, I told him, no, it's Orbit Al because my name is Al. Like most of my good friends call me Al or Albert, right? So they don't actually call me Orby. Secret's out. And so anyways, yeah. That long story short, that's kind of how I gave it to myself. No one gave it to me. I wish someone gave it to me. I wish there was a better story. I'm a little bit out there. It's a good story. I like it. And I like to be way high up in space. We have an adult smoking section here at the Wormhole that is outside of the premises, and we have a lot of issues with those people in between rounds, in between balls. They take too long. Never between a ball. I would never be that guy. Maybe once. But I would try not to. In between games, maybe. In between games, I don't have an issue. But in between balls, you know, come on. Don't be late for your ball. No, no. I hear that. Hang out. When did the Poor Man's Pinball Network start, and whose idea was that network? Well, I'd have to go back to asking Ian and Drew about that, of course. But I couldn't tell you exactly. I know that Foghorn Leghorn, of course, with Crafter Sally on our Poor Man's Pinball Network, they have the Pinball Drunk Drawer. And the Pinball Drunk Drawer was kind of started because Foghorn said, I believe to Ian and Drew, like, I have all these leftover really cool tapes, these old, you know, tapes, these interviews that I did at, like, Pinball X. Expo and maybe TPF. I think it was Pinball Expo. And he said, like, is it cool if we put it on the network? And I think they said, yeah, like, go ahead. We already have, you know, I think I think there was already in talks something called Tribe Multiball, which ran for a couple of years. That was, of course, with Tim the Lion Man Lee and Rachel Risto. Really cool. I'm sure you've heard of her. I love Rachel. I've had her on. Yes, that's right. Yeah. And she she like didn't she come in and help with commentary on one of the games as well? She she comes in and she's helped me at space city open she's helped me i think at tpf maybe so i don't know he's incredible she's a lovely lady virtual virtual hug for for rach she's awesome i hope i hope i can call you that by now that we've met a well at least a couple times on different days but no she's awesome she's she's incredible and then of course eventually she started doing uh the ray ray show with raymond davidson of course needs no introduction um and uh that was there for quite a while and then I think last year Ian and Drew only did maybe like two live shows and like maybe one recorded podcast at the start or the very end of 2023 or the very start of 2024 so they're not as active anymore but they were kind enough I don't know how much you know about the lore of the year I took off I took off a whole year I took a full-time job as a marketing manager of a local town here and marketing communications manager and I knew I just wouldn't have the time and energy to podcast because I do even though I get paid well for the last eight or nine months very little slash nothing for it it's a labor of love of course and I only get a few hundred listens I I wouldn't I people get the gold star I give them the pat on the back if somehow they got through the episode I couldn't I've never listened to one episode of my show that's not entirely true one time I couldn't find the remote so I did listen to the episode with Colin and I when Colin came on last summer because I was playing with the dogs outside I couldn't find the remote I would just I listened to the first 30 seconds and I go oh god a I can't hear my voice B, I say too many filler words, which will happen when you're talking by yourself and not editing and speaking very quickly.
    13:20
    And C, I don't record sober very often. So, like, I tried recording sober. It came out better, but it was just boring. It was like, here's me telling you nap arcade. So last week, such a, you know, blah, blah, blah. The code was updated. And it just didn't feel like me. And a couple people wrote me and said, like, yeah, but we just like it better when you just kind of. That's what made my show slightly different than the 20 other pinball podcasts. They don't just regurgitate the news because a lot of them will dig into it very deeply, which I love, but I just don't want to talk about all the news. I want to talk about stuff that I either find funny or interesting. If it's not funny or interesting to me, I don't really want to talk about it this far. Would you do more interview podcasts? I know you've had guests on the podcast like Glenn Wachter, and of course you had Christopher Franchi on. Yeah, I think Franchi's part of the five-time club. Julie Dorser's, Ian Hayward's part of the five-time club. I've done, here's the thing is, I think I've done 220 interviews over 10 years. There was a time during COVID when I was doing two to three interviews per week. The biggest thing with an interview, so like right now, for instance, with this happening tonight, I had to tell my son when he's coming home from basketball to be quiet and come in the back door. I had to ask my wife, please, can you kind of just like sort of watch both dogs? I can't have them jumping on me during this. A, because there's video and just B, because what happens is when I record solo, I just do it whenever I have time, whenever all the homesteading is done, whenever the dogs are asleep, whenever the kids are in bed. Right now I have my oldest son who's 20, who actually got second at the good old New Brunswick pinball championship against me last year. He works continental shifts. So for like 10 days, he'll be on midnights and then for 10 days, he's on day shift. So I cannot do any interviews then because I have to talk very quietly and close to the mic and I can't really worry about the dogs and him upstairs sleep you know he might be able to sleep through it but I just found it's a big pain in the butt and honestly here's the weirdest thing I remember I did this is nothing on Christopher Franchi because he's super entertaining but I just sat here and shot the shots like I am with you here now with Christopher Franchi on my birthday and I think it got like 700 listens five or six days later I just talked about nothing I mean you had to listen to me for an hour and I didn't even mention the word pinball maybe okay maybe a little but it got 875 and I went are you telling me if I have one of the top pinball artists on planet earth on and I plan out the interview and I write out all the questions and I get everyone to be quiet and I make sure all the microphones are working and you know you know how much work it is more trying to get oh yeah especially recording live I did all of that and I went and for what I got 600 listens and that was with Colin like shouting me out and putting me on the kineticist and then I talked about nothing and 900 people listen and it told me people don't want to hear I guess it's funny because people will say, you're incredible at interviews. And I go, then why does no one listen? Oh, I like your interview style, Orby. It's great. Oh, yeah, then why does no one listen? Why does nobody care when I interview people? People only care when I rant and rave like a lunatic. If I just talking measured and calm Just keep doing what you want to do and what brings you joy Albert You just keep doing that right I want to I want to get back to it Jamie I don know Chris well Yeah.
    16:23
    Chris Franchier well. He's a bit of a stirrer, though, isn't he? A little bit. Yes, he stirs a pot. I did for years, too. I think I've tried to be drama-free since episode 493. I've messed up once or twice. So I only record when I'm in a really good mood and I'm happy and excited. The odd time I'll do five rad, one bad when I'm not feeling well. A buddy of mine, Rorden from Australia, I did an interview with him. I had it set up for days and I was just kind of grumpy and in a bad mood. It was nothing specifically. I was just like, not like horribly in a bad mood, but I should have probably canceled it. And it was probably my worst interview ever. And I felt so bad because I was excited to chat with him about coming from Australia to go to Pinball Expo. But I was kind of like, kind of grumpy and down that day. Nothing horrible, but just sort of grumpy. So like if I don't record for a week or two, it's either because I'm in a bad mood or there's no news and then sometimes when there is good news I have to wait three or four days until I'm really now that I've done 600 shows I have to wait till I really want to record because if I record when I only kind of want to record I'm more likely to be mean I'm more likely to be rude I'm less likely to think about the other people's feelings that I'm talking about at the pinball companies and I know there's people from at least each company or at least four or five of the companies at least one or two listeners from each one of them so I know that you know from time to time they're hearing some of the things that i say so i want to make sure that i'm somewhat leveled but also weird right critical it's weird knowing that they they listen but um you know i my job is to interview the guests and and to touch base and talk pinball and and and have a good time we're not trying to stir anything right but your boy fancy has been a little tough on my boy retro ralph uh and got canada to regurgitate a few things that ralph is like a shill for stern or any of that crap but ralph's a great content creator i've gotten to meet him incredible and i'm so happy that he's going to be sitting next to me at the twippy so anyone giving him shit anymore has got to go through me i'm a i'm a fan of ralph and well i it's i mean this is this is what's happened to me jamie this has happened to me probably about 10 times actually the day that teenage mutant ninja turtles came out jack danger my boy who i had been in chat with in his live stream on Twitch. Honestly, I'm not kidding you. I would spend 20 to 30 hours a week with Jack Danger. If I was home and not at a pinball tournament, yes, even when I was parenting, yes, even when I was hanging out with my wife. Sometimes I just have one earbud in, sometimes just the video. But usually whenever I went to bed, I spent two to three hours with Jack Danger, loving watching him chat, you know, dance sometimes with a ladder, just be silly, have fun. And then he got in a big fight with, at the time, I, a long time ago, I had a show on the pinball network called top three with orby and at the time him and zach many got into this big giant fight like the day of and i was trying to take sides and i learned a long time ago i just don't want to take sides like i just stuff like that like if people are messaging me about stuff like that i just go like i am neither nor team franchi or team retro ralph i'm not team canada or team don i guess i am team don i'm wearing his shirt he sent me but i mean you know i'm i'm i'm team i I listen to a lot of different pinball podcasters and I disagree with a lot of what they say. And sometimes I bring it up on my show and sometimes I just let sleeping dogs lie. And I try more times than not to let it lie. Franchi's been controversial his entire he went up and smashed the Twippy when he won it. Right. Yeah. He likes to stir. He likes to stir the pot for sure. Anyone who thinks that Retro Ralph's content isn't good doesn't know what good video content is. Because I'm not trying to be rude to Kaneda, but I tried to watch his award show like seven times and he had like 15 flubs in it. so if he's being rude or mean to like retro else content it's like yo bro you got to look at your last like nine live streams that were like mid at best the audio wasn't great the video he knows that though he knows that he'll tell you oh i'm a great podcaster but i'm not a good video content you know i i i can understand that like as someone who's loved retro welfer honestly i've been watching retro wealth long before he was ever into pinball like i think right seven eight years ago back when i was getting into arcade stuff and getting into even watch when uh the one up arcade first did pinball he did a review on that i was in the live stream chat asking him questions back and forth so i followed retro for a long time his videos are top notch um he he tries to be honest if he doesn't like something about a game he tells you about it when he doesn't he doesn't like he doesn't like how the code hasn't been updated enough in x-men he says it right he doesn't like some things about john wick le and how much money he's lost on that he's been open honest about that but i think that not everybody has to be a canader francie type that's like super like you know uh We'll say Shatz Disturber in case my children listen later, which, you know, they've had me around enough. They've probably heard it. And then on the flip side of that, like, you know, Franchi's not always right about everything. He knows that. He'd be the first to admit that. He's gone – he's taken some things, like, to the edge and then passed on previous shows. And people kind of give him a little bit of a bye because they go, well, he's Christopher Franchi. He's great at art. So we'll give him a bye. If I said some of the stuff Franchi said on shows, I would be getting even more canceled than my famous Stern rant. Let's talk about the infamous podcast regarding Stern's Media Day for John Wick. I didn't hear it. Okay. I did not hear it. Oh, good. Thank you. It was taken down before I could listen to the podcast. My question is a few questions about it, right? One, why did you take it down? Okay. First of all, I was scaring a lot of people. And when I read their emails, I was almost like tearing up because I've never got more than like maybe two or three messages per show and maybe one email a month. and I don't really read emails and messages because like to me it's a water cooler show it's just supposed to be like when you're you know you watch Seinfeld the next day and you're at work and I'm talking that's why I don't people have tried to send me videos of the most upcoming pinball machine multiple times I've said no thank you I want to be like everybody else and be surprised I don't want to see grainy you know bad pictures I want to be surprised I think at the time that that was coming up to it I know that uh uh Jenga's had gone on this big rant saying that like everyone doesn't need guns and the only not only police should have guns and i was like i'm a homesteader like how do you not eat meat like anyways it doesn't matter he went on some crazy rant then carrie hardy went on a crazy rant and pulled out a gun and everything i was like whoa this is wild and i saw carrie hardy get five or six thousand listens i saw jengas get three or four thousand listens saying that no one should have guns i'm like that's as crazy on the flip that's so far left and this guy's so far right can we meet somewhere in the middle maybe and then Kaneda is I don't even know what but he said like 417 swear words in uh in one podcast that same week to try to like yeah to try to keep up with Jenga's and Kerry Hardy and I thought y'all I am bipolar and I've been mad all week that Stern did not send me an invite like I'm friends with people over there like I like I don't again I you know I'm not like when I heard Jason from pinball party talk about how many people were going I literally thought three to four hundred people were being invited and not me and then I found out later oh no it's just like 30 to 40 content creators I was like oh well that's not a big deal like I don't get enough listens I shouldn't be invited anyways however what I did is I let the negative side on my chip I thought no one's been talking about my shows for a while I haven't been controversial in a long time I'm a lot more calm I'm a lot more mellow I'm not an ageist as much uh I'm not as edgy as I used to be but let me just get all my like all the negative things I kept hearing like you know i don't remember most of it to be honest i know i still have it somewhere on my hard drive on this laptop i'm looking through here now would you ever put it on patreon for two bucks of course yes yes yes that's what i honestly i have four or five interviews i had one with cliff albert that like there's a couple topics in there that if i was crossing the u.s border to go to a show that maybe they might you know i had a really good interview with deborah tallman last year but then like three or four parts of it got cut off a couple times and stuff like that so i do take down stuff and i would like to i do want to do a patreon just like joe chervino the dote himself did and just have it at two or three bucks a month that's honestly that's like next up on my list of what would this first would your first episode on patreon be the stern rant of course it would have to be it would have no right i have no problem showing it i think the problem was like i had people messaging me like do you need money for a therapist are you okay and it was like listen i i Am I okay? Not really. Like we have a joke here in Canada. It's called half of us. It's like 54% of people in their life will either like in some way, shape or form struggle with some type of mental illness and need to get some help. And when you need to get that help, as long as you can identify it and afford to go get the help, that's maybe the harder part. Go get it and go help yourself when you can. And I think that what I was doing, you may hear the dogs in the background because my son just got home. But I think what I was doing at that point in time is that I was kind of a using the podcast as like therapy when I was really mad or grumpy about something which you kind of you got to be careful not to do that you should probably use like a therapist right so that makes sense which I went and did yeah and at the same time what I did is I allowed all the negative things in my head that I've been thinking all that week leading up to it I'm sure you've had it I'm sure you've listened to Kaneda go off or Franchi say something you're like oh when I get on the mic I'm gonna tear them a new one and then a couple days go by and you calm yourself down you go I'm not going to say that that was a little bit i don't get involved in that bologna and cheese that's good that's good okay that's just not the wormhole that that's not a model that's not our brand that's not what we're trying to do i'm just trying to promote pinball right and so call me a shill for pinball i don't give a shit right that's just what we want to do so all right we're gonna play a little game here we're gonna play a few games today i love games i'm very competitive though i know you are but this is a little different this one when we get to the hurry up you'll love some of those questions but let's talk about the pinball pinball rumor mill if you will i'm gonna give you my hot take this is jamie giving me you my hot take and then you say yes or no and add on this take okay albert all right i don't know a lot of pinball insiders i don't read a lot of pin side rumors let's just let's just go through it i know you don't but let's start with the monster in the room king kong for coming potentially from stern pinball right I would love to see King Kong climb up and down the Empire State Building, have planes shoot his ass down, right? Does the Kong pin have to have a climbing mech?
    26:28
    I think if Stern doesn't want to have a lot of complainers, they do. Obviously, you would harken back to thinking about Jaws and how if they knew that amount of, you know, they were going to have that amount of pushback, they would probably have tried harder. I mean, they did. We didn't know how hard they tried, right? We had no clue. I think they need some type of building because Godzilla has that epic building. Yeah. Gotta have a girl in the hand, and he's climbing up this building, and she's just coming up with it. I saw a fellow tribe member, Steven Silver, of course, of P3 Multimorphic. Sure. He made the ball go up the cliffs. If P3 Multimorphic can do it, Stern can do it. Absolutely. Will they do it? I don't know. They should, though. I totally agree with you. Okay, Harry Potter from Jersey Jack might be coming. Harry Potter. I agree with Don from Don's Pinball Podcast on this, that they should probably break it up into two machines, split from the Sorcerer's Stone, maybe the Goblet of Fire, and then Half-Blood Prince to the Deathly Hallows. What do you think about that, Orbert? Well, as being Orbiter or Orbital works, either works, it's fine. I will respond to dinner or dessert, my friend. I think that one thing that Don said that's 100% correct are the expectations are through the roof people are going to be disappointed no matter what you could do seven pins and people would say oh I can't afford all seven pins like Wormhole can't afford seven pros or seven of the LEs or CEs right and then if they only did two two's probably closer to a happy medium so I think that's a good idea but I'm also part of the poor man's pinball network and I know me personally I could only ever maybe afford one and that's after the kids move out we sell the farm you know what i mean so i personally would rather them try to squish it into one but it would be squishing yeah i don't know how they're going to get that all of it and you know we get moving staircase quidditch i forget it it's just so much i used to read them with the kiddos and uh i got hooked on those movies too so can i tell you how i got hooked very quickly go ahead please okay so i was all like I read like Chuck Palahniuk, like Fight Club. And I was reading like a lot of like strange. Fight Club's a lot different than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer. Yes. Very different. Very different. So I was 19 or 20. Actually, sorry, my wife would have been around, well, pregnant, 20. And I would have been 23, 24. And I had never read any Harry Potter. I had made fun of Dumbledore. What a dork. You know, I was trying to be too cool for school, Mr. Skateboarder guy. And I was reading this book to my wife, to my unborn child, who's now 20. and I'm reading this book and it all was about sex and all this rated R stuff. And I said, honey, do you have something? I just, I know he doesn't know what I'm saying. You know, the dad's supposed to read to the baby and the belly, right? So she goes, well, try this Harry Potter. And I go, no, she goes, just try it. So she literally had book one, like, like right there. And she, my wife fell asleep within 20 minutes. So I left the room and I started reading the, I finished the first book. I snuck back into the room, trying not to wake her up. You don't ever wake up a pregnant woman and I stole number two and I read all of number two that night then the next day on the way to work and every break I read number three and I think I got caught up right in time for book seven to come out on my birthday July 30th I was born the same day the same year as Harry Potter I even have the little thing here uh wait no on this side that was from being at a with Steve-O at a jackass concert you can't really see it there but uh up close up close you can see it I basically got beat out beat up as I have many times at a Steve-O concert but not not just there anyways the point is I end up getting crazy into Harry Potter and by the time the seventh book came out I stayed home booked the day off as a driving instructor read the entire book and I think two days my wife beat me by like three hours and that was a long one and I've been a huge fan since I've read the whole books I think I've read all the books four or five times now even did fan fiction sang I don't want to give it away in case anyone hasn't seen the last movie or read the final book but I even said Snape was good even my cousin and I got in arguments I wrote fan fiction about i knew snape was good i knew somehow some way i didn't understand all of it i knew he was good i can't wait for harry potter don't screw it up guys make sure there's one toy that interacts with the ball one toy jjp just one interacts with the ball somehow some way not tiny dancers spinning beside it or something but like with it yeah i totally agree with you and i love your uh your harry potter story it is a special first for a lot of us you know i mean especially those that have kids and that grew up with it spooky has beetle juice it has to be the original movie right it can't be the one they tried to just slide in on us right i love michael keaton he did that really other like birdman movie or something like that a couple yeah it was a good flick incredible but yeah the new one it did it doesn't vibe it didn't hit i haven't seen it yet i've just heard really bad things so like i'll wait for it to come on netflix for free but i hope they didn't if they do use the new one at least as long as there's enough throwbacks to the old one it could be fine but i mean with francie doing artwork on beetlejuice i think we'll be okay it has to be great it's gonna be beautiful franchise if it looks half as good as hey say what you will about francie his artwork's incredible so i just called him a stirrer that's all he is oh he's easter he's the artist fantastic and basically he's basically in harry potter there with the the cauldron he uh what are you hearing from my friends in houston uh barrels of fun can timothy chamelet sell a pinball machine well that's the rumor they're not gonna right right but they're not gonna add timothy because the last one they did was labyrinth and they didn't add my high school crush come on jennifer connelly the girl i chased after in shed in ontario they didn't add her so it's like come on she's the she's in the whole movie she only goes and visits david bowie what like three times for a minute like why how come they for why did they forget about her she awesome i sure it was a licensing issue with jennifer no i know but would you do wizard of oz without dorothy you be like oh well maybe we don do it with you know I don know Anyways it all good Labyrinth right there Okay It looks like a great game I watched them playing it at InDisc. It looks like it has a fun rule set. I mean, with Colin McAlpine and is Bowen Cairns there as well? No, Bowen Cairns and Phil Grimaldi. Colin McAlpine works for P3. Oh, okay. That's right. Colin McAlpine. Sorry. He was actually the one doing the commentary at InDisc. So, yeah, that's where I get confused. Oh, no worries. It looks like a fun game. I can't wait to play it. And honestly, I think Dune is still a good theme for pinball, but I don't think it's – I hope you get to ride a sandworm. That would be pretty cool.
    33:07
    You know, maybe a sandworm pops up, the ball comes up. Who knows? Well, you are a wormhole, so. Oh, we are, yes. We need it. Will Alice in Wonderland ship this year from DPX? They seem to be a little behind. How many – will they ship them all? I don't think they'll ship them all. I would say we'd be lucky. And maybe I'm wrong. I don't know anything about their production or manufacturing. Maybe I'm wrong. If I had to guess, I would be shocked if they shipped even half of them by Christmas.
    33:33
    But I could be wrong. I could be wrong, too. I could be wrong. I don't even think we see the first one until August, to be honest. I honestly don't see it until July, June. And I hope I'm wrong. I always cheer for the pinball company. I want American Pinball to do well. I want Stern to do well. I want JJP to do well.
    33:50
    Excuse me. I have an honors degree in marketing, so I happen to know that the more competition, the better even in Toronto Ontario not far from where I live they put like five of those big camping stores in a row downtown Toronto because they know once you're down there you'll go to this one then you go to this one you go to you know what I mean yeah big record stores do the same thing so last question in this segment I absolutely love playing Dungeons and Dragons what are you feeling on Dungeons and Dragons looking at it and the stern have a hit here like Dwight was meant for this like it's like it's like if he could get a time machine and go back to the 80s he'd say by the way in the year 2024 dwight you're gonna create your dream a dungeons and dragons pin so you better learn to be a good dragon master now or dungeon master now sorry so that someday you can while you're working at a pinball company yeah yeah you'll get to do mandalorian and you get to do some fun other you know game of thrones yes i'm sure he loves that stuff too he's a nerd like the rest of us right but wow for him that's like that would be like if i got to work on like a skateboarding game or something you know what i mean like something i've just loved my whole life for craft beer or cheeseburgers or, you know, pinball. A pinball pinball. A podcasting pinball. I don't know. I think that's a good hit. You could totally. I was very lucky to go there. I wish you would have gone as well. And you could see Dwight Keegan. Does that make sense? Like, you could just see Dwight Keegan. Oh, God. And you were like, all right. You know, if I'd never played Dungeons & Dragons, but if I like it a tenth as much as this guy is Keegan, this is going to be a big hit and it really was congratulations to stern i'm a shill now but it played really great so yeah i mean it's brian's best flow everyone said that who's played it i said that looking at it so it's his best flow he was already good at shots but now he's got even more flow in it i it's so interesting it's so different it's so unique people have been shouting about this i can remember being in pinball eight or nine years ago even when like you know head-to-head pinball was the biggest podcast or uh and then you had neil on i watched that that was very interesting from um do you remember neil he works at stern now neil or did i have nate shivers nate nate shivers sorry that's right i'm sorry don't worry i got you back literally right as i was getting into pinball podcasting i was listening to nate's every episode i was trying to go back and listen to everyone and then he went behind the paywall right as i started so but wow i when he got to come on your show and i learned so much about him and how he's doing. I just thought that's kind of more the podcast I'd rather be as opposed to like more critical. He was the last person beside me to like, he would, even when he went to North Star in Montreal, he talked about, oh, I went to the pinball. I talked to the arcade owners. The machines were in great shape. I tried this local beer. I had this local smoked meat sandwich, what have you, the local culinary. And he kind of did that. And that's sort of what I always kind of wanted my podcast to be more like was if any of the pinball podcasts who I attempted to, at least originally, mimic was definitely closer to Nate. we we miss him yes the pinball world misses him he's a a great voice and a great content creator and i wish that stern would he would do more for the stern and do it on stern insider connect and just you know you go to the stern insider connect uh app and there's a podcast once a month from nate shivers how cool would that be oh i'm there for it 100 anything he puts out i even watch his wife and his content on youtube i've watched a couple of the videos not all of them but All right, let's shift gears. What's your favorite card to collect as a card collector? Is it hockey cards, baseball cards, Pokemon cards? What baseball cards? I will tell you this. This is probably the nerdiest answer I can give, but it's the absolute truth. If you were to ask me five years ago, it would undoubtedly be hockey cards. I've been a hockey card dealer since I was in grade six or grade seven. So I've been setting up at collectible shows. And back then it was all about like, I think you were probably part of the boom in 1992 to 1996. We saw the junk card era. So I collected a lot of like Wayne Gretzky, Ed Belfort, Jeremy Roenick, Jarmer Yager, that kind of thing. and then about five or six years ago through covid happening i actually brought up a whole bunch of my old cards and i started really getting into baseball my grandmother uh every single she was a snowbird do you know what that is they call them absolutely i'm from new york and my okay they have snowboard when i was 16 years old i was surrounded by him okay so my grandma bernice shout out she's up there in heaven now but she would get out her old wings and fly down to florida and she would be in i should know the team uh clearwater clearwater florida that's where the Toronto Blue Jays Farm League they or whatever they were they would practice for spring training so she would watch every single game she would get cards signed she would hang out there I think it was like five bucks back in the day to go watch the Toronto Maple Leafs do their spring whatever yeah it's cheap and so she was in love with that kind of thing so then I slowly kind of found a whole bunch of her old collection and kind of got back into baseball cards then I the same way that I watch uh you know pinball content I watch like Sports Card Investor and Northeast Ohio Sports and all these different channels. And then I started actually making money grading cards. And then when I got there, I started designating two feet of my table for Pokemon for my son. And eventually that went to four feet, then six feet. Then I went to two tables, then I went to three tables. And now I do every sports or collectible or comic show other than Halicon, because it's like 1800 bucks. It's hard for me to break even on that. But I do like every show outside of Newfoundland on the East Coast of Canada, once a month or every couple of weeks. So I think just between now and March 1st, I have four shows. so that's actually like it's turned into a good side hobby but the funny part is i would say now of my two tables i have at my main show just to answer your question along about way roundabout way i have maybe two feet designated to comic books three feet designated to uh sports cards and i now have a table and a half for just pokemon like i'm probably in the top i don't know i don't want to you know i'm probably in the top five probably your fifth favorite uh pokemon dealer on the east coast pokemon has the opportunity for me to look them by i'm bidding on a whole bunch of cards from Shanghai tonight and so I'll be staying up till three or four in the morning when they end there because I want to make sure I don't get bid out on a couple of them some of these cards if they come they can they're only 50 to 70 dollar cards if they grade a 10 they turn into 800 to 1400 dollars US so you know if they grade correctly but I have to spend a lot of time and energy zooming in on the card looking at every pre-grading every single card through the internet before I bid on it and it's actually been I can't do that with hockey cards I can't do that with baseball cards even if i guess like juan soto's little brother is coming up right now i bought a whole bunch of his stuff and then he played horribly so now it's gone to zero um pokemon can't get hit by a car they can't start a dog fighting ring their wife like wayne gretzky can't start bidding on hockey games great job janet gretzky do you know what i mean so like that's the thing about a pokemon and they're also just beautiful little pieces of art now is it confusing understanding all the grading and how many different levels of sets sure but all if you just clear your head and take away the word pokemon and just imagine you're bidding on a beautiful like if i can show you right see this this piece of art right here this uh my buddy chris did this who lives out in bc um but that piece of artwork ended up being on two of our coffee labels or tea labels actually before that than a coffee label and it's just a big beautiful piece of art a pokemon card is just a small little beautiful piece of art that has a different value you can it's the only time you can go into walmart you can go into walmart i went to a walmart right by my house here and i bought a 12 package with two little packs of pokemon cards in it and this will mean nothing to you and most other people but i pulled out the surging sparks pikachu it is four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars in a 10 i found the tiniest spec this big in the back left corner so i had to sell it for 750 rob because if it came back a psa 9 i'm only getting 600 bucks for it if it comes back at 10 it's four and a half k so like it's just there's no other way to walk into walmart and possibly i don't even like scratch tickets i don't like gambling i don't like bingo right pinball and i love pokemon and i love probably burgers or craft beer third and then my family and friends and that's it so no pokemon definitely has taken over my heart for pokemon is i i've probably made like 20 to 30 000 profit on pokemon profit in the last year and a half don't tell the government ira whoever but yeah i won't tell anyone mostly from grading because my son my oldest sorry my youngest son is probably a 10 out of 10 at grading like if we send away 30 cards you get you take a 12 card it turns into a 300 card if it gets a 10 but only one in 100 cards will get a 10 unless you have that exact you're literally looking under a microscope and you're measuring how centered every card is so it gets pretty particular wow my brother was a big card collector in the 80s uh baseball he was a big tops fleer dunrus there you go have a drink uh 80s card collector so right uh what's your favorite comic to collect uh i'm a big harley guy from my pc but i also i'm a big speculator so when i found out that lady gaga was gonna play harley quinn i went back and i bought all every single comic book you could buy that had lady gaga on it so i like speculating and guessing like which which comics are going to be big in a year and a half to two years from now and then i try to buy the variants at wholesale but i mean again it's mostly money everyone says like what's your favorite pokemon card. I don't know. I've sold like any card that's ever been over worth over three or 400. I've sold. I am only allowed to keep, I'm too, I'm too much of a poor man. I am not just on the poor man's network. I'm actually a poor man who, who makes like, you know, maybe 25% of my money from a small company and the rest of it's just being a stay at home dad and a homesteader. Right. So if I buying a comic, I'm buying it to either grade it or to flip it and, or to sell it. So when I go to a show, I have a $2 bin that's buy three, get one free, a $4 bin, an $8 bin. And then I have graded comics separately. And so, like, for instance, the best I ever did at buying comics was my wife did it, thankfully, with Zoom, which we're on, right? And a phone. She was at an auction about an hour away. I got the very first Boba Fett. She bought this box. She wasn't allowed to look through it. She said, I think there's between 75 to 100 old Star Wars. I said, take a picture of the top one. I said, buy the whole box. They might have Star Wars 1 in there. Star Wars 1 in a 9-8 is worth $50,000. I'm looking through there. my hand starts shaking I got Boba Fett 1 I'm like oh my god this is three grand in a 9-8 I'm looking at it going no it's only a 6-5 maybe a 7-5 with a press anyways we ended up getting the very first origin story the Mandalore the first Boba Fett I got like seven or eight big keys I did not get Star Wars 1 I've owned Star Wars 1 once I'd love to own it again um but right up there would be Super Mario 1 and I just bought a Super Mario 2 last week so pretty excited about that but basically everything that you could get nostalgic about for pinball you get nostalgic about with comic books the same way you know i was not a comic guy uh but i was a huge mad magazine guy you know mad magazine oh god yeah i collect mad i collect mad yeah i can't sell them worth like no one buys they're not worth it my dad got me a subscription for christmas i was like very very young and i had it for so long probably too long i hadn't but i was at college when i think i i said dad i don't need to listen to read mad magazine anymore but uh i really loved it uh it's so funny talk about alpaca coffee before we get to the hurry up when okay coffee company yeah so it kind of actually started really funnily enough i was just watching either a homesteading video or a sustainability video probably 15 years ago and i lived in a little town home with only about a 10 by 5 foot garden filled the thing up read every i get really into niche projects so i got really into homesteading and gardening and and all of a sudden my little townhouse group we only had 120 townhouses and by the next year 15 people were growing all their own fruits and vegetables mostly vegetables it's canada let's be honest you can't grow there's no good you know there's nothing orange tree no there's no oranges or peaches or clementines i wish chefs kiss but no you can't do that and then by the third year about half of the people like 45 or 50 of the people and they were all coming to me for questions and i end up starting like a an organic lawn care company that's neither here nor there and eventually when we moved into our own house we started with an apple tree and a pear tree and eventually the pear tree we were getting like 400 pears per year and i was like honey i just can't eat all these pears before the next you know before they go bad pears go bad pretty quickly so we started canning them and making preserves and then we started selling the local farmer's market and then eventually we started doing lip balms or my wife started doing lip balms that slowly turned into candles and then that slowly eventually turned into us believe it or not doing tea and fast forward eight or nine years later we were at a local um local farmer's market here out in Nova Scotia when we moved from Ontario and they said we don't like people having to go up the road to the gas station to go get an acaf you guys already do tea is there any way you could do coffee and I went well coffee is a whole nother thing other than because some of our tea we grow most of it we just bring it in you can't grow actual tea with caffeine here in Canada of course but we have several homestead teas that have some of our own ingredients and so what we did is we found the best organic free trade coffee roasters on the east coast of Canada who's called Laughing Whale and we taste tested from so many places and we said to them can we white label with you and they said sure but we prefer that you do your own custom blends in your own packaging and we said no problem so we did those two things so for instance our best-selling coffee which is actually called the force is a combination of two light roasts and two very very dark roasts and it kind of creates like a full flavor to give you a blend like you'd get at start you know starbucks i don't compare to starbucks i think we're way better than them but it gives you like a full flavored taste like that and uh that was really a way for me to advertise on the podcast uh again without going to numbers i've done well over five figures in coffee and tea sales just from the show from people who wanted to support me which was so great because it was a way to move extra product especially with coffee I prefer it to be sold within you know three months six months a week or two if it's been ground but that was just like kind of a fun side hustle and still to this day we do five or six big Christmas shows where we you know a couple hundred bucks for a table you're there and then we do a Saturday market at a local show so it's just a little side hustle I haven't talked about the coffee or the tea on the show on purpose for a long time because I decided a long time ago rather than earning a couple hundred bucks a month from coffee or tea sales i would rather just build my audience i i'm more concerned with legacy if you will i'm really excited to get to a thousand or eleven hundred and eleven episodes i do hope that someday like uh i know final round pin side pd he beat me out i wanted to be the next co-host uh but you know it does you don't always get what you want right i think that's a song it is a song all right are you ready for our exciting rapid fire pinball question and answer game called the hurry up this is donovan wade's brainchild okay you can sometimes pause for 200 shows i did something called the lightning round when customers came on or customers uh yeah customers so similar right similar okay here it is rapid fire we see how you do on rapid fire some people don do as well would you ever go 100 behind the paywall yes okay stern insider connect goes to a dollar 99 a month for subscriber only avatars badges and exclusive podcasts as well as downloadable content are you paying a dollar 99 a month to be a stern gold member albert agar 100 yes yes yes they okay stern has worked so freaking hard on that i pay for canada's pinball podcast i don't even listen to half the shows i pay seven bucks a month of course i pay two dollars a month for you know now once you get into that 10 to 15 zone i think that would price out a lot of people but at a toonie even here in canada that's how much we pay to play sometimes one game of godzilla i think two bucks a month is fine her dreaded gaming can only remake one of the following pins and you have the final decision albert do they remake radical swords of fury or bonsai run all three you already know the answer i think it's radical come on radical have you ever seen escher lefkoff play radical at free play florida oh my god no it's it's such an incredible machine it's got any machine that makes you go hmm like 90 of machines that came out when radical came out you can easily see where the ball goes the orbit It comes around and shoots back at your flippers. It's exciting. It's fun. But, you know, Radical, you're like, how did the ball get there? Why did it go there? What's happening with the modes? Like, Radical is that one machine from that era. Like, I owned Skateball for a long time. I did an epic 18-hour livestream on Twitch on Skateball, which was super fun, except for wiping out in the kitchen. That wasn't as fun. Yeah, if you are skateboarding while playing Skateball, don't go onto a slippery kitchen floor. Good call. Yeah, Radical. Come on. same question but now you have the final say at cgc so you can only remake one of these three champions pub no good gophers or theater of magic i should say champions pub because we used to have that in league with jeff tiolis uh and he hated it he just hated it uh i don't hate as much as that but what was the second one i would pick the second one no good gophers no good gophers i love that game it's got the cool little fun no good gophers is another game from back then I don't know which came up first, Radical or No Good Gophers, but No Good Gophers had a lot going on. It wasn't quite as tricky, but it was fun. I have a segment called Shitty Movie, Great Pinball Machine.
    51:15
    Pick the best out of these shitty movies, but Great Pinball Machine. Judge Dredd, Waterworld, or Batman Forever. Shitty movies. Oh, man, I can't remember Batman Forever. I'm going to have to say Judge Dredd. I didn't love Judge Dredd, but it was better than Johnny Mnemonic. It was definitely better. Waterworld? Definitely better than Waterworld. Definitely better. I throw Johnny Mnemonic in there sometimes, but it's too easy because Johnny's so good. But such a shitty movie. Did you see them playing that in disc? Oh, my God. Incredible. They are incredible. I didn't get to watch a lot of in disc as a time out here for the hurry up. I was busy, unfortunately. Family, friends, life. Family, friends, Twippies, all that stuff. Twippies, yes. We'll talk about that before the end. We'll talk about it there in a little bit. All right. You are a guest on the famous Wedgehead Pinball Podcast, and you must pick a segment, a machine for their segment, Die on That Hill. What machine are you pitching to the Wedgehead boys?
    52:14
    I mean, I'm a huge fan of EMs. So if I was going to be impartial, I would say all EMs, because people just underestimate EMs so much. Like you can buy an EM for $200. Most people can work on the simple stuff on it anyways, and then probably sell it for more. So I would say that, but that's not fair. You didn't ask that question. I want to answer your question. Roller coaster tycoon. I love it. I own that for two years. It has incredible flow. Yes. Is there a couple modes you have to time out? Yes. So is it great necessarily for competition play? Probably not. It's super boring to watch because yeah, half the modes you have to time out. But if you're just playing by yourself, until my score was over like 30 or 40 million, like until I had already got through the game, usually twice, then I would go, okay, hey, I'm getting close to 50 mil. Now I'll start tying up loads. But like, no, no, no. When I'm just playing here by myself, practicing for provincials or something, it had tons of flow. It had hard shots. It had easy shots. It had, you know, multi balls that were close to the start button. It had ones that were harder. It had such a good mixture of them that definitely I would say rollercoaster tycoon. Rollercoaster tycoon for you. I haven't played enough pins to know, but probably that. If it was me, if they let me do it on the wedgehead pinball podcast, I'd probably pitch Sopranos. another great pin we have that my Monday night pinball league it tickles me man all right baked beans for breakfast yes or no oh I could dig that first of all I'm like 25 percent English I think I'm half Dutch but we don't know where the other quarters from probably out there in outer space but yeah I could beans for breakfast hells yeah a little bit a little bit of whole wheat toast little lots of butter butter a little bit of crumpets maybe a crumpets if you're in England Yes. Hells to the yes.
    53:59
    In 30 seconds or less, please explain why I need to try a donair. Oh, my God. 30 seconds or less? Okay. So it's like a Middle Eastern meat that's made on a stick. It has tons of good spices. If you like shawarma, if you like samosa, if you like any of those good things. And then what we do to make it truly East Coast is we add like a creamy, kind of sugary, kind of maple-y sauce to it. That just the flavors of the Middle Eastern donair mixing with the creamy Halifax flavor. Incrediboso. favorite cheeseburger and what do you put on your cheeseburger oh dear lord first of all everybody's putting too much stuff on their cheeseburgers this is the last question so take as long as you like last question okay when people make these big cheeseburgers get out of here i don't want it to be like this much meat and this much bun and like oh i put it's like the people with the caesar drinks when they put too much they're doing too much of wait you don't have caesars there I think they're called tomato juice and vodkas there. But here, people go overboard at the bars with the Caesars. If you just look up overboard Caesar, it will show you. They put on like mozzarella and then they put on like a big celery. And then anyways, with the burgers, you don't need to do too much. Probably the best fast food burger. And I'm sorry to say this. I've never been to In-N-Out, so I don't know. But the best fast food burger up here is like I stay away. OK, obviously, I've had McDonald's. But I'm suggesting like for about the same amount of money, you go to Five Guys. That's just like straight up. That's just like, but honestly, you just need to find a good place. The number one place is A, do they have a good craft beer menu? Then the burger is probably good. There's not like, if you're a super craft beer nerd foodie, you probably are good with the burgers. The second option is if they ask you how you would like it done. If they're not asking you how you want your burger done, it means that the meat came frozen and you don't want any of that. so go to somewhere where they'll actually because if they grind it in-house they're allowed just a burger is always better with a little bit of blood in the middle i'm sorry it's just like a steak sure it's how it is you can have a little tiny bit if like if you need to put a hint of barbecue fine i don't think you need to do that with a good burger if you absolutely need a squirt of ketchup i might make fun of you but fine but a good burger is okay maybe some grilled onions on it like let's not go overboard a little bit of lettuce tomato fine but when you see people just those big burger it's like no that's a sign of a crappy burger with bad meat because you won't taste the meat all you're going to taste is the oh and then on top of that it reminds me the snl skit with the taco bag and then and then we put this on top of the way it's like no guys you're hiding the fact that you're using garbage meat and it just doesn't taste good so if you're out on the east coast of canada you go to the tide and bore and you get the half bore burger so it will actually come with bore female bacon on the top and on the bottom will be local quebec organic beef um it's about 25 bucks takes a while to order you got to wait you know there's some things happening there but don't get any extra toppings you just get wild boar female bacon on the top if you again yeah that's all don't be if you're smothering barbecue sauce and ketchup on it it's a piece of crap burger this was great thank you so much for being such a good sport on the hurry up uh any chance i can get you uh to the twippies on february 22nd sir any chance um i would say like i would say i'm not i'm not a poet would i love to do it yes is there any way my like i live in a one uh one car household so i definitely can't drive there i if okay you just estimate this for me in american dollars if i got my butt to boston which i can drive to in like nine hours maybe less if i take the ferry if it even runs in the middle of January if I got to Boston how much is a flight like are we talking like 200 or 500 I was gonna say three to four hundred bucks three to four hundred round trip yeah I think so okay I mean I'm willing to look into it it's like my good buddy Ryan Barry's coming from Phantom Tilt this year he told me if I don't go to Expo he'll never talk to me again no I'm just kidding but like I want to go to Expo so bad this year like that's kind of like I'm trying to put the blinders on okay so expo 2025 you want to do yag pin but yag pin i can fly do for like 150 once i get my butt halfway there right like uh but i want to do expo maybe next year but maybe this year i don't we all need to see orbital albert in 2025 so listen why don't you make that let's make that your goal in 2025 we see you at expo tpf yag pin somewhere or bernard albert makes an appearance tpf is too expensive but i'd love to go there someday that's probably after we sell the farm my wife and i go for a nice trip and we make it like a thing um but yagpin i that's this 30th if people want to sign up for it i know like two three days from now and i would love to go there also i'd try to make it out to maple pinball the only reason i make it out to maple pinball in uh southwestern ontario with teolas there is a td is because i kind of get a twofer i can go visit my family both of my sisters live there and their kids my dad my aunts and uncles so i kind of i go visit for two or three days the flight is 60 to 80 dollars on flare from halifax if you actually get on the flight if you remember your passport you actually get on the flight yeah you gotta get on dollars yeah you gotta get if you don't get on it and you don't get there vital vital less fun where you're going uh any advice you can give to me about hosting the twippies you were on your podcast you said do some test streams i'm doing the hell out of them any other advice you can give me sir well i mean i just said it you're going to have to do this jamie you're going to have to give yourself a self-imposed 24-hour ban be from pin side or any negativity any negative podcasters 24-hour ban before the twippies and 24-hour after because about a day i find the first day people are really grumpy and grouchy and a day later they go but you know what it wasn't that bad first of all your audio issues are not going to be worse than jack danger and emoto and i love both of them but they had some major auto audio issues the year they did it i think what you have to do is you have to say this is our first year we you guys correct me if i'm wrong you guys do not have a hundred thousand dollar budget like jjp did for their their video of avatar i don't think so no close probably very close very very small so small budget i just think that you need to realize if the people there with you have a great time and most of the people listening have a good time there's going to be people complaining no matter what so just tell yourselves fix what you can fix within your control and anything that you don't do great with this year like you said i think recently just build it up make it a bit better each year and don't be a negative nancy or debbie downer if you're out there in the pinball world just try to be positive like you're not getting paid the big bucks to do this certainly not 100k like let's just all try to be positive we all ask for the twippies to be back it's back you got the most votes ever let's have a great time at it and try to be positive and support it. I love it. Thank you, Albert, so much for your time today. Where can people find you and your podcast, sir? So it is a little confusing. I get that. I just label it PNP for Pinball Nerds Podcast. And then you'll see like episode, if you see episode 600 and anything, it's probably me. But if you type into Google or anything you're on, any podcasting app, you can, of course, set it up so you get everyone automatically, which you should do. but uh you just type poor men's pinball podcast and over there there's only two of us but who knows maybe rachel risto will come back uh so we do have the pinball junk drawer you'll see it labeled that and then mine of course is pmp uh but you know i'd love the listeners i'm not gonna it's just to set expectations same thing with that mine is more of a blog style i go off topic i get lost in conversation a lot i'm you you get a gold star just like people watching mine it's kind of like watching the show Jackass back in the day. Very hard to watch. Yeah, I love Jackass. Very hard to watch, but if you somehow got through it. I think you're hard on yourself. I think you do a really good job. I think it's very difficult to maintain your own podcast talking in a cohesive. Now, say what you want about Christopher Kaneda, Caloris, but that man can do that. He does very good. Oh, God. No, the cadence in his podcast is very good. And you do a good job, too, sir. So congratulations. Keep it up. Ladies and gentlemen, buy some coffee. I hope I get some new listeners from this. If you used to listen to me and you haven't in a while, come back. Jamie, if you're still listening, you would know. I have been trying to go off topic a little bit less often and keep it more pinball-centric. So, you know, I'm trying. I had a lot of fun with you today, man. Thank you so, so much for taking the time. I really appreciate you, and good luck.
    62:24
    Continued success, my friend. Thank you. And someday I'm having you on. Oh, I would love it. Love it. All right. Love it. All right. Thank you, sir. Orbital Albert, thank you so much for your time. You're a genuinely nice human being, and I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for saying yes. I send out, I bug people, and I book people on the podcast. I usually book about three months out, and I've been working on him for a little bit. So thank you, Albert, for saying yes. In this week's segment on Be On The Lookout, we're looking for an IDSA title called V1. Now, this is a really, really rare Spanish manufacturer of pinball machines from the 80s. And we have two of their titles already, but we're looking for a V1. Thanks for all your help here with Be On The Lookout. We've actually been able to secure a shark pinball machine by Taito recently. So thank you guys for your help.
    63:21
    Twippies, Twippies, Twippies, Twippies. Here we go. Visit twippies.com, T-W-I-P-Y-S for all information on the show and events here in Houston. If you come down to Houston and there are a few tickets available, you're in for a treat. Not only will you get to see The Vault, which is our top secret pinball location, we put some Instagram reels and YouTube reels out recently on showing some of these rare pins. But you also, later that night, go to a D&D launch party at Eureka Heist Brewery, which is just down the street. And on Saturday, we've got the Barrels of Fun Tour, and then doors open at the Wormhole at 5.30. Tune in at 7 p.m. CST CDT on February 22nd live on the Wormhole YouTube page. Go now. Click subscribe and click that bell so you won't miss a second of the show. Then Sunday we're going to have a post-Twippies tournament here at the Wormhole. So a lot of packed into that weekend. A few tickets do remain. I've got to be honest. I'm nervously excited for the Twippies. I know it's a lot of work. I know we've been busting our ass trying to put on an incredible show for you, both live and in person and live on YouTube, but all I ask is one favor, and Albert said it too. Cut us some slack, okay? We're doing this for the love of pinball and nothing else, all right? There's no glory here. We're just trying to put on a great show. Thanks again, Albert, for coming on. This was an absolute blast. And remember, not only about the Twippies, but in general, don't be an a-hole.