Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching The Pinball Show. Buckle up because episode 72 of The Pinball Show is a big one. Another giveaway, revealing new pinball merchandise. speaking with Brad Brad Albright, co-hosting with a Canadian, Deep Fraud, the quintessential Deep Root SEC report coverage with a financial expert, CGC officially announcing Cactus Canyon remake and details about the release, more creator-switching teams, Keith Elwin talks Game 4, pinball market trends, and my love for John Stamos. All of this and more on this most full episode of The Pinball Show. Goonies never stay die. This next song is for dreamers everywhere. Happy anniversary, honey. Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. I dream as the wind in your heart makes it. When you're fast asleep. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 72 of the Pinball Show, and it's a giant one. A lot of news in pinball this week and a lot of exciting announcements, but let's start with the one nearest and dearest to myself and to many others that you know and love with our official merch launch. The store is now live where you can help support the pinball show or straight down the middle or Puppet Pals or the Pinball Network or Flip N Out Pinball, all with a wide range of high-quality products, including over 20 designed pinball shirts, art prints, backpacks, stickers, jackets, hoodies, hats, flip-flops, I shit you not, pants, fanny packs, because you've got to have one, mugs, game room pillows, and much more. You know where to go, FlippinOutPinball.com. That's Flipp, the letter N, OutPinball.com. It will funnel you into everything, this collection that I am super proud of and one of the highlights of my pinball career thus far. Now, this is a big one. You have a chance also at purchasing and winning a limited edition t-shirt of the one, the only, 4-inch Creasel clone. Absolutely. This print we're going to talk about in depth, but this 4-inch Creasel clone, I had to fight for it. I really had to fight for it. You guys know our co-host at the pinball show, Dennis Creasel, and his love for hating me. So he actually signed off on this. He loves it and hates it at the same time. And I said, why don't we just, because he didn't want this mass out everywhere, so why don't we just make this a limited edition shirt? We'll limit it to X number, and that's it. And he said, fine, Zach. If he later told me, listener, if for some reason we can sell out of these L.A. shirts, you may hear a pinball market trends by Dennis Creasle himself. But before all of that, I want to speak with the lead artist on this project, someone I very much admire. His illustration and artwork and pinball is just a small piece of what he has to offer. It's Brad Brad Albright. Now, we know Brad earns his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornell's University College. of architecture, art, and planning. He later earned his Master of Fine Arts at Hartford Art School's MFA program in illustration. He's worked with the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Maron and the WTF podcast, Red Bull, Stern Pinball, and many more. Brad completely slayed the commissioned pieces that he did for us for the pinball show, Straight Outta the Middle and Puppet Pals. Brad, welcome to the show, and thank you for everything. So for those listeners maybe unfamiliar with your work, can you tell people maybe where they've possibly seen some of your work and didn't even know it? Yeah, sure. I'm sure a lot of your listeners have been to Texas Pinball Festival. I was there in, what was it, 2018. I had a booth there. I did a couple of 3D posters. They were very kind to let me do sort of unofficially, but they were like cool with it and let me display them and share it there. They were really cool. I remember the 3D glasses and everything. You were kind enough to accomplish a piece there. Thank you. Yes, yes, thank you. Yeah, so the 3D thing, that's, I guess, if people knew me for anything, that would probably be it. So I do 3D posters with glasses, which I've done a poster for Stern, and I did some 3D stickers for them in the past year, year and a half for their Insider program. Before Stern did their Led Zeppelin machine, I did the artwork for Rotor Dave on Pinside. He did his homebrew re-theme, and we collaborated on that. People loved that art package. Loved it. And that was like the comparison piece that people used when Stern's Led Zeppelin came out. People loved that stuff. And have you done any apparel stuff for Stern? I thought you were doing apparel stuff too. Well, no, not yet. Okay. And you've worked with merchandising and clothes designing, apparel designing before, right? Yes. Yeah. So I went to school for fine art and then ended up working in graphic design, you know, as more practical, like professional application. But I found myself really missing the hand-drawn stuff. So I kind of steered myself back in the right direction. And that's when I started doing the graduate program while I was still working and then transitioned into a merchandising job, which was kind of the best of both worlds, doing designs for pop culture licenses. Sure. Doing things like wallets and lanyards and T-shirt designs for, you know, Ninja Turtles, Harry Potter. Oh, yeah. The big ones. Yeah. You did it. I love your Lebowski one. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And so in 2018, then I just jumped ship entirely and decided it was time to pursue my own stuff and see what I can do by concentrating on things like art festivals and my Etsy shop and online sales and then gallery shows. In town here in the Dallas area, but primarily my pop culture partner galleries are out in Los Angeles. I've got Gallery 1988 that I do a lot with, and I just started talking with Hero Complex, and I'll be showing with them a bunch this winter as well. So that's kind of where I am right now. I'm focusing a lot on the gallery work and pushing into some new media, not just the 3D posters with the glasses, but also doing these layered laser cut. Oh, like the woodcut stuff you've been doing. Yeah, yeah, these sculpted out things, and they're weirdly involved. They look super complex. Yeah, they're just kind of fascinating to me. I think it's this strange combination of art and print and technology. Sculpture, kind of. Yeah, yeah, and sculpture, and they're not just the traditional square rectangle format. They're freely die-cut, and now I'm starting to integrate spring-mounting things so that they're interactive and they wobble. Ooh. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm excited about where it's going. Us pinball people, we love big stuff in our game rooms, and I can only imagine, picture this, Brad, a layered woodcut, large, right, with some LEDs in the back. They cycle through different colors and stuff. I think it would be a big – we'll talk off the air, but I think it could be a big thing. People need to go to albrightillustration.com. That's A-L-B-R-I-G-H-T, illustration.com. And see, this is what pulled me in to contacting you. I saw some of your pieces here, and I thought this portfolio – I'm like, if he can do half of what he's doing here to represent anything I'm a part of, I would be one proud man. I've got to ask you, why pinball? What got you in? Is it arcade and pinball, just pinball? What the hell are you doing in pinball? Yeah, it's mostly pinball. Somewhere along those lines, I was being kind of nostalgic and thinking about growing up and playing a lot of the 90s pinball. Moving around as a kid in the 90s, you could always find an Addams Family. That was in every town that we lived in. I think that was kind of my entry point as nostalgia goes. I just found it freshly fascinating, and I realized how exciting of a combination of storytelling and art and light and sound and engineering and interactivity and gameplay. There's so much that goes into it to make this fun, accessible, challenging device that's also nostalgic. There's just so much there to chew on. And since I don't actually own any machines myself, it's a way of vicariously engaging in pinball, I guess. Well, it's an interactive art piece. That's what I see pinball as, an interactive art piece. And many artists love sinking their teeth into this because, like you said, it's fully dynamic. It's not just stagnant. It's not static. It doesn't just sit there. It has light that interacts with the art. It has sound that also tells the story of the illustration. There's so much going on. As we look back, I think it was like March or April I contacted you. What were your first thoughts when I contacted you about doing a collection rather than just a single art piece that maybe you've done for other pinball people in the past? Well, it was exciting. I was familiar with your work, of course, so honored that you would even consider working with me on it. Something that struck me as interesting was you had kind of like a split concept, kind of half and half. Some of it was illustration oriented. Some of it was text oriented. Yeah. And you wanted to kind of elevate these these like catchphrases and things that, you know, you've built up over your career in podcasting and pinball media and try to make it into something cohesive, which for me is an exciting proposition to not just do one single piece, but to try to do a series of things that tie together. What I found most challenging, I think, was the idea of doing a series of text-based designs. Okay, yeah. I don't really consider that one of my primary avenues. I remember you saying that, yeah. Yeah, it's something I'm challenging myself to do. It's certainly useful and good to continue pushing in that direction, but I was curious what it was that you saw in my work that made you say, yeah, he can do this. Yeah, for me, it's easy. I went to your online portfolio of the illustrations you put. A handful of pieces stuck out. Because they all, stylistically, you have a very prominent style. I approached you based on that style alone. Because there is, what I love about your artwork is there is, there's some realism there. But also, it's not too real. I don't know if that makes sense. Like when you're doing characters and stuff, character-based stuff. Yeah. Like, they're very much, like the illustrated pieces on like Beavis and Butthead or Rick and Morty. They're very true form to the animation source. But then you move on to like movie film franchises or television or bands and whatnot. Very iconic people. It's not a caricature, but it's very much, it feels real, but in its own world. And I knew the pieces that I wanted to have done were going to need just that. Thankfully, you were open to the idea and the concept. Even though at one point, I think you mess me like, essentially, is anybody going to buy this shit? This is so deep, and my response was, no, but I don't care. This was just for me to get prints on T-shirts and on the wall and some of the followers. They'll really appreciate the inside pinball nature of this collection, and I couldn't be happier with it. Let's jump into the individual pieces. The first batch you started, because you've got nine or ten different designs you did for us, But the first batch was, I asked you to do the four-inch crease or clone. I described that to you. The Pinball Show Goat. And people, again, follow it. You can go check out these probably on social media on the Pinball Network or on flippingoutpinball.com. It'll link you there. And we had the Blinded by Dwight series. So the four-inch crease or clone, I wish you could have been a fly on the wall when I presented that to Dennis. He said, oh, no. And he was like, don't get me wrong. It is perfect. because Dennis notoriously doesn't like to be the center of attention. He doesn't like any thought of him on a t-shirt. He just hates the idea. But he loved this film. I thought, honestly, I thought I was dumping money into the commission to work for it to be left on the editing room floor. Didn't think he would approve it, but I knew it was a long shot, and maybe I guilted him into it. I don't know. But he loves it and hates it all at the same time. And now is your chance to win. The 4-inch Creasel Clone t-shirts are a limited edition run. Only 75 will be made, and that's it. The reasoning behind this being, one, Dennis doesn't want to be on any shirts, and two, they're made using a more specified process, and they require a whole separate company to print and hand sew the pockets on, etc., etc. Thus, once they're gone, they are gone. But you can win one of these limited edition tees simply by going to the Pinball Network's Facebook page, or it'll be in Flip N Out Pinball's Facebook page as well. Find the post of the art designs and share it to your social media or to a pinball face group or pin side or Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is. Share it. And in your post, comment on which design from the collection is your favorite. Send us evidence of the share via thepinballnetwork at gmail.com, and Dennis and I will randomly select a winner on next week's episode. It's that simple, and it really does help us out here a lot. Thank you to those willing to help, and best of luck. And regardless, buy one anyway. Come on, help a couple guys out. Out of those three pieces, anything stick out to you? The 4-inch Creasel clone, the iconic goat, what they would look like, or the blinded by the white? Well, Creasel was a fun start. Yeah? That one and the goat definitely felt natural for me to work on. Okay. stylistically came came very naturally um and as kind of an aside i ponder for a second the idea of style well your artwork has your art i was trying to pinpoint it when i was describing it earlier your artwork has texture that's what makes it feel real it has a lot of texture it feels like you can touch this or sticking out on the page or whatever medium you're using even the goat like when you did that goat and sent it to me i sent like some ideas of what you know conceptually i was thinking of and then you came back in the first piece you came back with i was like there he is or like that's the goat that is the goat and you had the mouth open we know that that goat's screaming all the time and then the just the small details of color reflection like neon from that logo onto the the fascia of the the goat sides of this face oh it was phenomenal it was killer I love that you illustrated and made visual what has been iconic in audio form. So for that, thank you. And we'll talk about the Puppet Pals here in a minute the same way there. The second batch was Pinball Market Trends, Moment Maker slash Point Chaser, and My Homey Go Me. These were the text-based or typography-based designs that you said initially, not your wheelhouse or not one of your specialties that you envisioned. But after seeing what you were able to do with the My Homey Go Me, That's a piece. That's a visual illustrated piece. It's hard to just say that's a piece of typography. Yeah, yeah, for sure. We went back and forth on that, didn't we, on trying to figure out that style, that Gomez style. Yeah, depending whatever pens he may be using when he signs his signature, it was trying to land on what is it that is distinctively Gomi. Is it the little dots that he puts at the end of a long stroke, or the way that the shapes of the letters kind of cross over each other. So we had to try a few different things so that I could find the right brush settings to kind of emulate what to you looked like his distinctive signature. Listener, I want to remind you, the Moment Maker Point Chaser, this is for you. You get to determine and display proudly what Dennis and I and many at TPN have talked about in the past. Are you a Moment Maker? Are you chasing those wizard modes and those pinball moments? or are you a point chaser, more competitive base, you want GCs and high scores. Now, with a very almost like a spy versus spy concept, you can wear and support being a moment maker or a point chaser. I'd love to see how many of you out in public are going to pick a side there. Or hell, you can pick both sides and just whatever feeling you're having that day, you can wear that design to your backpack or whatever it may be. And I love that the My Homey Go Me, what we did was we wanted to make iconic and really tribute George Gomez work in pinball, his iconic games. So we did this where, if you'll see on the website, listener, merchandising-wise, you're going to be forced to certain colors, and these colors represent the pieces that he has worked on. So you'll see a green signature, I think like a blue or purple shirt for Monster Bash, a gold signature and a black background for Lord of the Rings, Batman 66 we did, which was an iconic piece of his work. So Deadpool, Deadpool's in there as well. A really nice metallic looking red on a black. So you guys get to pick based on his pieces. I love that. And then the final batch, Brad, was the Puppet Pals, SDTM's Return of the Kraken, and Hulk 2D2, which I think is going to be a fan favorite. Starting with the Puppet Pals, I cannot overemphasize how special it was to the creators of Puppet Pals and to myself, the whole shtick of the Puppet Pals is that it's a puppet show and an adventure in audio form, which is irony and stupid and silly and brilliant all at once. But the trust of illustrating what these characters actually look like in person was really big for us. I don't know if it was that big for you. You're like, oh, they're puppets. But for us, it was huge. The world now gets to see, because of your artwork, Brad, what the Puppet Pals look like. Well, to your credit, you gave me pretty good reference concept sketches to work from. Yeah, but if people could see the concept of what you did, you brought them to life. And you brought a lot of original ideas to that design that the creators of Puppet Pals just fell in love with. So we get to see Moppy and Rory and Steve there. That's something I'm going to wear all the time. And then we go to Return of the Kraken. I sent you, Greg Bone and I's, straight down the middle Kraken illustration that we, because we're not artists, but when we started, straight down the middle, that's what we had as one of our first T-shirts to help support the show. I gave that to you and I said, make it a 2.0 version. We want to see a return of this Kraken monster. Let's see what you can do with it. No concept in general, just run wild. and probably my favorite piece that you've done in the collection personally just because it was just gorgeous. It's so, so beautiful. I think people that are not into pinball would love wearing this illustration or would love printing this illustration for their game room or for their home. It's just the crack and wrap around that pinball machine and very iconic. There's some little Easter eggs in that illustration too that are near and dear to Greg Bone and I through our work in pinball media. one being the Dolly pinball machine. We're both not only in love with the pinball machine, but in love with that person. So we see Dolly. And then you see her slightly shifted from her original positioning to kind of be reacting to this Kraken. And there's another little Easter egg or two I won't give away, but a phenomenal, phenomenal work there. Was that a tough one? You said that was probably your favorite. I wouldn't say tough, maybe more time-consuming. I like that one, I think, the most because it's doing a lot of the things that I try to do in my personal work. It's a dense composition. There's a lot of overlapping shapes. Oh, yeah. So there's a lot of depth in it, and then there's so much to find in the finer details. So it takes a fair amount of time in the sketch stage to shift things around and make sure everything's kind of interlocking properly so that it reads, But it's clear, but you kind of have to analyze it to get all the nuances of it. And the perspective. The perspective is perfect. Kind of a weird perspective. Had to do some good searching to find the right photo reference of a machine from that era. Looking at it in the right perspective and then throwing in the little color reflections, water splashes coming out of it. There's so much going on. Oh, the perspective is perfection. I would have never thought of that. And I've not really seen illustrations with a pinball machine in that perspective before, but it was beautiful. And then what I think will be, this is Dennis Creasel's favorite. He said, by far, this is something that he will proudly wear, proudly print. He loves Hulk 2D2. This is one or two throw-off little bits that we've done, Dennis and I, improvisationally. And it just works for some reason, and we wanted people to visualize that as well. and now it works 10 times better because you see what appears to be in a different world the Incredible Hulk merging with R2-D2 it has nothing to do with pinball and I think people outside of pinball are really going to hold on to this one because it's just it's niche it's iconic it works for so many things Star Wars or Marvel or whatever it may be so those were all the pieces you said your favorite piece was probably the Kraken? probably so I'm fond of the last three, especially the Puppet Pals, the Kraken, the Hulk 2D2, but also the Goat, the Creasel. Any of the ones that have the hand-drawn stuff, I'm pretty fond of all of those. I enjoyed on the Puppet Pals doing kind of a janky cardboard pinball. That was a perfect idea. Most of the time, if I'm drawing pinball machines, I'm concerned about getting the geometry right or making sure that the pop bumpers look accurate or whatever. But in this case, I got to play up some of those inconsistencies and put little strips of tape and little jagged cuts and things and stuff. What was the most difficult piece? Was it the cranking? A difficult piece for an artist, but time-consuming, yeah. Pinball market trends was tricky. Because that was the most hand-lettered. Yes. No real font involved. Yeah, I wanted that illustrated by hand. I had an idea on that. You knocked that one out pretty good, though. I still think the signature was what we went back and forth on really trying to get done perfectly. Cowboy Crazily just knocked out and it was exactly. Hulk 2D2, same way, knocked it out. What did you, I've got to ask, it's different. I understand. I'm self-aware. I'm not always the most easy to work with on projects because I'm a bit obsessive and picky with some things, and I have an idea. Even if it's not the right idea, I have to control things. So how was it working with me? Full honesty. No, it was good. I think that you are self-aware enough about being particular about this or that. It wasn't unusual. I've had some difficult clients. I wouldn't put you in the difficult. Really? I don't get in the difficult? No, not really. I think you gave me what I like to have best, which is some parameters, but a lot of runway to kind of do what I do best. You were able to kind of cull those ideas down and make suggestions for the final touches, you know, color schemes or whatever. And for that matter, I'm really excited to see what you do with, say, ground colors for shirts or whatever it is. Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of pressure, but okay. Yeah, we'll find out. But no, I thought it was great. We did it, as you mentioned, in kind of batches of three. And I think the whole process might have dragged on a little longer than maybe you were hoping for at first. And I appreciate your patience on that. No, it didn't bother me. And that's why I gave you the complex stuff at the very end because I was like, I'm going to spring this on him because I don't want to scare him away initially. I'm going to give him the big complex illustrations at the very end. Yeah, and it wasn't difficult. I mean, you mentioned earlier how there was a moment where I was like, is anyone going to want to buy this stuff? I did feel like it was worth asking you that on the outset to make sure that we were on the same page. And I really respected your response, which was that for you it wasn't about the money. It was about celebrating your work in this space, being able to represent it in a visual way. And to me, that was the perfect response. And that really gave the right perspective, I think, to the whole project, to do justice to the concepts behind it, not to try to make a quick buck. Exactly. Because that's the last thing. And I'm guilty of, I mean, I've lived my life doing this, so it's not like I'm not making money in pinball. But there are some endeavors such as this or pinball award shows that it's truly not about the money. The only way that you can have the freedom to express yourself artistically for you, it's in these illustrations. for me, it's a lot of times in media or concept, just in some of the art pieces, is to not have any barriers or to limit the barriers, to limit what you have to have in return. Like, that's just not fun. It hampers creativity, and I'm a big creative nut. So anytime that I'm in a situation where creativity is blocked or I feel like I'm being held against my own creativity, I don't do well, and I get out of those situations as I have in the past. So, yeah, this is very much a celebration of my work. I can look back and say, you know what, I busted my ass, and I love this industry and this hobby more than anybody I've ever met. So I want to look on the walls of my game room and see these things to remind me of the fun and the friendships that I've made and some of the cool experiences I've had. And visually, Brad, you were able to do that for me. So for that, I will always be indebted and thankful for you doing that and taking on this project. Listeners, I want to remind you that these pieces of art can be purchased through FlippinOutPinball.com. But besides that, where can people, Brad, purchase your art? If they want to see your pieces or they want to add some of this stuff to their merchandising or collections or whatever it may be that you're making, where can people find it? Yeah, sure. Thank you. My Etsy shop is my main outlet. That's become more and more our daily operation in the house is kind of managing the Etsy shop and then feeding new exciting things into it. So that's albrightillustration.etsy.com. People can also find me just searching my name, Brad Brad Albright. That's where I am on Instagram. And then something that I should mention also is that in my Etsy shop, I'm partnered with Brad Hunter from Lift Frames. Oh, yeah. Yeah, most of the listeners will know him for his back glass displays, but we have partnered together and we're expanding it into poster art as well. Not just pinball back glass, but some of my original art combinations. I print these inserts and then I correspond with Brad and he ships the frame. So we have a few options there in my Etsy shop. So we're doing some pretty cool stuff with that. But also gallery-wise, if anyone's out in the L.A. area, Gallery 1988 and Hero Complex Gallery are both very, very high caliber. Amazing collections of artists show there. And it's worth jumping on their Instagram accounts just to look at all of the stuff. So much fun insider, like, pop culture geek content. It's like an endless flow of hilarious, just amazing artwork from so many great artists. And we've got a lot of listeners out on the West Coast there that I'm sure would love to go visit that. So that's great. So what's coming in the future for Brad Albright Illustration? Do we have anything that we're working on in pinball-related stuff? Are you going to design a machine? Come on. You're going to do artwork? Is that something you'd like to do at some point? To do a machine? Yeah. Well, that's the dream. Okay. Of course. Yeah. We can make that happen. Listener, you heard it here. If he's willing to do that and you see the phenomenal work that he can do, we need to remind some of these manufacturers that we need some Brad Albright illustration on, man, I can pick so many themes that would be perfect for your style more than any other phenomenal artist that we already have in pinball. So, yeah, that's a go with yours. That'd be good. Email us at thepinballnetwork at gmail.com. Let us know what themes you think his style would work perfect for I don know that Bojack Horseman is freaking phenomenal Yeah that was an example of one of these things that we able to do at a place like Gallery 1988 They have these studio relationships where they're not just always these unofficial fan art shows. They actually partner with the actual production companies. And so we've done things with Focus Features. I did some Shaun of the Dead work, which is my ultimate dream theme, by the way. Okay. Shaun of the Dead. Toe Jack Horseman from Netflix. Seems like a spooky pinball run of Shaun of the Dead. Yeah, yeah. I could see it. Well, Brad, thank you again, not only for appearing on the show today, but for working so diligently over the last April, May, June, July, four months or so. It was a lot of work. It's much appreciated. And you guys listening at home can support myself myself and all the media endeavors we're a part of by purchasing some of the merchandising, as well as going onto Brad's Etsy shop and purchasing some stuff as well. If and when you do purchase that stuff, send a picture to us at thepinballnetworkatgmail.com. Maybe we'll enter you into a contest or something. We'll surely show that off on our social media as well. Brad, I'll tag you in some of that stuff too. All right, buddy, until our next collection, hopefully a long time away for you, right? I'll see you later. All right, Zach. Thank you, man. Appreciate it very much. Appreciate you, brother. What a jam-packed episode we have here. Thanks again to Brad Brad Albright for the behind-the-scenes discussion to the merch collection. But there's a plethora of news this week in pinball, and I was trying to think, who could join me this weekend in helping discuss the Deep Root mess, Chicago Gaming Company stuff, Stern Pinball, some shit. Who could it be? Well, my special guest co-host today is no stranger to the Pinball Mike. He is one of our main administrators at the Pinball Network. He manages our social media and puts a ton of work behind the scenes here at TPN. He also is producing and co-hosting one of the most popular and informative pinball podcasts of all time with Silver Ball Chronicles. Oh, and of course, he's Canadian. Please welcome to the Pinball Show, David Dennis. Thank you. Thank you for having me, my goodness. I can't believe you're putting me on after Mr. Allwright. I should have gone before, because you've got to end with the tease of the shirts and the merch and all that stuff. You've got to end on a high note. I'm here to depress everybody. I thought the talent comes first. Oh, that makes me sad and sad. You're so Canadian. So what have you been up to, Double D? Oh, I've been ootin' a boot a bunch recently, recently. This is a big time in the household here. We're deciding to buy a second car, which apparently is the big thing here in pinball, where we're buying second cars everywhere. Oh, man. I'm not a big fan of buying cars. I don't like the whole rigmarole of all of that stuff, right? Like, you've got to go into the dealer. You've got to do the whole, you've got to test drive some cars. Do people test drive cars, Bill? Well, they do, but they shouldn't, right? Because the thing is, you've got to get in there. You've got to smell the leather. Oh, yeah. Then they get you all just wanting all the car cars. Let's not bullshit ourselves, Dave. There's no leather, real leather being put into vehicles anymore. They want you to get in there and smell the pleather. Yeah, that's right. The fake. Yeah, but it's, I test drove a few different cars and things like that, but you get in there and then you have the salespeople, right? You're playing on their home turf. Yeah, that's their home field advantage. Yeah, they got all the advantages. They got the economy behind them. Oh. Yeah. Jeez, man. I just want to drive your Mazda 3, you know. You don't have to give me a coffee. I just want to drive the car. If it feels like I'm not going to buy it. You don't go Mazda. You go Mazda. Yeah. Yeah, Mazda. Mazda. Huh. Mazda. Did you buy a Mazda? The new Nissan Zed. Oh, God. Yeah. Do you own a Mazda? No, no. I have a Nissan Murano built in Mississippi. Showed out Mississippi. Wow. And I can certainly tell that it is because it's certainly not built in Japan or in Germany. Hey, the Nissans are nice. Hold their value very well. It is actually dollar for dollar, hands down. If you're looking at getting an SUV, think about that Nissan Rogue. Think about that Murano because I love mine. You're pissing me off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't like the Mazdas Oh man they look very nice They look boring to me That's what I like I like a good boring car That's why I went with a VW Oh wow Punch bug do they still make the bugs is that what you bought They do no Convertible You would drive a bright blue convertible bug I do and I need on the side Like a really big like flower Right and then I'll pull up and be like Hey there. Hey, everybody. It's me. Come over here to do some investments. I'm David. David Diffus. No, I bought a Golf GTI. Oh, a little hatchback? Yeah, I am a hooligan at heart. I used to have a Mini Cooper, which is both the greatest car I ever owned and the worst car I ever owned. It basically fell apart. Another ugly car. Oh, I'm cool. That's it. I'm done. A GTI. How much did you pay for that? Like 50 grand? It depends if you're using Canadian dollars or US dollars But man, I have a hooligan at heart It's got four doors, I'll be able to fit the kids in there It's like the 2020's version of a Woody's station wagon Yes, yep, yep With the real fake paneling That's right I bought a car this weekend as well Oh, yes And you purchased, I'm sure, what? Like a Toyota Yaris? A Toyota? What the hell? You guys aren't that far location-wise from us to speak in the way you do Toyota? Toyota? Toyota. Toyota. T-O-Y. Toy. I thought you said Toyota. I bought a foreign automobile. I went American. My wife's got the American. She got the GMC Denali Roadster. I would totally expect that car from you because you're a little bit of that, like, little douchey. Little douchey. Whoa. A little bit of a douchey car. Well, I'll say that's a Nicole. You would drive a Canyonero. Canyonero. Nicole's a smart, beautiful little blonde that is in this big-ass truck. I love it. It's the XL, too. But, no, we bought a new car for, I drive the billboard on wheels, the flipping out van listener. You know that. Which is a Mercedes-Benz, right? Well, Dodge Promaster, baby. Oh. That's kind of a piece of shit. That's not bad. You're the second podcaster that drives a Dodge. Really? That my van's faster? Oh, shit. No, we bought a vehicle. My son's turning 16. He turned 16, David, and he had to have an automobile. So we had one of two options. We had option A because he doesn't give two shits about driving, is fearful of it, and is shitty at it. We could have got him like a $10,000, $15,000, you know, just run-of-the-mill used car. Could have done that because he doesn't care. Or a little Honda, you know, hatchback. Yeah, right. A little accent or something, yeah. But no. I said to the wife, why don't we, you know, driving the van to Target, not a great look. It's good advertising, but I'm tired of driving that thing. Why don't we get something a little nicer that I can drive? Isn't it back seats? No, it just has a... How do you put the kids in that and go to Costco? They just throw them in the back and they jump around and it's fine. You have to use the ratchet straps that are right there against the wall. I got a mattress back there. It's fine. But I had to buy Dominic a new vehicle. So we went with a foreign car, a Korean car. I never thought I would buy a Korean automobile. So like the Samsung Koreans or the Kim Jong Koreans? I think it's the Samsung Korean. Okay. But we bought the good Korea. We went with a Kia. How about that? I never thought I bought a Kia or spent as much as I did on a damn Kia. But we went with a Kia K5, the new 2022 redesigned Kia K5. And I've got to tell you, I like style. That's where I go. I don't go GTI. I think we call them differently in Canada. I don't care for performance. I go style. It's got to look good. And that K5, formerly known as the Optima. Ah, see, there you go. So I think we still call them Optima up here. You just haven't looked into it. They changed it all to K5. That was what it was overseas as well. but now North America. What happens when they get to K9? That's awkward. I don't know. It's a beautiful car, though. Yeah, give that a Google. That's a very pretty car. Black panoramic sunroof, bows. Sedan, four doors. It drives itself. You guys are listeners. If you guys had one of these high-techy cars that kind of drives itself in the interstate, I don't know if your GCI has this, but there's buttons that I can push, Dave, when I'm driving down the interstate, that it follows Antonio Cruz control, to adaptive Antonio Cruz control. So it changes its speed based on who's in front of you. And there's lane things where you don't have to really have your hands on the wheel. It keeps you in. So when you got this, and you obviously got this car painted like the General Lee, so does it actually jump over things with its laser-guided Antonio Cruz control? If I ride with Dominic anymore, it may. But, yeah, it's nice. I can do work while I'm driving. I'm joking, people. I'm not doing that. It's just safety precautions to keep you in the lane. But I have maybe driven 10 to 20 miles without touching the wheel or the gas pedal. I might say that. So new cars all around, and there's no haggle pricing because they can put the price down whatever they want. I got $500 off my winter tires. That's basically the only thing that I did, and that took me two hours. I know the owner of the dealership down here. He's a friend. and my only in was him getting me a car. That was his... It was like the Ellie. It's like, sorry, buddy, I can't give you a price break on this Ellie, but I can get you one, and you should be happy with that. So I took it. A seller's market across everything. I know it is. Unless you're selling unreleased pinball machines. Selling ideas. Yes. We'll see what the correspondence have drummed up, and then we'll get into some mess and some goods here on the Pinball Show. It's time for TPN Industry News. Hey, this is Kaz with a quick update on American Pinball. Like all of the pinball manufacturers, they are dealing with delays in releasing their new machines. The team is still hard at work on game number four. Some interesting news I saw this past weekend was at CGC's announcement at Southern Thrive Gaming Expo, and it showed Joe Schober as a team member at CGC. Now, Joe has worked at American Pinball on Hot Wheels and Oktoberfest, so I reached out to Joe for some confirmation. He told me that he is not done with American Pinball but couldn't comment further. So he could be doing programming for both companies. I also saw that Jim Thornton, who had worked on Houdini at American Pinball, is now with CGC as well. So I'm trying to try to find some more info to get confirmation on these moves. We look forward to seeing game number four announced soon. I hope everyone has a great week and has fun playing pinball. For the Pinball Show, this is Brian Cosner. Matt Morrison here reporting from the Southern Pride Gaming Expo with an exciting CGC update for the week. Ryan White put on a great seminar quickly detailing the past at CGC then spending the rest of the one hour seminar outlining the present and future of Chicago gaming. First things first, Cactus Canyon Remake is official. The code has been completed and expanded upon. 850 playfields are already screened and ready to go. Games should be formally shown in four to six weeks, and some SE shipping shortly after that. Currently awaiting one last licensing approval. The pricing was not revealed at this time. The topper wasn't shown, but is, quote, very interactive with its own minigame. They're also currently setting up a second production line and have five games currently in development. If you're tired of high Medieval Madness remake prices, fret no more. There's going to be more Medieval Madness remakes in 2023 and more upgrade kits this year, including toppers, RGB lighting, and extended display on the way as well. There's a whole lot of other tidbits we're discussed, and including some great questions from the crowd. I will trickle out more tidbits in the upcoming week. But that's it for this week. Back to you guys. All right, James, let's jump into it. We don't have a Deep Root correspondent because they jumped and bailed appropriately last year. Because now Deep Root Pinball not only bailed, but they failed. It's worse than that, Zach. It is worse than that. SEC charges San Antonio Advisor in $58 million investment scam. A new report has come out by the SEC showcasing the fraudulent activities of a Robert Mueller and Deep Root companies in general will get into. I read a short article by Melanie Waddell kind of highlighting some of the key parts of this, and we'll talk about that now. But before we do that, David, it's most appropriate to kind of have – you're in finance, right? You get some of this stuff. We'll start off with the disclaimer here, right? So I'm here as in my own personal opinion. This is not the opinion of my company. It's not the opinion of my mutual fund dealership. Nor Nissan. I'm not a lawyer. I am not an accountant, any of those things. We're going to link all of the SEC filing that I'm looking at at the moment and, of course, the article that Zach has said in there. So a lot of this is my own opinion, and I will be reading directly from the Securities and Exchange Commission document. Oh, man. I feel a big coverage here. Okay. So you're comfortable, given your experience and your current occupation, you're comfortable discussing and understanding the content to which has been released. Yeah. So a lot of this stuff, I can add some context to why they would use certain words in this filing. the process that's usually around being audited by a regulator, all of that stuff. Now, of course, in Canada, where I am, we are regulated differently. We have different terms, but there are a lot of similarities, and I can see that in some of the verbiage and words that they use within this SEC filing. So the first thing is I've noted here on what's in front of me, it says jury trial demanded. So the SEC says that they want this to go to a jury trial, And it says that it's against Robert J. Mueller, Deep Root Funds, LLC, and Ryan Policky Services, Inc. as the defendants. Okay. And then this is where we get into something a little bit different that I think people are then a bit confused about. And then it names Deep Root Tech, Deep Root Pinball, Deep Root Studios, Deep Root Sports and Entertainment, Deep Root Silicon, Robert J. Sébastien Muller, Jeffrey L. Sébastien Muller, Belinda G. Breen, who are the co-trustees of M.B. Hale, Ona Revocable Trust, and they're called the relief defendants. Okay. So Robert Sébastien Muller and Deep Root. Are you going to call him Sébastien Muller this whole damn segment or Mueller? Should I call him Mueller? Mueller. Mueller. Mueller. I spent a whole presidency calling a guy Mueller, and now I've got to call him Mueller. I don't know what it is. All right. Well, whatever. We know from Silver Ball Chronicles. I'm going to call him Robert. I'm going to call him Bobby Pinball. Bobby Pinball. Okay. Bobby Pinball and Deep Root Funds and Ryan Policky Services are the defendants. And then there's these other people that are caught up in it, right, which is the pinball companies and all the other shenanigans. $58 million. Yeah. Yeah, so $58 million across, it says here, number one, right out of the gate, 300 people who invested roughly $58 million, and, of course, that's U.S. To be honest, that's not a lot of money. The fuck if it's not? It's a lot of money, but when it comes to investment firm sizes, particularly in the U.S., like, you guys have massive investment firms. They're huge. $58 million in Canada is pretty big, right? But it's not astronomically massive, right? If you don't have $100 million in the U.S. under administration, you're basically a nobody. Oh, okay. Well, that's good. That's good to note here. I didn't realize that. Yeah. Even though we would picture, you know, Robert as this big, you know, billionaire or whatever, this is not a huge number. You know, we're talking $200,000 per client, right? Which is large. That's actually the client asset size is in fact large. The overall size of the business is not large. Generally, when you're generating revenue from this type of business, you're getting the advisory side of it. So what are you paying for the advice? So you'll pay a fee for that around maybe 1%. And then you're paying the investment cost or the actual like buying and selling and, you know, things like that, the investment management, which is maybe around 1% as well. So, you know, large asset size, business is not massively huge. It's big, you know, by any means, but it's not massive. So from an investment standpoint, kind of a small fish here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you can see that because there's a lot of the very mom and pop, some of the things that are noted in here, like little things that they're doing or Deep Root and Bob are doing. Well, Bobby Pinball is a noob, financial noob. Okay. All right. Yeah. So they had a 505, 575 fund was the name of this fund. What is that? So basically what it means is it's a marketing gimmick that says that, and I'm reading directly from the filing here, investors committed their principal investment for five years and elected to receive either simple interest at 7% paid out in a lump sum at the end of the five-year term, or 5% simple interest paid out monthly installments for each of the five years. Okay. Thus, the 575 name. So, I give, you know, I give my $100,000, and I can't touch it for seven years, and then at the end of the seven years, I get my $100,000 plus $35,000. Okay. Basically, is what I get from that. Okay. Right? And then if I chose to do an income stream, so like if I'm retired, I need money, right, on a monthly basis to pay my bills and all that stuff, right? I give him $100,000. I make $25,000, and he gives that to me on a monthly basis for 60 months at like $416. So that's how I understand that. But what does life insurance policies have to do with any of that? Aha. Okay. So I looked this up a couple of years ago, and it does not seem – it's not sketchy in any way. Well, beyond what has been mentioned here. $58 million. Okay. So it's not uncommon for businesses to start that manage to generate returns from life insurance. That's not anything crazy. Okay. Okay. So the idea is basically Deep Root, you know, the 575 fund would purchase a life insurance Ryan Policky. And then they would pay you for your life insurance Ryan Policky. and then when you die, I would get the money from that minus the lump sum that I gave you to buy it and any payments that I had to make. Does that make sense? As much as it's going to for me. Okay, let's assume I got a million dollar Ryan Policky. You're talking to somebody that understands, but yeah. Okay, so let me get the crayons out here for you. Is life insurance Ryan Policky the low-hanging fruit in here, in this equation? So there's only a couple of things that are guaranteed in life, death and taxes, right? So you're going to die, hopefully later than sooner, my friend. Okay. But if I have a life insurance Ryan Policky, let's say it's for a million dollars, and I need money. Well, there's a couple of things I could do. I can go to the bank and tell the bank, hey, I got this million-dollar Ryan Policky. Can I get a loan? Yeah. And I can use it as collateral. I'm going to give you money. Okay. Or I can use a life insurance Ryan Policky, and I can – this is a thing that has popped up in the last 20 years or so, where I can sell my Ryan Policky to a company. They take ownership of the Ryan Policky, and they become the beneficiary if I die. So no longer does my family get the life insurance Ryan Policky if I'm hit by a bus, the investment firm does. And you're doing that to free up some capital or some money? To free up some money, right? I've got to pay for my K-5. Oh, yeah. You know, I've got to do anything that you would do, pay your mortgage, buy a dog. And you can't, from what I understand, you can't get money by killing yourself because that's kind of against the Ryan Policky terms. You can, but see, the problem with that is that you're dead and you don't want to be dead. Oh, I got you. Right, great. So you've got a million-dollar Ryan Policky. Let's say I'm just pulling numbers out of a hat here. Deep Root Funds pays me $250,000 cash for that million-dollar Ryan Policky. Okay. Then they have to pay the premiums if it's not paid for until I die. Okay. Okay. What benefits did they get out of it then? So when I die, they would get the entire million-dollar Ryan Policky for $750,000. So they would make a return on my death. So they're banking on you dying. Right. You know, that's business. But there's a lot of variables in this kind of thing, Zach, right? You've got to figure in how much is paid, you know, how do you pay me too much, right? Like maybe you pay me too much up front. What's the monthly premium payment for that? Right? If I had taken the monthly premium payment and that lump sum and just put it in the market and made 8%, why would I take the risk of you living for another 20 years and not passing away? It feels like you're playing stocks with humans. It's amazing. Okay. Yeah, that is basically what it is. But you call it life insurance. It feels less bad. But that's basically what it is. Now, you're helping some people because they're going to need money to pay their bills and all that stuff, and they've got no other way to access money. So where did Robert Mueller and Deep Root Companies go wrong? What happened? Well, by the looks of this, this filing, there's a couple of things that were happening here. One is they were not generating enough revenue or interest to break it down on the money that was invested and the life insurance policies that were being paid out. to pay those clients monthly. Those opted for the monthly. Right. So about 45%, according to the filing, of those people elected to get a monthly income from their investment capital. Now, if people aren't dying or you're paying them too much up front and the benefit that you're getting as the investor is not high enough, You're not generating enough to pay that. It's all a waste of time. It's a useless proposition. You're wanting people to die so that you can sell high on your stock of human beings. Is this an ignorant way to look at it? But they're not dying and you end up spending more than if you were to even facilitate any of this. Yeah, so what my assumption is, right out of the gate, is there was some sort of complaint that was probably filed on behalf of a client, and then the regulator kind of went in. And then when a regulator comes into your business, it's terrifying, right? Because they go through and they're looking at every file. They're looking at all the signatures. They're looking at all the verbiage on a micro detail where before they were not doing that. They're watching the complaints. They're coming in to regulate. Right. And I think that there was some sort of complaint, and then that's sort of what opened the door. And then they started looking, and then they found stuff. What kind of stuff? Well, let's wind it back a little bit, okay? So, when a... You're going to tease me, okay. This document, when people are like, oh, well, you know, they might have, you know, they still have to do their investigation. No, it's done. Yeah, it seemed like it was done. It's all done. The investigation is over. This is the report from the investigation, which is then suggested that they would like a, by the reading here, they would like a jury trial demanded. Now, of course, these are all allegations. This is, you know, we'll throw in the old allegedly part in here. But it's not looking, it's not looking too hot. So they have not been proven guilty by the Supreme Court or court of law, but this regulator as part of the SEC has conducted an investigation and has given this report showing their findings thus to be used in a later requested court hearing. Is that correct? Yes. And I will also add that the SEC seems pretty formal of an organization or administration. They don't seem like they would paint with their words in a report. This was pretty strong, the words that they were using. Things like Ponzi scheme and defrauding and, quote, like a piggy bank to fund Mueller's deep root affiliated businesses. Are they typically this strongly worded? It was bleeding. The SEC will not make a filing. A regulator will not make a filing unless it's a slam dunk. Oh. Right? That's important. Okay. So, for example, in Canada, I can literally lose my license and have a report like this filed if I have a client form which is blank and is signed by a client. No transactions, no money moved hands, you know, no money. But the potential for me to be able to fill in a document with anything that I want with a client's blank signature or a blank form with a client's signature on it is enough to get me basically thrown out and fined from our mutual fund regulator here in Canada. So this is not good. It didn't feel good when I read it. 24 pages. So it says here that the defendants purchased no new life insurance Ryan Policky for the funds after September of 2017, despite raising $43 million for the fund after that time. So the fund is supposedly buying, you know, the majority of which is life insurance policies, but they haven't bought anything since 17. That's four years ago. Right. Now, it also says on their documentation, which the SEC has seen, and it's later on in the document here, where they talk about what's called a PPM. In Canada, I think we call that Fun Facts or... So Much Nicer. Yeah, I know, exactly. But it's, or, you know, we might call it something else, MFRP maybe. But anyway, it says here... That sounds meaner. Yeah, totally. MFRP. private placement memoranda, which is basically the document which sort of guides how the investments are done and all of that stuff. But anyway, in there, it says that the majority of which will be in insurance policies, but they're not purchasing any insurance policies after 17, which is interesting. Then the next line says that the defendant used the vast majority of the fund's assets, like a piggy bank, to fund Robert's Deep Root affiliated businesses, the relief defendants. And he's saying the majority. They're saying the majority here. Right, yeah. Mueller funneled more than 30 million of the fund's assets to the relief defendants, the non-arms-length transactions. What's that mean? So what that says is that the money goes into the fund and is moved into the relief defendants, which are the other Deep Root-affiliated companies, which would include Deep Root Pinball. Okay, what about the other 28 million then? It's sitting somewhere else, I guess. Okay, all right. That's a lot of money, $30 million. Right. It could be tied up in other business ventures. It could be tied up in investment in capital and other things. It could be on the stock market. I'm not entirely sure. Okay. Anyway, this is where it gets heavy. Okay. So, reading again from that document. It's now getting heavy. Okay. Since 2015, neither the life insurance policies nor the capital investments of the affiliated businesses, businesses, so the deep root businesses, had yielded significant revenue or cash flow for the defendant or the fund. Okay, so the money that's being invested into the released departments, i.e. the pinball company and the sporting company and all of those other things has not generated any returns or enough returns. So this is where I think we get into some serious trouble. This caused Mueller and Ryan Policky services to default on the purchase of one $10 million face value life insurance Ryan Policky, losing nearly $3.5 million of the fund's money in the process. Ouch. So they bought a life insurance Ryan Policky, which they paid somebody a bunch of money. Human stock is what I call it, but okay. They were paying the life insurance premiums of the Ryan Policky and because they didn have enough money in the Ryan Policky the Ryan Policky lapsed So usually what happens is if you make a bad investment in a fund or a deal goes bad you get a negative return, right? Well, that must not be what happened here. Oh, okay. It also caused Mueller and Deep Root to make more than $820,000 of, and this is important, Ponzi-like payments. Ouch. Not that term. to early investors in the funds using money raised from new investors, and to make at least $177,000 in payments from money borrowed on short-term basis using the life insurance policies as collateral. Okay. Why did they use the term Ponzi-like payments? Stealing from Peter to pay Paul? Kind of. Okay. So why didn't they just say a Ponzi scheme? Ponzi-like. Right. Ponzi-like. Ponzi-like. Was I Ponzi? The fund, okay, was not originally intended or constructed as a Ponzi scheme, is what that tells me. This is something that happened by accident out of panic or necessity or, you know, he made a really, really unethical and bad decision to kick the can down the road because of this error, is what I get from here. And this is all allegations. I don't get it, but this is my But Dave, could it also not be argued that because of this investigation did not yield quite enough details to confirm a Ponzi scheme, thus going with a more light terminology of Ponzi-like? Because maybe what I'm asking is, is there a scenario that there was intention to do that, but with lack of enough evidence to call it full-blown Ponzi, they just called it Ponzi-like? That's a possibility, but I would say what happened here is he defaulted on this insurance Ryan Policky, which caused some problems, and there's money problems. For some reason, he needed to pay some people their monthly deposits. He was short, so he moved money from one place to another to pay that. That's a no-no. That is a no-no, right? That is, in fact, a positive. I don't think he constructed it as so. I think because something wasn't going well or there was an error. Hold up, hold up. Are you claiming that there was ignorance here? Like, we've all seen how Bobby Pinball has run into Deep Root Pinball. Sure, sure, but I don't know. So something happened here where they were short and they had to make up money, whatever reason. Okay. The other thing that's pretty interesting is that he went to a bank and said, I got all these insurance policies, I need a loan to make up the rest of this shortfall to pay these clients. Oh. And that's what that is. Okay. Right? So that seems like what the allegations are here of that section. If I was Bobby Pinball, I'd be investing in some fucking antacids because, oh, man, I don't know if I can sleep. Oh, this sounds like stress. Now, the other thing when it comes to ethical lapses, what the regulator found, is that they found in a lot of the documentation and communications that he would have with people, So we're talking emails, we're talking websites like maybe the Facebook page and things like that. A lot of that stuff had that he received, the way they say, despite making suggestions, he took no compensation from the funds. He commingled the funds in Deep Root and Ryan Policky Service bank accounts and made salary payments of $1.6 million from 2016 to 2020. so the money is going in right but so and further on in the document I'm not going to get that deep further on in the document basically the money goes into the fund then it gets transferred to Ryan Policky services which is his own sort of company and then Ryan Policky services pays him so the fund is not paying him so he is not getting compensated from the fund but he is getting compensated for money from the fund from another company this is a little loophole okay why might he have done that why didn't he take it direct then I don't know. Why would he do that? He would do that to say that he wasn't getting compensated from the fund to make people feel better. Sounds a little premeditated to me, allegedly. But okay. Then they get into 1.5 million of the fund's assets were paid to pay personal expenses. And this is in addition to the 1.6 million? Yeah, so this is another bit of compensation. So he's getting paid $400,000 a year, basically, in salary from another company that's not the fund company. Gotcha, okay. This included... What did he buy? They included his daughter's private school tuition. I mean, come on. I mean, that's a given, all right? Yeah, vacations and cruises with his family. Who doesn't love that? His second wedding. Well, the first one didn't work. His second divorce. Then again, you know, sometimes two times is no enough. Okay, so then his third wedding. Oh, so he tripled down. Okay. Jewelry for both his second and third wives. Wow. Including the engagement rings and wedding bands. I wonder which one got the nicer set. Probably the third one. I'll show number two, okay? Yeah. Other lifestyle spending for or by his family. So that would just be dinners, I guess. They want a lifestyle brand. And condominium in Hawaii. Not just Hawaii, but the small island of Kauai. Lovely you, and blue Hawaii. With all this love... The SEC is going to sit you down, and they're going to ask you questions. And they are going to write down your answers. And then those answers will be included in their findings. And he says, look, it's because I don't like the big island. It's too touristy. I like the small, quaint Kauai. I like the curves and the bends in the roads. There's one round road that goes around the island. My Kia just corners so well because it knows it's closer to home. I need a uke right now. A Kia in Kauai, Hawaii. I would love that. The winds come through and move the world away. So, when asked by the SEC counsel during investigative testimony about the use of the fund's assets to pay for these personal and family expenses, Mueller asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Um, no, but I can tell you that I plead the physio. Um, so that's, that's, that's self-explanatory. Is it? Why does one plead the fifth? Because they're concerned that they may say something they don't want to. Bees, fifth. Five. One, two, three, four. Fifth. Anybody can say fifth. Anyway, so that's, you know. Oh, my God. So then it goes, like, then it goes into a few other. More? So, because the relief defendants received proceeds from the defendants' fraudulent conduct without providing consideration in exchange, they have no legitimate claim to the money. Accordingly, relief defendants were unjustly enriched and must disgorge their ill-gotten gains as the result of the defendants' violations. Okay, in people terms? All of the relief defendants, all the Deep Root companies, the pinball company, all those other names. Rather pre-order people, yeah. Right. Sports and Entertainment. What is that? Robert's father, Jeffrey, and his stepmother, Belinda, who are the trustees of a trust company, all are on the hook because they were given money that was from these people. Oh. So all of the salaries paid at Deep Root were paid with money, allegedly, from these people as opposed to making a pinball machine, making money, and paying their staff. Also, you know, the trust company is what owns the Hawaii estate. So what has happened there, I assume, because the trust company, and that's some sort of family trust. That might be Robert's grandfather was a business tycoon and made a bunch of money, and maybe his parents are trust fund people and Robert is a trust fund person. But because that trust fund received ill-gotten gains, they are now open to the SEC going after the money in there to pay back these people. But are they in trouble as well? Yeah. So they're in trouble just because they got the money. And then that's opened them up, I think. I don't know how the U.S. works, but it's opened up that trust fund and whatever is in that trust fund to pay the money. You're done. I'm sorry. That's gone. Yeah, that's gone. So then it goes into the actual details, right, about bank accounts that were used from one way or another, co-mingling the money, marketing practices that weren't really on the up and up. It would appear as though Robert had copied and pasted some information and forgot to change the fund name on some stuff because he's doing it ad hoc. He was told by some sort of accountant at one time he needed, if he's going to give money to one company to another, he's got to put that in the regulatory documents, which he kind of did. So all the details are there. Please look it up and read it for yourself. The devil's in them. But it's not good. Like, this is like, from somebody like me who's in finance, it's, what he was doing is really hard. Right? What do you mean by that, though? It's like you've got to move money around. He's not... I honestly, to be totally honest, I think it has more to do with him, much like the pinball venture being a way in over his head. I see. And when you start with an original sin, and then it spirals. Right? You've got to keep lying to cover up your lie. Right. So, I mean, if you go and you watch that Deep Roots seminar from Expo. Do I have to? You don't have to. Okay. But you can watch that, and you can see his bravado, okay? My assumption is he's like that all the time. And he obviously has a difficult time admitting what he's wrong or his mistakes. It's there in black and white. Things did not go well. And he knew they weren't going well. And he knew they weren't going well, but he was trying to fix them. and by fixing them he was making it worse, and I feel so bad for all these people. That's a pretty big, bold statement that he was trying to fix them, in your opinion, because this is the same person that roughly paid themselves $1.6 million in four years as well as an additional $1.5 million in other funds, including vacations and jewelry and stuff like that. Much like other sales folk, investment people, your clients are your friends. family, people that you meet at your daughter's private school. Idaho neighbor. Your neighbors at your retirement village. If you have a car collection, your clients are your friends that you go racing with on your private track. You know what I mean? Like the people you golf with. Oh, yeah. And unless you can keep up that lifestyle pace, right, you got to fake it till you make it. You know what I mean? Like most of my clients, you know, besides the clients that I inherited from the business that I'm involved in, all of my new clients are all, you know, other soccer parents on my kid's soccer team, you know, neighbors who are my same age. The people who've been, you know, allegedly defrauded here are all somewhere in Robert's social circle. and unless you're in that social circle with high net worth individuals or their parents then you're not getting those clients sounds like elitists to me it's bad yeah I feel really bad sounds like it's Dennis Creso group of people he'd like to hang out with so you know again right I'm not registered in any of these you know jurisdictions you know I'm a Canadian financial advisor I'm saying it on my own And as I read it, it's in no professional capacity. But, you know, that is bad. Like, this is bad. So what happens? What's going to happen? So I would assume he would go to, again, not a lawyer. Don't know U.S. law. Don't know any of that stuff. He would go to trial by jury. And he and his counsel would be able to lay a defense against these allegations, all of which laid under the facts section in here. all have emails, documentation, his interview answers. All of the stuff that's written in here has come from a big investigation by the SEC. Is he praying for a mistrial? Is this the only way out here? I don't know how it would work. I don't know. The SEC is a federal body in the U.S., is my understanding, and that means federal prison. Now, I don't know how. If you worked with the regulators and you came clean and you gave them the answers they needed and you didn't obstruct them, you feel remorse. You relinquish your licenses. Right. They may be lenient. If you fight it tooth and nail, they tend to go a little stronger. If you do a plea deal, right? Those things. And that comes from my criminology background here in Canada, is that when it comes to, first, they have to go to trial. They have to determine if these facts are correct. And it would be a jury trial, so an actual selected jury. This is not going to be solved here, you know, in the next six months, right? This is going to drag out for a while. So we're going to have another delay for Roses. Is that what you're telling me, Dave? Oh, my. Forget food truck. God, food truck. You know what makes me so mad is, once again, Jon Norris gets the shaft. Right, man, I was so excited for him. Shaft! So there's a good likelihood that he's either done in life or done and in jail. Or prison, not even jail. Prison. Yeah, I'm sure none of these people would like to talk to him at the moment. So here's the thing, right? Nobody at Deep Root Pinball LLC, if we tie it back to pinball, would know any of this. They wouldn't know how their paychecks were getting made. They would just know that their paychecks arrived. We don't know that for sure, but okay. Right. You know, Steven Bowden is not cooking the books over, right? You know what I mean? He shows up like everybody else shows up. Nothing we know of, yeah. He programs on the pin bar. You know, they do those things. Jon Norris is, I don't know, he's in like Nevada somewhere, and he's doing... Nordman already left. Right. So all those people, they're all, you know, quote, unquote, getting paid. How is J-Pop affiliated? What are the odds? This is all clearly J-Pop's scheme. I was going to say, what are the odds that J-Pop is associated with all this? Right. He's not. That's the thing. He just shows up and does his job. They wouldn't know any of this stuff. Wow. They're just what they call the relief defendants, that company, because the money is moving from his other companies, his other Ryan Policky services and moving into the Deep Root stuff. Now, in the documentation, it says that the people are aware that they are investing in other Deep Root businesses, but I don't think that they had a reasonable expectation as to what was going on. There's a lot of salaries there. I've been paying salaries for a long time. So anybody who literally got any money from Deep Root, that money was the money of these investors. So if you took money for advertising, if you took money for your YouTube channel, if you took money in salaries, if you took money, and that's why they are named relief defenders. Now, of course, you don't know that, right? So don't feel bad because you were, you know, tricked as much as these people were allegedly defrauded, right? So it's tough. Well, it's like if I was gardening and I went and did some gardening for a family and that family turned out to be the mob. It's not like I, you know. No, don't take me there. I thought it was interesting when I drove over that body in the backyard. I thought the choice of hibiscus this time of year was weird, too, but it's a job. My thoughts and hearts go out to all of those who lost money in this deal. It's another stain on the pinball industry, and one that I thought we were getting further and further from, but shit happens. And on a lighter note, Dave, what does this mean for the Goonies? Oh, yeah. It means the license might be open for somebody else. That's a good way of looking at it. All right, so is that the rest of pinball news? How do you move on from that depressing news? Cowboys? Rootin' tootin', baby. We're jumpin' from Texas. We're jumpin' to the West. Chicago Gaming Company officially announced during a seminar at the Southern Pride Gaming Expo this past week that their next game, number four, is going to be... Ooh, and they showed it? It's going to be a remake of Cactus Canyon. There you go. Boom. Outdated logo. That's the worst kept secret in pinball since GNR. Well, you get to feed them bread and crumbs, I suppose, Dave. But no, they didn't show it. No sizzle reel, SDTM sections, none of that. They didn't get spec sheet. They didn't get pricing. They didn't get availability. Did they talk about powder coating? No, Ryan White was there. He's a VP of sales over at Chicago Gaming Company. He was over there giving a seminar and was trying to give some details of Chicago Gaming Company as a whole, such as using technology like XLCDs or RGB integrated illumination, play field PCBs, interactive toppers, Chicago Gaming Symbol. Oh, interactive toppers. Yeah, I know. Show me your toppers, baby. This one's supposed to be interactive. An interactive game on a topper. Oh, my. Man, I guess my juice is flowing. I can feel you just sweating right now. You were going to say Ford and Church, weren't you? I'm keeping the class up here, buddy. You bring on me to keep the class high on the pinball show. We didn't see anything, no. We did get a report from TPN's CGC correspondent, Matt Morrison, saying that the game should be revealed in the next four to six weeks and in customers' hands one to two weeks thereafter. Well, I mean, if that's the case, then they're building them, right? One to two weeks? Like four to six weeks and then two weeks after that? If you're looking at eight weeks tops, two months, so it puts us October. And they said customers, right? Not customer. That's very true. So it's not like they just have one in somebody's house in two weeks. Yeah, I would. Don't hold your breath there, people. I think we'll see some to play at Expo. I think we'll see some start to trickle out slowly. I've played an original Cactus Canyon. What were your thoughts? You know, I liked it. It was all right. It was fine. It was flowy. Yeah, but I mean, it's not, you know, it's not something I'd pay a fortune for. So it's nice to see the remake is coming out. It's not the second coming. Yeah. Or for Robert Mueller's case, the third coming. It's not Attack from Mars. You know, it's not Medieval Madness. I'll tell you that. Okay. But it's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. They also reported that the CCR coding is finished. So what was the holdup then? Well. There's a bathroom on the right. That's how that goes right I played that last week That was last week's episode They did indicate that it's the licensing Improvement hold up that's what's causing The hold up here allegedly Allegedly I don't know where it's at I don't know why they revealed it As a dealer I don't know why they didn't contact Us prior to and said hey just as a heads up We're going to announce this cactus came we feel like You guys should know from a business standpoint before Our consumers but Details sample details It's pinball You know, I think, you know, you want to sort of trickle it out and build up some excitement and some anticipation. Yeah. Right? Because as soon as they give it to you guys, you're going to leak it anyway. Well, the problem is, as a dealer, I'm getting flooded with messages. Hey, I want to be on the list. Hey, how many LEs are you getting? Hey, when can I get this? Hey, how much money is it? Hey. It's like, well, I've not even been informed from CGC that there is anything. So you're steamed like a pot of clams, my friend. No, I'm friends with them over there. It's not a big deal. But it would be nice to have some info. That's all. It talks about the team members over at CGC. Doug Dubit, the president and owner. Sean Wilson, project manager. Sam Zier, programmer. Butch Peel, we've heard that name. Lead services. Hey, he ended up over here. Good for him. Jim Thornton, project manager. Wait a minute. They were... Joe Schober. Joe Schober. Programmer. The Schobe. The Ferret. Oh. Schobe's over here? Wait. So that's news. I didn't know that you spelled lime and sheets. Joe Schober. Oh, I see what you did there. Nicely done on many levels. Nicely done. Coming soon. Joe Schober from American Pinball. I'm pretty sure he's still working on a game in American Pinball. Well, he worked on the previous one. He worked on Oktoberfest. He worked on Hot Wheels. And to my knowledge, he was working on the next one or two or whatever. So what you're telling me here, Zach, is Joe Schober didn't take the same Uber as Joe Balcer a couple of months back when they left. Oh, yeah. Well, that's true. Nice work done. I think Ulster had to take a plane over to, was it Korea? Where are they making them pins at? The good Korea. The good Korea. The Samsung Korea. Other announcements from Ryan White at CGC is that they are making more MMR accessory kits. Those XL displays, toppers, RGB lighting. Thank God they are. And so those are on the way. And more MMR production coming early 2023. 2023! 2023! I feel like there's a video game industry now. Is that a typo? No, it's 2023. He's going to run into the direct competition of Steve Ritchie's next game. Oh, yeah. Man, you're witty. I can see why your podcast is so successful now. Oh, I'm so good. You're quick like a creasel, but softer like a Twinkie. Do you guys have Twinkies up there? We still have Twinkies here. You guys don't have Twinkies anymore. Do we not? I think somebody bought them. I think somebody's making the Twinkie. Twinkies are always more appealing, the nostalgic taste of them. So I've never had a Twinkie because I always looked at the back of that, at the nutritional information or lack thereof nutritional information. Some plastic ingredients. And I'm already, you know, I'm already what doctors call a little bit of a weight problem. And so I'm always trying to manage my weight because I can put on weight really quickly if I'm not careful. So I'm like, is that Twinkie really worth it? You think of a Twinkie and it goes in your ass, huh? It just goes right to my hips. But they are ramping up. CGC's ramping up production, so they're going to have two production lines. And right now they've got five games in the works. Uh-oh, don't go all Bobby Pinball on me now, Ryan. Five games? Not one. Not two. Get me a Theater of Magic, man. Update some of the code on Theater of Magic? Sure, sure, yeah. Getting all hot and bothered now Perfect world to get Lyman over there Updating them codes Just saying Just saying It's firm pinball also in the news Keith Elwin, he visited TPN's very own Final Round Pinball Podcast this past week With Jeff and Martin Did you hear that one? Yes I did I'm so glad that Jeff and Martin are part of TPN They do a heck of a job And when they talk to these insider folk like the Keith Elwins of the world, the rapport that they have with those individuals means that the quality of the interview is so much better. Couldn't have said it better. It's just natural. Oh, because if I talked to Keith Elwin, I'd be like, hey, Keith, can you tell me about the coffin lock? What are you working on next, Keith? There's a couple of people with Keith Elwin that Martin said that, to Keith Elwin's face that, you know, you've got to save one person between him and IE Pinball's Carl D'Python Anghelo, he'd save Carl. So, buddies over there. I would throw Carl D'Python Anghelo under a bus that was doused in gasoline to save Keith Elwin. A direct capture bus? Yeah. The sound would be so good. I'd throw him both under the bus for Dwight Sullivan. because the headlights on the bus were so bright you couldn't see and they got in the way it had to go in there somewhere see that one talks about past games as well as a future game he said of his three produced games right now his favorite he thinks uh jurassic park i i think jurassic park is his hardest game but it is his best game and he talked i don't know a couple years ago right about how that production got switched around and they kind of shoved it out as quick as they could Yeah, it's the masterpiece. Other than that O-Shot. I take it back. It's the masterpiece minus some of the assets. Yeah. The O-Shot's perfect. Don't. God, everybody wanting these easy games. Let's not get into that fight again. Can everybody take away every hard shot pinball? I'm sorry there, Mr. Top 100 rant. You and I in the group over at TPN, that's the benefits of that Discord channel. Wow. That was fun, wasn't it? Some of us had to take a walk after that. Good hearty little discussion there. Zack against the world. Sorry. I don't want to update it to 2.0. Fuck off, people. Keith Elwin also thinks that fan layouts in general are just boring, and his goal is to provide something different on every title that he leads. He's accomplished this. Every one is totally different. Absolutely. Now wait until he gets to 20 machines, and everybody's going to be like, well, that's the same shot as Jurassic Park. Yeah. That feels like the Goonies. Well, for God's sakes, he can do that Because he's only three games in Everybody complains about Steve Ritchie Who's the top of the next Silver Ball Chronicles game So on the next episode Of Silver Ball Chronicles Here's a little tease for everybody We're talking about part three of Steve Ritchie And all the critiques recently have been like All of his games look exactly the same Well that's because the guy's been doing this for 40 years Yeah, and if you want flow You usually go with the fan layout He's king of play. So as soon as Keith gets up to 20 games, the narrative will change. I disagree. I disagree. I think Keith, based on what he has showed in his previous three games, I think that's enough evidence to showcase that not only is he doing – it would be different if he was doing something different within his designs. When he's doing something different, listener, compared to all of pinball in the past, I think that's a good measurement that we can use to say of all 20 games, he's going to do something different in every one of them. And some of it's going to work, some of it's not going to work But thus far he's batting a thousand Or is he batting a hundred What is that phrase Batting a thousand He did talk about game four, it's coming It's hot, it's fresh And it's similar in rule structure as Iron Maiden I'm okay with that I played Iron Maiden I think I understand the rules But I don't understand what similar rule structure Pretty straightforward, they all seem complicated I think Keith Owen Keith Owen likes to use a structure where you have these tasks that you've got these play field components that you have to get so many of, but then you also have a separate task of mode-based play, and then you have a separate task of integrating both of them, as well as little side hustle missions. Where's my very target, Keith? He put it in Iron Maiden Premium LA. That's what he'd tell you, that captive, bold, very target. It was okay. That's not a very target They took a very target out of Iron Maiden But he would say that Avengers The Tower is a very target Man, I disagree Well, you could send your hate mail Into the pinball network I don't know enough about the depth Of the rules to where if you only get up to the second Opto, if that gives you a different point status In the first, I don't know But you're always going to make it to the top anyway Not always, get a little clunk there You shoot it wrong There's never any clunk in Keith's game, you take that back Oh there totally is But don't ever Say anything negative He talked about game four And he said quote Should be pretty straight forward Once you see the play field you should be like Oh that's obvious So he's saying this one is going to be understandable You look at the play field it's going to tell you What you need to be doing So much so that there's an insert That says like add a ball There's an insert that indicates that and you activate it using maybe the action button, which Jeff Teels loved to hear. Very cool. I hope you have to mash it a bunch of times. Thanks, Dwight. What I didn't know, this was news to me, Dave, is that no game designer can get an LE of their own design game unless they buy through a dealer. Why do you think the premium is always the most beautiful art package Because that the one the designer wants to buy Because they work with the artist They like hey slow down on the LE Let's put the shine on the premium. Do your best. But the one that I like the most, I'm going to put on the premium. I don't want to have to deal with a distributor. After hearing this information, Dave, you know me well enough. What did I do? Oh, you called Keith and said, hey, I got an LE for you. I would call Keith. Don't have his number. and if I called him, he wouldn't answer, I'd leave a voicemail. But I think the result will be the same as I received this time. I did message him, and I said, Keith, that sucks. If that's true, that really sucks. And I think you deserve an Ellie of your game design. So here at Flip N Out Pinball, we would love to find a way to get you your next Ellie. Wow. See? You're so generous. Look, and it is what it is. But it's the right thing to do. Regular markup. It's the right thing to do. I don't even know regular markup. No. Not for Keith Elwin. No. So, put that out there. Didn't get a response, but... But the topper, though. He's going to have to... We're going to have to talk about the topper. He's paying full price. Full ride. He probably doesn't like toppers, if I had to guess. So, you know, I reached out to him because I think that's the right thing to do. That is the right thing to do. Good for you. You are like... Thank you. You're like some sort of... I was waiting for the back path there. Thank you. I think that term's already been taken. Deep inside pinball right there, guys. Nope, I'll take the, I'll take, what do I take? I don't even know religion enough to know disciples. Is there a Zachariah? You'd be Zachariah, yeah. A saint of some type. I mean, give me that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's get that head just a little bit smaller. Let's just bring that down just a little bit. Okay. You got anything else? Dennis Creasel still doesn't like me. Does it hurt your neck when you're sitting there podcasting with your head just falling over because it's so big? I don't have a large head. The proportion of my head, I think, is close to perfection. Greg Bone, big head. Huge head. Yeah, but Greg Bone has the better jawline than you. Yes. Yes. And hair. I mean, let's state the obvious here. Hair is key to that man Facial hair also better Damn He's got an A plus butt that man Actually my ass is nicer than Greg's It truly is I'll be the judge of that See you at Expo We got some media shakeups Pinball media shakeups What the hell is going on That was bad news More bad news Turbo graphics are good news I guess it's all based on perception TurboGrafx7, our friends Ryan Kuyper and Dave Brin, they moved from the Pinball Network to Buffalo Pinball this last week. Yeah, congratulations. They're a very good streaming team. Big, big fans of Turbo. They've been doing it for years. I have actually been a subscriber of theirs on Twitch, so I can get their awesome emoticons and things like that. So good team. Professional pinball, Jesus. I'll tell you what makes their stream a little more fun than everybody else's they're playing games that are not the brand new modern Stern LCD which of course has a place in pinball streaming but they're doing like they're streaming like Genesis Cyclops right like Diamond Lady Jon Norris God Jon Norris so angry I know he'll be around he's coming around we'll see Jon Norris again soon, I promise. How about that for a tease? TurboGrafx-7, we wish you the best. We think the world of you. I love you like a brother, and I did before the Pinball Network was even a thing. Their opportunity to join their friends over at Buffalo Pinball is one that makes sense to me, and one that you guys should support and follow as well. Go to Buffalo Pinball. I think he's still going to be taking Fridays. He's going to be streaming under Buffalo. He's not getting rid of TurboGrafx-7 yet, and maybe there will be some random streams with Dave doing tech stuff on there, he told me. But just couldn't say anything greater about Ryan. He was professional. He's fun. He's courteous. Reached out, discussed this with us. So, thank you. So, what about this big, huge war? Are we supposed to, like, get our pitchforks and be all angry and how dare they leave and Buffalo pinball and think your chicken wings are so good? Are we supposed to do that now? I guess. I don't know. I don't think so. Okay. I think we continue to support Buffalo Pinball as we have. Yeah. We love those people. Yeah, man. It's a big pond, man. There's no silly shenanigans or any of that angry, like, honest to God. Nope. Good for them. Good people stick with good people. That's just how it works. Yeah. Tuna. Give us a call, Tuna. Tuna. Tuna. I haven't seen Tuna's stuff in a while. I've got to check in. No, I was referring to the bad news. That kind of makes me sad just because I love the guys over at TurboGrafx. But that's a good story. The sad story is our friends over at the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast have a shakeup as well. Ian Haberman, he's calling it quits. He's done. Yeah, that's a bummer. That's a bummer. And I listened to his farewell. His farewell was really, really heartfelt. It was kind of depressing. It was good. It was one of their best episodes, to be fair. Yeah. Yeah, the most polished and sober. Well thought out. But, you know, it's a bummer, man. I really enjoyed Ian. There were plenty of times when I would go see clients in other cities and towns. New Brunswick. Oh, New Brunswick. I'd travel out to see folk before the world ended, and I was locked in my office. But I would listen to poor mans, and I would laugh and stuff like that. It's pretty good. And then, of course, just because somebody steps away doesn't mean they disappear forever, right? No, they're going to keep going. Sometimes the fowler stink comes back towards us And it surrounds us for a little while And then we wave it away after a little while And hopefully the same thing will happen with Ian Yeah, and he's a great dude I loved his explanation as to why It was very thoughtful And he's wanting to put some more time back in the family And the thing that rang true for me And I relate to this better than most, I think Just because I pour myself into this media stuff too He said that the product that he was creating or conceptually thinking about and wanting to do, there was limits to resources and time to produce that product. Thus, he didn't feel fully great about the product he was producing because it wasn't the full vision that he would like to see done. Right. And once you start delaying episodes and something pops up and things like that, it's not that you're concerned about your ego or whatever, nobody's hearing you on the podcast. It's that you feel bad that you're not putting all of your effort into it, right? Yeah. And if you're not putting all your effort into it, it's stressful. I know that sounds silly. But if you're not putting your effort into it, you know, like you're not just, you're not doing it for yourself. Well, yeah. And what I can relate to mostly, though, is I think I know how Ian's mind works. And he presents himself because he has a lot of the whole poor man mentality, fun, drinking and stuff. But that stuff doesn't work unless there is structure, unless there is time, unless there's editing, script. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that that he plays very well naturally to the audience. But I think I know where he's coming from. There's a certain level that he wanted to get to that would call for too much, and he knows if he can't. It's like me. We had this argument, right? If I can't put in 100, if I can't get that, then I don't want to do it. And I respect the hell out of him explaining that. It was the sloppiest show on the Internet, but it certainly did have some polish that you might not have been aware of. Man, that tagline is so good. Brilliant to people who think about that. You haven't given Chronicles a good one yet. We'll get there. All right, Dave, hopefully you're fully aroused, because now is the time in the podcast where I present the gospel. You might be a financial guy. I get that. Hashtag whatever. But there is some truth out there. And we set it free here in a little segment we like to call PIMBA MARKET TRENDS! Oh, this music. Huh? This music. Here we go! Yeah, let's go. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. This is the part of the show where I get all animated. See, I'm awake now. You fucking put me to sleep with the SEC bullshit you had earlier in the show. This is the part where you hit a chocolate bar And you're just like Finances GDIs Whatever the hell you're driving TDI And you're the guy that's doing the market trends Turning up this week Is Jurassic Park Premium And Ellie bitches How about it How can you not turn this thing up Numbers don't lie I only report the facts The T-Rex eats the ball off the ramp. Yeah. Come on. Come on, man. Number two on the Pennside Top 100. Have you checked out that Topside 100 yet? Topside. Yeah, I pop in every now and then just to see where, you know, those games are. Jurassic Park. Stop making new games, Jern. It's number two. It's number two, and I think it's, wow, that's a big stake. I think it's going to stick this time. I think it deserves to be there. Wow. Minus the assets and blank thereof. In addition, my other supporting evidence here, only reporting the facts, is Keith Ellen, the designer himself, said of the three that he made, the masterpieces, that's the best one. That's his favorite. Not only that, it also is turning up because we here look at, you know, maybe we don't run polynomial analyses and stuff. We don't need to. You mean actual market trends. We have a finger on the pulse. What more do you want flow-wise than a finger on the pulse? You can take your EKGs and all that pulmonary pulse science. Such a finger on the pulse. And we got it here on the Pinball Show, Pinball Market Trends. Numbers don't lie. They're suggesting with another production run not until December. We're in August, September, October, November. Holidays are coming. People are hungry. There's only so many spots left in that December run from dealers before waiting in 2022. You're going to see that number shift upward even from where it is now. People are going to want Jurassic Park, and they're going to want it in a prehistoric way. I don't know what looks good next to a dinosaur. Almost dinosaur-like, maybe a big lizard going through a cityscape. Maybe they'll look good together. Maybe they'll both be the same designers. Maybe. Just maybe. Something big is coming as well. James Bond is not a lizard. I'm not excited about a James Bond, but whatever. You are dead to me. Unless it's Daniel Craig, because he's the only good one. Oh, oh. Daniel Craig's got balls. Like, that is a Bond. All right. He's got grit, baby. Daniel Craig, but now we're going down a path here. I don't want to go down, so let's move on to the next one. Get your moose out, Pierce Brosnan. You know what Pierce Brosnan was better in than 007 Goldeneye? Mrs. Doubtfire. He was good in Mrs. Doubtfire. Grab a nice fruity. Well, hello! Hello! Oh, man. Yep, Jurassic Park's on the up. Also on the up, my pants after seeing this guy every time he makes an appearance, is John Stamos, baby. My God, I got a man crush on this. Like the actor? No, my neighbor, John Stamos. He's a fucking actor. What other John Stamos? Your neighbor's with John Stamos? Man, I wish. Does he have an above-ground pool as well? I'd have a restraining order My neighbor, John Stamos Just be my friend, John John! You think John Stamos wears a Speedo or a Trump? It's like me and Emilio Estevez Emilio! It's like Emilio! Yeah, John Stamos is a man He, I was just, and this is selfish But look, it's a pinball market term for some reason I was looking at the Facebooks and the social medias And John Stamos This is like a culmination of feelings for me He appeared at the Indiana State Fair. Oh, God. God bless you, Indiana. Touring with the Beach Boys. Oh, can we get more iconic? You got Hoosier Land. You got Beach Boys. You got John Stamos. And he was rocking an IU jersey. Oh, guys, my heart can't take this many layers of joy. Literal joygasm is what I had. Yeah, no. Clean up aisle four. Remember John Stamos was on Full House, the best sitcom of all time. The only thing anybody ever remembers him ever doing? What's that? The only thing that anybody ever remembers him doing. It's not fair. He's one of the lead boys as well. He's a terrific and prolific singer, and he's beautiful. Is he the guy that comes out and tunes the guitars? He is. He's played a lot of things. Okay. You just remember the Full House. That's fine, because it was great. Remember when he sang? He was the Jesse and the Rippers. Remember that? I have no idea. You're probably real old. I don't know I didn't even know John Stamos was like more than that was the only thing he ever did, seriously I'll remember that song he sang Forever The Beach Boys, the episode of Full House Jesse and the Rippers, he played Forever and it was a music video, it was a cover for the Beach Boys song Forever He's a hard throw man Trending down this week since David Dennis is on is always Tron Legacy. Oh, come on. Sorry. Come on. Look, every time you're on this show, I'm trending that shit down. This is the worst. Numbers don't lie. I only report. I can't believe I put up with your crap. The quasi-fans. It's not true. If I can, if I got a finger to the pulse and I can change it or modify it or alter it because I'm an X-Man, we're going to trend down Tron Legacy. If you got a Tron Legacy, you're shit out of luck. That shit's dropping. Woof. Hopefully you didn't take out a second mortgage for that because... This whole segment has my blood pressure. Pennies to the dollar. Or quib to the frank. What the fuck do you guys use up there? Loonies. That's even better. Tron Legacy in Canada probably cost you 20 grand. I don't even know what that means. Cost me three sled dogs and a Saskatchewan lady of the night. Oh, man, and a pint of maple syrup. Is your syrup really that much better? It is, yeah. You have no idea. Can you bring it down? Yeah, of course I'll bring it down. They get you at the line. And I'll try not to spit in it. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the joke of the day here on the Pinball Show. Nice improvisational skills there. Also trending down is the low-hanging fruits Cactus Canyon original. Truly, if you have a Cactus Canyon original and now you're thinking about selling it, guess what? You're $2,000 too late. You just lost money. There's still people holding out not knowing what the next remake is. Now, there's a lot of people that would prefer the OG because you can actually do the fixes on the boards. You could do all that stuff. There's a lot of people that would prefer to have the old one. I'm not one of them, but that's the argument that they would make. And the flippers don't feel the same. Well, whatever. It's a better game. It just is what it is. Now, if you have a Cactus Can, you lost money. Might as well keep that thing. Now, if you have a continued version, the Eric Pripke version, I'm not saying that's dropping. I'm talking about the OG. because that might still offer enough uniqueness that retains some value. But nope, the original ain't worth shit no more. Sorry. Sorry. Hey, there's $15,000. Just a goodbye. That shit ended a year ago. My assessment on a Cactus Canyon original worth whatever the SV comes in at, probably like $100,000, $200,000 lower than that. Strong take. Also trending down this week, oh, here's some more fruit. Raza, Food Truck, and the fucking Goonies. Oh, man. You had to go for that. It kills me. It kills me. I know you were looking forward to Food Truck. I wasn't. Sorry, Orsler. Orsler. I'm sorry. I wasn't. I can imagine what it looked like, though, with those rams. Because he does the same rams. Goonies was where it was going to be at. Do you think they even had the Goonies license now that I'm thinking about it? Well, I mean... All of these lies. The investors owned the IP to that, I guess. They never said it was Goonies. It was an 80s property. I bet they didn't even have the Goonies. Maybe it was Rambo. I'm hoping they didn't have the Goonies. That way it can still be negotiated. What are you all doing, manufacturers, for the Goonies? And Loser Kid, this is the second week in a row that I will throw shit your way because you deserve it. Sorry, Utah. It's Tom and Asha from Indiana. You telling me in private message That Goonies is a horrible thing You just don't get it And it didn't age well Write in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast At whothefuckknows.com Let those guys know Their fingers not on the Their fingers like on the ankle To pinball If they think that Goonies is a bad thing I don't think that was their actual email address Scott, you're out of your mind I watched it again But the kids done hold up I'm looking forward to the next The next Loser Kid Pinball Podcast Award winning Loser Kid Pinball Podcast When they talk about the deep root thing This is, that'll be a There'll be no allegedly's in that podcast It's hard for me to even take them serious now With this whole Goonies And Dennis Creasel sniveling, whining Dennis Creasel agreed with him. Ugh, it's because they're right. Gotta find better friends. Deal of the week this week. Bye, bye, bye! Yeah, there it is. Yep, deal of the week this week is a data east Jurassic Park on Pinside from a friend over in North Dakota. Jurassic Park data east. T. Casey Butler 6. Pal over there in North Dakota. And Minnow. Minnow? I don't know if it's too silent. Minnow? He's got a nice data east. You think it's called Minot? Minot. Minot. Minot. Minot. Minot. Minot, North Dakota. Me, South Dakota. That was a stupid dad joke. It comes with an NOS gun, flipper board NOS, rebuilt board, NOS coin door, pin sound. It's like $400 right there. X-pin power supply, color DMD. Oh, get out of town. This thing's got to be $5,000, $6,000. Original topper. extra new and bagged T-Rex motor? NIB full plastic set? Full teardown 2015? This is a deal, right? How much would you pay for this? He's even got a pillow of Ian Malcolm. A pillow? Who doesn't? Well, we've got pillows now that we're selling in our merchandise collection. $4,400. Buy, buy, buy! This thing's going to be gone by the time we air this episode. And if it's not, y'all are crazy. That is a steal of the week. I can't say the same, though, in this week's deal of the WTF this week. Daisy Boy is a Jurassic Park week here. Jurassic Park Premium on Pennside. We're just trending that up. How can you trend that down? Well, I can when it's coming outside of San Francisco, San Jose area. I'm not a West Coast hater. I love you guys over there. but a person by the name of Mallory selling, attempting to sell, Jurassic Park Premium with 31 plays. Thought I loved it after 30. You should have left it at 30. 31 was the doer. Couldn't do it. It does come with a shaker motor, so there's that, external volume, and limited amber shooter rod. That's false. I don't get the whole wearing headphones when you're playing. I don't get that. I don't understand why you would wear headphones in play. Because if you're trying to keep it quiet, it's really hard to do that with really loud flippers. Yeah, yeah. And mechs. I can hear some things on my earpod pros that I can't hear on my television. That'd be my argument. Plug it into the Hobbit and play it and that'll answer your question. Immersive. You can feel every, every second of that ball going around that orbit. Get those headphones in. It drums out some of those mixed-up drop targets. Jurassic Park Premium with 31 plays with all of these accessories, like a shaker motor and a shooter rod. Mallory, $12,000. Go sell, sell, sell. No. That's like Canadian. Let's go here for that in Canadian dollars. And that's still a ripoff in Canada. They're making these machines, people. This could have been new in box with all these accessories uninstalled, and it still wouldn't be worth close to $12,000. What are you smoking over there? I know it's legal, but shit. Hook a guy up. I don't even know what to put this under. Deals of the week. Deals of what fuck. It's a little bit hybrid of both. Deals of the week. The fuck? This is Johnny Mnemonic. Whitewood prototype. I just list this because it's on Pennside by Fat Train. What up, Fat Train? Fat Train. He's always pricing shit really high and stupid. Same goes here. $15,000 for this Johnny Mnemonic. God. I kind of want this one, Dave. It's a whitewood. But it has like inner work. Not the spinner's word. But they've got like this black line art on Mylar and then overlaid on the white wood. It just looks really cool. It's really, really cool. And it's got a custom topper in full chrome. Should I buy this? Yes. I think it's a ripoff, but one that I might take. You ever like it, Jim Raff? Where you know it hurts, but it hurts so bad it feels good. If it doesn't look like I'm playing on glass, I'm sending it back. I like it rough, Dave, sometimes. And this is how it is here. You know you're getting taken, but you kind of like it. I don't know. I kind of want it. I don't really want to deal with that train, but I just might. So now, stay tuned. You should head on down to the Greyhound Station and jump on a bus and head on out to California. You want to get taken, go to the VW dealership and buy a TDI. BDI, what is it? GTI. I don't know. BMI? TMI this show's gone off the rails my friend oh it was off the rails long ago my friend alright do what you can to support the show and if you can't tight ass then just listen to next week's episode of Pitbull Market Trends Canadian edition now with 50% more moose we'll close out the show with this where can people find you between now and the next time like 2025 when Richie comes out with a game and you come back on to co-host. Yeah, so why don't you swing on over to silverballchronicles.com BDE! Swing over to BDE! All these mnemonics in here. Yeah, and also, of course, facebook.com slash silverballchronicles, but you can send us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com if you want to talk to me about the pod. we've just recorded our next episode which is a third part of our three part series on Steve Ritchie this one covers his return to Stern in the early 2000s and ends with Led Zeppelin and the months that followed it good timing we're talking about Star Trek we're talking Star Wars Star Wars is great World Poker Tour at least I got Ron on my side about the love of Star Wars I'm also on that bandwagon as well But the only reason I like Star Wars Is because my friend is the dealer And I want him to sell more And I'm required to say that So where can they buy extra pinball machines? If you're going to plug any game How about do one that sells well right now And as a reminder everybody You've got to go Really quick, simple and easy Go to Facebook right now Find the Flip N Out Pinball Facebook page Or the Pinball Network page Locate that art design post where we're showing off the art designs, and simply share it to your social media, to a pinball Facebook group, or Pinside, or Instagram, or Twitter, whatever. And then also post a comment on which design in that collection is your favorite. Send us evidence of that by an email at thepinballnetwork at gmail.com, and Dennis and I are going to maybe select you next week's episode to win that limited edition 4-inch Creso clone specialized t-shirt that I cannot believe he is allowing. And if we sell all of them, Dennis is going to do something special. We'll talk next week about what I think that may be. It was good last time. Bye, bye, bye. Flip N Out Pinball, of course. You can always email us media-wise over here at thepinballnetwork at gmail.com. You can now help support. Truly, no bullshit. I'm very, very proud of the work that Brad Brad Albright was able to do, as well as myself in creating this merchandise collection. I've handpicked all of the products. They might be a little bit more money, but I handpicked them because they are really nice pieces, really nice shirts and textures and stuff. Give me tri-blend or give me death. Absolutely. Couldn't have said it better myself there. What pins do you have in stock there? I got a Hot Wheels. What else you got? I have one Hot Wheels, and that's it. That is it. I've got more on order. What do you have from the other manufacturers? I have hundreds of machines on order. I've got nothing, Dave. I've got nothing. I've got a Jurassic Park topper. You've got a Jurassic Park topper? No. But I've got some. I've got Jurassic Park over-ordered. I've got some TMNT shooter rods. You thought they were never going to happen again. They did. They're here. And I do, I don't want to say what I've got, but I think Stern is sending me like a trailer full of accessories that I've ordered. So are you going to dismantle those accessories and build a machine? And people, the UV lighting kit for Stranger Things is coming. But in typical Stern fashion, they're just going to roll out slow, and they're going to trickle out. They didn't, all this misinformation out there, They didn't discontinue them at this point, and they're going to produce them. They're making them. They're making a lot of stuff. They're even looking at maybe going back to some toppers that haven't been made in a while. So stay tuned for that. Escalators, if you want one, get your order in now because there's still an 8 to 10-week turnaround time. Visit us at the Chicago Pinball Expo coming up in October. Get your tickets now for that. And the TPN team, Dave, are they going to let you out of your cage of a country and come down here or no? You guys won't let us into your country. Well, we have standards. That's right. That's right. Unless you bring some ketchup chips and some maple cookies. There's nothing you're getting across here, bud. Mexico, yeah. Come on up, guys. Yeah, no, I'm not going anywhere into the U.S. I'm sorry. You guys need to see how we party down here. Come on, baby. Don't send me any leftist Canadian hatred email, but I'm not going down there for a little while. Teefy, and last week we had nothing. Zero. Nada. We didn't have anything. It was an off week. It was an off week. I would probably blame the worst podcaster that we have for this, which is Joel Engelberg. Oh, I knew it was coming up at some point. I knew it would trickle in there. Hell, we lost custody of... TurboGrafx. That's what happens when we have an off week, people. Damn. That's what happens when parents argue and one of them loses. It's always the father. But I wanted to make Joel go the whole episode waiting for it, and I've made him listen right until the end. A lot of irons in the fire over there in the Engelbert Studios. You yourself have some pretty exciting stuff coming up with TPN here soon that we'll probably be announcing. Don't want to spoil that. This week at TPN, a free play. I believe we'll get another triple dream. Maybe just another. That's Tom's show, right? I think that's it. I don't know what else we'll get. We are due for a final round Tuesday. Until then, for David Dennis, I'll always be your Zachary May. And remember, Joel Engelberth is now only the second worst person in pinball. That's harsh. And always practice safe pinball and allegedly up. Buy a t-shirt. Wear it. So long, everybody. As the, what was his name? Who are you talking about? The designer. Norman? Joe Balcer? Joe Balcer. Right, okay. So then, so what you're saying is Joe Schober did not get the same Uber. as... Joe Bolton. Insert it all in. So what you're saying is Joe Schrober didn't get the same Uber... Schrober. Schrober. Schrober. This is honest to God. I screw up names non-stop on Symbol Chronicles. It's so bad. Schrober. It wasn't even that good of a joke either. It's a good joke, goddammit! I'll be so happy loving you.