thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast this is episode what are we on 51 51 come on we just had 50 last time i'm so glad we weren't recording just 30 seconds earlier so with me my co-captain as always scott larson and scott let's get let's get our wonderful friends of the podcast let's talk about them for a second before we introduce our guests Okay, first and foremost, if you want to pick up that new pinball machine or pinball swag to upgrade your machine, please check out Flip N Out Pinball. I just got my new Avengers topper, and I'm going to be installing it here soon. And so that's a great place to either get a machine or bling things out. Zach and Nicole have always been great to work with. Also, if you want to look at how to play that pinball machine, check out Ray Day Pinball. he's a great currently the world's number one and he finished this year as number one so he's a great resource for you also if you want to find out more about the things going on in pinball please check out this week in pinball Jeff Patterson and right now the Twippy Awards are going on so if you feel so inclined please go ahead and cast a few votes and vote for your favorite machine, favorite podcaster, favorite etc. Also check out the Pinball Loft. It's a blog of my friend and he'll be able to help you out there. If you want to pick up those pin shades, so if you want to play on location but actually be able to see past the glare of the glass, go ahead and check out pin shades. If you want to pick out some extra art, check out Brian Allen. He just released a whitewater alternative trans light which is a lot of fun. It has a lot of easter eggs from the Williams Valley era. And if you want light up your trans lights that have been sitting around and gathering dust please check out lit frames they always have a good deal going on and a way to spruce up your pinball area also if you want to check out some more information on pinball please check out pinball supernova and if you're looking at the history of pinball a great podcast that has just finished their 10th episode is the Silver Ball Chronicles. That is on the Pinball Network. And currently with us, we have the co-host of the Silver Ball Chronicles, way up from the Great White North, the land of Russian Geddy Lee. It's David Dennis. Hey, how is everybody? Thank you for having me on. This is the Top of the Mountain Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. It's a big deal to be on this one. Well, thank you. We don't feel that way, but no, shower us with more praise. We don't want That's right. I just need to get that ego going so I get all the softball questions, all the praise and love. It's going to be amazing. Okay, first off, I do want to start off. I saw David post something on Facebook, and this is how we started interacting. It was about the election time, and they had Canadians be like, and I had a guy eating some Lay's ketchup potato chips and staring out the window like Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched. and so I talked back and forth and David actually sent me some culinary treats from Canada and so now I have been able to enjoy Canadian cuisine and even when I was at Epcot Center I got some okay how do you pronounce this is it poutine or is that what it is that's the way to go yeah so yeah if you get the francophone pronunciation it's poutine and if it's if it's you know, your Anglophone kind of way. It's, it's like Putin, but you know, it doesn't, it's tomato, tomato, really. It's, it's all it is, is the most amazing thing that fills your heart with love and feels your, yeah, your arteries with a plaque. So, but Hey, it was very good. And so anyway, I promised him a shirt and in true to form the last of the year, I've been completely slammed the last two months. And so I have not been able to get that off again. Those things will be out and I'll probably recruit Josh to help me send those things out because he is much better actually getting to the post office than I am. I can't believe Dennis Creasel has one of these, uh, one of these hats and I'm, and I'm without one of these hats. And, and quite frankly, I think I am much more charming than somebody like Dennis Creasel. Well, Dennis is kind of, uh, I've, I've mentioned this before. If you watch SpongeBob, he is kind of the Squidward. he's usually trying to get the job done but he's not really the ray of sunshine that Zach is so anyway good times so we will get things up to you so Dennis how are things up in Canada right now things are going fairly well we've had a very mild sort of beginning of the winter so we're all very pleased at how this is going my area particularly when it sort of comes to the COVID outbreak and whatnot We are probably one of the best places in the entire world when it comes to caseload and where to live and where to be. So we're incredibly lucky. We're taking it incredibly serious here with masking since like July. You know, everybody is physical distancing like you would not believe. So it's turned out fairly well here for the most part. I do very much miss people. I haven't been to any events. I haven't gone to any tournaments in Nova Scotia, which is the province next to mine. I haven't played a lot of the newer games, and that's a bit of a bummer. But in general, how things are going, I would say significantly better than most places. That's really good. I feel like in the retrospective of the year, I feel like all I do is I go to work and I come home and not really do much of the other stuff. we've been able to do some limited events like i i picked up a turtle's machine and i also picked up an avengers and was able to get some people over but a couple people over we wore masks dropped them down but it just the dynamic is different usually when events get around there's there's fun there's eating there's drinking there's playing and when you're it feels more sterile, I guess. And it doesn't have that relaxing feel. The social aspect has been completely nuked this year. Yeah. And you have this weird anxiety all the time, which doesn't help you when you're trying to relax with friends as well. But, you know, it could seriously be a lot worse, especially where we are here in Canada. But the expectation with that vaccine, the distribution of that here. Canada is all about sort of lefty bureaucracies and government overreach. And so far, the vaccine rollout has been going incredibly smooth, incredibly fast. Testing is easy and quick, and majority of it is online. So things have gone really well here, considering what they could be. Yeah, I got my vaccine two weeks ago, and so I have not grown the third head, but I have been able to read mine, so it's been really useful. Nice! Sadly, it's just my mind that I'm reading, and I'm kind of boring, so... It's like the sound of rocks. Yeah, exactly. It's all good. So, anyway, you have a good New Year? You have a good Christmas time? Everything was great. Things have gone really, really well. The family had tons of fun. We were able to do the Christmas dinners. We were able to do all of that stuff because caseloads are so low. Got to see a few friends and play some pinball with their collections here locally. And I did a lot of tweaking. I got a couple of new coils there on some Black Fridays. And of course, those show up right just before Christmas. You're able to do some soldering and fix a couple of coils here or there, strengthen them up. So yeah, I would say I got ahead quite well this year. That's awesome. And we are going into the new year now we had an announcement recently uh so we kind of all knew this was coming we've heard about it uh led zeppelin yes let's talk about initial response and one when you when i tell you the word or the band led zeppelin what do you feel when it comes to pinball oh it's rocking out Right. It's it is it is the definition of rock. And I have to be totally transparent. There is one rule in my car, and that is never turn down Led Zeppelin. Are you being serious with us right now? That's the one rule. Well, that is the one rule in my car. Never turn off Led Zeppelin. So if it's on the radio or I have it on Spotify, it never gets shut off. And in fact, it rarely gets turned down. It is pretty great. I have two children. I got a five and a half year old and a two and a half year old. And I've had to teach them a very difficult lesson a couple of times on you never turn Led Zeppelin because they don't want to listen to it. And I say and I had to and I have to explain it to them. And, you know, they cry. But it is important life lesson that they learn that Led Zeppelin is to not be turned off. OK, is that did they turn it off when they were shoveling? Is that why you sent him out to shovel your driveway? Because I saw you saw you yelling at them. That's right. They they they need to learn these important lessons in life. I'm a you know, I love Led Zeppelin. I'm not I'm not a massive Led Zeppelin fan. And I'm not a I don't have that that level of love like a Jeff Teolas has. But I really do enjoy Led Zeppelin. I think they're a fantastic band. And I think that this is an amazing, amazing thing for somebody like Stern to pick up. I totally agree. I think that Led Zeppelin, well, they're one of the top seven bands to ever break like over 300 million albums sold or something like that. I mean, they've they've obviously etched their name into the histories of rock and roll and music in general. How many people have they influenced, right? How many bands have, you know, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham, you know, how many bands have they influenced to do what they do now? Like that, it goes well beyond they've played some awesome rock songs, you know, and sold some albums. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. No, it's a standout theme for sure. And I would consider one if I was in that era for a new-in-box pinball machine, if I was in the market for something like that. That would be something I would consider, but it's a Ritchie, so there's no major surprises when it comes to playfield layout. I think the big surprise here is how it's coded and what the code is going to be like, and I think that's where the game is going to shine. Yeah, I totally agree with that. See, when I thought of Led Zeppelin, I'm thinking, OK, if I ask you to name three icons from a different era. So in the 50s, in the 50s, you would definitely say Elvis Presley, right? Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. And in the 60s, you're going to say the Beatles, Rolling Stones and pretty much everybody else. Right. So you're talking bands that other bands say, I want to do what they're doing. So that's different. So you have the – and then think of the 70s. Is there a more iconic band? You could say Led Zeppelin. You could probably say Fleetwood Mac. I would honestly – if I was going to fight you on it, I would say ACDC is up there with Led Zeppelin. Okay, but I guess I look at ACDC and Back in Black came out around 1980. And so I would consider that the end of the 70s. But if you're looking at a band that drove the 70s, even Aerosmith said the reason why we made it big is because Led Zeppelin wasn't touring around here every year. And so they're like, Led Zeppelin's not coming, but Aerosmith is coming. And so that's when they made their chops because, you know, I would say Aerosmith's a good band. It's a great band, but I don't think it moves to the icon status. But Led Zeppelin is an iconic band. And when you look at the 80s, the iconic bands, I would say Van Halen. I would say ACDC. I would actually say, and I'm going to push back on this. I would say Bon Jovi because once they release their stuff, there is a shift in the way other bands are making music. And you could say the same thing about Guns N' Roses. They were a glorious sunset to that 80s sound. Then you had Nirvana who twisted things and moved on. Well, they were 90s though. No, no. I'm just saying I'm moving on with icons. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. You got Nirvana. You got Pearl Jam. And U2 is – okay, I forgot U2. I would say U2 is probably the biggest iconic band of the last 40 years, even though they really haven't done much in the last 20 years really. But really name other bands that are super iconic. And anytime you can land an iconic band or an iconic theme, whatever it is, you're going to take it. No, I totally agree. I think that my first impression of Led Zeppelin is the art fills to its era. I felt like it hits the 70s fill on the mark. I also felt like, though, that we've rehashed this play field before. And like David said, man, it's Steve Ritchie. You kind of know what you're going to get with it. But the thing that kind of is a no, it's weird to me, is like when you think of Steve Ritchie and you think of this layout, you think of star trek you think of spider-man you think of you know and all those have in commons that warp ramp and it just it feels right you know it's spider-man i guess it loops back around to the left side but still it's like the greatest shot in pinball yeah and it's weird to me that now this is technically behind a paywall because you don't get it with the pro you get it with the premium and the le it just it's a weird move to me so okay is there anything new about this yes i i will give you that but i i think you're gonna find that uh they have made compromises or they've made decisions based on what they can satisfy for the location pinball because you're still going to sell the majority of your machines um in the pro price range and then you're going to get the collectors and the premiums and some sort of mix out there but it's a challenging thing to kind of walk that line so i i don't know i i think it's it's good but if you really look at the 50s and 60s and 70s there wasn't much variation in pinball layouts either yeah well but here's the thing though like from what i've heard though is the pro has had lukewarm reception to it at best numbers wise being bought like it is obviously if you want this game people are buying premium or le it's not the pro on this one so do you think though that's because locations aren't selling games like there is no like location pinball right now and so you're mainly selling to a home collector i would i would say yes but um look at turtles and avengers this year avengers has sold pros to locations even the locations aren't really technically open i mean i know people that own pros that and turtles it seems like the pro is the better way to go versus the premium le oh don't tell me that kills me i have a premium but my point being is is i i feel like the numbers will go with the machine that feels like it's worth it the most yeah i mean if you're if you're trying to find you know that value proposition right now we're buying a box of lights that is you know is more expensive than you know what it actually costs you know to actually build yeah but if you're looking for you know unique fun interesting things that the premium the premium le of this is is is stellar if you're a diehard zeppelin fan and you just want the the tunes and the good time you know you're going pro if you're more of the player collector hobbyist you're going in premium le i agree yeah like i mean i don't uh when it comes to art in in general the premium le package i think is beautiful and if people are going to freak out okay okay there's a difference though road here dennis there's a difference though you have the you have the play field and you have the side art and so are you lumping them both together i'm gonna jam them both together i'm okay with the black and white because that is led zeppelin right yeah that image is led zeppelin and as a led zeppelin fan i'm like yeah i'm good with that now would i rather a hand-drawn you know franchi-esque band members beatles treatment well yeah of course but this isn't gonna make me you know drive to chicago in the middle of the pandemic and burn Stern to the ground. Yeah. You know, the pro with the Zeppelin III album art, you know, my least favorite album art, like, of all of their, you know, albums, right? But it is Led Zeppelin. You know, I got to give them. That's the brand. That's the, you know, that's the iconic album. You know, it's not the greatest. It's thematically consistent, I guess. It's artistically consistent with what Led Zeppelin has done themselves. Exactly. And it looks like a pop star in the 70s threw up on the album cover, and that's exactly what this machine looks like. So I can't fault them for that. Well, and I think this is a prime example. This is your first one if you're ready to start taking tallies. I think this is where when a licensor gets involved versus one that just is somewhat interested, like Guns N' Roses versus Led Zeppelin. I mean, Led Zeppelin, it sounded like the band had a lot of direction of where they wanted stuff to go. On Led Zeppelin or Guns N' Roses? On Led Zeppelin, and it wasn't for the better, in my opinion, artwork. Like David said, I mean, like album art, their number three album, would you really pick that as your main artwork? That's probably what they wanted because that's exactly how they envisioned their pinball machine. You listen to Eric with Guns N' Roses, Slash came in with an entirely different concept of what the pinball machine was going to be for Guns N' Roses. He came in as a fan of pinball saying, you know, pinball art is this. Yes. And get me a great artist and make me pinball art, as opposed to the licensor for Led Zeppelin saying, this is Led Zeppelin. Here's flip through the book and find what you like. Exactly. And so I think that that is the difference between I think that the problem that Stern is now going to have from here on out when it comes to licensors especially with Gary Stern remarks on Super Awesome Pinball Show it like if we can mod these things and we going to be threatened to uh you know whatever it may be because we we changing it from stock Then people are going to demand better product coming from Stern when it comes to our artwork and stuff like that. You're going to have to work a little closer with the lines to serve because it's obviously can be done. Cause look at slash and Eric, which, uh, guns and roses. It also depends though on now that's not necessarily a, a good or bad thing. My attitude is if you are contracting with someone who they have created a product, they've created a brand, and depending on how involved or non-involved they want to be, sometimes that makes it better and sometimes that makes it – it makes it okay mainly because that's their product. When you have Iron Maiden and you have the classic, iconic visual style of Iron Maiden was done in the 80s. And it was done by an artist named Derek Riggs, who he wasn't actually a trained artist, but he had a very style that resonated with him. And what Zombie Yeti was able to do in the Derek Riggs style was still consistent with what Iron Maiden was trying to do. So now with Led Zeppelin, I look at this art package and I look at it. I don't have a problem with that. I look at the way that Led Zeppelin has crafted their brand. They've always been very jealous of how they want to present themselves. And I don't have a problem with that because the alternative is, OK, so you're just not going to get a machine. If you don't want to do what Led Zeppelin wants to do, then it's their product. So if you're not willing to work with their constraints, then maybe you need to go somewhere else. Yeah, I think it's worth it, right? Like dealing with those issues, I think it's worth it. They're going to sell a ton of these. And some licensors, when they say easier to work with, what that means is that they don't really have much input. They're just going to let you do what you want. Now, okay, that's great if you have a good idea, but what if your idea sucks? Yeah. I mean, legitimately, right? We're assuming that, oh, well, the person who has the most creative control, they will produce the best product. But how many things has – well, I'll use Star Wars for an example. Like Star Wars books. I read like a – I saw there was a series of books that were supposed to be done after Return of the Jedi. And I listened to them on audiobook and I thought, yeah, it's OK. the story was okay but it wasn't great and my attitude is they probably just rubber stamped it it's going to be a a book that we're going to put out that's in the star wars theme and it'll sell because of that but maybe if they had more constraints so they said no why don't you push it this way why don't you go that way sometimes that's a better thing having unlimited creative control is the difference between the last three star wars movies and the mandalorian so you have the Mandalorian who I what's the guy's name John Favreau so you have John Favreau who does it who's amazing at what he does and is he knows how to do it and the other three I think had at best they had mixed reviews because they had all the control to do what they wanted yeah but I think it's hard to compare with that one because John has built a repertoire of He knows what he's doing over decades with Disney. And so it's hard to compare, especially where Stern is building a product that is a representation of what the licensor wants. I just, I don't know. It's hard to compare. But I get it. I get it. I get what you're trying to put out there. OK, but there is one thing that I don't hear a lot of people talking about, which I think is really impressive, is the lighting system with the integrated side decals, even on the premium. Yeah, very nice. And I think I don't hear a lot of people talking about that. And I look at that and say, that's actually pretty amazing. amazing that's on the level of integrated pin stadium stuff that they were able to integrate into and not an aftermarket yeah and you're not going to bang them when you lift the playfield up and down um you know they're you don't have to worry about magnets on and off like they are really really cool um led integrated like it's a it's very very cool uh granted the gnr um Hot Rails are a similar product, but I haven't seen a GNR in person to see them and actually dive into what they are. But when I look at these, I think, man, that's pretty darn cool too. It feels a little more thematically consistent, though. If you have a 70s band, you're not going to want that blinding over-the-top light. you're going to get some nuanced lighting. And I, I don't know, this is a personal thing. I bought a truck, and so I'm actually looking at upgrading the lights so I can see things. But I went to purchase one of them and said, hey, are you putting this on a street car? Because they're way too bright. And I wonder at some level, is there a, Guns N' Roses has a crazy amount of lights. And I'm sure it's great. and I haven't played one in person, but I'm wondering at some point, is there too much? And this seems to be more of the, I would get a lava lamp topper and put it on this machine. Yeah, it fits the theme. It's very cool. I don't know. Overall, I think it's a good machine. I'm honestly, personally, I'm glad they came out with Led Zeppelin because I can't handle buying another new in box because I just bought Turtles. I've bought Avengers. It's like if they came out with another theme that was geared directly towards me, it just, it wouldn't work. And maybe that's how a lot of people across the board are feeling because the last two were more geared towards a younger generation, in my opinion, where this would be getting those collectors of the vintage age. Of a certain age? So you're saying I'm a collector of a certain age? I'm a distinguished gentleman? Of vintage, yes. I'm a vintage collector. All right. So yeah, I am actually getting this. I'm getting the premium, and I'm quite excited about it. Yeah, I went Simpsons earlier in the pandemic here, so I am all tapped out for all purchases for the next couple of years until I can get my children to generate some sort of level of revenue. Or you decide Simpsons is no longer doing it for you. Exactly. You know, Simpsons was my first machine, and I actually don't think that that will leave. I think Spider-Man, I think I've scratched that itch. it's time to sell that on. And I'm actually really glad that I'm able to sell Spider-Man to bring in another Richie game. Cause that's my only Richie game. Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to, when it comes to Steve Ritchie games, you know, when you're talking Stern Star Trek at a competitive price on the, even the pro or premium LE level, you're getting, you know, somewhat similar things. What you're missing out on though, is this Tim Sexton code, which I think looks totally unique. Oh, yes. It's Chase the Blinking Light, which is stereotypically a Steve Ritchie design, but it's gone to another level where the lights change based on where you are in the song and combos left to right. I am so excited to play this because I think it is just going to be a riot. it does it does it feel anything like to you guys that this feels like a kind of i don't want this to sound insulting i actually think it's a good thing but kind of that rock band thing where it's making a video game out of all these songs that you know and it's actually putting it together in a fun way and that's what steve uh that's what steve and Tim together are doing with these. Cause I really liked what he did with black night. Cause I felt more like that, that video game draw. And I liked it was a different take than the chase, the flashing light. Yeah. Kudos to them for sure. I just, kudos to Stern. Cause I mean, their hires in the last two, three years have been so good. Like you can't argue that they've got a super team going over there, between Tim Sexton, Raymond Davidson, Keith Owen. They're picking up so many good, fresh blood that's going into these games, and you can feel it through these games. They are getting nice new designs. And that's why I'm not passing judgment on Led Zeppelin yet. It's not for me because it's not my theme, which is, like I've always said, the theme can be, or a pinball machine is kind of like what you're looking for and maybe a spouse or someone else. The beauty of the machine is the artwork. That's what's going to draw you in. But the personality is the play of the game and the code, and that's what keeps you coming back for more. But yeah, I think – I don't know. That's probably pretty good on Zeppelin, don't you think? Yeah. No, it's good. Sorry. I was – while you were talking, I was looking back and forth at all the close-up pictures of the play field to see like what else like I could be missing on that. There's a lot of tight horseshoes in there. Yeah. So, yeah. No, I will tell. Yeah, it'll be great. But I again, they've been putting out some really good machines. I'm looking forward to this one. I agree. So let's talk about David. You have started a pinball podcast with Ron Hallett. Let's let's talk about that. Yeah. So I'm the co-host of Silver Ball Chronicles from the Pinball Network, which is a history of pinball sort of podcast. So rather than a couple of guys talking about Led Zeppelin and the new pins, Ron and I sort of chat about historical figures, machine eras, technologies, those kind of things of the bygone eras of pinball. And if you're looking for a different kind of podcast, Silver Ball Chronicles is that kind of podcast. I totally agree. And the one thing that I appreciate about the podcast that you and Ron have been doing is, I can't remember if it was this last episode or the one before, someone had mentioned COVID. You had mentioned COVID, and Ron's like, hey, hey, hey, we're trying to keep this timeless now. No time markers of what era this is. We're trying to make it so anyone can listen to this at any time. And I think that's awesome because the problem with pinball podcasts, it is very news-based. And so to go back and listen to one from a year ago or two years ago, like head to head, you're only going to kind of see what happened back then. It's almost going to be like a time capsule kind of thing where this is not doing that. Yeah. And that was not necessarily the goal of the original show. So back at about this time in 2019. So wait, let me let me wind that back. Back in around December of 2019, I was thinking, hey, you know, I'm enjoying these podcasts. I chat on stream with Dennis Creasel and a few others. And, you know, my opinion, I feel, is not, you know, any more valid or more important than you guys or the others. And adding just another one of me to the mix, even though I am incredibly charming. yes i don't want to just sort of rehash the same news over and over again because because guys like guys like christian line and franchi and you guys and dennis and and zach like they do just such a great job already i thought if i did a podcast what would it be and i remember that jeff teolas on pinball profile did uh sometime last year in 2012 2019 i guess now he did a anniversary show for Tommy the album where he brought in John Borg and talked about Tommy the Machine. And I thought, wow, that is something that was really kind of interesting and cool. So I went and I listened to some of the older podcasts like TopCast and I could hear these stories being weaved throughout pinball history. And I know that seems a bit silly, but Steve Ritchie being the character that he is, he has all of these amazing stories that he's told time and time again how do i bring those out for new people like myself in the hobby who've only been around for a couple years because i like to learn and i come from a history background i found it very easy to pull those stories out and then weave them together in a narrative and that was where i thought okay this is different than me talking about the latest pinball machine and it's great i i and the chemistry between you and ron is really great too like i get chuckles from uh one of the episodes you guys were talking and all of a sudden like oh it's been 45 minutes if if you want to shut it down we're bi-weekly uh so you're the perfect amount of time to listen to now's the time to shut us off and then turn us back on next week the last 45 minutes you know just just great stuff like that it's it's making history fun and not making fun of history yeah when the the interesting thing about ron and i'm and i'm appreciative of Ron like you would not believe is he adds this elder statesman dynamic to the podcast where he's done a lot of soldering on a lot of these old machines and he's played a lot of these old machines and he's been around when some of these stories are told and maybe given more context than they are when the person who was there tells them. So he adds so much to that podcasts but originally when i sat down and i said to dennis in early 2020 when all the sort of podcasters you know resigned in one week i guess for lack of a better term yeah i reached out to dennis and i said dennis you know now that you don't have a podcast would you want to do this podcast with me and he's like well you know there's something going on yeah but you know i mean you And he goes, why don't you talk to Bruce Nightingale or Ron Hallett? And I thought, well, you know, I've never spoken or met these people. So why are they going to even talk to me? And at the time, I was thinking, OK, Bruce Nightingale would be pretty good because I envisioned the podcast to be a little more silly than it actually has ended up being. And I figured he would be really great to bounce off of. but unfortunately he was running the silver ball saloon in an East Rochester, New York. And he would not have enough time. I don't think so. I was like, well, maybe I'll reach out to Ron. And Ron was like, I don't have to edit. And I'm like, no, no, you don't have to edit. He's like, do I have to, do I have to write down a lot of stuff? And I'm like, no, not really. He's like, Oh, I'm in. And I'm like, well, okay. And then I was like, well, I'll show you the show notes. And I reviewed the show notes sort of over Skype with him sharing my screen. And each episode I've got typed out as like 5,000 point form notes, words. And he's like, yeah, this is great. I'm like, so, you know, that'd be great if you'd come aboard. And he's like, oh, yeah, no problem. And then like a week goes by. And I'm like, you know, I didn't ask him like 100% are you in? And then I reached out and I'm like, yeah, are you like in, in? like 100 he's like man i told you like six times i'm in on this and i said i'm in i'm in you you just need to do the work i'm in right and i was like oh my god i'm doing a podcast with ron hallett right the slam tilt guy and it's he has added so much um to it that you know he wrangles me in a lot he he tells me sometimes when my jokes are really not funny and i have to cut them out and there's a lot that i cut out to that i've made is it a canadian thing or is it just just jokes in general well we just have this self-deprecating sense of humor canadians yes um there's there's rarely things that are off limits and for the way the podcast ends up it does have some silliness and some fun running jokes in it but i again i had envisioned it to be a little more silly and ron has has brought that down and i think he's brought it down to being like incredibly good and i'm super happy to be doing the way i'm doing because i'm able to pay homage to a lot of people who don't normally get their names out there um you know Python Anghelo people know Python Anghelo but they don't know how you know how crazy the man actually was yeah um you know people don't know why the you know godlieb system one games are so bad except for three of them so let me tell you the story as to why that happened and then i'll throw in a couple of you know humorous stories in there and and hopefully that'll help so that kind of fun stuff it naturally comes out with with us and i'm so happy to have somebody like ron with me Oh, I totally agree. It's awesome. It's a very good show that your guys' chemistry together, along with the stories, make for a great show. And that's all you want in pinball, right? Us getting all this free content is very demanding of what we receive, and so we're glad that you're able to obtain that bar. a lot of it is just sort of you know listening to it i do a lot of driving for work from time to time and i'm in the car for a couple hours and i'm like oh listen to this and then as i'm going i'll kind of maybe write down on a piece of paper a couple of notes here and there copy and paste some of the some of the resources that are really good are written resources because then i literally just copy paste things in and then it just sort of naturally happens it's the editing of the podcast and I know that's a cliche. So if you're on the podcast cliche drinking game, now's the time to drink. The editing is the worst part because there's quotes that we'll say and I'll bumble through a quote or I'll misquote a year or a name and then I'll cut it out. And I have a lot of mannerisms because it's like, we're naturally having a conversation here, which is easier. But if I'm like, oh, hey, Ron, why don't you read this quote? I got to cut out. Hey, Ron, why don't you read this quote? to make it sound like he's just saying it. And that happens like 40 times. It's so weird, though, because I don't have any problem with the editing. What about you, Josh? It's not too bad. One of the things, I don't know if this is something you do, but you can have a pad of paper next to you with a pen and just write down your timestamps as you go through so you know exactly where to edit out. It kind of cuts back on the time process. Oh, it's every three minutes. you can be like most times i just throw them on you can tell what the 50th episode like there were some editing there but at one point i totally spaced to edit out i'm like am i echoing scott and he like no no i think we good i forgot to edit that all out and so it like it sounds like us fumbling before playing a clip and i was like eh like that okay can we talk about that day really quick I sorry I going on a tangent for a second Like that day was a sucky day for me Like, I woke up, got to work. My wife texts me. I'm not going to tell you the story that happened. Well, let's just put it this way. Literal crap hit the fan. Like, that's about as good as you're going to get out of this. Oh, come on. Tell the story. Tell the story. literally i've already discussed it we're not i've already discussed it with my my wife we're not she's forbidden you from talking about it out of uh respect to other people we're not going to talk about this okay all right okay all right all right and so uh and then noon hits and i'm helping clean up a mess that happened that morning and we get a call from my son's school and he'd slipped and on the ice hit his head and gave himself a concussion and uh and we're like crap so we had to run there and grab him oh i forgot to tell you between all this i had got i didn't receive a call i called fedex uh because we had some issues with with shipping with with avengers and it ended up somewhere skwampus and so uh the dude who got his truck stuck and he's like if you want it sooner then this time you need to come pick it up. It was just, it was funky. And so I ended up going, picking it up with a lift gate truck and I lowered the lift gate all the way down, got the, got Avengers in the back of the truck and then the gate wouldn't come back up. And so I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with a lift gate that I can't get to go back up. And so I had to use a come along and ratchet it up. And anywho, that was, that was before the crap hit the fan. And so So seriously, by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, it all just kind of melded together. And so when we started recording episode 50, even Scott was like, are you sure you don't want to put this off for like – Yeah, you were not happy. You're like, are you sure you want to put this off? And I'm like, no. We've been prepping for this for a week or two now between clips and editing and stuff like that. I just want to record. This will be like a good end of the day. and then for some odd reason my microphone did something super funky but we didn't realize it till it was all done and said and i'm like i'm not going back to record my whole thing that we just said so that's why that's why i was like when i posted it and i said hey like josh's audio quality is not perfect that's because i was like you know i'm done that was that was the cherry on top to the whole day yeah just time to move on yeah yeah fish or cut bait and you're like i cut i'm done yep i cut bait and called it good so anywho sorry that was my random tangent about episode 50 so but back to silver ball chronicles um so did it just kind of naturally flow with tpn or is there a specific reason is it because like dennis was like hey you should hit up ron is that why you ended up on tpn or is there what so kind of during that sort of purge at the beginning of 2020 um i was like oh i'm thinking about starting this podcast. And I ran it by Dennis because he had done editing before. He had used editing software. He knew what kind of microphone to get. And I was asking that stuff. And then he just sort of reached out and said, hey, would you like to join TPN? And at that point, I didn't have to learn how to set up a feed or an RSS feed. I didn't have to get a SoundCloud account. I didn't have to do any of that stuff. He's like, yeah, you just send us the podcast. We'll put it up. And then, of course, the natural question then is like, you know, do I have to put a flipping out pinball? Yes. You know, stinger on. Right. Like, you know, can I make jokes about Stern pinball and, you know, the lack of things on the play field? And that's when Zach reached out. He goes, man, say whatever you want. You know, I don't care. And I'm like, no, but really? He's like, yeah, like we're not going to kick you off or or slap you down or anything like that. Do whatever the heck you want. And, you know, they said, do a couple episodes and we'll see how it goes. And we did a couple episodes and like, yeah, man, this is this is great. Keep keep it up. And they've been incredibly, incredibly supportive beyond my expectations. There's there's times where Dennis reaches out as my producer seducer and he'll say things like, you know, this was good. but like, did you really have to talk this long about this one topic? And I'm like, yeah, that's you probably true. Yeah, probably didn't have to talk, but I could have cut that like 30 minutes out. Right. Or he's like, hey, why don't you try balancing your mic a little bit better? Or Zach will reach out and be like, hey, you know, when you're doing your show notes, can you include these? They've been beyond incredibly helpful. And all of the podcasters on TPN will will say that they'll come out and they'll say, hey, you know, they everybody here is helping and supporting me and building on what I was doing, which I think is inevitably the goal of that network. And I'm pleased to be a part of it. Now, you know, if I ever left or anything like that, would, you know, would I go to Indiana and leave a flaming bag on Zach's front step? Yes. Yes, you would. But, you know, I don't think so. Right. Like we're all adults and we're, You know, it's fun. We're all having fun. Well, and I think also the beauty of TPN is it's got its own built in fan base. Like that is one of the hardest things about starting a podcast in pinball. The joke is, is there's what, 78 podcasts out there. It's just whatever is your flavor. Right. The problem is, is if you don't network and you don't, you know, get yourself out on social media and pin side and stuff like that, it can be a lot of work. And so TPN takes that work and kind of negates it a little bit for you. And that is the beauty of it because, trust me, it is hard to build a fan base. Oh, hands down. You had mentioned at the beginning here that the Twippy voting had started this year. And Ron and I got an email from Jeff Patterson at This Week in Pinball. And he said, hey, by the way, guys, you just finished just outside of the drop down for the Twippies this year. I just wanted to give you a heads up. And I thought, man, that is so gracious of Jeff that he would reach out and let us know, because quite frankly, I didn't think we would even be like remotely close to being on the list, let alone sort of just outside the list. And I think if I didn't have TPN doing a lot of that promotion and popping up into people's feeds the way we had been, I don't think we would have that exposure to even be remotely close to making it on the top 10 Twippy list in our first year when we haven't even had 12 months in. So I think there's a lot of positives to be said there. I agree. Well, I want to make a case in point. Have either one of you heard of the Play Better podcast? No. I had never oh go ahead I was thinking about it I had never heard of them until I can't remember if Jack Danger had posted that he got some swag from them or something like that it's very Richie based it's competitive based is what it is but you know they're using the skull from No Fear as their logo and stuff like that I would have never heard of them because I wasn't searching for that if it wasn't for Jack Danger. And so my advice to anyone starting a podcast, first, have a good concept. Do your own thing. And then second, network as much as you can. Yeah, one of the things that's pretty cool on TPN is they have an off-the-record podcast. And a lot of the podcasts that are on there, like Just Another Pinball Podcast with Joel Engelberth and Craig Bobby's TPS, the pinball show Midweek. That sort of started off as what they called the off the record one time deal where anybody with a microphone and some editing software can do, you know, a one off podcast if you want to and see how it goes. And if you get a positive response and people enjoy it, you know, people will send you an email and be like, hey, you know, I think this is pretty good or why don't you talk about this or whatever. And you get that feedback and then maybe you try another off the record, the same thing, and maybe you get a little bit better feedback. And then maybe the TPN folk, myself included, would say, hey, this is great. Why don't you join as a full-time podcast? Here's kind of a day of the week or biweekly or fortnightly, as it were. And then you could do your own podcast and come into the TPN network. So if you want to do your own podcast, you can just come on board and do it. And again, there's no commitment required. There's no necessity to bow to anybody just to do your one-off podcast. Yeah. And I say, why not do it? Record it on your phone. I mean, there is no risk of losing anything by doing it. With Loser Kid, we have to pay for our own hosting through SoundCloud. And we have to, you know, there's payments up front that you have to get done before you can even get one episode out. Why not take advantage of what TPN has to offer? Even if you've thought about doing a podcast and you have an idea, you know, you might be the next Silver Ball Chronicles. Oh, thank you. That means a lot. So I want to move on to our next subject because it's something that you're heavily involved with. And I think this is going to take up the rest of our time. Let's talk about the Pinball Industry Awards. And this sounds like it's kind of a brainchild of some of those there at TPN. I want you to kind of explain where the concept came from, kind of who the brainchild of this initiative is and what you hope to gain from it. Yeah, the Pinball Industry Awards, really co-founded by Zach Minney and Dennis Creasel of the Pinball Network. It's really sort of from their gray matter that this has appeared. But I think the idea of a Critics' Choice Award or Critics' Choice-based judging panel is something that many people have talked about. And I'm sure you've had discussions and things like, what if, you know, an expert chose it? Or what if pinball podcasters chose the games and, you know, the best music and sound effects? Like that conversation is not unique. It's not like we, you know, Dennis or myself or any of the members of the Pinball Industry Awards Governing Committee, you know, came up with anything kind of on our own in a roundabout way. what we were able to do is we've got somebody like zach who's a bit of a hype man and you know he's he's able to push people to sort of say hey let's do it right let's like let's actually get off the couch and do something and that's where we said okay well what would it look like um i remember i had a discussion i want to say march maybe maybe february of 2020 and i sent zach a message and i'm like what if tpn had its own awards right like what if tpn had its own awards he's like well That's not going to work because, you know, we can't just give out awards. That's silly. And then he said, Dennis and I are talking about something. We'll let you know. So it rolls forward till about November. And he's like, hey, here's what we want to do is we don't want to have just TPN voting. We want to open it up to all pinball media as judges. And what does that look like? And then that's when we build a committee. And on the committee, it's myself, Dennis Creasel, Zach Minney. There's Jesse Jay from Jesse Jay's Pinball Podcast from Australia. There's Josh Jacobs, who does Silver Ball Stories, and George Fisher, who does Don't Panic Flips. So we kind of created a core group, and we said, okay, well, if we created these awards and here's our high-level goal, how do we manage that? And that's when we start. That's when sort of the real work started. And it sounds like it's been quite in-depth. The one thing I do appreciate that you guys are doing about this, too, is it's not drawn out over months. Like you're starting today, which is January 1st, and it ends on the 26th, correct? Yeah. So we wanted to do it. there was some discussion as to when in the year to do it and should we should we do you know an award ceremony you know the inevitably and i'll leave that to sort of zach to sort of maybe describe what his inevitable vision will be but um you know we didn't want to really piggyback off of an event we wanted to have our own sort of destination event this year of course it's online so that sort of solves itself but we wanted it to be in january um we didn't want to conflict with the Twippies that happened in March. We didn't want to do anything the same as that. So we set out to be as totally different from any other award ceremony as we could in pinball. And the idea was really that we didn't want to do a popular vote. We wanted to do a critic's choice vote. So we had to come up with a way to choose judges. And those judges, you know, we had to vet them. And then of course, then you get into, okay, well, how do we vet people? And how do we prevent people from gaming the system? And what are the rules and the criteria around who qualifies, right? Like you, all of a sudden you create this big frigging bureaucracy, right? And so we were able to sort of get that in the can and get that solved. And that's over at the pinballindustry awards.com. So the pinball industry awards.com and all of that documentation as to who qualifies as a judge in what we call pinball hobbyist media, which is people like yourselves, all that information is there and you, and you could apply. So if you wanted to be, if you were a podcaster, for example, and you wanted to be a judge to vote for best art, best code best machine game like game of the year that kind of stuff you can apply to do that so then you apply there's a form and then of course the committee members have to look at it and say well this person counts or this one's doesn't or this person is this so that was the major goal and then we wanted to get it sort of done and in the can by january so we wanted it to be short voting times, short application times, get it done. We didn't want to drag it out and then have an event, you know, in October of next year. Yeah, I get you. So, David, with, and you brought this up, this isn't really intended to be a competition with TWIP. And I just want to make sure that people know that that certainly is out there. We support this, we can pinball and support what Jeff is doing. So this is just a, I guess, a different take on looking at it, just like a different podcast or something like that. We're just trying to look at it and say, okay, what would a, I guess, an interested group, almost like, okay, this is the view. This is the pinball version of the view, right? Yeah, and exactly, that's it. So if you're pinball hobbyist media, so if you're a podcaster, if you're a streamer, if you're a pinball writer, if you're, you know, involved in some way that's sort of beyond being just anybody with an email address, you know, video content creator, you have a different critical eye. And we wanted to make sure that this sort of hobbyist media was able to make the choice. Now, in the end, we'll see at the end of January, on January 28, at 8pm Central, you will be able to figure out, okay, did this experiment actually work with the Pinball Industry Awards? And that will be, will these critics' awards be different than the Twippies in March, right, that are chosen by popular vote with anybody with an email address? And we're excited to offer a different piece. But again, we're not competing. I have a Silverball swag store for Silverball Chronicles, which is co-owned by Jeff Patterson, right? I'm a big supporter of Twip. I give to them monthly on their Patreon. So, you know, I am in this for the hobby to add a little bit something extra because, you know, do we need another award show? I don't know. Probably. But do we need another YouTube channel or another podcaster? Like, it's free, fun content, right? And I'm stuck at home in a pandemic, right? I can write some verbiage for a website. Like, come on. Right. I guess that's, I've always said this, that this is another way of bringing more chairs to the table. Just a different perspective. And everything kind of adds synergistically to all the things that we have going on. So I like that it's basically a different take as opposed to, well, Pinside, there's a lot of great content and great things on there. And we all use that. But we tend to realize that in many threads, there are some vocal people who try to drive the conversation and it drives things away from a consensus view. And so this may be a way for people who are active, involved in the pinball industry to have some sort of discussion and consensus to say, well, this is what we feel is the best in this category. And I think it's it certainly gives a different perspective. And I like that. Yeah, it's just a fun it's sort of a fun way to do it. We also have some interesting takes on things like art and things that make us a little bit different when it comes to to cabinet play field, that kind of stuff. So there's a there's a bunch of things. And I think people in the end will be very excited with the way things turn out. It's going to be a lot of fun. And in addition, so what we've done, you know, So one thing that is with, you know, Pinside and awards and things like that is they are highly, highly competitive. And that creates a lot of rifts within the pinball hobby. And we wanted to be able to recognize outside of, you know, Machine of the Year and art and the industry folk. We wanted to recognize some levels of excellence amongst streaming and podcasting and photography and videography that was not based on a popular vote because there's already the Twippies and they do a much better job of managing that. They do a much better job of doing, you know, a competitive popular vote. vote we we wanted to do something very different but we wanted to avoid a lot of like conflict and hurt feelings and and anger and some people for some reason just really want that so they go to pin side and they'll post on things um it really makes you wonder what their spouses deal with on on a daily basis. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you are the happiest person I've ever seen on the internet. What is your real life like? You know what I mean? Maybe their spouses drive that kind of attitude. You never know. So birds of a feather One thing I want to point out though because you are talking about the one thing I noticed with the Twippies in the past Honestly this is just my perception There hasn been much drama when it comes to the categories that have to do with pinball machines like artwork And, yeah, some people like, yeah, this probably deserved it more than the other. Where the drama comes from is this category of streaming, podcasting, photography, YouTube, yada, yada, yada. And so why did you guys decide to go with that can of worms when you could just focus solely on pinball machines? Yeah, there is a lot of discussion among the central governing committee. and we wanted to be able to say you know there's some serious people out there that are doing amazing things in streaming um you know jack danger george fisher at don't panic flip manu at uh uh mystery pinballs mystery science pinball 3000 carl d'Python Anghelo and ie pinball there's a lot of uh there's a lot of content providers out there and we wanted to be able to recognize them in a way. And it was really our goal to do that in a as drama free way as possible. And I think that in some ways, that is, in its in itself, sort of created a bit of an issue. And Dennis Creasel had mentioned this on the special podcast about the pinball industry awards. And that was – this is highly experimental. So in addition to the Pinball Industry Awards voted on by the pinball hobbyist media that all applied for their judges, we created a secondary category called the Excellence Awards. And that's excellence in streaming, podcasting, photography, and videography. And what we wanted to do was rather than bring in those judges from the judging pool that we have through application, we wanted to have it as a smaller, more closed group. And we would have a online video chat discussion, argument, you know, defense and nomination process. And what we would do is we would take that information and, you know, put it on the website as to who was nominated and who went through. The main goal was that we didn't want to have a winner. Right. We didn't want to say, hey, here's 10 people. Hey, group, pick a winner. And everybody else is a loser. You know, we didn't want to do that. We wanted to have a recipient and we wanted it to have. Whoa. Sorry there, Google. Oh, wow. where was she three months ago to help out that you know we didn't we wanted to have that recipient and we wanted to have a closed judging pool the problem is if we start bringing in a bunch of you know people as judges they all have agendas and people they don't like you know there's no secret that zach many has problems with some people in the industry you don't say i know Oh, really? But Zach is only one twelfth of the people that were in our meeting. Oh, you know what I mean? There were 12 people in our Excellence Awards meeting. Many of the names you will recognize and all of those names will be published after the event. All of the information will be published after the event. But just because Zach Manning has an issue with somebody doesn't mean that that person is not nominated. And it doesn't mean that the positives and the negatives of that person are not nominated. So I think he takes a lot of heat when he doesn't actually need to take a lot of heat, and a lot of people crap on that. But what we did is we created the Pinball Industry Awards Excellence Awards Subcommittee. God, we're so good at creating bureaucracies here. Seriously. And what we did is instead of a popular vote runoff, what we did is we had all of anybody at TPN who wanted to come aboard of this judging category, this panel. They could nominate somebody and then defend their nomination to the group. They would say, hey, I want to have X person should receive a Pinball Excellence Awards in streaming. And then they would defend that person. And, you know, there were pros and cons and this person and that person. And then the next person would have a couple of minutes to nominate somebody. We went through a whole list of nominations. And then at the end is the hard job where we say, do we have a consensus as to who we think rose above all of the other excellence category nominees? and in some cases it was very clear we were like yes you know all the other people obviously are you know have displayed some pinball excellence but this one individual should be included and of course there may also be categories where there are multiple recipients of an excellence category award because quite frankly we couldn't just say this person was better than this person there were no winners right we wanted recipients i think what that has done though is it's opened up some critiques to say um you know we're trying to give tpn awards right we can't beat canada on our own merits for a twippy so what we're going to do is we're going to create our own award show so we can give our own ourselves our own award well i mean come on Like, just am I you know, that's going to be a lot of fun going online at the day after this and me giving Silverball Chronicles an award. You pull up the podcast category. It's, you know, Jesse Jay and Silverball and the pinball show and final round. Right. Come on. The other issue is that TPN, by happenstance, happens to have a lot of really good content providers. So then the conversation in our meeting sort of, do we exclude those people? Do we – we can't give ourselves awards or should we or how do we – like, come on, guys. We do as much work as everybody else. Maybe we should recognize ourselves. So because it is highly experimental, there will be changes going forward as to how that sort of has run. But our heart was in the right place. I think inevitably the outcome, people will be happy and people will have fun. But the idea was that we wanted to give excellence awards to people, not have a bunch of popular votes. And, you know, we didn't want, you know, Scott to pick up, you know, his phone and call one of the judges on this committee and be like, hey, you know, you should you should give me an award because, you know, I'll give you some free anesthesiologist advice. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, absolutely. Right. So our hearts were in the right place. Right. So inevitably, I think it's going to be people are going to be very surprised. It's going to be really professional. We're going to have a lot of fun. Really. I agree. I think it's something new. I think it's something fresh. I can see the direction that's different from with TWIP than this. And so I really think it's a good thing to be doing in the hobby itself. The third piece to this is that we wanted to have some public engagement. So we didn't want to be elitist, right, where only a person with a pinball podcast that's done seven podcasts in the last 12 months can vote. You know what I mean? We wanted to open that up a little bit more. And the excellence categories that is run by the closed TPN committee, that sort of made that even smaller. so we wanted to create another thing and this is all on zach many he wanted to have a pinball machine hall of fame and instead of voting for the people that made the machines or the designer who gets all the glory and or the heat the head programmer that gets all the glory but there's you know 40 people at stern working on a single machine now how do we give the machine itself an award and everybody who was involved in that gets to celebrate it so we chose if you go to the pinball awards.com and you scroll down you can choose on the hall of fame or click on the top of the page i guess and we're choosing machines from different eras so electromechanical is a write-in because there are so many of those i didn't want to create lists so so uh jesse j Martin Robbins did an amazing job collating these lists together. There's 70 Solace State, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s. So you go in, you click Vote Now, and you can choose your favorite machine from those categories. And the machines will get a nod at the Pinball Industry Awards ceremony on January the 28th at 8 p.m. Central. Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited. Jump into the 2010s. Please choose Tron. I want to make sure that I keep my game's value up. So that is the only lobbying and underhandedness that we're trying to do here at the Pinball Industry Awards is to make sure that Dave can keep his Tron's sale value up. Yeah, sounds good. I agree. You go in with the slam-tilt approach. I respect that. Yeah, you're trying to drive it up. Let's talk about Stern Classics, Solid State Stern Classics. Yes, exactly. I did vote for a Stern Solid State Classic, though. The official pinball machine of the Slam Tilt podcast is the one that I choose. I chose. Yeah. You chose Gamma Tron? No, that's not the official one. I also voted for Simpson's Pinball Party in the 2000s category because I own that machine. I want to keep its value up. Okay. All right. So you're basically just voting for everything you own. So basically what you're saying is everything you're saying is completely unreliable and biased and you should start a flame war on pin side. And that's exactly why we didn't want to have that type of award for game of the year, as well as we tried to make the excellence awards closed. Oh, there you go. Well, David, this we're getting close to wrapping up. We really appreciate you coming on, doing some clarity with this pinball award stuff, because I know, you know, everyone's curious. And there are stuff that usually flies within the first day or two about, you know, like you said, the people saying that certain people can't win awards. And so you got to make your own. But I truly firmly believe if you feel like there's something wrong in the industry, you should try to fix it or see if there's a way that you can help that issue. like uh like stern pinball uh stern playfields like if if you're worried about their quality uh i would recommend maybe starting up a playfield company and and making them better and trying to sell your product to stern because let's let's all agree that like Mirco has had their chance yeah if if if you have issues uh with the way jersey jack makes their gnr playfields and they're chipping and pooling and you're angry about that go ahead and cancel your ce order yes exactly like it i'm just gonna reference to vote with your money is that what you're saying with your money right like yeah so everyone else can jump on that ce no because everybody will will get rid of those because there's all these issues if there's a problem there's a problem if not we're all ignoring it it's the worst exactly you got anything else for scott you know what i'm just looking forward to a new year. I'm looking forward to being able to get people vaccinated. I'm looking forward to people's businesses going back to normal. I'm looking forward to being able to interact with friends that I feel like for the last year I have really been isolated from. I'm looking forward to people getting their businesses back online. I'm looking forward to people finding hope and not being afraid anymore. And so that's really what I'm looking forward to in the new year. And I hope that everybody who's been drastically affected by COVID, even either emotionally, either financially, or I know people have lost loved ones that we can all try to look forward to a better year and be able to bring more, bring more hope this year. And so that's what I'm looking forward to. Yeah, I was, I was actually planning on going to the Pintastic show, which I hear in New Robert Englunds is fantastic, you know, well-run, professional, really great. And I was going to meet Ron for the first time and likely Bruce. We were going to have probably a pint or something like that and hang out. And then that all went out the window. So I'm looking forward in 2021 to seeing the people getting out there. Hopefully we'll all be vaccinated in Canada by September. And I'll be out there licking flipper buttons at a show soon. Yikes. Got to test this vaccination out. Yes. Oh, my goodness. Well, if you want to check out, if they want to reach out to you in the Silver Bar Chronicles, Dave, how do they do that? Yeah, so you can reach us on Facebook at facebook.com slash Silver Ball Chronicles. You can also email us. Ron and myself check the email quite regularly, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. And we'd love to hear from you. We really like engaging with people, which is a byproduct of doing the podcast that I get to chat and have these silly and awesome conversations with, like, Australians. Like, come on. Yes. When did I ever think I would be chatting with like a guy named Rardon who has, you know, an El Camino? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's pretty awesome. Or two random dudes from Utah. So. Yeah. Or two random dudes from Utah and their five wives yelling in the background. Exactly. All of them. That was a that was a that was a Mormon joke. Yeah. No, we got it. I got to say, I really appreciate you sending that clip. It was fantastic. I think it's the one that got me laughing the most out of them all. I was a bit stiff in my delivery, actually. After listening to some of the awesome ones that people did, I was like, I really tried to play it like straight-faced deadpan, and I probably should have been a little more natural. But I really did enjoy your 50th episode. Marc Silk, cracking me up. Oh, yeah. No, Mark's great. And the funny thing is I talk to Mark pretty regularly in the background on things. And the guy just sounds like a fun guy. I just wish that I lived closer to him because I would totally be hanging out at Mark's house, hanging out with his dog and playing his his his home pin version of Star Wars all the time because it just sounds like such a great event just going over to his house. Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on, guys. It really means a lot to to sit down with with you guys, because I know Keith Elwin probably couldn't make it this this week. so it's nice that i was your backup yeah yeah well i gotta oh go ahead josh well i got one question before we go and then i'll do our little send-off thing but um one of my favorite bands in high school was do not bring up aquabats again oh my god no no they're they're from california but some 41 is from canada i didn't know if you were into them or if if you guys even know who they are up there i had a really i have a really funny some 41 story so in in university the way that i um survived buying my beer money was that i was in cell phone sales i was in cell phone sales and uh in this i'm from a sort of rural canadian community i live in a city It's a very metropolitan city, but it's not. It's a very urban city. It's very trendy. But at the same time, it's very small, especially by American standards. And all of a sudden, these guys come in, three individuals, and they all have like sleeves in their tattoos and sort of dark hair and clearly not from my hometown. Okay. And I was like, wow, these people are different. And they had to buy a cell phone charger or something. They're in our small, you know, rural Canadian mall. And they bought a cell phone charger and they were on their way. Two minutes later, somebody comes from one of the other stores and says, oh, my God, did you know who that was? I'm like, no, not at all. And they're like, that's Sum 41. And I'm like, huh, how about that? And that is my Sum 41 story. That's awesome. You can recognize them because they're freaking short. Yes. Like I met them and I'm like, is this just typical for Canadians? Or did they just build them small in their town? Like why are they so small? Canadians are small. They're like 5'2 is the average height of a Canadian. Yes. We don't have the hormone milk like you folk down there have. I guess. Oof. So. But thank you for coming on, David. And if you want to get a hold of us, we are Lose a Kid Pinball Podcast. you can find us at Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com send us your email there contact us on Facebook at Loser Kid Pinball Instagram, Twitter we have not started an OnlyFans I know a lot of people have been clamoring for Scott to open up the OnlyFans but he's denying the ladies out there, I apologize I only celebrate with one lady my five wives so it just depends what day they're all the same wife so thanks again for coming on Shut up and sit down. Bye.