I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. Everybody's out of work, or scared of losing their job. We know the air is unfit to breathe. We know things are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, please, at least leave us alone in our living room. Just leave us alone. Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to write. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, I'm a human being. God damn it. My life has value. I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore I know I'm drunk the following is an ad hoc radio production and now ladies and gentlemen Time for the show. Sit down, kick your feet up, grab a cold one, get ready for... The Super Awesome Pinball Show! That's right, it's time for everybody's favorite pinball show! With your hosts, pinball artist Christopher Franchi, Texas Pinball Festival's Ed Beckerby, and Dr. Pivens' help, Chris Devine. Sponsored by Chicago Gaming Company, the home of your favorite top quality pinball remakes like Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, and more. Visit ChicagoGaming.com. And by Cointaker, distributors of new in-box pinball machines, mods, accessories, and Franchi pinball wear. That's Cointaker.com. Also by BackAlleyCreations.com, creators of the most badass pinball mods, flat pearl pinballs, and the easiest five playfield support bracket set. That's BackAlleyCreations.com. Sir. Nothing, B. In quarantine. So the truth. Nothing. Quarantine. Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Waza! Hello, pinball rock stars, and welcome to Season 1, Episode 9 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Today, we have a stellar show lined up. We have the Super Awesome Pinball Show making headlines, more show cancellations and what may be in store for your future favorite show, Topper Talk, Stern's Lord of the Rings Unvaulted, and, of course, our extra special guest, Ed Ed Robertson of the Bare Naked Ladies will be joining us. also find out how you can win a spot on our new upcoming live game show contest for crazy prizes and now the super awesome pinball crew ed and christian how you guys doing i'm doing great christian what's going on yo yo yo what's up um no uh no well not much couldn't be better happy to be here guys yeah so am i i'm just to get out of the house for crying out crunch man this sucks This sucks ass. I am so bored out of my skulls. If you guys, well, Ed, Ed doesn't look so bored. Ed's like sending pictures like, oh, smoking stogies in the backyard, barbecue. I don't have a backyard. Well, of course, Texas is a lot different than the northern states. I mean, we, our governors kind of open things up a little bit. You know, restaurants can kind of open 25%. And we're running to the store when we need to. I've been to the post office. I hang out in the backyard. It's 85 degrees every day. It's sunny. It's beautiful. So, you know, we're not as locked down as the other parts of the country are. I wanted to ask you about that. What is Texas like now? Are people going out? Are they, you know, are they all wearing masks? Are they having parties? Are they social distancing? What's the story out there? No, well, they do. I mean, people are still being, I'm just going to call it polite. I mean, people that are concerned, you know, they're wearing masks. Other people that aren't, they're not wearing masks. We went out to dinner the other day. Nobody was wearing masks. They're just not concerned about it. I mean, people are living their lives. I don't want to get into the whole big political thing about coronavirus, but, you know, people are living their lives. They're getting on with things, and they are being cautious. Obviously, if I see someone wearing a mask, you know, I keep my distance from them. But, well, I keep my distance from everybody anyway. Even if there was no pandemic, I'd stay away. That's right. I mean, Texas is the most aggressive state out there, it sounds like, so it will be interesting to see how the numbers play out and whether or not we see a lot of cases spike. I don't doubt people. More people get sick. But, you know, I got a whole thing about car accidents and how many people die every year from car accidents. And we could all just hide in our house. And I'm not trying to demean the severity of coronavirus. But I do think that for those people who are in that high-risk group, they need to do what they need to do to feel safe and protect themselves. But the rest of the world needs to get on with it. I mean, we need to get on with it. If you please to take off the mask. Great Scott Batman, take off his mask. The woman must be mad. Well, and businesses, too. Businesses are just getting crushed out there. And it's your choice if you decide to go shopping somewhere. So I say let them open. If you want to go shopping and you want to risk it, that's up to you. But give them the chance. Well, and that's what it is now. I mean, that's kind of the big joke, especially in Texas. I mean, Kroger's open. Walmart's open. Home Depot's open. They're talking about postponing the election. Well, hell, just have the election polls at Walmart because clearly that's a safe place to be because everybody's at Walmart. People are out shopping. I mean, there's, I don't know. Yeah, as someone in the healthcare field, I can't necessarily put a rubber stamp on what you guys are saying. I know everyone has their own opinion, but there's a lot of people out there who can't go out because they're at risk and because you may not be doesn't mean that you won't bring it home to someone who is. So there's a lot to talk about and it's probably not the right venue for it, but we're getting graphs every day to see how things are going and it's certainly not, seeing a precipitous decline in the virus out there. Wait, what? A lot of people are still getting it. Our hospitals are busier than they've ever been with coronavirus patients. So, you know, it's definitely a social experiment. There's only so much you can do to stop it from happening, and people are getting antsy and want to get out of the house, and they want to go to parties and go to bars. So we'll see how that plays out. But, Ed, I wanted to ask you about pinball. Specifically, are the pinball venues in Texas opening? No, not so much right now. Some of them are. Some of them are opening. They're falling under the 25% capacity. They are doing what they need to do for people to feel comfortable. Again, my personal opinion on stuff like that is every person is responsible for their own self. So if you don't feel comfortable going to a pinball place, don't go to a pinball place if that makes you uncomfortable. But those businesses, they have to open. I mean, they just have to. Or go out of business. I was so jealous when you posted that picture of you guys eating at the restaurant. I think your wife did. Kim did. And I thought about it. I'm like, I can't believe I'm jealous of somebody eating at a restaurant. But, I mean, that's what it's come to. It's like, oh, my God, they're at a restaurant. No way. Lucky. You know what is funny is, so we haven't eaten out since all this happened. So everybody's used to eating at home. Well, eating at home is relatively cheap. We went out to eat, and the bill wasn't bad. it was like $80 by the time, and that included, you know, our alcoholic drinks and everything, but I was like, screw this. We're not going out to eat again. $80. God damn it. I've been used to eating for nothing at home and I'd grill steaks. And so, yeah, it's, it's definitely changing. The world's changing. It's going to be interesting to see how, how the rest of the year progresses. I want to fill up my gas, the tank of gas every single freaking day, because it's a dollar and 70 cents right now, which is maybe less than half of what it was before all this started. You said $1.70? $1.70. Oh, it's like $1.35 here in Texas right now. Oh, that's not fair. That's not fair at all. I wouldn't know. I haven't filled up my gas tank in like three weeks. I've still got half a tank. Before we get too deep into our weeks of pinball, let's go over the super awesome pinball show in the news. We're going to play a couple clips for you, and then we'll come back and we'll talk about our personal weeks and what we've done in the past couple of weeks. So check this out. Oh, super awesome pitbull show. Sending up the troll watch to macho. Better watch out. I'm hunting you down, Gorgar666. Here comes the devil himself. Raising hell over not getting his free giveaway from Mr. Frenchy, the teddy bear of the pitbull artist. Oh, in case you haven't noticed, Mr. Gorgar, we're in a bit of a sticky situation right now in our country. But you go ahead and you block the hospital road with your beta male dually truck and whine about not getting your crappy mullet haircut. No one is listening to your crap, brother. Macho speaks. Macho beat you. You got hurt. Also, I want to thank, or at least mention, Christopher Franchi and all the guys over at the Super Awesome Pinball Show. A few episodes back, I don't know how many, but he opened the show with, for the first time, you know how he has all the podcasts at the beginning, little clips of them, and I heard... You're in there. player's podcast in there and then and then he goes even further and has all these clips of me saying how great he is yeah which which he is and the show is great too these if you're not listening to super awesome pinball show do it because it's great the best produced show it is yeah i honestly i you know as somebody that does this for a living i don't know how christopher does this because that's a lot what he's doing has a lot of work to put all that stuff in there and edit and drop and find find the things he's going to put in that happen to reference whatever he's talking about But it's like... How is he doing that? It's crazy that he has all this at his fingertips. Clever editing. We should have him on to explain. It all fits perfectly. We should have him on to ask him how he does it. Yeah. And just, I don't know. Why don't you book that? Okay. Well, that's it for now. So thank you for your time and attention. And now go listen to the super awesome pinball show. Yep. And see how it should be done. Right. Well, how about that, guys? The Pinball Magazine and Pinball News can't wait to finish off their podcast so they can go listen to us. Hi, guys. It's very flattering. That's pretty cool, yeah. And then Jeff Parsons from the Pinball Players Podcast mentioned the little drops I was adding of him in the show where it says, I love Christopher Franchi, I love Christopher Franchi. But that was pretty cool. And listen to the Pinball Players Podcast, too, when those guys come on because they have a good show as well. So you scratch our scrotum, we'll scratch yours. Oh, Jesus. That's what Elmo was thinking about today. Boss! Yeah, yeah! Boss! No, we love those guys. They are amazing podcasts. I listen to all three of those. And Macho, obviously, good dude. Jeff Parsons and Joe Lemire, two really good friends, and they put out a great show every year, every month. I don't know. How often is it? Every year. I always get Jeff's shit. He used to start off his podcast with saying something about, like, are you happy, French? Yeah, those guys definitely put out a good product. And I'm going to also say I'd be happy to come on your show, guys, but remember one thing. It's the three of us, not just the me. And number two, I'm not going to give any way of my editing secrets because that's part of the magic of the show. So, yeah, and then Macho sticking up for us because this fucking turdball who wins a prize from us. I'm sorry. We try to be positive, but this guy's a fucking turdball. I'm sorry. He's going around giving us zero ratings on all the pod catchers and stuff because he didn't get his prize when he wins a prize and we get hit with a pandemic. and like, I'm sorry, the fucking post office is closed. You know, I've got people who were more patient than him that gave me $100 for an art print and had to wait for it than him who got his free shit. And he's like, where is it? He's going on pin side. God, what a dick. So, Macho, thanks for taking our back. We appreciate that. I reached out to this guy personally a few times and told him, just be patient. We will send it to him. You know, it will come. And he was obviously not hearing that. Can't you shut up? My post office wasn't open. I was told that I could not go in and drop off packages. until last Monday. We were getting mail, but we weren't getting it every day. They were delivering mail like every third day or something like that. But yeah, the post office, I talked to the lady because I live in a condo, so it was like a community mailbox and I saw her there, so I went running over there in my car. And I asked her and she says, oh, you can't bring those into the post office right now. So that's all I know. That's what I went by. So I had to hold on to that stuff. Is it shipped now? Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, he should have got it by now, but he made such an ass of himself, he's not going to say anything. Well, I will say that if you win a prize in the show, we will do our absolute best to get it to you. There may be a few delays because most of those prizes come from third parties, but we will absolutely get you your prize. And speaking of, we need to somehow hook up the guy who won the TPF hotel room. The next chance we get, if we get some good evidence... No, that's on me. That's on me. Send me his name and address, and I told him I'd hook him up. I've got a pile of stuff set aside for him. Some show swag and some art prints and stuff. Awesome. So we're good to go with him. I just got to get that out to him. But, yes, because I'm old, that's the one thing I forgot about. Anyway, on to pleasant things. What we've done for the past couple of weeks in pinball. Our past few weeks in pinball. All right, guys. Christian, we'll go with you because you always complain if you go last. I do not care. Listen, the natural order of things has to play out. You know what I mean. Oh, okay. All right. concede to Ed, if you will. Ed, what have you been doing besides eating out and making everybody jealous? You know what? Pinball related, I've actually had, surprisingly, quite a lot of stuff. You may have seen that we came to an agreement with the hotel for TPF 2021. I think we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but yes, TPF 2021 is a go. In a nutshell, the hotel is going to work with us. We're just going to roll everything over to 2021, almost like whatever it is we had going on for 2020, it's just going to transfer over to 2021 with the hotel. So all that money and stuff is good. All the vendors, almost all the people that buy weekend passes have transferred their stuff over. I think we talked about that last episode, but yeah, we're go. I don't know that we're going to do it, but even Sylvester McCoy has reached out and asked if we want to rebook him for 2021. We're going to talk about that. I don't know if we're going to have him come out or maybe talk to somebody else or who knows, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. Other things in pinball that I've done. I received my chrome side rails for my Spider-Man. I've got a Stern Spider-Man. I've decided to do all the trimming chrome. So I had all that stuff chromed. I just got that back. I haven't put it on yet. It came out awesome. The new Elvira side rails. Have you all seen the new Elvira side rails for House of Horrors that Stern put out? No. Is it a Stern product? Yes, it's a Stern product. It's on their website. It's the official Stern side rails. Greg Perez designed them, did the art on them. They look fabulous. I'm telling you, I think they're the best-looking side rails I've seen yet on any pinball machine. Are you talking about these blades? No, no, the metal side rails that go around the flipper buttons and stuff. Have they got artwork on them? Yes. Or is each of them like the etched? No. I know most of them are, like, laser-cut, and they have, but no, these actually have some kind of, it's like the spider web with the red eyeballs, and it's some kind of an art process that they've, like, you know, heat-sealed onto the side of the side rails. They look really nice. I think they look awesome. They look great on the game. I don't know how they're going to hold up with, you know, fingers touching them and stuff on the side. We'll have to wait and see. But I think they look awesome. Dude, I'm looking at them now. If they're the same ones that I'm thinking you got, they look just like Scared Stiff. Yes, they do. It's the same kind of Scared Stiff. It has a very Scared Stiff feel to it. So those are it. Probably the coolest thing that I got this week was I got my Jaws Translight from Christopher Feranchi. He's so good looking. Good looking. Good morning. Oh, my God. Ooh. So I know that you made it to the post office for me, not everybody else. I'll say. Fuckers. I also got my Twippy Award. I shouldn't say I. We got our Twippy Award for Texas Pinball Festival winning best pinball convention for 2019. Jeff got that to us. He also included a pair of pinball socks, I guess, his Silver Ball swag. They sell all kinds of stuff. So he sent me a pair of socks and a T-shirt. That was very nice. Where do your Twippies go, Ed? Where do you put those? Well, now we have two, so I will probably pass one off to Paul, and so he can have one in his house, wherever, in his game room, or whatever he wants to do with it. And Kim and I will keep the other one in our game room. That's what I do with them. We just put them in the game room. And that pretty much rounds out my two. Oh, I did take two pinball machines over to my buddy Kevin's house to have restored. I took my Alvira, the Party Monsters, and Adam's family over, and he's going to churn them down, put new playfields in them, make them look brand new. Of course, he'll have them for a while, but that's what I've done. That's it. That's nice, man. So listen, for people out there who have always wanted to do that, they have a game that maybe they want to take and they want to rehab. Maybe not have quality, but they want to bring it out and get it all kind of redone. What kind of financial investment is that? You don't have to tell me what you're paying, but what would you estimate ballpark like a complete rehab of a machine would be? Well, there's two parts to that. There's labor and there's what the parts cost. So if you are going to do everything yourself, which I can do, I just actually worked out a deal with Kevin for these two games. I had a diner that he was bugging me for, so I'm trading him. I'm giving him the diner, and he's going to restore these two games for me. He's going to do play field swaps and everything. So financially, on labor, it's going to cost me a diner game. But restoring a game, you know, the play field is probably the biggest thing. You know, a play field is anywhere from $700 to $1,000 just for a new play field. Then you've got side art. And it's really up to you. You know, how far do you want to go? Do you want to, you know, get new side rails and new armor and new legs and new coin door and, you know, all new plastics and ramps? And, you know, you can easily spend to say, you know, we'll say Adam's family. You know, Adam's family, a nice playing, decent running game will run you, you know, $6,500, say, for a nice Adam's family. But if you want to restore it, you're looking at $800 for a play field, and you're looking at a couple hundred bucks for all new ramps, and a few hundred dollars for side art. God damn! So you'd be in $10,000 by the time you're all done restoring our Atomos family. That's what I would guess. So you're looking at maybe a couple of thousand bucks to fully restore a game, depending on how crazy you want to be. And that's how much labor do you want to do, and if you've got someone else doing it for you, then you're talking. I want to not to quote the guy. There's a couple of guys that do just a play field swap. Like, if you bring them a new play field and you say, I want my play field swapped, no other work at all, you're looking at probably $800 to $1,000 just in labor to swap out a play field. Well, that's not, like, a complicated one like Adam's family stuff. If you brought them, like, an 80s, you know, single-layer play field, it probably wouldn't be that much. But they can get pricey. Definitely get pricey. Yeah. Well, you're going to have some beautiful machines. I mean, you already do. I know you don't. You're a collector, right? I mean, so most of your machines are pretty freaking nice. I do. I get kind of super picky about them. so yeah it's too bad i don't play them just fix them then polish them all right there are pieces of artwork really you know that's not true people come over and play well they don't now but uh yeah we used to have some pretty good parties and and we'd host uh tournaments every once in a while for the for the local leagues and they'd come over and i live pretty far out though so we didn't host too many tournaments because we came i live way south of the metroplex so it's it's a good drive for most people every once in a while. How often on average do you guys think that you play your home games? This is something that's bugged me. I have a ton of really nice games that I hardly ever... Really? When I code? That's not true. Elvira just dropped a new code, so I'll put it in. I'll play a few games. We're just busy right now. That sounds so bad because we're stuck at home. Even Kim's working from home, but she's working Thursday through Friday. I'll go and I'll play once in a while, but not near as much as we probably should. I don't know if you want to blame me. We've got two teenage college students at home right now, too, that, you know, they take up a lot of our time. We're hanging out with them, enjoying them while we can because sooner or later they're going to go back to college. Get out of here! I hope. No, I think that's a good point. I think if you have children, it's much harder to submit, you know, yourself to a lot of games. I don't get down to the basement a lot just because I have kids who want to do, you know, I just built this huge Hot Wheels track in my youngest daughter's room. and they want to play video games and that sort of thing. So there's very little time where you can just go down and play unless they want to come play with you. Right. But as a retired dude who lives at home, I just wanted to get like a, when I retire, hopefully I'll have a little bit more time to play, but it doesn't sound like you're putting in hours. Well, ask me again in August because right now my whole life has been getting the kids home from college and getting all the TPF orders shipped out. That's what I was saying earlier. I just want to, we've shut down the online store. We're in a good position right now. You know, we've got everything secured. So I just want to put all the TPF stuff away for the rest of the summer. I mean, we'll talk about it here on the show, but I just want to put all that stuff away. And I need to get my garage rearranged. And I will probably get back into the game room and start playing once everything calms down. Plus, Kim and I are going to go, we want to bounce to Florida for a couple of weeks here. So we'll probably do that. I don't have any games in Florida except for I have a VP Cabs Vertigo that we play while we're there. But other than that, when we get back, I'll be playing some pinball. You deserve some R&R, man. You guys went through a lot, and I'm glad that most of that is kind of tucked in another way. That's so nice. Yeah. You're such a nice guy. It's true, man. You really are. You really are. I tell everybody, it's like, Franchi is such a dick, and Christian is just such a nice guy. Tune in next week when Franchi picks a new co-host for the Super Awesome Pinball Show. That's a piece of shit. Why do you have to disrespect, bro? I do respect you, bro. Have some respect, bro. I do respect you, bro. I just respect you, bro. I respect you, bro. Okay, I respect you, too. Okay. I do like that, man. Did that wolf fire come out of that tube when you opened it? Translate. Christian, what have you been doing for the last two weeks in Penmore? Well, the quarantine dream has kind of ended for me. My hospital is getting really busy. We're ramping up elective surgical cases, so I've been busier at work and less time at home. but I had a ton of time off just from you know lack of lack of surgeries that were being done so I had a lot of time to you know play pinball and hang out with the kids so I'm grateful for that even though you know we're going through a tough time as a country but you know I used my free time wisely I did some pinball repairs I fixed the faulty switch my liberty bell that kept triggering I found out it was a left upper sling that was just kind of you know it was the the rubber that was wrapped around it was just pressing the switch together and so it was constantly firing I figured that out I bent that down and I just used my hands to do that I have come to find out that you can, there's like a, a lease, which my, my good friend, Joe Fox sent me a, a bunch of, uh, tools to help bend these things without doing much damage to them. So that should be good in the future. I soldered a wire to my button in my Ripley's that became disconnected. Yes, sir. And, uh, and two years ago I bought a pin lifter from, uh, my good buddy, Bruce Nightingale from the slam tail pinball podcast. And he, uh, you know, he was grateful enough to bring that out to pinberg and so i took this frame it's basically a frame that you put on top of a motorcycle jack and you use that to lift up your pin machines when you don't want to you know just slide them on the floor or lift them manually and i have just been procrastinating the shit out of that thing and just because i've had time to do projects i finally busted that out sarah you know helped me quite a bit you know getting that all worked up and now i have a pin lifter which is pretty cool and and i can uh i can't wait to bust that out and try to you know move some stuff around. Outside of that, I did a podcast with Marty and Jeff Teolis the other night with Sarah. Today, we're counting down our picks for the top 10 traders in history. You guys are such dicks. It was a lot of fun. We had a ton of good people on from other shows and other people in the industry, and we basically had a bunch of drinks, and we did a trivia game show, and that was fun. I won't reveal any of the results on that, but you should definitely check it out on their final round pinball podcast on TPN. And I got two amazing boxes of swag this week. One from our good friend, Scott Larson from Loser Kid. He sent us a bunch of hats and T-shirts from his stuff, which are fucking awesome. I don't know where he finds this stuff, but it's like high quality silver ball swag style in terms of quality stuff. He has this, you know, his logo, which is really cool. Keith Elwin wears it. You know, all the big pinball people are wearing this brand. So we were very lucky to get that, and we're going to rock that and represent his podcast. And then Franchi sent us an amazing Jaws Translite. Sarah says, thanks for the sharks, Franchi. And we're going to put – it's not a Translite. What's the term for this, Chris? It's a print. Do you have the art print? I hate to say it's just a print. It's such high-quality stuff. It's not a Translite. Oh, is it textured like watercolor paper? Yes. Yeah, that's the art print. It is freaking gorgeous. So everyone who bought these, congratulations, because this thing is going to look amazing in your house. It's like the most beautiful print I've ever seen, and obviously the art is incredible. And I've got a Saps super awesome pinball shirt with that, so thank you, Chris, for sending that out, my friend. Yeah, I asked you if you were going to backlight it or if you were going to hang it on the wall, and you said you were probably going to hang it on the wall, so I don't want to send you a trans light because it's going to look like shit if it's not lit up. I have a couple of translights, and it doesn't do it justice, man, because I don't have it lit from behind. I have three translights. I just cycle through them and replace them in the frame because even though it looks cool, it doesn't look as cool as it should. So I much prefer a print. Well, that's why you go to litframes.com. Brad's got all the different sizes for all the different translights, and you can light up all your translights. Yeah, man. He did a special one. Sorry to interrupt. He did a special one for the JAWS translight that has a – I wanted one with a white border instead of a black border. I don't know why I was looking at the movie poster and it had this white border around it. I'm like, I want a white border on this trans light. So he went and had them made so you can get a special Jaws lit frame for your trans light. Nice. Okay, Chris, tell me about your week or two weeks. What has it been like for you? Insanity. Now, I don't mean the insanity like, wow, I'm so busy I can't sit still. I mean insanity like I think I'm going insane. Why, man, why the man's gone crazy. Because it's just me and Barlow, and Barlow doesn't talk back, and I'm having conversations with Barlow that I should not have with a dog. Like, because he's just looking at me like, dude, I have no clue what you're saying. But I'm going nuts. Like, people call me up, and, like, they're like, all right, I got to go. All right, I got to go, because I'm yapping for an hour and a half with him because I'm just, you know, I need social interaction. But other than that, trying to remain sane, I'm setting up a home office because all of my equipment for working, for drawing, illustrating, painting, computer work, everything is all in an office that I have that's a half hour away from my house because I like the idea of going to work. I need to go to work, get up in the morning, go to work, come home, leave everything. I won't be tempted to work at home because everything's in my office. So I have nothing at home, and now I need to work from home. So I got an all-new kick-ass computer and all of this shit. I'm ready to go. I don't have my desk. I fucking ordered a desk on Amazon so I would get it right away. Oh, no. Well, it's finally coming tomorrow, but it's been two weeks, you know, waiting to get this thing. So I've been rearranging things to set that up. Just another quick editor side note. The desk arrived with a giant hole in it thanks to a forklift. So I had to send it back, and I have to wait another two and a half weeks for a new desk. Thanks, Amazon. I myself have Twippy information. I did not receive my trophy. You'll never guess where my trophy is. Take a guess. Where do you guys think my trophy might be? It got smashed. Did someone curb stomp it? Yeah, Zombie Eddie stomped it. No, but I'll say this. Zombie Eddie, if he wanted to, he could, because it currently resides under the roof of Stern Pinball. Oh, really? Yes. Jeff accidentally sent it with all the Stern trophies to Stern. However, never giving that back to you. That's what I thought. I'm like, but he, he talked to Josh about it. And like me and Josh have always been good. You know, even after I left there, I was sending him art to you. Like I would tell him like, Hey, today's Adam West day. You know, here's, here's some of the pinball art that I put in a little special graphic together. You can post on the page and he did, you know, so, so we've always been good. We don't, I haven't talked to him in a while, but, but there's nothing bad between us. Do you mean Zach? Or is it? I'm sorry, Zach. Oh, my God, I've got to put money in the jar. I'm sorry, Zach. We're cash in the jar. There's lots of sharks in pinball. I get it. Yeah. Well, you know, it's because I'm interacting with Josh on something as well. But that's it. I can't talk about that. I want to know. I'm going to interrupt you. I want to know, since you're setting up a home office, please tell me you are going to get some Internet at your home. Well, that's it. I have to have internet because in order to use Photoshop, they need to ping your computer because it's a subscription now. You don't go to the store and buy Photoshop in a box. You have to order it. You pay a monthly fee, and then you get access to all of Adobe's software. So when you turn your computer on and you open up Photoshop, they ping your computer, and they're like, okay, he's paid in full. He's good to go. He may use Photoshop. Without them being able to ping my computer, I can't access Photoshop. So it's kind of useless. So, yeah, I have to get the Internet. Finally, after six years living at this condo, I'm getting Internet. We talked about this off-air, but just for all of our listeners, Chris has lived six years in his apartment with our condo with no Internet. I mean, do you churn butter? I mean, what are you doing over there? I am not an animal I am a human being I just didn want any distractions And if I needed to get my email I could get it from my phone You know if I need to check Facebook I can do it on my phone I got some VHS tapes I can send you. No, no. I recently bought one of those all-region 4K Blu-ray 3D players. So it's 3D, 4K, and I can play Blu-rays from anywhere in the world. So it's pretty high-tech. but that's what I do. That's why. Like, I've literally got library shelves that go up about 10 feet tall, about 8 feet wide, completely jammed with movies. Like, that's my jam. I go out and buy Blu-rays, and I have a zillion of them. So that's what, when I have time to watch TV, that's what I do. But, you know, this, you know, Netflix and shit like that, they've got so much good stuff going these days that I can't, you know, and a lot of it hasn't come out. Like, you can't get it on Blu-ray. So, you know, I really have no choice, but I'm going to be glad that in addition to being able to work and get into Photoshop and all that, that I will be able to experience the joys of Netflix and other things. So every time we do this podcast, Chris has to physically drive to his office, which has internet. How far away is that for you? It's about 20, 30 minutes. Okay. It gets you out of the house, I guess. Yeah, and that's another thing is I welcomed it until it got to the point where it's like, all right, now I have no choice. I need to work from home. And plus, you know, as much as I was ripping on Buffalo, I mean, I love him to pieces, but I've really enjoyed spending more time with him because I started doing the math and figuring it out. And this isn't pinball related, so I'm going to shoot this out real quick. But I started figuring it out. I go, okay, I drop him off at puppy camp, and he goes there three days a week where he gets to spend the night and play with other dogs. He has a ball. I don't do it to get him out of my hair. I do it because he has to go. He loves it. He needs to interact with other dogs. So three nights, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he's there. I pick him up Wednesday night. He's with me Wednesday night, and then Thursday and Friday I go to work, so I don't see him until the evenings. So I really only get to spend Saturday and Sunday with him, and then it starts all over again. So I'm seeing him for like two days and two nights out of a week, and that's it. So spending so much time with him now I've really enjoyed. So now I'm going to have a desk that's right next to my fireplace, and he likes to lay in front of the fire, so we're going to be buds, and then we're going to have a good time. That's awesome, man. So anyway, let's see. What else? By the way, I didn't say it earlier. Zach is sending me the trophy, so I will get it hopefully soon, whenever they get back into the office. Sent out all the JAWS stuff, as we talked about earlier. I have good news for some of you. Well, first of all, I uncovered it. You just said, um, like four times, and you bust my balls about saying it. Because I can say it because I'm the one who's editing it out. Okay. Double standards. Let me take that again so I don't have to edit it out. I can just edit everything out. I just shipped out all of the Jaws Translites, so that's good. And for all you Beetlejuice fans, people have been asking me, like, do you have any more Beetlejuice? Do you have any more Beetlejuice? Because this gets out after the sale. You know, I'll, whoa, I'm doing 30 Translites. And I sell them and they're gone. And then, like, two months later, somebody sees it at the house and they call me up and they're like, they want one. I found one. I have one. So I'm going to auction it off. Probably do that on my personal page so I can monitor it. All I'm going to say is just stay tuned to my Facebook page or the Super Awesome page for details on when I'm going to do that so you can get yourself a Beetlejuice Translate, the last one in existence. I can't even get one. I've looked for it, and I called Brad at Lithrames. No bueno. There's nothing out there. Sorry, yet another editor's side note. The auction already happened, and it sold for $630. Hey-oh! I didn't do a deal with him on the Beetlejuice, just the Superman. So the Beetlejuice was me. I sold all those at Expo, I think. So let's see. What else? Speaking of artwork and stuff, we are finally set up on Silver Ball Swag. Yeah, buddy. You can go to silverballswag.com, and you look for our logo, and there are four different shirts, and there will be a mug soon. I just sent the artwork tonight, so it probably won't be up yet, but that will be there. One of the designs, we had Brad Brad Albright do a drawing of our heads. Brad is such a good dude I was texting back and forth with him he was giving me homework assignments for my kids who are stuck at home and we need art projects and stuff for them and he was giving me ideas but he did an awesome job on that our heads out there with the super awesome pinball show logo so thank you Brad yeah it's really fun and he agreed to do it for a swapperoo for a Jaws translate so it didn't cost me a nickel hey well that's a good deal I always like that barterin Yeah, well, you should because it always cost me. I had to pay for the Translight, damn it. I don't care. I'm rolling in cash. You're rolling in dozens of dollars. I got so much money that, you know, when I go to the Wendy's and I buy a lot of food, I say, you know, I spent a quarter of $100. Anyway, so yeah, silverballswag.com. The super awesome pinball gear is up there. And then on top of that, I've been playing monsters like crazy because the other two games are shit stacked all over them. Like all these boxes of tubes and stuff I got for sending out the trans lights. But I've gotten some balls stuck in the most odd places that you can imagine. I've been posting pictures. Have you checked the, I think it's just on my personal page, but I've been letting pinball people. Oh, no, you share everything to the super awesome pinball. Is it over there too? Oh, yeah, yeah. I got a ball stuck on the mini playfield on top of the ramp between the ramp and the lens that covers the playfield. Like, how did it get way up there? Like, I saw it, too. It came off the flipper at a 45-degree angle, went right up top, and just went boop and stopped. I had to tear the whole damn thing apart to get the ball out. That was fun. I was going to ask you that. How do you unstick a mini playfield stucky that's under the glass? What's the process for that? I had to take it down. Really? Flip up the play field, loosen the screws on the mini play field on the side that the ball was stuck on, and just kind of like pull on the play field, you know, pull it away from the main play field a little bit because it just needed a little bit of space and the ball dropped out. And then I screwed it back down and flipped it down and everything was fine. And this one happened twice. So the first time it happened, I couldn't believe it. It was more astonishing than the mini play field one. I got a ball stuck on the 180 ramp or the metal ramp where it goes up and it flips over on itself and comes down the wire form, it got stuck on the lip of the ramp between the ramp and the wire form. So how it came out of the ramp when there's two sides on it, I have no idea, but it skipped up and then lodged itself between the ramp and the wire frame. And that happened twice, like two days apart. You know, on Facebook there are groups for the most random pinball chip. There's a group called Pinball Cats, which is just cats on pinball machines and that sort of thing. But there's also a thing, I believe, for stuck balls, where you can just post, like, or at least a pin-side thread, for sure, where they just talk about the craziest stuck balls that they have. So collect all these pictures and submit, man. I forgot there was another one. On the stairway ramp, the right stairway post, between the top of the post and the wireframe that comes around from the right to the left side, it just pinched right because you're just sitting on top of the stairway looking like a fancy chrome ball on the top of the handrail. I don't know how it hit the left side of the ramp mouth and shot up on an angle and just went boom and stopped there it's crazy but I'm telling you this telling you this guys fear the franchise the pinball skills are unbelievable now dude I can't wait you're talking a big game you said this last episode too when we get together we have to have a super awesome pinball show pinball off and see how your skills are yes I'm very excited I've been working and practicing on everything I've noticed that games are different, like, as far as when you're trying to tap pass on games, some of the flippers and the way they're set up with the slings are different, and they react differently. So I've been honing my skills, yo. Can you tap pass on a stern? Because that's pretty tough. Oh, yeah. A racing stern? Uh-huh. Yeah. I'm a master on Batman, and even on Guardians. And now I can do it on the monsters, too. Monsters are a little bit different. It took me a while to adjust, but I got it. Cool. I've learned how to drop catch. I've been practicing that shit so I'm a master in all this shit I'm telling you, you guys are in trouble alright man, I'm ready well listen, speaking of social media I saw a couple posts from you that I wanted to ask you about so over the last few weeks you posted two things one, I'm sure is a bit of a sensitive topic for you I'm not going to name the name of the company for fear that I would give them hits but it was a post from an online store that was selling a pretty nicely framed canvas resting on a shelf with your Superman artwork in it And I know that you're not at all involved with that. And I think there was another one with your Batman art in it as well. So, you know, in your post, you kind of appropriately called them out for ripping off your artwork and selling it online without your consent. And it seems like this stuff kind of happens a lot to artists in general. So how do you find your work like this online? Is it people who come out and say, hey, you know, did you realize that this was being sold? And then how do you deal with it? You know, you're saying you don't want to give the company credit, but it's not just the one company. Number one, each company has several company names they use on Facebook, and that's part of a gag, is that if they get shut down, they just jump over another one. The thing is you can't do, I can't do anything about it. I will go to them, and I will say, hey, don't do that, and they'll be like, fuck you. You know, they'll just ignore me. So then I'll get my attorney, and then he'll send them a letter, but by the time this all transpires, They've made their runs. You know, it's like a 24-hour thing. They'll put a thing up there and collect orders. They'll print to order, send them out, and move on to the next thing. So you can't catch them. There's nothing you can do. Even though you can't stop the sales necessarily, can't you hit them up, you know, retroactively for sales that they have made on your stuff? I don't know. All I know is my attorney tells me that it's not worth the effort. That makes sense. Financially not worth it. It just happens, you know. And it sucks. But, you know, I was wondering, I'm like, you know, God, the quality can't be good because if they're stealing my stuff off of, like, Facebook, that's like 72 DPI. You know, and if they're blowing it up to, like, canvas prints, number one, the file should be at 300 DPI, not 72. And also, it should be a much larger size than what's on Facebook. So by the time they blow it up, it's got to look all fuzzy and shitty. But there was a recent Batman one that was posted that had two signatures on it. And what that means is that means the art has a signature on it, and then when somebody buys a print from me, I sign it for them. So it's got a print signature in it. So that one they got to scan off of an actual art print. Faster. I don't know if these people are, like, going to shows and just buying up prints and taking them back to their work and bootlegging posters. What if you kept a log for the numbered stuff, and then when you keep a little spreadsheet, that would be kind of a pain in the ass. but when he buys one, you know, what's your name? You write your name down for a number or whatever, and then if that shit comes up, then you know who did it. They usually Photoshop it out. They'll take the signatures out, and these people were just lazy. I was going to suggest that you watermark everything, but you can't watermark a print. Yeah, exactly. There's nothing you can do about that. They'll find a way. When there's a will, there's a way. So there's really no way you can stop them. You're just screwed. Oh, fucker! Fucker! Bunch of fuckers! Yeah, it is what it is. It sucks. And I've tried, you know, and there's just nothing I can do. And what's funny, so, you know, I'll say this to everybody that listens. You know, a lot of you guys send me messages saying, hey, look, I found this. They're ripping off your artwork. I get like 10 of those a day. So as much as I appreciate you guys looking out for me, there's nothing I can do. So even if you give me a heads up, you know, there's nothing I can do. So there's no point in wasting your time, you know, sending it over to me and filling up my mailbox with stuff. I know you said that there's multiple names for these companies, but can you better business bureau these guys and see if you can get people to flag them as scams? Well, I forgot who it was, but one of my friends actually called me and said, okay, that company is owned by this guy or this company name or whatever. And they're also operating under the names this, that, that, and that. So, yeah, there is a way you can track it down. I don't know how. I don't know how he did it, but there's definitely a way you can do it. But like I said, it's just like, you know, it's comparable to a cease and desist. It's like, you know, that's your first step, and that's what any court will tell you. Go to them, tell them to knock it off. You can't just attack them and say, you used my artwork and you made money off it and I want money. Your first step is stop doing that. And if they don't stop, then you take action. So, like I said, if I tell them to stop, they don't care because they're like, well, that doesn't matter. That was yesterday's print. We already shipped all those and we're on to the next one. Yeah. So it's just why I started the Facebook page, I Hate People, and you can buy mugs and shirts and stuff there. Well, you'll be able to soon because, you know, for the most part, I hate people because they're fuckers like that. Well, all right, let's move on to another talk, which is a little bit happier. So you made a second post. It showed the lower play field art of your Monsters game, and it was really freaking cool to see up close. And on the post, you were highlighting some of the hidden stuff that you can only see if you remove the lower play field from the game and cool stuff like a reference to the creature from the Black Lagoon and other things. So Easter eggs are interesting to learn about in general. But in art, and for your art, this machine won a Twippy because it was such a great art package. Why hide art? What is the point of that when 99% of people won't even see it? Because it's fun for the 1% that do. A lot of the people tinker with their games. You know, I discovered just by owning the Munsters that it requires monthly maintenance that you take that lower play field out and have to clean the underside of the lens. Because Borg was telling me about this dust that comes off of the flippers, and it's magnetized. It just kind of shoots up to the top of that lens, and it looks foggy. And I thought that was, you know, I sent him a picture. I'm like, you know, it's kind of wearing out on the top from the ball rolling on it. How do I get these, you know, hazy marks off? And he's like, it's on the inside. You've got to take it out. So, you know, for people who have to just dig around and, you know, like on Guardians of the Galaxy, if you lift the metal ramp that's in the shooter lane, it says, that's right, bitch. We're the Guardians of the Galaxy. You know, just because it doesn't take, you know, it doesn't like, I think the most extensive thing I've done was on the Beatles on the left orbit plastic. If you take that off, there's an actual drawing of a beetle bug. and on the back of his shell it's got a little British flag and it says made in Britain or made in the UK or something like that. That's cool. It's just a fun little thing to discover because it doesn't matter what it is. There's something that pulls the plastic off because they're changing bulbs or whatever, and they're like, oh, they're just happy to see something they haven't been staring at for the past year while they're playing it. It's just discovering something new. So it's easy to do. Is it stuff that you intentionally draw for that spot or is it stuff that you've drawn for other places that you're like, you can't use it, so you stick it there? The beetle I drew just for that spot. But it's just a little beetle bug. It didn't take me more than, you know, 10, 15 minutes. But like on the monsters, in one of the drawings of Grandpa, he's holding a Play Ghoul magazine. And I took that magazine and tucked it under the stairway. So like if you lift up the stairway ramp, you'll see it laying down in there. And that was already drawn, so just a matter of tucking it in there. The Guardians thing, the you said a bitch for the Guardians of the Galaxy, that's just type. Just type it out in a font and put a funky drop shadow behind it and it just takes a second. Other things, it just depends. It depends. I might pull something off of one drawing, like maybe a cabinet drawing, and slide it in somewhere. But I try to do just unique things, and I haven't done a whole lot of them. I've done some tributes and things that I've talked about before, But as far as the little Easter egg things, I hope to do more in the future. But, you know, I think at least every game has at least one except Batman because I didn't do the full play field on Batman. I just did the character art. Well, whatever your next game is, Ed and I are fully expecting to be hidden under some sort of plastic somewhere. Well, you know what else? I didn't realize you didn't do the entire Batman play field. Who did the other stuff? Kevin O'Connor. Kevin O'Connor, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, he did the play field and, you know, because I was called in at the last minute. I remember the story that that was your first one and you learned quite a bit just doing that one. But I didn't realize you did. I thought you did the entire play field. No, he had the play field done, but he had used photos for all the characters on the play field. And after I had done all the cabinets and everything with artwork, Greg Freres just said, well, now it's going to look dumb. Why don't you carry the artwork over onto the play field, just redraw these characters. It was minimal. There wasn't a whole lot of illustration there. That's cool. So I didn't hide anything in there. No hexagons? No hexagons. All right, well, you guys want to move on to Pinball in the News? Yes, Pinball in the News. Don't we have a proper intro for this? We do. Let's see. And now, Pinball in the News, with your super awesome eyewitness news crew. Our first headline is show cancellations. That's a bummer. This has been one of the worst parts from a pinball standpoint from the quarantine, just because all of these shows are what a lot of pinheads look forward to every single year. I mean, Ed obviously knows this personally, but man, there's so many great shows that have been delayed with TPF obviously being the biggest. But then you've got Pinberg from a competitive standpoint. That is like the Super Bowl every year of people who love competitive pinball. Pintastic just canceled, which is a great show out in Massachusetts. And, Ed, you were supposed to come to that this year, right? Several episodes ago I talked about that was going to be my plan now that I'm retired and I have an RV and I was going to do this whole pinball show tour. And so I was looking forward to several shows. Pintastic, Chicago Expo is still happening. Fingers crossed that that show doesn't get canceled, Rob. Hold it together, buddy. Would you like the latest from Rob? I just talked to him today. Give us the latest. His quote is, he is remaining cautiously optimistic. He is not sure. That's all I'm going to say. He said other things, but that was his quote. As of now, it's still on, but he's remaining cautiously optimistic. And I especially love going to Chicago Expo because, of course, my father lives in Chicago, as does a lot of my family. But it's like TPF. Everybody's there. You know, everybody's there. So, well, and there's something else, Ed, the three of us got invited by Mr. Ken Cromwell to come see him at his new job at Jersey Jack. Yes, we did. I would love to do that. Ken is a great guy. He's fun to hang out with. And man, that would be such a great tour. Love to do that. So, but yeah, I mean, Pinberg was a huge hit. We just heard about that tonight. Sarah was particularly bummed out about that because she was really looking forward to it. It's a huge getting together of all the pinball, you know, family that we have. And obviously, you know, you have to kind of be into competitive pinball to want to do pinball. But we are really bummed out. Fortunately, the tickets that we bought that we struggled to get this year are going to roll over to 2021. So if you hit F5 in that 0.1 microsecond and actually got tickets, you know, your struggle was not, you know, for naught. You will be able to still play, and that's great. And then I know you guys aren't competitive guys, but the Papa Championships are like one of the biggest tournaments in the world. and they are going to restart that. So that was a little bit of a silver lining with this news that they're going to try in 2021 bring the Papa Pinball Championships, World Championships back to Pittsburgh. So I'm looking forward to that. But yeah, but Pintastic obviously was another big blow. Chris, you and I hung out last year at Pintastic. We had a great time and they had just upgraded to a new hotel and a new bigger space and they were really looking forward to that. and Gabe DiNunzio and his family put on an awesome time. We had a blast last year. So I wish them the best. I really hope that they don't get discouraged by this and they come back bigger and better in 2021. So I'm looking at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, and it's scheduled for May 23rd through the 25th. Well, that's got to be gone. Yeah, like you said, what Pintastic talked to Gabe about that, and he's really bummed out. They had a really cool show planned this year. They were going to have Kevin O'Connor come out. I've seen the artwork that showed me, that Gabe showed me, that work. I don't know that it's anything secret, you know, or if it's been put out. Was it out yet? No, they haven't revealed it yet, but I've seen it too, and it's amazing. Well, you know, Mr. Connection there with your box of goodies and shit like that. If one more fuck tells me I'm like a big teddy bear, but I don't get a box of goodies, they can eat my butt. You have gotten a Loser Kid box of swag long before I did, so I'm just going to throw that out there. I mean, I appreciate the hand. I didn't get a box of swag. I got a hat. You got a box of swag. There's two of us, man. I mean, so you got to have more swag for more people, right? Not when you're alone. Oh, no. Well, speaking of Pentastic, just like TPF, you can go to their website and order Pentastic swag and gear and shirts and stuff. I went on there and ordered some stuff just the other day. Yeah, I did, too. Got some Pentastic pint glasses that are going to be with you. I did, too. Nice, man. Next topic is TPF 2021. What's going on with that? Yeah, absolutely. 2021 is a go. I was happy to report last week that we had come to an agreement with the hotel. The hardest part was, again, I had said before, while TPF is a big show at the embassy suites, they've got an event there every weekend. So not only are they just bombarded with 50 contracts they're having to deal with, most of the hotel employees have been furloughed for the time being. So we finally got a hold of the hotel manager at home, actually. He returned our call from home, and we had a chat with him. And after some back and forth, we agreed just to move everything from 2020 to 2021. So everything that we kind of had in place, you know, deposits, contracts, everything like that, is just we're just doing a do-over, and it's just all going to get transferred to 2021. So that was really the big thing that we were kind of waiting on. Everything else kind of fell into place, and everybody else worked with us. The people that we needed to refund got refunded. Those people that had weekend passes, they're going to hold with us. They're 2021. All the vendors are going to hold over to 2021, all the sponsors. So everything is a go. We have some money to jumpstart the show with. Thank you to the GoFundMe that Cointaker put together. Plus, we did have some money still. It's not like we blew all the money. We had some money. So we've got money and all the sales from the TPF website, which we've now shut down the store because we want to take the summer off. So, yeah, we're rolling. And after the summer, we're going to hit it hard and we'll start planning. So we're ready to roll. So what do you do? You mentioned this earlier, but what do you do with the things you had planned? Are you going to, like your special guest, for instance, Dr. Who, are you going to still do that? I know you had gotten a… Well, his manager emailed us just the other day and said that, hey, you know, she's very nice. And she said, yeah, we got, because, you know, he's on our mail list. So she said they got the email and was asking if we wanted to rebook him for 2021. So that's something we're discussing. Of course, you know, that would be nice if we did that. And we may end up doing that just because we bought, we have a full-sized TARDIS. And my buddy Kevin bought a Dalek. And we had all this Doctor Who stuff that, you know, we were planning on having a really cool little Doctor Who area. And I know a lot of people bought tickets specifically to see him. So I hate to burn those people and have them come to the show. I bought $200 worth of shit for my daughter to get signed. Right. Exactly. And you're not the only one. A lot of people were really excited about him coming. Fortunately, all of the guests that we bought airfare for, including Mr. Franchi, American Airlines, has said that they're going to turn all that into a credit. So everyone should be able to rebook their airfare for TPF 2021, including Dennis Nordman, Mark and C. Ritchie. Of course, it escapes me who else that we bought airfare for. We don't buy airfare for everybody. I wish I could, but we just can't. So all of that stuff has been turned into a credit, so everybody should be able to book and show up again. I'm trying to think what else. It's really things like the banners we'll have to redo. Well, that's just, you know, maybe a lot of people don't actually know this, but I talked to you about it, and you decided to not roll over the artwork for next year and do something new. Well, I do have an idea that I will talk to you about, but it won't be the – I have an idea for a theme. So, no, it won't be the same artwork, but I do have a thought that we're kicking around, which I think would be neat. But we will recycle some of it. I want it to be fresh. We want to have a fresh theme for the show for 2021 or something commemorating the return of the Texas Pinball Festival. Is that the right phrase? Yeah, absolutely. So we'll come up with something cool. I've got some ideas, and you're locked in anyway. I know you're coming, so we'll figure it out. Right now, I don't want to really mess with it. I just want to take the summer off. And besides doing this podcast and just play pinball, I don't really want to do much with TPS for the next couple of months. Yeah, man. mental break and uh come back fresh next year right now right now so what else is in the news next topic is topper talk christian take it away all right let's talk about top talk so i did see on facebook that the medieval madness royal edition uh toppers are shipping and obviously french you had a hand in that which is one of the the most beautiful toppers ever made of course um it it nice sculpture it's really cool in the back um and that's and that's the part you had And you were involved with, right? Yeah, I did the artwork in the back. I'm not going to take any credit for that topper being awesome because it's that sculpture in the front that's just absolutely mind-blowing. And on top of that, Matt from Back Alley hand-painted those. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think he's hand-painting every one, not just the three that they had done for the show. But I think he's hand-painting all of them. I'm bummed it won't work with my original Medieval Madness. But get it maybe hopefully somebody will come up with some way to make it work so I can get one someday. Dude, I did a double-take when I looked at the price tag for that. But if you're telling me that every single one is hand-painted, then the $600 price tag might make more sense. Yeah, it's definitely a unique piece of art. Every one, you know, is different basically because they're hand-done. And it takes a lot of time. He didn't cheap out and like, well, I'll paint the shirt and the pants the same color because then I can save on, you know. No, there's plenty of colors and details, and we have a lot of hard work goes into each one of those. So I think it's worth every penny. And Jersey Jack just put out a Willy Wonka topper that's going to be shipping soon, and they're selling those now. But when I saw those two things, you know, these are games that have shipped, maybe not the remake of Medieval Madness. You know, the Royal Edition hasn't shipped until recently. But why does it take so long for toppers to come out? What's the disconnect between a game coming out and the topper coming out, right? Like, the Star Wars thing is obviously the freaking, you know, the gold standard for delays of a topper. But what is the disconnect between a topper and a machine? Well, with my experience with Stern, it seemed to be that the topper was a, I don't want to say an afterthought, but it was like they were really focused on getting the game out. Like, you know, everything's got to be just right, you know, for as much heat as Stern takes for having cheap games or, you know, whatever. You know, they're not like Jersey Jack. They spend a lot of time in basically, for lack of a better term, quality control and making sure that everything is done just right. And I think it just becomes a thing where they put all their energies and efforts into getting that game looking the best it can and ready for, you know, reveal time, whether it was, you know, at a show or whatever. And then they kind of sit back and take a deep breath and go, okay, topper. And then we went with that. Now, I've done, like, when I did the Munsters topper, you know, my end of it, like, I think the toppers for the three games that I did were my idea, except for the, like, well, let's just go back. Batman was a combination of my idea and George's idea. George wanted to do the center of the Batmobile with the siren light. And I had drawn this sort of cockpit with both rounded windshield bubbles. And then, you know, it was all just flat artwork. And George said, well, I think we can marry these two. We can take your artwork and put it on either side. And then my 3D version of the center of the Batmobile will go right in the middle and it'll look three-dimensional. So that was cool. But then we did Guardians. And that was just me, you know, just going, hey, you know, put this on here. Light up the plexiglass and the lightning bolts show up and we can put vinyl on this. And, you know, it was my design. that artwork was done the same time the pinball machine was done the same with the Beatles and the Munsters now the Munsters like I sort of did a layout and then I I don't I think it might have been Greg Freres who came up with or maybe John Borg had something to do with it too making the cuckoo clock the functioning cuckoo clock and they put that in the center so that wasn't as much mine other than just the the layout and drawing the characters but you did the art before or before the pinball machine was released so your part was done before that was finished so was it was Is it delay the mechanical part of the topper that just took time to complete? Just everything, everything really, because I did the artwork, but I did the artwork after everything else was done. So when I deliver my work, they're busy putting it all together. They've got to print plastics and all the decals that go on the cabinet and all that. So I'm done drawing, and they're still fucking around putting the shit together. So the game comes out, and then they're like, okay, let's take care of this topper thing. with Stern it never seemed to be a concern to have that done the same time as the game they didn't seem to I guess I'm sort of putting words in them out but to me it seemed like they didn't look at a topper as part of the game it was more like an add on if you wanted to later on yeah but then they started including them on the LEs and stuff like that so they did on Batman so maybe their theories have changed on how that stuff needs to roll out and maybe something like R2-D2 has made them look at that again and go, you know, we need to figure this out. When the heat off on a game you know a year later you know who wants a topper for an old game you know That the point right I mean in the video game world they have DLC which is downloadable content which comes out after the game is finished and it already been put out and then they can, you know, reallocate resources to making add-on content. But for a pinball machine, when the hype is out there and everybody is excited for a new pin, that is the time where I feel like a pinball company is going to sell the most toppers. So to come out months and months and months later seems like a totally lost opportunity to me. And why not do these things, develop these toppers at the same time as the pen itself? Is it just a resource issue? Yeah, it might just be an issue of time and who you can allocate to work on that because usually it's the same team. They don't have a topper division, so who really knows? I think it's just a matter of getting the game done and then focusing on the topper afterwards. To my experience, the topper was never something that was handled at the same time as the game, like they were thinking about that. It was, you know, I would always get that call after I finished up the last thing on the play field. Like, okay, now we've got to start thinking about a topper. Interesting, yeah. I think it would be, I mean, I'm just one dude, but I have heard a lot of complaints that, hey, this topper's taken forever. You would think they would try and do it all at the same time, but I am completely out of the loop in terms of what resources are and how it all plays out from a development standpoint. Yeah, well, look at Star Wars. You know, God, it was like forever. The monsters, they had an issue when it first came out. It wasn't really far behind the game, but they had a problem with the door on the cuckoo clock, and so they had to take back the ones that were sent out. They had to figure some things out and put it back out again. The Beatles, I think, wasn't very too far outside of the release of the game, But there are some things that just drag it out sometimes, whether it's, you know, problems with approval. You know, the R2-D2 thing for Star Wars, that wasn't anything on the end of Stern. It was trying to get that stuff approved by Lucasfilm, which it seemed strange. It would be so easy to get all the artwork and everything approved, and then they do this topper that, to me, looks just like R2-D2. What's the problem, you know? I mean, I wasn't there when all that happened, so, you know, I'm from the outside looking in like everybody else. But, you know, just with my experience from that, it just seems strange. Why that takes so long, I don't know. But, yeah, I mean, a year and a half after the game comes out, you know, it's just like, oh, let me get a topper for my game. You know, they're spending their money on new games. So it would definitely be, you know, a good idea to, if you don't get it out when the game gets out, you know, at least hit that month or two window afterwards. Well, I just got my Munsters topper however many years later. So I do think people will buy them, but you're right. It's, you know, once the next game's out, then everybody's on to the next game. So they need to do a better job of getting them out. People who are searching for a Beatles topper, a little birdie told me, not a little birdie at Stern, but another little birdie told me that Stern may be going back to the well and making a few more of those. So there may be hope after all, including me. I don't have one. I never got one. And then the next thing I knew, I couldn't find one. I'm like, what the hell? Where'd they all go? So I need one as well. But anyway, so, okay. So that does it for Topper Talk, and now we've got Lord of the Rings Unvaulted. It seems Kaneda let a cat out of the bag that wasn't a cat in a bag, apparently. I think it's a great idea. I've got a Lord of the Rings, and I love it. It's one of the most popular Stern games, and I think people would want to buy a new one if they could. Well, yeah, but this is a situation where a guy is sort of doing a custom one, and I think, from what it seems like, it seems like his idea was like, well, I'm going to spend a lot of money to, like, redo this artwork and redo the play field and, you know, have all these sculpts made. If that's the case, I'm going to sell some of this shit to sort of recoup some of my costs and let some other people enjoy this stuff too. But when Kaneda left the cat out of the bag, I think there was some backpedaling going on because they might have got bitch slapped by somebody who, you know, had the rights to that game and said, no, you're not doing that. So I think, you know, because if you do a one-off, you do a one-off and you pay and it's done, that's cool. When you start manufacturing crap and selling it, we talked about this before with licensing. Is there a vault edition coming or is there not a vault edition coming? The answer is no. There's no vault edition coming to our knowledge. But here's the bottom line is that all of this talk just underscores how much people want a Lord of the Rings vault. Because when this information was falsely disseminated out there, people were really, really hyped about it. And, you know, Jeff Patterson took to, you know, he did a whole post on why this wasn't true and talking about it. But, I mean, the bottom line is that people want this freaking vault. So Stern, get out there and get the license back. Yeah, but what system is it built? I mean, yeah, I know. This is going to have to be programmed, you know. Yeah, it's built before the SAM was the original. Right. It was built before the SAM. But, I mean, I don't know. I'm not an engineer guy, so how hard could it be for them to put it on the new system if they had to? Apparently it's difficult. I think it would be a great idea. I think a Lord of the Rings Vault Edition would sell very well. I mean, that's just me. I don't know anybody that doesn't like that game. Correct. There's lots of people who want a Tron Edition. There's lots of people who want other Vaults. But freaking everybody wants a Lord of the Rings Vault. So let's do it. I've got to play it. I've got to play it. Okay, well, let's move on to our last bit. Stern apparently leaking the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in an image where they were doing a Zoom meeting. And there's Dwight sitting in his basement with a little Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle showing on the side. Now, everyone's looking, oh, that's a backbox. That's a banner to the game. Now, number one, I can tell you right now that the banners to that game are probably not done yet. That's something that they do last minute. At least they've always done that when I work for them. So that's not a banner. And I talked to Mr. Dwight Sullivan about it. Called him up, and I said, my trained eye looks at that image and says, that's a poster. because it's not a backbox because there's no shadow from the graphic being sunk in around the frame of a wooden box. There's no shadow on the wall next to it that would certainly be there if there was an 8-inch, 9-inch deep box sitting off the wall. There'd be a shadow on the wall next to it there, and there's no shadow. The shadow knows. To me, that looks like a poster, and Dwight said, that's a kid's poster. I've got children, and that's a kid's poster. Shit, I was going to grill you, man. I was going to be like, how are you so sure that this is not a fucking poster? That looks unreal. Oh, no, I knew it was a poster, and then I reached out to him just to sort of back things up, you know. It just looks like it's such an odd angle, and it kind of, it just looks like it's tilted the same way that a backbox would be tilted. I was convinced this was a backbox. It's the distortion of the lens. It's, you know, your phone camera is similar. If you look at the outsides of some of the pictures you take in full frame, some of that stuff is distorted. and that's all it is. He's got a Ninja poster in his basement for his kids. It's nailed up to the studs. That's another reason how you can tell is because the corner of the poster ends right on the edge of the stud. Yeah, it does. That's the way you have to hang it. Well, here's my suggestion for all of these pinball companies that do Zoom. You know what? Start putting shit in there. Just put like a fifth element something in it. Just start putting stuff, you know, all over. Years ago, this was many, many years ago, I was hanging out with Steve Ritchie, and the new Superman reboot movie had just come out, and I had the DVD of it. So I handed it to Steve, and I said, here, take a picture of this. I said, hold this, and he held it, and I took a picture of him, and it's just him holding the picture of the Superman DVD. And just to be a little bit of a troll, I put that on pin side, and oh, my God, it just blew up like you wouldn't believe. oh my god, Steve Ritchie's doing Superman, and this is going to be the greatest thing ever, and this is proof, and I'm like, no. I don't take pictures of myself in my office very often, but I have a 12-inch tall figure of... Yeah, you deserve it. And I'm waiting to capture that in the background of a photo, so people can be like, whoa, what are you working on? Now you blew it, dude, you just blew it. Well, no, I'm going to beep it out. What do you think about an escape from New York pinball machine? Too fringe. Snake to the skin. I hate that name. What's the word for it? Plisskin. It sounds like foreskin. It doesn't roll off the tongue, that plisskin. We'll be right back. Guess what? I got a fever. And the only prescription is the super awesome pinball show. Oh, yeah! Super Cat! This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new, full-size, authentic Stern pinball, Chicago gaming, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parks, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. How do you do? How do you do? Welcome to Cat's Pinball Palsy. Yes, this is Cat's Pinball Palsy. We have just expanded. We've got plenty of machines. We started out small. Now look at all these games. And there's people coming in right now, and you've got to see the smile on their faces because they know that they're playing at Pat's Pinball Palace. Come on in. And they're going to get their money's worth. Hey, look at that smile. Look at his smile here. I'm telling you. Look, they're having fun here. They are having fun. Don't forget, we are located 27th Janice Cliff. That's in Clifton, New Jersey, one block from 246 West. It's very conveniently located. You take your car. It's only a gallon of gas. Not that much. Come over, two games for 25 cents. Come to Pat's Pinball Palace. This is Steve Ritchie with a mouthful of pumpkin pie. You're listening to the Super Awesome Pinball Podcast. Pinball show. I'm not doing that. Yeah, you are. Pinball show? That's what it's called. Okay, here we go. This is Steve Ritchie, and you are listening to the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Now, back to our program. Well, it's about frickin' time. I am the God of Hellfire, and I bring you... The Super Awesome Pinball Show! It's a cool show! Thank you, thank you, thank you to our fine sponsors for that. And coming up now, you may have seen this guy at a pinball show or two and thought to yourself, is that that guy? And it was that guy. And he was nice enough to take a picture with you. Maybe he even got to play a game of pinball with you. Because he's the nicest rock star in the pinball world. Ladies and gentlemen, he's kind of a big deal. The Barenaked Ladies, Ed Ed Robertson. Hey, hey. Hey, there you are. Hey, there you are. All right, I had to bypass my studio setup here. No worries, man. Whatever works. Now it's like the Brady Bunch. Oh, man, I don't have my camera hooked up. Oh. Bitch. That's probably best. Ed, I'm coming for you, man. You'll never fucking find me. He's so off the grid. I'm just going to look for the beard clippings. I've seen your selfie cam, James. You are way out there. The bare naked one himself. Pinball fan, Mr. Ed Ed Robertson. How you doing, sir? What is up, fellas? Nice to see you all. Nice to see you too, man. So you're not seeing us all. You're not seeing me, but put on everybody. Well, I used your joke and said two Eds are better than one, and it wasn't as funny. So, Ed, we had a whole big interview with you, but I know time is short, so we're going to cut to the chase. Everyone knows about Ed Ed Robertson, the singer, so we want to delve into your pinball background. So hit us with your pinball origin story. Where did it all begin? Well, I was super into the arcade scene of the kind of early to mid to late 80s. It was after school straight to the arcade like almost every day. But I was a video game kid, and the pinball machines were actually on like a riser section at the back of the arcade. It was like an eight-inch step up, and it was like where all the really, like, cool guys who smoked and stuff, they were back there playing pinball. With their big bells on. Yeah, us dorky kids were playing, like, God, I remember, like, R-Type and Body Champ and Sprint, Super Sprint, Off-Road. That was like the heyday of my arcade time, Robotron. I remember when Dragon's Lair first hit the arcade and how many quarters that sucked out of me. 50 Cent Game, actually. Oh, yeah. The first one. So pinball had this kind of tough, magical allure that as a kid I thought, like, I'm not cool enough to go up there to the pinball machines. and then when I started touring it just became the thing I did all the time because I was playing in bars every night I was 19 years old 18, 19 years old and I didn't drink or smoke and of course all bars and venues were smoking venues at the time so after I played I just wanted to get the hell out of the bar because it stank and hammer people. So I would go find a coffee shop or a laundromat nearby that had a pinball machine. And I sort of knew where cool machines were all over North America by about 1991 because I kind of sought them all out. So I'd be like, oh, cool, I'm going to be in, you know, I'm going to be in Winnipeg, and I know there's that next gen at the coffee shop in Winnipeg, so I can hit that after the show. It became like a real ritual for me. I'd go get an Earl Grey tea and play pinball for two hours after the show. Then, about 1998 or thereabouts, maybe 1999, I was looking for a present for my wife, and we were both pretty nerdy, and we were big fans of Star Trek Next Generation. And I was searching eBay, which was a new thing. Right, I remember that. You know, there were deals to be had. eBay, like, there was not a lot of people on it. And I searched Star Trek The Next Generation thinking I might find a Jonathan Frakes signed 8x10 or a Brent Spiner worn in a scene, you know, top or something that I'd be able to buy. Or, you know, I could keep dropping cast members' names all day. But anyway. You're so cool, Ed. We get it. You're a huge fan. Thank you. We did a corporate event one time, and Brent Spiner was there, and I didn't know. and I walked into the dressing room and I said, hello, Brent Spiner. And he said, wow, you know how to pronounce my name. I was like, of course I know how to pronounce your name. Dan, you left your action figure at home. You couldn't get it signed. Yeah, I'm sure most people just go, dude, you're Data. And you're like, fuck you, I'm Lover. Can you swear on this podcast? Yes, hell yes, hell yes. Swear away. Anyway, looking for cheap paraphernalia that I could buy sort of as a gag gift, the pinball machine popped up. And it was a light bulb moment for me. I was like, wait a minute. You can buy a pinball machine? Like, it had never crossed my mind. The thought never crossed my mind. And so it was a no-reserve auction. There was about two hours left. and I bid, I think, $600. No. And this was back in 1999, 2000, so yeah, okay. Yeah, 1999. And I won the auction. Wow. And a guy called me up. We exchanged numbers after the sale took place. He goes, Ed from Toronto. You're not the Ed from Toronto, are you? And I said, well, that depends. He said, are you the dude from Barenaked Ladies? And I said, yeah. And he goes, do you want a Twilight Zone, too? Wow. Oh, damn it. What, $500 for that, you butthole? He charged me $800 for the Twilight Zone. Wow. Well, see, that was 1998. That was when Stunt came out, right? I mean, that was big time. And did you start this process because you were, you know, rewarding yourself for success? I mean, this was probably your biggest success. You had a million dollars. it's uh yeah it was kind of on a whim you know um i married a banker's daughter uh and it sounds like it happened just outside an old west saloon my my wife's father my father-in-law was a regional branch manager for bank of nova scotia up here in Canada. And so I inherited those incredibly conservative, frugal spending habits. And my wife and I lived like a super careful existence because my band was huge in Canada in the early 90s before anyone in America had ever even heard of us. And then that went away. Oh, no. So I knew what it was like to, like, be on top of the world and then be right back on the world. Right. You know? And, yeah, that was right at the start of, you know, things really exploding for stunt. And I thought, I could probably afford a $600 pinball machine. Nice. Eating that extravagant spending that took me right off the deep end. Right, right, right. This is, like, how the VH1, you know, story starts. Yeah. I was in on the ground floor, by the way, Ed, because I'm from Detroit. So, you know, a lot of the Canadian stuff comes over. So I was in on the ground floor. I had Gordon when it came out. Nice. Well, I remember playing. We broke the attendance record at the Great Western Fair, which is in London, Ontario, just over the border. We broke a longstanding attendance record of 14,000 that had been set by Captain and Tennille. there's an accomplishment mid 70's anyway we're like 1992 and we put 14,700 and some people it's fairground and we drive across the border to Detroit and play for 400 completely disinterested people at the 99X night at the state theater in downtown Detroit Oh. Well, I want to back up. When you said you bought the Star Trek Next Generation for $600, was that Canadian dollars? It was real dollars. Oh. If you said it was Canadian dollars, I was going to say, well, that was like 50 bucks. Yeah. The ugly dollars, the green dollars, American dollars. Okay. All right. You just wait and watch your dollar, mister. Stunt blew up, though. I mean, you debuted at number three. You sold four million copies. so at this point you knew you were doing pretty darn well you know did the collection kind of take off the pinball collection at that point not for a long time actually and correction 6 million this is Wikipedia man I gotta update that I should update it but I don't did you piss through your dowry already I had Star Trek next gen and Twilight Zone for about four years. And then I picked up a Lord of the Rings when it was brand new. Nice. And I had those three pins for many, many, many, many years. And I had Twilight Zone up at my cottage where I am now, and it was super hard to get it serviced. The biggest close city is about an hour and a half away, and I managed to find a tech that would actually drive up here, and I paid him well to do so. But, you know, Star Trek Next Gen is always breaking. Oh, yeah. And Twilight Zone is no slouch either when it comes to problems with mechs, right? So they were always broken. And I loved them, but I was always chasing somebody to try and fix them. And finally my wife said, look, either get these things running or get them out of the house. And that's when I went, okay, well, it can't be that hard. I bought myself a digital multimeter and a soldering iron and sort of brute-forced my way through some schematics. And I started looking at videos. I discovered Pinside, and there was a lot of tech help on there. And NextGen was basically the machine I learned to do almost everything on. It's a great machine for that because it's got optos and leaf switches. And, you know, when you're chasing your tail on that thing, you learn a lot. Right. So NextGen was the first machine that I really lifted up the play field and learned how to maintain a machine. And once I knew the sort of basics on how to fix them, it just went mental after that. I was like, wait a minute, I can buy broken shit and get a new team? That's a whole new frontier. Yeah, your good buddy Tom McCullough was on last week, and he said that his extent of pinball knowledge is how to pick up the phone and call the repair guy. So you've gone to the point where you can fix everything? EMs, you know, solid states, the whole gamut? I don't know if you can see. Yeah. I guess the listeners can't, but that's a roached jungle queen that I'm slowly working my way through all the score reel mechs, pulling those apart. I rebuilt the AX relay to Z1 and Z2. Oh, sorry, Z1 and Z2. I can translate for you guys. Well, yeah, I'm learning on the EM thing. That's new for me. But it's really fun, man. You just rebuilt a Joker poker. I saw pictures. I did, yeah. I did. Well, you're qualified now to come over and fix my captain. Fantastic. Yeah, well, for those listening, I suckered Ed into buying an EM Joker poker that we had at TPF 2019 that ran flawlessly all weekend. I don't believe that. it's that, oh, it was working before it left here. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful game. It knows its own. So I'm going to tell you a story. So I asked Ed if he's interested. So, yes, he says, I'll take the game. And he comes and plays in Dallas. So I asked him, do you want to come play the game? He said, no, no, just pack it up. That would be great. Just wrap it up, have it ready to go. So I did. I mummified it, and I'll tell you, that was a damn good packing job I did. I grabbed his blankets, and you could have sunk it underwater, and it would have been fine. So we go to the concert. I deliver the game to the concert, and we meet Ed in the back parking lot, and he just calls a couple of roadies over. They just grab this thing, and they just throw it in the back of this truck, and I'm looking at it going, oh, my God, is that going to be okay? And he says, oh, it'll be fine. And I said, how long is it going to be in there? Yeah, the rest of the tour or however long it was back there. I don't know. I think you actually end up taking a break early and getting it back home sooner than you anticipated. Real quick, but let me tell you, no amount of bouncing around in the back of a truck fills the metal plate inside a score reel with dried up grease. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Absolutely. Is that the bundle deal that came with a video game or something at the Hall of Fame? No. The Hall of Fame. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful game. And I thank you once again for facilitating that sale. I'm happy to have it. but those score reels needed a lot. I'm sure they were. I'm sorry about that. You know, I'm not an EM guy. It must be nice to have roadies to help you move pinball machines. Not all of us have that. He just snapped his fingers. He just snapped his fingers, and these guys come running over. Yeah, so let's talk about that. I just snapped my fingers. I asked my road crew if I loved dearly or liked me to help. That's true. We had another pinball purchase. There was an extra loonie in it for you. Yeah. How many pinball machines do you have on tour with you when you travel? Usually just one. I had a road case built, so it actually goes on the truck with all the audio and lighting gear. So I generally carry a new, like a modern stern with me. I had Deadpool Premium out last summer. I had Iron Maiden out the summer before. But I'm always picking up other pins as we go, and often stuff that doesn't work. So sometimes I'll just strap a pin like that to a case, and I'll have the guys wheel it into the dressing room every day, and I'll just sort of work through troubleshooting it. The Marcos folks have been amazing with me, like overnighting stuff that I need to call them up. I'm like, okay, I'm in Nashville now, but I'm going to be in Birmingham tomorrow. And you get these parts to this venue in Birmingham tomorrow. So they've been awesome. You seem to have a pretty great relationship with Stern. I mean, do they send these machines to you and hook you up with the latest and greatest? They've been awesome. I love those guys. And, yeah, in both cases, those machines were just loners to me. Because in both cases, I already owned the machine. I had Maiden LE at home, and I had Deadpool LE at home. And, you know, it works out great for everyone. and I post a lot when I'm on the road, and it's good. It's so funny, like, when I make a post, the number of people that go, oh, my God, I love pinball. I'm sure you guys are well familiar with that, but it's like people don't know it's still happening. I used to play that machine when I was nine years old. Like, no, you didn't. This machine is nine months old. So, I mean, you and Stern have been linked. I mean, you've done voices for the Black Knight. You were the flamethrower guy, right? How did that all come about? Tell us the story behind how that started and what the process was like. Well, Steve Ritchie sent me a text or an email, I don't remember which, but he said, hey, would you be interested in doing some voice work for my new game? Which, of course, I was totally excited about. I love Steve and I love his games. And it was a really funny process because they sent me a script. And, you know, I have a decent working little vocal studio at home. So I burned off all the lines. You know, it took me maybe 15 or 20 minutes or something. Okay. And I sent it off. And Tim, who was doing the coding, he calls me and goes, it's great, man. It's really great. but you made a mistake. You c-speed Steve on the email and now he wants to direct you in a vocal session. So we got to do it again. And I go, what? That's great. That's great. I love that. Are you kidding? It took me like 15 minutes. Like, yeah, I'll just set it up again. Let's, you know. He said, yeah, we can be ready in 45 minutes here. And you record it locally and I'll have Steve conferenced in on the call and he can sort of direct you. now I don't know how recently you've talked to Steve Ritchie but hearing is not his strong suit so we're on a conference call and Ed how are you doing? I go I'm good, I can't hear him Tim goes he's there he goes ok, well let's try this burn! and I go burn! and Steve goes I can't hear him and Tim goes he nailed it so that went on exactly like that for about 45 minutes can you try like fire and i went fire and he said i can't hear him and tim said he nailed it that's awesome and afterwards i just i called tim and i said there was something amazing about a mostly deaf man uh directing an award-winning vocalist through. But I love those guys. It was so fun to do, and it's so crazy for me to hear my voice in a pinball machine. I love it. Is that the first time it's happened? I mean, as such a pinball fan, have you been asked to do music or audio before in any other games? Yeah, in tiny ways. I wasn't able to make the music thing happen before, but this is the first real like you know sent me a script had a bunch of lines did a bunch of call outs I did something I might have done something for Spooky at some point I don't remember that's cool we need a theme for our podcast yeah that's right yeah I mean you've done some pretty good themes for TV shows in the past and we could certainly go for a podcast ah there you go I see well I'll see what I can whip up here nice so I going to guess as Warner Brothers Television paid That right That going to come up ahead of time when I going to get the file from Ed Ed Robertson and it's going to say, French, he's a dick, ding, ding, ding, and that's going to be it. I'm like, God damn it. It's pretty catchy. It's pretty catchy. Yeah, isn't it, though? So why hasn't there ever been a Barenaked Lady's pinball machine? Is this something that you're ever interested in? There hasn't been one. Well, there was a mock-up one I've seen. There was one? There was one, it didn't work, but incredible custom creation by Billy, the main tech at Pinballs in Austin. We did a shoot for a Barenaked Lady song, the title of which escapes me. I think Say What You Want, maybe? And Darren and Mickey, who run Pinballs, are pals of mine. and Billy offered, we were working with a production team in Austin, and Billy Rankin offered to build this machine. He essentially took a burnt-out old pin and completely custom redid the play field. So it didn't shoot, but it lit up, it looked beautiful, and we may try to repurpose that into some wall art or something. Yeah, it's funny. I've talked to lots of people about a Barenaked Lady's pinball machine, and oddly it's not something I desire. No. I love my band, and I love my job, and I love my songs, but I would feel so embarrassed playing a Barenaked Lady's pinball machine. I kind of get that. It's like driving down the street and cranking my music in a car. Hey, hey, that's me. I'm singing that song. I can see how it would be a marriage of your two loves, right? Music and pinball. But at the same time, I get that. And you had mentioned that when you made the song Silver Ball, you know, to kind of pronounce your love of the hobby to the world, you felt like it was letting your freak flag fly, which was how you kind of described that. And was that awkward for you to kind of put your love for pinball out there as much as you did in that song? And you even titled your album after, you know, pinball. Yeah, well, it's funny because for pinball nerds like us, that's all super obvious. And every single reference in the song is immediately understandable by pinball people. But if you're not a pinball person, those words are just kind of nostalgic. And, you know, if you're a pinball nerd, you know I'm talking about Lord of the Rings. If you're not a pinball nerd, you just think I'm making vague sort of pinball-y things. So I think that's part of the strength of that song is really it's a love song that uses pinball terms as metaphors for a relationship. And it's kind of like it's only as nerdy as you are. That's a really nerdy song if you're really nerdy. Right. Right. What do your bandmates think of it? I mean, do they, now I've asked you this before and I don't remember the answer, but I think do they just like, yeah, you know, everybody's got their own thing and they just deal with it. Or when you go on tour and you stop at places and you take off to go play pinball somewhere, nobody seems to worry about it or they just, nobody wants to go with you or, you know, when you came to Texas, you dragged your neighbor with you. You had a buddy that you brought with you that kind of came with you and he was into pinball, but all your other bandmates are just like, well, Ed's going to go play pinball. Well, we kind of see each other for like 18 hours a day for months. Right, sure. So, you know, Jim goes running. He does his yoga stuff. Kev likes to go on bike rides and major walks. Ty is like, Ty will find a museum or he does a lot of bike riding too. And pinball is my thing. Like if I've got a couple, three hours between soundcheck and the show or before Soundcheck, I'm running out to find pinball. I'm lucky I get invited over to a lot of people's houses to check out some pretty cool collections, or I'll find a location spot. Do you remember back when you could go to a place and play a bunch of pinball machines, and there was people around and stuff? Back in the day. For those days now. Have you ever been to Pinball Pete's in Ann Arbor? They're still around. I have not. It looks like a two-level arcade in Ann Arbor, like on the campus oh no i haven't well it's a bit of a trek from it's probably an hour drive from detroit you're probably usually in the detroit area yeah it's been a while since i was actually in ann arbor that's where school kids records was yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so we definitely have been there before but i don't remember that place and you came out to hershey um last year we saw you live you were freaking awesome i was there with joe lemire who's a big pinhead as well um and anytime you come back to Hershey please come over to our place and play pinball we'd love to have you got a nice collection I'm just gonna throw that out you can edit this out of the show but uh I'd love I'd love to have you over to our pad and look at all the booze on the wall there I know I got booze I was gonna comment on that I'm like oh my goodness what do you got going on there it's a lot of gin and tonics uh that are being made over at this place well I will definitely take you up on that so this is man yeah you got it man I'm gonna jump off of pinball here and the tour's scheduled. How's that looking? You know, I don't know at this point. I got a long email from my manager about one minute before this call, and I didn't have time to read it. I'm going to say it's not looking good because I just don't think we're going to be at mass gatherings, which is every show, you know. If they're looking for six feet between people, you can't fit a lot of people in a concert. Yeah, that's more like a warrant show. not on purpose not a good day right so you you mentioned you mentioned the final you were on on uh jeff gills who showed uh a few weeks ago and you had said that you might push the dates to november is that is that probably not gonna happen or well the uk tour has so far pushed to november and i'm hopeful that uh we'll be at a place to do those shows um but my suspicion is that the summer tour will push to next summer but there hasn't been an official announcement yet but some of the venues some of the big venues that we really anchor our tour on like red rocks has already canceled their season so when we lose a couple dates like that the tour kind of becomes not viable anymore right right and i know you guys pretty well have guitar covered in the band. I play guitar myself, so in order to chisel in on one of your albums, I couldn't offer my guitar skills because you got it covered. So I'd like to offer something else that I think we might be able to squeeze in somewhere in a song. It goes something like this. There we go. Oh, my God. It sounded just like Chris Marquis, man. That was awesome. It's when you can't afford a turntable in turn of the patching. Not bad. A little bit of a fat voice for you? Thank you. Not bad. My wife has a podcast, Mrs. Pint's Pinball Podcast, and she wanted me to ask you. I don't like women giving me orders. Are you going to make another pinball-related song? And if you are, could you possibly have some cameos by pinball podcasters because she would offer her talents? Well, if only I could get a hold of someone like the number one podcaster in the world. Then I might consider it. I don't know who that is. Who would that be? Just one of your texts to him goes a long way on his podcast. Oh, my God, he loves you. He name drops you every episode. You're on this show, and can you say Kaneda? Yes. You turned to a friend of yours. Who must not be named. And he freaking loves you. He drops your name every episode. I love him, too. Chris is insane. Never has someone who knows so little said so much. you're so right but i you know what his show is fucking entertaining and he's uh whether it's informed or not he has an opinion he articulates it well and i find him entertaining and i more than anything i just love busting him on all his shit so when i hear him say something ludicrous I just immediately send him a text. I'm like, dude, you are such a moron. He sticks to it. And as I say, I do find the show very entertaining. But, hey, it's all about entertainment. Yeah. I love it. All right. So one thing I didn't know about you is that you've done a fair amount of acting. You did some hosting gigs for TV shows. You've had three seasons of your own TV series called Ed's Up, where you traveled around trying out different jobs. And having not seen that series, did you do anything pinball related in those shows? I didn't. I did 58 different jobs over three seasons. And it was everything from crime scene cleanup to tree planting in northern Manitoba to coffee farming in Jamaica. Nothing pinball related. part of the premise of the show was that I got GPS coordinates and a contact name and I would fly somewhere not knowing what I was in for and uh because I'm a pilot so that part of the show was like flying and I said to the producer at one point who's a good friend and a really really funny guy I said Craig I'd really like to do more with aviation like I got to do some great that stuff with the Canadian Air Force. I got to fly F-18 Hornets, and I got to do some unbelievable flying stuff. But entering the third season, I was like, I'd really like to do more with aviation. Like, maybe we could do an episode where I'm flying supplies for a remote hospital somewhere, or maybe I'm flying fishermen up to a fishing camp. You know, something like that. Just more with aviation. He said, yeah, I know you want to do more with aviation, but the network wants to see you blowing a homeless guy. So we've got to find somewhere in the happy medium. That's quite gay. Oh, my God. So it was more like, okay, you're going to be a garbage man in Pittsburgh. That's right. Not quite flying in the beautiful North supplying a fishing camp. Ed, we need you to fill up the tampon dispensers in the bathroom. I mean, you're a celebrity, so you're talking about pinball. obviously goes a long way. People listen to what you're saying. If you say, hey, pinball is awesome, people might look into pinball a little bit more. So what do you think could get pinball out into the mainstream more than it is currently? That's why I brought up the TV show. That's the kind of thing that I think might do it. Yeah, it's the conundrum, right? It's like the people who are into pinball are so crazy into pinball, they cannot understand why everybody isn't into pinball and doesn't own five to ten pinball machines. Why would you not? That's the conundrum, though. It's like the hidden layer of pinball that gets its hooks in all of us, the rules, the kinetic energy of it. That secondary layer, once you get past, you know, chimping the flippers and, you know, having no idea what's going on, you get past that and you learn that there's certain shots you're supposed to make. at certain times and you get hooked. But teaching people that is really tough. Like switching that switch on in their head takes a bit, you know. And I don't know what the thing is going to be to break it open to the masses again. I think that the tournament they tried a couple years ago, I don't know if it was a Stern Pro Circuit or a Papa thing, where they did head-to-head. So they had two Metallicas and the goal was, you know, light crank it up. Or the goal was, you know, who can start a multiball the fastest. I think there's a real barrier to a viewer who's not a pinball nerd. Because I watch a lot of streaming and I find it really entertaining because I know what's happening. Yes. But if you don't know what's going on and you're not able to follow, I don't know, It's kind of like someone from El Paso trying to watch a hockey game. They're like, what is offside? I don't even know what the fuck's going on here. Why are they fighting now? It's more like, why are they playing hockey now? Not fighting. So, I mean, one of the things you do is you, I know you're not a big social media guy, but you do tweet, or not tweet, but you put up on Instagram or something that you might be going to a show. and I know there was a post where you said, hey, I'm playing a show here, but over here is a pinball show. Why don't you check it out? It's awesome. Do you go to, I mean, I met you for the first time at Pinfest, for the only time at Pinfest and in Allentown and it was a total geek out moment for me. You were incredibly gracious. You took a picture with my wife and I and I don't know how someone who is as recognizable as you can go to these shows and not get accosted, but you do it. And are there shows that you frequent every year? Are there places you try and hit you haven't been? Well, it's pretty tough to beat the Texas Pinball Festival, and I'm not saying that because Ed is here. Ed paid you. It is such a great show. I've been to as many as I can make it to and will continue to, but the thing I always say to people is just, like, let's play pinball. Like, it's the most disarming thing. People walk up and they're like, dude, it's really you. You're here. And I go, yeah, let's play a game. You know, it's kind of a great equalizer. And, you know, I'm at those shows not as a guy in a rock band. I'm there as a pinball nerd. I'm excited to see the new games. I'm excited to, you know, check out what interesting mods are happening. and I'm not a big mod guy, but more like if I can add something to my machine to make it a little more bulletproof and run a little better, you know, OCD LED boards for my old valleys and things like that. I'm on the lookout for stuff like that, those new hardtop products where I can take a really roached old play field and just slap something like that on it and just, you know, pick up cool pinball shit and shirts and play a load of pinball with a whole bunch, I meet a ton of people that way. And it's so much more fun to play a game of pinball together than stand there awkwardly and take a selfie. Yeah, but you're pretty awesome about the selfies. I mean, I've seen you walk around TPF and Chicago Expo. And I do think most people are pretty cool. They give you your space. And I've never seen you mobbed by fans and stuff at those shows. But you are very gracious when someone does come talk to you and ask for a selfie or talks to you for, and you do tend to pay attention when they're talking to you and not seem overly busy. And you give people their time, and then you do go play pinball with them. So you are great at the shows, and we all appreciate that. Well, thanks, Ed. But I think that's, I mean, that's just being a decent human. That must be a Canadian thing. You know, sometimes I'm in the middle of something, and I've got to go somewhere or I've got to be on the air or I've got a show to do and I've got to say, hey man, thanks, I appreciate it, but I've got to run. But I try to, I don't ever ignore people and I am actually, I'm really fucking grateful that I am, I get to do what I love to do, I get to travel around, I get to go to these pinball shows, I get to own these pinball machines. So, you know, when I'm in a place like that, there's lots of things I do in my life that I do because they're not about rock and roll. I got into aviation because it was another outlet that wasn't rock and roll. And it's the same with pinball. I felt, you know, you were mentioning Todd just calls it tech, but I felt like for me I really wanted the added credibility that comes with being able to work on your own shit. And it put me in with a really good group of guys close to home, close to Toronto where I live, where, you know, because, yes, I could have all the AAA-list games if I wanted to just write a check and have Medieval Madness and an Attack from Mars. But if you look around my game room here, it's Flight 2000 and Fast Draw and Future Spa and Dolly. Yeah, that's awesome. Those are great games. And there's a Game of Thrones and a Jurassic Park premium. But I like the oddball games, and I like buying a broken game and bringing it back to life. And I'm not looking for museum pieces. I like a game that's worn out and well played. As long as it plays great, you know, the flippers are snappy and everything works, I'm happy. It doesn't have to be super pretty. That's cool. How many games are you looking at in your collection? I know you're kind of quarantined at your cottage, but you have, I was going to ask you if you have games there, and obviously you do. What's the breakdown? I have 14 here with me, and I'm picking up another two on Thursday. I'm going to make a run to my storage spot. Only 14? You are struggling in quarantine. That is his cottage home. I just built this room. Like, this is a new addition on my garage, and I actually started it in the fall. And the plan was to put, like, a workable studio in here and some pinball machines. And so, yeah, up here I've got Game of Thrones, Future Spa, Rick and Morty, Dolly, Adam's Family, Jungle Queen, Fast Draw, Flight 2000, Jurassic Park, Fathom, Metallica, Meteor, Flash Gordon, and that Joker poker we talked about earlier. So how many are at your main house of residence? I mean, if this is your vacation home. Yeah, I've got a measly 10 at home. All right. All right. So you ship more out here. I had 15 at home, but my middle guy, my 20-year-old, has started playing clubs in Toronto, and my second pinball room at home has now become his jam space. So I had to take five machines from there. and that's how I ended up with more machines up here. When you got your total nuclear annihilation, you had Jack Danger out there, you had Scott Danesi, you had Teolis and a bunch of other dudes. After that experience, will you ever do that again? Absolutely. Did you leave even with Teolis? Rick and Morty. But those rat bastards at Spooky wouldn't give me Rick and Morty number one for some reason. Damn it. Maybe that went to Justin Boylan. Can't say enough bad things about the people at Spooky Pinball. They're the company that you're just rooting for failure. I was just bloody rude. So when all those guys came to your house, didn't you leave to go play a show while they stayed and just played on your games? Yeah, I had to go do something. I forget what it was, but I did have something. I had a charity thing I had to do that night. Well, we've got to let you go, but one thing I'd like to say as far as how nice Ed is, he was talking about posing with pictures, taking selfies with people. When we were at the Chicago Expo and at the Hall of Fame dinner, I walked over to Ed and introduced myself, and when I said that I was the guy that did the artwork on Batman, he asked to take a picture with me. Nice. How cool is that? I didn't have that. Well, you know, at Texas Pinball Festival a couple of years ago, when Sam Jones was there, I had just taken several selfies in a row with a bunch of people, shook some hands. Remember when we used to shake hands? Remember that, guys? Yeah, without Robert. So I was taking a bunch of selfies, and I hadn't spoken to Sam yet, but I walked up and said, Hey, Sam, it's really nice to meet you, man. I'm Ed Ed Robertson. He said, Oh, it's nice to meet you, Ed. can you get me some water? Well, hello, Mr. Fancy Pants. And I said, yes, M. Jones, I will go get you some water. Happily, yes. Before we let you go, let me ask you this. In the song, if I had a million dollars, why wasn't any of that one million dollars set aside for a pinball machine? I mean, you had Kraft macaroni dinner. You had other things, pinball. That was 1991. won. I didn't know you could buy a pinball machine at so nice a time. Fair enough. I thought you needed like a special license and you needed to have an arcade. You wrote that song with Stephen Page. Who wrote the lyric, but not a real green dress that's cruel? That was an improv. It was never supposed to be that line. We used to sing, I buy you a green dress with a tastefully rounded neck. that would have not maybe flowed as well Steve sang but not a real green dress that's cruel the way we recorded that song we improvised it every day of the recording process for that record so we would get a bed track for like Enid or one of the other songs and then we'd do a new version of Million Dollars and we did so over the course of the record we had 14 different versions of If I Had a Million Dollars all with different improvisations, and we ended up just going with the one that felt the most fun, and that improv was in it. So Steve, I guess. Now, next year, 2021, is the 30th anniversary of something. Do you know what it is? Well, it will be the 30th anniversary of the recording of Gordon. Yeah, your first cassette, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, that would be correct. It's the only release that went platinum in Canada. Yeah. Now, what bands do, usually on anniversaries, especially if they're fragmented to some extent, is sometimes they have a reunion. So what is your relationship with Stephen like? Would that ever happen, even as like a one-off? Gotta go, guys. It was nice. No, they were together, didn't you, French? Hall of Fame, right? You guys read the Hall of Fame? Yeah, we got together again for the Hall of Fame presentation in Canada. That was cool, but, you know, we are in pretty different places these days. Well, I mean, your work, you're certainly not missing him. I was just curious what would go with the future. And the truth is I do miss him in a lot of ways, but there was a lot of things that were difficult about that relationship. You know, I gave Steve a call after listening to his latest record, and I really enjoyed a couple of the songs, and I kind of, like, overcame some barriers in my own head to just drop him a note and say, hey, man, I think this song is really good, good job on that, and I think it meant a lot to him. So the bridges are still smoldering, but yeah we did a lot of great work together and I'm super proud of that but I'm not in a hurry to write that that's fair enough well before we let you go what is chickadee china the Chinese chicken I'm I must know this never been asked this before I'm sure okay so that song was improvised i started a camera a high eight video camera this is 1997 or 8 and i just freestyle rapped for like five minutes and that song is just verses edited out of five minutes of freestyle totally gibberish no no like foundation in anything like but chickadee china the chinese Chicken came because I was a huge Tribe Called Quest fan. And there's a song called Scenario that's Tribe Called Quest and Leaders of the New School. And Busta Rhymes' verse on that is one of the greatest entries in all of hip-hop. And one of his lines is completely nonsensical, Chickity Choco the Chocolate Chicken. Chickity Choco the Chocolate Chicken. Oh, shit. I always loved that line. And right before I improvised One Week was the first big Asian bird flu that freaked everybody out. And so that just sprung into my head, Chickadee China, the Chinese chicken. You have a drumstick and your brain stops ticking. That's amazing. Maybe in the next interview we'll discuss the Sailor Moon line in that song. I guarantee it. I'm a smoking man. I'm a huge X-Files fan. All right. Well, Ed, thank you so much for your time, man. This has been awesome. Thanks. Thank you, guys. It's good to talk to you. Say hello to Mrs. Penn. Will do. And Kim says hello. Yeah, say hi to Kim. Barlow says hello. Barlow. All right, guys. Thanks, Ed. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ed. Love you, man. What a fucking good guy. And he went long. Shame on you, Christian. You took him in 905. I don't give a shit, man. I was going to squeeze every ounce of juice out of that interview. How often do you get Ed Ed Robertson on the phone? So I'll tell you that the first time I met Ed Ed Robertson was at TPF 2014. Darren Spohn from Pinball's Arcade, he had sent me a message telling me that Ed Ed Robertson was a friend of his, and he was going to come to the Texas Pinball Festival just to kind of give me a heads up. So I knew who the Barenaked Ladies were, and of course I knew the One Week song, but I really didn't know. So when Ed showed up, he's just kind of walking around, and he walked up to me, and he introduced himself. and I said, oh, yeah, Darren told me you were coming. I really enjoyed that song you did for Mystery Men, you know, Hey Now You're a Rockstar, which was actually smashed out. It was not. Yeah. So I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. So Ed goes, he goes, no, no, that's not us. And I looked at him, I go, are you sure? Okay, you fucking idiot. You fucking moron. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that's not us. You definitely recorded that song. You're just forgetting right now. Ed, I'm telling you right now, this is going in the show. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, man, that's funny. And your other song, Fly, I love that song. It's so good. You did cover for Shrek, you know? Yeah. A Believer? I totally mixed up Barenaked Ladies and Smash Mouth for just that one song in my head for some reason. But he forgave me. Okay, that was Ed Ed Robertson from the Barenaked Ladies. What a great interview, great dude. And it's time to wrap up the show. And before we do, we've got to let you guys know we have a new contest coming up that's actually going to be in the form of a game show. And what do game shows have? Contestants. We need two contestants to win fabulous prizes. So I want to draw your attention to our Facebook page. And in the coming days, there will be information on how you can win a spot on the game show to win fantastic prizes. We're going to leave it at that. Other than that, don't forget silverballswag.com. Get your super awesome merch at silverballswag.com. Yeah! Or you can get cool, super awesome pinball show merch. don't forget to email us questions possible interview ideas nude pictures, whatever superawesomepinball at gmail.com that's superawesomepinball at gmail.com and coming up we've got a really great interview with a really great dude and we're going to find out some really cool and really secret information that we can't talk about right now in case it falls through right Ed? That is correct pinball secrets alright guys that does it for episode number nine. Thank you, Ed Ed Robertson, again, for joining us, and thank you for listening, and we will see you guys in a couple of weeks. Adios. Bye-bye. Love you guys. If you'd like to drop us a line or ask a question, we can be reached at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. Questions or comments may be read on the air. The original content of this podcast is copyright 2020 ASAP Radio Productions. The commentary and opinions shared by the cast and guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the sponsors, Cointaker, Chicago Gaming Company, and Back Alley Creations. Their sponsorships of this show only serve to add to their continuing support of the pinball community. Cause we're gonna be legends Gonna get their attention That's what we're doing here Angels, baby It's about to be Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies. It's the backslash. The backslash. Okay, bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Later, Diz. Goodbye, goodbye, good friends, goodbye. It's been over a million days! It's over! Bye-bye-bye! Bye-bye-bye! Bye-bye-bye! Bye-bye-bye! You good dater! Get the fuck out of here! I gotta go. I'll see you later. Wait a- Okay, okay, sure, it's over. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hasta la vista, baby. Hey, you fucking chalupa suck! Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here? you