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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·41m 48s·analyzed·Aug 8, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Casual discussion of recent pinball venue visits and contrasting work experiences.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss their recent pinball playing experiences and work schedules. Chris visited Netherworld arcade during a Daytona tournament setup and played several classic games including Funhouse, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ghostbusters, and Addams Family, sharing detailed gameplay observations and scoring insights. Jared recounts his demanding work week (64 hours) on a film/TV production involving location shoots at various venues, contrasting his variable work environment with typical office jobs.

Key Claims

  • Funhouse replay is typically 7 million points on the original machine

    medium confidence · Chris states this as a known fact about original Funhouse replay scores

  • Netherworld is closed on Mondays for maintenance and setup work

    high confidence · Chris directly confirms this with Jimmy Natal's co-owner at Netherworld

  • Daytona arcade cabinets now have an updated version with three original tracks plus extras

    medium confidence · Jared mentions 'the new version of Daytona in the arcades now' with updated physics engine

  • Stern pinball machines lack standard headphone ports as a feature

    high confidence · Chris states this as a known limitation when discussing Ghostbusters audio

  • Taxi is a difficult table to score well on at Netherworld; most casual players score 700k-800k

    medium confidence · Chris and Jared discuss observation of player scores on that specific machine

Notable Quotes

  • “I snuck in and started dropping some dollars into the machine and, yeah, so I just had the place myself, really.”

    Chris @ early section — Describes unique opportunity to play Netherworld alone during closed period

  • “Your brain just tells you, mash all the way in, mash all the way in. But like you said, that multiball otherwise is a pain in the butt.”

    Jared @ middle section — Describes the cognitive challenge of executing half-flips on Funhouse

  • “That and Creature of the Black Lagoon can go die in a fire.”

    Chris @ middle section — Strong expression of frustration with specific game; describes it as nemesis

  • “I managed to get 256 million on it, which is pretty good. And the good thing is that it was also a special limited edition pinball machine. So because I got 256, I qualified for a Slimer pin.”

    Chris @ Ghostbusters section — Describes special edition variant that awards Slimer collectible pins for high scores

  • “It's basically got the three original tracks plus a couple of extra ones in there with the same physics engine.”

    Jared @ Daytona section — Details about updated Daytona arcade release

  • “They don't want you to know how much you're spending. Yeah. Like everything is 1.25 or like 1.75 credits.”

    Chris and Jared @ Dave & Buster's discussion — Commentary on predatory pricing psychology at modern arcade chains

  • “I cannot for the life of me imagine going to the same place every day at the same time and sitting in the same spot looking at the same little walls and same screen.”

    Jared @ work discussion section — Expresses strong preference for variable work environment over office job

  • “I'm known as the pinball guy at work, right? Because you know, actually no, I'm actually more notorious for my coffee skills.”

    Chris — Self-identification with workplace persona related to coffee skills and pinball knowledge

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonNetherworldorganizationJimmy NatalpersonFunhousegameGhostbustersgameCreature from the Black LagoongameTaxigame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Netherworld hosts Pinball Masters tournament and maintains active pinball collection; operates as significant competitive venue in Australia

    high · Chris references tournament infrastructure, machine maintenance schedules, and regular competitive play at venue

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Discussion of Pat Lawlor designs (Twilight Zone, Medieval Madness) showing varied appeal despite designer reputation; complexity not universally engaging

    medium · Chris expresses lukewarm interest in Twilight Zone despite Lawlor's legendary status; contrasts with immediate appeal of Dialed In

  • ?

    product_concern: Addams Family at Netherworld showing maintenance issues post-Pinball Masters (GI out, mini flipper damaged)

    high · Chris observed flipper bat damage and general illumination problems requiring service

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ghostbusters special edition features rule-based achievement pins (Slimer pin for 256M score) as collectible incentive

    high · Chris directly experienced Slimer pin award for achieving 256 million score on special limited edition variant

  • ?

    technology_signal: Daytona arcade cabinet updated with modern screen displays and spectator infrastructure, but adoption appears limited

    medium · Jared notes new Daytona version exists but hasn't seen widespread arcade deployment; discusses cost/space barriers for operators

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.125

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frebus. Joining me as always halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Hello there. It's a bit later today. I see a lack of light in the room there. Well, it's still daylight outside, but my house has a distinct lack of light in it.
0:38
We don't have a whole lot of, I don't know if it's, but we never have extremely well-lit rooms. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, if the rooms are on the wrong side of the house, you don't get any light, and it just sort of gets rather dark. I mean, usually there's plenty of light streaming inside the house, but once you get into the evening,
1:07
yeah, it turns out you need a lot of lights in order to light up a room. We just never bother to purchase a lot of lights. We're happy with lights in our working environment, and then I have a big old TV to light up the living room, so what do I care?
1:19
That's true, yeah. Quite true. Gee, what happened since last week? You know what I did do, which is quite fun.
1:30
I actually, I went down, you know how I was talking last week about missing out on Star Wars, playing in the other world. Well, I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go. I just really felt like playing some pinball. And so I thought, you know what, on Monday at lunchtime, I'm just going to go down to Netherworld and drop a few dollar coins in and have a bit of a play. And so I go, cool. got an uber down the road and um got there and place was shut and i went uh-huh what what's going on here so anyhow i sort of just went i was going to send netherworld a message on facebook messenger to see what was going on and and then i saw the truck roll up with a whole lot of daytonas rolling out the back of it um and i was going what's going on here so anyhow a couple of the operators i know were rolling in these daytona twins and um jimmy natal's guy i was talking about the last time he the tournament director, the owner or co-owner. He was there and said, did I get my days wrong? Are you always closed on Mondays? He goes, oh, yeah, today we are because we've got a setup for the Neverworld Speedway event that we've got coming up. So they basically got two Daytona twins and they've linked them together and today they're running a Daytona tournament there all day today. Wow. Which is pretty cool. They've done these custom little pins for them as well with this big monster in a Daytona stock car with all the tentacles coming out. It looks so good.
@ work personality section
Addams Family
game
Twilight Zonegame
Pinball Mastersevent
Dave & Buster'sorganization
Daytona USAgame
Pinball Arcadeproduct
3:07
And anyhow, I thought, well, geez, that's no good. He goes, oh, look, do you just want to... The bar's not open and the restaurant's not open, but do you want to just come in and play some pinball? I said, oh, yeah, that'd be good if you don't mind. So I went, okay, sure. I snuck in and started dropping some dollars into the machine and, yeah, so I just had the place myself, really. Nice.
3:28
It was really nice. It was nice of him to let me in and actually just let me play because, you know, I'm there all the time for the tournament and he knows me, I guess, so I was lucky there. Yeah. But it's very interesting playing in a place like that without any music going and without any sort of, you know, general trade happening. Yeah. And it was really, really good. they had a fun house there and this thing was very nice. It was all LED and they had it cranked up so nicely. It was pumping out the sound. It was great. And it was brutal.
4:06
It took me a good four or five coin drops to get the feel of it. And once I got into it, though, it was really good. I found that the way you lock the balls on this one, I think that was missing something up there, perhaps like a piece of rubber or something like that, because if you shoot the balls up there and they just pop straight out, they don't actually get held in there. So you had to do, fluke, a really soft shot up there that just dribbled the ball in. And then once I got that ball in and it was in the trap, I was then able to, like, slam other balls up against it and they would stay in there. I was able to get multi-ball.
4:45
So once I got multi-ball rolling, that was fine. I did terribly in it because it's hard to do multi-ball in Funhaus. It actually is hard to do multi-ball in Funhaus.
4:59
I was having all sorts of trouble with the timing on the trapdoor and all that, trying to get the million shots and stuff. But I did get a few million shots. I think I got a score of up to about five million on it, which on a real one is pretty good, I think. No, I mean, the replay on a real one is usually, what, 7 million, I think? And that was always tough to get. Because I think it was 7 million, and Whirlwind, I think, was 3 million. And that was tough to get.
5:35
Yeah, that's right. You've really got to know what you're doing on those games to actually get the score up high enough for that. And Funhouse in particular is a table that if you can master that half flip, so that you can cradle the ball and still flip the upper flipper.
5:50
If you can do that, you can run the table much, much easier. But it's so difficult to do. It is difficult to do. Your brain just tells you, mash all the way in, mash all the way in. But like you said, that multi-ball otherwise is a pain in the butt. It is. Beat time.
6:11
So that was really fun to play. I enjoyed the hell out of that. I didn't actually get the chance to play Funhaus when it was new, so I think that was probably my first real good go at a Funhaus in real life.
6:26
So, yeah, it was great to actually get a go on that, and it was a beautiful specimen, very, very well kept. All the plastics were nice and white and nice and clear and very good.
6:39
And what else did they have? They had a taxi, but it didn't want to take my coins, There was a problem with the coin validator on it, so I just moved. I didn't want to bother the guys as I was setting up. So I just basically went, okay, what games are working well? Okay, that's fine. And I just got on them. Some of them, I think, still had a little bit of dirt left on them from the Pinball Masters. So I left those ones alone. I think Mondays might be close so they can actually go around and do maintenance on them and clean them. so I moved on to Creature from the Black of the Dune which is my nemesis at Netherworld it's just such a it's so uncomfortable for me to play I really just can't get in the groove of it and I put maybe two or three bucks into that and it was just frustrating me so I just walked away and I went no this is just terrible I just am not cut out to play this game I'm just cutting my losses and I will just assume it's going to be bad it's really funny to do even in TPA I'm really good at Creature in Pinball Arcade although I don't know I haven't actually played it since all the retuning or played it a lot so I don't know how much differently that affects it but I was really really good at it but I never enjoyed it and it was one of those that I played purely because I could post a gargantuan score and kind of zone out while playing it, but it wasn't a table that I particularly was like, yeah, creature!
8:17
And so whenever I play it in real life, I think all the things that I don't care for become hugely magnified because it is not an easy table to play in real life. There went the one factor that I was enjoying, and in comes all the other factors that just kind of bug me.
8:38
I think that's the same for me too. In essence, there's nothing wrong with it. No. But for some reason, I just can't get in the swing of it. It frustrates me because they always pick it at the tournament and I always hate it.
8:56
I went, right, I just cut my losses. I went, no, I'm going around to the front room. In the front room, they've got Adam's family. They've also got a transporter. they've got Ghostbusters and Twilight Zone in the front room. Plus, I think they might still have Trident there as well, which is an old stone.
9:15
And so I thought, you know what? I always have a bad time on Ghostbusters. I'm going to use this time just to chill out when no one else is around and just get my head around this game. And it was nice and loud as well. I was actually able to hear the soundtrack on it for the first time probably ever.
9:31
And I've got to say, the soundtrack is actually really good on it. but you never get to hear it because Stern don't have headphone ports, do they? Yeah, no. That is really frustrating. So, yeah, definitely would be nice if we could actually get headphone ports that were a standard feature on Sterns. But anyhow, going back to the game, the first game I played was actually pretty good. I managed to, oh, no, the first one was about 100,000, not 100,000, 100 million. And I sort of got a bit of an idea more about how to get the multi-ball lit and the importance of that captive ball with all the stage balls in it. That's quite important on the pro. So I sort of had a bit of a feel around that, managed to get a replay. So I thought I'll start up another one and see how I go. This one yeah it really clicked for me I had a really good game I got containment multi I had a really good run with the ghosts Got a fair few jackpots and managed to get 256 million on it, which is pretty good. And the good thing is that it was also a special limited edition pin pinball machine. So because I got 257, I qualified for a Slimer pin. Nice. And so I'm going to have to collect that at another time because I didn't want to interrupt them because the bar was closed. So I'll pick that up probably this week sometime, which is really cool.
11:04
And then I had a go of Adam's Family and I think it suffered a fair bit from Brisbane Pinball Masters. There was a whole lot of general illumination out on it and it just felt sloppy.
11:15
So I think probably some work needs to happen on that one, but I'm sure that's probably on the cards for it. it probably needs to be taken off and given a good service. Because I noticed that the thing flip, that flipper bat is all smashed up underneath. So there's very little actual plastic bat holding it. It's just basically rubber.
11:35
So they might need to replace that mini flipper, I think. So that was my adventure on Monday. I'm curious. I mean, out of the tables that you mentioned and everything, it kind of brought to my attention, of all those, I love playing. Adam's family, I always have a good time on, even when I have a bad game.
11:55
And it's a table that you can have an absolutely terrible game one game, and the next game you get multi-ball almost instantaneously and have a fantastic game.
12:06
Yep, true. And I've always said it's just an incredibly likable table in general. The call-outs, the table flow, the look of it. I mean, everything about it just is imminently playable.
12:22
That being said then, a lot of people love Taxi, and I don't get the love for it. I don't know. It just doesn't grab me at all.
12:34
It's a horrible game to play in real life. Like, you have to... It is... It feels like you are absolutely battling with every inch of your life to get even a score over 1 million,
12:49
at least on the table at Netherworld. And it's a well-maintained table in good condition. And it is just a struggle. And it's just unrewarding, it feels. I also don't really enjoy the shot selection. I mean, apart from the ability to alternate ramps, left, right, left, right, there's not much else on the table that I really enjoy shooting for. I don't care to shoot the drop targets. I don't enjoy shooting all the way up to the top of the table to collect, I don't know who is that, Santa up there or something? I can't remember.
13:27
I don't like the ball locks, you know, with shooting. There's just, I don't know, to me it's a very awkward layout, and I get no satisfaction from it. But then I talk to other people, and it's their favorite table. I mean, they absolutely love that thing. And there's guys that I know that own it, and they're like, oh, I would never get rid of Taxi. I'm just like, okay, I'm not a convert.
13:52
I've seen guys, in fact, the one guy I saw playing it actually owns it and has leased it to Netherworld. But he, of course, being the owner of it, knows the intricacies of it, and he knows the point at which he could just shoot off that flipper to get that pin bot lock. And he knows all the things that you need to do to actually do well in that game. And that's the thing. You would almost need, before the tournament even started for me, I would need at least 20 games on that to get my eye in so that I can go, right, now I'm actually able to go and have a convincing game on it.
14:32
It's just one of those things that it's like, I've got to have time on it. And this extends to Pinball Arcade's version, too. I just don't have the love for it. It's one of those tables that I just don't ever select to play. I think, you know, in comparison to the one, at least the specimen I've got access to at the moment, that it's just so woefully easy in Pinball Arcade. It is just so unrealistic.
15:01
It's difficult. Like, every time you shoot that lock, it should actually feel like it's at risk. Yeah. The ball's at risk because it's really on the tip of the flipper shot. And, like, it gets everybody when they're in there. Like, I see people playing it there. A lot of them are flat out getting, you know, 700,000 or 800,000 on it at the one at Netherworld. And, you know, they're just going, I just don't know what to do on this table to get scores. Like, it's just everything is not working.
15:32
Yeah. It's just like, that's another one that I'd be very happy to see go and go back into the man's collection again. Because it infuriates me. That and Creature of the Black and Green can go die in a fire.
15:47
It's interesting also, me being a Lawler fan, I don't really care for Toilet Zone. Oh, really? You don't really dig it?
15:59
Again, even in person playing it, I don't get excited when I see it. When I walk into a room and I see the row of pins,
16:07
there are certain pins that, like if I see Medieval Madness, I'm like, oh, okay, I've got to go play that. There's no way I'm not playing that.
16:15
But when I see Twilight Zone, I just kind of go, meh, you know, I'll play it maybe. It just doesn't grab me. And I don't know if it's the theme necessarily or if there's just too much stuff.
16:33
And that's kind of weird, but I don't know. I can't put my finger on it of why that one doesn't really grab my attention. And yet, like I said last week, I played Dialed In. That has a ton of crazy features on it also. I mean, it probably has more stuff than Twilight Zone does, but it grabbed me immediately. so yeah i tend to well certainly at the moment like when when they get rid of those they turn the cabinets they'll actually get the pinball machines back on the floor again because it's taking up a whole row of where pinball machines would go at the moment which is pain in the ass you need a place to store them in my house uh yeah i'm sure they'll ship them overseas to you no i'm at your house yeah again that's right i'm much closer much closer we'll be happy to help so yeah once they get the pinball machines back in I'm thinking they should probably get some Wizard of Oz back in which means that I will probably be down there a lot playing that with headphones yeah for sure but at the moment it is Daytona City and that's great because full play Daytona is something you don't really see that often these days and if you've got a big group of mates who love to play a bit of Daytona it's fun Although you know that Daytona USA has been released again. They've actually got the new version of Daytona in the arcades now.
18:04
It's basically got the three original tracks plus a couple of extra ones in there with the same physics engine.
18:11
But to date, I've not seen them on any arcades here. Although, granted, I probably don't go into the big commercial arcades anymore because all they are is skill testers and video games. I don't care for that but yeah I don't think there's been as huge a take up for it as it was in the 90s mainly because the arcade scene is in decline so getting a big 8 player row of these I remember these used to be like 8 deluxe 50 inch cabinets lined up in arcades that took off pretty much one whole wall and they put them there because they were a license to print money. Well, you think about it, back then, playing a linked game was the only way you could do it. Most people weren't having... Internet was not fast by any stretch of the imagination. We're talking 26k modem was like, woohoo! You know?
19:15
You could have a LAN party, but the graphics weren't amazing and getting that many people together with your computers was a task in and of itself. So you go to an arcade and there's these racers that you totally enjoy playing and you get eight buddies, seven other buddies and yeah, really, really good time. Shoot, I used to have fun just doing the two cabinet playing with my friend and doing various kinds of race games and that was a lot of fun and it was it is when you think about it just a completely novel experience back then. Now it's so ubiquitous that any game that you get on console is going to be linked to other players. That's just a given.
20:02
But it was by far not like that back then. Yeah. Online or collaborative players now are standard, not an exception.
20:12
Yeah. I'm sure that the cost of one of these setups, because I think the way they do them now is they have like every twin has like a screen above it that shows you what's going on and shows a leader and all that sort of thing so there's a there'd be a lot of money that you'd have to invest as an arcade owner into like a twin now yeah because they're trying to make it a spectator sport and in an arcade absolutely i mean that's that's what you want people to walk in the door all they see is this thing but you know i think in a lot of other locations the floor space required for that type of setup is it pretty limiting So you know a lot of the barcades that are opening up now like they don actually have a huge amount of room for pieces like that
20:59
So, you know, and the footprint of one of those things is big. Like a pinball machine is big enough. But one of these things is, you know, it's like two or three machines or two or three games in size. Exactly. And right off the bat, that means your exchange is, hey, I could have three or four alternative machines going that people can play, or I can have this one game, you know, with these cabinets. And put all my eggs in one basket. Exactly. And basically put all my eggs in one basket. Rather than having, gee, you know, I might have three opportunities to earn a coin drop here. Yeah. But in this way, I only have one. So it's a tough sell for Sega. I really do like, I would love to play it. I would love to get into an arcade that has one and drop a couple of bucks in it. Although it probably would be something like four bucks a play down here for them to actually make their money. back.
21:48
I think that's actually what the game price was back in 1990. In the 1990s, for the deluxe ones, I'm pretty sure it was like $4 a play here in Australia. I think it was probably about a $2 coin drop. Yeah, I reckon. It was expensive because they were big pieces of equipment.
22:11
I don't remember. I'm trying to think. when it was just basic arcades, I think the most expensive games were a buck, but that was when most of your pinball machines were 25 cents, and some of your new ones were 50 cents, and that was like, but then you'd step over to these things, like, oh, man, a buck. Dang. That's four games on Mortal Kombat.
22:38
That was the kind of thinking that you had to go through. But when it went into, we have a place called Dave & Buster's, It's kind of a chain of... Do you have Dave & Buster's there, or are you familiar with it? I know what Dave & Buster's is. It's like a fast food chain, right? No, it's not fast food. It's a restaurant.
23:02
Their big claim to fame was that after 8 p.m. or whatever, it was adults only. And, you know, bar was open, and there was good quality restaurant. I shouldn't say good food, but it was full-on quality. You could get a steak kind of restaurant or whatever.
23:20
And then you could play pool. You could play video games. You could do any number of these things. But that was the whole idea was, hey, let's get rid of the kids. Come and play with your fellow adults. But that's when the price has jacked up on these things. And if you go into a Dave & Buster's now, now they have like, hey, let's play Connect 4 on a 10 by 10 foot screen.
23:46
It's these gargantuan arcade things. It's almost like being on a set of a game show. That's kind of the vibe that you get now.
23:58
If you think about the game show, The Price is Right, again, I don't know if you're familiar with it there, but everybody here in America is more than familiar. It's that size of games. It's giant wheels and giant everything. And it's more about the crowd. Big scale things. Yeah, and it's more about drawing a crowd over to watch than it is about your enjoyment playing, truth be told.
24:23
It is. It's a spectator sport, for sure. And they were the first place I remember going to that did the credit card. You loaded up a card, and then you inserted the card. And the thing was is that the prices were all funky. It would be like, well, A. $1.57. No, but they wouldn't use prices. That was where it was killer.
24:48
It would be spend $10. Well, your card now has 20 credits on it. And then games would be 1.5 credits.
24:56
I mean, it basically made it so that you could, it made it really difficult for you to do the math in your head of how much you were actually spending, which is genius because they don't want you to know how much you're spending. yeah like everything is 1.25 or like 1.75 credits that's inevitably that's really dirty inevitably you'd wind up with not enough credits on your card to play anything yeah and what what is your alternative well i gotta go load more up on the card uh-huh yep odd pricing yeah it's a very uh las vegas casino way of getting you to lose your money without realizing you're losing your money.
25:42
For sure, yeah. So I guess that was me last week. It was fun. I think I will definitely go this week. Hopefully that will clear it out. I won't go Monday. But otherwise I might be helping him unload a whole lot of Daytonas in my lunch break. Yeah.
26:03
Maybe Friday next week. I was working. I don't know if this, tell me if this just shocks you or whatever, but I just happened to have my stub statement here in front of me, and not this last week because I don't remember how many hours I worked, but the previous week, 64 hours for the week.
26:25
That's pretty long. Yeah. That's 24 hours more than I would normally work in a working week. And we were having this discussion. Yeah, you were in that. Yeah, we were having this discussion in the van ride on Friday coming home at 2 in the morning where everybody just kind of went, could you imagine working in a real job? I mean, like not a real job, a regular job.
26:51
And everybody's like, oh, my God, a cubicle job? Kill me. And we all have the same sentiment where I cannot for the life of me imagine going to the same place every day at the same time and sitting in the same spot looking at the same little walls and same screen. And I don't know how people do it. I honestly don't. well it's sort of one of those things that as one of those people who do exactly that um yeah i can say that there's there's you're not always looking at the screen well depends on what sort of job you're doing if you're a developer yeah you probably are yeah because i'm a product manager like i'm walking around and i'm talking to people i'm having conversations and you know i'm doing a lot of sort of like what would you call it metal work that's not like sitting in front pumping things into a computer. It's more like not really networking, but kind of is. It's building relationships and stuff like that. So it's sort of, it's different.
27:55
It's still inside a building, but I guess it's not so much in front of a screen. Well, what's funny is that there's been various times when we've gone on locations and shot at, you know, cubicle farms, essentially.
28:09
And inevitably, because you're standing around during the take and you're starting to look and you start looking at people's cubicles and the little world that they've created for themselves. And just, it is fascinating because you can almost immediately tell who this person is. If you stare at it long enough, just the little knickknacks and the little pictures that they have and how they post their notes because then you go one cubicle over and it's completely different how that person. But then you also notice the similarities where everybody has the same desk and the trash can is in the exact same spot and the file cabinet is in the exact same spot. And, you know, it's really just kind of like, wow.
28:54
It's funny. You see some cubes that are very bland and very minimalist. and then you see some that are like full of vinyl figurines and full of all sorts of random stuff and like posters of things and anime posters up on the things and you know it's very bright some cubes are really bright and some cubes are just really well very I guess matter of fact yes and they're there it's business time they're there to do the business so well and what it is it's interesting too because so last season I was on a show that we only went on location three times total.
29:31
Everything else was on the same stage, or we had two stages, but always on the stages. We practically were going in always at the same time every day, so it was almost giving me a taste of what that was like to always go at the same time, always go to the same location, same commute.
29:52
But then once you step foot on the stage, well, it's always shifting, where we're filming, what we're filming, where your carts go. Everything is constantly in flux that way.
30:03
But where you... We do have our... Every department has their carts that stuff is loaded up onto. And there is personality to that kind of thing because people put bumper stickers on their carts. Oh, okay. So there becomes that kind of personality. And then there is what I do, which is I wear these t-shirts that always have I'm that guy and so the show that I'm on right now it's started getting where people are seeking me out to go what shirt are you wearing today because they want to see what it is and so I guess it's interesting that you wind up you do want to display your personality to people in some way shape or form but always no yeah it's it's tough if you know if you're used to the outdoor but like you know doing what you do um and the constant variety of stuff then yeah it would be hard to actually switch to cube life but you know um it's a little bit like that for me too i'm known as the pinball guy at work right because you know actually no i'm actually more notorious for my coffee skills i um i actually the the go guy that people come to if they having trouble with the machine and don know how to use it they come to me and I show them how to make a proper espresso with it So much so that we've had so many new people start over the last month or so that I've actually made up a little instructional poster but using memes. So I've actually done like a meme poster about But, for example, one of the things I said is that is your stretch milk looking more like – is your stretch milk screaming when you froth it? You know, if you're in a cafe and you hear that – and they're actually screaming milk, it's bad if you ever hear that. Go to another cafe.
32:04
So if you hear that, it's like, yeah, let a bit of air in, mate, is what I said underneath it. And then I had another frame saying, why is my coffee coming out like a waterfall? You haven't packed it tight enough, mate. Put a bit more coffee in and stuff like that. And then the last frame of the poster is, so how do I use this thing? And below that it's like, see Jared Morgan. See Jared Morgan.
32:31
I'll sort you out. Oh, man. And I try and pick people up when I hear them doing crimes against caffeine. And the kids just say, you know what, there's a better way of doing that. Do it like this. And that's my way of getting in and showing them how to use it properly.
32:48
Yeah, so I'll give you an example of the kinds of things that we did this week in terms of location work. We were on location this entire last week.
32:59
Let's see. We were at a school for an entire day filming various high school type things. we were in a in and around a hotel and a bar which is really difficult to work in because these places are still open well like the bar we shut down but the exterior was a giant courtyard and you get information like okay but none of your equipment can be here okay so where does my equipment get to go you know we have these large carts i mean just our our department alone has six different carts and these are all probably four to six feet in length.
33:40
Wow. And so it becomes this, okay, where do we hide this stuff and still be able to access it to work? Yeah. And then you do hotel work where the hotel is fully open and we were in downtown LA and it was a nice hotel. And so you don't want to disrupt the guests because the hotel doesn't want that. And then they tell you, okay, you need to go up to the 26th floor. And you only can use this one elevator.
34:06
And you've got every department trying to jam their carts into the elevators. And then you get up to that floor and, okay, we're shooting 360 degrees. Oh, great. So where do we hide all the stuff that we just brought?
34:18
And then we go down a couple of floors because we're going to be shooting in an actual hotel room. And they give you, you know, they rent out practically the entire floor. and so all the departments have their own room that they can shove their carts in and that way they're not disrupting the guests in that fashion.
34:39
But now every time you need a piece of equipment, you've got to go out of the room that you're in, go into the room that all your stuff is in, bring it back into the other room, but nobody wants that because when they ask for something, they want it immediately. So you bring your own little pile into the room, but then every single time they change the camera and go, oh, your gear is in LeShott, so now you've got to move the gear. But you're also, and it's lights that are moving and flags that are moving and your camera equipment is moving. So everybody's doing this little dance. And so that's where it's never the same thing twice on any given day ever.
35:15
So it is. It's weird. Always shifting sand. It's always shifting. It's a weird, and yet we find our groove. And that's the fascinating thing about, I guess, about any work environment. You know, everybody finds their groove and finds their downtime. Well, I haven't been able to find any downtime on this show.
35:38
Except the evenings when you go and play pinball. Oh, yeah, that's happening, sure. My evenings are literally drive home, go to sleep, wake up, go to work. Drive home, go to sleep, go to, you know.
35:52
So on the weekends, you get a chance to do anything? In theory. That's if they don't have you working on the weekends. Fortunately, I'm not working on the weekends this time around. But, yeah, that's where I become envious of the cubicle life, actually, where people have a life. Yeah. You know, where you have an eight-hour day, we're going, oh, hey, we still got six more hours to go.
36:20
Yeah, I think that I'd much rather have a little bit more predictability in hours than variety in what I see. thing is though that you know depending on the job you're in in cube land it can actually be different type of variability so thinking about a new feature that you want to implement one day and that involves research and a different thinking than what you would have to do if you were like helping a team deliver a product and actually help them be in the team and communicating with them and unblocking roadblocks for them and getting information they need and things you would do depending on what role you're taking on the day um and i think that is a little bit like you know moving your camera equipment around and making sure that you you know you've got to roll the punches because i think we do that a fair bit too so i think it's just a different type of variety that's all different type of variety although you get to do a lot more sitting no I don't I've got a standing desk I stand all day oh wow I stand all day I don't think except at lunch there you go well see that's what suits you for pinball because you're used to standing then that's right I don't go to enough pinball tournaments that actually require me standing for 8 hours a day so I'm not using my skills gained at work I'm not using my training that my hours are put in training. We need to have a Le Mans of pinball. 24 hours of straight pinball.
37:48
Yeah. Or no. I think they actually did that at Netherworld. They actually did that at Netherworld. They had like an 18-hour lock-in, and it was like a tournament. And if you managed to stay the course for the whole time and actually not tap out, you went running for a trophy, actually.
38:09
It's pretty cool. Someone managed to do it. I tell you, when I, that first time I went to the pinball hall of fame, I played pinball for eight hours straight and my forearms by the end of that eight hours were just throbbing and my, my trigger fingers, I couldn't flex the fingers in. They were just stuck. It was like I had to do whole hand slaps to get the, to push the button. Yeah.
38:37
That's pretty. Yeah. it's rough. Like if you're not used to doing it or if you don't have a pinball machine at home, you know, like if you'll go to one of these tournaments that runs for a long time, it really, it does really get to you. It's like anything, like you're still using muscles. You may not be running a marathon, but you're still using muscles all the time. Yeah. I'm not going to go so far as to say pinball is athletic because God knows it's not.
39:04
You're not going to lose a lot of weight with pinball, particularly if you do what I do and have beer and also have like our snacks. Right. Um, in fact, I think it's probably a weight gain activity rather than a weight loss activity. Uh, but it's fun. So that's okay.
39:23
Yep. It is fun. Well, Hey folks, uh, we're going to call it short this week. Cause as you can tell, we didn't, uh, there was nothing really to talk about in TPA and I didn't play any pinball this week. And you know, we, Jerry did. That's what we talked about. So there you go. That's what happens some weeks. Some weeks we blather on and on and on about pinball. And other weeks we kill time. You get a little bit.
39:45
A lot of filler and not much killer. Yeah. There's a bit of that. Classy Netherworld stuff is a bit of filler. A bit of killer.
39:56
So that was good. Having my limited ability to get out and do location pinball, I think every time I go out somewhere, it's almost like an event for me. so yeah well I think we shall wrap this up hey folks why don't you drop us a line at our email address blahblahblockade at gmail.com tell us what you would like us to talk about especially for days like this when we're kind of sorely lacking basic pinball talking because we can BS with the best of them about a lot of this stuff. Let us know what you want us to harp about. We will do that. Visit our website, blockadepinball.com. Hey, Jared, I did it correctly that time. You did?
40:46
There you go. There you can find all of our past episodes as well as links to websites that we mentioned. You can follow us on Twitter. Highly recommended. At Blockade is the show's Twitter account, or you can follow us individually. I am at ShutYourTraps. he is at Jared Morigson with that we shall bid you adieu and we'll catch y'all next week bye bye yep see you later wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10% off your order wizardamusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some Pinball.