Hey, Poor Man Tribe and listeners, this is Glennie Rogers, and you're listening to the Tribe Multiple Podcast with Rachel and Tim. Poor Man Tribe's the thing, that is who we are. It and Drew. They're not in this thing, so how could it go wrong? Flip away with us, to an old blockade, and then we'll learn about each other. From two pennants to another Rachel and Tim, who do we have on the show today? Hello everyone and welcome to Tribe Multiball with Rachel and Tim. Tribe Multiball is a pinball podcast segment on the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast Universe where we just get to know the members of the Poor Man's Pinball Tribe and some of the awesome things they're doing in and out of pinball. I'm Tim Lee, and I'm here with my co-host... Rachel Lilge. And we're here to bring you another great episode today. How are you doing, Rachel? I'm doing pretty good, Tim. I've got a little fireball in my glass today. I decided maybe I'll have a drink tonight. How are you? I'm doing well. That's my drink of choice on a usual evening, but tonight I'm drinking red wine. That's kind of crazy. Do you normally have a drink when we podcast? I do. I do. I have a little Coke and fireball every episode. Oh, what are we on, episode 11? I'm finally finding that out about you? I didn't know that. Secrets, Rachel, secrets. Okay, all right. Do you want to jump into your personal pinball news? Yeah, you go first. How was your week? Well, oh, man. Oh, Nelly. Not whoa, Nelly, the game. Oh, Nelly, hold on, folks. I had a miserable, a miserable June playing league. I came off of such a great high and win coming in second place overall last month, which was me at District 82. And this month, I believe I placed in 41st place. Oh, I had just a really tough second half of league this past Tuesday. I took four fourths, which is yes, people, you heard that four fourths, which is for me, that was unbelievable and seven rounds of playing. I also did not do very well on the side tournament, which is Viking and I that game I actually really get along most of the time so what did i learn i think that part of my playing issues are i'm so focused on chapping up and taking the next shot that sometimes i'm not playing reactive like i should versus the game but i also think it's good that i am trying to trap up usually what's happening i'm bricking i'm bricking and dying after i'm trapping up or i'm hitting the sling and an outling death something like that you know so it's very frustrating after you catch the ball and you're trying to do the right thing and you screwed up. So I think that was a big part of my issue on Tuesday, but that's okay. I still had a really great time. That place is amazing. So it just sounds like you're a better player on the fly. You just need to play your game, right? Yes and no, but I also think it just depends on the game. There are some games where you just have to play right off the cuff and you need to whack the ball. Otherwise you're not going to get it up the ramp or whatever. So it's okay. Next month will be better. I feel like I'm always learning something and putting a new post-it note on that table. And the next time that I come up and play it, I'm going to pick each of those off and remember a little bit about it from the last time that I played. And it gives you a little bit of, you know, you get to learn a little bit about yourself and you get an opportunity to respond and, you know, see how you respond to a little adversity. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I had such a great time. I also got to interact with players that I normally wouldn't interact with. So it's a very positive thing, including another gal that recently started playing there that we got to talk about several different games talk about skill shots and so it was that was really fun too i actually really really enjoy giving my education to other people i always encourage people when they come play at district 82 and especially that's going to happen i think quite a bit in the upcoming six months to a year that if you're there and you're unfamiliar with the game and if you don't really want to look at pin tips come find me i'll tell you the skill shot and the xyz in that game the best of my ability because i play there at least two to three times a month. Anyways. Yeah, that goes over really well with new, you know, players in the tournaments or just visiting because it's nice to have somebody welcoming you and just showing you how to play the games. Yes, and I promise I will give you a hug. That's like a double bonus, right? Yeah. The other interesting thing that I did recently is I got to attend a Stern Pinball Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles launch party. Oh, nice. My favorite game. Oh, man, at Plymouth Tap, which is a location I've talked about a little bit. Nate, I'm going to give you a shout out. You're running a great thing there. You have six new sterns with Mandalorian on the way. Turtles and I, the shots are tight. When I'm able to backhand things, I feel like I played better. It is just not an overall easy game for me, but I think it's really enjoyable. I enjoy playing it. I had a couple of friends that came down to play, including my friend Mike Weinberg, who set the new GC and also won the launch party portion of it. As far as the overall tournament that he ran, I ended up taking third place. I won some stickers and tattoos. But the best thing about all of that, as maybe I will share this on the poor man's fan page, or you can look at my Facebook for Facebook friends, there's a picture of me dressed up as April. Nice. I saw that. It made me smile. Man, I haven't won. I've never worn a wig in my life. and two i've never worn all yellow with a white belt so it was a very interesting evening but i've never cosplayed either for a pinball i like to go to run fair and stuff and that but this was just as much fun and it makes me excited for expo to put some other costumes together so again that was such a cool place at plymouth tap thanks mike and matt mccarty also for coming down to help support that and i just want to keep his stuff growing Nice. That actually sounds like a really good week. It really was. Now, you tell me all about your stuff. Okay. Well, first I just want to say I love Turtles. It really is my favorite game. I can hit those shots really well. I don't know if it's just my machine, but I have no problem hitting the shots, and I just love the theme. We did a ranking show for Orbital Albert's show, the Pinball Nerds podcast, and I had it ranked number one. It's still probably one or two, but I love that game. So what did I do this week? One, it was my operator friend Mike's birthday. So I took him over a present. It was all pinball themed. I took him over some parts that I purchased for parts that I actually broke on his game. So that was kind of the joke. You know, I took him things to replace things that I broke. Which game was it? So that was Iron Man. I broke his light and I had to buy him a new ballast and a new light. So we laughed about that. And then I bought him some rubbers for a couple of his games for Iron Man and Shrek and told him I'd come over and I'd shop it out for him and I'd put on new rubbers. And then I got him that Brian Allen print. It's a Williams Valley pinball mashup print. Yes, I've seen that. It's amazing. Yep, I got it and framed it for him. And I knew he would like that. That was the actual present. So he really liked that. And he went and, you know, we had to guess what all the characters were from the games on the print. And then for Father's Day this weekend, I came home and my daughter and sons had taken a lot of pictures throughout the last two years of me playing pinball and my wife and the kids playing pinball and framed them in different styles of frames and cut out borders. And then they found some like just old classic pinball photos and they knew I liked bonsai runs. So they found a really nice photo of Banzai Run. And when I came down to the pinball room, there was a sign that said, you know, a light-up sign that said, Welcome to Tim's Arcade. And the pictures were all across the walls on my pinball area, and I loved it. It was my favorite Father's Day present, you know, ever. They put a lot of love into it. And they got me a carpet in front of my pinball machines because I always complain about playing on the hard concrete. but I will have to send you some pictures because I really liked what they did for me. And then, as I stated on the last show, Operator Mike showed up with some games for my son's graduation party, which is on Saturday, and he wanted me to have a couple of games in the garage. I had Monopoly from him, and he showed up with Iron Man and Jurassic Park Pro. So I have those games in my garage now for the graduation party on Saturday. Wow. Well, first, happy birthday. Operator friend, Mike. I can't wait to meet you someday. It sounds like that Tim spoiled you. That's awesome. Secondly, Tim, happy Father's Day to you. Thank you. I'm so glad that your family spoiled you. You did share the pictures with me. Is the welcome to Tim's arcade sign new? Yes, that is new, yep. Aw, that's so awesome. Aw, it's so sweet. Yep, I was flattered. I really enjoyed it and loved it. Yeah, well, you're a special dude. Don't tell anybody that, okay? I hate to admit it. You probably suck at pinball, but you're a nice human being. I suck at pinball. I suck at pinball. Less than Drew. That's all you need to know. Oh, we'll see. That's a couple months away, baby. Just wait. We'll see. All right. Hey, you ready for our guest? I absolutely am. So here we go. Today's guest is tribe member number 22, Jonathan Hall. Jonathan, how are you doing? Guys, how are you doing? Welcome to the show, Jay Hall. Man, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, so you're tribe member number 22. That's right, number 22 butthole. Number 22 butthole. Rachel doesn't like the word butthole, by the way. It's not that I don't like the word butthole, it just makes me think like I'm living in the 90s and my brother would be like, what's up, butthole? It just feels weird. It feels weird being 42 and calling other adults buttholes. I don't know. Go on. That's what makes the tribe special. That's right. I suppose butthole. Go on. That's the bar. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, butthole number 22, you know a little bit about the show and kind of the format, so we want to get to know you a little bit. Talk to me a little bit about how you play pinball. Do you play on location? Do you play at home? What's your preference? Yeah, so I guess we've all had trouble playing on location. past year. I just got back to our local game tavern, is what they call it, and that was last weekend. I got to play so many new games that they've added over the past year and a half since I've really been able to go out and play on location. So since then, I've been playing at home, rotating a few games in and out through my collection, just trying to keep things fresh. So I'm going to stop you right there. Yeah. I feel like rotating might be – you're really rotating the machines during the last few weeks, right? Yeah. Well, I've sold two machines and traded one in the last week. Wow. Yeah. I've been moving machines, practicing the Drew Boveir method of moving pinball machines. I think he actually commented on Facebook that I was moving more machines than him, and I took that as a compliment. I think that's a wonderful compliment. It's bolted the next week. Yeah, I got rid of that. I'm on to my next game. Right. I found one recently that may stay for a while. Okay. Yeah. What game is that? Avengers Infinity Quest. Okay. It's a pro. Traded my beloved Oktoberfest. After, I don't know, six months or so, I've really put a lot of games on it. I'm not a good enough pinball player for that machine right now. The shots are tight. I had all the shots down, but the game was so deep. I could tell that the people that come over to play in my neighborhood, they were getting frustrated. I was to the point where I felt like I basically would have to improve my pinball playing to ever see the wizard mode on that game, you know, tenfold. So I kind of was ready for something that was a little more approachable. and I just found on Pinside a gentleman was asking for an Oktoberfest and he had an Avengers Infinity Quest that was decked out. He had put a lot of money and mods into that machine. So Price was there on the trade. He was willing to drive to me. He drove three and a half hours the following day after we agreed on the trade. And yeah, we made the trade and I have been playing that game a lot more than Oktoberfest since it showed up. Maybe the guy was listening to Ian go on and on about his Oktoberfest secretly, and he was so eager to get there the next day. I like the game. I love it. I mean, I really do. I was ready for a change. I think the game is incredible. If you are a great pinball player and you want seven, eight games in one game, that's your game. It's great. The theme's great. I love it. I'm a huge fan of Oktoberfest and obviously beer and German food, all the stuff. So that theme appealed to me. But honestly, I needed an easier game. And not that Adventures is easier from a code and rules standpoint, but the shots are there. You know where you're going. I needed a game that would make me a better pinball player. So I think this game's doing that for me a little bit more. Yeah, they're very makeable shots. I heard you had a very good consulting service help you out with brokering that deal. I did. I sought advice from my good friend, Tim Lee. I think I probably texted Tim, I don't know, 50 times a day. I love it. Asking if it was the right decision, asking if I should do this. Tim and Glenn both, you know, I don't know why after we got that deal done, I don't know why I just didn't have a group text message with both of you guys since we talk so much anyway. But I reached out to Glenn too, and I was like, tell me what you think, because I know he had played Avengers quite a bit on location too. So I wanted to see what his thoughts were. And both of you guys agreed. It was like, you know, it's probably a good trade. Yep. One thing I didn't know was how many plays the game had on it. It turned out to be about 1,000. My Oktoberfest had 300, 350, something like that. So it had a little bit more, a little bit fewer or more plays on it, but it's still in fantastic condition, and I'm loving that game. Yeah let talk about that I don really put a lot of stock into the number of plays I just look at the condition of the game because a thousand plays could be really short games You You know 1 plays could actually be in worse condition if somebody that was really good had played the game you know 300 or 400 times So I just don't put a lot of stock into number of plays. Now, there's a difference. 10,000 plays, right? That's probably fairly heavily played and you have to look for wear and so forth. So I don't think that was a big issue. So, I mean, I think that was a very good trade. you know listening to glenn and i you probably got ripped off and like overpaid by like three or four grand but i just interject here and say that that's one of the things i really love about the tribe is that you can just go to anybody i actually messaged brad and you earlier today because i'm looking at buying something new in box and i just wanted a couple thoughts about that i also talked to daniel donnell about it today too and yeah so everybody's like yeah just do it yeah pull the trigger but yeah yeah and you know it's funny as i messaged dave Jeff Brenner about how to fix a post so we're all constantly talking yeah that's great i i have to say that dave during the time i did have octoberfest in the house he was amazing um i i wanted to make sure i went through the right channels for him because i was obviously we're in the tribe i can message him on facebook whatever we're friends on facebook but i wanted to make sure i was emailing him or whatever the proper you know chain of command protocol yeah protocol um but he was awesome i had you know zero issues really with the machine other than i wanted a tighter spring on the game to kind of get the the ball in that bar shot and i was texting ian i was like are you having trouble with this shot he said no i hit that shot every time my machines are in the garage so i don't know i've got them pretty level but it's it's always a challenge to level them perfectly so i'm not sure if that was the problem but i i messaged david and he uh just totally took care of me he was like yeah just put it you know try to stretch the spring out if that doesn't work put a you know put in the next gauge spring a heavier spring on it and we we worked through it and he was instantaneous that was the only problem i ever had with it i resoldered one connection on just a target or something i can't remember but there's one switch that that i needed to resolder but other than that ap games are solid. I mean, that game never gave me any trouble at all. Yeah, AP owners are always so happy with their games. We wanted to have Dave on, but Rachel wouldn't let him, so... No, come on now. I'm just kidding. Dave is scheduled for a future date. Yes, he will be scheduled closer to perhaps... Maybe I'll give you a super secret scoop here, listeners. For my next women's tournament, not the one on July, But we may have picked a date in October that will be at Mr. Jeff Brenner's collection. So I'd like to have him on the show just a little bit closer to that. Okay, so get off my back, Tim Lee. Hey, that's our secret. We won't let that go beyond us three. All right, so J-Hall, I hear that's what they call you. You have two other games you moved, and you got two more, right? Yeah, I got one more. So I sold my Data East Jurassic Park, and I sold my Data East Last Action Hero. I sold both of those and ordered a Ninja Turtles Pro, also heavily advised by my friend Tim Lee, but I think I made the right decision. Yeah, I might be biased on that one, but great game. Yeah, so my first time back out on location last week, our game tavern here, Token, I wanted to play Mandalorian. It was my first chance to play it, and it was my only chance to decide if I wanted to cancel my Turtles Pro and maybe move over to Mandalorian. I also wanted to play Jurassic Park. I wanted to play Stranger Things a little bit more. I'd played both of those on location in Smyrna at Game Galaxy, but I really wanted to put some time in on those games and just make sure and put some time in on Turtles mostly just to make sure that I felt like it was the right decision. I'm only going to have two games in my lineup now, and I am really happy that I ordered that game. I had more fun on that game than any of the others. That's great to hear. Yeah. Was that a theme you liked as a child? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I think I told you that DuckTales and Turtles were – that was my jam growing up. Oh, man, DuckTales. Yeah. I'll be 40 in August, so that hits all the buttons for me. Yeah, DuckTales would be a fun game. I don't think they'll ever make one, but I would play it. Me too. Yeah. I got to be honest. when that turtles theme plays you know my leg might twitch a little bit and the butt might shake so i just look out what about a duck tales that is a modern day safe cracker so instead of playing scrooge mcduck you're playing uh the bad guys and you're trying to break into the safe oh i i like that into the vault to go swimming yep so you can go swim right yeah absolutely swim within the golden coins and treasures. I mean, I want to do that at one point in life, don't you? And then when you fail at the end, just one coin pops out of the game. I like that. That'd be cool. I actually really like that idea. That's an interesting dream theme. Okay. What did you think, Amanda? It was fun. I got to play with my good friend, Chris Grosvenor, who's also a tribe member. I don't know his number, but showed up. He was there, and it was good to see him. He was just kind of leaving as I was starting. I was playing Stranger Things, and I could not leave that game. I kept getting free games on that game. Tim, you're so good at pinball. I can't believe that game stuck around as easy as it is to get a free game there. Yeah, they're all free here at Torch Arcade. Anyway, it was fun. I got, I think, three or four games on it before it was time to leave, so I didn't spend a ton of time on it, but it was fun. it's really hard to get up to that upper level of the game, not really the upper play field that was a pro, but the top left and right of the play field is just interesting. When the ball comes around to get into that Mandalorian helmet, it just wants to drop out of that area, and you kind of have to give it a nudge to get it up to the flipper every single time it comes around, which some of the players there were kind of complaining about that, but I thought that was kind of cool. It was almost like you had to nudge the game, You had to know that technique to get that ball up to that flipper, that upper right flipper. So I thought that was kind of cool, but it was fun. Just glad I ordered a Turtles. I like games that force you to use those other types of skills. That's very interesting. I've not had a chance to play it yet, so I look forward to doing that hopefully soon. I look forward to hearing your opinion on it, especially if they try to introduce that game in a tournament sort of setting, how that changes the approach to the game for sure. Yeah, well, Plymouth Tap, the place I was talking about earlier, he does have one on order, so he will have that fairly soon. So I will give a full report on that. Once in a while we have some other, I would say, quote-unquote competitive players that come down and play, but usually it's more of like a local crowd of just, you know, friends that come and hang out and play. It's a little bit more casual. It's an interesting collection of folks that play there. So I would be interested, too, to see how, you know, what tournament strategy we would like on that down the road. I think I should just watch it on stream or on Twitch a little bit more. Yeah, I try to watch it on Twitch, but honestly, I end up talking to everyone. I don't pay attention to the game. Well, me too. I'm not going to lie. I hope I like it because I bought it. And if I don't like it, I'm going to be so depressed. But my family, I said this on two episodes, they wanted it so bad. So the first time I've ever purchased a game without playing it, I ordered Turtles without playing it. But then I went to play it and I had that opportunity to back out, like J-Hall just said. Yeah. And I loved it. So I bought it. So I'm not going to play Mandalorian unless operator friend Mike gets one. Ha. You know, I might be able to play it because he ordered one. But we'll see. When do you get your turtles? I've been told it's mid-July. Very exciting. That's a month away. Right around the corner. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm starting to realize the theme is a little bit more important to me than I guess I wanted it to be or thought it was going to be. I just tend to really enjoy this Avengers. I don't know. It may just be because I haven't really had a Stern machine in the house yet. You know, playing on 2Data East and an American Pinball machine, those are just different kinds of games. And I guess I'm starting to realize I kind of like the Stern games more than I thought I would. And whenever I play some of those Stern games on location, some of them, it's like the first time I went to play Jurassic Park, it had a busted right flipper, a dead coil or something, and I couldn't play the game. And I was, although our operator and our technician here at our local place is amazing, he fixes games so fast, it just was disappointing to show up. So I was like, oh, don't want a Stern. I want a rock solid game. And, you know, American Pinball, I won't say Data East. So, yeah, I don't know. I was kind of just, I guess on-location machines are a bit different than when they're in your house, you know. Yes, every game that you play, no matter where it is, plays different. Yeah. Yeah, and I've had about 12 or 13 sterns, not all mine, maybe 14 that have come through my house. And I haven't had an issue with any of them. They've been really solid. As an operator, I now have a new respect for how difficult it must be to keep those machines up and running when they're getting a thousand plays a week and I'm barely putting a hundred in a month or maybe in a week if I'm playing a lot. Yeah, and they're not playing them like you. They're playing them like Rachel. They're like beating the tar out of those machines, shaking them, nudging. What are you talking about? Hey, you have admitted in the past on episodes that you like to give your machines a little bit of a nudge. I think that I do that. I'm much more physical with the game early on when I play, but I think it's the adrenaline, the anxiety, and the nerves that just have to move out of my body somehow, and it comes out with me pushing the game a little bit harder. Or I dance around quite a bit. You'll see someday, Tim, I do like my whole little pinball party dance party thing the whole time. It's great. yeah looking forward to it yeah rachel if it makes you feel better i um i had a i'm pretty sure it was only the second day mandalorian was on location here but i had a really incredible score going on ball one and then i tilted out ball two and three like it was nothing oh it feels for you i feel for you yeah so apparently i was either just had enough beers to give it some love or that tilt bob is a little is a little sensitive i don't know yeah or you just got carried away and i i've seen other players that are incredible players that hardly ever tilt where they just kind of get they're into a ball they're two minutes into like ball two and they've already picked up a danger a minute ago and then they forget or they don't see it so it does happen i was playing two player with a lady that i just met there they wanted to play the game too so we just jumped on a two-player game and i noticed she was doing a lot of nudging just forward on the machine but she wasn't ever kind of giving it you know the left and right move and i think that just me nudging it from side to side a little bit was what made it so angry yeah i don't know yeah it was it was good it was micro nudge micro nudge i saw an interesting nudge this week by tom graff he was playing twilight zone against him i came in fourth miserably he was playing against him and Cassidy and another friend and I saw him do this thing where he squatted down took like his hands I think above either leg in the front and he shook the game left and right like a real quick fast shake I have never seen anybody move a game like that it was and he got a double danger but he kept his ball alive it was just really weird but it was a cool cool move anyway yeah do you think it was a particular move for that particular machine Considering how long that he's played there, I'm going to say very possibly. And I've played a couple rounds with him, and I'm near him and observe how he plays when I have an opportunity to. That's just the first time I've ever seen that. Maybe it's just that game. Anyway, that was not a micro-nudge. Nope. Normally he is a micro-nudger, so it was just really cool to see him use that kind of force in order to keep the ball alive. Awesome. All right, J-Hall, before we take a trip down memory lane, did you get the topper for tmnt i did you did i knew it awesome good for you i got a lot of things i got all the things i've my my wife checked the credit card statement she was like i thought you just ordered a game i was like i know these are this is all the stuff that goes with the game and i got laser eyes i i ordered i ordered all of it i got the i got the uh art blades i got the Katana plunger. I got the topper. I got the shaker. I was shopping for PinStadiums when we were drinking margaritas and they had two sets of Penn Stadium Neos left in stock. And I was like, man, I need to order these. Anyway, got had a couple of margaritas, forgot all about it. Woke up the next day, one left in stock. And I was like, this is it. I've got to order these. I've got to spend the money now because supply chain issues are crazy right now. And I don't know what it's like over there, but I didn't want to have to wait months for it. So I ordered my PinStadiums. It's like, great. Check my email. I've got the confirmation. And then I checked the email below that and there's a confirmation there. And I was like, oh, cool. Okay. I got two confirmations. No, you were somewhat drunk on margaritas and ordered a set the night before when they were in stock. Oh, no. Then you got up the next morning and saw there was only one left in stock and ordered another one. So I bought the last two that were available, and I emailed Scott, and I was like, dude, I hope you appreciate this story because I need you to cancel one of these orders before I'm in big, big trouble. So I actually ordered two PinStadiums. So he was kind enough to cancel one of them before he showed them. Scott's a good dude. You need to put those credit cards away into the freezer if you're going to go on a little drink. It's all saved in the phone. It's all at a tap of the buttons. Right, right. I know. That's part of the problem these days, isn't it? Yep, really easy. It's super easy. So, yeah, I've got mods coming. I ordered a – I've gone nuts. I've been talking to Drew Boveir, speaking of. Oh, no. Yeah, I don't know if I've coined this term, but I'm going to call it a promium. It's a Stern Pro that you end up spending more money than you should have just ordered a premium so it a promium I have a start button coming from that looks like a turtle sewer cover I have I don know It goes on I already got powder coat lined up for it The problem is I got that Avengers Pro and it was so loaded. It had the topper. It had the powder coat. It had Penn Stadium's speaker light kit, upgraded speakers like it had all the stuff. and I was like, holy crap, the experience on this game is incredible now. It is loaded. So I had to have that on Turtles, and it's ruined me. So I'm going to have two really incredible Stern Pro machines sitting in my garage. Two Chromium games. I love that. So did you get the Krang that sits on top of the pop bumper? I have not ordered any internal mods for the machine yet, And sadly, I've been shopping for – because my Avengers doesn't have any mods on the play field either. It's all external stuff. And so I started shopping for both of those, and I'm going to have to stop. I'm going to get in big trouble. You've got to go the distance and get that one because that makes it very close to the premium because that's what the premium has. All the little toys. I know. I wish somebody made an aftermarket glider for the diverter that's on the Turtles Premium. They do, but it doesn't switch Yeah Raphael's not flying it, it's an empty glider Oh, okay From what I've seen I never noticed that I'm going to do purple armor I've got orange lighted flipper buttons coming I've got the blue katana coming and then I'm doing a red start button Hopefully it's not going to look like Clown Puke on the outside of the machine but I wanted to subtly kind of represent all. So we'll see. I don't know. We'll see how it all looks. I'm excited. I don't even have the machine yet. And I've got, I don't know, stupid number of mods coming. So post pictures on the fan page. I will. Congratulations. That's so exciting. I think actually it's kind of like Christmas a little bit, right? For yourself. You're like just these little treats at different, really cool things. Oh, it's very exciting. I did a lot of trading and like to get those two data East machines. I did a lot of work to get up to that point and then to sell those two data use machines and be able to order the game I want and get some mods out of it and some stuff I wanted to do is, is really awesome. It's like, you know, you hear those stories on the internet about how people like buy a pair of Adidas and end up with a Ferrari or whatever. And that's not, that's not comparable to what I'm talking about here, but the work that I put into it feels like that, you know, Good job. No, I think there's a lot of validity in your statement there. For sure. It takes a lot. That's something that I've learned, too, as I'm going along here. I don't know how long you've been playing or collecting. We'll get into that, I'm certain. But I've learned that you have to collect and put together and, you know, a couple of crumbs can make a cheese sandwich, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome. We're not talking about inexpensive investments here, too. You know, these machines cost a lot of money. Yes. I've been in the hobby for two years, but I've really only owned games for, I don't know, six months or so. So it takes a lot of work and smarts to be able to, I guess, not just buy your way in at the street level, right? I mean, I had to work my way up from the back alley. So, I mean, I'll put in money, too. Don't get me wrong. But it's at the point that this hobby is in now, it's really hard just to work your way into it. It's not like arcades were 10 years ago or even pinball machines 15 years ago. It's like you got to you got to invest, first of all, but you got to figure out the hobby and figure out how you want to trade up for stuff for sure. And figure out what type of games you're into, what era you're into, the content, what kind of player you are. Are you a casual player? All of that figures into purchasing a first machine. So you're right. It's hard to take that leap. Yeah, I agree. And the content that I've experienced with pinball podcasting and streaming and things really, really helps immensely. Just hearing people's stories about how they buy games and how they work their way into the hobby too. There's a lot of new pinball players out there, a lot of new collectors. So not everybody right now is the person that's had 20 games in their basement for 20 years. Not everybody is a tribe member Tish that's been playing since, you know, the 70s, right? Tish rocks, yeah. Tish is awesome. Yeah, we love Tish. She's one of my favorites. Yeah. All right, so you had mentioned that you've been in the hobby for a couple of years. Is that when you first started playing pinball? Tell us a little bit how you got into the hobby and maybe if you played as a child back in the butthole days. Yeah, well, I thought I was still a butthole now. Different buttholes back then. Rachel educated us. There's dry buttholes and there are the buttholes back in the 90s. Yeah, I was an arcade kid and I was a Nintendo kid for sure. So, I mean, you know, I grew up in the Chuck E. Cheese's and the Aladdin castles and all that stuff. I played a pinball machine very rarely when I was a kid, probably like a lot of us, really. I lost a few dollars in Funhaus. I remember that because the game attracted me to the character, Rudy, in there. I had to play that game, and obviously I would just get destroyed on that game within 10 seconds and realized that I'd rather put my quarters and tokens in skeeball or Ninja Turtles or Mortal Kombat or something like that. So I didn't play pinball as a kid at all. And then a couple of years ago, I decided to build a virtual pinball machine. And that sort of changed everything. Why did you decide to build a virtual pinball machine? Yeah, I have been restoring arcade games and a lot of them have been multi-cade machines. I've restored a few original machines too but when normally when I want a game in the house or in the garage I have very limited space so having a multi machine is really appealing to to me so I do like to have a vertical multi-cade or a horizontal multi-cade that plays fighters and so I like to have like more specific than just like one machine that plays everything but I really wanted a pinball machine. And I knew that, I mean, you can, you can invest two grand and build a, and build a VPN and yeah, it's not going to be the same experience, but you can have 5,000 pinball machines and one machine and one, one space. And I understand the appeal of it completely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just, that got me into it. I realized I could have all these pinball machines, just like I have a multi-cade sitting right beside it. So I drove to South Carolina and picked up a shell of an eight ball cabinet and went on my way. And it became, I guess, an interesting thing. Like I got really into the surround sound feedback of it, how you use audio to make it physically feel like the ball is moving. and I was starting to like build a cabinet and I would plunge a ball and the physical sound moving through the body of the cabinet, you could actually hear the ball moving up the wood and then the sound changes and, you know, around the ramp or whatever it is around the orbit. And I was just obsessed with how technological it really was. So I just kept building on that machine and I kept that machine for two years and played every single pinball machine I could think about playing. And I I thought it was making me a better player until I started playing real pinball machines. Did you learn quite a bit about different rule sets? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the biggest sell for a virtual pinball machine. If you want to know the rules and how pinball is played, I mean, you can learn any machine you want to learn. That's one reason why I wish I still had that machine here because I could learn any rule set I wanted to that's available. and most everything before spike system games are are readily available on that machine so if you have a classic sensibility you can play virtual pinball all day long awesome so that kind of got you out to the to the arcade then to just start playing the the physical pinball machines yeah well so i had a friend who has a bar and we were talking about putting a pinball machine in there and it's a just a i don't know it's just a neighborhood bar and there weren't going to be a lot of serious pinball players in there so i thought you know what's a what's a game i could put in that bar that somebody that's just drinking beer would want to go play and i was like octoberfest that's it i mean somebody's going to want to play octoberfest if it's a you know if it's a fun fun beer drinking environment and they're not serious pinball player or tournament play or anything like that. I thought maybe that would earn a few quarters. That's when COVID happened. They didn't do the expansion on the bar like what I thought they were going to do. So I had already ordered Oktoberfest and I'd already paid for it. So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to put this in my garage. And the second I sat down a real pinball machine next to a virtual pinball machine and sort of realized flipper lag and physics. And although the physics on a virtual pinball machine are incredible. Obviously, it's not the same. And I was playing a little bit on location. I'd played a couple of tournaments here locally. So I was starting to get into real pinball anyway. But I avoided it for a little while because everybody kept telling me it's like an itch once you start scratching it. I got rid of my virtual pinball machine quickly after that. So once Oktoberfest hit the garage, it changed everything. Nice, nice. And, you know, you said you kept Oktoberfest six months. That's probably around the time range that, you know, I sell a pinball machine. It seems that after six months, it's ready to go and you bring on the next one. Yeah, I sold my virtual pinball machine and purchased Last Action Hero and actually purchased that from a location that Glenn Glenn Waechter plays at. So when I bought the machine, his name was High Score Number Three. and the entire time I had that machine it was a few months, I never beat his high score, so that had to go it was in VRAM already installed, so I couldn't erase it it was just there haunting me I had high score number 4 and he had number 3, so that had to go man, I would want to I would play that sucker every day until I wiped that dude's name off the board that stinks I really tried, but Glenn's a good player apparently Yeah, he does pinball diagrams and maps and choose-your-own-adventure kind of things. So I can't wait to talk to him about that at some point. Yeah, Glenn helped me buy that game. So he was a good dude to help me buy that machine. And the location that it was at, they had a tornado in Nashville, and they had moved all their machines temporarily to another location. So hopefully me buying that machine helped them out a little bit, and I got to play it for a little while. It was a good deal all around. So I appreciate Glenn for arranging that for me. And then I traded a 60-in-1 arcade cabinet for the Jurassic Park Data East. So that was a good trade. Guy just really wanted an arcade machine. And I said, this pinball machine is probably worth way more than I'm giving you this arcade machine. He said, I don't care. It's a good trade for me. You want a pinball machine and I want an arcade machine. I said, deal. So within a week, I was an owner of two day-to-ease machines. Your pinball life coach helped you out on that one as well. I think you were messaging me. And I don't think that one was one we had to think about. It's like, yeah, you got to do that. Yeah, I had to do that. So that was easy. Easy, easy deal. So yeah, I've just been really fortunate to meet the right people and have good advisors. And I don't know. Anyway. Yeah, pinball advisors, pinball life coaches. So, hey, I have to tell a story, you know, back to the arcade machines and the multi-cades. Rachel, I don't know if Jay Hall remembers this, but one night, it was a Saturday. I was on my front porch, and I drank like four or five beers. And I'm not a heavy drinker, and I'm looking at Facebook. And similar to his story where he purchased the PinStadium Lights, this multi-cade came up. And I thought, Jonathan Hall has one of these. This would be really neat because you and I had went back and forth on the multi-cades before, and I'd ask questions about them and just, you know, we went and corresponded a little bit. So I said to my wife, and I sent it to Jonathan, and I don't know if you told me this, but the message I received after four or five beers is, you've got to go get this. So I remember going to my wife and being like, Jonathan Hall says I've got to go get this multi-cade. You've got to drive me to get it. And I started messaging the guy back and forth, and I'm like, can I get it tonight? and this was eight o'clock and he was like yeah if you get here by 10 so i'm like amy we got to go get this maldecade and she's like you've had like five beers i'm like that's why i need you to take me she's like where is it and i told her where it's like an hour away she's like are you serious i'm like i just committed to it so amy took me on jonathan's advice i blamed everything on jonathan like man he said we got to get this and we showed up and it looked pristine when i got it but the next day when you know we brought it home the next day when i i woke up it was an old poker cabinet that was brown and i'm like what did i do and so so jonathan helped me out there but i don't know what he said i could go back and look but i was all everything i was receiving on my end is like jonathan says i got to do this so i blamed everything on jonathan it was so ugly that my wife painted it the next day she had leftover paint from our walls when she painted the kitchen that she's like, I can't take this brown, and she painted it gray. I still have it. It's still in Torts Arcade. Tim Lee, I think that was not very nice of you to throw our guest under the bus. Well, listen, I said, I don't know what he said, but after five beers, I was interpreting everything he said as, you've got to go get this right now. I also don't think that anybody should be making any kind of purchases online, online, especially any type of arcade or pinball machine after five or six beers or drinks. Can that just be like our PSA for this episode, I feel like? I took cash, and I remember Jonathan. I do remember him sending me pictures of him drinking beers, so it probably was not the right time on a Saturday evening to have the conversation. Do you remember that, Jonathan? I am a man of conviction when I've had a certain amount of alcohol, for sure. I do remember cautiously advising you cautiously I also remember saying if you want it man go get it i don remember what you paid for but i i don think it was horrible no no i think it was like 400 bucks yeah that i i mean you be hard pressed to buy a cabinet for you know empty cabinet for 250 or whatever so yeah i'm yeah i'm just gonna say that i was giving you some good advice i also didn't know you were going to jump in the car or your wife drive you that night either i thought you were telling me you were going to go look at it the next day with a sound mind nope and a strong heart but no hey man the heart wants what the heart wants and and the gray that your wife put on that made it extraordinary yeah yeah it's a good conversation piece now and a lot of people play it so all right so that's my story kudos to your wife for driving your junk ass an hour away to go pick up some random thing and then it turns out to be so ugly and painful for you that's love when tim says it's a good conversation piece that means he's still blaming me for hey this is jonathan hall he told me to buy it that's fine legend legend legend in my own right there that's fine i recall you asking ian haberman uh his advice too dude i think i asked everybody their advice and anybody that gave me just a little bit of maybe you should get it i was taking their advice. All right. So let's move along. I wanted to talk about your business, Sync Communications. Did I get the name correct? You did. Yeah. So that's actually kind of exciting. Can you tell us and the listeners about your business? Well, it was started out of necessity with COVID. My company that I worked for for over a decade just decided to close its doors when things got a little rough in our industry. And so I was left with a choice, kind of wait around and see if they decided to reopen or kind of just run at it on my own. And so we just we sort of kind of had to just we were forced to make a quick decision, my wife and I, to open our own business. And so, yeah, I called a few clients and I called a few folks that work for me. I was basically running the company where I was before anyway. And I said, it's hopefully this is an inevitable conversation that we were going to have later on down the road, but we're going to have it today. And I need your support. And people were kind enough to do that. And we were very fortunate to both, you know, I guess, spend a few months on unemployment and and be able to maintain our way of life. And then and then open our business later in the summer of last year. and it's just been a rocket to the moon since then. We've been doing really well. We obviously have our struggles as a small new business, but yeah, it's been awesome. And I know that there's lots of people out there that are not as fortunate when it comes to, you know, what COVID did to their lives. And we're just really lucky. So, you know, really count our blessings. Yeah, that's good to hear. And it sounds like you are very blessed and you kind of took a bad situation and made it a good situation. What kind of projects are you working on? So we've been handling a lot of video production the past year, a lot of virtual events, online conferences, things like that. And we're moving slowly back into live events, which was mainly what we did before. But we've, I guess, gone into so much virtual event production and we've done some things that I think are going to stick around for a little while. So I'm feeling really good about moving forward. I think we'll go into live events. We'll definitely have a strong fall doing that. But then we've got a lot of new opportunities in video production and virtual events that we didn't have before. So we opened up our video studio. It's small here in Knoxville, but it's something. And we've been buying a lot of gear and getting ready. We've got a concert to do tomorrow at an event. And we're rolling, man. I mean, I go to work every day with 100 things to do and I couldn't ask for more. So it's been awesome. Congratulations. Thanks. It takes so much, especially during the last year that we experienced, to reinvent oneself in terms of new business or new whatever. So that is amazing. And I'm so glad that it's blooming for you and your wife. It's awesome. Yeah, we've worked hard. You know, we've got our son. He's seven. Grayson, he's, you know, everything we do. we you know kind of do for him so we're we kind of just had to you know pick it up and move it on and get this thing rolling so it's kind of you don't have a choice you know it's america yeah that's right you don't do anything there for ollie do you ollie oh yeah he's he's he's here he actually got shaved today at the groomer so he's kind of mad at me but what type of dog is he he looked really cute he's a golden doodle that's what i thought but he's so little is he a puppy He's a mini golden doodle. Oh, he's adorable. Yeah, he's about 25 pounds. I think they probably took about five off of him today. Yeah, they get so curly fur and just fluffy. Oh, floofy. Oh, awesome. Yeah, so we got our little gang here, and we're just all taking care of each other one day at a time. Yeah, and COVID gave you that little push you needed to kind of start your own business, so that's a pretty cool story. Have you ever thought about doing any marketing or video production for one of these up and coming pinball companies? Absolutely. Yeah, we've talked to a couple before. As a pinball guy, I know what I want to do. Also, Chris, the pin turn, we've been kind of chatting around about doing maybe a stream here or something. I have some ideas on camera angles, kind of the way I would like to shoot a pinball machine that I just I would love to have the opportunity to explore that for sure. Yeah, so if you're one of these folks in some of these up-and-coming or established pinball companies, give Jay Hall a call. I have ideas. Yeah, and we have a few that listen. I was shocked at who actually listens to our show. I thought it was just Drew downloading it from like 20 different machines, but no. I'd rather not know. Yes and no. It's like, you know, it's cool when people come up to me and say something, but it's funny, though, because I have to figure out the reference point. Like I had somebody that came up to me and talked to me about, I don't know, something when Tish was on our episode and something about that. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh, yeah, I do a podcast thing. And they must be listening. That's so cool. But still, I don't know, Tim. I don't know. Have you had anybody in your at Helicon or anybody else? Operator friend Mike listens quite a bit. Yeah, he's a groupie of the show. You know, he keeps talking about it. I've had some people message me on Facebook. a number of people in the pinball community message me and say, hey, I love the show, et cetera, on Facebook. I haven't been to a lot of location play. You know, the owners and so forth said, hey, I heard your show and I like it. But I was surprised at how many people messaged me. I would be the opposite. Like if somebody came up to me, I'd be like, you want my autograph? Let's take a selfie. Come on, bring your friends over. Hey, is that your grandmother? Bring her over. Let's take a picture. Yeah, I appreciate that. I can get into all of that. I appreciate it, and I really appreciate the people that listen and that do message and reach out and say something. Just trying to figure out how to deal with that a little bit. It's a cool new world for me to have that kind of little bit of that limelight. It's weird, but it's fun. I'm really having a good time with it. And I'll hug you, I promise. If you come talk to me, I will hug you. You have promised me a hug for every show. Yeah, I know. So when we get to Expo, do you think we'll have down, what is this, number 11? so they will have uh 20 done by then maybe i don't know anyways back to back to our guest sorry all right jay hall that was a little sidetrack so before we get to the most important question that rachel's going to ask you i need to ask you something important to me who is the worst pinball player in the tribe answer correctly please oh man you guys are going to put me on the spot like that i don't know i've never played pinball with anybody in the tribe Oh, it's Drew? Okay, good answer. All right, so Rachel, go ahead and ask our guest the most important question. Tim Lee, one of these times, when you bring that up, I'm going to drop an F-bomb. I've not done that yet on the show. I don't believe I have. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that might just come out. So we'll see. Anywho, Jay Hall, I like the nickname. I think that's fantastic. I have a very difficult question to ask you. are you prepared let's go are you certain no okay that's a much better answer how did you get into the tribe of the poor man's pinball podcast oh man i actually made myself a note to talk about this too because i am i don't know equally embarrassed and proud of this but do you do this like do you listen to podcasts in the car or something and you're having a conversation with the person even though you're not actually talking to you yes i have yeah i totally agree but that's totally wrong i mean you know um i i i was i started out listening to slab save i listened to ken cromwell showed a special windlet i was listening to them and then i found these guys ian and drew and they like to drink like i do and they like to shoot the shit like i do And I was like, yep, this is, these are my guys. Like I, I had, we're, we were having conversations, uh, for sure. So I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I'm listening to them. Like, like, yeah, these, you know, I'm, I'm totally invested in what they're saying. Like, you know, listen to an episode episode. So one day I just – I send them a Facebook message, and I know I must have sounded like a crazy person because I was just ranting about something, about some manufacturer, mistakes they were making. And I had all these opinions based on what they had been saying, and we had had a conversation. I was like, well, to follow up on what we've been talking about, here's all these opinions I have, and I know they thought I was nuts. Because you thought – you're coming from the perspective it's an ongoing conversation, and they're like, who the hell is this dude? Who the hell is this guy? I love that. Let me tell you my opinion on what we've been talking about for the past two weeks. So anyway, I don't know. I've started ranting back and forth with, I think it was mostly Ian. And then I said one thing. I said, the next time you do a segment on, you have a guest on. This is back when they had guests. Remember that? Yep. And so I said, next time you have a guest on, rather than asking them about their lineup, it should be the poor man's pinball profile rather than the poor man's, you know, like poor men's pinball news, but poor men's pinball profile. And Drew finally chimed in and he said, oh, Ian doesn't have the appreciation for alliteration like I do, but I love this idea. And and so after that, we just started chatting around or whatever. And obviously I've achieved the fifth pillar, which I will never tell anybody what it is. But yeah, I don't know. I was I was super excited and honored. And I know most people are like, who is this guy and why is he even in a pinball tribe and I didn't even have a pinball machine at the time, but I had my virtual pinball machine and it's just, um, it's been awesome. I've, I've, I made friends for life. I tell people all the, I tell people all the time, I'm like, I have all these friends and they're a part of this group and one day we're going to meet each other in real life and it's going to be like, we've known each other for years and we're all friends for life. And it's, uh, you know, I don't know. I don't, I'm sure I'm hopeful that you all feel the same, but it's, uh, yes, that's an absolutely great description i feel the same way yeah perfect amazing opportunity to be involved in thing that i apparently just ranted my way into so i really i really appreciate it and i could probably name off you know one each of each of the tribe members and one interaction i've had with them so it's just it's been awesome it's been an awesome opportunity so and i appreciate being here you know being invited to talk to you guys too because this this is also an honor for me so i appreciate it oh that's so sweet no i'm just so happy to have you on today did you did you is there anything else that you would like to talk about today oh gosh let's see drunk pin stadiums i had that um good uh promiums i had that yeah i've i've gone through my list at today uh while we're recording this it's glenn's birthday so um this may not air for a little while but happy birthday glenn anyway and chris grausvenner just want to say thanks to you he Chris, after our lead organizer of our local pinball tournament moved away, Chris picked up all the slack and he's always at our local places talking to people, inviting them to the tournaments. And we wouldn't have a local tournament scene without Chris. So he's extraordinary at what he does and he does it all just for the love of it. And we're also the largest. He told me when we were playing Mandalorian that we are the largest league group in Tennessee, which there's some big cities in Tennessee. So we actually have more members of our league than anybody in our state. So that's a huge thing that he's helped put together. So anyway. Way to go, Chris. Nice work, Chris. That's awesome. Can't wait to interview him. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he knows way more about tournament play and pinball than I do for sure. It would be a good interview for Rachel And happy birthday Glenn we love you Yeah happy birthday Glenn thanks again for our Intro song just love it We love you Ian and we love you Drew Oh yes we love you guys too I love everyone Me too And every game Turn it into a love fest Alright well I think that about wraps it up Thank you Jay Hall for coming on Thank you Rachel for being an Awesome co-host as usual my pleasure back at you all right well happy flipping on the house cell they're the heroes for in this day and age who could ask for more The crime wave is high with buggings mysterious All police and detectives are furious Cause they can't find the source Of this lethally evil force This is serious so give me a quarter I was a witness get me a reporter Call April O'Neil and on this case Hey you better hurry up there's no time to wait We need help like quick off the double Have pity on the city man it's in trouble We need heroes like the Lone Ranger When Tonto came pronto when there was danger They didn't say we'd be there in half an hour because they displayed Turtle Power.