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#110 Disorder in the house - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·3h 0m·analyzed·Nov 28, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Classic Pinball Podcast episode mixing service calls, machine repairs, weather chat, and community stories.

Summary

George and Dave record episode #110 of The Classic Pinball Podcast, a freewheeling conversation covering George's recent service calls and machine restoration work, his setup of eight classic pinball machines (with troubleshooting on Centaur), weather and outdoor activities, LED Christmas decorations, and a humorous anecdote about Australian collector Grant's prank quote request. The episode touches on broader industry themes including pricing, service call demand variability, and the challenges of operating high-end machines in commercial locations.

Key Claims

  • Pinball service call demand has been variable; Steve Young reported parts sales down and other technicians report reduced service calls, possibly due to economic pressures

    medium confidence · George mentions Steve Young's report during discussion of recent call volume

  • George successfully set up 7 of 8 machines (Mata Hari, Supersonic, Xenon, Knight Rider, Harlem Globetrotters, Bobby Orr, Skateball) with only Centaur experiencing ball launcher issues

    high confidence · George explicitly states the setup results and describes the Centaur problem in detail

  • Centaur's ball launcher issue is likely a reseated connector on the solenoid driver board (John's diagnosis), not a transistor or fuse issue

    high confidence · George describes John's identification of a connector issue on the upper right 28 or 25 connector on the solenoid driver board

  • Clover Food Lab in Cambridge filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, prompting George to reflect on past service challenges with that location

    high confidence · George receives bankruptcy notice in the mail and discusses it as a recent event

  • Bally machines commonly have low-quality fuse holders that lose springiness over time; replacing with new ones is standard procedure

    medium confidence · George discusses swapping out Bally fuse holders as standard maintenance on all Bally machines

  • Clover Food Lab operated Twilight Zone and Medieval Madness on 50-cent play with high maintenance needs due to 24/7 operation

    high confidence · George describes the specific machines and pricing in detail from his service experience

  • George's weather has been unusually warm (70°F and 50-60°F days in mid-to-late November) and he prefers working outside on Buck Rogers restoration

    high confidence · George describes specific temperatures and his preference for outdoor work during recent days

Notable Quotes

  • “It'd be like a 75 or 80 year old man trying to have children with a young woman. They just don't stream fast enough.”

    George @ early-mid episode — Creative analogy for Centaur's slow ball launcher issue

  • “Why did you do that? Because I could.”

    George (quoting himself) responding to Dave @ mid-episode — George's explanation for his unconventional octo-rectifier modifications on Knight Rider and Supersonic

  • “The ball keeps draining before I can roll it. I can't tap pass on the left. Oh, yeah, the left flipper doesn't work. It's Grant.”

    George @ mid-late episode — Reveals Grant from Australia was the prankster submitting a fake service request form

  • “Don't do it with the Porsche. Do it with the gremlin.”

    George @ mid-episode — Advice that experimental repairs should be done on cheap machines, not valuable ones

  • “When you have seven games you haven't had, you really don't care about the eighth game that doesn't work.”

    George @ mid-episode — Explains why he hasn't prioritized fixing the Centaur despite diagnosing the issue

  • “I know why people don't move pinballs. I know why people don't sell pinballs. I know why wives call people like you and say, can you get this pinball out of my house?”

    Dave @ late episode — Commentary on the physical difficulty of moving pinball cabinets and its market impact

  • “They don't have the most simplistic games either. If you're going to have something that's going to be on 24-7, have something that's going to be ruggedized.”

    George @ late episode — Critique of Clover Food Lab's choice to operate complex games at 50-cent play

Entities

GeorgepersonDavepersonGrantpersonJohnpersonSteve YoungpersonKeith ChristensenpersonMaureenpersonJanicepersonChris Hutchinsperson

Signals

  • ?

    operational_signal: George reports receiving service calls from Quebec, Kentucky, and Arizona simultaneously, suggesting geographic reach of his reputation; also notes Steve Young reporting reduced parts sales and service calls across industry, possibly due to economic contraction

    medium · George mentions multiple out-of-state calls in a short timeframe and references Steve Young's report of declining parts and service activity

  • ?

    product_concern: Centaur ball launcher malfunction traced to reseated connector on solenoid driver board; George failed to check connector integrity after machine transport

    high · George explicitly discusses John identifying the connector issue as the culprit; George confirms he dismounted and remounted connectors without reseating them properly

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Standard procedure on all Bally machines is replacing factory fuse holders with higher-quality springy versions due to inferior original design

    medium · George states this is standard procedure he always performs; explains Bally fuse holders have poor springiness and connection reliability

  • ?

    design_philosophy: George advocates experimenting with modifications on cheap machines ($100-$400) rather than valuable machines; cites examples of octo-rectifier and Molex connector modifications on low-cost machines like Knight Rider and Supersonic

    high · George explicitly discusses doing experimental soldering and crimping work on cheap games to learn before attempting work on valuable machines like Centaur

  • ?

    business_signal: Clover Food Lab in Cambridge filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy; location had history of payment delays and difficult management, operated premium machines (Twilight Zone, Medieval Madness) at unsustainably low pricing (50 cents per play)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.541

0:00
Hey! Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave.
0:41
I didn't get to do this very well the last time, Dave. Hello, Dave! Hello, George! I heard nothing. I saw it, but I heard nothing. I put it right in the mic. Well, it didn't work. Dave is having, I'm going to guess, a trogues. How'd you know? Well, because that's what you drink.
1:11
Anyway, I got started a little early, so I'm already shot out of the can and I'm ready to go. Dave and I, for all you new listeners, we do not discuss what we're going to talk about. and I had nothing on a blank page of paper this morning and now I have got a full page. So we're going to start with the top.
1:39
Last year's episode in November. It's good you have some time on your hands. No, I don't. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay. I've actually been very busy. But a year ago we published a show called Turkey Involved. Oh, yeah. And I know you don't remember it, and I certainly don't want to remember it. It sounds familiar.
2:06
Didn't you bring an El Toro into your shop? I did. And that was the show. Our lowest rated show, at least last year, I'm guessing this year, and it might even be the year before. they're very surprised not many El Toro lovers out there I'm shocked so we'll switch to another Valley game I saw this on Pinside today I haven't been looking that often but I thought this was if you're a car person and you don't really care about gameplay how about a ground shaker pretty good looking for $15.50 that's a pretty good deal we're going to come back to that, that was a well, I might as well say it, pinball pricing has been a subject of many a podcast, and our good friend from Australia Grant also suggested that we talk about it, but we're not going to talk about it right now, you tell me when you're ready to have a story or two I'll try, the last time we met our heroes. When was that? Was that mid-October? I know that I had two segments, but I don't remember the rest. And I said to myself, you know what? I think moving forward, I should at least listen to the podcast before we record. Because I have absolutely no idea other than I did a one-minute blurb on Maltese Brewery down in Fredericksburg with the 50 cent machines and the Keith Christensen Houston arcade pinball expo extravaganza that I didn't go to. Other than that I don't remember what we talked about.
Clover Food Lab
company
Brick Floydcompany
Maltese Brewerycompany
Theater of Magicgame
No Good Gophersgame
Centaurgame
Knight Ridergame
Supersonicgame
Mata Harigame
Xenongame
Harlem Globetrottersgame
Bobby Orrgame
Skateballgame
Buck Rogersgame
Twilight Zonegame
Medieval Madnessgame

high · George receives official bankruptcy court notice in the mail listing Clover Food Lab, Inc.; discusses prior service experience and payment difficulties

  • ?

    operational_signal: Clover Food Lab operated high-complexity premium machines at very low cost (50 cents) with 24/7 uptime, leading to frequent maintenance needs and equipment degradation

    high · George describes Twilight Zone and Medieval Madness both operating at 50-cent play, being 'beat the piss out of' and breaking frequently despite his expert maintenance

  • ?

    community_signal: Grant from Australia submitted an elaborate and humorous fake service request form for a Centaur, adopting alias 'The Knight Rider' and providing creative evasive answers about machine history and issues

    high · George reads the full prank form on air, eventually revealing it as Grant's work; form contains specific comedic details like 'My mate's brother's second cousin's ex-girlfriend's father'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Moving machines 500 miles carries risk of connector seating issues; George's greatest concern was Centaur and it indeed developed problems after transport, though not for the reason initially predicted

    high · George states he predicted Centaur would have issues; after transport and setup, ball launcher fails; diagnosis reveals connector issue from setup process

  • $

    market_signal: George notes pinball pricing has been 'a subject of many a podcast' suggesting ongoing community discourse about affordability; mentions Ground Shaker listed at $15,500 as 'pretty good deal' indicating premium pricing tier

    medium · George acknowledges pricing will be discussed on podcast; mentions Ground Shaker price without criticism, suggesting $15K+ is normalized pricing

  • ?

    content_signal: Grant from Australia aware of Classic Pinball Podcast and references it in his prank form ('heard about us from George in that crazy podcast'), indicating international reach and listener engagement

    high · Grant writes in prank form: 'I heard about us from George in that crazy podcast'; George confirms this is how Grant found him

  • ?

    operational_signal: Dave reflects on the difficulty of moving pinball cabinets as a factor depressing secondary market sales; notes wives call technicians to remove machines from homes, indicating domestic friction over space and weight

    medium · Dave states 'I know why people don't move pinballs. I know why people don't sell pinballs. I know why wives call people like you to get this pinball out of my house'

    • 4:11
    Well I know October 24th was the last time we recorded so I got a lot of oh, I know. A lot of stuff has gone on in between. A lot of service calls, a lot of interesting cast of characters, a lot of strange phone calls. It seems that my business is, I was getting calls from the other day and the same day, a call from Quebec looking for service on a machine and a call from Kentucky. and the prior day I had a call from Arizona so I don't know and I even at some point I said I can't really help you because I'm like you want to play for a flight but how did you find me? I'm thinking maybe it was a pin side thing or something but no they googled me and I guess there's no one out in these days. Not to interrupt but you just got done doing some work on your website. Well, it's a work in progress. We're still in the brainstorming thing. Oh, so that's got no effect yet? No, this is just pure Google doing it. I guess one of the Quebec ladies, I guess I was on six pages down. I guess it was like nobody I guess I was the one that stood out the best out of six pages.
    5:39
    How about desperation? Yeah. It's great, but then the same, I think around here, I mean, I get, I have, you know, service calls put out into, you know, late November, early December, and I got plenty of work going on. But, you know, the phone has been ringing a lot, like around this area. Now, I don't know if I fixed everything by now or what, but it's weird. So either that or, as Steve Young said, like pinball is down. His parts, like we talked last time, his part sales are down. Other technicians that call him to get parts, their service calls are down.
    6:25
    So the economy might start, I think it's starting to kind of affect the, you know, if you're going to eat or play some pinball, I guess eating takes priority, heating your home. well you can always bust up the cabinet of your pinball and throw it in the fireplace if you're really desperate but that's awfully expensive firewood then I was down at tonight I was grabbing some beer of choice at my local establishment there liquor store nice guy owns the place he definitely every time I come in and I don't go I might see maybe once every two weeks to buy a six pack. And he always had a smile on his face because he remembers, I'm the guy. I'm the guy that never wore a mask, didn't do any of that crap the whole time, and he remembers me for it.
    7:20
    You're the only face he could see. Exactly. But he wasn't down with it either, but he had to do it, but he liked my moxie of rebelling against stupidity. and he still remembers it and he has a great rapport with me he just knows that I'm I got some chutzpah so it was cool talking to him and getting the beer and so forth yeah so that was another cool little thing today but I've got a lot of service calls, Road Kings we did I went to John Jolly, we went to go see him you'll talk about that at the end we got two things we'll talk about at the end okay the holiday and John oh wait go back again I was getting whispered by caramel in my ear here I said there's two things we'll talk about at the end John and the holiday okay The holiday?
    8:32
    Which one? Oh, that one. No, no, no. There's no Thanksgiving. It's all Christmas. We'll come to that too. There's no money in Thanksgiving. That's why no one has it out there in the store. Just leave that alone. Don't ruin it. I won't.
    8:53
    Let's see. Theater of Magic. Went back there. Did some more work there. Down the Cape. Went to Chatham. Worked on No Good Gophers. They love you down in retirement land, don't they? They do. That's my new, that's my emerging market down there.
    9:09
    Went to go see Brick Floyd out in Kingston, New York the other day. How was that? That was really good. I was surprised how good that was. That was really good. I mean, I saw Australian Pink Floyd a couple years ago, and I was blown away by that. But these guys sounded really just like it. they had a really good groove. The problem with the venue though is the venue, they sold... Well, first of all, how big a venue? Oh, I don't know. You talked to me about this, but we haven't talked to you. How many people, Lorraine? 1,500 was the max capacity. Oh, so smaller. Small. Small. An old one, maybe from 1910 the thing was made. So an old theater. Old theater, and it's a non-profit theater, so they've got to go by certain rules or something maybe. Well, here's a really dumb rule. How about a rule where you can't bring any, buy a drink there, water, whatever, you cannot bring it to your seat.
    10:08
    So, everybody has to go and drink or whatever out in the, you know, mezzanine or whatever out there and you're buying the stuff and you can look through a window and see the concert while you're sucking down a beer and chugging, lugging, being Frank the Tank, but there's old people in there watching an old show. There's a lot of people over 50, 60, whatever.
    10:36
    They're the money spot. Yeah, well, they're also the people that need water, and they're going to have a problem, because they're on all kinds of meds, and the meds take their water. So these people are all drying up. They're all coughing and stuff and they, you know, they don't want to leave the seat because there's a really good show going on, but they have to go get a water and then suck it down.
    10:59
    You can't even bring a water in with you. It's stupid. So that kind of was the only thing that kind of tinkered a little bit. That doesn't seem like a very friendly place to go see a show. Well, it's New York, so there you go. Oh, never mind. Yeah, there you go. Okay. I've got a couple other things. Go ahead.
    11:21
    I need mine. What's it called? You want to hear it? You already heard, but our audience hasn't. So I started setting up my machines.
    11:33
    Oh, this one. Okay. Oh, this one. So I set up Mata Hari, Supersonic, Xenon, Knight Rider, Harlem Globetrotters, Bobby R. Powerplay, and Skateball, all working. And as one glaring omission, well. Right. Well, right. And you heard from me twice. And I did say this, and you should remember.
    12:04
    I said this in the last show. My biggest reservation of taking all those machines 500 miles is Centaur. And I was right. But not for the reason I thought. I think you destroyed Centaur. That's what you did. No, I didn't. Actually, if you didn't have an extra ball, you'd be like, oh, this game's great. It works. But then all of a sudden, it's like, how do you say this? eloquently. It'd be like a 75 or 80 year old man trying to have children with a young woman. They just don't stream fast enough. Ah, what? That's a very bizarre way to think about it. You know, but kudos for him for trying because saying, why the hell not? Give that a good shot.
    13:08
    So, the ball launcher on Centaur doesn't work very well. Just leave it at that. Yeah, I know. You're trying to think of something very creative to say. Trying.
    13:25
    Yeah. But out of eight machines to have only one with issue? And man, I gotta tell you, Dave? Two things. One, I'm going to tell you that I miss playing your games.
    13:43
    I have some great games, but I have a handful of player games, and I still love them. I don't care. There's stories behind them, and that's why you hold on to them. But playing your games, you know, I've had the opportunity and not many people have, there's a distance between how my games are set up and yours. How's that? All right. And your games are no slouch. Your games play well. I had fun playing my games. It's been a long time. It's really weird. But I also found something very strange. I thought I only had one really weird octo-rectifier game. Actually, I have two.
    14:35
    Last show, we talked about Knight Rider and how I soldered all the wires onto the rectifier board and then had Molex connectors and connected everything up. And you were like, why did you do that? Yes.
    14:51
    Because I could. Well, Supersonic, lo and behold, I haven't had that game up in a long time. Same thing.
    15:03
    he's stunned he doesn't even know what to say are you saying supersonic he said it doesn't it has the same octo rectifier type setup as night rider okay I have to take a picture or a short video and have you put it out on your website because Right, right. Well, you can make all the faces and comments you want. It works.
    15:41
    Yeah, well, like I said, that's what Chris Hutchins does, and the guy has a broken flipper, he'll just send him out a whole thing, but then the guy still has to take it. I have several games like that, Dave, but those are my player games, and I said this in the last show or shows before. If you're going to learn how to do things Do them on cheap games I didn't pay a lot of money $100 for Night Ride Yeah, there's a lot of parts in it But, you know, that's how you learn Super Sonic, $400 Same thing Bobby Orr, I've done it on that game Same thing, $400 Those are the games you experiment on You don't do it on a Centaur you don't do it on really nice $10,000 games that are now only worth $8,000. Well, if you're CPR back in the day, or actually Halifax Pinball, you sure did because you went for Fathom for a play field to redo way back when, I don't know 10, 15 years ago. It was one of the most complex artworks to do and it came out not too good because the wood was too thin and all kinds of problems with the thing. But yeah, they went for the gold on that one.
    17:02
    It's a shame. It took a long time for Seathair to make the correct one better. They really should have aimed a little lower.
    17:11
    That's what I'm saying. Why, you know, if you want to learn how to solder, if you want to learn how to crimp, if you want to learn how to repair a game, don't do it with the Porsche. do it with the gremlin. Well, even those are worth money now, but you get my point.
    17:31
    I get it. Hey, I got a quote request the other day, and it's on my website. You can click a button, and you fill out all your stuff, what the game name is, and blah, blah, blah. So I got this really cryptic one. And, you know, it says name, city and state, email, what kind of machine. So the name this guy called himself is the Knight Rider.
    18:00
    This is from 10 days ago. And the city and state is Australia, Victoria. So then it's like, okay, I think I know who this is. And so it says the title of the pinball machine, Centaur. How long have you owned it? A little too long, I'd say. Did you buy it from a private party or eBay or pinball sales company? Answer. My mate's brother's second cousin's ex-girlfriend's father worked for a guy that I'd bought it off of.
    18:33
    Has your game been worked on previously? You better believe it has, Doc. I've pretty much hacked everything. Sticker says, last service 1982. I can fix cars, so I don't see this being any different, really. I just don't have all those fancy tools like you do.
    18:49
    Then it says, please describe the issues you're experiencing with your game. The ball keeps draining before I can roll it. I can't tap pass on the left. Oh, yeah, the left flipper doesn't work. It's not Grant. Yeah, it's Grant.
    19:02
    It's Grant. He was punking you? He was. Probably needs those white rubber bandy things also as they all burnt off in the fire. would you like your game to undergo our exclusive day spa treatment where it fixes all the issues and gives your game a good once over, a refresh and he swore back yes, good, he said yes and I said what is your budget, he says I'm hurting Doc so look after me, I'll supply the beer how did you hear about us, from George in that crazy podcast are you looking to have the work done by a certain date, today if possible but tomorrow is fine. Let's see. Additional information. I'm thinking it'll probably just be a fuse.
    19:52
    I can help you fix it when you get here, so I expect it'll be a little cheaper. So there you go. So that was Grant. Well, that's a good lead-in to my game. So the game we didn't talk about, and we've talked about it on so many podcasts, I'm sure people are going to cover their ears now, but my centaur did not work with the ball launch. Do you think your prescription might fix it? Do you think Grant's prescription might fix it? Or do you think John's prescription might fix it? Or do you think it's a combination of all three? Did John give you a prescription yet? Yeah, he said the upper right 28 or 25 connector on the solenoid driver board might be the culprit. And he also said, and this is why I bring it up, the fuse holder, most people clip those things out and put new ones in. My question is, why?
    21:00
    On the playfield? The playfield fuse? Yeah, the playfield one. Yeah, because it's bally junk. They use a piece a crap one that the springiness of the fuse clubs was garbage. It barely held on and so the new ones are nice and springy. They have a nice tight connection to the fuse. So I always, standard procedure on all ballets, I swapped that puppy out. I put a brand new one in there.
    21:26
    Okay, so I'm 0 for 2. Didn't do that and all the original connectors are still, for the most part, in centaur.
    21:40
    I call them the zero insert, but some people call them the knife blade. Other people call them nasty words. Well, hold on a second. So your centaur, those are made to fold down unless you took the heads off. Did you fold down or took off? I took the head off. Okay, so there you go. So you took off connectors. So there you go. So what has changed since a working Centaur and now a working Centaur is you undid connectors and put connectors back on again. Well, like I told you the last episode, I knew this was coming. This is the game that I have not done and I didn't do it for a reason because it worked. but guess what? Now it doesn't work. I think John is going to be the winner on this one because he's the one that actually I just figured out just now but he's the one that identified what has changed the connector. The connector's been moved. Everything else is He didn't ask me that though. No he didn't but somehow he inferred it or whatever but it's, well he's John Boy Genius so somehow he figured that out. I knew that was coming but it totally makes sense now that you said that because I was going with transistor which it could be a weak chip 102 it's possible but it was working before and it traveled a little bit you know it worked before but again I don't know how it should work so So, you know, could it work better than it worked before? Probably. Did you try reseating that connector? I haven't done it. Nothing. When you have seven games you haven't had, you really don't care about the eighth game that doesn't work. And it's been so nice out. We haven't gotten to that yet. It's been so nice out. You know, it was 70 degrees today. It's like I'm not staying in the basement to, you know. I know that's how you earn your living, but I don't earn my living that way. I don't have to go in the basement. I'll wait until it's raining and crappy out, and I'll play with it. Believe me, I know the feeling because it's a gorgeous day outside. It's mid-November right now, heading into late November, and we have a 50-degree day, a 60-degree day. It's bright and sunny outside. It's warm. There's no way I'm working in the basement because I want to be outside. If I'm not exercising or walking or taking a little jog or whatever, I'm taking my work outside on the deck, which is what I've done the past two days. I've worked on Buck Rogers.
    24:34
    It's coming out great for the past two days outside. What kills me is these short days. The night comes quickly. Like 4, 430, it gets dark. It's like, ugh, you know, what a buzzkill. But I love working outside. If I had to work in the basement, it would kill me today.
    24:55
    And I feel for any people that are going to work for corporate, although these days they get to work from home a lot of times, so it's actually better. But back in the day, a couple years ago, you had to go in on a beautiful day, and you're working all day in a cubicle and looking outside and you're a prairie dog and you can't get out. You go outside maybe for a lunch hour for like 15 minutes, and it's like, oh, no, not for me. So I got to be outside in the fresh air, sunshine, getting my vitamin D and working on games. Nothing like it. It's best. Putting on a nice pocket. Well, that brings me to what I've been doing the last two days.
    25:35
    What have you been doing the last two days? The house is all LED'd out. What does that mean? We talked about this. Does that mean Christmas or does that mean LEDs in your living room? No. LEDs outside. I've been doing the front of the house.
    25:53
    Maureen just said that's awful. That's funny. Bridge. You know what, Maureen? She probably envisions blue garish lighting. Oh yeah, white and blue, man. It's awesome. No, no. It's the eye cast. Ugh, nah. It is blue. So it's not a warm light. It's more of a blue kind of cold light.
    26:27
    Are you saying? I thought it looked pretty nice. But, hey, to each his own, Grinch. What happened then? When did who fail, they say? But the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. So you're an LED guy. Uh-oh. I love LEDs for Christmas. I won't put them in my pinball machines, but I have a song.
    26:55
    Deck the pins with LEDs. Fa la la la la la la la la. Make it stop. Yay! Turn it off. I don't think so. Yeah.
    27:15
    So that's what I've been doing. Alright. I need to see some pictures of that. Well, I'll just say one column 600 LEDs on 160 feet of light string by myself. Wow. Right, not a lot of fun.
    27:44
    Once you get, you know, John there to help Daddy out. John was in Florida, and I don't know if you saw the weather.
    27:58
    20 inches of rain in Fort Lauderdale yesterday. That's a lot of rain. Wow. So I don't even know if he's home. No, he helped me. Oh, God. Without him, lifting head. how do you do this? Me? Lifting heads and putting them on pinball machines and then putting the bolts in and not wrecking anything, including your back or psyche.
    28:29
    Sometimes I have Maureen help me, but sometimes I'll just kind of... I had Janice help me, but that's usually low on the list.
    28:40
    Yeah, I wouldn't think Janice would be into it that much. Well, just I like being married. Okay. So, yeah, so I have a whole technique on that. I just can kind of, you know, hold the head up there if I'm doing it by myself and just kind of get one bolt in, next bolt in, get them kind of there, and then, you know, get her done. Get her ready. But, yeah, four-player EMs, those are not fun to do by yourself. No way. Way too much weight. even Williams heads, like Gorgar, whatever, heavy. Oh, no, the old Bally heads with the Transformers. Oh, those are heavy. Oh, yeah. The Centaur heads are great. That's no problem.
    29:27
    Oh, that was the easy one. He was liking me for that one, but the other ones, he was like, Dad, you know, he's dead lifting it up. I'm like, okay, I'll help you. You know, boom, get it up. and just, it's not fun. I know why people don't move. I know why people don't move pinballs. I know why people don't sell pinballs. I know why wives call people like you and say, can you get this pinball out of my house? How much? Free? Oh, I'll be right over. I get it. Exactly. I get it.
    30:05
    Do you have a Mr. T? You need a Mr. T. No. No, I don't have a Mr. T. I kept thinking about that. I should have gave you one of mine. I have an extra message here. I should have gave you one of mine. Well, when you come to visit, you can give me a housewarming gift. How's that? Fair enough. I like it.
    30:26
    I got a, well, we got five minutes on this segment left. And then once this five minutes expires, then it has to do its little spool and blah, blah, blah. So I'll just let you know. then we can go again for round two okay you gotta tell some stories I'm done my list I'd be crossing a lot of stuff off where's the mail from today you got that over there how many got it the mail from Clover so you know so Clover Food Lab out in Cambridge yeah they went bankrupt oh you don't go to Z on me. That's what my wife does. Maureen does that all the time. Hold on a minute. Wait a minute. Mr. Wall Street Journal, just hold on a second here. All right? No, Boston.com. I'll cut it out. Okay. Start over. All right, start over. All right. So, anyway.
    31:25
    I'm not cutting it out. I didn't think so. So, I get the mail today, and I see an envelope, and it says Clover food lab on it, and it's like, I didn't do any work for them. Oh, maybe it's like a 1099, because I think I did work for them earlier this year. It's like, okay, that could be that. But it's kind of early for a 1099. It should be that's in December, January. Not now. So that's kind of weird. And then I'm thinking back, it's like, oh, yeah, I did some work for them, but with them it was always kind of you had to wait for your money, fight for your money. I had to explain to the manager who they constantly keep changing the management over there in Cambridge that these games are very complex games here. They're on 24-7. You've got a Twilight Zone and a Medieval Madness.
    32:20
    The owner or somebody bought some nice examples of them back in the day. Someone really did a good job on them, but they got beat the piss out of. And they put them on 50 cents a play. $0.50 a play. $0.50. Cheap. That's great. Cheap. Cost of being played. And I had my card in there at one point, and once in a while, every couple months, I'd get a call. I'd get an email saying, oh, this thing isn't working right. It's like, well, tell the management there to call me back in, you know. But I gave it the old call. I kept, like, doing all my good stuff these games, but it doesn't matter what I do. It's like being in an arcade 24-7. Things are going to break. Things are going to have a problem. And I try to tell this guy, well, I just called you three months ago, and now it's broken again. But they didn't have the most simplistic games either. No, they had, like, high-end toys. I mean, if you're going to have something that's going to be on 24-7, have something that's going to be ruggedized. Right.
    33:19
    Don't put all these games with toys in them. Get, like, a classic Bally, a simple Knight Rider. Well, don't put a Centaur in there. No, no, no. Put up your Knight Rider 8-ball, anything like that. You know, you'd be way better off. So, you know, so then, you know, I got paid the last time, like, I don't know, six months ago. But the guy was just kind of a little kind of weird and just kind of like, and I gave him a break on the price. He was kind of like, he was getting a little weird on me. It's like, whatever, dude. And it was always a pain in the neck going parking in Cambridge, and you had to always go out and make sure you put quarters in the meter and go back and forth. and it was a hassle. Plus, I think I actually got... You talked about this in another episode. And I was wondering where I got a little, almost like a, I swear it's like a little bit of a key on the, a key line on the car at one point. Because I have a decent car. My name's Volvo. And when you're in inner city, they don't like when you have a nice car because they get jealous. So they might kind of key your car a little bit. I swear there's a little of that going on, but the Volvo has such a nice paint job, it didn't take, so I buffed it out. But it's like, that's probably from Cambridge. It had to be. So many reasons why it's like when he called me back recently, and he had, like, he was kind of, like, he didn't, he didn't, like, I don't know, he didn't, like, kind of say, please, or can you come out, he kind of sort of demanded me, or not demanding, more, I don't know, he just, he got a, he got to say a certain way, like, hey, can you come out and work on my game, and it'd be really nice to see you, or I don't know, he wouldn't have that, so I just didn't answer his phone call, and I'm so glad I didn't, because in the mail today.
    34:55
    Notice a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Debtor. Clover Fast Food, Inc. Bankruptcy court for the District of Delaware. Case number blah, blah, blah.
    35:07
    Full name. It's almost like, what is going on? Do they owe you money? No, they don't. But I had to keep waiting. I waited for money sometimes for a month. Are those games up for auction or sale? Probably.
    35:20
    Yeah, let's go get him. I should go right back. Hey, I'll take your games. I'm just saying. Don't get people... Now everybody knows. It doesn't matter. You don't care. I don't care. I'm sure the owner is going to take his games back. I would think he would. I'm sure they very quickly disappeared. I'm sure.
    35:42
    You know, the problem is, when you call yourself a food lab... I was wondering when you were going to get to that you know it doesn't really exude an organic feel confidence or again these days people any thinking person would say you know I kind of want to eat healthier maybe wait wait wait what's the name of that movie listen to me Hatcher you're going to tell them these people stop them That's what I was thinking of You beat me to the punch I did You know another thing I've learned in all this Is this right here This young little This little girl Do you want me to help, Russ? No Thank you No thank you What do you want me to do? What about yourself?
    36:41
    What about yourself? I'll do this one so um you drive go drive you gotta worry about yourself exactly that's right go ahead George what you got I can't be follow a kid great thanks jerk what do I got can I call Dwight Sullivan now My house is brighter than yours?
    37:18
    Who's Dwight Sullivan? I'm not telling you. Okay. I'm not staying in. Oh, boy. Yeah. I must not listen to my podcasts. Is that what happened?
    37:38
    You're just not paying attention. but that's what makes this show so great. So what would you do if you were me?
    37:50
    My pinball cart was oozing hydraulic fluid. And now abrupt is probably a polite word for how fast that machine comes down now. Mm-hmm. Do they?
    38:11
    Yeah, indeed. Right. Basically, good luck, right? Is that what you're saying? Well, you can get, I'm sure you can get that done. It's, well, too much money. I'm sure Google it up a little bit on Pinsight. Someone's had this problem before. Well, I saw that the game room guys, now, reserve comment before you go there. I'm putting the reins around the champ is already in your mouth and I'm pulling hard okay? yeah okay that means I'm trying to gag you but you're not complying are these the gay room guys or game room guys?
    38:58
    hold on I was wondering when this was going to start it's always part two anyway, the game room. Different people. Those are different guys. Have the same, like, you know, antique cart that I have. Mine's probably 40 years old for $440.
    39:21
    Which I didn't think was crazy money, but do they just sell, like, the piston, the mechanism? They do. I don't need the frame. Yeah, I'm sure they do. They sell reasonable gift for that. Yeah, I'm sure they do, because that goes bad all the time. That's where all the magic happens. So I'm sure it's happened before.
    39:44
    Okay. You're not reassuring me, but okay. I'll try. I'm pretty sure. I've read about it before. I used to have one. What are you eating now? I'm having a Trader Joe's baked cheese crunchies. cheese-flavored corn snacks, 40% less fat than regular fried cheese-flavored corn snacks, and I think the ingredients aren't that bad. Oh, that extra 4% is going to make a big difference.
    40:15
    It does not say non-GMO, but I've seen the ingredient list is actually maybe 10 versus about 30 of the usual suspects. So, you know, it's okay. I'm having pretzels Okay Um Pretzels are good Unique pretzels From Pretzelvania From Pennsylvania Pretzelvania Same thing Oh Okay So I'm gonna introduce And you better have a story Or I'm gonna be upset Okay What's up doc What's cooking What's up, Doc? All you're looking for burns, funny, fun things. Doc is gonna hunt things just to get a rabbit skin, but now the rabbit's gonna get. What's up, Doc? What's cooking? Hey, look out! Stop! You're gonna hurt someone with an old shotgun. Hey, what's up, Doc? All right. What's up, Doc? Well, let's see. I'll tell you what's up, Doc.
    41:27
    We went to go to work on a, we got a call for a rescue 911 that needed rescuing. So instead of 911, they called Dr. Dave.
    41:42
    Okay. That bell didn't ring. It didn't? How's that? Same time. Didn't ring. Okay, well... Do you have a defective bell, or is there something wrong with our feed?
    41:58
    No, not working. Wow, that's weird. Maybe Zoom, maybe something in YouTube. They outlawed the bell? I think so. It's outlawed. So let's talk about that right now. I think it's a hateful bell. That's why. Hate speech. I'm not editing the John Jolly thing. you might as well announce that now which part of John Jolly?
    42:25
    I'm not editing oh yeah don't bother yeah it came out great the John Jolly thing came out fantastic so Dave met with John Jolly yes I was going to wait until the end but it was a good segue Dave interviewed John Jolly for an hour I have not heard it I'm not going to edit it I'm going to include it at the end of the program, as we always do. Strap in, folks.
    42:53
    I can't imagine what this is, but I'm looking forward to it, actually. It's very ethereal. Okay. Anyway, continue.
    43:07
    Well, so I got a call. Rescue 911. And, you know, it's a system, Gottlieb System 3, something like that. And I kind of said, well, I usually work on the System 3 stuff, and I'll do my best effort for X amount of price. I can come out there and look at working or no, I'm getting this X amount of price. And if I do get it working, I can keep going with it and make a little more money on it and make the game even better. So he wanted it for his triplet's birthday. So I said, well, I can do it in, like, December. Oh, no, I need to get it done in two days from now. It's like, well, so I've got to push you ahead of everybody else and stretch myself out and fit you in somewhere. So I move someone and this and that. He goes, well, I'll make it worth your while. It's like, okay.
    44:03
    So we go there. I get it working. The helicopter thing is a problem because the part that always breaks, I found out, I didn't have the part of the specialized part. When the pinball resource sells it, you can't get it, or it's expensive to get. But I didn't have enough time to order it. So I got the rest of the game working fine.
    44:22
    I spent a couple hours there and gave him the bill. It was reasonable. I didn't gouge him. And I'm waiting for, like, okay, so I gave him the price, and he wrote out a check. And I'm saying, okay, where's the worth my while part? I gave you a price and it's the same price I gave you on this check. But what makes me want to come back to you? You know what I mean? Like, what are you talking about? What's going on here? So are you like the people at Starbucks saying, where's my tip? Yeah, where's my tip?
    44:56
    Exactly. But I earned my tip I got a tip for you What your tip I got a tip for you Yeah I bet he does Bend over Sorry.
    45:11
    Guess how old the triplets are, George. 31. Well, it's 27. Well, we thought they were kids. I thought they were kids. So he made you feel bad because you thought they were young girls. Right. And they weren't. they were young adults. Right. There's a lot of subterfuge going the whole way along there. The guy's kind of ready. He watches the whole time. You got nothing. I got nothing. Look in your hand. No, you know what? No, you know what, though? I did get something, George. You know what I did, George? I did a little pre... a pre-tip, let's call it. So, I just had a feeling this guy's kind of like, what's that guy who's like, did you come off? What's that thing he's saying? What's that thing you do? Who? You know, that Jonesy from Boston. What's that thing you do once in a while? So-and-so from Boston. Oh, Uncle something from, or Cousin Lenny from Boston. The Sam Adams thing. I don't know what it is. Sam Adams from Boston. Lager. Now Brighter?
    46:16
    Brighter Boston. Your cousin. From Boston. Take the parking spot. You take the parking spot. No, I am. Boston Lager, now Brighton. Sam Adams, baby. This guy was that guy. He had the Bostonian accent. He did totally like, hey.
    46:34
    Right. You know, he had the whole thing going on, okay? And, you know, I thought it was this young dude from his 30s. He was more like in his 60s, but he sounded young like that.
    46:47
    So, basically. He didn't come across. No, it was just weird. weird, I might go back out there again, but I'm not rushing, I'm not putting him ahead of the class again, sorry, you got one chance to go ahead of the class and you're going to do what you say, if you say you're going to treat me right and whatever, and you're going to like, whatever, you know, do that, don't say you're going to do something and don't do it, I'm a man of my word, and I, you know, I do what I'm going to do and I say what I'm going to do, and if someone doesn't do that, it's like, no, it doesn't run, they'll get run the right way with that one, so, you know, he paid me what I wanted, but I basically I kind of could feel that he wasn't going to really come across with the cabbage like he's supposed to. So I basically added in a rush fee. A $30 an hour rush fee on top. So there you go. Oh, I love you. You're the best.
    47:40
    That gets on so many levels. The rush fee. Can I tell you something? You're the smartest man in the room. You sold that rush.
    47:52
    Thank you. If you tried to sell that now. Forget it. You would have taken another 20% loss. No way. Really? That bad? Well, again, I teased it early on. Grant wants us to talk about this, and other pinball podcasts have talked about it, but I believe it.
    48:14
    The glut is here. they're shoving all these machines out now and Stern with the bigger production facility bad timing for Stern, bad timing oh you missed your spot, I'm not so sure it's going to be a merry Christmas so they have all these LEs all these crappy games they have, we can't sell them I mean, are they trying to put on Barbie now or something? the Barbie game? Don't laugh. That would sell. Oh.
    48:50
    It's not for you and me. It's not for anybody. You know what it's for? No, no, no, no. It's for the woke. The woke. Look.
    49:02
    If somebody said, can I invest? George, you interested in investing in the Barbie Fimo machine? Hands raised. They'll sell a boatload of those things. Pink and white. Hold on, which Barbie? It doesn't even have to look like Barbie. Which Barbie? The movie or the good Barbie from the 70s? It doesn't matter. That crap sells. Who's buying it?
    49:30
    Not us. But who? We're not the general public. We're not, you know, we're not the people being grabbed by the nostril and led down the lane. Or by the nuts. well that's you not me that's a good Barbie reference it is because the Barbie thing it's a man hitting movie you know it's crap whatever I you know look I'm old enough to know when that crap came out it was a little bit before but not by much and that crap's endured.
    50:15
    Even my granddaughter wants Barbie's, you know, whatever beach house, beach machine, whatever crap is coming out of, you know, communist China is coming to my neighborhood. Right, but that's not 2023 Barbie. That's like 1950, 1960s Barbie, the conservative Barbie. Now we got woke Barbie. It's a totally different show. Look, there's... Enough. You know, don't try to guess the general public. You'll just hurt yourself. He guessed it. He guessed it? How do you guess them? He said they're going to sell. Oh, you guessed it. She said they're going to sell.
    51:00
    That's true, Maury. Touche. Hold on. Thing for you. I can't hear her. That thing doesn't work. Don't do that. How do you know you did it? So you didn't hear her. Because he's on screen.
    51:13
    Well, when I play this back, it has to, because it has to go. Even if I go like this, when... No, nothing. Oh, interesting. What did you do to the settings?
    51:27
    I don't know. That's weird. I don't know. That's a little strange. That wouldn't work. Okay. That's interesting. You got some other stories?
    51:39
    Let's see. Besides Lenny from Boston. Not him. Say, where am I? The guy on the horse farm. Oh, the guy. Oh, yeah, the guy on the horse farm. Yeah. So, it's this guy.
    51:55
    We're down in Millis. And trying to find this guy's house. And it was raining. And it was in the right area. It was a side street, private road. and it's like, that doesn't seem right. Then I found this guy's house and it was a cool house. Basically it was like a huge barn. He turned it into a house.
    52:18
    He welcomed us in and you go in the house and it's like one wide open house. Like, and just a huge line of Like an old milk barn? Like a Quonset type barn?
    52:33
    Um, yeah, like a barn that's been converted into a house. So it's all open area. But it's all different kinds of barns. That's what I'm asking. I don't know the different terminologies for barn stuff. Stick built. Old. You know, like from 1930, 40. You put windows in it. Did it have like a second floor hayloft type thing? Yes, it did. And you could go around the perimeter over the outside and you can see up. So he cut the middle out and made like a balcony around it. Yeah, there you go. Yes, yes. Okay. Yep. I liked it. I mean, I said, I looked at Maureen, it's like, I could definitely deal with a house like this. This is cool. I like to have it all open like that. It's great. You get a whole line of pinball machines on one wall. He's got a Lionel train set in the other wall. He's a big kid. He's like, I don't know, he's 50s or so, 60s, something like that.
    53:28
    And he wanted us to work on, what game did we work on? What was that? Remember? I'm looking at you. He had five. He had five games. He had five games, and darn it. What was the game? I got a little thing here.
    53:48
    It's all a blur. It turns into a blur after a while. I'm not helping you. You're not helping. I know you're not. I'm not even going to try. Hold on. I like when somebody else is hanging out in the breeze. Yeah, thanks. Because they're having the biggest brain senior fart of their life. I'm not cutting that out either.
    54:11
    Well, you're a meanie. No, this is a good time to bring this up. There are other podcasts that are not editing their podcasts. You know what? They're following our lead. I know they are. But they'll never admit it. No, I didn't invent everything, but you know what? I'll point when pointing is needed we are the fly by the seat of your pants podcast and it's charming, people like it it's organic, it's not freaking good time for FM DJs as Grant said, he goes I'm sitting around with my mates, talking pinball and life exactly, exactly Yeah. Which is what John Jolly and I did, you'll see later on the show here. Same stuff. And we'd go off on all kinds of cool things. I almost was doing the George. I kept bringing it back to pinball, like you would do when I go off on a tangent. He was going off on multiple tangents, and I'd join him and go there. It's like, you probably should go back to pinball again. So I'd bring it back into pinball, as you'll see. But it was good. It worked out really well.
    55:27
    Interesting dude. I'm definitely going to have him over for one of my pinball tournaments coming up in the near future and I said I'll definitely invite you it'd be great to have him over and it'll be a different thing I have a different idea for John okay I think we should have at least a couple times a year the Jolly Report I like that because he's an interesting guy and he's very well written.
    56:06
    In fact, I'm trying to invite him to the latest last minute tournament the other weekend. And don't tell him to come to Pintastic next year.
    56:17
    Why? Oh, sorry. No, I know. Just kidding. Just kidding, guys. Hold on. That didn't work again. Yeah. Ring, ring. Ring, ring, bandophone. No, he'll probably like it, but still, no, he'll definitely enjoy the gig there. No, it's a good vibe there. It's a party situation. Okay, so for those who are new to the show and those who aren't, John Jolly is a guy who lives on Cape Cod and raises oysters. Now, I thought of this today.
    56:54
    Have you ever had oyster stuffing in your turkey? No, I've heard of it, but never had it. Okay, so let's go back in time. Do you like oysters? I do now, but I only like oysters Rockefeller, maybe a fried oyster, but the whole raw thing, I still don't get the raw thing. so are you game for having oyster stuffing because you know and I want John to talk about this in our next show you have to record John did he make oyster stuffing for his Thanksgiving he must he was going to come over for my tournament he said dude you're killing me I gotta harvest 3500 pounds of oysters that's crazy Think about what he said. I know.
    57:51
    Nuts. It's cold. It's like free money out there. It's like... I don't know about free money. That's hard work. Well, it is, but I'm saying it's just going out there and picking the dollars off the tree. They give him the land to farm. He gets a grant from the state. They give it to him. the shoreline. It's eco-friendly, man. It is. And it's like, you got it in the right place at the right time. And he sure was. It's like he's game to do it. He's like you. He held the basket out. Yeah, he held the basket. Exactly. He held the basket out. He waited 10 years. Put his name in. People failed before him. And the people failed before him. People tried before him and they failed. So when they failed, he's successful. But you'll see, he is the buckaroo bonsai of Oyster,
    58:45
    as you'll see. He's like, I don't know where he finds the time to do all the things he does. He makes my head spin.
    58:54
    Okay. So, do you have any more stories? Yeah, so the Millis Barn thing, I worked in a whitewater, which is my first whitewater ever. I never worked in a whitewater yet.
    59:06
    That's a cool game. It is a cool game. Talk about ramps on top of ramps. The ramps are like serpentine belt ramps on top of ramps. It's all about a 3D puzzle to get that just right. So we fixed that game. Did a lot of work on that for almost a day. We did a little Lord of the Rings work, a little of that. Oh, another collector game. Yep, another good game. Worked on both those games. So that was a nice day. Day spa over there.
    59:33
    Very cool place to work there in the barn and so forth and the heated barn house thing. Eight hours there. what else did we do again in Chatham we did No Good Gophers that was a fun thing they basically just gave us the key code and go in a nice six million dollar mansion in Chatham that was fun let's see then do you think anybody ever looks outside of the east coast where this is like where Chatham is so we have people that listen all over the globe. Probably not. If anybody ever looks and goes, oh, that's where that is?
    60:16
    A couple will. Basically, you know, Monterey is the Cape Cod of California, and Cape Cod is the Cape Cod of Massachusetts, kind of thing. But Chatham is right out there sticking out... The elbow. The elbow is sticking right out the closest... It's the closest this country is to England. Like, distance-wise, it's sticking right out there. Lower Cape, on the elbow. well we talk about it all the time and I think you and I take it for granted but we do talk about Cape Cod a lot yeah because I'm there all the time right well that's where the money is and then so then the last it is good money down there in fact I think this is their vacation home that $6,000,000 place is their vacation home never mind I don't know what other home they got but they're doing okay several people like that too down there. They have these really nice lavish homes and they're not there. They have daytime jobs. They're doing all right. Oh, they're doing all right.
    61:18
    And right near Chatham Bar is in. That's another great place. They're right near that. That's a beautiful place. And this place with the Noga Gophers, they're right on a golf course, which makes sense. So the guy must be a big golfer and he's got a golf game, you know.
    61:33
    So last week, I had this, everybody and their brother wanted to bring their game to me. And I've been putting these guys off for, these four people off for like a year or so. I said, no, don't bring it, no, don't bring it. I'm too busy, too busy. I had no room, no room. And finally, I just couldn't say no to them anymore. They just said, please take my game and take my money. And I'm trying to get rid of the games I've done. The Centaur ain't going away. I still have that. I still have the Gorgar I did. I still have the Knight Rider I did. These games are all good to go and ready to get the heck out of here. But I still have them, so they're taking up room. And now I got four more games came in last week. So I got a Williams Grand Prix EM that came in. Another Gorgar. That's a cool game.
    62:22
    A Gorgar? No, no, no. I know. Grand Prix. It is a great game. That's a fun. Gorgar. I'm all done with Gorgar. We've talked about that game so many times. I am so done with Gorgar. You're like the king of Gorgar. I know Gorgar on the back of my hand now. I love it. It's like they love it, but it's like I could do that in my sleep. It's like Chris Hutchins with Adam's Family. He's probably done a hundred of them.
    62:48
    What else did I get in? I got in a Captain Fantastic. And one more came in, right? One of the outside. Oh, no. That's Buck Rogers. I had that for a year. Oh. I never got to ask you about Buck Rogers.
    63:06
    Do you ever watch the old 40s serial? No, I just watched this stupid one from the 1980s with the hot babe, that blonde chick, whatever her name was, from Buck Rogers. What's her name? No. Erin something. Erin.
    63:20
    Erin Go Bra. Erin Go Bra? Yeah, that one. Erin Go Without a Bra. I don't have to Google it right now. Erin something from, let's see, Buck Rogers Aaron. Let's see. It is Erin Gray with her special 70s tracksuit she wore back in that time frame. Okay.
    63:47
    But today, not quite as good as back in the day. But, you know, that happens. Who is exactly? Who is? who is not me yeah so I got the Captain Fantastic I got the Gorgar Grand Prix and one more wasn't there one more there's three I thought four came in whatever I can't think of the fourth one I haven't written down my thing but it ain't here so whatever well you have it written down in your notebook my non-existent notebook I have my calendar my Google calendar it's on there but it ain't here for some reason so I don't know I don't want it to I think maybe it's just three. Maybe I'm just imagining it. But I did start work on this. I've had it for a year. Again, I got it from the Cape, Buck Rogers, and in a shed near a Masonic temple, a Goodfellows temple, I think, was there. And it was in the shed. And he shed it there to play. And they wanted to get rid of it. So I just put it in the shed. And I picked it up from the shed and brought it home and working on it. So I said, you know, I called the ladies, and now it's time. and she goes, you know, I'm thinking I want to do a re-theme.
    64:59
    And we're thinking of putting it on P-Town, and so they want to make it Buck Naked. I say, all right, we can do that. So Maureen's going to do the touch-up work on it. We're going to do naked guys over the place and call it Buck Naked. What do you think, George?
    65:14
    All right. Actually, that's not the real story at all. We actually have Buck Rogers that we're restoring to a real Buck Rogers. There's no Buck Naked at all. You know what sound effects go in there, right?
    65:27
    No. The crickets. I'm sure. The crickets. I'm not editing this. I'm with everyone else, Dan. Just let it flow. As long as you don't say anything really crazy. I say crazy stuff. no I listen to cool podcasts all day you need the code ring but yeah I get it speaking of code ring are you going to get your special AI code ring your aura ring are you going to get one of those you put it on your I don't know what you're talking about you're going to tell me in your marriage of the beast it basically tells your blood pressure how long you've been sleeping, if you're exercising enough, if you're whatever you're doing, it tells you what to do, how to do it. And is this from TikTok? No, it's just the Oura Ring. I think it's from one of those AI companies, Google or something. One of these. Zadimir? One big brother company that wants to, you know. Zadimir? They want to help you. Yeah. I don't need any help. It's for your own good. Yeah.
    66:50
    Dave and I are recording on Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving. For a week, Dave has been unclear whether we would even have a November podcast. We've never missed a month in the four-plus years we've been doing this.
    67:08
    Disorder in the house. And you say, Dave? Enough of that disorder. I figured out this stupid thing. well wait, so you said to me I can't get the recordings, why?
    67:26
    because Zoom and stupid OneDrive, Microsoft the whole OneDrive thing, it kind of baffles me, I don't know so I kept clicking on the audio and it said can't access, denied, it's like why? Nothing's changed. So I try looking different things up. I try contacting different computer guys I know.
    67:52
    You know, they didn't really want a deal. So it's like, okay, well, it's up to me. Okay, thanks. Yeah, thanks a lot. I am a tech. I guess I'll figure these things out for myself. So, yeah, so what I did, I just came to me in a dream last night. I was going to give up on it. I was just going to say, let's just record all over again. It's a Thanksgiving thing. We'll just record over and do a new one. And I said, well, I slept on it last night. I said, you know, I'm going to try one more thing. I'm going to try to sign into Zoom because when I record these things, I record them locally and they also record in the cloud. So I said, well, if they can't get the local one, let's try the cloud one. So I signed in and, boom, there it was. It actually allowed me to access the local one too. So something didn't handshake right. I wasn't signed in, therefore can't access. So when I signed in this time, it let me get them. But that doesn't answer the bigger question. What's the bigger question? You are famous for hitting the bell. Yes. It didn't record. You just said that you were playing music. It didn't record. I can't hear it, and it's not on the recording. That's really weird. It is weird. Well, like I said, Zoom, I don't know.
    69:11
    It has maybe something about it that doesn't want to get certain sounds, like just the voice and not sounds. I'll try a bell right now. Let's see.
    69:21
    Nothing. Wow. Okay, well, I've put in some virtual bells then, Christmas bells maybe. I'm not going to the editing for that. Sorry. You're going to have to do something monumental for me to do that. That's right. Well, that's okay. Not a big deal. So I didn't like the ending of our podcast because it was all, you know, about Thanksgiving and it's kind of sailed already and people are going to listen to this and go, why is this all about Thanksgiving? So we're cutting that all out for the most part and we're redoing it. So you said you had some stories. I've got a couple of things I want to talk about, but not many.
    69:59
    Not many. All right. Well, did you have a nice Thanksgiving? I didn't even ask. I did have a nice Thanksgiving. How about yourself?
    70:06
    Yeah, good. Yeah. They were in the basement playing machines for an hour, so that's always a good sign. That's cool.
    70:16
    Yeah, I sent Maureen's family over, did the little turkey thing. Maureen did her famous cooking, as she always does, and it came out great.
    70:26
    And now we're down at Mom's house for Thanksgiving number two down here. We're doing some more down here. Oh, that's where you're at right now? Oh, yeah, down at the cave. Oh, I didn't realize that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we get around. Okay, so it's all over this episode. Anyway, so you said you had a couple of stories. Yeah, I have to consult with my consigliere over here. Well, while you're doing that, let me see if I can elicit a comment on something that I saw this week that I didn't know was coming out. All right. Did you see that Merco Playfields has an Embryon Playfield? I saw that. Yes, I did. So my first question is, you own a couple of those, do you not? I think it was three at last count.
    71:21
    And we talked about this, I think, once before. The quality is? Well, the quality depends on who you talk to. The quality is good. I have Scott, a customer, who I did a fireball for. I actually just picked up his Merco nine-ball play field. It looks stunning. It came out really nice.
    71:50
    The clear coat looks like a sheet of glass. It's like really – it's almost like a piece of plastic on it almost. You almost want to peel it off, but it doesn't peel off. So the consensus out there from the Pinside peanut gallery was that the clear will bunch up or do something. We start putting posts on the playfield and screwing things down and then playing it. It gets torn up really quickly, supposedly. It doesn't really last like a playfield should. So a lot of people have been sending these playfields out to Kruseman, who stands all that clear off there, does his clear on it, and then supposedly it's good to go. But you're going to spend another, you know, the Merco costs about a grand, and you can spend another $600 to $800 for more clear coats, which means shipping everything else, you're into it for close to $2,000. That's an expensive playfield. Yeah. You know, so I told Scott about it. I said we could send it off or we could go as is and throw it in your game and see what happens and that kind of thing.
    72:55
    But I think he's game to – he just wants really nice stuff. He's willing to throw money at it and so forth, but he's going to be into it for some good money if he wants to do that. So I'm still hemming and hawing. And I also have two Quicksilver play fields I bought from them that I've had for a little while that I haven't done anything with. One's going to go into PJ's game. I've got to restore it for him at some point. and one going to my game, but I still have a really nice original. So I have so many other things ahead of that that I'm not going to really. Right, it takes a backseat. So the quality is.
    73:27
    The print quality. Eye of the beholder. But I think what everybody's talking about is more the wear and tear over time. Yeah, yeah, the durability. The durability is the problem. The actual look of it looks great. I mean, the print quality looks good. And now CPR also did, I believe, a nine-ball play field as well. So I'd like to compare those two. But I do know that Merco has this thing called Ceramic Clear Coat they're using, and they do Jersey Jack play fields, and I think one other. They actually do all the play fields for Jersey Jack and somebody else. And I think they were having problems too. I don't know. I don't think. Yeah, it's been discussed on other podcasts. That's where I was looking for your take on it. Not everybody else's, because I don't own one. I thought you owned one. Yeah, I own them. Now that there's an embryon, I mean, mine's roached up top like most of them are up in the bonus section. Right. But I look at it and I say to myself, eh, you know, is it really worth doing? I like the game, but I don't know. I'd like a quicker fix than that. Give me a big sticker. Give me something that's, you know, a little bit more reasonable. Well, the classic arcade sticker fix. No, I've done it. I did it on my Super Sonic. There's been problems.
    74:50
    My Super Sonic has it. So I just resurrected that. I hadn't played that game in years. And now that I've got all the room, I put it up.
    75:01
    It looks good. It plays okay. I mean, it's a Super Sonic. I mean, you know, it's not a big impediment. Let's put it that way. Well, that's the game that Jeff traded for the pinball pool with PJ. You know, they both kind of came through my shop and kind of gave a little reefer to both of them. And, yeah, so Jeff loves his pinball pool, doesn't mind the supersonic going away, and PJ loves the supersonic. So it's a good trade in their eyes. You know, I think out of both of them, I'd rather have a pinball pool. Well, you sold the supersonic to Chris.
    75:40
    Didn't you sell him that supersonic? Yeah, he has one. I had about three or four supersonics. Right, and they don't bring big money. I mean, you can find a good one if you really want it. You can go find a really good one. Well, I do have a good one. I have my own. I still have one with a new one on the playfield. Yeah, I haven't set it up yet, but, you know, I have one. And right now, we just finished working on a Buck Rogers I got from this lady down at Cape about a year ago. So we're in the middle of cleaning that one up. That play phone came out real nice. It was – I documented that one pretty well. I'm trying to be better about the before and after when I do my YouTube videos and take lots of pictures and even take a little bit of video here and there to actually show the process and show what I'm – to start with and show what I ended up as. So to start with, it looked really dirty and grungy and a little magic racer, some crazy clean, some elbow grease, and a lot of novas too. That play field came out gorgeous and has some wear here and there, but Maureen has started touching it up, and she's doing really well at touching it up. It looks really nice. So that play field is going to come out nice. That's going to be up and running hopefully within a month or two and ready to go. So what else did we work on recently?
    76:56
    Well, besides that, with my website, I'm going to switch gears here. I don't know what's happened with Google and Google searching and so forth or what algorithms they've changed, but they've changed some stuff. That's why I have now an SEO expert helping me to kind of, with my website and backlinks and all this other kind of stuff. So slowly but surely, we're kind of working through things a little bit. I still need to go through a whole barrage of things she's sent me. But she knows her stuff. She's really good.
    77:28
    But I've been getting calls from Quebec. Yeah, you talked all about this already. Well, okay, but even more recently. So yesterday, a call from New Jersey. Today, a call from New Jersey.
    77:41
    And I think they're realizing that I'm not from there, I'm from here. But I come up in a pinball search, and one of these guys, he said, You know, I know you're, you know, in Massachusetts. I know you're far away, but you've got a really great website, and I'm just looking for somebody. Do you know anybody down here who's as qualified as you? Hey, but we talked about this last show. Why don't you just put on your website, hey, I'm going to come to New Jersey, block a week out, and book, you know, a bunch of appointments, and if you don't get enough, you say, hey, I'm sorry. You go into it telling people, look, If I don't get X number of appointments to make it worth my while, I can't come. So the word gets passed around. I mean, that's what I would do if you want to go to New Jersey. There's some nice spots in New Jersey. There are? There's some not so nice spots.
    78:36
    I mean, I can tell you what you're with, and I don't want to get into that right now. Yeah, you know what? I have so much business. Like this time of year, no offense. I am so, already the phone is ringing, ringing, ringing off the hook. Everybody wants their stuff before Christmas. I have wives that want to resurrect their husband's pinball machine they've had. Right, but they all do the same thing. It happens every year. We have this talk every year, Dave, and it's like a rush to save Christmas for all these people. And it's like, hey, what did you think I was going to do, take out a bottle of Windex and squirted the whole time when everything was going to be really good. I mean, let's not go into the whole general public thing because I'll really go off. I mean, stupidity abounds.
    79:26
    Yeah, we've been doing, Maureen and I have been doing like eight-hour calls, like driving over an hour to places, staying there eight hours. And more often than not, what's been happening is that by the time we're done, it's like 8.30, 9 o'clock. We're out at East Mumble Branch somewhere. and they were saying, okay, we're looking up desperately a place to grab a bite to eat. And it says, oh, closes at 10. So we get there like 9.30, 20 of 10. We go in there and there's a bunch of people in there. We look around. Everybody has cocktails. They're all drinking and carousing. And we go to the bar and say, are you serving? It's like, oh, no, the kitchen just closed. But we can still have your drinks. They go, yeah, no, I don't need a liquid dinner. I would like real food. I don't want to get, you know, dropped.
    80:15
    And then drive an hour home. No thanks. Pass. You know, I want some nourishment, not alcohol. So, anyway, so that's been a frustrating last couple times going somewhere. So we just had to go home and, you know, had lunch. I think maybe you should start packing a picnic lunch. Well, Maureen does. She does. She packs a picnic lunch. So I'm not totally starving by the end of the day. We definitely take a break. and the last place we were at worked on his pin bot. This guy's pin bot up in, where was he?
    80:47
    He was in North Andover. And, you know, it hasn't worked for a while. He owns a nice house. He's an older guy, all alone kind of thing. And he really likes the game, but he hasn't had it working in a long time. And it was a nice, it had good bones, but as I'm going through it, like no one's been, no one removed ramps or anything forever. So there's all kinds of crud, all kinds of stuff. So looking at the game, I thought, oh, maybe like, you know, four or five hours. Like, no, we were there like about eight hours or so. And even then, it's like I was rushing to the finish and, you know, trying to get it all done. So we got it all done, and we're playtesting it, you know.
    81:29
    Oh, yeah, this is okay. Yes, my consigliere just told me this important part. So working on the game, you know, I'm taking a break like four hours in. Maureen made me a nice chicken salad roll-up sandwich there. And sitting on his stairs in the basement, you know, having a bite while she keeps working on the game. And he came downstairs like, oh, what are you doing? No, you shouldn't. Come on upstairs with me. You can eat up here, you know. So it's like, okay, you know. So I went upstairs, you know, he got me a drink and this and that. He even had some nuts and some snacks for me too. a really nice guy, offering all kinds of stuff, and I'm talking to him, and he wanted to chat up a little bit, because he doesn't usually have people over that much, I guess.
    82:13
    So, we're talking, and he says, what do you do? I said, I'm a teacher for, I'm a musician, I compose music and this and that, and I said, oh, that's interesting, what kind of, oh, it's drum and bugle core, I'll show you some stuff. Oh my god. George.
    82:36
    Help. Help, George. Oh, my God. I love him. Maureen could hear in the basement. She's cracking up laughing and listening. Did you listen to me? Of course you did, right? I thought of you the whole time.
    82:55
    Well, first I'm sitting there doing the drum thing. It's like, okay, the practice thing. It's like, okay, that's all right. Like, they started showing me the whole, then I started seeing the whole big football fields. Like, uh-oh, I know what's coming next. Oh, God, here it comes. I'm guessing you didn't watch the Macy's Day Parade. No, Maureen was torturing with it. Maureen was watching it. And I came upstairs. I was working. She came upstairs and cranked it up loud when I came upstairs to torture me. Yeah. Your favorite song. Yeah.
    83:29
    No. And I heard you say, oh, they're even doing acrobatics. And so I said to the guy, oh, they do acrobatics too. He said, oh, yeah, they do all this kind of stuff. I said, oh, they're very talented. I mean, they are talented for what they do, but just that horn, that brass horn stuff, that's the whole thing. It's just not my thing. You know, I appreciate people that do it with the talent involved, but I don't know. It's just not my thing. You're funny. But I didn't want to be rude and say, You know, this sucks.
    84:00
    You know. I mean, you didn't want to say, hey, my friend George tortures me with this stuff. Please, I'm not here. I'm working. Well, you know what? At least I was kind of getting paid to be tortured, so it was okay. And I haven't done Fantastic. Oh, it was in Fantastic, too. You know, they had a whole brass band in Fantastic doing all that stuff, too, doing video game music with a marching band kind of thing. And I had no idea. We went there. It was really loud. It was like, oh, my God. I can't avoid this stuff. It's like.
    84:33
    I love it. It was great. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So do not buy me Greatest Marching Bands Volume 5 through 7 for Christmas, okay? Do not do that. You'll have to tuck it back in. I'm going to have to go find some good marching music for this episode. Great. That's excellent. Appreciate that. That'd be wonderful.
    84:59
    I got a call. So here's another service call. So out in Brimfield, I got a call from a guy who I haven't heard from before Cooties, you know, back in, like, 2019 or maybe it was 2020, right at the beginning of it maybe, right at the beginning of it. He did some work on his game. but couldn't get part of working so he spent about 4 or 5 hours there and I said well you know it's getting late we got to go home and eat I'll come back we'll set up another time to come back and I'll finish this game up so over the next couple months or year you know he was busy I was busy and then I said hey how about now and then he I don't know then he wasn't around and I said, okay, this guy just kind of doesn't want his machine fixed anymore, and he kind of went away. It's like, okay, I guess I'll just eat that and just whatever. And it was Paragon. And then he emailed me back, and it was recently. He said, hey, we lost touch with you for a while. We'd like to get this game going. I should sell it or get it going. And I said, yeah, definitely get it going. I know exactly what you need. I realize I know what I need. So I went out there, did the work on the game, and got it running, and, you know, paid me, all good. and play tested a little bit and play tested fine and then left. Now, again, it was late. It was getting like 7 o'clock at night. We wanted to get a bite to eat, so we're going a half hour away from that place in Brimfield to eat. Just about to get to the place to eat, I get a text, oh, the game isn't working. And it's like I'm really bummed out. I can tell he's just getting kind of, I don't know, I wasn't getting a good vibe. and it's like, I've got to take care of this now. And I said, listen, I can come right back. No, it's too late. No, we can do it some other time. It's like, are you sure? Because I'm out here right now. Let me get this gun fuse. I had to talk him into me coming back that night. I don't want any bad feelings. I want this thing to work, you know. So I went back there and came to find out the wrong fuse was installed for the playfield fuse instead of a 1-amp slow blow. It was a 1-amp regular fuse. and it blew because two pop-up went on at the same time because they weren't quite adjusted right. So I adjusted the pop-up correctly, put the right fuse in there, and then a new fuse holder and then played several games with his son who was really into the game. And he wanted to make sure oh, can I play some more games while you're here? I said yeah, play all the games you want with me. I want you to play test it a bunch. I want to make sure it's working before I leave this time. So we did. We played like a half hour and everything was fine. and they were so thrilled that they gave me a nice review afterwards. So that worked great.
    87:48
    Oh, and the game came from a Rhode Island mafia bar somewhere in Providence. And it was actually one of the mob bosses' bar that they, he got the game for free somehow. So somehow I know someone is connected somewhere, but I don't know, but that's where the game came from.
    88:11
    Mine came out of the Red Light District in Boston. What was it called? The Combat Zone? Yeah. Which game? My Paragon. Oh, wow. Wow. Billy's Paragon. Well, that was a story. I mean, I don't know. I mean, no way of validating it, but it's a good story.
    88:30
    Wow. Interesting. Something with the mob. They must like that game. They like PowerGum for some reason.
    88:41
    That's interesting. What else do I have going on here? Oh, you said about the New Jersey thing. Just go down there, and I could do that, but the thing is, though, there are two sort of difficult games that I don't know if I can really prep enough and have enough stuff. These games have to be in the shop. One of them is a Superman.
    89:02
    Oh, no, no. Yeah, no, no, no. That's a bring it to you. Yeah. Yeah, and this guy... It's not that far. Tell him to get in the car and go.
    89:11
    Yeah, I could have him bring it up, but it's like, him and everybody, I got about 10 games right now in the restoration queue that people have brought. They brought me like four games that are sitting around right now, and then three games of trying to leave. I'm trying... Oh, here's another problem. I'm trying to get that Knight Rider out of here and go to Illinois, and the regular people there were moving games, you know. The mom and pop people have retired or their backs went out or whatever, but it's hard to get a person out and about to, you know, get his little van or his little U-Haul, whatever, for a couple hundred bucks and move a game from here to there.
    89:53
    I've been trying many times. I told the guy, too, I'm living a hard time. So now you might have to bite the bullet and pay about plus to have Belton and North American Van Lines to pick it up Yeah I got quoted a game Wow From them No from my mover It was $1,000 a game. Wow. And the reason is they crate every game.
    90:18
    Okay. This wouldn't be crate. This is all, like, stand it up, all with the legs on it, cardboard edges,
    90:25
    all the blankets and trick wrapping. They've done a good job from before. But on top of that, I was talking to Michelle. Michelle Bianchi, I think her name is, and she's been doing this forever. That's where people call when they want their game shipped. She's a good liaison. And I was telling her about what I wanted to do. She says, well, if that's where you are, we have no problem getting a smaller truck, a lift gate, you're a cul-de-sac, and no problem because we have daily shipments and daily things going on so that we can pack a truck full of stuff and be good. where your guy is, where it's going, if he's on a cul-de-sac, it's not going to work out that well because he's a remote location. We'd have to get an 18-wheeler out there. It has a lift gate, but if he has a cul-de-sac, we have to contract another person, another place to get a smaller truck. No, they don't. I watched it at my house when I moved. Yeah. The guy was adept enough to pull down my street, which you've been to, and then backed up my street after the 40-foot moving van was filled and pulled out onto that other road.
    91:41
    Yeah, if they're a good driver, but maybe they don't have good drivers. There you go. That's the problem. That I believe.
    91:49
    You're right in theory. Hey, they parked out in front of my house here. They took one whole lane because there's nowhere else to park. It's a country road.
    92:02
    And driving the U-Haul in here was no dream either because all the roads in this frickin' state are thin as can be. Oh, yeah?
    92:12
    Huh. Dave, I was driving down the center of the road with the U-Haul because I don't drive anything that big all the time. And my fear was if the tire went off the road, you're getting sucked off the road and crashing. There's no forgiveness. There's rock walls along it. There's ditches on the side. There's all kinds of fun. So you really got to pay attention.
    92:44
    Soft shoulder, they call that. Which usually is a good thing, a soft shoulder. but not in driving. No, not that kind.
    92:52
    No, not that kind. Not that kind. I'm not surprised. That's a hard way to make a living but I get it. I mean, you'd think there would be somebody but I'm not surprised.
    93:06
    What about the customer? Oh, yes. The customer is now thinking of taking a road trip here for Illinois and coming on over with his wife. That's a ride. Yeah, it's like, what, 12 hours or more? More. More, wow. Okay.
    93:25
    Got to be. So they better, if they're going to do that, they should hurry up so they beat the snow that's coming at some, you know, big day.
    93:34
    They probably already have it out there, right? Midwest, they probably already have snow. I don't know.
    93:40
    I heard that there was snow in southern New Hampshire the other day. Wow. Yeah, it was because we got it dusting. We got it dusting, yeah. Right.
    93:50
    So what other, do I have any other little tidbits and so forth? The Oz and the young man. Yeah, we worked at a Wizard of Oz in a Twilight Zone, this guy's house. He's like an hour away. And, you know, he just wanted a couple things. Which he usually don't do, but, you know, I usually want to do a whole thing. He said, oh, no, they're fully working. They're all good to go. They just need a couple things. Like, okay. So we spent a good afternoon there. And the Wizard of Oz, I haven't worked in depth too much on that game, but I knew enough, you know, knew my way around it.
    94:28
    There's one little thing called, oh, it's like the monkeys pick up the ball, like picking up Dorothy and bringing her or Dorothy's dog or bringing him away or whatever it was, but it picks the ball up. That wasn't working all the way in the back there, so I just had that just need some lubrication on that rail to go up and down and pick the ball, so I fixed that. a couple of little things with that game. A little bit of a refresh, not too bad. And that was working well. The Twilight Zone, if this guy had, I don't know, three mods, he had ten mods in the game. He had all the stuff modded in this game, including an LCD display, not an LED, and a pin sound board with a new soundtrack, which I wasn't really a fan of. I'm glad I got to hear that. What can they ask you about that? I don't like it. I listened to it, and, like, it didn't sound good. I mean, and his game had no sound at all. Well, no, I want to ask you about it because I saw a picture. Is that, like, a computer with a sound bank attached to it?
    95:32
    It's a board that has sound files located on the board, maybe with an SD card. It's like a $400 or $500 item. Yeah. Is that the right thing? Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's pretty wild. That thing was a lot of stuff.
    95:48
    Yeah, it's good for, like, you know, it's more of a high-quality sound, but it's all re-recorded. It's not like put the stuff through a filter and make it sound better. It's all re-recorded so it doesn't sound the same.
    96:01
    And when you boot the game up, it doesn't boot up the normal way. It boots up differently. Dad almost had his own computer that has to boot up on top of the game booting up. So that's the hand. Do a lot of handshaking. There's a lot more stuff to add to the game. You're adding more complexity to an already complex game, and you're also adding more things to weigh down your 12-volt and your 5-volt line in the game, which were already iffy to begin with, with all the stuff in that game. And I saw back there while I was there trying to figure out the sound problem, which actually wound up being the main speaker was blown, even though it didn't physically look okay. I brought a speaker with me, put in the speaker, and it came up nice, and now we had sound.
    96:38
    But the whole thing, I looked in the back board there. I didn't touch his board, but I looked at him. They had a KAHR 5-volt Kluge thing that if you can't fix the 5 volts on a game, your last-ditch effort is to put this thing on there as a daughter board to grab the 5 volts from 12 volts instead and grab the 5 volts from there to make your game run better, be more reliable. And I also saw people try to do some new connectors. They try to do a new 5-volt rig and some other stuff to get those 5 volts up and running. And I checked it out. It was a little over 5 volts, so he was okay. But I was like, they had some problems with his game at some point. Well, fast forward after we work on his game, we – hold on.
    97:23
    So fast forward, we work on his game, and everything's fine. Play tested it. Left about a week or two later, he said, hey, the clock – when I turn the twilight zone on, the clock spins around, then it reboots, and I don't know if the clock, something's wrong with the clock, then he called again, said, oh, no, when I booted up, other things try to turn on, and the game shuts off again, and you can come back out and take care of this, and I go, uh, yeah, but. I was going to say, I was ready to say run about five minutes ago. This sounds like. Yeah. This sounds like Problem Child on steroids. It is problem child on steroids. And it's not what we signed up for. When he actually called me, he said he's got no sound. I fixed the no sound problem. I didn't touch anything else. I didn't want to touch anything. There's so much stuff in there, I didn't want to touch anything else because it's like I don't want to own it. So, you know, I think, you know, he might want to try to get me to, you know, be married here to it. So I'm going to have a conversation with him again. I'll work with him a little bit. But I basically, I need to have, it's going to be a teachable moment for him. I'm going to tell them, here's what's going on. Here's, you basically, the more they overtake the fun, the easier to stop up the drain kind of situation. You get so much stuff in here. You're pushing the limits on a lot of stuff. I'm going to look up, there's a solution for some of this stuff. I'm going to look up. I know other people have done this, like Chris Hutchins, where you put all that crap in your game. You need to have an extra power supply added into your game to power this extra crap you want to run and not bog down the original stuff. So that might be a solution for him down the way. But again, I need to gently teach him what is it going on with that game. That is not an out-at-customer-site game refresh. That's bringing it in. There's way too much stuff wrong with that game. Well, the game had, I mean, I looked at the game, and it was pretty clean. So someone did, he had somebody do work on this a while ago. But I guess the guy's retired out of Connecticut somewhere. So that's why I think his wife passed away, and his wife was into the, knew the person, whatever. So now he contacted me. And, you know, again, I was just there to fix the sound problem. He said, oh, the games, all these games are in great shape. They're in great shape. And they were. They looked in nice shape. They didn't, you know, the game, it needed a flipper rebuild, so I rebuilt all four flippers and did some other small things for the game. But he didn't want me to really go through the rest of the game because he didn't really want to, didn't need it. And, you know, it didn't really, I didn't really want to go looking for trouble. But, again, trouble found me anyway with this game. So I hate, these things don't happen that often. When they happen, it's kind of like, you know, I got to kind of sit down and talk with the guy a little bit and just kind of explaining expectations and so forth and possible outcomes and that kind of thing. So it will be a little conversation at some point with that one. Unless you have something else, why don't we put an end to this and you're going to – Well, here's one more for the Christmas season. Okay. So I get this woman email me with a Firepower 2, and the email says, my co-worker Frank highly recommended you for my pinball machine. We have a Williams Firepower 2. I believe it's manufactured in 83. I'm looking to see what it would cost to run through the machine and spruce it up for my husband for Christmas. Frank, and he's the key point I like, Frank said what I want is called a day at the spa.
    101:15
    I got a kick out of that. It's like, yeah, all right, you get it. I'm glad that's getting around. I'm trying to figure out who Frank is. It's like, do I have a customer named Frank? I started looking through my files for Frank and I can't find him. I'm not sure who this Frank guy is, but thank you, Frank, whoever you are.
    101:31
    Maybe I've done work for you or work for one of your friends. I don't know. That was interesting. December is definitely filling up and maybe a couple more spots here and there. I want to make some downtime for you as well in December instead of, like, you know, going too crazy.
    101:50
    So, yeah. So that's, I think that's about it. I think anything else you have on your side? No, I'm just listening to the stories. We're going to do one more show to end the year, and we're done. I want to apologize to anybody, even though you don't. I haven't looked at our email in a long time, So I guess I got to do that before the next show.
    102:19
    Listen up after this. We've got a bonus feature with John Jolly. Dave did an interview with him, I don't know, a month or so ago, whenever it was. And as I always say, stay lit and tilted. You say, Dave? Sign us off. I say one more thing, George, before I sign off. Of course. You're lucky I have a drink in my hand.
    102:48
    Well, I see it's a three-minute countdown, so I've got to be quick anyway. Well, that never matters, but go. Come on. So speaking of John Jolly, so I've been talking, been texting him back and forth, and he wants to come up for our next tournament. So I'm going to try to have another tournament, hopefully in December, January, and have him up. I'd like to have him meet Jeff and be part of the crew and do a little pinball tourney. So maybe he's going to be part of that. That would be kind of a nice eclectic mix of voices and stories. And so it would just be fun. I'm going to try to, if that happens, I'm going to try to record that too, get some recording done. That would be fun.
    103:28
    Okay. So, yes, everybody stay lit and tilted. Have a great Christmas. And, I don't know, be good out there because you better not pout, you better not do something. Otherwise, Santa is not going to give any gifts under your tree. There you go.
    103:48
    You know you're a little early. You know you're going to say the same damn thing next month, right? I probably will. That's okay.
    103:55
    Anyway, folks, until next month, the Classic Pinball Podcast, my name is George. His name is Dave. Goodbye.
    104:04
    Goodbye. This is Dr. Dave, Classic Pinball Podcast. and today we are visiting with Mr. John Jolly of Jolly Oyster fame. We did a little work on his old Chicago and decided to visit him for a while. He's sent us several emails, very humorous emails, right on the air. And we're going to see what Mr. Jolly has to say. So, hello, John. I just want to admit, since you went down to once a month podcast, podcast. Yes. I've had to revert to my second favorite podcast, and it's the classic knitting podcast.
    104:47
    It's very close. Knitting and our podcast is very similar. I lost my beer. Oh, hold on. There. I found my beer.
    105:01
    An angel got his wings. Look at that. So, knitting podcast. Well, you know, it's close. George can relate, because George says knitting. no he doesn't yeah so we're getting down to like this one a month ish maybe because now we're far apart from each other we're doing you know zoom calls to do it we're getting it done but it's a lot better in person so you know but yeah I really appreciate your gift for writing and very humorous and it was fun reading your emails and so forth and And you are, from talking to you more and meeting you more today, I have to say you're the Buckaroo Bonsai of the Cape, because it's like you're playing in a band over here, you're building stuff, you're out there farming oysters, you're rebuilding your house and painting and anything you don't do? Bad attitude. You're a bad attitude? I try to stay away from being a bad attitude type person. Okay, good. No, I do a little of everything, which is, you know, it's admirable. And I would like to be that person someday.
    106:12
    I don't know where you find the time. Plus, you have two kids, right? Yeah. Two boys. And I don't know how you get it all done in a day because I can't keep up. I found all we have is free time when you create free time.
    106:29
    I have to learn from you because I don't have free time. I'm just, on top of that, I am like 24-7 pinball, pinball, pinball, because it's all consuming because it's all I have in front of me and behind me. And it pays well, too. It pays the bills. But, you know, I'll work in no play, like a Jack and Del Boy kind of situation. So I definitely appreciate having that. Oh, you get extra cool stuff here. In front of me, I'm seeing like a little studio here. It is a shop or barn area here. and he's got a set of drums and congas. He's got a guitar. He's got amps, and he's got an old Chicago pinball machine in the room. And also, you're in a band, too, right? Shango Axe. Cape Cod's biggest reggae band. All right. Is it the only reggae band? Yep. Okay.
    107:22
    I was going to say. We don't play anymore. Only once a year, and we're still the biggest. Okay, good. I like good reggae. All right. Did you ever listen to Max Romeo, Iron Shirt? Of course. And the last big show I played was with Peter Tosh's son in Boston for the Legalize Weed Festival. That seemed to work. That seemed to work somehow. You know? They brought the whole Zinn thing going on, and they legalized it. There you go. The cops were not impressed that we could walk around with weed plants, and there's people with bongs. It was true freedom. And how long ago was this? maybe six years ago. Okay, so before it really became really legal, right? That was a year before it came legal, so I want to say like five, six years ago. Okay, so you guys are cutting edge. You guys are groundbreaking in making things happen. I never thought as a child watching Peter Tosh videos like Stepping Razor X and these special things that were special to us,
    108:21
    like as if you were into Janis Joplin or this stuff, you know, the leading fathers of reggae, that I would be sitting there with his son on stage in front of 10,000 people as a person that didn't know how to play music.
    108:35
    Never classically trained, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah. It's a good battle to fight. So yourself, you're saying you were never classically trained? No, I was never trained. I just learned it on my own. You just picked it up? Yep. Wow. You know, multiple instruments, and that's about it. And couldn't ask for much more. I mean, as a person who didn't graduate from high school, I think I'm doing pretty good. You're doing pretty darn good. Yeah, hell yeah. So basically you started a painting business, like house painting and so forth. Yeah, 25 years, and then morphed into the Oysters, which is another musical type thing where you have fans and people that appreciate you for something that you really didn't have to try hard to do. Yeah, there you go. It comes down to it. Because it's just what you're doing. Yeah. And I think the best way to be special is to do what you do. Do what you do, right. Do your thing. Exactly. Do you think? Yep. So true. Everybody has gifts they're given from above. And I think the key is using those gifts. Know you've got them. Use them. And if you try to go off course and do other things, well, you'll be okay at them. But if you use the real gifts you're given, you'll excel at it and go. Well, don't try to be too technical. You don't have to be the best pinball player in the world. No. You have accessed something that's appreciative to other people, and then other people can help you do the things you can't do. Right. Exactly. Like, if you were sitting here alone in the room tonight, it would be not the best podcast. That's true. Hello? Echo. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. And it helps to have a couple beers or some kind of inspiration or people to cheer you on to help you on to the next level, you know what I mean, of thought process. Yeah, it's also set and setting is cool, too. You know, you get some very eclectic stuff in the room, too, which is interesting. All these, like, cool. It's everything my wife would like me to throw away. So she doesn't really come in this area much. It's kind of a guy's home. Okay, guy's home. Once in a while. Your wife's in here. Right. Oh, okay. You should probably leave the room. I've got to hear the inappropriate bell stuff. I can ring the bell. Wow, all right. The bell says it all.
    111:01
    Things happen here. Excellent. All right. So cool. And you also do a little hunting, too. It's the bane of my existence. Did you kill Bambi? I thought you did. I wouldn't mind just harvesting something that I can share with other people and share the moment and the experience. I think putting people together to enjoy something that they might not have enjoyed without you is always a good thing. And that's why there's people like us, so other people can appreciate stuff they wouldn't have appreciated from the get-go.
    111:39
    And, yeah, last year, quick story, last year. I was kidding about the Bambi thing, by the way. That's a whole Disney side-off, so go ahead. Bell, bell, bell. Last year I went to Maine and hunted my property for five days came home and then went right to Vermont for seven days and on the sixth day of a miserable journey I was already bummed out because I was not shooting anything and not being successful even though as a successful person you shouldn't think you're not successful just because you didn't succeed at the accomplishment my wife called me home And she sat me down at the table and said, you're a problem. And I said, I'm never hunting again. I'm quitting, blah, blah, blah. She said, well, it's not the hunting, it's you. Oh, boy. Oh, dear. Look, it's hard to change that. Never a warmer feeling passed through my veins to know that hunting didn't have to disappear. That I could just change my attitude. Right, right. And then get more performance out of my hunting. Okay.
    112:44
    Very good. Well, talk about that today. I think it worked because she seems very happy. She likes me. Good. That's good. Someday she'll love me. Okay, good. Well, just keep working on that. We'll make it happen. I have confidence.
    112:59
    Yeah, so I think the future beholds to me maybe a non-EM game. Okay. It would be nice to have, like, I like that firepower. That firepower, you've got a firepower 2 in there. It actually wants to live. But I'd like to have it with the firepower. If it doesn't, then that's a goal I could look forward to. Yeah, exactly. So what do you got here? You got your son here. What's your story? Harrison Jolly. He's a dirt bike rider. He's aspiring to be a pinball fanatic. From what I heard on the time of play, he did pretty well. Well, I think we need to buy more games to really get him into it. Right.
    113:42
    Well, I don't know. He seems like he kept pressing go in that game over and over again. Well, see, all this music stuff and everything, eventually it will disappear. Because I'm realizing in my musical career that, like, I just want to be me with a guitar and a voice and a paper and a pen. Okay, yeah. Yeah, go down to its essence. And I enjoy writing more than playing now. Right. Because I'm realizing that what more are you going to do? Right.
    114:08
    I've never been successful, so how am I going to be successful at this age? You've got to start somewhere.
    114:15
    Successful is what success is, and I feel successful enough that I don't need someone else to think I'm successful. Right, yeah. So I think eventually this will be a nice game room, and someday we'll get a gentleman's game like a... Playboy?
    114:35
    A little too racy. We'll stick with the naked girls and the champagne cup on the old Chicago. Right, yeah, sure. But I think what I would like to do is have eventually a golden tee. You know, it's a golf. Oh, yeah. I'm getting older, so I'd like to golf. Yeah, golf, okay.
    114:53
    Well, Frisbee, and you're on a Frisbee golf course, too. Buckaroo Bonsai. I love you, Buckaroo. You know, you obviously by this point, because I've told you, you're talking to a champion. Yeah. I'm the first place champion at my Frisbee golf tournament of three years. Staying up all night at 5 a.m. and winning the whole gold cup and so forth. Well, now I'm just going to make trophies for myself, so I'm going to win them. I make them and I win them. Nice. I've done that, too, in my football tournaments. I do the same thing. You play my games and you play me, and I win a lot of times. And some people would think it's sad, but it's not sad. It's sad to be the guy that's not making and winning the trophies. Right. Yeah. That's true.
    115:39
    That's a good point. And we're drinking cold beer tonight. We are. And it's an IPA. It's a Hazel Little Thing IPA, Sierra Nevada. Good stuff. Argued over by family, they say on the can. It doesn't say that? Yep.
    115:54
    Family owned, operated, and argued over. I wonder what they're arguing about. What are they, how much money? Obviously, it's about the money. The money. Yeah, well, money does that to you. No one cares what it tastes like. He's going back to pinball. There he goes.
    116:09
    Nope. I thought he was. He's going for a soda. I'm not for sure he's going to hit that pinball thing and hit the go button. Harry turned me on to Moxie, which is an old school root beer. So what makes it Moxie old school? What is it? Some kind of like root tonic type. Heroin? Well, children's heroin for sure. It's sugar. At some point it would have been illegal. Now it's legal. Right. Well, Coke had cocaine in it years ago, so it took the fun out of it.
    116:42
    They, I was listening to something about Coca-Cola, and they wrote it wrong or something. Coco, or Coke, there was something that derived it from the shell of the cocoa leaf, or cocoa nut. Shell? Not, not. Yeah. And when he looked it up, I don't know if this is to be true, but I thought that was interesting.
    117:09
    That it was misrepresented. But I'm pretty sure they used cocaine in it. Oh, they did. Way back when they did. I think it was like Coke gives you wings or something. You know what? I think this is a modern story to make it more appropriate. You think so? Yeah. Okay.
    117:26
    Could be. Makes it more exciting. Pepsi doesn't have that. Coke has it. Pepsi had a great campaign, though, in the 80s, which brought them to great success. What was that? It was the Alternative Coke, something about the Alternative Cola or something. The Pepsi generation, the alt generation? Something like that. It wasn't anticipation, it's Heinz.
    117:53
    No. Would Heinz have been just as good with one type of tomato? That's my curiosity. Fifty-seven. Yeah, do they need 57%? Not in real life. No, but it's good marketing and everything else. Yeah, it's all in marketing.
    118:08
    As in everything today, it's in marketing. You get to market that thing, and then you can try to make a choice and so forth, and just don't choose when you're all set. So I do like your lamp there. Here's a lamp with a... It looks like a... Oh, I see. It's Bambi's dad in the car, and he's got the hunter bound hand and foot.
    118:39
    And that's the trophy he's bringing home. Tied to the hood of the car. Nice. and that's, yeah, I like it. It's very appropriate. That's pretty cool. We've taken deers home on the top of the car from Maine and people love it. Yeah, I'm sure they do.
    118:58
    If you're in some towns in Massachusetts, I'm sure they do love it. I'm sure they do. By love it, you mean...
    119:07
    Not like Coke. Less than Coke. Right. Wow. They love that someone's daring enough to do it, I think. It's kind of a schadenfreude type thing. Is there blood dripping down going past the car?
    119:24
    And on people's windshields in the back room, there's like splatterings of... Well, as an aspiring hunter, it would be in the greatest hopes that that would be.
    119:36
    Sadly, most of the blood drips out when you... When you do the right thing and gut it and clean it and do the thing. That's a whole artwork. it's a whole skill to actually hunt and then there's another skill to properly clean, dress, and cut it up the right way and so forth and not wreck your meat it's culture, I mean and that's something that shouldn't be taken away just like music or me and you talking here and being able to say whatever we want because I don't feel that I can't say something I want to say, I would try to say something that was inappropriate to you in the moment, but maybe when you leave I would say it to someone else. Sure.
    120:17
    Fair enough. Fair enough, fair enough. What was I going to say about the Bambi on the top of the car there? I had something with that, but I forgot. Oh, I know why. Yeah, so, you know, you go to the store and things are wrapped in plastic. And, you know, no one got hurt. It's just, you know, open it up and you get your meat and it's plastic and everything's good. and you're totally disconnected from the reality of what it is. I think it's great to spray meat with bleach and stuff and put it on a rack and put ozone things in the air to keep the stench down. It is. You know, I think it makes everyone feel a warm feeling. It's Christmas morning. It is. A pink slime from McDonald's. Yeah. But I choose to smell the rot once in a while and strip it away from the good stuff. Right. And you were telling me also that you definitely do not take your knife when you're trying to clean and dress your deer. Do not wipe it on the fur because the fur is very – deers mark their territory, mark their area. They pee on themselves, so to speak. And you take the knife there and you put it in the meat. Now the meat's destroyed. So I learned something today. It instantly turns brown. Brown, right.
    121:34
    That's very good. which is not the best thing to look at when you're going to eat it. Right. It doesn't taste that good either, I'm sure. Or you grind it up and give it to your friends, which you can't say I've never done that. Right. They're ex-friends now at this point. Most people that get deer meat say, oh, it was horrible. Well, most people that get deer meat, it's about a year and a half old because the guy didn't eat it. Or the knife was wiped on the fur and then cut the meat. Oh, I see. These are things you learn in life. I'm an old man now. I'm 47. Right. So. Yes. I know what that feels like at about 10 years or so.
    122:14
    So, back to a little bit of pinball here. So, what games, you say you want to get a game room going. You have the old Chicago. You get a firepower, too. You might stay sealator, too. You might keep it. What games do you foresee? I think if I found some kind of maven type that would take it for a couple years and put it in the corner of the basement.
    122:41
    A maven type meaning what do you mean maven type? A maven, so I wrote a song. It's called Maven. A maven is, I was listening to Howard Stern one day on the way home from work, and I ran home to write this song. And a maven is someone who knows everything about you and everything about things. So someone who's all knowledgeable. And so that's a maven. But if some maven type that was all knowing about something would take it home and work on it for a couple years with no stress, and I wouldn't care if it was $800 more than the game was worth because it's a good story.
    123:29
    Life is about a story. And people write stuff because of emotional attachments to things. And I think it would be cool to have it be worked on and get it back in a non-pristine, fully functional player position. You know, so that would be fun. Or take a loss and find a cool game, you know.
    123:56
    And I see games come up for $4,000 that I would like to buy. Like what, for instance? What do you think?
    124:06
    Any names on your mind? No, off the top of my head. But, I mean, obviously everyone would want an Evel Knievel because of that. I got two of them. Yeah. I mean, I guess it would be something like that. Something that provokes like... Iconic. An iconic thing. Yeah, that you can look at and go, Jesus, that's where I came from. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. We did an Evil Can Be Up episode. You did an Evil Can Be Evil one we did? Oh, it was delicious.
    124:30
    Delicious. I found the Evil Can Be Evil advertising. You know, it's a little... You freaking launch the... A jump bike. A jump bike, yes. I didn't have one. I'm sure my brothers did. I came from a split family, so half-brother, two half-sisters that were older, and they're Yacht Club people, and they had everything, Atari. I mean, my brother would leave for the day, and I'd play Pitfall. Oh, yeah. And eventually I got my own video game system when I was 25. Okay.
    125:09
    Well, you should go on an adventure. That's good. What did you get? Nintendo. NES. And, you know, I would ride my go-kart. Okay. A real go-kart. Yeah. To about five miles down the road to Seward Harbor. And I would play a ten-yard fight with my buddy. And they were well off. And he had the video game system. And you had to take your shoes off to come into the house because it was carpeted. which is kind of enjoyable to see that someone took appreciation of what they had. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And now I do too, so I don't take my shoes off, but I do try to clean the rug once in a while. Right. In our house, we've got all new wood floors, except for one, the back room that has the games, the pillow machines, is all new carpeting. So when I have people, I always say, okay, bring house shoes, stocking for you, whatever, but when you go in the back room, no house shoes. There are no outside shoes. It's carpeted to keep the sound nice? Yeah. Is that the sound thing? It's for sound, and also it's for cushiness in your feet. Like, if you have nice stocking feet on or whatever, it feels nice. Yeah, well, you're not, like, standing on a concrete floor working in a department. Right. You're enjoying your hobby. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're in a nice cushy setting. Yeah. And it's good for sound, too, like you said. Yeah. Oh, yeah. and you guys have people over to play.
    126:43
    Oh, yeah, I just had over friends that I've had for 40 years now, so early 80s, yeah, and haven't had them over in a while.
    126:55
    And I think last I had them over maybe it was like, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, maybe more. I had them all over. So finally, you know, Maureen's good for that. She'll say, we had them over. And so she'll actually just announce, you know, we're at a, you know, someone's mother passed away. So that's when we get together. It's like, you know, this sucks. Everybody gets together for when someone dies. You know, let's get together when, you know, when we're living. Like, why do you want to get together when we're dying all the time? It's, you know, dumb. You know, let's do something different. So she had a good idea. So she just started to, hey, why don't you guys come over? So we're going to have you guys over. And then at the same time saying, great, now you put it out there. Now I've got to make it happen. And I'm so busy with, like, working all the time. I take very little time to actually, you know, sit back and enjoy and have people over and kind of relax a little bit because I think there's so much work to do. I have work on top of my head, you know. You're like me. You're put on this earth to do more than to go outside of the box and do something that no one cares about until they care about it. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then to bring people together under one roof to care about something. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And it does, it's an energy suck. Yeah.
    128:09
    And I'm sure it's why you're losing your hair. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm slowly losing my hair, you know.
    128:17
    But how do you not do that? And how do you not, because it's, there's nothing more enjoyable than frustration, pain, suffering, rewarded with a little bit of happiness. Especially if someone else is happier than you are. Right. And actually, another thing, I get to enjoy people enjoying my games. I get to watch them enjoy my games, which is fun.
    128:45
    Well, you're the only person I've ever met besides one other guy on the Cape. I don't know if you've met him before, but... Poets?
    128:56
    I think so. So he's, what's the name of his company? I wish I could remember, but he used to come over and fix the Sky Kings that I had bought from John Savage because I was friends with his daughter, and John Savage was the famous movie actor. And they were just sitting in a barn forever, and I just happened to connect with his family through music. And next thing you know, I'm training a kayak for a time zone. And I think it was a time zone. Tri-zone? No. Or time warp. Time warp. Time warp, yeah. And the Sky Kings. But, man, I sure love that Sky Kings. I played it for eight or ten years straight. Wow. Very simple game. All night. Oh, yeah. And it was just some fun. And I think if I can remember, you would lock that ball up on the left. And then you'd get up top and get lost in the top a little bit. It was just such a fun game. And more than the game, I just like the artwork. Oh, blue clouds everywhere, right? I wish I could draw shitty stuff like that. Right. Because it's complete shit art.
    130:05
    Yeah. Oh, boy. But that being said, some of the best stuff is shit. Yeah? You know, some of the best things you played when you were a kid were... It was only because it was new. Well, they get South Park that's out there from the early 2000s, 1999 or whatever, and that is really crappy artwork. Because South Park is crappy artwork, and so the whole game is crappy artwork. But it works, you know? Well, it works because of all the stuff you remember them saying. Right, exactly.
    130:39
    I brought my kids to the worst bar ever, and we played Sopranos. What a shitty game. And you can just play forever and ever. Now, as a guy who's spending money on a game, I do kind of want to play forever. That's why when I wrote to you a game I might want to buy, I would have been teed off. Because it's one of the games we can go to the local arcade, like you and George were talking about, if he ever came down. If this game didn't work, we could go to the classic arcade in Hyannis.
    131:14
    But that game we can just play forever and ever. We go to points. Points and overrides. It's a little, I don't know, East Ham. How far is that, East Ham, for instance? Oh, they have games? Yeah, points that, yeah. They get about, I think, 10 EMs. You've got to be kidding me. All work in nice shape. But only in, only seasonal. Yeah, yeah. You know, but in season, yes, I met the guy. I've been there for pizza and ice cream with my nephews and stuff, but no, I didn't realize there were games there. Yeah, got nice EMs there. They get a good selection of them. Wow. And he's got a guy that actually works on those EMs, and I played with him. It's like, it's pretty decent. It's decent stuff. It's not falling apart. Oh, I remember the guy's name. Pioneer. He's in Hyannis. One of his relatives used to come to see us play and met him through him. And, yeah, he used to come over, and he wasn't an EM guy, but he would always get it going. And he'd always, when he walked in the door, he'd always say, well, I'm not an EM guy. You know, I'm a later type. See what I can do.
    132:17
    Right. But he always got it going. Yeah. And I remember the things that he was able to fix, and looking back, it seemed pretty obvious. And it seems to me the problem with these simple mechanical things like a guitar, it's so obvious, but the obvious is the hardest thing to pick out.
    132:39
    The obvious is the least obvious, hiding in plain sight. Well, even your problem you called me in for today to fix for a pop bumper, you actually, you know, you got motivated, you cleaned the play field, did a really nice job with touch-ups. I can't even see your touch-ups because, you know, you're a painter, and you match the paint nice. It's like Maureen was very envious of me because she paints the play field. She goes, you did a really nice job because I can't even see where your paint is. It's fantastic. And then you did all the pop bumpers. You did all the new skirts on them and so forth. So that's a lot of work to pull all that stuff up. Your soldering skills could use a little bit of help, a little bit of work on that part. But besides that part, the big problem you had is that your pump bumper, the lower left one, it just kept blowing fuses all day long. And it was doing the same thing for me. And I put even a circuit breaker on it. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
    133:29
    Yes? Lower right. Lower right? Yeah. Okay, sorry. And it flipped over. It's okay. It's like lower left. It's okay. I had a mirror. It's like mirror, mirror, and start track. I pressed the bell. You pressed the bell. I know. I'm not supposed to touch it. It says don't touch it on it. Right. It says do not touch. It says official use only. So bad, bad, bad, John, bad.
    133:54
    So, but it was weird when I went in to look at it, right pup bumper, I really, I couldn't really find it right away. It's like, this is weird. And I took apart the whole switch stack and so forth, and I still couldn't really. And then I started saying, okay, let's try, let's try jumping wires from the other pump where it works and take that out of the loop and try it over here. and that worked. And I just started doing a bunch of different things to it. And I got rid of the diode in there that tested okay. I put all new fuse blocks in there. And it worked. And it's like I never really got a whole sense of what I actually did to get it working, though. I just kind of took it as a holistic approach to it. But I never really found it. The only thing, I suspected that the diode was bad. That's the only thing I could think it is. But it was just weird that it tested okay. And then I hot rod it. I high tapped the game, too, to get a little more oomph in the game. So with all that, I mean, when I first look at it, it's like, I looked at it in the morning, and it's like, I don't know if I can get this done. This looks like a really weird problem. I even called my friend Stu, who specializes in EMs. He runs a vintage pinball repair out of Framingham But he wasn available so he couldn pick up His phone went to voicemail so I said okay well I guess it me nobody else I'm the guy so I did it now is a diode a typical problem that you would look for yeah on these games yeah so a diode is a one way valve kind of thing so it allows current to flow one way and not flow the other way so if a diode is shorted or partially shorted it allows current to flow both ways when it's not supposed to, and then that appears as a short to the game. So that makes sense that when you hit the thing, a pop bumper, bang, it shorts. And basically it acts as a dead short. That's why it blew the fuse off. Is it a type of fuse, like how it blows like that? Is that to protect the game? Yeah, the fuse. No, the diode as a fuse. No. The diode is there to protect the bridge rectifier. So it doesn't shoot back at it and burn it? Yeah, because what happens is it's almost like a collapsing voltage. It builds up, and then when it releases, it's almost like a wave. It sends the wave back where it came from, and that wave going back can wreck electronics. It can wreck the bridge rectifier. So this diode stops that wave from going back to where it came from. It kind of shunts it. It stops it right there in its tracks. So with these games, the older games than this, let's say the 60s games, they had all AC voltage everywhere. But AC voltage everywhere, it's weak voltage. It's not strong. It's very buzzy.
    136:35
    It takes nothing to stop it. It's kind of eh, eh. It's just not strong. So with these games in the mid-'70s, they decided to bridge rectify the game on certain things, like their pop bumpers and their kickers on these games. And so they took the AC voltage and rectified it and made it DC so it's, like, strong and has a really solid hit. So that's why this game has really strong pup numbers now because of the DC. I just want to say I admire your business motto because we were waiting for the cable guy the other day, and you gave us a time frame of four hours, and you were a time frame of two hours, which is respectable. Yeah, a little tighter.
    137:20
    It's exactly right. The cable guys are the four hours. I'll be there sometime tomorrow. That's not good because, you know, I appreciate, I put myself in my customer's spot, you know. You know, they got things to do. You know, they don't want to sit there waiting all day. They can wait all day. I'll be there between 8 and 5. Now you're wasting your whole day waiting and I come in at 5 minutes to 5. That sucks. And it's horrible. So that's why I say I usually have a two-hour window. And then on top of that, I'll also say I'll try to tighten up when I say, okay, I'm leaving now. and here's my a little tighter ETA when I'm actually going to arrive. So then you know even better, you've got even more time to get whatever you need to get done ahead of me coming. So I want to be cognizant of people's time because time is valuable. Time is money. Yeah. That's what I do.
    138:07
    Well, it's great that you travel and come down to places like, you know, Hobonk, places like this, and I love to hear you going to Maine and saving people's days because you are. uh these are these are cherished items they are homes that um not that there aren't people um i'm excited too that dave um put in the new cough button um yeah hold on there's a cough button i gotta get the cough button go but uh but uh oh geez it just it just lights up everyone's life It is like music. It really is admirable.
    138:48
    And someday in my next life, I'm an atheist to a point, but I do believe in a higher power. That's good. That someday in my next life, I would like to come back to help people with their electronic problems because I'm a sufferer. Okay.
    139:07
    All right. And I hold a large cross over my back. Okay. well you're not only an atheist you're going to cross new banks well I said I'm not a real atheist I just don't buy into everyone's the dogma I don't think there's anyone looking down at me necessarily telling me I'm wrong ok alright well that's what we look at I'm definitely a Christian guy brought up Catholic and then said nah I'm really not down with this whole Pope thing I'm not I'm not, call no man your father, no, except for the Father in Heaven. So I'm kind of on that spectrum.
    139:50
    But I definitely, you know, it's definitely a higher power because I really think that all this stuff didn't just happen. I don't believe in a Big Bang. I don't believe it's just like, you know, the eyeball was just made by accident. All this intricate stuff made by accident. It can't be. It's mathematical. It's everything. It's Fibonacci numbers. You know Fibonacci? That stuff there. unavoidable.
    140:13
    These are obvious things. Like the pyramid. It's unavoidable that it could have been there longer. It's unavoidable that these people didn't build these things for their own self-well-being. Some people say that pyramids are even before the Egyptians. They're pre-date. It's hard to deny.
    140:35
    I realize all my truth-seeking and looking for knowledge and so forth the more I know, the more I realize I don't know.
    140:46
    It's like when your pinball machine dies. You were an atheist before it died. But after that, when you show up and fix it, you do believe in God. Hey, okay. All right, great. Beautiful.
    140:58
    There you go. I don't want to be worshipped as a deity, but okay. Let's go doctor. Is that a doctor like Bill Cosby?
    141:10
    No. Dr. Bill Conti Bill Conti's got his problems Dr. Huxtable so not like Biden's wife no, no, hell no what is she even a doctor of I don't even know I want to be a doctor at some point I have an honorary doctorate a doctorate in pinball and we agree as pinball fanatics we definitely agree yeah Oh, yeah. Or else we would just tell you, look, come on, with a doctor. Right. Exactly. Some people actually told me, I have a friend that actually are nurses and doctors. One time she said to me, you know, I know doctors, and they would take offense to you calling yourself a doctor. It's like, you know, have you ever heard of doctorate? You're a doctorate of philosophy. You're a doctorate. You get a doctorate, honorary doctorate of this. It doesn't always mean medical doctor. It means an expertise in a subject. That's what it means. People get upset when they can't get the acclimates that you get. Maybe I have a little jealousy situation going on. A hundred percent. Don't believe me, I had some of that going on. You know, I mean.
    142:18
    Oh, yeah. It's tough to avoid. It is tough to avoid. I had a classic pinball league years ago, and it was going great.
    142:28
    Five-year run. And what happened is I, hey, everybody and everyone, all are welcome. I'm calling in more and more. Friends and friends and friends. Don't even know these people are in my house. And who is this guy? And all of a sudden, a couple of upstarts say, yeah, you know, we think we can probably run this better. It's like, well, that's nice, but it's my league. And I started it, and I made this whole thing happen. Well, I don't know, blah, blah, blah. And then they do like a whole, you know, CC everybody. I think I should do this. It's like, you know what, guys? Let's just, I'm going to put it all on hiatus. How does that sound? How about you don't play my games at all? How does that sound? Well, do it. Go do it. Well, they tried to. Yeah, yeah, go do it. You be the master of success. Well, guess what happened? Guess what happened? My five-year run, guess what happened? After about a year, it failed. Because I left. I said, go ahead. You guys know it all. You know it all. You go do it. Failed. Especially with the freaking cooties that came in. These guys, they were all like, oh, Mr. Campbell's fake. Well, everyone wants to do something for free until they have to do it for free. Yeah, exactly. Because what I was doing, and this is where this guy was weirded out. And this guy, he has money anyway. Who gives a crap?
    143:44
    My wife, you know, we would do a finals. We'd do like a whole, you know, couple months long. Going house to house to house. This guy had 10 games to play. This guy had 10 games. All these great houses of pinball machines to play. Different titles. All old school. All like old Chicago. That kind of stuff, you know. You know, right on the time frame.
    144:04
    And then we'd play finals at our place. In my games, I'd bring up, like, I have, like, 70 games to choose from, so I'd bring up new stuff. I'd spend a lot of time hauling games up, setting them up, making sure they're nice, all this kind of thing. If I was them, I'd be like, you bragger.
    144:23
    There's the door. Goodbye. You don't want to play? And I'm like, can I come? Yeah. Yeah, that's what should happen. If I was on the other side looking in, can I come too? You fixed the games. Yeah, you go do it. You guys just ruined my games. Right, right. You guys are playing all day long. I'm working all day long on these games. Plus, I'm busy working on my customers' games, and I'm setting these things up. And on top of that, she's making, like, these awesome meatball sandwiches, homemade meatballs and all this stuff. She's putting on a big, giant spread. And then, you know, we chip in some money for the finals. And I basically took, I think, like 15%. 15% goes back to the house for the food and that kind of crap. Who gives a crap? It's like $30 minus, so you threw $5 or $6 at it. Who gives a crap? These guys, a couple of guys did. That's the problem. They get all kind of pissy about a couple of bucks. Like, well, then see you later. I guess it's not worth it to you. Bye. Well, you're like me. My Frisbee Golf Tournament, which I've been holding for three years at my 50-acre property in Paris, Maine. And I spend my whole summer working on the property alone, and I bring a couple buddies up that are enthusiastic. They don't even give a crap about Frisbee golf. They just want to mow grass. Great. And we cut trees and mow grass, and then I make the awards, necklaces, and fund the prizes, some herb. Oh, look, that's a good prize.
    145:50
    But everyone's thankful because they're not going to do it. Sure. But eventually they'll probably turn on me is what you're telling me. They could. It's possible. But if they're your buddies, see, if they're your buddies, you know them. Only friends. See, I had friends of friends. I didn't know these people. No family.
    146:10
    No, there's a family too, but that can be weird too. That can be weird too. But family is a little more tighter. But when you have friends of friends that are just weird and just kind of jealous. I put it this way. I had all my games out there.
    146:25
    Sometimes you've got to come up and I'll show you my stuff. Yeah, why can't I do it? Well, they're looking at my games with a fine-tooth comb. They're like, well, I don't know. There's one light bulb out here. It's like, you know what? F you. Believe me. And I take that seriously, the light bulb. All the light bulbs were out at one point. Exactly. I have ten games to freaking deal with. I just got home for a ten-hour day working somewhere. I'm sorry, one light bulb. But it's like any excuse to kind of just put a little chink in the armor kind of thing, just a little F you. It's like, you know what, get the frick out of here. I guess I should have done it. It's like, well, okay, this game is busted. I'm just going to shut it off. And now you can't play it for one light bulb. It's a motivator because you get rid of them and motivate yourself. Yeah. Well, I did. I basically got rid of all of them. I basically told all of them. I said, well, are you all the same opinion of this guy over here? or, you know, and I got only out of 16 guys, I got like two or three guys that said, no, no, I totally appreciate what you're doing. It's like, I only have three guys that really stood up. And I said, really? All you guys? You're just going to, okay, well, we're shutting her down. Bye. Have fun. Good luck playing any good game. I have some nice stuff. Sorry. Well, see you later. Being one of the only people that works on them and to tell that person that they're wrong seems to be wrong in its own right. It's kind of stupid. It's kind of, it's just, one of the guys was saying, well, I just, we should just have a league and just play for free. I was like, no, dude, just chip in 30, it's $30 for like, I think like two and a half, three months of play. It's nothing. And then at the end of it, you have a chance to, you can win, you can win a couple hundred bucks. It's a cost of a meal. Yeah, these days especially. Yeah. Well, it's like going to a restaurant and then you end up buying all the food and you're like, oh, really? And then the people that didn't buy the food take the food home. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Oh, yes. I've seen that happen before, too. That's when you get rid of that person. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, as another friend of mine said, he said, you know, time and time again or sometimes you have to weed your garden. You have to trim the bushes a little bit. So I weeded my garden. I weeded the garden, got rid of all the weeds. Pulled them all up, and now I allow new growth to come in. So now I had a recent couple tournaments now. I kept some of the cream of the crop of the last crew that actually had my back a little bit, and they were nice. I brought them in. Everybody else, I didn't invite you guys. Sorry. You have to be this tall to ride this ride.
    149:01
    And I had other new people come in that I know and like. And I had a house full of people. We had a great time. There's no drama. There's no jealousy or nothing. Just a good bunch of people. No BS. Well, like you said about the weeds, I have a garden, and it is mostly weeds. And I've seen gardens that are all fruit and vegetables. And I'm happy with the weeds. And if I do step foot in a garden that has fruit and vegetables, I couldn't be happier. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because it's not my garden, and it's probably not ever going to be my garden. but also another thing another friend of mine, Mike, he said you have to trim the trees to encourage new growth, I mean you're going to even grow a pot bush you've got to trim to encourage new growth you know so there's that and I get it too but I learned a lot too I had a good five year run and it was good while it lasted until it's hard for things to keep running that you have a really good thing, it's hard for a really good thing to keep going forever because nothing good lasts forever, it seems, you know? Well, you guys were doing a podcast, you know, a couple times a month, three, four times a month, and then now it's once a month, and it's just as enjoyable. And like you said... We do long form now. And eventually, there won't be a Dr. Dave for us to discuss over his wrongdoings and rightdoings. Yeah, right. we'll have to go back over the old stuff. Right, exactly.
    150:38
    Actually, it's funny. That's what George said. George says, you wouldn't believe how many people keep hitting our back catalog. They see our stuff and they go back and they just keep hitting the back catalog all day because there's tons of games to go after. There's tons of material to listen to. Now, our early stuff, granted, it's raw. It doesn't sound as good. It's not as polished.
    150:58
    It's early Rolling Stone. Yeah, right, right, exactly. It's the first album. Yeah. You know. Which is usually the best. Right. Even though it has scratches. Yeah. And it gets loud in certain points. Right, exactly. You know, it's part of the beauty of the flower. Sometimes the thought process is better than the actual process. Yeah, I think so. I'm 100% sure. Because every good idea starts off as a great idea. Right. And it turns out to be, hopefully, an all right idea. Well, the worst thing is, you know, when you see a good old boy from down south say, Hey, y'all, watch this. And then bad things happen.
    151:36
    Then there's a tree involved. Yeah, a tree involved. Some blood. Some water. You know, broken limb. Things like that happen, certainly.
    151:44
    So circle back again, back to pinball again here for a second. So if you had your druthers, what games would you put in your game room if you had, you know? I don't know because I have a hard time remembering things I would know when I saw it and I know when I feel it. And really, pinball is a feeling, a thought, and really it's looking at a picture and saying, I need this. Like I said, the evil can evil. It's part, like, this game was born when I was born. Must be why I have it. Right. Same thing with the Sky. It's odd that the Sky Kings, I think, too, is a 76. I think it's probably right around there, 75, 76. Yeah, 75. Single player. Yeah, and I think you just get drawn to those things. But like I said, I think, I mean, I. Oh, Bow and Arrow. You ever play Bow and Arrow? No. Because that's the same generation as that game there. So it's a ballet, same year as that one. If you like that game, you like Bow and Arrow.
    152:55
    Hocus Pocus. I'm lucky to be able to have one game and love it for the rest of my life. It's like a pair of shoes. Yeah.
    153:04
    I guess I would like another Sky Kings. Wow. You probably picked up for a song because people aren't looking for Sky Kings at my speed. Oh, I know. I traded it for a three-wheeler, and it didn't run, and I'm pretty sure it ended up in the trash. Okay. I wish you gave it back to me. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Well, that's where the three-wheeler came from, your Honda. Well, and also, I think if I got another game, I would like to have a story behind it. like you are like my little chicago yeah um it would be nice to have some kind of connection to it um it's all about a connection uh it's spiritual it's physical it is uh yeah um and and to show that to someone else that um that this is your connection right right i mean like yeah like for instance i have a genie which is 1978 godly genie wide body uh i found it Because a guy called me to work on his Stern Magic from 1978.
    154:02
    And I went to his house and he is a mortician. Funeral director, mortician guy. And he had a genie. Oh, no, he wanted to trade me for the magic. That's right, I had a magic. So I said, okay, yeah, I'll give you a nice restored magic for your genie. Because I didn't really care for magic and I wanted the genie. Genie is a better game. The genie wasn't working. So when I got home, I worked on it and so forth. I looked inside the paperwork, and I saw all its history on where it was, the bowling alley it came from, and the people who worked on it, the technicians. It was the bowling alley I went to as a kid. This was the genie I played as a kid. There's the connection that we're talking about. This was the genie I played as a child, like his age. I was playing this particular genie. So now I can't let this game go. It's my game. It's what I played. It's like McDonald's, the burger with the little cuts of onions, the dehydrated onions. Yeah. You loved the dehydrated onions. I did. I love those burgers. No one likes dehydrated onions. But I did back then. It was okay. It was happy back then. When was the last time you went in your kitchen and used dehydrated onions? Never.
    155:15
    But back in that time frame, I loved the McDonald's burger. I had like four or five of them as a kid and put the ketchup on it with the dehydrated onions and the pickle. That was beautiful. That was like a delicious meal. Now, I think the food from back then, I think it was not as crappy as today. I think they actually had better quality meat back then. Who knows what they're using now, sawdust and floor sweepings. Probably some beef fat in there. Beef fat and soy, you know.
    155:42
    Some Bill Gates Beyond Meat probably. Who knows what the heck's in that crap. good stuff it's an endless horizon all these made up products again back to like real food real stuff I think being a hunter and going out and getting it, killing it butchering it, cooking it that's a more honest way to live it's honest we grow oysters we don't need to feed oysters They feed off the surface of the water, all the phytoplanktons and stuff, and little microorganisms. And that's the kind of farm you want where you don't have to do anything. Yeah, right. Lazy Man Farms. It's called Lazy Man Oyster. Yeah, I know.
    156:34
    I keep trying to switch my logo, but my logo guy tells me don't do it. Yeah, it looks good. I like it. I got your stuff in my game room right now. I got little stickers of your stuff. It's great. Yeah. So how did you actually get from being a painter into oysters anyway? So I was maybe 24, 25, and my sister worked at the bar, Lost Dog Pub. Oh, Lost Dog. I've been there. And it's family now because she's married to a nephew who runs a sandbar, and we have our oysters there. And my old-timer buddy that I used to do carpentry, he was a carpenter that I worked on the crew, and he was in the bar and he goes,
    157:13
    they're giving out free oyster grants. And so I went and put my name in and 15 years later I got an oyster grant and I have another one coming up. So we got an acre from the state. Oh, wow. And it costs nothing to own. Wow. You just have to work it, which is the best way to own something. Yeah. Show that you're worthy. And like the pinball machine, show that you're worthy. Do a little bit of artwork. Do a little bit of touch-ups. Then get the guy like you in to solve the problem. Right. And you don't need to be a mathematician. You don't need to know all that. You just need to know how to push the stuff around and the numbers around.
    157:48
    But, so then I got the farm, and that guy had failed with multiple others, and they all told me that they were great at it, and that's why they failed, which made me painfully aware that you can't be great at something and fail. And so it made me pull back and say, I'm going to run two businesses and devote myself to, as a musician, devote myself to like an idea, a cartoon, a logo, a picture that inspires you, just like the artwork on that machine.
    158:29
    Because half of the joy of these pinball machines is the art. It's got to be 40%. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and more than that. The artwork just draws you in. Yeah. It's just a blank white whatever, just a whitewood play field. It wouldn't be nearly as exciting to play. Like most great musicians, it's because they started at a certain time, they can be obnoxiously bad, but still be completely rewarding to watch. Right.
    159:05
    Bob Dylan. I saw Bob Dylan open up for the Grateful Dead one year, and I watched the fence get torn down. Some guy was climbing across the tree, and we were in the woods because we didn't have tickets. It was the last big show. I think it was Highgate in Vermont. And he's crawling across the tree, and the branch dropped, crushed the fence, and we all ran in. And then the next day in the news, it was, concerts are over forever, blah, blah, blah. This major thing happened, and we were sitting there watching it happen. and it was enjoyable. It's nice to watch chaos sometimes. Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, pinball is chaos.
    159:44
    Control chaos. It's something, doing something that you can't control until you realize that it is slightly controlled. Right, right. Like I was saying, my boy taught me that if that ball comes down to the left, to the left flipper, and if he just doesn't react. Just let it bounce over. It will just stop. Right. And as soon as it stops, then hit it, and you get that point you want. Yeah, right.
    160:09
    Just like listening to you talking to your buddies on the Pinball Podcast, you know, the greats, they all have a little trick like that. Yeah. Not that, like on the recent podcast, not that you should use a trick to win a game. Right. Not that you should. Oh, the centaur one. You shouldn't necessarily take advantage of an obvious thing. But me playing against my kids, I can. Right, yeah. There you go. Right, exactly. You see your advantage. And I will. Oh, yeah. Well, they have youth in their side, so you've got to take anything they get. And they don't know. Right. They don't know. Exactly.
    160:48
    That's great. But I always call pinball, it's play block work. Yep. You know, that's what it is. And I just am amazed by the engineering involved in how, like, all this. like in that old school EM there, the Chicago, has all the, you know, machinations and relays and fun. It's like, you know, it's very fun in a box.
    161:12
    Take away the noise and, like we were saying, take away the noise and the art. How long would you play it for? Yeah, not as much fun. Well, speaking of that, you know, in Germany, I told this to George on the podcast recently, that they had to export all these games, the EMs, these Valley games to Germany. They had to take all those chimes out because the Germans didn't want it. The German shop owners said, no, it's too distracting. We don't want any, no noise. Take it away from sales.
    161:40
    Yeah, they did. Yeah, they didn't want it. They didn't want it in the shop. So it's just like, imagine no chimes in that game, just like clunk, clunk, the ball's running around. That's all you had for noise. No chimes. I have I'm sure you've read that pinball book up top there oh yeah R.C. Clarke or yeah maybe but it goes through the history of pinball and you know the wrecking of pinball and the rebuilding of pinball and you know all the lost art and it's amazing how it almost got religious at a point where it was like you know It was a Salem witch trial against it, basically. Yeah, there was. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there was. They were taking sledgehammers and stuff and putting stuff in the harbor in New York Harbor. Might as well have been booze. Might as well, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, because it was kind of the mob was into the game, and they were gambling with stuff back in the day. Back in the day, they'd have a knockoff button, so you'd win games, and you'd go up to like 50 credits and say, hey, bartender, pay me off, and they'd give you a bunch of nickels, and then he'd go bang, bang, bang, bang, knock them down to zero again. So there was some gambling going on, but not this stuff. The stuff from the 60s and 70s, no. Stuff from the 50s and 40s, yeah, there was some of that mixed in. Oh, woodleg ones? Yeah, the woodleg ones, there was some of that mixed in. And those games were a lot harder to play. Pachinko and stuff. Yeah, pachinko, that's a whole other thing. That's a Japanese thing. I get calls from people, can you work on my pachinko game? No, just pinball. Oh, you mean the one with the ball drops and hits sticks? Hits sticks. No, I'm not working on that. No, no, no. Not as exciting. Another thing I say is, like, get a pinball machine. Then I get people that want to sell me, like, a home model from Sears, a pinball machine. It's like, no, or fix it or whatever. It's like, no, I don't want to fix it, and I don't want to buy it. It was meant to be thrown away when they bought it. Exactly. It was a home model. It was meant to be thrown away. It's just not, you know. Although I will say the Bally home models they made, they actually used some real good parts in them. And I actually have fixed a couple of those. There's actually a lot of stuff they don't make, but there's other stuff that does translate from this stuff. And I got them running. Is Bally the king of bimbo?
    163:54
    Bally, yeah, Bally is kind of the... Overall? Well, it depends what era you're talking about. You know, I'd say Gottlieb is more, I call it more like the, I'm going in car brands. Like, Gottlieb's a Cadillac, you know. Bally was more of a, I don't know, GM. and Stern was a little more, I don't know, sort of Ford-ish.
    164:19
    But Gottlieb's back in the day, all their assemblies and their mechanics were strong and overbuilt and just really well designed.
    164:29
    Bally was well designed too, but their mechs weren't quite as beefy. And then Stern back in that time frame, just cheesy, hot metal, got all this white crap on it. not nearly built as nearly as well, but the Stern games in the time frame were more fun to play. Even though the inner mechanics were not as durable, whoever designed the games had more flow. It's flow. The ball would flow around and flow nice.
    164:57
    Ballet games were more clunky-chunky. The ball would go up and it would come down. Chunk, chunk, chunk. Stern games were flow nice. Gottlieb games were a little bit chunky, too.
    165:09
    But yeah, that's what I do. It's funny how you can become like a fanboy about something because I'm a – I would say I would want a ballet game because it's about all I've owned. Yeah, ballet is good stuff. And you can put the blinders on and say, like, I like Nike or I like Coca-Cola. And it's hard to get away from that. Also, you feel comfortable, like, with a Cadillac. Right. Or it's like I used to have VW Syncro or Bus or stuff like that or Jeepster Commandos.
    165:44
    Jeepster, George, Jeepster. Even though it wasn't the best car ever made, it's hard to get away from the nostalgics of all you have to do is take interest in something and then nothing else matters. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, you zone in. It's like being a Mac person. Right. I would never get a PC.
    166:06
    Well, that's why the commercials were like, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, I'm a Mac. And the Mac would totally be fun. I'm a free-flowing Mac. I can do whatever I want. And the PC, you've got to have a pocket protector. I'm just here and I'm non-moving and non-bunging and I'm not creative. The Mac guy was like, yeah, I'm totally creative and free-flowing. I'm young and free. But unfortunately, to own a PC, you had to be more creative to keep everything out of it. Yeah, exactly. All the gremlins and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I guess I chose Mac because I thought it was going to be easy, and it's not easy. It's not easy. It's not. PC is way easier. The world runs, the corporate world runs on PC. You know, so everything runs on PC. PC, Google, all that good stuff. So, but I can do Mac, but it's just not as intuitive to me. I just, I'm Android and PC guy. and as for the pinball world too, it's like there's many different languages here too and you're going to know, you know, electromechanical you're going to know, you know old Williams, new Williams, old Bally new Bally, old Stern, new Stern there's like all different flavors to know and it all comes with time and experience and I think with the EMs too, you can feel the electricity going to the second before it gets to a spot, you already know it's traveling Yeah, it's a lot more visceral. This game is a lot more visceral. You can feel the thing. Whereas, like, a newer digital game, you already anticipate that it already knows what you're doing. This game is... These EMs are more physical. The modern Stern game stuff and the Jersey Jack stuff is more visual. It's a visual entertainment. There's all kinds of lights and shows. Yeah, slot machine. All kinds of buzzy lights and there's a subwoofer in it. There's all kinds of, you know, it's like... It's over-the-top visual sound experience, but doesn't have a physical experience. This is something where you can feel the game working inside. You can feel things like pumping and chunking and so forth. So it's a little more... Something to be said about analog. Yeah, there is. It's analog. And there is something to be said about analog because we're analog creatures. Yeah. I think our generation doesn't want to let go of the analog. Yeah. We don't want to let go of the connection we have to the next part. Whereas we don't understand the connection in the computer world. You don't have to. you don't have to know the math, and it's all done for you. Right.
    168:28
    Press the button. Yeah. Well, with his world, I mean, is he, you know, on the phone and so forth, and has strong thumbs and so forth? Yeah.
    168:39
    But just as much... But he's also in the outside world, too. He's out with the dirt bikes. Well, he's lucky his dad builds him skateboard ramps. Yeah, there you go. And we have the property, and we do all sorts of fun stuff that has to do with, like, hitting. cutting and doing.
    168:56
    Real world stuff. Not the virtual world stuff. Stuff that will be lost. Yeah, because the virtual world will be lost. The physical stuff, you're actually building something and it's for time, a memorial.
    169:09
    It's way better. It's a real deal. Same thing with money, too. Money, even though it's a fee on currency, at least you can hold it in your hand. Bitcoin, you can.
    169:20
    Well, it's like a child. A child doesn't appreciate money because Because you press a button, which is can I, and the person says yes, and then it appears. Right. And when we were young, it was can I know, okay, well, I'm going to either take a dollar from my mom's wallet, or I'm going to go cash some cans in, or I'm going to beg. Right, right, right. Yeah.
    169:44
    Yeah, it's when the chrome was thick and the moon was straight. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, now chrome isn't what it used to be. I know. Yeah, it's pseudochrome. Yeah. Even backlash mirroring. Like, I think I'm on your game. No, you don't need mirroring in your game. But there's usually mirroring on backlash back in the time frame. It was real mirroring. And today's stuff, because it's toxic. Reflected? Yeah, reflected. Like, a real mirror, like, outline of the letters and so forth would be mirror, you know? and today's stuff it's hard to get it because it's a toxic way to make the stuff so they make it pseudo mirror it's more of a so it felt more dimensional as far as it like grabbed you yeah exactly it had more of a three dimensional thing going on felt more like thought rather than yeah it wasn't it's flat it was more like a depth to it yeah so that was cool but they you know It is gray stuff they use instead. It looks kind of like mirror, but not quite the same. No, touching up back glass. That's tough. Because you're going to leave a stain.
    170:54
    Yeah, you have to have something that's transparent ink. Yeah. So you have to allow light to go through. So you have to hit it. You have to get the right color and the right amount of stuff on there. So sometimes you're better off not touching it up so you can still see the product. yeah I still I will actually touch up a back glass and I'll you know especially it's really you know junky whatever or a couple of spots and I'll like this put something on this when a light shows through it doesn't like blaringly say bang it's a light bulb showing through here so to kind of mute that effect you know the good thing is they are making new back glasses these days that are they're pretty close to original. I would say that a lot of them don't have the fine detail as much as the original. Is that because they're computer printed? Yeah, the DPI. Yeah, not silk screened. It's not quite as good. But if your thing was trashed or you didn't have one, it's great. But if you had one that's like an 8 or a 9 original over a perfect repro, I'd probably take the 8 or 9 original. Well, and it's funny that you can take newer electronically designed photo and it doesn't have the same grab as the one that only had five colors. Yeah.
    172:16
    They created the same picture because your eyes can only focus on so much so it becomes this big blur of awesomeness compared to I see everything perfectly. It's almost like a painter. When a painter paints something, like I just saw recently Owen Benjamin, someone painted a picture of him playing the piano for his two young children, the children on top of the piano over here, and there's one other kid looking on while he's playing, and the light's coming through, so she, this artist, took that picture, this real picture, and she did her interpretation of it, and it was kind of blurry and so forth, but how she did it was like your mind interprets what it is, and it was beautiful, even though it was like, if you look at it, right on top of it, it's all blur and you can't really tell. There's no sharp detail. But you don't need the sharp detail. It encourages a feeling. You need space between to create that detail. Distance. But it's also, you get a feeling from the painting. It's more organic. If you actually just draw just the raw picture. Yeah, sure. It shocks your imagination rather than making you look at it and go, wait a minute. Right. Your imagination has to build it. Your brain has to build what's going on in that picture. It's more engaging. There's more going on. There's more thought process in that. That's what's cool about a painting.
    173:40
    We're at an hour and twelve in, so we've got a pretty good run here. You're coming back with a cape at some point. Like I said, I would love to take you out to the farm and have a little recreation. Yeah, I'd definitely like that. No talking about pinball. Okay. Just recreation. Okay, I can do that. That sounds good. I can try. I can try it today. And I'm going to send you home with some sauce and some oysters. Yes. Sauce and oysters. Sounds good to me. And now you're an expert oyster opener. Yeah.
    174:10
    Screwdriver. And I realize someone told me. I'll give you a knife. Would you like a knife? Sure. All right. Yeah. Oh, cool. Awesome. I heard that you get them really cold and pop them. It's better than having them warmed up and pop them because they're cold, so they easily pop. Oysters do not taste good above 45 degrees. Okay. The cold is what makes them taste good.
    174:34
    But you cook them, you cook them anyway. Yeah, but if you're not cooking them. Okay. I mean, you're cooking them, but if you're not cooking them, you want them at 32 degrees. Cold, cold, cold. And it brings out the sugar, and it brings out the texture.
    174:47
    And warmer, it brings out the pastiness and the, ah. Oh, okay. Interesting. The thing I never understood about eating a raw oyster, though, is... Two bites.
    174:59
    You want to take two bites and then swallow it. But actually, people just say, go, just shoot them. And it's like, you don't even taste them. They're in your stomach. I'll explain to you the proper way to eat a raw oyster. So you, if you're going to have some sauce on there, that's fine. But you open it and you, little sip of the sauce, little sip of the juice, the terroir, the water. That's where it was grown. That's the salt water. It's not processed. It's the water from the ocean. So you're drinking salt water, ocean water? You're just drinking straight water. It hasn't been processed through the oyster. It's just in the oyster. Okay. And then you take a little sip. Then you push it into your mouth after. So you take a little sip and a little breather. Okay. Nice breath to clear your palate. Then you push it in your mouth.
    175:44
    Two bites. You'll feel the crunch if it's nice and cold. Or you'll feel the break of the body. Okay. And then you eat it, and you save a little bit of the liquid, and then that's how you tell if an oyster is really good. Okay. And you said you kind of crunch on it, too. You said you kind of chew it. Yeah, you want to split that. Hopefully the body isn't split when you open it, because you don't want any of the water to be mixed with the body. Okay. And then, yeah, it should have a nice break in it. You should kind of feel it. Now, do you stick oysters by now? You have so much oyster. Do you stick them or do you still like them? No.
    176:26
    Okay. Who gets sick of life? No. What's your preferred way? The raw? The way I'm giving them to you. You like them with the... With the cream sauce and the booze and all the good stuff. Okay.
    176:41
    But I do appreciate a raw oyster, and I would like it with a little bit of ENC barbecue sauce. It's a vinegar sauce and it's hardly a barbecue sauce but it's delicious.
    176:56
    It's more of a vinaigrette. Okay. Where do you get that from? You can get it at most stores. It's an old school bottle, looks like an old beer bottle and it's just delicious. What a great company. I bought it years ago for pulled pork and it was horrible. But then I noticed it had a little oyster on it. Okay, there you go. And now I tell people I make it.
    177:23
    Right on. Plop your little label on there and call it done. I like it. Well, looking forward to coming back here again. And maybe I'd definitely like to go out and see the farm there.
    177:34
    I'd like your chicken things you get going on there. You've got the chickens over there. It's cool, too.
    177:39
    And maybe at some point hitting pointe shoes sometime during the summertime. I'm hitting some pinball stuff. Oh, hell yeah. That'd be fun. That'd be a blast. Yeah. No, I'm always around, and I don't got much going on, so. You don't have much going on? What are you talking about? You're a fucking Puckeroo Bonsai. You got children. You got freaking a band. You got a pinball machine. You got an oyster thing. What don't you have going on? I don't know. You make my head spin. Well, I don't want you to feel bad about yourself. Okay. I appreciate it. You know? I'm a humanitarian. I'm just a poor pinball doctor, Jim. you know that's all well anyway this has been the classic pinball podcast Dr. Dave talking to John Jolly of Jolly Oyster and it's been a blast thank you Dave hey thank you Maureen you're welcome yes thank you Maureen I'm excited you guys came and couldn't be happier cool I'm glad we got to fix this old Chicago because I wasn't quite sure the old girl was going to come alive but she's happy now so that's a good thing last thing I'm going to say is I'm so glad I didn't keep working on it. Yeah, good thing. Exactly.
    178:47
    Yeah, because I'll you know, you're doing pretty good otherwise. I just got to work on your soldering skills. I'm slightly mechanical. That's why I don't get into the modern games as of yet. Right. Because it's out of my realm. You're getting it done though. I see you get some talent here. You get some mechanical ability.
    179:05
    You're coming along. I've seen a lot worse put it that way. but anybody have a great day, great night and we will see you on the next run see ya
    179:38
    Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Right. Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave!
    179:53
    But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. This joker's not only stupid, he's a moron besides. I heard that. Thanks for the compliment. Hasta la vista, baby.