Welcome back pinball nerds to episode 640 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, who's frequently called the most positive person in pinball. In fact, when I was on a fellow pinball podcaster's show, I was accused of being so positive this guy has rainbows shooting out his butt. Up here we like to call that the rainbow butt monkeys. but in the United States of America, you know them as, I forget their name, but they changed their name anyways. Okay, I've gone off topic. What else would you expect? Today, I am so excited to let you know, number one, first things first, I'm using my Shure microphone from Retro Ralph. Ralph, thank you so much. And I don't care what any other pinball contenters say, if they think it's lame or pathetic, that Ralph was kind and gave me this, like, wow, I think that's really rad when someone's kind or nice or generous or if they have an extra microphone sitting around and they already listen to your show anyways i mean ralph is benefiting from getting to hear me in this nice crisp sure microphone as opposed to yesterday i humbly humbly apologize i did want to bring you guys that news that i brought you but at the same time guess what i am not gonna lie i was just uh a little bit under the Carl Weathers i was very very very very sick but i also thought it was important because for 10 years or the better part of i have always done a five fast thoughts on like the newest pinball machine after we watched the live stream so i do apologize though the the thing is that not only did i not have my snowball mic plugged in because why would i take it out if i was using the sure but for some reason or another once in a while like one in three or one in four times when i open audacity it doesn't know that my new sure microphone is plugged in even though it sure is dad joke of the day there um so yesterday when i went to record because of partially i can't even take the daytime like cold medicine medicine because of my tinnitus i have to take the nighttime one and it makes you super groggy and makes you feel drugged out like not like a good like man these gummies are hitting you're like wow this space cakes incredible or like wow that was the best jay ever no it hits you right in the face like it just feels gross i don't know what like meth or any of those weird crazy pills feel like and stuff i don't even know if that's a pill i don't think it is but like i assume they feel that way you know how you feel you feel really really hung over and groggy like that hung over when you used to go to keg parties in college and you'd still be drinking until the keg emptied it It didn't matter if it was 5, 6, or even 7 a.m. And you had to go to your Microsoft Office Excel final presentation or final test or something an hour later. Yeah, I got 51%. I did pass it. Cheers to Professor Sloan, who may or may not help me with a couple of the answers. All right. I don't want to go too far off track. I just asked. I'm trying to be – I'm not journalistic. I don't have any journalistic integrity. I certainly am not a journal. I'm not a journal? I'm not I'm I have no integrity put it that way but I did ask a quick funny important and not funny important question to bug today okay el presidente I think or maybe co-president with Luke I'm not sure now that his dad doesn't work there but I think he's like the head of the company right he certainly is the head of the social media and marketing he does a hell of a great job doing that among many other hats I'm sure that bug wears there but as we're all getting ramped up and excited about the we're going to see Christopher Franchi's next artwork masterpiece which we're already so excited for after seeing Evil Dead and then on top of that all of us around here I think we're all excited to see the next Spooky because Spooky's Evil Dead was the first one that had a ton of great mechs that interact with the ball it was Spooky's first that had really good flow it was Spooky's first that and this is maybe the most important part and this is where the biggest question in lies this is spooky's first ever pinball machine that everyone is saying is reliable on location and to be honest we heard the exact opposite about that for years and years and years we heard from people that they had issues with halloween or they had issues with even going back to like the jetsons or dominoes some of you listening right now may be so new into pinball that you don't even know that they made dominoes or the jetsons but they did and uh not only that but like i think halloween ultraman even i've even heard quite a few issues with looney tunes problems with code problems updating problems turning off on a certain player's ball so my journalistic question if you want to call it that i hate saying it that way but i am actually you know what i know that it sounds cringe and lame for me to say that for you the listener but for me by me exclaiming that and for me by me saying that what it actually does is it allows for me to actually feel like i need to do a better job doing my job sorry the dog is bugging me a little bit i might have to go put draco franche upside so outside sometimes he just starts licking my face and he loves me so much he just wants to keep licking me and he doesn't get why i'm just talking into a weird strange microphone here like this so if you hear me leave for a second there's my journalist integrity going out the window gone all right so here's a question that i asked a bug and i thought about it for a long time during his live stream i know at the end i've joined like 50 or 60 spooky live streams over the decade i've been covering this hobby i know at the end what bug is cool enough to do no matter what is say hey guys i'm opening the floor to questions and he'll only do it for five five minutes six minutes sometimes longer but usually just a couple minutes at the end and you've got to get in there at the right time at the right place with the right question. And I think that I asked the perfect question at the perfect time at the perfect place. And thank you, thank you, thank you to Bug for answering it. So my question was, and I quote, see, I'm trying to get a little bit, I'm trying to get a little more profesh. I'm never going to be profesh now, but I'm trying to get a little more profesh. Okay. So Evil Dead is by far your most reliable. No, sorry. Evil Dead is your most reliable pin so far do you expect your next pin to be as reliable and then i added these two important words on location okay so i said that on location now i've never tried this before with this speaker but i'll tell you what it can't be worse than the sound yesterday because yesterday you unfortunately had to hear me talking right into a laptop microphone like on like a 10 year old freaking, I don't even know what brand name this is, Nitro 5 whatever, like gaming laptop, which I used to use for the Pinball Nerds podcast streaming channel, and the sound quality is just absolutely poor. Plus, I kept trying to talk into a microphone that was not turned on, and I got Danielle to talk into a microphone that wasn't turned on. So I'm probably going to delete yesterday's show. Honestly, I was still a little saucy, still a little salty. There's still a little salt in my wounds from being made fun of pretty bad. It did hurt my, I won't say feelings, but it hurt my pride a little to be called that. By someone else in the pinball community that I thought we had at least a smidgen of respect for each other at least a smidgen enough that it wouldn be taken that far before we could talk to each other But anyways you know what It is what it is Sometimes you got to do what my mom and my best friend, yes, she was the same person, would say, Albert, she had to say this a lot, Albert, today is the first day of the rest of your life. That would usually be followed by something like, stop being so miserable, stop being a Debbie Downer stop being such a negative Nancy okay like she would get really upset with me I don't know why she started to sound like she had a demon in her but let me try my best and if the sound quality is not incredible I do apologize but let me try my best to start to turn my microphone and press play here I want to listen to Bug because I think there's something lost if I just read the two paragraphs it's very quick you could go watch this yourself if you want to It was posted two hours ago. So it was posted around probably that would have been around one time, Eastern Central time. But it doesn't really matter. It's posted today on Spooky Pinball LLC, their Facebook page. But let's hear what Bug has to say. What I love here is he does a quick burp and goes, oh, my God, guys, I'm so sorry I burped. Excuse me. It's like, dude, you're allowed to burp. All right. Hopefully the sound quality is good. I'm going to watch my monitors. Let's see what Bug has to say here. um but you know we like kind of having that same rough window of game launch times we've been in that november december range for a few years in a row now don't really have any major okay so there you go you're gonna see a november or december that's another little tidbit here you're gonna see a november or a december game launch and uh bug could you uh could you tell me exactly how reliable your machines are oh and first could you do a little burp just so it's funny for my show changing any of that for any reason i keep burping that's so it's so terrible it seems like evil dead is your most reliable pin so far do you expect your next to be just as reliable in location i expect the next to be just as reliable if not more uh for a number of reasons it's funny luca whoa whoa whoa i'm quoting you on that bug you said just as reliable if not more so i guess everybody who's listening to this show and everybody who's excited for spooky's next pen, especially, especially if you're a location, you're wondering, was it a fluke? Like, did you do something right for Evil Dead that you didn't do for your other pens that you're not going to do in the future? Or are we going to see this incredible reliability? Because arguably that was the one thing people weren't sure about Evil Dead. Everyone who saw Evil Dead was like, wow, the art. Wow, the mechs. Oh my God, the shots. Did y'all just go to Niagara Falls and figure out Flo, that's spooking me out, spooky. Scary. Okay, let's not go off topic too much more. Let's hear the end of Bug's answer. I was talking yesterday on the phone about exactly that, where I was looking at the start of Evil Dead production, and there was just so many things that we were still learning, even though it felt like we perfected a lot. When I look at the next game and the processes we have set up for that one, I'm like, oh, this is going to be even better. And it's tough when you're always designing and working like three, four years out, because the thing you have out right now is three, four years behind where you're actually at as a company, especially on the design side of things. So it's only going to keep getting better and better, especially a few games from now. It's like the best that we can possibly be doing on every single front that I can possibly think of. so really looking forward to getting to oh sorry to interrupt you there bug i thought you were done no no go ahead bug those sorry oh no he was done he went to turn to talk to somebody okay let me close my laptop here and i'm just gonna move my microphone back all right so hopefully you guys could hear that okay i'm gonna compress the audio afterwards so that his levels of mind It should be more similar-ish. But if not, just remember, the audio today is 100% better than yesterday. And please, if you haven't listened to yesterday's episode, for the love of God, don't. It's not a good one. I just talk too much. Sometimes I use this microphone when I'm bored. I've said it in the past. I try not to do it. I've used this microphone as a therapist or in place of a therapist before. I've used this microphone for like when I'm bored. but now I want to start actually using this microphone to deliver information to you. I want to start using this microphone to, of course, still be entertaining and enjoy myself. But pinball nerds, I've got to go. Hayden's, or sorry, one of my sons is here, and I have to go help them out, and we're going to have to go get ready for a soccer game. Only a short episode today. Remember to join Patreon if you haven't, because I'm just going to keep doing more and more content there. All right, pinball nerds, until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Oh, Donnie. Oh, Donnie. Oh, Donnie. Oh, Donnie. I had a boy, and Donald was his name. Since he left me, I've never been the same. Oh my god, welcome back, Panball Nerds. Yeah, so basically I stopped the podcast a little bit early because some people came in the driveway, including my son, and I wanted to make sure you got off to soccer practice, but now that that's all good, I forgot to add one, well, okay, two very, very, very important things to this. When Spooky Luke, okay, first of all, you're probably wondering why I played that song. Let me just say this first. That was a shout out, okay, or sorry, this was a shout out to Donald O'Donnie. Okay, don't judge the singing voice just yet. I still got a little bit of cough in this throat, okay, but I'm working on it. And if you can hear the difference between this microphone and the last microphone, this microphone is the $50 special I did about 500 shows on. And the last one was a much better, you know, much more competent microphone. however it doesn't mix well with like music for singing and yada yada yada yada whoa we shouldn't have done that yet but here's the thing i made up with donald garrison of don's pinball podcast we talked for quite some time and uh i am happy to say here that jenga's donnie all peace and love from here on out um sorry that honestly i think that all three of us kind of got into it well mostly, well, primarily, I guess, Glenn, but then also myself and I guess Jenga's, uh, I guess we hit some, uh, we got some spare, some stray bullets as they would call it. Okay. But we buried the hatchet. There's, we buried so many hatchets that even Terry hatchets family would be jealous. Okay. Remember her in Seinfeld? Wow. See, if I didn't do part two of this episode, I wouldn't have got a Seinfeld reference in. Um, what did she say? And they were spectacular. Oh, the other thing I wanted to say and I'm glad I'm back Mr. Christopher Franchi the one and only world-renowned uh this guy he's funny he's interesting he can do a radio talk show he's incredible at making podcasts he also a really really good interviewer maybe not quite as good as Christian Line where is where in the world is Christian Lyon I wonder where he is How it going And where Mrs Pin Maybe more importantly. Oh, as a correction, okay, before I go into Franchi's birthday here, as a correction, a couple of shows ago I said, where are all the women in pinball? Because there's not very many women-led pinball podcasters. And I remembered really three people I should have remembered before, and I want to humbly apologize to them. Rachel, um, Twippy award-winning electric bat. Come on. Right. Other half. I know it's only half. It's not like, but it is women led. Like, come on. She's, she's one half of the dynamic duo over there. So there you go. And then I thought not podcaster, but has been on a couple of podcasts. You have Erica, Eric's pinball, Erica's not Eric, Eric, Eric, my buddy, Eric just sent me a message. Maybe I was thinking of him, but Erica's Pinball Journey. And she's doing incredible stuff over there. I can't, I don't, has she came out with her Stern video yet? I don't know, but she's doing really rad stuff. And then the other person that I thought of, her name is Erin, and I can't pronounce her last name and or remember it, but although, and all the wormhole pinball's gone, rest in peace, wormhole, moment of silence. All right, that's loud enough. I don't know man i don't know i don't really maybe i'm too punk rock for the punk rock pinball community because i saw that someone commented that they commented that the type of pinball podcast that they would listen to would be very positive all of the time and it's like but i thought we were punk rock about it punk rock should be allowed to be a little bit sassy a little bit salty have some you know you don't have to be mean or rude necessarily but you've got to have a little bit of that edge to be punk rock am i right come on come on you can't be punk rock and be like welcome to the podcast how are you today right you can't be that dry you got to be like you know you got it anyways who knows i don't want to argue about who's the most punk rock pinball podcaster because none of that really matters and the real answer is it's jason from the pinball party have you heard that guys like it's kind of like blink 182 style punk that he does it's incredible of course you have because when i get my pinball bows i get it from chad and i wait no no no free no zach if you want that if you want me to play that i will because it's very punk rock but you You've got to pay the big bucks. That's right. We're going commercial. If you're a distro out there and you're listening, I'm taking all the money. I tried with Patreon. I think I've topped out at 15. I've been at 15 for a couple days. I did want to tell a little story for Tim Lee. He loves my ex-girlfriend stories. Going to save that for the end. But I've got to start by singing a second time on the same show for Mr. Christopher Franchi. Happy birthday to you. happy birthday to Franchi happy mother freaking flipping birthday to my favorite pinball artiste mondo Franchetti happy birthday to you okay uh that's all you get all right now bug was saying something okay bug was saying something during the factory tour and the one thing that he said that stood out was he goes, I've got to be, he says this right at the start, he kind of is trying to be a little, I think he's giving us a tip on the next game. And look, I know a lot of us think it's Beetlejuice, but we didn't know until today, did we? Because we had no tips. Unless you're like, unless you're like Christopher Franchi and you work there, you probably have no clue what the next game is for sure. Anyways, you might have heard the rumors, could be Gremlins, it might be Weezer, could be Radiohead. Wouldn't it be great if it was the office. I heard there's like the high-end model is the Dwight Schrute butter cab. No, Dwight Schrute wouldn't have a butter cab. He'd have a jello cab or at least the topper would be encased in a jello stapler. Am I right or am I right? And it jiggle like, okay, sorry. My ADHD has taken over. Whenever, I don't know about you, if you're sick for three or four days and you start to feel better, you're all of a sudden like, oh my God, it's like a new, like today's the first day of the rest of your life almost. And to any of the audiophiles that had to listen on one mic and now they got to listen on this one, I apologize. Let's just wrap this up quickly. What was the Spooky Luke story again? It was Bug. Bug said, I had to be very, very, very careful to make sure that a certain sound, and I feel like he almost said song or like was inferring that it was a song almost started playing and when that song started playing it would have been a dead giveaway and it would have you know honestly thrown away a little bit of the FOMO excuse me or increased it in some ways but I think that the song that he was uh worried about hearing this is just the best guess okay but this would be my best guess that the song or music that bug was very afraid might start playing I don't know if it was from the topper the multiball start or even pressing the play button? I have no clue. But this is my best guess. Bug didn't want you to hear this, guys. Daylight come and me one go home. Daylight come and me one go home. Work all night to find the rum Daylight come and me one go home Me one go home Stop up Nana till the morning come Daylight come and me one finish the podcast Alright, I still think between these two sections, it was a nice short podcast. Sorry for running out my mouth yesterday. I'm going to do my best to try to keep it 20-30 minutes. I'm going to do my best to make sure I'm using at least a snowball, if not the awesome sure mic from Ralph. And on top of that, I'm going to make sure to not talk too much about my Patreon. I'm just going to give you this, try to give you this soft sell from time to time. I did the hard sell for the week. I'm done doing the hard sell. I got 15 people. I will just say this to end it. If it's been a couple of days since I got a new, since I got a new Patreon, okay? If you are kind enough to join my Patreon, I don't want to admit this before, but you will forever, even if you only joined for a month, I hope you joined for longer. I'm going to make it worth your while, but you will forever be encased as nerd herd number blank. So Tim, the lion man, Lee, very famous tribes member, shout out, uh, tribe member number 26 or of course to the poor man's pinball tribe. Hey, we got, we got two tribe members. That's not bad. I, you know what? A lot of the tribe members, they're not going to listen to every single blog that I do. I've done six, seven, 800. Now, you know, when you include extra interviews, all my live streams, that sort of thing. They're not going to be listening to every time. But you know what? And they don't have to. And just because you're listening, I want to make this abundantly clear. A lot of people can't afford Patreons or they don't want to or they only have a limited budget for like, for me, I only spend $4.99 per month on Netflix. I got to watch hell a ton of commercials because of that. But other than that, the only thing we have is Prime because that comes with our Amazon because we live out in the fricking boonies in the middle of nowhere. So we absolutely have to have that to survive on a day basis because we just can get many things like several things are seven hours round trip in halifax or three hours round trip plus you know give or take depending on the Carl Weathers the traffic all that stuff in monkton so we use amazon a lot but um i forced him to lion man lead by the way franchi your excuse this is where i'm saying i'm not going to talk anymore about pinball i really do truly believe listen is it a red herring for sure what Bugs said is definitely 100% going to be Beetlejuice. Of course not. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. See, just by saying it three times, you're going to get it. But I don't even care what it is. I'm just excited. When you hear Bugs say that they are three or four years more advanced and that he, I mean, he was speaking to the quality control. He was speaking to the legitimacy of like how well they're going to be built and how reliable they're going to be, especially at a place like on location, maybe like the electric bat where the machines are on from 5 a.m. in the morning to like 3 or 4 a.m., you know what I mean? And that's the type of reliability you've got to have so we can grow barcades, so we can grow arcades, so we can grow even family fun centers like Dave and Buster's and stuff, right? Because the more techs that get called out there more often, and I heard this at Palace Ad in London. I've heard this actually out here in Riverside, you know, that the amount of maintenance at a bowling alley, not the one that my buddy takes care of the other one but the amount of maintenance and time and energy that the pinball machines have the you know they have those little kitty machines it's just a screen and they run for millions and millions and millions of plays a pinball machine has a real live moving part inside of it and it will just break down slightly more often than one of those arcade machines and that's natural and that's normal and that's okay but the easier the pinball machines are to maintain the more locations are going to take them and that's why the reliability and I added the two words on location at the end. So anyways, I want to tell this really quick story for Tim the Lion Man Lee. He made a joke one time, was like, dude, how many ex-girlfriends do you have? You've got to stop talking about your ex-girlfriends. You've just told too many stories. Well, you know what? I might be just throwing away my Tim the Lion Man Lee Patreon here by telling one more girlfriend story. But I thought about this one because I saw this particular pair of shoes in the last week and I think it's a decent one. But I do have to get to a soccer game. So I'm going to tell it very, very, very quickly. A girl and I who had been engaged, we had been together like three and a half years on and off, all the way since high school. You know, I went to her grade 12 prom with her, that kind of thing. We had been together for a long time. I thought we were going to live together forever. I have mad ADHD. It's possible she was dealing with some other things. We were both like type A strong personalities, which we got along sometimes and we really didn't get along other times. Well, when we finally broke up, we left on some bad terms. She may or may not have heard. not too long after that I may have held hands with one of her friends or something. I'm not really sure. Girls get mad about that, right? They don't like it when you hold hands with their best friends, especially after you break up with them. But what she did next was so uncalled for. Sure, yeah, I held hands with a couple of your friends. Who cares? The point is that she walked up to me at the legendary pinball bar known as Call the Office, and Sunday night, was it Moe Gravy or Ray Gunn? I think Ray Gunn is Sunday nights, which was like all retro. and then Moe Gravy was like jazz and funk and breakdancing. So like one of the, it's gone now. You can look it up though. Shout out to Sean Murray, by the way, who played in our Monday Night Pinball League there. He unfortunately passed not too long ago after having some stomach issues for a couple of years, but he played in our Monday Night League there and I've always wanted to give the chance to shout out to Sean Murray. Sean Murray was there for the very last night ever that we closed down Call of the Office before the pins were removed by Speedy at Speed City Records. And that was a very memorable night. That's something I would have to talk about behind the paywall. But we closed up, called the office, and we had a blast. And maybe we had even a better blast after that. But to go back to this girlfriend, on the Sunday night, the first time she saw me, she knew I loved to go there. She tracked me down. And she, like, whipped her drink in my face, like ice cubes and all. And, like, it was, I got all sticky. And there was, like, popping and stuff. And, like, it went all over my face, my clothes. Back then, I used to fashion myself as a fashionista and think I dressed really cool. was wearing a lot of fresh jive and billabong and really like surfer what you can imagine it was the 90s and i was a surfer skateboarder punk rock dude but the point is she didn't just do this once after she did it the third time i went to the managers was like can you just ask her i don't care if she comes here but it's been three sundays in a row when like and i'm single now i'm trying to vibe out you know what i mean and she's just wrecking my entire uniform every time i got there and like for the whole night and then so they eventually said listen we can't ask her not to come unless we see it happen so if she comes here come stand over by the bar and I was like well she I don't think she's going to throw it on me in front of the bar and they're like well we don't think so either but there's nothing else we can do like there was this is before there was cameras everywhere and stuff I don't even think all the office even had cameras near the end but anyways so she I go over to the patio and I tell the guy the situation that I you know and I tip him well I always give a good tip on the first beer of the night that way they never overlook you the rest of There's a good timbit for you or tidbit if you're Americano. And I basically said to him, like, dude, can you please try your best? I'm going to get a drink and you just keep an eye. The security said they need to actually have someone from the bar see her do it. So I'm going to come like stand in this general area off to your side. It wasn't that busy yet. It was still kind of light out with the patio lanterns out on the patio bar. And I got my drink and I purposely was like five to six feet away from the bar, but also close enough that, you know. And then when she came out there, I just said, listen, Rachel, I've already talked to, oh my God, I said her name. I'm sorry. No, it's not the electric bat one. It's a totally different one. But I said to her, I said, listen, I've already talked to the management. You've done this three weeks in a row. You've wrecked my clothes. Could you at least just start throwing water at me so you're not, you know, buying a new drink for five or six bucks each time? And she looked at me straight in the face and said, sure. And I looked down and she had two drinks in her hand. I could clearly see one was like a vodka orange or something. and the other one was like a water. And so she literally just, this time instead of throwing it, she was actually slightly nicer about it. She held it above my head and slowly poured it all the way down me. And right at that moment, I watched the bartender leave the bar and the two bouncers came back a second later. And wow, karma's a B-I-T-C-H. That's all I'll say. She got taken out and she started kicking and yelling and don't touch me and don't ditch your hands. I'm going to sue you. And she's throwing her drinks and she's in her tall boots and everything. They used to call them prostitute or hooker boots. I would never do that. If you want to have sex for money, you go do your thing, okay? Totally liberal like that. I'm just fine. You go do your thing over there. I don't want to be part of it. But don't be throwing your drinks on me, okay? So anyways, she was banned for like three months and then I saw her four or five months later and when I saw her, I said, oh, you're going to go ahead and throw your drink on me so I don't have to see you for another three months? And she said, I'm not going to throw my drink on you but I'll never, ever talk to you again. And I said, thank you, you just made my night. And she walked away, and I don't think we ever talked after that. I kind of saw her walking around at different punk rock shows or whatever, but that's the story, that's the end of it. I'm sorry this podcast ran so long. You know me, I get bored, and as Jamie says, ooh, I was born a rambling man. All right, and until next time, pinball nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe spooky pinball. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.