All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he hopes to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 574 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name is Orbital Albert, or at least it used to be Orbital Albert, because on today's instead of being the character I usually play on this podcast, who's an over-the-top, yelling, screaming, ranting... Lunatics may be taking it slightly too far, but you know, I'm just going to be just Albert, I guess, today. So, good old Orbiters taking a day off. This is kind of a special episode. I want to announce some major changes happening. The first one of such you just heard. I'm just going to be more myself. I always talk about authenticity is important. And look, the things that I've said on the show, for the most part, when I wasn't trying to be just comedically funny to make a point, have been my authentic self. But it's me playing like the most angry, irritated, or excited version of myself. And although I'm sure many of you like hearing an excited version of myself, I end up saying stupid things that I don't mean and I later regret. and I'm also in my own day-to-day life just trying to be a more calm, relaxed person. I'm increasing my meditation. I don't want to go too far off topic here, but I am actually seeking some help, working on my mental health in two different areas, actually. So I know that my listens will probably go way down. I'm never going to get peak listens like the Stern rant and get almost 1,000 listens in less than three days. And that's okay, though. I think that's okay for me. What I would rather do is just not lose any more friends in pinball. Since that rant, I'm pretty sure I'm down like four content creators or something like that at this point, unfortunately. And that just sucks because my favorite thing about being in pinball content creation is supporting the other pinball content creators. And for the most part, yes, although from time to time, like one in ten shows, I may call one out or be a little bit over constructive or rude about it. most of the time, I am overwhelmingly positive on the show. And someone maybe who only gets a link to my negative or rude shows might not think that because I can tell you this, the shows where I am calm, relaxed, have a straightforward perspective. Nobody listens. Nobody shares. Nobody cares. No one writes me. I don't get any donations. No one buys any coffee. When I go off the rails, I break records with numbers I get people reaching out to me do you know what I mean? and I guess what I'm saying is I'm going to trade all that I don't care if I never sell another bag of coffee beans or tea at least here on the show I don't care if I never get another donut and I'm not going to be asking for either of those on this show as we move forward with the Pimble Nerds Podcast 2.0 it will be slightly less of a blog you're also going to hear less filler words. It doesn't mean at Christmas time I might not do an episode where I have a couple beers and I bring back good old Orbiter, okay? But, moving forward, I just want to be more calm, more relaxed. And I'm sorry to all you hardcore pinball nerds who have told me that I am the only pinball podcast that you are able to listen to without having to fast forward I guess I am now the only pinball podcast that you're going to have to put in four times fast forward because I'm trying to think about what I'm saying more often than just going off the rails and letting it slide. It's probably not good for my mental health either to just completely say whatever comes to my mind right away unfiltered. So although I'm sure I will lose some people hopefully I won't lose as many friends and maybe I'll go down to exactly zero listeners nobody will listen but at the same time I'll feel better about myself and I won't be feeding that side of me that I don't like because most of the time I am actually a really mellow down-to-earth calm chillax dude uh uh okay within in comparison to myself from 20 years ago or 10 years ago even um maybe in the grand scheme of things I'm not a mellow let's just say Monday to Friday when I'm chilling at home like I am right now on the homestead. And, you know, that's why I moved out of a big hustle bustle of the city so I could live a more calm, relaxing life. And this is just how I am most of the time. For those of you who know me in person and played a pinball tournament with me, I'm not like, hey, how's it going? My name's Orby. You know, that's kind of like the radio show. You know, that's, I don't know, I guess, I guess I thought that's what you were supposed to do, kind of. I don't know. And I also just thought, like, it's kind of fun, which it is kind of fun, but I think that what it does is it feeds like this negative, it's almost like the social media negative algorithm. So anyways, I'm going to be a little more contemplative. I'm still going to be weird. I'm still going to be weird, y'all. It's still going to be the weirdest pinball podcast on planet Earth. In fact, I got some weird stuff coming up. I would much rather people say, oh, instead of, oh, that guy, he loco, he crazy, man, something wrong with him, or, you know, on the flip side of that, A lot of people say, you should win the Oscar, because I actually thought you were losing your shit there. Which, I mean, I kind of was. I don't want to say it was all acting. I was really genuinely hurt and upset. I just, I let it get to me purposefully to just let it all out. Like taking a big upper decker all the way. So you see, I'm still going to go off the rails a little. But let's get to the topic of today. I am lucky enough to, between my two sons, be at a grand total of 34 parenting years combined. So that's pretty rad. What's even more rad than that was, growing up, unfortunately, my mother, after she got divorced from my dad, married a much, much, much younger, instead of marrying for money, she married for love, I'll just say. She married a much younger, she was the cougar. My mom the cougar. That's kind of, I mean, she's been dead and gone from the earth for 15 years now. So I guess I can say that. Hi, mom. I can see your picture over there. I love you, mom. There we go. Anyways, my mom was literally my best friend. And losing her was probably the worst thing that ever happened. She also bought me my first pinball machine ever, which is just one of those like, and I say just the $100 one. I think I was in grade five or grade six, the $100 one from Sears. and I remember I played with it so hard that the batteries died out and my poor stepdad had to drive into town to go get batteries because a little small store in our town was gone. But today I wanted to talk about how to be a rad dad because although I'm not a very good pinball podcaster and I certainly am not a great breadwinner, to be honest. Who likes bread though? Carbs suck. Let's go keto. Let's go keto here on the podcast. I did want to talk about how to be a rad dad get your kids into pinball, keep them into pinball, and really how to be okay with them not being into pinball at the same time, because I've gone through both phases with both of my sons. The Hey Dude, my oldest son, his nickname, it used to be Hurry Up Hayden. We don't use that one anymore, though. We always call people the nicknames they prefer, because that's just rad, and that's how we do it as being a rad dad. And Orbs, Little Orbs Jr., Little Orby Jr., I don't call him that, L-O-J. We called him L-O-J for a while. I don't think he prefers that. I think he just likes Owen. We used to call him the O-Man, but I think he just likes Owen. So I will respect my son and call him what he prefers to be called, which is just Owen. And wow, this dude, he was out of pinball for like three years. Hayden and I, that was kind of our thing. We would go play pinball after we moved here. He would come play on a Friday night when we were having a big tournament. He would come play if I made him a trade or I nudged him in that direction, which is the best you can do with kids. But Owen has just got back into pinball. And now every time we go anywhere with pinball, he wants to stay there and play pinball as opposed to going to the mall, as opposed to going here, there, anywhere. And Hayden, now that he's 19 and he can go to bars and he can go to parties, he's not going to the bars with pinball machines at this point. And he's going to like the... Probably. Oh, my God. Draco Franchi just looked up at me like, Dad, I was trying to see these. I'm sorry, Draco. I will take you out soon, my buddy. Okay. So, oh, speaking of sound, speaking of sound, I'd be reminisced, I believe is the word, if I didn't give a shout out to my buddy Glenn, the skateboarder there, Glenn Debbia. Glenn actually either did or helped with and I'll have to ask Ian Herwer the next time I see him over there at P3 Multimorphic of course I don't think he's with P3 Multimorphic I think he has his own company Herwer Games I believe it's called I think but his new pin I think that Glenn Glenn Waechter did all the sound for it or his new I guess it would be more so software that's played on Drained so yeah I would like to speak with I might even try to get them both on the show Who knows? Maybe I could get... That would be kind of pretty cool if I managed to get Glenn and Ian on the same show. Maybe I'm going to start doing... You know what? Triple Vuck didn't work with the Vuck Boys, but maybe I'm going to try to start getting two hosts at once. What's more complicated than trying to figure out the sound for one? I managed to do it. I managed to do it with Peter Barclay. Oh, my God, the Alaskan guys. I managed to do it with the Alaskan dudes, so that was pretty awesome. also I'm going to be announcing number 4 and number 5 of the top 5 most rad I kind of went off the rails and got off track there for a little bit but I have announced my top 3 of course with Zyron Silvers and Elliot Keith out there shout out, shout out and shout out to Zyron's dad who also lives Mr. Silvers I'll call you because I don't know your name, sorry but I want to get back to being a more chill, rad, mellow in real life I'm just a pretty chill, mellow stoner dude who, yeah, I make a lot of sarcastic jokes, and after I've had five or six beers, I'm probably closer to the character I used to play on said, what was it called? Pinball Nerds Podcast? That doesn't make sense. Of course it's a podcast. Anyways, here on PNP, I'm PMP. It's that old mate. Here on the show, I might still go off the rails, but I want to make sure that I never have ever a show like I did where I was ranting and raving off the rails with Stern. And why would I even let pinball, even jokingly, get my blood pressure that high? I shouldn't. And I will say this. For people who are still convinced that I'm just an evil person because I was mad because Stern raised their prices to so astronomical that middle America can no longer afford an LE or L, barely even a premium. And I was upset at the fact that after they raised these prices, not only did they not lower them when sales were tanking for so long, they were so, a company that was so quick in being reactive in the past was so slow at being reactive to pricing changes. We know it's coming. We're seeing the $500 off over there at American Pinball and sometimes I slag American Pinball, but sometimes I got to give them their flowers. So there you go, boys. There you go, getting there done. And girls, Sophia's over there. Don't forget about Sophia. Sophia Ryan, I would never forget about her. So all the people over there, you know what? I'm not going to say y'all killing it. But I think, I think, and it was hard for me to listen to that pinball news magazine. I'm only saying, amen, hallelujah. I will only say positive thing about other content creators or nothing at all. Okay, so I'm going to become like Martin Robbins when he's talking about a pinball machine he hates. He's like, well, it's a pinball machine. Okay, that was even worse than my Irish was my Australian. But that's why you guys listen. You don't listen. Wait, now am I making fun of Marty Robbins by saying that? Oh my God, what if I offended all the Australians and the New Zealanders all at once? That's it. I might as well end the show. Exit stage north, left, whatever they do here in Canada. I don't know. Go break a leg. Go do something. But as a dad, and really I'm speaking to all the parents out there. This isn't exclusive for the dads, even though I think it's nice to have something for the dudes, for the men's on Father's Day. Don't worry, ladies. I'm not going to tell you you can't listen to this episode. okay and for and for all the dudes listening who don't have kids or their kids are grown and raised and not in the house anymore I think what you could assume this episode would be similar to is if I was talking about a neighbor a friend a family member I know at one point I was at a pinball tournament and I believe there was around 18 people in the tournament 18 people At my best friend Melvis house So he got the receipts on this There might have been 15, I don't know. I'd been drinking all day. Once a year I play in this thing called Hart. And a good friend of mine from London, Robert Englunds, shout out Ben, comes in. He is an engineer there, and another friend of mine who is a lawyer flies in. and basically what happened, another one who's a politician, he comes from Kitchener-Waterloo actually. So some of my old super nerdy friends who are way more successful than me and could actually afford tons of pinball machines that don't love pinball like me, so don't own any, we all play in this thing called heart and for 24 hours, we play 24 different games. Every year we trade out the game that gets the worst votes and we add in a new one. We do everything from bowling to pool to like Mad Gabs. I think there's like five or six board games, checkers. We don't do chess. Chess got voted out because it takes way, way, way too long when you're having that many people play around, Robin, even with like 10 chess boards. But I got all of these people playing in a pinball tournament and they really got into it. Like when we were down to the final four, they were all like super, like way smarter than me, super intelligent dudes. And I somehow won that pinball tournament. And I remember looking around at them and going, wow, all of these 18 people here are into pinball because of me. Not one of these single solitary people played pinball growing up and were into it, and I've slowly got all of them into it. And now we have people like my best friend Melvis, my other buddy Travis, who go out to pinball tournaments locally. And all of that has to be done very carefully because it's really easy. I akin it to back when I was part of a cult, and I've got to even mention that because my dad's listening. We should call my dad. I'm trying to think of how we could call my dad on speakerphone. I'll prank him another time. I'll prank him another time. It's too early in Ontario. Oh, God. It's like 8 a.m. in Ontario. My dad could have gone back for his mid-morning nap. But happy Father's Day, Dad. But to all you listening, whether it's a neighbor, a co-worker, a child, better than ever telling them they have to play pinball, better than, say, trying to buy them off with money to play pinball, the best thing to do would be to gently nudge them and encourage them especially have pinball machines in around your house have one or two pinball machines I mean my youngest son can say since he was what what nine years ago now so almost a decade I guess from when he was like seven years old we had at least one pinball machine in the house at all times and I'm telling you as a dad when you come home from work or you get out of the shower or you finish making dinner and you walk over and you see your kids playing and you didn't tell them they had to. You didn't even tell them that you wanted them to. And they're getting high scores. They're putting in GCs. And they're, I mean, pinball is freaking fun. It's not a hard sell. It's just got to be done gently. So if you own some in your house, that's a huge win. If you can't afford any, which is totally cool. I don't money shame here. And yes, I have an above ground pool. Sorry, Kaneda. I did recently unblock Chris. Chris, welcome back to Orbital Albert's world. Hopefully Chris and I can... I think we've spent more time blocked from each other than unblocked. Of course, he is probably my top frenemy of all time. However, Chris, I know you don't like the term frenemy, so maybe the new Orbi 2.0 is just going to be your friend. I'm going to try to be your friend, but don't make fun of me for having an above-ground pool, Chris. That wasn't rad. I don't like it when Chris goes in deep at the pinball companies, nobody else is better than him. Like, even my stupid rant to Stern, even though I swore more and was more angry than he gets, and arguably was funnier. I think mine was funnier, maybe, Chris. Sorry. You even said it was freaking hilarious yourself on the show, dude. But my rant didn't really go anywhere. And let's be honest, he has a much bigger audience than me. So when he goes on a rant and he chews out the pinball companies for valid reasons, I love it. I think no one else is better at being critical, not just to Stern or Stern's marketing department, but to every pinball company. Of course, from time to time, Chris has his biases, and he goes through times when he just freaking is a hardcore simp for JJP, and other times he's just simping it out for Stern, and other times he's, I don't know, all his European buddies there and stuff. And who knows? I mean, even, you know, from time to time, you know, from time to time, Chris makes valid points about other content creators. But I think what Chris shines at and what I respect him most for is when he does go after pinball companies for not doing what they say they're going to do. That's what I like hearing. I can't do what Chris does and I don't want to. I'm going to be more the lovey-dovey, like, you know, I love all things in pinball. I do love all things in pinball. The only thing in pinball I don't love, in fact, is the prices. It's not even the fact that I don't get invited. It's okay if you don't invite me, Stern. But please, when you introduce Pokemon pinball, if that is true, if Pokemon is coming to Stern, please, please, please, either make the premiums, like the pros $400 to $500 less, the premium like $1,000 less, and the LEs $1,500 to $2,000 less. And Stern, you would be full of those lines. You'd be, you, I don't think you'd get 8,000 orders, but Stern, please. I'm saying it nicely now. And after everything I did to Stern, I think I was bringing this point up before, after everything I did and said and all, you know, me being a dick and everything, here's, this speaks volumes. Zach Sharp didn't unfriend me. He could have unfriended me in a freaking heartbeat. Nobody in pinball content, nobody out there listening to this show, nobody would have said, Zach, you're wrong for unfriending Orby. You know, maybe he forgot to. Maybe he's going to hear this and just be like, meh. I mean, I assume he doesn't listen. I hope no one sent it to him, but I'm assuming someone probably did send him a link up part of it. And if they didn't, they probably will now. Jesus, I'm sorry, Zach. I'm sorry, all Stern. This is the start of my Stern apology tour. At least, I mean, I was called a Stern fanboy for like almost a decade, so at least I most likely won't be called that anymore. But I would like to move forward, and I am something I have shared with Ryan Barry and a couple of my other friends. I am working on becoming a better content creator. It's something neat. Like a lot of people wouldn't assume that Josh Mudd, tribe members, shout out, right here on the Poor Men's Pinball Network, they wouldn't assume that Josh Mudd and I would be like really good buds. And I mean, don't get me wrong, we're not. We don't talk very often. In fact, we haven't spoke very much for a while. But when I went through a really tough time like three years ago on the show, probably the toughest time I've gone through in my life as an adult anyways, maybe, since my mom passed. Josh was the first one to reach out. The thing is, he posted the other day something that I really respect. He said, as long as you're trying to get 1% better per day... I don't remember the exact quote. I don't remember the exact quote. But it was just talking about how, to me, the gist of it for me was that if you're improving 1% per day, you're someone who's trying to make yourself a better person. That's the important part. Like, what matters more so is your intuition and your perspective and why you're doing what you're doing. When you're making fun of other pinball content creators saying that, ha ha ha, you have an above ground pool, you're literally saying, I can make more money than you. Or, in my particular case, although I don't think I could make more money than Chris, I mean, I have kind of chosen to live a kind of a quieter, more calm, more mellow life, and I've chosen to be time wealthy. There is two things. They say, you know, you can't buy time. Well, you can't. I mean, why is Back to the Future most people's favorite movie? Because if we could buy time, we'd go back to being a teenager. We'd go back and we would go, I don't know, that girl that turned us down in college. I don't know, or guy, whoever, what, you know. The point is that you only get one chance at this life, and if you're not always trying to make yourself at least 1% better, what are you even doing in your time? And Chris, stop making fun of people with above-ground pools. Now, when you're making fun of people for their clothing, I think like when Kaneda wears a pink Gucci shirt and he admits he spent $800 on the shirt, and then he makes fun of a $2,000 Stern topper, it's like, pot? Why don't you call it frickin' black mofo? At the same time, I think that when someone makes irreverent, over-the-top, silly choices that they choose themselves, we should be able to make fun of each other lightheartedly, calmly, cautiously, without going overboard like I did to Stern. So thank you, thank you, thank you, Zach Sharp, for not unfriending me. Hopefully you didn't have to hear my rant. And I apologize if you had to hear part of it, because frankly, it's unlistenable. I've tried three times now. I have the master copy. I cannot get through more than 30 seconds of it. I hear that and I'm just like, wow, this person is going through like the worst day of their life, which I mean, you know, I was having a bad time. I will be open and honest that I, you know, was having some issues as a dad and a house hussy. You know, I was falling short of my house husband. The two times I've came back from trips this year, it's taken me two or three weeks to get back into my rhythm of being like an awesome house husband and awesome dad because because usually when I come back, I've been partying for five or six days, and both times I came back, I was sick for two or three weeks, and I also have an autoimmune disorder that I'm trying to work out and work with, and, you know, I probably should be masking up. I'm not going to lie. A part of me is afraid of people making fun of me for masking up, and it's like, it's either do I wear the mask, and then I'm not sick for two or three weeks, and I'm a better house husband and a better father when I come back from going on a pinball trip, or do I wear the masks the whole time. Everyone's like, oh, he's afraid of COVID. And what's this guy's issue? And it's like, so that's why I never, even one of my good friends, I'm not going to name who it was, they were making fun of someone wearing a mask at a pinball tournament we went to. And I was like, yo, dude, first of all, there's like 100 reasons why someone could be wearing a mask. Second of all, who cares? Life's too short. Who cares? If you want to go spend $13,500 on a pinball machine because you love the theme, and hopefully you've played it a couple times, because as we say here, that motto is not changing. That's with me until episode 1111, okay? I'm doing 1,111 episodes of this. And I'm sorry, but all the rest are going to be positive for the most part, whenever it can be. But for those of you going on trips, what, like, I think I might just start wearing a mask. Because it's either on the plane, you're sitting in a plane with like 200 people all re-breathing the same air. And then you get to a tournament. And I did all this stuff to amp up. I was taking tons of vitamin D. I was doing zinc. I was doing even echinacea for three days leading up to it. I was doing all these things to try to keep my immune system healthy. Mind you, I was smoking like a freaking chimney, Daganja and everything else I could get my hands on. All legal things, all legal things. Don't worry, no black tar heroin here. But, you know, I partied like a rock star and drank my ass off. And I'm sure all of those things are horrible for your immune system. That's part of the reason why I got sick when I came back. But part of the reason why I had this horrible rant was because I was just not getting along with my wife. I was not getting along especially with both of my sons. I had issues with both of my sons in a few weeks leading up to that. And to boot, I was mad at Stern for not being reactive enough and lowering their prices. Which, when you're coming out with a Keith Elwin Jaws game, and the more and more people play Jaws, the better and better it gets. Everyone who bought Jaws and sold it early code is kicking themselves. Especially if you bought it and you lost money on Jaws. right now all you're thinking is what did I do people are like there's rumors that people are saying it could be better than Godzilla I don't think it's better than Godzilla you can hear here on the very first show when I was being super positive talking about Jaws for the most part and I did say that I think it will be known as being better than AIQ and better than Iron Maiden but probably not as good as Jurassic Park and definitely not as good as Godzilla even though I think Jurassic Park is probably better. To me personally, I enjoy playing Jurassic Park slightly more than Godzilla. That's just me personally. Don't come at me. Go ahead. Give me your so angry at me rants. I am going to let people roast me. Is that wild? My birthday is coming up next month. I don't know how I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to request you get the same way that I do five rad and one bad to make sure most of my shows are positive. I would like, if people are going to write in to roast me at pinballnerds at gmail.com, Give me five rad things, even if they're like, I don't mind your interview shows, or I like the fact that maybe you're trying to be slightly more positive, or I like the fact that you try to do constructive criticism without being a total negative Nancy and Debbie Downer most of the time. People like the fact that I walk that line. So if you can think of at least a couple positives, if you just want to go on a wild rant and just send me what you hate about my show, go for it. Especially you, Zach Sharp. You deserve, like, anyone from CERN Marketing Department, they can say whatever the hell they want. As long as it's funny, I will read it. Hell, I might even open it. I might even get rid of the five rad and one bad because that's almost too congratulatory. If you send me a rant, I don't care how mean it is. Even if Dawn, love you, Dawn. I want to give you a hug, buddy. I know Monica, Dawn's wife, put in an awesome order through Angry Alpaca. Really appreciate her doing that She did reach out to let us know that she hadn received it yet My wife checked on the tracking number let her know it going to be there this week So I put in some extra special treats there for Don and Monica including a nice handwritten card. And, you know, I mean every word of it in the card, Don. And I'll say it right here again, from one dad to another, I hope you have a rad Father's Day, my dude. And someday, I don't know if it's going to be Pinball Expo, you know, 2030, someday, maybe we could play a game of pinball. That's all I ask. Just one game of pinball. That would be cool. Because, you know, I was Don's biggest fan, which is kind of weird. I feel like a fallen, a fallen, a fallen angel. He pushed me into Kaneda's arms. It's your fault, Don. No, I'm just kidding. It is weird because you do feel like you kind of can't be friends with both of them because both of them don't want you to be friends with the other. And I kind of like trying to like be friends with everybody in pinball, which is really hard to do. It's hard to be friends with Franchi. and Zach Manning. You know what I mean? Like, it's hard to be friends with Kaneda and Dawn. It's tough. It's tough. You got to walk all these weird little lines, you know. You don't want to shout out one news site more than the other. And it's like, I love all the pinball news sites. I love everybody who's working hard. We're all working hard for a collective goal. Whether you're a podcast, whether you're a YouTuber, we're working towards this collective goal of introducing what we love so much, what is probably for most of us listening to this, the best, brightest, most coolest, most rad thing in our lives is pinball. Our pinball friends. For some of us, it'll be our pinball tournaments. For others of us, it'll be our pinball collections. And for even more of us, you know, it might be just being part of the pinball zeitgeist, listening to a pinball podcast. Or who knows, you might get a shout out. Or who knows, Orby might go a little bit too far off the rails. Or maybe, just maybe, he'll have a nice, calm, cool, collected episode that makes sense. so as a pinball parent as a pinball dad as a pinball neighbor co-worker friend a pinball nerd out there in the greater dysphoria let me tell you you need to gently nudge these people and so it's much easier with your kids so let me give you an example of uh even a couple months ago when i owned guardians of the galaxy orby's arcade is empty right now even though i'm working on possibly getting a golden tea in there to start golden tea was like i would say through most of college, I played more golden tea, pool, and darts than I did pinball, because pinball was hardly anywhere, and like, golden tea was freaking everywhere, like, well, even in my local college bar. Shout out to Fanshot, the Outback Shack. I ended up, when I was, I ended up working for Flying Monkey's Craft Brewery, and I ended up closing a deal at my old bar that I used to party at all the time, which was so funny. I thought maybe one person would recognize me there. Nope. When you go back to your college bar 10 years later, doesn't matter how big of a celebrity you were then, ain't nobody know who you are, because they change staff every two years. But I've gone off topic here. Hey, I did say I was going to try not to be a negative Nancy. I did say I don't want to personally call out any more content creators, hopefully ever again. I definitely don't want to go on rants like the Stern thing again. But back even a couple months ago when I had Guardians of the Galaxy here in Orbeez Arcade, sometimes I would do an easy suggestion like I know each week we do, we call it the hour of power to try to make it sound fun and either Saturdays or Sundays when we get all four members of my family together, we all pick four different parts of the house like one member of the family will do both bathrooms, the other will do a really good clean like spotless, when you own a coffee and a tea company I'm sorry like I might be Dutch and I might be very cheap and I might be very frugal but I also like, this is also a Dutch thing, I like my house clean and spotless and when you run a tea company and a coffee company from your house that's how you want it so we do like a deep clean of our entire kitchen every Saturday and someone has to do that one then someone does all the carpets and I've gone off track here a little but what I will say I'll say is do you guys want to do 40 do you guys want to do an hour of cleaning or I would allow 45 minutes of cleaning try to squeeze it all in in 45 minutes but then after that we meet in the arcade and we all play one game of pinball together and you sure his chats, not just, not just little, not just Owen and hey dude, but also drop target Danielle's like, uh, yeah, let's do 45 minutes of cleaning. So whenever you give that little choice, you know, or you say, oh, well it's, it's, it's up to you. You know, uh, I'm trying to think when Owen was younger, some choices that I gave him, like I wouldn't be like either eat your broccoli or play pinball. Like, you know, you should be able to, first of all, finding a theme they like is so important. And that is part of the reason why I got guardians of the Galaxy. Guardians of the Galaxy was Owen's favorite MCU for, you know, movie and everything for years and years and years. And also just the super tight shots I knew would help me become a better pinball player. I do really legitimately miss playing pinball at home. So I would like to get another pinball machine again, even though this year I've given up having a pinball machine in my arcade so I could take that pool of money and use it to go on trips, which is why I'm here to say, I'm officially, that's it. I'm putting my foot down. I'm putting my foot, I don't care if I got to stand in line for three hours at the passport office and get my passport renewed, I'm coming to Expo. So any y'all that have been waiting to meet me, I'll finally get to meet you at Expo. There's literally people who have listened to hundreds of shows, thousands of hours of me talking into this dumb $80 blue snowball microphone, okay, and they've never met me. Like, I've never met Glenn the Skateboarder. I've never met Christopher Franchi. Not that Franchi listens to every episode, but he definitely listens to some because I get some feedback like that. So Chris, thanks for listening to maybe not all the episodes, but most of them. And I do want to give back. This has been by far my best year in pinball podcasting in the last year. Honestly, between Dono's and Coffee and Tea Sales, I'm up over 10k. That legitimately is more than I've made from collectibles in the last year or damn tootin' close to it. Don't tell the IRS or whatever they have here in Canada. Don't be telling the tax man about those because some of those are cash money sales. A lot of them are trades of my own private goods that I already had not included in that year. So they weren't bought and sold in that year. So it gets a little gray. But honestly, like our TM coffee company obviously, you know, makes in around that much as well. But like this is became me talking to this little microphone is about one third of the income. Now I still save thousands of dollars a year because I do everything else on the homestead, like our own honey, our own maple syrup. We've bought like two, two 18 packs of eggs from Costco in the past five years. And that was like in deep March when like three of our, our birds stopped laying. So like we rarely, rarely, we were down to one when we were down to Betsy, the day of pinball provincials in New Brunswick, when I won the New Brunswick pinball championships, We came home very, very, very late, and the doors were not closed, and a fox got in there and ate... I don't want to go too graphic here. I'm trying to be positive on the show. Unfortunately, I can still see the feathers, but Laverne and Shirley got... Everybody who eats meat on here, if you're a vegetarian and you're offended by this, that's totally cool. But if you're out here and you eat meat, and just hearing about what I have to go through as a farmer offends you, maybe stop eating meat or watch some Slaughterhouse videos, because believe me, though, I wanted them to retire forever. Both of those girls had given me eggs all the way through COVID for four years. Both of them had probably given me, you know, eggs four to five days a week in the summer, then like three out of five days a week in the winter because they were both heirloom. And they were, they're the Quebec ones. No, they don't smoke a cigarette and wear a bandana or anything. But I forget what they are, but they were very specialized heirloom birds. and they were the only ones who gave us eggs in the winter. I've said I wouldn't go too long here today. Let's try to just wrap this up. I'm going to try to just stay on topic here and wrap it up. Basically, when you're being a pinball parent, and it doesn't matter if you have a girl or a boy, I know even my good buddy Matt, he gets his daughter to play from time to time. It's just a matter of doing a trade. At some point, at some point, and this is all being a parent is good at trading, they're going to come to you and they're going to ask you to go on a date they're going to come to you and they're going to ask you to go get a job they're going to come to you and ask you like my youngest son did and he wanted to get a scooter and because it's 49 cc he can drive it on the freaking road and i was like oh my god i know he's drove atvs with friends he did have a scooter till recently but a stand-up scooter that only goes like 30 kilometers an hour and this is a sit down like a gas powered one, not like one of the little electric ones. This one he has to ride on the road. Like he can't just ride on the sidewalk or whatever. Anyways, he came to me and I had to try to, I had to try to bargain with him and I had to make rules. And I had to say, if I see you one time, once not wearing your helmet, I don't even care if you're on our seven acre property and you're riding it without your helmet gone, gone. I had to tell him the first time that he's being, you know, that he gets in trouble this summer. The first thing he's losing is his scooter. And if he thinks he's going to drive it even one time once in bad Carl Weathers when it's raining out and he's going to be high risk to go down, like those things are death traps in bad Carl Weathers, those tiny little wheels. And especially like a 15-year-old who's... So it was very hard for me because I couldn't tell him. It's his own money that he works every Saturday at Angry Alpaca, the Pugwash Farmer's Market, making money. I can't tell my own son he can't spend his own money on that, but I can tell him he can't drive it. But I don't want to tell him he can't drive it because you know what? in less than six months from now, he's going to be driving a motor vehicle. He can go out in six months from now and he can legally get his motorcycle driver's license and go drive a 150cc motorbike. Or 200. What is that? Kawasaki Ninja. I don't even know. Like, he can go get whatever. Some type of crotch rocket. Now, of course, again, he has to have my permission to ride it while he's still living here. Or at least until he's, I don't know, 18, 19. But being a parent is a delicate tightrope that you have to walk. And it's all about bargaining and making trades. and as a pinball nerd dad for the last 10 years every time my sons have came to me and asked for something I've either said fine then you have to do an extra load of dishes or fine but Friday night during the live stream I want you to join me or fine you can go get this new Pokemon set but I want you to come to this tournament next weekend because you haven't been to a tournament in a while or fine you can go to this party and I'll drop you off at it and I'll make sure you get picked up at midnight and I won't enjoy my Friday night so much so I can be a good dad and be a DD and come pick you up late from the party at 1 or 2 a.m., if tomorrow, when we go to Moncton, you'll come and play pinball with me for the afternoon. And so I have just been making these trades, and you nudge them towards the games that they like. Drop Target Danielle hates modern games. So when I'm at a place that has any EMs or solid states that are a little bit slower playing, I ask her if she wants to play a game with me. When I'm at a location that only has mostly modern sterns, she usually just says, hey, I'll see you in a bit, and she'll go shopping or go do something fun or look for a cool place for us to go for a meal on the patio because we're both foodies, right? So that's the cool thing about being a pinball dad, is that all of us listening to this, not just the dad, but every parent, frick, I'm trying not to swear on today's show, every single pinball nerd listening to this has one co-worker, one family member, one friend who doesn't play pinball. And you just gently nudge them. Because your buddy, even if your buddy's going to come to you and be like, oh, yeah, do you want to come with me on this, whatever, hunting, fishing trip, or you want to come see this ball game with me, and maybe you don't like that team as much, you can just say, yeah, that would be really rad. I'll go watch Vladimir Guerrero and Bo Bichette knock the ball out of the frickin' park at the Sky Dome with you, or the Rogers Center, as long as, in between the second and the third inning, when we go by the frickin' hot dogs with pinball degenerate Joe Chervino, say, on Hot 99 Cent Hot Dog Day when Joe's going to get five or six of them and see how many he can crank back. Will you just come play some pinball with me? And he'll probably go, or she will go, well, yeah, I can go play some pinball. Like, if we're already going to be there. I know how much you love pinball. I don't want to come to your house just to play pinball. But, yeah, if we're already going to be there, which is really cool. If you live in the GTA or Greater Toronto Area or TDOT, as they used to call it, and you go see a Jays game, on the middle level there, the 200 section I believe, there is free pinball machines. It's like modern sterns set to free play. Put pinball everywhere. That's what I'm saying. Is that no matter what you're doing or where you're going, doesn't matter if it's a bachelor party, maybe not like at your best friend's wedding. Don't be like, hey, on your wedding night, did you and your wife want to come out, check out my pinball collection? What I'm saying is whether it is a kid, whether it is a friend, a family member, we all want to expand pinball. we all want to get more people into pinball and the gentle nudge works better than a push always it always has and it always will so if you want to nudge your kids into it and and and twice twice once my oldest son and once my youngest son really didn't care about pinball they refused to like they didn't want to listen to any pinball podcasts in the background like while we were driving somewhere or something they'd be like dad can we put on anything else they didn't want to watch like uh pinball tournaments like the awesome if but 19 even though I was a little bit critical of Carl if you go listen to that you know I do think I do think I wasn't so much critical of Carl of the people who are taking five minutes purposely between each and every ball making it near impossible even for someone like myself who loves tournament pinball that was tough to watch that was real tough I had to put those uh toothpicks in there and just be like no I was actually just like I was listening to a different podcast in between each one No The commentators did a great job keeping it interesting in between, so shout out to them. And I want to give all the praise and glory to our Lord and Father, Karl DeAngelo of IE Pinball. He is the modern, he really has, between him and Jack Danger, you know, Jack Danger really brought pinball streaming to the forefront, but Like Carl of IE Pinball did a great job really setting up how, like tournament pinball, how to show pinball. And he literally wrote the book on how to do the rig for and that sort of thing. So I appreciate IE Pinball. And I think that it was a spectacular job done. I just, you know, and you can go listen to that last episode. I'm not that proud of that episode. But basically I did talk about the two things that I thought would make, you know, two improvements. One improvement no one's talking about. and is kind of expensive and difficult to do. And the other improvement is very easy to do, and I'm not going to lie, as a quick update, Jeff Deolis, I'm not sure if it was through Pinball Profile. Actually, I think it was on Dalton Eli. He did a really funny... If you don't follow Dalton and Dalton's pinball streaming on Facebook, you should. He does awesome cartoons. I would love to have those in the future as part of the Pinball Nerds podcast, trading cards. But I should reach out to Dalton about that. Maybe I'll wait a little while from that Stern podcast. I'll wait for the heat to die down for a couple more months. But Dalton made the point that, yeah, sometimes some people are trying to ice you. And I don't know if he was poking fun at it. He probably was. So hopefully I'm not misunderstanding it, Dalton. But basically he was sharing the fact that, yeah, some players do try to ice you. Some players do go take five minutes on purpose. And that does happen. It is a real thing that happens between competitors. It's not cool. And it's hard to tell which competitors are attempting to ice you and which competitors are legitimately thinking, oh, geez, he had a big move. I got to leave the pin for at least two minutes for the tilt bob to stop. You know? And what is the difference between maybe someone is, it's 50% one thing, they're waiting for it to stop, and 50% they're, yeah, they're trying to intimidate or ice their other player a little bit or wait for them to cool down more. I don't know. I mean, I'm not good enough at competitive pinball to know those things. I'm not in the zeitgeist of it enough to understand it. But my thought is that if they can do it in chess, which is the most lo-fi sport on planet Earth that we've been playing, or hobby, if you want to call it that, we've been playing for the longest time, and they can implement, like someone posted that, I think it was Robert Byers posted, love your charisma, Robert Byers. Robert Byers is like, well, I'm not even going to say it. See, there you go. I'm speaking slower. I'm preventing myself from saying, I need like a button to just like mute myself when I'm about to say something dumb. Because I definitely wasn't going to say that like, no, see, there you go. I was about to say it again. I'm the worst. But Robert Byers was saying that like Amazon, you can buy 12 chess timers or whatever they're used for, 12 of these little timers for $24. You know what I mean? Like, there were certain games that were, like, really fast-playing older games that, like, you know, you don't have ball save, you don't have extra ball, you don't have easy ramps to just hit and keep repeating the shot. They're, like, either solid state or even some older EMs that are brutalized at IFBA 19 that there was more time. It felt like, it felt like, I haven't gone back in time, but it felt like there was more time between the balls than actually watching playing pinball. And that gets so frustrating. It doesn't matter if it was, and I love hockey, but I purposefully started the Edmonton Oilers, which they lost last night, thank you very much. 3-0. Okay, Edmonton, you made it to the finals. Could you maybe just win one game? I don't want to never hear the end of it from Florida. Like, Eric Stone is just going to wear, at Nationals or Pinmasters next year, Eric Stone's just going to wear a Panthers jersey. I know it. And he's going to make fun of my dry-sidle jersey. I was thinking about getting everyone I love in pinball to sign my dry-saddle jersey next year at Pin Masters. I think that would be cool. I know y'all are thinking, Orby, you're never going to qualify and actually win New Brunswick again, so you won't get to go to Nationals. Yeah, I know that, but I also said it and I meant it. I want to go to Pin Masters every single year of my life for the rest of my life. It was just such a fun, cool event where I got to play with 19 of the top 25 players in North America and probably like a good chunk of the top players in the world. It was just such an awesome experience between D82, Lumberjack Johnnies, being on the live stream, getting to meet so many awesome people. Both the Sharps were there. Getting to meet both them was awesome. You know, just everything, just everything. That was by far the best experience. It was better than Pimberg. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Pimberg heads. Getting to represent a province, getting to go to nationals, getting to play in pinmasters getting to meet how many rad people i met at lumberjack johnny's which the other two are going to be announced by the way uh that i met at pinmasters and nationals and lumberjack johnny's at my wisconsin cheesehead trip um i'm going to be talking about that coming up soon as well because i would like to put a little bow on that and just kind of move on but i've rambled i've ranted if you're a pinball dad out there take a bow if you're a pinball dad who your kid doesn't like pinball right now, it's okay. The best way to get them into pinball is to, like I said, during times when they're not really into it, just don't force them into it. If you force them into it one time once, you've probably lost them for life. But if you always just let them come to you and from time to time, from time to time, I'll go show Owen like a really cool save if I'm walking in a tournament. Hayden will actually watch a little bit of tournament pinball with me, which is nice. Hayden doesn't watch any sports or any real hobbies with me. So it's not like I would expect that. He loves watching Seinfeld with me, which I think is so funny for a 19-year-old. He's like, his humor's finally got to the point that he, like, loves Seinfeld, loves Curb Your Enthusiasm. Oh, and my youngest son, we watch, not Reno 911, Jesus, I haven't thought about that show for a while. That was a funny show. I need short shorts like that. But no, not Reno 911. What is the, Brooklyn Nine-Nine? He loves Brooklyn Nine-Nine. So I love that show, too. That is a hilarious show. I do want to give a quick shout-out to Gary Stern. happy birthday um all the pinball dads out there keep doing your thing we want the future generations to be into pinball i want to play i i want i hope next year at pinball masters uh owen comes i want to rotate bringing one son then the other son and i want to be that dad who's like 50 years old and i'm going to watch my you know 30 year old or 20 i guess he would be 35 year old son uh depending on it is i want to go watch him play like i want to be like dalton's dad that's so cool that dalton's dad comes and supports him and watches and he was a really cool dude a little bit intimidating very like very this big like he he had on a jean jacket or as we call it here a canadian tuxedo i think uh and he he's just a really nice guy but uh you know i want to be that dad who gets to go cheer and i actually think both my sons have a chance to be like i'm in the top one percent of pinball players i actually think hayden has a chance to maybe be in the i wouldn't be shocked if he would be in the top 250 if we had more pins, if I had a little bit more money and I had more pins at home for him to play more, and if we got out to more tournaments, and if he continues to be into it. If he's not into it and he doesn't go to the pinball tournaments, then he's not going to get better. But I do want to get a pinball machine here at the property. But first things first, I'm getting that passport. I'm coming to Expo. I can't wait to meet all of you at Expo, any of you that I haven't met. I'm going to be taking lots of pictures. I'm trying for seriously, like, I know that sounds silly. I'm trying for 500 selfies at Expo. I can't do 100 interviews like I did at Pembroke. That is too crazy. I can't do that. But I want to try for like, okay, maybe 500 is too many. 250 selfies, probably still too many. How about this? 420. I like that. That's a real Orby number there. 420 selfies. Y'all can be part of it. I'm going to have a blast. I'm going to have a fun time. I'm going to try not to play in that pinball tournament at Expo. Because if I'm playing in that pinball tournament, I get zoned in on a pinball tournament, and I put the blinders on like a horsey. and then I don't do anything else but just you know play the thing but anyways this was supposed to be uh just letting you guys know there's gonna be some changes to the show letting you guys know also that from here on forth it's gonna be I'm gonna be a positive poly that's what you're gonna call me it's gonna go back to like when I was on Kaneda's pinball podcast and uh the the comment was uh what's wrong with this guy he's way too positive he's so positive he's got rainbows flying out his arse, I think he said. So, rainbow butt monkeys. Flying round in circles, circles. Okay, there's like two people who listen to that who actually know about rainbow butt monkeys. But anyways, that being said, let's move on. Let's close the show with saying, if you are a dad, take a bow. If you use Father's Day, you know, they're going to say, what do you want? We don't want financial gifts. The best thing I could get from either of my sons would be a homemade handcrafted card and for them to say, Dad, let's go play some pinball. For me, Sackville is the closest place. They thankfully have a Jurassic Park there. I believe it's called Vortex Games. They're not open crazy tons of hours. But if you live in New Brunswick and or Nova Scotia and you're traveling by Amateur Sackville, make sure you go shout them out. And if you're listening to this show, why not walk into an arcade and especially a family arcade on Father's Day? it's going to be full. Imagine going there when it opens and just putting loonies or toonies, depending on where in Gandy you are, or dollar bills or getting the credit thing. Go to all these arcades out there and just literally for all the dads. Yeah, the odd person who's not a dad is going to go use those free credits, but like what a cool thing on Father's Day. You know there's going to be, it doesn't matter if it's, I was going to say the Bosco and Roxy's, but what is that, what is that, that play, Dave and Busker's or something? You know, all those places are going to be full of dads with their kids and a lot of them are going to be looking at pinball machines maybe in a new light if you add some free credits they might just see that flashing start button and maybe we'll get some new pinball dads and therefore get some new pinball money and therefore we have the future generation and for any of you who thought that pinball was dying or dead oh my god at ifba 19 the young kids were killing it i think elwynn was the last person like under 50 to go out and like after that it was all like people like like ray day maybe was like the last person under 30 to go out or in around that age I don't know um I don't want to be an ageist or even guess but the point is that I could tell by looking at them that like Arvid Flair Arvid is like you know 16 go Arvid Arvid's my new favorite uh uh Escher you're still you're still my fave but Arvid you're now a close second I love his style I love his charisma he had a hype man this guy is the future of pinball watch out Jason Zahler I think when Arvid is your age I think Arvid might be number one you heard it here first I could be wrong I've predicted wrong in the past once or twice I'm usually right, but I've been wrong once or twice. So I'm saying it right here. I think Arvid will be the world number one by the time that he is Jason Zoller's age now. Not that Jason Zoller's going to be bad by then. Who knows? I would like to see them. I think everybody can admit when Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson kept fighting back and forth, that was good. When basically Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been fighting, they've both got millions and millions and millions of new fans and listens and Spotify, whatever. Beefs are kind of good. They are. you know when I'm beefing with another content creator I get more listens I don't want to be that person I don't want to get listened that way anymore I want to get listens maybe because they say um you know he had a controlled measured response that made sense uh even though that's not going to happen because no one shares those messages that said no one ever right but who knows maybe I'll gain back a few friends and maybe just maybe I'll help a few dads get their kids either back into pinball or younger dads that have kids that aren't playing pinball yet, maybe I gave you one little tidbit of advice here so you didn't come on too hot and heavy like Orby yelling at Stern's marketing department and basically scare off your kids from pinball. That's the main point is that and some kids are going to grow up and they're just not going to like pinball. Not everyone's going to like pinball. It could be possible that like from the age 20 to 25, Owen doesn't play any pinball at all. And if that happens, that's fine too. That's okay. I've told my sons, literally, as long as they're healthy, happy, and not hurting other people, I don't give a flying F what they do. I mean, I don't want them to be addicted to hard drugs or be homeless either. But I mean, you know, short of those things, I've told them to do whatever they want in life. I haven't put pressure on them, kind of like my parents did, and a lot of my Dutch millionaire family people did, where you had to be a doctor, or you were nothing, or a lawyer, or own a car dealership. Not all of them. Not my mom, thankfully. But most of them had kind of that idea. So, shout out to my stepdad, Ian. Happy Father's Day. I know you don't listen to this podcast, because I don't even think you know what a podcast is, bro. But, Happy Father's Day. Shout out if Chanel or Mel Dizzo is listening. You can let Dad know I said Happy Father's Day. And also to Kirkster, the Kirkmeister, that's right. Former cult leader, no, I'm just kidding, sort of. the Pentecostal church is, some sects of the Pentecostal church are more culty than others, and some are more like a typical type church, but anyways, Dad, I love you, I'm glad our relationship's better now, happy Father's Day, I hope you have a rad day, and yeah, maybe, you know what, also just to all you dads, treat yourself, let yourself have a fun day, and at the very least, treat yourself and go play some pinball, have a rad day, until next time pinball nerds, Remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. McDonald's. Happy Meals.