Rocky Top I will always be home sweet home to be. Good old Rocky Top, Rocky Top, Tennessee. Rocky Top, Tennessee. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George, and today I'm joined by my co-producer and grand pronosticator, Dr. Dave. hello Dave hello George did you say procrastinator or pronosticator I mean I'm guilty of both no comment on the pronosticator yes you no what did I say pronosticator I meant the other one you are a pronosticator what was in the news this past week that you predicted months ago was it this the monkeys the monkeys no no okay okay okay enough of them no it's not that news item not that news item okay why did I know you were going to do something like that oh i don't have anything prepared no jerk no it was they don't use this term and you might know the new term ufos ufos yeah i know the uh well what did you tell me months ago oh months ago i said uh well the next news item that will be coming up will be coming up they they can i have to remind you no sometimes you're gonna spark my thing there so uh i don't want to spark your thing verner von braun said back in the late 60s he said it's going to be this this it's going to be this and then the final thing was going to be an alien invasion well we didn't have that he said a fake alien invasion he's what he said okay so now we have ufos in the news so i don't know george maybe yeah he had something going on with that said we'll we'll migrate into pinball here do you think the sale of close encounter machines and stranger things machines will become more sought after? Probably. Maybe. Oh, really? That pig? Somebody will buy that pig? Well... Well, no, I didn't mean... There are going to be some people buying this thing. Sorry. Sorry, you stole George. Oh, you have a close encounter. I do. Oh, I didn't say it. I didn't say it for that reason. Oh, good. Okay, see, now you were worried about the segue. Now, oh boy. X-Nay on the Close Encounters, eh? I truly did not, okay? I teased this in the last couple of episodes, and I want to thank our audience again. We've drawn in new people. our last episode probably one of our best so thank you audience very much appreciated but i teased that i was going on vacation i thought it was smart to publish the allentown show first and then backtrack into what i did on my spring vacation okay Okay. Janice and I drove over 2,500 miles in a week. Our first stop was Memphis, Tennessee. And I sent you pictures of this particular pub called the Flipside Pub in Memphis. And if you recall, and you probably don't, they had... What are you trying to say, George? Well, I just know you. I have to remind you. My mind is like a city. They had a nice lineup of machines, which I will go through. You can comment accordingly, but you saw the picture. Rampirific or not so rampirific? Well, no, a little bit of everything. I thought they did a really nice job. The one thing I thought was cool about this place is that they have monitors above every single game. So if somebody is playing a game and sitting at the table or a bar, they can watch that person play. Which brings up another question, which I'm not sure. This person is known on Pinside who owns this bar. Okay. Oh, and I forgot those. Never mind. He was the one who brought to market something called the Opsicle. Oh, yeah. Those little LED. Yes. I like the cherry flavor. Yeah. It looks like a stick of gum, right? Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. A stick of gum. Kind of like a popsicle. Well, that's, I think, why he calls it a Opsicle. Yeah, exactly. It's a good one. Anyway, he does a really nice job. The game's played well. Question about this. So he has all these monitors over the games. So there's no regular news or sports on in the place? Here's my recommendation. I wanted to have him on. Actually, I wanted to meet him. But when you're on vacation, I didn't want to say, hey, I'm going to be there at X time. Are you going to be there? I just figured if he was there, great. And I met his partner. He was running out to pick up kids or something. So I really didn't get to interview anybody. It would have been a great interview. I still would do it because I think there's more to this. But my suggestion to him would be, if you're not running a regular tournament on Twitch every week showcasing your bar and machines, you're missing a bit. You need to be. You really do because it's a really nice bar. I would go – I went in the afternoon because we were touring Memphis and it was Saturday. But at night? But at night, this place must rock. it's a really it looks like a really fun place to go and if i had my druthers too if i had to own a bar like that you know a brew pub with some machines that kind of thing i would definitely most of these you know uh you know go to these bars and these restaurants whatever wall-to-wall tvs with all the latest you know doom and gloom news and the regular crap that's like you know you get that at home i would put up like this guy's doing put up you know what's being played on the machines there. Also, maybe some cool YouTube channels, funny cat videos, whatever, on these screens. Way better relaxing than to watch the latest what's going on in Clown World out there. I didn't even tell you what games. So, let's start there. Skateball, Spider-Man, Future Spa, Star Trek, Valley, High Speed, Black Knight, Swords of Rage. We're familiar with that. Captain Fantastic, ACDC, Six Million Dollar Man Rush, Godzilla, Power Play Star Wars, Wizard Dirty Harry and Royal Flush That's a nice selection I had to play Future Spa That's a great tournament game That should be used more I don't like the theme ACDC I played I played Godzilla Wizard Royal Flush That was pretty much it I ate, which was good. This was funny. So chatting up the bartender. Kyle. Kyle. Do you know where your owner is? I've never met the owner. I was like, wait a second. I go, you've never met the owner? Probably the manager he knows, not the owner. Right, right. But he doesn't know the owner. I go, how long have you been here? He goes, three days. I go, okay. I go, pass. No, but I have other bartender stories which are pretty funny. So, good place to go. Crosstown Brewery, which is a local Memphis brewery, was really good. Wiseacre. They have a beer called Tiny Bomb, as in B-O-M-B. Okay. Boom. Space Age from Beale Street Brewery, another great brew. What's that place called again, the first place? Wise what? Wiseacre Brewery. It's actually a pretzel place nearby. It's called Weisenheimer's. It's really – no, I'm just kidding, George. Keep going. It's a really bad joke. Go ahead, George. I didn't prepare a joke. I didn't prepare a joke for this week, so you're on your own. So that was Flipside Pub. If you have a chance, you're in Memphis. I would highly recommend you go there. Second stop, a place called Laughlin Yard. Outdoor place with fireplaces and fire pits. a big barn had me at fire a big barn with a stage and over one acre of grass area in downtown memphis okay cool place pretty cool big tvs everywhere the grizzlies made and you probably don't even know what sport the grizzlies are sounds like a bear i like bears i knew you would they're a basketball team they're into playoffs people are were watching the games the night before. Anyway, good place, cool place to go. Would recommend it. Ended up the trip, well, we went to Beale Street. Folks, go out and look at this video. The Beale Street Flippers. Now, you know what Beale Street is, right? That's the music area of Memphis where all the bars are. You can walk down the street with an open container. They are serving beer right out of the window on the street and cocktails. Wow, okay. So there's this troop, and I'm going to call them a troop, the Beale Street Flippers. That kind of fits with the theme today, right? These two guys were backflipping down the street. Now you're probably thinking, oh, how much could that be? No, I mean literally a block flipping like 10, 15, 20 times down the street. What's the point? it was entertainment you know people are out there drinking and kind of hanging out they get paid for that yes they passed the hat and they had quite a few dollars in it i also saw it do you know what do you know what a polaris slingshot is don't know what this sounds like a drink of some sort No. Could be. The Polaris. It's a, I guess you would call it a motorcycle. It's a three-wheeled vehicle. Oh, okay. I've seen those. Right. And they're classified as a motorcycle. All you LEDs out there, you would love these. A pack of like five or six of them came down the street. all the trim on each one of these motorcycle or slingshots had leds it was like this light show parade during the day i could imagine at night it's probably pretty cool and they were kind of winding their way through memphis so did uh did these trikes have a any member topper no there's no like bubble lights or anything like that that would be pretty cool bring it back to the ramp game last place if you're in memphis go to germantown go to the commissary barbecue best barbecue in memphis and i've been to quite a few of them at other times i visited there great place so a little bit of travel a little bit of pinball sorry you weren't in plus in plus impressed with the flippers but they're pretty cool now if they're dressed up like a flipper in a pinball machine, that would be kind of different. Yeah, well, that wasn't going to happen. So now we're going to get to what I really wanted to talk about. Or how about if they're 1920s flapper girls, flappers doing flippers? That'd be something. Or if it was flipper the, you know, what's it? You know, the thing from 1960s. What? You know, they call him Flipper, Flipper. Faster than lightning. There you go, George. You know the show. It's right after the... Sally Field and the Flying Nun, which I didn't understand any of the freaking, her habit. How did that fly anywhere? Wouldn't it come off her head? It would be pretty cool if you could do that. Did she nail it to her head? How did that work? Oh, yeah, she nailed it to her head. Okay, so now we're going to get into the meat of the show. Okay. If there was ever a time where I thought I was in a place that maybe I shouldn't have been, it was when we went to, well, you're familiar with Pigeon Forge, the home of Dollywood. But we actually went to Gatlinburg, which is at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. first time i ever traveled to memphis via car we stopped in a town called kodak just like the camera a couple of hotels harley dealer moonshine dealer a bass pro shop you know all the important things in life moonshine is big these days it's it's up and coming you have absolutely no idea all different flavors and so if you looked across the highway we were on the westbound side, you looked across the highway, there was nothing. Woods. Nothing. I got the bright idea that, hey, we're down in Tennessee, maybe we should go to Gatlinburg, because it's right near where we stopped. What do you think, Janice? Okay, find a hotel. I'm looking for a hotel, and the tagline on one of the websites was, the cleanest hotel in Gatlinburg. I said, that's got my name all over it. But it makes you wonder, what are all the other hotels like yeah well we'll get to the hotel in a minute so we come off the exit it's our second day no our no sorry we're coming back so we're coming from Memphis to Gatlinburg it's about a seven hour ride and we get off the exit and there's a lot more stuff well Dave I've never seen more amusements in a concentrated area in my entire life everything from alligators to zip lines and everything in between. Alligators and zip lines? That sounds like a really bad idea if you fall off. Knife retailers. Moonshine distributors. Ripley's, believe it or not, not on one side of the double highway, but two sides of the double highway. Mountain coasters. This was the one that got me. An indoor snow tubing park. It's like a giant snow cone. This goes on for two miles on both sides of the road. I've never seen anything. My head was on a swivel. I'm just looking around. I'm like, this is like sensory overload. And then I said, you have to have a cracked skull to take young children to this town. Because all you would hear is, Daddy, Mommy, can we do? Can we do? Let's go here. Let's go there. I saw things in Gatlinburg that I probably shouldn't have seen, what mothers were doing to their young children. Probably not acceptable in this part of the country. Well, they were probably disciplining them, right? They were a little bratty and disciplined. A little bit of a, you know, sometimes you need that. So that was the beginning of it. And I'm like, uh-oh. I'm going to get in trouble for taking us to Gatlinburg. the next part of the trip you're going through a national forest okay so you're going from sensory overload to serene it's like oh maybe gatlinburg's not so bad wrong it's as honky-tonk as the last place if not worse we pull into our hotel folks have a chance to go to one of these go jimmy buffett's margaritaville as build clean hotel nice bar nice pool service great place to stay on a little piece of property because everything gatlinburg is compressed just like everywhere else get into the pinball so we stayed one day finally we ventured out into town and you better like pancakes and moonshine because that's pretty much what i saw well what else wineries uh what's the snack the meat snack uh teriyaki and a stick yeah well what no no help me oh jerky yeah jerky places okay so we finally decided it's the next day it was like 85 90 degrees we decided well we better go see gatlinburg because the day one we were there it was almost 90 degrees we sat by the pool it was It was absolutely gorgeous. After having, you know, kind of a wet and garbagey spring, it was really nice to get to this app. We went to the, you would probably call it the Space Needle, but there are three arcades in the bottom of the Space Needle. And I like okay this could be good So we go into the first place Okay All modern games i should probably bring them up but you probably don care it you know godzilla and turtles and you know all the modern sterns deadpool ghostbusters they had 10 of them and they had a couple of bowling alleys a really nice clean arcade, but nobody in it. And, again, I have to refrain myself from what I would say. The woman behind, I'm probably not even allowed to say that anymore. The person behind. Them. Yeah, them. I asked, how much is it to play pinball? $40. A game? I couldn't understand. She got $40 out of her mouth. But beyond that, Janice started barraging her with questions. It was like, I might as well have talked to the wall. She couldn't be bothered? No, just couldn't comprehend. Wow. It was really weird. Too much moonshine, baby. Did she have purple, green, yellow hair? No, no, no, no, no. I'm not going there. I'm not going there. So remember, I said there's three arcades. so the next haunt i'm like chance this one's open over here and there's air conditioning it looks pretty nice and there's a guy behind there and he looks like he could have a conversation and i said so what's the deal with the place up on the end and i kind of got the eye roll like i don't want to talk about it i'm like okay cool i go how much does it cost to play pinball here he goes well there's a machine over there you can put a dollar in you can put ten dollars in i go how much is it for a game you can say a buck you know maybe a buck and a half depending on the game And there were four games, all moderns again. I'm like, okay, that's reasonable, but it's 90 degrees out. I'd rather go to sit by the pool than play pinball. I could play those. I know I was going to Allentown. Here was the Coupe de Gras. So the third one, and this is kind of the theme of the show, the Pinball Museum of Gatlinburg. Folks, I don't know what the deal is with this place, but they will not tell you online and in person what machines are behind the door. It's a pay one price to go in. It's a mystery. And it was dark, not very inviting, and the person behind the counter was not very hospitable. I didn't even make it through the door. Janice was like trying to ooch her way to get through and kind of see what was going on. Late, ma'am, come back. Not allowed to do that. So I wasn't going to go spend 20 bucks to find out what was behind the door. Something to hide, George. I'd stay away. Yeah, I'd stay away from it. So remember the theme. The Pinball Museum of Gatlinburg. That was our experience in Gatlinburg. We went back to the pool, and this was funny. Two funny pool stories. We saw this one lady two days in a row, and she saw that we were going into town, and we were back in less than an hour. She goes, you two must be really fast walkers because you haven't even gone an hour. Janice looks at her and goes, there wasn't a lot to see down there. The waitress the day before was even funnier. Was her name Flo? The waitress? it would have been more like non-flow. Okay. She just looked bewildered, lost. And there weren't that many people there, and we wanted a drink. So she comes over, and Janice is like, I'll have what that person's having. Is that a strawberry daiquiri? Yes, great. I'm like, could you tell me what IPAs you have on tap? What's an IPA? No, worse. Worse. she goes well there's a bunch of wooden handles over there with rotten on them but i really don't know what's going on i was like well i was like sure things ever said i'm like wait a second i go this i looked at james i go he goes yeah that did happen i said can you call for that in life you know what's going on or can i give you a little hint you see that order pad you have turn it over go over to those tap handles and write down the names of the beers because i'm probably not the only one that's going to ask you so that was one of my bar stories um let's just say we did a little bit of fun as we were away so the next day we left gatlinburg and went over the smoky mountains folks worth the price of admission very very cool So we get to Asheville, North Carolina. Now, I'm going to continue the story. There is the Asheville Pinball Museum. Okay, sounds promising so far. And actually it was. Okay. Sort of. Sort of. day one did our thing went into town had lunch went to a micro brew actually went down the hill we're up on this hill and went down to another place i'm like jess i can't do this anymore actually the pinball museum was literally steps from where we stayed which is really cool 15 bucks all you can play i went at like six o'clock at night i'm like you know a couple hours by myself it'll be fun great little place they had beer for sale soft drinks for sale they had quite a variety of games about 35 different games here was the gotcha they had a lot of older games but again and sorry playing your games playing my games playing their games not quite the same thing their modern games which i played primarily great i mean monster bash attack from mars simpsons ghostbusters i played all those because they played great weren't a lot of people there i mean price was great and there were two other bars in asheville that had pinball but they weren't one was i'm not going to say which one it is but wasn't in the most desirable janice's like even though that's only two blocks from our hotel and downhill she goes did you kind of look around where it is and it was more of an industrial area i'm like yeah you're probably you're probably right exactly you're probably right and the other place was out of town someplace um so i thought ashville was a lot of fun i would go back um some great breweries um i think i sent you a picture from one of them. What was the name of it? The Dissolver Brewery. That was the one with the weird shrieking head thing that I think I sent you. The picture, it looked like the devil or some monster. A hipster place. Asheville is definitely like the Burlington, Vermont. Okay, gotcha. Or whatever town in Oregon or Washington. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yeah, it's a hipster haven. but really good the beers I had there Into the Flames and Brain Oasis so that kind of gives you an idea of the theme of the brewery I'm trying to think what else in Asheville well we talked but people don't care Flowers, Biltmore Hotel a really cool place to go visit if you're with your wife and she's into flowers and architecture. But when it's 85 or 90 degrees and there's no air conditioning in this turn of the century from the 1800s, not so good. And, you know, I perspire in a snowstorm. So it didn't go too well. I got the AC cracking at 68 here and you're still perspiring, George. I am. I am. So the Vanderbilt Estate, if you're there, cool place. gotta give a shout out to uh hillman beer janice went shopping you know what george did and a great beer uh back ass words okay an ipa good solid fun people there went to a corporate place too they must own a bunch of breweries called bold rock they give the impression i don't think the kettles in this place worked it kind of looked like a microbrewery but i didn't see a lot of microbrewery action they had like 900 tap handles decoration it was but a cool place kind of hung out and uh and uh and did that so i don't know i tried to think about why all these places are called the pinball museum so they're all called pinball museum The one in Gatlinburg was, the one in Asheville, I know there is one in Roanoke. I know exactly why they call it. Why? It's for tax purposes. If you're doing a museum, they can put all the games in there and not put a tag on them. Really? You think that's it? Yeah. It's tax purposes. If you have a museum, you get a big tax break versus having to put a stamp on every game, you get a pay on every game. Oh, that's what I forgot. We went to this other place called, I'm back in Gatlinburg. there's another gigantic kiddie casino called Arcadia and it looked the part now casino meaning that you you spin the thing with all the tickets in the ticket place right yeah and so I went in and I again another nice guy behind you know the the desk I said do you have any pinballs he goes yeah we got two in the back and he named them I don't remember what they were it doesn't matter I said but what's the deal here in Gatlinburg and maybe the state of Tennessee I said every place I go to, you can't put a quarter or a dollar or whatever amount of money into a game. I go, is it against the law? He said, yes. You have to buy a card and redeem points into a machine. You can't put quarters into the machine. Probably called gambling or something. Maybe that's why. Again, North Carolina. Same thing. All three places in Asheville were the same exact thing. They were all pay one price. But you can't physically go into a building and put money on the machine. You can't have an arcade like that. Well, they skirt the law, but in the land of entertainment, given what I saw, you'd be better off if you could put quarters of dollars in the game, but they must not like that for tax purposes. There must be something... It's just tax purposes. There must be something around there. I think the one you couldn't see behind the door, the pinball museum there. I bet you go in there, it's a giant... That was really weird. I know what it was. There was one giant physical steel pinball in there with a big rope around it. No, I just didn't look. It was a pinball museum. That's it. It just wasn't inviting. 20 bucks. And the place in Asheville, the pinball museum in Asheville, they had all kinds of colors. There was crap everywhere. I played pinball so I really didn't take any pictures or do anything to observe what they had but there was all kinds of tchotchke crap everywhere the other cool thing was on all their EM's they had clear acrylic back boxes you say they got tchotchke? yeah Joni loves tchotchke go ahead George why me? Oh, boy. You know. So that kind of concludes the travel itinerary. But I do have something I would like you to try to look up on Pinside. I just tried. I read it this morning. And I might have missed it. Did you happen to see the article on the pinball house? what's it called in Las Vegas? Pinball Hall of Fame, right? Pinball Hall of Fame, yeah. Steve? No, that's Tim. Tim Arnold. Tim Arnold. Yeah. Did you happen to see the news on that? No. See if you can pull that up on Pinside. I might have missed it. Pinball Hall of Fame. And go. What do we got here? Sad to see another incident at the Pinball Hall of Fame. Yeah, I got this right here. Oh, you do? Okay. Local businessman. Okay. Oh, what happened? You might not. Saves child from devastating head injury. You might want to read the threads. I'll try to be delicate with this. Okay. Mayor Frank Rizzo. Hold on a second. Wait a minute. There was an incident at the Pinball Hall of Fame, I think last Thursday, with a child that was spinning in circles in the aisle of the machines. Well, he might be autistic, George. You kind of jumped the gun. Okay. Tim asked very politely for the person to take the child outside as to not... Because he might get hurt. Might get hurt. A safety issue. Sure, makes sense. Safety issue. And the repeated line from, I think, the father, I don't know if the mother was there, because there is, out on Pinside, this all happened in the last couple days, There is a news report from whatever Las Vegas television station. I guess the repeated phrase was, he's autistic. Okay. It sounds as if, what I read, that this family is now going to end up suing Tim Arnold for doing that. It kind of fits the theme. I kept talking about pinball museums, but this is probably the grandest of all. I mean, it's a museum. This is like he started this whole museum thing. Right, he did. So it kind of fits, but it... I don't want to comment, because people are just going to be so divided on this that my opinion doesn't really matter. I feel bad for somebody who owns a business and has to navigate the world. It's very difficult. On top of it, Tim's a really nice guy. Tim donates a lot of that proceeds from that to the Salvation Army. He's always been Salvation Army. He's very much into... I think it's been said before, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school... Benevolent guy. That he is, but he can also be very direct. Sure, yeah. But with the kind of business that he has, I think you have to be. You have to be. We've all been in arcades as kids, and you kids will be kids. Yeah, if you're a kid and you're just, say, you're running down the aisle there, and you could get some water on the floor, you could slip, you get hurt, and it's on the owner that you got hurt in his place. He was worried about not only the child getting hurt, but to have an incident at, and unfortunately, it made the TV news. You could read the thread afterwards. I saw it this morning, and I was like, huh? I guess it kind of fits sort of the travelogue that I just went through. Sorry it might not be as funny and as entertaining, but this was kind of a serious thing. Way to bring the shore down, George. I, I, I, I, if I don't say anything, people aren't aware of it. You can fall where you are, where you are with your thoughts. I just, I just felt really bad for him and said, with all the things that that man's been through over the last two years, this is probably the last thing that he needs. So research that story. Make up your own mind about the whole thing. Get all the details and make up your own mind what you think went on. It's too early. I tried to be as down the middle as I can. Let's change gears. I got another topic. I got something back. You first. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, do you know, you were talking about the big thing with the moonshine thing. When we were in Ohio, there was something there. I kept seeing this big thing about different flavored moonshine. Moonshine is like a big up-and-coming thing, I think, down the south and out west. Where did you see it? In Ohio. I'm saying where? You were out At the pinball show at Pin Brew Fest On the way out there Maybe in Pennsylvania Between Pennsylvania border Oh you're saying that you passed a sign or a business We went there to get There was some fireworks That they had Moonshine and fireworks You might blow a finger off So the lady there She had a nice business and she was selling us some baller rockets And she was talking about this lady with moonshine the streets it's really popular then you brought the moonshine thing do you know uh what moonshine was originally meant for do you know the whole the whole gig do you know how it relates to um henry ford i'm gonna give you a story george i watched the moonshiners because i think it's pretty interesting how they go about constructing do you know but you know there's more than well George Washington brought basically alcohol to the colonies but no I don know okay here the Ford ahead Here the real deal So Henry Ford when he was selling his Model T maybe it was the Model A whatever the first car No, no, no. T is first, which is the teens. Okay, so Model T. When he was selling that, his big selling thing was, an acre of land will put fuel in this car. You need an acre of land in the car. It's like, what does that mean, acre of land? Because back in that time frame, farmers would power all their equipment with moonshine, with alcohol. They didn't need gasoline, that kind of stuff. They would use alcohol. They used corn. You're saying that a farmer would ferment their grain, no matter whether it's rye, wheat, or corn, and distill it into a usable product to run their vehicles. Someone decided, hey, I'm going to drink this and get high off it. Great, but that's not what it's made for. So fast forward a couple years, the oil tycoon industry or whatever didn't like that too much, and that's how Prohibition came in. It wasn't really about people getting pissed off that people are drinking too much. It's because big things like that were happening instead. That's why Prohibition came in, to stop the mom and pop making the moonshine to fund the cars. So, George, all that being said, as Paul Harvey said, the rest of the story. There you go. I had a roommate in college that would listen to Paul Harvey every day at noontime. I love that show. Very informative. I'm in college and I'd come back to the room and most people would be blaring the stereo. My rural Vermont roommate who will remain nameless. We'll be going... Well, that would be going on in every other room, but not... Yeah, Russell. Russell liked Paul Harvey. That 25 minutes every day was Paul Harvey. Yep. Good day. Good day. Right. Okay, I want to... I have this one written down. You can comment. Paul Harvey News. We're going to go back to pinball, okay? Because I kind of digressed, I guess. A little bit different this week. All right. I'm watching something on Twitch. I don't remember what it was. And the subject of pinball pitch came up. Now, for someone like you who works on a variety of different manufacturers' games, is there an industry standard for pitch on a pinball game? I know what it is for what I collect, but I'd like to hear your answer. So for a modern game, a Ramper, it's 6.5 degree pitch. Okay. For an old school game, 4.5. An SS game? SS, 4.5 to 5. But I like going more 6 or so. I like to go in the same pitch as a modern game on an old school game. I do 6, 6.5 on those two. Now, what got me going is, now I remember, and we haven't done this yet for a show, but we will, is Embryon. you know how that game can be floaty oh yeah and i'm guessing that you would probably put extended feet on the back feet on the yeah oh yeah now would you on that game not adhere to the six percent and jack it as high as it would go oh yeah i could go like seven seven and a half maybe on it it all depends on how the ball reacts and so forth. Okay, that's what I wanted to hear. It depends how it plays. How it plays. So would you agree that steeper pitch on a game isn't necessarily better for game play? Not necessarily. Because the game was designed... Correct. Well, give me an example of a game that you can jack the hell out of. Or have done in the past. The two... I call it... Have you ever had a game, other than an operator, we've seen enough of them, with a 2x4 in the back of your game? Have you ever done that? I've done it, but it's too much. It's too much with that. So if you're looking to take people's quarters, you're putting one of those. Well, put it this way. Fun and Games back in the day, they had a Flight 2000, which I thought was a really fun game. They had it jacked up so much in the back. It must have been a 2x4. You could not make the big shot in that game, so you can start multiball, is go up the, rip the left spinner, go all the way to the top of the game so it's a long shot. No matter what you did, you could only go halfway up that spinner shot. You could never get up there because the thing was way too steep. Because I think people were rocking the game and winning too much, so they did that, so there's no way. So it made the game unplayable. So I just didn't like playing the game after that. Okay. You've got a couple other things, unless you have something. Do we have anything? Joe, well, I could tell you a little bit of a travel log, if you want. or you want to do your thing first and then travel on? Mine's real quick. In our last show, we forgot a few things. So you recorded some passages that I used where you gave the illusion that I was sitting with you, but I wasn't. George, you're pulling back the curtain. The reason I am is because I heard one of our fellow podcasters do the same exact thing. And I said to myself, wow, I'm not the only one doing this. So I'm seeing a lot of the things that I thought, oh, you know, hey, we're losers. We've fricked it up. George, we are the Garage Bandit podcast. Yeah, we're more like cable. We're super cool. Cable access channel nine. Yep. We're more like that. Okay. Your turn. Stories. All right. So I just went to Concord, Massachusetts. Real nice place. and they have a Williams Hot Tip for a solid state Williams game that they've had in the... Williams Hot Tip. Yeah, it was in a... Why do I... Because they just had a tournament on it recently. What's it look like? It's a horse race theme, you know. Oh, okay. Yes, I do know that game. It even has a... I'm going to look it up while you're speaking. It sounds, one of the bells on it sounds like a horse galloping. It's interesting. It goes clop, clop, clop. It's interesting how they did that. Fun game. Need a lot of work. Need a boardectomy. And about six or seven hours on site there and got that pretty well dialed in. What year is that game? That's like a 77, I think. I think that's what it just says there. So I think it was basically made in EM. It was basically... 4,900 units, September 1977. Yes, I am familiar with that game. Actually, I remember playing this game when I was in Banning. So, yeah, okay. This house was actually owned by... It was 1870 the house was built. Owned by a historic railroad guy. I want to say Carnegie, but it's not Carnegie. Who was the railroad guy back in the 1800s? Well, the person I just talked about. Who? Vanderbilt. It wasn't Vanderbilt. It was some other railroad guy. You know, the Biltmore in North Carolina. This was his house, and this thing was a nice property. It was still gorgeous, redone, whatever. But one thing about this game that... How old the property? 1870. Oh, so before Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt built that house that I went to in 1890. Yeah. Which was, I told you some of it. Go out and look. Folks, you've got to go see this thing. the wealth that these people had insane it's crazy i've never seen anything quite like it yes they build modern houses that are gigantic but not like these and these things are built like fortresses well i told you the quality the foundation of the vanderbilt estate the walls were 40 feet high and 27 feet deep for the foundation and it all had embedded uh ironwork in it they ain't going anywhere i i think you could shell the place and it would still be there it was a fortress it was gorgeous a crazy place so go ahead so the thing about this there's a first game i've heard about it but i never seen one uh for real in action and this game had it so back in the day when they're making the bridge from solid state from em to solid state electromechanical solid state games they uh were worried that the public would not accept them because um they wouldn't have chimes anymore or they they were if they uh if they didn't have no no they still have chimes this point yeah this one's got chimes but they it was missing all the clickety clackety clunkety of an em like an em when you're playing like the fourth screen of the you feel all the tell me they recorded that as a soundtrack no no they did not but it's because it's an em game it has chimes in it well no it's it also made it has chimes so they had no no soundboard in this game what they did is they put a stepper unit with um um an em score reel in the bottom of the cabinet near the chime box that would go chunk it to chunk it a chunk to make that EM feel. To give the illusion. Well, because when you... To give the illusion. It didn't do anything. It just made noise. It made noise and it made the cabinet shake a little bit. So you're playing an EM a little bit. So it had that EM kind of feel to it. I did not know that. But I've heard people talk about it in years but I've never seen one in action until... This one actually was unhooked. So I said, I'm going to hook this back up. I don't know why you'd unhook it. Did the person have any other games? No, that was it. Really? Yeah. Okay. I don't know why. They had it for like 20 years and it wasn't working for 20 years in some other room. They just brought it in and it needed a lot of help. Well, that kind of leads me. Is it a big home theater set up room? Well, that kind of leads me to the next kind of observation. Say that three times fast. Do you think, given the world, that people are buying more games because they're nesting? or do you think they are getting rid of games because of the financials? Have you seen any change in market habits? I haven't seen any fire selling of anything. What I have been seeing, I think... You haven't noticed on Pinside a lot more churn? No, I haven't looked for it. Have you seen it? It looks like some stuff's getting sold off. It looks like some people are trying to get peak pricing. Again, I don't know how fast Stern is churning games out. And again, you don't listen to any other podcasts. We're kind of in a dead zone right now. I mean, our next show, I guess, will be about Pintastic. Maybe something else if something comes up. But it's kind of a... Stern's just trying to get back orders out. Fathom, we got an email from Grant. I asked him to keep his eyes and ears open. And I guess one of them has been put out somewhere, but not a lot of information. So it's kind of, everybody's kind of waiting. Toy Story seems to be. But who cares? That's all modern crap. No, I get, I. We're a classic pinball podcast, George. I get that. You're a really good restorer here that restores classic pinballs. Well, then talk about it. No problem. I'm just kind of saying that if you go and listen to Our Brethren, there's not a lot going on out there. I was listening today on something about John Papadiuk and the game that you and I reviewed, Circus Voltaire. You know, they're kind of doing the same thing. Oh, I have something else. So there's a podcast out there being done by an Aussie. Oh, all right. Who's doing game reviews. Is it Grant? No. Oh, it should be. But they're doing older game reviews. Hey, wait a minute. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, we don't have that fancy accent. That's true. Maybe we'll adopt one. Well, we've asked Grant. He'll come on. He's working on that Electra. How about the prices of pinball machines in Australia? Oh, insane. Insane what they're getting for it. A Kiss and something else like $25,000 or something, or $50,000, whatever it was. Right, I don't even care about the exchange rate. But still, that's crazy, crazy dumb money. I just don't think they have as many games over there. Then you've got to import them. It's supply and demand. That's probably what it is. But I think a lot of people, since we are in big-time inflation land here, and even if you put money under your mattress, it's losing value, you need to put your money into tangible assets. So people are buying machines, and it goes up with inflation. So you buy a machine for a couple thousand dollars today, a couple years from now, maybe it's worth $4,000. So rather than putting the $2,000 under your mattress, or in the bank or whatever, or lose it in the stock market, you buy a game, hold on to it, there you go. I was going to start with the joke of you didn't make any comments about me wearing a barrel. George, you're wearing a barrel. It looks like you have a barrel on yours. You're making a bad stock decision. Unfortunately, it's not filled with beer and or valuable oil. I wish it was. Let's just leave it at that. Your stock portfolio took a little hit, did it? Uh, again, we're a pinball show. Can I tell a couple of stories about bartenders and lifelong residents of Gatlinburg? Sure. Go ahead, George. What have we got? So I'm at the Gatlinburg Brewing Company, and there's this gal, Jamie, who was behind the bar serving us beer and pizza. Cool pizza place. They had a revolving 750 degree pizza oven. You ever seen one of these things? No. It's like a turntable, right? They put the pizza in here. By the time it comes around, it's all done. A couple of times around. Three minutes. Wow. Really good. So if you're in Gatlinburg, go to the Gatlinburg Brewing Company. So I asked Jamie, lifelong resident of Gatlinburg, probably, well, I'm not going to say how old she is, but old enough. Okay. Jamie where's the pinball museum in Gatlinburg and Jamie said no you reacted accordingly silence she looked at me there's pinball in Gatlinburg I'm like Jamie how long have you lived here she goes I had no idea all my life nice gal So I come to find out that her boyfriend is the bartender in Margaritaville. So I decide, well, if lightning strikes once, let's try again. Sure way. So I asked the same thing. I said, hey, you know, I was talking to your girlfriend about the pinball museum. Do you know where it is? The dog face. Again, what? Lifelong resident of Gatlinburg. So, folks, when you get that reaction, these are people that are in the entertainment industry. They should know what's going on in Gatlinburg for a variety of reasons. So I said to both of them, I said, I will mention you on the podcast. So hopefully somebody in Gatlinburg lets Jamie and Josh know that I spoke about them. and their familiarity with pinball, there's not just one place. There's three places. Maybe they're not into pinball. Do they like pinball, these two, the bartenders? Maybe they're not really on their radar. No, but it just goes to show, you know, we think, oh, everybody knows about pinball. No. 95 out of 100, they give you the same response. There's pinball? Well, at least they didn't say what is pinball. No, they didn't say that. They didn't say that. They knew what pinball was. I mean, I guess growing up in Gatlinburg, you've seen every amusement note of man coming through. And actually, they had a ski area there. Okay. Would you ever think that there'd be a ski area? I mean, the Smokies are pretty big. Yeah. But I said, do you folks know we don't get a lot of natural snow? I go, okay, now I get it. So without a snow gun, you're not getting snow. Yeah. So kind of if you really had to ski and you're down there, hardcore, sure. And what about the Carl Weathers today? Today? Yeah. And yesterday? day yeah we got a heat wave cue the heat wave heat wave you can cue the music there george you know no you know that's not that song oh you don't like that one okay another one all right do you have anything to add uh i feel like we were light on well you know what i'll tell you what's in what is in the doctor's uh tech area being restored right now how about another firepower just about done yeah you were lamenting about that beautiful game trying to uh Another wonderful Williams game. And 17,000 of them. How many? 17,000. Oh, that's a pretty popular show we did. Firepower? Yeah. Well, we did the Fs. What's the other F he did? Richie. Come on. F14 Tomcat? No. You had it through. You've got to make me look it up. All right. So, F. Another F. Just go. Continue with your story. So, uh... No, he didn't do Fireball. That's not Steve Ritchie. Another F. His book pulls out an F. Uh, Gorgar. I have another Gorgar. I have two Gorgars I'm doing. It's $14,000. Flash. Flash, yes. So I wondering why I seeing all these Williams games lately I keep getting Firepods I keep getting Gorgars Because they made so many of these things and everyone knows these games as a kid because they were everywhere Lucky you Yeah I'm going to Firepower. I see you're going to Fanpower. Another F. Look at that. Do you think they can hear that? They probably can. He's a portable fan. George, he's a fan man. No, I'm a... That's your biggest fan. It's a very small fan, George. oh that's what i want that's what i want to go look up continue okay i'm gonna go see if we have anything in gmail yeah speaking of fans yeah maybe so uh yeah firepower is almost done it uh it's coming out really nice had some had some board issues even with replacement board sets i'm finding some of them are i don't know i have a little problem and then i'm having problems as well uh speaking of supply chain issues there's this the big there's a backlog to get these new boards williams games uh of like four four to six months backlog you can't get these boards these new redone boards for williams games i do have a couple of things to talk about excellent so i have to find other other and i'm surprised you didn't talk about one of them uh well once you okay you remind me i'll you would you you poke me a little bit and i'll uh i'll uh you know say something about it um so i had to find other ways to do it so i found this other board I went in there, and it's working great now, so, so it should be ready to go, Gorgar is, I got that one, a little more time on that one, and then, then I have to dig into, they've been waiting for quite a while, is a nice beautiful Centaur I'm going to restore, that I want to break into that, you know, break ground on that by, definitely by July, August time frame to start getting going on that one, as well as a Knight Rider, those are the two longest in a tooth games that need to get done so after that is going to be a beautiful restored nine ball I'm going to do that's already pre-sold because I have two nine balls I think that's pretty much what we had going on so yeah a lot of restoration work been flying through here and PJ's quicksilver I'm doing I'm doing his quicksilver as well quicksilver him so yeah I vowed that we'd do a rush moment and remember it's a moment anything to report i have nothing on your game i know no real chatter have you been playing it or do you just look at it george i don't play it i don't look at it what i do when i relax now after play testing my games in my restoration area you turn it on as a jukebox no i go downstairs and i play missile command none of these games i play missile command and battle zone i play one leg is out the door already yeah, I don't know, we'll see I should, you know what, I will for Ray Day's sake I will read the rules and I will give it a good go and play it the way it's supposed to play and then see, but right now it's like, you know, not just I haven't been playing anything, I'll tell you what I'm looking forward to playing, never mind Rush or the Flash Gordon or the Fathom or 8-Ball Lux sitting next to it, all great games I have a gorgeous This Bally 75 Hocus Pocus I want to bring up. I want to play that instead. That's what I want to play. Remember we talked about this and I said, do you know who Mandrake the magician is? And you said, no, I do not. Well, I actually took a picture of Mandrake. Does that look like the guy that's on your back glass? Yeah, it kind of does. No, not that guy. No, yeah, not that guy. Yeah, it does. Yeah, Mandrake. Okay. Sure. Okay. Yeah. the classic uh whipply snidelash uh mustache so what do you got for uh okay i sent you something via email you did and i got no comment but i thanked him i'll thank him i just didn't have his email i sent it to you scott the decal oh yeah yeah yeah okay thank you scott i thought He did a really nice job. He did. He did a great job. I mean, I've got to give him an address. I would have figured you would have given him an address, but I'll give him an address. We're going to see him. Actually, you know what? Save it. We're going to see you at Pintastic. So this thing he did, it's on a cricket? He did a cricket thing? What are you doing with this thing? When we see him, we will talk about it. I just wanted to acknowledge that it just showed up in my inbox on Gmail. He's got my home address. He would send it there, too. I'm curious what it is, though. I don't know. We'll find out. It's artwork he did. You know he's going to hear this, so. Oh, I got another story, too, as well, to say. Should I save the story? No, you don't save anything. I want to continue with the Gmails, though. I got another one. Okay, okay. So your buddy with the Daisy Dukes, Glenn? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Glenn's a pretty funny guy. I'm sure he is a funny guy. Glenn just didn't take. Did he do some more tweaking after I kind of tweaked him back? No, I asked him, and I think he heard us talk about it. He told me why there was that picture. But that was only one of 12. He did a calendar of that type of stuff for his buddy's bachelor party. So he gave him a calendar of, I'm guessing, he didn't elaborate. He just said, I took some pictures and I made it into a calendar. All right, I got a question. I might not have an answer. I got a question. So is his buddy, does he play for his own team? No, I don't. Or does he like the opposing team? I don't know what the other 11 pictures are. I don't want him to send them to me. Glenn, I thought it was pretty funny. I'm sure you, I don't know where you live, Glenn, but you definitely need to go to Cooter's Place in Virginia. maybe you need to take some more pictures there or go to Catherine Bach Day or whatever else they have at that place that's right up your alley sounds promising so did you have anything else? I did have something to say about you're not going to say what you normally say? yeah one more thing no not yet that's coming later no I will add that I want to thank Sandra and Mark over at Pinnivators do wonderful products over there Well, tell the audience what Pinnovators is so they're not wondering. Well, I will tell you what they do. So they have this add-on device. They put on mostly the, let's go 90s, 90s Bally Williams games, and I think even a little bit older too, maybe the late 80s stuff as well, that they have a headphone jack, and it's really good quality sound. So it's basically meant for people that want to play their pinball machine loud but have young children or they're going to bed, they want to play a 2-amp or whatever, and they want to crank it. This allows you to put these headphones on, and people say they can hear things they haven't heard before through regular speakers. Very good sound clarity and quality. Mark is, I believe Mark is an electrical engineer. Yeah, he's an electrical engineer, a really smart dude. I'd say him and John Day should get together and talk shop sometimes because they're both very bright people. Aren't we going to see him? Who, John Day? Yeah. yeah i mean he actually he just we're gonna see him next week yeah we are i think are we gonna say yeah i think we are yes we are gonna see him next weekend yeah that's true we are yeah yeah right we're all day so so there'll be stories yeah we're not gonna record there that would be impolite but we will talk about them well we could offer to record there we can say hey we can if you guys want if you guys don't want we won't we can we put the offer up i'm gonna throw Throw it out there. Yeah, throw it out there. I don't know who listens and who doesn't, but we never do this. How come we never play dollar games? Yeah, we should. I'd do it. Okay, I'll float it. Yeah, I'd do it. Especially on a nice... Oh, because you're thinking, oh, I'm going to make some dollars. Yeah, heck yeah. You've got some competition. I know. Can we bet on people? You can. Why not, George? It's his, what's it called? Draft Kings? We can do Draft Kings. Oh, we're going to be doing that anyway. We'll do a draft game with a couple drafts. So anyway, I want to get back to Mark and Sandra, Pinnivators. So they do great stuff. They also do a subwoofer hookup, so you can actually hook a sub up to your game in an easy way and really good quality sound of that too. But they offered to take a game back for me from Allentown. I had no room for it because I was bringing back the Close Encounters. They took back this Williams game. I kind of wanted it because I saw Eric Stone play in a tournament, I think in California a while back, and it is, what's the name of the game? OXO, yes, Williams OXO. And so they brought it back for me. They brought the game back for me. I went up to their house the other day, made us a nice lunch on the grill. We were just going to go for lunch. Seven hours later, it's like, where did the time fly? We were, like, just hitting it all cylinders. We were on the same page on a lot of stuff, you know, had a great time talking with them. So thank you again, guys. Wonderful people, great product. You reminded me about Eric Stone. and our audience. This week is the World Championships down in Fort Myers, Florida. Oh, yeah. Eric Stone, I'm guessing, is going to be participating. He totally is. He's there. So it's not just the championships. Which weekend is this? It's Memorial Day weekend is the Worlds. But leading up to, I think they have four or five days of other events. So they're taking the opportunity to do a lot more tournament play than just what the worlds are going to be. I thought that was pretty cool. And I'm trying to think what else with them. We should have some of that going. Maybe they'll put that on the TV. Well, that's what I was going to say. That should be in a bar. Well, I'm wondering if they are going to just broadcast the championships or if somebody will be smart enough to do it every day. If there are other tournaments, why wouldn't you put it on? So I don't know who is and who isn't, but consult your local Twitch listings. Well, to tie that back with – we're talking about bars and not having stupid news on and the doom and gloom of the clown world out there. And some of these bars like Texas Roadhouse, for instance, we go there a couple times. It's a great – for corporate places, good stuff. On their screens up there, you don't see any news crap. You do see some sports, which is great. Then they have this certain channel, and I forget what the name of the channel is, but it's basically – it's like this – It's almost like a YouTube channel of all these funny videos, but it's a constant roll of different things and different scenery and just like a really interesting take. It's something you would probably, if you're at home eating dinner watching TV, something you would put on that's relaxing and fun to watch. That's what they put on the big TVs there at that place. And I think on top of that, I would add to that, if I had a bar like that, I'd put all that on there as well as I'd have golf on, maybe some hockey, different sports. I'd also put on, like, you know, all these great pinball tournaments. I'd have that on a TV as well, playing in the background. I think it'd be interesting for someone to watch that as well. They're, again, the Whopper Palace of the universe, District 82 out in Wisconsin. It's like a regular thing. They had a tournament on on Friday night, a three-strike knockout tournament. Now, I only knew a couple of people, but even so, they're all they always have content on we'll see tune in i know somebody's gonna have the world's on this week i don't know who it'll be but you know that's coming up stay tuned got anything else yeah we're supposed to go to uh cambridge coming up soon to do uh we got a restaurant oh you're going back to that again yeah but what are the machines again it's got a beautiful twilight zone a medieval madness that's right but here's the problem I used to have the company car. I have a nice Volvo. I really don't want to park in the street there. You just don't want to go. I don't have the best car. No, I wasn't talking about the business. I was talking about getting the business. Yeah, I'll probably get the business all right. Yeah, just being the whole atmosphere there in the surrounding area. I don't know. I'll be a stranger in a strange land, George. Let's just say that. Yeah, and America's dog is still at our house for yet another week. Cooper the Wonderhound. He's becoming a permanent fixture. I think he's actually your dog now at this point. I think you've actually adopted him. I think they're trying to make him our dog. You guys are never really dog people. Now you're being drafted. Drafted? Or held at gunpoint? There's a little bit of a difference. Okay, Dave. I think... Hold on. Take two. I'm sure people will be waiting with faded breath to listen to that podcast since it's one of our more popular podcasts which one our last one no when we do the game review we go through the list and we tell people how much we do or don't like a game and comment accordingly that always seems to get a rise out of people I'm sure Pitchforks and Fire will come with those who are bringing their games. Are you bringing a game? I also saw that they're calling it the Best in Play. I think that's the first time I've ever seen that on the website. Good. Finally, it's there. Excellent. It took how many times? Excellent. Yeah. Well, you know. Well, that's good. I mean, anything to report on that? Well, I think, I believe John Day may be helping out this time, which will help a little bit. But any other inside baseball as to what's going on with the show? Yeah, yes, there's been some baseball. So, well, I think there's going to be two bands playing. I think it's going to be. I know there's the Rush Band. Saturday Night Rush Band, but I think Friday Night is some other band, and I'm not sure what it is, but that's the rumor. Okay. It's a rock and roll pinball show we're turning into. I hope that we can somehow, you and I can jump behind a microphone for the tournament there at some point. Oh, you're going to pitch that again? Yeah, I'll pitch it again. I just, you know, if the opportunity is there, you know. I don't know, but I think they do the same thing in all these tournaments. Don't the participants, like, sometimes will jump behind the mic? Right, but we're not regular participants. Are you going to apply? If I do, it's going to be Friday. I'm not doing the Saturday. Squeeze it in before you get the cutoff. Yeah, if I do, I'll do Friday. But, you know, I have a job to do with this, with judging the games and so forth. so I have to get that. Yeah, I'm not going to do what we did the last time and do our travels and travails. We'll talk about it afterwards. But are you going to line up the Daves? I did get an email, a Gmail from Dave G. Do you know who I'm talking about? Your stereo guy? Oh, him, yeah. Yeah, good guy. Yeah, he didn't know the old equipment I had back in the 70s. You should look it up. Okay. Great American Sound. Don't know that one. the... If I recall the story... Did I turn you on to him to fix some stuff? Did I tell you about him? He just contacted me through Gmail. Oh, from our show? Yeah. Okay. So I commented accordingly. Actually, he might have been the first person to contact us. I kind of forgot. What else you got? Mail? You have more mail? No, nobody. This is probably the spot where I should... Because I usually forget. The Classic Pinball podcast numeral one at gmail.com no i told you about scott who sent you the decal thing glenn we talked about oh no here's a guy no we talked about this guy the last time bob evans we talked about him he has a great restaurant yep right him uh muffins uh him grant me me me me because i didn't want to forget things no nobody nobody wants to interface with us come on give us some content maybe they're getting gun shy because they know they know they know we're going to comment for good or bad anyway i'm going to say goodbye uh happy flipping folks we'll see in a couple weeks all right folks have a great uh time in the sun out there it looks like we're going to be uh getting some warm Carl Weathers some more and uh key to happiness is having a thankful outlook and spirit so try doing that as well I am Dave. This was George. Bye. Thank you. But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. Dave. Who? Dave. D-A-V-E. Yeah, Dave. A-right.