Welcome back, pinball nerds, to the fifth annual I'm-Just-Gonna-Call-People-Drink-Some-Beer-And-Have-A-Rad-Time-For-Christmas. My name's Orville Elbert. I'm your fifth favorite pinball podcast. And that's right, I do apologize to all my patrons. I'm not gonna lie, Drop Target Danielle did a great job, but I myself wasn't quite in the Christmas mood. And our WTF happened, our year in review that's behind the Patreon. I'm sorry to all the patrons! It wasn't my best episode ever. I was being a little grinchy still. But it was interesting and it was fun. If you're one of these people who likes Orbital Albert a little bit wound up, a little bit excited, a little bit of a negative Nancy or Debbie Downer, then get over there to Patreon and listen. But if not, you're in for a treat tonight because I just heard back from the one, the only, the man who saved pinball, Roger Shark. He might be able to briefly join us at the end. But other than that, who do we have on here? We're going to be talking to Aaron from Fast Pinball. I've got to start with him. Retro Ralph might be able to hop on. Carrie Hardy. We've got Dan Bitterlich, okay? Come on. We've got Duncan. We've got Doug. We've got Glenn the Skateboarder. Jamie. I should have wrote Jamie on here. Can you write in Jamie here? Everyone say, Hello to Drop Target Danielle. She's not behind the paywall tonight. Hello. You're kind of going to be half sitting in, right? Let me just move the mic to the phone a little bit closer. Sorry, guys. I'm probably too close to it now. I've got to call Aaron from Fast Pinball because he is going to be heading out for a Christmas do soon. A do-do-do-do-do. Now, to everyone who's unfamiliar with this show, it's a little bit weird. It's a little bit wild. We get a bit crazy. I've already had a sour beer, but I'm going to pop on to my next one. I thought this was a great beer for tonight. It's called the Drama Free IPA. Donald Garrison of Don's Pinball Podcast, hoping to talk to him. Um, George Gomez. I messaged George Gomez. Do you know the cojones it took? Like, I really, really, really was feeling, well, you don't have to have cojones to have shabuts. To get, like, you know, just to get excited and give someone a call. But anyways, we don't want to miss Aaron, so before I go any further, honey, tell these nerds to go over and listen to you on Patreon, because you did a damn good job. Please go listen on Patreon. Thank you. That is all. Look how low that is on the thing. This is wild. Okay, we're going to have a great time. Everybody, listen, pause the show. Go get yourself a half eggnog. No, no, no, no, no, no. 60% chocolate milk, 40% eggnog. I don't care what you blend it with. I don't care if it's chocolate soy milk. I don't care if you're a soy boy. Just go drink it. It's yummy. All right, let's see here. I guess I should have Facebook up. By the way, you are going to hear some background beefs and bloops. No, that's not your insider connecting, okay? that is literally just, you know, that's just either people writing me back, or it is people that are letting me know when they can or can't come on. So here we go. Without further ado, hopefully Aaron answers. About half the people I'm going to be calling, I have no clue if they're going to answer or not, and that's totally fine. I kind of pooched the dog. We were stuck in Moncton far longer than we thought. The mall took long. Everything takes longer at Christmas. Costco takes longer. Don of Don's Thimble Podcast found that out the hard way but when he went to the Fredericton Costco Don, how dare you go to Fredericton two and a half hours from me and not tell me you're going to be there no, he only had 30 minutes and the arcade was closed because it was Monday alright, you know what before I call him, I oh, there we go okay, I think that's loud enough let me go back over here hello Hey, how's it going, Aaron? Dude, happy holidays, man. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas. What's up? Not too much. So, have you listened to these in the past when I call people and just see how they're doing? You know, probably. Like, it all kind of runs together, man. Fair enough, fair enough. Well, just to let you know, because it might be your first time on the show for this type of experience, we just do a quick five-minute chat. I ask you, how was your year in pinball? And you give me, like, you know, less than a 15-minute response. So how was your year in pinball, Aaron? Dude, this year was good. This was a fun year. We got to be a part of a lot of really great projects, got to see a lot of hard work kind of pay off finally. Like, after the slowness of the COVID-era park shortages and the tariff madness that was going on, Like, it was just everybody was working so hard to do what they originally planned to do, and that stuff all came to life. So got to see a lot of good projects come to life. Like I said, got to go on some road trips. We did our annual road trip to Expo. I did it with Erica this year, and that was a blast. Like, it just felt like it was nonstop go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, pinball. For sure. well yeah when you spend a solid 10 days driving across the country picking up every homebrew pinball machine on planet earth and then you took like the long long long way home like that's on you aaron that's not no no i'm just kidding on behalf all the homebrewers thank you for all your hard work with obviously not just fast pinball but like shout out to you from every freaking homebrew on planet earth that that you know you've helped out in one way or another so Dude, it's a labor of love, I tell you what man, you know, I think it was like when you and I were on a podcast at one point, you asked me about tournament play, right? Yes! And I got off that call with so much shame that I could say that I was not good at tournament play, so I set out at that point to get better at playing pinball, right? Yeah And I don't know if I I'm holding up the camera here like, I played my first tournament now listen this is audio only so they can't see it Aaron but I'm telling you right now it looks better than shit on a stick man it looks great dude it was great I mean like I think that like you know I've had some great football machines at our facilities here lately and I gotta say like I've been playing Dune most of anything and it's uh it's a game where I'm like fighting to win and I actually want to win so it's made my skills better and um like I said I placed third, finally, in a tournament, and I turned my cash winnings right around into sponsoring their tournaments for the upcoming months coming in. Because FastFox is these AFBA tournament feet, stuff like that. So, you know, pay it forward, I guess. So, tell the truth. Okay, so you were motivated by chatting with Orby to go, that's it, I'm going to start playing some tourneys, just a little bit. I lit a fire under your butt, and then you went out there and got third? Was that your first tournament, your second, your third? I'm just curious. Well, to be clear, like, I've played in tournaments, but socially. Like, my friend Sean Irby, like, you know, we used to go out and play at the Wednesdays out here at the Triple Knocks. And it was just, I was not going there to, like, beat these players because I was not, I was going there to meet people and hang out and stuff. And, like I said, like, after we were talking, I was like, you know, if I'm going to be building these things on a regular basis, I should be better. Step it up. And just learn to, lit a fire, man, lit a fire. Damn. Well, Aaron, listen. Okay. I want to say this. This is what I love about Dune. I think that Dune is one of these rare games kind of similar to, like, Houdini by American Pinball. And I would say maybe, like, kind of like Guardians of the Galaxy. There's the Rocket Raccoon shot and the Mode Start shot on the very, very, very far end of the right-hand side there. I would say more so, though, like Houdini. and I'm trying to think, like, just there's a couple other machines that are just so hard that they're almost not fun, Houdini being the main one, especially if you're having to do coin drop up here in Canada. They might charge you a Toonie, two bucks just to play Houdini. Well, even me as being, like, a decent player, I'm done that thing in a minute and a half, and I'm like, whoa, I literally just, there goes my Toonie, a fart in the wind, gone, you know. So, anyways, Dune is really growing on me. I already said that, you know, like, I love the alternative back glass. I love the Worm Mech in the middle. I like the shot pass. Anytime you're like, whoa, where's that ball going to come out, right? So I honestly think that the difference between Dune and, say, something like Houdini, Houdini's just not fun to shoot, and you're never going to get into the flow, whereas Dune, there is actually some pretty decent flow and unique and interesting ball pass, so you're going to become a better player. Yeah, for sure. Get some loonies ready, though, because if you're playing it on location, it's not going to run as long as a Godzilla game for 20 minutes, probably, unless you're like Keith Elwin himself or something, right? But wow. Great game. I mean, I've actually been playing, I think I took the tilt out of it because I'm on a carpeted floor here, so I'm like, I've got to get my nudge game under control again, try to be better. Yeah. And I was playing in this tournament like two weeks ago, not this latest one, and I had not adapted my no tilt in my games to real tournament play, and these games are yelling at me. And Sarah Bay, who's like the Washington State champion player here last year, I think, I was up against her, and I tilted in my first – and the ball. I was like, oh, my God, I'm sorry. She's like, what are you talking about? That's part of gameplay. I was like – Tilting is crying. It's my first public tilt. she's like oh oh Aaron was embarrassed no the thing is like there's there's a brand new tournament director out here and she's super nice she's really rad I'm so so happy that Natalia is her name I'm so glad that Natalia is taking over tournament directing in my local uh uh Zero's Arcade in Moncton but it was so funny because I got a tilt and she was like hey like I don't want to call you out in front of everybody but usually once you get like one danger you're kind of like let off quite a bit because I don't know if you knew this Albert but like you lose your bonus if you tilt you don't ever want to tilt she goes as soon as I get one as soon as I get one of those dangers I just stop nudging for the whole rest of the game and I said well I understand where you're coming from you know especially on a solid state or even an older machine your bonus you know tilt could end the game if it's an EM your bonus could ruin it but I said I was very early in the ball and I literally just had one danger left and I knew that it was going to go out the out lane so I gave my last tiny little bit of the tight tilt to try to save the ball from going out. And she kind of eventually, I try to explain, but tilting is trying. And the thing is, even as a tournament director, and that's what I'm saying, she's played in dozens of tournaments, no one had fully quite explained to her the same thing that my favorite Canadian player, Eden Stamets, said. If it goes out in out lane or straight down the middle, and you don't already have two dangers, and you don't get a tilt, there's something wrong. Like, tilting is trying. If it goes out in out lane and you don't have at least one danger, what's going on? You should have tried to save it, right? So the only difference between a good player and a great player is nudging. Well, you know, I mean, just you describing all that, like, in my head going, I did not understand the difference between the warnings and losing the bonus and all that kind of stuff. So now I've really got to think. That's a whole new strategy danger layer to this that I've got to think about now. But, see, I'm always learning, man. Always learning. Hey, here's the thing that you do. This is what I do. And you can see me on livestream doing this at Pinmasters, actually, on Fox Cities Pinball at D82, like, however long ago. Like, a year and a half ago. Two years ago, which you helped support, by the way. Thank you. And when I was there, once I got to two dangers on Godzilla, which that tilt was set up tighter than something very tight, okay? Someone tightly wound up like myself after too many energy drinks, okay? And this thing, I just barely nudged it. And so what I do is once I get to double danger, I stand right up at the machine so my body, my feet can't move back and forth at all. So I can't try to pivot to like to nudge and use my foot to like angular help with the whatever, you know. And then I also just I go to hold me holding on with two fingers and I just barely I pretend there's cotton balls there and I just barely press the flippers. And it was funny because I believe Andy Bagwell noted that in the chat. Like, oh, my God, you can see he's at two dangers. If you stood completely up, like I have to, so that I don't forget what I'm doing. I've often had craft beer, possibly a couple special gummy bears before I play. So I'll forget, oh my God, like I'm in a 15-minute ball on Circus Voltaire, and I have one danger or two. And then if you have to do a slap save, you need to know. So what I did today while I was practicing, I was playing on Iron Maiden, and I was at 85 million on my first ball. My wife wanted to frickin' go home. The dogs have been home by themselves for a while. My son was standing there like, dude, I've looked at every record in the store. You're on ball one. What's going on? So as soon as I got to one danger, I pretended I was at two, and I managed to do three slap saves without getting a single danger. So it's just pretending once in a while that you're at two dangers, even when you're not, can actually help you learn. Eventually, once you get really, really good at nudging, you want to learn how to nudge with the least amount of movement of the machine, because someday you're going to get to these big frickin' tournaments where they're going to be so tight, you can barely breathe on the thing, and it tilts, so... And it becomes like a physics exercise. You're considering, like, how heavy is this game? What type of scoring are we on? Ballspin. Always. Your brain needs to be remembering ballspin at all times. You need to visualize in your head if the ball is spinning left or right. Also, the biggest thing, like, my son's a really good player. He probably could easily, if he played all the tournaments, would have been made provincials this year in New Brunswick, like out of 90 players, he probably would have squeaked into the top 16, no problem, my 17-year-old son, Owen. Also known as Little Orby Jr. but he doesn't dead bounce enough. And I was watching him today on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and he smoked me on the first ball and got like 15 million. But there were three or four times when he had one important shot and all he had to do was just one of those times, once he knew he needed that one shot, anytime the ball came near his flippers, he just flipped away instead of doing a dead bounce. And I explained to him nicely after the ball, this Christmas time, I don't want my son to be like, Dad, you're walking home. I said to him, by the way, just to let you know, you would have started your Ninja Turtle freaking multiball or a pizza party multiball, if you just dead bounce over to that other flipper, you could have got the ball under control and had a controlled shot, and instead he didn't get to play that multiball. And I beat him by like 1.5 million. He surely would have beat me had he got that one multiball. So sometimes the differential between doing, like, that's probably the biggest thing, is not nudging, but it's just dead bouncing, that the average newer player doesn't do enough. Yeah, it's like knowing the game and the terrain. I mean, like, doing out of the scoop, like a dead bounce off the right flipper to the left is pretty safe. It's required. And on Predator, it's actually like trusting the center post that's in that game. It's the same kind of effect for me there. But that one, I trust the center post. It's just, I think the wide-bodiedness of that game, like the geometry is just different. So I just need to spend more time on that to trust bouncing off the center post in a game like that. My first year in the hobby, Aaron, there was no center post. And then all of a sudden, I guess I was listening to George Gomez. He basically was Keith Elwin, one of the top designers, one of the top players in the world, comes to you and says, I want a center post, and he sells the most pins for you. You go, yeah, okay, I guess we can do that. But like George said... Wasn't it treated as like, old school Williams days, like a center post meant you messed up in your design. Right. There was some badge of shame that you had to wear. Yes. But I think it's an interesting game dynamic. I don't look at it so much as a failure design. It's like It's just a different, like, factor. So do you know that post was originally named after my favorite designer of all time? No. Okay. A little bit of pinball trivia. His name is Steve Kirk. You've probably heard of him. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scars, Meteor, et cetera. I think he designed, like, according to internet or according to the IM, whatever, the pinball database, he designed over 200 machines. So a very prolific designer. I think I actually owned one of his first pinball machines, which was one of the top-ranked EMs called Singalong. But it was originally called like a Kirk Post when he would put them in. It was because Steve Kirk was the main one doing it. And my favorite thing about the Kirk Post is if you get a crappy enough meteor, an old enough meteor, for some reason, especially with a really crappy rubber that's worn down, if you cradle up on your right flipper and you just let the cradle drop, the ball, and practice this not in a tournament first era, not when you're in finals of a tournament about to win a million dollars, okay? but practice in warm-ups. If you cradle up on Meteor and you let your right flipper drop on a lot of these old ones, it will perfectly hit the Kirk post, bounce over to your left flipper, and I swear to God to you, don't know if this was like on accident, probably on accident. Maybe he's just a freaking genius and we didn't know it. Well, we did know he's a genius, but maybe he's smarter than we thought. It literally lands right where you need to flip to shoot it up through the right spinner perfectly. So if you can just cradle on the right, you have cradle on the right, and then you got to have nerves of steel to let it drop off the Kirk Post and back. Would I try this in a tournament? Probably not. But anyways, I've gone way over 10 minutes, and I know you have somewhere to go, which is why I called you early tonight. I know. I'm getting texts from my wife right now going, you know, we had to leave like 10 minutes ago. Go, go, go. Get out of here, buddy. One of our kids isn't even home yet. He was like on a hike or something somewhere. So I'm not in trouble yet, but I should be going. Yes. I don't know if you noticed, but I was wearing a nice sweater today because we're going to like a Christmas party. I'm not wearing my signature black hoodie. so uh there's very fancy very I thought you were gonna put on a Christmas sweater when you told me this that's that's what I thought I implied when I said that but I realized I don't have any Christmas sweaters so yeah whatever man well hey let's uh let's call it now then and then Merry Christmas Happy Holidays rah rah rah 2026 is gonna be incredible dude let's just all like go into the new year knowing that next year is gonna be incredible for friends for pinball for all that good stuff. And I'm going to see you at Expo this year, right? Listen, I can't even say yes because I've gotten in trouble so many years in a row saying I was going to go and then I don't go. So I will say 50-50. I will say that until the day I show up. But I honestly think it's a better 50-50 than even when I was 95% last year. I'm very much the kind of person that likes to just will things into existence. So just know that I'm over here willing your visiting Expo this year into existence. so you just need to do your part by packing your bags and then I'll see you there so man, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year Merry Christmas shout out, everybody go buy some fast pinball boards take it easy Aaron Merry Christmas Merry Christmas he hung up before I finished saying that oh my god, honey, I've got like 15 messages oh my god, that was way too long no Albert, you can't, I have to go quick I'm in so much trouble guys oh my god, missed call, Eric Stone call back Say hi to Eric Stone. I have to go pee-pee, honey. Just say hi to Eric Stone. I have to go pee. Oh, she's not going to let me go in the bathroom. You can go. Well, you just said I can't go. Well, I have to go to the bathroom. Man, I drank an energy drink. There he is. guys I missed a call from Eric Stone I talked too long okay uh uh I'll just tell him I'm gonna call him back okay can you at least talk to the microphone until I come back I want you to tell them a very Merry Christmas to all the pinball nerds And thanks for listening to all of Orky's family. We would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas from all of the pinball nerds out there listening. We hope that you have a great Christmas, a happy new year, and that the 2026 brings you everything that you desire. Well, maybe not everything, but you get the gist. from me, the two pups, sitting on the couch. Hope you have a lovely evening, and I hope the rest of this podcast goes very, very well. Anyways, I think I can hear Albert pretending to be Santa. I think he's on his way. Have a lovely day. Have a lovely day. Here you go. This is for you. Thank you. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. My name's Orby. Man, I love this show. You guys know I edit every single show all day long, or all year long, and this is that one show I don't edit, so, you know, get used to it. Okay, who's next up on my list to call? Dawn of Dawn's Pinball Podcast. Okay, let's see here. I can't. I just woke up. What's up? Oh, God. Oh. Hey! Oh, my God! Roger Sharp said okay to an hour. Guys, Roger Sharp is going to be on the show. If you just hold out to the very, very, very end, Roger might be back. Okay. I'm going to... Thanks, Aaron, for coming on the show. Aaron and I talk too long. What a guy. I feel like if Aaron and I lived in the same neck of the woods, we'd hang out. I don't know if we'd be besties, but we'd definitely be very good acquaintances. So, shout out to Aaron. And guys, just go buy all the... Listen, just take 100% of your money. I don't care if you don't have money for food, for rent, for your mortgage, for your car payments, for your kids to go to your nursery college. Just go take 100% of your money and just buy all the Fast Pinball boards. I'm just kidding. But legit, if you're doing a homebrew, you should. Okay, I'm just going to tell Eric Stone, I will call you later. Cheers. Okay, there we go. All right, next up is Dawn. This is like challenging. I kind of feel like a radio show, like a call-in radio show like that. And guys, Don told me he may or may not be answering. I'm not going to lie. If he's got a patient, open heart surgery or brain whatever on the... If he's busy. If he's busy with a client. Wait, now he did say he's the manager of Burger King. Huh? Yeah. That's what he told me. Thank you for calling Happy Hannah's Handjobs. This is Sarah. How can I direct your call? Oh, I'm so sorry. I was trying to call Burger King to speak to the manager, Don. Oh, shoot. Was that this phone? Sorry, I know. This is Don. I'm covering for Hannah. She's out with a wrist injury. What's up? Hannah Banana! Merry Christmas, Don. How's it going, buddy? Yeah, you know, pretty good. Freezing my butt off here, but it's probably the cold winds of New Brunswick blowing in, so I'm going to blame it on that. I can't believe that you are so close to me. It's like a weird feeling. It was so strange being in Fredericton, and I'm like, this bro is always over there for Flippin' Funny Friday, or whatever, and I'm like literally in that town for 35 minutes to go to Costco, but I'll definitely be back. Well, listen, one of these times when you have, I know you're super busy, okay, between Burger King, custodial work over there, it's spooky, you know, We Are Pinball, Don's Pinball podcast, and then you have like a regular 40-hour week job, plus I think like you like print stuff on some type of machine and do mods from time to time, and then over top of that, you have a collection of like 20 pinball machines that's growing, nay, moving, right? So, you know, you're a busy guy. You're a busy guy. You only have a certain amount of time. Now, today, if you have to let us go, you are working. So, today, if you have to let us go, I'll know it's for an emergency. Absolutely. Okay. But one of these times when you're going to Fredericton, let me know in advance. And if you have, if you happen to have like not even a full day, but like 12 hours, 10 hours, eight hours extra, we could squeeze in, you know, a dinner and a movie and some pinball. Nah, screw the movie. You can watch movies in America. I want to be a fundie flipper. How do I do that? We can't talk about that on air, okay? It involves five different processes, and some of them you may need to be streaking in the quad, okay? I'm not going to lie. So this may not be good for your day job. In all honesty, I'm probably going to be doing that anyway, so this is just extra gravy on your biscuit or poutine. Sorry. Yeah, we don't have biscuits up here. You guys and your biscuits. I don't even know what that is. But, you know, the poutine, I will say this. If you are in Fredericton, or especially if you are in Moncton or Dieppe, you must say poutine because, honestly, if you say to them poutine, they will put 30% less cheese curds on. They will just assume you're from Ontario or the United States or Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, anywhere but the east coast of Canada or Quebec, and then they just look at you like, I literally have had someone gave me the side eye when I asked for poutine. They're like, dude, you're not at McDonald's, bro. Come on. Dude, like, okay, all right. So I live up near the Quebec border with New Brunswick, and it's super-duper French there. But I crossed over into Frederikburg or whatever, and the lady at the booth was just like, hello, bonjour. and I'm like, what is this bonjour accent? I thought I was in French Canadien. What the hell is this? She was not the French one. It was awesome. So, okay, tell me the big difference. This is so lame. No one cares what you and I, Don. I probably should do this off-air, but I don't give a shit. No one listens to this show anymore. How many, like, what is the main difference between, like, an American Costco and a Canadian one? Well, so the hot dogs are still $1.50, but it's in funny Canadian money. So I think it was only 80 cents. Wow. So there's that right off the bat. Did they taste the same? You know, like, so I'm a hot dog connoisseur, so I can appreciate the differences. But I think by and large, it was very similar. You know, the pizza was slightly different. Still, I wouldn't say one's better than another. But, you know, it was legit. It was legit. My favorite thing, though, being a fan of my best favorite pinball podcast here, I was on the road driving, taking in the scenery. and like I see a direction sign for Moncton and it's like the funniest sounding name. I only know it because of your podcast. Moncton. And here I am looking at the shit right on the freeway or the Trans-Canadian Pipeline or whatever the hell I was driving on. So that was cool and I've got you to thank for that. Moncton. Moncton. Sounds like something you get like stuff in your undercarriage and have to scrape off or take antibiotics for. How did you know? That's what it means in French. Ah, so there's a full circle, man. Don't le pantalona. This is the land of the fever trappers, after all. It makes sense now. Well, listen, I don't want to get too serious on you. But first of all, just because this is the first time we've talked on the phone in a while, I want to humbly apologize for being a bit of a Debbie Downer earlier this year. I get jealous sometimes. I'm a little bit of a sensitive Sally. And it's so funny because I think the only thing you did like a year ago to like mildly annoy me, which it shouldn't have been anything because it's totally true, Usually I would have taken it as a compliment. I think all you literally said in a live stream was, yeah, that Orbital Albert guy, he's a bit out there. And I happened to be in the live stream, and for some reason or another, that just set me off. And then I don't even know what happened earlier this year. There's some type of stuff. I don't even know. I was just having a bad day or something, and for some reason, I think the minor thing that slightly annoyed me, and it was so dumb that I was annoyed by it, because in the time I thought it was so funny, basically you came on my show this show a year ago, the Christmas show and it was really funny because while you're in line the woman's like, I need to see your passport sir and I thought you were like joking or something like you got Monica or someone in the background to say that and then I hear Monica talking I'm like no, that's not her and then I was like oh my god, this dude's really in line at the airport, why didn't he answer my phone call but I also thought it was really funny so I had this conversation with Danielle because you were the only person that I recorded separately because you said Albert, I'll be on a plane while you're recording this, so you've got to call me earlier. So I could have either put you at the very end of the show, or I could throw you at the start. And I thought it was just so comical and funny I threw you at the start, but I don't know. That show didn't get a ton of listens, but I know as of Christmas Day it's dead, no one wants to go back and listen to someone talking in a Santa voice. That's why this year the Santa voice is gone, and I just want to legitimately, now that we're on the air, I just want to say it super wasn't rad the two times I got mad at you for basically nothing, and I hope moving forward I'm less of a jerk. Well, I mean, look, this is all supposed to be fun anyway, so it's kind of hard to have too big of an ego. And in your own defense, I am good about finding the buttons to push on people and the intrusive thoughts 100% win 100% of the time. So I'm sure I was somewhat there to blame. Thank you. No, no, no. You didn't have to say that. That wasn't the point of this. But you know what? I think it's really weird because I think that you and I are like somehow weirdly opposites. And yet, like we would have been buddies if we went to the same high school. Seriously. Okay. Okay. I do. I do think we would be friends slash enemies. Like once in a while we'd wrestle once we had a couple too many lemon drops or something, you know. But we'd also be really good. You remind me. I love lemon drops. You remind me actually of halfway between one of my best friends in high school, Timothy Hillis and Jonathan Gravel. and you're like the halfway between the two of them and don't worry, my friends were very charming very handsome, very fun to hang out with and so I think you're in that same boat and honestly, we listen to very similar music other than Insane Clown Posse and we also and I've grown to like them in my own way but we also skateboarded and would have been hanging out in probably the same circles so anyways, I do, again, I apologize for being a jerk but moving forward, let's be buds in the end we're really border buddies so you know i think we should just go with that well now we have to be basically because like eventually if you keep going up to you're in um um stewart mclean who you have no clue who that is but you should look up and at least listen to the christmas story and all you americans do the same stewart mclean was the number one storyteller on cbc radio for the last 20 years but unfortunately passed away a couple years ago and he would always tell a story about Banger, Maine. And the funny part was, especially growing up in Canada, I had to travel to Port Huron or Sarnia or Detroit to go get cheap clothing. Because like shoes, literally Nike shoes would be half price. Like if they were 200 bucks in Canada, they'd be 99 there. So even with like the 30% extra you'd pay, it was just worth time and energy to do it. So going back to Stuart McLean, they would travel to Banger, Maine, which was the first place that had like a good mall when they were coming from, excuse me, the Maritimes. And then what he would make his family do is put on, like, five or six, like, things of clothing and, like, t-shirts and everything so they weren't charged the duty when they went back. And they all were, like, you know. Anyways, it's a funnier story when he tells it because he's one of the best storytellers on planet Earth. But look at how far you off with it. That is 100% a gangster move. I love it. You're saving hundreds of dollars with your kids, right? Yeah. Who's not for using your kids to save a few bucks? Come on. Absolutely. We'll make a little international border smuggling when it's kept within the family. That's right. That's right. Well, listen, I wanted to talk very briefly about, well, first of all, congratulate you with whatever the heck you're doing over there. You know, it seems like you're doing something rad. You're moving down. You bought Charlie's old house, right, in Wisconsin? Absolutely. Not Wisconsin. I wish I could share details. but like it's so badass. I don't want any details. Just wait. Just wait. No, you can call me out right here on the live stream. Have I ever, ever, ever even remotely hinted like, hey, Don, could you tell me like the next pinball? I've never said that to you or any person who works at a pinball company. This is true. This is true. You're a solid dude. Well, I don't know about being a solid dude, but I just like surprises. It's the same thing with Christmas morning. You know what I mean? that's my favorite thing is just being surprised. I don't care if it's just a handwritten card. Of course I'd rather a box of Pokemon. Come on. Let's be honest here. Oh, by the way, thank you for that shout out. You were like, I don't know too much about Pokemon, so you should probably ask Albert Agar about that. I'm like, whoa, no one ever knows my last name. I'm either called Albert Agar or Albert Agarth. They say it like Garth from Bill and Ted. No, not Bill and Ted. Wayne's World. Argarth. Yeah. Agarth. It's like, what? Agar. They got it wrong. But tell me... Now I don't know how to say it. Agar You said it perfectly No Agar It rhymes with Hagar Oh okay I always tell people it rhymes with Hagar the Horrible which used to be a comic I don even think it around anymore But tell us what you can tell us Just like in vague little, I don't want you to get an angry phone call from Bug tomorrow morning. I'm sure he listens to every Pinball Nerds podcast episode as soon as it comes out. But just give us like an idea, like, come on. I know you're not actually like literally the custodian. Are you helping out a little bit with the designs? Do you plan on maybe doing trade shows once in a while and being customer-facing? Are you more so on the idea guy? Are you helping with troubleshooting and rules, possibly? I'm just curious. Are you going to just fill whatever void needs filled at the time? Or can you give us a little clue? What would your business card say? If Don Garrison had a business card for Spooky, what would it say on it? A spiritual advisor is my main position. You just maybe spit out my beer in my cup. Okay, that's not going to be drinkable now. I also assist in activities director also. It's essentially a big Antonio Cruz ship, the whole operation there. We've got a Captain Steubing. We've got the bartender there. We get celebrity guest stars come by every week. It's really the love boat is where we all are there. But, you know, there's almost like a cheat code when it comes to design in this hobby, in this industry. Okay. And really it's just listening to the people that, the customers that buy the games, the people that play the games. What is it that they want? and then you make that and then they see it and they're like, yeah, that's exactly what I wanted. Thank you very much. I'll take another one when you're ready. So I would say start with that. But, you know, everything that people say, like, we hear it. And, you know, we're fans probably more than anybody else is, and we want that too. And, you know, we want it delivered at a great price and, like, packed with value. and we're just uniquely positioned to be able to deliver that more than probably anybody else is. Don't let that get out. But, yeah, it's awesome. Awesomeness is coming. I've said it before, Don. What I love about you guys is your social media game, your open and honesty, your customer service. You know, I love all of that. And I think finally Evil Dead and now Beetlejuice, you guys put it all together. You have by far, like, let's be honest, you have the most packed into a pinball machine for under 10k in the world. I will, I will, maybe, maybe, maybe if you were to get, you know, Barry's Barbecue fully decked out, like with really tasteful mods and like really good video of actual meats being flipped, it'd be slightly better, you know. But no, I can't, it's so sad. I haven't played Evil Dead yet. I just watched another live stream with, I think, Retro Ralph was playing it. So, I mean, like, good for you guys. Be honest. And, you know, to be honest, like, I had nothing to do with Beetlejuice. But you know how hyped that game was? Like, it was way overhyped, right? It was obscene. Like, what game could possibly live up to that? And then it was revealed and people were still, like, jaws on the floor, even with all the pre-hype. Like, that's phenomenal. When does that happen? You know, when does that happen? You know, we get the idea in our heads when rumors come out. And then we see the final product, we're like, oh, it was Star Wars, but I was expecting more than just eight shots and a toilet bowl. You know, or, oh, it was, you know, Godfather. How are they going to make it? And then, oh, that's it. You know, but, like, when you get something that's pre-hyped this much and then still satisfies, amazing. So hopefully I can manage to not, you know, mess up the mojo. Well, I'm very happy for you. I'm very happy for Spooky. I want to see, like, it's not just, like, I know I get called, like, a stern shill and fanboy and upper decker or whatever else, but I want to see every single boutique do incredible. The number one thing I learned back at Fanshawe College when I was taking marketing was that when one industry does really well, it can scratch the back of the other industry right beside it and so on and such forth. The silly example they used back then I don't believe is 100% true, but I guess it was in this one case. But when Mountain Equipment Co., also known as MEC, which is one of the largest, I think, in Canada. I don't even know if they're in the States. I think in the States you have a different, like a hiking, it's kind of like a Costco for hiking. Like REI? REI, thank you. That's the name of the U.S. one. Yeah. So basically up here, what happened is Mountain Equipment Co., our top, you know, co-op, whatever place for that, built a place in downtown Toronto, right at Queens and Spadina in Fashion District. And all of a sudden, the second biggest people opened up right across the road. And both companies did better. And then a third company, and eventually there was, I think, five different hiking, outdoorsman, whatever companies. Any company that could fit in real small. What was the one we saw in Moncton today, that other one that's from the States? What's the biggest one, Don? The outdoor shop. Bass Pro. Oh, yeah, Bass Pro shop. Bass Pro couldn't F with them because they need too much square footage, and it just wasn't going to work downtown. so Bass Pro was the only one of the outdoor shops left out. But all five of these shops ended up being the top seller in all Canada, and they were all beside each other because everybody knew, hey, if I want something, I'll visit all of them and just compare in price. So I think it's kind of the same thing, you know, like a rising tide floats all boats or something. Well, yeah, look at where the best theme parks are in the country, and they're all nestled right next to each other competing. And when Universal competes with Disney and competes with SeaWorld, who wins, but the consumers. We get all this cool choice, and we get all this competition, which is like bringing innovation in. I want Stern Pinball to punch back hard. I want them to drop something that's completely devastating. You need to pretend to like that C3 blowtopper. He bought Coe in the phrase of the Avatarians, and brings some more innovation, and then we're just going to ride this chariot straight into the fires of pits of hell, at least until ACDC Remastered comes out. Well, I don't know what words you just said, but it sounded like Zeya Wataneo to me, which reminds me of the bucket list. And it makes me think, Don, before I die, even if I found out I had terminal cancer tomorrow, my one last wish would be just to play a game of pinball with you and have a drink or two. We should make it happen. Let's do it. Okay, listen, Roger Sharp is waiting for my call, and he's just finishing dinner, so I've got to give him a call. but I really, really appreciate chatting today. Don't be a stranger. Let's, I want to try to have you and Jenga's on in the future, I think episode 666. Come on, let's do it. Come on, yes. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. And when I get to chat with him, I will apologize to him too because I don't even know why I was being a dick to him because he's actually a really rad dude. So anyways, you guys are super positive in pinball, which I appreciate. I don't know if I'm, I turned 45 and I'd mellowed out a little bit more or maybe my medication's finally kicking in. I don't know. Maybe I've cut back on the old beer skis and that's helped. I don't know. But the point is, I apologize to him. He'll maybe listen to this. Who knows? I know he doesn't listen to the show, but maybe he'll listen to this one and your segment in particular. But I would love to get the chance to, you know, just chat with him sometime. Especially, I don't know, like after a new pinball machine comes out because say it's, I don't know, Pokemon coming up. There's a chance that you're right in the middle that you know a little bit about Pokemon. From what I understand, Cengiz doesn't really know a lot about it, so we'd get the opinion of someone right in the middle, someone on the low end, and then myself, who's high AF. On Pokemon. Let's do it. That sounds amazing. I'll send him a clip of the show, so he'll listen to it. There you go. We'll make it happen. Cengiz, if you're listening, I love you, bro. Have a ragdoll. I'll talk to you by then. Happy Boxing Day. I swear to God, you better call me right at the border. If they give you any problems, Just say, listen, I got Albert Agar here on the phone, and he will drive up from Nova Scotia to vouch for me. Like, I'm a rad dude from – I might look like I'm from Quebec, but my name is Donald Garrison, and I am American. And then they'll have to let you in. Yeah, I think that's pretty much the cheat code, yeah. I'll try it at the border next time. Dude, have a rad night. I talked way too long to you, but, I mean, yeah, you're two podcasters. It's going to happen. Yeah, we totally should have recorded this. This would have been great content. Oh, my God. I know, right? I always think that after we talk. Oh, well, next time. All right. Take it easy, buddy. Have a good night. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Donald Garrison. I hang up on him. Oh, jeez. I went too long, huh? Oh, God. There's, like, nine calls. Okay, everybody. call in two men, guys, Todd, oh my god, excuse me, I'm sorry, hopefully Todd scripts that part, Todd Tucky, you may have heard of him, TNT, yes, no, what's his YouTube channel, I'm such an idiot, oh my god, guys, imagine blanking, isn't it TNT, or am I, am I confused, Craig Bobby, Okay, Craig Bobby says, well, I won't read it out loud. Thanks, Albert. I think, okay, hold on, hold on. I'm not going to read this out loud. He has, you're hosting family tomorrow night, but aim for a little bit later. Okay, towards 9 p.m.? That's like 10 o'clock here. If I do a three-hour podcast, they're all going to kill me. Should I try to call next, then? I don't know who. Let's look at the list. Was it Julie? Julie Dorser said yes. Let me look at her. Okay, everybody. Julie is my favorite TD. You probably all know her. I think she was nominated for a D-Jenny's Award for Community, yada, yada, yada. She was my TD at Monday Night Pinball at Call the Office back in the day. Oh, no. I shouldn't mention or talk about Sean, should I? But I kind of want to. My buddy Sean. Okay. You can call after 7.30, which is 8.30 here. Here we go. Okay. We're trying to call Julie Dorsters, everybody. London, Ontario. My TD from Monday Night Pinball called the office for so long. And then it turned into Speed City Records. But now it's at Forked River Brewing Company. Hi. Hi, Julie. How's it going? Good. How are you? Not too bad. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Well, it's a couple days away, but it's getting there. Ho, ho, ho. No, I promised everyone I would not do the Santa voice tonight, so that's not happening. I'm only going to do the Belschnickel voice. Oh, wait, no, that's German Christmas. Wait, what's the Dutch, Sinterklaas? Sinterklaas? Kaputsches. Hoi, wat in mijn skootsjes? Oh, my goodness. That sounded dirty, Julie. I'm not going to lie. I don't know what you said there, but it sounded very, it sounded naughty, but people don't do it. Sinterklaas is earlier. It's December 5th. It's around December 5th. And you put out your wooden shoes and you hope you don't get taken away to Spain. Yeah. I still want to get a bumper sticker. I don't know, Julie. Is this wrong? Okay, I'm only half Dutch. Can I get the bumper sticker that's actually, I'm only 48% Dutch, I found out. But, you know, pretty close to half. Can I still get a bumper sticker that says wooden shoe? Wooden head, wooden lisp? No, that one would be too close to home. That is true. I can't get that one. Everyone knows that's true. No, I would get wooden shoe. Rather be Dutch. Oh, that's kind of cute. Yeah, yeah. I like it. Okay. There's at least one person got that. One person at home got that. Well, listen, I'm only doing quick five to ten minute calls. I just got a message back from the one person in pinball I thought who would never write me back, Julie, who is the one man who I would assume would never write me back to maybe do a Merry Christmas with me? Any clue? Keith Owen? No, he never writes me back. I ask him every year, Julie. He's never responded even once. But you asked who would never do that. Okay, you're right. No, you are right. But Roger Sharp wrote back. I was like, what? Yeah. Oh, but isn't he Jewish? so don't you have to talk about Hanukkah? I will say happy Hanukkah. Like, eight nights, let's go. I don't know a whole bunch about it, but here's the time. I'll just say happy holidays, maybe. I would say happy Hanukkah and break out the yarmulke. Let's go. And listen, he said he has to make dinner, but I could call him in like an hour and a half. I should have written down what time that is. I'll check after my phone call with you. But like, you know, if Mike Dynast, you know, he's a shenanigan. If he doesn't answer, I'll be upset, but I'll get over it. You know, like Sean Russell said he's busy. He's busy. It's like, okay, you're too busy for, like, you know, the least listening podcast. Sean is not a Christmas guy. Oh. He's not a Christmas. Okay, well, that makes sense. That's not his season. That makes sense. It's a tough season for people. So you missed Forks River because we had 34 people on a Tuesday night. Wow. Julie, I'm not going to lie. When I came home for about a week, I kept thinking, imagine if I just stayed in London. I probably would have been friends with half those people on Monday night. You mean Tuesday night? Tuesday night, sorry. And the other half probably would have hated me. But the point is, some of them would have been friendly with me. I just never ever messaged Speedy. Like, it was so nice to see him and just talk to him. I think when he saw me, he was like, oh, my God, why are you here? Yeah. He doesn't come out too often, but he does. And he owns a couple of those games, right? Right. It was so nice to see Marcus City. I think he comes to get money put in his pocket. No, that's a long time. It was fun. Yeah. It was so nice to see him, and he went to finals that night, and, like, I'm not going to lie, he might have been the only person there close enough to winning the drunk award with me, so, like, he tied a couple on. So he did well. I was shocked that I went to finals. I've never, okay, I have played stars. I had never played any of the, I had played Genie, like, twice at Pinberg or something, but, like, all those old machines I hadn't played, I thought I would, I told Hayden, I said, listen, if I get, like, fifth last or tenth last, I'm exhausted from traveling for a week straight. I'm kind of pinballed out from Maple still. I don't know any of these machines. All these players understand, like, you know, these individual feeds on these machines. I'm not that familiar with even Kong. I've only played maybe 10 games on Kong. Godzilla and Jaws I know okay, but, like, those were the only three games there I really knew that well. Bond I'd only ever played there at that location ever, like twice maybe with Matthew for that. So I was shocked I did that well. But I just think it's such a cool, for people listening who don't know, for the better part of, I think, two, three years, Julie was the tournament director at Monday Night Pinball at Call the Office in London, Ontario. And that's where I kind of, like, you know, learned how to play a little bit at least. And I just, I love it there. I miss Call the Office. I miss all you guys. When I left Call the Office, it just closed. So in my head, it still exists somewhere. But shout out to you and Mike. And who's the gentleman? Corey Cook. Corey Cook keeps all those games mint. Shout out. They are in such great condition. Like, if there's something wrong, he fixes it right away. Yeah. It's remarkable. And there's very few venues that have that person of skill who can fix a game. Incredible. And that's what he does for a living now. And he's so busy because there's so few repair people. and so he's doing great at that and he loves having the games there and the brewery loves having the games there. It's a win-win really but... Julie, do you know how close I was with the brewery owners when they first started? How? Well, I did the interview with them for the Brews Brothers on Rogers when they had issues doing the expansion there with the red tape from... Because Fork River used to be much smaller on the other side. And then for, I think, like a good year and a half or so, we made all the craft beer soap for Fork River. Also, I've got to interview them a couple times. And I was familiar with Stephen, and I'm trying to think the other two, Kevin, who's the other gentleman, the main guy that I hung out with, Reed, something Reed. Anyways, I hung out with them every, like, once a month, every single, I believe it was Wednesday, we did a party. Those guys all came from the London Homebrewers Guild, which I was part of. So we would go to Forest River once a month to do the London Homebrewers Guild. And I tried to talk them into getting to pinball that many years ago. So who knows? Maybe I set the seed in place that helped maybe when Corey went back to get it to happen. Hey, let a man dream. I don't know. But craft beer, like for you to drink great craft beer like that and have access to the pizza and Kyle's Fried Chicken right there, and you're not downtown. Have you had Kyle's Fried Chicken? Oh, God, yes, Julie. My liver is still paying for it. It's the best. It is so good. So good. It is literally amazing chicken. I love it. I don't get it as often because they're not open Tuesdays, because it's not enough of a crowd for them to be open. Fair enough, yeah. On the weekends, when we have a tournament, I'm there. I'm like, chicken. and they even know my order. They just go, hi, Julie. I go, yeah, my usual. Well, sometimes people might think I'm joking, but I always say on the show, you're my favorite TD. And the reason I say that is for years and years and years, when I was probably, honestly, even more late, more often than I am now, and even partied harder than I do now. No, you're not late ever, Albert. See, this is what I'm saying is you, for the most part, were just like, oh, you're late, get in there. You know what I mean? You were very, I would send you a message and be like, I'm sorry. But no, not only that, but like you, between you, Mark and City, Sean Russell, even Joe Stanzik, you know, you guys were kind of the four people that helped me the most with my game. And even if I was playing in a game with any of the four of you, you would be like, dude, you've got to aim for this next, or this is how you blow it up. And it was such a cool, fun environment to go to Call the Office, my favorite punk rock bar that I used to go to, you know, at least once a month or so until I was 25 to go to concerts and Moe Gravy and like their Sunday Night Retro and stuff. Like the same place that I went there all of a sudden became my favorite location to go to Monday and Thursdays. And you guys were the three or four people I saw there all the time. And now pretty much all of you guys, other than, I guess, Joe Stanzik, but all the rest of you guys have moved over and play at Forked River as well now too. So I'm glad to see someone is holding the flame and keeping London, Ontario pinball running and happy. And you're getting like 30-some-odd players, which is incredible. Well, normally we get about 23, but I think because it was before Christmas, we had everybody came out, right? And it was a great night. It was a lot of fun. And it's a bit hectic because it was like a little overwhelming, right, for that many players to show up. Yep. But, yeah, it was a fun night, and I'm glad it's going really well, and Corey's really great at, like, you know, rotating games. So, you know, in a couple months, a couple games will move out, and a couple different games will move in. So it's great for us because we get to practice games. You know, you go to Pinburger, it's like, oh, this is victory. I know how to play this. Not that it plays the same, but at least I understand the game, right? So there's good things about that. If you live in Kitchener, Waterloo, Sarnia, Windsor, even like, I don't know, like probably not Mississauga per se, but like even Brantford, you're within an hour, hour and a half from London, Ontario. If you can't make it out to a Tuesday night, there's like a Saturday or a Sunday every couple months. Just follow them on Facebook and you'll see when the next one's going to be. Am I right? Yeah, we actually do get, Eric comes from Windsor. We've had people from Burlington. We get some of those people because it's a different venue and it's fun. Corey likes to give good prizes. He tries to make it fun for everybody, even if you're not an A player. I like that. He's a superstar. Yeah. No, very welcoming environment. Really cool group of people that you have there. Very similar to my fun group of friends that we have out here. And listen, if you and Tim ever come out to the East Coast, I would love to host you, just like show you around either Moncton, Fredericton, Charlottetown, St. John, or Halifax. You don't have to like hang out with, if you're here for three days, you don't have to hang out with us for the whole three days, but like just for a couple hours, show you the cool pinball spots, maybe take you guys out for a nice dinner or something for coming and visiting us here. And it would just be nice to see you. I've been trying to talk Mike into it. I'm like, Mike, you've gone everywhere but the East Coast to Canada. Melvis came out here once. I'm trying to talk him and Lisa into coming out here again. You know me. I'm always trying to talk people into coming out here and visiting. But if you do come by, I can show you all the cool spots in the top four big towns out here, big, big towns in quotations, because even Halifax, if you don't include the other half of it, which is on the other side of the, what do you call it, the harbor there, it's smaller than London. So every town out here, Julie, is smaller than London. You probably already know that. But if you guys ever want to come for a trip, we'd love to host you guys. Okay. It may be on my bucket list. I may choose Newfoundland first. We'll see. Newfoundland is gorgeous. Grosvenor Park is incredible. St. John's is just... St. John's, the architecture, the houses, just how old it is, you're not going to see that outside of Europe. Yeah, and I don't think I'm going to the States for a bit. Fair enough. I'm going to wait and see what happens over there. I heard they're looking through your social media, perhaps, from time to time, and I'm like, uh-oh, maybe avoid it for a while. But I also promised Aaron of Fast Pinball that I would go to Expo this year, so who knows. If I get strip-searched and they're not going to find anything, I wouldn't be stupid enough to even bring a penicillin pill across the border. They're not going to find even an Advil, so they can go ahead and search me all they want. I might even enjoy it. Who knows? But the point is, at the very end of the day, I would really like to go to Expo this year, and I don't want to let politics prevent me from going, but also it's a little scary. But I may or may not have ADHD, and I like being scared a bit, so who knows? Maybe I'll get a rush from going across the border. I don't know. We'll see. Well, and who knows what happens in the next, you know. I'll probably be fine. You know what? 99.9% of the Canadians are fine. If you're not super-duper rude to them and you have nothing to hide, you're probably fine. They might hassle you for a bit if you have as much, you know, negative and rude stuff to one party on your social media as me. But they'll probably get over it and let me go eventually, and I'll just have a funny story to tell you. I don't know. So anyways, I totally miss you. I miss all the London people. I really miss Monday Night Pinball. I think of it often. It's so great I got to talk to you. And now I must go call Roger Sharp because I think he's done dinner. Okay. And can you post the podcast to my page? I will for sure. Yes, I will for sure. So I can listen to it? And I will tag you and you'll listen to it and go, Albert, I don't know. I don't know, man. I don't know about that one. It was okay. probably like the last probably past beer seven people will be like I'm tuning out sorry dude I gotta call Roger Sharp by beer six you know what I mean well tell him I said hello I will you introduced me to him so I will definitely do that Julie okay alright have a rad night say hi to Tim for me okay Merry Christmas Merry Christmas ho ho ho bye Albert Merry I can't find the turn off the call button there no you're breaking the fifth wall no there I found it so the thing is I'm watching our levels on audacity and therefore I can't see what's happening over here should I call Roger Sharp now I don't want to call him drunk that is so rude oh my god I had another call ready but now oh my god Todd Tucky ok I'm going to try Todd Tucky I don't, I forget when I said, honey, when did I say I call back Roger Sharp? You don't remember? Doesn't matter. I forgot when I said I call, I would call him. Is it true I'm calling Kaneda next? I think I should have, can you pour me like a squirt or anything non-alcoholic to have in between these? Thank you. Hello. Oh. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Todd Tucky. It sounds like Santa himself. Well, you know what? I am in the Great White North, but I'm not Santa. It is I, Orbital Albert. How are you doing? How are you doing, Mr. Tucky? So it's Santa, but it isn't Santa. Well, last year I called this Santa during the podcast, and everyone was like, please don't do that again, Albert. And so I said, well, can I just bring him back for like the start of the call? And no one responded. So I took that as a yes. Ah. That's a good yes. Yeah. And we got, actually we have a customer in the showroom now. Okay. And we have to talk to him. Fair enough. He's walking to the back. That makes total sense. Did you like the Popeye? Did you like the Popeye? Yeah. Can you tell me about it? We had all the LEDs. We did all the upgrades, so it's nice and bright. It's got the LED lighting. How old is the machine like that? Pop-I came out in 94, 95. Okay. The pinball machine, the Pop-I is older than that, right? Well, Todd, can I help you sell it? Yes. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Zach Manning from the Pinball Show he says that Popeye is one of the most underrated machines of all time so I mean you know that's something right? It is, Zach has got a pretty big YouTube following yes there's a lot of stuff in it there's a lot of extra shots if you do this there's a lot My worry is all those moving parts, and then I've got to make this thing with this thing. Well, it's a daily. We charge $1,000 a visit, and you can pick $100,000. And you get five free service calls over a 20-year period. It's the same as with all these games, too. Now, but if I buy one brand new out of a box, they're going to break a lot. They're brand new ones. And not as much as those? I could believe, but the old games run a long time. It doesn't surprise me. That's what we've been selling. Our oldest game in there is 77. How old is Popeye? 94, 95. No, the machine itself. Yeah, it's got the newer dot matrix display. The original game just had numbers. So if we were to buy that, like, do you do something to it before? Well, yeah, they have to bring it back and go over it again. but they had completely shopped it and finished it at some point. It's been in the showroom three weeks. Okay. So they bring it back and go over it again. And if we buy it, we can pick it up. Are you guys delivered? Do we need to see it? Where do you live? We're in Horsham. We can bring it out to you for 50 bucks. You set it up. Yeah, it would be better if we did it. That's why I'm asking. Yeah, it's heavy. Okay, like 350 pounds. so actually it probably isn't that heavy maybe 300 the Jersey Jacks are 375 the latest ones are the new Sterns they're only 250 they don't have as much wood in them too modern but that Popeye is based off the cartoon the Fleischer cartoons but Popeye's been around 1935 May Questel and it's our voice in there for a lot of it, but then they had to customize some stuff, so they had to fake her. She passed away. Her last movie was Christmas Vacation. So she played Olive Oil the entire time. It was only her. And her last movie, she was a movie actress too. But the Popeye voice is one of the original ones, but they had to get a voice, a light artist because Popeye didn't say extra ball, things like that. Right. It's a good thing. But, yeah. What's the... How far... Are you going up or down? Yes. No, it's right into our garage. We could load it tomorrow. If you wanted it. Or we could wait until Friday or Saturday. What do you think? Well, listen, it's your gig. You've been talking about it. Are they coming over for Christmas? No, this is something separate. Okay. How else would you do this? The holidays. So... Todd. Is there any kind of sale or anything going on on that one? Yeah, we have $200 off one, so it'll be $47.99. The only other charge would be the tax for the governor. Okay. He loves me. And the delivery charge. Okay. We're paying cash? I'll pay you the tax. Tax. Okay. Okay. That's good. Listen, I'm going to let you guys do the details off the air, but Mr. Todd Tucky, I could try calling back maybe in like an hour. Are we live? Well, we're not live, but I'm recording live, yes. Oh, okay. You can cut that part out, right? No, I can't cut that part out. But the thing is, like, I don't want him to give any personal information, so why don't I just try calling back later on in the night and just say Merry Christmas to the both of you, and I hope you love the Popeye and eat your spinach. Good. Call me in a half an hour, young man. Okay, I will try my best to. Merry Christmas. Yeah, I'll be here. I'm going to be here until 1030. Okay. Well, you said it there. same. All right. Well, listen, have a good night. I'll talk soon. They hung up on me before them. Wow. Okay, guys, I feel bad. Should I try to call Roger Sharp now before I am luck, suck, doy, two sheets to the wind. Is this the good time to call? Let me reread. Oh my God. I was supposed to call so many people. Oh my God. I'm in so much trouble. And I, oh my God. But Todd, Tucky, thank you so much for your time. I thought that I explained that when I called, I was going to be live on the show, but maybe I didn't. Let's see here. It would be a phone call or Zoom. Okay. Let me just ask, Roger, is now a good time? Guys, is it okay if I give a family member or friend a call? Not one wrote back. Can you believe that, honey? Not a single family member or friend wrote back. can you believe that, like not even a single Melvis, or like not even a single, oh my god Rachel Risto, I must call her put me towards the end of the episode, okay, Rachel near the end let me take a look here, okay, Roger near the end, Darren Darren I said I would call okay Darren guys Darren what about Carrie Carrie Hardy I gotta call Carrie Hardy Okay I don want to call Carrie too drunk This is wild I apologize everybody I should have done this better. I called him Carrary. Carrie? Wait, what about Hayden? Is he still at work? Hayden's probably still at work. Guys, I'm going to call my son Hayden. He moved across the country, which is making getting in the Christmas spirit a little harder for me. But let's call Carrie Hardy, and let's hope he's eating his Chipotle, okay? We want to make sure he's in a good mood, a positive place. He can be the Zen master. Well, guys, I tried Carrie Hardy. He was not available. Rape meow. And that's okay. Can I just, let's call my dad. My dad's going to go to bed pretty soon. Everyone, like nobody cares about me calling my dad except for me. Just to say like, you know, Merry Christmas. That's it. Very simple. Very simple. I'm trying not to do the Santa voice. How am I doing? Zero to ten. No, no, no, no. No, it's not that good. You like it? Drop target, Danielle told me to, guys. Oh. Oh, never mind. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Mr. Agar. you having a good night bud? oh my god I'm having a great night I got all my Christmas shopping today done uh okay maybe just a little I just thought oh merry Christmas how you doing dad? good good buddy Danielle just passed me a note I feel like I'm a secretary forgot to wish Owen a happy birthday but I'll call him tomorrow I'm gonna send him a little money for his birthday Oh, and? Well, that would be nice to send him his birthday money three months late. That'd be great. He'd love it. When's his birthday, bud? September 28th. Well, then, why do I have a fan on, buddy? I thought it was weird. We're live on a pinball podcast, dad. Say Merry Christmas to all the listeners. Oh, Merry Christmas, everybody. Ho, ho, ho. Oh, yeah. There you go. Now, listen, listen, listen, listen. Every single time I had pinball at my house and you and I came over, you played at least one or two games with me. Am I right? Correct. And is it true that while my mother had me in the womb, she played pinball every single day with you, down at the bar where you guys were smoking ciggies and chugging the bat blues? I don't know about every day but I know I played pinball with your mama and then with you out in Atlanta yeah and just like dancing she was better than you wasn't she well just admit it no you beat her at Atari she beat you at pinball oh no that's true I did beat her at Atari so no she was better at pinball well dad I'm so freaking far behind you're going to be the least offended on planet Earth if I let you go early? Not at all. Okay, because listen, Roger starts a band and he's saying pinball is I'm supposed to call him and I want to make sure I'm sober. So right now even though I'm on the Christmas episode I'm supposed to get drunk during, I've switched over after just three tall cans of beer to drinking just boring water. You're a listerine. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can I have an egg nog and chocolate? No? Do we have the Black Baxters? Um, no, we have the Northumberland, the new one. Oh, let's try the Northumberland without and then once it gets down 40%, we'll fill the top up with chocolate almond. Have you ever had that, Dad? Uh, uh, egg nog and chocolate whatever? Egg nog and chocolate, uh... No, but I can tell you this. At Christmas, your mom used to make the best homemade clou. Get out! She started, like, from, like, with whatever, all the ingredients, and she put it together. Yeah, no, she made it homemade herself. And it was good. Everybody liked it. Okay, but you're a non-ordained priest, and I am an ordained Judas priest, so like, when I have Christmas morning, like, it's religious to me. When I have a clua and milk, it's religious to me. Like, that is a... I feel like I'm close to God. We didn't make it religious. We used it in the winter, we used it in the summer, we used it camping, we drank it anytime, anywhere. Anytime, anywhere. All right, Dad, I love you. Thank you so much for that turkey, even though we had to get turkey roll. I read on two different websites after I talked to you, everywhere in Amherst, Sackville, and all the way to Turow or Moncton is sold out of turkey this year. You can only get a goose, you can only get a gander, you can only get a duck, you can get a Cornish frickin' hen, but you can't get a turkey. and a partridge in a pear tree. Thank you to the doctor. Amen. What a way to go out, Dad. What a way to go out. I like it. Merry Christmas. And keep the Christ in Christmas. Amen. All right. My dad's a little religious, and I'm a little not religious, so, you know. Okay. Oh, Jamie Burchill. Oh, my God. I better write back. Oh, thanks. Merry Christmas. Oh, my God. Jamie Burchill. Are you serious? honey okay northumberland can i do the live uh taste test oh my god okay not as good as the uh black one but second best easily how are you oh merry christmas jamie how are you sir thank you i thought i thought you might have bumped me no I didn't bump you I'm sorry I'm so far behind um listen Donald Garrison Donald Garrison he just I told him five to ten minutes and he's like hey listen I work at spooky now I'm important listen to me yap on and ramble I was like whoa take it easy no I'm just kidding no we did you know what I I sent messages out to like 20 people assuming two or three could talk and like 10 people wrote me back and I keep saying five to ten minutes it ends up being 20 and then I feel embarrassed. That's fantastic. It's an agglomeration. Okay. Whatever. Do you know who wrote back to me? Not as impressive as George Gomez. But like very close. I don't know. Roger Sharp. Jeff Danger. No. Roger Sharp. Roger Sharp is just finishing dinner and we're going to chat. Is that crazy? You got to bump me for Roger Sharp. Okay. Bye, Jamie. Sorry, I got to go. Bye. See you later. Absolutely. I'm just kidding. No, listen, listen. He said he has to finish making dinner. He wanted an hour and a half, and I'm giving that man an hour and a half. Yes. Because keeping Roger Sharp at five minutes, that would be like getting to wizard mode on Game of Thrones. You know, I've never met Roger. What? No, I've talked to his sons multiple times and the knights guys, but I've never gotten a chance to meet Roger Sharp. Well, I'm the exact opposite, Jamie. I got introduced by Julie Dorsers who was just on I think two people ago my favorite CD from London, Ontario by the way shout out to Julie she introduced me in line waiting at the concession stand the very final Pemberg in I believe 2019 she goes Albert you want to meet Roger Sharp I go no I can't no he's the guy who played pinball I can't meet him she goes just let me introduce you to him and I said I don't know I don't know and I said fine because he was like two squats back in line. So it was just organic. It was natural. We weren't picking him out. You know, I wasn't like, oh, can I get a selfie? You know, he was just there. So it made sense. Anyways, that was so cool. Then the next day when I was doing really, really, really bad in A division because somehow I qualified for A division at Pembroke and I was like in third last place in A division. Literally, my friend goes, Albert, shut up. You're playing one machine down from Roger Sharp right now, dude. And you're in a higher division than him. Like, just be quiet and enjoy yourself. And I had to go, oh, my God, you're playing beside Roger Sharp. Just shut up and just enjoy it. So I've never talked to Josh. I've never talked to Zach. I've seen them, but I've never gone up and, like, talked to them. But I've talked to Roger. So we're the exact opposite. So together, we're six degrees of separation, sir. Damn, that's so cool. Listen, I wanted to thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I don't know if it was your idea. Maybe it was Kale's. I don't know if it was Retro Ralph's. It was one of your guys' idea on the round table, the JVS show round table, which you should all go like, follow, subscribe, comment, do all the things, do all the good stuff. But one of you guys came up with the idea for Patreon, and I've been all humming and hawing. I think I've even made fun of Patreons in the past. And I was like, well, fine, I'll try it. And honestly, it's been a game changer because I don't have to try to sell coffee or tea on the show anymore. It's great. I love it. You know what? I'm going to take credit for this. This is me. Thank you. Okay. I was the one that came up with this idea. Ralph's trying to steal it from me. But that's not the reality. The reality is I came up with it. He stole Woodgate from me. Did you know that? He took Cabinetgate away. Jointgate. Yeah. I texted him. We have a chat with me and Cal and Ralph all day. And they were talking about the cabinet. And I went hashtag Woodgate. And guess who makes the podcast over it? Oh, Retro Ralph. What a guy. The thing is, though, the thing is, though, Retro Ralph kind of, like, I don't want to say, like, he's a different, like, you know, like, I'm a C-, you're a B+. He's kind of, like, in the A territory for, like, he can get two. No question. He can get two, three hundred thousand views when he just does, like, I watched his video from last year about the new shooter arcade machines. It's got, like, three hundred, it's like a half a million views. half a, it's like, what? That's more than I've gotten 600 podcasts, so like, you know, it's cool. I'm not saying he's like, oh, he's coming down to your level to go on the show, but like, you can save for the rest of your life. Remember that really cool rant that Ralph went on about Cabinet Gate? That was kind of my idea in the first place. Yeah, listen, I am very lucky that they even talked to me. Their heads are still in it, right? I mean, these guys are... Well, Kale, after winning the Twippies, come on. I mean, these are mega stars, and I, you know, slid into their DMs, okay, and said, hey, I had this idea for a podcast. Do you guys want to be involved? And it took months and months of convincing. No. It took no time at all, and it was a great – it's been a great experience. Well, I don't want you to tell any of the other podcasters, because some of them could have big egos and get a little jelly. but I don't even care if I have seven sometimes I have up to seven I know you listen to all of them too sometimes I have six or seven like pinball podcasts in my queue to like just to listen to when I'm like just like playing fortnight or doing the dishes or walking the dogs or whatever what have you right like it's that's such the coolest part about being part of the pinball like I don't know I guess kind of part of the pinball like whatever is that from time to time you'll hear a shout out about yourself or from time to time they'll agree with you on a take you had or disagree with you and then I can take the information I get from another podcast but it's just so cool that you get to be part of this like I guess kind of part of the cycle of news and some of these people are your friends that you get to talk to and like even tonight I haven't talked to Don in a couple weeks like I know he's super duper busy with moving and everything else but I get to talk to him for like 20 minutes on the podcast I just felt like who am I to get to talk to this dude who works at Spooky now and he's like he's the manager of Burger King you know so like that I was just like, whoa. I know. The weekend manager, assistant to the? Dr. King. Yeah. Dr. Kirshen. And I think he's wonderful. I think Orville, Albert, what is so cool about this community is how genuine people really are. And most of us. Most of us. I'd say 95% of us. Maybe 96. Maybe 96. Yeah. Are very excited when we get to see each other. And these shows and these expos have really become like a reunion for us to get together and to see each other. Because I wouldn't get to see, you know, Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey. I talked to Aaron tonight from Fast, by the way. You talked to her tonight? No, no, I talked to Aaron from Fast, and he gave a shout-out to Erica. Oh, yeah, how could he not? Yeah. She got stuck in a car with him for a week. well she kind of does like I kind of joke that I'm like the only like blog because I talk so much about like my tournaments and how I interact with people and really mine's not really a podcast about like news at all or rumors it's just really how I interact with you and like just at tournaments and other stuff like that and Erica's really is kind of like how she interacts with pinball so by far she is like the top right yeah by far she's the top I don't mind being second place to her at all, because her content's incredible. The time and energy she puts into editing one video is like the time it takes me to record 20 podcasts, for God's sake, and still hers takes more talent, so good for her. If any of you guys listening have not you know, you haven't, I think she's on like every, she's on like TikTok, Snapchat, I think she's on everything, but go watch her YouTube videos is my favorite part. Yeah, she's great. You know, there's so many of us, and I don't want to missed anyone because then we'd miss somebody and then they'd accept. You miss one person and yeah. The one person I have to give a shout out to is our friend Kaneda. We had a little bit of a beef earlier in the year but you know for three or four years I talked to him in the mornings for I would say sometimes 15-20 minutes maybe half an hour especially leading up to a new game release. Him and I shot the chats and if I were to scroll back on our messenger, it would be longer than probably anyone else I've ever talked to in pinball. Seriously, like we were that close from like 2019 until about 2023 when we started having some beef. So like I have genuinely legitimately missed even talking to him. So I will say this straight up here. You know, any part of any beef that I ever had this year, I just want to forget about it and move forward and bury the hatchet. Okay. And just like I was jealous when I saw you got to go have dinner with him. You know, I've said to him like 10 times, even when he came on my show, I went on his show. Someday, sometime, I want you to take me out in New York City. You know? I want to go to the good restaurants. I want to go to the jazz club. I want to go get the good craft beer. You know, I want to do that. You got to do that. I was a little jealous. Let's hear it. We met him, and he wouldn't tell us where we were going. Okay. So, it was me, my wife are my good dear friends Christine and John and we go and I said look I know you you're doing this for me right you don't want to stay a night in New York City but talk to pinball but this is a guy that I like him and I'd really like you know if you guys would go and do this for me and you know what he took us like good fellas behind the scenes at the Copa to get into this Japanese jazz club and we were treated to the nines all night. It really was a lovely, lovely evening and Christopher was lovely. Look, I have no beef with that dude. It was a fun, fun ass night. Look, when he makes fun of Ralph for those gloves, I go, come on, I like those. Don't make fun of him for the gloves. I could have made fun of Ralph for the gloves, but I chose not to. I took the high road. You could make Spiner Rouse in the gloves. He's not making any money. He just thought people might like his gloves. I know. I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding. But when Kaneda went after him for the gloves, I was like, listen, Chris, stick to, like, stick to, like, I love it when he takes the companies and just rakes them over the coals. I freaking love it because I can't get away with saying that stuff on my show. But when he does it, I love it. I can't quite be. I used to be a little bit more like that. I love it when he does it. I just don't like it when he goes after the content creators. and I just feel like I don't want to be part of that. But at the same time, some Canadians like maybe not the number one, but he's easily in the top 10. Like, okay, number one is Don because we've talked so much. I want, okay, wait, no, number one would probably be Glenn, the skateboarder of all the, if you include him as a content creator, which I do, you know, he does your intro songs, which are so rad for the show. So I'd like to meet, I think Glenn's at the top of the list, you know, but like Don, you're up there, retro Ralph, like even Todd Tucky, You know, I just talked to Todd Ducky. He's lovely. Isn't he a wonderful person? I got to hang with him a little bit at the Houston Arcade, actually. It was really lovely. And, you know, shout out real quick while I'm talking. I've been pumping up the Texas Pinball Festival. I think that's going to be at TPS. And it's one of my favorite shows, so I'm definitely going to TPS. And I hope your audience goes as well because it's going to be a blast. Listen, only 300 to 400 people listen per show, unless you're Craig Bobby or David Dennis, you know, and it was years ago. But listen, I would say if you live within, well, really anywhere in the United States, you can find an inexpensive flight to Houston or Texas. Yeah, that one you're going to go to Frisco. Frisco. It's right outside of Dallas. I'm 25% Texan. I don't know that much about it, but I'd love to go somewhere. Don't even worry about it. Do you know I'm related to Jesse James? No, you're not. Yes! I am the direct... He's like my... He's my uncle to the sick. So, unfortunately, so my grandmother, Bernice James, in grade 9, she said, Albert, I've been waiting for a good time to tell you this. She pulled out our frickin' family tree and she said, unfortunately, you're related to the single most biggest killer on planet Earth. And I was like, what? And she's like, she showed me the direct, like, line from... Anyways, it doesn't matter. She moved up here from Texas because the James name, as you can imagine, got some bad rap after the 1890s. You know what I'm saying? That's wild. Yeah, her parents moved up here in like the 1910s or something like that and lived in London, Ontario, where no one, I mean, they had heard of Jesse James. And everyone's like, yeah, okay, whatever. You're kind of sort of, you know, I don't even think that's the main reason they moved here. Maybe just Canada was awesome. I have no clue. Maybe we had no maple syrup and poutine. I don't know. But they moved up here. I don't know, buddy. So I have to go visit, I've been to Holland already because I'm half Dutch, but I've never been to Texas. Like, I have to go to Texas. Dude, I'll show you the state. It's not my home, I mean, it's my adopted state, being a New Yorker, and I have fallen in love with the state. It's the nicest and greatest people are Southerners and Texans. Wow. They accept me. They accept me, the fact that I even wear a Yankee hat around Houston, which is crazy. Wow, I thought you'd get booed. So don't bother me. Yeah, I get booed a lot, but I'm Houston. Don't bother me. Just a little boo. It's usually me, but I won't tell anyone. Well, good. Listen, who else you got left? Who else you got left? Well, I got, oh, God. I got, like, you don't even want to know. I'm looking down at my list. The people that have confirmed, I have Jamie. Oh, wait, that's you. I have Doug. I have Duncan. I have Dan Bitterlich. I have Glenn the Skateboarder. I have Kerry Hardy. I have Retro Ralph. I have Darren Jay. And then I have a whole bunch of people that I, well, I have to call back Todd, because when I called Todd Tuckey, he was in the middle of selling a Popeye. And I had to be like, no, dude, I'm live right now. He goes, just edit it out. I said, no, like, I'm recording live. I have to go. I'll call you later. You got to sell. You got to close. He's got to close. You got to let him close. Always be. Closing. Closing. ABC. Come on. You've got to know that. That's from death to the field, right? AIDA. Come on. I know this. All right. Get out of here. Jamie, thank you so much. Go have a wonderful Christmas Eve Eve. Happy holidays. Thanks for coming on in such late notice. I thought no one would come, and you were kind enough to come. Go back to the family and friends. Have a rad night. Everybody, go listen to the JBS show, the round table, and everything else they do. And if you haven't, there you go. All right. Hey, thanks for not bumping me. Have a great evening. You're never bumped. Have a good night, Jamie. Cheers, buddy. Come on. I could never bump that. I would never bump Jamie. Did Roger Sharp... Okay. Roger Sharp wrote back. Roger says, just let me know how this will work. Okay. I'm going to say, well, Roger, I will call you. Well, I will call you in five minutes. Right here. on Facebook. Miss Endure. Okay. I'm wondering, Draco Franchi, can you just take over and chat with them for a little bit while I go to the bathroom? Okay, that's a no. Lunatuna Elwin Agar. I got one dog on each side of me and neither of them is helping me. What are the chances of that? Is there anyone else who could help? Can I call, should I call Hayden? Is Hayden off work? Is there anyone else? Do you want me to call Matthew Megaphone to take over while I run to the bathroom? Call Hayden? Okay. Guys, I'm going to call my son Hayden. Let's see here. Okay, but what if he's still at work? He got called in today, honey. He hasn't even written back. He just won't answer if he's busy, correct? I don't want dead air for the listeners. Hey, while I am not talking to anyone, Merry Christmas everybody. Thank you for listening to all my shows or any of my shows. I'm going to try next year to go off topic even less if that's possible. Hopefully it is. Hayden's probably still at work so he's not going to answer, but if he doesn't, could you just chat for one second? Yeah. It's almost 6 there, so. It's almost 6 p.m. He might be done at work. He might be. Let's see. I don't know. I'll hang up. I'll hang up. Sorry, buddy. We'll call you later. Pardon? I think we're going to call Roger Sharp next, folks. So stay tuned. I hope you guys are enjoying this lovely conversation that Albert has set up, and I hope it continues, and it's lots and lots of fun. Here he is. Poor, poor, thank you for filling, oh god, I just stepped on the cord that holds a laptop. That's not good. We do need video next time, but you know how chaotic that would be? They'd have to see a dog on my lap, and you know, I mean, also, like, the bandwidth goes down. Okay, let's give Roger Sharp a call, guys. Let's see what my sister said. Aw, thanks. A very Merry Christmas to you. Eve to you. How's your podcast going? Well, Janelle, it's going great. Can you come on for five men? Guys, who wants to hear my sister? Nobody! She doesn't even play pinball! But she's my sister. And it's Christmas. I feel like I'm, I do kind of vibe with like Bill Murray and Scrooge, because like I'm kind of like that a little bit. Let's check if it's still recording. Oh my God. Honey, we're at an hour 30. Oh my God, I have to go faster. Do you want to go faster? Remember going on the Himalaya? Do you want to go faster? Okay, I'm going to try calling Roger Sharp through here. It wasn't, it was only two minutes ago I said I'd call. Who can I get in for a very quick call? Who was I supposed to do early? Darren. Darren J. Darren, don't be mad Darren, Darren Walker poor Darren subscribe to us honey you better come over here and say hi, he's a big fan of yours apparently Darren subscribed to us through iPhone but then it sucked and then he went back and then it sucked and then I don't even know don't you, just subscribe through the Patreon app, don't do it through Apple you know what I mean Last Christmas. Remember we sang on the show for Patreon? Okay, guys, I'm trying to call Darren J. Walker, but while I'm calling him, I just cracked a hemp. Don't worry, there's no THC in it. Darren is not there. I just cracked a hemp IPA. Should we try to call Kerry Hardy very quickly, or were we close there? Let's go back to Roger Sharp and see if it's been... I'm putting Roger Sharp on the pedestal, guys. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wait, Colin. Colin wrote back. Colin from the Kineticist. Yeah, I can't, buddy. I'm sorry. That was fun last year. Merry Christmas to you and yours. Okay. Should I call him anyways? No. Danielle says don't call him anyways. I was going to call him anyways. All right. You know what? There's people on the list that I have to call that I haven't called yet. So, like, don't just say, this isn't, we're not pranking people, it's Christmas. Hi, Albert, what did Craig Bobby say? Sounds like fun. We're hosting some family stuff maybe towards the end of the night. Okay, remind me Craig Bobby at the end. Jamie's gone. I've got to mark this off. Glenn's supposed to be next. But are we, like, we're so close to five minutes, I don't want to, like, not talk to Roger Sharp, you know what I mean? Let me turn the volume up in case his thing is lower. Let me plug this in. No, that's not going to die, right? Okay. Guys, this is so nerve-wracking. Why would you choose to call 20 people in one night? It's so much work. What did Enzo say? Enzo's in Australia. I'm going to, like, whatever Enzo says goes. You know what I mean? He's also our biggest contributor. Thank you, Enzo, over there on Patreon. So we just fired him off some couple of bags of coffee and a couple of bags of tea, or at least coffee. Guys, we're calling Roger, sir. Hello? Hello, Roger. Yes. How are you doing tonight? We are doing. How are you? Not too bad. Well, I just wanted to thank you so much. Honestly, I thought that there would be a very little chance that you'd have the opportunity to chat with me tonight for five or ten minutes. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. As being a huge pinball fan, this is really, you're kind of making my Christmas, Roger. So thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much for all you've done for pinball. I'm not going to say you've saved pinball because enough people have. But I'll tell you what, you saved pinball. So thank you for doing that. I think pinball has maybe saved my life. So the fact that you got to be part of that, you know, it's just been such a positive part of my world for the last five or so years. I have a very small pinball blog called Pinball Nerds Podcast. And I actually had the pleasure, I don't know if you remember, you probably meet so many people, but Julie Dorsers actually introduced me to you at the last Pinberg. And I was just chatting with her before you and she said to make sure to say hello to you. Well, these two are my regards as well back to her. and that was a unique experience to say the least in terms of the marathon that that event proved to be but thoroughly enjoyed it and my pleasure to actually have time in the schedule to be here with you so thank you for reaching out oh no problem I've had the pleasure I think I'm not going to say I've listened to every interview you've ever done but I've listened to multiple that you've done with Jeff Teolas. Pretty much any time. It doesn't matter if I have five, six, seven pinball podcasts in my queue. If I see Roger Sharp, I get to hear from you. I like to go back and listen to it. So thank you so much for all you've done for pinball over all these years. I'm just curious. I know that I did get to play with you in a competitive manner back in 2019 at the final Pemberg, which was just incredible. at one point I was I managed to just barely qualify for a division and I was a little down on myself because I had lost so many times in a row against incredible players and a friend of mine tapped me on the shoulder and said Albert you're playing five feet away from Roger Sharp just be just just be thankful for that and that immediately put me in such a good mood I was like well there he is you know and I was kind of just getting into pinball I had played maybe one or two well, I think I'd actually played only one charity tournament at a local bar, and all of a sudden I went back and started typing pinball into YouTube, and the man who saved pinball came up immediately. I don't know if it was the Vice one that came up first or something, but I started watching that, and I got so intrigued by pinball. As a man of many interests, I got into playing poker for a couple years. I still am really into going to see indie bands live and stuff like that, But poker, or sorry, pinball, Freudian slip, pinball has never lost my attention. And you're just such a big part of that. So between you and obviously both your sons, Josh and Zach, helping out so much with pinball and being part of pinball, do you ever feel like this, I don't know, I guess if you go out to an event, are you kind of like overwhelmed by how excited people are to see you? I don't know if there would be a question of being overwhelmed. I think I'm flattered and very humbled and appreciative that, you know, people think, I guess, so fondly of me and the fact that after all these many years, I somehow endured. Truthfully, it's been a surprise. none of this which started over 50 years ago that I ever envisioned would actually ever happen in terms of I guess defining my life influencing as you recounted so many other people in terms of I guess discovering and enjoying pinball as well as having it become in no small measure a vital part of my family's lives. Wow. Yeah. So it's been a gift and a blessing, to say the least. And I'd like to think that I have been able to make myself as available as possible. I'm just a regular person. I'm a regular old... Come on. You're being humble. It's okay. It's okay. Well, thank you so much for all of it. I mean, like, you know, it must be like, I know both my sons, I'm so lucky, just like you, both my sons, just from me having pinball machines in our house the last 10 years or so, just through osmosis, from time to time, I might have bribed them a little, like, okay, you can be late on your dishes if you just come play a game of pinball with your dad, right? like just gentle little nudging if you will towards playing a bit more but both of them have sought out playing pinball even when they're not with me even with their with their friends or a girlfriend or whatever when they're out of town so I know that like you know it's rubbed off well but for you I can't even imagine it both of your sons may be like as involved as pinball you or more so you must just be like super proud you have these two sons that are both doing really cool stuff for pinball um and here you are you introduced it to them you're just you're probably thinking as a dad like now that i'm getting to the point that like my one son's moved out the other one's leaving for university next year i'm just so lucky and privileged that they actually loved pinball like me because some people just don't like pinball or they're not that into it and that okay there nothing wrong with that but like i lucky because both my sons are into it and like how lucky are you Roger that it just so happened that both your sons love competitive play they love everything about pinball I would say almost as much as you if not more How lucky are you for that to have happened? I'd like to think that it is a gift that keeps on giving. I mean, Ellen plays in Bells and Shines out here, and my grandson Colin has started competing as well. So we are, in effect, a three-generation pinball family. And for that, it is just, I don't know, it warms my spirit when I see it all happening. I am really, again, just dumbfounded by the fact that both of my sons going back in time when they were younger, because the question had been asked, I guess, years ago. I think it was at Pinball Expo. and both of the boys were still teenagers back then and competing and some woman was standing next to me I think watching her son and she just turned to me and said so when your sons came home from school did you force them to practice and I was just like no they really weren't allowed per se to play pinball I mean school work and outside activities and sports and all the rest of it you know Pinball is just there, and I think by just being there, they gravitated to it, and, again, somehow they managed to really kind of thrive. Let's face it, Zachary is the executive director of marketing at Stern. Right. Josh is the CFO at Raw Thrills and also had a very significant hand in the remake of Kansas Canyon. Yeah. as well as working with Mark and George on Pulp Fiction. So, again, I guess the nuts don't fall too far from the oak tree. That's right. And I know, did you, were you like, you designed a couple of pinball machines. I think Barracuda was one of them. Barracuda? Barracuda. I'm Barracuda. I'm thinking of that Canadian legend rock song, Nevermind. But, you know, these things happen. But, like, do you, okay, I'm just curious. do you still, like, how do you interact with pinball still? Do you listen to podcasts very often or watch YouTube videos? Like, do you get to play in tournaments very often anymore? Or at this point, are you just excited to get to go to, like, expos and stuff like that and, like, see some of your fans and that sort of thing? Well, I mean, I guess to answer the question in a similar way, I designed six pinball machines. Six? Okay, yeah. I missed five of them. and a couple of other things I've made. I still compete. You still do compete, yeah. Yeah, I'm in a league here, the Chicagoland Pinball League, and I've been in it since it started. Wow. I do travel intermittently for tournaments. I know Ellen and I were the guests at Biff in Nantes, France, a couple of months ago, where they invited us out and played pinball, signed autographs, and whatever I know is upcoming. I'm planning on being in Florida. Ed Van Der Veen was gracious enough to extend an offer for me to appear there. And Thilo and Andreas at GPA in Germany have us slotted in for this coming, what's going to be effectively here, Memorial Day weekend, the end of May. So, yeah, I mean, I still enjoy playing. I have games here. I have 25 machines here, as well as my five antiques. Josh is babysitting one of my games in his game room in his house. But, yeah, I mean, to me, it is a passion and a love affair that really doesn't diminish over time. Are there things that I can do sometimes? Yes, infrequently. Are there other things that I used to be able to do that I can't anymore just because of reflexes, concentration, and whatever the physical stamina needs to be to go to a replay or to go to some of the longer tournaments. You know, it's taxing. Roger. Definitely love it. Enjoy it. And it is the gift, again, that keeps on giving in terms of my relationship with pinball. Well, I sometimes, you know, I get a big EO and I brag and I go, oh, wow, I'm ranked 4,000th in the world, blah, blah, blah. Oh, that's a top 5%. Roger, you are 2,039th in the world. You are killing it. You just recently, back in August, got 21st of almost 100 players at the Interium Monthly Stern Arnie Super League. Like, that is no slug. You're playing in Chicago where the average player frickin' knows pinball better than anywhere else on planet Earth. so for you being ranked it doesn't even matter what your age is for you being ranked 2000th in the world that's still the top 2% you know 3% in the freaking world so congratulations to you I should have done my research and checked this out first I will say this like I'm 45 Roger and even myself I've noticed against like both of my sons who are 21 and 17 like on the modern machines my reflexes are a bit slower than theirs and that's fine sometimes my rule knowledge and my flipper skills and nudging ability will outweigh their youngness from time to time, and when it doesn't, that's fine. We pass the torch on and we let the younger guys win, am I right? Sure, absolutely. And, you know, look, my biggest challenge, and fortunately, some of the structures of the IFPA tournaments provide an opportunity to play across different eras. The new games, I really don't know the rule sets as deeply as I should. And I think that that is something that, again, works against me. They're so deep, though, Roger. Like, even AIQ, my best friend, Melvis, who I owe a phone call to after this, he owned it for a year and a half, and he tried to explain the rules to me like 15 times. Raymond Davidson himself, which is, he's an incredible rules encoder dude, he's tried to explain the rules to me, and I still don't fully understand AIQ, queue and I've played hundreds of games on it, right? Like, some of these games are so complex, Roger, that if we don't understand it, it's totally fine, you know? We can still get out there and kick butt on the classics, the solid states, the EMs, everything else, right? Right. Alright, well, listen. Hey, thank you for taking the time out today. I, alas, am way over my call time for pretty much every other person on the list, but if anyone, if there was one person I was never, ever going to bump in my lifetime, it would be Roger Sharp. And sometime in the future, I would love to do just like maybe an episode with you and I, maybe sometime like, you know, down the road in the future, because that way we could spend a little bit more time and go a little bit deeper on all the stuff we're talking about. It would be my sincere pleasure. And more importantly to yourself, your family, your sons, as well as any and all folks who might be listening in. Let me wish everybody a very, very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and good health to everybody and just stay safe these holidays. Thank you. And I'm just going to add to that, but, like, don't drink and drive. If you've had a couple drinks, just find a different way home. So great advice. And yes. Thank you. Well, Roger. Definitely follow that advice. Can you tell me whereabouts? Like, do you live right in Chicago? Or are you, like, I'm just curious. It's like, are you in, you're not in, like, where is, isn't the Chicago Pinball Expo, it's, like, in a small town outside of there called Schaumburg. Is it Schaumburg? Yeah, I do Schaumburg. It's in the northwest suburbs, and I am actually in Arlington Heights, which is maybe one or two towns over. Okay, so you're very, very, very close. So I'm very close to the event, to Expo and to Entrarium. and yeah, I mean the next time you're in town please, let's make sure we get together and your offer of getting on a podcast with you, I never really directly answered the question but I don't typically listen to podcasts or watch the videos. It's tough, there's like 50 of them now, right? It's tough. Well, there is a bunch but there's also the situation of just available time and the fact that I know in the past, my sons, either or both of them, this goes back a number of years since things started happening a little bit more with all of the media. What did you say the other night? And it's like, huh? I don't know. I mean, I was asked a question, I answered. I tend not to necessarily be politically correct, so whatever I wind up saying is what I wind up saying, so don't mean to hurt feelings or do anything that way, but again, I'm more than willing to join in if and whenever there is an appetite to hear more from me. Roger, you made my Christmas, and no, I'm serious, because I always thought I'd have to have a beer or two before I would even possibly reach out to Roger Sharp, because he's like the pinnacle to get, I don't know, like George Gomez, Gary Stern, Roger Sharp, they're somewhere up there, and like Pat Lawler, Steve Ritchie, you know, you guys are all kind of like pinball gods. So just the fact that you respond, hey, I didn't hear from a couple of the other pinball gods, but I heard back from Roger Sharp. So thank you for making the time. And I'll tell you this. I moved from London, Ontario. I used to live in southwestern Ontario. And I was never so jealous my whole life. I've lived out here in Nova Scotia, Canada for six years. I've never been so jealous my whole life. My buddy Joe Chervino and a couple other friends from Toronto, they posted a picture of the world premiere of The Man Who Saved Pinball with you at the premiere, and you were, like, signing posters, and they got to meet you there and watch the show with you. And I was never so jealous in my whole life, Roger, until I saw that. And I was like, okay, now I wish I was still in London, Ontario, because I could have driven up and seen you. That was the first time in four years I was jealous, so that means something, buddy. Albert hopefully at some point we'll watch a movie together and we'll sign autographs and do all sorts of great things I can't wait just be well and all my best thanks Roger have a good night Merry Christmas Merry Christmas take care wow guys that just made my freaking night that is so cool I get to talk to Roger Sharp like if nobody else answers the whole night if nobody answers the whole night then that's fine oh no I missed I missed oh gosh okay can you believe that who was that on the phone oh does he want me to call him oh okay Hayden is still working everybody Hayden is still working now I mentioned this on one of my last shows but if by chance anyone listening would like to donate to the cause between now and Christmas, so for two more days. Hell, I'll even extend it to January 1st. If I happen to get any donations to AngryAlpacaT, T-E-A, AngryAlpaca, T-E-A, at PayPal.com, at Gmail.com. Thank you. Thank you, honey. Drop target, Danielle. You rock. If I get any PayPal donos, I'm going to 100% give them to Hayden as a surprise because he just moved across the country. But thankfully, he's got shifts multiple days in a row out there working for Canipost. Now, listen, if you guys ever thought you were heard, my son is delivering mail today when he left, or yesterday. He did a 10-hour shift delivering mail outside, door to door, and it was negative 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Sorry, Celsius. I thought negative 40 is where Fahrenheit and Celsius come together. Let me check. How much is negative 38 Celsius to Fahrenheit? Okay, that's negative 36.4 degrees Fahrenheit. My son delivered mail for 10 hours outside and somehow survived it and was begging to get another shift today. So that's cool. Okay, we missed out on Dan. We might have missed out on Darren. Let me try Darren. Honey, if Darren answers, you might actually have to come say hello. Well, you don't have to then. Don't worry about it. No, it's fine. Well, you don't have to. Hey, Darren, how's it going, buddy? Good, man. How are you doing? Not too bad. Yeah, we tried to call you right before I called Roger Sharp, the man who saved Fimball, and you didn't answer. But can you imagine Darren is going before and after Roger Sharp? Isn't that cool? well did you did you tell roger that you were calling me oh i didn't he was like oh albert give darren my regards what a gentleman and a scholar he said listen tell him if you're not tilting you're not trying and i said okay roger sharp whatever you say well i don't know if he actually did say that but i do know roger very well do you really very well Oh, okay, I was totally kidding. I'm sorry. I knew you were kidding, but yeah, I used to work with Rogers. I worked with all those guys. What? Where? I'm so curious. Where? Williams Valley. I used to work there way back in the 90s. What? Are you telling me I accidentally called an ex-employee of Williams Bally and I thought it was just Darren? this shows my integrity is real because not only are you a Patreon fan but you actually write me from time to time so thank you so much for that I know those guys very well I'm very good friends in fact Brian Eddy is like one of my best friends we're pretty close to the same age Brian and I so when I started working there we just became really good friends we'd always go out to Outback and restaurants and stuff but we just became really, really good friends. In fact, I was his best man at his wedding back in the day when he got married. So him and his wife, Stacy, and my wife, Janelle, we would always go out and hang out and stuff like that. So, yeah, I knew those guys really well. I worked there for like five years before moving to San Diego, and now I'm in Utah. I have so many questions. So little time, but so many questions. Okay, first of all, give us the Coles Notes version. What the heck did you do at Bally Williams, Darren? Okay, okay. Wait, so can you, let's see here. Can you hold on for like a minute? Yes, go ahead. No, no, go unload the car. Listen, I've waited to go pee, so like it's all good. Okay, so bear with me. I'm retired, so I kind of do like Instacart, DoorDash. I do that during the day to keep myself busy. Good for you. I've done DoorDash before. I love it. Go do your thing. Go unload your car. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so bear with me one second. Let me unload this. I got a bunch of, these guys order like 10, seven up, 12 packs, so bear with me. Okay, listen, guys, Darren is going to work out his biceps. My wife and I are just going to enjoy some fresh air here. It'll be fine. You know what? I wish I could. I need to work out my biceps. There's no doubt about that. So, hold on one second. Well, everybody, I used to work at DoorDash. I'm actually considering, you know, I was thinking Patreon. Oh, yeah, I'll get two, three hundred bucks a month, no problem. We've kind of stagnated out at $175 a month at $21. I won't say stagnated out because I want to keep it fresh. I want to start doing live streams. I try to do a live stream. I told you this. I try to do a live stream. When? Like two or three weeks ago and they said, oh no, because you're in the 19 and over, you can't do a live stream. Oh yes, you have to change that. Yeah, it's not like I'm going to be showing my junk. What am I, Darren? No, I'm just kidding. I think that's why it's set up like that. Okay. Yeah, so I'm not, like, literally I was maybe going to smoke a J. Fair enough. He does enough business. You do enough. Take your time, buddy. Take your time. It's legal. It's not like you're selling it or, like, shipping it to people, right? No, I would never ship it to anyone. F that. It takes too much time and energy to grow. You only get four plants per person here, so, like. Per house. Per house. Guys, Danielle and I sang on the Patreon thing. And I'm not going to lie. We practiced it a good solid three times before we hit the record button. I feel like every time that song comes on, then we tend to sing it. That's the whole thing. Like, if Mariah Carey comes on, I'm not singing it. I'll say, Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. Rockin' around the Christmas tree. If that comes on, I'm singing it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry if you're standing beside me at Walmart, Superstore. Wait, they don't have that in the States. Remember, wasn't it nice that Dawn came on today, too? Obviously, like, come on, Roger Sharp. but like Don was on there and you know, he was so like, he was just generous about the whole thing. Oh no. Darren got disconnected after we heard the dogs. Um, maybe he will call back. Isn't that so funny? Like I think it's, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I am home now. Oh no. Rachel's home now, but I have to call Darren. Guys. Thanks for listening. This one might run long. Everyone says, don't do three hour podcasts. And like, I agree with them. It's like a variety hour. It's a variety three hours. Listen, this is what I always say, and I truly believe it's correct. Don't think of this as one two-hour or three-hour podcast. Think of this as like six half-an-hour podcasts. Seriously, I'm not going to do the Santa voice ever again for the rest of the night. Luna, Chuna, Elowen, Agar, you are not allowed up there. Stop it. She's trying to get on my lap while I'm recording. I don't like it. Oh, my God. What did Darwin say? Life finds a way? Darren! Darren, do I have to call you back? Or do you think he'll call back? Okay, I'm calling him, but if he had to do 12 cases, he probably had time. Darren! Darren, how you doing? All right, hold on. Yep, almost done. How many cases you got left? I'm back. Oh, that was a huge order. Okay, I'm back. Ian Malcolm. Who's that? It's her dad. All right, hold up. Ian Malcolm. So, like, did they give you a good tip for that, at least? That's a lot of weight. No, I think they're giving me, like, a $20 tip, so that's pretty good. Okay, $20 tip, you're like... That's what it says. Yeah, you get, like, 80 of those, and you got a, you know, a Star Wars topper. Pretty close, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. So. Well, Darren. Anyway, answer the question. Yeah, go ahead. Tell us what you did. I'm so curious what you did at Bally Williams. Okay, so. So, I was. So, in 1992, I got married. Right. And I started, like, buying pinball and video games. Right. And I started doing like a, I had like a route, like a route. And I started playing a couple of games. And my whole goal was to work at Williams Valley. So they ended up posting a job about running the tech program or like basically like a test program. Right. So I applied for it. I applied for it. And I just, they flew me to Chicago and I interviewed with David T, George, all those guys back in the day. Wow. They hired me. Wow. So my wife and I moved from Utah to Chicago, and I was running the test program. So before we manufactured the games, they would put, like, these prototypes on location. Right. So we would have, like, say, 10 arcades throughout the Chicagoland area. We'd put them, and my job was to make sure that they were, you know, fixed them, give feedback to the designers, and make sure they're working and then gather all the numbers, weekly numbers, and then I would give that to the engineers, the designers, and then the upper management. And then from those numbers, they would kind of figure out how popular the game is and figure out how many they want to make into the world and stuff like that. Guys, we are talking to pinball royalty. I just thought you were Darren Jay. This is great. I don't know about royalty. I mean, close. You were beside royalty at the very least. Yeah, those guys were really cool. So I'm still good friends with all those guys. I'm just not in the industry anymore because I moved from, right before pinball collapsed, I knew it was going down. So I jumped ship, and they bought the home division. I was making games for PlayStation, Nintendo, Game Boy back then. And so I jumped ship from Chicago to San Diego and started working for the home division. They had a home division. They wanted me there. So I left pinball. And I loved pinball. Pinball is what I loved. But I knew it was going down, so I didn't want to go down with the ship. So I jumped ship to San Diego and started working in the home division. part of the company. Wow. So, yeah, then I moved on from there to, like, gaming. We started making, like, slot machines because that eventually disappeared, too. And then I went to did slot machines and eventually retired and then moved up here about five years ago. So where is up here? Yeah. So I moved to St. George, Utah, which is, like, southern part of Utah, almost like the border of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. You fucking live in God's country. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Oh, my God. In the United States, it was like the fastest growing county in the whole United States for like two years in a row. So right after, I moved here right before COVID happened, and then everything just kind of exploded. People started coming. I moved from California just like everybody else, but people came from California, Oregon, Washington. They all kind of moved out this way and other places like Arizona. They moved to Arizona, then they moved to Idaho. But this place has really just gotten, I mean, big for what it is. Yeah. Wow. How's the pinball scene there? Like, how are you still involved in pinball? How are you still involved in pinball at this point? Do you play tournaments? You talk to Brian and some of your pinball friends, but how long? I just talk to those guys. I'm not involved, actually. I can order the games for cheaper. They give me a fresh family discount, but I'm not involved as far as feedback. I don't do any of that. I go to Expo here and there. I've been there a few times, but I'm not involved at all. I'm not involved with any of that. I told them if they wanted to hire me, I'm not moving out to Chicago because we're planning here now. Right. If it was 10 years and 15 years ago, I would move. But I told them that they need, if they need, like, help for customers on the West Coast, I'll be happy to kind of do that. But I didn't really care. Darren's your uncle, yeah. Yeah, I do my own thing. I don't need the money as far as that crap. I like kind of doing my own thing, you know. Yeah. Good for you. I still stay in contact with, like, Roger Sharp. Roger and I used to go golfing all the time. No way. I just talked to him. That's so cool. Yeah, so Roger knows me really well. In fact, we can always be, like, me, Roger, and Ed Boon. You know, Ed Boon's the creator of Mortal Kombat. So him, you know, all three of us would go golfing in Chicago when I was there. It was pretty cool. So, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. If Ed Boon knocks in a chip from 50 or 60 yards, did he ever say, Fatality? Ed's actually a pretty cool guy. I'm surprised he still... Who would win? Who would win between you, Ed Boon, and... Who would win between you and Roger Sharp and Ed Boon? I'm curious. In golf? Yeah. Well, not in making video games, because you'd lose at that. Yeah, I'd lose at that. No, I'd probably crush them. To be honest, though, when I lived in Chicago, I wasn't much of a golfer. I like golf. I mean, I've been playing basketball and baseball my whole life, so it's a night coordination, right? Yeah, all the same. I picked it up pretty quickly, but I didn't get obsessed with golf until I moved to San Diego after the fact. I started really getting into it. But now, I play for like five or six years all the time, probably like three or four times a week. I would be obsessed with it. But then I got burned out. So I haven't played in almost like eight, maybe a year. I just got to the point where I just didn't have fun anymore because I was being too serious about it, you know? You know what? What you're describing, just to bring it back to pinball, Darren, this is what you're describing. Is this like this happened to me when I started? Like the one year, I think 2018 or 2019, I played 65 pinball tournaments in one year. I was driving to Toronto, Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Waterloo. I played too much, and I got the same thing you said. And then I just, for a whole year, I just went back to just playing three or four tournaments, and I waited until I loved it again. And I think now I've struck a nice balance. And I bet you could do the same with golf, where maybe you play like, you know, six to 12 rounds a year, but you try not to take it too, too serious. And you might be surprised. I was surprised when I stopped taking pinball so serious. I somehow won the New Brunswick Pinball Championships for the Provincial State, You know, I don't even know how that happened. It's just random. So, anyways, listen. Well, I used to go to that expo way back in the day because I worked at the company. So we'd go to expo. And one year I won the expo, you know, trophy for best pinball. But the final I had to play somebody that's a designer or, you know, or a programmer. So it was a very final. So I won the whole division. And then I had to play Lyman in the very final. Lyman beat me, but I got the trophy for, I can't remember what it was, like amateur or whatever. So I won that. That was way back in the day. I mean, I was pretty darn good, but Lyman was on another level. He was, you know, back in the day, he was something else. But it was a lot of fun. But I had this huge trophy. This thing must have been like freaking four feet tall. I don't know. It was massive. So when I moved from Chicago to San Diego, dude, I'm like, I'm not taking this thing with me. This thing's huge. I just, like, I threw it away. I'm like, I don't care. Oh, no. No, Darren, I want to talk. But you have to remember that when I left pinball to go to San Diego, pinball was dying. And when it died, dude, I just, like, I didn't even care about pinball anymore after that because I didn't care about J&E or Golly. because they didn't make very good pinballs at all. It was all about Williamson Valley. They made by far, and it was all about the flipper feel. Right. And I kept telling, and then when Sega, or when, you know, when Sega kind of went, when they kept going and going, and then when they turned into Stern, I was telling George, I said, listen, I just can't get back into pinball because it's all about the flipper feel. You guys just don't have it. And then something turned. I think when they got on to maybe the Spike 2 or maybe, I don't know, all of a sudden, you know, it was probably like 2016. All of a sudden, they figured out the flipper field. I went, holy crap. And then I started playing the pinball again. Because it was all about, because the other companies just had mushy flippers and it really bothered me. I mean, I just lost the love for pinball. But Starrett's got it. But you're back. Every time I try, now, JJP, I hear that the last two games have been much better. I don't know what they feel like. Do they feel like it, Albert? Okay, okay. Here's the thing. I don't want, between you and me, let's pretend no one's listening. I may not have played Elton John yet or Harry Potter, but let's not talk about that because I live on the East Coast of Canada and there's no pinballs here. I could ask you questions about pinball at least for 45 minutes to an hour. I want to have you on the main show. I had absolutely no clue. I had no clue. You had never told me this. I had no clue. But before I let you go, well, thank you for sharing it with all the listeners. I really appreciate that. At least 10 to 15 people will listen to this, so don't worry about it. It's fine. I'm not one of the big podcasters. I didn't know you were recording. Oops, I got it. I bet you did. There you go. But listen, before I let you go, I know Drop Target Danielle is here. She wanted to say Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Why don't you tell her Merry Christmas, Danielle. Thank you. It's always fun listening to you guys' show. Thanks so much. Yeah. She's usually paywall, but we brought her out tonight for the show for a little bit, so. Oh, look at that. Look at that. Man, make a special appearance. All right, Danielle. That's awesome. That's fun. All right. Thanks so much, Darren. Listen, have yourself a great night. And I'm so far behind on calls. I'm getting messages left, right, and center. But you know me. Okay. I'm a rambler. I can't wait to talk to you again, though. You and Roger Sharp are the only two people I've said that to tonight. So there you go. Oh, look at that. That was special, special. Merry Christmas, Darren, to you and yours. Have a good night. All right. Thank you. Oh, Merry Christmas. Oh, my God. I have to pee so bad that I'm so many calls behind. Can I finally do the lightning round? Could it happen? Okay, listen. I have to call Glenn. I know that. Rachel Risto is home. I have to call her first. I bet you she can fill time while I pee. She's a professional. Guys, Rachel Risto, total professional. She could fill time if she had to. Oh, my God. Totally good. Let's fill these vapes, though. Hello, hello. Hello. Merry Christmas, Rachel. Merry Christmas, Orby. How are you? I'm doing very, very well. I'm running very, very, very far behind, which I feel bad about, because, you know what, I'm not going to blame it on Roger Sharp. Every minute I got with that man was gold. That's unfortunate. Oh, no! That's the way it's going to be sometimes. No! I'm here, I'm back. Okay, you're back. And she's back. I'm alive! Okay, what I was going to say is that, like, you know, I'm very far behind on calling people, so I probably can't talk for long, but thankfully I got to talk to you not too long ago talking about the rodeo. Yeah. Yes. Less than 45 days, maybe 30 days or so, I'm going to go play the Southwestern Bells Pinball Rodeo in San Antonio, Texas. There we go. Did they get a couple sponsors? They're still looking for sponsorship. They're still looking for some. There we go. Plug it up, right? Plug it at the start. You know, got to get it in there. Can you, I have to run to the bathroom, but I said I'm going to call Rachel next because she is a consummate podcaster pro. Tell us about your year in pinball. You don't have to talk about the machines per se, actually. I'm more curious about like how your competitive pinball is going and how just like you know like doing commentary for Fox Cities is going you tell the whole audience for a moment or two and I'll be right back sure you rock thank you enjoy it