Hey, Poor Man Tribe and listeners, this is Glennie Rogers, and you're listening to the Tribe Multiball Podcast with Rachel and Tim. Poor Man Tribe's the thing, that is who we are. Ed and Drew, they're not in this thing, so how could it go wrong? Flip away with us, to an old blockade, and then we'll learn about each other. From two pennants to another Rachel and Tim, who do we have on the show today? Be patient. We'll get to the guests. We just have a few things to talk about first. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tribe Multiball, a podcast that focuses on the tribe members of the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Rachel Risto, and we're about to bring you another cool episode. How are you doing today, Rachel? I'm doing great, Tim. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. Before we get started, I just wanted to mention a little bit to our listeners. We recorded two episodes in a row, and we went back, and today we're recording our personal pinball news so that it wasn't stale when we release it. So in this episode, you're going to hear our guest mention something about the P3 title before it was released. So I left it in there. It was a lot of fun, and we had a lot of cool guesses as to what the title was going to be. But we all know it's going to be Weird Al now. So just a little FYI, you know, we would like the personal pinball news to be fresh and relevant. For sure. Yep. Ready to get started, Rachel? Absolutely. So what have you been up to? Playing pinball. Ah. I got to tell you real quick. I was talking to Drew on the phone yesterday, and he's like, how come you never have any personal pinball news? You always say I got nothing going on. Well, today I have something going on, but we're going to go to you first. Okay, sounds good. I'm excited to hear all about that. I recently played the 2X Winter Tournament at District 82. That was actually three tournaments. There's a Friday night, I think it was a three or four strike, and then it was a 13-round match play on Saturday. and then a four strike in the afternoon. It was a lot of fun. This is the first time that Josh and Zach Sharp came up to District 82 to play. I was very excited to meet them. Zach has sent me some amazing things for the Eastwood Wisconsin, so I finally got to hug him in person. I asked him first, of course. I've learned a little bit that you can't just go up and hug people. Would you like a hug? I've not had anybody say no so far, but I think my shot was pretty good. I had an opportunity to play Twilight Zone against him, and I had this really cool thing that happened. I learned something new. He was player three, and I was player four. And after he finished his third ball as player three, while he was collecting the bonus, he scored a replay. And I was almost in front of the game. He came running right up to the game and hit his flippers. Because while it's popping that, I think it's a reel, for the replay, if you do that, you score an extra five million points. Wow. Isn't that the most random, craziest little nugget on Twilight Zone? It only happens when you pop the replay during your bonus. So it's not like while you're playing the game. So I just thought that was really a fascinating little tidbit. And I'm looking at him like, man, I wish I could crawl into your head and learn all these interesting little neat things, you know. That's one of the cool things about pinballs. You're always learning, right? Yeah, that's kind of neat. I've never heard of that. My machines only give you free points when they're broken. I didn't play that great at the 2x but I had a really fun time it was a day actually that I just let go enjoyed playing all the games that were there I try to focus on the games I haven't played in a while when I get up there sometimes I feel like I get in a rut playing the same I don't know 50 games and there's 110 there if that makes any sense it does I also ran Ladies Flip Nikki's Arcade recently it was a very interesting three way tie for first place between Tara Hengem, Becky Meyer, and myself. That was insane. After 13 rounds, I've never had that happen before. And we ended up playing off, and Tara won it all. So I was super excited for her. I also had a really big game on Adam's family. So if you're a Facebook panel, you should check out my post on that because that was pretty interesting against Cassidy. Nice. Well, congratulations, Tara. And that sounds like a pretty good tournament, but I could beat both of those sharp boys. We'll see. Maybe someday, Tim. I don't know. I hope that they hear this and they find you and they challenge you and Keith and Raymond and all the other people you say that about none of them have ever beat me so in my mind I can beat them all until they beat me I'm the king fair enough I also want to say thank you to Scott Denisi I ran a side game that was a charity fundraiser for Beja Transport Fund which helps people get to their medical appointments throughout Wisconsin and the Midwest based out of Green Bay. And it was really exciting because we were able to raise, I would say, maybe I shouldn't disclose it, but we were able to raise a nice chunk of change. And then I do want to thank an undisclosed tribe member who offered to match that amount. So I was able to double up the amount in our charity side. So that was really, really, really cool. And why I bring Scott Danesi into it is because I chose TNA as the side game. And I wrote to him, and he was so kind to send me a couple of really cool items to give away as the prizes in that side tournament. So, Scott, thank you so much for being so approachable and so kind and supporting Ladies Flip Wisconsin. Again, you know, Tim, when those kind of things happen, when I meet, like when I'm at the Sharps and having this interaction with Scott, to me it just keeps blowing my mind how kind and nice people are in pinball, and they're so welcome and opening and encouraging, and it's just such an awesome thing. Yeah, I have had a minimum of 20 people tell me that the Sharps are just great people, like genuinely great people. But I will tell you, with Scott, I talked to Scott for 10 minutes at Expo. Really? And I thought, this dude's a really nice dude, and we chatted and laughed, and Glenn was there. And he left, and Glenn said, oh, we got to talk to Scott Denisey. And I said, that was Scott Denisey? I thought it was just somebody that I met at Expo. But the point is, he was super nice. Like, we laughed and carried on. I didn't know it was Scott Denisey because, you know, I'd never really seen him before. So he's a great dude. But, you know, you got to talk to three great people in pinball. It's just interesting how, you know, I'm just trying to be, I'm just trying to do the best I can for my tournament series and to provide really cool things to the gals that come play. And they all drive me to do that. I had so much fun at this last ladies flip. Not that I don't have fun at all of them. And I didn't really care how I played. I think what I took away most from there is that there was the hostess. She had five of her local friends that came and played that don't normally play pinball. But what's so cool is that three or four of them were typically in the bottom bracket, the bottom group, most of the tournament. But they probably had the most fun. They were laughing and encouraging each other. Like, you know, you got to hit this thing over here. I think this is what you got to hit. It was really cool to see that. and just, I don't know, all the laughter. That all builds me up and makes me want to keep doing it and keep doing more tournaments. So I am doing my next big one. It will be at District 82 on May 14th with a 13-round and a side tournament. So that will be really exciting. The only other pinball news I have is that I'm going to Louisville Arcade Expo very soon. I'm very excited about that to see my buddy Dan. Tish is running a Battle of the Bells competition on Friday night. I'm excited to go out and just check out a different pinball expo. For me, I'm looking forward to the getaway, meeting new people, playing pinball, and just having a really great time. So if you see me, say hey. I've heard that's a good show. That's a lot of pinball news, and I've got to say I love you, Rachel. I love what you're doing with your tournament series, and I love that there's a charity involved. Thanks. Every time we talk, it's a really good charity. You know how to pick good charities. And actually, I'm not the one that picks them. I ask the host or hostess to choose the charity. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. That's even better. Right? It hits home with them. For sure. I kid that I can beat all these players, and I joke around, but they would destroy me. I actually played a top 20 player one time, and I said, you ready to lose or you ready to get the beat down joking? And he beat me by like 7 billion points. So I do it in fun. I know I'm fairly poor. I will tell you when you do beat a person on a game, I beat Neil Graff and Cassidy Milonowski on Mouse and Around at the same time. And I will never forget that because that will probably be the only time that ever happens. And sometimes people just have a bad game or having an off day or whatever. But I tell you, I treasure that in my little heart of mine when I'm able to beat a really good player because I'm like, hey, I did the thing. So you could beat Keith. You could beat Raymond. and you could beat all these other players, Tim. You just haven't played them yet. And I think that's a really great perspective to go into it with. Yeah. Well, there's a reason people are walking around with Tim Lee and Drew Sucks at pinball shirts. So that's a good transition into my personal pinball news. Tell me all about it. Can't wait to hear. So I played in another tournament, and I will tell you this. It is the best I have ever played in a tournament. I was on fire. I play now for me, I played a game of Hobbit and I had an 800,000 point ball, just one ball. Wow. I got to the mini wizard. I don't I didn't know the roles. I was just flipping the ball around and I got the mini wizard mode and the guy came up behind me and he got a one million point ball and beat me. Like I'm thinking in my head, I got this, you know, I'm going to win. And so I went to the next game, and I think it was Family Guy, and I blew that up. And the guy that played with me, he blew it up even better, and I lost. So anyways, I played every game better than I've ever played in a tournament, and I finished in seventh. I'm like, what? I was like – I didn't have a bad game. Was it the level of competition? Everyone just played better than me. There are people – actually, I beat a guy. I think he was ranked 500th in IFBA or something around there. Okay. And I beat him. Everybody and people I've beat before just played better than me. It was funny. I had my best day and people just played better, which on the flip side, the day I won the tournament, you know, these were mostly all the same players. We did have a couple of folks come up from the River City Pinball League in Harrisburg. So thanks for coming up. And, but anyways, back to when I won the tournament, I thought I just had an average, not such a great day, but I won. So it just, just depends. Right. Right. That's, that's absolutely true. I'm really glad that you're still, you're getting out there and doing more tournament playing. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's fun. My, my buddy Justin goes with me and, you know, we have a lot of time. Yeah. So the other thing I did, and this is kind of weird. So my buddy Justin, he is a P3 distributor. I'll give him a little plug. Pinball at Wise Trailer. And he owns an RV dealership. All right. Well, he loves the P3. He loves the concept. And he's always been looking for something to kind of take to these RV shows because people are buying these huge motor coaches. Right. And he said, what do you think of the P3? And I said, I think it was a great idea. So we did kind of a test run at a small RV show. So we took a P3 with Heist to an RV show. And the only thing I have to say is it went way better than I expected. That's awesome. Yeah, hundreds of people played. They loved it. They loved Heist because, you know, we got a lot of – I haven't seen a pinball machine in a long time, but we had – They still make these. Yeah. The local news let them do a little snippet on the machine, so we had a good 20 to 30 people come just to see this particular machine. But we had hundreds of people that went through. They loved the machine. I'm pretty sure he got some good sales from the show. But one thing that amazed me, and you're taking a pinball machine to a place where they haven't seen pinball, but there's a lot of stuff there. There was no sticker shock. Nobody even batted an eye at the price of pinball because we were kind of the cheapest thing there. RVs were $30,000 and up, and not a single person said, oh, that's way too expensive. so maybe a kid's dad or two might have said that but the p3 has a very small price tag in comparison to a 20 foot rv right yeah i mean or a camp or pop-up camper and any of it it's a very small price tag well i'm really glad that you both were able to get to that show and do that um it's also kind of like bringing more people into the pinball world so that's super rad as well yeah that's kind of what we've been doing so it was a lot of fun we had three days talking pinball showing new people pinball even if uh folks that might not have been interested in buying a machine i wanted them to be interested in pinball and every single person that came through got the tim lee tutorial so i don't know if that's good or bad i think that's fantastic i'm really again i think anytime that you're exposing new people to pinball or people are like oh yeah i played this when i was 12 or whatever the case may be, it's brilliant. Just bring them back into the fold. And I really want to talk about Weird Al if we can for a second. I really think that game looks like a heck of a lot of fun, and I can't wait to play it. Can't wait. Yeah, I'm excited. When it was first announced, so I actually told Ryan Kuiper at the beginning of February, I said, I think it's going to be Weird Al. I had listened to Amish Paradise that morning. It just came on the radio, and I thought, this is a great theme because they had – Stephen had teased it's something that everyone would like, and I thought, who doesn't love Weird Al? I sent Ryan Kuiper a message that says, I think it's Weird Al. Nobody told me anything. I sent Justin a message that says, I think it's Weird Al, and then I backed off of it. Like the next day, I talked myself out of it. So when it was Weird Al, at first I was like, oh, and then I'm like, I love Weird Al, and it looks fantastic. It looks like a fun game. Did Stephen Silver give you a little sneak peek or something there? No. That dude, I tried to crack that guy numerous times and not a word. Congratulations, Steven. Congratulations. The game looks amazing. Can't wait to play it. I'll give you a full Rachel review when I do. Yeah. I also hear that there may have been a change up in your games. Yeah. You ready for the big news? I'm ready So Last Friday I decided that it was time for Adam's family to leave No I didn't know that's what you got rid of No Yes yeah so I know it's your dream theme It's my grail But somebody Made me an offer that I Couldn't refuse You didn't say that right Tim Someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse I can't even do it but you need to say it like in your your mobster voice. Yeah. Yeah. So somebody made me an offer and you'll know why I had to take it, but I will tell you, I made the deal and it took me a few weeks. You kind of knew this was coming. I let you in on the hint and it took me a few weeks to get there. But on Thursday, I started playing Rush music all day long. I said, Amy, could you please help me load Adam's family into the vehicle i got it upstairs with the escalera and i was playing rush music i said i made a trade so all friday morning she's like you bought a rush didn't you and i'm like why do you think that she's like you've been playing rush music and sending rush clips to us so she was certain she said she was 100 certain that that we got rush so what we ended up getting is a halloween oh yeah finally yeah amy absolutely loves halloween she did a little snippet on the on the loser kid christmas show about how she wants a halloween so we had it all set up i went to the rv show with justin and all i got was like a thousand hearts when she got home i love it is it set up upstairs or in the basement no it's in the basement there's only one machine that's going upstairs i was well very nice job tim congrats amy i'm so so excited for you that you finally got your your dream game yeah yeah love you amy i will say this it is more fun than i anticipated and the butt pretzel shot in the upper play field is probably one of the best shots i've hit in pinball in years i really love it my only problem is is in just just an fyi i i wish they would you know i hope they take care of this in the future i had to make too many adjustments to the machine to get it up there. I probably had to make three or four adjustments. You know, the spooky guys online were great. They helped me out. That's good. Didn't really know that shot existed because I didn't watch a lot of streams. I'm scared of my own shadow. I'm actually scared to death to go in the basement with this machine at night when Amy's not there. But so that shot, congrats to Spooky. You made a good game. That shot is fantastic. Zippy got to get these things working a little bit better out of the box. Just because now that she can get it up there, Amy can get up there. She's in love with the machine. And I heard there's going to be a code drop maybe this week. Oh, that's exciting. I still haven't played Halloween, but I did get a chance to play Ultraman over the weekend. And that is a really fun game. I really like playing it. But I forgot totally about the butt pretzel shot. Totally forgot about that to try to make that shot. Yeah, it is. It's – once you – it's three shots to the middle ramp on Halloween, and in the fourth shot, it diverts over to the right. And I had to adjust that diverter. That was the problem. It was hitting – the ball was hitting the diverter and rejecting. But once I got it adjusted, after the third shot, it opens up the right third-level play field, and you get it over there. And the butt pretzel shot is really easy to make. You just rip that spinner, hold up your right flipper, and it's just little figure eight. Fun. How fun. Yeah. I giggle like a little kid. I love it. That's awesome. We had some really good news today. Yeah, yeah. All right, Rachel, are you ready to get to our guests? I absolutely am. All right. I don't know how this is going to go. In the pregame warm-ups, you and the guests were a little bit rowdy, so we'll see how it goes. Hey, I'm having a good time. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah, so I'm excited about this one. This is one of my best friends. We talk every Tuesday morning and every Friday morning on the way to work. Cute. And yeah, we got a little thing going on there. Yeah. He was playing hard to get when I tried to get him on the podcast, but we got him on. So welcome to the show, Glenn the Skateboarder Glenn Waechter. Hey guys, what you drinking tonight? I am drinking the standard Fireball and Coke. I'm having a little 99 peaches on the rocks. I emptied my fireball. I finished my fireball recently. I think I should have another drink, don't you? Yeah, go for it. Let's just jump right in. Well, I've got an IPA that has, I don't know, mosaic and centennial hops. So it's pretty tasty. Sounds good. but anyhow I feel like I was misled a little bit here guys I was told it would be Rachel and Amy that's how I got you on the show no I did play hard to get and the problem with me is that I have to try to put aside like an hour and a half to do this and on any night of the week our plans change so quick and I just get really I get nervous like as far as like am I going to waste your time but my wife is out of town so I'm able to commit to the tonight I've done all my other duties So good to go. All right. Life with kids, Glenn. I've been there. So absolutely. I'm so happy to have you here. I know this is super hilarious. Everyone probably thinks everything I'm going to say is going to be funny. But I think I've told this to Tim in the past. Like, it's hard. It's hard to be funny on the spot. But I usually have to write things down and have jokes planned. And so I don't know. This this this could be all right. We're all just winging it, Glenn. Yeah, there's really no planning here. We wing it. So this is going to be serious, Glenn. Oh, no, we don't want that. The serious side of Skateboarder Glenn. So what do we have on our agenda? What do we want to chat about tonight? All right, so you were born and raised in Milwaukee, but you live in Nashville. So you've listened to the show. You kind of know where we're going. The first thing we want to talk about is tell us a little bit about pinball in Nashville. Well, the pinball in Nashville seems to be, you know, all roads to the state championship of Tennessee go through Nashville because we have we have four communities in in the Tennessee state that like Memphis and Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville and the other cities don't really have a consistent turnout of events. So they probably won't get maybe two or three players from each city to the state final this year. And a lot of that has to do with Memphis not having any locations right now having tournament pinball because David Yob is trying to get his new venue open. He's got it set up. They just don't have it open yet because they don't have a liquor license. So he's got a partner that I think the guy owns the restaurants and the bar, and he provides the pins. So it's going to be awesome. They've got TVs above every single pinball machine so you can watch the person play standing behind them. That's pretty awesome. It's huge for tournaments to be able to watch. Oh, that's how he does that. You can't really look over someone's shoulder and see what's going on. Right. So I think Memphis has got the right idea. Nashville, we have no quarter. No quarter has an interesting history. Seth is the owner, and he opened it up a couple years ago, and that's every week he has a tournament. and that is where all of our points come from. We get up to like, we think we've had over 40 people playing in tournaments in this tiny little hole in the wall craft beer and pinball place. I've never been to a bar since I was like in college where I walk in and feel like people know who I am That amazing 10 years maybe 15 or 20 years went by Cause I 40 now Well 39 15 years went by without having any of that And then all of a sudden you like Whoa like I'm, I go somewhere and people know who I am. That's really cool. And now people are like, I kept hearing you on a podcast. Like, like that's kind of funny too. He's like, every time I'd listen to a podcast, I hear Glenn's name. I'm like, yeah, yeah. That's a question for later. We'll get to that. Glenn's goal in life is to be on every podcast. So you're predominantly a tournament player though, right? You don't play in the leagues? I think it's tough because I would play more. I would play more often, not in tournaments, but I love to be competitive. So I schedule the times that I play to always be at a tournament. I would love to be able to have more nights of the week available to not always play under that high pressure, to get some practice, to be more social. I would love to be able to go out. But the problem is if I go out with a few friends on a night, then I'm not playing in a tournament that week because that was my one night to get out and do something. So I kind of have to make sure I manage what I'm trying to get out of my pinball hobby because I just don't have as much time as a lot of people. For sure. And for good reasons. Absolutely. The best reasons. I love taking care of my kids. I love taking them to all their stuff and watching them grow as people. And in five to ten years, I'm going to get tons of time back. But for now, once a week, every other week maybe is about when I get to plan a term. And that's fine. That's enough. I got a pinball machine at home now, so that makes it a lot better to kind of – For sure. Yeah, that's fun. And when you get your weekly dose of life lessons with Tim Lee, I tell you often, enjoy the time with your family because right now I have two kids that are at college and my daughter is here. But she doesn't want to spend a ton of time with dad. You'll get plenty of pinball time, but it can be lonely. So enjoy the kids and make it all count. So that's pretty cool. So I have a question. I've had this question that I want to ask you and Rachel. You and I have talked about it. How are the pinball machines set up in Nashville? Are they generally brutal or are they easy? Because you know me. Glenn knows exactly what I'm going to say. When I walk into a barcade, I can't stand when the machines are brutal. I want to enjoy myself, drink a beer, and have a good time, and bang. When they go right down the middle, I just get really irritated. Not irritated. Tim never gets irritated, but I get like, oh, come on. You're set up on a ski slope. I want like a 4% pitch. So what are your thoughts there? My thoughts are you have to probably take a little bit of the Orbi magic with you and smoke a little bit of the green stuff so that you could have a little bit of your nerves calmed next time you go. Who's this guy hugging everyone? The machines in Nashville are getting set up harder and harder because Nashville has not been a big state or Tennessee has not been a big state as far as competitive pinball goes. It grew really fast. And so a couple of years ago, we were all new. All of us were. So we weren't blowing machines up. Tournaments would have 20 people show up and nobody would get gigantic scores and be able to nudge and save the ball. And so now that everybody's gotten so much better in a very rapid rate, they have to make the machines harder. Otherwise, we're at the bar until 1 in the morning. I wake up at 5. I can't drive 45 minutes home after a tournament that ends at 1 in the morning and then go to work and function. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat. So the machines are set up a lot harder. And I separate the two. I'm okay with that. you can go to Game Terminal, which is a super arcade. It's kind of like Walmart just decides that they're going to give themselves a name, Super Walmart, instead of just Walmart. So Game Terminal is a super arcade. They have over 100 pinball machines, and they're all set up the way that Tim Lee would like to, where you can actually possibly get to a wizard mode. But they don't have any tournaments there. Eventually, maybe, hopefully. But the tournament locations have their machines set up really hard, and it's good because you want to get through as many rounds as possible it makes the tournament worth more points for the ifpa and and then you get out of there at a reasonable time yeah i i get it i just like to that's one of the arguments you and i and i friendly conversations you and i always have because i'm like glenn i went to this place at the beach and it was every game was brutal and you know then i go to a place in maryland and everything's set up where tim lee can can advance so and rachel and i you and i have talked about that um right well we all watched Drew Bouvier walk up to his first tournament game ever on stream against Raymond Davidson. And that was at District 82. And I think he learned really quick that those machines are set up really hard as well, and probably for the same reason. Right, Rachel? Yeah, I would say so. It's interesting because other players, Colin MacAlpine, he did comment that he thought the games played pretty fair in terms of, but I don't think he found them to be overly difficult. So I thought that was an interesting comment. So I'm always interested when other people come there to play because I really don't know anything different. But I'd still rather have games set up to be a little bit harder, a rubber missing, or the outpost moved, or the center post taken out of a game. I'd rather have all of that. Eric does a really great job of making these adjustments. I know he's done a lot of adjustments, I believe, to mouse it around to make it a more difficult game. I love that. because in turn it makes you a better player. So what's good and bad about that is if I go play Mouse and Around somewhere else, that game, such as Logan Arcade with some of my friends, you know, Expo Weekend, that game played a lot differently. But it was good because it still makes you a better player. You want, when it's a location play where it's just specifically for fun, like a big arcade, yes, you absolutely want the game set up Tim Lee style. I'm right there with you, Glenn. I like that, Tim Lee style. So speaking of that, something that, you know, Rachel, I don't know if you do, but Glenn is like a rules encyclopedia. Yes, thank you for saying that. I was going to bring that up. He's amazing. Glenn helped me out recently with my Fox Cities Pinball League on my way there. We were chatting on the phone, and then he sent me some tips about different games that I haven't played, and I haven't played in a long time, and it was incredibly helpful. I now will always forever remember where the skill shot is on Congo. So thanks so much for that, Glenn. So things like that, it's really great, especially when you were standing next to me at Expo and we were playing Baywatch, and you told me every single thing that I had to do. I'm like, okay, and I just went and hit the shot. And then you'd have another sip of your beer, and you'd be like, no, okay, I'll hit this. It pointed right on the glass. It was great. And I'm like, I need you in my ear. Everything that I go play, just like, I've got so much hair going on. Nobody would know. No one would know. They'll never know. We could just shrink me down like a little miniature Dennis Creasel Put me in your pocket. I'm all right with that. I'm okay with that. I'll put you as a little hair tie or something. Like a little Dr. Pepper guy. Sure, sounds good. But yeah, Glenn, thanks so much for that. I really appreciate that because I've commented before, my rule knowledge is not as good as it should be. That's why I feel like Rookie Rachel yet, right there, is because my rule set is not as deep as what people think it is. I'm getting there. Well, that stuff grows. You got to give it time. It'll get there. Right. I just start telling Glenn to give me three. I'd be like, dumb it down for me because he would give me all the rules. I'd be like, I remembered the first two, Glenn, and I would start to get the sweats. And I actually – this is funny, and I'm going to ask you to explain how you learned all these rules, Glenn. But I was in a tournament. I said, Glenn, I need to know what to do on Simpsons Pinball Party. And Glenn responded, I got nothing for you. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't have anything for me? That happened to me once too. So, Glenn, tell us, like, are you at home reading, like, rules after rules after rules just for these tournaments? What I do is I play a game for the first time, and while it's fresh in my mind the next day or the day after, I watch a tutorial on it. And then that reinforces something in my brain that makes me be able to retain that for later. If I watch, if I read rules, I'll fall asleep. I think that might have to do more with just not being able to focus. If I'm reading something, it's not stimulating. So then I just, I shut down. But if I'm watching a stream and it's something I'm familiar with that I've played before, I can somehow retain a lot of that information. And that's really the only thing I do. I used to take a lot more notes. I used to make a lot of drawings. The very first pinball tournament I ever played in had like 50 machines that I'd never played, but maybe 10 of them. And so I just started watching all these videos. And then I started drawing the playfields out on paper. And I started taking notes of what percentage the ball would be down the flipper to make certain shots. So I'm looking at Tales from the Crypt. I've never played it before, but you've got to be able to hit that mode shot. Where is that shot on both flippers? And I know that, and that's the only thing I went into that tournament knowing. And you can really get a lot of ground by just knowing where one or two shots are before you touch the game, even if you've never played it. I love your approach to that because you think about where the ball – that's something, I guess, I think about, but I don't think about until I'm really right there playing the game. Okay, I'm looking up at the field. I'm going to shoot my shot. I'm not always looking down exactly at my flipper in order to shoot it. Sometimes it's intuitive. Does that make sense? You'd be a horrible golfer. You'd always be over the ball. Sometimes it's intuitive, not always, but I do work on that. Like on my maiden, you know, I know a little bit more. I'm working on that. My right, my left flipper, where to shoot the fricking ramps on that, you know, from. So, but I love that idea. And that It was something else somebody else had said to me recently as well, but I love the approach to that so much. So I am trying to integrate that in certain games where certain shots are really difficult. You help me more than you know, buddy. Yeah, Glenn helps me a lot. One night I cheated on Glenn. I sent Billy YJ a message on Avengers, and then he didn't get back to me fast enough, so I messaged Jonathan Hall, and I had a few beers. I'm like, man, this dude, he knows just about as much as I do, which isn't much at all. So then I messaged Glenn. I went back to Glenn and then I felt dirty. I'm like, man, but no, no, I'm just picking on Jonathan. But no, that's pretty awesome, Glenn. I just wanted to put it out in the public that you're my rules guy. Mine too. Yeah, and I don't know as much as some people. I know Ian Harawir, that guy, he's an encyclopedia. He knows the rules. There's a lot of classic games. I don't know a lot of the rules, but at least the classic games, you can look up on Pintips or something and you can get like what everybody already knows the three things to do in the game so yep classics are more about execution than it is memorizing different situations yeah i i always say three rolls for dummies so all right let's switch gears here so glenn there there's something that you're famous for and we talked about it we teased it a little bit earlier and that's kind of weird like you guys haven't mentioned anything about me without my shirt on so far. You just okay with this? Well, when we get to your past, I actually had a note here to figure out how you got into pinball. Like, did you play shirtless as a kid? Because I just envisioned you in high school walking around without a shirt on, flexing your muscles. But we'll hold that until later in the show. But one of the things you're famous for is essentially content. and let's you know you wrote the theme song for for rachel and i but before we get into content one of the things you really like is music do you mind talking about a little bit about your past with uh with how you got into music and then we'll jump into how you got into the parody songs and yeah yeah my sister played the saxophone for one summer between fifth and sixth grade and I thought it was cool and she didn't stick it out, she didn't like it and so then when it was time for me to pick out an instrument I wanted to be a drummer and they told me now we got enough drummers and then I thought well what's the next biggest loudest instrument I could learn and so I learned the tuba I played the tuba from 6th grade all the way through high school oh wow I was a starting wide receiver on the varsity football team and I didn't have to do the field show because I was on the football team. I wasn't in band. So early on, music was important to me, but then I'd get made fun of, right? So people made fun of me for bringing this tuba. I literally had to take a tuba on a bus to school. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And so my friends would make fun of me. I've got three vowels, oompa, oompa, you know, from Wisconsin. We know how to polka, you know, three or four times. And, you know, get your grandma on the dance floor. Let's go, right? And so I'm like, well, I'm going to teach these guys. So when I was in the high school pep band, they let me play songs on the drums. So I was playing Evil Ways, and I was getting all the fills, and I was actually playing them. And so the director let me play the drums for two songs every basketball pep rally or basketball pep band, whatever you can call it. And so then they're like, oh, yeah, but what else can you do? And I was like, well, I guess guitar would always be cool. My friends had a band called Four Stroke Engine, and the T-shirts had a hand like this for the O. They'd make me a circle. Oh, my. And they're like, but we don't have a bassist. So I went to the store, and I did a payment plan with the music store to buy a bass guitar. I showed up the next day with a bass guitar and an amp. I'm like, all right, guys, here we go. Teach me how to play this thing. So my very first guitar playing was in a band, which is not that different from my very first pinball playing was at a tournament. and so like I just I just jump in with both feet and then the bass guitar got boring I'm like what can you do with bass guitar so I learned six string guitar I got an acoustic guitar and I got an electric guitar and I took a few lessons not not a ton I kind of hit a wall took lessons for about maybe six months and then it opened up all these possibilities that I didn't know were there so then then I went to college to record music I have an audio engineering degree and the stuff that I record with at home is nothing like a home studio this is like three, $400 worth of equipment and you're off and running record two tracks at once at most. So yeah, that's, that's my musical background. I was a tuba player, then a drummer, then a guitarist. And eventually I learned how to sing a little bit too. Well, you got a great voice, but Rachel, I think we found our new editor. He could be. I don't know how you're going to, how are you going to pay him? I pay with love. I'll send you cheese curds I'll send you cheese curds and spotted cow I don't know something from a gift package from Wisconsin you name it I don't know that I have the time to edit I haven't even had time to record I've got a couple songs in my head bouncing around that I want to get to that are parody songs that I just haven't had the energy and the time to really put into it but yeah so then and then Orby that's an amazing journey in music though I love that starting with the tuba inspired by the saxophone that's wonderful yeah i think my parents didn't think i'd make it like so i had to kind of prove to them that i could i could stick with this instrument yeah and they never missed anything my parents were great man i was really really lucky they went to everything i ever did my grandma was there so i just like they just loved it and every stupid christmas parade and it was freezing outside decorating my tuba with christmas lights It's just being a total band geek. Oh, I love all of that. So sweet. And I still got friends from high school from all these different groups. I'd play hacky sack at lunch with the owners. I would, like, half of your lunch, you go outside, you do whatever you want. Yeah. You know, like being in band and then being on the football team. And I was actually a diver my freshman year, so I rocked the Speedo. And I was horrible, but it was fun. And I'm on the golf team. I've got lots of friends in different areas. And I think that's really an important thing to do in life is just to open yourself up to everybody, right? For sure. And so there's a lot of people that don't like sports. And I think a lot of that comes to like, well, not everybody in sports is a really nice person. And so it kind of shapes your whole image of sports ball. I hear that all the time. It's kind of like your backhanded compliments. I don't watch, is that a sport ball thing? Like that kind of always drives me nuts because my kids get so much out of sports. I can't even imagine where they'd be right now without having something that they've worked so hard at and over a long period of time being getting a payoff. And it doesn't have to be sports. It can be music. It can be writing. It can be art. But you have to apply yourself and work really hard at something to then down the road appreciate what it all was for. Right. And I think you can apply that to anything. But anyway, what were we talking about? Just the music. Orby, the Pinball Nerds podcast. He one day said, I want to have a contest where somebody writes my new theme song. And so I didn't even finish his podcast. I pulled in my driveway. I grabbed my guitar. I just started playing chords, and it just came up. That song wrote itself in five minutes. Then I recorded it. He featured it on his show for, I don't know, 200 episodes or 150 episodes before the show, before he hung it up. But then I'm like, well, who else can I write a theme song for? And what other things can I do? And then Jeff Teolas called me one day and was like, Glenn, the Reach Around Awards are this weekend. Could you by chance sing a version of a Led Zeppelin song with these lyrics? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. I'm like, well, that was kind of fun. That was a parody song. But it was the actual tracks of the band. I didn't have enough time to record any of the instruments. I'm like, if I'm going to do more of these, I'm going to record everything. because I don't really like parody songs because usually people just go and grab the karaoke track and then they slap it together. And that's fine if that's all you can do, but I think that there's some kind of artistic integrity involved in recording music and making something, if you want to call it art. If you want to just call it a gimmick, that's fine. But if you want to actually think that you're creating art, you have to put more time and thought into it. So everything I've done, I've recorded every instrument. And I've had awesome people like Rachel. You sang your theme song with me. I sure did. Thank you for the opportunity. I love that so much. So much. I got Pete Quint to play a horn solo, and I told him, like, Pete, you know, it's good, but I really wanted to have the harmony track. Do you know how to double that so you have two tracks? And then he went to his wife, and then they wrote out the harmony because he's not, like, as much of a music major as she is. He's got a lot more classical training. So she knew the key of the song and then the harmony for that Justin Bieber song. And it turned out great. I got Dave Jeff Brenner to play the drums on another one. I love collaborating. It's something I've only gotten good at as I've gotten older because I'm kind of a control person. I was never good with other people because I always want to control what's happening in the group with a band. And so it's been fun to open myself up and allow myself to let other people contribute. I like that more. Okay, that's actually a pretty neat story. I didn't know that Orby, the theme song, was your first song because we just started to talk soon after that. So thank you, Orby. We miss you, Orby. So first, thank you for writing our theme song. You had mentioned that Rachel sang it with you. It was your idea. You guys requested it. I can't sing though, so I had you fill in for me. So I'm like, Glenn, we need this theme song, but I'm not going to sing it. It's funny. I think I was talking to Joseph Hood, and he goes, Glenn, I like everything you do except that theme song for Tribe Multiball. I don't think he likes Kenny Rogers. And I said, well, you realize this was something that Rachel wanted. And he goes, oh, okay. So his mind kind of changed a little bit. Oh, I love you, Joe. That's so sweet. Joseph Hood, he's badass. He can't deal with Dolly and Kenny. He's very punk rock. Yeah, he is very much so. Well, maybe we should record another one. We're 20. This is episode 20-something. And so it would be kind of fun to do something else. We'll just have to see. Yeah, I could do a nice little punk rock song. I could sing on that. I would love that. The Ramones couldn't sing and play or play, and they got pretty famous. Okay. I would give up a night of pinball with the entire tribe for us all to go do karaoke one night. That would be my absolute biggest dream. Because karaoke is one of those magical things where you don't even have to be good. You just have to put your heart into it, right? That's right. You can win the crowd over with just energy. That's right. And the people that embrace that make it so much fun. You get up there and you sing off key and I will cheer and I will clap for you because I think it's amazing that you went up there and poured your heart out. I don't care. And then I'm going to get up there and I'm going to sing off key and as loud as I want as well. And I don't care. I don't care. because it feels good. It's like a cleansing when you sing karaoke almost. I love to sing. I sing almost every day. Oh, nice. I get booed a lot, but that makes me even more excited. Yeah. All right, so let's loop back around. So, Glenn, I don't even know where to start besides the music. You've done all kinds of skits. I always make the joke that love letters on the Poor Man's Pinball Podcast always made me uncomfortable. And then you did Pinbot, and then you did a Love Letters with the Pinbot voice. That's still one of the most uncomfortable things I've listened to. So what made you decide to do that? I don't know. I build custom closets and install window treatments, and a lot of that job is repetitive. And so I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I was listening to – actually, I was listening to Ian and Drew because Orby said these guys swore too much. It sounds like my style, right? And not because I swear a lot, just because I like when people are loose. When people are swearing, it means that their guard is down. Like they're already not giving two shits about what anybody has to say, right? They're going to just say what they feel. And so that, like right away, I'm like, I'm going to listen to these guys. And I thought it was kind of funny that back and forth between the two of them about Aubrey not liking them and then liking them and then, you know, eventually becoming a tribe member himself. But when they would do love letters, they had love letter segments. And I was just listening to them and thinking, well, what if a pinbot, what if pinbot, bride of pinbot was sentient? Or what if pinbot was sentient and actually like wrote a love letter to his wife? Like, how great would that be? And then I thought, I wonder if I can, I wonder if I can record with my musical gear. So I put it through a distortion pedal and a compressor and a modulator. and next thing you know, I'm controlling the pitch shift with a knob as I'm talking, as I'm reading the script that I wrote, and I'm trying so hard not to laugh. So as soon as you start doing something like that, these ideas just start pouring into my head, and they shoot onto the paper And I didn know It was funny because I sent it to the guys and they didn use it the first week I don think or maybe they just waited forever to have another episode. I was like getting really nervous. I'm like, Oh, should I message them? Should I ask them if they're going to use the thing? Was it too inappropriate? And I just, eventually they, they played it and they said, Holy shit. Like, and that's when I realized that, okay, like maybe, maybe I'm not the only person that has this twisted sense of humor and it has nothing to do about sexualizing anything everything about that pinbot skit was rated g based on what was on the artwork and all all the nuance and and innuendo that was in there was already there on the machine beforehand it's just how are you going to interpret it right yeah i don't i don't know what rated g movies you're watching your version of bambi is a heck of a lot different than my version of bambi so the return the return of pin bot when when he had a moment talking about drew that was not that the first one the first one was actually a hundred percent based on the gameplay and what the artwork looked like okay and then eventually neil came into the picture so neil neil was the second thing i did um i told i told ian and jim like hey what if what if someone does like a tournament conversation and then the more i thought about it well shoot you know there's not enough tournament players that are listening to this, but there's a lot of drinkers that play in tournaments. So let's do the drunken pinball tips. Let's, let's, let's give tips to the guy that likes to drink and play pinball. Like, like you, Tim, you need three things. Give me three things and that's it. Yeah. But then I got a little carried away. I'm talking more and more and more. Um, and I eventually talk about the entire game. Maybe if you go back and listen to those, um, you'll, you'll pick up on a few things. The, uh, I I'd like to go back and do more of those. Uh, I think it's funny to do that, that voice from from from neil hey hey there poor man driving listeners this is neil from fish tales like i just think it's funny and i don't know i don't know if there's i don't know if anybody else thinks this is funny as i think it is but i get a kick out of it i i enjoy him and you did a song with rachel as well right yeah the theme song for this show oh yeah we did the theme song but no uh glenn actually wrote me a love song well called nudge it gently and i hope that you play it at the end of the episode, Tim Lee, because it is fantastic. It's definitely an ode to me, and I love you, Glenn, for it. It's amazing. I've never had anybody write a... You wrote it for me, right? I mean, ultimately... No, he wrote it for me. The concept about playing pinball and not always having a nudge hard, as soon as I came up with that idea, the first thing I thought about was you, because you are ruthless with the machines. Yeah. And so I think it's funny to like, let's take, let's take a song and reverse the gender, right? Let's make this song that's about a guy, you know, talking about a guy and let's flip it and make it about a girl that plays too hard rather than a guy that too hard. I love it. I've never had anybody write me a song for me in my life. So, I mean, that is just amazing. I love you, Glenn. Just love you. But then you also contributed with the, uh, the other pinball segments, the game room the game room segments have you noticed that that kind of has disappeared we haven't heard that in a while the last time that game room porn on the poor man's pinball podcast the last time that came up was during a live show and several people in checks we just started podcasting they recognized my voice and they're like OMG Rachel that's what I was talking about I was really proud with that because I took the music from what game did they have in their basement? Oh, I don't remember. It was this old game that just had the weirdest soundtrack. I took the soundtrack from that game, and I added a funk wah pedal-like strum, and then I mashed it with the original music that they used on the Love Letter segment. Nice. And I thought I was so proud of this. Everyone's going to die when they hear this. and I don't think anybody realized that I mixed these three things together and I created this whole new song and then I get Rachel to jump in there and she just, she turns up the old 900 phone caller number up to 11 I can't believe I did that because I'm like, you know, I try to keep myself pretty squeaky clean you know, in terms of my personality and what comes across you're a dirty girl, Rachel sometimes It was really fun doing that, though. I'm not going to lie, because it was like a channel to a different side of me that most people don't get to see. Moving on. Moving on. That made me blush. So then one day, at this point, Tim and I had started chatting a couple times, and I called him on my way home from work. Because I was in my work truck. I got a guy named Skyler that works with me. And I'm like, oh, my God, did you guys ever hear? And I said, Skyler, did you ever hear the commercials that Bud Light used to do? It was like real men of genius, real American heroes, whatever it was. And so we listened to like three or four of them. And we're just laughing in the truck and we're listening to these old commercials. And then I went, oh, my God, this is the perfect joke delivery method right here to roast somebody. And the length of it's perfect. So I called Tim. I said, hey, Tim, have you ever heard of these commercials? And you're like, I think I remember those a little bit. And so immediately Tim and I became co-writers of this segment that ended up with like 10 or 12 different ideations about it. But I even talked to John Borg at Expo about it. He loved it. Yeah, it was the genius segments. I really enjoy that. Thank you for letting me participate. Glenn had to refine a few of mine because apparently since I can't sing, sometimes I didn't put the best lyrics with how they had to be sung. But I got a lot of good feedback, so it was good. Glenn and I really bonded over that. Maybe we'll have to do a contest or something someday and give away a shirt on a Rachel and Tim parody. Wouldn't you like to hear a Rachel and Tim parody, Rachel? Okay. Somebody can do a genius segment and we can sing it. Glenn can sing it about us. What people don't realize is that the only way that I still have friends in this hobby is because Tim, he was my governor. I wanted to take that thing to an inappropriate level every episode, and he's like, Glenn, we can't do that. You can't say that, Glenn. That's too much. Yeah. There was actually one that – I told this to Zach so I can say this. The first one I wrote about Zach Menny was brutal. I didn't even share it with Glenn. I just I went to read it I'm like Tim you're a real a-hole and it was you know nothing against Zach I buy all my machines from Zach but I'm like this is even too brutal for Zach and he has to see it he's like can I see that I'm like no no no then we wrote one about him so we just picked on him for the B plus and so forth but yeah a couple of times I had to talk Glenn off the ledge and hey we want to have friends I think that's what I said one time well I'm sure I've said some things that were not totally appropriate it and I'm learning, I'm getting better as I get older. And, um, I know that some of the Neil segments had some, had some stuff that was probably not, you know, appropriate for everybody because it, it, it did sexualize women in a way. And it was a character that I would kind of like, I was drawing on a character that was not like a part of me that I was talking about, you know, getting some poon at the bar. It was just, that was his character. And then in my head, that's the kind of guy that he was. And so I can't, I'm not, I'm not sure if I can separate the two if it makes it good or makes it bad it's certainly not the way i behave in in the world but i just think it was funny to have you know a character that was a little inappropriate that hung out with guys in a bar in canada somewhere or northern minnesota that just just kind of like acted that way and and maybe if i went back and redid it i would kind of exclude some of that stuff because i'm i've i've learned a lot especially from talking with rachel about about just the ways that that some of that stuff can kind of get played off hindsight to 2020 glenn So nobody cancel me. If you're interested and you want to hear any of the dumb audio bits, I think there's multiple hours worth of content on my SoundCloud page called Pinball for Y'all. Pinball for Y'all. Go check that out and just different fun things that I've done with Tim and other people. Yeah. And on a serious note, Rachel, you've helped enlighten me to some things that have gone on as well that I've never noticed. I'm sure they were happening in pinball tournaments all across the country, and you've kind of educated Glenn and I, and we love you for that, and that's the kind of relationship I have with both of you. We can be very candid with each other, and neither you hesitate to tell me if you think I'm wrong about something. Just like Glenn, I told you, yeah, we can't write that song. I appreciate the candid relationship with both of you. Well, thanks, Tim. I really appreciate that. And Glenn, too, for both of you having a listening ear to obstacles that I guess I have encountered and helping me to overcome them. You've both been really good pals that way. I appreciate you both. We're at the end of our show, but we can do all our love and thank you right now. Group hug. We're going to do a group hug here, you know. Big hug. So what else you got going on, Glenn, in your modern pinball world? You said you had a couple of parody songs kind of in your head. Are you going to be writing for any other shows? Because you've been on a few different shows now, and I know you talk to all the podcasters. So what do you got brewing? Anything? Well, just because you said that, the reason I talk to the podcasters is because I think it's important that there's a back and forth. these people put a lot of time and energy into creating whatever they're making. And I don't know how often people reach out to them and thank them. And even just, you know, something that happened on whatever episode of whatever podcast you're listening to, gone back and just mentioned something about it and started a conversation so that they know somebody's listening and somebody appreciates them. Because I think that that's probably what, after 100 episodes, people start kind of like, This is getting old because it feels like you're throwing a hot dog down a hallway or whatever. I've done that. I've literally thrown a hot dog down a hallway. Very drunk. I've done that with a girlfriend of mine. Is there any other way? No. I highly recommend. So outside of talking to all the podcasts, you talk to a lot of tribe members. You are probably the best at communication within the tribe. I mean you called me first, and is there a reason you do that, or are you just a nice guy? So I think Ari put it best when he grabbed my phone and filmed me at the pinball Olympics. He said, Glenn is preparing for maximum attention. Yeah. There's never been a more true statement in pinball than that. and that just cracked me up and and i guess i guess i should embrace that i mean i guess i like to talk about myself a lot and and not everybody does and i should probably focus in on what other people have to say more than thinking about my next thought but i think everybody has that to work on but anyhow um yeah i like to i like to think that i'm connecting with other people and and i'm trying to be a better friend to the people that i connect with and follow up because that's not something i've always done like i've i've got a lot of good friends that I had back in the day that I have not kept up with. And I don't know if that's just because we get older or because maybe I'm just a little bit too self-centered. But anyhow, I like to, I like to catch up with a lot of people because I want to get better at that. And like you, Tim, you say it's all about the pinball relationships. It's not so much about the pinball and the tribe, Ian and Drew, I don't know if they realize this, but they put together 46. Is that what we're up soon? 46? I think so. 44. Okay. Cause I try, I call Amy tribe member 44 every day now. That's great. That's awesome. Um, but they put together 44 people that are all really, how do you even put it? I just think they're all interesting people that want to know other people. They want to learn other people and they want to be part of a community. Like, like, you know, a couple of people have come and gone from the tribe that aren't active, But other people, you know, they come back. So for the most part, everybody in the tribe gets along. I don't think there's ever been like any any real drama because they put together this group of people that are all really interested in each other and want to connect. No. And it's it's a good group. And, you know, that really showed at Expo. Glenn, I'm glad you went to Expo. You know, when we first met Glenn Rachel, I don't know. I don't know if you were there. We went to pick up Glenn, and he pushed me out of the way and hugged my wife. So that tells you what kind of guy Glenn is. He's always joking. And then we're at the Pinball Olympics, and Glenn's ripping off his shirt and tying a bandana. Yeah, man. I'm like, here we go. I took a picture. I had to take a picture that evening after Pinball Olympics that Saturday. You came back and looked at Glenn. I'm like, what is going on with this TV7, Super Graphics 7 shirt? And you're like, yeah, take my picture. I have like four of them on my phone at night because he's like having the best, the beat, living the best life. It was so much fun. There's so many, there's so many things to get upset in this world. I can't imagine why you'd ever want to choose pinball to be one of them. Oh man. And just, I mean, I've not had a weekend like that. Maybe ever like, like as far as you show up, not knowing what to expect and just get completely comfortable with these people. Like immediately, Like, when's the last time you've made 20 friends in a weekend since high school? Like, I haven't. Right. Not that close. You running across the lobby to hug me was pretty epic, too. Like, all of a sudden, this guy, like, yells, I think he yelled my name. And, like, I turn my head, and you're barreling your way over to me. And I'm like, I better just open my arms. It was so good. Yeah, I agree. The tribe is a bunch of really unique people. I don't like to overuse that word unique, but really from all sorts of different walks of life. And that's what I think what makes us so fascinating to get to know each other. And that even though pinball brings us together, it's just neat learning these little bits and pieces about you and Tim. Every time Tim and I talk, I learn something else about him. It's great. Every time I talk to Tim, I think I could be talking to another tribe member. So there's a lot of guilt there, too, because I think I've learned everything about Tim that I can at this point. That was on the second call that you learned everything. If anybody listening to this has me on Facebook, just call me, just randomly. I don't even need to know who you are. Just be like, hey, I'm going. Just use the Facebook Messenger phone and just give me a call. Just let's chat. And if I can't do it at that minute, I'll message back. I'll say, hey, later on today at this time, let's connect. And I think it's great. Humans are very social people. We need that in our lives. We do. Absolutely. Glenn, I don't even know. I don't know if you ever told me this. How did you even get into pinball? Did you play as a child? You said your first time you played pinball was in a tournament, so I don't think you played as a child. Well, pinball is a long story for this guy. Poor man, pinball tribe, listeners. Not everybody likes to have themselves an origin story, but I got one for you if you sit back and listen. It all started on a dark and stormy night. The moon was full, shining bright. I walked into a bar to meet three wise men. They gave me a magic lamp. I said, rub it hard. I was a little skeptical, as anybody else would normally be. I took this lamp and I rubbed it, right? And just as I was about to give up on it, a pirate ship barreled through the fog. And the skipper came out of the pirate ship and said, Glenn, we need a skipper. Our last skipper died a perilous death lurking through the muddy ocean waters for the Oracle. And we got this treasure map for you. We need your help. I thought, well, shoot, it's a Tuesday night. I got nothing else better to do. So I got on the pirate ship and we sailed the seven seas for, I don't know, one, two months, maybe a year. until we came across a deserted desert island. It was nothing but sand. I got out and followed the dotted map through the jungle to a waterfall. The cave behind the waterfall was glorious. They gave me a torch and said, go in there, look for the oracle. I walked through there. Wondrous treasures beyond your imagination just in every corner. I couldn't touch none of it, of course, because of the booby traps. Drew, you're laughing. I said booby. and so I saw I saw a haze in the corner and I said to myself that must be the oracle so I walked back to the oracle and he had an aura you can't spell oracle without aura so he had a blue aura it was magnificent you know linen sheets robes flowing glorious must have been 1500 thread count sheets and he said to me he said to me something I'll never forget and he had this glint this glint in his eye it was no it was no normal glint see this was like this was like a glint that you'd see like the morning virgin sun at the butt crack of dawn shining through two mountains and and just just barreling across this valley and hitting the morning dew on a tulip it was like it was like this impossible gravity defying teardrop hanging on the edge of tim lee at the very end of notebook. That was the kind of glint I saw in his eye. And what he told me was something I already knew because I felt it. I was cursed. I was cursed for the rest of my life to play every single pinball machine that was ever made. And I tell you, I left that, I left that cave port side and I went to the starboard of the boat and it was gone. It was gone. And I didn't know what to do. I'm stuck on this deserted island. And then I saw a periscoping, telescoping periscope pop out of the ocean water. And I said to myself, that must be my friend Nemo. No relation, of course. So I got on his submarine. And I said, Nemo, I need to play every pinball machine that's ever been made. He said, you can start with my fathom. So I played Captain Nemo's fathom. And he took me all the way back to Nashville, Tennessee. And now you know the story of how I got into pinball. No relation. Oh, my gosh. My stars. I don't even know what to say to that. You did that all in one take, which was amazing. Zach Manning didn't get through that story. Oh, it might take me a minute to recover from that. Oh, my word, Glenn. That's a mic drop. I'm not even going to ask any questions. a fascinating way to get into pinball. That's the best origin story that I think I've ever heard to date. I don't think that that will ever be topped. That was amazing. Bravo. Bravo. I can't wait to hear that. I suppose you also want to know how I got in the tribe. Well, keep going. you should at least ask the question tim all right ask the question i'm not even gonna cut out the laughing all right glenn so how uh um all right tribe number seven how did you get into the tribe probably something to do with a lot about what i just said I sent I sent Ian and Drew pictures of me shirtless in funny situations for a whole 12 weeks in a row because my best friend down here for his birthday one year see what he does every year for Christmas he makes these ridiculous Christmas postcards and he sends them out to everybody way over the top, hilarious stuff I thought well shoot, this guy sent me 12 years of Christmas cards that were hilarious I need to make him a calendar and what better way to make a calendar for your best friend than make every picture shirtless and then what funny pictures can you make out of being shirtless and so we drove all around Tennessee working and I'd come up with an idea like oh look at that old barn let's get on a ladder and take a picture there oh look there's a General Lee replica from the Dukes of Hazard I'm going to wear Daisy Dukes one day to work and I'm going to take a picture I've unfortunately seen that one So I just, on every F it Friday, because they used to do F it Fridays, I would wake up in the morning on a Friday and I would send them F it Friday with a picture with no explanation, just for 12 weeks in a row. And eventually they said, you're in. And then I said, well, shoot, now I've got to do something different. And that's where the Neil thing came from. And then that's where the pin bot thing. And then I realized, well, I've got this recording ability to do stuff like this. I might as well do something creative. And so, yeah, that's how I got in the tribe, by just creating content for the guys and just being silly. I love it. I love all of that. That's awesome. And you've been on a live show. I remember you visited for Christmas. You were on the Christmas episode. I was, yeah. And I got Stephen Moppy to do a Genius segment while I was there. Yeah. Stephen Moppy from the Puppet Pals. It was not everybody's ever not not everybody's a fan of them. But holy crap, the amount of work that they put into it. I want more. I wish I wish they'd keep doing them. Not sure if we're going to get any more. I don't know. So let me ask you. So we talked about Stephen Moppy because that was a that was the one where they picked on me a little bit. And I really appreciate it. But I got many questions over probably a two or three month span. People thought at one point that you were Stephen Moppy. it's a fair guess I mean there's not many people that are as outlandish as I am the guy whoever does the Puppet Pals clearly very very talented regardless of what you think of the voices or the the theatric I've never seen a Broadway musical he might be my gateway into that if I go to New York I'm going to see a Broadway musical at some point you should absolutely I think that should be on the bucket list if you could go to New York City Yeah, but you're not Steve Amapi though, correct? I'm not. He's way, way more talented. Just like the guy that does the triple drain music. He way way more talented than me as well There some people that are in this hobby that do some pretty amazing stuff Yeah Wait till they hear the Tim Lee thrash metal intro to try multi I don't know about thrash metal. That's really not my speed, but we'll figure it out. All right. Just for Joe. We're going to do that just for Joe Hood. Yeah. We're going to make a badass intro for Joe since he said ours sucks. That was in confidence. Nobody was supposed to hear that. that's all right i uh joe chickened out when i wanted to play him on uh black knight 2000 so i owe i own one so i don't i'm kind of speechless rachel you are that's how's it fireball it's not the issue we're just feeling like you know i don't think we hardly even talked i think i'm talking most of the episode i think it's great no i've been laughing But I got a big smile on my face. We do have a couple other notes that you guys sent me about possible content to just talk about. Favorite games. I think my favorite games are probably the ones that I know inside and out. And it's kind of funny because when I started this hobby, I had no interest in Game of Thrones at all. I've never seen the show. It didn't connect with me. I knew nothing of these weird words that the game had in it, like Lannister and Martell. And I didn't know what any of these things were. So I avoided the game forever. And then when the pandemic hit, I rented a Game of Thrones because when I played it in tournaments, I had no clue what was going on because I never wanted to play it. And when I rented that game for a month, I learned that game inside and out, and I love it. It's probably my favorite game. and I own an Avengers and Avengers will eventually maybe be my favorite game. But that game, boy, that game, the amount of the amount of different ways that you have to have your brain adjusting to whatever's happening. I've never, I don't know another game that I've ever played that I have to change strategy based on how I'm doing. Metallica kind of does, but Avengers, like if you, if you win a gem and you miss your shot and you place it on the wrong shot, if you're going to get the points out of that gem or maximize it you have to then change what you're doing in order like in order to use that gem to its most potential and if you don't get a gem you fail at it like and then it goes to Thanos then you're like well shoot now I got what's the next gem I'm going to try to get and where am I going to put that and oh shoot this Avenger's powered up more than the other ones so when I place the gem on that Avenger it'll do more than the other one, but I don't like that shot. I can't hit that shot very well. I'd rather have it over here. But the game really makes you make a lot of decisions. And I don't think that people give it enough time to get to where they understand all that because it's so complicated. And if you've got more than one machine in your house, you're going to just walk over to another one. So it's my only game. And I got it from Zach Manning, flipping up pinball, bye, bye, bye, because it was the last game that he had. And it was just lucky. I'm like, well, if it's the last game you have i'll get it i'll take it right now because they were about to jack the price up a thousand dollars right so i just jumped on it and i love that game so much i'm gonna have to to ask people like some tips on cleaning and and swapping out parts because i've never done that before because i've got stuff coming in the mail but uh but yeah like that game and game of thrones those are my two favorites aiq i've called you like nine times because i get to that first gem and like oh man i I got to call Glenn again, and Glenn will say, Rachel, he'll be like, I told you this last time. And I'll be like, listen, I got to like step two, and then I forgot what was going on. And it's at the bar, and that's the interesting thing. I would love to have that game in my basement because at the bar, I can't get very deep into it. I'm just playing to have a beer with my wife and friends and whatchamacallit and just have a good time. but I've been playing Game of Thrones in that tournament series at Penn State, and it's a lot of fun. I did not like it when I played it on location just one or two times, but now that I'm forced to play it and I've been going up to practice, I've kind of got a little soft spot for it myself. Dwight Sullivan has polished that game maybe more than any other game has gotten polished. Now, this is me saying not knowing exactly what happened to Munsters in the last couple updates, But when Game of Thrones got the update, it went from everybody always only picking either Tyrell or Martell for their house to now every single house has a viable tournament strategy. Every house, depending on how hard the game is set up, it'll determine what's the smartest thing. If you pick Targaryen, it spots you the first dragon, right? So you only have to then do two of them. So you actually only have to complete three houses to get to Hand of the King, which is the halfway part of the game. So nobody would ever pick Targaryen before the code update. Nobody would ever pick Lannister beforehand. Nobody would ever pick Baratheon. But they made these interesting perks to make the scoring and then the ball savers or the multipliers. Every house has now got something viable. And if you learn every house, if you have that game, you basically have, what is there, seven houses or six houses? Yeah, there's six different strategies to play that game because every house makes the game different. slightly but your approach changes yeah i i really like dwight's games mandalorian i don't think people appreciate the best car option that he put in there and there's even a secret multiball in there that i recently discovered but yeah i i think that dwight's uh something special when it comes to development he's taking turtles to that next level so i could see that i i had only played the recent code and it's fantastic i never played the older the older code on game of thrones so what's your favorite like uh do you like dmd games do you like the old solid states or i i like everything i mean i know that's a lame answer but i'm gonna find i'm gonna find something redeemable about every game um and and maybe i wouldn't choose to play it by myself but in a tournament every game is fun because every every game has something you have to do and you have choices you have to make and if if it's just as simple as plunge the kiss letter in the middle at the top on on belly kiss and then rip the spinner all day or strikes and spares very similar like that's still fun in a tournament see like you got to do it better than everybody else like i enjoy that get control of the ball be able to put on the other flipper whatever you got to do right i think there's i think it's always fun i think your answer is correct there i don't think it's a bad answer people often ask me what my favorite game is and i'm like my answer is whatever i'm currently playing because it's fun it's just entertaining yeah i don't think there's a game i haven't liked jetsons i didn't like jetsons i always tell people that but most other games i like glenn i have to say playing the p3 with you at uh expo was a blast that was one of my uh it was kind of weird we played for like an hour it was saturday night but that was one of my highlights i just enjoyed it Because we had talked so many times, and the entire expo, we were kind of hanging out with a group of people. But I got myself a little Glenn time. Kept staring at your guns, though, and that shirt with the sleeves ripped off. I tried to roll up my sleeves, and Amy came down later. She's like, put those down. She's like – but no, that was – I got a little Glenn time. That was a lot of fun. We kind of explored the P3 together. Yeah, I hadn't played it in an environment where I knew what I was doing. My very first year in pinball, Jerry came to Nashville for the Grand Ole Game Room Expo, and he had a couple of them set up, and I played one game of the very first game that they made on P3. I apologize, Jerry, for not remembering the name of it. But I played three balls, and I couldn't get into it, and it was mostly because I wasn't familiar with it at all. And so I didn't give it a chance. I really didn't, and I should have because it's pinball. It feels like pinball. It's different in the feel to me in the same way that Bally feels different than Stearns. Like, they're just different. All these games have things mechanically that make them feel different. Not bad, just different. And I guess I'd like to also make a point, too, that I'm excited to see if anybody can come up with some more original themes. and I know that that doesn't sell, and I know that it doesn't do well in location, and I get that you've got all of this built-in fan-based purchasing power when you put out a Star Wars. But what happens when you have a Star Wars is you have absolutely no imagination involved in the experience. Like when you play Medieval Madness or you play Attack from Mars, I know those are the two greatest unlicensed themes ever, but they capture your imagination. Like you're discovering a whole new theme that you're not familiar with. And so you get to actually let your whole self get consumed by whatever it is that the theme is, and you're learning it in that moment. And, you know, you have to be good at it. Like the companies are going to have to be good at making an original theme, and maybe it's too much work. Maybe they like the fact that there's this best car thing that they can pull out of Mandalorian or whatever else the theme would be. But when you have all of these themes now that are being rehashed, I hope that somebody does a good job at making something original, and I hope people give it a chance. Yeah, and I think Multimorphic is that platform where anybody can develop a game. And I actually was so stoked. I don't know if I even said this on the show that my buddy Justin was looking to be a distributor in pinball, and I came home, and he had played the P3 and I was an influencer. It was his decision and we talked about it and I told him how stoked I was about the P3 and how you and I played. And I purposely played on Saturday night because I wanted to see how the flippers held up after three days and it turns out it was their new flipper kit. So I made a beeline because everybody always complained about their flippers. But I fell in love with Heist and I fell in love with the platform And I had played at Ryan Kuyper's two weeks before that for about a half hour to an hour. So I came back, and he's going to be a P3 distributor. So he's signed a deal with them. So I'll just give a shout-out to my buddy Justin. But that started with you and I playing. I know I played at Ryan's house, but after we played for about an hour and a half, I'm like – I said, dude, this platform is fantastic. So that's my only plug. Pinball at Wise RV. For anybody listening, I'm not a great player, but I like to think I'm well-rounded. I can drop catch. I can live catch. I can dead bounce. I can loop pass if the game allows me to. It usually comes down to the geometry of the game. Now, heist, I think I drained two of my balls trying to do loop passes, and then I look like a fool. But there's a lot of games, if you try to do a loop pass, it won't work. I thought P3 felt good. It felt familiar. the screen throws you off for about a game and then you get used to it. And then like everybody wants something different and then here's something different. And then it gets, and it's coming around. Like clearly people are starting to like get chances to sit in front of it and play it. And so I think, I think we're going to see with whatever Stephen Silver's next game is, who is also a tribe member. He says it's his dream theme. So we will see. I can't wait to see. Yeah, I really hope his dream theme is Transformers 1984, but I've said that a few times. Rachel, what do you hope it is? Man, I guess maybe Harry Potter. I think that would be really cool if you could do each Harry Potter book, because the game, the P3, is so interchangeable that you could have a storyline for, you know, book one would have its own... I don't even know. I don't want to use the word cartridge. I don't even know what it's called. The modular device for it. Yeah, the module. You know what I'm saying? The module. So I think it would be neat if book one had its own module and then book two had its own module and you play through it. That would be a cool idea. And Harry Potter, of course, would be really rad. But I don't know if it's licensed or not. But I'm still going to stick with the idea of Shakespeare would be a really cool game. See, you could make that. You could write that game. Or you could talk in. It's so funny. We have been waiting to have Ian Harrower on the show. You and I have talked about this until the P3 releases their licensed theme because he's the P3 guy. He's been a big proponent of P3. But you could talk him into writing you a Shakespeare game. So, Ian, I know you listen to the show. We need a Shakespeare game. This would be funny. I used to read quite a bit of that, and I used to be a really big reader. But then, you know, pinball happened. So now all my time is on audiobooks or maybe a book in bed. But unless I digress, move on, right? I'll leave you guys with this tease. There are two people in the hobby, the pinball hobby, that are huge. Like, I'm talking huge into Beanie Babies. Really? One of them is Tommy Skinner of this Flippin' podcast, and the other is Stephen Silver. Are big into Beanie Babies? I didn't know that. I'm going to be honest. You're pulling my leg. Poor Tommy Skinner. I met him. He's a nice fella. One of those people is really into Beanie Babies. Oh, boy. So the only thing I heard is I think it was Jerry said something along the lines of it was like – or maybe it was Steven. Or somebody said it's an older theme. Not an older theme, but it's not like a – it's like a classic theme, I think, and everybody would love it. I don't know what that would be. But I creeped on Stephen Silver's Facebook page. I went back like five, six years. I saw Batman. I saw all these superheroes. There was no theme that I could link. Like he had so many different things that he likes. I couldn't pick up on like what would be a dream theme. I did see a few Batmans. I saw a Transformers. So I don't know. We'll see. Love you, Steven. He's a good tribe member. So if it's Beanie Babies, as long as it's fun, we'll all play it. Sure. All right, Glenn, you got anything else for us? Well, there's a guy that I've gotten to come out to pinball tournaments. It's actually kind of a funny story. So he reached out to our Nashville Pinball League Facebook page and said, hey, I'm new to this. What's it like playing in tournaments? And so I saw this. I didn't recognize the guy's name. His name's Eric. Eric, how's it going? and uh and i said hey i just recorded a podcast on tpn about my strategy going into a tournament at no quarter and i put it out there and he listened to it and i hadn't heard from him for a long time and all of a sudden one night i'm at a tournament and this guy comes hey glenn it's it's me eric i'm like i don't remember you i felt really bad and he's like you're the guy that told me listen to your pop i'm like oh yeah eric yeah i've got him to come out to like five or six tournaments now. Nice. That's the kind of stuff that makes me feel like doing this a lot. Like just, just like putting yourself out there and taking risks and, and, and talking to people you don't know. Yep. You never know what kind of an impact it's going to make. So just me reaching out to this person I've never met before, continued this ball rolling to where now he's coming out to tournaments and uh and i i get a kick out of watching him progress because he's got one machine at home he's got a metallica and then his next game's coming in the mail eventually he's got himself a rush on the way so yeah i absolutely love that yeah that's so cool i want everybody i want everybody to talk to that person that that looks like they don't know what they're doing or that maybe might might be at the arcade alone and just say hi and just like don't be pushy don't be weird but just like just make a connection with somebody new and see how many more people we can get in this hobby because a lot of people are scared to play in tournaments. I know Zach Manning does not like tournaments. Oh, come on, Zach. Come on, Zach. Come play a tournament with me. You should play in tournaments. It's not about winning or losing. No. You learn about people that you never thought you would learn about. You'd learn about their family and their past. Right. And you get to enjoy all these things over a beer or two or five or ten, whatever. If you're 80, 15. Yeah. In between rounds. in between balls, in between rounds, chatting about nothing and everything. I love that aspect of pinball too, the social aspect of it for sure, and getting to know new players. And I will say when I play terribly, that is the best time when I meet the most new players. It's a true thing, but it's a good thing too because then I'm like, oh, well, let's play this game. We'll play it. I don't even care if I win or lose generally at that point if I'm playing so terribly. I'm just going to have fun. and so I do try to help that person say well here's a skill shot or I'll ask them I'm like do you want to know like the skill shot and how to play this game and they're usually like oh yeah yeah I'm like okay like let me like let's finish up here I'll show you you know x y and z and then we play one game quick game together and um I'm right there with you Glenn it's just about promoting that unity in the community and and reaching out to people too that they might not want to come back they might not because nobody interacted with them or they might feel you know there might might be more of an introvert and they need an extrovert to interact with them or just somebody or somebody just to say that was a lot of fun playing pinball with you very small things can mean big deal to other people right i think that's what you're getting at yeah absolutely you two are both really good people i can tell you that love you both love you too glenn i tell you there there There aren't many people that I would drive around in a circle at the airport with Drew for a half hour to wait for. You're one of them. There's like four people at Expo that I would have just kept circling, and Drew's just spouting off gibberish. I don't even know what he was talking about. Sam, let's list off all the people you wouldn't do that for. Let's just see where this goes. Nope, nope. I'm just kidding. I would do it for any tribe member. There's 44 people that I would do it for. Maybe a couple of others. I'd like to say thanks to Ian and Drew for putting this all together and getting this boulder rolling down the hill. I miss Ian. I understand that there's more important things than pinball podcasting. And I can't wait to hear him come back and guest episode. And I actually hope that the few people that aren't as active on the tribe page come back for whatever reason. Some people, maybe this isn't for them. but if you haven't been around on the tribe if you've decided that this wasn't for you just come back and say hi and just give us another shot yep absolutely and I really learned that the tribe was something special when we all walked into Expo without Drew by the way I brought that up before we all walked in there and I looked around and I thought man these are just a lot of really good people so yeah if you've gone away come on back We love you, and there's some good things going on. All right. I think that's been a good episode. I think it's time to wrap it up. And again, there's been a lot of love in this episode, so I appreciate you both. Right back at you, Tim. Yep. And Glenn, too. Yeah. I love you, Glenn. Great episode, guys. I really appreciate it. All right, Glenn. Talk to you tomorrow morning. I'll call you tomorrow morning. Yeah. Happy flipping. Happy flipping. And Drew sucks at pinball. Tim sucks at pinball. Yes. This is a song for all you poor man and tournament players. But Rachel, listen closely. You don't always have to play so hard. In fact, sometimes that's not right to do. Sometimes you've got a micro nudge. And fucking trust in a rubber tube Sometimes you've got to ease Some tilts won't let you sneeze Sometimes you've got to play safe So I'm gonna nudge you softly I'm gonna deadbath sweetly I'm gonna plunge you easily I'm gonna flip with my pinkies. Then you say, hey, I went to counselors to try and help you deal with all this anger. But I plunged and got another house ball straight down the middle. That's fucking bullshit. So what's your favorite pin? That game is not cool A crusty steam and heaping pile of poo What's this avatar? Cause I'm not gonna buy it Because Louisville's got Zanzibar And then I'm gonna short plunge exclusively Flutter flip the flippers discreetly And then I'll use the fuck word repeatedly Cause when I drain I'm gonna merge you Oh Oh Oh Oh The Poor Man's Pinball Tribe presents Podcasts of Genius. Podcasts of Genius. Today we salute you, sloppiest show on the internet. Podcasts of Genius. Hold up, Moppy. Something just doesn't feel right. I mean, this is Mr. Glenn and Mr. Tim's bit, and they do such a super swell job. Podcasts of Genius. Plus, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the script you've written. I take this line, for instance, The pinball podcast that brings no real value to the hobby, just a couple of Midwestern schlubs holding each other's dicks in a basement. I also don't know if we're going to get any brownie points by reminding the whole world about the whole urinal barfing situation. Let's face it, Moppy. There's just no way Ian and Drew are going to let a bunch of silly puppets in the tribe.