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Now With More Chaps and Rage

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·55m 30s·analyzed·Dec 16, 2015
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Blockade hosts discuss merch, league play, and rumored Stern Ghostbusters alongside Highway Pinball's modular cabinet innovation.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss t-shirt merchandise, personal league tournament experiences with pinball machines (Attack from Mars, Monster Bash, Twilight Zone), beta testing of Judge Dredd virtual pinball, and spend the bulk of the episode recounting frustrations with elementary school Christmas pageants. They conclude with pinball news: rumors of a Stern Ghostbusters machine and details about Highway Pinball's modular cabinet system allowing playfield swaps similar to Pinball 2000.

Key Claims

  • Stern is working on a Ghostbusters pinball machine

    medium confidence · Chris mentions this as a rumor he heard, and notes the timing aligns with new Ghostbusters filming. Jared speculates it will feature Bill Murray's likeness if possible, or the original cartoon Ghostbusters.

  • Highway Pinball is developing an Alien table with modular playfield technology

    medium confidence · Jared explains Highway Pinball is creating modular cabinets where you can swap playfields between games (Alien and Full Throttle initially), similar to Pinball 2000's approach.

  • Highway Pinball's modular system will allow playfield swaps in approximately the same time as Pinball 2000 (around 2 minutes)

    medium confidence · Jared provides technical details comparing the design to Pinball 2000, which had a 2-minute swap time with common bus connectors and driver board in the cabinet base.

  • Monster Bash plays wildly differently machine-to-machine compared to TPA emulation

    high confidence · Chris describes his experience in a league tournament, noting the bounces, outhole behavior, and flipper response are brutally different from what he's learned on The Pinball Arcade.

  • Judge Dredd Zen Pinball beta is missing ramp flash functionality

    high confidence · Jared discusses the Judge Dredd beta testing, noting that ramp flashes are essential feedback for knowing which ramp to shoot, and their absence makes the game harder to play.

  • Wizard Amusement.com has already sculpted a Slimer shooter rod for the rumored Ghostbusters machine

    medium confidence · Chris mentions speaking with Mike, owner of Wizard Amusement, who confirmed he's already created a Slimer-themed shooter rod in anticipation of the Ghostbusters announcement.

  • Highway Pinball plans modular flipper mechanisms for quick replacement without table downtime

    medium confidence · Jared explains upcoming design where flippers can be swapped in minutes with screws/slides, eliminating need to pull tables from operator floors during repair.

Notable Quotes

  • “Monster Bash is just brutally different. Even the one that we were playing, the outhole was ejecting, you know, three different ways.”

    Chris @ ~13:00 — Highlights the gap between virtual pinball emulation and real machine play, a persistent challenge for players transitioning from TPA to physical tables.

  • “So they've yet to figure out how to mic these kids and make it sound even audible.”

    Chris @ ~26:00 — Captures the comedic frustration with school pageant audio issues; central to the episode's humorous rant section.

  • “Stern's next pin or one of their next. Ghostbusters. Yeah, come on. That'll be strong, right?”

    Jared @ ~79:00 — Introduction of the Ghostbusters rumor, positioned as potentially pairing well with Addams Family as a 'double punch knockout' combo.

  • “I wish we could get the full functionality of the Dead World locks actually locking in rather than virtually. It would be so good.”

    Jared @ ~47:00 — Commentary on limitations of Zen Pinball Judge Dredd beta; reflects ongoing emulation vs. physical play gaps.

  • “It took him another three minutes to get that stupid thing off. It's like a Hefty bag of tears.”

    Jared @ ~60:00 — Humorous anecdote about the Hefty bag poncho incident at the pageant; exemplifies the absurdist tone of the pageant rant section.

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonWizard Amusement.comcompanyMonster BashgameTwilight ZonegameAttack from MarsgameJudge Dreddgame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball emulation players (TPA) experiencing significant transference challenges when playing physical machines due to differences in physics, bounce behavior, and flipper response

    high · Chris describes Monster Bash playing 'brutally different' from TPA; discusses finger memory problems and unpredictable outhole behavior on actual machines vs. emulation.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Ghostbusters machine design considerations around Bill Murray likeness rights and potential use of original cartoon if film rights unavailable

    medium · Chris speculates: 'I seriously doubt they're going to base it off the new movie as that's not going to sell as many pinball machines as something with Bill Murray on it, presuming they can get Bill Murray's likeness.'

  • $

    market_signal: Wizard Amusement proactively manufacturing themed shooter rods (Slimer) before official Ghostbusters announcement, suggesting strong anticipation and first-mover advantage

    medium · Chris reports speaking with Mike at Wizard Amusement who 'already got a rod sculpted' for Ghostbusters; Mike immediately confirmed 'Slimer' when asked.

  • ?

    announcement: Judge Dredd Zen Pinball continues beta development with second build showing improved bug resolution from first beta

    high · Jared reports Judge Dredd beta 2 live on Android and PC; notes 'staggering' amount of issues resolved between builds; missing ramp flash functionality identified as remaining gap.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Highway Pinball designing operator-friendly serviceability features including quick-change flipper mechanisms and pop bumper replacements to minimize table downtime

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.167

0:00
Thank you. This is a Blockade Podcast with your hosts Chris and Jared. Wizard Amusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Wizard Amusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
0:44
You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Shut Your Trap, a.k.a. Chris Frebus, or as somebody called me after seeing me on Blab here, Rob Halford.
0:57
Joining me as usual is my co-host, Jaren Morgan. Hello, everybody. Yeah, I don't know what you think about the Rob Halford comment. I'm not wearing any leather. I'm not rocking out.
1:12
I mean, just because I'm bald and have a goatee, I don't know. Rob Halford from... Judas Priest. Lead singer from Judas Priest. I don't see the resemblance much. No.
1:24
Whatever. That's what she said. It certainly got some laughs on our thread about the last podcast because my comment was that I always wear assless chaps while recording this. to which then became a big, giant discussion that chaps are always missing the seat. And what really makes them that? And I'm just like, I'm not even going to go into this conversation. Everybody's just got a little too silliless, weird. I don't know. Anyway. But just looking at the comments we had, that was probably the most comments we had on any post for a long time. So more usless chaps discussion. Maybe that's what we... Usless chaps. Discuss.
Ghostbusters
game
Stern Pinballcompany
Highway Pinballcompany
Aliengame
Full Throttlegame
Pinball 2000game/system
The Pinball Arcade (TPA)product
Addams Familygame
Blockade Podcastorganization
Robert Poloranaperson
Kimperson
Mikeperson
Farsights tournamentevent

medium · Jared describes planned modular flipper design allowing 5-minute swap without pulling table from floor; similar modularity planned for pop bumpers, which are 'notoriously hard to replace.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Stern Ghostbusters pinball machine in development, potentially timed with new film production

    medium · Jared: 'Stern's next pin or one of their next. Ghostbusters.' Chris speculates on Bill Murray likeness availability and notes timing aligns with new Ghostbusters filming.

  • ?

    technology_signal: Highway Pinball implementing modular playfield swap system similar to Pinball 2000, with quick-change flipper and pop bumper mechanisms

    medium · Jared explains Highway Pinball Alien table will feature swappable playfields (2-minute swap estimated), modular flipper units, and pop bumper replacements without table downtime.

    • 2:11
    This could be the title of this podcast. Usless chaps. Speaking of clothing, ladies and gentlemen, you have until the 18th of this month, that is, this coming Friday, in order to purchase the Blockade t-shirt.
    2:31
    To get it, go to represent.com forward slash blockade dash logo dash t. And then you can order your shirt. Just so everybody knows, regardless of if we hit our goal of 25 shirts or not, which at the moment it doesn't look like we're going to, but, you know, maybe we'll have a sudden run on them. I don't know. Anyway, if we don't meet our goal, it doesn't matter. The shirts are still going to ship out. They're not going to ship, I don't believe, until just after Christmas, maybe the first of the year. Yeah. I can't remember. It's January. Yeah. But, I mean, it would be within that first week. But anyway, so do not fear if you're like, oh, well, I don't want to pop in because they're not going to meet their goal. Doesn't matter. You'll still get your shirt. Shiny, good-looking threads.
    3:26
    Yeah. So, yeah, definitely pop in. At least take a look at it. We want to know what you guys think. We haven't heard feedback at all other than just those that have purchased. Yeah, if you don't like it, tell us. Because there's a good chance we can actually tweak that design a little bit after this campaign is finished. get you in for another one. So, yeah. Yeah, if there's a different color that you were hoping for, if you're not... Well, I don't know. There's not too much of the logo. I mean, I'm not changing the logo.
    3:56
    But, yeah, if it's a matter of colors or whatever, even if you guys thought that the price was too high, I mean, there's really not much less we can drop it by. There's not much of that at all. I'm just saying, you know, if that was... That was an issue.
    4:14
    breaking the balls, breaking the balls. There we go. Some. So anyway, I just wanted to get that out of the way. So there's our two clothing segments. Never done clothing on this show. Go figure. Yeah. It's first for everything, right? Well, you know, cause I know you and I, we, we scour the fashion magazines. Yes. Very on trend and things. And things.
    4:40
    Things of that matter. uh so i was uh in league tournament last week i was mentioning this before the start of the show and uh you know as usual you get a table like um attack from mars which you know i know exactly what to do i couldn't even break a billion really so it was so sad i had the bad bounces and just it just it ate me alive yeah a total brick and then i go over to um monster bash and the hardest thing for me on that table is that i'm so used to the bounces on tpa that i i'm expecting it to bounce the way that it does and monster bash is very popular among our collectors it's pretty much at everybody's house there hasn't there hasn't been a single machine that plays the same I mean, they all play wildly different from each other.
    5:38
    No machine you'll see in the arcade environment will have the TPA rubbers on it at all. So, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, even... I'm talking more so than any other machine that I think that I've come across that's in TPA versus real life. Monster Bash is just brutally different. um i mean to the point that the one that we were playing the out hole was uh ejecting you know three different ways you know you'd be able to trap it one time on the left flipper the next time it wouldn't even come close to the left flipper um yeah just all sorts of dangerous shots going on on that one uh so it's but i again for me though the biggest the biggest issue is because it's probably my second or third best table that i'm at on tpa so trying to unlearn what i've learned is just it's pretty much impossible like it's it's it's muscle memory well sorry you know finger memory um to try and unlearn that sort of stuff and sort of yeah it's i didn't however uh things like judgment uh on tables like that because this really is a it's feel and you've got to get used to the machine.
    6:50
    And unlearning that feel is really hard. You can't do it. I did do really, really well on Twilight Zone.
    6:59
    Get lost in the zone? No, but I was getting close. I was really nailing the left ramp, right ramp combo. I couldn't quite get the timing down on piano to be able to successfully let the piano all the time. but I did get a couple of jackpots and relight the jackpot in multiball and I mean I was I felt like I was semi in control I completely smoked the other players I mean I just oh just I was at I rang in something like 260 270 million I think and the nearest to me was maybe 110 so So, yeah, no, I really racked the score up high on that one compared to my competitors. So, like I said, I felt like I was really doing well. That was the last table of the night for me, too.
    7:57
    The rest of the night we won't talk about. Right. You know, sometimes it just doesn't go your way, you know.
    8:07
    So, there were no highlights of the night. The rest of it were lowlights. Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, I only played two tables in the Farsights tournament on the PC this month, just because I got so busy. So I'm probably not going to be in silver level anymore. I'm going to go back to the bronze.
    8:32
    Yeah, I thought it was a tournament running. I don't know. I didn't get a push notification on the phone to tell me. Well, yeah, December, it turns out, is kind of a busy month. yeah it kind of is kind of to the point that i forgot to even put up a table of the week the previous safecracker coincidentally as well was it well i now i put it up uh a couple of days early but But now our table of the week is going to run right up to the turnaround of the month. And I'm really leery about how many people are going to show up for turnaround of the month as it's two days after Christmas. I think it's going to be a bit of a quiet month. Yeah. So we might – I'm going to start the sign-ins a full week early. Or not full week, maybe five days early just so that people can have a chance to remember and get it in. because otherwise it can be the day before Christmas that I'm saying, hey, sign up, and then there occurs some day, nobody's signing up on Christmas Day, and then the day after maybe, but yeah, so we'll compensate.
    9:46
    One of those lessons learned that maybe it was just like, you know what, maybe we should have just taken December off.
    9:52
    Have a gap month. Yeah. So Pinball was saying, oh, we got a beta running. We have a beta running every month. so actually back-to-back betas at the moment um isn't it we can actually do a little bit of beta well we got the u we got the ui running again um oh okay have they done changes to that not that i noticed well yeah they had some bug fixes and obviously i never came across any of the bugs um to know what needed fixing but i did just boot it up again and uh there it was after probably three weeks, three, maybe four weeks of it not being up there. So I was like, hooray! So they actually took it down to actually work on it? Yeah, they actually took it down to work on it. Yeah. So yeah, Judge's Red is in beta, which I guess bodes well for them getting it out before the holiday then.
    10:50
    It's looking pretty good on Android. Most of the early beta issues have been ironed out now. It's actually good there. Robert Polorana is actually putting the bug list from their bug tracking database in. The amount of issues they resolve from the first build to the second is kind of staggering. It's huge. Most of them, I've noticed, have been raised on PC. A lot of the PC guys obviously get in there early and test.
    11:15
    Then it goes over to the mobile platforms, it seems. It's how it works. It starts on iOS. Oh, it doesn't start on iOS first. Then moves over to Android and PC. all right yeah yeah so i've got i've got a um a little friend in my room at the moment the studio is at uh studio north lakes at the moment on studio that broke um because it's a uh a work from home day um for me today i've got to mind the kids while um kim gets some some uh scans done so yeah it's a work from home day to day and yes i've got a audience in the room at the moment curly haired audience yes so if you hear any funny uh children noises i'm not apologizing for them because that's what's happening yeah it's not you dropping the sounds in got it no it's not um no totally i totally put those in in post yep it's just adds flavor to the podcast yeah but But anyhow, getting back to Judge Dread, yeah, it's looking pretty good. I think the only thing we're waiting on at the moment is the ramp flashes, really. And that's a major thing that I see every time. And because they're not in, it's kind of amazing how much you rely on the ramp flashes to tell you where to shoot. Because the ramps are a pretty sort of heavily shot thing for most of the modes in Judge. So, yeah, not having them lighting up, you have to refer to the DMD to tell which ramp I should be shooting. So, yeah.
    12:53
    Yeah, Pinball Wiz is right. I wish we could get the full functionality of the Dead World locks actually locking in rather than virtually. It would be so good. Yeah, but we know it's not going to happen. So nothing we can do about it. But does that make you mad? Does that make you angry? Does that make you full of rage? Good, because I've got some rage to give out.
    13:18
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. All right, rage on. Flame on. So it being the holidays here, Christmas time, and me having a kid in school, that means, of course, the Christmas pageant. And we all know the Christmas pageants or any of those kids pageants are, they can be painful. I think even in the best of times they painful And yes it can be cute to watch the kids sing And yeah that fills your heart with joy But it's the other things. It's the other things that just make me want to pull, since I don't have any hair on the top of my head, it'd be pull the hair on my chin.
    14:11
    Because it's amazing. it's absolutely staggering how terrible they can make the experience so we'll start with the fact that uh at my son's school they have a stage it's maybe you know two feet high so you can barely see the kids and then they just have this this sea of uh chairs and it's outside yes uh my wife has come in here to uh to help comment on this because we were both laughing and raging at the same time yes um so there's a c there's a c of mic so she can contribute directly so we have this we have this sea of chairs and we've learned long ago why bother showing up an hour and a half early to get the good seats in the front rows when you can show up five minutes beforehand and sit a good you know 100 feet back um because it doesn't matter the show is still going to suck either way so um so everyone gets there five minutes early, five minutes before the show. We sit in the back area and that way we can make quick exit and don't get locked in and everything. But you can kind of see more of the madness to this. But anyway, in all these years we've been going, this is our now fifth year, they have not figured out the microphone situation. That being, if you put speakers behind the stage and the people on the stage have microphones you're gonna get feedback yeah they don't they don't understand that so like within the first you know three minutes of them being on stage all of a sudden you hear the tortured wookiee yeah and and that's if you're lucky enough that all the mics work because here's the other thing usually half the kids mics aren't well i mean they might be on but they haven't jacked up the levels at all so one kid will be talking like this the other kid's talking like this yeah can we can we balance this out please somehow you know you're not sure if the if the kid's mic is picking up the other kid or not i don't know anyway so they've yet to figure out how to mic these kids and how to make it uh sound even audible because what basically what they do is they come up, they do a little stage play, a little skit, and then they bring up a grade of kids and they'll sing three songs. And then they'll come back up and do another skit and then they bring up the next group of kids while it's going on. So you've got seven groups of three songs you've got to sit through? Sometimes they combine the kids.
    16:53
    So sometimes we get lucky. But yeah, it's probably about five different uh batches of kids singing singing songs um to make matters even better oh it's the same songs every damn year so the music director doesn't go gee it would be nice to maybe uh sing something completely different this year no no hey it worked last year why shouldn't it work this year so yeah so they wonder why attendance is dropping off at these things well no attendance never drops off of course not no attendance is still the same but maybe it would account for the parents that are talking during the whole program or like you know on their phones playing temple arcade well that might have been me but um no it it so they're singing the same songs so you're bored off of that but what they do is they have a backing track you know for the kids to sing along to, right? Well, they pump the backing track to the speakers. There's also speakers at the rear of the audience.
    17:58
    But they didn't bother micing the children. Right. They don't mic the children. So all you hear is backing track, and you can barely make out the kids singing.
    18:10
    Right, right. Yeah, just moving their mouths, essentially. Which was really comical when one of the songs, they didn't get the appropriate karaoke because it had somebody singing the song and you could barely hear the kids over the one child singing and then the second verse it was a chorus of children singing so basically the kids all stopped singing and we're just kind of doing hand motions because it was like my really vanilla basically yes yes a lot of lip-syncing going on really stage show oh man um and then you got to the inevitably each year you get the parents that sing along to the songs and you're like hey i came here to see just said you want it oh god right right you know we came here to see hear the kids sing not you sing rudolph the red-nosed reindeer because you suck right and i'm not saying that the kids are brilliant either but at least them i can go oh how cute you know shut the hell up Yeah, that's right. I would let you finish, but shut up. Right. Or you get the parents that are holding up their iPad and recording the entire thing. iPad recorders, man.
    19:23
    And the thing of it is, you can't see anything. Because unless you're right there in the front row, it's just going to be a whitewash of imagery. Because all they have is a spotlight blaring on the kids. Everything else is pitch black. so again photographically it's just going to look horrible which reminds me they actually have the goal to charge for a dvd of this thing when all they have a dude sitting up on a roof with a camcorder aimed at the stage end of story right i'm like i don't think his audio feed is any better than our audio feed so man that's terrible yeah so basically me and my wife we sit in the back and we just kind of laugh and make fun of the whole thing.
    20:07
    Quietly. Quietly? Not so much. We have our checklist of... Okay, so we've got parents singing. There's the microphone feedback.
    20:20
    It's pageant bingo. You've got pageant bingo going on. My wife just said bingo at the same time you said bingo there, Jared.
    20:28
    Pageant bingo. I think maybe we'll pass those out next year. That'll be fun. If you did, that would be so awesome. of going, winner! What do I win? An early exit.
    20:41
    You get to go home now. Take your child off stage. The comedy of this particular event this time, it started to drizzle.
    20:52
    Very light, more like a heavy mist than anything. It wasn't like droplets slashing on you or anything. You could see it in the lights that it was obviously drizzling and stuff. so there's a guy two rows and over a ways from us he's got a you know big old heavy puffy vest on he's got long sleeves and everything also we hear this this noise i'm like what the heck is that i look over he's got a hefty bag and he's tearing this thing open i'm like oh he's gonna make a hefty bag poncho we make them at work all the time for blood right yeah yep the dude spends five minutes, and I'm not exaggerating, five minutes trying to punch a hole for his head and two holes for his arms.
    21:36
    So the saying couldn't even fight his way out of a hefty bag? Wet. Wet, because it was drizzling. So yeah, literally could not fight his way out of a wet hefty bag. Oh, man.
    21:50
    Finally, finally gets the whole thing. I mean, he's just making all this racket. Gets the thing over, and he's a big guy. Gets the thing over his head, gets his arms through and all it's covering is the puffy jacket which i'm pretty sure was raw water resistant to begin with like bravo dude that was yes yeah you did a fantastic job um and then so he's wearing it and it probably it stopped drizzling maybe five minutes later uh so we get to the end of the show and he gets up it took him another three minutes to get that stupid thing off It's like it's a hefty bag of tears through it.
    22:31
    Far out. Yeah. So then we get done with the whole, and I won't even go into the other things that go on during this.
    22:43
    To say the least, we're pleased and saddened when Santa shows up with his wife because it means him blathering on for 10 minutes and the, kids singing Silent Night and the principal of the school going, come on, everybody sing! Trying to get the audience to sing. The audience is like, nope, not happening.
    23:02
    But the good news is that means it's the end of the show. So anyway, you go to pick up your kid at his classroom after the fact. And that's where the after party is happening, right? Yeah, where the after party, right.
    23:14
    So that's when you have to lie. Because they go, what was your favorite part um um did you hear me sing yeah yes we saw your lips moving they were very convincing lip movements very very good the best i can say is i really appreciate the hard work you put into it because i do i mean the kids have been rehearsing this for you know maybe, I don't know, two months, two months, maybe three. I don't know. They, they, it becomes their music class. And what are they doing music class? All they sing these songs over and over again, uh, you know, to learn them and stuff. But I wish I could say the same for the kids doing the skits because they're terrible. And this year, this year we had a guy, they were doing a Christmas Carol, which I really don't ever need to see that ever. And then do I have to sit through a kid's version of it is really bad. but the guy that they the kid that was playing scrooge one of them because they had two scrooges go figure but the one kid that was playing scrooge he would talk like this oh no it is the ghost of christmas past i do not want to see that's fate i was like it's robo scrooge it's robo scrooge yeah it is too oh boy and then inevitably you'll get the uh the girl who uh fancies herself the actress and just over emotes and she'll be like well what you need to see scrooge is that and your hands are flying everywhere and and she's talking the head back and forth with attitude and everything just like you still suck but as you can tell as you can tell this is why we sit at the back because well because you know guaranteedly the parents that are sitting up in the front. They're just like, oh, this is so precious. Oh, you did such a wonderful job. It's amazing.
    25:17
    Yeah, they'd be like, no, they'll be the no, they're it's the mom helpers, you know, the ones that will then all of a sudden get the brilliant idea of, oh, well, you know what? I teach dance. Maybe we can teach the kids some dance moves too. And you're like, please. more or less more or less i mean we've gone to their school assemblies and when you see the cheerleading squad you're just gonna go maybe you shouldn't they're elementary school kids come on right they're elementary school and some of the dance moves they're doing are not elementary kids school dance moves and you're just like oh really and they drop it like it's hot I'm getting a look from my wife of maybe I shouldn't talk about elementary school kids doing the major ladies bubble butt song bubble bubble butt so anyway that was my torture for having the coup de grace of the whole thing this is the part that I love so like i said it's a single spotlight brightening up the stage everybody in the audience is just nothing but a shadow right so the kids they'll go up on stage and inevitably the parents then all of a sudden stand up and wave their arms and i'm like you are a shadow how is your kid supposed to know that that's you waving at him and they'll sit there and wave and wave and wave and wave and i'm like so you want to ruin the entire show by having your kid acknowledge you right to you know forget the song hi mom you know and they will try over and over and over again to get to distract their child to help them forget what they're supposed to do so my son my son and his group are up there they're singing get done to a song and also when you hear we hear there's like and I can't even make out what it is but it sounds like somebody was getting murdered in the middle of the audience right and so we were laughing about that so we're walking home with our neighbors um and their boy happens to be in our class and I'm like did you hear the person that sounded like they were getting murdered yeah it was their older daughter was trying to get their son detention I was like oh my gosh I can believe we know you people
    27:57
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. I don't know. It's because probably Kim and I are pretty new to all of this. but we had a pretty good experience at our, our kindergarten graduation ceremony. It was pretty short. It was only about an hour.
    28:19
    And there were songs sung. The kids did a really good job. And Zachary did, was a narrator for the very hungry Caterpillar. And if you're a parent over here, perhaps it might be a really common book that we read, but yeah, very hungry Caterpillar. We all know it. Yep. And it's, yeah, the whole book thing. What happened was Zachary was narrating the book, reading it out, and the kids were, they had, like, painted up bits of the book, and they were acting it out behind. And it was quite good. Like, they did a really good job of that. And that's the thing. The kindy concert is, like, small little bits of content, like probably one and a half minutes maximum because they're kindy kids. So that's pretty palatable. and you can get through in an hour and then Santa comes at the end and it's all good. Well, it still can be adorable too. You know, but... Yeah.
    29:15
    That's right. It was really good. Zachary did a great job. He was reading... Zachary's pretty good at reading. He's got a reading age of about eight-year-old. So he's five and he's reading at an eight-year-old level. And let me just close the door because my kids are killing each other.
    29:35
    so that's better. Yeah. He did a, he did his reading and then there were a couple other songs that he was in and that was, that was fine. I think we probably had about three things that he was in because kindy has two groups. So yeah, just two classes essentially. So yeah, at the moment it's okay for us. It'll get worse. And yeah, we're preparing for, cause big school concerts, that's where it's going to be quote fun. Yeah.
    30:08
    Yeah. And unfortunately, as the older they get, the worse it gets, because then they are able to memorize more lines. And I mean, I'm dreading what the junior high one is going to be when that time comes, because then they'll try and put on full blown productions. So.
    30:22
    But. Yeah, look, you know, I'll just go in really low expectations and prepare to be. What's the word? Impressed. maybe yeah it's a strong word but strong words yeah hey uh yeah so i i heard a rumor blockade news not live and mostly current you might have heard this rumor but it was new to me but i don't have my ear to the ground so there you go but uh stern's next pin or one of their next busters yeah my come on that'll be strong right that should be pretty good yeah like especially, especially with how they've been building things now, I would hope that it's not a Photoshop job. I, you know, that, that it, it's real art. That would be fantastic. And more to the point, I'm already thinking, man, you put that side by side by Adam's family. Hello. There's a, there's a combo you can't resist, right? Yeah. That's a double punch knockout. Really? Isn't it? Yeah. That would be pretty amazing. Yeah, no, that'd be pretty cool. And obviously the timing is right as they've been filming a new Ghostbusters. I see one of our people here in Blab, Captain Bazaar, is saying, I hope it's not based off the new movie. Well, I seriously doubt they're going to base it off the new movie as that's not going to sell as many pinball machines as something with Bill Murray on it.
    31:53
    Presuming they can get Bill Murray's likeness, which I think, you know, they'd go after it if they could. Yeah. If not, we're going to get the real Ghostbusters, that cartoon that they did years back.
    32:05
    Oh, wow. Anyway, no, I thought that was a pretty good announcement. And then I already talked to Mike, who is the owner of wizardamusements.com, and he said he's already got a rod sculpted for it. And I went, Slimer? And he went, of course. I was like, all right. Of course, what else? I was just kind of like, damn, I really want to be able to win our drawing so that I can win that one. That would be pretty sweet to have on my desk.
    32:41
    But yeah, so that was one rumor. The other thing that I wanted to mention that I thought was interesting to hear about. So Highway Pinball, they do that full throttle table, correct? Yep.
    32:55
    They are currently working on an alien table. Yes, they are. And my understanding of what they're hoping to do is make these tables modular. Yes. So what it's going to be is you buy the cabinet for, say, Alien. But now you want to play full throttle. Well, you can buy the playfield and all the guts, you might say, are going to be contained on the underside. and within, and now this is where I'm a little shady on how long it's going to take you to do this, but you should be able to slide out the entire play field and slide in the new play field, and now you'll be able to play full throttle in your alien cabinet. And therefore, you can store the one underneath your machine if that's an EB or if you've got a storage room somewhere and you're lucky enough. Obviously, if you're an operator, this is what you'd want to do. But you wouldn't then be paying as much money for everything because now you're just buying the playfield and the guts. Yep, that's right. Exactly the same model as Pinball 2000 was trying to do with their system. The reported time that it took to swap out a playfield on the Pinball 2000 pinball was about two minutes. So take your play field out, disconnect the connectors from the back. There was like a common bus at the back where you just had all the cables plug in.
    34:34
    And the good thing about that design was the driver board for Pinball 2000 was actually in the base of the cabinet, covered up by plastic shield. So components that falling on the driver board didn't short it out. and it was basically a short cable connecting the play field and then it just went up to the logic box in the back, the prism card in the back of the back box. So it was just about six or seven cables you had to unplug, all Molex cables that you just had to unplug from the back of the play field and then you're done.
    35:03
    You play field in. I think the side art cabinet can be replaced in the highway pinball cabinets as well. so you can slip in new side cabinet art and slip in a new um back box and you're done and on the subject of the back box it's really cool because there was they originally had a little lcd that you see in the play field there well they had an option to have that up in the back box as well but then they announced that they're going to do a full lcd back box as well so i'd assume that when you plug in your play field, it'll detect the play field type or you'll just switch it over in the main board and it'll just display the new art and your job's done. All you need to do is swap over the mylars in the side of the cabinet and you're done. Nice. The other thing that was being discussed was the flipper mechanism. They want to make it so that if the flipper starts dying or going bad, it's a couple of screws and the whole thing just slides out and then you can drop in a new unit it'd be five minutes repair time tables back up and running and then you could work on the flipper mechanism you know back in the shop or whatever but your table is not down while that's being worked on which would be a great boon to the operators um huge because you're not having to pull the table from the from the floor um and they said they were going to be trying to do that also with the pop bumpers which pop bumpers are notoriously hard to replace they suck to replace they're usually underneath something like a ramp or something so you have to strip the whole ramp off to get to them then you have to desolder the the uh the light connector yeah and then it's a whole massive stack you've got to um you got to take out so it's a real pain in the bum yeah so i thought i thought that was really kind of ingenious uh to be trying to make these a little bit more modular because their opinion is we need to get the operators back on board. We need to get these things out in the field. It can't be just home collectors because that's not a recipe to grow the business pinball, pinball business in general. So I thought it's one of those things where it's, I love the competition that's starting to emerge from the, you know, you where you got Jersey Jack doing the LCD back glass. You've got Stern responding in kind and trying to really make their playfield toys much more integrated, I would say, to the table than just being a toy on top of the table.
    37:40
    So now this idea of making things modular to pop it through, it's pretty appealing. I like that. There's modular in the sense of what Pinball 2000 is going to do with playfields. but this just takes it to another level. Being able to go, right, that flipper assembly is dead. Boom, two screws, take it out. New one in. The game's operational in around maybe 10 minutes max rather than about 20 or 30 as you're doing that on site, which is another pain to try and fix. Well, and then on top of that, then it could also be one of the situations where you don't have to necessarily be savvy to doing repairs as an operator. If it's just a matter of, hey, pull these screws, just drop this in and then send this thing back to us. Right. And then we'll fix it. Well, now you can have it at your pizza hut and you know, the, you, without the idiot employee going, roll up the call or distributor about that. And then two months later, it's still the same issue. So exactly. Yeah, no, I thought that was really pretty, pretty sweet. I really put some thought into the way they design that pin. And I think from the people who've actually played this game, because there are a couple out on site. And they're saying that they still force of habit look up at the screen, up in the back box for the information where it's right in front of their eyes, right in the bit of LCD. But that's one of the reasons why they did the mod to put the screen up in the back box. But also, you know, it was pretty flat up there. Like there wasn't really anything to attract people's attention. But this, you know, nice high-color display flashing away up there, that would attract a crowd in an arcade and that's what they have to think of um so yeah it's good move it is it is i like seeing these things uh we'll see what the the new year brings forth in the pinball world from these manufacturers because it seems like they're like i said they're
    39:36
    ramping it up they're they're trying to compete with each other and uh that's only a benefit to us yes that's right i think it's good competition is good it's um the new world pinball renaissance at the moment, and it's a good time to be playing pins. Yep. Unless you're in Australia, when you don't get any of them, because it's too expensive to get them down here.
    40:01
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. So I have one other thing to rage about, just because I didn't get enough earlier. so as i've mentioned before i work in the motion picture industry each time you start a new show or it's your first time on that show that's considered a new job so you have to fill out a whole new set of paperwork these paperwork depending on the production go anywhere from only being two pages of stuff to fill out to what I like to refer to as the novel.
    40:40
    The novel being, you know, it's basically every lawyer clause I can think of. And if you miss one initial, they can't accept your paperwork and they're going to send it back to you to do this. So my life as a day player, I wind up filling out a lot of these. and I've gotten good at knowing where to look, where all the, you know, the initials need to go and stuff. And now, and then you forget one and most productions, cause you're then not there the next day and you get it turned in. Most productions will call you up and be like, Oh, Hey, you missed this and you missed this and be like, okay, yeah, just put my initials there. I'm fine. And they're like, okay, great. And they'll do that for you. Right. Yeah. The one production company that refuses to do anything of that nature is Disney. Oh, so Disney is, is draconian when it comes to filling out everything yourself and getting it approved and checked and all this jazz So again and theirs is also a very thick novel making sure that you don have any conflicts with other, you know, interests and stuff like that, which again, you're like, well, I'm working for multiple shows. Of course, you know, there might be conflicts, but they're more interested in if, are you creatively interfering? Doing something that would maybe cross over into Disney's IP. Yeah, corporate espionage, that kind of jazz. So anyway, now everybody in our industry hates this because we have what's called a roster. It's a union roster. You cannot work unless you're on the union roster.
    42:22
    The union roster means that it's saying that you have worked X amount of days, you're paid up for all your union dues, and therefore you can work on a union show. In order to do that, we have to go to this facility and it's called Contract Services and they look at your identification, verify it, write it all down. So it is boom there and any studio can call them up and verify, right? They have to verify for, right. We also have to take all these safety courses to make sure that when we're on set, we know how to be safe and everything like that. We have to physically go down there, take a three hour class for one particular thing. I've taken maybe 12, 13 of these classes, you know, and each time you go down there, you're getting verified and all this jazz, right? So without any of that, I cannot work on a set. Yeah. Now, so each time you work, you get this paperwork thing, you get this I-9 form. i9 form asks for your uh proof of identification you can either show your passport or you have to show two of some other identification usually it's your driver's license and uh your social security card i don't know what in australia i don't know what you guys have for a backup thing but anyway your social security number basically that yeah your social security number in combination with your driver's license is how identity theft goes rampant because with those two things you can qualify for any card you know credit card um or you know hack into most people's accounts because most secure accounts are always asking for your social so you read any any site about identity theft and the thing they always tell you is never carry your social security card lock that thing away in uh you know security deposit box yeah i sure enough had uh lost my wallet at one time my social was in there i was like shoot so when i got the new social i was like i'm not carrying this thing anymore i don't it's a pain in the butt to replace what do i really need it for so when you fill out these forms it used to be we all we got to fill out the information ourselves well then all of a sudden it came down no somebody has to verify your identification somebody other than you okay so we were supposed to hand it off to an assistant director and then they'll look at it and fill out the thing the problem is they never have the time of day for you to do this it's it's always just like well no i'm busy right now i'm busy right now and you're like well i'm gone at the end of the day so you know what do you want so it all started a lot of times it was oh let the department head do it or so long as you filled out the form correctly they put their sign you know signature down the bottom or if you were right there and you just flashed it to them you're like look here it is and they go okay fine great because ultimately they don't have a clue how to verify if this is a legitimate government document or not. I mean, these things confuse customs.
    45:25
    Anyway, so I go to start a new show or I went and day played on a new show this past week. Turns out it's Disney. I don't have my ID. I'm like, oh, it's going to be this problem. I have photographed my social though, so I filled out everything else. Turn it in. I said, here's the photo. They're like, nope, we need to see a physical document. I'm like, but why?
    45:47
    I'm like, I don't have it with me. I'm not back tomorrow. And they're like, well, we can't pay you until you see it and until we see it.
    45:54
    I'm like, so call contract services. Nope, we need to see it ourselves. And I go, and this is where the anger part for me comes, because logic goes right out the door. And I stay. I said, so I couldn't work this job unless I was verified by contract services, which you all accept as the authority on whether I can work it or not. But you won't accept their authority on saying I am who I am.
    46:23
    Yes. You have to see it yourself. Yeah, that's pretty stupid. It's very stupid. And then to make matters worse, they're like, okay, well, where are you working on Monday or Tuesday? And so I told them. And they go, okay, well, we'll send a PA to look at your document.
    46:40
    A PA is literally a PA. It is the lowest hire on the entire production. This person is lucky if they earn $125 for the day working a 14-hour day. I mean, they literally get paid pennies. You know, this is the entry level's position. And you're telling me this person is going to have the authority to look at my document and verify that it's real. Whereas this other facility, which is essentially a notary republic.
    47:13
    So, yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. And it just irks me to no end. I even called my union about it. And they were like, well, legally, it's somebody who has to look at it. And they go, we know it's stupid. And we are trying to change it. Because when they first demanded that we all go to contract services, that's what everybody thought. they were like oh thank god we won't have to deal with stupid paperwork anymore but no everybody's like nope it's a brand new job you always have to fill out this for brand new jobs so yeah i must fill out you know 20 or 30 of these things a year because that's the thing the next season when it starts a new season it's a brand new job so you have to do it all over again even if this is you know get a whole stack of the forms from each of the studios and just have them all filled in and then just sign them at the end and just put the date on it.
    48:06
    That's what I'd be doing. I'd be beating the system. I'd go, yeah, here's my form. Boom, before they even give it to you. We're just going to give you the form. Yeah, here it is completed. Well, here's the thing. This particular production company, I've worked for this production company this year within the past six months, but it was on a different TV show. Now, each show is a different show or it's a different show. So even though it's the exact same production company and that production company is so yeah yeah oh that's so stupid that's paperwork for the sake of paperwork i hate that yeah it's paperwork for the sake of paperwork and it's also nobody looking at it in a logical manner it's it's that it's the here do it this way well why because that's how i had to do it yeah does nobody ever think about maybe times have changed i don't know maybe maybe there's a computer database now maybe you could do this on your iphone maybe you know that'd be nice but then again it doesn't surprise me either because i had to get fingerprinted to go on a field trip for my kid fingerprinted yes are you serious yes oh my god yes don't want to want to make sure that you don't have a criminal record if you're hanging around the kitties on a field trip so i had to go have a different thing here it's called a blue card. So the blue card you have to get if you're going to work with or around kids on a regular basis, you have to go and get this blue card. And that allows you to work alongside kids. Even bus drivers have to have a blue card. They charge me $55 to have this done and to be put in the database. This database goes to the FBI and it goes to probably Homeland Security. I'm not sure what other government agency, but it's kept on permanent record right here's this again this is the part that just tweaks me is now that's for my son's school now let's say he changes schools and goes to a different school or let's say he's on a sports team and i want to be the coach i'd have to go get it done again because for some reason they can't just call the database with the fbi and be like hey here's this person can we compare and contrast you is this who they no it's you got to get all verified brand new again every time i'm like this is so it's 55 bucks each time you want to do something else well no and this is the other it's a floating fee it was 55 bucks when i did it but let's say demand is high or something like they can go all the way because somebody else told me they paid 85 dollars man it's why are things so hard why it's meanwhile right right this is all so that i can claim that i am who i am and yet the identity theft people can get away with it with you know like that so yeah it's ridiculous anyway anyway those are those are the good times yes um i'm noticing we're we're we're doing our a longer version of our podcast today so we should probably wrap this up but yeah here's the thing folks here's the thing it is a longer version but uh there might be a few week hiatus coming up um yeah yeah because jared is uh not going to be at work and therefore not being able to upload um plus he's got some other familial things going on. That's right. Myself, I might still attempt to pop on here and do a one-man show. I don't know, that might be scary and maybe I'll upload it from my own house, but for the most part, I'm going to say that we probably won't be getting a new blockade in until January.
    51:54
    Warning. The following contains little to no actual talk about pinball. I think I might have worked out what was going on with the upload issues here that time as well it we we had um a lot of wet weather um a couple of weeks before and the the communications pit that's down the road from us has notes in it from the telephone engineer saying oh yeah this is water damage pit so yeah the guy we had some crackly line issues at the same time and i reckon the crackly line issues were the things that were destabilizing the internet connection so it was sort of getting to a point where it was uploaded maybe 20 and then the line crackle got too bad and the noise got too bad and therefore it dropped the connection but then re-established it really quickly but that just kills your upload right so i have a feeling that might have been what happened the line is fixed now so we could actually do a couple um and see how we go but um there might just be like a a couple of rapid fire episodes right on return The good thing is that the way I've structured my leave is I'm having two four-day weekends.
    53:01
    So there will be a point where I am actually in the office. There just might be a little bit sort of irregular in the times that we upload. So don't count on it coming out on a U.S. Tuesday.
    53:12
    But, yeah, we'll try and do something. We'll try and keep some content coming. What we're really saying is if you just follow us on Twitter, myself at shut your traps jared at jared morgues or the show in general at blockade uh we always announce when we're doing recording sessions uh so you can easily keep up to date uh right before we started this we sent out a tweet uh with the link saying hey come over here and you can watch us live record so um we will definitely keep you informed we're not going to make you uh you know hunt and search and go hey is new blockade out or oh thank god a new blog cage not out yeah uh so yeah we'll uh we'll we'll keep you up to date uh we're not saying bye-bye see you later we won't see you for a couple of months um all right it's not gonna be that long no you're not that lucky um so we'll we'll keep you up to date and again uh just reiterate uh go buy our t-shirt represent.com forward slash blockade dash logo dash t everybody wants one you know you do too all right well that will be our session for today thank you all for attending for listening thank you once again to jared morgan for joining me we will see you all again soon wizard amusement.com the west coast leader in classic pinball makers of custom pinball shooter odds and buyer specifications you can swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own a table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention block podcast receive 10% off your order. Wizardamusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    55:06
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blackade is delivered to. We can't prove unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.
    55:26
    you