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Christmas Break Summary

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·19m 28s·analyzed·Jan 16, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Holiday break recap covering Netflix binging, family stories, and pinball restoration plans.

Summary

BlahCade hosts discuss their Christmas break activities, focusing heavily on Netflix streaming habits (Doctor Who, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Sense8) and TV consumption patterns. They touch briefly on parenting gift-giving experiences, New Year's resolutions (Slurpee intake limits), and a Firepower pinball machine restoration project. The episode concludes with Game of Thrones book/show timing discussion and mentions an upcoming trip to Banning, California.

Key Claims

  • Doctor Who Netflix series (newer shows, not related to Doctor Who pinball table) watched nightly at 2+ episodes per sitting

    high confidence · Host describing personal viewing habits during Christmas break

  • Host completed Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Sense8 in approximately 1.5 weeks

    high confidence · Direct statement of viewing accomplishments during break period

  • Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Sense8 all suffer from slow 3-episode intros and include one filler episode despite only 12-episode seasons

    medium confidence · Opinion-based critique of narrative pacing in Netflix series

  • George R.R. Martin's next A Song of Ice and Fire book will not be ready in time for the next Game of Thrones season premiere

    high confidence · Host citing recent news about Martin's statement before Christmas

  • George R.R. Martin has given Game of Thrones showrunners permission to diverge from book material while maintaining the same ending

    high confidence · Host referencing Martin's official statements to producers

  • Child preferred Funko Pop toy over Galaxy Tab 4 tablet as Christmas gift

    high confidence · Host describing personal family experience with gift reception

  • Host is pursuing Firepower pinball restoration with clear-coat approach rather than perfect restoration

    high confidence · Detailed discussion of restoration strategy and materials

  • Host has New Year's resolution to limit Slurpee consumption to one per week (previously consuming 1-2 daily)

    high confidence · Direct personal statement of resolution

Notable Quotes

  • “I prefer to just be plopped into the world. I don't need all the way—I want the fun of the show. I don't need to build up to the fun.”

    Co-host (Australian) @ approx. 18:00 — Expresses critique of slow narrative pacing in modern television series

  • “it should be all killer, no filler”

    Co-host (Australian) @ approx. 22:00 — Opinion on episode structure in 12-episode limited series format

  • “Pinball, movies, snacks, but mostly pinball.”

    Host (Kaneda) @ approx. 45:00 — Core podcast philosophy statement regarding Backroom segment content balance

  • “if you just had have known. If you only had have known, could have saved all this money”

    Host @ approx. 28:00 — Humorous reflection on child's gift preference over expensive tablet

  • “Does that mean they're holding over the series until the book's written? No. Are they going to split and divide?”

    Co-host (Australian) @ approx. 41:00 — Questions about Game of Thrones production timeline relative to book publication

  • “I have to go an entire year without paying attention to what anybody is saying [to avoid spoilers]”

    Co-host (Australian) @ approx. 43:00 — Describes spoiler avoidance strategy for delayed Blu-ray viewing

  • “Maybe at one stage, someone might release a full playfield decal for it. And if you have it clear coated and like locked in at a really good quality sort of seal, then it's not that much harder to just lay the decal down”

    Host @ approx. 35:00 — Forward-thinking restoration approach accounting for future decal availability

Entities

BlahCade PodcastorganizationKanedapersonAustralian Co-hostpersonDoctor Who (Netflix)productDaredevil (Netflix)productJessica Jones (Netflix)productSense8productGame of ThronesproductGeorge R.R. Martinperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Host planning to conduct interviews and capture content (photos, recordings) at Banning, California event for upcoming episode

    high · I'll have a little report from Banning, California... I want heaps of pics on the Twitters... hopefully we'll have some interviews to go along with it

  • ?

    product_strategy: Firepower pinball restoration project will utilize clear-coat approach with future option for full playfield decal application if released

    high · Maybe at one stage, someone might release a full playfield decal for it. And if you have it clear coated and like locked in at a really good quality sort of seal, then it's not that much harder to just lay the decal down

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.058

0:00
we might have to save some of this stuff for next week. We'll do a 15-minute backroom. Yes, it'll be a small backroom. It'll be the closet of the backroom. So, yes, in case you're wondering, this is the blockade backroom where we talk about stuff that tends to be completely non-pinball related, and some people prefer it that way.
0:23
And we're okay with that. We're okay with that. I just wanted to touch upon the holidays, since the holidays happened, and how we enjoyed our three weeks off of not doing the blockade.
0:39
So obviously Christmas happened around here, and that meant the kids. And there. What? You guys have Christmas in Australia? Yeah. Wow. Go figure. and the kids were off of school so therefore they had to be entertained and I decided to fire up the Netflix so I've had a Netflix account a long time ago it was not the streaming version it was just the disc based version if that tells you anything about how long ago I had it and And I decided, though, that, you know, because the TV has the, my new TV, it has the smart apps built into it. So I was like, oh, okay. So I clicked on the Netflix app. It was saying, oh, hey, you can get a free month trial. And I was like, oh, but it's going to say, oh, because you got your old email address. And I was like, wait a second. I've got some Google email address. So I booted up that, got my free month trial.
1:40
Yep. We have been, me and the boy and the wife, too, have been just gorging on Doctor Who. Yep. And hey, didn't we just talk about the table? But it has nothing to do with these Doctor Who's because it's the newer stuff. But anyway, so we have been like every night watching probably two episodes at least. That's a pretty good cadence to binge watch, I think. I don't think you want to sit down and watch like a whole like series in one go. That's a little bit too much. You'll get fed on that. Well, two episodes is not a binge. No. Well, it's definitely not. No. But I think that's not a binge. I'm afraid to do it as well. Like you don't want to like, you don't want to just go crazy and watch them back to back. Cause they just don't get that separation. I think it's really important that you actually have time to think on some of these episodes and actually form your own opinions. Ah, see, I'm not that way at all because what I was going to say is on the weekends, we've been watching say five or six episodes and just going through. And then, so that's what I'm doing during the daytime with programming that he can watch. But then with Netflix, you know, I haven't watched any of these new series that Netflix made. So in the span of about a week and a half, I gorged on Daredevil, finish that. Jessica Jones, finish that. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, finish that. Sense8, finish that. And these are, it's like, I've just been planted watching these things just plowing through them. I'm like, I got to get through them while I still have Netflix.
Firepower
game
Samsung Galaxy Tab 4product
Funko Popproduct
Pinball Arcadeproduct
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.product
Banning, Californialocation
3:12
Oh, man. Yeah, you know what? it's terrible that I say this but we've got Netflix of course down here now officially you don't have to like torrent not tunnel through a VPN to get it and yeah we don't have it because we just don't have the time to watch it it's just one of those things you've got to actually commit to it right well and for me I'm a person who that's how I relax is by watching TV so it's really easy well although I shouldn't say it's really easy when I'm working it's next to impossible for me to watch TV because all it is is come home, go to sleep, wake up, go to work.
3:46
But with the show having been ended, I have the time right now. So it was, you know, been able to do that. And it's been fun, you know, seeing all these shows that people have been talking about for, you know, a year or two.
3:58
Now I can finally join in on the conversation. I kind of feel like doing that with Game of Thrones. Like, Kim has no interest in watching that type of sort of, I won't call Game of Thrones science fiction, but I call it that sort of fantasy style stuff. She just doesn't have any interest watching. I'm going, I'm so out of the loop with all of these shows that I just feel like going, you know what? I'm just going to watch these an hour at a time at work and my lunch break and just catch up slowly but surely. And I don't know. The other thing is it's the perfect timing for me right now because most of the TV is in reruns. They were in reruns all through December and I say reruns. Half the time they just don't even air the show. They air something else.
4:41
New episodes, I should say, aren't going to be popping up. Maybe one or two episodes will pop up in January but for the most part nothing comes up again until February which is what we call sweeps So February will be It similar here as well See at the moment as an aside we got it tennis Tennis, tennis, tennis at the moment here in Australia. It's our tennis season in full swing. That's all that's on television. And they're having – they've actually started promoting what you would call the sweep season. They started promoting that back in December with promos. Okay. it's just infuriating because we have to put up with these same spots all the time in the ad breaks. Right. So anyhow, February 1st is when all the things come on. The soaps come back on. The big reality TV shows come back on. It's just action stations. So, yeah. So that's the other motivating factor for binging on all this stuff and just cramming it in is because I know that I've got to finish it all before the stuff I normally watch comes back on. Because then you won't have a chance. Although here's the problem. The stuff I've been watching has been so good compared to what I normally watch that now I'm really not interested in those shows. That's a good thing to have. You know, for instance, I've got recorded the first 10 episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now, I've not been a fan of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I only watch it because it's Marvel and I need to keep up to date on that stuff so I can enjoy the movies more, I might say. so obviously daredevil and jessica jones were both marvel shows but they were so much more interesting than what agents of shield is and it's just like such good things about jessica jones that's it's one of those things that i will pass me by as all the other shows do but i'm going ah yeah it would be really funny actually i feel like going and watching that marvel universe you know how to watch the Marvel universe in order and complex black chart that I, I can found someone across this the other day and I, I shared it again and going, oh, right. Geez. If I was to watch all these things in the correct logical chronological order and it'd be hours upon days on weeks of viewing. It'd be insane. It was funny because I started watching the first episode of Jessica Jones and I don't know, maybe 15, 20 minutes into it. My wife wandered in as she, as she does. she usually starts in one room and then if a show I'm watching sounds interesting, then she'll kind of stop, you know, come in. So she started watching it. She thought it was a movie.
7:11
All of a sudden, all of a sudden it ends. She goes, it's over. I go, well, that episode, she was like, ah, got up and left and she didn't watch any more of it. It was like, I'm not committing to any of this.
7:23
So, but you know, the, the problem that I'm finding though with these, the mainly the three shows that I watched, which was again, daredevil, Jeff Jones and Sensate. Sensate's that show from the Wachowskis and Jay Stravinsky or Stravinsky, I'm not sure. Anyway, the guy that created Babylon 5. It's a sci-fi show. Really interesting concept and I really liked, I enjoyed watching it. But all three of the shows suffer from the same thing, which is they take a long time to get going, talking like in my opinion, three episodes.
7:57
Yes. And because they're doing too much intro. it's they're setting up the world rather than just plopping you in the world i prefer to just be plopped into the world i don't need all the way exactly exactly it'd be like watching the born identity where first you get all the backstory of where he was and then finally him being dropped into the ocean and then trying to figure out his memories rather than just getting the flashbacks you know it's like give me flashbacks i don't need yeah i want the fun of the show i don't need to build up to the fun um that's right and then all of them suffered from having one episode which would just be a painfully slow nothing happening episode and the thing i find out about that is you know they're only 12 episodes long they're not having to milk this out over 22 episodes like regular series do and so it's like why are you still having to have a filler episode you know you should just be it should be all killer no filler exactly exactly and so you know and these are all first season shows so it'd be interesting to see what happens in their second season if that becomes just nothing but the fun but uh yeah they all in my opinion took a little while to get you know to get going um of the three i think sensate was my favorite i i because it's the most science fiction it's not comic book it's science fiction and i enjoy the science fiction much more. It sounds really interesting. Yeah, it was a- I'm not going to come to if I need a laundry list of things to watch. If I eventually ever do get Netflix, I'll go, so Chris, what's the laundry list of things I should start watching? And in what order should I start watching these laundry lists? Yeah. So one of these days one of these days we do it So the other thing I was going to mention was with the and I sure you come across this exact same thing as most parents have where the gift you give your child that you think is going to be beloved and you spent a lot of time and money on buying and in store instead, they just prefer the cardboard box of some other toy. Absolutely. so so we uh hardball boxes and be done with it it'd be a lot cheaper right so we we had gotten uh we got him the tablet and uh the you know the it's a samsung galaxy tab 4 yeah so that my wife could reclaim her ipad and and we were for sure thinking oh this is going to be young he's gonna be just enamored with this this is gonna be great well santa brought him a pop dollick uh the pop makes these fun looking uh little toys so i'll hold it up for the camera oh yeah yeah favorite toy of christmas that little piece of plastic that thing yeah yeah yeah so it was kind of now now the tablet came in second i'll say that much that's good but but It was just kind of one of those things where you're just like, ah, if you just had have known. If you only had have known, could have saved all this money, you know. So the important thing that we need to clear up right now, does a tablet have TPA on it? No. It does not? No. He doesn't care about pinball? Nope. All right. Fair enough. You have to work on that.
11:22
You're going to have to work on that, I think. he he hounds me about fixing my firepower in the garage but um uh maybe that's what you need to do your goal for 2016 is to just make that a player's game rather than strive for perfection and then yeah i've i've i've got one new year's resolution that i'm actively starting which this will come to shock to people but i'm limiting myself to one slurpee a week one slurpee a week yeah it got to the point where it wasn't just one slurpee a day but sometimes there'd be two slurpees a day so yeah um so they have the sugar-free versions over there or is that another thing over there the sugar-free versions now and then there'll be a sugar-free one but it's got a hideous aftertaste oh yeah i know i know this aftertaste the watermelon one that they have over here oh man it's it's that chemical hit that you really don't like yeah and you it almost turns you to the sugar like oh geez i think i might just have a full full sugar one and just like have the diabetes instead so so that that's actively happening and yeah i really do want to uh i do really want to make this thing happen uh this year yeah so i asked somebody who does restorations uh a clear coding question the other day um and it it came back in an answer that makes things a little easier on me and i do kind of think that it will just be a uh a player's a player's version make it play say well just yeah get the either mylar down or a clear coat or just like do some fixes to make it playable and even if that just means you know bogging up the areas that are really terrible and sending it back and just having a clear like a non-arted piece of play field then I've already sanded it flat, which took up some of the art.
13:19
I bought some wood fill, so I'll fill in the errant holes that shouldn't have been there that somebody tried to do fixes on for broken pieces, and then I'll clear coat it, put the decals down. Who knows? Maybe there might be, at one stage, someone might release a full play field decal for it. and if you have it clear coated and like locked in at a really good quality sort of seal then it's not that much harder to just lay the decal down and then do some clear coating over the top of that so right do it right get it get it done clear coat strip the play field and so if anybody out there has a firepower decal and would like to donate to the cause you can message me or make it accessible price wise because the decals aren't that much like there's some you can actually get some for older tables and it's just like you just lay them down like a piece of book covering basically yeah what I really need is I need the planet that's where my where is. It's the planet.
14:30
Right by the slingshots and at the top where somebody did a really bad paint job and painted over the top of the planet um so uh or if somebody came up with a if a massive death star just get a massive death star stick it right on the top of that planet and then um you're done basically there and there we go yeah bob's your uncle honestly if you're gonna clear coat the whole thing just put stickers and crap all over the play field and just layer it up and then like clear coat the the ridges out of the problem, basically, and just put lots of layers of clear-cut over the top, and then it'll be perfect, and it'll look like you've got artwork on there. So there you go, problem solved. Like when guys decorate their skateboards with tons and tons of stickers? Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
15:17
That's what I do. I was also going to mention, since you kind of brought it up with Game of Thrones, bad news, Game of Thrones fans, the next book that is currently being written by George R.R. Martin will not be ready in time for the new season to start.
15:34
More than likely it won't be ready this year. Who knows? It's one of those things where it's like... Does that mean they're holding over the series until the book's written? No. Are they going to split and divide? Are they? He gave the showrunners the permission to go ahead. They know the ending. And he's given him permission to run with it and has basically said, hey, if it winds up being different than the book, even though the endings will be the same, but if how characters get to that point is different, well then, hey, the book will be different than the show, which is not unusual from shows being different than the books. And really, that's not going to be that much of a problem because fans of the franchise are going to be going, oh shit, well I'm going to have to have the book too, right?
16:23
I'm going to have to read that book. I think what it is is people want to be spoiler free with the books.
16:31
Obviously, if you spend, you know, if you spend that much time reading a thousand page a book, you don't want to know what the outcome is. Yeah, right. As opposed to knowing the outcome and watching a movie for an hour and a half, you know. So I think that's what people's concerns were, that they wanted to read it first and then watch it second. And in this case, it's going to be the other way around, which will be interesting. It's going to be interesting. I think there's going to be a lot of people staying away from the internet for a year and a half so they don't get spoilers for the show. Well, that's what I said. I'm going to have to stay away from it because I don't watch it until it comes out on Blu-ray.
17:08
So I haven't watched this last season. It's coming out on Blu-ray in March. And so that's when I finally get to watch it. So I have to go an entire year without paying attention to what anybody is saying. Yeah. So in my mind, I might still benefit from the fact that if the book comes out late in the year, I'll be able to read the book and then watch the show and not have seen it first. So that'll be interesting to see what goes down. Yeah, you may be golden with that. I think it could be good. He dropped that lump of coal, I think, right before Christmas, like two days before Christmas. It's like, nice. Thanks, George. Thanks.
17:46
Yeah, right. okay well it's like about 7 40 here in the morning so all right i guess probably enough back room we'll throw that out there people can look you know it's the bonus edition there you go folks uh you know things that we would like to squeeze into the regular podcast but most of the time can't just can't most of the time can't or if we did people just go meh mesh man movie talk etc etc blah blah blah and they tune out well I'm just telling you saying it like it is but you know it's okay that's what the back room is for we can talk about random stuff and things and gorge out on movie talk and series talk and present talk as much as we want and it's okay that's why it says like it says on the back of the t-shirt pinball movies, snacks, but mostly pinball alright hey, good chatting with you, we shall talk again next week and I'll have a little report from Banning California I can't wait I want heaps of pics on the Twitters so I can I shall do my best and hopefully we'll have some interviews to go along with it but we'll see that depends on if I can actually identify anybody they'll have name tags on, won't they? you should be right I don't know. I'm sure they will. I'm sure you'll be right. Just take some decent recording equipment with you, like your little microphone, and, yeah, you'll be right. Yep. All right. Good stuff. We will chat again. See you later. Bye-bye, everybody.