Game over. Game over, Stern! Alright, I was channeling a little bit, a little tiny bit of my Macho Pimbo podcast there. Now listen, I will be honest. Kerry Hardy loses his shit, pulls out guns, yells, screams, talks about politics, gets the most views like I've seen him get in months if not years. And then over on top of that, within the next week, he gets several interviews like Pedretti, Brian Allen, Pinball Brothers. Wait, one of those was someone else? There's so many interviews in the last week. So much content. As a pinball nerd, I freaking love it because I can't get enough of it. And I love Kerry Hardy. I am also a Cary Hardy fan. For those of you who didn't listen to my take on the whole Cary Hardy situation, if you want to get deeper into it. I mean, if anything, that episode was harder to listen to than me even losing my temper. But you can go back, and I did five rad and one bad on John Wick, and I also talked about the Cary Hardy situation. But my point is, I saw Cary Hardy lose his frickin' shit and basically be rewarded by getting talked about. You know, that whole bad, no publicity is bad publicity, yadda yadda yadda, all that BS. Arguably, he probably did lose some fans, but I would say overall he maybe gained more fans because he walked it back just on time. Just in time, he was able to, like, you know, I would say hold his head high, you know? He's maybe going to be, he's maybe going to have one or two, like, hardcore lefties, like, say something to him one time here or there in the chat. Like, get over yourselves, guys. You know what it is? It's the people far, far, far. It's like the top 1% of the people far on the left and the right kind of, like, ruin it for everybody. They're like the negative Nancy Debbie Downers you bring politics into everything can we not just have some things that are sacred that we don't have politics in I used to love talking about politics but not on a pinball podcast you know what I mean so says the guy who goes off topic all the time I will say this I did go way over the top and I was way too much of a braggart about myself during the show I do feel bad for that um I was trying to like I was trying to like harness every possible sliver of a negative thought that's ever came into my head and like regurgitate it all at once and you know I there was some shrapnel in there I one person said to me like one good friend of mine said are you afraid you've burned bridges in the future with stern and it's like yeah a little bit but at the same time I have gone out of my way to be a fucking simp for them in the chat on twitch every every single stern pro circuit I am in probably in chat more than anyone else and I have the receipts to show it I am putting up links to stern i'm putting up links to ifpa i'm putting up link like i'm trying to further pinball to the pinball map i'm talking to any newbies that have a newbie question on any live stream of a new pinball machine getting live stream on anyone's live stream i try to be the first to reply to give them a sensible logical you know uncomplicated easy to understand for newbie nerds response and i feel like i've been very leveled most of the time and done a really great job promoting pinball especially for stern and if the if if you're gonna bite the hand that feeds well fuck you i'm gonna burn you at the fucking stake so from here on out i am a simp for every pinball company well okay except for home pin but pinball adventures but i'm a simp for every pinball company except Stern and the reason is is because Stern has done it they this was the most egotistical least humble launch of any pinball machine ever first you go get two people who've never presented any pinball content previously don't know how to record it don't know how to get that capture the audio capture the video have no clue like how to play they don't know what a post pass is or I mean none of that matters it's great that we had some of those but fail number one, not putting guns in a machine where guns are everywhere in the movie. They just are. Fail number one. Don't take a license about guns if you can't have guns in any of the artwork, okay? Fail number, at least one of the models, one of the fucking models you put guns in. One of them. Jesus, crepes, okay? Jesus, crepes, as they say in Quebec. Get me my crepe in my cigarette. Uh, anyways, second fail was only getting king of kongs and the other ding dongs and not getting actual any pinball content creators the third mistake was coming out and saying that you didn't know that people would be up in arms you live in america if you do if you have anything without guns if you say anything second amendment you're gonna get chopped out to the bit because they the only two things that I know for sure that Americans believe in, okay, the only two things they believe in staunchly, and us, me as being a non-American, that we hear all around the world is guns and religion. They love guns and religion more than their family, more than their friends. They would literally, there's people out there who would end their lives to stand up for the Second Amendment. Like, they would literally, basically commit suicide to stand up for their right to own a gun and not just a gun because we can own guns here in Canada okay but to own like an AK-47 because when the guy beside you gets a bigger gun then you need a bigger faster gun then you need a bigger then you need a bazooka then you need a nuclear like where does it end but anyways see now I've gone off topic I'm talking about politics and that's why this this is it I'm ending it on this show I'm not talking about the guns I'm not talking about the politics I'm not even going to talk about stern marketing fails for a while because I'm sick of it and I started this podcast in a good mood and now I'm getting grumpy because Stern sucks so bad but here's the thing Stern doesn't suck I love Stern I love John Borg okay and everything almost ever I almost everything's ever done the code on well on Munsters I guess that's more Dwight but I even love most things Dwight has ever done most most listening to Dwight for 45 minutes talk and do a big preamble at the start of any live stream that he did the codes for that's probably not my favorite part about Dwight but everything else he does is awesome okay and like i love raymond davidson i love tim sexton um gary stern if i ever got to meet gary stern that would be one of the coolest moments of my life like we all get that roger sharp is the man who saved pinball but gary stern is the man who saved pinball after it almost died in around the year 2000 right if it wasn't for him still pushing pushing pedal to the metal and saying that's it we've got to have this you know we he basically stayed with pinball when every other manufacturer died out switched to making slots or gave up on pinball Gary Stern was like a horse a workhorse like a Clydesdale with like those blinders on he just said I don't care pinball arcades don't exist anymore we'll keep pumping them out so thank you Gary and he's also super entertaining seems like a fun dude um don't agree with everything he says and does of course and how could I and how would I but that would have been one of the best moments of my life to just see the cafeteria at Stern with the 420, I believe it is, 420 microwaves and that one big wall. I'm sure you guys have seen the picture. I think it's 420 and they might have had to amp it up to the new factory. They have 450 microwaves altogether. Like, just to see that because they'll have to run off the line and make their food really quickly and then run back to the line because you can't run one part of an assembly line without the other part, so on and such forth. But that would have been the best moment of my life and I would have provided more pinball content than probably everybody other than Don. Don's probably doing a freaking live stream from the stern bathroom. He's probably, he's not, Don's not like an upper decker guy like me. I like to do upper deckers and people piss me off. He's more of an upper pisser. So he'll take a piss in the top part of the toilet. And then the next time someone goes in there to flush in their beautiful office, it'll all just come raining down yellow. Now the thing is, no, I'm just kidding. Don does not do that. Don does not. I'm totally, totally kidding guys. This is a joking, fun pinball podcast. From time to time, I'm going to give you my honest, unfiltered reviews of a pinball machine. yes from time to time are you gonna have to put up with me going off topic of course from time to time i'm gonna use too many filler words like when i keep saying time to time and um and yeah and all that kind of shit because i've got like 30 concussions i'm a stoner hipster dude who lives in the middle of the country who drinks way too much caffeine before he does a show and basically i enjoy losing my shit it sounds dumb but i kind of like getting all amped up and riled up it's like when you used to play a sport back when you were younger, you know what I mean, like you get all, I don't know, like to me, this is my sport, I can't skateboard anymore, and in fact, the reason why I started this pinball podcast almost 600 episodes ago, was because I snapped my arm in multiple locations, and was told, not only could I no longer skateboard anymore, but I shouldn't be doing any aggressive activities, well, screw you doctor, I kept doing disc golf, I still go to a skateboard park once in a while, fully geared out in my wife's roller derby gear um I haven't talked much about pinball this this this this show which I should have done I wanted to let everybody know that most mostly I'm okay I mean am I bipolar do I probably need to be uh medicated yes even Kaneda Kaneda who for the last six months forgot I was pinball nerds podcast on poor man's pinball network even though he sent me notes on several shows about things I said he didn't like he he still didn't know where I was for like six months freaking doofus uh freaking hipster doofus there you remind me of like uh no he's probably more like Jerry than he's probably more like Jerry than uh Kramer I'm probably more the hipster doofus but anyways uh he did Kaneda's was actually pretty funny even if you're anti-Kaneda kind of like I am he's definitely another frenemy I don't know it's something I don't know who I dislike more Zack or Kaneda it's kind of like it depends on the day right depends on recently it's probably been I've liked Zach a hell of a lot more than Kaneda, but then at the same time, like, I actually think if I saw Zach at a show, I could go up and be cordial and, like, try to shake his hand and say hello, how's it going, nice to see you, good to finally meet you, thanks, thanks for the millions of hours of content you provided between straight down the middle, flipping out, yada, yada, yada, I think he kind of, like, finally discovered Joel, and that's a pretty damn good diamond to find over there, even if David Dennis doesn't like Joel from Triple Drain, I do, I kind of do think of my Pinball Podcast as being an insider's podcast, most of the people that are listening to this would be absolutely confused if this was their first pinball podcast ever but why would you start here with a pinball blog that's meant to be for hard freaking core pinball nerds but if that's you a hardcore pinball nerd and you're listening to the first time remember to like remember to subscribe and if you're ever on the poor man's pinball podcast channel and you type that into google and you click on the top link when you get over there if you want to make sure that you're listening to because drew and ian do an awesome show on here uh foghorn leghorn and craft beer Sally do some fun shows on here as well. I don't, I'm not gonna lie, I don't listen to the We Suck one very often because it's mostly about Nintendo Wii games from 20 years ago, but if I'm bored and the mood strikes me right, I might listen to it because you will hear some cool music in there, but I do listen to the Drunk Jor whenever I can catch up, so make sure you check that out on Poor Man's as well, and make sure that you like Poor Man's Pinball Podcast over there on YouTube, so the next time they do a live stream, go back and watch that live stream. It hasn't got enough views. Those guys, these guys are like, they even helped choose to bring me over here. They're probably hoping I don't do too many shows, like quite as hot as that last one. Cause it was a little crazy. It was a little cray cray, not going to lie. Uh, but now I want to let everybody know. Also, if you're someone who does struggle with mental health and you actually legitimately get as angry as I got on my last podcast and like, you don't know how to calm yourself down and you're not doing it just to rile yourself up for a pinball podcast to be entertaining and to be funny. I heard from I heard from one person it's the funniest pinball podcast they've ever heard and they they knew for sure I was joking you know who you are you you are one of two people on this very well listen to pinball podcast another gentleman who was there today I'm not gonna give away my secrets but he told me that when he heard me grab the microphone and go up like this sorry I probably hurt your ears again he said that when I grabbed the microphone and I went up like that he said he knew for sure without a doubt that I was joking like I don't know who could listen to that and not know I was fucking around, like, honestly, like, the, the most angry I've been in the last decade was when my Oma passed away, because I didn't get to go back to her funeral and say a final goodbye, and I didn't get to see her in her last six, six months of life while she was at the, um, um, palliative care center, and I wasn't even that mad for that, or maybe I was close to that mad, but only briefly, right, because I was, I was, and, and I'll be honest, like, a lot of times, especially with males, I'm sure there's some females who do it as well, but I find especially with males, and this is at least what I've been taught when I had to go to an anger management program, that's right, you're like, whoa, you completed anger management, you're still this hangry, maybe I should have eaten, maybe, you know what, maybe I should just blame my whole last shitty podcast on, I didn't have my Chipotle, well, they don't have Chipotle here, but I didn't have my Canadian maple taco, you know, no, no, no, I'm not going to blame it on anybody, I knew what I was doing, I mean, I didn't know I was going to go quite that far off the rails I think I even surprised myself my voice was so hoarse I couldn't talk for like 24 hours even at this point I can do one of my other favorite hobbies even though I horrible at it which is singing okay so I absolutely want to be a positive for some pinball podcasting most of the time and I will be a positive unfiltered uh somewhat balanced pinball podcaster whenever I can possibly do so but in this particular case when Stern had basically punched me in the face after me French kissing Stern for like eight years basically like spreading their butt cheeks and going to every person at stern i get fucking told that and again this is another pinball podcast where i spoke to one of the people on that show they have less than two dozen pinball podcasts ever their average show gets like a quarter of the listens of what my typical shows get and yet they were still invited all expenses paid all the way across the country both people on the thing you know like rolling out the red carpet and it's Like, I don't care that Stern wouldn't spend the 80 bucks. They were too cheap to spend the 80 bucks. What I care about is I didn't get to go meet all those people. Josh and Scott from the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. You know how bad I would love to meet them? Like, I've listened to every one of their shows. I've spent, sent literally thousands of pinball people over there, like, heard about Loser Kid from me. Like, I was one of the first people telling people show after show after show, like, their first 10 episodes, you guys got to get over there and listen to them. I was also one of the first person to tell people to go listen to, well, not the poor man's. The poor man's, I thought they swore too much. Holy crap. Now, at the end of the show, now that we're nearing the end, I'm going to tell you the real reason why I actually, not why I recorded that, and not why even I was so angry. It wasn't just because I was going to miss out on not getting to meet Josh and Scott, okay, and Kale and Rachel from Electric Batpod, and Don from Don's Pinball Podcast. I wasn't going to meet Colin from the Kineticist. I wasn't, I want to meet Jason Knapp so bad. I was supposed to do an interview with him last year and I effed up on it. I ended up getting too busy and I screwed up on the timing. And Jason, I'd love to have you on the show in the future at some point. But my point is, I want to be a primarily positive force. There's no negative Nancy's or Debbie Downers here, except for on the last two shows, and I'm sorry. But I'm going to try to move on out to be constructive criticism for Stern. And I will say this, the constructive criticism I should have given to Stern was that Stern at the very least if you're only going to invite said number of pinball podcasters send it go on to the kineticist or this week in pinball on the promoter list or whatever right go on to the promoter list and just send a quick email Facebook message Instagram DM TikTok MySpace how whatever media they have send them a quick message and say hey we didn't forget about you we're sorry we didn't invite you to this one we'll try to include you in a future one but what we want to do for all the pinball podcasters and content creators who work so hard for us and do such a great job what we want to do is at least invite you to be part of the live zoom it would take all of 30 seconds you jack danger the world's best pinball live streamer i said it he works for you i bet you it would take jack danger on the high end on the high end five minutes to set up a simple camera just viewing the room and maybe one other camera to be handheld to show off the game or whatever it is you're telling all the other pinball podcasters and you could even have a moderator either tim sexton raymond davidson whoever whoever you have there whoever has time has energy who understands how to use twitch or zoom or whatever or or youtube um you you or however you're going to be presenting it probably better with zoom so you could have a private channel right but if you had a moderator there who just asked the questions in chat that made sense so that all the other pinball and that would have cost you nothing would have took 10 minutes of time from someone at stern and it would have been like they must have known oh if we leave all the guns out of a movie that's all about guns people are going to be mad they must have known and if they didn't know they should have known and then over and above that if they should have known everyone's going to be pissed about it they would have said you know what john wick's not it's like a b or a c level tier anyways let's not get a b or c tier level game about basically a shooter who shoots people for a living if we can't get guns on it and then over and above that they should have had the tenacity to say hey this this launch is not going correct they should have got out in front of it and said just to let y'all know i know some people are going to be disappointed there's no guns on the artwork that had nothing to do with us if george gomez it came out or whomever it came out and said all of that before the launch no fucking problem. Not a single solitary Karen or Nancy or whatever you want to call them would have been upset about this. But because you made us guess and fill in the gaps, and Kerry already hadn't had his Chipotle yet, and he happened to have a loaded freaking M16 on him. No, I don't know enough about guns to know what type of gun that was. And hopefully it wasn't loaded. It was locked, thankfully. That's kind of a neat lock there. But I don't know much about guns. I'm not a huge fan of guns, even though I'm not anti-gun, I'm definitely for guns, especially if you're a farmer, especially if you're a hunter, especially if you own, you know, a slaughterhouse, and believe me, every single person out there who eats meat one time once, you should be forced into, at the very least, if not going to a farm and watching the same animals that you eat be slaughtered, you should at the very least have to watch it happen on YouTube to have more respect for the people who bring the food i.e put the bacon on the platen put the steak in on the kitchen table and i don't know that was that they can't all be winners guys it can't all be winners but then over and above that stern should have had the foresight to know like hey anyone who's been in the game for a couple years anyone who like you know especially people okay were they going to go to canada and enroll the of course not literally the programmer on the game has violently had a a drink of like I don't know probably alcohol I'm assuming by how drunk he was I have seen the video I'm one of the rare people has seen the video of Kaneda like throwing the drink at okay he more so kind of poured it very hard or threw it up or I don't know I have seen the video it's been a couple years but I've seen the video of Kaneda actually hitting Tim Sexton in the face with like a giant drink at the women's tournament the New York City pinball tournament I think that's a real reason why Kaneda hates pinball tournaments is because basically it's the only place where he was told off and since then he's been soured about it well I mean that and he's not very good at pinball but sorry, Canada, it's just the truth. But my point is, I want to stress that the Stern Marketing Department, not everybody at Stern, whoever in Stern Marketing made all of these decisions, and it was probably multiple people, whoever made all these multiple decisions that got worse and worse and worse, that person is who should be apologizing to me. But not just me, because I am one of the small pinball content creators that will stand up for myself. And I will say when something is morally and ethically wrong in this industry and in this hobby, and most other small pinball content creators just won't do that. They won't stand up to Stern. They'll keep just basically kissing their ass, A, because they're friends or family members with the distro, B, because they get a cut of the money or they get their Sterns for less money because they give Flippin' Out or, you know, Player One or whoever, one of these other distros a shout out, right and also because they want to be invited to the stern stuff in the future and because they don't want to be embarrassed when they see them at an expo and i don't fear any of those fucking things okay the people who know me the best the people have actually spent time with me in real life know that that's not me i play a character called orbital elbert on this show in real life i don't really get that upset about stuff also in real life the way that i'm talking to you now basically yelling like if I was like if I was going to intro my podcast in like just me being me okay welcome back pinball nerds uh my name is Albert Agar and this is called the pinball nerds podcast uh here we're today we're going to chat about John Wick pinball some things I liked about it some other things I didn't like about it and yeah that marketing department you know I don't I think they could have done a little better I think they made a couple minor mistakes that's just not me okay I mean that's like me if I'm like dealing with my kids or like dealing with someone at like I don't know if I got to go to the MTO or whatever the hell they call it here in Canada I can't even remember like the ministry in Nova Scotia it's like the ministry of wizards you're a wizard Harry anyways I've gone off topic too many times I will now that we've got to the end of the show be open and honest part of the reason why not I recorded that show but part of the reason why I felt okay just hitting the upload is because nothing I could say in that show I mean the worst thing I said in that show anyways was like, I would take an upper decker at Stern and that would never happen. I would never do that at any pinball company other than pinball adventures or home pin. Y'all know that. Um, I am the biggest simp. I would be taking the most pictures. I would be doing the most interviews. I would be fanboying out. I would be asking for a selfie from pretty much every person who works at Stern. Uh, other than maybe, well, who knows? Maybe, maybe all just the hard workers on the line. And please, please, please. I was at no point. I was at no point trying to offend just like people who work at Stern or work for Stern or work with Stern or make the other parts for Stern or are Howard Stern fans I wasn't trying to offend anybody I was just trying to openly and honestly convey how mother effing pissed off that myself Jason from pinball party and multiple other people I don't want to mention out loud who I've heard scene that our big, huge, giant content creators did not even so much as get like a letter like, hey, we're not going to invite you this time. Don't worry, we haven't forgot about you. We're going to have you in a live stream. You know, we want to leave this channel open. We want to work with you in the future. You know, you don't have to bullshit and say, oh, I love your podcast. Who loves my, I don't love my podcast. I've never listened to a single fucking episode. I definitely, I can't listen to that podcast from two days ago. I listened to about 10 seconds. was like, oh my god, this is cringe. So at the same time, my last pinball podcast was a little bit cringe, a lot of it cringe, and it was like somehow gold, Jerry. It's gold. I don't know. I do not know. I don't know which it was. I'll let you decide. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. I'm probably halfway between. It's a little bit embarrassing. I'm sure it will be thrown back in my face at some point, probably, which is totally fine, and honestly, probably do. I'm okay with getting roasted. I get fucking roasted so hard by all of my buddies all the time, which of course I do, right? But I get roasted so hard all the time by so many of my buddies, it would only make sense. That the pinball, I mean, I make myself the butt of the joke on like 99% of my shows. I'm not roasting Jason from Pinball Party. I'm roasting myself most of the time. But from now on, Stern, I'm roasting you! See, I can pretend to be angry. Did you think I was really angry there? Hopefully not. Anyways, I'll try not to lose my shats as often on future shows. I actually am an ordained dudas priest that's not even a joke I have over a decade now in practicing as an ordained dudas priest including tons of other shit I'm not going to talk about on this show but let me tell you this an ordained dudas priest would not lose his shit that I mean like something really really like I would have to get like I don't know like a an asteroid would have to fall out of the sky and like I don't know take out Chicago and all the pinball nerds that live there and all the awesome pinball factories and everything awesome that gets done there. Like, or to have to take out London, Ontario, my hometown, or like Toronto where I have like 20 friends, you know? Like, it would have to like, something really bad would have to happen for me to actually get that angry. And I'll be honest, a lot of the time, especially for men, I've tried to mention this before, but when we're sad, and I was mostly sad for a couple days, and I let it turn into anger. And I shouldn't have done that. I should have just said like, dude, really? It is not cool that you're not getting invited. It is not cool that you're not going to get to go meet so many awesome people in pinball that work there and other content creators and check out Chicago proper I've never got off the highway in Chicago right and like it would have been life-changing for me I know a lot of those other pinball content creators have been to Chicago they've been to Expo they've been to Stern this is not life-changing for them this for some of them it might even feel like it's work for me it wouldn't have been work it would have been my pleasure to go there and support Stern and be a Stern simp and basically go there and have a great time and try to be open and honest and tell you what I didn't like about John Wick but also like pump up everything I love about it. I would love nothing else to do that. Now, here's the real truth. Part of, part of the reason why, part of the reason why I basically was okay with uploading the episode was because I heard Jenga's lose his shit and say, no one on planet Earth should have a gun ever. Guns are the worst. So he went off the deep end one way and said stupid shit. And then I heard Kaneda say the F word 17 times and lose his shit for two hours straight. His blood pressure must have been through the roof his cortisol much must have been really high and i hear all of these things happen and what i tell myself is they both got more views from it then jason loses his shit and does that on his podcast and he gets talked about and more views invited with by sangas onto there and then me i lose my shit and i get the most listens i've ever got before and then i get told that there's a very important person from a big pinball company wants to come on my show so it's like wow all i have to do is lose my shit one time once to actually make people pay attention and listen. But I don't want to do that again because that's very embarrassing. From now on, if I'm going to embarrass myself, I'm going to do it by singing.