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Episode 38 – Josh Hates Twilight Zone

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Apr 13, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

IFPA's new $1/event fee model sparks debate; Josh Sharp explains rationale and fieldshost concerns.

Summary

Josh Sharp (IFPA co-organizer) joins the Slam Tilt Podcast to discuss a new 2018 IFPA funding model based on $1-per-player-per-event fees to support state and national championship prize pools. The conversation covers the controversial announcement (released April 1st), community reception (52% approval on Pinside), implementation flexibility, and broader topics including PAPA tournament logistics, the new app-based queue system, and player participation dynamics.

Key Claims

  • The new 2018 IFPA funding model will collect $1 per player per event submitted into rankings to fund state/national championship prize pools instead of having finalists fund them

    high confidence · Josh Sharp explains the new rule directly to podcast hosts

  • The Pinside poll on the new funding model achieved 52% approval rating

    high confidence · Josh Sharp cites the specific approval rate from Pinside vote

  • IFPA staff had internal bets on the approval rate, with the highest guess being 30% before the 52% result

    medium confidence · Josh Sharp describes an internal IFPA staff bet

  • A prominent player withdrew from competitive participation, possibly due to the new funding model

    medium confidence · Hosts discuss a player pullout with timing that suggests it correlates to the announcement, but acknowledge they don't know for certain

  • Josh Sharp played in 39 events in the prior year

    high confidence · Josh Sharp states this directly during discussion of player participation rates

  • PAPA's app-based queue and entry system was successfully implemented at the recent tournament

    high confidence · Ron and Josh extensively discuss the app experience at PAPA

  • Ron Hallett finished ninth in B Division at PAPA and was one spot away from mandatory promotion to A Division

    high confidence · Ron and Josh discuss Ron's PAPA results and ranking implications

  • HBO filmed content at PAPA, including Robert's finals performance and Escher's gameplay, scheduled to air in May

    high confidence · Hosts discuss HBO's presence and planned air date

Notable Quotes

  • “I almost got to pay for my second flight back to Pittsburgh”

    Josh Sharp @ early segment — References dollar bills being thrown at him during the announcement, illustrating community reaction to the new funding model

  • “With 52% approval rating on Pinside, I might add, who would have thought?”

    Josh Sharp @ funding model discussion — Indicates surprise at the high approval rate compared to IFPA staff expectations

  • “I couldn't help, you know, maybe I got a little bit of Nightingale in me, but like I it was oh, I couldn't resist it. It was great.”

    Josh Sharp @ April Fool's announcement discussion — Josh acknowledges the timing of the announcement on April 1st created confusion about whether it was a joke

  • “I love not having to stand in line to buy tickets. Great. Being able to queue myself for a nine-deep Captain Fantastic line while eating dinner at a restaurant. Great.”

    Josh Sharp @ PAPA app discussion — Positive feedback on the app's convenience and queue management features

  • “I know how I stack up. I mean, I watch the players that kick my ass on a regular basis, and they're, like, not qualifying in A. So what chance do I have?”

    Ron (host) @ PAPA Division discussion — Illustrates tension between different skill divisions and player motivation in the ranking system

  • “It costs us so much because our scene is so big. And if they go away, now suddenly the little scenes can actually have an impact in the state standings.”

    Host/co-host (discussing dynamic) @ funding model analysis — Identifies a paradoxical push-pull dynamic where the new fee system creates winners and losers based on scene size

  • “There are certainly, you know, even if people are willing to sponsor that dollar, so the players are actually paying nothing, you know, there will be areas and communities with tournament directors that just believe that this is against the fabric of their being and they won't run their event as an endorsed event”

    Josh Sharp — Josh acknowledges ideological resistance to the system even if cost is zero, showing the fee is symbolic as much as financial

Entities

Josh SharppersonRonpersonBrucepersonIFPAorganizationPAPAeventSterncompanyRaw ThrillscompanyZach SharppersonRobertperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: IFPA introduces new $1-per-player-per-event fee to fund state and national championship prize pools, replacing finalist-funded model from previous four years

    high · Josh Sharp directly explains the new 2018 rule and its implementation structure

  • ?

    community_signal: New IFPA funding model receives only 52% approval on Pinside poll, generating significant community debate and at least one prominent player withdrawal

    high · Josh cites 52% approval rate; hosts mention player pullout with timing correlation to announcement

  • ?

    technology_signal: PAPA implements new app-based queue and ticketing system replacing paper/NeverDrains site model, allowing remote queuing, text notifications, and streamlined entry purchases

    high · Extensive discussion of app features: remote queueing, payment tapping, queue depth notifications, on-deck alerts

  • ?

    content_signal: HBO films pinball content at PAPA tournament, including finals footage of Robert and Escher, scheduled to air in May (not a multi-year delay like King of Kong)

    high · Josh mentions HBO crew filming during qualifying and finals, hosts note May air date expectation

  • ?

    business_signal: Josh Sharp applies Raw Thrills' Big Buck Hunter championship model to IFPA: using online tournament fees to fund larger prize pools and attract corporate sponsors (Jägermeister, alcohol brands)

    high · Josh explicitly compares IFPA fee structure to Raw Thrills approach and discusses landing Jägermeister sponsorship

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.261

0:00
Hey, Headbangers, this is Rabid Ron, bringing you the Tri-County Area's hardest and hottest metal. Helping out today are our guest DJ winners, Beavis and Butthead. How you doing, dudes? Uh, no.
0:13
How about you, Beavis? Check out my butt! Okay, let's give Beavis and Butthead time to calm down a little and play something from the new group, Viking Funeral. What do you say, Butthead? Uh, they suck.
0:57
Yes, and welcome to episode 38, GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan's first foray into James Bond, after getting screwed out of it two movies earlier. But guess what? We have a guest. Right, Bruce? Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait. You can't wait? You can't wait to introduce our guest? No. Okay, go ahead. Yes, he is the number two player in the world. He's number two? And he's one Pinberg. He's one Pinberg. And he's just a... What? Are you sure you're introducing the right person? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead. It's Zach Sharp, right? No, no. What do you mean, no? It's Josh Sharp. Oh, shit, this is the guy who freaking runs IFPA. Yeah. He wants to charge us a buck. And he's a freaking podcast whore? Yeah, and he's also on our show right now. You might want to be nice to him. Hi, Josh. Yeah, Bruce. Hi.
1:56
How's it going, fellas? No, Josh, I haven't looked forward to it. Ron, I need to know, when you do the intro, are you reading it written down, or that is memory every time? No, that's memory. That's memory. Good for you. All right. Well, we've done 37 episodes now. 38, yeah. So, yeah. Hello, Josh. Josh, welcome. Hiya, boys. Playing any tournaments lately?
2:22
@ late funding model discussion
Escherperson
Bowenperson
Jim Belsitoperson
Keith Ellmanperson
Andy Rosaperson
Kevin Martinperson
Pinsideorganization
Jeffperson
DraftKingscompany
Jägermeistercompany
HBOcompany
  • $

    market_signal: New fee structure creates paradoxical incentives: large scenes complain about costs and may withdraw, potentially empowering small scenes; geographic inequality in tournament access persists

    medium · Hosts discuss push-pull dynamic where big scenes may opt out, allowing small scenes to gain comparative advantage in state standings

  • ?

    competitive_signal: PAPA B Division playoffs used modified machine set (removed plungers, no ball savers) and included players from A Division equipment; promotion threshold from B to A is top eight finishers

    medium · Ron describes B Division playoff structure and his ninth-place finish implications; Josh confirms top four/eight promotion rule

  • ?

    operational_signal: PAPA app successfully reduced queue wait times in B Division but created edge cases: missed queues, notification anxiety, difficulty tracking finals results in UI

    high · Ron and Josh discuss queue experience, missed queue due to notification delays, difficulty reading finals brackets in app vs. LED board

  • ?

    industry_signal: Josh Sharp acknowledges IFPA's dual role: neither the sole driver of pinball growth nor responsible for killing the sport if fee system fails; emphasizes flexibility for tournament directors and voluntary participation

    medium · Josh's statement: 'the balance between the responsibility that we now have for killing pinball if we do this is sort of unfair to the amount of credit we're given with growing the scene'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Initial skepticism and confusion (April 1 announcement timing) followed by moderate acceptance on Pinside (52% approval), but ideological resistance remains from tournament operators who view fee as philosophical violation

    medium · Josh describes initial skepticism due to April Fool's timing; some tournament directors refusing to run endorsed events even if cost is zero

    • Oh, my God. You know, I don't get to say that often anymore because I only really go to big ones. But, yes, I did. My wife will certainly let you know that I just went to a tournament this past year. Oh. Which is why we have limited time tonight. Well, but to show your dedication, for those who don't know, Josh was there for the circuit on Wednesday. Uh-huh. Then flew back home for your daughter's birthday, I believe. Yes. Yep. She turned three. Then I flew back out to Pittsburgh. Now that's dedicated, Father, right there. There's a man whose priority is in order. I got so many props from so many people, and my only response is, like I had a choice. My wife would have killed me if I didn't do it. But I appreciate the props. I'll take them. He knows who the boss is. That's good. So, Josh, I heard men were throwing dollar bills at you this weekend. There was a lot of that.
    3:12
    I almost got to pay for my second flight back to Pittsburgh. That's crazy. So, okay, we'll start with that. So actually, for the listeners who don't know what we're talking about, Josh, would you like to explain what this new 2018 rule or thing is going to be? Concept, campaign, whatever it is. Yeah. So we're attempting to elevate what our state and national championships mean to the world of competitive pinball in an attempt to hopefully garner more media attention and potential corporate sponsorship down the road by having endorsed tournaments fund those prize pools, rather than having the finalists fund those prize pools that we've done the first four years.
    4:05
    The funding will be based off of its $1 per player per event submitted into us to be included in the rankings.
    4:17
    And off it went. With 52% approval rating on Pinside, I might add, who would have thought? What's that Pinside thing? I only like to read TIL forms. We had a little bet amongst IFPA staff of the approval rate that that Pinside post, the poll would generate. And I think the highest that anyone guessed was 30 percent. So we're beyond expectations already. It was just completely uncontroversial new thing. I just I don't see. Yeah, I mean, you know what? I'm far more interested in in like knowing what you guys think about it and and and how you guys have received like what it means to you. Because if you don't know what it means and how it's working and why we're doing it, then I clearly didn't do a good enough job of explaining that to start. So I'd open the floor to you guys for your reaction to it. And that would be of great purpose to me. My first reaction, honestly, was we had some inklings that this was coming. Yes. We didn't say anything, of course. We told in confidence. But when I saw the announcement came out on April 1st, the first thing I thought is. Bruce would totally appreciate that. Wow. I love that. What a dick. How could he do that? Everyone is going to think that this is like, oh, okay, April Fool's, because it's not like you haven't put stuff out there April Fool's before, like the million-dollar tournament and all that stuff. So it's like, dear God, everybody is going to think this is a joke, and then it's not going to be, and that's not going to go over well. Yeah. I own that. I couldn't help, you know, maybe I got a little bit of Nightingale in me, but like I it was oh, I couldn't resist it. It was great. Right there for the taking. And then it sets up it sets up future April Fool's that like may not be real. And you know what I mean? I'm setting myself up for the really long play here. Joke wise. Yes, you are. Now, my thoughts. Actually, I don't mind. I don't mind it. But I had one. I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here. I love that, yes. What if we did, instead of $1 per event, maybe a $25 yearly membership?
    6:29
    So the logistics, first of all, how many people do you think are going to pay $25 a year based on how many tournaments they play on? You give them a bumper sticker, you say, I'm part of IFBA, you know. No, that's cool. I'm asking, how many players do you think pay that fee? Oh, mostly if they're going to play. Honestly, a lot of the players are probably over 25 tournaments. Think about it. That is not. Did you see the data dump? I saw your data. I last year I was in 39 events myself. OK. Yeah. But you're in you're in a pinball scene. I am in a pinball scene. But New York City, a lot of guys. I know what you're saying. Some areas it's not. Some areas it is possible to do 25. And most areas it's not like I don't play 20. I don't play 25. Of course not. No, and you still are in a league, too, in Chicago also. I am. Well, and, you know, there's things here, right? Like I play in a league once a month, but we only report annually. So that's one event. So there's a lot of variables here in terms of execution that we're leaving it flexible to tournament directors to decide how they want to implement it. I don't mind a dollar. Honestly, I don't even mind $25. Guess what? But everyone doesn't take a chance of – the purpose of you have servers that are holding this information. You're making trophies on your own. There's a lot of other things that are going on. I know money is not going towards that, but there's a lot of other things that people don't realize that somebody is paying for something. There is. And I'm happy to have called this an administrative fee and then donated all of it. But I prefer to be honest with what we plan on doing. And the plan with that money is similar to what we did at Raw Thrills with Big Buck Hunter, which was we pulled from the online tournaments into the world championship pot. And if you look at that right now, your videos that you do for that, the tournament and everything like that down there is incredible. Yeah, but it took a lot of work to get to that point. And for us, what I've seen is it's been so much easier to attract bigger and more lucrative sponsors the bigger you get. It's crazy like that. I mean, I had a conversation with DraftKings three years ago before fantasy football, daily fantasy stuff, hit big for potential sponsorship. And the amount of money that was in play for what we were doing with was like a joke to them. I know. And, you know, on the Buck Hunter side, I know we were able to land like Jagermeister last year. I know. Because we were able to talk about this big thing, and we're letting them be a part of this big thing. And unfortunately, for better or worse, big thing tends to, you know, rotate around the access of dollars at play. unfortunately for a lot of people that don't play pinball for that part, but it's one of those necessary evils that I see that can potentially take the sport to the next level to have more people interested in even knowing what it is. Forget about players, but we have people that watch the Buckhunter Championships now that aren't Buckhunter players. They're just entertained by this world they didn't know existed. And maybe they become a customer if they see our game at the bar, but But for them, it's more about just exposure.
    10:03
    I totally agree. I see it. I actually watched a little bit of it. I was amazed at these people. Their first, you know, how they play, you know, because I'm still an arcade guy a little bit too, but just the crowd mentality and the frenzy. Like, you know, we see it at Papa when you're behind the scenes, you know, and you're watching the guys, you know, you guys up in A. We're like, oh, you even heard it when Bowen lost that ball. The whole crowd went, oh. But your things for the Royal Thrills, oh my god, it's like a thousand times hotter. It's a thousand times wilder. Is this crazy as darts? It's definitely, the dart stuff is crazy. It trends towards that kind of, you would never anticipate that it would be that crazy, and it's sort of like over-the-top crazy. Because, I mean, it's a bar game, so it's sort of like, Like, we take Buckhunter exactly down the path, like, that it needs to be played, which is, like, fun, exciting. I mean, the competitors are drinking, so it sort of has that vibe going on. The sponsors are a lot of alcohol sponsors. So, you know, the idea of seeing people, you know, we had Moosehead Lager for a big sponsor a couple of years ago. And to see everyone dancing around to some music while competitors are playing in the background and everyone with their moose head loggers is something that they can then use going forward. I don't see a problem with it. I don't mind a dollar, but I don't know about Ron, and I know some higher players did not like it. I'm going to join the protest. I'm joining the protest. I'm being pulled.
    11:33
    Those are like, what are they talking about? There was a prominent player who I believe has to be pulled. That is true. And I would assume it was over this. Again, I don't know that for a fact, but the timing of it seems it has to be. I believe it is. Okay. And I'm not saying anything else. I'm not saying who it is. If you want to know who it is, it's very obvious. Yeah, that's very obvious, but I'm not going there. I see it as, you know, now the Super League is, in effect, dead, kind of, in the New York area. It's different here now. It's a little different than it was before. I mean, in that you will have, like, if I go to the Buffalo Open, I might actually get enough points to make the state finals, the actual state finals, not the upstate finals. And then maybe I can get some in the money pot. Who knows? That's the nice thing. But, I mean, most of the, I think most people are going to have issues with it or ones who live in parts of the state and maybe don't have a scene and other parts of the state that have a huge scene that have really no chance to get in there. The interesting dynamic I find is like, so that argument of these small scenes that can never compete with the big scenes to even qualify, so they're not interested. But meanwhile, these big scenes are all like, F this, I'm not participating in this. It costs us so much because our scene is so big. And if they go away, now suddenly the little scenes can actually have an impact in the state standings. So it's one of these weird, like, there's a push-pull dynamic here with this, where if everyone gives the middle finger to it, then I can tip of Illinois and run the only Illinois tournament. And suddenly my player group is, you know, being represented at nationals. Like, there's no telling how it's going to play out in the different dynamics of the different communities. Now, with Jeff, you talked about, I listened to the pinball profile. Hi, Jeff, pinball profile. Well, and I listened to the whole thing, and it was a great interview, and you guys talked about how you can actually make sure before the tournament starts that either add a dollar or you take a dollar off the top or you pull people, whoever is in, say, if you have 30 players and the top 20 say, I don't want to be in it, but the bottom 10 make it in, pay the dollar. And at the end of the tournament, whoever finishes the best player out of the whole tournament out of the 10 people will be number one in the IFPA eyes. Correct. I love it. Great. Correct. Guess what? We're trying to be as flexible as we can for the tournament organizers. Yes. And honestly, the only thing I'm going to have a little problem with, of course, is is it going to be PayPal? Is it going to be, I guess we're going to be doing it by PayPal, I'm assuming?
    14:14
    Yeah, we're going to, I mean, I deal with money, you know, for my real job. So I'm extremely comfortable in managing this from the accounting side. And I know some tournament directors that plan on fronting me. They're going to send a check for the first $100, and as they work down that balance, they'll let me know. And it could take a couple of months to work down that balance. But then they don't have to worry about it. They can send me one check, be fine for three months until I ping them again and say, hey, but at the rate that players are playing in your event, you won't have enough to cover your next one. Perfect idea. That's a great idea. Now, what kind of car are you driving now?
    14:53
    I am driving an Aston Martin. Excellent. And I'm looking to upgrade to a Tesla 3. Excellent. It fits with the bond.
    15:04
    It does. It's an Aston Martin BB5 with a lot of – so it doesn't have the oil slick and the smoke screen. No, wait. It's Goldeneye. I'm driving a BMW Z3. Oh, yes, you are. There you go. That was a golden eye. Yes.
    15:16
    I want to make sure we have this all set. that, you know, somebody has to see you driving in a nice new car and going, hey, that's where all the money's going. That's right. Guess what? I have no problem with that. I really don't. I think it's going to be better for the sport. So you called it a sport. It is a sport. It's going to be eventually a sport. All right. Eventually it's going to have to be. And as I told Jeff, there are certainly, you know, even if people are willing to sponsor that dollar, so the players are actually paying nothing, you know, there will be areas and communities with tournament directors that just believe that this is against the fabric of their being and they won't run their event as an endorsed event even if it's free because you know i'm sort of in that like protest land and and that's fine the most important thing for me is as long as they're getting together to still play pinball i don't particularly care if it's endorsed play or not you know for the for the purposes of growing the game you know globally as a thing that people do. You know, I've never looked at the IFPA as the carrier of that burden, so to speak, in terms of us being the only reason why people are out there playing. And Ron's been a really good example. I've known Ron forever, long before, you know, Whoppers existed. And Ron's always had a great perspective on like, he plays the same way and reasons why he's played, you know, in 2001 as he does today, because it really doesn't impact him in any way. And I feel like the balance between the responsibility that we now have for killing pinball if we do this is sort of unfair to the amount of credit we're given with growing the scene to where it's become today. Yeah, it's kind of like some people were asking me at Papa when I'm playing in B. It's like, why aren't you playing in A, Ron? Don't you want to know how you stack up? It's like, no. I know how I stack up. I mean, I watch the players that kick my ass on a regular basis, and they're, like, not qualifying in A. So what chance do I have? Probably very little. How much chance do I have of spending a ton of money? Very high. So why not just play in B? Well, you're not getting any points. Okay.
    17:35
    So what you're saying is, so I don't get points. So that's a good thing. I can keep my rank nice and high so I can keep playing in B. You know, and honestly, if I ever got ranked high enough somehow where I had to play in A like at Papa, I would skip A and just play in Classics.
    17:49
    There you go. That's what you always do. What you can do is suppress yourself off the website right before Papa starts. SP, maybe. Suppressed player.
    18:01
    Now, Ron skipped out of it this year because he didn't have to finish the semifinals. He finished ninth in B. One more spot, you would have had to move up. Yeah. Oh, is it top eight or top four? I think it's top eight when you go into B. I don't have to go into A the following year? Yeah. Oh, I thought it was just the top four. Yeah, I think it was just the top four. Me and Josh, I'll vote you. Hold on. I think it's top four. Yeah, because that's what I remember it.
    18:30
    My view is we'll see what happens. I always have the wait and see attitude. And if anyone didn't see. That's my view too. Yeah, what Josh said, if this totally blows up or just bombs big time, well, then try something else.
    18:46
    It's kind of a year-to-year thing. See what happens. We change shit all the time anyway, guys. We get yelled at every year for something. We might as well get yelled at for this this year and then for changing it back next year. Well, you had rule changes that weren't controversial, you see, for this year, so you had to do this. We didn't, I know. Because you weren't getting enough shit. You had to do this. That's right. Top four. You were right, guys. Of course I'm right. That's why we get paid the big bucks. Yeah, that's exactly why. So, Papa. Yes, let's talk about Papa. First, the software. What did you guys think of the software and the app? I love the app. I think the finals could have been shown better. The whole deal, just so listeners know what the hell they're talking about, the app. There was an app this year. So instead of using the usual, the NeverDrains site that they usually use or whatever, it's off the pop site, but it's the NeverDrains software, they had an app.
    19:46
    And with this app, and this was a dangerous app for someone like me, not only could you cue yourself, but you could pay for your entries with this app over and over and over again.
    19:59
    It's not even real money. You just start tapping on your phone and you have more entries. That's amazing. Yes. You can save your info, your payment info, which I didn't do because I'm paranoid about that. But you could. And just this, like, six more, six more, 12 more, whatever. Just keep buying. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. That was like, ooh, that freaked me out. That was too easy. It was too easy. And in B Division, anyway, the queues were excellent. I mean, they just never got too long as opposed to, say, Classics.
    20:31
    Do you play Classics, Ron? Did you enjoy one of those nine deep queues from time to time? Yeah, well, the only one that didn't matter was Stars.
    20:40
    Stars was eight or nine deep, and you're like, oh, I can't leave the area. I'm going to be up in a couple minutes. Average game time, it says zero minutes. It hasn't even made it a minute. It was that brutal. It was awesome. And people just kept playing it, not just because you're trying to get a score, because they love Stars. Stars has just earned quite the reputation. But, yeah, if I had one thing to improve with, it would definitely be because you would tap on finals. And, you know, if you're used to looking at, like, the table or the, you know, the brackets format that they used to show, it doesn't really look like that. And you have to tap, like, on the bottom. It'll have, like, round one, round two, round three, round four. And you tap on it, and it'll just have player names. And you've got to tap again to actually get the match results. And some of them weren't always getting updated. like i think classics three ended up just not being on there at all so it's it's weird in a situation when you're at papa and you're asking people who won because it's not there you know that kind of weird or you know when you like what what going on in the finals and well and you look over and you have to look at the what is that called It wasn like the glowy thing that they had all the scores on Yeah, the LED grease board or whatever. Yeah, instead of like what they used to use, the big paper with a marker, now they use that. But it was kind of the same deal. That kind of was like, I think it was done, the finals were done better as far as the scoring because you could just look and it was immediately updated. It was a little different, which was weird to see it go from that to kind of going backwards. But the app, everything else in the app, I loved it. What about you, Josh? What do you think of the app? I love not having to stand in line to buy tickets. Great. Being able to queue myself for a nine-deep Captain Fantastic line while eating dinner at a restaurant. Great. I wish you could and I understand why you can't but if you could queue yourself for the classics and the skill division at the same time that would have been just epic because you could wait in both lines at the same time knowing that your wait was much longer in classics and then after you played for me I can go play my A game and instead of waiting 45 minutes for my classics game I can wait 30 minutes for my A game and then finish my A game and head right over to classics and be second or third in line to play that class escape. So you're sort of killing two queue lines at the same time per minute. But I can understand why they did not put it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I even missed a queue because there was like three people in front of me, but it was the situation where they weren't there, so they called one out after another. I think they talked about, someone mentioned like when you got the text notification, which was also awesome when the queue line moved, like to know how many deep you were. So I get the message and then I'd be all paranoid of like, I know I was five left, but was I really? And it's like, oh, my God, I'm two left. Yeah. Right now. Oh, it just buzzed again because the person isn't there. Oh, my God. They're passing me. And I did. I did miss one Q&A that way when, you know, they call someone's name three times and it's like next. And then all of a sudden your phone starts buzzing with like that was either the shortest game of Iron Man I've ever seen in my life or someone missed the Q. Yeah. Yeah, I would advise, what I was thinking, and I thought the same thing, if they had like an option, like where you had like, how many games in a, like how many games, players ahead of you do you want to be notified? And have it like a little scroll down, like wheel, you just say one, two, three, four, however many ahead you want to be notified. So I want to know when one person's ahead of me, and then alert me. That's what I, I pretty much waited. You know, Zach and I went and hung out in a corner, watched movies on our tablets. And then when, when the on-deck text came, it was like, you know, one of us would just magically get up and walk away. Then go play your game, come back, sit, watch the movies, hang out, wait for the next text. I was thinking, you've been playing the tournaments too long. There were several times in Classics where I'm playing. And out of my peripheral vision, I can tell what player is next to me without seeing them. just by their mannerisms. You know, I see someone come up. I see, you know, shorter than me, wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt. He's wiping off the lockdown bar in a certain way. That's Zach. Yeah, Zach. Then I see, you know, like the water bottle. I say, oh, it's Josh. I mean, you know, Keith Ellman's next to me. I can tell it's him. I was actually having an interview with maybe it was the HBO guys who I talked to before. They showed up for Robert. But the idea of all the players having their sort of weird personalities of how they play and how they stand and how they interact with the game, and that the person who was interviewing me had no concept that that would be possible. I didn't understand how the body English and the mannerisms of players would be so vastly different when you're just standing up and pressing buttons, even if you're nudging the game. Why everyone wouldn't be standing the same way? And I made the comment that I'm pretty sure, you know, out of the top, you know, 25, 50 players, if you showed me a silhouette of that person playing, I could probably pick it out of a lineup because everyone is just so interesting. If I see someone, you know, lifting up their leg in a dog pissing position, I know it's probably Josh. The leg up position, that's the first thing I think of when I see it.
    26:04
    Or Lyman, Lyman with his cross legs. I hear the lineman, cross-leg, way low, or I hear the side of a machine being slapped severely. It's probably Andy Rosa. There's certain mannerisms you just see.
    26:16
    You mentioned HBO. HBO was there. HBO was there to film Robert's horrible finals. Good Lord, that beat picked the wrong year to bomb out. But it was – I don't know if they came back and caught any of Escher's stuff. They did. Hopefully they did. They did. They were in the corner during that. That's why I was thinking, well, they've still got a good story here if they want to stay. Yeah, it's supposed to air in May, so it's not one of those things where we all forget about it, and then three years from now it shows up. I think it's supposed to be pretty soon. All right, so it's not like King of Kong, because I was there when they filmed that. It was like two or three years later it actually came out. Like, oh, there I am. Fun spot. All right.
    26:55
    Yeah, and they had the dude, like when Robert was qualifying, actual qualifying entries, like playing Funhouse, the dude is in his space. He's like a foot away from his head as he's filming. No, there's a real, I know, I've talked with some of the players where like, if this is where the sport, you know, this is where I want to see the sport go, like the kind of peripheral vision crap that nobody likes to deal with will become a necessity. And I know for a lot of people, sort of the overhead camera was a reality that people didn't want to have to deal with. And then the anxiety of being under the camera for the first time and dealing with that. And I think that's obviously become more normal now over the years, but that was an issue when things first started and people not wanting to be on camera. But hopefully that's a problem that we can, you know, at least with this dollar fee, it's a problem we're hoping that in five to ten years, you know, 20 years, that we'll see. Yeah, golfers deal with it, believe it or not. As picky as they seem to be, they just, you can't be moving. Like this dude was like moving back and forth and, you know, while he was filming him. The golfers get antsy when you move. Yep. You know, so, but whatever, whatever. I really, I don't care. We used to, when I used to bowl, I would play games with my dad where I'd just, like, go on the lane next to him and move all over the place and try to distract him. And he was, you could not distract him. He didn't care.
    28:18
    So, Ron, you going to ask Josh the question that you talked about with you and me? How good he did? No. Well, how good I did? Come on. You got ninth and B. I was in rarefied air for me. I had, like, top ten scores in five of the six games and spent literally most of Saturday trying to get that sixth one on either countdown or heavy metal mountdown. It did not work out. Did you like the Herb style over Papa style, or what was your take on your Papa experience? For someone like me, who's probably my worst thing is consistency, it's great for me. I was able to play, and I'd like to thank Jim Belsito for giving me tips on Surf and Safari.
    29:09
    And I'd like to thank Bowen for giving me tips on Sopranos. I mean, I actually had to execute those tips, but I did. Because I had like 50 million in Sopranos.
    29:22
    And he said, what are you going for? Well, the only thing I know to go, I go for the multi-ball. I was like, no, go for envelopes. Just like shoot the ramps, go for envelopes, shoot the fish when it's lit.
    29:32
    So, okay, I did that in the first two balls. I did nothing in the third ball. Got into a groove, and I ended up like 110 million. I had a top ten score in Sopranos in the B division. It's like, wow, that worked. Well, I guess knowing the games really does help. Maybe I should pay attention more. Did the plunger remove for B division? Yes. It had the plunger removed. I don't think it had a ball saver either. And then when we had the B Division playoffs, they took a bunch of the games from A Division and brought them over. So no ball savers, no nothing. So it's okay.
    30:05
    So I ended up tied. And this is the funny part of the story. Both Bruce and my father are texting me saying, oh, you got eighth place, first round by. Meanwhile, I notice I'm tied with someone for eighth. And I'm thinking, like, there's probably going to be some kind of playoff occurring. Sure enough, Kevin Martin comes over and says, Ron Hallett. and then Andrew, I think, was the other guy's name. It's like, playoff. Metallica, go. So for the eighth spot, which I lost. But I won in the first round, so it was okay. I won a game, the third ball of big game, I had two Lazaruses in one ball, in the third ball, and that got me second place.
    30:45
    That was awesome. Nothing wrong with that? Nothing wrong with that. The first one was one of those Lazaruses that barely comes above the flipper, the kind that if you're really pissed and weren't paying attention like most people probably do you would notice it but i was on it i got that don't get out of there and yeah i was i you know i took a zero on ghostbusters so uh ghostbusters got revenge for all the shit i talk about it it's like no yeah it's like you were you were due for that yeah it was due it kicked my ass yep pissed me off that majorly pissed me off but we were in a situation where um the one guy he had to if he just didn't end up last, he was in, but he ended up draining out. He shoved the metallic. It was metallic. He shoved it like five feet forward and then ran over and just kicked the trash bin. You may have heard it in A-Division because it was loud, extremely loud. Everyone started like, what was that? What was that? Some people thought he like hit the machine or something, but people were like, that was uncalled for. Kind of was. That was kind of extreme. but then we ended up in a one game one game playoff with like three people for one spot playing transformers of all things fun transformers uh nothing the first two balls the third ball i finally started getting it going but drained out short of taking the guy and i drained out with a tilt trying to save it so went out as i should that's good that's how i want to go out and it wasn't like a pilot error trying to recover type tilt it was an actual trying to save the ball tilt So that was good. Good for you. Good for you. How did you do, Josh?
    32:21
    I did fine. I did. I did well. Like I finished fifth. I lost in a tiebreaker to the Wonder Kid to advance to the finals. So, you know, for me at this point in my life, it's disappointing. But, you know, if before the weekend started, you know, when I take fifth and all that comes with it, You know, probably, because it's much easier to not finish that high. But, you know, I was feeling good that day and playing well, so it would have been nice to take that into the finals and see what I could have done. But that did not happen, and that's why you play the game. Yeah, you're still young yet, though. So someone like me and Bruce, we're old.
    33:07
    I'm catching up to you guys fast. These kids, man, they age people fast. That's funny. The funny thing is you kept thinking, like, who's going to be the first new person to win? Because it's usually always the same group of players win, and you're thinking, like, is it going to be Raymond Davidson? Is it going to be Kevin Burrell? Is it going to be Josh Henderson? One of these guys is going to be the champion. And then a 13-year-old wins it. Like, okay, we were totally wrong. Obviously, in their 20s, they're too old. You have to be 13 to win.
    33:39
    I immediately got home and started my 5-year-old on pinball steroids. There you go. He only has eight years left. Pinball steroids. You're there.
    33:48
    So, Josh, we have a question for you. Yes. We have a question. Yes. We know your father is the man who saved pinball. And we want to know how many times behind the scenes, like when you're eating dinner at the table, family dinner, do you guys laugh about it and say, can they ask me any other question besides this during an interview?
    34:08
    Like does your father get sick of answering that? Does he start saying, well, yes, I completely saved pinball. It would have died if it wasn't for my game. I think over the years he's embraced more of the legend. And so at this point it's like, yes, I did kill an elephant on my way to the courthouse, or else I never would have made it. But I think an interesting development recently that people don't know about is that he's been digging through some audio tapes that he has from when he recorded his pinball book back in the 70s, and hoping to get that digitized someday and released to the world. And one of the tapes he found was labeled Court Hearing. Oh! And it was like the hair on the back of my and Zach's neck sort of stood up, like, are you effing serious? And he doesn't know what's on it. He's literally getting digitally pulled now. Is it a real thing?
    35:08
    Yeah. So it's like but but I don't know if it's like I asked him, I'm like, is it a chance that it's media coverage of when that happened? You know what I mean? Like it could have been a random media interview regarding the court hearing. And he's like and he's like, I don't know. I don't know. It could actually be the actual testimony, which would just be crazy. I'm going to punch the ball now and hit it in this lane. It's like, oh, my God. What's even funnier is I tell them I can't wait for it to be like, oh, my God, this is supposed to go so much better than this. I'm sorry, I'm not doing it well. Something to that effect would just be so much better, to just destroy the myth.
    35:47
    And they voted 6-0 to stop this grown man from crying. See, this is what I love. This is the good part.
    35:57
    Well, you know what, Bruce? You know you're old when your first spoken words were on a reel-to-reel. because we found a reel-to-reel my parents had where my voice is on at like probably less than a year old and it's on a reel-to-reel that's when i knew i was really old really old because people don't realize you know yes your father's but he's done so much more he worked a game plan he designed games you know he's done so many licenses for so many places you know he's done a lot more and of course it always goes back to he did he founded papa i mean come on he's the guy who's done a lot So, you know, that's why I actually have more respect for him in that way because he's done so much more. I always thought of him as the mediator, the mediator, the guy who fixes stuff when it's broken.
    36:45
    You know, Dutch pinball, Big Lebowski, Blake Wright and stuff like that. He's the man you bring in when it's like, can we make anything out of this situation? Let's get Roger in here. Let's see what he can do. Let's see if we can we can mend this, this Star Trek license here. See if we can get this. OK, we got it. OK, we can do everything we want. It's awesome. I know certainly, and we use him for licensing at Raw Thrills, but his ability, the relationships that he's formed, you know, allows him some gravitas to be able to, you know, have some big licenses trusted by companies that, like, have no business, right? Like, and we see it at Raw Thrills when he lands, you know, a license for one of our competitors because we don't have him full time. He's just a contractor for us. But it's like, you know, we're a pretty big company in the industry. And to lose a license to someone who is like just a startup is like, why would Universal give this property to some company that hasn't made anything before? And it's because my dad's really good at what he does with his clients. And he's been able to do the same thing in the pinball world. I know, you know, for Stern to be able to sort of pick any license they want over the years, you know, they've run into the Roger Roadblock where it's like, you know, between them and other companies fighting over the same license. You know, my dad's cashed in some brownie points and being able to leverage those relationships to get licenses, you know, whether it is for Highway or for Dutch or for Jersey Jack. It's impressive. It really is. And then, you know, going back to game plan where he's designed games or anything like that, you know, there's a lot more, you know, people don't realize. I don't know if they all realize it. Some people do, of course. The inventor of the multi-lane change. Multi-lane. He calls it multi-lane change TM because it is trademarked. Of course it is. It was Williams. They trademarked everything. Multi-ball trademark.
    38:36
    Here's a raw thrills question. Does Eugene Jarvis swear as much there as he does everywhere else I see him? Oh, my God. It's unbelievable. I love that guy. Actually, it's the, yeah.
    38:49
    And actually, like, my swearing has gotten better with my kids, you know, being born, but our work environment is not supportive of a non-swearing environment. It's crazy. Because if just our listeners out there, and there's a pinball connection. He did the software for Firepower and F-14 Top Cat. Just look up Eugene Jarvis. The guy is hilarious. Yes, great. and and no filter it's it's always best when he has yeah when he had what i remember i went up to midwest gaming classic and he had something like kid asked him a question about like defender or something and he's like dropping f-bombs at his answer and i'm just sitting there with my head down like oh my god eugene didn't know the room man and he just does not care it's so just freeing it's unbelievable to repeat a story he was at the um gary stern roast i guess you would call it that they had at Expo, whatever the hell that place was. And basically the first thing he said is, he said, Gary, $15,000 for a pinball machine? Are you fucking kidding?
    39:55
    Which I thought was hilarious. Like, wow, okay, that's Eugene Jarvis for you. That is. Alright. Game you like, game you like. Yes. Because we like our guests to participate in our normal segments. Yes, let's do your shtick. Oh, do your shtick. Nicky. Remember, game you like, game you hate, and it can't be a game you own, and you have to be able to play it. Which how many games do you own? What do you own right now? Let's go for that real fast. I own 24 games, maybe. Nice. In a 600-square-foot house, I believe you said. Yeah. How the hell does that work? I'm in the middle of a Bruce move, so all my games are folded up in the garage right now. Oh, boy. What do I have to picture where they were? I have an 8-Ball Deluxe, a Monaco, an Air Aces, a Countdown, a Hoops, a Sharpshooter Cyclops Barracora. I have the Roger Trilogy.
    40:52
    Dracula. Metallica World Cup Soccer. What else? Jackbot, Fishtails, Demoman. Whirlwind. Yeah, Whirlwind Funhouse. I need to go left to right in my mind, Ron, or else I'll lose where I am. There you go.
    41:11
    Whirlwind, Funhouse, Attack, Tron, ACDC Premium, Walking Dead Premium. I think I said Metallica Premium, but okay. That's it. I think that's it. And a Captain Fantastic, which never made it in the basement. I got it recently, and it's just in the garage.
    41:30
    It sounds like he's got a Hoops. I love Hoops. I got a Hoops. It's fantastic. Don't say you love Hoops, Bruce. you hate all Gottliebs. No, I like because it's a single-level game. No, but you're going against – yeah, but you also said you hate the ones with the newer flippers, which that has. It does have the newer flippers, but the shots are fun, and the rules are okay. Okay. And I own a Vegas that's at my older brother's house. Oh, God. There it is. Wow. There's a reason why it's at my older brother's house. Well, here you go. At Papa, I played in a row Vegas just to see how many times I could loop it and get the multiplier and try to see how many times I can loop the shot. And then I played Hoops, because I wanted to play a good game. And then I went over and played Road Kings.
    42:12
    The sad thing about Vegas is that it's actually a really fun game if you focus on the Vegas letters and then being able to get to the cashier target wizard mode.
    42:25
    There's a one-way gate on the top of the left loop that players orbit over and over again. and I want to switch that one-way gate so it goes the other way. So if you shoot the left orbit, it just comes back down at you.
    42:39
    And see what that does for the dynamic of the gameplay. It's on the to-do list at some point when I get that game back. There you go. I want to make that game playable so bad because it is fun if you actually play the way that the game is supposed to make you play rather than exploiting it. Do you find being into tournaments that it hurts your enjoyment of certain games because of that? I can't play this any other way. Can I do... So for the game I hate, I own it. But it's a really... I need to use this game because it was my favorite game for all of my childhood.
    43:17
    And I grew up with the game in my bedroom and would sell my dad's games before selling this game when I was younger I loved it that much And that game is Twilight Zone It was like the best game ever And since becoming a tournament player no game has dropped further down in my list to like almost a disdain for the game because of how one-dimensional it is for tournament play. That it's like the lost opportunity. Like most games, if there isn't a lot of great stuff, then the lost opportunity doesn't mean anything. It's like, oh, well, the game's kind of one-dimensional, but don't worry, the other dimensions aren't that good. For Twilight Zone, it's like the combination of it's really one-dimensional for tournament play, and all this other stuff on the game is so epically awesome, but you ignore it. Like, it just hurts my childhood soul so bad. Wow. Did we just have Josh Sharp on the show say he hates Twilight Zone? I love it. That's going to be a new quote. Epic moment. That's going to be a new quote. I do. But it's like it's not even just that I hate it. Yes. It's like it's almost like finding out your kid stole something from the grocery store. It's like a level of disappointment more than hate because you've built up your kid that like, oh, I've raised such a good kid or whatever. Then you find out he does something stupid. And it's like, oh, my God. Do I blame myself? Do I blame myself, guys, for hating Twilight Zone? maybe I blame myself I don't know what to do my smile is just going like bigger and bigger every second it was on such a personal pedestal for me and with you know ramp ramp lock multiball and powerball mania all day it's just like mind numbing now and then with and powerball mania like if the goal was for powerball mania to play with the powerball for longer and then build up that if there was risk reward associated with not shoving the powerball back out of the play field as quickly as possible. And obviously that kind of pinball didn't exist back then. It's kind of just the risk-reward of pinball has sort of been the new hotness the last three or four years. And I think there's something that could have been really special with, instead of having the powerball jackpot at $50 million every time, what if it was $5 million if you cashed the ball in right away, but for every spot target you hit, you raised that up. And the longer you were willing to risk the Powerball in play before you cashed in, you could raise your Powerball jackpot to $400 million if you wanted. But there's something there that would have brought the game back into some sort of like not just shove the Powerball away and go for Powerball jackpots. Anyway, that's the game I hate, and I hate to say it. Yes, all right. Because it would have been the game I loved the most in the world. For a very long period of my life. Enough, Bruce. I have a new number one player ever. Stop. And I broke the rule because I own the game. But I feel like I had to do that. No, hate you can. Hate you can. Yeah, hate you can. Oh, okay. Like you can't, though. So you can't say Walking Dead.
    46:35
    Ah, that's it. Yeah. Let's see. A game I like that I don't own. I own all the games I like. I'm trying to think if there's an appreciation for something that... I mean, for the longest time... Oh, and I own... I mean, I own a medieval madness. I'd say for, like, the longest time, like, the... That... Ah, you know what? Monster Bash. I don't own a Monster Bash. I think Monster Bash, if set up appropriately, is, like... besides the exploit with the spinner for playing Mosh all day and spinner points, the balance in terms of accessibility to casual players, entertainment, and a wizard mode that's achievable in tournament play when the game is set up hard, that game pushes right to that limit of Monsters of Rock is still available on a Papa A-Bank hard set Monster Bash. And I think once you get beyond that, like Attack from Mars, for example, was in the A-Bank at Papa, and nobody went for Rule the Universe, right? Like nobody plays the game that way for tournament play. And to me, that's where a lot of games fall apart for me in terms of it just being sad. Like I want games where I'm not sacrificing the ability to reach the end because it's just too deep and too hard to make it on three balls. Unless you're Keith Elwin.
    48:14
    Unless you're Keith Elwin. That's what he did again. To me, Monster Bash is like the pinnacle of it is doable on three balls, no extras, you know, no ball save, tight tilt. It's still there. It's like it's really far out there, and you need the perfect game to sort of do it, but it's there. Cool. All right. Nice. I have mine. Mine's going to be a little different. Game I like and game I hate. Okay. First game I hate. And I played a ton of it. Heavy Metal Meltdown.
    48:44
    Because it was just ramp, ramp, ramp all day long. That's all there was. But the sounds, Ron. Okay, well, the game I like. Heavy Metal Meltdown.
    48:56
    Because it's so cheesy and corny, but the sounds are so awesome. When you hit the side buttons, heavy, heavy, metal, metal, heavy, heavy, metal, metal. And the light show is quite impressive because it's one of those, Bruce always has to tell me. What are they called again? Bally 60803s that have like 30 zillion lights on them. Yeah, I just found myself actually enjoying that game, even though it was just this one-shot wonder, and I just enjoyed playing that. So that's mine. How about you, Bruce? Jackpot, I like. Love it. Been playing a lot more of it lately. It's at one of our locations in town. I've really been enjoying it.
    49:35
    Different ways to get some points. I like it. Uh, game I hate? You posted the picture this weekend. Popped right in my head. Road Kings. Oh my god, I hate that freaking game. Oh, I like Road Kings. Oh well. God. Bad System 11. There's not many. Bad System 11. Really? I grew, we used it in Pinmasters and Nationals, and I sort of grew a little minor appreciation for it over the weekend. Yeah, I mean, it's got the locks, the relock, the shot, the way it like fires the ball around and the whole, I liked it. I was digging it. Okay, we've only got Josh for a couple more minutes Let's go now to your last topic Alright And there's a similar list on Papa But I figure, since we have you on Yeah Top five games that seem like they would be good in tournaments But aren't So in other words, something like Black Knight 2000 Everyone knows that's not going to be good in a tournament Because it's just boring and will last forever But what games seem like they would be good But actually aren't so like theater magic and why not left loop all day yep no good gophers more software bugs than you guys have bond movies to choose from yes what else what else getaway is on our banned list now what you know why is that it's some kind of What bug is that?
    50:59
    So there depends what software revision, Rob. The best software revision, there's issues with Secret Mania and the ball lock counter in terms of it just loses track of how many balls you've locked. I don't even know if it's player to player, but all of a sudden, instead of getting a super jackpot, you're starting Red Line Mania because the game doesn't know anything. It just runs into situations I call weird situations that cause tournament directors high anxiety when those situations present themselves. So Theater of Magic doesn't fall on that list in terms of it can be used. It's just a slog. But No Good Gophers is on our do not use list. Whodunit now? Whodunit is on our do not use list. I like Whodunit too. I like Whodunit. I do too. And after, yeah, after Kaylee ripped that off at Pinberg, it was like, oh, my God, quick, add it to the blacklist. Not only ripped it off, but within a week had somebody who was able to replicate it because it wasn't quite entirely sure what caused it. And it's like, I figured it out here. I'll post it on YouTube. Here's how to do it. So that, you know, Gophers Getaway, Terminator 2, we don't use for the same weird, you know, ball locking super jackpot bug that I ran into as a player. Yes, where it didn't give you the super jackpot when you hit it. Right. But it gave me whatever, however many more targets to multiball in multiball. Yeah.
    52:30
    Yep. And then that one also, I haven't seen it in a while, but I used to run. I don't know, did you play in the old pin brawls at Expo back in the day, Ron, that I ran when I was a youngster? Youngster. I did too. I both did. We actually won one of the divisions one year. Good. So, like, one year I ran on Terminator 2 with Lyman playing where it said 255 hits to multiball. and was like, oh my god, what just happened? And then Lyman explained the bug to me, and it was like, all right, well, that game's done.
    53:03
    So that's probably my, I think that's five games. That's five or more. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there's a list of games that just can't be trusted. And I mean, what's sad is most of the time for low-level competition, it's probably fine, but you just open yourself up as a tournament director to, do you want to make a ruling in that situation? No. And, you know, more often than not, it's like, no, thanks. I would prefer not to.
    53:28
    I have one quick story. This is quick. Go ahead. This is quick. Just my appreciation of Dracula is actually because of Josh Sharp. Oh. Inadvertently. Because in all our years, I've only played you once, single. And then one of the expo brawls where partners, me and my father, played you and Zach. Okay. So I really only played you twice. and this was at the second pin mania the first one that was in the garage the one that you won so you remember this yes so i'm playing you in dracula and this is i'm a young tournament buck at this point you know i've only been playing tournaments maybe a year or two and i really don't know any games at all so i'm asking people what what do i do in dracula and the guy tries to explain to me the whole like multi multi ball thing which if you haven't played dracula there's Three different multi-balls. The more you get running at once, the more points you get in its simplest form. And I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, I got it. Yeah, okay. So I'm up first, and I get missed.
    54:31
    And I'm hitting missed. I'm getting jackpots left and right, 10 million, 10 million, 10 million, 10 million. And I'm there like, I'm playing Josh Sharp. And I'm kicking his ass. I'm having a good ball here, and I have this long ball, and I'm feeling good about myself. And then Josh plays, and he gets missed and coughing going. So he's getting $20 million, $20 million, $20 million, $20 million. I'm like, what? What's going on? Why is he getting $20 million? I only got $10 million. Software bug. And he played half as long as I did, and he kicked my ass. That pissed me off. So, like, literally after that, I just started playing the shit out of Dracula. And really, that's how my love of the game started. From that one incident, having to learn, like, how did he do that? I need to find out how to do that. that game is like one of the best examples of of you know maximizing efficiency of a game that doesn't have a whole lot of rules but man is it a great game in terms of just it's like cars passing each other through the night like a lot of the times you just can't line things up and then eventually you do and it's like the game opens itself up to you and it's just an amazing experience When my father's over, he always finishes with Dracula. I don't know why. He likes to be frustrated, I guess. But those rules he understands. He gets that. He gets the three multiball things. And he tries it, and he gets so pissed, but he always finishes with it. There you go. So I'd like to thank Josh for joining us on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're always welcome to come on, too. Since you're now, you know, that other guy doesn't get on those podcasts enough, you're more than welcome to come on with us. I need that. I need to throw Zach in front of some of this fire. He needs to get on the podcast. Yeah, Zach is never on any podcast. What's up with that? He's just too busy winning, guys. That's plenty of time to talk because I'm not playing in finals. Winning. Next time we'll get to get him on, definitely. We'd love to have both you guys on. At least, guess what? You beat him. You beat him this weekend. Yes, you did. I did. I'll take it. Did you give him any shit at all or no? Are you past that point? No. I've resigned to the fact that he's better than I am, which as the older brother, it's really tough for me to put that out there. It's the Williams sister syndrome. It is. That's not to say I can't beat him on any given day. That's true. I beat him last weekend, but he's taken his game to some level that I've not gotten to, and it's impressive. What would you say he's better than you? What particular skill? accuracy for sure that's by far my worst uh attribute but uh i think his fearlessness in terms of you know what here i'll allow my wife to be mad at me we'll take an extra three minutes but at uh at expo there was uh a metallica uh i had ball on the flipper during during one of my playoff games and crank it up was lit and my sparky multiball was also lit my second sparky at the same time and so i cradled it for a minute and thought about like what i wanted to do do you start crank it up and then if you drain your games over and you never get to you know the sparky or do you cash out the sparky and then do you crank it up after so i i chose to play sparky first and take those points for sure and then i played crank it up after and i was sitting with elwyn and zach after that game was over and and zach had made a comment because he knew i paused like longer than normal to sort of make that decision and so i asked those guys i'm like you know what would you think i made the right play or what would you have done and and this is the difference between me and zach and keith zach and keith were both like well you do crank it up first man because when you get out of that, you can use that Sparky to reach your second crank it up. And I'm like, oh my, second crank it up? Are you guys kidding me? Like, that was so much beyond where my mindset was in terms of, like, that game being played. But for those guys, it was like, you know, that crank it up wasn't necessarily the end of the game for them. They knew that they were going to plow through that and keep going.
    58:43
    Yikes. Zoinks. Yeah, zoinks. All right, well, thank you, Mr. Sharp. We don't want to keep you any longer. We apologize to the wife. We're sorry. No worries. No problem at all, guys. Please welcome on here. Thank you. Cool. Good luck. Have a good night. Good night. Good night, Michelle.
    59:05
    That was kick-ass. Yeah? Yeah. He's still on. Well, now I'm actually walking into a grocery store. So I didn't want to do that while there was recording. We're still recording. Oh, come on, guys. We're continuing on. Oh, yeah. We're going to go on. All right, all right. We'll drop you right here if I hit the right button. Here we go. I can drop out. All right, drop out. You guys can keep going. All right, later. Later. Yep.
    59:33
    Oh, we're keeping that in there, too. All right, we're keeping that in, yes. And that was Josh Sharp on the podcast this week. But wait, it's not done. Not done. We still got a whole other show. We got a whole other show. No, no, we're not going to go that long. No, we're not. We got news. We'll do news and we'll do mail because we don't want to get too far behind on our viewer mail. The mail ball bag is full. Yes, yes. I had listeners asking me about the slam mail ball bag.
    60:03
    They're like the slam bag mill, but whatever Bruce calls it. The mail ball bag. Mail ball bag. Slam mail ball bag. The slam mail ball bag. Okay. So, all right. First, news. News. Not much, but a couple things. News. Total Annihilation is going to be built by Spooky Pinball. Really? When did this come out? They announced it yesterday. Oh, excellent. So I think I might be buying a Spooky.
    60:32
    Really? You liked it that much? I actually liked it. I didn't even play it, and I liked it that much. What does that tell you? All right. That was announced. I don't know when, but they're going to know more later on. But I think that's a great thing for Pinball and a great thing for a basic a game that plays great with all the sounds and everything in the light show, you can make it really, really done well. So that was the good news. Of course, we had three under-18 winners at Papa. We had an 8-year-old win, D.
    61:07
    We had a 16-year-old win, B. And Escher, 13-year-old, won A. All right, so he was like 16. I knew he looked young, but he was in the group that continued on that I was in. So he, yeah. Whoever is in my group always wins. Last time I got knocked out, it'd be the guy who actually knocked me out in a playoff one. So if you're in my group, you're probably going to win it all. Just remember that. One more bit of news. Well, first, I have to thank Jeff Teolis from Pinball Profile for having you on. Yes, he had me on. And you guys talked half about me, which is kind of a little creepy. Yep. Yes, we did. Hey, he brought it up. But I guarantee I'm going to be getting that Stargazer from you. Oh, okay. One more tidbit of information Jeff told me today, which if you don't subscribe to Pinball Profile, definitely please subscribe. It's a really good show. I listened to it all. He now has 35 episodes.
    62:06
    It is George Sakai's birthday next week. Oh, my. I'm 80 years old. Yes. Set phasers to study. That's studying I am. Also in news, in case anyone wanted to know, Mr. Steve Bouton, fun with bonus, finished one spot ahead of Tim Sexton. Oh, nice. Of Tim Balls. Now, Steve really was behind the eight ball with coming in late, you know. So what you're saying is, like, even so much less time to qualify, he still finished ahead of Tim? Are you insulting Tim? No, no. I'm saying that he usually qualifies in the top 24. I don't think he's missed one in a while. Uh, yeah. I think he's been used. Well, it hurts. Hopefully, it all depends on the timing. No, you've got to work. You've got to make money. So, unfortunately, you've got to do what you've got to do sometimes.
    63:03
    So, I'm going scratching off the stuff. What stuff are you scratching off? Scratch and sniff? Scratch and sniff. Okay. Repairs. Any repairs this week? No, I was at Papa. Yeah, you bastard. Oh, yeah, well, I did. I visited Bruce's home. I didn't really get to see Bruce. No, he did not. I don't know why the Papa. Because, you know, Bruce said he was going to be back at 10, which I figured meant 11. And it was 11.15, so I was close. So I went downstairs, and just to paint you the picture, folks, usually when I go down to Bruce's basement, I have my sneakers on. But Bruce has all new carpeting. So when I came in, it was raining because the weather sucked Thursday. So I took my sneakers off. So when I went downstairs, I had socks on, which I usually don't have. Which is a concrete cold floor. Yep. So I got to experience the wonders of non-grounded games. I got to experience the tingle. You have four. Actually, I have five. Okay. You just must have brought another one in because I'll give you a pass for two of them. I go to play big game, and I'm holding the lockdown bar, and it's like, does this have a shaker motor on it? It feels like it's shaking. And I realize, like, no, Ron, you're getting a shock. So that was one. Then you had eight ball champ. Yep, two. Which you just got in, so I was like, okay. But then I was horrified as I went over to whitewater. Whitewater, which you've had forever. And it's not grounded. Whitewater I've had for a long time, yeah. Yes, and even more horrified when I played Centaur, the game that you practically built from scratch. And it's not grounded.
    64:43
    What are you doing, Bruce? Are you trying to kill me? No, hold on. You're not going to die from it, so that's the first thing.
    64:49
    I could have a pacemaker. Yeah, okay, then you're screwed. Second thing is, today I bought five ends so I can put a ground on it just for you. Ah, thank you, Bruce. Thank you. Next time Ron comes over, he will get shot. Which will probably be coming over for Buffalo. Probably. Guarantee that And I will say thank you for replacing all the LEDs in 8 Champ Oh God It looks so much better Literally I could not play it I attempted to play it and I know people are going to say oh come on it wasn that bad It wasn't even the flickering LEDs, which they were flickering badly. Whoever had it previously had put super white, bright LEDs in the slingshots, and they literally were shining right in my face. Like when the ball would come down to the flipper area, I'd lose it. I could not see the ball. It's like, oh, my God, how can you play this? You can't. And that's why I got so frustrated with it. So that's why. And we were talking about how you like to talk about how many lights are on a 6803 system. How many? Guess how many LED bulbs I took out of that thing. This is not including GI. 115.
    65:59
    130. That was close. You were. Guess how many you already have out of. Now, I'm also doing the nine ball I've had for eight or nine months, and it's just flickering. It's just bothering me, too, so I'm finally doing that at the same time. I'm up to 40 bulbs, and I'm almost done. But, yeah, we put pictures up for the eight ball champ, and now that is the LED, so you'll be able to enjoy that. Hopefully, you can take it home to me next time so we can, you know. Yep. Put some pictures up from Papa on the Slam Tilt page. Yes, you did. A lot of people like my picture of a box for dialed in. Yes. But the dialed in that was there came in, and I said, like, hopefully one day I'll be seeing this box at my house.
    66:40
    I'm also still the karate champ, Bruce. Yes, you are, but against me? Yeah, against you, I lose. But, you know, exploiting the game, I did good. Ready for some ball bag? I'm all done with repair. Well, I still have to rebuild Stars flippers this week, and I have the kit that just came in. And Bruce was lucky. Bruce was lucky with the Stars. that actually came with the right chime unit in it. It actually plays not bad for what I paid for. Yep, and your backless is better than mine. But just about every star's backless I've seen is better than mine, I'm starting to realize.
    67:13
    Oh, well. Well, luckily, I think our check cashed today. Hint, hint, wink, wink. Yeah, that's the story for the way in the future. The slam tilt game. Before we get to the mail ball pack, Jesus, the buy ball pack. Before we get to that, I'm thinking, like, when we go to shows together, if we get high scores, we should put STP in. STP? Stone Temple Pilots? For Stone Temple Pilots. No, for Slam Tilt Podcast. Okay, we can do that. Because I know some people do that, like, in different leagues or some organizations they're part of. They'll put that in.
    67:53
    We should start doing that. It's like, woo, the Slam Tilt guys, we're here. Zach came over this week also and helped me. I need something over tomorrow to help me out to finish up because we have a Buffalo Pinball League night at my house this weekend. And then next weekend, we have a busy weekend of events. Thursday is the Syracuse Pinheads. That's at the normal location every Thursday. Friday is Central New York Pinball League night number three. And that's at Wizard's Arcade, Wizard's Pinball out in Syracuse. And then Saturday is Western New York finals. Western New York league finals. So we're doing the upcoming events already. You're getting your upcoming events. No, I'm just getting them out of the way. So just talking about them. Out of order. You're screwing up the format.
    68:42
    Well, this is new. Yeah, you're right. Oh, and speaking of, you have all these events. There's an actual pinball league starting in Albany. I know. I was going to bring that up. That was going to be next. Multiple people brought it up to me. Howard, when I was at Papa, he brought it up. Then, actually, Zach must have talked to the guy who was running the league because he actually sent me a PM on Pinside.
    69:07
    That's cool. And then one of the emails we got from our listeners is reminding, it's the same thing, that there's a league in Albany. And I'll be playing in it. We'll see how it goes. Every week. This is exciting. Every week. This is exciting. Is your dad with you?
    69:22
    I'll have to talk to him, see if he cares. I think it should. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Why get them back in a competitive pinball? Eh. Well, it's a league. It's more, you know. Don't think of it as competitive. Think of it more of it's like. Competitive pinball. Not everything is competitive. Okay. Whatever. Let's go to the slam tilt ball bag. I think the pinball is an apartment is the first new one. Nope. Actually, it's not. The Jersey accent one is the first one. Oh, yes. Yes. I had a southern Jersey, not a northern Jersey accent. Guess his parents dropped them on his head. Yes, they did. And that was from David.
    69:58
    Did you pick up a game for Scott? Yes, I picked up a roach. Not my words. Oh, yeah, you know, Timmy was going to help me.
    70:10
    Thanks, Tim. After the finals, he left. Thanks, Tim. Yeah, thanks, Tim. Who did help you? Mark Steinman. Nice. The other guy who runs the building. And when we're putting it in my car, he's looking at it. It's like, wow, this thing's a piece of shit.
    70:26
    So he agreed with Scott. It's a target pull, which is funny because that was one of the games in B Division qualifying that I had the third or fourth highest score on. So I love target pull. You're surprised you're not keeping it? No, no, no. He can have it. So would you like to take the next one? Sure. Is this the pinball as an apartment? Yes, it is. Okay, this is from Derek. Hi, guys. Long-time listener, and I have a question I think many pinball collectors face, especially the new younger generation. Damn hippies. The generation. Damn hippies. We are holo-hopes and rock and roll music. The generation who can't afford a house, struggling with college debt, and would rather invest in a pinball machine.
    71:12
    They wonder why the pinball industry is hurting. Ha-ha. I am currently living in a one-bedroom apartment. It was formerly an old folks retirement community, old folks home, with many houses converted into apartments. Each house holds four units. I intentionally went for a ground floor unit in courtesy of the neighbor above me. I've talked to the neighbor above me and he's completely fine with it, having a pinball machine, so as long as I don't play it or have crazy parties at like 11 p.m. Nice older fellow who knows at least what a pinball machine is.
    71:41
    Okay, two other units separated by hallways so they really couldn't hear anything. I plan on getting the pin sound mod so I can use headphones. I was told by a friend that he had some games in an apartment once, and people never knew it, mainly because the sound really doesn't travel through the ceilings. Bullshit.
    71:57
    However, another important question is, if it's even smart to put a game in as it may not even fit in the doorway, it's a 600 square foot unit as well. However, there is a dining room corner, and that is where I could put at least three games. I've done measurements. That's a good thing. And a modern stern can fit in the doorway, but just barely. Wide bodies are obviously not even considered. I wonder why. What's the difference? They can be considered. Yeah, they can be considered. Just to let you know, a wide body, at least, like the head for a Star Trek Next Generation is the same as the head size for a getaway. Yep. So that's how you're going to be putting it through the door. So if you can fit a getaway through there, you'll be able to fit a Star Trek through there, a doorway. I put a queen-size bed in with great effort, a three-seat leather couch. It could probably seat four. Flooring is bamboo, if that makes a difference. but obviously the game will sit on rubber feet. Is this even feasible without getting evicted?
    72:52
    What do you think, Bruce? Well, first, sound does carry through, but luckily we actually have tournaments at my house sometimes until like 11 or 12 o'clock, and my wife has got 8 o'clock going, screw this, go into bed, and she'll fall asleep. And I have some insulation above, but she'll hear for a little bit, and then she'll fall asleep. What you need to find out is what your neighbor likes to drink. and then when you're going to have a party or you're going to play a lot of pinball, you go up to his house beforehand, you say, here's your six-pack, old-timer, have a good one and rock away, you know, and then you can have a good old time. But don't have it late either because then you don't want to see people getting mad or anything like that. But sound does travel. It's actually not the audio sound that really is the most annoying thing. It actually is the mechanical sound that actually travels more. So do one and see how it goes. and this this isn't um male but this was a comment from our friend scott who made a correction in flash gordon the music they use for the hawk men during the battle scene the vaulting steam i believe it's called it's actually from the the game vanguard i get i gave the wrong game but that is correct that's it's and actually that came first before vanguard vanguard oh yeah Vanguard ripped it off from the movie. I actually had one of our listeners comment to me, making fun of me, making fun of Surf and Safari. Surf and Safari is cool. No, it's not. Yes, it is. But I was wrong. They did fix the bug exploit for the random award. Yep, you're wrong. It played good. I liked it.
    74:32
    Steve Daniels, I was wrong, so at least you know now. I will say I'm wrong when I'm wrong. And he actually said he won the Northeast Pinball League A Division. So very nice job, Steve. Big thumbs up. Thumbs up. Woo-hoo! Mail here from non-Australia Ryan. He was asking us previously about what shows we recommended. And we said, like, it depends on what you're looking for. Well, he says what he's looking for is a show to play pinball and bring friends with to play. Try to get them to buy pins later so I can play them at their house. so I would say yeah like probably Allentown or Texas or something like that or probably but don't get your own over close he said he's in the Midwest so probably not even a lot of shows it's just the expo expo and Midwest gaming class Kalamazoo and Kalamazoo Kalamazoo is smaller but you could do Kalamazoo there you go so that's that one a lot of email because we were kind of Slacking Yeah, slacking We got G'day, lads YNC G'day, lads Love me Braves, I love ya But your OC accent sucks Leave it to Ron Got that? Okay Ron 1, Bruce 0 With Star Wars rumored But he didn't say he loves you Yes, he does No, he didn't say that Oh, that's right He says he loves you But your OC accent says so He doesn't love me But my accent's better Okay. With Star Wars rumored to be possibly announced in two weeks at a Star Wars convention, which Stern actually pulled themselves, at least the announcement from that. They pulled the announcement. But that doesn't necessarily mean they won't be there. And for those who say, like, what are we talking about? Again, enterprising pinheads, not enterprising, that's not the right word, inquiring pinheads. They looked at a Star Wars convention, noticed that Stern was on the guest list. I believe once that got out, Stern had themselves removed from the guest list, but the rumors being that they will be unveiling the Star Wars pin there. No, they'll be unveiling something of it, like pictures maybe or video. So he's asked us, what do we hope for in a new Steve Ritchie Star Wars game? Hopefully, this is what I'm hoping for.
    76:48
    Lime and sheets with him. That's it. Yeah, probably not going to happen. What I'm hoping for is a cool hand-drawn art, usual Steve Ritchie flow, and if they could get Mark Hamill to do all the voiceovers to be like the narrator of the game. Since he does tons of voices anyway, and he seems to be pretty approachable. Yes, he does a lot of voices. Because you know you're not going to get Harrison Ford to do anything. He's dead, so who cares? Harrison Ford isn't dead. No, he's dead in the movie, so who cares? Jesus Christ. He's not dead in this one. It's the original trilogy. Idiot. But that's what I'm hoping for, for the game.
    77:27
    Oh, someone sent a link to, yeah, this was from Jim. He sent us an email with a link. This was an April Fool's, I believe it was an April Fool's joke originally. And Bowen Cairns used to send this out on RGP days every April Fool's, which was a realistic-looking post where he said he went to and played a prototype Beavis and Butthead pinball machine. and he even gives like the rules for it and yeah he makes it sound like it really exists and every year some people would believe it oh yes it was yeah we can only hope i would love a beef some butthead for that that you talk about dream themes that's it right there that is my dream theme i had one oh what was your family guy family guy oh i thought it was elo no because i I don't know what happened. I think that's it. I had an email from Tim telling me that Albany has a pinball league starting up. Yep. So, oh, God, what does Scott say now? Scott was making fun of me because Papa does not have blackjack ROMs because Bruce sold his blackjack, which I tried to buy another one, and I couldn't. I didn't get it.
    78:50
    And that he has new Barracora in test that does play for multipliers in all game ROMs instead of both OS ROMs, which... And he said, good luck with that Ship B lineup in Papa Ron, and with Pump and Dump, that changes everything with people with deep pockets.
    79:06
    No, I didn't really have to play that much to qualify. How much did you spend? I'd have to look at my credit card.
    79:14
    But I was qualified with a limited number, And most of the entries were trying to play either Countdown or Heavy Metal Meltdown to get that sixth score up. And that's where I end up blowing. Oh, and Classics. Yeah, I did spend a shitload on Classics. But it's Classics. What do you want? I know. So next week's guest. We're going to have another guest next week. Yes, and it's the pinball princess herself. Herself. That's what her email says. Yep. And I'm very looking forward to it. We're looking forward to it.
    79:48
    I guess I'm not an OCPC. No, you're not. I kind of am. No, you're not. Come on, by proxy I should be. I go to enough of their events. The Orange County Pinball, what is this East End? You go to every one of my tournaments, too, so you should be in Western New York. Yeah, the Orange County Pinball Club member will be joining us. But we'll just tantalize you. We'll just leave that there. We're not going to go any further there. The first lady. So, Ron, you better be on your best behavior. No, you better be on your best behavior. Me? I'm fine. Oh, yeah, you're fine. Yes. No, no, no. They expect it from me. Oh, God. They don't expect it from you. And then when you come up with stuff, it just ruins the whole show. Ruins the whole show. Yes, the whole show. Ruined. Ruined. One more thing I wanted to comment about.
    80:32
    I've noticed that people have not made reviews of us lately on iTunes. Please, we can always use a couple more reviews. Hey, if they're bad, I don't give a shit. They're good. I just want some more reviews. We haven't had one since December. and the one I did read was very funny we hate everything you don't hate everything, I hate everything yeah, Bruce hates everything except for early ballies I got to play Alien Star a lot, it was awesome I know, Ron wants an Alien Star guys 2 million on Alien Star another top 10 in the qualifying, that was awesome and that was with no real multi-ball because every time you locked the ball for multi-ball when you got it, the ball would immediately drain the left out lane the way it would kick out which is kind of bullshit So I just went alley past spinner, alley past spinner. That's all I did. I managed to get two million. Did you actually see my text today?
    81:24
    All my text? Yes, I saw your text. Okay. We'll talk about that afterwards. Okay. Yeah, I was ignoring you. I'm like, are you serious? Come on. You need to get control. He's out of control, folks. He's out of control. OCC. I was down in your basement, and I'm like, he sold games? Where? This thing is full again. Yeah, you only have like one section that doesn't have games now, and it's just got crap sitting there. How much gaps do I have now between the games, though? That's true, and the floor looks great. Thank you. The floor looks great. Except for now it's peeling. It's peeling now. The rugs look great. I can redo it. Everything looks like that. Extra room is all fixed up, looking nice. I haven't seen it yet. I'll have to take a picture of it before league night. It's really cleaned up downstairs now. There's no more shit on the floor. The couches are set up in the corner now again. I have a nice little waiting room. The jukebox is set up. And you didn't see this weekend. You had a pole installed. Nope. I wish. I got a 60-in-1 game with a 40-inch monitor in it. Why? I like to play Galaga and Burger Time and Frogger and Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. All right. So you get to play Galaga now when you come over. No. No, I'm not doing that. I made that mistake once. I went to one of, yeah, it was like a Western New York event. where I get there, and it's like there's a Galaga. I'm like, Ron, you need to get a high score on that.
    82:48
    Like everyone's telling me I need to get a high score, so I play it. Yeah, I spent one game I was on the thing for over two hours. It's because I beat the one score, and I'm told like, oh, no, actually, the real high score is this. They have it up at the desk, so keep playing. By the time I was done, everyone was fucking gone. I was like the only person still there. Sorry. Boy, what anger. I didn't leave you because I drove you there. No, I drove there myself. Did you? Yeah. That was at the Fantasy Raceways or whatever it was called. Jay Giles just died. Jay Giles died? Yep. Chuck just posted it.
    83:25
    Bummer. Yes, Mr. Webster. I was trying to think of a really bad joke there based off a title of a Jay Giles band song, and I couldn't think of anything. Yep. John Giles of Jay Giles Band dies. And he was the guitarist. Yep, he was 71. Wow, he was older than I thought. And don't forget, April 28th, right? No, it's April 29th. It's Howard's, what's it called? The Catskill Classic Match Play Pinball Tournament on April 29th. All right, that's what it's called. Okay. 2 p.m. Be there, be square. I know you'll be down there because I'll be in Buffalo defending my title. Yeah, I'll be down there. Come back and play. I'll be there. I've played like shit lately. Yeah. Yeah, you have. I mean, I didn't want to say anything, but yeah. But you still beat me, so I keep telling you, just pretend you're playing me. You will never lose.
    84:21
    Hey. Oh, boy. Oh, wow. This took this long to get the first yawn. That's how you know this is a – It's 830. Oh, that's right. We had recorded earlier. Oh, that's it. That's it. Exactly. I'm an old fart. You are an old fart. You got anything else, man? We good?
    84:39
    No, I think we're good. We're good. Hey, guys. Don't forget. Any comments about GoldenEye? GoldenEye is the best video game ever for Nintendo 64. Oh, okay. Pinball game is good, too. I always liked it. Yeah, I did. Actually, the only thing I don't like is crotch wear. Crotch wear is bad for people. Crotch wear. Yeah, that's the wear between the flippers. Is that what you're talking about? Yes, crotch wear. Crotch wear. Okay, there's a new term for the pinball dictionary. That's an old one. That's crotch wear. Oh, Steve Bowden, fun with bonus. You got to add that crotch wear. It's wear between the flippers. Remember that? I love crotch wear. Oh, I'm sure you do, Bruce. Oh, my. Don't forget, let's all wish George Takai a happy 80th birthday next week. Wish me a happy 80th birthday. You know what? I thought I was older than that. Really? Yes. I thought I was older than 80. Are you sure? Let me look it up right now. George Takai. Oh, funny, if you look up George Dekai, like, oh my, it's like the first, the first, you know, pops up. Oh, I guess so, yes. April 20th, he will be 80 years old. And remember, vote for George Dekai. Yes, vote for George Dekai. Make him a senator. Yes, make him a senator. Senator Dekai. Because he will literally take the helm, just like on Star Trek. Oh my. All right, thanks, everyone. Thanks, Josh, again, for being on the show. Thanks to everyone who's been sending us emails and correspondence. We were like one week behind on that. Sorry about that. We're back in the groove. We'll be back next week with another guest. Yes. Less work for me. Yes. Say goodbye, Bruce.
    86:27
    Goodbye, Molly Atkinson. Oh my, my, oh my, my, you can donate if you try. Oh my, my, oh my, my, it's guaranteed to keep you alive.