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Joe Ciaravino - “Dude Where’s My Code?” - Episode 56

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 29m·analyzed·Mar 7, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 (batch) · $0.019

TL;DR

Joe Ciaravino on competitive pinball, community leadership, and platforming code developers through his new podcast.

Summary

Joe Ciaravino discusses his journey in pinball content creation, competitive play in Toronto, and his new podcast "Dude Where's My Code?" focused on elevating code developers and designers. He emphasizes community building through Pinball Degenerates, tournament play, and the importance of mental resilience in competitive pinball. The conversation highlights the behind-the-scenes work of code developers and how modern pinball's technological capabilities have shifted design focus from pure mechanics to narrative and emotional experiences.

Key Claims

  • Joe started Pinball Degenerates about seven years ago as a community-building effort rather than pure content creation

    high confidence · Joe Ciaravino, directly stated in interview

  • Dude, Where's My Code? Code podcast launched on Patreon with a $2/month subscription model and has released nine episodes as of March

    high confidence · Joe Ciaravino, directly stated in interview

  • Phil Grimaldi is described as the godfather of Houston pinball and holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology

    high confidence · Joe Ciaravino, discussing Phil Grimaldi in recent podcast episode

  • Modern pinball game development relies increasingly on code, LCD screens, lighting, sound, and video rather than mechanical innovation due to standardized playfield sizes

    high confidence · Joe Ciaravino, discussing technological shifts in pinball design

  • Toronto has multiple IFPA-sanctioned pinball leagues including City Pinball, Bluffs Pinball, and Maple Pinball with strong community venues

    high confidence · Joe Ciaravino, describing Toronto pinball scene

  • Joe tried competitive pinball after a successful league stint and is experiencing significant nervousness that is affecting his performance

    high confidence · Jamie Burchell discussing his tournament experience and taking a break from competitive play

  • Pioneers like Joe Saeed, Jack Danger, and Nate Shivers elevated pinball content creation standards and accessibility 7-8 years ago

    high confidence · Joe Ciaravino, crediting early pinball content creators

Notable Quotes

  • “We're degenerates, not jerks. You know what I mean?”

    Joe Ciaravino @ N/A — Encapsulates the philosophy behind Pinball Degenerates community ethos and group identity

  • “The people working behind the scenes, the people doing all the stuff behind the scenes and working literally relentlessly, like morning, noon, and night. Those people are really working hard.”

    Joe Ciaravino @ N/A — Explains the core mission of Dude Where's My Code podcast - to highlight underrecognized code developers

  • “When you're playing pinball, it's such a great zen experience... you have to be thinking about that little silver ball that's happening right now in front of your nose”

    Joe Ciaravino @ N/A — Describes the psychological focus required in pinball as a meditative practice

  • “I landed a plane in a 30-knot wind at O'Hare this morning, didn't bat an eye. My hand was steady. You asked me to get ball three multiball on whatever game, and I'm choking.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ N/A — Illustrates the unique competitive stress of pinball despite players' other professional accomplishments

  • “It's not just the big blow-up moments. It's the anticipation. It's the moment. It's the build-up that she wants to focus on.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ N/A — Demonstrates shift in modern pinball design philosophy toward narrative and emotional experiences

  • “Pinball is the opposite of t-ball... Pinball doesn't really matter that much about how you press the flipper... The timing is the most important thing in pinball.”

    Joe Ciaravino @ N/A — Technical observation about what distinguishes pinball from other skilled activities

Entities

Joe CiaravinopersonJamie BurchellpersonPinball DegeneratesorganizationDude Where's My CodeproductPhil GrimaldipersonElizabeth GieskepersonSteve Ritchieperson

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Joe Ciaravino launched Dude Where's My Code on Patreon in recent months with 9 episodes released monthly, focusing on code developers and designers as underrecognized contributors

    high · Joe stated podcast is ~1 month old with nine episodes to date, releasing one new episode monthly

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Degenerates employs private membership screening and non-punitive coaching approach to community management, prioritizing inclusion and education over bans

    high · Joe described messaging members privately about offensive behavior rather than immediate removal, with ~99% responding positively to coaching

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Competitive pinball players are experiencing significant tournament performance anxiety despite skill level, with nervousness impacting results more than in other skilled activities

    high · Jamey discussed choking in tournaments despite strong play, taking month-plus break due to mounting stress; airline pilot anecdote illustrates unique psychological demands

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Modern pinball design has shifted focus from mechanical innovation to code-driven experiences (LCD, lighting, sound, video, narrative) due to standardized playfield constraints

    high · Joe explained standardized machine sizes limit mechanical shots; code developers now create emotional/narrative experiences rather than purely mechanical challenges

  • ?

    venue_signal: Toronto pinball scene features multiple established venues and leagues with strong operator support and diverse price points (free-play premium venues to casual bars)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.060

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamey Burchell and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from America. Hello, my name is Jamie Burchell and you are listening to and are watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. And today I'm very excited to be joined by a very special guest, Joe Cerevino of Pinball Degenerates on Pinside and a fairly new podcast on Patreon called Dude Where's My Code. Welcome to the Wormhole Virtually Joe. Thank you very much for having me, Jamie. It's an honor to be part of this and to be a guest. Thank you so much. I'm not sure if a special guest. I'm just a guest. Not so special guests. We first met at Expo. Yeah, this past October. It's the first time we've actually met. My friend Ian Jacoby had it was with, you know, kind of nudging off your booth, if you will. And we were nudging off each other. We were nudging each other's budge, so to speak. There you go. Budging each other's nudge. And it's great. I've really gotten to know you on the weekly chat that we have on the Discord content creators that Colin Offshammer put together. Yeah. And there's, what, six to ten of us there on a weekly basis, and we just talked pinball? It is a great group. And I really like that those chats are fun. Okay, as usual, these interviews are very, very informal. Joe, let's go, you know, let's talk right off the bat. I like to start today about competitive pinball. All right, let's go into it. It's a passion for both of us, right? Yeah. How's the pinball scene in Toronto, and how often do you play in tournaments? I try to play in most, if not all, the major tournaments here in Toronto.
1:54
We've got several leagues running. I've been kind of not doing so much the leagues as much because it's just right now just D. Jenny's getting ready for a bunch of stuff and traveling and a whole bunch of stuff. But I try to contribute. So I've actually started up a league of my own, which is kind of an informal league. But we have some great leagues already that are IFPA sanctioned. We've got City Pinball here in Toronto. We've got Bluffs Pinball in the East End where I live. And we've also got the Maple Pinball, which is in the West End part of Toronto, actually technically Mississauga, which is kind of like a right just on the cusp on the West sort of edge of Toronto. And they're really great. They've got, I'd say, over 60 pinball machines there. It's a great location in Maple. Cabin Fever is where we have our City Pinball meets. They're a much smaller, kind of a small kind of hole in the wall kind of dive bar. But the collection there is top-notch. The games are always playing incredibly well. At Heaven Fever, they have operators. Dan Beeson does a great job, and the owner, Robin Harrison, does an amazing job as the owner-proprietor of the bar there. And it's just a really awesome vibe, very cozy. It's like kind of a pinball, obviously a pinball hangout, a great place to buy a vintage vinyl and stuff. Great cocktails, great craft beers on tap and really, really amazing place. Just a great place even just to take a date and have just kind of cool, chill place to have and maybe play some pinball while you're on your date. So it's a great vibe there. And there's another place called Antisocial, which has about 70 games as well. And they have an incredible like it's more of a kind of a club where you have to like, well, it's not a club, but like it's a it's a twenty dollar entry. All the games are on free play, but all the games are like LEs or premiums. Oh, wow. It's unbelievable. Like this guy, Steve LaForte, is the owner. He just goes all out on the premiums, and even if a game doesn't have a topper, he gets like a custom topper for that game. And like it's like completely – like all the games are top-notch shape, and they're really high-quality games, and that's called anti-social pinball here in Toronto. You're just plugging everybody, aren't you? Yeah, no, I love – I just – I want to support as much as I can of the community here because they've given me so much. Yeah. And I just – I can only – and they're friends of mine, you know, so like, of course, like I'm going to be there for them. But again, to plug something for myself, I'm doing this thing. So in Toronto, we have a lot of raccoons. Like a lot of cities have raccoons, but we try to pretend we're special with our raccoons. But, you know, we call them trash pandas. So we have – I run the Trash Panda Pinball League, and it's kind of a very entry-level casual league that's not IFPA certified. So we can do fun stuff like Split Flipper or team games or kind of wacky stuff, critical hit type tournaments where, you know, it doesn't really matter. And it's not like for any whopper points. People are just coming. A lot of them coming for the first time. They've never like literally the guy that came in first place in last the first season. He had never played in a pinball tournament before in his life. He'd been playing pinball, but never had gone out to play competitive pinball before in his life. It was the first time, the first league that he ever played in and he won it. And that's why it's so important to do stuff like that. Get people, just new people, new interest in the hobby, and have it like a low level, very competitive, but also a very social aspect to it. And that's what really, I think, keeps me coming back. Not just the games. I love playing the games, but it's really the people that keep you coming, right? Yeah, it is, right? Like Houston, we have a really great team. We've got probably five tournaments a week, and it's really, really growing. And what's keeping it growing is not only great places like the Wormhole, but also great people, right? Of course, yeah. It's nothing without the people supporting it and coming, right?
Pat Lawlor
person
Jack Dangerperson
Joe Saeedperson
Nate Shiversperson
Mark Seidenperson
Colin Offshammerperson
Ian Jacobyperson
Greg Pavarelliperson
Steven Bowdenperson
Lyman F. Sheats Jr.person
City Pinballorganization
Bluffs Pinballorganization
Maple Pinballorganization
Trash Panda Pinball Leagueorganization
Antisocial Pinballvenue
Cabin Fevervenue
Stern Pinballcompany
Wormhole Pinballproduct

high · Joe documented 4+ major venues (Cabin Fever, Maple Pinball, Bluffs Pinball, Anti-Social) plus his own casual league with growing participation

  • ?

    historical_signal: Joe Saeed, Jack Danger, and Nate Shivers (Coast to Coast Pinball) are credited as pioneers who transformed pinball from singular to social experience 7-8 years ago

    medium · Joe credited these figures as establishing quality standards and accessibility that opened pinball to broader audiences through streaming/podcasting

  • ?

    product_strategy: Joe testing $2/month Patreon model for Dude Where's My Code with free samples on YouTube, positioning as accessible entry point rather than paywall

    high · Joe described intro as free with sample interviews, $2 subscription for full episodes, contrasting with jumping between platforms

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community includes professionals from diverse fields (airline pilots, psychologists) who experience unique stress profiles in competitive contexts

    medium · Airline pilot anecdote; Phil Grimaldi's doctorate in cognitive psychology; broader pattern of high-achieving individuals in pinball

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dude Where's My Code podcast explicitly aims to elevate visibility of behind-the-scenes code developers (Elizabeth Gieske, Phil Grimaldi) relative to designer/director figures

    high · Joe stated goal to 'give these people exposure' and 'get their names out there' as counterpoint to well-known designers (Steve Ritchie, Pat Lawlor, Jack Danger)

  • ?

    event_signal: IFPA 15 tournament in Toronto appears to be significant historical event that influenced community culture and terminology (degenerate term origin)

    medium · Joe referenced IFPA 15 as multi-day competitive event hosting top international players including Sheets, Pavarelli, Bowden

  • 5:32
    It's just that's the heart of it, right? Yeah, when there's leagues that have assholes in it, they wonder why they don't grow. It's a community, but there's so few and far between in Pinball. Yeah, it comes from the top down for sure, a lot of it, right? What you allow in the kind of atmosphere and what you allow people to get away with. But I find that a lot of these things, maybe I'm just kind of lucky with the communities that I've been involved in Toronto. Those people generally don't really, they weed themselves out. You don't even need to really talk to them. They just like figure out like, oh, like I'm not connecting with anybody here. They probably figured out, they think that it's like all of them. They're the jerks. And they just kind of like just, you know, leave. So it's generally either that or people just realize, oh, okay, I'll just let that person have their space. And I think it's – again, we're very, very lucky in Toronto. It's a very cosmopolitan, very progressive city with a lot of very open, inclusive atmosphere in general in the whole city. So it's like that reflects in many other things. Pinball as a group as well is just kind of an offshoot of that kind of culture that we have in the city in general. Well, that's great to hear.
    6:45
    You've got to come up. You've got to come up to Toronto, J. The weather is not great. I've got to tell you, right now, don't come up at this time of year. In the middle of early March, late February, no, you don't want to come. But June, July, August, come on up. It's great. It's really beautiful. I would love to go and go to a ballgame. Oh, yeah, the Dome. I love the Dome. People hate the Dome. I love the Dome. I'd like to see it. You can definitely get me up there when the Yankees are in town, and that would be a lot of fun. Yeah, hey, man, I love it when the Yankees are in town, too. It's great. We're lucky to be in that division that have so many great leagues, other teams, you know, so we get Tampa Bay and whatever, and the Yankees, of course. You're a pretty good player. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. No, no. I disagree. I checked out your IFPA ranking. No, no, no, no. I'm sure you know it by heart. No, I'm in the – I probably – you know, my only goal was to make the top, like, 1,000 in, like, two years. I did that, and now I'm just letting it slide. I really – honestly, I don't check it at all, really, at all. But I'm probably, like, around 3,000 or something or 2,000. That's where I'm at. I think you're in the 2,000s. That's fine for me. You know what I've been struggling with? Sure. Honestly, is my nerves. And I know it sounds crazy. Hey, if you're not a competitive pinball player and you're listening to this and you're like, Jamie, your nerves are getting to you. When I'm calm and relaxed, I play better pinball. Oh, absolutely. I think we all do, right? Yeah, for sure. But when I'm ants and nervous, I choke like a chicken, Joe. Just don't choke your chicken while you're playing because then you'll get thrown out for sure. You'll definitely get thrown out. I just have a tough time staying calm. I tell this story real quick. I tell the story of an airline pilot that plays with us. And he told me once, he's like, dude, I landed a plane in a 30-knot wind at O'Hare this morning, didn't bat an eye. My hand was steady. You asked me to get ball three, multi-ball on whatever game, and I'm choking. He goes, I am literally shaking. And that's competitive pinball. So how do you handle this? How do you handle the nerves? Not well. I mean, I don't really drink much and I don't do any kind of other substances, but I was just fine. That's how some people kind of deal with the stress. We call them performance enhancing. I mean, that's fine.
    9:10
    Whatever floats your boat, I don't judge or whatever, but it's just not for me. It just puts me, especially smoking, it just puts me in a weird, even worse headspace. But for me, it's like two beers good. I like to drink cider. I'm a cider guy, so usually I'll drink like two ciders or like maybe a rye and ginger and then like something else. But like, yeah, basically two drinks and I'm like, that's my level just to loosen me up. And it's a fine line because you want to be calm and like, you know, relax. But then also you want to actually still be alert and care. You still want to be just like, whatever. You know, you've got to have to be alert. I'm taking a break from competitive pinball. I'm going to take a month and a half off. That's healthy for sure. Because I'm going to get so nervous. Yeah, it's it's it's making it not fun for me. But I remember you were talking to Kale for an interview that they were doing down from Electric Bad. I remember Kale was talking about it because I think maybe he does jujitsu or something. Yeah, he does his deep breathing. And he does deep breathing. And I'm trying to do that, and it doesn't work for me. But if that can work for you, great. It didn't work for me. I was literally channeling Kale, and I said, all right. Because we had our league finals. Yeah. Two out of three games. And he picked a bank of games. And I'll tell a pinball story to you, Joe. Yeah. We start out at Jaws. And I suck at Jaws. OK, I don't have a plan. You know, you need a plan. You need a plan. The plan goes to hell when you get punched in the face like Michael Tyson. I know, but I just don't have a freaking plan on Jaws. So I lost on Jaws. So then we go to Stranger Things. I know Stranger Things. I have a plan. And again, multiball kick his ass. Then we go to Elvira and I couldn't do a thing. Oh, man. Elvira's burned me so many times. She got me good. It's a simple layout. There's nothing crazy about it. There's nothing that made me. I just literally, my shoulders were tight and I was just, ugh. Anyway. It's a fine line, right? It's a fine line you got to walk between just going with the flow But also keeping your mental acuity and focus. I never, yeah, it is. I never got this nervous playing golf. Never. Yeah, no. It was really good. And I'm thinking about dusting off this club again.
    11:33
    That's an interesting sport, too. I mean, I don't play much golf other than like mini putt or like, you know, maybe I'll go to like a golfing range or something once in a while. But I'm pretty terrible. But it's an interesting sport. When you think about it, like the amount of time you actually play golf is like probably like for like a two or three hour long thing. You're only playing the actual game. You're swinging for like, I don't know, 10 seconds or something. Like for the total amount of time you're actually doing the thing that is playing the game. The rest is just kind of like walking around.
    12:01
    It's a cultural thing too. It's hanging with people and it's hanging with people too, right? Like your friends, you go out and have a couple beers, you go on the lanes, have some sandwiches and you call it an afternoon, you know? There you go. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things like with golf that are, it's a solo performance thing. In a lot of ways, it's very singular, and it's very much like a head, like 90% of it is like in your head and your body mechanics, right? Because it's interesting, somebody's kind of referred to pinball as kind of like the opposite of t-ball, if you think about it. Because t-ball is all about, it's nothing to do about timing, right? Because the ball is always going to be there, right? And it's all about body mechanics as t-ball. But pinball is the opposite. Pinball is the opposite. It doesn't really matter that much about how you press the flipper or, you know, you just got to have the timing, right? The timing is the most important thing in pinball. So it's like the opposite of t-ball. And when you're jittering.
    12:51
    Sometimes that works. Sometimes that energy. Sometimes you get lucky and you're just on the fly. You're just making like crazy on the fly shots. And you're just like, I'm like possessed. Like I'm in like a weird fucking state. Sorry if I swore. No, it's okay. Like you're in a weird flow state, right? And you just let go. And you're just in the zone. And then that's the magical thing when you're in that focused zone. And you're not like in having any sort of internal monologue whatsoever. That's part of it, right? You're like, oh, geez, I need like 20 more thousand points or I lose. I know. You're just like, OK, I made a great shot. OK, I'm going to make this shot. OK, then this shot. This is flashing. Going to hit that. Oh, missed it. OK, I'm going to do a little later. Hit that. Good. OK, moving on. Like, that's the kind of monologue you need to be having, right? I know. And that's the beauty of pinball. Like, it makes you present. When you're playing pinball, it's such a great zen experience. In the best possible way, it's like a great distraction from the rest of life in the best possible way. Because if you're thinking about, oh, man, I've got to do the laundry, and then I've got to pick up the kids at 8, and then we've got to take them to a choir practice tomorrow. And then you've lost. You've lost. You're not playing pinball. You are in a different world. You have to be thinking about that little silver ball that's happening right now in front of your nose, like right down in front of your eyes. And if you're not thinking about that, you're lost. You lose because you lose up here first. What are you going to do with your flippers? What do you think controls your hands that control the flippers? It's up here. Your brain. So if your brain is not playing the game, then how are your hands going to play the flippers and how are the flippers going to hit the ball? It's going to cost me a lot of money in therapy to figure that out. You can just talk to me. You can just talk to me. We'll figure that out. All right. Let's switch gears to when you first got into the pinball content creation space. What came first for you? I mean, I don't know. I mean, really, I'm kind of new to content creation. Like I've always been a great, like voracious consumer of pinball content, all the podcasts, you know, starting with like the great Nate Shivers and Coast to Coast Pinball. It was a very kind of sparse landscape, even just like seven or eight years ago. And I think like so much nothing can be said about like podcasting or content creation without like mentioning like Joe Saeed who started streaming pinball and Jack Danger who started streaming pinball and Nate Shivers. Like these guys were real pioneers and, you know, they've gone on to do different things in their lives. But I think the standard of quality and seriousness that they brought to the hobby of pinball and discourse of pinball and the fun of it and how engaging it can be for a larger audience, let's just say, as opposed to just a singular experience, which usually you're not playing with other friends. You know, you're just by yourself and you're just having a singular experience. Opening that up to all the different possibilities of being social and, you know, interacting on chat and letters and discourse, that has really opened up the whole hobby in a new level that you cannot underestimate all these people have done. So I've always been a huge, huge consumer of pinball podcasts, streaming, and award shows like the Twippies, and all kinds of fun stuff like that. It's all been part of this great, great kind of mosaic of fun.
    16:11
    But yeah, I mean, I started Pinball Degenerates about seven years ago. I wouldn't say that's really content creation. It's more like a community creation, right? That's the way I see it. Because it's not like some crazy egotistical project. But if you're not engaging your people, if you're not engaging them with content, your group's going to die, right? Well, yeah, you set the tone, right? You set the tone and you try to show, okay, well, this is acceptable and this is what we're about and you may be new here. And it really just started with me bringing in all my pinball friends at first because all the people that I knew, right? It is a private group, but it's not to be like a gatekeeping jerk. It's just to make sure that we don't get bots constantly spamming the thing. And just people understand that it's like, okay, look, you're going to be part of this community. You have to be respectful to everybody else. Show all the wacky, crazy, fucked up, crazy pinball stuff you're into. That's great. Be a degenerate. We're not going to judge you. We're not going to rip you apart. We're not going to criticize you or anything. We understand. We're one of you. And it just started with a great group of friends, and then it kind of started. Again, I don't need it to be the biggest pinball group in the world. I just want it to be a great pinball group. That's all I want. It's a great group, Joe. I appreciate it. It's hard. It's hard sometimes. I really enjoy posting on the Generates. I get a lot more feedback from them, and it's been a very good community. So thank you. Thank you. Well, thanks to the community. That's what, again, it's all about, right? You try to set an example, and it's hard. It's hard. You don't always get it right. I've messed up. I've lost – I've said sometimes some stuff that I regretted and I've owned up to it. And we try to all kind of understand if somebody says something kind of like offensive or sexist or whatever, something that would kind of like make other people in the group feel less than, I would – I don't just ban them like an asshole. I message them privately and I say, look, this is kind of like counter to what we sort of believe in as a group. Yeah, coach them up. Yeah, like, I mean, I'm just like, I don't want to be like, you know, again, I don't want to be like, you know, patronizing, but just like, hey, man, like, I'll tell you, look, this is the reason why this is not cool. And if you could shake it down, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to have to remove it or anything like that. But like, I just want you to understand. And some people are like, oh, yeah, sorry, I didn't really mean it that way. I was just having a like a lighthearted joke. No problem. Like, that's like 99% of the time. 1% of the time, they'll be like, fuck you, man. Whatever. Okay, well, see you later. Bye. I tried to talk to you like an adult and explain to you kind of what we're about. And if you don't want to be part of that, you can go. You can leave. You know what I mean? Like, that's fine. Well, you've done a good job there. Congrats. Well, it's hard. It is a hard thing. And find them on Pinball Degenerates on Facebook. It's a great Facebook group. Facebook groups slash groups dot Pinball Degenerates. All one word, Pinball Degenerates. And, yeah, like everybody, like as long as you're not a robot or a jerk, you're welcome to come join. Like that's basically the only kind of prerequisite, right? Yeah. Yeah, so it's just like that's why there's like some questions for like bots. Like it's great. I get all the responses from the bots that clearly it's like a chat GPT response. Like what's your favorite pinball machine? My favorite pinball machine is, and in quotes for some reason, it always does it in quotes, Adam's Family Pinball. That is my favorite pinball machine. And I'm just like, hmm, that's a little suspect, you know. So, you know, it's like it's like, you know, if somebody says something like their favorite game is like hard bodies, Then like, yeah, then OK, you're in, you know, like you're part of us. You're what you understand. And so like there's just like just agree to not be a jerk to other people. Be respectful. That's all. And just add whatever crazy shit you're doing in pinball, whether it's, you know, another podcast or streaming or a restoration that you just finished that you're super proud of. And just anything, anything, just jokes, memes, throw them all in there and we're all going to just appreciate it. I found it to be – yeah, Joe. I found it to be a very, you know, encompassing, nice group. So there you go. Yeah, I mean we're degenerates, not jerks. You know what I mean? It's great. We're degenerates. We're obsessed. Again, I kind of bristle at the end of like pinball wizards is like that's the default most of the normies use to describe like a person who's enthusiastic about pinball. But it's like I'm a degenerate, and that was like – that came to me. That was actually inspired, the term was inspired to me by a group of friends, all American friends, Greg Pavarelli, Steve Bowden, and the late great Lyman Sheets. They were all in town in Toronto for IFPA 15. And after a grueling weekend, okay, like grueling, just like top level pinball, like we're talking competitive level play, the highest in the world. After like 15 or 16 hours straight of that, these guys didn't just go home and go to sleep and get a good night's rest for the next, like the finals. They went downtown. They traveled like another two hours to get downtown to partied up at like midnight till like four or five o'clock in the morning at this bar where I used to work there. I still love these guys, Tilt Arcade Bar. And they came and they partied, Lyman Sheets, Greg Pavarelli, Steve Bowden, and we're all having fun. We're all playing pinball. We're just enjoying pinball. You'd think you'd be sick of it after all this time, but they're degenerates. They can't get enough of it. And I was like, you guys are degenerates, man. You guys are partying up way into the morning hours. It's going to be like you guys have to be back at the finals in like five hours. You guys are crazy. And that's where just kind of the idea came to me. Like that's the real spirit of pinball. Yeah, sure, be competitive and all that stuff is a lot of fun. But it's like just getting together with your friends, have a couple beers, relax, be social, enjoy the games, enjoy the company. And that's what I love about it. That's what makes you a degenerate in my opinion. Awesome. You know what I mean? Well said. Yeah. And that's why, you know, I mean, you know, it's the community and it's all the people that really inspire me. And again, it's about everybody in the group. It's not about like all the dumb memes and jokes that I post and everything. It's nothing without everybody else contributing to it. Well, go check them out, guys, because it is really good. What gave you the idea to start Dude, Where's My Code?
    22:10
    Well, I loved like – again, it's not a mean-spirited thing. It's kind of a satire of that entitled – Explain it for everyone in case they don't know. So the podcast Dude Where My Code It on Patreon right Yeah it on Patreon I get a lot of flack for it It only a month It It only a month but whatever it is I feel that for me as a content creator it was important I have the kind of intro that's free. It's like, hey, if you think that this is something you'd be interested in, take a listen to these little sample interviews that I did. And if so, give it a shot for $2. You put that on YouTube, and I thought that was really smart. I think the little snippets that you took from those great interviews were excellent. Well done there. How many episodes have you done so far? We just had our ninth one. Phil Grimaldi, our good friend Phil Grimaldi from Verils of Fun was our most recent one for March. I do a new podcast every month. Okay, good. He's the godfather of Houston Pinball. Without him and the Drone A's and a lot of other people, Houston Pinball doesn't exist. Yeah, I mean he's a fantastic ambassador for pinball. And again, I've met so many incredibly brilliant, passionate people. I only met Phil a couple of times at some tournaments like Pinnberg and a couple of Pinnbergs and a couple of things here like Papa. And I spoke to him very briefly, but like it was so amazing to get to know people like Phil. They have a psychology like Phil has like a doctorate in like cognitive psychology. And I'm just like, that's amazing. How do you take – we talk about this in the interview. How do you take your knowledge of cognitive psychology and learning, the psychology of learning, how do you take that and apply that to pinball rules, using nonverbal cues, sort of like any kind of mnemonic devices to help people remember certain rule sets and stuff like that? And he has so much that he puts into that. That's his background that he puts into it. It's incredible. The guys are like all these people are so incredibly smart. And I'm just it's really a pleasure. Honestly, it is two dollars a month, but I would I honestly would kind of do this for free because it's such a great journey. No, I think it's smart by starting out on Patreon. I think it's harder for people when they jump back and forth from Patreon. Maybe. I want to give these people exposure, right? Because again, the whole point is that these people are doing the code and people only really complain when they haven't done their job or they don't think that they've done their job the way they wanted to, right? But when they do their job, and they usually do at the end of the day when the code is finally finished, it's amazing. There's so many rare instances. I can't even think of an instance where a game has been finished, it's done, done, and it's still a stinker. I can't even think of a game off the top of my head of a modern game where the code is not going to be changed anymore. Well, maybe, but they're just outliers, right? Eventually, you kind of have to have faith that, yeah, people really care. These people working on the games behind the scenes, they're going to finish the game. They're going to do their job because they love it, and they're not just punching in. They're doing something in pinball because they want to do it in pinball and they love it and they take it very seriously. They really do and I take it seriously. And so that's the whole point is to give these people a platform. I wish people would literally – not even for like the subscribers or viewers. It's literally just for the exposure for these people to get their names out there because we all know the Steve Ritchie's, the Pat Lawler's, the Jack Danger's, the Mark Sidon's of the world. We all know these names. They're the designers of the playfields. They're like the directors of the really kind of big faces to each of these games. But the people working behind the scenes, the people doing all the stuff behind the scenes and working literally relentlessly, like morning, noon, and night. Those people are really working hard. And you could make the argument very easily that in modern pinball, given the sort of standardized kind of games that we have now, So it's kind of like, you know, like not there's not J.J.P. is not doing wide bodies anymore. It's all kind of a standard size that everything is kind of generally coalescing around. Like you're dealing with a very finite real estate area and there's only so much that you can do mechanically shots that you can change everything up without it being somewhat saney and repetitive a little bit. Like like there's still ingenious stuff that people are still doing, but there's only a certain amount you can do with a game physically. But there's so much more like an incredible, especially with the technology now with LCD screens and lighting and sound and video and all the different things that you can do under the hood, so to speak, or under the play field. The technology that that's part of the experience of not just shooting shots for the sake of shooting shots, but making the meaningful, emotional, narrative driven based moments and the anticipation. I was talking to Elizabeth Gieske from Stern Pinball. That was an excellent one. She worked on just recently Dungeons & Dragons and, of course, Jaws was her first game that she worked on. She talks about, you know, it's not just the big blow-up moments. It's the anticipation. It's the moment. It's the build-up that she wants to focus on to get there, the frustration. Oh, okay, I got to make that shot. Oh, jeez, I missed it. Oh, jeez. Okay, okay, I got to make that shot. Okay, I got to make it twice now. Okay, I got to make it now. I got to make it fast. And all that anticipation to get to the big payoff is the real art that these people are working and crafting. It's just like a story. I'm a movie guy. So you can't just have explosions. I was talking to Josh Sharp. You can't just have Michael Bay-based explosions, constantly fireworks, because then that gets really boring. It means nothing. But the anticipation and being able to build up to it and really feel like you've earned that, now that's what we're talking about. That's a real pinball moment, and that's what these people are all about making, and you can really craft that now as a programmer. You can make a story out of a pinball game. Again, to bring a parallel, again, you get me talking about pinball. I'm never going to stop. No, man. Movies and pinball have such an amazing parallel. Originally, movies were just seen as like an idle entertainment. You would put your nickel in the Nickelodeon, and you'd watch a lady in her swimsuit for like 20 seconds or something. You'd get some titillating film content, and then you'd move on. It was like a circus freak show or something, like an attraction, a sideshow attraction. And that was what film started out. It was just kind of a curiosity. But then people were like, oh, wow, I can actually tell a story with this technology. I can actually get other things like sound and color and things that make it more engaging for the audience. And I can actually tell something that has a real art form and a real human experience. And I think pinball is kind of hitting this level where film and video games as well because video games were just like arcade experiences. They were just something you went – you played it for like Donkey Kong for like two minutes and then you moved on, right? You ate all the quarters and you moved on and you didn't think about it anymore. But now you've got games like Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy. You've got epic, epic storylines now where you're engaged for multiple – like tens of hours of gaming time. And you're engaged. You care about these characters. You care about what happens to them. You want to see a sequel. You want to come back to it again and again and again. And I think pinball is kind of getting that way because of the home market, because of the demands of a home market environment. People are putting these games in their home. They don't want to just play them for like a month or two and then get rid of them because like, you know, bringing a pinball machine to your home is quite an ordeal anywhere. Rar, Hally Good Pinball is an investment in a lot of ways for different things, physically and money. And you want to have something that represents you, that connects to you emotionally, intellectually, like just on many different levels. You don't want just like an idle kind of piece of entertainment that you just, you know, consume and then throw away. So I think pinball is kind of hitting this kind of threshold right now. And you talk about games like Dungeons and Dragons. Wow. Like you're carrying over player progress. I talked to Dwight Sullivan, again, not to push the pinball podcast, but that's what blows my mind. We didn't get specifically into D&D at the time because he was just literally on the cusp of revealing it. But he was talking about technically his Game 7 for Stern. And he was talking about how he's put so much time and effort, and it doubles the amount of code of the previous games that he did only four or five years ago. It's unbelievable. And the amount of work that's going into it, and again, not to take anything away from Brian Eddy and the amazing dragon and all the fun mechanical stuff like the gelatinous cube and Rath, the relentless, the head, the dragon, it's amazing. Like nobody's ever done anything that complicated before. Like it's wild. But the code is really what's going to get you to come back and get that second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth quarterback in there or on my account. I'm a Canadian, so loonies and toonies. So, you know, that's what's going to keep the player engaged and being like, yeah, this is a game that I want for my home. This is a game that I want to keep playing on location. This is a game that I want to just I want to keep playing, you know, and that's the code. It's not necessarily just the shots and getting the score. People want to people want to like it's like, again, in video games, it was like back in the day in arcade games. People like, well, what are your score in Donkey Kong? What's your score in Pac-Man? Right. That's all that mattered. Right now. Yeah. Who cares about your score in like Zelda or Final Fantasy? This doesn't even exist. It's about what you've experienced in the game or like the Indiana Jones game that just came out. I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan. It looks amazing. I'm all in the Call of Duty right now. Oh, Call of Duty, sure. Right, yeah. And it's just like you're being engaged. I'm playing the new Call of Duty. Nice. I'm upping my character. I've already prestiged a whole bunch of guns. And it's a personal thing. It's a personal thing. Yeah, like we did all the ARs with my son when he was here for Christmas. Awesome. Great time over the Christmas holidays. Man, I had a ball. I said to Orby, I said, I want King Kong to climb up the Empire State Building, have planes running around him. Physically in the game. You don't want just like an LCD screen of it. No, no, no. I want it physically in the game. A physical skyscraper. I want Kong coming up it. Yeah, okay. Okay? That's my take. Is that possible? Are they going to do this? I mean, look, I'm all about – Or is it going to be plastic? No, I mean, we'll see. I mean, again, like, it is tough bringing, like, that level of mechanical. I'm just thinking, like, having a vertical thing. There's all, like, you know, you had the, like, the building in Godzilla, which, you know, raises and lowers that. That's, I mean, something that's relatively, like, about a foot and a half, almost a foot and a half. Just Kong climbing the Empire shape building. Sure, I'm all about it. I think that's what we need. I'm all about it. But, like, I mean, and, you know, you talk about other games, like, what is it, Wipeout? Like the old, like the Gottlieb game, like with like, it has like a whole ski hill and the ball goes up the ski hill and it comes down. And like, you know, it's possible. It just depends on like, but like, you know, from a mechanical thing like that, you always have to balance it out. And Keith is always about the shots, right? Like, I'm not sure if he's super, super keen on, you know, what I like to call Tima, which is a thing that I try desperately to make it a term, but almost nobody, except for Multimorphic, they use that term in their recent promo. I got a shout out to my friend Steven Silver who put that in the promo for Princess Bride Pinball. They actually used the word thematically integrated mechanical action, which to me is not the – it may not be the most important thing for most people, but for me it's what makes pinball unique. It's that, like you're saying, I want something to happen physically in the game that relates to the theme. It has to be thematically integrated mechanical action. It can't be just like mechanical action for the sake of it. Maybe this will catch on. I don't think so. No, it's never going to. I've already tried. I've already tried so hard. Get Steven Bowden to put it in the dictionary. I try. He doesn't want anything to do with it. But I love him. He's a great guy. But there's no way that's going in the new pinball dictionary anytime soon, anyhow. But my point is, yeah, that's what I think people crave. It's not just like shots because, yeah, there's other games where you make a shot and you get points. Like, you know, pool is like a different kind of – like it's an ancestor. Like, pool, you make shots and you make the shots and you do it good and you put the ball where it needs to go. And that's the thing. And you're using kind of an analog as the stick is your hand as opposed to flippers. Right. It's a less mechanical thing. But it's basically they have the same ancestor. Right. They like bag of towels and pool. Right. Is where they kind of split off. But, you know, I think that people really still crave that magical. Like when you think of games like Adam's Family, you think of the hand, the thing hand that comes in, picks up a wall. That's an exciting moment. It's not a big part of the game. The castle in Attack from Mars. The first thing you think about is the – exactly. It's the castle. It's so brilliant, by the way, how that works. All the things – it's like a string that pulls it, and when it lets go of the tension, it goes down, and then when it pulls the tension down, it goes up. It straightens up. It's such a brilliant design. We'll move on to another game. Multimorphic is supposedly releasing their newest module for the P3 platform, Portal. Yeah, I heard that too. That we're hearing, right? What are your thoughts on that title? Did you play the video game? Oh, yeah. I love Portal, and I've played parts of Portal, too. I haven't gotten through the whole thing. I had to kind of stop halfway through, and I never picked it back up. It's like a puzzle game, right? My kids played it. The best thing about Portal is that it literally takes the concept of learning. Again, going back to the psychology of learning, it takes the concept of learning in any video game, like whether you're playing like Zelda, Metroid, Mario Brothers, Call of Duty, whatever, right? When you're playing a single-player game, the game goes, hey, this is what you can do. You can look up, look down, left, and right. It's kind of like a play tutorial. And then in Portal, there's levels that are based on that same concept. It's like, oh, this is how you walk through a portal. You go through here, and then you end up here. And then it's like, oh, but by the way, also, if you shoot a portal above you, you can land, and then you can jump, and you can carry that momentum forward. And then you can do this thing now. And then the next level is like, oh, but you can add this now. So do all those steps plus one thing. And then the next level is like, do all those steps again plus this new thing, and then this new thing. And you're constantly learning a new technique or a new skill. And that's the beauty. And that's how video games work. That's a lot of games. That's how they work. It's like, oh, I have this new item. I have this new shield or sword or gun or whatever you want to call it. And now I can do this. And now I can do everything else in my arsenal, in my toolbox, and then this. And now I've got to learn and master this new thing. And now I've got this new thing. And that's the whole idea of like, again, that goes back into pinball where it's like, you know, games, a lot of games that Dwight's done with like Mandalorian. It's like, oh, I played this long and now I can use the flamethrower and now I can use this item and now I can use this and now I get an extra ball. Wow. OK, cool. So you're taking it from like a very little seed of like a game and then it just kind of like exponentially blossoms. And that's, I think, a lot of the keys in any game, in any game you play, it starts always very small board games, video games, pinball games. It starts from like a little kernel and then it just kind of like you just run of it is watching it kind of like evolve and all the different things you can do. And experiencing that is so much fun. I think that's like the real essence of what a game is, you know, learning. It's interesting with Multimorphic because they do such a good job incorporating video games with pinball. Yeah, I mean, the small screen is an interactive ball screen. It'll be interesting to see what they do with that. They have some of the best Tima out there as well. It's not just about the screen. It's about the mechanical things that they put in the game as well for all the modules. You're popping that Tima. I am, I am. It's all right. But a mechanical – you call it toys. You want to call it toys. You want to call it necks or whatever. It's all part of that, you know, the cliche, the world under glass, right? It's what makes it a unique experience as opposed to just a bunch of ramps and loops and targets, right? We've seen that many times, and it's not an engaging, emotional, narrative-based experience usually. And that's just part of the evolution of the game, right? Back in the day, you'd play a game from the 60s and 70s. You'd hit a bunch of targets, and then you'd walk away, and that's it. I got the high score and then you walk away. But now it's like, man, I really want to get to that new character. I want to unlock the bard in Dungeons & Dragons. I want to unlock these characters or these different functions and modes and stuff. And you're really invested. That's a really, really smart way to make the games modern and fresh. Playing again and again and again and one more quarter. That's what it's all about. One more dollar. Originally, that's what pinball was. It was just a passive income-gaining machine, like a claw game almost. You'd put it there. You'd fix it up. You'd reload it with – fix it up, and just people would get – you'd make passive income off that. You'd check it every couple days and collect the coin box and whatever. But it's amazing. Like there still is that, like, again, that one more game feel to it that you kind of have to still have even for the home market. I like the P3. I love it. I love it too. We have one, and it's getting a flipper rebuild, and we're going to bring it back. And I love playing Dungeon Door. That was one of my favorite game.
    39:22
    Yeah, yeah. And there's so many great value. Again, all the third-party games, I talked to Nicholas Baldrige, who's doing some of the best third-party mods out there with Drained and then Bite-sized, as well as kind of like a version of his Drained playthrough. He's building himself. He did the code. His wife did the artwork on it. It's like a full, real game. And, you know, the value add to the P3 system, once you have the cabinet and the actual original, you know, the base model, you can just keep on adding new games to that. And the value add is incredible. Like, it's just getting better and better. My only issue is they're heavy as hell, dude. Well, yeah, that's true. I mean, because there's so much mechs. There's so much mechanical shit in it, right? There's a screen. It really, really is. There's a screen where there should be just a piece of laminated wood, right? I'm just saying, good luck getting yourself. You're calling two buddies. You've got to call Zach Menny and get in Les Galera from Flippin' Out Pinball. There's a plug for Zach. Harry Potter from Jersey Jack is coming. We're hearing $4 million licensing fee. Holy Jesus, really? Is that what they're saying? That's what I'm hearing. Holy shit. That's four times Beatles. Four million dollars. Wow. Four times Beatles. Yeah, that's wild. So my question quickly, I'm sorry. Yeah, go ahead.
    40:42
    Do they do the first three movies? Do they do the first three books? What's the deal? Oh, man. They can do all seven books. I don't even know if you can do just one movie in a pinball machine, like a movie that's the first one, Sorcerer's Stone. You could do the Sorcerer's Stone. You go in. You get sorted to your house. I mean, you could just do a whole game about that. How many Harry Potter games are there? Like seven? There's like a two-parter. Well, there's seven books and eight movies. And eight movies because they did a two-parter for the final one, right? Right, for the Deathly Hallows. Yeah, so I know all this shit. I don't. I don't. I'm a movie guy. So, like, I watched the first two and I understand the appeal. I get it. The third is the best one. You're making a mistake if you don't read. I know. It's Alfonso Cuarón. It's the Prisoner of Azkaban, right? I know.
    41:31
    Yeah, dude, it's the best one. I kind of zoned out after the second. I was like, yeah, I guess it's kind of just more of the same. Yeah, but they're kids. The third one is excellent because they're becoming young adults. I know. That's what everyone tells me. You're making a mistake there. I am. But I think it's a very rich, obviously, and incredibly deep IP, and you could put so much into it, and people are still going to be like, oh, but you lost this moment. I love this little kind of thing. Like there's all these great little moments. It's almost a not win. It's a tough situation and Eric, he's excellent. Eric Menier is a genius as well. Again, not to disparage any playfield designers, the stuff that these people are doing in pinball is truly remarkable. It blew my mind when Eric Menier, I saw him on a video tour of Jersey Jack and I don't know who he was talking to, but he was talking about how they designed the underside of the playfield to have the mechanisms not just stick straight down So that the weight, they have them kind of tilted at an angle. So the way that they're screwed into the playfield is kind of diagonal so that the weight of the mechs doesn't directly pull down on the fastening like the screws and bolts so that the weight of gravity doesn't like rip them right out. And I'm just like, there you go. That's next level thinking about like engineering, man, just for the under the playfield stuff and the stuff he does on top of the playfield. I mean, don't even get me started, man. I mean, it's incredible. If you ever move machines for a living like we do here at the Wimble. JGT, I'm sure, is up there for sure. Holy shit. Yeah, you might just give yourself a hernia by just trying to move like a pirate. I don't even try. Again, get in Les Scalera. Get a stair cliff lifter. No, we got a – Yeah, or somebody. One of those coffin movers, but they suck. Okay. Yeah, but I think Harry Potter is a great IP. Don't get me wrong. I mean it is a bit complicated, you know, what – who the money – the rights holder. But it's kind of a double-edged sword because, again, you game like Star Wars for me example, right? Like Star Wars is – I'm such a huge Star Wars fan. But like it's so hard to do that game because I want so much out of it, right? And that's only – that was only just three movies that I wanted to see, let alone like all nine movies. Trying to do like something like that. Imagine trying to do a Star Wars video game where it covers from the prequels all the way to like the J.J. universe. I don't even pretend that universe exists, so we won't talk about that. I'm basically like an Old Testament Star Wars fan. Me too. I'm like the New Testament is great and all that stuff, but like the original three is all that really exists. And not the specialized. I don't want to go down to Star Wars world with you because I'll go into Mara Jade and what they should have done and this whole thing and the books. I know. It's amazing. Kevin J. Anderson came. Oh, he was fantastic. I know, I know. But again, going back to Harry Potter, I think it's going to be really hard. I think at the end of the day, I think people will be happy with what they get because it's better than nothing. It's better than it never existing. So people have to take that with that consideration. They're going to do their best at J.J.P. to make as many people happy with what they put in there. But again, it's only a finite space that you can do stuff in there mechanically. If million is real they got to get their money back somehow Yeah it going to be tough economically for sure to justify that expense But I mean at the end of the day I mean if you really think about it like if you think about the math like the difference between selling you know the amount of games that they sell Target like probably like three maybe four even 5 games at the cost of like what a low level what the like collector what the limited edition $15,000, right? Like 12,000 for KJP. Because I'm Canadian. I don't even know what it converts to KJP. I think it's 12,000 to 15,000. Okay. So 12,000 to 15,000 US per game. And they want to sell at least 3,000 of those. So you're making several million, like tens of millions of dollars. Does it make a difference between – is it going to kill you if you only make 36 million as opposed to 40 million? I don't know. The 4 million at that point, I don't know if that's going to be a huge deal breaker. Joe, I barely graduated college, so my math is going to be. I'm the worst. I literally have a learning disability with math, which is pretty bad if you're a pinball. Let's not go over there. All right, two more left. Yeah, yeah, let's go for it. Spooky has Beetlejuice, Franchion Art, got to be perfect for Beetlejuice, right? I'm a huge Beetlejuice fan. I think Beetlejuice, again, that's a property that really gets near and dear to my heart. I think Beetlejuice, the first one. I saw the second one. I enjoyed it. It's fine. I'm not watching it. I'd recommend it, even if you go into it as the lowest expectations, and you'll be surprised, Because Michael Keaton really does a great job. And it's not just they didn't they didn't go crazy. They didn't just make it like just the Beetlejuice movie. Like like they use Beetlejuice sparingly in the first movie. He's something that's always talked about. Right. Literally. Right. He's not like, oh, gee, Beetlejuice is going to show up. Where's Beetlejuice? What's Beetlejuice doing? Where's where's Poochie? Where's Poochie? That's a Simpsons reference. But anyhow, so it's about like the buildup of this character. And then when he shows up, it's like he there's a big payoff. Right. Like he's like larger than life. And they do that in the movie. And I think that it's a great theme for pinball because you've got the sandworms from Saturn. Gotta have the sandworms. You know, you've got all kinds. It's kind of like I've always wanted a Dune pinball machine. I want like a sandworm or something to eat a ball. I'm obsessed with things eating balls. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry for the Jaws fans out there. I was part of the ones leading the charge of why doesn't eat the ball? I mean, that's the whole point of a shark is that it eats. That's the main thing that it does is eat and make little baby sharks. That's literally what they say in the movie. But anyhow, I'd love to see like Sandworm in Beetlejuice. Obviously, if you can get Michael Keaton doing the voice, that'd be insane. Even just the callouts like it's showtime, folks, and multiball starts. No brainer. No brainer. You know what I mean? Like, so I love it. The color, you know, and I think Franchi does an amazing job with especially Evil Dead. And if he takes that kind of like neon purple sort of like fuchsia and, you know, green kind of colors, He did a spec Beetlejuice Translight. If he does that treatment for the whole game, you've got a no-brainer winner right there. That would be a dream thing for me for sure. It's such a perfect movie. It's a nice IP for them, and if they do have it, it makes a lot of sense. It's fun. It's got star power still. Obviously, because of Stranger Things, Winona Ryder is still a relevant name. Of course, Michael Keaton is a relevant name. People know who these actors are. I think that it's just Tim Burton. What's that? Dale? Dale, yeah. Yeah, you gotta have that to multi-ball. Harry Belafonte, man, of course. Yeah, that's the multi-ball. Yeah, of course. Banana boat multi-ball, sure. It's got to be. Yeah, yeah. One, pinball two, pinball three, pinball brunch. You know, like, come on. It's gotta be. It just writes itself, for sure. I think that'd be a lot of fun. The music is part of it. It's great. It's quirky. It's fun. It's got a lot of, again, comedy. Comedy is so important in pinball. And it's weird because you think that comedy, because like hearing a joke again and again, if you go to like a standup and you hear their joke again and again, you know what the setup and the payoff is. You know what the punchline is. It's not as fun hearing it like multiple times. But it's weird in pinball. It's unique in pinball because like you take a game like Attack from Mars or Medieval Madness, that's like a comedy game. I love mimicking the call outs, even though I've heard the joke a hundred times, thousands of times, maybe. Rick and Morty does a good job with that. Oh, again, a great example. Rick and Morty, it brings me to tears. They knocked that out of the park. It's funny. It's great at Rick and Morty. Yeah, it's so good. And like Jeff Parsons did a great job for the – what's the life – the game, the life game of – what's his name, Mort or whatever it is. He's like, Mort died in his sleep quietly. And it's just so deadpan and that's what makes it great. I think Jeff Parsons did a great job doing like a cameo voice in that as well. But again, comedy, I think it helps us like for me as a pinball player, it helps us like a mnemonic device. Again, you talk about learning pinball, knowing that I'm going to make this shot and like make an orbit shot on like Attack of Mars. We're going to build an atomic blaster. Like it's just something that I know and I'll never forget that line in my life. You know what I mean? Like it's just like a fun call out that's silly, you know, and same thing for Medieval Madness or any other kind of comedy based game. It's part of the learning process of like, okay, I know where I am because I know that call out. I remember that joke. And now I know like I need three more shots now. You're right. More comedies in Pinball would be fun. Yeah, I mean not for everyone. I don't want to Seinfeld. Well, yeah. I don't know. That couch multiball on Seinfeld. We can go for days or friends if you're a friends guy. I don't know. I am a friends guy. See, that's why we can't be friends now because I hate friends. Oh, my wife and I watch it every day. I'm sorry. I've never laughed at any once watching Friends. Even Pivot, I'm like, yeah, that's somewhat funny, but that's no Vandalay. That's no Vandalay Industries. No, true. It's very true. And you want to be my textile salesman. But at the end of the day, as someone who's a diehard pinball player such as yourself and myself, you could literally make a game. Like Keith Elwin could make a game about the phone book, as boring as that is. And if it's a great game and I still want to play it and it's fun and you do a great idea and you execute it well and it's engaging and fun and shoots great, I'm going to love that game. That's going to be probably one of my favorite games of all time. It doesn't matter. You know, like that, the theme is just what gets like the initial quarter, like the initial interest, the attraction, right? It's the play that gets the second dollar. And if it's an engaging thing, it'll keep you there, like you're engaged with the story and the people and stuff like that. But just as a competitive player, that's just another level. That's the beauty of pinball. People play for different reasons. They do play just for score and trying to figure out the exploit of like, okay, how do I maximize the amount of value of points I can get with the littlest amount of shots and the safest amount of shots I can do? That's also part of the hobby, you know, and that's part of the competitive scene. Yeah, you get games like I have Jurassic Park in my house right now, right? And I had never got to the visitor center. No, not me, man. I finally got to the visitor center, and now I want to escape from Nublar. I'm not good enough. It's going to be really hard. But the addiction to do that is what they've – we've talked about that earlier. What they've done with code has just been phenomenal. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's a great landmark game. Last question in this segment. Alice in Wonderland, your favorite. We talk about this every week. Is Alice in Wonderland going to ship from DPX this year? Say it on the record, sir. Oh, boy. Wow. You're really putting me under the spotlight on this one. Oh, my God. Look, I just – look, I want – This is an inside joke for the – The chat. The Discord group. Go ahead. You go ahead. You can take this anywhere you want. Again, people are new to the hobby, and I get it. They don't know the history that Dutch Pinball has gone through as a company. And if you look into it and you go through that incredible, what is it, 10 years now? It's been 10 years since they first announced the Big Lebowski? I'm not sure. It's very close to that. And they just finished their main company, not just DPX, not just like the offshoot branch. We're talking about Dutch Pinball, the main company. They just finished their final run of Big Lebowski's and the early adopter group that put in their money 10 years ago are just getting their games this year. That's crazy. And that gives me as a buyer, again, I don't have enough money to buy any new in-box Pinball machine, I'll be completely frank. But if I did, it would give me a bit of pause to think, okay, maybe they've gotten their act together and they've streamlined everything now. That's totally a very reasonable thing to understand. But just take it with a grain of salt when they say, we're going to have this all done by the end of like 2025. I think that's a real stretch. I don't think that's going to happen. I can guarantee that all the games will not be finished by 2025.
    54:00
    I'm willing to go one deeper and say I don't think a single game will be released in 2025. So not one game. That sounds very unkind. It sounds very unkind, but just considering the amount of wait time that they needed to go through with Lebowski. Now, I understand there was a lot of external forces that Dutch pinball had to deal with. They lost Yop to cancer. Tragic, like just heartbreaking. You could have just said, you know what? Our hearts not anymore. We lost one of the founders. Barry could have just walked away and they didn't. And I respect them for that. And they had problems with the manufacturing company that they thought could assemble all these parts. And they got basically extorted for like paying them more than they agreed to. And they would just hold on to the cabinets and the games like this crazy stuff that was beyond their control. And I get it. But pinball is hard. Making pinball is hard. OK, it's really hard. And, you know, say what you will. I have other opinions, again, on the actual like the execution of the theme and the mechanical action and the gameplay of the theme. And that's one thing entirely. But in terms of like their competency to manufacture, I don't have as a consumer or potential consumer, I don't have that much confidence. I don't want to make that like sound something like something I'm trying to hurt them or like hold on to your money. I mean, most people put their money into it any already. So they already have. They already have. So I'm not really talking anybody out of it. But I'm just saying I'm just curious what you thought. Yeah, just I mean, temporary. I'm just saying people who have invested into it and people are really excited to play it. I'm excited to play it too when it's finally finished and ready to go and go out the door and get to people's homes.
    55:40
    I got to play two balls at Expo. I had fun, but I couldn't hit the top ramp. Yeah, I heard that was really tough. And that's a big shot in the game. It's vital. All right, so here we go.
    55:55
    Yes, I will go on record. I don't know if any money is going to be – I'm not beholden to paying anybody out. I'll bet you $10. You pay me $10? That one game, at least one game. At least one game. That will be put on location or a person's home in 2025. A production game will be released in 2025. Okay, I'll do $10. $10. American dollars or Canadian. That makes a difference. That's like $20 Canadian. All right. I'll make it $5. No, no, $10 US. That's fine. I can make it. All right. Do we want to talk about the Degenny's now? Okay. Or do we want to do the hurry up and then do the Degenny's? Let's do the Degenerates in the Golden Hurry Up, sure. All right. When did you come up with the Degenerate Awards? This is the fourth year. Yes, this will be our fourth year. It really, at first, did not, in 2022, during the middle of COVID, when we were all kind of like really getting fatigued and staying at home, and it was difficult because, you know, you weren't, again, not having that social aspect of going to see people, and there was still a lot of concern about, you know, a resurgence, constant resurgences, new strains and stuff. We didn't know we were getting out of this when or whatever. So I felt like, you know, I wanted to do something for, again, the community that I have on Facebook, the Pinball Degenerates group. I wanted to do something that recognizes really not an industry award, which, again, no, nothing to knock anybody else out there, like the Pinball Industry Awards and the Twippies. They all have their like they're the big guys. They're the Oscars, the Academy Awards and all that stuff. I wanted to do something very low-key and kind of community-focused, specifically in this case for the people who are making really great stuff and doing really great stuff in the Pinball Degenerates group. So I came up with this kind of like fake award thing that I was just doing out of my bedroom, and I bought a bunch of awards thanks to David the Sluver from Ulix Store. He helped me put together the awards and I just kind of gave out about 15 or 16 awards. And also there was like the joke at the end where I was kind of razzing a couple people because it seems a little self-indulgent sometimes, these pinball awards. So at the end of it, I had a secret award. At the end of it, I gave myself an award. I gave myself the Dote, the Degenerist of all time, D-O-A-T, not the GOAT, the Dote, Degenerist of all time. And I gave that to myself and that's how I closed off the show. But, you know, really, again, I wanted to – it was really – honestly, it was about recognizing all the awesome people that were my friends, most of them, or some people I didn't even meet. I've never even known. They're like a guy in Greece who did this amazing restoration and had to ship a game to ship a trophy out to Greece, which was not inexpensive. Let me tell you. So whatever. They earned it. They deserved it. Right. And they posted cool stuff about their process and great photos. It was just an amazing job. So I had to recognize that. And I just felt that, you know, this is fun. And that for me was just going to be like a fun joke one off. And then people were like, wow, that was really fun. I really was like, really? I was just like, like just with my headphones in my bedroom, just giving out awards, doing dumb jokes and having fun. And they're like, oh, you got to do that again. You have to do that again. I'm like, oh, oh, OK, sure. If people enjoy it, I'll do it. And so we kind of from there, we slowly kind of evolved and very rapidly actually getting more and more intricate and elaborate. So the second one, we were on location at Cabin Fever. We did it. Robin let us do it. Cabin Fever, we did, you know, with people playing pinball in the background. And we were giving out awards. I built this, our mascot, Billy P. Ball, I built like a mascot to help present the awards. And we gave out a bunch of crazy awards and stuff like that for that night. And we had a lot of fun. And people were like, oh, man, you got to do that next time again. And I'm like, okay, sure. And then we did it more elaborate. But then I was like, for the third one, I don't want to just give out awards. I want to do something kind of fun that's entertaining because the Oscars, they don't just give out awards. They do segments and musical segments and stuff like that. So I'm like, okay, maybe we can do a little sketch, kind of a side plot that's going on. And so in the third one, the third Yannal to Jenny Awards, we had our mascot, Billy P. Ball, get kidnapped by these topper terrorists who were ransoming Billy for a Ghostbusters pinball topper. And so I was like, we do not capitulate to terrorists. We do not negotiate with terrorists. Billy, we love you, but you're on your own, man. Good luck. And so we did this like, you know, Tarantino-esque Reservoir Dogs kind of sequence where Billy gets horribly maimed. And it's like a lot of dark, violent stuff that we put in there, a lot of dark kind of humor. And Billy escapes, but he barely escapes with his life. He's all bloodied and bandaged and bruised and everything. And then we kind of set it up for this one that's happening, the fourth annual Pinball Degenerate Awards, happening March 15th at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. It's going to be live. We'll have a live audience and we're going to find out how Billy P. Ball is doing, our mascot, and we're going to try to save him because he's in a coma. And we need Dr. Dude, the one and only Dr. Dude, to save his life with his excellent ray. So we've got until midnight on the night of the degenerates, March 15th, to find out if we can raise enough money to pay for his life-saving medical operation here. And we'll see. We'll see what happens. Does he live? Does he die? It's kind of like a reference to the old school SNL when they had this bit called Larry the Lobster. I don't know if you go back. Do you remember Larry the Lobster? So they had a lobster and they're like, vote, call in and vote if we should kill Larry or let him live. And at the end of the night, they said, well, we had more votes for killing Larry. So they boiled the lobster on the show. And, you know, they got a lot of letters, I'm sure, from the SPCA or whatever. But it was a great bit. It was like a great way to engage your audience. And so hopefully people will really enjoy it. We're going to have a live audience here. We're going to have all kinds of crazy stuff. I don't want to get too – I don't want to – like literally the expectations for this has always been – I've told people a million times. This is not the Academy Awards. This is not the Twippies. This is not the Pinball Industry Awards or anything like that. The level of quality and entertainment that you should expect is basically like what you would expect from a third-rate children's beauty pageant, okay? Okay? Like, please, just temper your expectations. We're going to have a bunch of technical problems, I'm sure. We're very, very ambitious for this, but just bear with us. Have fun. I'm familiar with technical problems, Joe. It happens there, but hey, that was out of your hands, right? And that's what happened. I mean, it was an internet house. It was an internet house. Live television. Live television, folks. So why are you doing it live? Why don't you do a 30-minute delay?
    62:41
    I don't even know how to do that on Twitter. It's an OBS. You could do it. Oh, yeah? Well, I mean, it's too late now. It's too late. I'll tell you what, next year the Twippies will be in a 30-minute. We'll see. I mean, I might have a costume malfunction as well, so who knows? If you need any advice, I just went through it, brother. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for all the help you've done, honestly, and congratulations to you and the whole Twippy team. I've told you this a million times already privately, but I just want to say, again, you guys did an amazing job. Colin, you, Aaron, and Ian. Even Ian did a great job. And of course, Ralph. They're great hosts. They're my friends. Yeah, and they're my friends too. And I got to do the Twippies with my friends and I get to do it again next year. We're already planning. We're doing a debrief next week. We take it serious, right? Yeah, but it's fun. It's fun, right? It's fun. It was an internet outage. There's nothing I could do. No, no, no. And it was great. You guys came right back. You guys rallied together and you guys just pushed through. And that's what teamwork and that's what you do when you're working with your friends, right? You're not like shouting at each other. Next year will be better. Yeah, it's going to be better and better for sure. Again, you guys are the real professionals. I'm just doing a fun thing. I can't wait to watch it. Well, we'll see if it even gets to air. We'll see. It's going to be kind of like, again, it's going to be kind of like a mixture of like UHF meets like The Muppet Show meets Saturday Night Live. Well, I can't wait for it. So it's going to be weird. And so what day is it again? March 15th, Saturday night, March 15th, 8 p.m. Eastern. Oh, it's right there. Yeah, there you go. Right there. On YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. So you're going to use Restream? I guess, even though you're trying to talk me out of it. We're going to give it a shot. I think you should just do YouTube. Yeah. I mean, I just want, again, like I just want to make it as open and available to people as possible. You know what I mean? So I want to have that. I know. Because, again, it's all about having fun.
    64:42
    Next year is only YouTube. That's probably the smart choice to do. And everybody's on YouTube. I use it every day.
    64:50
    You know what I mean? I do, yeah. So that's great. Well, congrats. I can't wait to watch it. It's going to be great. You're downplaying it way too damn much. Lower your expectations. Please. That's the thing. Lowered expectations is my mantra. Because if you exceed that, that's great. If you need it, then that's great, too. Because it's like, yeah, that's as dumb as I thought it was going to be. No problem. But it's like you can't go any lower than that than really low expectations, right? You can't be like, oh, that was a ripoff. I paid nothing for that. And I wasted my – well, there you go. Like, you paid nothing. Like, no, it was free entertainment. What do you want? It's free. It's going to be great. But we would appreciate, though, if people want to donate to the GoFundMe, I do have to say.
    65:25
    What do you do with the GoFundMe? You're buying a – Well, we're trying to save Billy's life. But, like, you know, there is actual costs that are associated with this. You're not selling any tickets. We are selling tickets. Oh, okay, good. We are selling tickets for the live. It's only $20, though. So it's like a basic, like very simple. Like you're going to get one hell of a night for just $20. We have sponsorship from our friends at Reed's Distillery. They have a great gin and seltzer mix that they're bringing, and people can have that. We're going to have lots of fun. It's going to be kind of like a little pinball party, and it's just kind of like a weird show. It's going to be very weird. And so hopefully it all works. You sold the shit out of it, Joe. That's a great sell. I've been working really hard on it. And also my friends. I've got to say, this thing doesn't happen. Again, I make that reference to the Muppet show because Jim Henson is a big influence on me and a big inspiration, the late Jim Henson. And he had that one song, like, if one single person believes in you, then why not two? And if why not two, then why not three? Then why not three? Then why not four? And then why not four now? Why not more? And if all those people can believe in you, then you can believe in you too, right? And that's the whole thing. It's like this happens like it's like a weird snowball effect where it's like I've got a weird idea. And then people are like, oh, I want to help that person because they're doing something cool. And I want to be part of that. And you know what I'm talking about because you've got, again, like the great team with Ralph, Aaron and Ian and Colin and everybody organizing, everybody behind the scenes, Donovan, your buddy Donovan. Oh my God We did like a pinball award show and we were like giving out real awards and we were like it crazy Like you only on this earth for so long right And you got to do stuff that like pushes you out of your comfort level and stuff that excites you and makes you and it fun But why are you doing – why would you do something if it wasn't fun? So all these people that are helping me, they're having fun and we're having fun. Hopefully the night will be fun for everybody watching and in the audience and just, yeah, again, lower your expectations. Have fun. Oh, you see, you're doing good, and then you went. Lower your expectations, though. Stop that. All right.
    67:44
    Are you ready for exciting rapid fire? Yes, yes. Let's do it. Hurry up. I love it. We're going to try rapid fire, Joe. Yeah, I'm going to go quick. Okay, you're going to do your best. This is Conor Wade's brainchild from the Wormhole Simple Rapid Fire questions, starting with Canadian Football League or National Football League? I hate all football. Hockey all the way. Or baseball. Favorite hockey player of all time. Doug Gilmore. No question. They could have won. They could have won the Stanley Cup. Well, maybe they would have gone to the Stanley Cup with Montreal in 93. But Wayne Gretzky, high stick, Doug Gilmore in the face. No call. And then minutes later, he scored the winning game in game six and then ended the Leafs hopes for getting to the Stanley Cup. I'll never forget Wayne for that and many other things that he's done recently. But we're not going to get into the politics of that. But Doug Gilmore, number 93, killer. I love it. Yeah, man. Absolutely. This one is – I'll tell you mine real quick. My favorite hockey player of all time is number 22, Mike Bossy. Oh, Bossy. Yeah, yeah. Wow, yeah. Long Island, New York. Of course. And there's two people out there that are listening that go – that know Mike Bossy. Shitty movie but great pinball machine segment time. Settle the argument once and for all. We're going to retire this question. Pick the best pin out of these two shitty movies. Okay, that's subjective. Kongo or Johnny Mnemonic? I'm going to have to go Kongo because I love the callouts. I think the callouts in Johnny Mnemonic are okay, but they're a little kind of like, it's clearly a Keanu impersonator. And like, I'm making a long distance phone call. And like, there's a couple of those, but Kongo. Holy shit. You've got, what's his name? Winston from fucking Ghostbusters. You've got Tim Curry as a whole film. Oh, that's right. He was in that movie. Hippos! Zinge! What does it mean? And it's just unbelievable. Like, it's just the call-outs in that alone are amazing. Amy! Amy, no like! Bad gorilla! Bad gorilla! Such a bad movie, isn't it? I loved it as a kid because I was a huge Michael Crichton fan by that time, and I was deep into the books, all of Michael Crichton's books, and I was excited to see anything after Jurassic Park get turned into a movie, including Kongo. And I love, hey man, the movie ends with monkeys, like apes, getting cut in half by lasers powered by diamonds. I know, that diamond is fucking terrible. It's fucking amazing. It's terrible. It's amazing. It's terrible. And it's got also Bruce Campbell in the beginning of the movie. He's just there. It has Laura, what's her name? No, not Laura Dern. Laura Linney, Laura Linney. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. She doesn't want that. Ernie Hudson. Ernie Hudson is. Ernie Hudson. You got Dylan Walsh, you got Tim Curry. I mean, Tim Curry is amazing. He is one of the greatest character actors of all time. I love Tim Curry. And I think the shots are amazing. And I got to say, I mean, some people have maybe mentioned this a little bit, but everybody loves Keith Elwin's first game, like first production game, Iron Maiden. Okay. And you know what? He's gone on record as well before he even released Iron Maiden, talking about how much he loves Kongo as a game, not a movie, but he loved Kongo. If you look at Iron Manon and you do a mirror flip of that game, you take the playfield and you flip it horizontally, it is the exact same layout, pretty much, almost shot for shot, as Congo. Pinball has just been named an Olympic sport. Oh, God. And you get to pick four players to represent Canada in the next Olympic Games. Wow. Pick your top four Canadian pinball players to represent your beloved country. Number one, my boy, number one draft pick, Jack Tadman. I call Jack Papa Jack because he is a father. He is a father. But I think one day Jack Tadman has the skill and the ability to win Papa. One day. This is your top four, man. You're not messing around because you know where we're going in America. Jack Tadman. Yeah, I know. You guys are going to kill us still. You guys will probably still. But number two, Robert Gagneau from BC. Number two pick. Number three, my boy, Mike Savage. We call him Savage. And the way he's such a huge guy, he's a massively tall guy, he's a big guy. So he kind of does like the Ken Dryden thing. Again, bringing it back to hockey. You know how Ken Dryden used to lean on his hockey stick as a goaltender? I don't know if you know that. But so, Mike, his games are so insanely long. He'll get up to like six, seven billion on Jaws or something insane on a regular day and be like, oh, it was okay. And he has to sit down. He's a big guy. It hurts his back to stand for so incredibly long. So he sits, and we give him all kinds of hell for this, you know, like, oh, somebody bring up a chair. But he sits on like a stool, he sits on like a bar stool, and he will play for literally hours on like your Iron Maiden, on your Jaws, on anything, on Foo Fighters, on any modern show. All right, so that's three. So that's three. Number four. Oh, man. Who's my fourth? This one.
    72:49
    I mean, I guess I'm going to have to go Adam Becker because he is a Pinnberg champion, And he's kind of semi-retired, but I'd say Adam Becker, he's got so much. I mean, this is the Olympics, Joe. He's a pinball. He's an actual legit pinball champion. He'll come out of retirement for the Olympics. I'm sure he would, yeah. And if we're just trying to win the gold, you know what I mean? We just have stone-cold killers. You have to go Jack Tadman, Robert Gagneau, Mike Savage, and Adam Becker. That's my top four pick. All right. Teolis is going to be pissed. I mean, Teolis is great, but I don't know. Are you going to put Teolis on modern games? Are you going to put him on Dungeons & Dragons? I don't know. It's your team. I've seen Teolis play some of the modern games. Unless it's Rush. He knows his stuff when it comes to music pins, especially the ones that he owns, like Led Zeppelin. Like, holy shit, he can put up a clinic on Led Zeppelin. I'm just giving you a hard time. Yeah, I love Jeff. I love Jeff. With the increased fan base of Formula One. Oh, wow. Should Stern do a Formula One pin, yes or no? You know, it's funny because, like, you know, Gary's always talking about, like, how things will be successful in the European market. I think it would do much better. Like, you do, like, a Lewis Hamilton-themed pinball game. I could see that doing very well. Put him in the new Ferrari right up top. Yeah, for sure. Like, I could see, like, I could definitely see a Ferrari game, too. Like, if they can do a Mustang, they could definitely, or, like, Corvette, they could do a Ferrari game for sure. But going back to F1, like I do watch something like we have F1 here in Montreal in Canada. I've gone to at least four F1s. I'm addicted, dude. Really? You've got to come up to Montreal. You've got to come to Montreal, man. I started watching the F1 on Netflix during COVID. Oh, yeah. My wife and I don't miss a race. Yeah, that was a great series. A lot of people got into F1. Oh, it's fantastic. And the new one is coming. It just came out. So I need to watch it because it's fantastic. Yeah, and people don't understand the ruling amount of physical duress. That is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's crazy. I can't even – it's hard to just watch them race and have that concentration. Yeah, it's awesome. I think it would be a great pin, what Hot Wheels could have been.
    75:06
    I like Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels is fun. But I think, yeah, I mean if you have a fast – depending on the designer, right, all depending on the designer, If you've got a fast flowy game and you get the sound effects of like the rumble of the engine and like just, you know, speeding out and like crazy like, you know, call outs and like, oh, he caught him in the hairpin and just like just crazy. Yeah. High octane entertainment. I think there could be a market for it, especially in the European market. And again, like it's great to see it become more and more popular, you know, in North America, certainly because of the more races like, you know, like Las Vegas and like do they have one in Texas? Yeah, we have one in Austin. Yeah, you got one recently, like in the last couple of five or six years or something. So, yeah, man. We're doing really great on this. Hurry up. We're doing good. Okay. I'm sorry this is not – but, yeah, yes, I think it would be successful. Yes. All right. Last couple of questions. These are for your – because we know you're a film major, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not a major. I'm a bachelor. I'm not a major. Okay. I'm sorry. What's my major? I'm not a – what's the word? Like a master. I don't have a master's. I have a bachelor in film production. You have a bachelor's in film production, so you like your films. So we're going to ask you a couple of film questions. Let's do it. Okay, here we go. Godfather 1 or 2. Man, that's like saying Star Wars, New Hope, or Empire. Because you can't have the second one, no matter how superior the second one is, the first one sets the groundwork of the first one.
    76:30
    I'm still going to have to go with the first one. I'm a purist. It's not like Empire where it doesn't work without the first one. Like Godfather 2, you can still kind of understand the concept and go into it without having to have too much of a backstory. But you've got – you don't have in Godfather 2 – you know you have Robert De Niro, which is amazing. I mean, come on. You do have that, but you don't have Marlon Brando. I know, but the answer is two. But Marlon Brando is the Godfather. Like when I think in my brain, that is Marlon Brando. It's not his son, Michael. It's not Pacino. When I think of the Godfather, I'm thinking of, Oh, look what they did to my boy, they massacred my boy. Like, that's the Godfather. That is the Godfather. All right. It's Brando. Number one he chooses. Which Stanley Kubrick movie would make a great pinball machine? Holy shit. Right off the bat, The Shining would be amazing. Yeah. You break down the door and Shelley Duvall. Great answer. And you just get in there. That's perfect. And, you know, it's got so many great call-outs. And music is amazing. I love, you know, the haunting, you know, music of The Shining. It again would be a great horror theme. You wouldn't really have much room for comedy because it's a pretty straight-laced kind of atmospheric movie. It's not really like even a horror movie. Like there's very little violence until the very, very end, right? It's all about like mental insanity. And if you could like relate that, another one would be great would probably be like, you know, One of the more popular crowd pleasers would be Clockwork Orange, for sure. You could probably do a great Clockwork Orange. You lock your three droogs, and then you go out for a night of ultraviolence multiball.
    78:16
    There's some problematic scenes that you might want to stay away from in a Clockwork Orange. I don't think that you could do a 2001. That wouldn't work. It's just so cerebral.
    78:29
    I think, yeah, for sure, The Shining would work great because that's a huge crowd pleaser game. Shining is probably the one that I can't do. You can't do like, you know. Eyes of the White Shining. Well, Eyes of the White Shining. I don't know. Very weird. You know, or like, you know, Full Metal Jacket would be too much. Full Metal, yeah. Full Metal Pinball. I don't know. That's not going to work. It's too dark. I would think like more of the crowd pleaser kind of like, kind of more sort of like, maybe I'm missing one that's just out of left field that I just can't remember because Kubrick does so many different great genres. He was a master. And the great thing about Kubrick is that every time he did a new movie, it was a different genre, a completely different direction, right? And people would, at the time, they'd go, oh, this is no, Clockwork Orange is, that's no Dr. Strangelove. Or they'd say, oh, Dr. Strangelove, that's no 2001. They'd always be compared to the previous movie. And then when Eyes Wide Shut came out, he passed away. And then people didn't really adopt it until much later and appreciate it because they were always comparing it to his previous movie, Which by the time his next movie came out, it was considered like a masterpiece. You know what I mean? So I think hopefully enough time has come where we can talk about it, you know, about if Eyes Wide Shut is a great movie. I think it's a pretty interesting movie, but definitely not a pinball movie. Not a pinball theme. You're literally just throwing your money away if you buy the IP of Eyes Wide Shut. All right, last question for you, sir. I'm so sorry. It's taking so long. You're talking about movies now. Dude, I had the best time. I'm talking about movies now, which I love even more than pinball. No one plays the hurry up. Yeah, I'm sorry. And I let it go because I like it and I don't care. You're very generous. It doesn't matter. It's my show. All right. Who cares? Hopefully people are still listening. They are. Okay. They are. So we're an hour and 20 minutes. Oh, my God. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to see the last question. Yes. What the hell is pea meal bacon? And as the pickiest eater you'll ever meet, will I ever eat any of this? Okay. Do you like ham? Yeah, I like ham. Okay, that's basically what Pino Bacon is. It's a loin. It's pork loin. It's a cured, a salt-cured pork loin, okay? Like a pork chop. Like you take a pork chop, right? All right. I like pork chops. Okay, so you take the bone. I dig on swine. I dig on swine too, man. I'm Italian. They say Italians love eating pork so much that if Italians could figure out how to cook the oink, they would eat it. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't know if you can get that joke, but anyhow.
    80:56
    So, okay, so a pinball bacon is basically a pork loin. You take the bone out like you would have in a pork chop and then you brine it in like a salt water brine, like a wet brine, okay, and you brine it for like a day or two. And then they used to, as a sort of, again, it's not bacon, it's not the belly. It's like a British bacon, like what they would call like, you know, rashers and stuff or American style, which is the most of the bacon that I eat when I'm eating bacon is like stripped bacon from the belly. OK, that's real bacon. That's actual real bacon. Not the Canadian bacon crap. We call it female. It's not. Again, it's like you're not from Canada. I get it. You call it Canadian bacon. But if you're in Canada or in Toronto, which is like the home of the female bacon sandwich. If you come to Toronto, you've got to have, you've got a must-have. I'm there. It's like going to Chicago and not having deep-dish pizza. It's like going to Austin and not having barbecue. You're insane. You did not experience Austin, Texas if you didn't have barbecue, for Christ's sake. You didn't have brisket. I can't wait to go to Toronto, hang with you, and get some pea meal bacon. So they wrap it in what used to be ground-up peas, but now it's not ground-up peas because that's too expensive and it's not really tasty. They just roll it in cornmeal. Okay. Okay? They roll it in cornmeal, so there's no pea in the pea meal bacon anymore. They roll it in cornmeal, and then they just sort of leave it in the fridge to set up, and then you slice it pretty, not super thin, but pretty thin slices like you would ham, like slices of ham. And you fry that up in a pan, and then you throw it in a bun, like a Kaiser roll, maybe a little bit of, if you want, some mustard. Like I like personally, I like a hot honey mustard, like something sweet and a little spicy in there. And that it's just like this perfect. The bacon is so salty and fatty and it's got a bite to it. Unlike like bacon, which I personally like people, different kinds of bacon. I'm a foodie guy, too. So you hear me talking about three things, pinball movies and food. These are like my top things. I mean, this is perfect. This is what I try to do. This is all my wheelhouse, man. So bacon, people have different preferences and how they like to cook the bacon. I like crispy. I like semi crispy bacon. I like it not to be like shatter in your mouth like glass, but pretty close. Like a good chew, but like not chewy like it's like chewing on some rubber. Anyhow, but female bacon doesn't get that way because it doesn't have the fat, right? So you can fry it just so it gets warm through. You don't want to overcook it. It also gets dry. You just cook it through like you would ham, like a ham sandwich, and it just melts apart in your mouth. All the different little fibers break apart in your mouth, and you just chew it, and it just melts in your mouth. It's beautiful. It's literally like our city sandwich. We used to call Toronto Hogtown because there were so many pigs that were slaughtered. It's a real thing. They used to call Toronto Hogtown as a nickname because they slaughtered and sent out so many pigs across North America to New York State, which of course you know very well, and all across North America. But yeah, all across the eastern seaboard, Toronto was the epicenter of pig slaughter in North America. Well, congratulations on that. Yeah.
    84:06
    There's very few places. You've got to go to – in Toronto, there's St. Lawrence Market. They have the Carousel Bakery. That's the best place to get a fresh Kaiser roll that's baked that morning. They got the best female bacon sandwiches at the – even Anthony Bourdain, the late, great Anthony Bourdain, who was like a spirit animal to me, late, great Anthony Bourdain. I loved him, and he came to Toronto. That was like one of the first things he tried, and he loved it. So you've got to come to Toronto, have a female bacon sandwich, have some poutine, have all kinds of different crazy stuff that we have up here. We have a lot of hearty food because it's cold. You've got to stay warm. You've got to carb up.
    84:40
    So that's great. Joe, thank you so much for today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, honestly. I had a really great time with you. Thank you so much. Where can people find you and your podcast again? I don't know if they want to find me, but digitally you can find me. Yeah, just on Facebook. I also have a really dumb kind of a joke Instagram account called PinButts. And it's basically I just went through all the artwork and backglasses and playfield art of all the pinball machines I could find to find all the butts, like male, female, even animal butts, any kind of butts. I've just cataloged on this Instagram, but you can message me on that. It's kind of a joke account that I became my default account when I lost my original account to hackers. But, yeah, on Facebook, you can find me, Joe Cerevino, and obviously on the Pinball Degenerates page, I'm there. And, yeah, just answer three simple questions, like, just to prove you're not a – It's only three questions. Yeah, I mean, even if you don't have an IPA number, it's just there as, like, a placeholder to make sure that, like, the bots aren't, like, putting – like, my number is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's not your IPA number, buddy. So you're not getting it. So, yeah, just, I mean, if you don't have an IPA number, don't worry about it. Just let me know what your favorite pinball machine is and agree that you're not going to be a jerk in the group and then you're in. And you're in and watch the Degenerate Awards. Pinball Degenerate. Fourth annual March 15th. Maybe the last. Who knows? That's how it goes. You got this. All right, Joe. What a pleasure. Thank you so much, sir. I had a great time with you. Thank you for hanging with me and getting to know you a little more. It was awesome. I appreciate it. Me too. I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much. All right, brother. That was fun as always. Long. Boy, Joe and I can talk, huh?
    86:27
    When I first met Joe, I actually didn't even think he was a real person. I was like, this person is the most excited and nice person I've ever met. This is a caricature. This isn't real. And he really is genuine, and that's why I like him. He's just excited, and he was excited to be on the podcast, and that warms my heart. So thank you so much, Joe. Today is March 4th. I'm still kind of decompressing from the Twippies a little bit, but I did have the best time hanging out with my friends. And Ian, Aaron, Ralph, and Colin, thank you for giving me this opportunity. There's nothing we can do with internet outage, but I think we did a really good job, and hopefully you guys liked it. If you want to see the Twippies again, the Vods are up on YouTube. But check out content made by Retro Ralph. He made a YouTube video about the entire weekend. And it is a fantastic recap. And he also then went through and did another recap on his the flip side on his podcast. So thank you, Retro Ralph, for that. That was very, very nice. Excellent article as well, written by Ian Jacoby of Nudge Magazine. They both cover the weekend very, very well, so I don't really need to talk about that anymore. Speaking of YouTube, we're going to be making the switch, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to be ditching Twitch. And I'm sorry we had a good run on Twitch, but I think it's time to say goodbye. So honestly, we want to broadcast in 4K moving forward, and I can't do it on Twitch. And so I hope you follow us from Twitch to YouTube on March.
    88:00
    At TPF, that will be streamed on YouTube and not our Twitch channel, so I'll give you ample notice of that. The next big event, again, is TPF. I can say we're bringing Devil King by Technoplay. Check that one out. We're bringing a Geiger conversion kit. The pinball is called Sky High. That is wild, total ripoff of NeverEnding Story. And we are bringing an Alvin and Gee football. And we're also bringing Pulp Fiction. We're going to bring that Pulp Fiction, and there's going to be a little topper on it by Electric Playground. So I'm excited to say that. And we're going to actually please stop by our booth at TPF because we're going to have a little scaled-down booth. I think we went a little crazy sometimes with the big walls. But we're going to scale the booth down, but Electric Playground is going to be right next to us. And then Friday night, we're going to do a happy hour. So stay tuned for more information about the happy hour at TPF. And then Saturday night, we're going to be streaming the Texas Pinball Festival Wizards tournament live on YouTube, not Twitch. And very excited to be streaming that for my fourth year in a row. Thanks again, Joe, for coming on. This is a long podcast, so I'll just leave you with thank you. Thank you guys for everything. Thank you for the community. Thank you for embracing the wormhole and treating me as nicely as you do. I really appreciate it. God bless you. King Kong