What's going on everybody? Welcome to episode Man, I can't believe I'm saying it. It's episode 4 and it's only been a few weeks uh of the Dirty Pool podcast. Uh, I'm Jeff and I am so stoked today to be joined by Ian Jacobe. Is it a Is it Jacobe? Is it a soft or a hard J? Yeah. Jacobe. Wait, what would the other one be? Jakob. Jacobe, I guess. Yeah. Yakobe. Yeah. No. Uh, yeah. Jacobe. You got it. All right. I'm here with Ean Yakobi, uh, owner and creator of Nudge Magazine. Uh I I'm so stoked for this episode personally just because uh you know the first my entrance back into pinball involved talking to some of the people that were on on Tilt's crew specifically Jeff May of Jeff May's podcast and he was like yo you would love this print magazine he since you love vintage photography and all this and he was like you should connect with Ian and check out Nudge and that night I went on and tried to buy all your magazines and none of them were in stock. Anyways I couldn't be happier. This is Ian. Hello Ian. That's that's sounds like us. That story all the way around sounds like us. We have great friends, a nice network of people, a good product, and nobody knows how to buy it or get it. So, somebody asked me yesterday about how to get it internationally, and if you did international shipping. So, well, let's start off. Can you get Nudge in Tasmania? Say, this is a great actually, thank you for asking this. Um because so I used to be the only person in charge of shipping for Nudge and that's hard because obviously okay so like let's take a step back right Nudge is a pinball lifestyle magazine. Uh a big part of my pinball lifestyle is like smoking pot, hanging out at arcades and like being kind of a do nothing. And so someone like that isn't necessarily they don't also have the characteristics that make for a good like shipping and logistics person. Um, hold on. Smoke smoking weed and and being chill doesn't match with managing logistic networks. You're blowing my mind. I think those people are are quite organized. They're quite um they're unflapable. I think really good ones. And so for me, when it was like uh you know, we would get we were really lucky. Um people wanted to buy Nudge right off the bat. So we would have like really big orders come in and then it was just me at first in my truly in my parents' basement and then just in a normal room like this but just me a normal Can we can you define a normal room like what is the framework for a room that is normal? Sure. Yeah. I would say like this looks like 15 by 15 or something but um you know good air flow. There's like a reasonable amount of light that reaches it every day. Um, but I'm just saying it's not like a it's not a shipping, you know, it's not a shipping and receiving area. Uh, so it was just me doing that and and thusly stuff went wrong. I'll say stuff went wrong and so it was hard to get people magazines timely. Uh, occasionally they would get extra magazines. There was That's a bonus. Yeah. Well, for those people, yeah, for me it was really hard when I'm like live or die. Like even though our magazines are expensive, I think they're $20 plus shipping. Um we don't make a lot of money uh on this endeavor. It's really kind of a break even situation right now for me. Um but like those kind of errors were just like quite costly and very I'm not someone who bounces back that easily from just like wow you sent 10 magazines to the wrong place and now you have to pay for shipping somewhere else, you know, and that's just coming out of my pocket. Sure. So, so long story long, now we have an external company shipping our stuff. For issue five, the first 300 are still going to come from me and they're going to come with like a bunch of awesome stuff and all that, but everything else, if you go on nudgepinball.com and you put in an order, uh, Mixum can ship it and I'm fairly certain they can do it anywhere in the world. I think we have Canadian readers who have gotten them through them. I know you've gotten them now. I think that was through Mixum. Um, so they're they're Look at that. Perfect. Those look good. Oh, nice. Yeah. Be careful. Getting attacked. So, long story long, I think you can uh internationally get all back issues of Nudge. Now, with Nudge 5 coming out soon, you you will have to wait. Just like you say soon. Well, we're going to jump back to what nudge is in a second, but when you say soon, what is the timeline for people that are eagerly awaiting or is it episode? Is it number? What do you call it? Yeah, issue five, I think. Yeah, an issue. That makes a lot of sense. Uh, I think issue five hopefully will be done by in June and I think it will be published in June or July. So, coming up really fast, actually. So, Nudge, let's let's reel it back for those that don't know what Nudge Magazine, Nudge Magazine is is a magazine. And I realize that that's a dumb statement, but in a lot of ways, it's not because we're in a world of totally digital publications, right? And this is this is not this is like a real thing. Like, I'm touching it and feeling it. And it's not made of zeros and ones. And you have to have either the biggest pair of coonace or zero zero self uh awareness to be diving into making a publication like that. Like it's 2025. What are you doing? Yeah. Well, I think it was 2020 when we started. So maybe it was smarter then. Actually, no. I think it was probably dumber. There's actually more magazines I think now than there were in 2021. Well, so you're ahead of the curve is kind of where I'm going with this joke is that like I think that more than ever now people are actually latching back on to media that means something. Uh and you can see that in the return of vinyl and kids wanting to buy CDs and stuff now like in a lot of ways the technocratic society that is pushing the giant AI monster and we'll get into we'll get into the full digital world with you later. uh you know people want something they can touch and feel and feel a part of is a human element. So what brought you to that four or five years before it was a thing? Um well it was all I really knew how to do. Um I come from like writing for alt weeklys and stuff like that. I I I I'm assuming you're from LA and you guys have those there and you know I lived I grew up in this place called Oaklair and I wrote for our local Alt Weekly which is called Volume One and I would just write fun weird articles you know it's like oh we tried every tuna fish sandwich in Oaklair in a day you know and here's the article about it. It's like stupid weird stuff like that. So I actually grew up in Saudi Arabia but that's a different story. Yeah, you guys probably don't have a ton of uh alt weeklys there. Not a lot of pinball magazines in in Saudi. No. Yeah. Or just like about anything because these weren't really pinball magazines. They were like, you know, what's going on this week or like what are the cool concerts and then there would be fun little like articles in there. So, um, so I used to do that with a guy who I was also in a band with. I know you're a musician, but I was in a band called Lark Larks for many years um with this amazing drummer. My favorite drummer. I was so lucky. His name's Brian Mowen. Um, and he drums in like a lot of a lot of great bands, but he was the drummer in my band and he's also a graphic designer. So, when I kind of got the idea for Nudge, which was really just born out of like COVID boredom, like I couldn't go out on location to play pinball and I wanted to stay connected to that world. So, um, this was a way to do that. And he was a guy who I just knew had the right vision and like we had a really good working creative relationship and other stuff. And so, um, yeah, we just decided to do it. And I think it was pretty early on that I was like, I definitely want there to be, yeah, a print version of it because I hated when people are like, we're a magazine and then it's like you're it's not a magazine. It's the It's so annoying. And maybe a website. And so, like, for me, I think what's always kind of set us apart is like I just asked someone the other day cuz I I I was getting flak about something, but I was like, can you say one nice thing about me? And the person was like, "I like your magazine." Like the physical magazine. I was like, "Okay, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's but I'm saying that's the base, right? And that's cool." Like that that we always have that I don't have to be like, "Oh, we're a podcast or, you know, rely on Instagram on Instagram stuff because we're like an IRL thing." And I see Tracy in chat. Uh, we own nothing in a digital world. I own Nudge Magazine. You can't pry from my hands. Tracy's the best because she says that and I still owe her in issue four talking about people. You should probably get that issue out. You're on the spot now. And if you don't, then the internet will have this evidence forever. Tracy and I have done this dance where we've been in the same place even with me with magazines and her needing one and it like still hasn't weirdly worked out. It's sort of a cosmic thing. So, she's going to get it exactly when she needs it. The universe will align. So you said we had someone to say something nice about you and they mentioned the magazine. So do you feel that this magazine is like an extension of you as a as an individual? It's a lifestyle magazine. It really has a lot of I mean as someone who has read the articles and checked it out like it's not it's not really a a magazine in the traditional sense. It's more of like an artistic experience. I mean there's of course articles and interviews and stuff in there but it really is kind of just an expression of you as an artist. Would you agree or interesting? Um, well, not me specifically, I guess. So, you asked about like having my real name on here and saying, you know, Doc Monday and all that. And Doc Monday was sort of my persona that I created that it was like, okay, this is like a heightened version of me that is in the magazine. Um, since then, I've been like, whatever. People just call me Ian anyway, so I just roll. I have a great story about this. I know we talked about it slightly, but I can't wait. Yeah. Um, but uh, so I just like kind of went away from that. But I I don't really think it's the cool part about a magazine is it's collaborative. I know like you kind of come from like music and film and that stuff. And so there's a different it's a different to enact a vision of a lot of people versus a vision of just yourself. So, like even though I wrote a lot of the articles early on, um I always wanted to make sure is like we've always had like, you know, a dozen photographers. I was really lucky. Gina Kletia, Kia, sorry, was like just randomly hit me up and she was this amazing photographer in New York and she's since written a ton of articles for us, but it was always like I like the collaborative part of it and I like um getting other people's perspective and influences. So, uh, that was that was kind of more that's how I see Nudge as as a collector, not just So, if you're looking at the first first issue, right, the amount of collaborators you had at issue one versus what you were doing versus issue upcoming five, like what kind of how many more people are involved in the the the collaboration of Nudge now? Interesting. Um, I would say probably it's slightly larger for sure, but I think it's more like it's just I have a roster of people to pick from now. So like Gina has some photos in this one, but I don't think she wrote anything for it. And um that you know she's written something I think in every other issue, but it wasn't like we didn't I don't know. it just like we had a lot of other stuff to to pull from and and she didn't submit anything. So like I think we just have a greater like our net is bigger now. Um but it when it like when you look at like the opening page like when you look at like uh like the list of contributors and stuff, it's all like it's usually about the same amount of although that that's funny. Okay, I'm saying that but it's like we have like four or five illustrators in this one. I think we had two in the first one. Um, yeah. I like I said, I th this issue I've actually written nothing except for the like opening letter, I think. Um, so that's pretty different for for me. And it was an experience to sort of like let that go and be like also I'm not going to edit these people. I back in the day. Well, so that was going to be my next question is like what if someone submits an image and you're like, man, I don't really like this or this doesn't really pair with what I'm trying to do with Nudge. Like what's the soft let down on that? or do you just like [ __ ] it? Because I know that punk rock is a theme for Nudge and whether you would admit to it or not, like the the core of the magazine is is pretty punk attitude. Mhm. Yeah. No. Well, first of all, I really like to be an encourager. I have my masters in um like fiction writing and so I always thought I was going to be a professor and kind of like foster writers. And so for me, I always like to encourage people. I think Nudge is like a first publication for like a lot of people where either photography or um you know writing and so I like to really encourage people it's more like someone will have an idea and they're like but I can't write and I'm like just do it like and we'll make it good like it's actually not that hard to make it good enough to be a nudge. Um, so like uh so so but it does happen where someone will write something or give me something that I don't like or isn't right for the magazine I guess is yeah like how you said um and it's easy for me to tell people no because I'm a very honest person we talked off air is that I think the strength of nudge is our authenticity which flows I guess from me. Um, but I think is a commonality between all our artists, um, is that I really value authentic thought and like tell me what you actually think because then we can get to somewhere interesting. So, so I don't know if you know this from watching previous episodes, uh, but we have some illustration contributors to, uh, Dirty Pool as well, and I'm just curious if you think that this drawing here, is it nudge caliber? Sure. Definitely. Yeah, for sure. It's got a vibe. It's got perspective. Uh I like that the O is [ __ ] up. Um yeah, definitely. Who Who said that? I'm going to let I'm going to let Greg know that not only did uh Johnny Crap uh think that this was an alternate backlash for Stern's uh new white and green version of Godzilla. Uh but that nudge magazine also is uh thinks that he's got what it takes to be a nudge, dude. A spearmint. um like color combo. Godzilla would be awesome, right? I mean, Godzilla is green sometimes. He's a lizard kind of, right? He's like a bear bear donkey lizard. Maybe if you could figure out some kind of like cream uh like uh armor to it or something like that would be really interesting to me. See, that's where I don't think the pinball manufacturers have the like the coahones to do that kind of like early 90s like Tandy computer cream, you know? Like I think that that's that's the texture and feel that that pinball, you know, trim needs is more vintage computing. I like diversity of like sort of like art and color and so I think it would be interesting to play around in that sandbox. you say that, but I like I do think it it could be kind of fun and and right now we're basically only getting black powder coats, right? So, yeah. Uh it might be I love it. The Kong one is is smooth matte. I really like it. It's not textured and it's not glossy. It's like hard matte. It's I love I mean I'm a guy who wears all black and so and I love matte black. I like same for water bottles. So I'm I I'm kind of fully [ __ ] when I'm like oh black powder coat everything cuz that's how I would do it too. It's funny because I'm I'm about the black clothing as well. I mean, I got my scanner shirt on right now. Uh but also I have a neon pink water bottle, so I feel like it's important to have like contrast, you know? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I'm I'm a little [ __ ] Silky. All right. So, really reeling it back to note. So, you mentioned being a band. I actually didn't know you were in a band. Mhm. Yeah. I was in a um indie rock band called Larks for many years and we toured and we were on um a label called Absolutely Kosher which they used to have like Pinback on there so it was kind of like that era. We were towards the tail end of when they were a label. um they kind of were a big deal for a while cuz they had great distribution, but I think kind of when the internet like you know they never recovered from like after Napster and like just like music streaming and and iTunes and that kind of stuff. So uh they folded right before we were about to release our second album. So, our second album we just released uh you know on our own and then yeah, we never really officially broke up, but you know, I moved to California, the drummer moved to California, um our guitar player moved to North Carolina. So, yeah, it's funny. The late 90s, early 2000s basically like cashed out a lot of smaller labels just because the idea of a label like disappeared. And it's almost in a lot of ways weird that it's like kind of coming back now as like a curated playlist thing. Like record labels still exist now, but it's more like they represent clusters of artists and a social media distribution platform instead of a physical media distribution platform, which is what they existed as before. My label is still around too, but it has since you know changed its format in such a way that it's just like it's not the same. So yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I love music. Um, I still will I have a piano. You can kind of see back there. I do. I see that. I have a piano, too. Although you can't see it from this angle. Nice. Um, and and so I I still like playing music. Brian is actually obsessed. He's his like white whale that he's been finishing for like years and years as he has a soundproof basement studio and it's like gone through so many iterations and like so many, you know, rewrites, redesigns. Um, but I think it's he's almost done with it and then once he is, we were talking about it's like that'll be a fun thing for after Nudge uh sessions to go jam out. So you say almost done with it, but anybody who's been treating a space knows it's like an unfinished song. There's always something else you can do. Yeah, his wife is pushing him towards the finish line at this point, I think, just through being a bit exasperated. As am I. Like I'm not just going to put that on her. Like figure it out, Brian. So what instrument do you play? um in bands. So I was the primary songwriter uh in singer and larks and I played keyboards. So it's interesting that you mentioned that you're a singer um because you had called and left me a message and uh I'm I made a little diddy out of it and uh you know I'm kind of hoping maybe uh maybe you could freestyle over it a little bit. Uh you know, let's jam.