Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Pinball

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand America’s obsession with pinball. He heads to Long Beach California for a meeting of the Long Beach Pinball League, headed by passionate pinball man Tom Walker. His league is part of the International Flipper Pinball Association which is made up of 96,000 players from 45 countries. David then meets Tom Rader, a man who has been obsessively collecting pinball machines for years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, and New Zealand are accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now as soon as I started to settle in the United States, I found a few bars that I liked. I love bars in America, mainly because you can go on your own like a total loser and just sit up at the bar and do your thing and that's normal. You don't need friends. There might be sports on that you can watch, or you can just strike up a conversation with someone random next to you. The last time I was at a bar, I met Rhonda, who was in a reminiscing kind of mood.

We live on the boulevard, so there's been gruesome moments. I watched a guy get hit on a motorcycle, and I watched him fly up in the air in his shoes and his helmet went everywhere. In New Zealand, going out solo isn't really done. You have to be with friends and friends are great, but sometimes you just want to have some time to yourself or meet someone like Rhonda. The other thing I like about some of the bars in America is that they have pinball machines that you can play.

I'm not sure when I started really noticing this, but they're an extra thing to do, and like drinking they can be done solo or with friends. And so today we turn to pinball, a game America turned into a phenomenon, one that's currently booming here in the US. I wanted to explore the origins of the game and where it fits into American culture in 2023. So hold on to that table and make sure your reaction times are up to speed, because this is the Pinball Episode. Probably one of the more wild transitions in an intro. I sort of just was thinking about bars a lot,

and then I met Rhonda, and then it's sort of, oh, there are pinball machines. But listening back to that introduction, that was rough. That was a rough transition to the topic. It was a ride. I like it. It's a mystery. We don't have that many mysteries. No, we don't, do we? No, I would actually like it if you would include a couple more mysteries.

I can work on that. Instead of the intro, you just have no idea what's about to happen ever. Yeah. But you do have a lot of pinball machines and bars here. It's not something you really have in New Zealand, but I've just noticed in a lot of bars, there will be a little pinball machine. And I got intrigued and then I started playing a little bit and I just realized how fun pinball can be. When was the last time you played? Have you played pinball recently or ever? I have played it. Definitely not recently. Must've been like October 17th, 2002. So specific. What was that date? What happened on that date that that memory's burned into your skull? I'm just kidding.

I have no idea. I have no idea. I mean, I know I've played it. Well, we did have in my hometown where I am currently, there was a place called Bogey's, and it was a sports bar. And they also had trivia every week. And my best friend's dad had a trivia team. So we would go with him while him and his friends did trivia

and we would hang around there. And I think there were games like pinball and stuff that we would play. And also there was a lava cake. What's a lava cake? Oh my gosh, chocolate lava cake. You would love this because it's so childlike it's a cake and then you like get into it and then it oozes of chocolate is it like sauce like chocolate sauce yeah like molten chocolate it's so good oh i love this this is amazing and you sort of just guzzle it up you sort of of scoop it up with a spoon. How are you having the lava?

Well, it's good if you have ice cream so you can make it into a little soupy. But then you have the hard pieces of cake. Still moist cake, but, you know, it's delicious. Oh, this sounds so – I'm really excited about this. It's not in New Zealand. Wow. We got to do – maybe we should do an episode on Lava Cake. Oh no,

we're definitely doing an episode on Lava Cake and also trivia. That's another very American thing. Yes. And we should go. Oh no, a hundred percent. Trivia team down. I'm so bad at it.

Rob will be so good. I can't wait. Rob will be amazing. I get so intimidated when I'm put on the spot to say a random fact about a thing. It's a panic place for me. So we'll be great. It's all going to be on Rob's shoulders. Oh, it'll be really fun. Just quickly, I forgot about this. A headline here just came in. Whisper Audio unveils ultra

quiet electric leaf blower powered by aerospace tech. So here we go. Just there's a leaf blower out the window right now as well. So this is great news. What's the price point on it? It doesn't have a price point. It sort of looks like something NASA's built. So I imagine it's going to be quite expensive. So the local gardeners will all have it quickly. Yeah.

Look, I live in hope. Very exciting news. Probably the most exciting news I've read in a long time. I think what will happen is that you are going to be so excited. then the world is going to convert and you're going to miss that sound. You're going to feel untethered. It's like when they say they could remove mosquitoes. We fucking hate mosquitoes. But if they were gone.

What? It could have impacts we don't know. I'm just saying. It's an incredible theory. I'm not one to stick up for mosquitoes. I do hate them. I just thought it was a good analogy. No, there's a day here where there's nothing but leaf blowers and also people chainsawing

down or cutting down branches. It's like the war on nature day is like a Wednesday in my neighborhood. And it's so loud. It's like there's a chainsaw over here. There's a hedge trimmer over there. There's a leaf blower over there. I'm just sort of forming a theory about how America is just trying to really push back against Mother Nature and sort of slowly cut it and blow it back into oblivion because it's getting out of hand.

That's because it's the day before garbage day and they're getting the trimmings ready for garbage day. Is that what it is? In LA, garbage day is crazy. No, you don't have garbage day in New Zealand. Where does the garbage go? No, we have garbage day, but I think there's more garbage, at least on my street in LA, there's more garbage than I've ever seen before. So there's these big skips, right? It's not just the little wheelie bins that you wheel out to the curb. There's these giant skips outside the apartments. And when the truck comes and lifts those up and puts out the trash, it's the loudest thing I've

ever heard in my life. It's crazy. And when that combines with leaf blower day and chainsaw day and hedge trimmer day, it's crazy out there. Oh my God. Well, okay. This is for another day, I guess, or a previous day that we already did. But in an apartment, there's a lot of people who have garbage. Single bins are for one house, and those still exist. If you own a house here, you have single bins. Rob, do you have single bins? Yeah.

Yeah. And my apartment has the same thing you're referring to as a skip. Do you not call it a skip here? I don't know what that's called, actually. It's a dumpster. It's a dumpster. Yeah, dumpster fire. Oh, I thought a dumpster was a place you went to. That's the tip. What? Now you're just fucking with us. Now you go to the tip. That's like the big hole in the ground where you, so environmentally friendly, where you just bury all the rubbish. Well, David, you're talking about the dumpster that gets wheeled out on garbage day, but that's normally in an alleyway where people are bringing their trash from the apartment. Yeah. One of those things. And they need it obviously,

but it's just so loud. It's right. My window right next to me here. It's because we're recording this remotely. It's, and also Monica, I should point out you're, you're in a sort of a, where are you right now? I'm looking at you on Zoom and you're in sort of a cupboard. Yeah, I am. I'm in a basement, ding, ding, ding, a small, small storage closet in the basement with carpet. It looks hectic. The shelf behind you looks like the trunk of your car. It's just a massive mess.

The shelves there, but it's like someone's gone in and just throwing things on these shelves see i come by it honestly it's a mess let's see if i can lift this i can give you a little upside down cups and sauces and different items part of it is the angle maybe a little well that part's bad because that's that's a mess but yeah there's like extra it's her cooking stuff that she can't fit in the kitchen big pots and pans and things yeah yeah and then like that oh my god my dad's old files there's so many envelope i don't know what those fucking envelopes are and this is my childhood desk oh that's cute that's like a really beautiful wooden. Those are my old stickers. Little love hearts and everything. This is so beautiful. And that's my ABCs at the top in that weird string.

That's really, really endearing. That's really, really great. This is your childhood room. Yeah, that's why I love Harry Potter so much. I can really relate. This desk has such a history. When I was five, I was climbing on it to get something from the top, and I fell. I got this huge- Like a gash. Yeah. But in my mind, I was climbing the Eiffel Tower or something. It was so high up and such a big drop.

And now I see it's just regular. Yeah. It's funny. Your memories as a kid are so, so different to reality. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's funny.

Okay. Pinball. Okay. Pinball. Yeah. So pinball, I recently become interested in it because my friends had their child's birthday party. And so they rented a pinball sort of repair shop, but out the front, they had a lot of recently become interested in it because my friends had their child's birthday party and so they rented a pinball sort of repair shop but out the front they had a lot of pinball machines you

could actually use but the kids were not really that into it they just wanted to chase each other around and play tag and that kind of thing and basically walked into this kid's party and all it was was just the adults concentrating so hard on these pinball machines while the kids were just being ignored and it was the best you could see it tapped into something in an adult brain and then i started playing there's something about all the lights and the sounds and it's so hands-on so mechanical moving parts you can see and there's something really sort of hypnotizing about it i guess it reminded me a bit of being in a casino as well where you're pulling you know levers and there's lights and there's sounds.

And something about that really activates something in your brain that just really wants to play. Yeah. It's also nostalgic for people. I think arcade games make a certain generation very nostalgic. Yeah, absolutely. I've also noticed a few people in LA have bought them. You can buy them for your home now. So people are forking out thousands to have them. There's vintage ones, and then they're still making brand new machines you

can buy for like $7,000, which is a lot. I should be clear now, we definitely have them, and I've definitely played before, but I've sort of been reminded of them in America because they're just much more prevalent here. As we're going to learn in this documentary a bit later on, pinball had its boom here. This is where machines we play today became realized and nothing's really changed since then. America's the one that's sort of innovating and making all the new tech. And so I would say, I would argue, very American. All right, I'm excited. Let's hear it. It's 7.30 p.m. on a Tuesday night and I've driven out to Long Beach, California for a meeting of the Long Beach Pinball League. It was their pre-season meetup, and a chance for new players

to practice, and existing players to bring friends along. Walking into the Long Beach Beer Lab, the brewery and pizza place where they meet, the first person I bump into is Les. He's in his 50s, wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing a lot of tattoos. He fills me in on what Long Beach is all about. It's very diverse. You have millionaires and homeless people live right next to each other. And then sometimes I'm like, oh, I live in such a bad place. And then I see tourists here from Europe right on my beach all like speaking their language

like you. And they're like, oh, they spent lots of money to come here, and I should be happy, and then I live here, and they always hear them, Disneyland, and I'm like, ah, so we take for granted a lot of it. Les says this pinball league is like a social club. Looking around, I inhale the smell of beer and pizza. Some people are here just for that. But then along one wall is a line of. Looking around, I inhale the smell of beer and pizza. Some people are here just for that. But then along one wall is a line of pinball machines and a crowd starting to gather for the night's activities. The head of the league, Tom Walker, is pulling out a bunch of t-shirts he's designed for the league. He says they just had their finals for the last season.

So what happens, we break them up into two divisions. So the top eight players play each other in like an elimination bracket. And then everybody else plays like a strikes tournament. You have players that are just absolutely just so far ahead of others, or is it pretty even at that point? So the top eight, it could have been anybody's game. Sometimes someone sneaks into the top eight

and yeah, I feel sorry for them because they're really good at that level. But with our league, it's different in that we really just cater to all levels of players. Looking around, the thing that strikes me is that I would never, ever picture these people all together in the same room. There are different sexes and ethnicities and fashion. Some here are teenagers. Some are old. Going on some of the tans and wrinkles,

some players have been living at Long Beach for a long time. This is your first time? Yes. What brought you here? My friends. Maybe trying to not let them look so bad. How's it been? It's wonderful. Everybody's so nice. Tom runs this league with his wife of 17

years, Jessica. They both adore pinball. It's universal. If you're somewhere, you can play it by yourself. You can play it with one other person. You can play it with four. And it's something you can do drinking, non-drinking. I mean, depending on your crowd of people that you're hanging out with. That's why it brings the community together so fiercely, especially here in Long Beach. Because Long Beach is a very community-driven place. This league is part of the International Flipper Pinball Association, the IFPA for short. Formed in America 17 years ago, it's now made up of 96,000 players from 45 countries, including the players in this room tonight. While some leagues in America are more hardcore, this one at Long

Beach is a little more laid back. That's not to say they don't have amazing players, they just keep it more low key. If you're at Long Beach, it feels like things should be more chill out here, right? Right. Yeah, definitely. We've got a good vibe in Long Beach. I grew up in Southern California, moved to Oregon for about 15 years, and that's where I kind of got into the bar arcade, because it's really popular up there. Staring around the room, I see a few different eras of pinball machines in their collection. A Jurassic Park one takes my eye. That was released by Stern back in 2019.

It reminds me that pinball was tied so strongly to American pop culture. What makes a good pinball game? Is it the gameplay? Is it how complicated it gets? What do people want? I think it depends on what you prefer. I've talked to some designers.

We were just down in San Diego Comic-Con, and there was a designer down there I was talking to. He really likes flow. If you can just get the ball kind of moving. Some people like really challenging shots. Some people like objectives. But, for instance, like this game, it's a new game. It's called Total Nuclear Annihilation.

It's by Spooky Pinball. And it was a throwback game. So if you look at it, it looks like an old game, but it was made like a couple years ago. And the whole object of it is that you've got to dial in the keypad up there, then hit it in the reactor, then your shots become lit. Once you get those shots that are lit, you blow up the reactor, then that lights the number one, and then you got to do the whole thing over again. So it's really actually very simple, but like complex to master.

I've heard a few people saying this, that a good pinball table should be easy to understand, but really tough to master. I bumped back into Les, who's been watching me talk to Tom and Jessica with curiosity. Turns out he had a big weekend. He just saw Metallica play not once, but twice. Yeah, it was so great. Both nights, Friday and Sunday. You went both nights? Both nights. Yeah, of course. Cheers, of course.

Why wouldn't we, right? I'm jealous. It's Metallica. Two nights, no repeats. What? Tonight, though, it's all about pinball. Les often comes down here with his son, but tonight he's solo. He's been part of this league for only three months, and he loves it.

They'll explain everything to you. The beer's good, right? And you don't have to be good. You just have fun. He introduces me to Precious, who's been playing a little longer. I think this is my third season. Have you always played pinball since you were a kid, or is it a new thing? So growing up, I played the Windows computer version of pinball and so...

Same. Exactly. Always a good time. And then when I heard about this via Reddit, actually I was like, I need to be here. And that's when I actually started to play pinball. The greatest thing about pinball, the community, everyone is just so friendly and ready to help and just we're all here for a good time and I just like everyone from all walks of life like shows up here and yeah everyone here is just so amazing which I love. Suddenly I hear my name over the speakers. Someone signed me up for a pinball team. I heard my name. Yeah you're on Scooby-Doo, you're player three. Okay. I'll introduce you to your group.

I'm excited to play, but there's immediately a problem. Tom sorts me out. I've encountered my first problem. I don't have quarters, so I should have bought some with me. That is a truly rookie mistake, not bringing quarters to a pinball tournament. Everybody does it once. He lets me borrow some quarters, and loaded up with the small silver coins America seems to love so much. I hand my sound gear to Bethany, who's a teacher by day, pinball player by night.

I like the mechanical aspects. You can really physically see everything moving. And some machines have parts that all move around and stuff, which is cool. Versus like a video game on a screen, it's so flat. She agrees to narrate my game. He's choosing a character. around and stuff which is cool versus like a video game on a screen it's so flat she agrees to narrate my game he's choosing a character he chose daphne everybody daphne it was all downhill from there really and i learned that when the steel ball falls down between those two flippers it's called a drain a depressing drain he drained but's okay. It should come back around. There it is.

The hand-eye coordination is almost there. That was, I saw what happened and I'm truly embarrassed by that. How was your first pinball? It was really good. It was fun, but I'm deeply embarrassed by using the incorrect hand. The right one was meant to go, but the left hand fired. You know what? You have another round. There's three. It's great. The other rounds didn't go much better for me. I think you need a few different things to be a good pinball player. You need some strategy, some good reaction times.

You need to know the game, and you need to stay calm. I wasn't very good at any of those things. So close. I found anger there and I hit the machine. It happens. My hand hurt from hitting the table. I go and watch other people play and there are some amazing players here. I wonder if my technique was just bad. Maybe I need to do that thing where you tap the table to make the ball do what you want. It's called nudging. Is that allowed or not allowed? You can nudge it as long as most machines have a thing called danger and tilt.

So if you nudge too hard, you get a tilt and it turns the whole thing black. And then the ball automatically, you can't do anything. I order some pizza and it's delicious. One of the players, Mika, shouts me an IPA. I'm feeling better, even in my failure. Tom brings over a tablet to show me how everyone's ranked tonight as the night comes to an end. I realize that because I played, I am now officially in the system of the International Pinball Flipper Association. It now has 96,001 players.

And so here's where we're at now. And then you can track the standings. So Billy Ralph, Dennis Eichhorn, Mitch and Joe are the top players tonight. And we would... Where's my name on that list? Let's scroll down to find me. I'm not at the bottom. 28.

28, there you go. 31's the bottom. I'm fourth from the bottom. Fourth from the bottom. Not bad. 31's the bottom. I'm fourth from the bottom. Fourth from the bottom. Not bad. I'll take it. So yeah, that was my first pinball tournament. And I had a really good time.

Everyone out there would always laugh at the end of a sentence. It was like this really jolly vibe, which I really got into. They do seem like really fun people. And you did lash out as what is now a pattern you lashed out in pickleball now you lashed out yeah i felt like how i felt when i slammed the laptop on my therapist that time it was like a sudden anger it doesn't happen that often but when it does it does really shock me and i got it quite a few times i think i was angry at myself because my body would react in the wrong way.

Like I'd just clearly do something too slow or stupid. And I really hit the machine. I whacked the side of it and made a noise, like a big grunt. It felt good to do. Was that before or after you've reentered therapy? No, I've been doing therapy. So I didn't actually bring it up with my therapist. My therapist always says, how's the week been?

And I'm like, it's been fine. Oh, my God. What do you guys talk about? Tell us about your therapy. I try and always turn it back on the therapist because I always think it's a bit of an uneven relationship because they know so much about you. So I'm always trying to learn more about them. So I sort of try and find out how their morning was and then try and find out what else is going on in their life. And it's hard to do because it's not the way therapy is meant to work,

but I try and flip it on its head. No. Oh my God. Okay. We're not going to go down that wormhole. Did that make you want to have a bit of a flipper pinball time? It did make me feel nostalgic for that vibe and bogeys. There's much more to it than I thought. I didn't know about all the rules and the going dark. Yeah, no, that's amazing. I didn't realize a lot of things about pinball. So if you get too abusive towards the machine, like if I'd kept whacking it, it would have just turned off and gone dark. Another thing that was really amazing to watch good players play is that they're suddenly just doing things that you don't even, I didn't even

know was possible on the table. Like mostly when I play it, just you hit a few things and the ball disappears. But, you know, suddenly these players had three different balls in play and they were playing one ball up on a top level, one further down. So I always thought pinball was a bit, you know, pretty random. But no, if you're a good pinball player, holy shit, it's really impressive and really fun to watch that's really cool i would like to watch an expert at it because that does sound fun yeah

we're gonna what we're gonna do and i know often we're doing this we'll do that and we just have too many things to do but we should go to waltz because they've got i know you're not drinking at the moment but they've got some yummy wine or some root beer or something or water or whatever you have when you're not drinking great and it's a really cute atmosphere and the pinball machines are really fun. So I think we should do one waltz round. I love that. Let's do it when I'm back. Yeah, that sounds really fun. I also do love the different themes of the tables. Yeah. That's the other thing because, as I say, there's new machines coming out. So,

you know, there are like two Foo Fighters pinball machines at the moment that you can get. And they're really amazing. So there's like pinball machines based around big bands. And then there's obviously around movies like Jurassic Park. Do you think there's a Good Will Hunting one? I don't know. That'd be so great. I feel like the pace of pinball might not suit that particular theme.

It might be like need to be a bit more slow and reserved. It would be beautiful, though. It would be beautiful. It would be beautiful. They should try it and send me one, and I'm happy to promote it. I do think what's interesting, though, is they kind of hacked the brain, like the algorithm, before computers did. Keep it simple, but have quick bursts of validation

so you keep going. Yeah. The next part of the doc is going to go a bit into the history of how the stuff kind of came to be, but they put enough in there where you do get that little, even if you're failing miserably, you get enough wins that just makes you want to keep feeding those quarters in and that becomes incredibly addictive. Yeah, the original dopamine boost that you don't know is happening. They invented that. As a kid, did you ever play any, I don't know, video games or pinball machines or arcades? Did you have any of those that you kind of got into a little bit or not at all? A little bit Mario Kart and Mario World and a little bit of Tetris, all on 64. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember the first time I ever left New Zealand was to go to Canada.

It was our family's first overseas trip. And I just remember I spent so much of that trip just glued to Super Mario Brothers, just playing video games. And it was the first video game I ever played. And it's just so funny. It just shows how I'm in this new country. There's all this exciting stuff around me. But me and my brother, we're just glued to a video game most of the time,

which is so funny in hindsight. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is brought to you by BetterHelp. Now, I don't know about you, Monica, but I'm finding daylight savings and it getting dark early so depressing and horrible. It is awful. It is, right? I think it's maybe worse than other years.

Yeah, something's going on. I've felt low and things aren't going well this week. And I think it is something to do with this whole daylight saving thing. Look, it is entirely normal to feel some sadness and anxiety about this kind of stuff because they're not going to take daylight savings away. We're stuck with it. So you can do something else and try some therapy. It can be a bright spot amid all the stress

and change and weirdness of the year. Even if you go in with something you feel like can't be changed, like the daylight saving situation, you can talk about it to your therapist and they actually might have some tools for how to combat it. Yeah, I sometimes when I go into a therapy session, I will think I have nothing to talk about it to your therapist. And they actually might have some tools for how to combat it. Yeah, I sometimes when I go into a therapy session, I will think I have nothing to talk about.

And then holy shit, there's stuff to talk about. There's always stuff. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, fixable and suited to your schedule. So find your bright spot this season with BetterHelp.

Visit betterhelp.com slash burr today and get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash bird. Okay, next part of the doc, I am going to explore my theory that pinball is as American as apple pie. It's American as beavers. Yeah, that was a bit rough, wasn't it? That beavers ep. All right. No, I liked it.

I liked it. As I spent time with the Long Beach Pinball League, I found myself becoming curious about where pinball even came from. This idea of ricocheting balls off things to hit other things. I mean, I imagine hundreds of thousands of years ago cavemen were busy bouncing rocks off the cave walls, but it's generally agreed that the basic concept of pinball didn't start in America, but in Europe in the 1600s. The Europeans loved various games that involved rolling balls around on the grass, and so they wanted to move things indoors.

The French came up with bagatelle tables, wooden boxes that looked a bit like a pinball table. Using a stick, you'd fire a ball into the table, and there'd be various obstacles and things to try and hit. Then around 1870, British inventor Montague Redgrave moved to Ohio and took out US patent number 115357, adding a coiled spring to the mix, which would fire marbles onto the table. Things were getting more American, and way more pinball-y.

By the 30s, things had evolved to coin-operated machines. American David Gottlieb coming up with Baffle Ball, which sold 50,000 units. Other names floated around, Wiffle Board and Ballyhoo, but eventually America just landed on calling it Pinball. Pinball popped off in the 30s. Dozens and dozens of manufacturers, mostly based out of Chicago, they were closely aligned with gambling machines. And at one point, the mob was heavily controlling their distribution around America. For reasons like that, it wasn't smooth sailing. In the 40s the mayor of New York went after slot machines and pinball machines.

They became either outlawed or really heavily regulated. Pinball also took hit during World War II when manufacturers had to shut down or switch to making more important things like parachute harnesses or bits of weapons. After World War II, pinball got big again. Flippers were added to pinball machines. The game became less about chance and more about skill. In the 60s, multiplayer pinball machines were invented, and designs kept being refined and changed. It was still banned in places like New York, but in other parts of America, pinball was booming.

I wanted to talk to someone who experienced pinball during this time, while pinball was still controversial. I'm a pinball addict. It's been a long time. I knew Tom Rader loved pinball because the name on his email wasn't Tom Rader, it was Tom Pinball. My dad got me addicted indirectly when he was going for his teacher's master's degree back in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He was going to college getting his master's and he had a part-time job at a tavern and they had the pinball machines and bingos.

Instead of getting a babysitter, he'd bring me along. I was maybe five years old. This is the early 60s. And he just set me on a bar stool in front of a row of pinball machines with an ashtray full of nickels and just, you know, let me have it. During the 60s in America, pinball wasn't always easy to play. And obviously it was outlawed in a lot of places, in L.A. and New York and Chicago, and so pinball wasn't around everywhere. But there was various times

at bowling alleys you'd come across it. When I really got re-hooked was in high school. That's because in the 70s, pinball bands were finally being lifted in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Journalist and pro-American pinball player Roger Sharp had a lot to do with that. In 1976 he did a big pinball demonstration showing the New York City Council that pinball was a game of skill, not gambling. There's a film about it from a few years ago called Pinball, the man who saved the game. It's worth a watch. This probably sounds weird but I play pinball all the time. Helps me focus.

Are you any good? It may be the thing that I am best at. As a side note, I do wonder how many movies they're going to make about old bits of American pop culture. Nostalgia porn. There's the pinball one, the beanie bubble, Tetris, yeah, Flamin' Hot Barbie. America is on a roll. Anyway, pinball. With bands lifted in 76, pinball got even bigger.

Here's Roger Sharp and his colleague on the news in 1990. It's an interactive game. It's physical, it's mental. In a lot of ways, it's a, it's mental, in a lot of ways it's a mystical experience as well. Mystical experience? Well yeah, let me amend that a lot like sex statement to say that it's a special kind of thing, let's just put it that way.

Yes, in the 90s they were comparing pinball to sex. You're literally in another world, a fantasy world. And there is a sort of horniness associated with pinball. Just take the scene from Dazed and Confused where a sexy Matthew McConaughey strolls through an arcade filled with pinball machines. And the artwork on the machines has become almost as iconic as the games themselves. And I might be wrong here, but for a while, it did seem to target a more male audience. Pinball was in pizza joints and bowling alleys.

7-Elevens and bars was ingrained in American culture. A game where guys got to show off in front of the opposite sex, impressing them with their reaction times and skill. And Tom Raider, who got hooked on pinball age five, well, he got into it big as an adult. Not content with pinball machines at a local arcade, he wanted them at his house. Like many Americans who love pinball, he got interested in the home market. I had no idea how much it would cost, whether it be like $300 or $3,000. I ended up buying one for about $600. It was a Williams Laser Q. This was about $92, $93, and the game was probably about the mid-80s, $82, $83, 10 years old. I needed to get another one.

You get bored with playing one. So then I found out about this place called Super Auctions in Orange County, California. And they had an auction every last Saturday of the month where operators that had old equipment that they no longer wanted or wasn't making money for them, they'd bring it to the auction to sell it off to whoever wanted to buy it. And they'd had hundreds of pinball games and hundreds of video games so these auctions would go on all day and through that I bought several more games and then networked with other people there got other contacts and found out about this or that or this publication pinball classifieds and it started out slow but then it just kept growing and growing where it became the hunt

was more exciting than the actual playing a pinball, finding a game across country, making a deal, then arranging shipping. And that wasn't cheap either. Sometimes that almost costs as much as the pinball game. How much money do you think you sunk into collecting so far? Over the years, I bought over 350 pinball games. I was maybe spending about $500 per game. Now, this is back mostly in the 1990s and the early 2000s. It's a lot of money to be dropping. Yeah, yeah.

350 pinball machines at $500 each, that's $175,000. He could afford this because he was doing something else very American, working on oil fields for 36 years. He moved around a lot, could visit a lot of sellers, and he was earning enough money to buy what he wanted. And luckily for him, his other half was into it. Well, I met my wife through pinball. She had a pinball on ebay and i bid on it i won it so i went up to pick it up and we got to talking and seven eight months later we were married well that's really beautiful yeah what's the difference in the market for collecting authentic old games that are around and new creations that are being made okay there's kind of two different school groups there's the

electromechanical classic pinball from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. That's when it was just purely electromechanical. But then in the late 70s, it's solid state. The circuit ICs and whatnot came around. And from about 78 on up to today is all solid state electronics. But now the new games, I don't really enjoy the new games for two reasons they cost a lot and there's just so much going on you don't know where the ball is i like the simpler games of the you know 50s 60s and 70s where you can it's a simple objective you know what to shoot for some of the modern games but they're what's revived the pinball industry, instead of selling to route operators, they're selling to the home game market.

Dentists and doctors and engineers that have money to burn, so they're buying these machines, which are now about maybe $6,000 or $7,000. I think back to that Jurassic Park machine I'd been eyeing up at Long Beach. I looked online and yeah, it's $6,999 to buy new. Collectors with a bit of money have given pinball an extra lease on life. It strikes me as something constantly in flux, pinball. Banned and not banned, popular then unpopular. The pinball industry has been a leader in pushing new tech, at the forefront of using microchips and circuit boards to power its games.

And that's helped it keep coming back. But maybe the main reason pinball keeps coming back is simple. I think of Mika, the guy in the tie-dye shirt who bought me that beer out at Long Beach. He had a really good point. So I think people like things that they can hold in their hands that feel real. Because so much of our lives, you pay your bills on the internet. You have to double factor authenticate on your iphone or whatever then you want a metal ball against metal planks you know it feels good in increasingly unsettled times as things slip from between our

fingers or we worry that they're about to a pinball machine is something you can grab onto and then you look around you and see all the people doing the same thing. And the world feels a bit less lonely and a bit more real. So as you can tell, Monica, I love pinball. I fall in love with pinball. I think I'm going to stay in the league. I'm going to keep playing. You know, Rob can play his fantasy football.

I'm going to be out there in my pinball league. You're with my pinball buddies, you know, trying to get up from place 9,060. Wow. That's fun. I like this for you. It's on brand. I could be a pinball addict, couldn't I? You totally, totally could. I forgot to bring up something that we know everyone has thought that you have also in this episode referred to somebody's arms. Yeah, I just think maybe it's the time of the season at the moment, but just, I don't know, you see, when you see a pair of arms sticking out, I don't know, I like, maybe I just like arms. You notice arms.

Yeah, I don't know, big manly arms. I just find them, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about it. I have been pointing out arms a lot lately. You have, and especially when they're rugged or tattooed or something like that. By the way, they're probably going to be good. And often when they come paired with a tattoo and a bit of a tan, boy, it just really gets me, obviously gets me going. I mean, you should have seen this Metallica fan. I mean, he'd been to two shows and he just had great tattoos, great skin tone, good muscle bulk. What a guy, Les. Loved him. Loved him. Oh, I really loved what he said about two shows, no repeats. That's impressive. Yeah, that's something Metallica does to sort of, I guess, show off their back catalog. Fans that do go multiple times, they just get a completely different show. That's kind of magical. Yes, it is. That's so cool. And that's a great way. That's the way to get me, speaking of addict,

if I was going to a show, someone I really liked, and I knew that I would go to everyone. Like if Taylor did a different show every night, I would have had to go to every single one. You'd be down. And she's probably, if she made her show like a little bit shorter, she could very easily do two completely unique shows because she's got too much stuff. I'm going to her movie today. I've booked in the front row. When I booked the front row, the first two rows were empty and all the other seats were sold. I just checked the seating map out of the Grove and it's now entirely full. And I also realized that in sitting in the front row, I kind of wanted to give myself like a very visceral, obnoxious, kind of like immersive, like the screen's right there. I'm going to be craning my head up.

But I also realized now that being in the front row means that I'm going to be directly in front of the dance pit. And then I panicked. And then I panicked because I was like, oh, my God, I can't just be a 40-year-old man on my own, sat in the front row as, like, children, like, dance in front of me, and I'm surrounded by them. So I got another ticket and I'm inviting my friend Albie. Oh my God.

That's hilarious. Yes, you posted. I did feel the need to comment on your post because you were very negative and I had to tell you to stop. Yeah. And that's fair. I was, I did sort of bait people a little bit because I posted a screenshot of the fact I was going and said, you know, this is essentially this is going to be just horrific. And, you know, I knew that would elicit some sort of negative responses. Yeah. Why'd you do that?

Why did you do that? You are so funny. You are so provocative in your social media slash written work. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Then you are so not in life. Yeah, it's a sickness I think I have. It's not a good thing. But obviously, a lot of people are laughing along and being like, oh, this will be tough for you. There's two things, right, that make this screening so crazy for me.

I like metal music. I like really pretentious stuff. Like, I'm a snob. You know, I want to like the band that no one else knows about. There's all that stuff. Plus, I really like the idea of a cinema being a really quiet, beautiful space. And so the idea of just being crazy down there. I know. I'm so excited to hear about this.

I'm genuinely looking forward to it. I'm going to sort of interview people down there. But then a very angry group came on to Instagram who basically said, I hate woman. Very angry at me. And then, so that was like a big thing. I'm a misogynist. And I just sort of pointed out, like, I'm pretty confident I'm not a misogynist. I'm definitely a snob. But, you know, I'd argue if Ed Sheeran was doing the same thing and I was sitting front row at an Ed Sheeran IMAX surrounded by people dancing and singing, I'd be sort of equally as worried. But no, it got intense. But I deserved it all because I was a provocative little shit when I posted it.

Yeah, your beef is not with women. It's with the mainstream. And I also think it's funny, though, because do you think that the music you listen to is pretentious? you haven't heard before. You're always trying to push how extreme something can be. Sure. And there's elements of being a bit pretentious in that. I definitely have elements of that, but then I also like really popular stuff. I mean, I'll go to a Metallica show in the metal world, that's as populous as you can get. And I've been to a Taylor Swift show as well. She came to New Zealand and the show was, it was amazing. I had 1989 on CD. I think that's actually a really good record. So no, I support Taylor. I just am a

bit scared about being, you know, I mean, think about I'm a 40 year old man sitting front row in a theater surrounded by like screaming people. It's going to be something else. It will be. I'll FaceTime you. You're in a different time zone, but maybe I can FaceTime you from inside the theater because I'm curious how much it translates to the experience of actually being at the live show. It's a Thursday at 7 p.m. and that show is booked. Yeah. She is the most powerful person on earth. I love it. Yeah. I just saw a headline and it's, they're two very different things. And this headline is sort of made to cause

controversy as well. But you know, Martin Scorsese has this incredible format like Killers of the Our Moon. It's been crushed by the Taylor Swift film in the box office. She's such a big phenomenon. A lot of people are making that comparison. I saw it. And I do think that's a false comparison because part of the reason that movie is not doing well is because there's a strike and no one can promote anything. And people don't even know that movie's out. Taylor can promote her movie and is, as she should, that has nothing to do with SAG or actors or anything. But I knew a year ago about the Scorsese movie coming out and then all of a sudden I saw this article comparing it to Taylor Swift,

but I didn't know it was out in theaters and stuff. That's a strike issue. Would love for that to be over. Yeah, and Taylor is just, yeah, I mean, anything she does is going to pop off. There was a very funny, I have a very sort of personal anger against Taylor Swift because my very niche doc, Mr. Organ, is playing in some little theaters and her film was playing, I heard from a few people that went and obviously the Taylor Swift film was playing next door. And they said the noise that bled through the wall, the base of the music mixed with screams of fans and like them jumping up and down.

And Mr. Organ is like a very quiet, slow film. And they just said it was so like it really changed the tone of Mr. Organ. I kind of love that. Like it's just Taylor is just like so big. She's like encroaching on other cinemas around her. It's kind of amazing. Wow. But yes, pinball, have a game.

If you see one in your local bar, chuck some quarters in, have a jam. It might sort of bring back some nostalgia. And you might also find a new hobby like me that maybe you fall in love with i wonder if they're gonna allow apple pay that's a huge hurdle at this point with those games no one's carrying around change yeah change is kind of crazy and yeah i made the mistake at the tournament of yeah just having no quarters on me that is a big thing and it's like our laundromats episode as well. Obviously with laundromats, they're updating things so they can take card and tokens, but I'm not sure. I think some pinball machines take cards, but generally, yeah, it's a quarters thing. And that is something that like defines its original kind of time that they were popular in. Right.

I like it. It's a little bit like, we don't care if you play. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. So you got quarters, you can play, you can do your thing. And it is such a social thing because it was really amazing. At Long Beach, it was just such an assortment of ages and people that were just clearly very different from each other. Most of them weren't amazing. Some of them were, and they were just teaching each other different things. And it just became this instant leveler where everyone had something to talk about. That's really nice. And that's sort of hard to find i think and that's what i really liked about it anything that elicits community we're we're pro including taylor including taylor yeah oh my god i've just got a little shiver thinking about tonight it's gonna be so

so unusual but no i can't wait it also long. It's about three hours. I think I might go at the beginning and then duck out for dinner at a P.H. Chang's and then duck back. No, absolutely. No. For the end. Three hours, I think. That's how long the concert is. You are to stay. Also, I have to stand, don't I?

Like, I can't be sitting in a front row as there's a dance pit in front of me. I've sort of got to get up and probably move my bod around a little bit, don't I? I'm not so sure about that. I don't know. I don't know. You'll feel it out, I guess. Oh, God. Yeah.

I mean, how it goes. Anyway. All right. Well, this was fun. You got to see my childhood desk. There is an important sticker I want to show you. Please. I love the love heart.

I'm curious what was around the love heart at the time. There'd probably be some images of boys around there back in the day. This was like kindergarten. I mean, I was. Yeah, right. See, that just had my name on it. It's so cute. But look at this one.

Can you read it? I want the world drug free. Yeah. I want the world drug free. Just like I want the world drug free, just like me. Such a big statement from a child. Oh, they were really on top of us with that DARE program. Yeah, we had DARE in New Zealand as well. Yeah, I remember being very, very, very scared of drugs.

But they really get in there early. That sticker was so important that I not only stuck it on here, I put tape over it. Oh, you really believed in that. Did you have the Life Education Trust? Did you have that? No. A truck that would turn up at your school,

and Harold the giraffe was the mascot, and you'd all be ushered into this little sort of trailer which is a stunk because it was like a bunch of like 14 year olds being like shoved in such a small place and harold's would come out who is this giraffe like a puppet and he would educate you about life things drugs and science and i don't know if you did sex ed as well science Science! Oh my god! Oh my god. Yeah, and one year, because I was quite a suck-up as a student. I was always trying to be like the goody-good and get in the teacher's good books. But I volunteered one holidays to be Harold to raise money for the Life Education Trust. And so I had to put

on this big giraffe suit. And the head, the head, Harold's head went up like my head was in the neck and it went up like another meter and a half. And I was quite a tall kid because I got tall quite young. I mean, this was maybe when I was, I don't know, 16 or something and not that young. But I just remember walking down the main street of Taranga where I went to school and just bumping my giraffe head

on all the overhead signs that were hanging outside the stores and just making a real fool of myself. This is so embarrassing. And then were you walking around telling people don't believe in science? No, no, no. Sorry, I should clarify. No, they taught us about science. Although it was a Christian school, so they did teach a lot of non-scientific shit there as well. But no, the giraffe was pro-science. So he had that going for him. He was a good giraffe.

But yeah, that would be amazing. Don't believe in science. That's what I thought. It's really good. But yeah, it was, I had a fan in the head because it got so hot in there. And there was a little electric fan that would go. But yeah, that was me for one summer. Harold the giraffe.

How much money did you raise? Not much. I wasn't great at it. I wasn't great. Well, when they see this big gangly giraffe bumping into signs and stuff, hard to take that seriously. Yeah, I wasn't good at that particular job. But I tried.

And look, you got to try, don't you? That's all you need to do in life. Got to try pinball. Got to try pinball. Got to try it live. Yeah. That's a good motivational message to end on it is i'll facetime you from taylor tonight okay and i'll let you know how i'm feeling can't wait all right all right bye