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The Punk Rock Pinball Podcast is hosted by Mike Felumlee and Stephanie Wysocki, co-founders of Live From The Rock Room and the team behind Punk Rock Pinball. Mike’s background in punk music (Smoking Popes) meets our day-to-day life running a growing pinball club, playing in tournaments, and building out the pinball community.
Each episode is us talking through the machines we’re enjoying, club updates, events we’re hosting, places we’re visiting, and whatever’s happening in pinball that week. It’s straightforward, conversational, and pulled from our actual experience in the hobby.
If you want a real, honest look at pinball from people who live in it every day, this is the show.
Hello.
Speaker 2:Woah. Hello to you.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the Punk Rock Pinball Podcast episode
Speaker 2:Something.
Speaker 1:28? Maybe 29. Seven, eight, nine.
Speaker 2:Something in here.
Speaker 1:Let me look at YouTube. Although I didn't put the episode number on the title of the last one.
Speaker 2:We'll never know.
Speaker 1:We'll never know.
Speaker 2:We'll never know.
Speaker 1:Let's see. View all my videos. I didn't put it on the last view. 25, six, seven, this is number 28. K.
Speaker 1:We're gonna recap the wonderful year of 2025.
Speaker 2:Your hat is so distracting.
Speaker 1:I got my Pikachu hat.
Speaker 2:That is something else, honey.
Speaker 1:If you're listening on the podcast on Apple or Spotify, I'm sorry you can't see this wonderful Pikachu hat.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm really sorry for you too. I've never seen this thing. I had no idea you had this.
Speaker 1:Never seen this hat.
Speaker 2:Never. Where did you get this?
Speaker 1:I bought it somewhere in the Western United States.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Sometime around August 2024. Okay. On tour with the Smoking Popes and the Get Up Kids.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Everyone else was buying hats at the truck stop.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So I also bought this Pikachu hat. I'm like, I like Pikachu.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:And then I wore it at some shows, and then I just felt weird going around in public as a 51 year old man. I guess I was a 50 year old man at the time in a Pikachu hat, so I don't wear it that much, but I can wear it on this show. Because we might get to see Pikachu in a pinball machine, like, next week, maybe, from Stern.
Speaker 2:If they take it to CES.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're gonna announce something at CES. It's gonna be Pokemon or Transformers. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Is it going to be like, did George Gomez George Gomez said one of those two machines are gonna be made, but he did he say it was gonna be the next machine?
Speaker 1:He was talking about the machine that he was designing with Jack Danger. Uh-huh. Specifically about that machine. This is on the Kerry Hardy program. I wanna give him the credit because he asked the question.
Speaker 1:Not stealing any gimmicks or information, give him the credit where credit's due.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:he asked specifically, they're talking about this machine, he said, is it Pikachu? Pikachu on my mind and on my head. Is it Pokemon or Transformers? And George smiled and he said, it's one of them.
Speaker 2:Is the next game?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So we are going to see either Pokemon Pinball or Transformers Pinball, and that's gonna be next week at the CES.
Speaker 2:Starts next week.
Speaker 1:I used to work at CES, like every year I would have to go there for work. That was a long week, because I would go like a couple, two, three days before the show, and then I'd stay the entirety, and then I'd stay a day after to pack and ship all the stuff. This is when I worked for BDS Marketing as a contractor for Motorola Mobility. I know that's interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody is.
Speaker 1:We had about 400 or 500 smartphones and tablets and watches at the big CES booth. I think it was 18,000 square foot booth the last year I did it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Huge.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's bonkers.
Speaker 1:And me and my buddy, Mohammed, would set them all up, like 500 phones, we'd have to make all the phones look like people used them. So we'd put pictures and Gmail accounts, and they mostly were prototype phones, we'd have to put the software on. And then anything that would break at the booth, I would fix it. So I'd get there at, I don't know, seven in the morning and be there till eight at night. It's a young man's game.
Speaker 2:It's a glamorous life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, there's lots of cool stuff at CES. Yeah. And I'm really excited to see what may get announced in a press release.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nothing cooler there than a new Stern pinball machine.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:Can't wait to see it.
Speaker 2:I wonder, like, at CES, who's walking the show floor and from, like, and and saying, like, pinball. That's what we need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the editors, like, from CNET, the website, or
Speaker 2:of media people.
Speaker 1:That a gadget? Is that a thing?
Speaker 2:Maybe.
Speaker 1:There's all those weird tech websites. Wired. Are they stopping by and writing a piece on Pokemon Pinball? They should be. Should be.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll see.
Speaker 1:Because the other pinball companies are not at CES, right? You're not gonna find Jersey Jack over there.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Like, there's no way Spooky's there.
Speaker 2:You're not
Speaker 1:gonna find Chicago Gaming there. Would only be Jersey Jack to be the only other ones that might have that money. I can't wait to see it. Me either. So that'll be our podcast next week.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be about whatever the hell game that is.
Speaker 2:It might be in two weeks, or it might be a special edition.
Speaker 1:Might be, because
Speaker 2:It's not gonna be on Sunday because or
Speaker 1:we're record it probably Sunday, and we won't know the game by So we'll probably get a midweek episode that week.
Speaker 2:Marshall said he knows.
Speaker 1:So 2025, we had a big year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We were born that year.
Speaker 2:We were born?
Speaker 1:Punk rock pinball was born.
Speaker 2:It was born in the year established in the year 2025, the year of our lord, 2025.
Speaker 1:It began as a humble Facebook group on 03/16/2025. Punk rock pinball as the thing that it is was born that day as a Facebook group. If you're not in that group, you should join it. The link will be in the description.
Speaker 2:How many people are in it these days?
Speaker 1:Right now we have 2,645 lovely members. Punk rock pinballers? Of punk rock pinballers.
Speaker 2:That's pretty impressive, I think, for a little grassroots deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. In less than a year?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I love it.
Speaker 1:And then when was this podcast right here, when was this born?
Speaker 2:Oh, we put out the first one on July 5.
Speaker 1:July 5.
Speaker 2:So we probably recorded it a day or two before that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe we did it on the July 4. Had been talking about doing a podcast kind of since March since we made the group. Because we made the Facebook group thinking we'll make a podcast and that group will be where we share it. And we had this YouTube channel that we're on here that was called Live From The Rock Room, which we've changed the name, but we're like, we'll do the podcast, we'll put it on The Rock Room.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we, I guess, we're slow starters because we started the group in March and we didn't do the podcast till July. We probably had the day off on July 4, it's probably a weekday. And we're like, You wanna do that podcast?
Speaker 2:And we did.
Speaker 1:And then we did. Didn't even have the video at the time.
Speaker 2:We didn't. Because I don't even know where it was.
Speaker 1:I mean, was on YouTube.
Speaker 2:No, video stuff was at Bombsite. That's why we didn't do it.
Speaker 1:The lights were over there.
Speaker 2:The lights were over there.
Speaker 1:But then, the videos, they weren't getting, like, a ton of views on YouTube because you get more views if you have actual video Mhmm. And not just the stills. We're like, okay, we'll do a video with it. That adds a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Does, But but it's worth
Speaker 1:since then, since its creation, we've had, if you combine, like, the views and the and the the podcast streams downloads, well over 30,000.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Or, like, well over 30,000 listens. So thank you for watching.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's a lot. It's kind of more than I expected by this point.
Speaker 2:It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, we're getting easy over, like, the average episode is like over a thousand, like, consumed between Apple and Spotify and all those other little podcast deals in YouTube. Some of them go bigger on YouTube, some of them go smaller. We've got some that are closing in on 2,000 views here on YouTube, and some are just a few 100, which is weird.
Speaker 2:It's just the way it goes.
Speaker 1:The podcast numbers on the audio side are very consistent, where it's like a couple 100, like two to 300 each after they've been out a little bit. But on YouTube you need like a hook for the algorithm, is kind of annoying Because you have to, anything if it's got Costco or Star Wars in the title, gets way more views, because people are searching that stuff. So you have to have some kind of big name thing in your title on YouTube if you wanna have like, if we don't have that, it's like, okay, this one's gonna get a few 100 views. Or if you have a bigger name thing, it's like, this one might get a thousand.
Speaker 2:We're learning.
Speaker 1:That's the nature of YouTube. It's annoying.
Speaker 2:We're learning. We had Christmas this week.
Speaker 1:We just did Christmas. Merry Christmas. Belated. Yes. New Year's coming up.
Speaker 2:New Year's.
Speaker 1:Happy New Year's.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:What else did we do in 2026? We started the Punk Art Pinball HQ.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. We we I can't believe I still can't believe we did this. Mhmm. Yeah. We took control of our own pinball destiny here in Central Illinois, inspired by cool places like ORD in in the Chicagoland area of having a private pinball club.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And in this case, if you build it, they will come is true. Yeah. All like all of our so many of our friends down here in the middle of the state are participating. Our members have contributed games to the, you know, collective. We're up to, I think, 26 games in there.
Speaker 1:27, maybe? So if you're a member of our HQ, it's yours too. Yeah. So thank you everyone, because I know we have some members that don't get to get out there a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they still pay a monthly due, so thank you very much for helping us make that happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for being part of it. And yeah, it's just like, it's so cool.
Speaker 1:It's just
Speaker 2:kind of like is a little overwhelming.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's awesome. Like, it's a great place for I feel like the tournaments there have been really great. And without all of our members, it wouldn't be because we couldn't afford to just do this on our own. It's not an arcade.
Speaker 1:It's not an amusement venue where you can come and just pay us money to be amused. We don't have open hours. It's just a private collection of games. So extra special thanks to all of you that have games in there and trusting us to keep a safe place for your games. And everyone that's paying the standard membership, thank you for helping us keep the lights on over there.
Speaker 1:And the gas bill, we just got that. That was pretty big. Pretty big gas bill. It's been cold here.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And I think we're able to provide a really awesome location for tournaments in this area. There's nowhere else in Central Illinois for tournaments that has this many machines with that kind of variety. We've got lots of the latest Stern machines. We've got several DMD machines. We've got EMs.
Speaker 1:So it's really becoming like a pinball training facility.
Speaker 2:It's really what it is.
Speaker 1:It's a pinball training facility. It's our home office
Speaker 2:and
Speaker 1:a training facility, and we're trying to breed powerful, competitive pinball athletes.
Speaker 2:We're not trying, we are.
Speaker 1:And a few of which are going to be competing in the state finals for IFPA.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true. That's coming up in a couple weeks.
Speaker 1:Because I think Joe and CJ both made it.
Speaker 2:I believe so.
Speaker 1:Joe Sharp and CJ and Shelly Sharp will be in the ladies finals.
Speaker 2:So cool.
Speaker 1:All members of the PRPHQ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need to make sure they're swagged out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you all want any of the latest designs, we'll get them to you. So that's pretty awesome. Maybe one day, I will never make the Illinois State championships in the open. Never.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll have to go out to Wyoming.
Speaker 1:But you know what we might make? You might make the ladies next year. I don't know. You're good enough. You just need a little better performance in some of those bigger At the expo one, you should have maybe more focused on the open side versus the ladies.
Speaker 2:I'm learning. I'm learning the strategies.
Speaker 1:But congrats to them on that.
Speaker 2:Super proud of them. We're gonna have to go cheer them on either virtually or in person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure the men's one will be streamed. Wonder if the they should stream the ladies one on the Chicago Water and Fire
Speaker 2:I don't think that's announced.
Speaker 1:Oh, did I just spill some beans?
Speaker 2:You might have.
Speaker 1:It's fine.
Speaker 2:K.
Speaker 1:I just said that on the Twitch, they have that screen. The location's not announced for that?
Speaker 2:I don't believe so.
Speaker 1:Well, it might be somewhere cool. Could we leak secret IFPA information?
Speaker 2:I might beep it out.
Speaker 1:You could beep it out.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna like
Speaker 1:We can look and see if it's announced yet.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Oops.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You can bleep it.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. So that's super cool. We've got we did a gimmick this weekend.
Speaker 1:We did, we were at Bottom Lounge, but we did create one more thing in 2025.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, sorry, we did.
Speaker 1:We did.
Speaker 2:The PRPA.
Speaker 1:The Punk Rock Pinball Association. It was originally, I just wanted to have like a cool leaderboard for our tournaments here, was the first idea. Where I wanted to track like all of our tournaments as like a series.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And to see who's the best here. And then I'm like, why don't, if that's gonna happen, why not just make it a thing where everybody in the country can play? So that's what we did with the help from our friend Nick Greenup from Kansas City.
Speaker 2:Couldn't do it without Nick.
Speaker 1:That just launched. If you want to see what it's about, you can just go to punkrockpinball.com, and in the main menu, there's a thing in the main menu called Punk Rock Pinball Association. Click that. That will tell you all about it. And there's links on that page, every other page that you'd need to see.
Speaker 1:If you want to host Punk Rock Pinball Association tournaments, there's a form on the website. You fill out that form. It will come to me. I'll get you a login, and you can start hosting tournaments and submitting your own results for the leaderboards. We'd love to have some more folks participate.
Speaker 1:We've got, like, 16, I call them scene reps, because eventually we're gonna have some scene leaderboards. So we've got 16 scene reps right now. It just rolled out like not even a full month ago, and there have been 14 events with two zero six players.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:And it's the the leader of top five is the same as it was, last week on the Pokemon episodes. I don't need to read them against all the Kansas City people. That's gonna change soon, because we've got our monthly tournament coming up on the seventeenth.
Speaker 2:We got leagues.
Speaker 1:And we got leagues and Joe and Shelly's New Year's Eve thing will be a PRPA, so we're probably gonna knock off some Kansas City people soon unless they have another one soon. I don't know what they have up their sleeves.
Speaker 2:I don't either.
Speaker 1:14 events already, two zero six players. A bunch, there's a event in Colorado coming up. I'll pull that up on the Facebook group. There's stuff in Colorado. At the cake shop.
Speaker 1:Tons of stuff in Eastern Iowa, like at Jay's Silver Ballroom. They've had like the most events of anybody so far. It's Jay's Silver Ballroom in a couple other spots out there.
Speaker 2:So thank you, Emily and Jay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Jay and Emily, thank you so much. You're early adopters, early supporters. We appreciate that. Let's see, what's this? Where's the Colorado one?
Speaker 2:I saw it in the punk rock pinball Facebook.
Speaker 1:I apologize.
Speaker 2:Because I saw our friend Barry is going to go.
Speaker 1:Is Barry Binder gonna go?
Speaker 2:I believe he said interested.
Speaker 1:Barry Binder and your and your lady, Tracy, you should go. Yeah, you should Barry has some questions that we can do on a different episode about like kinda how to get better. He's like a super noob. We are not super highly skilled players, but we have some skills.
Speaker 2:We will tell you everything we know.
Speaker 1:So I think we're qualified to teach like a brand noob. Yeah. But if you're looking for advanced pinball strategy, like way advanced,
Speaker 2:We'll not gonna be from get get you just enough just enough to wet your whistle.
Speaker 1:We're not, like, top level players.
Speaker 2:No. Gosh, no.
Speaker 1:If you want more advanced stuff, like, listen to some of the TravisMurray things, and just watch the Fox City streams when they're streaming, like, the major events, and watch those big dogs play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they talk about strategy and what you're trying to do. The commentators are awesome.
Speaker 1:The next level.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the Electric Bat, their livestreams. Surge. Surge is great with the rules. They can guide you through, like, advanced tactics. We can get you, like, yeah, like, try to hit specific shots.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. You know? Like, practice catching and trapping the ball. Like, the basics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can do a little of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can't find that one. I should've had that prepared, I'm sorry. But there's one in Colorado coming right up.
Speaker 2:It might be this weekend.
Speaker 1:I can tell you what the name is.
Speaker 2:It's like Cake Bite.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's the exact name.
Speaker 2:Kevin Johnson's gonna be mad as hell.
Speaker 1:Kevin, I'm sorry. I apologize in advance, Kevin, as I'm trying to look through stuff. I'm just trying to find the form, and then I can tell you the fellow's name that's setting that up. Individual. But you could talk while I'm doing this.
Speaker 2:Well, while Mike's looking that up, yesterday, we went up to the Bottom Lounge Mhmm. Where there was a four different ska bands playing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And Scott people are very friendly.
Speaker 1:They are nice.
Speaker 2:Like, so friendly and so nice. We met we did a little pinball gimmick of a high score challenge on a few of the machines. Our friend who owns Bottom Lounge and Delilah's in the city is also a pinball fanatic, and he put all of the games on free play for us, which was cool. And we, yeah, we did a little gimmick with some folks who are new to pinball and a couple of friends that we'd never met, before Mhmm. In person.
Speaker 2:And and plus, our good friend Mike Vinicore showed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. MXV was there. Thank you, Mike, for coming out.
Speaker 2:He ripped up all of the machines.
Speaker 1:He tied Mike and I tied for first place in our gimmick event.
Speaker 2:Congratulations to the Mikes. Yep. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Yep. What
Speaker 2:an accomplishment that is.
Speaker 1:What an accomplishment that is. I beat him on the Beatles. Wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is an accomplishment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it wasn't a great score. I'm not gonna say the score, but it was higher than Mike's.
Speaker 2:All right, wow.
Speaker 1:And he was about to go shoot another score right before we left, because you could do multiple tries on each game, and he's like, Oh, I'll go do another one. And he had just gotten through explaining to me how he doesn't care about how he does in tournaments. I'm like, Mike, you just said it doesn't matter. He's like, Okay, I'll let you have top billing.
Speaker 2:That was a nice
Speaker 1:So thank you, Mike. So maybe, I don't know, is that coercion or something in an approved event that was for points that I talked Mike out of going to because he would have beaten me probably.
Speaker 2:This whole PRPA is a sham.
Speaker 1:It's a sham. But this little gimmick, because it wasn't a proper tournament, we have a way where you can do some single game challenges and it gets you 25% of what the full points. So full points were not awarded at this event.
Speaker 2:No, just like a very small amount of points.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there were like, we had like 11 players, but only like nine or 10 submitted scores, so the first place got 10 points, but it's 25%. What's 25% of ten? Two point five. 2.5 points were earned that day by me.
Speaker 2:Other thing I want to call out on the leaderboard is there is one person on the leaderboard who is grinding Mhmm. Who has attended and participated in seven events.
Speaker 1:And there's been 14 total.
Speaker 2:And so this person has been to half of the PRPA events. Our friend, Kat Davis.
Speaker 1:Yep. Congratulations, Kat. You are the most active Punk Rock Pinball Association player thus far. Seven events played, with more to come this next week probably, because she'll probably be at Joe and Shelly's.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:And she'll probably be at our monthly, so Kat's gonna have 10 events under her belt in no time.
Speaker 2:We're all gonna be chasing Kat. Yep. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:And once she wins a couple, it's like, boom.
Speaker 2:Yep. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1:Colorado event's being hosted by Adam Jordan.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Adam.
Speaker 1:At bitemecake. Is that what you said
Speaker 2:it was? Yeah, thought it was cake bite, but
Speaker 1:Bite Me Cake Company slash Flip A Coin Arcade Bar. That's coming up on the third?
Speaker 2:Yes. That sounds like an amazing place. Like, it's a bakery. They have cake and pinball. Is that like, does that sound right?
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:God, that's like heaven.
Speaker 1:Also on the third, it's a big day because ORD by Chicago is having a Punk Rock Pinball Association tournament.
Speaker 2:Their very first one.
Speaker 1:Their very first one. Thank you guys for signing up for that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So January 3, two tournaments. The ORD one's probably gonna have a good number of players,
Speaker 2:I it looks hope our friend Aaron is feeling better so he can make it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Aaron Redick, he's got the COVIDs right now. Hope you feel better.
Speaker 2:Him and Jess, I hope they both feel better.
Speaker 1:Lots of people have that right now.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:It's going around like crazy. I don't want it.
Speaker 2:I hope we didn't get it yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, guess I didn't I washed my hands a good bit.
Speaker 2:I did, too.
Speaker 1:And we met our friend Matthew Nippon yesterday. He owns the games where we play at Triptych in Champaign. He has games at a few other locations around Chicagoland. He's gonna have some of them doing Punk Rock Pinball Association tournaments. So I have like a strong foothold in Illinois here in Iowa, and we have Dory up in Wisconsin who's gonna be doing some, maybe has done a couple already.
Speaker 1:So kind of our Upper Midwest here. I guess that's where we're rooted. Then you got Colorado and there's, where's the other, there's one other farther away one. Montana. Oh.
Speaker 1:We have somebody in Montana.
Speaker 2:Is it our friend that watched the livestream?
Speaker 1:Yes, it is. Seth? I'm gonna get his name wrong. I think it's
Speaker 2:Well, that's cool. We need some people down in Texas.
Speaker 1:We need some Florida.
Speaker 2:We need some Florida. Yeah, there's a Florida scene.
Speaker 1:We need some Oregon. We have Tyler in Tennessee, Tyler Campbell.
Speaker 2:All right, Tyler.
Speaker 1:We have Jay Gross in Iowa, Adam from Colorado. I was gonna read them all. You're get your name out there. Robert Rob Natoli from ORD here, Chicagoland, Matthew Nippon, Chicagoland, Shannon Miles in California. Oh.
Speaker 1:So we're out on the West Coast. Okay. I think they're gonna run some bells and chime stuff.
Speaker 2:That's So so
Speaker 1:that's cool, Shannon. I don't know if Shannon listens. Emily Gross.
Speaker 2:Well, Ashley and Madison.
Speaker 1:Felicia, that's also in Iowa. Lots of folks in Iowa. Big support in Iowa.
Speaker 2:You know, the people that love corn.
Speaker 1:Tim Alexander up in Superior, Wisconsin. Oh. That's like way up there. So we're all over Wisconsin. If you wanna play a punk rock pinball tournament, we're all over Wisconsin.
Speaker 1:Got Lindsey from Moline. Quad Cities, kind of Iowa ish, Illinois, Iowa there. Seth out in Montana. I think Seth ran the tournament already. I don't know if he submitted the results yet.
Speaker 1:I think they had, or that note's coming up. So you can be a punk rock pinballer in Montana. That's a Who'd have thought we'd be in Montana? Brendan Krause over in Michigan, friends of the Bathroom of the Future boys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like up north, aren't they?
Speaker 1:Michigan band. Cool. Dennis Keppi over there in Moline, Quad Cities. If you're in the Quad Cities, you're gonna have, probably soon, the leaderboards are gonna be filled with Quad Cities people.
Speaker 2:Oh, jeez.
Speaker 1:Once Dennis starts doing big ones too, and you have the Jay and Emily ones and the
Speaker 2:Dennis We need the scenes to break out, man. Yeah. We need the scenes to break out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This leaderboard you created that none of us will be on.
Speaker 1:Jamie from St. Charles.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:They're running, I think, some open ones and some ladies only ones. I think some bells and chimes. We've got Dory up in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee. Tiffany in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2:Oh, Tiffany. Called her Ashley. Tiffany. Yeah, she's super nice.
Speaker 1:Millman over in Iowa. Lots of folks over We're gonna have to go to Iowa. And we've got you, Stephanie Wysakki, here in Bloomington, Illinois. Yeah. And Shelly Sharp is a scene rep in Peoria.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yeah. Shelly Sharp and I are are she just sent me comfort confirmation today. She had the Peoria Bells and Chimes renamed officially to Central Illinois Bells and Chimes. Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Ladies, we're gonna make it inclusive of Champagne and Bloomington and Peoria and just make it a bigger deal.
Speaker 1:Springfield. We gotta recruit some folks from Springfield.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do.
Speaker 1:There's gotta be some players down there in Springfield that
Speaker 2:wanna know. They got the dumb records. They've got pinball machines.
Speaker 1:Chris O'Brien, he's from Springfield.
Speaker 2:He's from
Speaker 1:He's a PRPHQ member. Yeah. Yeah. So there's gotta be some ladies in Springfield that would come up and play Peoria or Bloomington. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good job, Shelley, renaming that because that's really what And like, no one of these cities are really big enough to have their own big chapter for Bells and Chimes, but when you add them all up, because now you could maybe host one in Champaign. It should rotate between Champaign, Bloomington, and Peoria, and then if you could find a place in Springfield, even just rotate the four.
Speaker 2:It'd be cool. Yeah. Yeah. And if everybody can't make it, no big deal. Hopefully, we find some new people, so maybe we'll have to talk to Jeff at Dumb Records.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. That's really neat.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Super cool.
Speaker 1:And they should just all or they could all just be at Punk Rock Pinball HQ because it's central to all those cities.
Speaker 2:Or yeah. It's fun to mix it up. It's fun to mix it up.
Speaker 1:No. It'll be cool because Joe and Shelley's house is a great place to play. Mhmm. If our friend Brad ever puts more machines in the Porbros in Peoria, that would be a good spot. Yep.
Speaker 1:Porbros in Bloomington, you could even have one there if you wanted. Yep. Punk Rock Pimble HQ in Bloomington. Could probably have one at someone's house in the champagne from the champagne league.
Speaker 2:Probably.
Speaker 1:Or over there at Triptych. Yep. Triptych might have the last bells at Shelly's house was big. That would have been too big for a Triptych almost.
Speaker 2:She had 24 ladies.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean and I feel like Shelly and CJ are I mean, they they've really worked hard to grow that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because CJ was hosting all those at his various locations in Peoria for a while, getting that really established so that it wouldn't exist without his locations where he had games.
Speaker 2:We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for CJ.
Speaker 1:No, because we got hooked by playing the Night Shop tournaments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so thanks CJ.
Speaker 1:And then this wouldn't be a thing unless we had gone to Joe and Shelly's house and saw, okay, it made it seem less weird because that time we only had Jaws Before we went to Joe and Shelly's and they had like 11 games.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:then we're like, well, they have 11? Because I remember we were talking about maybe getting a second one and I was like, is that crazy?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then we're like, these people don't seem crazy, and look at all the pinball machines in their basement.
Speaker 1:They had 11.
Speaker 2:Now that you have, like, 20,
Speaker 1:I Yeah. Because they've got three over at the HQ now. Yeah. And their basement's full. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So I think they always need to have a couple more than we have.
Speaker 2:That's all right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, that
Speaker 1:one's nice. But if you calculated the value of the collections, theirs is much higher.
Speaker 2:Yeah, theirs are fancy. They've got the fancy machines.
Speaker 1:Because we have mostly Stern Pros or the older used Sterns, the Pirates and the Ripley's and a firepower.
Speaker 2:Fun house.
Speaker 1:We only have a couple premiums. Just the Jaws fiftieth and The Walking Dead.
Speaker 2:Yep. Oh my gosh. This week on, I don't know what day it was, Saturday night, we livestreamed. Mhmm. It's embarrassing, but I'm gonna say it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We livestreamed for, like, three hours. It felt like
Speaker 1:It was three hours. It was over three hours.
Speaker 2:And there were a few of us at HQ. Spicy Rich and Pamela were there. But Spicy Rich, and Kevin, and Joey, and you and me, Rob and Rob. And we tried to the goal was to crack 300,000,000. I put that number out there because if you got 300,000,000, I think you'd be in the third spot on our leaderboard at the HQ.
Speaker 1:So it's been done on that machine.
Speaker 2:And more. Yeah, it's We been done on that played for three hours, and no one really even sniffed it. Kevin got the closest.
Speaker 1:Kevin got 200 something. It was shameful. The game just beat the crap out of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It made me feel like a terrible pinball player.
Speaker 2:It was embarrassing, and it's up on YouTube.
Speaker 1:It's on YouTube. Don't watch it.
Speaker 2:Don't watch it, because you know what?
Speaker 1:I don't even know if the audio The audio probably sucks. I gotta figure out the audio on Yeah,
Speaker 2:audio probably sucks. We also had the playfield cam was mirrored, so it was backwards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 2:I know, I'm just saying.
Speaker 1:It was only mirrored part of the time.
Speaker 2:For half of
Speaker 1:Rich fixed it.
Speaker 2:I did.
Speaker 1:You did it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, Rich and
Speaker 1:I did And then Rich was monkeying with some other things. But I gotta figure out a way to make the streaming more compelling or to not do it? Because we need to have commentary. I know. But I don't have the proper gear for that, and I don't know if I wanna invest in that gear to do the streams.
Speaker 1:I don't know. You tell us. Do you want us to try to make the streams better and to do more streaming? I find it to be fun, but also stressful, because I don't really like figuring out that technical end of it.
Speaker 2:Alright. Well?
Speaker 1:Because it'd be cool to, like, stream our tournaments, but I would want to stream it and, like, have the player names up there, player one, two, three, four, and all that. But I don't wanna have anything to do with making that happen. On that end of it. You just want to play. I just want to play.
Speaker 1:So if somebody at the HQ wants to take that on, or has those skills, then I'm happy to put it on the channel, but I don't necessarily want to be the technical person behind all that, because I wanna just play. Unless there's a great demand. We don't have a lot of people watch the streams, So unless some bunch of viewers comment here like, no, you need to do the streams and just make them better, maybe that will inspire me to want to figure it out more. But anybody that's a member at the HQ, if you want to learn the stuff and maybe even invest in some of the equipment, which is not that cheap, I'm happy to be a part of figuring that out, but I don't want to just do it. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Maybe we can make a a committee.
Speaker 1:Maybe that could be a streaming committee.
Speaker 2:We'll figure it out.
Speaker 1:Because it just that kinda stuff, like, I couldn't get the HDMI out of The Walking Dead to work.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:And I got it on Avatar. It's the same gear. Plugged Avatar in, it just worked. Walking Dead, I'm just getting a black screen. But then I tested the cord to the TV, and you got it.
Speaker 1:And that kind of stuff just makes me crazy, and I just wanna play pinball, and I spent like two hours doing that, and I just wanted to flip. We need somebody who's more of like an AV nerd.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That maybe already knows how to do that. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Attention AV nerds.
Speaker 1:AV nerds at PRPHQ if you're listening to this. Not everybody at HQ listens to this.
Speaker 2:No, know. Or if you aren't at PRP HQ and you have some tips.
Speaker 1:Or if you got tips or if you're in the Bloomington or Central Illinois area and you're like, I'll come over and show you how to set that crap up. Cool. I'll come let you in to play pinball.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You don't have to be a member. Like, we have the keys. You can come and play if you wanna
Speaker 2:Help us.
Speaker 1:Us make our livestreams better. I just feel like the product so far, our livestream product isn't up to par with the good ones.
Speaker 2:It's probably why Retro Ralph didn't wanna play with us.
Speaker 1:It could be why he didn't wanna play with us. Because he does a better stream.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he has like high production value.
Speaker 1:His production value on his livestreams is better, ours, it's mostly on the audio side. And we could have better cameras and yada yada, but it's mostly the audio needs to be better and we need to be able to have commentary. Because otherwise, you're just watching some random people play pinball.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And on The Walking Dead stream, you're watching them play pinball poorly. Yeah. Except for a couple games by Kevin and Rich had a good game or two. Yes. And that was it.
Speaker 1:And everyone else just kinda got their ass whipped by The Walking Dead. So there needs to be a way to make it interesting and have it sound good. And if somebody wants to come in and help, I'll also help, but I don't wanna just do it.
Speaker 2:K. That's fair. Got it. Point taken.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 2:What else?
Speaker 1:What are we looking forward to for 2026? We're at thirty seven minutes. Mhmm. Just looked down. She's got a timer on her thing.
Speaker 1:So we could wrap it up here, but I I wanna talk maybe what are you excited for for next year? Because that's coming right up in a few days.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm excited. We well, I'm excited for more punk rock pinball events and traveling a little bit
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To go do that, like taking the show on the road.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty excited about that. I am also I'm also very excited about like all of the new friends that we've met and meeting more new people to play pinball with. That's pretty cool. Yeah. We're both social people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's like, I'm I'm excited for that. We don't even know what's gonna happen. I'm excited for potentially getting some art blades for my Jaws fiftieth.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Will they be making specialized Jaws fiftieth heart blades? We need to know.
Speaker 2:So that I'm looking forward to. Yeah. I don't know. I'm also very excited for, like, the creativity and contribution of people within this punk rock pinball community near and far. Like, they're just kind of surprising me every week.
Speaker 2:There's just something someone's doing something that is super cool that maybe we hadn't thought of. And it's kind of taking on the life of its own. So I'm just I'm really excited for the future of this and to be sitting here a year from now and hopefully just kind of being in awe of, like, what happens. I think it's going to continue to grow, I guess, is what I'm saying, and I'm excited for that growth. We're giving it a shot.
Speaker 2:I guess even if it just flops, we're giving it a shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's already not flopped. Mean, have, as a show, I mean, the numbers from the show have been bigger than I already expected. With like 30,000 plus listens, I thought it would maybe be sitting at this point, maybe getting a 100 per episode and getting like a thousand per episode. So that's already like, to me, like a success. Even if we quit tomorrow, we didn't make an this is the last episode, it's been a success.
Speaker 2:It's cool.
Speaker 1:The Punk Rock Pinball Association, I really have no goals for that. So that could, I mean, I want it to grow, and I wanna provide this kind of organization and leaderboard for anybody that wants to use it that's gonna be hosting safe and fun and fair tournaments as an option to IFPA. We have nothing against IFPA, but if you want a different option there, like, I want to build out the functionality of this leaderboard and have it out there for everybody, and then it's really up to the people if it grows or not.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And I don't have any hard goals on that. We'll use it for all of ours, and if it gains nationwide adoption, that would be wonderful, but if it doesn't, it's still fun for our little area of the world here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I totally agree.
Speaker 1:And what I'm looking forward to with that is to do some team tournaments. And I was gonna have it be like scene versus scene. And if you're one of our tournament directors like Jay and Emily or Dennis Keppi, I know a lot of you guys have a lot of ideas. I'm thinking of like travel teams, but based on the location. So let's say there's a Jay's Silver Ballroom team.
Speaker 1:And let's say there's Nick has his team from the solid state pinball supply, and let's say there's a punk rock pinball HQ team just from our punk rock pinball HQ members, What would be the best format for us to compete against one another? Because we will travel. I think we could get at least five to, like, come and play like any of you guys, and we would invite you to come here to Bloomington. Like, Quad Cities is not that far. Kansas City is not that far.
Speaker 1:Dory, like, pick a location up in Milwaukee and and well, the busiest one, and, like, make a team. And let's travel around and let's have some team location versus location team tournaments, and I just wanna hear from you or from my tournament director people, we'll send out an email probably, How do we wanna format this, these the competition?
Speaker 2:If we do this, it has to be streamed.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, then somebody a friend of the PRPHQ, please help figure that out because it's not gonna be me.
Speaker 2:I know. I'm just saying it has to be. It's like if somebody
Speaker 1:do, like, 80% of it.
Speaker 2:If somebody needs to go on a Tom Graff boot camp weekend or something Yeah. Like and, like, to pick his brain on how to do it baby style because he's got quite the setup there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because because we don't have the money to buy the Tom Graff streaming setup. No. That's insane. No.
Speaker 1:It's I've looked at that.
Speaker 2:It's intimidating.
Speaker 1:It's super intimidating. But like And Tom Graff, kudos to you, man, for setting up that crazy system and playing in these high level tournaments and playing well. Like, kudos to Tom Graff. He's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So awesome. But, yeah, we need a baby version of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Anybody in our little scene wanna go, like, pester Tom Graff the next time he streams a big tournament and just write down all of the stuff? Yeah. And maybe we could collectively buy all the stuff. Or We have some of the stuff.
Speaker 2:I know that Jack Danger just did, like, a whole new rig of stuff. Maybe we can get him to come down and stream it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, what's on his new rig? Or maybe he could give us a walk through of his new rig. Yeah. Because we can do it.
Speaker 1:We have the stuff to do. We probably don't have all the right stuff definitely not on the audio side. But I wanna do these team versus teams. It should be streamed, you're right. But what's the best format?
Speaker 1:I was thinking like five person team, okay, five on five. Okay. And the home team, nobody knows in advance who's playing who, you do like three, like a certain number of rounds of like head to head play.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Where every player plays like three times. And say home team picks like, we're the home team, I put forward Joe Sharp, and then the visitor gets to pick who's gonna play against Joe. And then you go down the line. My player two is CJ. Then Iowa gets to pick who plays against CJ.
Speaker 1:One team picks who's gonna play first, and then the other team picks the game.
Speaker 2:K.
Speaker 1:So if I put forward Joe, you pick a person, guy or gal or whoever, and that person picks the game. And then maybe, like, the winner of that match, they decide maybe the player and the game next time. There's lot of ways you could do it. And then each game is just worth a point, and then after three rounds, it'd be 15 matches. It's like who has the most points.
Speaker 2:That's pretty fun.
Speaker 1:That sounds fun.
Speaker 2:That sounds super fun.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's do that.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. I feel like we could get that going against, like, some Quad Cities, Eastern Iowa folks, like, pretty quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Probably.
Speaker 1:Because we'll go there, you can come here and do one, a home and home, home and home match?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah?
Speaker 1:Uh-huh. Let's do Maybe you set up a season where, like, once we establish the teams, every team gets a home and home against every other team. Let's say you have Kansas City, we have Quad Cities, we have Milwaukee, we have Chicago, and we have Central Illinois, then every team plays every team twice, so you'd have 10 matches per year.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Okay. Okay. I think that'd be fun as hell.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's kind of like pinball meets roller derby.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:I love it. And everybody can have their, like, team name.
Speaker 1:And some special shirts. Yeah. So we recognize each other. So we can identify each other in the crowd.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Special shirts. Uh-huh. Some warm ups.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Some warm ups.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Full outfits.
Speaker 1:Ryan Young doesn't listen to this, but he I wonder if he can. Yes. He can print our he could embroider Mhmm. For our team. I'll buy these for our five people.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:Like a whole, like, tracksuit warm up suit.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we come with our embroidered shiny, like, Adidas tracksuits coming to flip. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And Ryan already knows a track suit because he has one.
Speaker 2:He loves them. He loves a track suit. He wears the full outfit.
Speaker 1:Because we're gonna be comfy in our soft pants Mhmm. Ready to flip. Mhmm. Just don't watch me play The Walking Dead. This is all it falls real
Speaker 2:fast. It all falls apart. Yeah. Well, that sounds super fun. Alright.
Speaker 2:Well, that's that's going out to the the world now.
Speaker 1:And then 2026, I'm just also excited about the potential Stern pinball lineup.
Speaker 2:I mean, that goes without saying.
Speaker 1:Because you know what it is? You know the rumor of what it is, all of them?
Speaker 2:Planet of the Apes?
Speaker 1:I heard Spooky had Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's I
Speaker 1:like the Spooky, I just wish they could make more games.
Speaker 2:I get it.
Speaker 1:Because the spooky has Planet of the Apes. I want it. I want one. Yeah. But I just can't get in line like that.
Speaker 2:So what games?
Speaker 1:So they're saying Pokemon, want it. They're saying Transformers.
Speaker 2:Doesn't interest me.
Speaker 1:But it's by, now I've forgotten his name, the fellow that designed John Wick.
Speaker 2:Well, then maybe I'm interested.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I'm sorry I forget his name, and I just had it on the top of my head. He's good.
Speaker 2:He's very good. That is a great game.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They're saying that a possible Batman sixty sixth Anniversary Edition. Oh. That's what they're saying? That game's great.
Speaker 2:It is great.
Speaker 1:They're saying a possible ACDC remastered Woah. As the remaster.
Speaker 2:Those are four bangers.
Speaker 1:They're saying a possible Keith Ellwyn fallout.
Speaker 2:That's very interesting.
Speaker 1:That sounds like five games I need. And then you got Spooky with Planet of the Apes. Sounds like six games I need.
Speaker 2:And that Planet of the
Speaker 1:Apes. But that won't be till 2027 because they're making Beetlejuice all next year.
Speaker 2:True, true, true, true, true.
Speaker 1:Which looks amazing. We're not getting one because we didn't get on the thing.
Speaker 2:No, but we'll play it.
Speaker 1:We will play it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know
Speaker 1:We might even do a thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know a couple places that are getting Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1:We might even do a Beetlejuice lunch tournament somewhere, TBD. That might happen. I would love one if they could crank them out like Stern. We'd probably have one coming to HQ soon, but maybe they'll get there.
Speaker 2:They'll get there.
Speaker 1:So I just can't share everyone's full excitement on those just because they don't make enough.
Speaker 2:Well, we're gonna get to play it in 2026.
Speaker 1:We're gonna get to play it probably in like two months.
Speaker 2:That's so exciting.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think that's a wrap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a wrap.
Speaker 1:It was a good year. We did it.
Speaker 2:We did do it. Put it out there.
Speaker 1:We made this whole thing, and it's all thanks to, if nobody watched and nobody joined our HQ, Marshall liked that. Marshall said He doesn't like a clap. He likes a high five.
Speaker 2:He said congratulations to you.
Speaker 1:Because if it weren't for all you people in the Facebook group and all the people watching and at the HQ, all the members and the people that come play the tournaments, we wouldn't do any of it. So thank you all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:For a wonderful pinball year.
Speaker 2:And, yes, this is just an awesome community, and I'm glad that we get to contribute back to it in some sort of a way. Yeah. And connect more people. It's cool. It's great.
Speaker 2:Our dreams are coming true.
Speaker 1:Pinball dreams have been made.
Speaker 2:We're making new player. We're finding new players.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We found some yesterday. Found like four or five brand new players yesterday that are like, oh, I'd never even really thought about pinball. I think I'm hooked now.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
Speaker 1:You're very welcome.
Speaker 2:Welcome.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Welcome and you're welcome. Alright. That's a wrap. Alright. We'll see you in the new year.
Speaker 1:And? Toodle oo. Goodbye.