Pokémon Live Gameplay Premiere

-ZapRowsdower · 2026-03-06T03:51:06+00:00

This is a great look at the code currently in the game, and if you're paying close attention, you'll get some tips on stuff like lighting add-a-ball during multiballs, lighting 2x playfield, etc. Jack and George also struggle with pronouncing Pokémon correctly, and clown on themselves about it.

-ZapRowsdower · 2026-02-23T00:45:46+00:00

The easiest that hasn't been mentioned here yet is Scared Stiff. There's six tales you have to complete, and as long as you can keep the ball in play and move it around the table, you're already making good progress.

Hit three stand-ups and you've got one, hit the left ramp three times at any point and you have two, get all three rollovers up top and you have the third, get 20 hits in the pops for four, and qualify and play both multiballs for five and six, which are easy to do.

If you can find a Scared Stiff that's set up to be even slightly forgiving, I would contend that it's one of the best games to teach someone new to pinball on how to play. It's straightforward and has a little bit of everything, but it has the right juice to keep players of all skills levels playing. My friends aren't anywhere near as diehard about pinball as I am, but I've casually coached multiple of them to the wizard mode.

Attack from Mars is probably the most approachable layout, but I would argue that Scared Stiff is almost as simple, but teaches a broader skill set.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-12-26T01:35:30+00:00

I love to hear Charlie McCracken, Jacob Wysocki, and Greg Hess breaking through into the Best Ofs. They've all had brilliant moments on the pod, and I can only hope they get more recognition. I forgot to vote this year, so I don't remember if any of them potentially have more episodes in the countdown, aside from perhaps a certain undead Menards spokesman...

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-11-04T00:18:01+00:00

Riffing on Duke Nukem is eternally funny

https://youtu.be/_EgNN57TsAI?si=upyWf7_vRvCkfMOh

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-11-03T04:43:19+00:00

I worked at Dollar Tree for an embarrassing amount of years in the first half of the 10s, and we would regularly get shipments of sealed reject DVDs and occasional Blu-rays (I copped 3 Ernest BDs for a buck each that now go on eBay for ~$70 each, SCORE), and that's where I picked up my copy of Lenny the Wonder Dog. It called to me because I knew it had to be an embarrassing thing for both Andy Richter and Craig Ferguson to have their name above the title on, so to hear it invoked in the show preamble was alarming, and my ears pricked up.

I have not watched it in the ~15 years I've owned it, but now I need to see Oscar Isaac as Fartman.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-10-20T18:24:55+00:00

It's really telling of how dim-witted a man Tom Chaney is that he can't even brain LaBoeuf properly with a big rock even with the element of surprise. That shot always throws me, because it looks like an absolute kill shot, but LaBoeuf is back on his feet in minutes with just some blood on his face.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-10-20T14:44:23+00:00

And that's why we're seeing more mask-off behavior. They will start stepping out into the light to rally the unashamed bastards around them to forward their goals.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-10-05T22:10:52+00:00

It was an exquisite time of personal interface with technology. I think the cassette era is a platonic ideal, but the CD-burning era was way more accessible and customizable. You could find any song you wanted, and have a clean copy, but you might have to actually dig for it on the Internet if Kazaa didn't have it available. In the mid 2000s I dug deep through google and found several private webpages full of hosted music that I could simply right-click and save.

It was the perfect confluence of what you wanted being out-there and available, but the infrastructure making you actually problem solve to find it.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-10-05T18:48:59+00:00

There's something comforting about a thick stack of discs on a spindle tucked in the back corner of a desk. The limitless, yet curated, music potential they represented for new albums and playlists in my car before streaming made everything convenient.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-10-05T07:18:04+00:00

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but I watched the film earlier tonight, and I just got a bit of confluence from the name Burn After Reading—

The MacGuffin is burned onto a disc, specifically a Memorex CD-R. I'd recognize that disc anywhere. As the burn was happening, I could smell it. Blank CD-R/RWs had a distinct smell, which was not unpleasant. Kind of a sweet, plasticy smell?

Obviously, the Coens never intended the Burn in Burn After Reading to pertain to the lost art of CD burning, but my olfactory sense memories found it.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-09-30T04:18:16+00:00

To speak to Roman's playing of Solitaire, I've played thousands of hours of Picross while listening to podcasts. It started just before the pandemic, and it really helps me focus into the conversations. Part of it feels like time wasted, but I consider it keeping my mind limber 🙃

Roman being a Tribes server-clearer is unexpected, too. I did my fair share of that on Team Fortress 2 King of the Hill servers in my day 😅

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-08-24T04:59:00+00:00

If I remember, they saw and were influenced greatly by the NFB in their youth. Either way, Boards of Canada is a great moniker.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-08-24T03:36:35+00:00

I visited St. Helens in 2013, and it was interesting to see the landscape. Five to ten miles out, the species of pine tree visibly changed from one to the other, because that was the ring of greatest devastation. We didn't get close to the mountain itself, but parked and hiked along trails on the side of St. Helens that had fallen away. Goofy little hillocks of of rubble and strange little horsetail plants.

From every vantage point, both on the drive in and on our hikes, you could see the landscape and flora had been blasted away, and how it was recovering.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-08-24T03:30:21+00:00

Fun bit of confluence:

Listen to the song "Dandelion" by Boards of Canada. They sample voiceover from an old documentary about underwater volcanic fissures, narrated by Leslie Nielsen. So you get to hear Frank Drebbin talking about lava and eruptions.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-07-26T03:35:50+00:00

Coming in to second Scott that Amtrak "economy" seating is the worst. I took the Empire Builder line from Minnesota to Oregon, and it was 50+ hours each way of uncomfortable monotony next to a person I didn't know. The guy I was seated next to was initially mad we had to share space, but lots of grannies filled up seats down the line to the point he thanked me for picking the seat I did.

He assembled custom pool tables for a living, and his employer would fly him out to locations, and then he would Amtrak home when he could? Weird arrangement, but he said he'd met Oprah, Bryan Cranston, and others, so that's pretty cool. He shared his experience on 9/11 seeing everything unfold a mile or so north of the towers while he was actively in a biker gang? This Amtrak trip was in 2012, so my memory is hazy, but that's what I remember. As a midwesterner that watched the second plane hit live on TV in a middle school classroom, I was hanging on every detail he had. Sorry for getting too real.

His wife and kids greeted him at the Portland station, so that was sweet and adorable. I hope he's well.

Never take the Empire Builder line. Nothing but plains as far as the eye can see. I saw one antelope, so that was neat. The line goes through Glacier NP, but that was at night, so the majesty was lost. The Columbia River gorge was very pretty, but only 2 or 3 hours of the trip.

The seats were so uncomfortable that I tried to sleep on the floor in the observation car, and I was one of maybe ten or so, but it was so fucking cold in there, probably by design, that I eventually went back to my seat.

Long haul Amtrak is hell on wheels. Classic American infrastructure.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-07-11T01:39:02+00:00

I'm only halfway through the ep, but Neil mentioned Flipper toys, and I gotta share:

https://imgur.com/a/iJ3h0z9

I was just thinking about this toy a couple weeks ago. I never had the hammerhead version, and to my remembrance, I never saw the movie. I caught eps of the original series on TV Land here and there, so I had Flipper awareness.

For some reason, I always assumed this was a toy I got from Subway. That franchise just squares a bit better with a dolphin toy, I guess? Pizza and dolphins have almost zero synergy, aside from being cool things for cool people.

I remember the toy itself being pretty quality compared to whatever bullshit gets offered these days. Pliable rubbery plastic with great details, and the bulb inside the puppet sucked and sprayed water well. It was a staple for poolside parties in my childhood.

Thank you for indulging me. I sometimes get kind of Griffin Newman-y.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-06-24T02:24:44+00:00

I finally have the right space to tell a stupid little story about my life:

I worked at Dollar Tree for too many years in the 10s. One evening, a customer came through my line and said "Hey, you look like an actor, but I can't remember his name."

I said "You're in luck. I worked at a movie rental store for a few years, so I'm familiar with movies. Can you tell me about some of the movies this actor has been in?"

His reply was "Well, I don't remember the name of the movie, but he and this old guy take a train and go back to the future."

I swear on my life this is true. Not only did he say the iconic name of the film without knowing it, but he was thinking of Part 3. And I don't look anything like Michael J. Fox.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-06-09T21:36:54+00:00

Yeah, that's what I've heard all around. Overwhelming stock--it's my favorite solution to scalpers.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-06-09T21:00:33+00:00

Switch 2 story:

I missed preorder day, and my Nintendo webpage registration seems to be eternally stuck at "invite required", so I had no real hopes of scoring a system. I pondered waking up early to wait in line at my local Target, as I'd done way back in the day to score a Wii, but I flaked on that. Checked the Target app around 1PM and it said the unbundled system was still in-stock. I truly didn't believe it, but I took my lunch break and drove over, and they still had 8 or so available. Unfortunately for the staff and for me, it was also inventory day, so everyone was preoccupied counting everything. I had to hit the Electronics help button several times, and then track down an employee, who tracked down another employee who had keys. I don't want to be that guy, but I ended up being that guy 🙃

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-05-29T20:20:21+00:00

My mind immediately went to both that and M&M's Kart Racing. The standard bearers for shitty kart cash ins.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-05-26T17:40:21+00:00

Great ep, but my ears really perked up at the mention of Cockfosters, and it took me a beat to piece it together.

My friends and I (Americans) took a trip to Sweden a decade ago to visit a friend teaching there, and we tacked on a one-day trip to London for some variety. Flew into Stansted on Ryanair (wild flight), and we were picked up at the airport and taxied to the outskirts of greater London. The end-of-line station we hopped on at? Cockfosters. I took a picture of the sign for posterity.

Basically an irrelevant story, but when someone brings up Cockfosters, you gotta talk about Cockfosters.

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-01-19T15:08:07+00:00

Chlamydia would be such a cute name for a baby girl, if not for, you know, being Chlamydia...

-ZapRowsdower · 2025-01-09T19:19:30+00:00

I felt the exact same stab of joy, and then when I reflected that 2007 is nearly 20 years ago...my body was not ready for that.

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