I have a pretty bad pinball problem.
I'm into about, oh my god, 60, 80 hours a week of pinball.
That's too much.
I'm having a moment.
This is pins and needles.
My pinball arcade, poor man's arcade,
pinball collection in a room for people to play.
This is usually what I say is my favorite game here,
Jungle Queen.
Metro Mechanical style pinballs are my favorite class.
There's an aesthetic quality to the artwork
that I just think is beautiful,
as well as her being an empowered, strong woman
as opposed to some slutty robot
that is being saved by a big, strong man.
The way this got started,
I had an apartment that was pretty big.
I lived with a fella.
That didn't work.
So in his space, I put a pinball machine,
and then another pinball machine,
and then another pinball machine,
and then I would get rid of a table,
two pinballs, I'd get rid of a couch.
So I moved all of my games into a shop
that I thought, oh, I'll call it pins and needles.
I'm a costume designer, seamstress,
and I have all these pinball games.
It's so stupid, it just might work.
And it sort of did.
Singalong was one of my dream games.
The theme is actually a little more wholesome
than what I like,
but see how the head is shaped like a wedge,
I collect wedge heads, they're my favorite.
My new favorite is embryon.
It has the biggest vagina in pinball.
It has three captive balls in it,
so you want to hit the big ball,
and that'll knock the other balls up into the vagina high enough.
You really got to whack the balls hard up in there.
Once I had a couple games going at a time,
I realized that maintenance was of the utmost concern.
They have a couple hundred switches
and all kinds of things that can go wrong with them.
Without labor, there's 100 bucks, 120 bucks an hour.
So I just had to start figuring it out myself.
It became clear early on
that without some kind of technical skill,
I wasn't going to be able to continue collecting.
She's back.
This is where the brains happen,
the MPU and solenoid driver board with the interconnect.
Sound and power supply.
Look, I found my screwdriver.
It's male-dominated.
There's a seediness to it.
There's a living in your mom's basementness to it.
Fucker.
And then there are some really great people in it
who are just undying hobbyists
who, you know, want to keep the pinball thing going
and are bummed that at one point, you know, all the games
were out in public for people to play
and now they're all, like, at some dude's house
who probably doesn't want you coming over that much.
That's what I really wanted.
Do I like anything more than pinball?
No.
Nothing.
Not even close.
