Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Five Reasons Why Jersey’s Jack’s Next Machine Should be The Chosen

Posted: August 25, 2021 by datechguy in business, culture, entertainment, fun, pinball
Tags: , , ,
Christ about to deliver the Sermon on the Mount from the Chosen Season 2 finale

One of the great bits of fun about Pintastic each year is to see the new machines that are being released. Some are original, some are licensed. The question is to find a game that would not only make a good machine, but would have a good customer base to start with.

The answer of course is the Chosen. Here are five reasons why Jersey Jack Pinball should consider making a Chosen Machine.

5. Mutually beneficial to both parties

One of the goals of the folks at the Chosen is to expose this series and the message of Christ to as many people as possible, particularly those who might not be exposed to it. As a pinball company one of the goals at Jersey Jack is to expand the hobby exposing it to others. A Chosen Pinball machine would accomplish both. The message of Christ would be spread to a hobby base that while having some Christians like myself in it is not known as a faith base, while Jersey Jack with it’s line of G-PG machines would be an excellent entre to the hobby for those who would like the game.

4. Inexpensive licensing:

One of the biggest expenses for a game based on a movie or TV series is the licensing cost. The Wizard of OZ, the Hobbit and Pirates of the Caribbean all involved licensing costs.

The folks at the Chosen have been giving away the show in order to spread it to as many people as possible, that being the case it is likely that the license cost will likely be nominal for the very same reason.

3. Consistent with Jersey Jack Personal Beliefs:

Jack is known as a solid Catholic and a Knight of Columbus. In speeches at Pintastic NE he has talked about how his wife reminded him of this when deciding what games to make and use. You can’t find a product more in tune with those religious believes than a Chosen Pinball machines.

2. Ready Made Customer Base:

The first thing to consider when making a commercial product is “will it sell” “Is there a customer base for it?”

According to the Chosen website 75,346 people raised $10,000,000 to fund season one and 125,346 people (including 86% of those who funded season one) raised the ten million for season two. On the “Pay it forward” page as of this writing the first five episodes of season three are funded while 21,000+ people have kicked in to fund episode six so far. The chosen has managed to crowd fund $11.85 Million of the 18 million they’ve budgeted toward paying for season three. Over 257,000,000 people have watched the series so far and over 2000 fans showed up from all over the country to be part of the “Sermon on the Mount” scene that ended season 2 and will begin season three.

That’s what I call a customer base.

and finally the #1 reason why the Chosen should be Jersey Jack’s next machine.

  1. It’s practically designed for a Pinball machine!

Pinball machines these days are all about progress toward goals. The chosen is made for it.

Imagine a goal of collecting 12 apostles plus Mary Magdalene (most with video clips for them).

Progressive increases for bumpers are there like the size of crowds in Sychar or for the sermon on the mount, the lines in Syria, the fish in Simon’s boat) and we they haven’t even gotten to the potential stuff in season three like multiplication of the loaves and the fishes Those are made for the bumpers to increase.

Point to point goals. From miracles (Driving the demons from Mary, Simon getting the fish, curing the leper, healing Simon the Zealots’ brother) to meetings (Nicodemus meeting Jesus, getting through the crowd to the roof) traveling from city to city Capernaum, Cana, Syria, Caesar Philippi etc etc etc

Several potential mini-games (making Abagail’s toys,, Simon in a fight, preparing Shabbat dinner, finding Jesus in the crowd at Sychar or as a child in Jerusalem, escorting the taxes, plowing the field, even fixing the axel or fishing for food in season two ).

There’s even potential penalties (Roman taxes that subtract point) or arrests (John the Baptist or Jesus) and ducking the Pharisees.

Moreover there is potential for growth. A game that encompasses the first three seasons can potentially be followed by a 2nd doing seasons four and five as the really heavy stuff that might be tougher for such a game (the final arrest, scourging and Crucifixion are many year away.

The chosen is , as of now, the finest example of an excellent television with small non-cooperate control, combine that with Jersey Jack, the best new pinball makers also with the same small non-cooperate model and you have potential for a winner that will sell long after both men are gone.

It would be educational, inspiring, and most of all for a pinball game, fun!

An American Father

Posted: August 22, 2021 by datechguy in culture, education
Tags: , ,

All Politics is local

Tip O’Neill

The last 10 months from the steal of the election to the dishonorable debacle in Afghanistan I’ve really been in despair concerning the state of my country that my sons will be inheriting.

And then I saw this:

a lot of people make a lot of money on the race racket. This man isn’t one of them and the best part of his speech at the local school board is that it made a difference:

The good news is this shows that the Race racket in general and Critical race theory can be beaten at the local level ie people stand up to fight and refused to be played. He understand that the most dangerous thing to a person’s success is an excuse to fail.

The bad news is that even after this speech Critical Race Theory was beaten by one vote.

As long as there are financial incentives for the race racket there will be people playing the race card but local action can trump it but only if people are willing to fight.

Review: Katla

Posted: August 15, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, media
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

This summer Netflix debuted the Icelandic series Katla. The actual Katla is a subglacial volcano, which last erupted in 1918. 

Whereas for the series, which is centered on the village of Vík, Katla erupted one year earlier, forcing the evacuation of most of the town, save for some essential workers and their families.

Then a Swedish woman covered in ash, Gunhild (Aliette Opheim), not seen in Vík for twenty years, appears mysteriously, having not aged at all.

Others then emerge in the same manner.

To explain the setting and mood of the Katla, I need to make a diversion. Stick with me. Although this bit is quite fascinating.

According to Icelandic folklore much of the country, particularly rocks and boulders, are inhabited by the huldufólk, the hidden people. 

Iceland is unique. In the fifth episode of his long running podcast Lore, “Under Construction,” host Aaron Mahnke describes the island nation this way: “Now you have to understand something about Iceland, much of the region is a vast expanse of sparse grass and large volcanic rock formations,” adding, “the ground boils with geysers and springs and the sky seems to be eternally gray and cloudy.”

Nature is particularly harsh in Iceland. Earthquakes are common, it has a chilly subpolar oceanic climate, long winter nights, and of course there are those volcanoes, nearly thirty of them are active. 

The use of folklore is a common method to explain the world and with so much of Iceland being a seemingly blank canvas–the “vast expanse of sparse grass” that Mahnke described, as well as its unpredictable volcanoes, it is understandable that folklore’s roots are deep there.

Mahnke in his podcast mentions a couple of road projects in Iceland–one just six years ago–that were altered to assuage fears that the huldufólk would not be disturbed. Click here to find other projects that were changed for the sake of the huldufólk.

In a 1998 survey slightly more than half of Icelanders said they believe in the hidden people. In the minds of many Icelanders the huldufólk are quite real. They are certainly part of the psyche of this Nordic nation.

Huldufólk take on many incantations within Icelandic folklore, among these are as changelings.

Katla is an eight-episode series that is the work of Sigurjón Kjartansson and Baltasar Kormákur. The duo was also responsible for the series Trapped, Kormákur directed the movie Everest.

It appears Kormákur and Kjartansson’s primary audience for Katla is Icelanders and other Scandanavians. The former and probably the latter have a basic understanding of the huldufólk, whereas the primary audience of this blog does not. Hence my diversion because the huldufólk legends aren’t discussed at all in Katla except briefly midway in the series, but that part is featured in the Netflix trailer.

After the emergence of the young Gunhild, the “other” one–twenty years older of course–is discovered in Sweden. Next to come from the ash is Ása (Íris Tanja Flygenring), whose return puzzles her sister Gríma (Guðrún Eyfjörð), a rescue worker in an unhappy marriage with a dairy farmer, Kjartan (Baltasar Breki Samper). Ása and Gríma find themselves entangled in the complicated life of Gunhild and an old relationship of his.

In Katla we also find a deeply religious man, police chief Gísli (Þorsteinn Bachmann) and a scientist Darri (Björn Thors), whose lives are dramatically altered by the new arrivals. 

Katla is part science fiction and part psychological drama. It’s worth your time. 

The show’s directors make the most of the stark scenery–the cinematography is breathtaking. And the acting is compelling.

Katla is rated TV-MA for violence, scenes of suicide, brief nudity, and strong language. It is available in English, in Icelandic with subtitles, and in English with subtitles. I recommend watching the Icelandic with subtitles version, as there are passages in English and Swedish–and that method of viewing fills out the storyline a little better.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Conservatives’ quiet boycott of woke Olympics succeeds

Posted: August 8, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, politics, Sports
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Blogger after a race in 2019

By John Ruberry

Did you hear about the massive organized protest by American conservatives of the Toyko Olympics? 

No?

That’s because there wasn’t one. 

The 2020 Summer Olympics, delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, got off to a bad start, unless you are woke.

In a women’s soccer match between Team USA and Sweden, athletes from both sides took a knee rather than stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Sweden won the match, 3-0. The US women’s soccer team was the overwhelming favorite to win a gold medal in Tokyo, it ended up with the bronze.

Earlier this year the International Olympic Committee rescinded its Rule 50, which stated “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”

The Olympics are a dying movement. More on that in a bit. But the woke protests just add accelerant to the fire. 

In competitive sports success of course is achieved by winning a game, crossing the finish line first, or lifting the heaviest object, or throwing it the farthest. 

The Olympics are a big business, despite being comprised of not-for-profits such as the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, or more commonly in other nations by government ministries of sport.

The big money for the Olympics comes from TV rights and revenue for the broadcasters. If you envision television ratings as a shot put, then that heavy ball appears to have been thrown by a weak child.

From Fox News: 

NBC is giving advertisers who bought airtime during the Tokyo Olympics extra commercials due to underwhelming ratings for this year’s 2020 Olympic Games, fueled by a pandemic-weary population and backlash against woke athletes protesting the U.S. flag and national anthem. 

NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua insisted to the Associated Press that the network would still make money on the 2020 Olympics – but left out details about how much. 

NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics on July 26 averaged 14.7 million viewers — for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 53% less than the 2012 London Olympics. The opening ceremonies saw their lowest viewership since 1988.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, there are more television offerings than ever. And some people will watch Olympics segments on NBC’s YouTube channel and those viewership numbers are not included in the network’s ratings total. 

But the viewership numbers still suck. 

Wokism likely contributed to the ratings rout. That may change soon as conservatives are mobilizing against Critical Race Theory and the Democrats’ hard shove to the far-left, but conservatives don’t have a boycott apparatus in place, such as the liberals do with medium-sized groups such as Media Matters and tiny Twitter armies such as Sleeping Giants. That’s because those on the American right calmly reach for the remote and watch something else when they are offended. Or they simply stop buying products, such as what I did after Gillette ran its toxic masculinity television commercial two years ago. I loved its Good News razors. But I don’t want to put money into the hands of a company that insults me. And now I use Bic razors–which I like better and I probably never would have considered purchasing until that nasty commercial. Gillette owes Bic a finder’s fee for making me a customer. [Corrrection: a commenter mentioned that it should have been written the other way around.]

People watch sports, or buy tickets to live events, for many reasons, but the drama of a competitive event is likely the primary one. Not for the politics, that’s for sure.

And conservatives don’t need a Media Matters-type group to tell us what not to watch. Again that may change soon but the American right doesn’t possess the kneejerk compulsion to regularly pressure companies to avoid a network, a website, or a television program.

NBC is in trouble because it already purchased the US rights to every Olympics through 2032. Because leftism is a quasi-religion don’t look for the IOC to reinstate its protest ban for its athletes any time soon.

And yes, the Olympic movement is dying. Only two cities bid for the 2024 summer games, Paris and Los Angeles. The French capital was the winner and LA was immediately awarded the 2028 games. There was no other bidder. And for the 2032 Summer Olympics, the “winner” was Brisbane, Australia, the only bidder. 

For the 2022 and 2026 winter games there were only two bidders each.

Of course that’s because organizing the quadrennial Olympics are big money losers for host cities. Los Angeles managed to turn a profit with its last summer games–but that was in 1984. The 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were particularly ghastly financial debacles. Allegations of corruption in the bidding process over the years makes one wonder how stupid supposedly smart people can be.

Athens is a city of many notable ruins–and now Greece’s largest city can add numerous sites from the ’04 games for tourists to marvel at.

As the expression goes, when you get woke you go broke. 

But the Olympics were already arguably broke. 

Next year Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics. I can think of a bunch of reasons not to watch. China is a communist dictatorship, it has a long history of doping among its athletes, there are over two-hundred concentration camps that incarcerate Uighurs in China, and what else? Oh yeah, there’s a good chance that the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan laboratory, which destroyed the international economy and killed millions.

Woke protests will seal the deal for me and many more in a few months when the Olympic flame is lit in Beijing.

Corporate CEOs need to listen to the millions of quiet conservative protesters like myself and not the dozen or so left-wing screamers who show up at their board meetings. There are more of us than them.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Update: (DTG) Liberty Lanche! Welcome Liberty Daily readers Take a peek around. Discover the Mystery that has befuddled New York Writers , Check what’s under my Fedora this week, watch my occasional commentary, and if you’re a Catholic download our August Indulgence Calendar and if you liked John’s piece, you can find more of his writing here and don’t miss my other Magnificent Seven Writers:

Oh and if you’re wondering who this guy is and if you should help pay my writers and our bandwidth costs, I’m the guy who is a room full of hostile press during press conferences actually asked Donald Trump neutral or friendly questions.

It hasn’t made me a lot of friends.

Older Entries
Newer Entries