Jared, don't take what Josh said TOO literally. I think he meant, "anything [good] that can actually make it to market would be a huge step in increasing the [positive] awareness of pinball to the masses."

There has to be quality control to ensure positive awareness. Otherwise, Stern would have simply hired somebody like P.T. Barnum instead of you, because P.T. Barnum once said, "I don't care what the newspapers say about me, as long as they spell my name right."

I don't think Stern would consider the following names for any pinball promotional activities, because of their notoriety and infamy:

- Orenthal James "O.J." Simpson
- Lance Edward Armstrong
- Nicole Elizabeth "Snooki" LaValle

Barnum probably would have said, "Bravo! You spelled their names right."

But how is that even REMOTELY applicable to pinball?

Well, here's another notorious name to add to that list:

- Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia

Along with a few infamous photos in pinball history...

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Great! So let's think of ways that we can actually get the hobby banned again for another 30 years so that pinballers in the year 2045+ can all sit around and reminisce about how great a promotion it was for pinball. I hear that O.J. Simpson's Q-score has dropped a bit since his Hertz commercials back in the late 1970s, so if you hire him to do a commercial promotion for IFPA, you can get 500x the number of marketing impressions than you could back then. That would definitely generate some buzz! And Lance Armstrong seems to have a lot of free time on his hands, in between occasional meetings with his lawyers, so maybe he can come speak at an IFPA tournament just to get a large crowd out? Think of the possibilities!

Or we can just keep taking the P.T. Barnum approach, acting like carnival barkers, and wondering why the hobby's sizzle reels aren't being picked up by networks?

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Now THAT sounds interesting, assuming it's focused on the competitive tournament scene.

That was awesome! I've watched hours of video of Robert playing pinball, both on location and in tournaments. The video that his friend shot of him reaching Valinor on a LOTR LE on location in his area is really interesting. To the best of my knowledge, it's one of the few videos in existence of a successful Valinor quest in the wild...

And Robert's personal story makes the subject matter of this project even more compelling. He is such a nice person... a real credit to this hobby and the competitive tournament scene.

I'm really looking forward to the feature length documentary. Thanks for posting!