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September 3, 2005

Special When Lit



I was about 13 years old when I first entered the Palace. I was a tag-a-long to an older friend who was going there just to score a nickel bag.

Pinball Palace was a small, almost hidden place, tucked between the Jerry Lewis Movie theater and a specialty bra shop. From the outside, it looked forbidden and dangerous, two things that combined to point a beckoning finger at me.

Gina opened the door and I followed, knowing that this was exactly the kind of place my parents warned me about. Which made it exactly the kind of place I wanted to be.

As soon as we stepped inside my brain went into sensory overload. The smell hit me first; cigarettes, pot and teenage sweat all mingled together. That sounds nasty but it’s really a powerful, enticing aroma to a 13 year old who was already dabbling in the dark side of suburbia.

The noises. The clacking of pool balls as someone yelled “break!” Dings and whistles coming from the mess of pinball machines that lined the walls. Bikers cursing. Quarters jangling in the pockets of Levis. Fists banging on plexiglass as a machine tilted. And David Essex's “Rock On” on the jukebox. The combination of those sounds and the smells was intoxicating. Overwhelming at first, but so intoxicating.

This was my first time in the Palace and, I have to say, the sensory overload, plus the bikers looking like they were about to start a brawl with some potheads, made me a little nervous. So instead of digging for some quarters and trying out a game, which is what I wanted to do so badly, I kind of just hung back while Gina made her deal with guy at the change counter. When she was done, we went behind the movie theater, smoked a joint, and then snuck in the back door of the theater. They were showing Shampoo. We watched Warren Beatty, naked on the floor and humping the daylights out of the poor girl underneath him and all I remember is a person was watching them through a window and said something like "Now that's what I call fucking!" Gina sat gaping at the screen, taking in every word, every movement, probably taking notes in her head, and all I could think about was going back to Pinball Palace. The sounds played in my head. Pinball machines. Quarters. Rock On. That place was beckoning me like the sea calls to a sailor. Or something like that.

I went back with Gina the next Saturday. This time, I brought quarters. While Gina flirted with her dealer, I made the walk toward the machine in the far corner, toward the thing that haunted my dreams the entire week. It loomed there like a god calling me into its temple. Or maybe it was like a monster luring me to its lair. I stopped. Stood in front of it. Sucked in my breath and admired the beauty that was the Bally Wizard. Pinball Wizard. Tommy. Ann Margaret with her legs spread on the backglass. Tommy.

I hesitated for a split second, then put the quarter in, knowing full well that I would become addicted to the flashing lights and turning numbers. The quarter dropped. I hit the reset button. The silver ball popped into place and I slowly pulled back the lever, feeling the resistance of the coiled spring. I let go. The tip of the lever and the metal ball connected and as that ball went around the curve on its journey towards the playing field, it took with it my grades, my social life, my allowance. From the first loud ding when the ball rang up my first score, I was obsessed.

My fingers worked the flippers as deftly as Gina’s fingers worked rolling joints. I moved back and forth, swinging my hips and nudging the machine a little to the left, a little to the right, careful not to piss it off enough to make it tilt. My eyes darted between the ball and the scoreboard and my heart skipped a beat as I saw the paper taped to the top of the glass with the high scores for the week listed. My name would be up there one day. Yes, it would. A girl’s gotta have goals in life. Some of my friends wanted to discover a cure for cancer or find life on Mars. I just wanted my name written in magic marker on top of that piece of paper. I’m pretty simple like that. You want a higher education? Rip it up. I just wanted a high score.

An hour later, Gina had to drag me out of the Palace. Even when my quarters ran out, I wanted to stay. I wanted to watch the masters play, the guys who turned over the numbers over. The guys who could smoke and drink and play at the same time.

Going with Gina on her Saturday deals wasn’t enough anymore. I started walking to the Palace after school. If Gina wouldn't go there was always someone else willing to hang out and watch me play pinball with me instead of going home. I’d bribe them with a couple of cigarettes and the promise that there were older, hot guys/girls there. We would throw a few quarters into the jukebox (three plays for twenty five cents) and play the same tunes over and over. Black Betty. Trampled Underfoot. Slip Kid. Have A Cigar.

Sometimes I would ask my mother for a ride to the library and when she pulled away after dropping me off, I would duck out the door and run across Front Street, straight to Pinball Palace. I mean, mom never wondered why I went to the library so much because, despite what you may think you know about me, I was really a bookish kinda kid. I liked to read. I didn’t really like lying to my mom, though. Catholic guilt. It wears you down. So I rationalized my lying by, well, justifying it. See, I wasn't out on the streets doing drugs - no respectable 13 year old considered pot a real drug - and I wasn't out getting pregnant like Mrs. Winslow's daughter. I was just playing pinball. Besides, I kept a copy of The Chocolate War tucked into the back of my jeans. Sometimes I read while waiting for the Bally Wizard to free up. So I wasn’t totally lying. Right? That Catholic guilt. It’s still there.

My trips to the Palace got less frequent as the weather got cold. No one wanted to walk that far, not even for a bribe of a cigarette, a few quarters and a slice from Pizza King. Once in a while we’d get a ride to the movie theater and slip inside the Palace instead. Each time I walked through those doors was like the first. The smell, the sounds, the adrenaline rush as I stared down the Wizard. Ann Margaret with her legs spread.

They closed Pinball Palace before the warm weather came back. Neighbors were complaining. Community action groups were picketing. Churches were praying for the souls of the kids caught up in the glare of those flashing lights. They claimed Pinball Palace was a haven for dirty, unkempt teenagers who cursed and drank and smoked. It was stealing the life and soul of the community's young adults. Well, yea. Not to mention my allowance. But hey, it was my choice. I kinda liked having my soul eaten away by the Bally Wizard and Grand Slam and Atlantis.

And then, it was gone. I cried, I mourned, I laid in bed at night, my fingers twitching to imaginary flippers, the game playing out in my mind. We had to find another place. I was an addict looking for a fix. I needed it. I craved it. I played entire games of Grand Slam in my head, complete with tilts and free balls and high scores.

That summer, my parents decided I needed an “attitude adjustment” and pulled me out of the "terrible" public school system. Catholic high school would surely lead me on the path to a righteous life. I would make new friends. Better friends. Friends that didn’t reek of bong water and hang out in pinball places. Friends who wore skirts and ties and gave their quarters to the collection basket instead of jukeboxes and games.

So the new school year starts, I make some friends and mom and dad are happy. I’m staying after school to study and umm...attend chapel.

Not quite. See, the 7-11 across the street from school held a deep, dark secret in its back corner. A Bally Wizard pinball machine. My new friends, who hated ties and skirts and hoarded their quarters like gold, would watch me play for hours each day, taking bets on whether I would break the high score or not. highscores.jpgI had a following. I was the Pinball Wizard. 7-11 wasn't quite the same as Pinball Palace, but Kevin had his portable cassette player and we listened to Thin Lizzy and Wish You Were Here while I worked the flippers. Every day. Bell rings. Class dismissed. Walk across street. Smoke joint. Drop quarters. Special when lit!

Pinball eventually gave way to other video games. Asteroids. Galaga. Space Invaders. Arcades started popping up everywhere. My pinball skills were ancient history. Nobody cared about the high score taped the Bally Wizard. There were aliens to fight. Spaceships to pilot.

I’ll never regret all those hours and quarters spent feeding my pinball frenzy. Learning the exact angles of each machine, getting a rush when my name went up on the high score chart. Those were good times. My mother told me that I was wasting away my life playing those games, that I would never get anything useful out of it. Hah. What does she know? If it wasn't for those quick reflexes and the incredible hand-eye coordination I developed at Pinball Palace, I wouldn’t know the joy of kicking my kid’s ass at Street Fighter. -M

Led Zeppelin - Trampled Underfoot
The Who - Pinball Wizard
Supersuckers - Gone Gamblin'

Rally X - Best Video Game Car



Rally X

This was the simplest looking game. Like Pac-Man, but with a car, right?* How hard could it be. Well, you have to take the extenuating circumstance into consideration here. I played this game in a club. Rumbottoms, I think. So you take this simple little maze/car game and throw in a few stiff drinks and some crappy Doors cover band playing in the background to distract you and, well, it wasn’t all that simple of a game.

Ok, so let’s drive this little car around. I’m the queen of video games here. The expert. This game is gonna be so easy I’ll be bored in five minutes, and I’ll go back to heckling the Jim Morrison wannabe. Ok car, drive. No, not that way. The other way. I’m not that drunk. I’ve only had one or two shots. Damn it. Where the hell are you going? Why do you keep hitting the wall? Dude, focus! Stay on track! It’s a god damn joystick and a stupid little car, why can’t you keep it on track. Oh fuck. The red cars. They are after me. Hurry, think. What to do? What are these buttons for? Mash, mash, mash the button! Smoke! The car is blowing smoke out its ass! Jim Morrison is singing Strange Days. My car is running out of fuel. I need another shot of whatever that was I was drinking. Yea, drinking and driving the Rally X car. This is not going well. Someone put a cigarette in my mouth and light it please, because I’m not letting go of this joystick. I am gonna make this fucker run this course right. Red car! Red car! Come on, let’s blow some smoke out of our ass....what the hell? They give you a weapon, but you lose fuel when you use it? What the hell kind of deranged thinking is that? You gotta kill these guys but you end up killing yourself in the process. Oh! Hit the wall again. Wheels spinning. Jim Morrison sings. The blue bus is calling us. Dude, fuck your blue bus. This red car is calling me. It’s mocking me. Wait. Bonus round! What the hell? You can run out of fuel in the fucking bonus round? Who designed this game? Marquis de Sade?

It looked so simple. Simple as the bass line to Love Me Two Times. Simple as the doofus flipping his quarter around behind me who doesn’t get the hint that I’m not leaving this game. So many levels, so few Doors songs left. One more shot. One more encore. Yea, a cover band in a shitty bar is doing an encore. I’ve got one more quarter. Friends gather around the machine. They want to go home. Jim Morrison Jr. is butchering Crystal Ship. Ok, keep your cool. Stop banging into the god damn walls. What the hell is wrong with this car? Is it retarded or is it just me? Move, car, move! Red guy! Red guy! HAHAH I AM BLOWING SMOKE OUT MY ASS! I GOT YOU FUCKER!! Yea. I got this car going. This little bastard is a mean machine once you’ve got enough kamikaze shots inside you to get your adrenaline going. This is the only car of its kind where you need to drink in order to drive it. Drop those smoke bombs! We’re on a mission from God! We’re gonna clear those flags and move on to the next round!

The band comes out for its second show. My friends are gone. The dude with the quarter gives up and starts playing pinball. Jim breaks out into a drunken version of Love Me Two Times. It’s just me and my car. My friends let me down. Jim let me down. My car won’t let me........fuck. Out of fuel again. Stupid game. Stupid joystick. Stupid car. I’m gonna go find my friends and get the hell out of here. Hey, what’s this? I’ve got another dollar. That’s four quarters from the bartender! Pinball guy buys me a shot. Jim starts singing Alabama Song. Come on car, let’s blow some smoke out of our ass. It’s only 1am. I’ve got four quarters and no ride home. Might as well drive this fucker into the sunset.

*It actually ran on pac-man hardware

SNFU - The Quest for Fun
The Business - Drinkin' n Drivin'

Evil Otto



Something you may not know about me - I’m a hardcore gamer. I cut my teeth on pinball machines back in the 70's and I’m still going strong today with about six different consoles in my house plus a working C64 that I use to play games like Last Ninja and California Games. pong.jpgSo when Turtle and I were talking and the subject of video games came up and he said ‘let’s write about arcade game tonight’ I jumped at the chance. And then he started bombarding me with links to Pong. Yea, I get it. I’m old. Thanks. But let me tell you, dude. Pong ruled. You may think it was just a simple game where you hit a white dot back and forth against two lines that were supposed to be people, but there was a lot more involved. It was social commentary. It was all about the futility of life, the dawning awareness you get at 3am when you realize that this is all there is, just a back and forth, back and forth, never ending game of throw and catch. Well, hell. I had to find some way to make that game interesting. I tried to turn it into a game about the Cold War, but no matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t make Player 1 look like Kruschev.

I lived in arcades for more years than I care to mention. I can’t imagine how many quarters I dropped into those machines. I kinda miss those days. The thrill of stuffing a paycheck's worth of quarters into a slot. Spending almost entire days controlling joysticks and trackballs, mashing buttons and shooting insects and riding ostriches. I played every game out there, from Death Race to Galaxian to Tron and Dragon’s Lair and Ghosts and Goblins and Tempest and Defender and, well, you get the point.

There's one game that sticks out in my mind from those days.. This was around the time I was graduating high school and you would think I’d start behaving more like a grown up and less like a kid jacked up on speed and quarters who spent her school lunch hour in the local pizza place pressing buttons and jonesing for a high score. But no. The lure of the games was just too much. berz.jpgNothing could pull me away from that pizza place, or the 7-11 or the arcade. And especially not the local bar (whose name escapes me) where a game called Berzerk sat in a dusty corner, begging for my quarters.

“Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!” I can still hear that loud and clear in my head as if I was still standing there, beer balanced on a barstool pulled up next to the machine, quarters laid out in a row as if to say to anyone else “This is my place. I’m not leaving. Don’t even think that you are going to get anywhere near this game tonight. Cause I am on fire and fucking Evil Otto is going to die a brutal death this evening.”

Except Evil Otto could not be destroyed. I knew this, knew this was how the game worked and there was nothing I could do about it, but that did not stop me, especially when I was drunk, from thinking that one more quarter, one more game, would let me somehow find some deep, dark secret hidden deep within the code that would let me destroy Otto. I was at war with this evil overlord. He haunted my sleep. He kept me awake even when the bedspins would die down. Do you know what Evil Otto looked like? He looked like this: otto.jpg Evil fucking Otto was a bouncing smiley face. Oh, don’t let that smile deceive you. You could feel the evil oozing from Otto. You knew he was bad despite the happy grin.

This game was frustrating to say the least. You couldn’t touch anything. Not a wall, not a robot and especially not Evil Otto. You just had to maneuver your humanoid around and hope that all the robots would kill each other off and you could escape into an opening in the wall before Otto bounced into you.

“Chicken! Fight like a robot!” What? Is this game mocking me? “Fuck you!” I would yell back at the machine every time that voice called me a chicken. If I was drinking vodka, I might kick the game or threaten the disembodied voice with bodily harm to both it and its mother. If I was drinking rum, I would just feel hurt and cry. “I am not a chicken! I am not a chicken!” Someone would come over and hand me a shot of something fiery and I’d throw it back, take a deep breath and challenge Evil Otto to come get me, motherfucker. berzarc.jpgWhen I would actually kill all the robots and escape through an opening, the voice would say “The humanoid must not escape!” Dude, that’s kinda scary. I mean, especially if I had been smoking pot and was all paranoid about Evil Otto killing me in my sleep to begin with. Now this voice is yelling out that I must not escape? I would rather it call me a chicken. That’s freaking creepy.

You think I’m a wuss for being afraid of a stupid bouncing smiley face? Check this out:

Berzerk was the first video game known to have been involved in the death of a player. In January 1981, 19-year-old Jeff Dailey died of a heart attack soon after posting a score of 16,660 on Berzerk. In October of the following year, Peter Burkowski made the Berzerk top-ten list twice in fifteen minutes, just a few seconds before also dying of a heart attack at the age of only 18.

See, dude? Otto was indeed evil. He still shows up in my dreams once in while. "Intruder alert!" -M