Every day, on the way home from work I pass an auction house. On Mondays, there is a 67% chance that I will have to either slam on the brakes or swerve around the brain-dead morons who prefer to spend a larger portion of what little attention they have on the items on the lawn of the auction house than on the traffic on the road. Usually, I get slightly irritated and decently exhilarated testing the limits of my cars braking and handling abilities.

Today, I was completely sucked in with the rest of them. While passing the auction house at a healthy 35, out of the corner of my eye, I swear that I saw a dismantled pinball machine lying in the grass. Visualize, if you will, one of those movies where a woman loses her husband and she thinks she hears his ghost in the house. You know, the ones where she gets all hopeful and confused at the same time and says something like, “Jimmy? Jimmy, is that you?” Now imagine me with that same tone and expression, and actually saying aloud, “Gor-Gar? Gor-Gar?”

At a time when I wore work boots full time and my hair in what is now affectionately known as a mullet, one of my friends had, in his basement, a pinball machine. As one of the coolest things that a kid could possibly have in his house, it occupied a serious amount of time for us in that pre-18, pre-car period where getting some junk food and playing pinball was the norm. If one of your friends has his own pinball machine, that’s pretty cool in itself, but this one was beyond cool. This pinball machine was GorGar. Not only did it have scantily clad amazons and skulls all over it, but GorGar was a giant Devil, which really fit in nicely with the whole Led zeppelin / Judas Priest /work boots / mullet theme of my youth. Oh, and to make him cooler? He talked. Fucking talked! Back in those days, this was huge. His devil voice would announce “GORGAR! BEAT! ME!” at the start of every game. Fuck Pong. Fuck Hockey. Fuck Squash, tennis, NoFriendo, and you too, Sega. GorGar was the new sheriff in town, and that sheriff not only inherently liked to listen to Judas Priest, but he talked to us on our level.

And all those good memories with Gor-Gar that were once locked away in some corner of my brain came flooding back in a two second period, completely disrupting my ability to drive, leaving me in good company with the other morons on the road.

As I drove away, I began to think that there was no way that it could’ve been GorGar on the basis of several irrational points: 1.) Because I had only seen one GorGar machine, there must’ve been only one GorGar machine ever produced in Massachusetts and quite possibly the United States, and 2.) Because Gorgar obviously had Satanic power, there was no way GorGar could break, AND 3.) There is no way that someone would sell GorGar in perfect working condition in an auction. Perfectly logical. I was in a full on coma for the rest of the ride home, dreaming of triumphantly out-bidding everyone for GorGar, setting it up in my apartment, and tracking down all my old friends and tricking them into coming over with something inanely grown-up for some GorGar and Judas Priest.

Thanks for the memories Gor-Gar. Hopefully, you have better friends than me. I don’t write. I don’t call. I don’t put on a copy of Judas Priest: Live and live after midnight with you anymore. I barely even remembered that you existed.

Feel the Power that is GorGar

Posted in Misc.