Which didn’t entirely stop me from doing the wrong thing or being just a complete idiot, but managed to make me anxious about almost everything I did. The thing is, I grew up wanting to be good, and as I got older, that evolved into a desire to always be right. Who hadn’t, at some point in their lives, been a Ross? A little bit selfish, kind of stupid, getting away with something you know you shouldn’t be doing, and all the while thinking, What’s the worst that could happen? Getting trapped inside a pinball machine forever, that’s what! A small, stupid decision with immutable consequences - that was my worst possible outcome.
It was some serious eternal punishment, biblical stuff. Olson’s face looming above, and the giant pinball comes rolling down the escalator. It turns out that the whole mall is a pinball game, and the cute girl from before is a princess who needs pinball-gameplay-based saving. The fountain begins spitting out quarters - and now you know it’s about to get really weird. Sure he’s broken it, Ross runs out of the store only to discover that all of the mall’s doors are locked. And as soon as he’s alone again, he goes back to pinball. When a cute girl comes in, Ross just fumbles around, being unhelpful. He does a terrible job watching the place, too. There’s just one condition: no playing the mysterious, extremely cool pinball game hidden under a sheet.īut Ross totally plays the pinball game, pretty much as soon as Mr. Olson, still doesn’t want to hire Ross - especially (ominously) after what happened to the last kid - but eventually agrees to let Ross watch the shop while he’s out for lunch. Ross evades the law by ducking into a shop where, it turns out, he’s previously asked for a job.
“The Tale of the Pinball Wizard” begins with our anti-hero Ross running away from mall security guards after fighting a woman over quarters from the mall fountain. I remember there was a spooky magic-shop episode, something about a swamp monster - but the one where the kid gets trapped in the pinball machine forever? That one stuck. Yet, I’ve never been a person who enjoyed being scared for fun and, to be honest, I didn’t really watch it that much. There is some brief exposition before one of the characters begins their tale, transporting the viewer into the live-action narrative.Īs far as horror went, it was some Goosebumps-level stuff - nothing an 8-year-old who still had a night-light (me) couldn’t handle. A group of kids, under the auspices of a club called “The Midnight Society,” meet around a campfire and tell scary stories. During its four-year run, each episode followed a basic formula. It aired in Canada in 1990 before moving to Nickelodeon’s “late-night” programming slot, SNICK, to frighten American children in 1992. But it was clear to me as a kid, when I watched the end of one particular episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, as a giant, silvery pinball bore down on our protagonist: Forever is a long fucking time.Īre You Afraid of the Dark? was, as imagined by its creator, The Twilight Zone for tweens. There are mathematical calculations that approach it, religious yearnings for paradisiacal eternities, and experiences like waiting in line for the bathroom when you urgently need to pee. Forever, as a concept, is pretty hard to comprehend.
0 kommentar(er)
