Tag Archives: teeth

Space Ace: All The Fun, Less Quarters

Gaming

I decided to drop money into iTunes last night in a fit of shop therapy (read: post-Disney depression) and discovered that Don Bluth’s Space Ace was available for download! Actually it came out in May but I’ve been avoiding money-draining endeavors.

space_ace2

Does my hair look ok to you?

For you younger readers, Space Ace is the second laserdisk game from Bluth Studios as follow up to Dragons Lair, but this time set in space! It’s the story of a dashing blond couple named Kimberly and Ace, unexplainedly menaced by a blue and leather clad, space overlord called Borf  (oh Don! You scamp!) . It’s over the top cornball campy with it’s characters but it’s Ace’s “random” ability to flip back between a muscle bound hero to weed thin child due to exposure to The Infanto Ray, that makes it fun. The beginning of the game lets you choose the difficulty level and in turn, lets you see more of the game the harder you go. It was pretty innovative stuff.

All hunky...

Ace shows an uncanny ability...

...all skinny

...to change. Almost childlike, I'd say

The game play can get tedious (you watch the same video over and over, remembering which way to guide Ace to avoid obstacles to advance the story), and at $0.50 a pop when it came out, your cash would drain out of your pocket fast. The game also tries to mess you up by mirroring or flipping the video so that you don’t become complacent with Ace’s directions. A simple trick in a simpler game era. The animation was top notch and fast paced, often too fast to enjoy the artistry and fluidity Bluth put into his characters.

spaceace3

Ace learns the loud way that Kimberly is a bit of a princess...

I’m glad to report that there are “HEY! I FUCKING CLICKED THAT!” bugs in the game. These are either due to processor speeds of video on the iPhone or they were just there to begin with and were never cleaned out. Even the false “hints” in the way of onscreen flashes are present, resulting in no action on Ace’s part or his ultimate death, tug familiarly on my memory of originally being there, and subsequently aren’t that much of a frustration. Relax and enjoy the visuals!

Borf's been to the gun show

Borf shows us that in space, no one can straighten your teeth.

I’m so caught up in nostalgia I don’t mind repeating it a few times.

$4.99 from the iTunes store. I give it 5 out of 5 for anyone who was old enough to play this originally in a smelly arcade. Anyone else will have been de-sensitized by high brow graphical games and won’t find this amusing at all (some user comments in the app are pretty funny!).

The Lesson: Boil In Bag Bunny Not Included

Personal Bits

At 4 am, I startled awake after sensing a presence in my room, standing at the foot of my bed.

“JesusfuckingChrist!!! What the fuck, Javier?”

Javier (“Hav!” I would call him) and I had been dating about a month. I had given him a key the week before because I felt I could trust him. Plus the apartment I had was massive: it was a long flight and a half to get downstairs to open the front door. My legs are lazy, my heart, not so.

“I missed you. I wanted to be sure you were here,” Jav says, sitting on the corner of my bed. I turn on the light.

“Wait. You drove from Ajax to see if I was sleeping? You don’t trust me?”

Thus began the end of our emotionally charged whirlwind dating. Javier was a closeted Uruguayan, first gen Canadian, testing the gay waters for the first time in his early 30s while living in the basement of his deeply religious parent’s home. At the time I was working the odd bar shift at The Black Eagle while working at Rogers in their iMedia department (yes, Rogers jumped on the “iBandwagon” back in 1998-2001) and would come home on the weekend at odd hours. Needless to say our relationship was moving along at a slow pace, since I had very little free time. Because of my lack of enthusiasm in our love affair, early on in our relationship, Jav accused me of sleeping around and not finding him attractive and that I’d prefer to be with bigger, bearish type guys simply because I worked at a rough leather bar.

I did find Jav extremely attractive: he was one of those hairy Southern Latinos, slenderly well built, well groomed, and playful. He had beautiful eyes and the whitest teeth of anyone I’ve ever been with. And apparently had no sense of boundaries.

“I’ll go,” Jav says and rises off the bed. A switch-whipped puppy couldn’t look sadder

“Oh for Christssakes, Jav. You better stay.”

The above mentioned incursion happened early Saturday morning. Sunday we met up and I called it off. It was surprisingly swift and without incident – Jav accepted that he was being a bit smothering and we parted without drama. I was relieved that I dodged an emotionally crippling bullet.

Monday morning at the office, I get a call from reception as soon as I sit down at my desk saying I had a visitor.

Uh oh…

I come around the corner to find Jav in tears in the middle of the reception area. Like Jav’s tears, co-workers are streaming by us, offering odd sympathetic glances. The receptionist has her head down, ears wide open.

I drag Jav out into the hall for some privacy. He begs me to take him back, he can change, it will change, he’ll give me my space. I stand firm and say that we need to go our separate ways. After a long pause, he leaves.

The remainder of the day I am sent 40 to 50 emails from Javier’s gal pal telling me that I am a horrible person, god will punish me, I’ve ruined Jav’s life, his heart and subsequently his career. I am scheduled to rot in hell and be miserably alone for the rest of my life, according to her. I am a monster who cannot possibly love anyone. I have lost the ability to love when I cut Jav loose. I was scum.

I call IT to ask how to block an email.

My boss notices my distress and after listening to my story, tells me that sometimes our hearts are unbalanced. In both senses of the word.

Forgetting Yourself

Queer stuff, Travel, You Stupid Dick

A story from our recent camping trip:

We had packed up the car on the last day of camping and said our goodbyes to the three women across from our site, offering up our remaining wood for them to use. We get into the car and start to drive away.

We almost got to the campground’s front gate when SharkBoy remembers the clothesline still hanging between some trees back at the site. How he did an inventory in his head of the car’s contents while he drove to the exit is a mystery to me. But it came to him in a flash and I had to jump out and hike back to our spot. It was quicker than trying to turn the behemoth of a car around and obeying the 3mph speed limit through the trailer park, crawling past glaring tenants who think you’re doing 4mph.

Back at the site, the women are deep in animated conversation and without comment I head straight to the trees to start untying the rope.

I’m considering using my teeth on one particular high up knot, concentrating all my will to get it to release itself and without thought, I fart.

Sometimes the only time you notice a noise is when it stops. I’m not talking about the fart, no. The lesbians had stopped talking abruptly.

Don’t turn around. Keep working that knot. Wind up the rope. Keep your eyes down. Get back to the car…