So Saturday I was fortunate enough to attend a birthday party for my now five-year-old nephew Max. The party was held at the mecca for all children's birthday parties (before the introduction of the gozillion jumpin' thang, moonwalk party places): Chuck E. Cheese's!!!

There are many fun and not so fun things about the place where Charles is truly in charge, and I'm going to cover a few of them while I am here.

Bad: The volume. Sweet Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. My left ear is STILL bleeding from the volume. Five teenage girls singing the CEC happy birthday song with 47 kids and a backing track is nearly too much for a fellow like me to take.

Good: I still love video games. Especially ones that award tickets. Even if the games are old and suck ass. For example, the coin toss and drop. You may not know this one, but it's where you put in a token, it flies to the back row and top tier (of three) and you hope it goes in the hole. Sort of.

But the real carrot is the idea of knocking a couple over and on to the next ledge and then the next one and into the hopper. THAT'S where the real tickets come from in my experiences.

So what I do is grab a cup of tokens (even if I have to steal them from the kid that put them in their shoe while they went into the ceiling tube farm). Then I just keep feeding one of the side (NOT THE CENTER) slots. pretty soon, coins are falling over ledges and tickets are shooting out of the machine. All tolled, I earned over 550 tickets for my nephew doing that Saturday.

And before you ask, yes, 550 tickets is a lot. It elevated me to near God status amongst the four and five year old set.

Bad: Giving every male over 16 that is wandering around the gaming area the evil eye and wondering if "HE'S" one of those pedophile creeps but knowing full well he's probably just hiding from Brittney or Chelsea's birthday party too.

Good: That machine that eats and counts your tickets. That alone is worth playing games and saving tickets.

Bad: That none of the games that don't pay tickets are really worth a hill of shit. I mean, they have a one-man virtual reality spin around and puke inside the helmet game, that dumbass jetski game, nascar pinball (good for there but bad for pinball) and that 18-wheeler driving game that they have in every Target and Walmart in the nation.

Good: Believe it or not, the pizza is not horrific. Or at least the cheese pizza isn't. I don't understand it, but it's not.

Bad: The sickness I feel that results from pitying the poor souls that work for the giant rat. And it's not like they only work one party a day. They have to do about a dozen.

Fuck that. I don't care if they're training to be the next oscar award winner. That place HAS to suck the life out of you one sanity point at a time.


But my favorite moment of the party happened when we arrived. It was me, my lovely wife, my nine-year-old nephew and my nearly four year old daughter. It was Saturday. And it was 10am. Oh, and we were carrying a huge fucking package covered in wrapping paper. (So you know, it was a Thomas the Train lego set). And what does the door employee say?

"Are you here for a birthday party today?"

Ummmm...no honey. We're not. We'd like a table for four in the smoking area and if that's not available, can we just get a couple of cocktails and wait in the bar?

At that moment I realized something. I realized that I had just the will to live exit the body of a total stranger right where she stood.

I wonder what her soul did for the rest of the morning? I'm guessing that it played Whack-a-Mole.