All Right! Who Peed in the Ball Pit?
Yesterday I spent an afternoon worshipping at the bier of illustrious rat and children's entertainer Charles E. Cheese, known as "Chuck" and a menace to anyone who decides to sign on for the dubious rewards to be gained from the art of parenting. Of course, every Chuck E. Cheese is divided into halves - the area where the toys, tubes and games are found, apart from the other, the large banquet room where birthday parties are held and pizza is served. This second room is a locus for the repetitive stage entertainment offered by Cheese and his minions, and as this the area where the seating is located, the parents are the ones who get stuck with "the show". Les Miz it ain't folks.
I have been making the pilgrimage to Chuck E.'s place for quite some time now, even well before my daughter was born. Chuck E. Cheese's first opened in the 1970s when I was just a little too old (and we were too poor) for the place not to be an extravagance, but my youngest brother Devin, born when I was 17, became my guide for many trips to the Cheese in days of yore. Today, it is Chuck E., "the funny emcee" (as per 1970s TV ads - he is neither funny and these days mostly only sings) who is an animatronic figure - his apostles do their singing via satellite. Used to be there would be something in the restaurant that told you about these characters; but nowadays all of that has been removed.
So, being the gracious sport that I am who wouldn't want you to be stuck without the dramtic personae of any performance, will summarize - the big obnoxious chicken with the cheerleader outfit and the hands with five fingers is Helen Henny. Her now-retired animatronic figure was particularly interesting in its torets syndrome like facial tics, clucking ululations and flittering battery of feathers, rapid eye movements and confusion. The dog with the cowboy hat is Jasper and the little Italian pizza man is Pasqually, whose voice is particularly irritating to me. At one time I fantasized Pasqually as the victim of a Sicilian mob "hit". Finally there's the monster, Mudge, who used to sing a rave up on The Guess Who's "Amercian Woman" entitled "Canadian Bacon" that was actually kind of entertaining.
One day, I expect some guy in a Chuck E. Cheese costume to wander out into the crowd with a pistol and shout "I can't do it anymore. This is not the way to live - representing a celebrity that's not real and that no one pays attention to. I'm going to end it all right now..." BANG! Now THAT would turn some heads. Of how about, this: at one point Chuck E. says "Now kids, let's get together and have a little talk about the evils of dialectical materialism..." At one point even yesterday, as my daughter's birthday cake was served up, I seriously considered taking a piece of her birthday cake and shoving it into the robot Chucky's mouth, if only to witness his fiberglass and polyvinyl chloride fabricated yap gnaw into the cake as he continued to sing without missing a word. But the cake was SO expensive, and there was so little of it to go around...
However, there was a bright spot. There is a feature where children can dance in front of a blue screen and appear on several monitors throughout the auditorium. Mostly the image is of non-descript heads bobbing into the bottom of the frame. But at one point my daughter bounded into the frame and began to execute some serious MTV dance moves ala Britney Spears cum John Travolta. This caught everyone's attention, and then she whispered a quick strategy to her younger freind Arianna. Ari got down behind Remy and they began to do a many-armed "buddha" which broke up the whole room. That hammy daughter of mine, a born star if ever there was one.
One thing more - that pizza is positively the most diabolical imitation of "food" ever devised. If there is a chemical compound which is the opposite of Ex-Lax, I'm pretty sure they are mixing it into the dough.
Uncle Dave Lewis
udtv@yahoo.com