Weekend Plans Post: In the House of Charles Entertainment Cheese
When I was a kid, there was tension between Showbiz and Chuck E. Cheese. I was more of a Showbiz guy, myself. I had a birthday party there and one of the gifts given was a 45″ that had the above birthday medley on it. I must have listened to that record a hundred times. My poor parents.
But that’s not to say that I didn’t have good memories of Chuck E. Cheese as well. It’s just that Showbiz was about the video games and the emphasis wasn’t on Skee-Ball. I loved how it was an arcade *FOR ME*. The surly teenagers were all at the billiard halls or at the mall.
Chuck E. Cheese was all about the skee-ball. Get tickets, get more tickets, get even more tickets. Get a hundred! Then trade in 100 tickets for… some groucho glasses? How much are the good prizes? 2000?!? WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THAT?
Yeah, Showbiz was better.
There was a third restaurant that tried to horn in, if I recall correctly. It was riverboat themed, I think. There was an animatronic dog who would tell corny jokes and was surrounded by his entourage of corny animatronic hangers-on. I liked it because the place was always empty. It closed, of course.
Anyway, I called my buddy today to ask him what the plan was and if we were doing anything this weekend. He said “Dude, my inlaws are in town. I’m going to Chuck E. Cheese’s with the kiddos. FEEL FREE TO SHOW UP.”
So I figured, hey. I will show up.
Last time I was at Chuck E. Cheese, it was 1985. I wanted to see what they’d done with the place.
And… well, stuff that wasn’t transparent to me then was sure as heck transparent to me now. Chuck E. Cheese is Entry-Level Vegas.
For one thing: No more tokens. Instead you get an RFID card. Swipe your card, play your game. Card resets after 30 seconds.
They still have a few video games but they’re all designed to be lost in less than a minute (say what you will about games in the 80s, they were designed to be lost in less than 90 seconds!). It’s mostly games of chance with large signs saying “THIS IS A GAME OF SKILL” on the side. Press the button and get your guy to jump a jumping rope. Press the button to have two tokens be dispensed and roll them down the ramp and, if you’re lucky, into the tiny slot that gives you 25 tickets instead of merely 3. Skee-ball. Get 45000 points and get 25 tickets!
Then take your tickets up to the counter and see the sign that says “round up your tickets! 1 ticket = 1 cent!”
Get a plastic flower ring for 50 tickets. Get a plastic dinosaur for 100 tickets. Get a bubble pipe for 125 tickets (bubbles not included)!
At least the pizza was not bad. I mean, it wasn’t *GOOD*. But it wasn’t bad. They had an all-you-can-eat salad bar, though. What surprised me was that the bar had hard-boiled eggs. You could easily make your money back on those alone! You just have to eat 50 of them in one sitting.
I got back to the house wanting to call my mom and apologize for making her go to those places. “I had no idea.”
So, this weekend, I’ll give her a call. (Also: Summerslam and fried chicken on Sunday night.)
So… what’s on your docket?
Not sure I understand the RFID thing. Does that mean that the games are free play for a fixed hourly rate?Report
Yes. About 30 bucks for an hour. You get two pauses. Not three.Report
This week I started a with a new company and it wasn’t until after I signed the offer that I found out they *only* give Macs to their employees. So this weekend will be spent in recovery from that trauma.Report
Maybe you can still get out of this. Did you sign a contract?Report
Tempted. Massive failure of due diligence on my part.
I mean sure, there are always a few execs running around with their prestige Macs at HQ, but for people doing actual work?Report
Still death-hot here. Will probably be death-hot until October. I still braved driving to the next town over to go to the JoAnn Fabrics because I felt like I was gonna lose my stuff if I stayed in town another day
Bought a Halloween doormat. Yes I want it to be fall.
then I went to Kroger’s for groceries, not a great idea, apparently this was the first day after payday/Social Security day a lot of people got out to shop AND ALSO the store’s AC was broken and it was like 85 F in there. And the “customer service” desk was closed so my checkout person was having to field calls (there were 2 checkstands open and the self-checkouts are supposedly for 20 or fewer items). I was polite to her, I know it wasn’t her fault everything was bad but it was not a fun experience.
I feel like AC repair companies should prioritize public buildings for repair….Report
Half of what I learn about AI makes me say “OH WAIT NOT THAT THAT ISN’T WHAT I WANTED!!!”
But the other half is “you know what? Okay. Yeah.”
Here’s Frank Sinatra singing “Where is my Mind?” by The Pixies:
If I had a problem, it’s that the *REAL* Frank SInatra would have waited until it seemed insane before starting to sing. That’s one thing that AI can’t master quite yet. The whole “not singing yet” thing.Report
I just learned that Chuck E. Cheese was founded by Nolan Bushnell. Also, apparently it went bankrupt in 1984 and merged with Showbiz.
This is how conspiracy theories get started. It’s all connected, man.Report
Dude. Look at the screenshot in the post in the OP.
Showbiz Pizza. “Where a kid can be a kid”.
IT’S ALL CONNECTED, MANReport
Yeah, that’s what set me off. I distinctly remembered that as a Chuck E. Cheese slogan.Report
It was!
It just wasn’t that *FIRST*.Report
Quick Summerslam review:
Great psychology in the matches. I was on the edge of my seat for half the PPV.
The finishes were head-scratchers. They would have made sense for an In Your House PPV. Not the 2nd biggest one of the year.
I can’t wait until they finally break the old records and let us move on.Report
I felt like the end of the Roman/Jey match was a straight-out-of-the-Attitude-Era swerve for the sake of the swerve (and we couldn’t figure out how to get out of this).
Hopefully LA Knight winning the battle royale means they are finally going to start letting him win matches (and it wasn’t just Slim Jim putting their thumb on the scale).
Glad to see Cody get the win over Brock. Hopefully this will shut up the “WWE only brought him back to bury him since he didn’t beat Roman” folks. It probably won’t though.Report
If they had weeks of “WHOSE SIDE WILL HE PICK?” for the whole Jimmy and Jey storyline, it’d be different. He’s torn! He’s got loyalty to his brother. But he’s got loyalty to his tribe! These are in tension! HOW WILL IT GET RESOLVED?!?
Then you do that *EXACT SAME FINISH* and the match goes from “the story is spinning its wheels” to “THEY MOVED TO THE NEXT ACT!”
The Cody/Brock match was a great exception. That story got resolved and tied off with a little bow and was that a face turn for Brock?Report
If anything, they were building the tension with Solo. Way out of left field.
Supposedly the Brock thing was improvised by Brock, so probably not intended as a face-turn. I don’t think Brock loses if he doesn’t want to (in the sense that he has a lot of control over his storylines, though I doubt anybody on the roster could pin him if he didn’t want them to), so I don’t think it is unreasonable to think he likes/respects Cody.Report