Pop, Lock and Drop It!

Anyone here go to ShowBiz Pizza Place as a kid? It was a pizza place attached to a big arcade, along with an animatronic rock band. Chuck E. Cheese always got more media acknowledgments, but ShowBiz was the place that I knew. It had far better dead-eyed mascots.

The animatronic band was called "The Rock-afire Explosion". They played cover songs. When there was a kid birthday, the gorilla playing keyboards, Fatz Geronimo, would talk *live* to the kid. It was the ultimate "fuck you" to the smart-alecky kids who assumed that all the animatronic *musicians* were NOT in fact sentient machines...

"I hear it's Billy's birthday today, where's Billy? That's a nice BLUE sweater you're wearing, Billy...!"

Doubting kids would go into cardiac arrest over this bit.

Viddy this helpful instructional video from 1984...

Please note the vaguely threatening tone he takes on as he cautions operators not to lose their temper. What kids didn't see were the animatronic mobsters that ran the joint...

But it was the canned cover-tunes that really got the place pumping...

Grownups who want to mix pricey mediocre cuisine with animatronic bullshit can go to The Jekyll & Hyde Club in NYC. Sadly, arcades are dead. Oh, the things we leave behind...

It is hard to believe that it's been about a year since I walked away from the day job. I haven't been on Easy Street, but this is the longest stretch that I haven't worked in an office since I graduated from college. Oh what a ride it has been, people! Oh what a ride...

I sense a theme week brewing... I may as well concentrate on a fucking theme, because I can't friggin believe that October is next week...

Gosh, it was real nice talkin to ya! I'll see ya later!!!