Chuck E. Cheese’s does not hold the same allure as it did when I was a kid. I don’t know if it changed so much or if I am just too old for that particular scene.

Nate — or maybe it was his wife — suggested yesterday that we take a little trip there. I was actually looking forward to going because the opening of my new story, “A Zombie Romance,” takes place at a Chuck E. Cheese. (Or “Showbiz Pizza” as we called it back in the day, when we wore onions on our belts, as was the style at the time.) It was the perfect opportunity to refresh my memory — which, sadly, is pretty damn vague when it comes to life events before age 14 — of what a Chuck E. Cheese looks like.

It’s not that the join is rundown or anything, though there were tons of trashy parents there. It’s that all the entertainment blows. The tons of video games you could demolish your friends at have been replaced by simple arcade-style games where everyone is a winner. The one game I had any interest in was a Mario Cart game, and these little seven-year-old fuckers were hogging it. So we wasted our paltry free tokens that came with the food on a crappy first first-person shooter and skeeball.

The one highlight was that Nate is still afraid of the animatronic mascot. He doesn’t even like to make eye contact with it. It’s fucking great.

I did manage to come out of it with a fairly good visual of what a Chuck E. Cheese is like. Though I think in my story I might spruce it up a little, to make it cooler. It certainly needs it.

JAB