So What's Your High Score?

So Ava turned 8 recently. When it came time to choose her birthday we came up with a few scenarios…none of which looked demented at the time but became increasingly so the closer we got to the actual event.

We asked Ava, as responsible, nurturing (read: stupid) parents are wont to do…"What would you like to do for your birthday, here are some choices"…

A Pottery Party, in which young children start with soft and malleable clay and after smashing and pounding it into submission then paint it in garish colors after which it is baked until it is a stone-like density capable of holding a tasty beverage or perhaps inflicting permanent brain trauma on the child next to you.

A Bowling Party, in which young children are assembled in poorly fitted shoes in a room where the lights are dimmed to a level normally associated with where bats congregate and then given dementedly dense spheres of polyurethane which often cause parents to reach for a tasty alcoholic beverage or perhaps inflicting permanent brain trauma on the child next to you.

An Arcade Party, in which 15 random children are dropped off by parents looking for two hours without their "Little Darlings" (read: Homemade Terrorists) in a two-story building packed with screaming kids, flashing lights and high pitched sirens that it makes the firebombing of Dresden look like the time when you accidentally used an extra squirt of lighter fluid on your BBQ grill.

As you may have guessed…Ava chose option 3.

Now I haven't been in an arcade since back before The Goths sacked Rome but I do remember that it used to be about playing the games.

If you still think that, then you my friend are El Wrongo.*

Anyhoo, the point of arcades nowadays is to provide a centralized location in which to disburse cold pizza, flat soda…and to provide a free-range, open environment in which thousands of children hopped up on so much sugar that it is literally eating their brains from the inside-out can shriek at upwards of 145 decibels every single second of the 2 hours that you are there.

It is truly epic in the real sense of that word…it's loud and there are glowing flashing things exploding every few seconds, while random children, faces plastered with cold pizza grease and clutching handfuls of cake run around in circles making horrible wretched squealing sounds that would be completely at home in Satan's living room.

It's like if you had the power to take a half dozen ferris wheels, light them on fire and have them spin at a hundred miles an hour while crazed children hang on for dear life and all the while a volcano is erupting alongside a rockslide of christmas lights and assorted car parts that scrape across your skin and somehow, I'm not sure how, inside this insane terrifying din, you can still hear them playing Justin Bieber over the PA system.

Let me try once last time…

It's as if you're tied down in the middle of the desert at high noon during Burning Man, there are filthy hippies dancing with zero coordination while a million drumbeats lash at your eardrums and somehow, again you dont know how…you are covered in gravy and just this minute a crazy mad scientist has found a way to make piranhas airborne and they haven't eaten in a few days. And he just let them loose.

Well, maybe its not that bad, but lord it ain't good.

* El Wrongo is the star of a new Cuban American superhero show I am writing. In it there are many amazing episodes such as "When El Wrongo has One Cortadito Too Many", El Wrongo Ditches The Wife to Go to All Star Wrestling and of course the tear jerker in the making…" El Wrongo Loses His First CockFight to a Little Girl with a Parakeet Named Teeny".

What is going on here?

Can someone…anyone please explain it?

You can't…can you?

And they said romance was dead...

Cause I'm classy like that...

Good things come in small...

Me and Renee have a conversation.

Me: "OK if Im going to take Ava to MermaidSwim, can I go see Godzilla Sunday morning"?

Renee: "Sure.  Go crazy.  I’ll give you money for popcorn".

Me: "I wont need it, as you know, I will shake my maracas for the hot girls behind the counter and they will give me free popcorn".

Renee: "So long you hold out for a large bucket, its OK.  Don’t give it away for a small".

Me: "Large Bucket"?...Im confused… are we still talking about popcorn…or vajayjays'"?

Renee: "Popcorn".

Me: "Good, it was a little confusing there. With vajayjays, I thought smaller was better".

Questions they should ask...

Kinkos

1. Are you comfortable telling people that you have to charge them $1.50 to open their PDF by claiming its a "file rendering" charge?

2. Can you attend our 4 week seminar on stapling?

3. Are you surly? If not, can you learn to be?

4. Are you willing to throw your hands up in exasperation and take your break every single time a customer asks you for anything including directions to the water fountain?

5. Do you know the difference between yellow and goldenrod paper?

6. Can you work the dreaded Midnight to 8am shift aka The Meth-head College Students doing their Resumes Mardi Gras?

7. Have you ever xeroxed your ass or mashed your zoobag on the copier glass, for fun?

8. Can you take a carefully collated and color coded stack of 2,789 pages from a very prestigious law firm and drop it on the floor? Can you then copy it and reassemble it completely out of order despite the fact that each page has a page number?

8a.Follow Up: Can you do that a few times per week?

Music Store

1. Do you know the difference between an Electric Guitar and a Bass?

1a. Follow Up: Do you pronounce "bass: like "base or like the fish"?

2. Do you giggle every time you say G String?

3. When heading to the restroom, are you willing to use the phrase "dropping the mike"?

4. Will you sneak into the store after hours so you can practice the drumming part at the end of the song In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins?

5. How many time have you seen KISS in concert, how often it too much?
This is a trick question…you can NEVER see KISS too often.

6. Are you such a good salesperson that you could sell a piano to a racist who doesn't believe that the white and black keys should touch?

7. If a customer comes in asking for sheet music to the truly awful song "Blake's Got A New Face" by Vampire Weekend are you willing to slap them repeatedly about the face and neck until they change their mind?

7a. Follow Up: Can you in fact hum that very song while slapping them?

Comic Book Store - The Sanctum Sanctorum

1. Have you now or in the past owned and maintained a shrine to the greatest comic artifact in human history…Stan Lee's Mustache?

2. What is your take on the Moebius vs. Kirby Drawing the Silver Surfer Conjecture?

3. Are you willing to read the entire Fantastic Four run by John Byrne even though it means not showering for a week?

4. Working at The Sanctum Sanctorum would be good for:

• A. Making me insufferable at ComicCon
• B. Make me more knowledgeable about Jack Kirby's Fourth World Series.
• C. Picking Up Girls.

Note: If you chose C, you are automatically disqualified, girls are as rare at The Sanctum Sanctorum as common sense is in a session of Congress.

5. Do you think that Batman complains about his dead parents too much?

6. Hal Jordan or Guy Gardner?

7. Have you ever had a serious conversation about whether the Thing's wang is made of rock or if he is smooth like a Ken doll?

8. Are you willing to make a clueless mom cry when she comes in for a birthday gift for her kid and asks for a copy of "Washmen"?

Pool Supply Store

1. Are you allergic to Chlorine?

2. Are you trained as a lifeguard?

3. If a pool is 20 feet by 15 feet, 5 feet deep with a ladder at one end and a set of stairs at the other end, how many boxes of Jell-O will you need to fill it?
Bonus points if you know how long it takes for that much Jello-O to set.

4. Are you applying because you saw a porno with the title "Pool Boy Gets It On", Poolin Around", The Pool Boy Gets Me Wet or Mrs. Johnson, you Need a Water Softener Because the Pool Boy is Too Hard"?

5. Do you know which end of the pool skimmer you place in the water?

6. Someone is drowning, they call out for a lifesaver, do you immediately think of the floating device or the candy?

7. In the previous question when you read "floating device" did you automatically think of large breasts"?

8. Have you ever recreated the infamous pool/candy-bar scene from Caddyshack?
Follow Up: Why not? Are you allergic to nuts?

Zookeeper's Assistant

1. Do you look good in khaki?

2. Do you need to wear a hat because you freckle easily? Will you supply your own hat? It must not say Federal Boob Inspector or something even more stupid like Donald Trump for President.

3. You are trapped in the Rhino habitat, it turns and charges at you. You:

• Run and climb the nearest tree.
• Sit down and start reciting the Lord's Prayer.
• Soil yourself violently.

4. Do you know the difference between a Tiger, Tigon, Liger, Ligon, Lion and a goldfish?

5. Have you ever thought about letting the Kangaroo into the Warthogs habitat to see if they would mate and produce the worlds first Wartaroo? What about a warthog and a flamingo to make the first Fartalingo?

6. When is it Ok to fling poop back at the Chimpanzee?

Statistically Speaking...

85% of people polled said they loved the new Star Trek Reboot.
15% were in their mother's basement building JJ Abrams voodoo dolls.

90% of all people polled masturbate…
10% couldn't take the poll because they were masturbating at the time.

71% of all hippies smoked weed and bathed once a month.
29% of all hippies are dead

33% of all mothers steal from their children's Halloween stash
67% of all dads take the rest.

99% of all wives hate hearing the phrase "put the shoes to her" from their husbands.
1% are deaf.

43% of people think that being outside without a jacket you catch cold.
57% or people are not idiots

21% of voters turned out this year
79% realized a long time ago how worthless and futile the whole process is.

25% of people polled say they believe in astrology
75% of people polled believe that the other 25% should return to their home planet

100% of the people polled believers that we should build a rocket and send Miley Cyrus, Donald Trump, Ed Sheeran, Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin and the entire cast of Jersey Shore into the sun.