Family Fun Center – Seattle, WA

 

Since Coach and I are travelling celebrities, people like to hang out with us. We do fun stuff and are fully prepared to leave our dignity at the door. We had gone to a party the previous night and someone mentioned we were the coolest people he had ever met and we should all go do some laser tag the following day (that’s how I remember it). That same person ditched out on us, cough cough Pete Greenberg cough cough. We aren’t scared to go by ourselves, though. We were fully prepared to act like twelve-year-olds at the Family Fun Center. It’s an indoor and outdoor playland with video games, go karts, bumper boats, trampolines, mini golf, and batting cages. How could this not be a blast?

I forgot I was wearing my t-shirt with John Wayne Gacy (dressed as a clown) in a children’s game land. Whoops! The cop I ran into in the bathroom simply raised an eyebrow and walked past.

 

We bought some big expensive multi pass where we could do lots of stuff.

We did the go karts first. I would highly recommend go karting with Coach. He loves the brake like an old man, so you’re sure to get around him. I bet his father (who’s addicted to NASCAR) is ashamed. Coach got stuck behind this old Asian man and his son traveling at ridiculously low speeds. When Coach realized the man’s wife was taking photos of him each lap, Coach decided to do hilarious photo bombs every time. This is why Coach is awesome – he turns rotten Asian Plums into spiteful wine.

Then we did some mini golf. I did win the first round, but ChickenLittle absolutely destroyed the back nine and ended up winning the second round (he’s a lefty, so I’m sure he’s got some sort of Nintendo mini-golf cheat code). I still ended up the overall champion, but Coach was right behind me.
 

Then, bumper boat time. I love bumper boats, even when I’m worried about my phone/camera getting soaked. But hey, I DESPISE my phone right now, so the worst that could happen is I get a new one. These boats, as they should, contain water guns on the front so you can hose people down as they get close to you. They also let you spray civilians walking unknowingly past the bumper boat area. They also let you spray Coach in the ween as he’s trying to exit the ride after the whistle blows. Hahahaha. I’m a jerk.

Finally, it was laser tag time. They put us in a room full of small children and moms – NON-hot moms, for the record, even in the dark. One of the moms looked at us and said, “I’m guessing you’ve done this before”. Hahahaha. Yes, and we’re going to stomp your children. Well, we ended up NOT beating their children, since we had a severely incompetent group of really young children on OUR team. I will note that I scored the most points on both teams, with Coach a close second. He’s also a laser tag champion, but I don’t think he has a trophy from it, like I do. Again, I’m a jerk.

I love doing stupid stuff like this with the guys. I wish PulChevy were there to beat us all at everything and to say wildly inappropriate things to everyone 15 years younger than us with a chip on their shoulder. Next time, brother. Can’t wait!!!

Top 5 things about Family Fun Center
1. Bumper boats
2. Go karts
3. Mini golf
4. Laser tag
5. Inappropriate t-shirts in a child zone is always fun

Bottom 5 things
1. This place is NOT cheap
2. Laser tag was not explained well by the 15-year-old worker
3. Incompetent juvenile teammates in laser tag
4. Many video games weren’t functioning
5. The outside stuff isn’t open in the winter months – just a heads up

www.fun-center.com

Chad's Grand Slam Birthday - Coon Rapids, MN

This year, for my birthday, D.Rough asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate. Her and I had such a good time at Grand Slam when we went there for our random date night, so I thought we should go there and invite a ton of people on a random weeknight. Our thinking was it wouldn’t be overrun with kids and it would mostly be our people hanging out acting like children. We tried to do this the week of my birthday, but ended up postponing the event due to a blizzard – sadface. Our make-up date had considerably fewer people interested, but we still made it happen. And we still had a blast.
We took full advantage of the package deals Grand Slam has. For 12 bucks, you get tokens for games, unlimited bumper cars, laser tag, and mini golf, and you get a token for the batting cages.

We started out by watching MisterMister whiff a bunch of baseballs in the batting cage. I took a special sort of enjoyment from this, since he’s such an avid baseball fan. He talked up getting into the 60mph batting cage and then we watched him connect with exactly 4 pitches out of about 30. I don’t know ANYTHING about baseball statistics, but I’m assuming that’s not what sports people refer to as “batting a thousand”.

Trudy took a stab at her own set of pitches and was able to crank most of the balls straight to the back wall. She’s some sort of sports phenom or something.
Since I saw MisterMister’s performance in the 60mph cage, I felt my confidence rise – it may also have been the flask of birthday Jack in my back pocket. I thought out loud, “Hell, *I* could do better than four hits, even in the fastest cage they have.” So I stepped into the 70mph cage (might have been 75mph, but I don’t want to brag, I just don’t remember), and started whiffing my own set of pitches. And then, I finally connected. And then again. I was on a roll and D.Rough caught it on video. I’d say it wasn’t too bad, considering I’m scared of the ball and absolutely loathe baseball. But hey, I did alright in there. My dignity was intact.

We then tried our hand at some skee-ball in the game room. D.Rough is a veteran skee-baller, and racked up some serious tickets. Trudy, as I said before is a sports phenom – skee-ball IS a sport, right?

Luscious and Garrison brought their son LittleKiller – thanks to my prodding – and he ended up having a blast. He has some issues with the massive arm strength it takes to heave those massive 2 ounce skee-balls hard enough to score points, but he’ll get it eventually. It may take years of training, but we’ll see him taking younger kids’ money as a skee-ball shark soon enough.

LittleKiller also loves him some air hockey.

...And driving games...

We got to see Garrison pretending to be a 12 year old Asian girl, which frankly was one of the best parts of my night.

EJens ended up buying some sort of family pack of tokens and here we see him and MisterMister counting out tokens like some sort of creepy coin dealer on the air hockey table. I sure hope he has time to spend all those. It’s getting close to closing time here at Grand Slam…

A quick ride in the tank makes everyone happy.


Then a much longer ride in the bumper cars, where I got to see LittleKiller’s head smash Luscious in the nose when she backed into the wall too quickly. Concussion aside, LittleKiller had a blast while his parents and a bunch of other morons drove padded cars into each other like 10–year-olds.

We played a quick game of laser tag. It was 3 on 2, so it wasn’t exactly the most fair thing ever, but our one extra person had never played laser tag before. It was tons of fun and the 3-person team (US) won all the marbles. We decided we wanted to play one more round, so I walked over to the computer monitor. Saw what button to push for new game and pressed yes. Then when asked if ready, I pushed Y to start, and we were off. About 3 minutes later, random dbag kid with a chip on his shoulder turned the lights on and stopped the game to yell at us for restarting the game. “Only *I* can restart the game. Not you guys!” Ok, asshat. I’m sorry you’re under the assumption that pushing two buttons gives you some sort of real power, but you’re 19 and yelling at grown people who simply don’t care and would rather be drinking (some of us are already). None of us are intimidated and are hungry for cake. Bye bye.

We took a break for some cake. D.Rough is swifly becoming the master baker of cakes and she asked me what kind of cake I’d like for my birthday. I immediately said “Goat Head”. She was surprised at how fast I said it (as was I), and thought I was trying to sneak something sexual or weird into the cake idea, but I wasn’t. At the time she asked me, I was simply thinking about goat heads, for some reason. She agreed to do it and came up with an absolutely amazing cake for me. I could probably write an entire review of this cake, but I’ll try to keep it simple.

She made the head out of a red velvet cake covered in fondant, and she made the body out of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that looked like fur – she has the best recipe for carrot cake, ask anyone there. And she made the horns out of fondant-wrapped rice crispy treat cones. She made me pose with the cake, just like her mother used to do to her when she was a kid. I realize now, this is her family’s subtle way of getting well-earned credit in photographic form for posterity, under the guise of taking a photo of the birthday boy/girl (that just HAPPENS to have the cake they slaved over for hours in it).





It was an amazing cake and everyone loved it. Especially LittleKiller. They especially liked the part where she made enough for 50 people and everyone got to take home the left overs.


Then it was time for some mini golf. I love mini golf, and it’s clear that most of our friends do, as well. It’s difficult not to. We had a blast.





It was getting near closing time and EJens still had half a million tickets from skee-ball and other kids games. We decided to ho head-to-head on this hilarious kids game where you punch a button to knock these things over that are going around on a wheel. Apparently, I’m the master at this game because I won every time. We played maybe 20 times and I kept racking up the tickets.





MisterMister really wanted to win this super ball game where you try to drop a ball into a hole in a rotating wheel, but never actually got the jackpot on it. It was fun with all of us cheering him on and watching 1-3 tickets pop out at a time. Hahahahaha.


I also needed to play some air hockey, so Johnny and I battled it out. It was a very close game, but I pulled ahead by 2 points. We both are quite gifted at hitting it into our own goal, it seems…

EJens tried his hand at an electronic jump rope game. Watch the light spin around and then try to jump when it gets by your feet. Funny, but not hilarious. Maybe if he were completely loaded, it would have been funnier. Yes, I’m sure of it, in fact. Next time.

Because I have awesome friends, they all decided to pool their tickets and get me something nice. We did have like four hundred tickets or something insane like that.


I ended up with a pair of fuzzy dice, a rubber fly, a robber ducky with an eye patch, pop rocks, and a pig that poops when you squeeze his middle. I have awesome friends.


We left Grand Slam and headed down the road to Mermaids for some drinks and food. Mermaids has two-for-ones after 9pm and we took full advantage of it.

Despite the weather, it was a great birthday party. And an adventure we’ll repeat. We love Grand Slam.

Space Aliens – Albertville, MN

D.Rough’s parents went on a super sweet snowmobile day-trip last weekend, so we thought we’d hang out with D.Rough’s sister SalsaSandwich for the day and go have some fun. D.Rough wanted to take her sister to Space Aliens – a space/alien themed restaurant with food and tons of video games. I’ve heard about it and it has been recommended to me (especially by friends who have children), but I’d never been there. I plugged it into the GPS and headed out. Yes, it was a half hour away, but it would be worth it.

We arrived at the Northeast Minneapolis location only to find it closed. Not closed for the day, but closed forever. Suck suck suck.

D.Rough was still determined, however. I jokingly said, “The GPS says there’s another one in Albertville” (Albertville is another hour away), and D.Rough said, “Let’s go!” Really?! Well, we had nothing else to do and it was below zero outside, so we headed up the interstate to Albertville. SalsaSandwich cashed out in the backseat the whole way, so she had no idea we were in the car “getting lunch” for like 2 hours… hahahahaha.

We went inside and got seated. There’s a LOT of neon all over the place and all kinds of fun space toys and posters and movie cells and blinking lights. Pretty awesome place. We checked out the menu before we did anything else – people were seriously hungry at that point. I was VERY surprised at how much variety the menu had. I wasn’t expecting much, frankly, but there were a lot of things that sounded delicious. Burgers, wraps, sandwiches, pizzas, appetizers, soups, salads, some Mexican food, ribs, BBQ, steak, potatoes, and probably half a dozen other things I’m forgetting. They also have a pretty awesome drink menu (both adult and regular beverages) which includes shakes and malts.

Even the bathrooms have space and alien themes going on!!! Awesome!

It took us a while to decide, but we finally figured it out. D.Rough got a giant baked potato (she’s been her before so she knows the potatoes are like 8 inches around) filled with beef brisket, sour cream, cheddar cheese, bacon bits, fried onion petals, and bbq sauce. SalsaSandwich got an Alien burger with cheese – and because she’s awesome, she got a double. She got fries, of course, and a couple of random dipping sauces (there are 10 different ones to choose from). AND she got a Dew in a space alien drinking glass – can you tell I like SalsaSandwich’s eating style?! I finally decided on the Planet of the Zombies Taco Burger – burger with nacho cheese, lettuce, tomato, olives, taco chips, jalapenos, and taco sauce. …and fries, of course, with spicy ketchup and nacho cheese dipping sauces. I thought I’d top it off with a Pink Squirrel, as well – that’s a pink milkshake with some delicious alcohol of some sort in it (doesn’t even matter what kind).

Then we went to play a crap ton of video games and won as many tickets as possible. D.Rough needed to vent a little frustration on the whack-a-mole game before she exploded on a young man in the game area. HILARIOUS!

The food came out after we got back from the first round of games and we were all pleasantly surprised.
SalsaSandwich’s double Alien burger was freaking enormous. Seriously. One of the biggest restaurant burgers around. She said it was delicious and she ate about 75% of it before throwing in the towel.

D.Rough’s giant baked potato was delicious. It could have used a little more brisket in my opinion, but it was very flavorful and enormous. I’d probably get one of these gargantuan potatoes the next time I go back here. Tons of toppings and everything tasted excellent.

My own burger was pretty amazing, in all honesty. I’m not a huge fan of olives, so I got rid of as many of them as I could, but everything else was fantastic. The meat was perfectly cooked and it tasted like a fantastic taco burger.The fries were crispy and delicious (not much different from most regular fry places), and the dipping sauces were really good. The spicy ketchup wasn’t very spicy, but I always love cheese sauce with my fries, so I was very happy.

The Pink Squirrel went down really smooth (twss), and I would have loved to order 5 more of these things. They have a bunch of adult milkshakes here at this place, so make sure you look at the drink menu.

Once we finished up, we went back and played half a billion more games to win tickets. SalsaSandwich ended up with a boatload, so she cashed them in three giant alien whoopee cushions. Yes, those kind of whoopee cushions. My face hurt from laughing at both her and D.Rough making all kinds of jokes and noises on the LONG ride home.

Classic Saturday fun for people who know how to have a good time!!!

Top 5 things about Space Aliens
1. Planet of the Zombies Taco Burger
2. Giant Baked Potato with Beef Brisket
3. Pink Squirrel
4. Video games are always a winner
5. Really huge menu for a theme restaurant

Bottom 5 things
1. There are tons of rotten little kids running into you and ignoring you and yelling and there’s nothing you can do about it
2. The potato needed more beef in it
3. It’s like 2 hours away from me
4. I REALLY would have liked to see some video games for grown-ups there, even though they don’t dispense tickets
5. I heard this place actually has fantastic ribs, and I didn’t get to try them (my own fault, but I’m still bummed)

www.spacealiens.com

Seattle Trip 2010 – Seattle, WA

Pul-Chevy, Coach, and I went out to Seattle to visit ChickenLittle this month. It’s mainly a nerd getaway when we do these things and people don’t seem to get that what we do really isn’t all that exciting. Our friends all think we’re out there for porn, hookers, blow and other debauchery, but it’s pretty much us drinking and playing video games. I’ll make this short on text, so you can understand what I mean when I say we play video games and drink.



No, wait! We DID stop to look at porn on Kevin's computer briefly... and then back to video games!



Next day, more video games...


The drive to Portland didn't even slow these guys down. That's why they invented mobile video game devices, right?


And when we got to Portland, we discussed going to strip club and then all decided "Let's go to an ARCADE!!! Where you can drink!!!" Told you we were nerds.

Not only that, but we made Kwang take us back to his place so we could play Wii at his house. He had to actually put batteries in his controllers so we could all play. We're the best friends a guy could have.