@GaragePunk Podcast Network

Island Packet — As a rule, I generally don’t look at the steady stream of YouTube links sent to me on any given day, for two simple reasons: Sure, I don’t have the time, but more importantly, bosses are walking around here all the time and my desk now faces a common area instead of my old window, where I could sit and play online slot machines based in some filthy alley in Borneo and it could be weeks before anyone noticed.

Yet every now and again a link comes across that demands my attention, like anything that involves the words “Rock-A-Fire Explosion.”

For those of you who have never been to a Showbiz Pizza or Chuck E. Cheese restaurant — which is to say, those of you who have never known true joy — the Rock-A-Fire Explosion is a band of animatronic animal characters who play classic hits from the 1970s, ’80s and today while you are consuming extremely ghastly pizza.

They are made up of a tuxedo-rocking gorilla named Fatz Geronimo, an oversized female mouse named Mitzi Mozzarella, a drunk-looking beach bear named Beach Bear, Dook LaRue, about whom I remember nothing, and I think a talking sun or something. They’re basically the Country Bear Jamboree, except with less jug-band and way more Pat Benatar (although it’s been a while since I’ve been to Disney, and it’s entirely possible that the Jamboree rocks out on some serious “Shadows of the Night” for all I know).

And you may remember them best from Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese, where they served as the house band before Beach Bear succumbed to a whippets addiction and Mitzi Mozzarella became known more for her drinking and losing custody of her two small mice than her music.

OK, fine, I’m kidding. But Showbiz Pizza, at the time, was reserved for only the grandest occasions, such as a birthday or Thanksgiving Day, because it’s not like you can just walk in there and play Dragon’s Lair and hours upon hours of skeeball all the time. Your mind would just be 
SAUSAGE.

Subsequently, the Rock-A-Fire Explosion, when you are 7, is pretty much the cat’s pajamas. And they remain that way until one day you get brave, and your friend Tim dares you to look behind the curtain when the band isn’t playing (because even the Rock-A-Fire Explosion needs a set break for cigarettes, particularly that gorilla, who was pretty much the Amy Winehouse of the group).

And you do look behind, because you’re 7 and you don’t want to look like a twerp, and you discover that when they are not operational, the band that minutes ago was like a one-way ticket to the fun zone, that was rocking out to “Surfin’ U.S.A.” with mechanical aplomb, that recorded a version of “Do You Love Me” that is a proud addition to your 45 collection at home, is in reality a bunch of ghastly-looking robots full of gears and wires and eyes frozen open. They’re just beasts, creatures who, when shut off, look like corpses, except corpses whose faces are frozen into expressions of fake permanent forced ecstasy, like the Joker, or John McCain. It is a horrifying revelation, worse than Santa Claus, worse than the Tooth Fairy, worse than anything in the world ever, because you are 7, and the chances are good that the image will be burned before your eyes some 25 years later when you’re trying to think of a column idea or something, I mean, whatever.

I am running out of room, so I should mention that the YouTube link in question is a clip of the Rock-A-Fire Explosion performing Usher’s “Love in This Club,” a song with a lot more sex in it than the usual Rock-A-Fire setlists. It’s part of a series of songs designed to elicit the inexplicable joy of watching characters you liked in the 1980s doing odd and disquieting things. It’s a little weird, sure, but it’s a funny kind of weird, unlike what happens when you look behind the curtain.