November 2001

Part I: A Quest for Pancake Gravy
The Adventures of Grandpa and Godzilla

"One. Two. Three, lift!" Grandpa grunted as he and Godzilla lifted the long, blue couch away from the wall. They moved it about two feet and released it with a thud.

Grandpa looked behind the couch at a mess: there was a plate, two forks, a parking ticket and more dust-bunnies than he had ever seen. "Dude, the controller is not back here." He said.

"Shit. This is your fault, jerk! If you did not buy stupid Duck Hunt we would have never lost the damn controller!" Godzilla drunkenly said something about Grandpa's "dumb face" and motioned to move the couch back against the wall.

"Here we go." Said Godzilla, "One, two, three."

As the two slowly moved the couch, a smile came to Godzilla's face. He looked at Grandpa and said in a muffled voice, "Are you about a size four-teen?"

Grandpa cocked an eyebrow and replied, "Why, yes."

"I thought so." Said Godzilla, who dropped the couch and whapped Grandpa on the head with a whiffle-ball bat!

Grandpa dropped the couch and fell backwards into the dresser, laughing. He looked to his right and saw the controller under a pile of newspapers that were under the Baseball Encyclopedia, 1997 edition. "I found the controller! Look!"

Godzilla knocked the papers on the floor, picked up the controller and put it in his pants pocket. "I knew hitting you was a good idea. Asshole."

This had been no normal Tuesday.

Both Grandpa and Godzilla woke up around 8:30am. Since neither of them had milk in the house, they waited until noon to order out for pizza. The two called 8 pizza delivery joints demanding, "Gimme a pizza wit nuttin'!" The first 7 establishments hung up in a hail of swearing, tired of the almost daily phone call referencing a 1988 Poly-O String Cheese commercial. The final phone call, to "Dave's Fancy Pizza" yielded a response of "oh, hey guys. The usual with a 2 liter of grape soda an a pack of smokes?" Dave's Fancy Pizza is the longtime favorite pizza kitchen of Evil Robots, Inc.

Once the food situation was taken car of, the Head Idiots in Charge came to a great idea - drink all afternoon!

So Grandpa found fifteen dollars in his room and went out in search of thirty cans of beer. The liquor store near their apartments sold a large variety of expensive wines and imported beer, but there was one small section in the back that featured the finest canned lagers made that month.

For the next twelve and a half hours, our two friends drank all thirty beers, which is no large accomplishment. But they were not trying to break a record; they wanted to get a good buzz on.

By one o'clock on Wednesday morning, Grandpa and Godzilla were buzzed and nearly at the end of an Excitebike marathon. They were playing this one player game because one of the two Nintendo controllers was still thought to be missing. Until that point, neither of them was bored with Excitebike to bother looking for the lost remote so they could watch television.

Since their pizza binge for lunch, neither had eaten a bite other than the left over crusts in the pizza box. Their stomachs told them that it was time to eat.

"'Zill, I think we should go out for some pancakes and bacon. That would be great right about now."

"Damn right, let's get going." Replied Godzilla, as he started level one of Mario Brothers.

"Do you want to walk over to The Ducky Duck Deli on the strip?" asked Grandpa.

"Fuck that, man. Let's go to Denny's. They have free refills."

Both Grandpa and Godzilla grabbed their keys and left the house. Grandpa walked over to his pick-up truck, and Godzilla pulled his motor-cross bike from the alley.

Grandpa watched as Godzilla turned on his bike and began to ride up the avenue. You see, Godzilla lost the front wheel of his bike and had to pop a wheelie everywhere he went. While that may seem like a challenge to some, the fifteen or so Busch Lites- half of the NASCAR 30 Pak- in his belly made the ride seem much easier.

Grandpa hurried to catch up to Godzilla, who drove remarkable fast for a person riding on one wheel, but also for someone who could not see where he was going.

When he reached Denny's, Godzilla was not only more hungee than when he left, but he had a hankering for something delicious.

Grandpa and Godzilla seated themselves in the smoking section. On their right, three goth-teens sat quietly finishing their fifth refill of coffee, writing down gloomy, yet earth changing poetry in their respective sticker-covered composition books. On their left, a waitress sat eating a ham and cheese sandwich she brought from home, reading a Tom Clancy novel.

They were not lost. They were in Denny's, all right.

The waitress took their order for one coke and one apple juice. Godzilla liked to drink apple juice because he thought it helped him drive better while drunk because it was the same color as beer. "It tricks your liver because it is the same color as beer, but doesn't have any alcohol in it. It's heavier than beer, so it goes to the bottom of your stomach and gets in to your blood stream faster," he often says.

When the waitress returned with their drinks, they tried to place their order.

"Do the pancakes have to come with syrup?" asked Godzilla.

"It comes on the side, like the butter, hon." She replied.

"Well, I don't want syrup for my pancakes, exactly." He said.

"Do you want blueberry topping? Strawberry? That'll be extra, you know."

"I want to get the pancakes, but I want to get them with pancake gravy, not syrup."

"Come again, hon?"

Godzilla looked angry, and sounded drunk, "If I order the pancakes, I want you to bring me the regular syrup you bring for regular people, but cover the word 'syrup' with a label reading 'pancake gravy'. Can you do that for me, a valued customer?"

The waitress mumbles something under her breath and walked away. Grandpa chugged his Coke in what seemed like record time, but Godzilla did not notice. Neither did he touch his apple juice.

The waitress came back to their table. She had a worried look on her face, "I am sorry, boys, but we don't serve 'pancake gravy' here and we do not plan on doing so any time in the future."

"Are you serious?" asked Grandpa.

"Whoa, calm down, man." said Godzilla. "Ma'am, if that is the way you are going to be, we are going to leave and never come back. You have not only hurt my feelings, but you have broken my heart. Let's go, dude."

Grandpa slapped a five on the table and followed Godzilla out of the establishment.

Godzilla picked up his bike and tossed it in the back of Grandpa's truck. "Damn! There's my tire!"

Grandpa looked at the tire in the back of his truck. "Oh yeah, you put that there three weeks ago."

"You fucker, why did you let me drive poppin' a wheelie all the way here?"

"I don't know. You are the dumb-ass who likes poppin' a wheelie so much."

"Touché," said Godzilla as he walked towards the pay phone. He placed a phone call to the Denny's they had just left.

"Yes. Hello. Is this the manager? I would like to make a complaint." He covered the phone with his hand and turned to Grandpa, "Hey Dr. Feelgood, you better turn the truck on now."

"You are the manger? Great. I was wondering what your policy was about serving pancake gravy to those who are allergic to pancake syrup. Oh, yes. I will hold."

Almost immediately, the manager busted out of the Denny's shaking his fists and yelling, "Get the hell out of my parking lot and go the fuck home. I am going to call the police."

Godzilla dropped the phone and jumped into the truck. He leaned out the window and yelled, "The Police suck! Sting is a jerk!"

Grandpa did a donut in the parking lot and yelled as he darted out onto the street, "This party's lame."

With that, the Kings of Kickin' Back drove off to continue their adventures.