We then traveled to Meridian, listening to the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, as Indiana Jones has been Nicholas's character du jour of late, and no more so than this weekend. Once in Meridian, we ate at Nicholas's favorite restaurant, San Marcos. Nicholas ordered the chicken quesadilla, while Penny and I both had the flautas, hers chicken and mine shredded beef, and we exchanged them, mixed and matched, garanimaled them back and forth. "Do you, Penny, take this chicken flauta, to eat for the enjoyment of your taste buds and for the nourishment of your body? Do you promise to keep this chicken flauta in your system, forsaking all other corn tortillas, having this chicken flauta only unto you, so long as your intestinal tract doth will?"
"I do."
"Dad, please, just eat."
We left San Marcos to go to Books-A-Million, where Nicholas found a deck of green Bicycle playing cards, several books about Indiana Jones, and his grandmother Nance. He found her in the entertainment aisle, on the shelf next to a book about Franki Valli and the Four Seasons (She'd come to Meridian to find shoes for a wedding she attended the next day, held in Wayne Manor. The bride's father operates Wayne Transportation International, a subsidiary of the Wayne Foundation). After Nicholas pulled her down from the shelf (spine intact), my mother kept Nicholas's attention while I snuck out of the bookstore to drive to Game Stop, just a couple of miles back down the road. Because of Meridian's convoluted road system, it took me thirty minutes of circuitous routing and re-routing to drive those two miles. I browsed around, found some things I thought he'd enjoy, and waited ten minutes for the retail assistant to help the lady in front of me. When it was my turn, I waited fifteen for him to look, twice, through every drawer behind the counter for the game--they only stock the covers on the shelves--that ultimately he couldn't find. "We ain't got it."
"Why was box on the shelf?"
"How the hell should I know, man? I just work here. You gonna buy that other stuff or not?"
I did. I picked up Penny and Nicholas from the bookstore, and then Penny dropped Nicholas and me at Geoffrey, to find some Indiana Jones birthday cake toppers while she went to the GNC store at the mall to find some ear candles for my father (I guess he didn't think Penny's cake would turn out well, so he'd ready his ears just in case). Nicholas and I found the Indy toys, and "Dad! Come look!" He was pointing to the Indiana Jones Lego boulder scene Lego set. "That's it, Dad--that's it! That's what Mom wanted for the cake!" I looked at the price: $89.99. I told Nicholas that the boulder set was cost prohibitive, and that we'd just use the pieces we already had. "Dad," he said, "that is not cost prohibitive." I asked him if he knew what that term meant. He said, "It means that you're not going to spend money on it because you'd rather spend that money on seeing Batman, which I can't see, and Hellboy, which I don't want to see, and buying popcorn and Mountain Dew and Glo-Worms since I won't be there, so you can't just take mine and eat half of them. Is that what it means, Dad?"
"It means...look, son! There's an Indiana Jones bobble head!"
"Oh, cool!" A little while later, Penny picked us up. We went straight back to Philadelphia, bypassing our house. She dropped us off at the theater to see Space Chimps. Though the trailers for this movie looked cute, I wasn't entering with high expectations. Nicholas was. He'd heard all the talk, seen all the commercials about The Dark Knight, and all he knew was that the Batman Begins sequel was just another movie that happened to be opening on the same day as Space Chimps.
The movie didn't disappoint him. He stayed attentive, and after the first ten/fifteen minutes, he actually stopped asking me questions. I thought the movie was funny and charming, with quite a few verbal zingers, about as many simian puns as one can imagine (and an ingenious way to tell them, too), and a zaftig alien kid that sounds as if she's singing opera when she screams from fright. That kid was a hoot. In the Jeep, on the way home, I tried replicating the alien kid's comic, operatic bellow, and the family told me immediately to stop. I tried the scream again, and they told me to stop again, and I just laughed. Love that alien kid.
As great as she/it was, what I loved most about Space Chimps was the villain Zartog, and here's why: his actions and his vocal declarations made him a dead ringer for my favorite comic book bad guy--Tim Boo Baa.
I first discovered the sheer, raw power of Tim Boo Baa in Marvel Comics' Journey into Mystery # 10. Years later, I discovered that the Tim Boo Baa story (written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko) in that comic was a reprint of the same story (with the same cover, though the text differs) in Amazing Adult Fantasy #10 (which did not contain that kind of adult material), the same series that would soon spawn Spider-Man five issues later.
The tyrannous Tim Boo Baa was greater than Doctor Doom, for Tim Boo Baa showed no mercy; Tim Boo Baa was greater than Magneto, for Tim Boo Baa had no cause for which to fight; Tim Boo Baa was greater than Luthor or the Joker, for Tim Boo Baa had no nemesis that would ever defeat him. Tim Boo Baa conquered not just his land, not just his nation; Tim Boo Baa conquered his entire world, and he held that reign with a harsh hand for years and years, until...but no, I can't divulge the tragic end of the mighty Tim Boo Baa. You must read it for yourselves, as I've not the power now to do so. I just might tear up at the beauty, the truth, the humanity, rendered in the conclusion to the story of the fantastic Tim Boo Baa. If you're wishing to read it, Tim Boo Baa's story has been reprinted a second time, in The Amazing Fantasy Omnibus, which reprints all fifteen issues of Amazing [Adult] Fantasy in bright, luxurious colors in oversized art (which still doesn't measure up to the grand, epic stature of which Tim Boo Baa sorely required). This volume comes highly recommended by me...and Tim Boo Baa.
Once Tim Boo Baa was safely defeated, our family (including, now, my parents and my brother) went to eat at the local restaurant City Limits. Up until this night, City Limits was Nicholas's third favorite restaurant (the second was Old Mexico, also in town, but Nicholas didn't want to eat Mexican two meals in a row). However, while we were waiting on our order, Nicholas decided that this restaurant wasn't worthy of five-star status. While wondering why it was so hot, and why the food was taking so long to get to the table, Nicholas spotted something in the corner. "This is a three-star restaurant," he said. We asked him why, and he said, "I see a fly in the corner." After we finished our meal, my son said, "Next year, I want to eat a classier establishment; I think I deserve fine dining for my birthday." We asked him where he wanted to go eat next year, and before he could answer, George piped in with, "Taco Bell." Nicholas looked at her, looked at us, and he said, "What she said."
Happy Birthday, son.
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