I just sent this to my friend for his 40th. It was either that or a hooker. I feel I made the right choice.

Ronald has the stare of a true sociopath.

'expensive birthday disappointment' tag

God that stare with that really strange chord progression...

Anyway story time. When I was about six or seven I begged my parents to give me a birthday party at McDonalds. This was one of the older restaurants that had a basement for parties and the like. It was otherwise a pretty rad place for a kid as it had this model train that went around the top floor, had a player piano in it, and had all sorts of neat things that a McDonald's franchise could get away with in the mid 80s but likely couldn't today. Needless to say that place is long gone and demolished.

I don't have many memories of my birthday party or even who was invited. Like what friends did I possibly have when I was six because damned if I can recall. I'm sure I don't even talk to them now and haven't heard from them in 30 years. I remember the staff was friendly, but the cake was inedible. The basement had this awful wood paneling and we were all seated at cheap 'fake wood' folding tables and the staff were simply there to say sorry we wish we could give you a better experience but corporate has this policy on birthdays and you have to have an official cake that we made with our shitty ingredients and the cake will be inedible but we promise if we could fix it we would. But we can't.

I'm pretty sure I never heard this record before and glad I haven't as it probably would have changed the course of my life in a bad way if I heard such rubbish when I was 6.

I do recall when Super Mario Bros. 3 came out that the happy meals had some pretty rad toys. It didn't make up for the past but hey I still have my jumping goomba and jumping red koopa somewhere.

Related: when I was a preverbal kid, we went to the Tacoma Showbiz Pizza, and we sat in the smaller "adult" lounge with Dimples the saucy burlesque hippopotamus. I somehow rolled my matchbox car behind the plinth that she stood behind, and my dad wasn't able to reach it. To resolve this issue, he lowered me into the machinery, to get the toy. Somebody triggered the automation, and I very narrowly missed getting my arm ripped off by the machinery. I wasn't scared, despite the close call. I was fascinated by the mechanics and the movement. My mom was screaming and crying, but I was just entranced by it all. I must've been three or four. This memory is crisp and very clear.