Summertime Mr. E.

Man, it’s hot here. “How hot is it?” you ask. It is so hot that all I want to do is lie in bed and ponder Great Eternal Questions. Questions such as: What does the E. in Chuck E. Cheese stand for?

This mystical conundrum has never bothered me before. It started knocking on my mental chamber around 10:00 this morning, when I awoke from another long, sweaty sleep. I’ve spent most of this weekend in bed -- either sleeping, or reading Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River. Today, I’m bookmarked at the chapter where Jimmy frantically phones his wife and youngest daughter at Chuck E. Cheese. His eldest daughter has gone missing in the local park. I feel for the guy. Really, I do. But it’s too hot to follow him through the blood-stained underbrush. At 10:10 a.m., I bid Jimmy a good Sunday and flopped onto the cooler part of my pillow. And I began wondering.

Edgar. Eddie. Eduardo. Maybe he’s Hispanic! Eugene. Ephram. It could be a family name. I reluctantly peeled myself from the top sheet and switched on my computer. Logged onto Instant Messenger. Eric would know. Hey, maybe Chuck’s middle name is Eric!

No, he wasn’t sure. Damn. He did direct me to this Web site, where racially diverse, animated people once pondered the same question. Apparently, a smattering of Yahoo users voted for their favorite answer. The winner: “The name ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ was designed to make a person’s mouth smile when they said it. So it was just a name that was created, and didn’t necessarily stand for anything in particular.” Gee, thanks, fallencupid79. For nuttin’.

“Didn’t necessarily stand for anything in particular.” There’s less waffling in our current Administration. If you’re so sure, fallencupid79, why not just say, “Didn’t stand for anything”? Why not say, “The E. is meaningless”? Because you don’t know, and it’s past your curfew.

I don’t buy Grease Lightning’s answer, either. He says it’s “another way of saying ‘Chucky’ Cheese.” If that’s correct, then why doesn’t a certain Mouse go by “Mick E.”? “Mick” is a way hipper name than “Mickey,” if you ask me. If Mick Jagger had been a Mickey, I bet the Stones wouldn’t have made it past the Maypole County Talent Show. Chuck E. is a genuine Chuck, make no mistake.

In my day, nobody bothered ciphering Chuck E. Cheese’s middle initial, because Chuck E. didn’t exist. When I was a mouseling, Chuck E.'s was Showbiz Pizza. According to trusty Wikipedia, Showbiz became Chuck E.’s in 1992, for reasons as mysterious as Chuck’s middle moniker.

My last visit to Chuck E. Cheese was in 1998, for a Wellesley Newsie’s birthday party. After several rounds of Skee Ball, we partygoers adjourned to the Celebration Room, for Munch’s Make Believe Band. As the eponymous purple monster plinked his keyboard, and the predictably mustachioed Italian pizza chef grinned over his drums, Chuck E. himself appeared in the flesh (or fur, as it were). He shook our hands. He sang “Happy Birthday.” He danced...a little too close, for me. In later years, I witnessed the same grooves at packed nightclubs on Beale Street. This Chuck E. was probably too young to enter nightclubs without a fake ID. But he was old enough to fully appreciate a throng of college-aged girls in party hats.

As we filed past the cash register on our way out, I heard Chuck E. whisper to a waiter, “That was awesome.”

Wikipedia notes that Munch’s Make Believe Band replaced the Pizza Time Players in the early ‘90s, around the time Showbiz became Chuck E.’s. For the Players’ performances, lead vocals alternated between Dolli Dimples (a hippo), Harmony Howlette (presumably, a dog), and various other animatronic females. When Chuck E. took over, though, he usurped the mic and received his own, special stage.

Looks like E. stands for Ego.

“It’s just like in Dreamgirls, where Beyonce crowds out Jennifer Hudson,” I typed to Eric. “I bet the hippo was too fat to be a lead singer. What a croc!”

I waited for my E. to concur, but...nothing. Probably he’d wandered off to stand in front of his air conditioner. “Hey! You’re not listening to me!” I typed. “Fine!” And I slammed the animatronic door.

Psychologists have cited the correlation between hot weather and irritability. That’s one mystery, at least, with empirical support.