A vicious brawl erupted at a south Florida Chuck E. Cheese’s over the weekend, with adults throwing punches, kicks and pulling hair while their children ran screaming for safety.

A 16-year-old girl shot video of the melee with her cell phone and posted it on Twitter, where it naturally went viral with thousands of shares.

Miami high school student Krystel Jimenez told InsideEdition.com Tuesday night that she was at the pizza parlor with a friend when “two people got into a fight and then their families got involved.”

While she was filming, Jimenez said she felt frightened by all the punching and yelling. “It was worse because no one could stop it,” she said.

 

                    – InsideEdition.com

 

 

I was watching Inside Edition the other night and they did a big story called “Chaos at Chuck E. Cheese’s” about a recent string of major fights that have broken out at the children’s pizza chain restaurants across the country. It showed these wild mass brawls at different Chuck E. Cheese’s and they had plenty of video.

The story said that, in some incidents, the cops had been called, and they said of one scene, “In the video, some parents can be seen running to find their children while others keep fighting. More people are seen jumping in as fists fly and women yank each other’s hair.”

OK, “Chaos at Chuck E. Cheese’s”? First of all, since when is that news? I’ve never seen anything other than mass chaos in any Chuck E. Cheese’s.

So a giant fight broke out with people turning over tables, throwing drinks, pulling hair, with kids screaming and crying at the top of their lungs. OK, let’s say some huge brawl like that did break out at a Chuck E. Cheese’s – first of all, how would you know? What’s your clue? The screaming and crying? The hair pulling and kicking, drinks being thrown and tables being knocked over? Food flying through the air and bodies all over the floor? How is that in any way different from just any random Tuesday night at Chuck E. Cheese’s?

Sorry, no – chaos at Chuck E. Cheese’s is not a newsworthy story to report. What’s the next news story in the lineup after that one? An Inside Edition special exposé on the fact that some people in America drove to and from work today?

The other part of the story that just had me howling in laughter is that, in the report, Inside Edition blamed the outbreak of fights on the restaurant chain’s practice of serving too much alcohol to parents.

Here’s a snippet of dialogue from an interview with an “expert” …

 

Inside edition person: So why does it keep happening at these places? This could be one reason. You may be surprised to learn that, at many Chuck E. Cheese’s, alcohol is served to adults.   Here’s Parenting Expert, Dr. Gayle Lewis …

Lewis: This is an atmosphere that’s chaotic. There’s children running around, screaming. With the alcohol, I think that just adds to the stress and it adds to the capacity to act out.

 

OK, first of all alcohol doesn’t add to the stress; it helps you maintain stress at a semi-manageable level. Lady, I don’t know where you got your expert degree in parenting, but I can tell it clearly wasn’t at a party school because you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to alcohol.

In the report, they asked the question, “People like going there, but Is Chuck E. Cheese’s serving too much booze?”

Do they serve too much booze at Chuck E. Cheese’s?? What kind of question is that? No, no, no! You can’t serve enough alcohol at a Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Here’s an interesting statistic I didn’t realize, but I probably could have guessed if I were thinking about it: On average, on any given night, a single Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant sells more alcohol than every NFL stadium across the country combined on game day Sundays.

Inside Edition questioned whether they should stop selling beer at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Listen, they shouldn’t just sell beer in Chuck E. Cheese’s, they should also sell hard liquor and ketamine.

In the report, Inside Edition’s brunette bombshell Lisa Guerrero explained the wait staff company’s stated policy of serving only two alcoholic beverages per adult and then she went in with a hidden camera and showed how the wait staff does not follow that policy. A waitress served Guerrero more than two drinks and told her how to get around the limit and the Inside Edition shoved the camera in some poor manager’s face asking why that Chuck E. Cheese’s wasn’t following the chain’s policy.

Listen, they shouldn’t have a two-drink maximum at Chuck E. Cheese’s – they should have a 20-drink minimum. I don’t start to feel even semi-right in the head in a Chuck E. Cheese’s until somewhere around the 14th or 15th drink.

Of course parents are getting bombed at Chuck E Cheese’s. You want to limit alcohol at Chuck E. Cheese’s? What are you people – some sort of sadists? Why don’t we start enforcing the Chuck E. Cheese’s two-drink limit and while we’re at it we can also pass a law that forbids the use of anesthesia during major surgery.

If I were at Chuck E. Cheese’s and Chet the pimple-faced manager came over and told me they were cutting me off after two beers, I think he might change his mind real fast once I grabbed his neck and started strangling the life out of him.

Of course there are lots of fights at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Inside Edition tried to make it seem like alcohol was the problem, but in reality a thick steady rich stream of alcohol is the only thing keeping the adults from killing each other each every time they go there.

Listen, you need to drink at a Chuck E. Cheese’s, and you need to drink a lot.   You know, it’s fine and no one will blame you.

A lot of people don’t realize this but if you ever get pulled for a DUI it is a totally legally exonerating defense if you tell them you just came from a kids’ birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Not only will the cops not charge you, they will feel so bad for you that they’ll drive you home in the police car, carry you into the house and tuck you into your bed.

And it’s the same way at AA meetings. Normally, if you go to an AA meeting and you tell them you’ve fallen back off the wagon, they give you like a very disappointed look and ask how it happened this time. But if you say it happened because you had to go to a kid’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, the whole group just starts nodding in support and comes over and pats you on the back understandingly, and goes, “Well, why didn’t you say so? I mean, it’s Chuck E. Cheese’s – what are you gonna do?”

The place is stretching the limits of human mental endurance. It’s a powder keg waiting to happen. You have parents who have been running around all day preparing for a 20-kid birthday party and then they walk in to a place with hundreds and hundreds of other people’s screaming kids with video games blaring, and, just when it’s hard to imagine how it could get any worse, a giant anthropomorphic mouse mascot and his animatronic band of stuffed Muppet mutants start playing, over and over again, on a12-minute loop, the same three incredibly grating songs they’ve been playing since the 1970s.

Tick, tick, tick …

And Inside Edition has the audacity to ask: Is Chuck E. Cheese’s serving too much alcohol? No! If Chuck E. Cheese’s didn’t keep adults plied then that stone cold sobriety mixed with those surrounding and the band’s terrifying and stress-inducing uncanny valley effect would ratchet up the mental anguish on the humans to horrifying never before seen heights.

Listen, I read in Wikipedia that Chuck E. Cheese’s founder said the “E” in the name stands for “Entertainment,” but I say it stands for one word pure and simple: Evil.