Moonshot

Took Mo to Moon Marble on Sunday, and finally got my Dad there. I knew he'd love the place, and I've literally been after him about it for years.

He found a metal slide whistle and wondered if it really worked better than the plastic ones. Buy it and find out, I suggested.

But it was $25. More than he wanted to pay to find out, and I can respect that, I'm not a big slide whistle aficionado.




I rarely buy anything at the Moon except for a stocking-stuffer trip at Christmas. If you avoid buying the novelties, it's one of the neatest 'free' outings you can take your kids to in Kansas City (free after the gas to get there). If I caved to the buying impulse, that joint could bleed me faster than the Country Club Plaza any day. A part of me truly wants pink, girl 'squirrel' underpants.

And most of the stuff (Bruce once asked, as he was starting a demo, 'Did you find everything you didn't need out there?) is priced to move. I don't mean that a licorice mustache lollipop is necessarily worth $1.50 (or whatever it was marked), I mean that people in America will generally throw a double sawbuck at you if you intrigue them slightly.

Twenty bucks: it's high for a lap dance, unless prices have gone way up since I last had one a decade ago. But compared to a week's groceries, a tank of gas (even for a small car), etc., it's de nada.




My Dad came back with a line about how when he was married to my Mom, if he had $20 in his wallet he was carrying a lot of money.



No doubt, but that was two wives ago and you could buy a nice house in the burbs for $30,000. I filled up my four-cylinder Accord the other day for over fifty bucks.



I did get some gum that gave me pause. Made with natural rainforest 'chicle.' I wondered if this was where the brand Chicklets came from.