"The Adventures of Chuck E. Cheese"

(June 1999 - May 2000)

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Oh where to begin with this one... let's just say that a history of ShowBizPizza.com wouldn't be complete without a mention of The Adventures of CEC. While in high school, prior to the origins of SP.com, I found a comical website entitled Bert is Evil. It went far beyond where I was willing to stretch my sense of humor, but it gave me the inspiration to make my own parody website involving CEC. The only problem was that I didn't have access to a CEC costume.

Enter eBay and the beginning of my long-standing debt. Long story short, I was able to buy a costume and with it my friends and I took some goofy pictures which I used as the basis for warped stories. At the time, the handful of people who visited the website loved it, well, except for CEC Entertainment. I always knew in the back of my head that I was bending the limits of good taste, but I knew better than to cross certain lines. I took precautions to try to keep the level of humor acceptable, because at the time this site was my baby, and I tried to protect it as best I could while still trying to be funny. Ultimately I was given some rather straight-forward "cease and desist" paperwork which seemed extreme at the time, but in retrospect were probably overdue. LOL

It's worth noting the existence of this old site, because it was SO much fun to update that it delayed the progress of SP.com substantially during that first year. It wasn't until Tripod shut it down that I was able to devote the proper time and attention needed to operate SP.com. This ended up being a blessing in disguise obviously, and I'm glad to say that almost a decade later SP.com has a rather plesant relationship with CEC Entertainment (I was notified last month that a journalist called them for some historical info and they referred him to SP.com). So at the end of the day this little bump in the road is basically forgotten about - well short of me drudging it back up right here.

Aside from all the controversy, The Adventures of CEC did happen to live on (partly) inside the SP.com website. For instance, the short-lived "Chuck E's Cheezy Newsletter" (which had a whopping two issues before the plug was pulled) was transformed into "Billy Bob's Bulletin" which became a staple of SP.com for about 6 1/2 years. A more direct reference was the parody website "The Adventures of Billy Bob" which was shown several times throughout the years - first as an April Fools gag, then returning a few times for Rock-a-Palooza 2003-2006.