In Remembrance of Cheesecaks Past

Illustration by Sean E. Woods

Young we were, and golden-eyed...

The way I remember it, it happened in my car - the '82 Corolla. Steven and Susan and Tony and Ron and Jeff were in the car, and we were wondering where to go for dinner. The Cheesecake Cafe was one of our normal hangouts, and so Steven suggested we go there...or at least, he tried to make that suggestion.

"How about Cheesecak?" he said.

The response was merciless. We all started to guffaw as Steven stumbled over his words, and Tony immediately piped up, "Cheesecak Cayfee!"

And so, the Cheesecake Cafe became the Cheesecak Cayfee forevermore. But more importantly, it inspired a Paladin of Order (or was it a Minion of Chaos?): Cheesecak Shakspear. And it led to yet another round of back-and-forth nonsense. It's impossible to say who said what at this remove, but it went something like this all night:

"Damn cheesecak, damn near took m'arm off!"

Which, later on, led to the great jaw-replaced-with-an-ashtray meme: "Broke m' lower jaw clean off and I had to have it replaced with an ashtray, CLANK CLANK"

And of course, any story involving blunt trauma damage to the jaw has to involve Paladin of Order, Jake Radish, Tooth Shootist, who never shot until he saw the whites of their teeth. Said passerby Sean Woods,

"I’m amazed he can shoot out teeth while leaving the jaw relatively unharmed.

That’s the mark of a good Tooth Shootist."

Woods also overheard other remarks:

“Then guy smiled and BANG!, a shot went off behind me. I turned to see exactly who fired the gun, but I didn’t see nothing. I looked back at the dude, and all his teeth were gone. It was one heck of a shot – I’m amazed his jaw wasn’t shot clean off.”

“I says to the guy I says ‘You’re lucky your jaw doesn’t need to be replaced with an ashtray.’ ”