For a guy trying to hide from his forty-fifth birthday tomorrow, what the hell was I thinking taking my kids to Mars 2110? It's a campy, broken down Mars-themed kids' restaurant that might have been a little bit interesting in 1998 when it first opened but now looks about as convincing as a high-school haunted house.

As often happens on Saturdays we didn't leave the house till noon. I worked on my book last night till 1:15 and slept till 9:30. Ava had a sleepover and they were contented in the morning watching the High School Musical sing-along. I've got to tell you the parts that I saw were fantastic. The production numbers spectacular and inventive.

Then I checked the mail and found a small envelope from American Express. Never a good sign. They'd screwed up on one of my convenience checks, this one my rent here in New York. Great.

Then I took the kids to Times Square to buy Ava's keyboard for her new piano lessons. We were starving so I thought we'd duck into Mars 2110. She'd been there for a birthday party and I can never pass up kitsch. The Star Trek ride at the Vegas Hilton is fantastic and I was expecting something like that. Instead a weirdo in a mad-scientist wig named "Dr. Mars" gave us the Vulcan salute and welcomed us in, then we waited in a long line to enter the "teleporter" which was just more silver and gray painted crap. This one was supposed to be a flying saucer but was much worse for the wear. There was a screen in front for the motion ride that was no bigger than a flat screen TV and thirty of us crammed inside. Star Tours at Disneyland it was not. We just took off, flew through a worm hole and landed. WTF? There was no story at all. Did we get lost and end up visiting odd lands or fields of floating meteors? Nope. We just stepped out into a cavernous disco with red-painted walls, half-empty tables, the other half housing long tables of kids, parents, balloons and the odd roving out of work actor in an alien suit posing for pictures. I wonder if furries lust after these jobs? I swear that every table but ours was having a birthday so you couldn't take a bite of your $14 hamburger without having to sing Happy Birthday again.

The tables were chipped, the food uniformly lousy but for some reason my sadness left me and I started to laugh. Besides, they served Pepsi so how bad could it be?

And, my $14 hamburger came with $5 in game coupons so we went over to "cyberstreet" a section of the place with videogames and played air hockey, skateboarding, skiing, Star Wars and Ava rode a Harley. We emerged into the suddenly cold fall air, walked over to Sam Ash and bought Ava her first piano (in this case an electric keyboard).