Darkened space: a man puts the finishing touches on robots – assembled from spare parts including an old tape deck. He presses play and we hear “Dare” by Stan Bush (from Transformers: The Movie (1986)… a crack of light opens from the door… as they, against all so-called laws of nature, roll out the back of a garish orange box truck plastered with advertisements. Thru an otherwise normal neighborhood… “if you try leaving the past behind…” [wide exterior shot: Ma's + Pop's] we zoom in.

Six employee’s arms – in six different primary hue T-shirts that may evoke a Star Trek crew – pull in succesion from a closest various cleaning instruments to prepare a Ma’s + Pop’s for a day…

A smiling man wipes down the counter and waves you in further…

The soda jerk fills foamy drinks!

A young person carries a taaaaall sandwich!

Skee-ball!

…and a ninja throwing star nails a dart board!

(Six somewhat suspicious looking characters are gathered round a table and share conspiratorial looks.)

Young persons build towers with legoes!

(A man in black points to a white-board with many splintered time-lines marked “OR” clearly delineating events such as “2027 – Valkornians make contact” while another “OR” strand shows “2023 – last Valkornian exterminated.”)

Other young persons fire a laser, melting those lego towers!

A detective uses tweezers to pick up a used napkin and dusts it for fingerprints and looks suspiciously towards the children.

A lab tech demonstrates shooting flame out his right sleeve and flame retardant out of left.

A mage uses windex, making a pentagram in the bathroom mirror, presumably to clean with the scrubbing bubbles of evil.

…and in general lots of mundane commercial filler for a restaurant, mixed with the bizarre and probably shady…

Finally characters and robots and more stand together to invite the viewer hither…

————————–

Ma’s + Pop’s: This Is What the Future Smells Like.

You cannot quite place that smell, stepping through those doors, is it fresh-baked bread and a hint of gunpowder? Or is it unharvested wheat and cooling steel? Overhead, a fan circulates; whatever it is, it won’t last long. Suddenly it shifts – here comes bananas.

Your other senses catch up, then overtake you. It’s mostly one room but quieter than you’d expected, high booths along the wall absorbing their conversations and soft music – Handel? – plays above the center of the room, where a man is stretched out, arms behind his head in red-blue-yellow ball pit… built into the floor? Its primary colors focus your eyes – there’s just too much detail to take in. You’ve already passed two film posters; was one “The Man Who Took the Bus”? Do they make fake movies here or just fake movie posters? Before you guess, on a table stands an effigy of Ganesh out of legos. It has power over you.

You shake it off. Most furniture appears scavenged from thrift shops and playgrounds. There was a tire-swing outside. You’ve got this place’s number, already. Tim and Eric Awesome Shop. Venture Brothers Ice Cream Parlor. It won’t last four months.

There a supermarket vegetable sprinkler in one of the booths. They’re just trying to mess with you. You’ll have a milkshake and leave. Just a milkshake and leave.

Until you smell it again. Cucumber relish and the memory of battery acid. Good God, they really spilled battery acid in here. You’re sure of it. Because they did. And it’s a health code violation. They’ll go to jail, you think to a Tiki mask. It blinks at you with red LEDs. You were about to walk into the bathroom. The door is covered with braille and you think it says something dirty.

There’s a kid in a gold shirt wiping you a fresh spot at the counter. “What’ll we do to you today?” he says. Behind him, is a framed faux Time magazine cover – Homer Simpson’s hand holding a glowing green rod. “In Rod We Trust” it says. You remember that episode. You laugh again and take a stool. It makes a weird noise, almost like a whoopee cushion. Is that intentional or not?

Dry ice is spilling out behind the door to the kitchen. That’s intentional.

You get an orange-chocolate shake. It’s good. Thick but evaporates down your throat. The kid is making another, you’re not sure who ordered it. You spin your stool 540 degrees but you’re seeing less, tasting more. There’s a lot of plants in here; each one has a name-tag. Same for an aquarium full of sea monkeys – they’re also on the menu. It’s peaceful, but antagonizing. You want to stay, stretch out on the balls, but don’t think you should fall asleep. They’ll draw on you in marker for sure.

Does anyone ever order the sea monkeys? you ask. The kid says no, most people get the joke. “And they cost a lot.”

“Yes… I get it… but what if someone really does…?”

He says he was trained to give them a hard time. Some of them get attached to those things. It’s why they can’t serve lobster.

The air shifts. It’s your imagination, you think, except your imagination is smelling a locker in the employee break room – someone just filled theirs all the way to the very top of it with the freshest pile mud. That’s what it has to be. It must be breath-taking… Then you gasp. You’ve awoken to the applause of God – the sound of one hand clapping at your life. A tree fell on you in the woods; you weren’t around to hear it. The DJ just re-mixed “OM.”

You have found it. You have found it with bacon-wrapped sushi.

*
Ma’s + Pop’s harkens forward to the soda fountains and general stores of yesterday’s tomorrow’s yesterday’s, a vision of neo-retro-futurism – or possibly retro-neo – or maybe neo-retro-neo – but let’s just say hyper-futurism (with nostalgic themes) that adds up to a sublime mutant of American mythology ran-sacked from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Ma’s + Pop’s is your local freak-house’s kitchen dropped back in time, gone corporate, re-designed for war by moms, and thrown open the doors. Like a sleep-deprived Applebee’s – having an acid flashback – Ma’s + Pop’s is filled with less Americana than 6CTCorparama, ripped from the best pages of the Weekly World News and stuck up on the wall like a half-cyborg Tyrannosaurus head that activates if you get too close.

Ma’s + Pop’s – like a series of Russian dolls – mom’s kitchen inside a college sandwich shop inside a novelty store. With a robot soda machine rolling around in it. Simple! A place for those thirsting for a niche beyond the diner, bar, coffee shop, or treehouse. Ma’s + Pop’s run in three sizes:
* small – this Ma’s + Pop’s is a quiet outpost for vast operations that have nearly over-looked this mundane dimension, a convenience stop of oddities on a lonely desert road. The proprietor, well, he can tell you a story or two – real whoppers.
* medium – a regular cafe with a taste for the strange, with Chronotrono and the Employees as McDonaldLand-like characters to be pushed into or out of the background, depending. All the employees got stories, a right interesting bunch – and we can cook you a Whopper.
* large – a Planet Time-Traveling Robot Hollywood stuffed with memorabilia of things the Men in Black won’t let you remember and all employee stay in character (as themselves, with a secret mission).

MAJOR MENU DESTINATIONS:

Soda Fountain – head up to our soda bar and have one of our jerks help you ease your troubles with fizzy refreshment. Enjoy a large selection, including secret home-mixed flavors, such as Red – not strawberry or cherry, but the actual flavor of the color red itself! Or voice-activate Soda-Bot and watch it maneuver with agonizing slowness – right to your table!

Make-Your-Own-Freaking-Sandwich Station (featuring the SAMMICH-TRON 8800).  Don’t have time to make you own sandwiches? Man, we sure don’t have time either. Use the stupendous SAMMICH-TRON 8800 – probably the world’s only sandwich-component vending machine – to dispense loads of meats, cheeses, and toppings to your disgusting un-washed hands. Then put them and anything else you can find between our fresh breads.

Culture Clash Delicacies. Love ethnic food? Well, it’s time to desegregrate – in fact, our ethnic food is downright miscegenated, right on your plate in front of grandma. America is the great melting pot – let’s find out what Egg Drop Chili would taste like with a bagel and sauerkraut. Finally, we can let the healing finish.

And gathered from across the internet, the wackiest snacks in the fleet.

AND MORE.

Games – a variety of simple distractions you might find in any bar or home. We keep a rotating selection. And remember, if you enjoyed yourself, start treating robots the right way now before they want to kill all humans and tip that insentient machine.

One rack labeled “Artsy”, with art supplies should the Chronotrono inspire you.  One rack is labeled “Fartsy”, with whoopee cushions and things should you feel a different kind of inspiration.

Relaxation – what’s that in the other corner… a huge shelf of books that looked like they were given away from the Occult Book  Store! And a bean-bag chair! Crappin’ holy! Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you…

Restroom – not just a bathroom, a restroom designed to truly rest you! Put together by a committee of Chronotrono’s best psycholo-bots, our restroom will leave you 40% more rested through its use of music (popular film themes), imagery (motivational posters), and double-ply TP for the greatest bowel movement you will ever have.

Free wi-fi! Clean floors! Windows! A swear jar! [drops a nickel.]

Ma’s + Pop’s: So Funny and Delicious, You’ll Be Lucky Not to Choke to Death!