HOW AMUSING

It was inevitable that at some point during my time in Georgia, I would head to Six Flags. After all, I am from Central Florida, which is ground zero for amusement parks, and so I am genetically disposed to answer their call.

The last time I had been to Six Flags, I was a child. As I recall, the big ride was the log plume thing and the big entertainment was singing and dancing by characters from H.R. Pufnstuf, an early '70s kids show whose creators constantly denied that it had any connection to drug use. Anybody who remembers the show might find such denials laughable.

Since then, Six Flags had sent Mr. Pufnstuf and his ilk back to Living Island, replacing them with the sleeker heroes of DC Comics, such as Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern. That was probably a decision spurred by the success during the last 25 years or so of comic book movies.

But the DC characters exist upon an ideal plane. Their impossibly good-looking faces are attached to bodies that look like they have spent considerable time at BALCO facilities, and they rush to help people with an alacrity that implies an emotional disorder. They are utterly apart from reality.

So seeing them brought into the here and now was something of a downer. There was simply no way that the actors and actresses playing these parts could be convincing. (But one has to admire their bravery; to put on one of those costumes and invite comparisons to the originals takes a lot of guts.) What we got was a physically flawed set of superheroes, ones who weren't strangers to comfort food and six packs ... of beer, that is. Suddenly, it became easy to imagine Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson occasionally blowing off the bat signal so they could sit around in their boxers, pound brews and watch "Chopper Chicks in Zombietown" on TV. Of course, they would use the Batmobile only to make beer runs to the nearest convenience store on such nights. I kind of liked that.

The log plume ride was still at Six Flags, but it had long been eclipsed by a host of roller-coasters that offered greater thrills by a magnitude of 100. Their names implied lethal force and danger: Georgia Cyclone, Ninja, Mindbender, Goliath. And true enough, these rides were fun as hell. But there could have been more accurate names for some of them: Herniated Disc, BrainScrambler, Cause for Litigation. But I doubt those names will go anywhere.

HELPING DAD

When I told my father that I was going to major in philosophy, he was supportive but not exuberant. I think he began to sense that I would be better at thinking about money than making it. When I announced that I wanted to go into journalism, Dad shrugged wearily and told a friend of mine, "Well, at least he'll be able to write down all the things he's wondering about." I think then his suspicions hardened into certainty: The only way I was going to stay out of poverty was through generous loans and subsidies from the First National Bank of Mom & Dad.

I tried to balance the scales by telling Dad having a philosopher-journalist son could be a handy thing if the revolution comes. I might be sufficiently proletariat to keep him from "political re-education." He responded that my deepest commitment to socialism was an abiding interest in free beer, so he wasn't too comforted by my theory. Anyway, the commies cashed their checks soon after, and I lost that hole card.

However, I was still determined to prove my worth to the family. The best way to do this, I decided, was to help Dad with his business. Though my father was a successful dentist and I had no training whatsoever in his field, I knew I could help him. How? By being an idea man, by coming up with plans to grow his practice that no one else could have thought of. Unless they were speed-eating peyote buttons.

One of my first ideas was to offer Dad's patients more than just dentistry, to give them a little entertainment, to amaze them. I thought Dad should try a few magic tricks on is patients. He could, I suggested, sit a patient down in the dental chair and ask him to open wide. Then Dad could crack open an egg and dump it in the patient's mouth, following it with milk, sugar and flour. Dad would then place a silver kerchief over the patient's face, tap three times with a magic wand, remove the kerchief and voila! there would be a little cupcake in the patient's mouth. Extractions? Instead of using forceps to pull a molar, Dad would simply have to reach behind a the patient's ear, pull back a tooth and ask, "Is this the tooth you wanted pulled?" Of course, the magic would be short-lived if there wasn't enough gauze at hand.

Beyond belief, Dad rejected this idea.

Another idea was to give Dad's office a cinematic flair. I figured Dad could re-enact scenes from famous movies at his office, movies like Marathon Man. "Is it safe?" Or maybe Blue Velvet, with Dad playing the Dennis Hopper character. Dad could have strapped on the nitrous mask whilst working on patients, with hilarity ensuing. But nothing from Little Shop of Horrors; Dad can't sing a lick, and that might have driven away patients.

Again, Dad was cold to my proposal.

Dad could have given his patients a chance to play a game. After all, most of us love games. I thought Dad could introduce something called "Call Your Shot" in which Dad would present a patient with two syringes, one filled with novocaine and one filled with a mix of hallucinogens and Prozac. Whichever syringe the patient picks, that's the one that will be used on the patient. And if the game needs to be juiced up any, Dad could inject himself with the remaining syringe.

No dice.

Oh, I had other ideas, such as retro Wednesdays, when Dad would use dental technology from the 1920s and back to the Old West. But nothing could shake my father out of his stodginess. In fact there was only one idea I came up with during that time that Dad fully embraced.

My idea to move. To North Carolina.