I'm not keen on serene beaches. I want diversions. Like Putt-Putt. And go carts. And water slides. My son, Jess, age six, shares my interests. And so, when we saw the LOBSTER ZONE game at Calypso Joe's, an otherwise dreadful faux-Bahamian restaurant in Orange Beach, on the Alabama Gulf Coast, we began feeding dollar bills into the maw of the machine. Imagine a lobster tank of the kind you find in most grocery stores. Glass front. Bubbles rising to the top. Lobsters lying on the bottom. Now marry that tank with one of those quarter-a-try games wherein you manipulate a mechanical claw so that it drops from on high to scoop up a bucket of plastic trinkets. Switch out the trinkets in favor of lobsters and you get the focus of the game. For two bucks a chance, you manipulate the mechanical claw, dropping it into the tank in an effort to snag a lobster. If you succeed, you just drop the lobster down a chute at the back of the tank. When it emerges, a waiter carts it away to the kitchen, where, for ten more bucks, they steam the beast and serve it with two sides. Of course, Jess and I had no luck with the game. Our waiter told us that was customary. "No one ever wins," he said. "But on a good night, people line up for a chance to try."
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