* Its warm here finally. 75 degrees today. This means the Mr. Softee trucks are out playing that infernal jingle again and again and again! The jingle was almost banned in 05′ under a Mayor Bloomberg noise ordinance. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting of the mayor, Mr. Softee vendors and night club owners. In the end the noise police had to stop chasing the ice cream trucks and put away their decibel meters as a compromise was had which involved hours and duration the jingle was allowed.
About 10 years ago in Manhattan an ice cream truck company was owned by the Hell’s Angels and they parked their trucks in a lot next to their NY headquarters on east 5th Street. Needless to say they didn’t have a lot of competition in the neighborhood. I don’t think they do it anymore though. Today a Mr. Softee truck drove past us and the driver looked as though he could be an axe murderer. Tom said “There is a snow-cone’s chance in hell that I would let THAT guy serve my kids an ice cream.” Hey, its a tough job, I would look a little disheveled too if I had to listen to that racket all day long. It must ring in their heads eternally. Thankfully NY has a law prohibiting sex offenders from driving and serving ice cream from trucks. I should hope so! Mr. Softee looks like a pretty shady character too come to think of it.
* Ruby went to see a scary movie with some friends tonight. This is the first year I am allowing her to go to the movies without a chaperone. I am there when she gets out of the theater so it isn’t that big of a deal. I recall sneaking in to see Stuntman (rated R) in 6th grade with a boy. I had taken the bus with him to the mall. I remember getting a huge soft drink and eating way too much sugar and having to pee the whole time and being completely freaked out by the movie. Every summer we would sneak into the movies by transferring hand stamps. We got into Great Adventure that way too. My Mom would just drop us off at the gate. I saw my first concert there: Rick James and the Mary Jane Girls.
* The commercials played during the TV show American Idol must be paying a pretty penny for the exposure, so you would think that the companies would put forth the most attractive image for the company possible. I was watching it with Tom and Ruby the other night and a Wendy’s Hamburgers commercial came on. It was a close-up of a spatula placing a hamburger down on a grill. Then a voice said “If hamburgers were meant to be frozen, then cows would come from Antarctica.” I almost fell out of my chair. Are you kidding? After I laughed and said “ppppfffttt!” I said “Well, if hamburgers were meant to be eaten, then cows wouldn’t scream when you killed them.”, to which Tom replied “…if meat were meant to be frozen, we should all be eating penguin-burgers.”, to which I replied “…if hamburger wasn’t frozen, billions of people would die of salmonella.”, to which he replied “…if hamburgers were meant to be frozen then do you then fed-ex the meat somewhere or do you use local beef?” to which I replied “…if hamburgers were meant to be frozen, wouldn’t potatoes used for french fries grow in Antarctica?…does Ore Ida have a farm there?” Ugh!
It is just so sad.
So is the idea that the guy who wrote this genius line will, on his death bed, look up at the fluorescent lights and think to himself that this was his contribution while here on earth.
* We took Jack and Marlowe to ride the carousel in Prospect Park today. It was their first time. A few days ago we took them to pet some real horses at Kensington Stables in Brooklyn so it was a little confusing that we called the carousel horses “horses” too. Jack looked very serious about it the whole time. Marlowe tried to do acrobatics on it. Neither Tom or I would call it a “galloper”, a “merry-go-round” or a “roundabout”.
It was originally carved in 1912 and spun around at its home in Coney Island until 1952 where it was moved to the park. After 70 years it stopped working and was finally restored in 87′. They took off around 20 layers of paint and uncovered original paintings on it. It has an old working Wurlitzer Band Organ in the middle that sounded great. Tom of course spoke to the old Italian guy who ran it for awhile. He bragged that he keeps it tuned up and that we should go to the one in Central Park and compare, “it sounds-a very bad-a next to this-a one.”. It was the most fun Ive had for $1.50 in a long time.
Then we let J & M run around in a field next to the carousel, all of the trees surrounding it were in bloom and smelled amazing. The kids didn’t know what to do with all of that space.
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