ICE-CREAM IN
DISTENSION

by

Iexela Nihsnap

as
told
to

O*v*a H*a*m*l*e*t

1. Ice Cream in History

Man has known and enjoyed ice cream for thousands of years. Ever since the days of Nero when mountain snows were carried by swift runners, trotters, gallopers, speedsters, messengers, carriers from the mountain peaks to the court of Nero where they were devoured, eaten, sampled, tasted, gobbled, licked, chomped, swallowed, people have attained enlightenment, understanding, joy, terror, sniffles, tonsilitis, from ice creams, sherbets, ices.

Never through dozens of centuries did anyone think this extraordinary. Ice cream was regarded simply as food. The world's great chefs made ice cream. The world's great gourmets ate it. Yum! Did anyone tried to apply special rules, laws, guidelines, standards, measurements, valuations to ice cream that were not applied to turkey stuffing, for example, or barbecued frogs' legs, matzoh ball soup, gefilte fish, pirogen, mamaliga, kasha, lasagna?

Nobody even suggested it, if anyone had there would've been an immediate negative response such as "Nerds," "Nix," "Piss on that stinky idea," or some such. Nobody would have liked it except maybe a few rightist degenerates.

2. The Influence of Howard Johnson

Along came a native denizen resident inhabitant citizen of Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of a Bohemian mother and a Transylvanian father, named Howard Johnson who, for reasons which have never been clear, set out to establish a separate identity for ice cream.

Where ice cream had previously been served in general restaurants along with Kellogg's Rice Krispies, chopped kolrabi greens, escargot bourgoigne, corn syrup, artificial flavorings and preservatives, John established a chain of Howard Johnson's Ice Cream Parlors across the nation.

Suddenly ice cream was segregated, separated, removed, severed, differentiated from other foods. New standards had to be applied to ice cream. It had to be smooth. It had to be sweet. Above all it had to be cold. Oh poopie gucky!

A quotation which I recently came across is of no relevance whatsoever to the topic of ice cream:

"Heaven in their dreams was a range better watered than the one they knew, with grass never stricken by drought, plenty of fat cattle, the best horses and comrades of their experience, more of women than they talked about in public, and nothing at all of golden streets, golden harps, angel wings and thrones; it was a mere extension, somewhat improved, of the present .... For every hired hand on horseback there have been hundreds of plowmen in America, and tens of millions of acres of rangelands have been plowed under, but who can cite a single autobiography of a laborer in the fields of cotton, of corn, of wheat?"

That comes from Frank Dobie, whose notions, although inadequate and incomplete, are nonetheless worth your going back and reading it again. Do it.

3. The Basic Elements of Ice Cream

The many kinds of ice cream can in fact be brought down to three elemental types. In fact, if you break anything down far enough you find that it's all vibrations. But we need not go quite that far. Three is a chummier number than one.

The three elemental types of ice cream are pink (strawberry), green (pistachio), and acapulco gold (cannabis). These three elemental types of ice cream can be combined in various ways, as indicated in the diagram shown below:

We can easily see that there are various combinations and permutations possible, enough, if my publisher would only send the half-a-cent a word that the editor promised me, I could buy enough food stamps to add the needed seasoning to the fruits of my foraging expeditions. At present, things are pretty bland.

I could cite any number of examples here, but instead will quote my own greatest novel, solely because it is one I have memorized and will thus be able to cite without having to rise from the typewriter and walk to the bookshelf. Here, from page 573 of the Deuce Edition of Rite of the Thurb:

"The way you sharpen a pencil is like this: First get a pencil. You can generally recognize them by their shape, which is long and thin, frequently with a hexagonal cross-section but sometimes round. The pencil is made of wood. There is a long cylinder of wood with a shaft of graphite (or, to be technically correct, lead) up the middle. An eraser at one end is optional and doesn't concern you except to remember that if there is one you should sharpen the other end.

"There are also mechanical pencils but those are a different type and I'll tell you all about sharpening them in a later chapter.

"Anyway, you can sharpen your ordinary wooden pencil in a number of different ways, which makes this thing much more complicated than I'd meant it to be.

"You can sharpen a pencil with a pen-knife (which is in itself grounds for a lengthy digression at half-a-cent a word), a razor blade, or a pencil-sharpener which may be of the miniature solid-state technology, the hand-cranked wall-mounted type, or the new electric variety. Most common is the Boston Model K-S ...."

Now that quotation actually goes on for another 2500 words, or $12.50's worth, but let it be.

4. A New Cognomen

Since Howard Johnson ghettoized ice cream so many rules have grown up about it, specifically the requirements that it be cold, smooth, and sweet, as well as pink (strawberry), green (pistachio), and acapulco gold (cannabis), that people who make other kinds of ice cream find themselves condemned either on the grounds that it can't be good since it's ice cream or that it can't be ice cream since it's good.

Well! Rather than struggle with false restraints, I propose that we just throw away those limitations by calling the stuff something else. Thus when someone comes along and says to us: "Ho, varlet, thy confection strikes me as some other stuff than the veritable iced cream," rather than getting into a snit over technicalities we can simply respond, "Right on, man, it ain't!"

But we need some name for it. We can't go through life calling our products "Hey, kid!" or "You there with the cherry on your melted marshmallow topping!" Imagine walking into a drug store and asking for a frozen meat ball brillo split!

Never happen.

So we might retitle our product "frigid sweets," or "chilly treats," or, if the initials IC seem to be of some value, we can retain the initials and the connotations of ice cream by calling them something different like "industrial cheese." Yes, that has a distinctive ring to it, yet retains the important initials. Let's call it "industrial cheese."

5. The Stork Paradox

When it comes right down to it, and I am getting tired if you want the truth (still, half-a-cent ....), the whole thing is summed up in this nifty piece of dialog:

The car leaps into the air -- straight at the planes!

"Heaven save us! We're going mad! The car is chasing us!"

"Turn tail! Let's beat it!"

"Just shows you what you can do when you meet trouble halfway! It turns around and beats it!"

"I don't know how you did it but you sure get results!"

"We ought to get a boat here! This is a seafaring part of the country!"

"Get aboard! I'm sailing in five minutes!"

"My thanks!"

"Mine too!"

Etc.

6. New Attempts at Freedom

All of the great innovators in the development of modern ice cream (or "industrial cheese") have, whether they liked it or not, been forced to smash their heads against the walls of Howard Johnson's legacy. Still, whether it was Otto Dreyer with his rocky road ice cream (or "industrial cheese"), Max Baskin and "Whoopie" Robbins with their Berry-Berry Good, or even Elmer Bordon's Glue-All, they stuck to their gums and came up with types of "industrial cheese" which could never for a minute be mistaken for the old-fashioned ice cream.

Some were not creamy.

Some were not smooth.

Some were not even cold!

But this was only the beginning of innovation. We can go on to hallow the names of "Bunky" Starnstedder of Billings, Montana, who invented the sundae -- a daring innovation in the development of "industrial cheese" (or ice cream). Mel Cartwright, a pharmacist's assistant in Oil City, Pa. who developed the cherry smash. Janie Ginsberg of Cambridge, Mass., originator of the root beer float. And Alvin Van Macklinberg of Stockton, Ca., who in 1915 accidentally knocked a can of powdered malt into a glass of milk, with what the reader may infer.

John Kendrick Bangs, the bard of Yonkers, said this:

"If you have faults, grieve not!
Let this thought keep you warm:
Who hath no faults hath got
No hope for a reform!"

7. Now, Voyager!

Even so, Starnstedder, Cartwright, Ginsberg, Van Macklinberg are all struggling to reconcile their confections with the traditional limitations of ice cream. I say, let them eat "industrial cheese!" There need be no limitations.

New flavors and combinations lie before us. Chicken enchilada industrial cheese! Rhubarb pie industrial cheese! Kim chi industrial cheese! Griffin A-B-C industrial cheese! Leonid Brezhnev industrial cheese! There is no limit!

Let "industrial cheese" be our war cry, and half-a-cent a word our price!

Ave, atque vale!

Eheu fugaces!

Paraguay and Uruguay!

Et cetera.

--Dick Lupoff

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DON'T MISS THE NEXT EXCITING INSTALLMENT OF

I*C*E C*R*E*A*M I*N D*I*S*T*E*N*S*I*O*N

Coming next issue!

(Assuming the author stops badgering us about that half-a-cent a word and gets busy writing the next installment ...............................................................................................................................................................WHEW)

Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan

Data entry by Judy Bemis

Updated October 14, 2002. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.