I had ice cream twice today– at lunch that place over in Grand Central Market, and then at night I tried Scoops finally. Both times, just having to stand behind these people who want to taste-test every flavor ever devised by Man before buying a scoop of ice cream. All of the sudden, everyone at a damn ice cream parlor’s Anthony Bourdain exploring strange new cultures with a child’s eyes. It’s ice cream– it tastes delicious– let’s get on with our lives!
I mean I know rationally that I can’t blame people– it’s not their fault. Ice cream (at least in LA?) is probably in a war with those frozen yogurt places that bypass an honorable amount of human shame and just let you put whatever the hell disgusting old candy you want on your yogurt from a Halloween-buffet type scenario and you don’t have to say out loud all the disgusting shit you want to do to yourself, you don’t have to say where other people can judge you “please put candy corn, gummi bears, and three scoops of marachino cherries on top of the no-fat frozen yogurt I’ve selected.” So ice cream’s response has just been to get really weird with flavors– like, at Scoops, I went with the Apple Toffee mixed with Horchata Popcorn– I wasn’t sure what it’d taste like but it sounded like a Vampire Weekend album so I ordered it. I didn’t need to taste it ahead of time because I’ve tasted ice cream before, and also I like to live a life of adventure. So I guess rationally I get that other less-Dauntless-y people want to taste stuff before leaping.
It’s just that thing that all these people in line watched the people ahead of them drag the entire line down, and cost us all time with our friends and/or family and/or empty one bedroom apartments… but as soon as they’re up to bat? Do they think of the people behind them, the way they wished the people ahead of them had? No! They become the Bad Guys. They repeat the cycle. It’s like the history of the failure of leftist revolutionaries, in miniature. This is what happened after the French Revolution!!! Did nobody learn anything from Bioshock Infinite?? Did I spend all day watching people taste ice cream, or did I spend all day watching people fail a not-too-challenging test of their morality and sense of selflessness and the higher call of community, over and over, just so they could maximize a $3 ice cream purchase? Goddammit! Maybe the problem is we’re all not angry enough! TEAR THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN.