Nonsense Review - Ice Cream Truckin'

The hot summer days. The heat blazing down upon you, sweat dripping from your brow. You lie on your side, staring at the shapes the hot air swirls into the tapestry around you. You smack your lips together in their dry, chapped, unfortunate state. You need a nice refreshing Cherry Coke, or a trip to the pool. Because nothing beats the heat better than a trip to the pool.

But wait! Just as your mind is filled with bikini clad public pool honeys and whether or not it's worth risking the shattered beer bottle covered floor of the common swimming hole just to cool down and hit on some fellow dropouts, a familiar tune interrupts your thoughts. The jingle of the Ice Cream Man floats through the air, and the scalding heat is momentarily forgotten, as you leap and bound out of the house to throw your money at a white truck full of the most delicious cure for the summer.

Provided it isn't loaded with rocket launchers and demon clowns.

That is, if it isn't already faded off into the distance by the time you get outside. Many a kid knew the scorn of living on a street that simply "wasn't part of the route" and just happened to be a detour the ice cream truck would speed through sometimes to get to the high revenue areas. Or even worse, having an ice cream truck come down a sidestreet or back alley nearby, but not onto your own street, leaving you standing in the middle of the road clutching a wad of cash, screaming blood curdling cries into the air for your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shaped ice cream, until a concerned parent calls the police to taser you back into your domicile.

Worth it.

The ice cream treats are always better from the truck (if you manage to catch it) than from the store. Try it. With your adult money, go to a store, open the cooler, and purchase a popsicle. I'll wait here.













Not so great, huh?

What the store bought popsicle is missing is the satisfaction of catching the truck, or simply just the experience of buying it from the truck itself. Maybe it's the music. It's got to be responsible at least for getting you to pay three times the amount you would per bar than it would cost for a whole box at your local grocer's. But the heightened price has to be responsible for why it tastes better then. You pay more so you trick yourself into thinking it's better ice cream, subconsciously.

Or maybe it's just all the time the driver spends lovingly rubbing LSD into the ice cream before doling it out to unsuspecting innocents.

Guys, I'm having a bad trip...

Most importantly, though, ice cream trucks are a hearkening back to childhood, and a delight to children everywhere. It's your parents giving you a dollar and sending you running toward a stranger, only for you to come running back crying to tell your parents "Spider-man costs more than a dollar!" and then them telling you to get the rocket pop, but come on, mom and dad, rocket pops are for jerks, even Mikey got a Spongebob. Even if you don't partake in the trucks in your adulthood, the jingle makes you heartsick for the good old days.

Unless you live in my neighborhood, where for some reason the ice cream truck comes by at about 10:30 at night.

Rating: 4/5, for nostalgia's sake. I eat the Great White bars.