My Theme Song.

The BEST song… My favorite besides Imagine by Lennon…

My Theme Song.

My Theme Song

From a Book

I got the license. I did not sell the drugs. I had my route all mapped out–Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Hyde Park and Milton, miles and miles of hungry kids. If I started early in the morning, I could make the whole route in eighteen hours, get back to Charleston, and plug in the truck so the freezer could recharge overnight. The next morning, I’d be right back on the road. Ice cream sleeps for no man.
My truck had a big green dragon painted on the door, to show the customers where you stick the trash. The dragon’s mouth cleverly surrounded the hole in the door where the garbage bag went. If I punched the button on the dashboard, I could turn on the revolving lights up front, to let all passerby know that the ice cream was rolling through. There was also a button to ring the bell. And no, it was not one of those newfangled ice cream trucks that plays a stupid jingle all the time. No, no, no. I hear those all the time in my neighborhood now and I shake my head. These trucks offended my professional code. You know what that means? It means he doesn’t respect the ice cream. A real ice cream man doesn’t play a little jingle– just a bell that rings and says “never fear, the ice cream man is here, let’s see those dimes and quarters appear” without hassling people with a jingle.
I see the ice cream man on my block, and he makes the kids wait in line. You know what that means? That’s right, you heard me– it means he doesn’t respect the ice cream. It also means he probably sells the drugs.
Like playing a stupid jingle– you betray the whole experience when you make people stand in line. The kids want to crowd around the ice cream truck and look inside, ogle all the flavors and freezers, like boozers standing at the bar. Nobody wants to be put on the spot, forced to make up their mind fast like they’re standing at the green-throw line. Of course, people want to feel like they’re waiting their turn, without others cutting in line ahead of them, but a real ice cream man knows how to reassure the customers that he remembers whose turn is when. You’re here to make people relax, enjoy the presence of the truck, not make it a stressful experience. You’re here to respect the ice cream. Can’t sell it without insulting it? Fine. Somebody else will, buddy.
This was the best job I ever had, even if at meant putting up with little kids all day. I learned a lot about crowd control. Snow Cones were the toughest. You have to open them for the kid, because they’re basically a fat chunk of ice in a plastic bag. Two out of three Sno-Cones get dumped on the ground while the kid is trying to rip them open. I think they much design them that way on purpose. So when you give a kid a Sno-Cone, you better have a back-up handy. After the first Sno-Cone hits the dirt, you have to hustle the new one into their hands pronto. You have a two– or three-second window.
They never cry right away. They always stare at the ground in shock, then fast-forward through denial, anger, depression and acceptance before they start to wail. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. That Sno-Cone on the sidewalk is the end of innocence, the first lesson that the world is out to nail them, and you do not want to be there when this happens.

-Talking to Girls about Duran Duran, Rob Sheffield

Music to My Ears.

One of my favorite things about Monday’s is hearing the sounds from the church while I pass by in Brooklyn. It always reminds me of one of my favorite covers of Let it Be, what I believe to be one of the best lyrically beautiful songs ever produced and I am not just saying that because I’m a HUGE Beatles fan.

From a Book.

Think about this for a moment: if you weren’t a baby and you came to earth as a human with a fully developed brain and had the full weight of the molecular experience occur to you at once, you would hardly have the capacity to respond in an cognitive way to your experience. But because we were born as babies and had to be taught to speak and to pee in a toilet, we think all of this is normal. Well, it isn’t normal. Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd,  isn’t it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to peel pain.

-Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller

Story Time: For Mommy.

…Because every day is Mother’s Day…

From a Book.

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, through I hungered to be one. I imagined that I felt the calling and prayed that it be so. But one night, while watching The Song of Bernadette with Jennifer Jones, I was struck that the young saint did not ask to be called. It was the mother superior who desired sanctity, even as Bernadette, a humble peasant girl, became the chosen one. This worried me. I wondered if I had really been called as an artist. I didn’t mind the misery of a vocation but I dreaded not being called.

-Just Kids, Patti Smith

Friends Chronicles.

My friends are my family.
My family are my friends.
They all create my world.

No matter the distance.
No matter the time.

My Theme Song.

One of my favorite songs of all time…