Sunday, December 10, 2006

Fun while flacking Ice Cream Man in Boston's Weekly Dig

Ice Cream Man is an Amazon Short that describes 25 years of hijinks in
Central Square, selling ice cream. It is written by Helen Epstein and
me, and you can download a copy for .49, half the cost of an iTune. It
is an attempt to meld together Lake Wobegon, Tales of the City and the
old Gasoline Alley comic strip.

This is a too long url. You can try to copy and paste it to your
browser
http://amazon.com/amazon-shorts-digital-shorts/b/
ref=sd_allcatpop_sh/103-8165378-7962202?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=13993911

or try
tinyurl.com/yjjnkm


Gus Rancatore, Co-author of Ice Cream Man

Defend Yourself!
by Justin Becker
Issue 8.49
Wed, December 06, 2006

After a quarter-century of running Boston's best ice cream store, Gus
Rancatore turned to the most logical person to help him write his
memoir on the biz: Helen Epstein, an author of a book about the
Holocaust. Apparently, there are more connections between ice cream and
Germany than meets the eye.
 
SO YOU STARTED TOSCANINI'S WITH YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND'S NEW BOYFRIEND.
THAT'S WEIRD.
He was a very nice guy and became, I kid you not, a vaginal surgeon.
 
THAT'S SIMILAR TO RUNNING AN ICE CREAM STORE.
There are probably some superficial similarities. Both of us are trying
to make you feel better. He's doing it for people who have chronic or
traumatic situations, and our customers are, at worst, suffering from
existential angst. There's a friend of mine who says "If a customer has
a completely terrible day, he or she should still think 'Well, my car
got stolen, I lost my job, but I still got a nice ice cream cone." We
give people little bits of sugar and cream, and ideally, they're
happier than when they came in.

AFTER A LOT OF BAD DAYS, WON'T THEY HAVE A REALLY BAD DAY WHEN THEY
REALIZE HOW FAT THEY ARE NOW?
Well, we make small portions of ice cream and encourage our customers
to eat small portions, which is my contribution to dietary common
sense. I think you're better off eating a small amount of better ice
cream than a big pail of really bad stuff. In fact, I tell people it
was an East German training secret that part of their athletic success
was small amounts of appropriately wonderful ice cream. It's a shame
that that great country is gone. The little cars and everything.

IN THE BOOK, IT SAYS YOU FIRED A WORKER WHO DESCRIBED THE WOMEN WHO
MAKE CAKES AS "CAKE BITCHES." WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?
I did it because he was a chump. People who go to Hampshire College
should not put on airs that they served time in California prisons or
grew up in really tough neighborhoods. It was just really offensive
having this chubby kid, son of two faculty members, pretending to be
some Black Panther.
 
WOULD "VALUED EMPLOYEE BITCHES" HAVE BEEN OK?
It was the "bitches" part. We're not taking shit like that from
Hampshire College graduates. You have to draw the line someplace, and I
draw it around the Happy Valley.
 
IT'S NO EAST GERMANY.