Notes from my day.

[rivka]

• The person in charge of developing flavors at Ben & Jerry's needs to be knighted. Or given a Congressional Medal of Freedom. Or something. Because first there was Dublin Mudslide, Irish Cream-flavored ice cream with chocolate, crushed chocolate cookies, and coffee swirl, and now there's Apple-y Ever After, which is brown sugar ice cream with ginger-caramel swirl and chunks of apple, and which is also the pinnacle of ice creamy goodness.



• While it's nice that Loew's White Marsh has a Reel Moms movie on Tuesday mornings, the truth is that just about any movie theater's 11am weekday showings will be populated by stay-at-home mothers with their small children. Alex and I blend right in.



• Someone on my friends list - I'm pretty sure it was epi_lj - posted about seeing Madagascar, and mentioned that there was a moment when he laughed out loud, hard, and no one else in the theater did. Which led to a moment today when I laughed out loud, hard, all by myself, and then said to myself, "Hey! I bet that's what made If laugh." ("It's a cookbook! It's a cookbook!" Am I right?)



• True Confessions Time: I actually said the following words to Alex today. "Let's get down on the floor and have playmat time! And then, after I feel like we've had an adequate amount of high-quality interaction, we'll go to the mall." Further True Confessions: We both loved the mall trip. Alex was having such a good time staring at things that it was hard to get her to take her bottle, even though she was clearly hungry.



• As long as the heat index is over a hundred degrees, I refuse to feel guilty about taking our healthy afternoon walk in an air-conditioned mall, even if it does mean inculcating my innocent daughter with morally bankrupt materialistic values.



• Mmm, materialism. You can't have Apple-y Ever After ice cream without materialism.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

re: Madagascar

There's a part of The Incredibles that the entire theater laughed at, when I saw it, that I can't imagine happening getting laughs anywhere but in the bay area.

The same goes for Star Trek IV. Someone there knew enough local stuff to throw in inside jokes.

There was a joke in Crocodile Dundee that I had to explain to the Australian I saw it with. He'd grown up in the city, I'd lived there only a year, but in a rural area.

And thanks for the ice cream recommendation. :)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

When I saw My Own Private Idaho in Portland, OR, the entire audience burst into wild applause at a seemingly random moment. Why? Tom Peterson had just walked on screen in an uncredited bit part. It's the sort of thing that you can't even explain to people who haven't lived in Portland:

"Who's Tom Peterson?"
"Oh, he... he had some furniture stores..."

[ckd]

Do tell on the Bay Area inside jokes.

WarGames got an ovation for the ferry dock scene when I first saw it, because the dock was only a few miles away.

[ailbhe]

I talk like that to Linnea all the time. It's a bit embarrassing when I do it in public.

I may experiment with cinemas, armed with that information.

I would have *killed* for an airconned mall less than 20 minutes' walk away through the searing heat. You're so lucky!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Alas, we have to drive to the mall, so we can only go there on days when Michael hasn't taken the car to work.

[ailbhe]

Alas. But you got there, anyway. Our malls were all too far to go in the heat sans car, and we're always sans car. We sat in the no aircon house with a plant spray instead. She liked the plant spray.

[dlacey.livejournal.com]

The local theater here has movies for mommies too. They turn down the sound so it doesn't hurt little ears and provide a change table and baby wipes as well.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

If you liked Dublin Mudslide, you will LOVE Chocolate Therapy (chocolate ice cream, chocolate cookie pieces, with a chocolate pudding swirl). I tried both recently, and it was no contest.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

It's a cookbook! It's a cookbook!

I've not seen Madagascar, but that quote--is it funny because of the Damon Knight story/Twilight Zone episode connection?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's a random very funny throwaway bit.

[eeyorerin]

I think a few people in the theatre we were in laughed at the cookbook line, but I'm not sure.

I'm not sure if you still can, but you used to be able to suggest flavors to Ben and Jerry's, and if they liked your idea, they'd send you coupons for free pints and an official letter. doctorpepper invented the flavor they dubbed The Full Vermonty (maple ice cream with pralines), which has sadly been retired.

I'll have to look for the apple flavor. That sounds yummy.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'll have to look for the apple flavor. That sounds yummy.

It's only in their ice cream stores, not in pints. But it should be! It should be in pints!

[eeyorerin]

I had some in the airport the other day (delayed reaction theatre!), and damn, it was good!

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

the flavor they dubbed The Full Vermonty (maple ice cream with pralines), which has sadly been retired.

*wracking sobs*

[saoba.livejournal.com]

I always talk to infants as if they were fairly verbal adults. It garners one strange looks in public ("I'm sure you think this is a crime worthy of the attention of Amnesty International, but I'm still going to insist you put on your snowsuit." springs to mind). It also resulted in small children with large vocabularies and frightening senses of humor.

I used to strap my son into the child seat on my bike when we needed an out of the house experience. When I was hugely pregnant with my daughter and still riding it would freak people right the heck out.

It's not so much ice cream weather here in the Pacific Northwest, but I raise my 70% cocoa extra dark chocolate Le Petit Ecolier cookies in your general direction.

[ailbhe]

We do a lot of "Sugar, there's nothing in the Geneva Convention about drinking Mammy's highly caffeinated beverage." She's going to *say* highly caffeinated beverage before she says tea.

My mother used to ask us "Who perambulated on yer physiognamy then?"

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

Must try Apple-y Ever After! Must!

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

The opening scenes of Chariots of Fire gets a similar response in St. Andrews, Scotland. Cheers for the university cross country club running across the West Sands, and jeers when the Russell Hotel was dubbed something else and transported to England (while the West Sands were clearly visible in the background).

While I lived in Scotland I went to see The 2000 Year Old Man. When he says that the most important invention ever was Saran Wrap, I was the only person to laugh out loud. See, in Britain it's called cling film.

It's always a little bizarre to realize that only you and the screenwriter get the joke :-)

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Oh, my god. That appley ice cream sounds *amazing*.

-J

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, now I want ice cream.

Wait! I have ice cream! It's not Ben & Jerry's, but it is homemade vanilla laced with just enough limoncello to keep it slightly soft and vanilla-lemony.

And I have fresh strawberries, too...

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

The person in charge of developing flavors at Ben & Jerry's needs to be knighted. Or given a Congressional Medal of Freedom. Or something.

It's actually a small group of people who decide on and develop the new flavors. They get thousands of new suggestions via their web site, and the names and suggested recipes are vetted by a small committee (along with internally developed ideas), then a small list is handed off to their recipes guy, who has a few assistants. After talking with some of their marketing people (who are way cool) for an over an hour a couple of years back (I submitted a flavor suggestion -- Jumpy Monkey, which is Chunky Monkey with coffee base -- and was selected to chat with them about a lot of random things, including regionalisms), I was also given the impression that there was still way too much power in the hands of only a few key people.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I often get to laugh on my own when I see subtitled movies here. The audience are listening in French, I'm reading English subtitles faster than the actors are talking. I laugh, and a little while later the actor says it and everyone else laughs. Zorinth hates this -- I do have a loud laugh -- and writhes next to me whenever it happens.

I also talk to babies in complete sentences, and the result was a small child who talked in complete sentences with subordinate clauses before he was two.