Freezy

I first saw him in 2008, at The Shake Pit in Bradenton, and immediately portions of my brain screamed at other portions of my brain. This sign depicting an anthropomorphic ice cream cone named "FREEZY" caught my eye, like literally, and wouldn't let go of it, gripping it in a beam of pure silver radioactive-hot intention.

Freezy's gaze followed me everywhere I walked. Even when I walked out of range of his direct line of sight, I became aware that Freezy emanated a 3-D holographic spherical field of vision that swept up everything within it towards it. I looked around at my fellow ice cream enthusiasts, who obliviously and robotically extended their tongues and rubbed them in a vertical trajectory against their cones like cattle at a salt lick. Don't you see it too? Somebody, tell me you see it too! It wasn't the first time I've felt like the guy with the special sunglasses in They Live and it won't be the last, mark me.

But what did Freezy WANT? Perhaps nothing more than a tithe to his chapel of soft-serve. For, once I stepped up to the counter and made the purchase of a large Coke Milkshake (which the Shake Pit creates by squirting actual Coca-Cola concentrated syrup direct from their fountain-soda tanks - shades of Bart Simpson's consciousness-altering Super Squishy made entirely out of syrup) the man-faced cone quietly nodded his assent and acceptance, in almost Buddhist fashion, and gently released his psychic tentacles.

I've been there a zillion times since. You'd think he'd remember me. But no, we have to go through the same damn rigamarole every time. I say, "Wassup, Freezy? My man!" and he just starts in with the hypno-ray vibes and giving me that Bela Lugosi look with his unfathomable little crescent moon eyeballs all over again. Sigh.