Villa de Loon

By Tiber

I’ve been through this before, ladies, but obviously it bears repeating. No, you do not want to marry a Prince, so quit holding out for one.

I know many of you still think that becoming a Princess means you can sit around all day wearing a sparkly tiara, while your favorite singer serenades you, a servant does your nails for free and another one feeds you tiny chocolates in the shape of peasants who now have to bow down to you and hand over all of their high tax money.

Well, that last part may actually be true. I don’t know.

The reality is that no matter how awful you feel or how desperately you want to see your friends, instead you’ll be forced repeatedly to get up at an ungodly hour to unveil, open, christen, reveal, applaud, and delight in every plaque, megastore, ship, statue, amateur folk-dancing group and new waste-management facility in the country.

Until you die.

Plus, you’ve heard that royals never carry money? The reason for this is that because they’re forced to shake so many hands, soon their fingers stop working entirely and they’re not even able to pick up a coin.

So, girls, go for the nice male who’s a prince of a guy without being a Prince of the Realm.

You may have to watch more football but at least you won’t have to wave at it for three hours.

And afterwards, your time will be your own without your having to go and be the Patron of the Flounder Museum.

 By Tiber

An ice cream truck started driving round and round the neighborhood today and it was playing so many songs, I got caught up in trying to identify them. He was hitting Mozart to Mos Def. Some were easy to recognize like “Happy Birthday” but I soon realized the truck was also playing Christmas carols. Since we’re nowhere near Christmas, do they think this will make people feel festive again? It just made me feel uncomfortably lost in a time warp in winter and the last thing I wanted was some ice cream.

It took me even longer to figure out their weirdest musical selection. But finally, I realized that the ice cream truck was playing, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Yes, that’s right. A song that brought grown men to tears during the American Civil War is now used to try to sell children “zootie-pops.”

Here, again, though, I didn’t see that much product being sold. Instead of buying, you really are just standing there, trying to I.D. all of the music.

When I was little, ice cream trucks only played one tune, over and over and over again. I guess those days are gone but, frankly, as a pure business model, my guess is this was much more effective. I know from personal experience that Dad would sometimes give us money just to “please, please, make that damned song go away.”

Some of this new truck’s tunes also included old folk songs that I was actually able to sing along with. The funny thing is, I don’t ever remember learning any of these lyrics. Maybe we’re all singing away in nursery school and we just don’t remember. Was a familiarity with these songs good for sales? I guess it helps some.

In the future, though, I imagine they won’t risk just hoping that you’ll feel fondly about something you learned as a child. Instead, your purchasing choices will already be locked into human brains at birth. Then, whenever an ice cream truck is anywhere within five miles of your kid, his eyes will glow and he’ll suddenly start to chant in your own home,

“It’s Saturday. Buy me 12 “Nicey-Iceys.” It’s Saturday. Buy me 12 “Nicey-Iceys.” It’s Saturday. Buy me-”

“All right!!! All right!!! Come on!!! Let‘s go!!!”

By Tiber

I was stopped at a traffic light today and I noticed a sign for the “Titanic Driving School.” Now, obviously, I know that “titanic” just means “of great size.” But still, this isn’t your first thought whenever you see the word, is it? Are the driving school owners historically ignorant? Or maybe they know about the big ship and they just don’t care.

“Hey, none of you students are ever gonna run into an iceberg anyway, are you? So shut up!”

I don’t know, though, it does seem to me, that if you were running a driving school, you’d want to avoid the image of anybody crashing into anything.

This got me to thinking about other shop signs and I was reminded of one that I really loved. We had a new dry-cleaners open up in the neighborhood and the owners didn‘t speak English all that well. I guess they wanted a catchy slogan and when they finally found a saying that had something to do with their business, they snapped it up and emblazoned their window with the words “Bring us all of your clothes and we’ll take you to the cleaners!”

I wanted them to keep their slogan forever but either somebody told them what it really meant or else their business stopped completely and they asked, but in any case, that sign soon disappeared.

Another store sign I drive by occasionally just sort of baffles me. The shop is called “Darts and Things.” Obviously, the “things” part of “Darts and Things” would probably include dartboards. But what else? Are there dart gloves? That’s still not enough for a whole store, is it?

So what are the other things? They could be as common as shampoos or as esoteric as, I don’t know, robot clothes. But how would you know without stopping?

I could go in and see what  they sell for myself. But that would probably spoil it. As it is, I like to imagine what all is in there. Well, darts, we know that…but I also think they have gleaming rows of Zambonis, remote-controlled waffle-makers, aquarium furniture, flying carpets, invisible inks, video games from the future, self-filling beer bottles and bear repellant.