After a weekend of drinking Miller Lite and eating roughly six hot dogs in two days, I am in much need of a break. While cozy in bed last night with my computer on my lap, I saw there was a new video essay by Ashley Norton about Modelland, the 2011 dystopian fiction novel (ghost)written by none other than Tyra Banks. Modelland has recently gotten popular again online after someone uncovered the audibly challenged official song for Modelland on YouTube—made by Tyra herself on Garage Band.
I may or may not have Modelland on hold at the public library right now, and I want to read the full text before I potentially do any more writing on it. For the purpose of this newsletter, all you need to know about Modelland is there is a recurring motif of what she calls a “smize”, which if you’re a fan of ANTM you would already know that a smize is a “smile with your eyes.” But in the book, the smize is a drawing of a cunty-looking eye. The characters in the book try to find one of the smizes, and the smize is featured prominently on the book’s cover. It is also the logo for Tyra Banks’ ice cream store, also called Smize & Dream.
After watching enough hours of Tyra berating women for being fat (read: a size four instead of a two), finding out that her post-modelling passion is ice cream has made my brain fold up into an origami crane. Even more mind-melting is the Our Story page on the company’s website. It features the usual Tyra Banks story: her mom, whom she is close to, worked extremely hard to provide for little Tyra and helped her find her way to her dreams. They apparently would bond together over ice cream, which is something that I believe happened until it didn’t. Because of the modeling. She then claims to be working 24/7/365 on ice cream, which I just can’t believe is true. She’s still very busy acting like she’s never done anything wrong on camera.
A celebrity opening up an ice cream store isn’t that newsworthy. Celebrities are trying to sell weird shit on the side all the time. But Tyra is not just any celebrity—she is more insane than the rest of them and she’s ready to sell you hot ice cream.
That’s right. Hot ice cream. Also called Hot Mama on the store’s website. What could hot ice cream possibly be? It’s got ice in the name but it’s also…hot? It’s not hot chocolate, it’s not a hot milkshake or melted ice cream. And don’t even MENTION the possibility of a custard. It’s hot ice cream! In one of my favorite quotes of all time, Tyra says, “People think ice cream can only live in one temperature — cold. But I’ve spent years studying how ice cream behaves, how it churns, how it melts, how it releases flavor — and Hot Mama flips that entire idea.” I never knew that ice cream behavior was a field of study. It’s usually just cold cream.
It’s been over eight months since hot ice cream made a wave on the news to promote its entry into the US market (it’s usually only available in the Sydney, Australia location). Now that there has been enough time where people did have the ability to try it, the verdict is in: it’s just warm milk with whipped cream on top. Like a hot chocolate in thickness, except it’s more vanilla and less sweet. But some people say it’s too sweet? Doing a little looking on Reddit, some people really like it, while others say it’s disgusting and worse than any milk product you can find on the market. Have to take the haters with a little bit of a grain of salt because this is Reddit after all. All I know is that it’s probably not worth $12. No, it’s definitely not worth $12.
This whole hot ice cream mess reminds me of a time in high school when we were at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for a marching band competition. It was October and we were feeling the stadium cold. Concessions was selling hot chocolate, but my friends and I didn’t really want hot chocolate. We wanted soda, but if it was warm. Thinking we were funny, we went to the counter and asked the horrendously underpaid employee if there was any way to have a Coke, but make it warm. Or at least not ice cold. She should have just killed us on the spot, but politely explained that cold carbonated water was a whole part of the machine setup, and that heat wouldn’t really work because it would just be like flat syrup water.
We gave up that day, but one of the people in the group persisted to do some research at home and warmed up a can of cola. It was just as bad as you’d expect. I don’t want to sound like a Republican, but some things are meant to be hot and some things are meant to be cold. If you do want to try hot ice cream but didn’t live in New York in the month of February and/or can’t go to Sydney in a pinch, and you live in the greater midwest, you could probably just take a cup of ice cream outside for two seconds and have a similar experience.
Would you try hot ice cream? I probably would because I love a bit and have no concept of self control.
Please enjoy this high-quality homemade song:
SHOWS!
Thursday, 7/9 I am doing improv with Dr. Coke at The Western at 9:00pm.
Friday, 7/10 more improv with Dr. Coke on the 10:00pm show at Logan Square Improv.
Monday, 7/13 is another free show at Burton Place at 9:00pm.
Wednesday, 7/15 I’m at Blind Wolf Speakeasy again for a show at 8:00pm.
The 14th is also my birthday, so consider subscribing or whatever. I’m very cool and unemployed about to go to grad school so…just think about that.
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