Saturday, April 16, 2005
Mister Softee, Scourge Of Hoboken
He didn't exist in the Bergen County town I grew up in; an old guy named Mattie had the ice cream truck market cornered. If he had a presence in New Brunswick when I was kicking around down there for the first half of the nineties, our paths never crossed. But ever since my first summer in Hoboken, 1997, I have had but one constant local nemesis, one brazen arch-enemy, the mere mention of whom has been known to drive me into Pavlovian fits of rage. Nobody seems to know his first name, so everyone just calls him Mister Softee.
I have nothing against his soft ice cream; it's just that the truck's damn theme music is so repetitive, and insidious, and downright evil. If you hear it too many times, you start wondering what you can do to rid yourself of the mere idea of it forever. We all know plenty of annoying songs, and we may occasionally go batty trying to banish them from our brains, but there's something just so much more sinister about those repetitive chimes emanating from that truck that passes your house a few times a day for half the year. You can always turn off Z100 if you don't like hearing the same songs over and over; try turning off Señor Softee.
In a perhaps failed attempt to keep my sanity about it all, a long time ago I came up with my own words to Mister Softee's tune; you can imagine my shock when, just minutes ago, as I searched Google for images while writing this, I discovered that the song already has words. Those attempting to sing along to a truck near you would do well to note that, according to the transcription offered on the official site, the first verse/phrase/whatever repeats three times instead of the standard two. I guess the version we've been hearing blaring way too loud from the trucks all these years turns out to be the Radio Edit.
Though in some ways they're not far off from the "official" lyrics, I think I still prefer the Zen-like simplicity of my version, which my friend Keith pointed out must surely have been influenced by the theme from It's Garry Shandling's Show.
This is the theme to that Mister Softee
Mister Softee's theme song
This is the theme to that Mister Softee
Mister Softee's theme song
Well Mister Softee has a theme
Yeah Mister Softee's got that theme
Yeah Mister Softee has a theme
Mister Softee's theme (you know)
Yeah this is the theme to that Mister Softee
Mister Softee's theme song
This is the theme to that Mister Softee
Mister Softee's theme song
Mister Softee has a theme
And this is it
Lyrics © 1997 Mike C.
