Jason has killed a lot of folks with a lot of different tools. His victims may wonder, “Who is this man? And why is he murdering me?” Meanwhile, we the viewers want to know, “What is that tool he’s using? And what’s its history?”

Wonder no longer.

Today: Ice Pick

As used by Jason in: “Friday the 13th Part II” and “Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning”

Victim(s): Alice Hardy, Les (during Tommy’s dream sequence)

Refrigerators are everywhere! My house… your house… your friends’ houses. Your teacher might even have one! But that didn’t used to be the case. Back before people had evolved the ability to invent refrigerators, everyone used ice boxes – unwieldy food preservation cabinets that had to be regularly restocked with fresh blocks of ice that folks bought from merchants called icemen (sorry, girls. There weren’t any actual icewomen. That’s just something daddies call mommies who have headaches). To shape an ice block to box size – or to chip off some cubes to cool down some tasty lemonade – people used ice picks. An ice pick is a sharp, wooden-handled tool that resembles a scratch awl.

Oh. In that case, picture a stitching awl with a straight point.

Really? May I ask what kind of awl you can picture?

Nope. Forget it.

It’s nothing like that kind of awl.

FUN WITH YOUR PARENTS’ STUFF! Breaking ice without an ice pick can be really hard! Try it! All you need are ice cubes and some of your PARENTS’ STUFF! Try crushing the ice with your mother’s jewelry box or the butt of your father’s handgun… try to chip it on the computer keyboard or smack it with the buckle of the Time Out Belt… try as hard you can to break it against the big window in the living room. See why ice picks were so useful?

Sure, ice picks were named ice picks because of their ice picking ability, but they can pick other things, too – human brains, for example! Walter Freeman, a famous neurologist (just a fancy word for “head shaman”), used ice picks to lobotomize (just a fancy word for “calm down”) the mentally insane. Freeman customized a van, which he called the “lobotomobile,” and set off on a nationwide mental hospital tour, during which he taught multiple doctors how to perform his violent and irreversible procedure – place an ice pick through the corner of the eye socket and, to quote the ‘50s pop sensation “Dr. Freeman Boogie,” “smack it like a broken Polaroid camera.” Soon, though, lobotomies went the way of the ice box as powerful neuroleptics like Thorazine took the psychiatric industry by storm.

FUNOLOGY PROJECT! How do you think lobotomized patients were treated? Probably not very nice! Try acting lobotomized around your family and friends, and see how they treat you. It’s easy! Tone down your personality. Quietly fiddle with random objects. Turn off your ability to love. Periodically soil yourself. CHALLENGE! How long can you keep it up for? A week? A month? Remember: science is all about the gathering of unrecorded, subjective data by way of long-running, secret deceptions (just a fancy word for “fun”).

Families… head shamans… who else used ice picks? Good question! Have you ever heard of Murder, Inc.? Well, Murder, Inc. was a group of steel-balled Italians and Jews who performed contract killings for the National Crime Syndicate between 1920 and 1940. Some of these Mafia hit men liked ice picks almost as much as Dr. Freeman liked lobotomizing the insane. Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, well known members of Murder, Inc., both considered the ice pick their go-to goomba-elimination tool. Human bone is no match for the shattering force of an enthusiastically swung pick! You may have heard that Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky met his fate at the business end of Stalinist-wielded ice pick. Untrue! Trotsky was actually killed by an ice axe, which is like a super-sized ice pick designed to lobotomize thawed-out dinosaurs.

CONTEST! What sort of weapons would you use if you were an assassin working for Murder, Inc.? What if you worked for the KGB? How about Yakuza? Draw each weapon on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, along with an illustration of yourself using the weapon, and mail each of them to: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500. The more entries you send, the better your chance of winning!

Thank you, Jason, for helping us learn through murder.

Join me again soon for another thrilling installment of Jason Vorhees’ Arsenal!