Nance’s Chunky Mon­key ice cream was a suc­cess, but not an unqual­i­fied one. It was basi­cally a vanilla base with banana puree stirred in, and a hand­ful of roughly chopped Her­shey bars added at the end. Noth­ing like try­ing to re-create a prod­uct most peo­ple buy com­mer­cially to make you appre­ci­ate the prob­lems of com­mer­cial food prepa­ra­tion. How do you make a choco­late bar that you can freeze for days and still won’t chip your teeth, for instance.

Alan: “They prob­a­bly add a bunch of lard ‘n’ crap to it.”

Thanks. Way to put me off my feed. Of course, Alan, hav­ing worked at a Campbell’s soup plant, knows a thing or two about com­mer­cial food prepa­ra­tion. He won’t drink V8 juice, nor Campbell’s soup, but don’t let those prej­u­dices put you off your feed.

My old boss Richard worked in a cottage-cheese plant. He doesn’t eat cot­tage cheese. My friend Jim went to board­ing school down­wind of a bour­bon dis­tillery, but he hap­pily drinks bour­bon — he didn’t start until long after grad­u­a­tion, though. And I think Mark worked in the Brach’s candy plant in Youngstown. He had an amus­ing obser­va­tion: “Choco­late is the oppo­site of bour­bon. You have to learn to dis­like it.” He doesn’t like it.

But Project Ice Cream is an exper­i­ment, and you learn as you go. One thing I learned today: All hail vanilla beans. They are worth the money, at least if you’re mak­ing ice cream.

Kate wouldn’t touch it, by the way. She took the tini­est taste and turned up her nose. My lit­tle fern who lives on air and rain.

Blog­gage aplenty today:

I learn some of the most inter­est­ing things at Amy’s. Did you know there’s a web­site devoted to cat­a­logu­ing art that depicts the Vir­gin Mary as a breast­feed­ing mother? Now you do. Eat up, kid.

Last year, on our Fel­low­ship, after we toured the Chicago Art Insti­tute, one of our over­seas mem­bers asked us Amer­i­cans what the big deal was over “Amer­i­can Gothic” — he just didn’t get it. I wish I’d read this Slate piece before­hand: When the pic­ture finally appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, real Iowa farm­ers and their wives were not amused. To them, the paint­ing looked like a nasty car­i­ca­ture, por­tray­ing Mid­west­ern farm­ers as pinched, grim-faced, puri­tan­i­cal Bible-thumpers. One Iowa farmwife told Wood he should have his “head bashed in.”

Quote of the day, from a Freep story on a mur­der sen­tenc­ing. This is the victim’s mother talk­ing: When Ronald Brown busts hell wide open, I hope my angel flies through heaven and sheds tears for him to drink. Because he’s going to be a thirsty son of a gun. Hey it beats, “Now we can get some closure.”

The Poor Man is tak­ing care of two adorable kit­tens. And you know what that means. No word on whether he’ll be using the Citikitty, a potty-training device. Ques­tion: Once your cat is using the toi­let, do you have to com­pete for it in emer­gen­cies? And is s/he allowed to scratch?

Oh, and I guess I promised this. The new kitchen. Note: cool color, new light, green back yard and, espe­cially, the small stained-glass ren­der­ing of Spriggy, cen­ter bot­tom. One of my stranger Christ­mas presents.

Would any­one like to guess how old Anne Ban­croft was when “The Grad­u­ate” was made? Thirty-six. Guess how old Dustin Hoff­man was? Thirty.

The first time Sally Field played oppo­site Tom Hanks, she played his girl­friend (“Punch­line”). Six years later, in “For­rest Gump,” she played his mother.

Life isn’t fair, but Hol­ly­wood really isn’t fair.

Of course, Mrs. Robin­son was one of the sex­i­est fortysome­thing babes to ever be cap­tured on film. Prob­a­bly because she was only 36.

Want to read a good revi­sion­ist take on “The Grad­u­ate”? Check out Roger Ebert’s.

Why am I writ­ing short para­graphs, like Lance?

One of those things.

On the orga­ni­za­tional con­tin­uum of 1 to 10, I’d put myself at about a 5.7 — I make lists, but I don’t usu­ally get through all of them. Today the list was:

Fin­ish paint­ing kitchen.
Clean kitchen from top to bot­tom.
Go gro­cery shop­ping.
Buy a lovely bou­quet of flow­ers for the kitchen bay win­dow, to cel­e­brate the new look.
Make ice cream.
Fix a nice dinner.

What I accom­plished on the list: Noth­ing. But it was still a good day.

I started with good inten­tions (paint­ing), and took a break to check my e-mail. Good thing I did, and good thing the per­son I was hav­ing lunch with today sent a “see you there” e-mail that I received just in time to take a speed shower, scrub the Laven­der Ice from my cuti­cles and sprint to Ann Arbor to have a two-hour busi­ness lunch that I would have oth­er­wise totally for­got­ten. I would have remem­bered it, had my cal­en­dar not been buried under a pile of crap in the fam­ily room, due to the kitchen-painting project.

Ah, so what? Every­thing gets done eventually.

Tomor­row: Pic­tures. (I hope.)

Ann Arbor was lovely. No park­ing, but lovely. That is my town, I must say, the only place I’ve ever lived where I felt more or less at home. I pick up Kate at school this year among a herd of blondes wear­ing dia­mond rings of one carat or more. I picked up Kate at school in Ann Arbor among gray­ing late-starters like me, les­bians and even the occa­sional blonde, who might be pick­ing up her lit­tle tow­headed clone but also a Chi­nese, Guatemalan or other dif­fer­ently col­ored child. Things about Ann Arbor drove me nuts, but mostly I loved it, five-month win­ter and all.

I don’t think I’d love it so much if Alan were com­mut­ing 90 min­utes a day, though. Best to leave it a rosy mem­ory I can visit inside of an hour.

Tomorrow’s ice cream fla­vor: Banana with choco­late chunks. Chunky Mon­key, with­out the wal­nuts. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

When we were Fel­lows, the group trav­eled to Detroit on a field trip, where we sat through the morn­ing meet­ing at the Free Press. Some­one asked an edi­tor how you judge the dis­play of crime news in a metro area so far-flung and sprawl­ing. The answer was a ver­sion of “you trust your gut,” but I also recall this response: “Heinous­ness plays a part.”

Well, I’ll say:

As para­medics fran­ti­cally stripped 17-year-old Bil­lie Rut­ledge to find the first series of bul­let wounds and try to save his life, the man, now armed with a shot­gun, walked up to the dri­ve­way on Omira in north­ern Detroit. He ordered para­medics to step aside.

With that, he lev­eled the shot­gun at Rut­ledge, as the para­medics fled, and blasted the teen early Sat­ur­day morn­ing in the top of the head.

Paint­ing the kitchen was so exquis­itely bor­ing today — brush brush brush roll roll roll swear swear swear — that I’m not giv­ing you a sin­gle detail. Let’s chat about “Six Feet Under” instead. Tonight’s episode was called, coin­ci­den­tally, “A Coat of White Primer.” Hah.

I’m opti­mistic about the last sea­son. I always am. Face it, for all the nit­pick­ing, 6FU, like most HBO dra­mas, is so much bet­ter than every­thing else on TV that I don’t really care if the sto­ries get far-fetched or the sit­u­a­tions cir­cu­lar. What else do I have to do for the next hour? Watch “Law & Order” reruns? “House”? Please. I’m there.

I really enjoyed this week’s open­ing set piece, which reg­u­lars know is always a death. This week’s — a woman in ther­apy goes around shar­ing her feel­ings, and ends up impaled on an and­iron — just killed. (Sorry.) I’m a Fisher at heart; a lit­tle repres­sion never hurt any­one, and in fact makes the world go round. It makes it run smoothly, any­way. Find me a per­son who says, “It’s time for me to think about my needs” and I’ll show you a real asshole.

Some­one said that to a friend of mine, years ago. She had to bite her tongue not to reply, “That’s all you DO.”

The rest of the episode? Worth the wait. No pick­ing nits for me. I’m just happy it’s back.

Now, back to Laven­der Ice. It needs a sec­ond coat. But it looks good!

Tomor­row — today, for most of you — I am paint­ing the kitchen. It’s the least I can do, as the bur­den of most of the wallpaper-stripping and most of the prim­ing and all of the ceiling-painting and all of the new-light-fixture-installation was borne by Alan. So tomor­row, I take brush in hand, open the can of Laven­der Ice and try to per­form up to Alan’s standards.

No small task. You have never met a pick­ier home improver.

When Alan started his new job after Christ­mas, and we were liv­ing apart and try­ing to sell our house, I started watch­ing a tri­fle on HGTV called “Sell This House.” Peo­ple with houses that won’t guess-what are vis­ited by a chirpy team of annoy­ing peo­ple who do a quick and dirty redec­o­ra­tion and then repo­si­tion the dog as…a show dog, anyway.

I thought we would bond over this show, which I enjoy because it fea­tures clue­less nim­rods who have to learn — yes, learn — that when a house is for sale, it’s a good idea to take your bicy­cle off the front porch and slap a coat of white over your grass-green bath­room that hasn’t been painted in 20 years. I watch it to crow with supe­ri­or­ity. Alan? He’s just an insuf­fer­able nit-picker.

“You’re paint­ing wall­pa­per?” he moans. “The new own­ers will HATE you. Don’t you know prep work is 90 per­cent of the job?”

Prep work is, indeed, 90 per­cent of the job. Now that the prep work is over, I’ll han­dle the remain­ing fraction.

It’ll be a good day to be inside — we topped 90 degrees today and likely will tomor­row. In case you were won­der­ing, it snowed…five weeks ago? OK, six. Six weeks ago, snow. Today, mid-summer. And you won­der why Mid­west­ern­ers are so hardy.

In between today’s 90 and tomorrow’s 90, we had a thun­der­storm. I watched it march from Lake Michi­gan to Huron and Erie via radar, an angry line of red. Alan had gone pad­dling on the lake, and as the wind lashed the trees and the rain started to fall, I’ll admit to a moment or two of worry. But just a moment. Alan takes care of him­self so well in the out­doors that I just don’t bother fret­ting any­more. Watch­ing “Cast Away” with him was an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence; I real­ized that if I ever find myself in the Helen Hunt role, I’ll never be able to remarry and move on with my life, because if there’s a way to stay alive in the widely scat­tered, uncharted islands of the south Pacific, he’ll fig­ure it out. It was sort of like watch­ing “Sell This House” — I’m think­ing, “Oh, that poor guy, how will he sur­vive?” and Alan’s yelling “Turn the god­damn life raft over, you idiot! It’s rain­ing! Col­lect some drink­ing water! And open the pack­age with the angel wings on it! Use the ice skates!”

He would have been home in a month.

But enough about my hus­band. On to the bloggage:

The NYT was a feast this morn­ing, but I think my favorite was this slight “Mod­ern Love” piece, about a man who fell in love with his girlfriend’s dog…but not his girl­friend. They stayed together a year on the strength of the human-canine bond. Every­one should have a dog.

In spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of the fifth-grade sex movie. I had no idea this was an aca­d­e­mic tra­di­tion, although come to think of it, it’s actu­ally on the school cal­en­dar at Kate’s ele­men­tary: Fifth-grade human repro­duc­tion cur­ricu­lum. The NYT does a his­tor­i­cal piece.

Found via the Poor Man: Paul Revere a despi­ca­ble tat­tle­tale, says GOP: Repub­li­cans today crit­i­cized Paul Revere for his famous ride, say­ing that he had vio­lated pro­fes­sional colo­nial ethics by divulging mil­i­tary secrets in vio­la­tion of his duty to his lord, the King of England.

“These were sen­si­tive infor­ma­tions about mil­i­tary troop move­ments with which he had been entrusted,” said G. Gor­don Liddy, an expert on ethics in gov­ern­ment and a pro­fes­sor at sev­eral unac­cred­ited law schools.

That G. Gor­don. Such a patriot.

And I knew there’d be good news for me, if only I waited long enough: Curvy women “will live longer,” say experts. Gotta love pas­sages like this: Insti­tute of Pre­ven­ta­tive Med­i­cine in Copen­hagen researchers found those with wider hips also appeared to be pro­tected against heart conditions.

The researchers say hip fat con­tains a ben­e­fi­cial nat­ural anti-inflammatory.

That’s a BBC story, so be advised a British 14 is closer to an Amer­i­can 12. Still.

Maybe the magic num­ber is 40. I’m so there.

If I ruled the world, no colum­nist would be per­mit­ted to refer to a sit­ting, for­mer or aspir­ing mayor as “hiz­zoner.” No, not even if you asked really, really nicely. I’d also ban “Pol­i­tics ain’t bean­bag” and “All pol­i­tics is local.”

Tomor­row: The ruler of the world takes on dri­ving habits.

I’m so glad the econ­omy is doing bet­ter. Now that I’m a sub­scriber to the Wall Street Jour­nal, I don’t know what I’d do with­out their peri­odic Dis­patches From the Amer­ica I Don’t Know and Don’t Rec­og­nize. Today’s install­ment — which I can’t link to — details the lat­est in yacht­ing trends: freighters.

Yes, these “SUVs of the high seas” are being bought by bored rich peo­ple, rehabbed to com­fort­ably accom­mo­date them­selves and their tro­phy wives, and then hit the watery road with such new ameni­ties as a top­side bas­ket­ball court. “indus­try experts say the demand for the mega-boats is grow­ing in part because of their macho ‘Per­fect Storm’ appeal — a big sell­ing point for thrill-seekers.”

I won­der what your aver­age New Eng­land sword­fish­er­man — who invented “macho ‘Per­fect Storm’ appeal” by going out and dying in same — thinks of this. Aston­ish­ingly, none were consulted.

Oh my, but it’s an over­cast Fri­day — threat­en­ing skies after a week of South­ern California-style sun­shine. It re-orders the to-do list, which is fine, because “cut grass” has been replaced by “read three more chap­ters in ‘The Hot Kid.’” It’s a good way to limp into the week­end, and so to the bloggage:

And I don’t have any, or much. Want to be depressed on an over­cast day? Check out the NYT’s story on young girls and AIDS in Africa. Man hands on mis­ery to man…

PATRICE LUMUMBA, Mozam­bique — They met a year ago on the dirt road out­side her aunt’s house, in this strug­gling town­ship where houses are built from bound-together reeds and the only water comes from wells. Flora Muchave was 14. Elario Novunga was 22, nicely dressed and, Flora said, full of promises.

“Now,” Flora recalled her sob­bing from her deathbed, “you are going to suffer.”

Jeez, let me just open a vein now.

TPM Cafe is sort of like the Huff­in­g­ton Post, with 99 per­cent less unem­bar­rassed idiocy. It’s only in its third day, but I have hope.

And I have hope for the week­end. We may go sail­ing among the midges. I hope you do, too.

A strange phe­nom­e­non is going on this morn­ing. We’re hav­ing an insect hatch in the neigh­bor­hood — Alan, stream­side ento­mol­o­gist, informs me they’re midges — and many are cling­ing to the screens, too lazy to go out and breed, I guess. So enter­pris­ing birds are hov­er­ing at the win­dows, pluck­ing them off. Some birds hover bet­ter than oth­ers, so this is a noisy busi­ness as they bat­ter the screens. (Plus the lawn crew just came to my neighbor’s; 10 min­utes of airport-level engine noise and they were done. Van­ished, along with the grass clippings.)

I don’t know if it’s our prox­im­ity to the lake, the heavy tree cover or what, but we gen­er­ally get a more inter­est­ing bug-and-bird show here than in Fort Wayne. The other day I saw a scar­let tan­ager bop­ping around the park strip. A first.

But I didn’t start this for the nature update, but to plug in two blog­gage bits I for­got, earlier:

I’m glad Lance has the patience for this, because some­one has to take apart the Human Events list of the “10 most harm­ful books of the 19th and 20th cen­turies.” Guess what’s No. 4 on the list. Ready? The Kin­sey Report. As if:

The Kin­sey Report? “The reports were designed to give a sci­en­tific gloss to the nor­mal­iza­tion of promis­cu­ity and deviancy,” the edi­tors explain. In other words, The Kin­sey Report invented homo­sex­u­al­ity and the homos caused AIDS. Before Alfred Kin­sey there were no gay men, only a few scout­mas­ters, lonely sailors, prep school cir­cle jerk­ers, and con­sid­er­ate hus­bands who went cruis­ing because they wouldn’t dream of insult­ing their wives by ask­ing them for a blow job.

Oh, and Hank explains the spe­cial magic that is Hank, via Poyn­ter. Fol­low the link within to the story they’re talk­ing about.

“I’m Pope Bene­dict XVI. When I get home from a hard day at the Vat­i­can, I like to pour myself a drink, relax and thank God for Springer on the radio.”

Right-wing maroons sling so much b.s. about their ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents that I don’t even keep track any­more, but one that really ran­kles is the one that says left­ies don’t have a sense of humor. When I heard the bumper quoted above on Air Amer­ica the other day, I laughed out loud. Maybe you had to be there. But it tick­led me.

There’s lots of talk radio to choose from in the D. We have WJR, the Rush/Paul J. Smith/Mitch Albom jug­ger­naut; WDTK, B-team con­ser­v­a­tive talk (Prager, Ingra­ham, Medved, Black­jack Bill Ben­nett, etc.); and Air Amer­ica, the call let­ters of which I can’t remem­ber. Plus the usual NPR assort­ment. And you know what? It all sucks.

I used to punch fran­ti­cally up and down the dial, look­ing for a decent song to lis­ten to. Now I punch around for some­thing, any­thing that doesn’t bore me to death or start me pound­ing the steer­ing wheel. Last week I switched between a dis­cus­sion on women in com­bat on NPR, Den­nis Prager sound­ing like the pompous wind­bag he is, Al Franken dron­ing dron­ing dron­ing and Rush, aka Insta-Change-the-Station.

I gave up and put on Pere Ubu, “Story of my Life.” Not a bad album.

When the best thing on Air Amer­ica is Jerry Springer, you know you’ve either found an unpol­ished gem or the outfit’s in trouble.

To-do list: Buy more Pere Ubu albums. Also, the new Beck.

What a day today — sunny, hot, luverly. I spent a chunk of it inside (work­ing! whee!), then a chunk at the East­ern Mar­ket, buy­ing vanilla beans for Project Ice Cream. They smelled so good I felt like stick­ing one up each nos­tril and see­ing what kind of laughs I got, but no. I just snorfed and sniffed and drove home over sur­face streets. I was look­ing for a sign I’d seen painted on a build­ing last week, when I was with­out a cam­era: “Den­tures of the Future.” Didn’t find it, but as usual, I found a gazil­lion other amaz­ing sights in that wrecked old man­sion of a city. Remind me of this gid­di­ness if I’m ever carjacked.

Speak­ing of wrecked old man­sions and the like, that seems a good time to move to the blog­gage, where we com­mend Ash­ley for send­ing us to “The Five-Bedroom, Six-Figure Root­less Life” in today’s NYT. Part of their series on class, which has so far been a big ol’ bore (richer peo­ple get bet­ter health care? Who knew?), this install­ment was worth the time. It’s about the Links, young, afflu­ent and on their way to…someplace else. For the time being, they’re in Alpharetta, Ga.:

(They) belong to a grow­ing seg­ment of the upper mid­dle class, exec­u­tive gyp­sies. The shock troops of com­pa­nies that con­tin­u­ally expand across the coun­try and abroad, they move every few years, from St. Louis to Seat­tle to Sin­ga­pore, one satel­lite sub­urb to another, hop­scotch­ing across islands far from the work­ing class and the urban poor.

“It’s as if they’re being molded by their com­pa­nies,” said Tina Davis, a top Alpharetta relo agent for the Cold­well Banker real estate firm. “Most of the peo­ple will tell you how long they’ll be here. It’s usu­ally two to four years.”

It’s been inter­est­ing to watch the reac­tion on the Deep Throat story. I never spent the time oth­ers did, try­ing to fig­ure out who he or she might be. Ulti­mately, what’s the point? The story is the point, not the source. And, hav­ing seen the first whiffs of crab­bi­ness last night from Pat Buchanan et al, I can’t say I was sur­prised to hear some are still car­ry­ing a torch for Nixon, but really, Ben Stein’s gone right off his rocker:

So, this is the great boast of the ene­mies of Richard Nixon, includ­ing Mark Felt: they made the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for the Cam­bo­dian geno­cide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as jus­tice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought him­self the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Wood­ward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bring­ing up the rear. Out of their smug arro­gance and con­tempt, they hatched the worst night­mare imag­in­able: geno­cide. I hope they are happy now — because their future looks pretty bleak to me.

Got that? Oppose Richard Nixon, accept respon­si­bil­ity for the Khmer Rouge. No won­der these folks have no prob­lem believ­ing Bill Clin­ton taught mil­lions of middle-schoolers to give one another oral sex.

Sat­i­riz­ing The Corner’s been done before. But the Poor Man does it again. Such an obvi­ous tar­get, and yet…it still works.

Oh, and what hap­pens if you take a ran­dom episode of “Dead­wood” and cut out all the clean parts? You’re left with seven min­utes of filth! Funny, but, you know, not safe for work or children.

And now I must go — got the new Elmore Leonard from the library today, and oh boy, does that promise a tooth­some evening of read­ing. So see you anon.

I have no idea why the fol­low­ing com­ment, from Jeff, was rejected by the Mov­able Type black­list, but what the hell. If you’re a Water­gate hob­by­ist, let’s use it to kick off a thread on Deep Throat dis­cus­sion. Add your own, if you’re so inclined:

.…and for those who haven’t fol­lowed the ongo­ing inside base­ball recrim­i­na­tions of the fel­low Nixo­ni­ans, it was fas­ci­nat­ing to lis­ten to G. Gordo shiv his lit­tle alter­na­tive real­ity into every inter­view he did, ellip­ti­cally enough to keep duck­ing a libel suit from John Dean. His the­ory, not voiced for ten years but pushed avidly the last twenty, is that the Water­gate bur­glary was entirely a John Dean ini­tia­tive, set out to recover info Dean feared the DNC had on his wife’s pur­ported pre-nuptual career as a high-priced call girl. Mo was a wild girl, but most unlikely to have been a lady o’ the eve, and even if ’twere all true, it doesn’t begin to explain all the other nefar­i­ous­ness in the White House at that time.

Ah, but it is all great polit­i­cal Kabuki for us mid-40’s age folk. Clo­sure, not so much.

By the way, I’m pretty sure it was the phrase “call girl” that got the com­ment smacked down, so if you want to con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion on that topic, come up with a euphemism to fool the black­list fil­ter — “hotel maid,” say.

Richard Cohen weighs in.