You guys are having such a good time in the comments I’m thinking I should just turn the wheel over to you. Surely you have more to say than I do. I just wrote eight paragraphs of an obituary of Edward Kennedy, then thought Jeez, let the man die first. Then I went back to bed for an hour. I need a very long bike ride and I plan to take it, but before I do so, let me fish this comment by mild-mannered Jeff out of the comments previous and hold it up to the light:

OK, i finally got around to reading the second page of the “purity ball” story and looking at the slide show. For the record, “ewwwww.”

Having typed that, i gotta type this — have y’all been to any Midwestern ceremonial of any of the following: Job’s Daughters, Rainbow Girls, DeMolay, Key Club, Eastern Star, Knights of Pythias, Civil Air Patrol (yes, especially their youth dept.), Grange youth auxiliary, or DAR? I’ve ended up sitting through all these and more doing the opening prayer or singing a solo at the request of the new officer installation or something. They’re all off-kilter rehearsals for weddings and even, in a dim sort of way, funerals, and they share elements of the kitschy and creepy all wound up in Enlightenment symbolism and patriotic fervor and a vague kind of practical mysticism that may use the name “Jesus” with some emphasis but isn’t worried about being Christian at all.

What i find most fascinating (as opposed to appalling) about this is how it’s another expression of the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon in American society — these are events that replace what used to be spread through a whole nine-month, Sept./May programmatic year of youth organizations that you joined and worked through the offices for . . . 12 officers for a group that had maybe 20 members at most meetings.

Those ongoing organizations are fading fast, and “events” are getting cobbled together to replace them, like . . . the Purity Ball. Concentrated kitsch and intense focus on a relationship that needs to play out over time, not find an artificial focus on one evening.

I still laugh at the horror-stricken look on my wife’s face when i pointed out to her, decades after, the Freudian aspect of the major service clubs in her high school for boys and girls — I kid you not, Key Club and Lockets. No points for guessing which was which!

I used to date a boy who was in DeMolay, if an eighth-grader carrying on a long-distance correspondence with a gawky geek in southern Ohio can be called “dating.” I met him when I was in Ironton visiting a friend, and he came to Columbus for a DeMolay convention. I kept saying, “DeMo-wha-?” and I’m still not sure what, exactly, it is, although it has something to do with the Masons. Fortunately, they have a website, which explains:

DeMolay is an organization dedicated to preparing young men to lead successful, happy, and productive lives. Basing its approach on timeless principles and practical, hands-on experience, DeMolay opens doors for young men aged 12 to 21 by developing the civic awareness, personal responsibility and leadership skills so vitally needed in society today. DeMolay combines this serious mission with a fun approach that builds important bonds of friendship among members in more than 1,000 chapters worldwide.

Jeff’s right. One thousand chapters or not, these outfits are dying dying dying. They don’t fit with modern life. Those ladies’ clubs where dowagers gathered in flowered hats to discuss gardening and good works? Going and gone. When I was a columnist, every so often I’d accept a speaking invitation from the Rotary or Lions or (my favorite) the Optimists, and it was like One Hour in Middle-Management Hell. I was frequently struck by the rituals — the group singing, the pledge of allegiance, the pledge of brotherhood, repeated loudly. (Roar lions, roar lions! Bite ‘em bite ‘em bite ‘em!)

It didn’t work out with Mr. DeMolay. I hope he found a nice Rainbow Girl and settled into a nice southern Ohio life. I will always remember him fondly, though, because he took me to see “A Clockwork Orange.”

Since we’re letting others carry my load today, let’s toss it to Michael Musto:

There seem to be more publicists working the Sex and the City movie than hairdressers gathered around Burt Reynolds’ noggin trying to make his shit look real.

Man, I’ll say. Is there a photograph of the Fightin’ Four walking toward the camera in color-coordinated outfits that hasn’t been published yet? It’s like a downmarket version of “The Wire” blitz last winter. And the movie doesn’t open for another week! I may have to go on entertainment-section hiatus to get through it.

Bossy has fallen in love with Rachel Maddow. I haven’t, although I like her fine. She’s strangely compelling to watch, mainly because of the disconnect between her confidence in her ideas and expression, and her plain discomfort in her TV makeup and pearl-gray jacket. She looks like a man who wandered, jacketless, into a restaurant with a dress code, and has to wear one out of the lost-and-found box. I know she probably doesn’t normally spend a lot of time thinking about the semiotics of the smoky eye, and neither do I, so I’ll leave that to her makeup artist. But she was on “On the Media” talking about those jackets, and she said MSNBC finds them for her. MSNBC doesn’t need my financial support, so I won’t take up a collection, but I’d like to suggest they buy her another two or three of them, preferably in deeper colors that will flatter her fine skin. If I were dressing her I’d also put in a word for a necklace or two, maybe some very very subtle silver earrings, but that would probably burn her flesh the way the smoky eye seems to. Bossy has unearthed a picture of her in Buddy Holly frames, and she looks perfectly natural. That’s what she should wear on the air.

(When I was on TV, people were always giving me advice about my turnout. I said to myself, “Boy, I hope I never waste time picking apart TV-news outfits.” Shows what I knew.)

A few of you reader folks have been saying, in comments, that I’m a liberal/socialist for supporting Obama, and I’d like to correct that, although I wonder why I bother, because I suspect some of you would describe anyone to the left of Dick Cheney as such, but here goes: I’m not supporting the Democratic ticket, whatever it shapes up to be, for lots of specific policy reasons. I want us to start developing some sort of solution to the health-care mess, and to get out of Iraq, and to figure out what we’re going to do with the part of the country that has been cut out the American bargain in recent years. That’s a heavy load, and I don’t know if the Illinois senator can carry it all on those slender shoulders of his. But I do know this: No one running for president today can be worse at the job than the current occupant of the Oval Office. So all the talk about whether Obama’s ready or if he’s been tested or if he did something in Chicago that isn’t absolutely kosher good-government best-practices seems irrelevant at this point. All the candidates are imperfect, but for Republican in particular to say, “He’s not qualified,” after eight years of blood-drenched fiascos just seems, I dunno, galling. I’m not getting a tattoo. I’m not buying a T-shirt. But I’m pulling the lever with the sense that whoever wins will be an improvement, and some will represent more improvement than others.

That’s why John McCain is putting as much distance between himself and George W. Bush as is humanly possible, and that’s why, barring a disaster, Obama’s the favorite to win. Yes, it’s that bad. Get the hook.

Back tomorrow. More rested, I hope.

I had a meeting this morning in Troy. Normal travel time to this particular venue is 25 minutes. I gave myself 30, and arrived 31 minutes late. Ah, well. I only need two words to tell you why — crash, construction — and it was worth the trip anyway, because someone told me a good story, and now I offer it to you:

It was about the very first website design the storyteller ever did. It was 1993, before the Web. The client, a large automotive supplier, wanted an online resource for the company’s many locations, and came to an ad agency to get one. The agency’s biggest issue was with billing; no one could agree on what, exactly, they were doing, and how the client should be charged — was it media, service or something else? They finally settled on a quote of $700,000, based on billable staff hours. The client paid without dickering.

Today’s clients were shown a website design that would make the automotive supplier’s site look like a cave painting (which is was, comparatively). They will pay considerably less than $700,000. Don’t emerging technologies have interesting economics?

I like this account for the same reason Diane Keaton’s character in “Manhattan” did novelizations: It’s easy, and it pays well. And I like it for lots of non-specific ones that stem from it being my sole non-journalism writing gig, and as such, offers me entree into the exciting world of American business. My boss on this project can sling meeting jargon with the best of them, and I like to jot it down, if only to look busy in the meetings — “build out” is a big phrase now, and today I heard “loop” used as a verb in a non-knitting sense. We’re going to build out our timeline, and loop Bob and Bill along the way.

Unless Bob and Bill get caught in traffic, that is. Interesting tidbit from the jam: When I knew I was going to be late, I called to tell them so. I didn’t have the number in my phone, but I did have it in my laptop. Since I was stopped, I opened it up and searched my inbox. This was near an underpass. You Mac users know that when a wifi-enabled laptop can’t find its home network, it scans for open ones in the area and gives you a dialogue box: “None of your trusted wireless networks can be found. Would you like to join (the one with the strongest signal)?” Today that one was called “bridge 1,” presumably the overpass just ahead. It had a wifi network, presumably for the traffic signals. I can’t think what else a bridge would need wireless for, unless it’s surfing bridge porn during lulls in traffic.

I wonder if the network cost $700,000 to set up. Likely far, far more. And what do we really need? A new bridge.

Because of my late start and busy morning, no bloggage. But feel free to bat the ball around in the comments anyway, while I go look for some, or maybe clean my family room. What to do, what to do?

My husband should have been an archaeologist. He really has the knack. Putting in our garden in Fort Wayne, he turned up half an ancient horseshoe and an Indian-head penny. Replacing some bushes here a couple years ago, he found a St. Joseph figurine someone had buried, probably in hopes of selling the place.

Then, yesterday, while planting a rosebush for our anniversary, look what turned up:

Two half-pint milk bottles, 3-cent deposit, property of Dairy Container Corp., Detroit, Mich. I suspect they were dropped there by the workers pouring the foundation back in 1947. I found several on eBay and other sites, just like it, in the $10 price range. But I’m not going to sell ‘em. They’ll make cute little vases for the roses, whenever they come. If they come. Did I mention we had a frost warning last night?

And that the pool opens in a week?

Thought about Obama on my bike ride today, and something I learned riding horses:

When approaching a fence, do not look at the fence. Find a focal point beyond the fence, and look at that. What is a fence, anyway? A stride in the air. Keep your rhythm, don’t pick pick pick at the reins, go forward confidently, and stay focused on that spot beyond. Never ever look down; did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?

If you do it right, you should go ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump and-jump ba-dump ba-dump and-turn, and find the next focal point.

(This is also where we get the expression “take it in stride.”)

This is how I’m approaching November. The election is the fence, but I’m looking at Thanksgiving, to raising my glass with best wishes to President-elect Obama and his family. Early signs are encouraging, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a Jack Russell terrier ran out on the course and started nipping at our heels, but I’m looking to November. I’m ready to wash these Republicans right out of my hair. (Ever see a horse kick a dog? This happened to my trainer once. She turned a horse out in the paddock one morning, and it went scooting off, kicking up its heels, which attracted the Jack Russell, who rushed in to put a stop to such frivolity. The next thing she saw was the white blur of the terrier, Triscuit, flying through the air. Thud. She ran to Triscuit, who was lying in the dirt, apparently dead. “Oh my God! Triscuit!” As she mourned, Triscuit’s eyes opened, blinked a few times, and then she hopped to her feet and trotted out of the ring. What horse? What kick? For purposes of this story, I think we should change Triscuit’s name to Michelle Malkin.)

I expect the next few months will be nasty, brutish and very very long, but I’m staying focused on Thanksgiving. HBO is running promos for “Recount,” and in one, Bob Balaban, playing Ben Ginsberg, intones, “The stain of the Clinton administration is being washed away…” That’s how I’m thinking about the campaign. The stain-scrubbing.

You’ve probably all read this Peggy Noonan column by now. The stopped clock on one of her twice-a-day sweet spots, or early rope-a-dope to break the horse’s rhythm? I put nothing beyond this administration and its apologists, but maybe this is just Peggy, angling for some better TV work. There’s always a good living in criticizing your own tribe — you’re a Fresh New Voice Unafraid to Challenge Conventional Wisdom. She’s got an IRA to stock, too.

A wee bit o’ bloggage:

God, this is so creepy it makes my skin crawl. We’ve discussed “purity balls” here before, but this shit is positively Islamic, only grosser:

Loss tinged many at the ball. Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16. Mr. Clark brought Ashley, in her white satin gown, to show her that he loved her like a daughter, he said, something he felt he needed to underscore after Ashley’s father left her family a year ago.

It’s too bad Ashley’s father left. He could probably have shared in the four fat goats and six laying hens the elderly Mr. Clark paid for her “promise” to his teenage son.

OK, back to work. Make merry!

If my energy level in the morning matches my intentions the night before, I’m taking a weight-training class as you read this. On the table for discussion until I get back:

I saw a kid in my local Kroger yesterday wearing an Obama T-shirt. It looked like he’d had it for a while. Obama rally in Oregon draws 75,000. I lived through the Reagan revolution, but can’t recall anyone wearing RR T-shirts outside of a political convention. Cult of personality, thirst for change, or neither? Early warning that Obama will rock the house in November, or just a blue-America hiccup? Discuss.

And if you prefer the silly, here’s this: Princess Beatrice was attacked by the same milliner that brought down poor Sarah Jessica Parker last week. When will Scotland Yard get on the case? How long will these butterflies and their thirst for hair product be allowed to humiliate such lovely women? (And when someone wears a hat like this, what are you supposed to say? “Nice hat?”

Back in a bit.

Hello, I’m tired. Greenfield Village was wonderful. I followed the wise parent’s guide to driving on field trips and kept my mouth shut. And so I learned that when you’ve had botox, the first thing you should do is call a meeting and make it a family secret, because your kid is going to talk about it with her friends.

Good thing I have no secrets, because God knows they’ve certainly been discussed in back seats en route to field trips.

I was supposed to be a Learning Team Leader, or something, for my group as we wandered through the complex, and lord knows I tried, but history is one of those things that most people don’t appreciate until they’re 40, and I can’t do anything about that. What was significant about the printing press in colonial America? the kids were instructed to answer. I gave them the talking points and tried to explain the bigger picture — the power of information, cheaply and easily disseminated throughout society, but when you’re 11, even the internet isn’t a comparison. The wheel turns.

It is interesting to see what others find interesting. One girl was fascinated by the looms, a boy by the farmhouse garden, my own by — lord knows why or how — the millinery shop. I think it was the hatpin collection that did it. That’s some lethal-looking history.

And now, I prepare to collapse in a heap. Thanks for all the recipes. Next on the to-do list, sifting through them all and printing the best-sounding ones. Another item for the to-do list — just what I need.

Actually, I do. I’m coming to the end of a few projects this month, and need to repack the schedule for a few more. Maybe a cookbook — Two Days in May: Cookin’ With Nance’s Commenters — available in .pdf form for download.

What’s good to blog about when you’re tired? How about YouTube? This one’s going around this morning:

Surprise! A radio talk-show host who failed high-school history. Color me astonished. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d just admitted it early on and shut up; everyone has holes in even their basic education, and one of the hallmarks of adulthood is being able to say, “Really? I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that before? How interesting.” But he couldn’t, and he did the cable two-step: When in Doubt, Just Keep Yelling.

Next, I always wanted to do those Ann Landers “confidentials,” so today, CONFIDENTIAL to JoodyB: Did you get to the Was (Not Was) show in the Twin Cities? If not, a brief guerilla clip of one of the show’s best jokes, the “Sunshine Superfly” mashup, captured in Boston:

That’s a tiny stage.

You want more? Here’s a golden oldie, Anita Bryant getting a faceful of pie, not from the Florida sunshine tree:

Question for the room: When did pies in the face become the universal gesture for “I mock you, but I don’t find you dangerous enough to shoot”? Is it a vaudeville thing, or does it go back earlier than that?

Non-YT bloggage:

Star Jones: “If I punched every bitch who called me fat, it would be dead bitches all up and down the highway.” No need to click through; that’s the punchline.

Wear a T-shirt with a mild witticism about underage drinking? Get suspended!

Off to buy bagels. Enjoy your weekend.

Our situation so far: Today our heroine is a) sleep-deprived and b) on deadline. Tomorrow I’m tied up on parental business, starting in early morning — yet another all-day field trip to pad out the last weeks of the school year. I didn’t drive for the last one (to Lansing), so I volunteered for this one, fool that I am. It’s to Greenfield Village, which we visited with the Girl Scouts just last month. Which means I’m at risk for boredom. But. Because driving also involves chaperone duties, I won’t be able to duck out at lunch and find some Arab food. (If Greenfield Village is Dearborn’s No. 1 tourist attraction, Arab food has to be No. 2.) And because driving means packing your car with other people’s children, I won’t be able to stop at an Arab bakery (No. 3) on the way home, either. Even though it would be good and good for you, educational and tasty.

So today it’s one big post that will have to carry you through tomorrow. I know you, my little chiclets, are fully capable of bouncing the ball around for that long, and today/tomorrow you’re going to have help. Our regular reader/commenter Jolene told me to tuck this away for a rainy day (and whaddaya know, it is raining):

What’s your go-to kitchen favorite?

Inspired by this WashPost blog post, which has links to several great recipes within, we’re looking for dishes you can make in your sleep, those things you whip up when you want something simple and good, when takeout won’t satisfy. Nothing too complicated, please; let’s work under the assumption none of us has a lot of time, but still want to eat something good.

I’ll go first:

If Alan and I divorce, it will be over this dish, which we both once loved but Alan has recently declared himself sick to death of. Well, that just moves it onto the lunch menu, which I eat by myself most days. And it is?

Black beans and rice

One medium onion
One colored pepper of the stoplight family (green, red, yellow)
One 14-ounce can black beans
One or two cups of rice, uncooked

Start the rice. Dice the onion and pepper and saute in oil (I prefer olive, but just-plain will do) until tender, then add beans (drained or undrained, depending on whether you like it soupy). Lower the heat and wait for the rice to finish. When it’s done and the beans are warmed through, make a bed of rice and ladle the beans on top. That’s it.

What I like about this dish is its tabula rasa-ness — you can add so much to it or just leave it alone. Tomatoes, hot peppers/sauce, leftover chicken, other vegetables, whatever you like that traditionally marries well with beans — it’s all good. It’s both a protein and a high-fiber gut-scrubber, which means it builds both muscles and farts. While you’re eating it, take note that beans and rice is a staple dish across the globe and has been for as long as both plants have been in cultivation. Four billion souls can’t be wrong.

What’s yours? Anyone who contributes Arab-food recipes gets extra points for making that stupid opening paragraph have a hidden point.

* Inside joke for Fort Wayners: Pat Parsley was the byline on the recipe-exchange column in my old newspaper. The woman who wrote it, most weeks, was named Susan. More MSM lies!

A p.s. to yesterday’s story of John and Sammy’s house: You can’t see it, but underneath that tree is their nearly new Prius, and I’m told it survived the crash with only a few cosmetic dents. The massive oak’s trunk fell directly on the reinforced passenger compartment, something to remember the next time your uncle says he wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those death traps.

And it was a big tree:

OK.

You hardly have to be a grizzled veteran of internet culture wars to know this story would be red meat for the blogs:

Marche Taylor’s prom night experience wasn’t what you would call “the norm.” That’s because instead of a night of dancing and hanging out with friends, the Madison High School senior ended up in a confrontation with school officials and escorted out in handcuffs. Officials said her dress was inappropriate for the prom.

I urge you to check out the video. “Inappropriate” doesn’t really describe it. The photo of Marche being rousted, taken as she passed under the hotel’s lit-up entrance, looks like nothing so much as a Vegas hooker bust.

This story got less attention:

Jasmine Donald calls herself an “over-the-top person,” so it’s fitting she rode to her prom last week in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce Phantom.

Donald, 18, wanted to make a bold statement. And for $6,000, she did, thanks to a gift from her grandmother.

The Belleville teen stepped from the $340,000 luxury car into a crowd of paparazzi snapping shots of her walking into the once-in-a-lifetime event.

At least for a night, Donald led the lifestyle of the rich and famous — complete with hired photographers.

Both are pretty depressing, for any number of reasons. The first girl obviously has no one in her life to tell her one doesn’t go to a high-school dance dressed like Li’l Kim, the second no one to say a $6,000 gift from one’s grandmother should be spent on college, not a goddamn posse of fake paparazzi taking your picture. Even a car would last longer. (Hint to others considering this insane idea: When buying an experience from a jar, ask yourself, “Will the actor/participants in this laugh at me behind their backs?” If the answer is yes, save your money. Also: When you spend a hefty four-figure sum to have something be “all about me,” you need to reexamine your priorities.)

I guess it’s to be expected that a couple of shallow teenagers — and many other shallow teenagers, whose stories don’t make the paper — see their high-school proms as some sort of low-rent Oscar night. (Aided and abetted, I might add, by newspaper reporters who helpfully describe them as “once-in-a-lifetime” events. At the moment I am having a once-in-a-lifetime Tuesday morning. You don’t see me booking photographers.) They’ve been seduced by the cult of celebrity, ever detail of which is a filthy lie. The New Yorker had a great piece last week on the fashion world’s undisputed master of Photoshop, Pascal Dangin. How great is he? This great:

For a charity auction a few years back, the photographer Patrick Demarchelier donated a private portrait session. The lot sold, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to the wife of a very rich man. It was her wish to pose on the couple’s yacht. “I call her, I say, ‘I come to your yacht at sunset, I take your picture,’ ” Demarchelier recalled not long ago. He took a dinghy to the larger boat, where he was greeted by the woman, who, to his surprise, was not wearing any clothes.

“I want a picture that will excite my husband,” she said.

Capturing such an image, by Demarchelier’s reckoning, proved to be difficult. “I cannot take good picture,” he said. “Short legs, so much done to her face it was flat.” Demarchelier finished the sitting and wondered what to do. Eventually, he picked up the phone: “I call Pascal. ‘Make her legs long!’ ”

Pascal Dangin can make your legs long. But you need to read The New Yorker to learn that. I doubt poor Marche Taylor does so.

And to think, just last week I was feeling sorry for Mischa Barton and her cottage-cheese ass. Screw her. At least she got a few gift bags out of being a celebrity.

So let’s make this a mostly I Hate Celebrities/No Photoshop bloggage roundup today:

Who had to sit behind Sarah Jessica Parker at the “Sex and the City” premiere in London yesterday? My sympathies. (Psst, SJP: That thing was meant for the horses outside.)

And, as usual, the Daily Mail is on the We Point It Out Because We CARE beat, re: SJP’s hands.

OK, a late start today, maybe some improvement later, but for now, I gotta get to work. Carry on.

Seventeen years ago — the same week in August 1991 that there was a coup in the Soviet Union and rioting in Crown Heights — Alan and I went backpacking on Isle Royale for something like 10 days. We learned of these events upon our emergence from the backcountry, and considered turning around and going back in.

But that was only two-thirds of the bad news. Our friends J.C. and Sammy’s house was destroyed by a tree that fell from the front yard onto their house in Atlanta. All wasn’t lost. They were unharmed, and the enormous insurance check allowed them to rebuild the house and convert an attic into a second floor.

Which was a very nice second floor, until yesterday:

In case you’re wondering, I was only the 35th person to say, “What are the odds?” upon hearing this. Deb was the 36th. Courage, friends.

You younger readers may want to sit down for this next part: Once upon a time, the only thing you needed for great sex was a can-do attitude and a filthy mind. All the other stuff that goes along for the ride — raw oysters, lingerie, a firm mattress, bourbon — is just frippery. Fun frippery, sure, but not necessary. How this universal human experience of joy came to be seen as wanting, I have no idea. Maybe someone thought plain old sex was too ’70s, too granola, too hairy-legged or something. When I learned young people were piercing their tongues for the express purpose of “improving” oral sex, I could only shake my head and recall the old joke, about what a man says after the worst bj of his life. (“That was great.”) I tell you this so you can know where I’m coming from when I tell you what I found in my Sunday newspaper ad insert, among the grocery ads. Yes, it’s a marquee position for KY’s latest concoction, a “couples lubricant” called Yours & Mine.

(And yes, let me pause for a moment to imagine the many geezers I toiled under in the newspaper business — the same ones who fretted over every too-high hemline in a fashion story and too-suggestive title in the movie listings — peeing their pants over this. Alas, they are no longer in a position to turn down advertising, even pre-print, and needless to say, if “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” were being made into a movie today, no one would have to change its title to “About Last Night” for fear of not being able to advertise it. It might help if they cast someone other than Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, however.)

At this point, I’d like to add a little musical accompaniment:

Now that I’m a geezer myself, of course I wondered why “he” needs a lubricant at all, unless Yours & Mine is just an elaborate cover for a gay thing, in which case I don’t think they’d be advertising with salad dressing and barbecue sauce.

But as you can see, the hook isn’t just that there are two flavors here. Hers is “thrilling,” his is “exciting,” and then there’s a strong hint that together, they’re greater than the sum of their parts — “one amazing reaction.” Are they referring to plain old friction, or is this like one of those tricks Brian Cranston pulls in “Breaking Bad”?

The ad is coy, the website, even more so. (Warning: Extreme Flash-heavy.) My guess is, there’s some sort of chemical reaction when they get together. What sort, I don’t know, but I can speculate. Perhaps the baking soda/vinegar kind, or maybe the Mentos/Diet Coke variety. I hope it’s not aluminum foil and toilet cleaner, as that would be very unsexy. But you never know. I think drilling a hole in your tongue isn’t exactly the height of erotica, and you’ve seen what I know.

Someone with a deeper background in advertising might like to weigh in and tell us about how difficult it is to sell sex products in traditional media. The old-line MSM may be dying, but they still wrangle millions of eyeballs on a daily basis, and successfully placing an ad like this — one that frankly sells the sex, not “feminine comfort” or some other euphemism — is no small accomplishment. Even if the pitch has to be made to, er, married couples. On the website, two mini-ads feature “Mr. and Mrs.” couples, and the tagline is “Couples that play together…stay together.”

In other words: Do it for the children!

Speaking of marital relations, Jenna Bush’s wedding went off without a hitch (that we know of), and the pictures (that we saw) were lovely. An old pro of the wedding racket told me once all brides either gain or lose weight going into the big day, and it seems Jenna was a loser — she really looks sensational in her dress. The party-girl beer fat is gone now that she’s grown up a bit. She’s taking hubs’ name, settling down in Baltimore and we won’t hear from her again until the baby or rehab. It’s NotJenna I’m a little worried about now:

I see her sister picked out a meh dress and made her put flowers in her hair — entirely within her rights as the bride — but there’s something about that smile that looks a little …off. And why is she doing that thing with her shoulder?

Recent rotator-cuff surgery? Mainlining “America’s Next Top Model” reruns? Or just whatever mom takes every morning to get through her days?

Not much bloggage today, but there’s this: Yet another first-the-earth-cooled explanation of the credit crisis, in simple enough language that a toddler could understand, via This American Life. It’s my firm belief that if Barack Obama started talking about Wall Street in language like this, John McCain would surrender by June 1 and, if we were really lucky, we might be able to rush Washington with pitchforks and torches. In the meantime, listen and simmer.

I am, at least on a night when I can see Was (Not Was):

Don Was introduces the band, The Majestic, Detroit.

And guess who came out for the encore? Mitch Ryder. He sang “Devil With a Blue Dress.” I would have preferred “Rock and Roll,” but no one asked me. A great band, a great night.

Added: Full transcript of Don Was’ Freep interview from Friday. Bonus quote from Keith Richards: “When you think, you stink.” Proving Richards is a Zen master, or maybe just channeling Yogi Berra.