Hank Stuever, my favorite Washington Post writer, hit another one of the park this week. (I just got home from softball practice.) Style section Stuever examines the legacy of the flip-flop.

Somewhere a television camera crew is always waiting so it can shoot videotape of anonymous people from behind as they walk by, wearing their flip-flops and tank tops and stretchy shorts and eating enormous ice cream cones. The tape will serve as B-roll for the next alarming expose of national obesity rates.

A little Googling turns up as well that Stuever has a Web site, all set up to promote his book arriving in stores this summer, Off Ramp. Despite the promotion, he's still got some of his best stories posted and has some interesting links, including his Slate diary from a couple years ago.

Meanwhile, L.A. Times auto critic Dan Neil is digging in again and setting off to defend the Pulitzer like the castle.

Neil adds book reviewing to his agenda, conparing two new books about the American relationship between roads and billboards. Writes Neil: "By the early 1920s, America's roadsides were tatterdemalions littered with garish billboard advertisements of all description."

Tatterdemalions? Ragamuffins. Points for obscurity there.

His review of Mazda RX-8 further pushes the close-in bounds of my vocabulary. "The 'Rx' is a prescription-strength emetic for anybody in the rear seats when this fervid little coupe is in full thrash mode," Neil writes. Emetic? "An agent that causes vomiting," apparently.

But you know we don't come to Neil for the words. We come for the word-play. Fortunately, he restates later:

Thanks to a compact motor, the hood slopes away for good forward visibility. In the rear seats, however, the visibility is quite limited — so it's hard to lock your eyes on the horizon for vestibular relief. Mazda would probably say the seats are for occasional use. That occasion is hurling.

Bookmarked a while back, Slate contributor Emily Yoffe tries to go 48 hours without talking or writing to communicate. Unlike people who make similar attempts and avoid people, Yoffe actually goes about living her life. The ending's sweet and makes you glad you read about a Human Guinea Pig.

What I hear:

"Him and his men, come in the club like bootypants."

What Lauryn Hill says:

"Him and his men, come in the club like houligans."

Which does make more sense.

One of my favorite Cheers guest roles was Carla's son Ludlow (picture), the un-Tortelli-like product of her brief relationship with a world-famous psychologist. Coming across that episode during this weekend TV Land's marathon, I wondered where the kid actor was today. Apparently, Jarrett Lennon has grown up and made himself a Web site.

I was walking in the door last night and heard this chirping off in the side bushes. The cicadas had quieted down for the night — a sleep that always surprises me; how can the cicadas sleep better than I do? — but the noisemaker didn't sound to be a cricket either. They seemed to have quieted down too, which didn't do much to explain why they were in my basement every early morning this spring. But the almost quiet was okay. I got to thinking about the County Fair song and which was the stranger choice, using crickets as background music or singing about winning big stuffed bears?

Back on May 17, we checked various search sources to see how cicadas were faring with the common Web surfer. Searches for "cicada" yielded then:

-eBay: 276 items

-CafePress: 481 items

-Google News: 516 items

-Google Groups: 19,200 items

-Google: 253,000 items

As of this morning, all of those numbers had jumped, most significantly by percentage in the realms of sales (eBay, Cafepress and vanilla Google):

-eBay: 406 items

-CafePress: 874 items

-Google News: 1,410 items

-Google Groups: 20,300 items

-Google: 332,000 items

Topping the eBay results was a copy of the Cicada Hop. Lyrics and an MP3 sample had been posted here.

I was listening to Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life recently. The best part of the album (and there were many good parts) was that there were no cicadas.

The New York Times finally discovers Cicadaville.com. Despite the lateness, the paper mentions an interesting comparison between Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Went to the Avenue yesterday afternoon to rent John Cusack's Better Off Dead. The movie got a major thumbs up from check-out guy at the video store, whose approval on top of actually renting you the movie makes the store doubly cool to the now ego-added amateur consumer.

Check-out guy: "This is a great movie."

Me: "Yeah it is."

Check-out guy: "Have you seen it before?"

Me: "Yeah a few times. But my brother hasn't seen it."

Check-out guy: "Ah yeah, great movie."

Me: "Two dollars!"

Check-out guy: "Two dollars!"

Out back in the parking lot, one of those Greatest Generation parking lots confined by the amount of dirt friends could move and their generosity to their neighbors, there was a red Cherokee-style SUV with the trunk door up.

A young woman in white dotted sundress and a man in a dark suit stood in the back. She was struggling to wrap a gift there and he stood around in the full and upright position, as he was wearing a neck brace.

I wondered where on that block they had purchases the gift: the CVS, the liquor store, the Chinese restaurant, the investment services above the Chinese restaurant, the pastry shop, the video store, the toy store, or '50s diner?

Given the couple's ridiculous condition, any of the above seemed reasonable. But I woke up this morning and realized they had probably just bought themselves some Scotch tape.

C'est la vie. I next thought of the ice truck I followed for a while on the road the other day. It trailed a stream of water from the back the whole time. Maybe that driver too had a better explanation?

That's what it is.

By now, you've read Matt Brochu's "What she doesn't know will kill you," his work-of-art column for the University of Massachusetts' Daily Collegian. Or if you haven't, you're reading it right now. Go read. It's good for you.

Done? Now read the rest of the story.