Unless you're the one particular dude with a suburban Detroit improv joint who won. His essay got him $100k and, as mentioned in this blog previously, a role in introducing the new Edy's flavor, "Red, White & No More Blues." The flavor has strawberry and blueberry swirls mixed in vanilla ice cream, with a "Recovery never tasted so good" badge on it.

It's national economic crisis-based, according to Dreyer's (PDF).

At the time of Rocky Road's birth in 1929, almost all ice cream was made in three flavors "“ vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry "“ and was always served as sundaes. Dreyer added walnuts (later replaced with almonds) to his chocolate ice cream and, using his wife's sewing shears, cut marshmallows into bite-sized pieces to make the first batch of Rocky Road. Dreyer and Edy picked a flavor name to give folks something to smile about in the face of the Great Depression. Rocky Road became America's first blockbuster flavor and remains one of the best-selling flavors of all time.

I wish there were a few more sources for the naming. As Wikipedia points out, there's at least one alternate story about the ingredients. But Google turns up nothing more … except a book called The Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning interviews a Dreyer's ethic chief and the author notes on the Rocky Road story, "It's not a long drawn out narrative, yet the imagery is rich and generates associations." Various results in Google News put the invention a few weeks after the stock market crash in '29, but none are sourced.

Building off this story/legend/whatever, Edy's-Dreyer's is now running a contest where you help introduce a national economic crisis-based flavor and get $100,000 to turn around your Rocky Road of a life.

First, they took on your Dairy Queen. Now, as friend Sheri photo-txted from a supermarket, they're messing with your grocer's freezer. What next? They run at you on the street and kick the cone from your hand? I wouldn't put it past them. (Yogen Fruz Google Squad, welcome back.)

First, I won. Then Monica won. Now we want you to win. Edy's Slow Churned Neighborhood Salute has returned for a new summer of ice cream party community-building madness. There are 1,500 chances to win, and you can now even enter by video. Once again, to inspire you, here's what victory looks like, minus the vodka and my refrigerator:

Congratulations to friend and colleague Monica, who received her party-in-a-box last month, on the heels of her essay winning Edy's neighborhood competition and preceding the great freezer-conquering arrival of the ice cream itself. I'm glad the win and party last year could be the start of excellence. Here's Monica's 300-words-or-less essay:

A set of earplugs and a mask block out the lawn crew and the sun. A caffeine jolt sheds my sleepiness while most climb into bed. The smell of dinner wafts into my apartment as I sit with a bowl of cereal.

I work the overnight shift. My life has been lived upside down for the past six months, sleeping while others work, working while others sleep. I know my neighbors only through their sounds, having moved into my apartment the same week I started this shift. Across the hall, a crescendo of sneezes, usually delivered in triplets. To my right, the shrill phone that often rings until the caller gives up. Above me, a vacuum's hum as I leave for work at 9 p.m. These are my neighbors: a comforting symphony, reminding me I am still a part of the waking world, though I spend my 'days' in near solitude and silence.

Why am I hoping for an Edy's ice cream party (apart from the obvious goodness)? I envision after the event that noises will now be known as neighbors, routines will now have faces, and the seed of community will have been planted. My work shift may not change, but my sense of community would be turned upside down.

Who can win in '09? If you have interest, let me know. I want a cut.

Spotted walking through one of the casinos on the Reno strip. (I was walking, not the sign. But that would've been cool. Like the flashing Esquire cover.)

My taste buds were so confused. All of the logo deliciousness was there, and I knew about the coastal name differences, but still. Well, at McDonald's you can buy a Krusty Burger with cheese, right? But they don't call it a Krusty Burger with cheese. 

I wondered about the ice cream parties. Did Dreyers have their own? What were their parties like? What kind of upside-down neighborhoods won them? Would Cooper Patrick grow up to win one? Would he one day take my ice cream? Should I be concerned?

This blog, April, on Edy's Cookies 'N Dreamz ice cream: "Yes, you read correctly — chocolate cookies and cream. I'm hoping they're testing the flavor for a permanent run. If that dream ever happens, we can debate regular cookies and cream vs. chocolate cookies and cream. The debate can rage all night and day, and we can consume multiple cartons of ice cream to make sure we reach the right decision."

Should've looked it up!

YumSugar, January, on a vote involving Edy's American Idol-themed flavors, including Cookies 'N Dreamz: "You have until May 31 to vote, but if you cast your vote before April 29, you will be entered in a contest to win a trip to the American Idol finale. The winning flavor will end up in the regular Slow Churned Light lineup."

Vote here. I've cast my ballot for Cookies 'N Dreamz over the two other candidates I've tried, Cheesecake Diva and Mint Karaoke Cookie. The latter flavor is a mint cookies and cream, which certainly gets my attention but loses to more chocolate. The other two flavors involve orange and banana. While I've expanded my palette plenty the last few years (mmm, foie gras), I'm not about to vote for fruit ice cream.

You stand by your flavor. The Post has a story this month about one woman's quest for her favorite flavor at her supermarket. Even when the situation becomes a disaster, she stands by her flavor.

It'd be nice to say here that I was holding the line for some good reason, maybe in honor of the recently departed Irvine Robbins of Baskin-Robbins fame. But apparently I have a lot of learn about my long-time favorite flavor. Cookies and cream, one of the original 31? No way. Turns out the flavor is about the same age as I am. The Edy's man with a claim to the invention, official taster John Harrison, eats his ice cream with a golden spoon.

Harrison is a fourth-generation ice cream man. Read more here about his cookies and cream creation — the byproduct of a peach crop hailstorm — and the thin line between success and failure.

It's that time of year again, Marketing Daily reminds us. Edy's Slow Churned Neighborhood Salute is waiting for your essays, and this year's prizes are even sweeter. In addition to the 12 cartons of ice cream — my winnings fed 80 people last year — there are now four boxes of ice cream bars, a commeorative ice cream scoop and an apron.

If my friends were to follow in my ice cream footsteps, I would be so proud and so happy to eat their ice cream. They could enjoy and chronicle the saga, as this blog did last year: the essay, the victory, the waiting and the party.

One 2008 follow-up to those posts: Last month I bought a carton of the Hollywood Cheesecake I'd enjoyed at the party. The flavor was tasty but, more importantly, led me to limited edition Cookies 'N Dreamz, cookies and cream where the ice cream is chocolate and currently in my freezer.

Yes, you read correctly — chocolate cookies and cream. I'm hoping they're testing the flavor for a permanent run. If that dream ever happens, we can debate regular cookies and cream vs. chocolate cookies and cream. The debate can rage all night and day, and we can consume multiple cartons of ice cream to make sure we reach the right decision. Until then, we yearn.

Or "How I Spent My Summer, by Patrick Cooper."

Comments at work hit a million this week, so we celebrated yesterday. Also, the long-awaited ice cream party went down.

The apartment people weren't interested. I gave them their shot. Gave them the essay, gave them the flyer. They appreciated the offer but felt they would had to buy many more cartons of ice cream to go with my 12. The ice cream had to live in my freezer for nearly two weeks.

But I knew what I had to do. Eating the cartons myself would've been awful ice cream karma. I wasn't a big karma person myself, but I did have a TiVo Season Pass for My Name Is Earl. (If you're just catching up on my ice cream saga now, read the essay, the victory news and the karmic ramifications.)

So, I found another venue. By a count of the cups left over, the ice cream fed about 80 people. Cleaning up, I grabbed a lingering spoonful from each carton. The "Take the Cake" yellow cake-flavored ice cream tasted amazingly like yellow cake. With my mileage varying there, I got my biggest kick elsewhere, from "Hollywood Cheesecake." It tasted like everything good about cheesecake.

My brain ended the day on a bit of Three 6 Mafia note, so sleep wasn't terrific. But that gave me the chance to start today with a loosely related link to the Smithereen's version of Behind the Wall of Sleep. The Globe caught me up on that one in the car a couple weeks ago, and I postponed giving up on the station.

Nats tonight with all sort of people in beautiful Section 512, and Nats finale at RFK on Sunday. A woman was likely a non-native speaker of English asked me in the apartment elevator the other day if you could bring bags into KFC Stadium. I replied and motioned that they checked your bag but that you could bring it in. But secretly I thought to myself how a KFC Stadium would need a mascot that was a giant biscuit.

A lot of people have been asking about the ice cream. The ice cream does not arrive until September. In the meantime, the FAQ contains such awesome sentences as "What if I don't want to host a block party," "DO NOT touch the dry ice with bare hands," "How many cartons of ice cream will I receive and how big are they," and "I have some neighbors who are lactose intolerant. Is there any flexibility with the ice cream?"

Aside from the details, there's one important thing to note here. When the ice cream does arrive, I feel I have to share it with my neighbors in my building. There's no requirement to do so, but I watch enough My Name Is Earl. I know what goes on.

Plus, I recently experienced an act of ice cream karma and would enjoy another. After I brought ice cream to a coworker's going away potluck, most of the ice cream was left over, and the host brought it back to work. He wasn't too concerned what happened with it then. Despite multiple opportunities to take it home, even on days when I mistakenly thought I had no ice cream in my freezer, I did not.

Because, as I've explained here or elsewhere before, doing so would be breaking the rules of the potluck. In medieval times, the knights of the court — wearing their helmets or "pots" on their heads — would gather their food before great battles against armies and dragons and eat it together on the round table. They would share and share alike as they would soon share the triumphs and sorrows of the battlefield. All were expected to contribute to the meal as they would contribute to the battle. If they did not give food, and instead only took from what others gave, they would be cursed. Their luck would be ruined. A dragon would eat them.

So instead we add a random Friday ice cream break. The two cartons were empty in 20 minutes. People were happy and volunteered to do it again in the future. It's all community building! If only I could give ice cream to our readers. It would totally speed the process. Coconutwork Journalism. Network Neapolitan. Cookies 'n' cream … 'n' community.

But this work talk brings me to my other point. If you don't work for a major national news organization, perhaps you can join the ice cream industry's follow-up contest, "Dibs: Quest for a Cooler Workplace."

Tell them what you're doing to make your workplace "cooler," and you could win a freezer full of ice cream for a month.

They give you 228 containers of Dibs and a "bunker-style" freezer rental. The highlights from the official rules are many: "Grand Prize winner must receive permission from his/her company or employer to have the freezer on company property…. Standard electricity rate charges will apply, and are the responsibility of the company. … Winner will receive two subsequent deliveries of Edy's Dibs ice cream snacks… If the freezer is not empty, it will be filled to capacity and winner will forfeit any containers of Edy's Dibs ice cream snacks that do not fit into the freezer at that time."