If you haven't yet tried Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream ice cream from Ben and Jerry's, you should. It is the most "just okay" ice cream you'll ever taste. Your tastebuds will be bombarded with a cavalcade of average, middle-of-the-road flavor.

Okay, so AmeriCone Dream never did much for me. I'm more of a Phish Food man, what can you do? However, on July 7, Colbert will be doing something Phish has never done: he'll throw the first pitch at a RiverDogs baseball game in Charleston, South Carolina (his hometown). He won't be throwing a ball, however, he'll be throwing a pint of AmeriCone Dream. I'd like to see the entire game played with a pint of ice cream, but that probably won't happen. Jerry Greenfield, the "Jerry" in "Ben and Jerry's" will catch the pint. Let's hope he does, because I'm pretty sure getting conked in the head by a pint of frozen ice cream is kind of painful, especially if one of those waffle cone shards get wedged in your eye.

In addition to tossing his ice cream, Colbert will also sit in on the radio broadcast during the game.

[via CC Insider]

Artist and animation historian Amid Amidi has a great piece on the Cartoon Brew blog about how focus grouping and executive decisions have ruined the current state of television animation. The main thrust of his piece has to do with the idea of creators pitching their shows, and that sometimes too much energy is put toward making a show seem appealing to a network executive rather than focusing on the actual quality of the show itself and making something audiences will truly enjoy. He points out that lionized directors from the Golden Age of animation such as Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery were unhindered by such bureaucratic bullshit and allowed to create cartoons on their own terms that are still enjoyable even today. Those old cartoons are not only great works of art, but they transcend generations. My own nieces and nephew enjoy Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny as much as I did as a kid, just as my father enjoyed them long before I was born.

Cartoonist Tony Millionaire is pitching an animated series based on his "Maakies" comic strip to Cartoon Network. Who the heck is Tony Millionaire? If you don't know, stop reading this, go to Maakies.com, and enjoy one of the best underground comics ever, a combination of drunken, sea-faring animals, surreal plotlines, and the stylistic approach of the great comic strip legend E.C. Segar. Then, while you're enjoying those strips, have someone else read the rest of this post and tell you about it later. I have not found any official news on this, even on Millionaire's site, but cartoonist Keith Knight mentioned on his blog that he saw a brief clip of the series at The Staple 2006 in Austin. Animated shorts based on "Maakies" were also shown on SNL a few years ago.

Update: Very special thanks to reader owen, who found this interview in which Millionaire talks about the new series. Also thanks to Robert for the direct link.

• Six Degrees, J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias), ABC: stories of six strangers in New York intertwine.
  
• Jericho, Jon Turteltaub, CBS: social, psychological, physical chaos ensue when a small town is cut off from the rest of the world after a nuclear disaster.
  
• Orpheus, Ridley & Tony Scott, CBS: a man's girlfriend is involved in a cult.
  
• Faceless, Joe Carnahan, FOX: prosecutor goes undercover to an underworld organization (a prosecutor?).
  
• Heroes, Tim Kring, NBC: everyday people discover they have super hero powers.
  
• Seeing Red, Graham Yost, NBC: a cop talks to dead people to solve cases.
  
• Untitled Alicia Keys project, Alicia Keys, UPN: inspired by the life of Alicia Keys, the show is about a 24-year-old musician who grew up in Hell's Kitchen.
• Underfunded, David Breckman & Rob Abrash, USA: a brilliant agent for the Canadian Secret Service solves cases despite the agency's severe lack of funding.