It's 98 degrees in Brooklyn. The Weather Channel website says it "feels like" 107, but I say it "feels like" hell. If I could, I'd curl around the base of the toilet with my panting dog. But I can't, so I find more conventional, homo sapiens ways to cool off: straddling fans, sticking ice cubes in the waistband of my underwear, and visiting ice cream parlors.

I love ice cream any day of the year, but this August, the creamy delight cools like central air. Never mind that my midsection has noticeably thickened since Sunday; we're having a heat wave, and I don't care if I'm too fat to can-can. I watch the kind scoopers stack sugar cones with tears in my eyes. Even my lactose intolerance can't stop me.

What is it about ice cream anyway? It's cited as a comfort food, right up there with mashed potatoes. Ice cream socials please kids and their parents equally, and a cute date will split a cone with you from the truck outside the restaurant while you ponder how to invite them over. Wherever there is ice cream, life seems happy and positive."That particular industry--ice cream--it's very unique," says Victor Amezcua. Amezcua owned and operated the now defunct Lovin' Spoonful ice cream parlor in Ann Arbor, MI. "Everybody going in there wants to be pleased. It's a preconceived idea that they're gonna go in, they're gonna have ice cream, and they're gonna enjoy it. They come in in a good mood. It's unlike any other business."

According to Amezcua, ice cream is little more than milk and oxygen. Lovin' Spoonful made all of its own ice cream from scratch. Essentially, an ice cream churner incorporates air into heavy cream while slowly freezing it. Blades within the barrel of the churner continually scrape the sides and rotate the outer layers back to the center; otherwise, the outer layer of cream would freeze, and you'd be left with ice candy. The ice cream maker that Amezcua used could finish a batch of ice cream in 10 minutes.

To tell a whether your local parlor serves up good quality ice cream, Amezcua advises to note the sensation on the roof of your mouth.

"You feel a slight coating-that's what the butter fat will translate to," he says. "The higher butter fat content, the better."

Ice cream's infinite flavor offerings (unlike smashed taters) make it a popular choice for social eats. No matter who you're with, everyone in your company can find a flavor they'll enjoy. If you decide to make your own ice cream, Amezcua says you'll find natural and artificial permutations of anything. Just be sure to buy concentrated varieties; because of its heaviness, cream requires a lot to flavor it. So-called "natural" vanilla bean ice cream is very popular at the moment, but Amezcua warns that natural vanilla beans alone might not be enough to flavor ice cream. For his vanilla ice cream, Amezcua used four times concentrated vanilla, referred to as "four fold" in the business.

"It was also 70 dollars a gallon," Amezcua warns.

When asked about his favorite flavors, Amezcua admits to missing a flavor he created and produced in the shop called Midnight Desire-delectable bittersweet chocolate with fudge swirls and brownie pieces. Two others were lemon chiffon and pumpkin.

"I like these obscure flavors," he said. "I want the ones that aren't going all the time."

Toppings (another area in which mashed potatoes fail to deliver) provide an opportunity to innovate and personalize your favorite flavor, though Amezcua himself says he prefers the toppings inside the ice cream.

"I'm not a big topping guy," he says. "I like the ice cream, the texture of it. But toppings are the sh-t. You could get anything at all. Any kind of cookie pre ground for you, brownie toppings, sprinkles, M&Ms, nuts, all the syrups."

To spruce up a plain scoop o' vanilla, Amezcua suggests smothering it with freshly pureed raspberries and doling out a shot of Chambord.

"Bailey's, same thing," Amezcua winks.

Prior to and since owning the parlor, Amezcua has bartended for a living. Though at first glance, the two experiences seem like polar opposites, he noticed several interesting similarities over the years. First and foremost, knowing how to mix flavors.

"That's where the term mixologist comes into play," he says. "Understanding that one flavor goes well with another, like chocolate and raspberry."

Often, customers walk into an ice cream parlor or a bar with a certain unnamed hankering. It's both the scooper and the bartender's job to determine what the customer likes and steer them in a direction that would satisfy them. Amezcua says that, in either scenario, providing that pleasure is very rewarding, but the ice cream parlor fulfilled him more than any bar has since.

"With ice cream, you come in feeling like a child," he says. "It's amazing. Everybody was glad to see you, everybody had a good time, and it was so much easier. All these kids-they just love you. They see you as the ice cream man. I miss the warm fuzzy I get when those kids look up and say, 'I wanna be an ice cream man just like you.'"

Today, in this oppressive heat, I watch a Baskin Robbins ice cream man mound strawberry cheesecake, chocolate chip cookie dough, and rum raisin into a waffle cone for me. His right forearm bulges noticeably compared to his scrawny, non-scooping left. I chuckle to myself. Heed Amezcua's advice: "Don't arm wrestle an ice cream scooper. You'll always lose."