ah, the suburban art project

Apparently, Arlington County can't believe that there's a nude mermaid made of tree swimming in a couple's front yard (so not homeowner's association approved). I can't believe the wood artist they hired to make the thing gets $300 a foot and that a wife is encouraging her husband's deciduous breast fetish, but, that's life.

Speaking of large, how about those breasts? he is asked.

"Nancy had told me she wanted her well-endowed," Dustin says. "I said the way the tree had grown, I didn't think she'd be big-chested. . . . When I realized she was going to be rather large, I intended to have her hair fall over her nipples."

The Jacksons -- make that Paul Jackson -- pressed for full torso nudity, arguing that because she is turned partly toward the house, the breasts wouldn't be that noticeable from the street. "And let's subtly put some nipples in there because everybody has nipples," he told Dustin. (Subtle is the operative word; the nipples are not much bigger than a quarter.)

As a conciliatory gesture to the Banikas family, whose view is second-best to his own, Paul Jackson inquired of Bob Banikas, as the project neared the end, whether the breasts should be reduced a bit.

"Don't touch them!" Banikas replied. "They're my inspiration in the morning!"

Banikas sees the lady in his rearview mirror on weekdays when he backs his Hummer H2 out of the garage. "Then I'm ready to go face my day no matter what happens," he says.

Of course, Banikas has ruffled some feathers of his own in the neighborhood, driving his maroon Hummer. Drivers have shouted at him; some have given him the bird, and we don't mean the kind perched on the mermaid's outstretched hand. It would seem that neither his tank nor the sea creature next door are "the Arlington way." The Malibu way, maybe.