My daughter, our friends, and I were all set to go to Egypt this year. Woo hoo! Long-time dream and all that. We booked rooms, met and planned, bought visas. Everyone in the party was looking forward to the trip. Since my airline doesn’t fly directly to Cairo, we decided to fly into Tel Aviv and then go overland to Egypt.

Fast forward to today. Rampaging terroristic bulldozers, increasing rumors of Irani-Israeli war, random rocket attacks from the Gaza strip, not to mention riots over food and at border crossings in Egypt have dampened the ardour of some members of our party. So what’s a girl to do? It is simply uncivilized, not to mention downright counterproductive to friendship, to pressure people into taking a trip into a country or situation for which they feel great apprehension, even if your mouth is still drooling over the prospect of gob-smacking ancient art and monuments in close proximity to a market that would be any shopper’s wet dream. Alas—l’amour et les amis!

So all I have to do between now and July 9 is find a location that offers the same intrigue as Egypt with less of the danger and that is just as friendly to our poor lowly little war-smackered dollar.

There is a lot that sets this movie apart as an original—the all-female cast in an industry where 70 percent of the roles available are for males and Rosalind Russell’s dazzling debut as a comedic genius to name two. But it is a quirky little part in the middle—barely five minutes long—that really stood out for me. In the middle of this 1939 black and white film, they shot an entire fashion show in technicolor and it breaks out on the screen like a scarlet hibiscus bursting forth out of concrete. Since I was watching the movie on the Turner Classic Movie channel, I thought it was simply another of Ted’s attempts to monkey around with a movie classic, but I later found out that was an original feature of the film. It is exactly the kind of nonsensical whimsy you just gotta love in a George Cukor film.

FlyGirl commented on an entry titled, A story about "Winnie the Pooh: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh":

Is she potty trained yet? :)

Actually, my daughter loved Winnie the Pooh also when she was small. Come to think of it, she’s a lot bigger now and still seems to like Winnie the Pooh.

FlyGirl commented on an entry titled, A story about "Shoot 'Em Up":

Although I do like Paul Giamatti. He’s a very interesting actor.