the Friday Five

It's that time of year when the only new things on television are music/dance competitions (the 21st century answer to variety shows?). Yes, it's the season of reruns.

This week the clock turned back to last fall and the Glee kids went back to school and still got "slushied," and Michael hired his nephew on The Office, which was not something even he would be likely to repeat.

In honor of this annual Time Warp, please share five things worth a repeat. These could be books, movies, CDs, recipes, vacations, or even TV shows.

1. Television shows: How can any list not start with The West Wing? Great characters, great situations, and enough throw-away lines per episode to stock a whole season of any standard TV dramatic series. (Remember: "My God, King Lear is a good play..." -- "A verb would be good, sometime soon"...)

2. Books: Well -- I wish I could find a copy of Eric Mascall's Via Media; -- it can be downloaded from Google but only in the US of A, apparently.

3. Movies: A whole long list -- Song of the South--I missed one Very Anticipated showing of it the summer I turned six, because I woke up that morning with chicken pox...nearly broke my heart -- I should explain we were living in far northern British Columbia and a movie was a darn seldom thing, involving a projector and giant cans of film arriving by float plane from Juneau, very big deal indeed. But another great movie in that list was Carnegie Hall...and Kes, which is now available on DVD, worth seeing again.

4. Recipes: I wish I could recapture what one of my grandmothers used to do to a fried potato. And I wish I could recapture what the other grandmother could do with a chocolate cake, peppermint boiled frosting, and bitter chocolate topping...

5. Vacations: I would love to be going on a family driving vacation this summer... or taking a three-week trip to Italy with my children ... or planning to get on a big boat with a whole bunch of RevGals. Oh wait -- I am.