I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream and on Sunday July 19 sweet treat lovers across the country chanted this phrase in honor of National Ice Cream Day.

For such an important date, I decided to search for an ice cream parlor that was making the day extra special. It didn’t take long to find the Webster Groves’ beloved ice cream spot, Serendipity.

“Serendipity suggests that what you have found isn't just a ‘happy accident’ but better than you could ever have imagined,” owner Beckie Jacobs said.

And true to Jacobs's word, Serendipity was better than I could have ever imagined. Serendipity is known for its great variety of flavors that are added and changed on a regular basis. On any given day stop in to try ice cream flavors such as Bailey’s Irish Cream, apple, cinnamon, cantaloupe, egg nog, dulce de leche and even Blow Pop. All the ice cream is homemade and Jacobs can experiment with flavors a lot.

Let them eat cake in Soulard this weekend where the legacies of Queen Marie Antoinette & King Louis XVI will be alive and well…. at least until they meet the guillotine on Friday night.

Among the highlights of this year’s 23rd annual Bastille Days will be a parade, a cake-eating contest and a mock beheading of the King and Queen.

St. Louis was founded for French King Louis XIV by two French explorers, Pierre Laclède de Liguest and Auguste Chouteau in 1763. By 1840, the growing city of St. Louis reached south into the "Frenchtown" area, a mix of common fields and French-owned farms. This area quickly urbanized and became known as Soulard. Bastille Days provides a variety of activities and events that honor the July 14 French national Holiday, Bastille Day, and embrace the strong French heritage that is part of St. Louis, and especially the Soulard area’s, history.

Friday night’s festivities begin at 6:00 p.m. with a farewell gathering at the corner of Russell and Menard for Queen Marie Antoinette & King Louis. Visitors can watch the King and Queen march off to their dreaded fate as part of a parade that includes marching crewes and royalty, led by the “Joia” percussion group. At 6:45 p.m. a mock beheading of the King & Queen will happen in Soulard Market Park located at 8th and Lafayette.

In case you haven’t heard, the MLB All-Star game is being played in at Busch Stadium this year.

Oh, so you have heard. I guess the perpetual commercials on television, the unmissable billboards lining the highways and the continuous publicity events throughout the city must have clued you in.  Probably the most obvious and recognizable of the publicity campaigns are the miniature arches that have invaded famous St. Louis sites.

Major League Baseball Properties, in conjunction with the City of St. Louis, the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Sports Commission, has completed the installation of fifteen, ten-foot tall All-Star themed arches produced by MLB-licensee Forever Collectibles.

Car and Driver recently posted a study about drivers' reaction times when sending, reading and receiving text messages.  Some pretty scary statistics resulted.  Did you know that texting can add up to 70 feet in a driver's reaction time if he or she is driving at 70 mph? Fender-bender accidents or totaled cars are a likely result!

Of four scenarios tested, unimpaired driver, drunk driver, driver reading e-mail and driver sending a text message, the texting driver had the slowest reaction time. Currently, 14 states have laws making texting illegal while driving and more states are currently debating the hot-button issue. Over 66% of drivers between 18 and 24 claim to text while driving and this percentage is on the rise within that age group and among others as well. Toastedrav headed to University City's Loop to hit the streets and ask St. Louis how it feels about texting while driving.

Thank you MLB All-Star game for bringing an array of great events to St. Louis this month.

From July 1-15 Play Ball 2009: A Visual Retrospective of Baseball will be at the downtown Crowne Plaza Hotel.  This exhibit is, in the simplest description, art for charities.  Live paintings, shows, and auctions will all be hosted over several days to raise money for charities such as the ALS Association, the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the Garth Brooks Teammates for Kids Foundation and the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure.

The entire event is based around the artist Malcolm Farley. He has been called “America’s Artist” and has a love for painting “America’s game.” He is the perfect artist for the baseball crazy city of St. Louis and the baseball-frenzied atmosphere that will be taking over with the arrival of the All Star game.