high vs. low culture?

I know what you're thinking: what the hell have you been doing that you haven't blogged in more than two months?! It's neither as boring as you might imagine nor as exciting as you might either. I just haven't felt like blogging. I've seen celebrities, I've seen movies, I've made all sorts of random observations. Allie has been here during that time, and I have been procrastinating majorly on preparation for my doctoral exams. We even went to Disneyland for Al's birthday a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, what the hell finally inspired me to write? Something pretty odd. Something pretty embarrassing if I was actually ashamed of my long-ago obsession with Beverly Hills 90210.

Huh? Let me explain.

I don't know if I blogged about this before, and I'm not going to bother looking through my archives because it's just not worth it. But they are remaking 90210 (with the new shorter title), and it premieres on Tuesday. There are billboards all over Los Angeles promoting it, I've read stuff about it, and Allie keeps asking if we're going to watch the show. I always tell her "Of course!"

I almost blogged a couple of weeks ago when I was driving east on Beverly going home from somewhere and spotted some filming going on. I got excited when I noticed that a corner building displayed a new, shiny label of "The Peach Pit." 90210!!

This morning when I woke up, I realized something. Yesterday we picked up one of those invite-pass thingies for advance movie screenings. I've been here three years and I've never actually been to one before. Usually they aren't interesting to me, but this one is The Soloist, Joe Wright's latest film. I'm really looking forward to this movie, and it might actually be a work-in-progress one since the film hasn't been rated and it's not due out until mid-November. And this screening is on Tuesday night, directly conflicting with my 90210 plans. I don't have Tivo and apparently my VCR doesn't work with my HDTV. I can only hope that the CW streams full episodes after they air.

I went to the website, and it appears they do stream episodes. (Apparently they are making big-time references to the original show in the TV promotional spots that I've never seen since I have never ever watched the CW; they've got the music and the same photo shot promo thing of the cast.) Hopefully they'll do this one, but I probably won't know until it's over. And I'm going to have to risk it, unless Al can't go because she's working late on Tuesday, because I'm not obsessed enough to actually stay home and watch TV. That would be embarrassing!

Maybe one day I'll blog about how interesting it is that they are remaking a show that had a ten year run that only ended eight years ago. In the meantime, I'll just say it's some cool postmodern shit (and nostalgia).