Coolness by Association

Thanks to the repository of useless knowledge that is the internet, I learn that today, Sept. 2, 2010, is 90210 Day: 9/02/10. This is, of course, absolutely unsignificant, and yet the date acts much as Proust's madeleine, bringing back to me memories of my early teenage years.

This is not because I ever watched Beverly Hills, 90210. I don't believe I ever saw an episode in its entirety, and it was seldom that I even saw clips. But it held a kind of allure for me at age 14 or 15, because it was the Hot Thing. I read about it in the papers, I heard commercials for new episodes on the radio (remember when radio was big enough business that TV advertised there?), and people talked about it. I wanted to know what the buzz was about, and I had a sneaking feeling that I was missing out on something. Certainly it seemed like the characters on the shows, regardless of their Hollywood problems, had achieved some ineffable level of coolness. Could mere association by viewing grant me coolness by osmosis?

Time has wreaked its usual havoc, and the actors and characters of 90210 have all slunk off to obscurity. I live a far more rich and beautiful life now than any scriptwriter would have the courage or imagination to portray. Popular shows come and go, but I myself endure. And that's pretty cool.

Joining the Ranks of the TV-ed

For something over a year now, we haven't had a TV. Our previous one had died a slow and painful death as a result of the injuries sustained while being knocked over several times by young Darwins scaling the entertainment cart. (Smashing a coffee table, on one occassion.) And as it was hard to justify spending several hundred dollars on something like a TV at the time, we simply cancelled the cable subscription (keeping the high speed internet, of course) and settled down to watching the occasional movie from Netflix on our iMac.

This also allowed us to go around making ourselves annoying by saying in regards to cultural attachments, "Why, we don't even have a TV."

Have we been watching The Amazing Race this season? We don't even have a TV right now.

Oh I just love Dancing With The Stars! Never seen it. We don't even have a TV.


Yes, it's been fun. I get a kick out of telling people that we don't have a TV, because it generally kicks off interesting conversations focusing around topics like: What do you do at night?

But all good things eventually have to come to an end, and good things which involve annoying those around you should probably come to an end sooner rather than later. Plus it does get a bit annoying, when we want to relax and watch a DVD, to have to do so clustered around the computer on chairs. So when an opportunity came up last week to get a 32" flat panel TV at a very low price through the company at which a work, we decided to fulfill MrsDarwin's decorating dream of getting a TV which could hang up out of the way on a wall and not take up any valuable floor or furniture space.

I expect we'll enjoy the new addition to the "digital home" -- but I must confess that I will miss having the chance to brag about not having a TV. We aren't completely giving in, however. Thus far, the plan is for this to be a DVD viewer only. We are not getting cable back (and reception is non-existant in our neighborhood) -- at least for now.

Pop Culture Watch: Roadkill Edition

The holidays -- that neutrally named period leading up to the solemnity of the birth of Our Lord during which it is a requirement of consumer culture that we all rush about terribly fast seeking the best deals on the planet on items destined for others and ourselves -- are approaching, and as my duties this year involve running the "holiday core team" tasked with making sure that all the consumer electronics sales for Nameless Large Corporate Employer go off well from Nov. 26th through Jan 2nd, things have been rather franetic at work of late.

In all this I am reminded of a scene in a movie -- some sort of slacker comedy I saw years ago whose title escapes me -- in which a character brings himself to tears going on a rant about the poor, innocent, starving coyote who is endlessly tortured by a cruel, sadistic road runner.

Perhaps one of our readers who has retained more pop culture cred than I will recall what movie I'm thinking of. Regardless, I think I have been won over. The young ones have been watching the Looney Toons Golden Collection Vol. 3 via netflix, and having watched the Road Runner repeatedly break laws of reality which only adhere in the world of the cartoon when they serve to injure the coyote, and listening to his insufferable "Beep, beep", I think I'm ready to say: The Road Runner is a punk.

More to the point, he is a force of chaos. I'm in Wile E's camp. The bird needs to be lunch. He's exactly the sort of creature who would suddenly decide to revise all his pricing after it's already been sent to the site team for execution.