9021-FAIL

I was so excited all day yesterday about the season premiere of 90210 and the series premiere of the new Melrose Place. Really. Even Ben was looking (somewhat) forward to the 2 hours of terrible television that we had planned. Its just a guilty pleasure for us, so we watched 90210 all last year despite the fact that it was pretty unrealistic and did no justice to the original 9-0. We decided we wanted to watch Melrose for the same reasons. What I'm trying to say here is that neither one of us really went into this with high expectations.

I had planned to give a full recap of the show based on the notes that I took last night, but the more I think about it - it really wasn't that interesting. Instead, I'll talk about the merits of the show since that might be slightly more likely to keep your attention. (Slightly being the operative word there). I would apologize for any spoilers I include in here, but I honestly do not feel one bit bad about spoiling it for you here. If you read this and still have intentions to watch it, you are a glutton for punishment.

Evidently, Annie's call to the police at the end of last season resulted in all of West Beverly going to summer school due to their underage drinking. Totally a reasonable punishment, right? WRONG. When I got caught drinking in high school I was suspended for 3 days. Not relegated to summer school. (True story. I would maybe tell it some day but my mom reads this blog and I'm pretty sure she's still pissed at me about that!) Digression aside, everyone hates Annie now and she's about to turn Emo on us. Adriana, Naomi, and Silver are BFF now as evidenced by their coordinating Wayfarers. (Was this whole show one giant advertisement for Wayfarers? Seems like it to me)

Rut-roh. This is turning into a recap rather than a discussion of the show's merits. Indulge me though.

So the whole show basically takes place at the Beverly Hills Beach Club, which is odd considering Beverly Hills isn't even on the beach. But whatever. Navid shows up in a yellow Ferrari (I could be wrong about that, I don't know cars). Now, I don't care how rich you are. Why on earth would you buy your child a car like that? Another totally unrealistic element of our beloved show. Now, I do realize that in the original show Dylan did drive a Porsche but that worked somehow. Not sure why but it did.

Naomi is clearly not over her heartbreak with Liam and is crazy about every male she sees or speaks to. I think maybe the best line in the whole show last night was when Naomi was talking to her friends about the (older) man she had met at Barneys "... he's so brilliant. He reads books you guys - for fun!!"

Yeah, read that line again. Its priceless.

Probably the only other highlight of the show was when Naomi had a little run-in with an older soccer mom at the BHBC. MommaSoccer makes fun of the girls' clothing choices, Naomi asks MommaSoccer to come to their beach bash that night, MommaSoccer says the high schoolers should be required to have chaperone's at BHBC to which Naomi brilliantly responds by saying "over-50's shouldn't be allowed to wear sleeveless". SNARK. FEST. 2009. BHBC EDITION!

A bit later in the show we find out that TheReader is in fact, MommaSoccer's husband. TWIST!!

Lots of things happen but frankly, it was pretty drama-filled and I don't feel like rehashing so I'm going to skip ahead to the beach bash. Scene: everyone is dancing and having a good time. That's pretty believable. Then the camera pans out a little bit and we discover that ....

Everyone is doing the very same dance!!!!!

Yes!!! Choreographed high school dance parties. Doesn't everyone do that? Iloveit!

At the end, we see that Annie was most likely date-raped (it seems that she had no recollection) and Naomi manages to get hold of the naked picture of her with intentions of passing it around the school.

Next up: Annie officially becomes an Emo.

In summary, the show was bad. Worse than usual. It seems that they pack too much drama into one episode. I know the real 90210 dealt with many of these same issues but that was over a 10 year span. Clearly, this 9-0 isn't going to survive 10 years so they are trying to pack all the drama into 3 or 4 seasons.

I would love to talk about Melrose Place but: a) this is getting long and b) it is worse than terrible. As in I only watched about 15 minutes of it. No way on earth it will be picked up for another season.

Update

This is just too good not to share! Remember my post the other day about the cigar dude wanting to use my picture in some photo group?

This was his message to me:
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called The Beauty of a smoking Woman, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

I clicked "no thanks" and responded to him in my comments section:
I'm sorry Stefgauloises ... I don't know that the person in this picture with me would approve so I had to decline your request

His response:
awww.. so sorry Katie.. but thank you anyway ;-))
all the best from germany
Stef ;-)==~~

Easy out, right? So then of course I created the starred out picture to put it on my blog. Well since I did that through a Flickr program, it saved the new photo in Flickr. I thought nothing of it.

Then I get another message on the newly saved picture:
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called The Beauty of a smoking Woman, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

Since he was so persistent, it really did make me a little curious. I tried to click into the link he put to his gallery but that group was private. Of course that wierded me out, so I just went into this person's public photo stream. It wasn't anything terrible but still strange -- lots of women smoking very provocatavley. All of the photos were posed and looked like professional shots. The photo that he asked me about? Completley a novelty picture. So I really don't understand why he wanted my picture so badly.

BUT

Against my better judgement, I responded to him:
Can I have permission to view the other photos in this group before I agree?

I don't mean to be weird, but I'm just curious as to what I'm agreeing to!

The response:
sure Katie....i would like to invite you to join "The Beauty of a smoking Woman" but i only can send you an invite to join my group when you add me as a contact or friend...the flickr police forced me to make this group private and so i only can invite contacts or friends..... means people who have me on their contact and friends list....

i hope you understand.. i am so sorry for this trouble

Unfourtch for me, I had already clicked on the email to view his group before I saw this message on my Flickr account.

I didn't ever even get into looking at his photos because I read some of the information on his group site and it was just ... EW.

FILTHY.

So, it is a fetish site. I had a bad feeling about it from the very first message but I really didn't think it was going to be something sooooo drastic. I really just thought it was some dude who liked smoking pictures. I mean that was totally plausable in my mind -- some people like pictures of kittens, cars, and all different things. Oh well. Live and learn, right? Needless to say I told him that I was a fairly conservative person and would prefer that he did not use my image in his group.

I'm not so sure about this whole internet thing

I have always stored my photos on these online galleries. I always thought it was the easiest place to upload and then later purchase my pictures. I have a CD somewhere for most of these pictures so I could get them back if it was ever necessary, but I really just like having them organized online. This was working pretty well for me until I realized that my photos were on several different sites. I switched around for various reasons -- usually because I wanted to buy product from one site that wasn't available on another. Or I liked certain formatting options on a different site better. Whatever the reason, the point is that my pictures were spread in various places.

In an effort to reduce the need for me to reduce the number of different usernames/passwords, I decided that I really needed to make the switch to one site. Now, I realize it makes sense to move everything to whatever site that I have the most on but that is Kodak photo gallery and I don't like it nearly as much as Picasa and Flickr. I decided that since I liked Flickr best, I would move everything over there. (And yes, I know this task will take me a year or longer) So I started.

For whatever reason, I uploaded some (not even close to all) of my pictures from my trip to Cuba 2 years ago. Totally legit, trip btw ... I still have proof that I had liscense to go in case Obama reads my blog and decides to give me hell about it. This was one of the pictures in that set:

The other girl's face wasn't blocked out on my flickr site, but I did this since I was posting it on my blog and she doesn't have any clue this blog exists. (I post pictures of friends and family that read my blog, but they can always tell me to take them down if they have concerns)

I logged onto my Flickr today and had a message from an administrator of some site/group called The Beauty of a Smoking Woman asking permission to add this photo to their set. I declined for various reasons, but it did get me thinking. I'm not so sure I like all this random stuff about me all over the internetz.

I know that I can make that photo private, and I can make my blog private but really once its online it is out there. Plus, I like for people to read my blog and look at my pictures. It is too late for me to go private at this point, and I really don't post or write anything that I would be all that embarassed about so there is no reason really.

I know I sound hypocritical, you don't need to tell me that. I'm just thinking out loud. On one hand, I enjoy blogging and putting my pictures out there but on the other you just never know if there is some creep lurking out there. I'm not saying that this Smoking Beauty person is a creep at all (because probably a creep wouldn't ask my permission) but this is just what got me to thinking.

I'm probably still going to add my photos up to Flickr. I may just make my profile private so that only friends and family can see. Not sure.

That's all.

Fancy Pants

I have a confession to make. I guess it isn't a true confession given that I am posting it on the interwebs for anyone to find. But here goes ....

I have committed a major fashion faux pas. I am wearing the same pair of pants that I wore yesterday.

Is that horrible? I mean they're just black work pants. Aren't they all the same anyway?

I would like to try to defend myself for making this terrible decision but the reality is that it was done out of pure laziness. I did not re-hang my pants when I changed out of work clothes last night. I also failed to select an outfit last night. Therefore, when I got up this morning and saw that pair of pants laying in my closet I simply defaulted to the easiest thing.

Pretty much the only thing I have going for me today is that I did a good job of adding a pop of color with red shoes and a fun necklace. But then I read somewhere that red shoes are whorish. So I really don't know. I guess I'm just a lazy, fashion-challenged, whore.