"Brenda, your brother's totally dope"

Yes, I will admit it: I watched the first couple episodes of the new 90210. I would love to say that I watched it purely as a sort of media anthropologist, and this is partially true, but some deranged part of me also wanted to be in middle school again, when things were simple and Beverly Hills, 90210 was second only to The X-Files and Friends as the highlight of my week. Yeah, I watched a lot of tv in middle school. Weird how I watched more tv than at any other point in my life, and yet got the best grades I've ever gotten. But I digress...

So I watched the new show, hoping that I would love it as much as I loved the old one, or at least as much as I loved the first season of The OC when I watched it on dvd. No such luck. The new series is clunky and devoid of interesting character-- save, of course, for the ones who showed up from the original series. I find that I'm almost exclusively interested in the Kelly-Taylor-dating-fellow-teacher-and-has-4-year-old-with-unnamed-
former-cast-member plotline. To hell with Annie (who bothers the living crap out of me), or Naomi (who is trying to reinstate the perm as a fashion statement), or Ethan or whoever the fuck. Kelly Taylor and Brenda Walsh? Now THOSE are characters I care about. Those are characters I followed for ten seasons, or I suppose it was more like 7, because I wasn't allowed to watch the show when it began in 1990. In 1990 I was 7 years old, and in retrospect I wouldn't allow my 7 year old to watch it either, but man, at the time I was furious.

So I will continue to watch the new series, if only for a) the original characters' plotlines (I am holding out hope that the father of Kelly's baby turns out to be Dylan and that Luke Perry comes back, perhaps finally looking his age), and b) because Jessica Walters, she of Arrested Development, occasionally graces the show. In the meantime, though, I will relive past glory and watch the original series on veoh.com, starting with the pilot, which I watched tonight... and which was so hilariously 90's it was almost painful. Jason Priestly's mullet, Jennie Garth's clothes, the SOUNDTRACK, for the love of god, and of course, the guest appearance by Rex Manning, or to use his real name, Maxwell Caulfield. Yes, Maxwell Caulfield from Empire Records and Grease 2. Oh, I miss the 90's.

The best thing about rewatching the show though? The theme song. Easily one of the best theme songs ever written for a tv show. The "modern" remix for the new series can't hold a candle to the old, twangy one I hummed along with in 6th grade. It's interesting to see the first few episodes, which I've only ever seen in reruns (again, I wasn't allowed to watch the earlier seasons), and how they had a doofy, sitcom-esque opening credit sequence for the song. So not as classy as the slick, white-background opening sequence they had in the later seasons.

It's also funny to see the plot lines they clearly abandoned after the pilot, like the vice principal hitting on the Spanish teacher. What? And it's great to watch it now that I know my way around LA, and can name the beaches they film at, the streets they're on, etc. But anyway. I do have more interesting things to think about than 1990's tv shows. Really! I just can't think of them right now.

things i have wikipedia'd today

Lance Amstrong

Greenland

Minke whales

Donna Martin

Danger Mouse

The Beaumont Children


...just a snapshot of where my mind wanders when you let it.

meet Avery

I got to feed Baby Carrillo!


(also, ugh, my hair is officially ugly)

I didn't look nearly as awkward as Kevin feeding Baby Carrillo:



She is the prettiest newborn I've ever seen.

where "terrific" is spelled P-R-I-M-A-R-Y

I have often waxed nostalgic about Pacific Primary and the amazing community of people it houses, but indulge me: I'm going to do it again, and with good reason.

Last week, Pac Prim opened the Orange Sun School, a brand spankin' new building across the street from the original building. It's been a long time coming- I've worked at Pacific Primary, off and on, since I was 18, and expanding enrollment has been a dream of the director, Belann's, for that entire time. Probably longer. Pac Prim gets about 250 applications a year for what amounts to about 20 spots for new kids-- it would be about 35, but siblings are automatically granted admission, so they tend to take up a good chunk of the available spots. When I was Sunroom Coordinator part of my job was to file applications and keep them up to date when each part was sent in, and it was just heartbreaking to read about all these amazing families, families who value education via discovery more than anything, and to know that most of them would never get in. I was also responsible for greeting applicants (or their parents) when they came on a tour of the school, and meeting them made it even harder! I have no idea how Belann could decide on which 20 families to accept- if I were her I would have just put them all in a hat and taken the first 20 that were pulled out.

Original Building:


The year that I was Sunroom Coordinator was a big one- the school purchased the condemned church across the street and began a capital campaign to turn it into a second site. It was all up in the air for awhile, but things finally went through with the mortgage and everything, and plans were soon being drawn up. During my first year at AFI, the church was mostly used for storage of all the stuff we never had room for in the first building. Then last summer they knocked it down and broke ground on the new building. Even more applications, a new batch of teachers, and a ton of hard work later, and Pac Prim opened its Orange Sun School last week to 75 smiling new kids and their families.

New Building:


On Sunday, they had a block party to celebrate the opening. I was so bummed to have missed it! I know I missed a lot of my old favorites by doing so-- both kids I knew when I was in the Sunroom, and kids I knew way back when I was a Summer Assistant or a sub. Uncle Owen spoke (Uncle Owen and Aunt Kris were part of the 5 families that founded the school in the 70's) and they did a giant Pacific Primary circle and from the looks of THE PHOTOS ONLINE, it was one big happy San Francisco event. I know I'm a total hippie and it gets even worse when I talk about Pac Prim, but... I'm just so proud of all of them and so excited that more kids will get to experience this wonderful place.


(giant Pac Prim circle at graduation, August 2007)


Sonia, Anna, Raia, and Sam on the playground at the old building.


(Dalia on in the MLK Day Peace Parade, 2006)

When I was home a few weeks ago I went to visit everyone at school, and Belann gave me a tour of the new building. It's beautiful-- a little too new and shiny for my taste, but a couple years' worth of kids should fix that soon enough. It's almost completely green, energy-wise, and there are bathrooms in every class! The best part is that on the second floor- yes, there are two whole floors- there's a giant multipurpose room for Heidi, the music and movement specialist, and Elyse, the expressive arts teacher, to have their classes. Heidi and Elyse have never had enough room for all the wonderful things they do with the kids-- Elyse used to have her art classes in the Sunroom (which was actually lots of fun for me!), and while Heidi had the music room, it really wasn't very big. So hurray for increased artistic and musical expression!


multipurpose room


playground


Brian's new classroom-- for the Panda Bears, I think?

There was a moment on Sunday, when I first remembered that it was the day of the block party, that I turned off the radio in my car and quietly sang the school song to myself:

Our school is made for me and you
Every day finding out something new
See the sky with the smiling sun
Learning stuff sure is a whole lot of fun!

Because we're P-A-C-I-F-I-C Pacific...
P-R-I-M-A-R-Y terrific!

And then I felt like a dork and turned the radio back on.

dear republicans, please spontaneously combust, love cameron

My Two Favorite Quotes of the RNC Coverage:

"Did you know that if you vote for John McCain, you will immediately grow two inches taller and receive a patented shot of heterosexuality in the arm? Cool!" -Dana Goldstein, The American Prospect

"Over the past week, Palin had begun looking like a character from Twin Peaks." -Ezra Klein (man, I have such a blog crush on him!) , The American Prospect


I may rant about politics later, or I may not. In any case, let me just say this: I cried during both conventions, but definitely not for the same reasons.

heartbreak

People I Miss More Than Anything At 4:33am When I Can't Sleep:

Taylor
Tim
Jack
Carol
Matt (Olson)
Martha

...


What the hell am I doing here when all my friends are elsewhere?

banging my head against a wall

I need the advice of you, my three (four?) loyal readers. I have to figure out what to do with my hair. It is short now, but I want it to be long. The problem is the prolonged icky-gross stage it has to go through in order to BECOME long. And then there is the question of the bangs. My whole head is one giant clusterfuck.

In the beginning, Cameron had nice long hair that she had been growing all her life:



Let's ignore the fact that I looked better when I had long hair by default, because I was not yet horrendously fat as I am now. Wasn't my hair pretty?

Then, junior year at Northwestern, I did the unthinkable and cut it:



From there it went through many iterations, including Horrifically Short (when I was in Tennessee and Europe),



Getting Too Long,



and Just Right:


(may be hard to tell with the hat on, but the length was perfect)

I've done middle parts and side parts, and I think the side part is better in general, but then that gets complicated when I have bangs, because my bangs don't look all nice and dramatic like most people's bangs, they look short and dweeby unless they are cut JUST SO and have grown out to JUST THE RIGHT LENGTH. It's nice when they look good:


(and even here i'm not sure if they look good)

But usually they end up looking like this, apparently unsure what side of my head they belong to:



And no one wants bangs that look like that! Ugh! So I think I should get rid of the bangs, because I'm not one to get my hair cut enough to keep them up... but as for growing my hair out, what do you guys think? Should I resign myself to being in the Getting Too Long stage for the next 6 months or so until it actually becomes legitimately Longish?

For the record, this is a pretty acurate representation of where it is now:



HELP! It is a daily source of annoyance.