i need a tv so i can the paris hilton farm show and queer eye, so i can be part of america

I just got finished watching The O.C., and man, is it good! After I caught myself saying "Whoa" to some bit of outrageouness, I had a brief fit of nostalgia, thinking back to Cypress Circle viewings of American Idol, Joe Millionaire, and various Michael Jackson specials. I sometimes really wish that I had a tv in New York so that I could engage in trashy tv watching. I miss watching stuff that you know is bad, but enjoying it anyways, and having fun doing so.

This show, like 90210, is about a bunch of rich, white kids in California, doing wicked things and having fun doing so. The success of this format should probably give me pause, but I am going to cite Aristotle's Poetics to justify my liking of these shows about rich kids. His theory was something along the lines of: Drama should be about gods and nobility so that that way their falls are much bigger, are much more tragic. They have more to lose. It is a bullshit theory that privleges wealth, and assigns more meanings to the actions exercised by those in possession of it, and really I don't know why I just cited it to justify my love of shows like this, other than I want there to be a reason for their appeal. A reason other than an unacknowledged idolization of these people, of wealth and whiteness.

Okay, fuck it, the reason is sex. It always is. The show is about teenagers, and although they are richer and prettier than most of the teenagers I knew, there are still bitchy high school people, people that want to be cool, and people negotiating ways in which they can be concieved of as sexy. And this is (was) such a large part of the high school experience, and to see this acted out in such a magnified (histrionic, dramatic) fashion is to make these moments all the easier to say "Whoa!" about, to recognize what's going on, and to be distanced enough from the situation (thank god) to be able to say, "Whoa!", to say "I cannot believe she just did that." Watching humans interact in ways so believable that you are forced to say, "What is he thinking?"

The O.C. is not complete trash, there are admirable aspects about the show's production and writing, but it was still shocking tonight - shocking - to hear my current favorite Belle and Sebastin song, "If She Wants Me," played during the background. Belle and Sebastin on The O.C.?!

I also have a little crush on the Seth Coen character. His hair and his cheekbones(!) remind me of a former obsession, Marky Mark Fessenden. And I love having crushes, just seeing this O.C. character who reminded me slightly of an old crush, made me full of desire, a desire to be touched, a desire to touch someone's brown, moppy hair. Yours, Seth Coen. Anyone's really at this point.