As my colleague Ruth Samuelson mentioned on this blog this morning, Beverly Hills, 90210 is back in a new version called 90210. This is, she rightly points out, exciting news. I made a point of watching last night’s premiere, partly because I do love bad TV so. But I also tuned in because 90210 was, back in the day, a subject very dear to my heart: For a couple of years I wrote a column for my student newspaper called “90210 Watch” that had regular updates on the goings-on in each episode. We had no fancy metrics to show how many people were reading, but it was a smashing success for me personally. The Chicago Tribune rang me up for a quote in a story about campus viewing habits. My arrival at somebody’s apartment to watch an episode was moderately event-like. Women at bars, cognizant of my byline, suddenly voiced interest in things I said.

This would be a good place to mention that the University of Chicago once came in dead last in a survey of America’s best party schools.

For me, journalistically speaking, it’s all been downhill from there: Hell, I’m not even the most famous “90210 Watch” contributor living in the D.C. area. But 90210 has gone downhill too: It’s more than a little disheartening to see Tristan Wilds go from Mini Omar to Beverly High Token Black in the course of a few short months. Everybody’s still petty, moralizing, and dumb as rocks—yet dumber somehow, now. Blogs and text messages are trusted as gospel, which leads not just to bad plot turns, but bad dialogue:

“You’ve got to stop with that blog. All it does is cause problems.”

“That’s what a blog is supposed to do. Cause problems.”

Small wonder it didn’t screen for critics.

Creature of habit that I am, my Sunday nights tend to go the same way: At 11 p.m. I turn on the TV, watch the best show on television, then go to bed, visions of faceplants dancing in my head. But lately I’ve had a few more options to choose from, thanks to the advent of digital TV. Since installing my converter box last month I’ve been trying hard to appreciate some of the newly available subchannels, even the ones that are just 24-hour weather feeds. But the hardest to get behind is Channel 7.3, which is WJLA’s feed of something called the Retro Television Network. RTN specializes in reruns of old TV shows, which means that it should be a fantastic option for somebody like me, who a) Watched an unhealthy amount of television growing up and b) Likes a dose of stupid before bed.

But there’s something disappointingly off and B-list about RTN, like shopping for Wheat Chex and being forced to settle for Generic Farms’ Tasty Grain Polygons. Behold the cavalcade of crap on offer here: Harry and the Hendersons, The Greatest American Hero, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, Hunter. Most troubling are the shows I’ve never even heard of. Did you know that Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner acted together in something called Switch? What’s Laredo? Who wants to see Judd Hirsch play a cop?

If it’s a matter of funds, RTN, just make it simple: 21 Jump Street, all day, every day.

If you can’t get enough of LL’s smooth, supple radio voice, just wait till you get a load of his rugged cable-television good looks!

At noon, tune in to the Politics Hour on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-FM (88.5). Kojo and LL will be talking about the upcoming Democratic National Convention, the upcoming first day of school, and will be quizzing the candidates in the Ward 7 council race: incumbent Yvette Alexander, Villareal Johnson, John Campbell, and Robin Hammond Marlin.

Then, at 4 p.m., LL will be the guest analyst on NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt on NewsChannel 8. LL will be helping to break down the Schwartz-Mara debates, the school-opening countdown, and the summer-jobs debacle.

The best local TV channel has gone dark. Earlier this week the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that WWTD, Channel 49, has ceased broadcasting after the majority owner of the channel sold its lease to Albritton Communications. “WUFO-TV” had been using the channel, and the change left founder Michael Gravino to decide whether to keep the station going till November 1, running its mix of UFO-conference footage, NASA conspiracy fodder, and other tinfoil-y fare through Halloween. Ultimately he decided to pull the plug on both the channel and its Web site.

“It made no economic sense to stay on,” says Gravino.

Though Gravino’s ambition to create a national network of conspiracy-and-aliens programming is now sidelined, he’s proud of what he’s accomplished since going on the air last November. He says that of the 8,600 hours of airtime that WUFO filled, a third of it was direct testimony from people who sighted aliens, making it what he calls the longest sustained UFO disclosure effort ever. Gravino doesn’t have hard numbers on viewership, and notes that the channel’s weak signal didn’t help encourage more people to (ahem) furiously fiddle with their rabbit ears. Also potentially problematic was WUFO’s stew-like mix of programming. “We ran it like a jukebox,” he says. “We never had a schedule, nobody knew what was coming on next.” But, he adds, “we got a lot of content out to people.”

The WUFO Web site, Gravino says, may come back soon: “We’re doing a little video for a legacy site,” he says. As for whether his next project will be WUFO-like, that, like so many blurry cigar-shaped objects, is up in the air.

“We fought the good fight for disclosure,” he says. “We’ll see what’s next.”

When it comes to attractive Washingtonians, the City Paper staff doesn’t exactly top the list. At least we’re in good company: I’m willing to bet that the average CityDesk reader has a face for bitter, anonymous Internet commentary. But surely, there must be one hidden jewel among us who can rise up above the mass of Washington’s blog trolls and declare, ‘Me! I am a majestic animal! I shall appear on an episode of television’s longest running game show, CBS’s The Price is Right!”

On Thursday, August 21, an open modeling call for The Price is Right will be held, glamorously, at “Sleepy’s,” 5812 Kingstowne Shopping Center, Alexandria, Va., from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The one contestant whose beauty can not be tamed will go on to compete with national finalists for the opportunity to appear on an episode of The Price is Right.

Or, you could just make a “My Pets Have Been Spayed and Neutered” t-shirt.

Terribly late to the news here. Lifetime is picking up the LNS reality show. Patrick Gavin has all the details here. Like everyone else, I’m a little grossed out and a little excited. I’ve yet to find mention of the show’s name. If anyone would like to riff, please have at it. “Welcome to Poundtown” perhaps? I know you guys can do better.

…I thought the movie theater’s manager was toast. Toast, I tell ya. He was swarmed—swarmed!—by middle-aged ladies who had to wait in line to enter a documentary screening because they had pre-purchased their tickets online. Meanwhile, people who just walked right up to the ticket booth were able to then walk right in. It was scandalous! They wanted answers! The manager told them that the Internet tickets guaranteed them a seat, but the staff still had to scan in their printouts. The scanning part was the reason for the line.

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to work!”

“What’s the point of pre-purchasing!”

“This isn’t what happens with Fandango!”

“I want to talk to a manager!”

The best part? The ladies made all this ruckus entering a documentary about the Chilean judge who, after investigating the murder and disappearance of thousands and the god-awful torture of thousands more, indicted Augusto Pinochet. The General and the Judge was a moving, courageous film that proves living in or near Chevy Chase, D.C., is not all that bad.

The judge (Juan Guzman) was there, as was the filmmaker, Elizabeth Farnsworth, former senior correspondent and fill-in anchor at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The post-film panel was moderated by Lehrer. Margaret Warner was there, too. In other words: Way to klass up the joint ladies!

Truly, though, see the film. It airs as part of the P.O.V. series on PBS. WETA will show it Wednesday, Aug. 20, at 10 p.m.

I am about 10 years late here, but I think I’m not alone. In July, the BBC released a DVD collection of a genius show called Spaced, which started in 1999, and concerns the weirdo adventures of two mid-twenties friends on the dole in London. The show stars Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and Jessica Hynes as friends who pose as a couple to score a flat. They’re both often unemployed — she’s an aspiring journalist, he draws comics — but make good use of their time getting into strange situations with their crew of friends: a depressive, angry, anti-social artist who lives downstairs, their drunk landlady, a gun-obsessed guy named Mike and Twist, an attendant at a dry cleaners who says she works in fashion. The DVDs come in advance of the inevitable US remake of the show, which I just can’t imagine. Slacker aside, the Brits are better and funnier with slackerdom than us. Perhaps it’s because their empire fell first.

Photo: BBC

John McCain on the U.S. invasion of Iraq: “We were greeted as liberators. We mishandled the war for nearly four years. We mishandled it in a way that was so harmful that I stood up against it.”**

Nevermind that it took McCain a really, really long time to stand up against the Iraq War strategy. He may have even hedged his bets on supporting the surge.

But were we really greeted as liberators?

**McCain quote taken from an interview he did that aired today on “This Week…” McCain also oddly invokes the Oil-For-Food scandal as part of a laundry list of reasons we invaded Iraq. I hadn’t heard that reason.

This just in (via e-mail from the NewsHour PR dept.):

Friends,

When we decided to follow rookie superintendent Michelle Rhee one year ago, we had a feeling that we’d have a good story on our hands. After all, 37-year-old Rhee was new to Washington, a Korean-American in a predominantly African-American city who had never been a superintendent before (or even a school principal!).

She was also the 7th leader in 10 years to try and turn around Washington’s failing schools-and she was the first to do so under the charge of the city’s mayor, with no school board to answer to. But even we were surprised at what unfolded as Rhee fired more than 15% of her office staff, removed 36 principals and 22 assistant principals, and announced plans to close 23 underenrolled schools, all before the last day of school.

Now she’s promising to radically change 27 more schools before opening day at the end of August, and finish negotiations with the teachers’ union on a new contract that she says will be unlike anything the country’s seen before.

Tonight on The NewsHour, we’ll sit down with Rhee—and her critics—to reflect on the year.

Thoughts on the other five episodes? Missed ‘em? Find them here.

Last Friday the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies pointed to a story in Variety that says a sitcom about an alt-weekly is in the early production stages. The show, says the report, will be “set in the office of a dishy alternative weekly publication and blog.”

Awesome! Or not. Truth is, the offices of alternative weeklies, dishy or no, are fairly dull places. I’ve worked in three of them, and nearly every internal conversation is some variation of this exchange:

Staffer One: Copy’s got problems.

Staffer Two: Fuck.

But I suspect I know how this new show, tentatively titled “The Weekly,” is gonna go—I’ve seen plenty of portrayals of journalists on TV after all. (That microscopic rating for Oliver Platt’s Deadline? That was me.) Don’t think what follows is funny? Fine; the show is being produced by a co-creator of The King of Queens, so I’m just being spot-on.

[Opening credits and music. Death Cab for Cutie, maybe. Or Coldplay. Whatever's cheaper.]

Staffer One: [sitting at computer with a Juno poster]: Holy crap! There’s an article on [gossip site affiliated with network running the show] that says [underperforming artist on record label affiliated with network] might be staying with his girlfriend at a downtown hotel!

Staffer Two: Didn’t he just break up with [something that rhymes with "Amy Winehouse"]?

Editor: Sure did! This is big! Becky, get right on it for our blog, the Edge! This is a big, big story!

Staffer Three: And it’s gotta be fast! The daily paper is gonna have somebody on this for sure! We’ve gotta compete because it’s a tough time for newspapers like ours—last year our revenues dropped by [depressingly sizable percentage]!

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Staffer Three: Boss, Becky’s story is in.

Editor: Yes?

Staffer Three: It’s got problems.

Editor: Dammit!

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Editor [at bar with colleagues]: Well, I’m glad we got that big story! We even got a mention on [nightly news broadcast operated by the network]! But no more sleeping with sources, Becky! That’s almost a firing offense!

Becky: Sorry, boss! But I was just doing what I saw women journalists do on TV shows!

Staffer: Here come our microbrews!

All together [clinking glasses]: To alternative weeklies!

[Closing credits and music. Foo Fighters, or something.]

The Washington Post has a nice story today by Paul Schwartzman about the dangers of riding on top of the double-decker buses operated by Open Top Sightseeing—low-hanging tree branches, power lines, etc.

I liked the story even better, though, when I watched it on the WUSA-TV 11 p.m. newscast last Monday:

Good job, Channel 9! All of this attention, of course, has been prompted by the tragic deaths of Joshua Stoll and Michael Feiock last Friday en route to a Nats game.

Schwartzman, to his credit, added some more factual meat to the story, including the fact that Open Top itself has trimmed tree branches to prevent injuries. Still, the Post is notoriously stingy about acknowledging other press outlets’ coverage, and that’s especially true when it comes to TV and radio newscasts.

Jon Stewart Wins: The Daily Show’s response to the New Yorker cover flap hits the nail on the head. Stewart’s advice to the Obama camp:

You know what your response should’ve been? It’s very easy here, let me put the statement out for you: “Barack Obama is in no way upset about the cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist. Because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists! Of which Barack Obama is not. It’s just a fucking cartoon!”

Last night’s red-carpet ribbon-cutting list-wielding grand opening of Good Stuff Eatery near Eastern Market was a classic D.C. event. The celebrities were reality stars only foodie-TV nerds could love. The paparazzi consisted of DCist and a few other foodie-TV nerds with personal cameras (yours truly included). A guy came through on a bike yelling to people that it’s against the law to block the sidewalk. This was said, of course, while he was riding through them on the sidewalk. Several people came by in their gym clothes, pissed to find out a “private” party prevented them from getting takeout. “The burgers better be good after all of this crap,” one said in response. The PR lady holding the clipboard and list of VIPs informed yet another that no, this was not “like” a private party. It in fact was a private party.

Oh, D.C., how I love you sometimes. As for Chef Spike and his dress maroon porkpie hat… well he’s a tool, but that’s my word. I asked his fellow contestants to word-associate “Spike” (I know, I know. I should have asked why Lisa always makes that face and what they all are doing now and what they thought of the food none of them were eating, but, look, they were chatting. I didn’t want to be annoying. Anyway, here’s what they said):

Antonia: “Lovebug.” Although she later wanted to change hers to “Butternut Squash Soup.”

Stephanie: “Impressive.” Really, Stephanie? Could you be nicer? No wonder you’re the winner AND the fan favorite!

Lisa: “Scallops.”

I must admit to perhaps prompting the scallops comment, as the episode where Spike cherry-picks ingredients and ends up with mushy frozen scallops is one of my all-time faves. Lisa took the bait, god bless her unpopular heart. She just became this fan’s favorite. Sorry, Antonia, although—wow—are you so much hotter than you are on TV.

One parting note: Spike turned over the ribbon-cutting of his own restaurant to Stephanie, saying: “Well, I would cut the ribbon, but I didn’t win.” Polite or weird? I vote weird. It’s your restaurant, bro. Own it!

What’s up, dweebs? Yeah, put down your Pogs for a second because I’m only going to be seen talking to you this one time. Tomorrow morning, The X-Files masterminds Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz are going to donate a collection of objects from the show to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Or whatever.

But don’t get too excited, four-eyes: The event is open to museum and media types only. That’s right; I could totally go if I wanted to, but I’ll be busy, like, washing my hair and trying on new outfits, and other things that cool kids do that you totally wouldn’t even understand because you’re so unbelievably lame.

Artifacts from the show that I totally don’t care about at all include “a detailed and annotated script from the series’ pilot episode, FBI badges, posters and other objects.”

“Other objects”? I bet that’s code for “Gillian Anderson’s panties.” But oops—sorry—the museum is closed for renovation and currently has no plans to display the objects in the future. Are you crying yet?