From Catacombs to King.

Work was excruciatingly slow today and I mean slow as in the worst movie you've ever seen type of slow, only it lasted a literal 8 and a half hours that felt like 46 and three-quarters. For me, it was comparable to the time I watched The Postman with Kevin Costner. I swear to Godfrey Jones that atrocity was at least 16 hours long.

As I'm sure you can tell, I am very, very glad to be home with the wife-i to eat a delicious dinner she's preparing and to sit down and watch One Tree Hill with her. We caught a preview of it a couple weeks ago and we both had never seen it before and decided that since the soap channel was going back to square one that we'd try it out and honestly, I'm surprised that I like it as much as I do.

First, I had no idea it revolved around basketball, which since I've met my wife, college ball has become a part of my life and it's fantastic. Second, the music in it is my kind of music, be it nostalgic or new. Third, Moira Kelly is in it and not only was she the voice of Nala in the Lion King, but she's awful purdy to boot. Fourth, it's basically Gilmore Girls, just not as funny/clever.

See, ever since I married my wife, I've become a TV junkie, and to me, this is far from a bad thing because I also happen to be a pop-culture whore. I may not be into tabloids and gossip, but movies, for as long as I can remember, have been a big part of my life and music, while not as big a part, is still up there, especially in the past 6 years (although I've been in a rut lately), so why not TV as well?

I've recently decided that I'm going to attempt to watch (including catching up on the past) as much TV (that seems important pop-culturally to me) as I can in a quest to amass as much referential information as I can because to me, being aware of pop-culture is a pretty important thing.

Why?

Because not only is it the "here and now", around the water cooler, being blogged about, but because it reaches these places, it becomes lasting, and it becomes the "then" and history is now a pop-culture time-line. To remember pop-culture is to be able to converse about history in the near future.

It may seem trivial to some, but it's something a good portion of the population can relate to, and for someone who enjoys writing, being able to not only reference something, but have a good amount of others understand the reference is what it's all about (to me).

Yes, a good portion of the population should probably relate to more important things like current events, politics, academia, and the like, but whether you like it or not, pop-culture has become just as important in shaping who we are and who we grow up to be.

It's yet another inescapable fact of life.

I mean, for all of you out there who do fight it, what would you have to fight if it weren't there?

That, of course, is a pretty rhetorical question, because while you might be able to keep one thing from reaching pop-culture status, you can't exactly keep everything from it. There will always be the popular, and whether you love or hate it, you're still embracing it's existence in some fashion.

Right?

Now, all I have to work on is training my memory to actually recall things and I'll be well on my way to escaping the pop-culture catacombs I currently inhabit and finding my place as king.

At least in my own mind.