It’s that time of the year again: the annual membership drive. We’ve got a week of great programming — the schedule should be up soon.

I hope you’ll consider making a donation during the drive; listener contributions help cover our day-to-day operations and, of course, keeps WPRB bringing you its usual brand of awesomeness.

This year’s drive features exclusive premiums including a portable radio in the shape of a penguin (?!), an amazing shirt designed by my friend John Cei Douglas, and something by yours truly (pictured).

On the drive edition of Pop Recon, I’ll be airing brand-new interviews with Stereolab and a surprise guest TBA. Not only that, but this show will (hopefully) feature new “Pop Recon” theme music by my pals Andrew & Dean. I think you’ll really like it! The new episode airs Friday, October 3rd at 7:00 p.m. ET.

» 2008 Membership Drive details

Oh, hi. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Here are some things you might want to know:

1. I’ve moved and have no internet access at home. I realize it’s ironic that a media studies person would live without internet, but it’s pretty liberating. When I go home I do things like, uh, unpack my apartment. I am amazed/appalled at the sheer number of books and LPs that I own.

2. From the department of “I Kid You Not”: I am teaching students how to blog. In the advanced class, I teach them new ways to slack on blogging. It’s a lot harder than I make it look, no really.

3. My show on WPRB has moved to 6-8:30 PM on Friday nights. 6-7 is the Top Ten show, which I’m proud to continue hosting; then Her Jazz 7-8:30 PM. Pop Recon moves to 8-8:30 PM on the last Friday of the month.

4. School is great and my brain is being molded into, uh, something.

5. I’ve had the new Love Is All album, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night, since mid-July. I’m really into its anti-social, downright cantankerous, and overly melodramatic nature. At every spike and stab, it morphs into another new wave favorite: Waitresses, Romeo Void, Mo-dettes, and so on — and what I mean is that somewhere in the sea of skronk there’s plenty of melody to keep it fun. Anyway, I can relate to it, perhaps you might too.

Thanks to the CW Network, blogging has officially entered the mainstream consciousness. Though we’ve been living with Gossip Girl and its anonymous author/narrator for a year, it’s been rather a passive relationship. With each fantastic plot twist the characters move further away from living underneath the Gossip Girl’s watchful keyboard. Or perhaps they simply don’t care, and the writers offer a subtle message through all the Chanel, leather, and lace: none of this actually matters. (Perhaps this is one of the many reasons the late-20s & up demo digs Mad Men? Remembering a world without an Internet [or barely any civil rights and social advancements] is perhaps the greatest escapism of all.)

Though Gossip Girl seems largely unconcerned about the impact of blogs, last night’s series debut of the revamped 90210 tows a harsher party line on the medium. In between the obvious and typical moral messages found in all teen programming (”Don’t do drugs!”, “Cheating is bad!”, “Be honest with yourself and others!”, all of which I might add are important, so don’t mistake this as snark.), it seems that blogging has joined the Greek chorus, though with mixed messages. In one subplot, Silver, who runs a Gossip Girl-meets-Perezhilton.com blog, eviscerates the new student on their first week, and a former friend on Week Two. And though that character seems be coming to terms with the realities of her online decisions, we’ll have to keep watching to see if she gives up the ghost.

If Silver’s blog is the bane of a 90210ers existence, why are the few parents seen in the series more up in arms about term papers than internet bullying? I get it though, why writers might want to paint negative portrayals of blogging and other uses of social media — cyberbullying happens, and we’ve seen some pretty grim examples of it, more recently the case of Megan Meier — TV is still strangely the dominant medium, a place where we take our cues from. It would be boring TV after all, if West Beverly Hills High opted to value a unique skill such as Silver’s and promote it as an equally positive value as singing in a musical (which they did), or playing on a sports team (and they did that too).