Shoot the Boot

I've recently declared my love for 90210 here. Old school 90210. "I HATE YOU!" "I choose me!" Kelly taking diet pills in the Peach Pit Bathroom. Donna losing her virginity at graduation. Hell, Donna Martin graduating at all. Brandon and his many women. Brenda, Kelly and Donna singing about Brandon and his many women.

In college? We were obsessed with 90210. Only two shows were don't miss: Days of Our Lives and 90210. Melrose was later.

We were so obsessed that one year, for Christmas, my friend Smithy bought my other friend Vanessa the holy grail as a gift. The Brenda doll.

I wouldn't say Brenda was our favorite. Back then, she and Kelly were kind of equally bitchy. Kelly was all pouty face and leading Steve on and talking about being date raped and being mean to Andrea. Brenda was loving on Dylan and bitching at Brandon and hating her parents because she was loving on Dylan. They were both...fairly awful. But Brenda, for some reason, got scorn heaped upon her more than Kelly. Then Kelly began her walk up the ladder of deification once she fell for Dylan and manfully gave him up for Brenda's sake when she came home from France. Despite the fact she totally cheated on him with...Rrrriiiick. You should read that with a rolled rrrr at the beginning.

So we got the Brenda doll. She would watch the shows with us. She got moved from the dorms to their apartment. Eventually, she got a bit battered from getting tossed around at parties.

Then, one day, someone got the bright idea to drink out of someone's shoe at a party. This, somehow, transformed itself into an idea: shooting the boot.

Brenda doll came with white boots. Like Nancy Sinatra boots. She never wore anything like that on the show. The closest she came was when she was slumming and wearing Doc Martins in college. Whatever. She came with boots.

You always knew that a party at their place was nearing culmination when someone would start to yell, "Shoot the boot." It would gain voices, raise in volume, become a rythm. "Shoot the boot! Shoot the boot!"

And we would. Put a little vodka in the white boot, a little beer, a little Purple Passion. And take a swig.

Nothing like the plasticised taste of vodka from a Brenda Walsh boot to really get a party rolling.

I wonder what happened to the Brenda doll. Did she end up in the trash when we graduated? Did she go into a box, never to be unpacked, wedged between Chemistry texts?

Brenda, I miss you.