I Heart Weekends

What a week! I made it through hours of grading, reading, and tutoring, so I've taken the last couple days off, more or less. I was pulling 10-12 hours days there for a while, so naturally I got a cold. This is happening more and more it seems. Anyway, sneezing and coughing aside, I've had a good couple days off. After my long haul of classes on Thursday, I watched a couple episodes of Battlestar Gallactica on DVD (I'm up to season 3), then the NBC Parks and Recreation, Office, and Community trifecta.

Am I the only one who loves these shows? Sure, everyone loves the Office, but I need to stand up for Parks and Recreation, and Community. I didn't like Parks and Recreation at first either, but the last episode of the first season pulled me in, and now I'm hooked. Yes, I expect Amy Poehler to be funnier too, but she's up to something with this character: she plays an ambitious woman with a huge heart who doesn't know herself or how the world works, and she ends up looking foolish again and again because she just can't conceive of a world that is inherently hurtful. She believes in perseverance and a fair meritocracy; that if she continues to build this park with good will in her heart, she will one day be president. Rather than laugh at her optimism, though, Poehler's character gets you to believe in a just society and a better tomorrow because to believe in them is essential to living, that we need to believe in these things to stay sane and happy; to remain pure at heart in a maelstrom of modernity. Also, it's still kind of funny. We laugh at these characters make asses of themselves, because at our best--at our most earnest--we make asses of ourselves as well. And we're better people for it. Like Christgau says, we all need a little corn in our lives. It helps you shake some of that cynicism out of your head. Poehler's character does that.

As for Community, well, what can I say? I love college (obviously), and this show sums up that strange emotional and temporal space that is college and the college campus. Bake sales and candlelight vigils for victims of government oppression? Check. Dead Poets Society professor who climbs trees and makes his students stand on their desks to feel liberated? Check. Lonely, socially awkward students looking to redefine themselves within a new social environment and failing miserably? Check. All of these are played for laughs, and yet, like Parks and Recreation, its a heartfelt show: we're not laughing at these characters, we're laughing with them. I also think the dialogue is sharp, and Joel McHale, here and on The Soup, is a treasure.

My Friday was also wonderful: Kit made us soup for dinner, which was great for my cold, and her baby Logan sat in his jumper for the first time. We watched him learn to use his legs to jump for about 20 minutes. It was so beautiful. I can't imagine what it's like for Logan right now, learning so much so fast. Then we sat down to watch Dollhouse, which aired its first bad episode. Good premise, but a bad script led to some bad acting. I guess you can't win all the time.

I also discovered Lala for myself. Lala is basically the best music store on the internet. The MP3s are reasonably priced, and you can listen to entire albums at CD quality before you purchase them. You can also buy "web albums" which are very cheap, but you can only listen to them streaming from the website; you cannot download them. But, you can listen to them from any computer anywhere. And even better, there is a program that matches the music on your hard drive to music on Lala, and let's you listen to that music streaming from their website on any computer. Did you catch that? You can stream your entire collection from Lala for free anywhere! Anything they don't own can be uploaded for free as well. It's really amazing, and very forward thinking. They also have a sale going on now for albums listed in Pitchfork's Top 200 albums of the 2000s. A bunch of them are only $2-3, and many are as low as $6. Brilliant. Here's a sample from Lala: [update: Lala closed. Below is a link to Grooveshark.]