The week’s been mostly a blur; lots of kid taxi duty, review sessions on training materials for software that hasn’t even made it through preliminary build yet, homework assistance, funeral services, making a nuisance of myself to certain financial institutions, and planning for weekend projects. I’ve honestly been losing track of what day it was for most of the week.

I did manage to catch a little bit of a break last night; Catherine fell asleep leaning against me on the couch while I had a computer on my lap checking email and prepping the bills. Seeing as the kid really needed the sleep, and would wake if I moved, I was forced to spend two hours or so getting completely hooked into what’s clearly going to become a new televised obsession, “Glee” on hulu. Yes, it’s cloyingly sweet, and populated by oversinging (and occasionally distractingly Auto-tuned) central casting stereotypes, but it’s so damned earnest about it; it knows exactly what it is, and revels in it. It shamelessly inhabits the campy, hyper-real after-school special world it creates, in a way that lets you know that it’s completely in on the joke without constantly winking at the camera the way so many other things do; it’s this compete embrace of the campy conceit that makes the subversive and sometimes really dirty jokes work so well. It’s silly escapism, but it works on a lot of levels that much of it’s audience probably won’t notice. Plus, there’s a capella Journey and Queen tunes, and Jane Lynch, who elevates everything she’s in, and has never failed to make me laugh.

The problem is that now that I’m hooked, I’m going to have to watch this when it airs, and risk exposure to all the crap I hate about broadcast TV, like bothersome commercials and needlessly alarmist local news.

After getting the kids to bed, I also caught up with this week’s Heroes (via the Roku/Netflix box), which really has so much potential, but never quite fails to waste it, and mostly just steals ideas from Watchmen, Marvel Comics, and Battlestar Galactica, but keeps me watching because some of the characters are so damned charismatic, despite the ham-handedness of the plot. I mean, does anybody not see the budding romance between Clair and Gretchen, doomed to fail because clearly Gretchen is more than she seems (not to mention that a mainstream American television show wouldn’t dare risk showing an actual same-sex relationship, but is more than happy to un-subtly hint at hot girl-girl action! to milk the titillation factor)?

Anyway, that, barring what netflix and my dvd/blu shelf provide (Netflix sent me Milk this week, but I wasn’t up to serious, issue-based biopics with unhappy endings last night), is my state of television; except for Dollhouse, which, y’know, Joss Whedon; I’m going to be there.

So – tunes:

1. “The Well and the Lighthouse” – The Arcade Fire
2. “The Loss Adjuster (Exerpt 2)” – Jarvis Cocker
3. “Fingerprints” – Katy Perry
4. “Finest Worksong” – R.E.M.
5. “Measure of Me” – Amy Ray
6. “I’ll Be There For You” – Bon Jovi
7. “Pot, Kettle, Black” – Wilco
8. “Hawthorne” – that dog.
9. “Bad Lucas” – The Breeders
10. “Sunday Morning” – Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs