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Jun. 1st, 2009

3:39 PM

Stuff going on in mojoworld at the moment includes:

in a month-ish I am giving a paper at a conference, which I haven't written yet, and so I'm basically going to spend the next month in a state of ever-escalating anxiety. It's going to be my first conference paper, and it has the safety of being a conference held at the university of excessive acronyms, but the terror of being an international conference full of impressive people who will be mean to me.

my students sat their exam this afternoon and I have to submit all the marks by Friday, and it doesn't look like I'm actually going to make it on to campus to pick up the scripts until tomorrow, so this week I will mostly be marking those and not writing the aforementioned conference paper, which gives me more anxiety. I also have general ongoing marking anxiety because, I don't know, I just don't really feel qualified for the whole process, and I really wish they would double-mark everything, but they don't for first years, so, whatever, but. I fret.

I wasted the whole weekend with a friend visiting, driving around the Norfolk coast drinking wine and listening to Van Morrison. But I feel pretty good about that.

sun! :D

I finally got around to watching season three of Friday Night Lights and I loved it so much I've been going round telling anyone who will listen that FNL is as good and important as The Wire, just in a sort of completely different way. So far people have ignored me, but I will persevere.

At first I thought Jason had been mysteriously written out because he wasn't in the first however many episodes, and I was going to complain about how that was really problematic and there are precious few characters with disabilities on TV and it felt like they just couldn't be bothered to deal with him anymore--but then he reappeared. And he suddenly seemed like an adult and he had a baby (which was a bit wtf for me, because I completely stopped paying attention at the end of season two), and I kind of completely loved his whole arc, and his final scene on the porch with baby and mother and Tim saying goodbye and watching them may have made me cry, you know, A LOT.

Mini fallout from Coach finding Julie in bed with Matt--this may have been my favourite high school virginity/teenagers/parents narrative ever. I absolutely loved the scene where Tammy and Julie talk about it on the couch and they both cry. I thought it was really ridiculously beautiful and honest and uncynical, and I just love this show for having so much love and kindness towards its own characters, even when they're fucking up and being imperfect. I also love Matt/Julie in this ridiculous childish way, and I love the varying degrees of awkwardness between Matt and Coach. (also, Coach and Matt's grandma have possibly my favourite relationship on the show.)

Tyra, everything. That she saw Jason getting paralysed as a turning point in her life was a revelation to me, such a great way to revisit the pilot, and she was just the most awesome fleshed out honest real character for the whole season. Loved every moment she was on screen.

Coach, everything. Being a moulder of men. Coach/Tammy, my favourite TV marriage in the world.

Smash, Billy, JD, Landry, TIM RIGGINS, MY HEART. There was not a single plot or character I did not care about this season.

Tim leaving his shoes on the football pitch after the State finals, and that moment where he's crouching down and it's like a prayer or something, SO AWESOME.

Everything, everything, everything. Loved it.