Well, consider me shocked. That was non-terrible television.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I laughed. I laughed during Two and a Half Men. Maybe it was because of Charlie Sheen’s HILARIOUS funeral, or perhaps because Ashton Kutcher is a genuinely gifted comedian, but I laughed. I almost feel embarrassed.

My relationship with Two and a Half Men isn’t a very strong one. In fact, all I’d seen of the series was a few post-credits tags while waiting for Archer to come on. All I knew was that Charlie Sheen played Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer was criminally wasted, and the mysterious half-man lurked about. Having that much knowledge, I entered tonight’s premiere wondering just how bad the show that is famous for being bad could be.

Every so often, we’ll take a look at two similar shows, old or new, and discuss their respective merits and flaws. This week, two new comedies centered around young, hip girls — FOX’s New Girl and CBS’s 2 Broke Girls. Next week, we’ll pit The Playboy Club and Pan Am against one another.

I think I’m over Zooey Deschanel. I know it’s blasphemous to say, and I’ll risk the little credibility I have, but she just doesn’t do it for me anymore. In 2009, sure, I would have fallen head over heels for a pilot starring everyone’s favorite Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But that was then, and this is now. We’re two years past the storm of Zooey-related fervor surrounding 500 Days of Summer, and whatever goodwill she had after that has been completely lost on me while watching FOX’s New Girl.

If only New Girl were the only pilot this year featuring a would-be indie princess, but alas, we have CBS’s 2 Broke Girls, a show I was admittedly very excited for, in no small part to the wonderful Kat Dennings, who has been relegated to supporting roles for too long and is destined for greatness. 2 Broke Girls won’t get her there.

While both of these pilots are fairly middling, and don’t do much for the comedy genre, there’s potential in both, and leads strong enough to potentially build competent series out of each.

May 14, 1998 may not mean much to the average person, unless it was your birthday or anniversary— if that’s the case, congratulations. To a huge chunk of Americans, though, that day was a watershed moment in America’s cultural history. Frank Sinatra suffered a heart attack that evening that would prove to be fatal, but his ambulance made it to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles in less than 10 minutes because of record lows in traffic. The event that kept the roads of LA clear that Thursday evening was another cultural milestone that overshadowed the death of one of the 20^th century’s biggest figures: the finale of Seinfeld.

I was six years old on that night in 1998, and I was one of 76.3 million Americans who tuned in to see the final episode of the sitcom. I had many memories of television before that point — I remembered watching Friends, Frasier, Cheers, and Seinfeld with my parents — but the night of that finale was the moment I first remember feeling that I was witnessing something huge. I felt like a part of a society bound together by not political beliefs, or religion, but a box in the living room. That night, I knew that television would become an inseparable part of my life.

Adele scores her second No. 1 this week as the heartfelt “Someone Like You” bounds 19-1, but her triumph has been nearly drowned out by the news that Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV sold an impressive 964,000 copies in its opening week. The record industry has been used to bad news about declining record sales for a decade now, but this week represents a major bright spot.

Weezy’s sales figures are astonishing. Sure, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way might have outsold Tha Carter IV in its first week earlier this year when it topped a million, but Lil Wayne didn’t have the benefit of Amazon hawking digital copies of his album for 99 cents. He also didn’t have the benefit of a blockbuster hit single piquing public interest which raises some interesting questions. Just how important is a monster single to spurring album sales?

Cultural commentators frequently discuss the death of the monoculture in the digital age – the loss of shared cultural artifacts that span regions and generations. When Americans only had a few black and white channels to chose from, it was easier for them to experience the same cultural phenomena at the same time.

No matter how many YouTube views Justin Bieber gets, it’s not the same as a nation transfixed by Elvis’ swivelling hips on the Steve Allen Show in 1956 or overwhelmed by Beatlemania when the band performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963. Today, there are precious few events (the Superbowl, a high profile presidential debate, maybe the finale of American Idol during its heyday) that can bring us together that way.

While the fragmentation of culture makes it impossible to have another Elvis or Beatles or Michael Jackson, MTV proved the monoculture isn’t as dead as we thought Sunday when they attracted a record 12.4 million viewers for the annual Video Music Awards. And America didn’t just watch – they talked about it too. VMA commentary dominated Twitter trending topics. Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby announcement broke a Twitter record with 8,868 tweets a second being sent out about Beyonce’s baby bump.

Lady Gaga’s performance of “You and I”  while dressed in drag contributed to a sizable 35-16  jump for the song on the Hot 100 while Adele’s heart wrenching rendition of “Someone Like You” led to similar 34-19 move. Expect both songs to continue their climb in next week’s chart. A top ten entrance for both of them wouldn’t be surprising.

What is surprising, however, is that the new No. 1 song in America is a song that was neither performed Sunday night or up for any of awards. In fact, the lead singer militantly attacked the VMAs on Twitter before the broadcast calling it the ”one day a year when MTV pretends to still care about music” (oh, and he also added a “f*** you VMA’s” tweet too).

It’s been a few days since Billboard announced the big news. Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream has tied Michael Jackson’s Bad for an album to launch the most No. 1 singles on the Hot 100. Since then, I’ve experienced shock, denial and pain. Hopefully now I’ve party rocked through the stages of guilt and can begin accepting the fact that the I Kissed a California Gurl [sic] girl has rewritten the Billboard record books.

This week, Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” overtook LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” for the No. 1 spot, giving Teenage Dream a fifth No. 1 single. It is the first time a female artist has managed the feat and the first time since Jackson pulled it off the summer of 1988.

When Billboard announced Perry’s historic achievement, she promptly took to Twitter to celebrate her “little-engine-that-could of a song” for finally going No. 1, and it’s a miracle that it did. After being stuck behind LMFAO’s summer conquering jam for three straight weeks, it seemed like the window of opportunity was quickly closing for Perry. So obviously, Capitol Records pulled out all the stops.

Twenty-three summers ago, a song by a rising pop act reached the summit of the Hot 100 before being steamrolled by one of the biggest recording artists of the decades achieving an unrivaled chart feat. The song was “Foolish Beat” by Debbie Gibson, and the steamrolling superstar was Michael Jackson whose “Dirty Diana” became the fifth No. 1 from his Bad album. A handful of albums have pulled off four chart toppers, but for more than two decades, Bad has been the sole album with a quintet of No. 1s. That could all change next week, however.

This summer, the foolish beat is “Party Rock Anthem” by rising pop act LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock. Katy Perry takes the role of pop juggernaut. Singles from her Teenage Dream album have been unstoppable in their march to No. 1. Last summer, she began her assault with “California Gurls [sic]” featuring Snoop Dogg followed by “Teenage Dream,” “Firework” and “E.T.” featuring Kanye West.

Perry finds herself one spot away from tying Jackson’s record. Teenage Dream‘s fifth single, “Lasy Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” sits at No. 2 for a second week, but “Party Rock Anthem” refuses to budge. Despite being No. 1 for over a month, “Party Rock Anthem” had its best week of radio airplay yet, growing 2% for an audience of 146 million. It also remains the top downloaded song in the country, shifting 202,000 downloads. That puts it above “Friday,” which only sold 151,000 downloads and is quickly running out of steam at iTunes. Perry’s hit is still strong at radio, however, and could overtake “Party” soon.

The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll is 17 Track’s attempt to squeeze more than sixty years of music onto a mixtape.There are many ways to tell a story, and the story of rock ‘n’ roll is one that has been told many times in many ways. It’s messy, complicated and difficult to follow in some parts, and the entire history of it could fill volumes. But what if you didn’t have volumes? What if you only had a blank CD-R and you had to tell the story through songs? Each song in this list represents a moment or movement in the development of popular music. It’s not a list of the best, most important or most influential songs, it’s exactly what it professes to be – a history.

The third song, Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” tells the story of rock ‘n’ roll getting it’s first true star who revolutionized rock forever.

To say Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American is the soundtrack of my youth is an understatement. I’ve spun that disc – which turns 10-years-old this week – more than any other. Growing up Mormon in Gilbert, Arizona, it’s to be expected. Down there, Jimmy Eat World is bigger than the Beatles, at least in the crowds I ran with. Everyone loves them and everyone is familiar with each of the 11 songs on their breakthrough record like they were all smash hit singles.

I blasted “Sweetness” before every track cross country and track race I ran. I replayed the guitar riff in “Get It Faster” every time I listened to it and plucked it out on the piano regularly. I played “Hear You Me” the day a friend died. To this day, my brother and I play Jimmy Eat World at the end of the 11-hour car ride from Provo, Utah to Gilbert.

For Bachelorette viewers across the country, Bentley Williams was one of the worst villains the reality show has seen. Host Chris Harrison said the 28-year-old Utah resident “just seems to have bad intentions.” But while William’s actions were shocking to some, they were all too familiar to women who’ve dated his type — the “Mormon All-Star.”