Well that didn’t take long. Just a few weeks after I wrote about Apple acquiring LaLa.com, the site is being closed down. May 31, 2010 will be the last day for the site that has twice gotten me all excited about it and then pushed me away.

I’m the first to admit to being an Apple fangurrl, but really, this annoys me a lot. Rumor abounds that Apple will soon be opening its own streaming network but I can’t see them following LaLa’s business model. I think Apple will expect more of a profit margin than a nice 10 cents for songs that you only listen to online. We already know they charge more than 89 cents for downloads.

I liked LaLa’s model because it worked for people who don’t have a lot of money. No monthly subscription fees, you could listen to an ENTIRE song once before you decided to buy or not, and you could add as little as a buck to your “wallet” if you wanted to buy something. Places that charge monthly, or require reloading in amounts of $10 or $20 are out of many people’s league, believe it or not. I know it’s more than I can frivolously spend.

LaLa users will be given an iTunes store credit in the amount that they had spent on the LaLa site. I spent $5. That’ll get me 5 songs from iTunes as opposed to the 50 wonderful songs I had amassed in my LaLa collection. I discovered a huge number of new things that I’d never listened to on LaLa over the last month or so. I feel kind of sad that my journey of discovery is over for now.

As I sit here watching Independence Day on television for possibly the hundredth time I wonder: Is it just me, or does everyone have a handful of movies that they can’t stop watching? Movies that, no matter how many times they show it on TV, you’re going to watch–even if you own the movie on DVD!

For me, the handful consists of: Independence Day, Men in Black, 2010, The Shining, The Final Countdown, and Practical Magic. I own these movies on DVD, and yet here I am watching a commercial-laden, truncated version of Independence Day on television. And I’ll probably watch it again when they repeat it late tonight. What is it about these movies that appeal to me? On the surface I would have said the fact that the good guys win the day. But what of the Shining? Good certainly doesn’t triumph there.

Is it the characters? Again The Shining is the odd man out. I find Shelley Duvall’s portrayal of Wendy thoroughly annoying. She’s like an automaton, stomping through the scenes in an expressionless monotone. And yet, from the opening long shot of Jack Torrance driving to the overlook punctuated by the Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind soundtrack, my attention is all there. Perhaps it’s all the creepy minor characters. Even thinking of the twins intoning “Come play with us, Danny” gives me a shiver.

In the case of Men in Black and Independence Day, the attraction is two-fold: actors and message. In both movies, the good guys triumph by laying some whoop-ass on aliens who dare to mess with Earth. Both feature Will Smith who is particularly adept at this kind of movie. He’s a perfectly believable action hero while at the same time tempering the characters with a wise-cracking sense of bravado. Independence Day also features Jeff Goldblum, who is good at pulling off the brainy yet baffled hero of the day. Independence Day features a rousing morale building speech by the president which is a highlight of every watching. The president then jumps into a plane and goes to fight the bad guys. Maybe the appeal here is a secret wish to have a president of that fearless caliber.

The Final Countdown is an odd time travel movie with a big cast: Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, and Katherine Ross. Even after multiple viewings, the final scene is the grabber. While a minor cult classic, the movie explores a classic paradox (which Martin Sheen’s character outlines at one point) of what would you do if you had a chance to change a horrific historical event. And what would be the consequences?

I can’t explain the appeal of 2010. Perhaps it’s the novelty of Helen Mirren doing a bad Russian accent. Or perhaps it’s the underlying theme of triumph through ignoring political borders. 2010 is often touted as the movie that explains a lot of what was going on in 2001: a Space Odyssey, but it doesn’t. I don’t think anything can explain 2001.

The last movie on my repeater list is Practical Magic. It’s just a sweet little comedy with thoroughly likable characters and an equally enjoyable cast. The combo of Sandra Bullock, Nichole Kidman, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest make a family of witches seem perfectly normal. And any movie that touts love and family conquers all evil can’t be all that bad, can it?

What about you? Do you have repeater movies that you watch every chance you can? And now… onto another run of Independence Day!

The news that Apple has acquired LaLa.com made me look back fondly at my old pal LaLa.

Four years ago I joined up with LaLa.com when it first started. The premise of the site then was to swap. Those old CDs you had that you no longer listened to could be swapped with other users for ones you did want to listen to. As a person with hundreds and hundreds of CDs languishing unlistened, it seemed like a match made in heaven.

But then, as with anything that is made to do just what I want it to do, the purists stepped in. They only wanted to trade if you not only had the booklet for your CDs but also the back inserts and spine inserts. As someone who had long ago given up keeping jewel cases in favor of a notebook filing system, it became increasingly difficult for me to trade my CDs. A price increase in the trading finally put an end to my fun and I put my account “on vacation”.

But while I was disappointed with the trading aspect, the people of LaLa.com were another matter. They were fun, helpful, and amazingly accessible. One of their tech guys spent a few days trading files back and forth with me when they introduced the LaLa Visualizer for iTunes. It had some issues on the Mac and they solved it. A big plus in my book. And when they went to a new packaging method, my post office tried to charge me extra to deliver my last CD trades. I contacted LaLa and they were on it, contacting my post office and setting them straight. I can’t say enough good things about the folks at LaLa.

I revisited LaLa.com to see what it was all about. Now it’s mainly a streaming service. You can listen to any song they have in their library once for free. This is great just for sampling songs. Thirty seconds just isn’t long enough to know if you’re going to like it.

For 10 cents, you can add a song to your online library. You can play that song whenever you want through the LaLa interface. Again, this appeals to me a bit. I tend to listen to my music on the computer anyway. It doesn’t make any difference whether I listen via LaLa or via iTunes. And I can even upload my iTunes library to LaLa so it’ll be all in one place.

For 89 cents (or 79 cents if you already have paid 10 cents to have it in your library) you can download the MP3 version of the song so it can be used on your iPod or other portable device. Although while I was browsing, I did see some songs priced at $1.29. Again this is acceptable to me as I buy songs from iTunes at 99 cents or $1.29 for the DRM free ones. In fact, the main reason I don’t buy from iTunes more is all that DRM stuff. Every time I switch computers or upgrade iTunes, I have to reauthorize my music.

I wonder what will happen to LaLa now that Apple owns it? Will the heavy handedness of Apple’s music distribution become the rule of the day or will the music loving folks at LaLa be allowed to continue to operate as they have been?

I’ve reconnected with my old pal LaLa. I hope my joy isn’t once more dashed.