Katie was out of town, so I spent most of the weekend mainlining Dead Space 3 with David and not seeing these weird soldiers because, I dunno, video games! (Photo by GameXpect)

The funny thing about this list is that it was mostly generated over the weekend when Katie was out of town. The rest of week I spent watching the second best baseball game I’ve ever seen and hanging out with her and Kara.

Movies

Guys…I just want to see Star Trek. Why haven’t I seen it yet?!

TV

Veep – I hadn’t even thought of the comparison until I read it on The AV Club, but it’s fascinating how some photo memes turn into viral, badass things and others are just embarrassing.

Community – Finally saw the body switching episode. I guess the Troy and Britta thing never really worked or gelled in the non-Harmon era, but I don’t know that I buy that Troy would handle it that way considering how much he struggled to get Abed to confront his feelings last year. Not a bad episode otherwise.

Happy Endings – Best line of the four (or so) episodes I saw: “If I met you today, we would not be friends”. I wish the show hadn’t gotten rid of Pete, but it remains as funny as ever. The news that ABC won’t pick up this show (and it’s questionable status as a TBS or USA pickup) saddens me greatly.

Music

Here’s a great track by Thundercat, “Oh Sheit It’s X”

Books

Uh…I swear I’m not an uncultured animal. I swear!

Video Games

Monaco – Holy crap, Min, Dave, and I are just stumped by the museum level. We need a fourth who’s very good at the game, methinks…

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – Still moving along slowly. I thought I was gonna beat it last night, but I chose to Monaco it up with Min and Dave instead.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask – Mostly playing the daily puzzles and not even touching the story. I’ve got two games to beat before I get to it anyway, so get off my case!

Dead Space 3 – Played just…hours and hours (like 8 this week) of this over the weekend. Dave and I are nearly done and having a blast recording it for the channel. Hopefully we get good views from that, but even if we don’t we’ve had fun. My favorite part: fighting Necromorphs for 10 minutes while David tries to figure out what to do in hallucination-land.

EDIT:

Somehow left off…

DmC Devil May Cry – Beat this sucker and the Vergil DLC over the weekend. I never played the original games, but the attitude and fun of this version is rather tongue in cheek and very funny. It could easily have been too self-serious and boring, but they 100% avoided that.

I’m gonna wreck it! (Picture courtesy: Italia Film Middle East)

Had me a long weekend and I managed to get back into the movie mood. Too bad none of them were quite as good as I was hoping.

Movies

Wreck-It Ralph – Not as good as I thought it would be. I mean, it’s still a decent caliber movie, but it doesn’t soar to the heights of, say, WALL-E. I felt like the video game worlds they invented ultimately weren’t that interesting, but it was otherwise pretty good.

Flight – More about alcoholism and addiction than I thought it would be. I also found the decision to come clean at the end to not make sense. I didn’t think he would have felt guilty enough or ready to admit his problem based on the entire movie before it.

Taken – For how much the internet just adores this movie I thought it would be much better than it is. Just kind of goes and then it’s done. Not a terrible way to spend 90 minutes, but it’s not gonna warrant a second viewing from me.

Casino Royale – Preparing for Skyfall by watching my favorite Bond movie…in Spanish! I don’t like the dub voices, but I like some of the translations.

TV

New Girl – I found the punch to the face and the facepalming hilarious. Nick continues to knock it out of the park this season and, like I say every week, this show has no idea what to do with Winston.

The Mindy Project – I like this show more than a lot of the critics do. Sure, it’s not blowing the socks off of network comedies, but it’s sharp and witty and I love Mindy Kaling’s delivery.

Key & Peele – Some great sketches in the pair of episodes I watched, but the most recent one was a little weak with its material. That Michael Jackson one was fantastic.

The League – I really liked the episode where Ruxin did poorly on the Wonderlic and started acting dumb for the rest of the episode.

Childrens Hospital – It’s really hard to compare episodes to A Year in the Life, but I do love me some Nick Offerman as Chance Briggs.

NTSF:SD:SUV:: – The infomercial was pretty funny, if not a little predictable.

Saturday Night Live – The Anne Hathaway sketches started out pretty weak, but then they really picked up near the end. That Homeland sketch was brilliant.

The Amazing Race – Can’t believe that a team stole money from another team (essentially) and that the same team managed to lose their passports. To be continueds are unsatisfying, but I’m so hooked for next week!

Happy Endings – Finished my catchup of S2. Wore me out a little, but ABC knew that it might so they didn’t air one this past week. Thanks, guys!

Community – Watched “Remedial Chaos Theory” again with Min. Brilliant and classic episode. ROXANNE!

Parks and Recreation – I’m getting a little tired of the endless repeat of Chris Traeger stories. Come up with something new, writers!

The Daily Show – Long string of episodes to try and get current. I’m still prior to the third debate and the election. Just gotta keep plugging away.

Cowboy Bebop – Just a few dinnertime episodes with Min. Managed to not sing along with “Tank!” once. I’m super proud of myself.

The Thick of It – Not having subtitles available makes this…tough to watch on top of the sometimes impenetrable British political system, but it’s usually very acerbic and very funny and very profane.

EDIT: Glee – Forgot about this one. Wow, this show is…mostly not good. They really tried to rewrite history by claiming that Finn was some kind of super motivator. I don’t buy it. He’s doofy and kind of dumb…kind of like Mr. Shue! I find that I only care for Marley when she’s singing (she looks so happy and smiley when she does), but the rest of the new kids are just noise.

Music

Still loving this Geko Jones track that I rediscovered:

And also listening to lots of Stevie Wonder:

Books

A Confederacy of Dunces – Got a few pages in here and there. Ignatius’ character has become a real archetype for the nerdy, put upon character of the modern sitcom. The dude who thinks that the rest of the world is going to hell, but not him.

Video Games

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – Very little game time in lieu of tv and pokemon.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask – Daily Puzzles! Love just popping in to solve them here and there.

Pokemon White Version 2 – Lost my Nuzlocke challenge against Colriss on the Plasma Cruiser. Built up a new team of six and I’m at Victory Road now.

Hotline Miami – This game is just violent, fast, and fun. If you watch my youtube page, there should be some new episodes of Dan Plays starting tonight.

FTL: Faster Than Light – Got some really fun episodes recorded while unlocking a bunch of new ships. Can’t wait to start trying them out!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown – After a three week hiatus to let my backlog catch up (not quite caught up still), I finally jumped back in because David and Min were playing Ironman Classic games of their own. So epic and so fun and I filmed an exciting episode out of it. Very cool and very fun.

Best NPR First Listen!

Movies

Tokyo Godfathers – I wrote at length about this movie here, but I just wanted to take a few words to say how truly fantastic it was. Great movie.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. – Tiffany and I were choosing between this and Our Idiot Brother (ostensibly because they were the only two “date” movies, but really because of my dual crushes on Emma Stone and Zooey Deschanel), but I think this would have been the better choice. Crazy, Stupid, Love. was sweet and funny. Only real downside was the C-plot being a little creepy. Easily the best romantic movie I saw this summer (Best comedy goes to Bridesmaids).

Super – James Gunn is a sick man, haha. The movie was middling to me, but it was much better at showing how sick and ridiculous everyone involved would have to be than Kick-Ass was, so I liked it more than that. Ever wanted to see an awkward sex scene/quasi rape of Rainn Wilson by Ellen Page? This movie’s got it and it’s just as off-putting as you’d think it would be. Ellen Page does a great job playing a quasi-psychopath in this. She’s fantastic.

TV

Weeds – I can’t believe I’ve missed what’s been in front of my face this whole time. The whole season has been about Silas and Nancy’s relationship with each other after he found out who his real father was. Things are really ramping up here.

Top Gear – What a fantastic show. Makes me think stupid things like that I want to buy a BMW, but it’s a lot of fun to watch. The segment where they tried to escape that Italian town was hilarious.

Dexter – Lent my mom Seasons 1 and 2 and ended up watching part of the first episode. Always neat to watch the pilot and see how the show has changed from its inception.

Better Off Ted – An adequate way to kill a half hour while I eat or need a break. The show wasn’t gonna break any funny records, but it’s better than some of what’s out there. Just no real place for it on ABC, I guess.

Retro Game Master – The affirmation section of The Wing of Madoola was really funny. This show is at its best when the Kacho is able to make all kinds of silly jokes. Also hilarious was the part where he called the game company to see if he could still win a raffle from the 1980s.

Music

WILD FLAG – NPR’s First Listen looks like might it’s still up. Go check it out. I listened to this disc all last week and loved it.

The Civil Wars – Really got into them last week. Joy’s voice is so sweet and John Paul harmonizes well with her. Delightful to listen to.

Jonathan Coulton – His new album, Artificial Heart, came out this week. Good times, good music. I really like “Dissolve”.

Books

Collected Stories – So far Márquez is obsessed with twins and death.

(Comics from here down)
Amazing Spider-Man – Spider-Island continues! Still lots of fun.

Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu – Felt just a little too stereotypically Asian for me. Good art, but the story was kind of boring.

Ultimate Comics Hawkeye – I can’t say I’m that interested in Hawkeye as a character, but Hickman’s writing remains really cool and the consequences on the Ultimate U are huge. To have the X-gene eliminated in all but one region is a tremendous tactical advantage. Wonder if it will stick.

Video Games

Bastion – I agree with most people, the Narrator is super awesome. This game is fun, but it couldn’t tear me away from TF2 and…

Star Wars: The Old Republic – Got in the beta. Can’t say anything else or I’d violate the NDA.

Team Fortress 2 – TF2 remains awesome. Playing with Dave and Lee this weekend was a lot of fun. Got a lot of new achievements, but Sentry Gunner continues to elude me. I will have it one day. Oh yeah, I also played with KENDRA. Killed her once too. She did not get me back…yet.

Dragon Age 2 – Still working on that second playthrough as a Templar supporter this time. Reminds me that I’ve gotta go back and fix my ME2 playthrough for ME3 in March.

You’ll notice that this list is weighted heavily toward the end of the decade rather than the early part and that’s all because I didn’t watch much tv in high school (2000-2004). The list is also pretty small because I didn’t have access to most tv shows during my years at the university unless I went and bought box sets (2004-2008).

Firefly

It may have come out early in the decade, but I was way late to the party, since I first started watching Firefly during the summer of 2008. I’m not what you’d call a Whedonite. To this day I’ve never seen an episode of Buffy or Angel, but, between Firefly (and Serenity) and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, I’ve come to see that he’s a damn good writer capable of creating interesting worlds filled with great characters. Firefly is definitely not the first space opera to hit the airwaves, but it’s definitely one of the few I’ve ever seen to focus on fringe members of society like Captain Reynolds instead of prestigious members of an organized army. The world of Firefly is not that different from ours, save for space, and it feels like an accurate representation of what space would be like in its exploratory infancy. If the wild west was possible on Earth, it seems more than likely that the space frontier would develop similarly. Firefly makes me happy because the crew is amazing. Each character (…minus Simon) is interesting, well acted, and hilarious at any given time. FOX did the world wrong by canceling this show and bringing back Family Guy

Arrested Development

Once in a while a great show comes along that revolutionizes the way you experience television for the rest of your life. Arrested Development is that show for me. I didn’t start watching until the third season (final) was set to start, but I fell in love with the show from the first zany episode. One of the leaders in the recent American movement to serialized television, Arrested Development is probably the first serialized comedy I’ve ever seen and that may have been its downfall. Rather than go with the typical American sitcom style of status quo ante episodes and unrelated plots, Arrested Development episodes depended and borrowed heavily from every episode that preceded it, a trait that blocked out potential future viewers who felt like they were continuously out of the loop with the jokes. Those of us who were in on the joke loved experiencing every minute of the Bluth Family’s fall from grace in this show that proves that smart comedy can be hilarious. Unfortunately, it also proved that smart comedy doesn’t sell. FOX canceled it during its third season, tragically ending the best show I’ve ever seen in my adult life.

Lost

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. Oceanic Flight 815. The DHARMA Initiative. The Others. Jacob. The Smoke Monster. If you know what any of these things are, you know something about the best drama of the decade. I initially avoided Lost because of all the hype. If that seems petty and stupid, that’s because it is. People hear a lot about the show and how it never seems to answer questions or come to any satisfying conclusion, but I think that’s the talk of people unused to these long, serial dramas and the pace at which they move. Of course, ABC wasn’t helping any with the pacing when they were refusing to give the creators a firm end date. Lucky for us, the staff held their ground and told ABC they wouldn’t continue the show without a firm end date. Since then, things have moved along briskly (if confusingly) as the cast tumbles toward the dramatic conclusion of the most puzzling show of the decade. Will we all be satisfied by the ending when it airs in 2010? Expectations are running high, but I’m trying to keep mine neutral to low so that I’m able to enjoy the ending they’ve got planned for us. So long as it doesn’t go out like The Sopranos, I’m game.

The Office (US)

Bringing hit shows to America from across the pond doesn’t guarantee success. The television environment in the UK is just too different for that. Many of the best shows are extremely limited in scope and know when they’ve run their course. The original run of The Office in England comprised 12 episodes over two seasons and one two-part Christmas special. Within two seasons The Office (US) surpassed the episode count of its parent and finally managed to come into its own identity. No longer borrowing from its roots, The Office has stumbled here or there and struggled with the Homer Simpson effect (as I like to call it), but overall blossomed into a fine show all its own with a much happier outlook that reflects American tastes more than anything. Beyond that, Steve Carell has emerged as one of the premier comedy actors in the business thanks to his ability to express very human pathos into his comedic roles. While I personally think that NBC shouldn’t push the show beyond next season, it’s certainly been a funny ride so far.

Extras

While we’re already talking about shows written/created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, we may as well progress to the fantastic look at the life of a television/movie extra as told by Ricky Gervais. It’s unclear to me how much of the story is auto-biographical, but one can’t help but get a peek into the difficulties that Gervais must have faced trying to earn notoriety and bring The Office to television while also getting a glimpse into how different The Office could have been if Gervais and Merchant didn’t keep their standards up while chasing fame. Spoiler alert, but the first season deals with Gervais’ character, Andy Millman, and his struggle to both sell his idea for a show (a blue-collar workplace comedy with an obnoxious boss (ring any bells?)) and gain notoriety. Each episode features a cameo by a known (usually) British star in film or television as an exaggerated version of themselves and Andy eventually gains enough attention from the BBC to produce his show. Unfortunately, they turn it into a laugh track, lowest common denominator comedy to attract the highest audience possible and Andy continues to compromise his vision just to hold onto the scraps of fame that he has gained. It’s a sad story with a slightly uplifting ending that’s absolutely worth watching for no reason other than to see Orlando Bloom act like a self-centered jerk who hates Jonny Depp.

Weeds

This show has really gone and changed from year to year. What started as a satire on suburban misery has really ballooned into a far-reaching comedy tackling some seriously complex issues (maternity, masculinity vs. feminism, maturity, rape, murder, addiction, etc.) without ever getting too dark for too long. Just watching the opening shows how much the show has changed, since “Little Boxes” hasn’t played past season 3 when they, spoiler alert, burned down everything you knew and moved on. While some of the stereotyping jokes have gotten a little old (WE GET IT, SANJAY IS GAY! HAHAHA….MOVE ON), the show does still seem relevant and interesting in its fifth season and the most intriguing developments seem to come where you least expect it: from Nancy’s kids. Let’s hope that the show continues strong into 2010 with some fresh, interesting plotlines as Nancy delves deeper and deeper into a world she used to only scratch the surface of. It’d be nice to see Conrad again too…Extra bonus reason to watch: Mary-Louise Parker is seriously hot for an older lady.

30 Rock

I almost missed the boat on 30 Rock. iTunes gave me one free episode (the one where Jack things Liz is a lesbian) and I thought “Good, but not great” and didn’t watch through the rest of the first season. The critical buzz brought me back for season two and I fell in love with the show. Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin are comedic powerhouses in this, the second best comedy of the ’00s. In fact, 30 Rock and this most recent presidential election have both proved that Tina Fey was probably the only funny thing about SNL when she was still head writer while Mean Girls proved that she’s just plain good at writing. 30 Rock is brilliant in its subversive, but fair humor and takes the best parts of Tina Fey’s improv heritage and applies them to a sitcom that will have you guffawing every episode unless you lack a soul. It’s a must watch.

Dexter

I love shows that take place in Miami. More than that, I love shows that are unique in premise. Cop shows are a dime a dozen. Shows where the main character is the real villain are harder to come by. If you’ve been living under a rock, you don’t know that Dexter is about a cop who is also a serial killer. It’s not a unique plot in movies/literature/comic books, but it’s one of the few times I’ve seen it on tv and I love it. Dexter Morgan is a sociopath struggling with living with the urges that drive him to kill and staying out of the electric chair. The first season was based heavily on the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, but subsequent seasons have had more creative freedom to mold Dexter beyond Lindsay’s strict characterization. I’m a little behind on seasons 3 and the current season, but I feel like the character is maturing rather nicely, if not a little unrealistically (he seems to exhibit more feeling than a sociopath should, but I’m no expert) and the show usually brings me back for more each season.

Pushing Daisies

Bryan Fuller had a great premise on his hands. Ned, the piemaker, could touch dead things back to life, but the renewed life had two rules: If he touched them a second time, they were dead forever and if he let them live longer than a minute, another life would be taken in its place. Abandoned by his father and harboring a power he does not really appreciate, Ned grows up to be a rather distant man who doesn’t let anyone get too close to him. He also teams up with a private detective, Emerson Cod, to solve murders once Emerson spots him using his powers. The status quo he develops (baking pies using rotten fruit that he brings back to life and solving murders for the reward money) comes crashing down when he revives a childhood sweetheart that was his one true love. While the show is often too sweet for its own good, the development of its themes of affection and intimacy (without touching, of course) are both interesting and well done. The storylines were clever and the show was funny, but it was ultimately too expensive to produce for the limited ratings it received and the show died before giving the viewers true resolution with all of its dangling plot threads. Worth watching because it is the most unique show of the decade.

Honorable Mention: Battlestar Galactica

There was so much promise here. The first two seasons of BSG were the best sci-fi I’d seen on television. How can you screw up the paranoia of the Cylon threat and the powerful storylines about a race driven to the brink of extinction? I’ll tell you how: haphazard decisions and haughty religious overtones. The Final Five were not decided upon when the show began. As I heard it, they shoehorned cylon origins onto characters who they never intended to make cylons and the see-sawing quality of the final episodes make that very apparent. When you combine that with one of the stupidest finales in the history of television (let’s just say it goes something like “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”) you’ve gone and ruined what could have been the most significant show in recent science fiction history.

EDIT:

How did I forget The Wire?

The best police serial I have EVER seen. It deconstructs everything you know about television cop dramas by showing you both sides of the fence and the reality that good almost never triumphs over evil. David Simon must have really been affected by his days in Baltimore, because this love letter to the city tells the truth, giant warts and all, about how drugs have destroyed Baltimore and how the police are rendered powerless by bureaucracy to do much of anything about it. The show is a bit of a downer, but the acting is superb and the plotlines (save for one that I really hated in Season 5), will keep you interested through the five seasons. This show is a must watch.

SPOILERS!

Wow, what a crazy season it’s been! The finale went and blew away everything we’d all been expecting. Who could have guessed that the final episode would be Jacob-centric? What the heck happened? Where is this going next year?

It’s the home stretch for Lost. Sixteen episodes left and you can bet that Abrams, Cuse, and Lindelof know that there’s no more space for filler. It’s balls-to-the-wall time.

I have to admit that I didn’t guess that Locke was the body in the crate, but I knew it was someone. What I did know was that Locke was somehow being manipulated by Jacob’s nemesis (hereafter known as Esau, cause, why not?) because, as a bunch of characters have stated, dead is dead, even though it really isn’t. What does it mean that Ben killed Jacob? What will happen to the island now?

I’m 99% sure that the bomb Juliet managed to detonate at the Swan will not eradicate the future. That would invalidate the recent murder of Jacob and I don’t think the show wants that to happen so soon. I predict that the bomb and the electromagnetic energy will combine in some way to just send them somewhere else in time. I don’t think that the Lost folk would want to sacrifice Juliet, Miles, Hurley, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Jin to this, although they might :sob: keep Juliet dead.

No, I don’t think they will erase the five seasons before it and start anew, although that would be pretty ballsy, wouldn’t it? For the show to just throw away everything that’s already happened, start from status quo ante collisio (fragor is supposedly Latin for crash, but it’s also Latin for crack, so it could be just the sound…I’ll use the Latin word for collision instead) and go from there in what is turning out to be the epic struggle between Jacob and Esau.

Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, they elevate things higher. You go from it being about Widmore and Ben to this new conflict.

Things we learned:

– Jacob interacted with most of the main characters
– He did not interact with anyone currently dead on the island, Juliet, Rose, Bernard, Lapidus, Miles, or Ben, that we know of
– He physically touched each one of them in some way at pivotal moments in their lives
– He was unable to be killed directly by Esau
– Esau is able to assume forms. We can probably assume that he was the Alex who commanded Ben and that he might be the smoke monster, another creature known to assume forms (Christian, a spider, the horse, Locke, Walt, Mr. Eko’s brother Yemi)
– Richard Alpert probably came to the island on the Black Rock
– Someone hijacked Jacob’s cabin. Since it’s not Jacob and since Christian has appeared in there, it’s probably Esau
– I think Ilana is another ageless one like Richard. Either that or she knows about Richard from Jacob. Since they’re both servants of Jacob, I’m going to assume the former.

Things We Still Don’t Know:

– Why does the statue foot only have four toes?
– Why the ancient Egyptian motif?
– Where the heck is Claire?
– What happened to the people in 1977? Quick aside: it’s pretty clear that Jack did what he was supposed to do and as Miles said in causing the incident. The fact that Dr. Chang got his hand impaled supports this, since it probably wouldn’t have happened that way without Jack and the gang showing up and shooting the place up. The environmental dangers on the island probably stem from fallout of some type. This is probably why babies die on the island too.
– What is Jacob?
– How is Richard Alpert kept alive?
– Will dead Jacob mean aging Alpert?

That’s all I can think of right now. Too bad we have to wait for January to see the next one.

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ’em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.

This coming Friday will finally bring me back to civilization and cable television, which brings with it the ability to finally watch sporting events reliably on television, a luxury I haven’t been able to enjoy for about four years. More importantly for me, it also brings with it the ability to watch games in High Definition.

I know plenty of people who just don’t get the point of HD. To them there is no real, compelling reason to watch television at a higher resolution. I can think of at least three friends of mine who frequently poke fun at my HD obsession and claim that I’m basically wasting my money obsessing over it. Personally, I think that it takes a certain special something to really make the point of HD stick: sporting events.

Consider my friend Margot, a high def detractor who commonly scoffs at my obsession. We’re both fans of Lost who just started watching this year. Since the entire back catalog of Lost episodes happened to be online, we were both watching episodes off of ABC.com to eventually get up to Season 4. Once I hit Season 3, which was available on Blu-ray, I naturally started renting those discs from Blockbuster. Consider the following: ABC.com claims to broadcast Lost in HD online. Really, it just has a certain high bitrate limited by bandwidth potentially reaching up to 720p. While I think I might have hit full HD on the S1 and S2 episodes once or twice, Margot never even came close since her connection was so bad. Instead, she saw blurry, choppy, un-synched video. One final point: Lost takes place on a deserted island. It’s actually filmed in Hawaii. This results in breathtaking vistas and locales on screen. Margot came over a few times to watch some of S3 in HD and she actually seemed to think it looked quite nice. When I finally asked her “Well? Now do you see the point of High Def?” she disappointingly responded with a “Not really. I’m just glad it’s not choppy.”

What was the point of that rambling story? Not even a beautiful show like Lost can argue the case for HD. Our next case looks at my former roommate Min. He also witnessed Lost on both my computer and the Blu-ray, but while he thought it looked nice, he still wasn’t really convinced. For him the revelation came, as I predicted, through sports. This is the same roommate of mine who is thoroughly ambivalent to sports in general, yet, for some reason, watching the Celtics in the NBA championships did it for him. One day he was watching a game that the landlord forgot to turn on in HD. He told me that he was thinking “Holy cow, what happened to the broadcast?” When they finally noticed that they needed to swap to the HD broadcast, he finally saw the light with the pronounced on-screen differences.

My brothers-in-arms, as you attempt to convince your significant others or friends that the wave of the future is HD, I implore you to use sporting events as your main argument. It really is your best bet, since action movies will typically fail to convince a good portion of women and sitcoms in HD also tend to have minimal impact.