Lists

I'm not one of those people who likes to concern himself with making, keeping, or peddling lists. However, I can't come up with a good idea for a blog post and it has been a while since I made a post. During the many hours that I spent perusing the internet over the holidays, I came across The Nielsen Company's top 10 lists for the U.S. Needless to say, I had some thoughts...

• Americans, like Romans, are sustained, uplifted and defined by their bread and games (circuses for you historical purists).
• I had not previously realized the degree of box office dominance delivered by The Dark Knight. It's like watching the last three Rose Bowls...
• I'm going to avoid commenting on the music categories so I don't end up insulting someone. Honestly, if the Starcraft Terran theme can't crack the top 10 music ringtones, why even bother.
• Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope ranked higher in audio format than book format. I'm not sure what to make of that.
• Best-liked TV commercials is a great category, kudos to the Nielsen Company. The Bridgestone one is my favorite on the list, but it can't hope to surpass Terry Tate: Office Linebacker.

Trivia: The actor who plays "Terrible" Terry Tate, Lester Speight, also provides the voice for Augustus "Cole Train" Cole in the Gears of War video games. Clearly not much diversity in his roles, but he definitely does good work in his niche.

The video games section contains lots of juicy stuff, too:

• World of Warcraft dominates the PC game market, which should not come as a surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of PC gaming. What is surprising is the popularity of the first Halo game. I spent countless hours playing the original Halo in high school and I've been consistently tempted by the bargain bin PC version with free online matchmaking (unfortunately, this kind of matchmaking does not get me a hot date).
• Finally, Sony cannot be pleased with the console usage stats. They are in bad shape if the original Xbox gets more play time than their vaunted Playstation 3. Fanboys (a.k.a. fanbois) will contest the reliability of these numbers, but I don't have any reason to believe that the results are inaccurate short of gross incompetence or vast conspiracy. The other lists seem fairly reasonable and I have no legitimate reason to doubt those results (the contact numbers listed on the final page would be the place to go if I did).