This week, I read The Hunger Games, an action novel by Suzanne Collins. At some point, The Hunger Games will be made into a movie, and I'm sure the experience of watching it won't be as good as reading the book, but then I wondered about how Collins' trilogy would work as a television series. I think it'd be pretty good. Then a friend of mine wrote about how when he's old, he'll wish he read more books, but he won't wish he'd watched more television. The prevailing mindset is books are good and television is bad. Are they really all that different? I wondered. Both require absorbing a story while completely sedentary.

Obviously, using one's imagination to visualize what's happening on the page is probably the biggest difference, but right now it's entirely probably the best American novelists are writing for the small screen, guys like David Milch and David Simon and Matthew Weiner.

So while it's probably healthier to read a novel than watch Jersey Shore, I think I'll look back and be glad I picked 60 hours of The Wire over Angels and Demons.

More likely, I'll realize all that time was wasted and I should've spent my life outside in the sun, experiencing what it is like to be alive and serving my fellow man. Only time will tell. On to the shows!

I watched the series premiere of The Onion SportsDome with a friend of mine who was in town for the BCS National Championship (which I don't want to talk about). The first few minutes were solid, with a few quick jokes ("The Phillie Phanatic has been arrested for molesting thousands of children in front of huge crowds over the years"), an introduction to the sportscasters that should improve as those characters develop, and some decent bits on the Miami Heat and insane former NFL players.

Then, for one glorious three minute span, the frantic pace of SportsDome hit on all cylinders. The first story, about Shaquille O'Neal suffering a series of heart attacks during a game, was the first time the show elicited full-on laughs, which lead into a 40-second bit covering the last three years of Major League Soccer action, and finally peaked with a play-by-play from the National Crystal Meth Hallucination League.

By the end, we had to pause the show, because we couldn't breathe. It was the hardest I've laughed in as long as I can remember. We were glad when the show didn't maintain that high level, because it would've been too much. Maybe in 20 years humans will have evolved to the point that a half hour of machine gun paced comedy would be acceptable.

I don't say this about many people on TV, but before The Daily Show came on last night, I said to myself "I wonder what Jon Stewart is going to say about this". He did a great job.

According to Nielsen (via the AV Club), Americans watched 34 hours of television per person, per week last year. Apparently, this is a record.

Nielsen Ratings aren't necessarily trustworthy. Most people I know love television, and watch it frequently, but there's no way they're spending 30 percent of waking life in front of a TV. I know my in-laws big screen features an unending, ear-bleeding loop of Fox News, Seabiscuit and The Blind Side, but they're outliers. And even they aren't watching all the time.

There may not be 34 hours of quality watching per week, but there is some great stuff out there. We're in the Golden Age of television. Even Ira Glass says so. All you have to do is boil out all the impurities. This column intends to help.

Unfortunately, we're going to be sports-heavy with the debut. Hey, all I do is report.

The NFL Wild Card Game (Green Bay Packers at Philadelphia Eagles)—Sunday, Jan. 9. 2:30 PM on NBC

Nothing against the Baltimore/Kansas City game earlier in the day, but this game has Michael Vick. This means your wife will be onboard for some pro-animal invective spewing, and you can quietly ooh and aah when he does something superhuman, which is likely. There's nothing quite like the first two

I like the existing version of 30 Rock, but I'd be willing to watch the Japanese re-invention of the show as well.

[HT: Splitsider]

I admit that I didn't spend that much time thinking about the liberal influence in Hollywood this year, but based on the list of "The Top 10 Repulsively Liberal Hollywood Moments of 2010" on the Big Hollywood blog, it was out there.

Honestly ... the large number of digital entertainment options out there make any particular offensive voice less significant (two of the items in the top ten involve Bill Maher, a guy I phased out of my life years ago), but I'm not the media watchdog the author is, apparently:

With so many repulsively liberal Hollywood moments in 2010, where does one start? So many uninformed celebs ranting angrily about Fox News, Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party Movement, so little time. This was a tough year for liberal Hollywood A and B-listers. With their President Obama taking a swan dive in the polls and a real (not astroturf) grassroots citizens movement rising against him in a way only Frank Capra himself could have envisioned, movie and TV stars were on the progressive warpath in all ways petty, ignorant, and stupid.

10. Smallville’s last season. Yes, it’s a silly TV show but this is about the state of our uniquely American icon, Superman, and how flaky TV writers misused the character for political potshots this season. After making history as the longest-running comic book based series in television history (10 seasons), “Smallville” writers finally let loose and began idiotically tossing in anti-conservative insults. Case in point: this season’s “Smallville” villain is a conservative radio talk show host taken over by the supernatural forces of hate and fear.

Maybe it wouldn’t be quite as annoying if the lightweight writing of the show were better.

The rest of the list, including two "Dancing with the Stars" mentions, can be found at Big Hollywood.

We have something from both sides of the spectrum of online video this week: another segment in our Secrets of Tucson Bartenders series (featuring Amber from Harvest making a delicious margarita) and a piece from a School of Journalism student on services available for Tucson's homeless this winter.

Secrets of Tucson Bartenders, pt. 5:

Services for Tucson's Homeless:

From Fox News yesterday, Father Morris (who I think is supposed to be offering a hip perspective on Catholicism on the network, but usually ends up babbling on like an insane person) likes a recent study when it says it's good to pray, doesn't like it quite so much when it suggests that talking to any distant unseen person would work just as well.

Jon Stewart dedicated the entire episode last night to the delay in passing the Zadroga Bill, which would provide health-care benefits to Sept. 11 first responders.

The other two segments, including interviews with first responders and, less significantly (maybe) Mike Huckabee, below the cut.

If you've been wondering how many African Americans had speaking parts during the 10 seasons of Friends
, a rapping computer drops the knowledge on you via YouTube today (spoiler alert: 24).

Mildly NSFW, although I think the educational nature of the presentation makes up for the profanity.