I like lists as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure how useful a "100 Best" list of anything is. Twenty-five best? OK. Ten best? That's good too, because you're really picking what you think are the best. But once your lists gets into three digits, it seems more like history than opinion. I mean, what wouldn't be on the list?

Time's James Poniewozik picks the 100 Best TV Shows of All-Time (or All-TIME, as the web site cleverly puts it). Since he picked 100 shows, all the usual suspects are here. The obvious ones (The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, Your Show of Shows, 60 Minutes, Cheers, I Love Lucy, M*A*S*H, etc) and the not-quite-so-obvious but certainly deserving (Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Odd Couple, Friends). And it includes a few surprises too (American Idol, King of the Hill, Oprah).

If I was to pick the Top 5 things I hate about television, the coverage of the NCAA Tournament this month would be near the top of the list. It interrupts regular shows, and I truly don't understand why people get so ga-ga over COLLEGE basketball, unless you went there or something.

But I do like the brackets set up, and we can use it for other things in life, including TV! Jacksonville.com has a tournment of their own going on. They're trying to pick the best sitcom character of all-time and they need your help. Go here and vote for your favorites in Week 1 (the second round is this Wednesday). Make sure you read the directions carefully.

Speaking of brackets, I picked up the new book The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything. It's a clever idea: get an expert in a particular field to set up a tournament about everything in life (puncuation, sports rivalries, dogs, political issues, etc) and keep on narrowing them down til you get the champ. There's a lot of TV-related ones in the book, including game show catchphrases (by Ken Jennings), animation characters (by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast), black and white TV shows, talk show hosts, and several more). Lists like these are argument starters for sure, and the entire outcome depends on how you start the brackets, which is rather random (unless you do something like talk show hosts, which you can at least start by nighttime, daytime, or region). Why are certain people/items placed together and not in another bracket? So it's probably not precise, but it's a ton of fun.

[Thanks to Toby for the tip.]

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a boat for sale...

This web site is selling what they say is the original S.S. Minnow from Gilligan's Island. Boing Boing readers aren't so sure, saying the show started before that, but others say that this could have been one of several boats used during the show's run. Looks liegit to me.

It's $99,000, with an engine rebuilt in 1999.

Several years back, long before TV Squad or most other TV-related web sites, there was a terrific magazine called Television Chronicles. It was basically the ultimate publication for the serious TV fan, and I was really hoping to write for it at some point. But after a few years it ceased publication, but now I'm happy to report that it's back in online form (God bless the internets)!

Publisher Bill Groves and editor Ed Robertson are back at the helm, and their first issue (August) has a lot of great stuff, including a long feature on the 70s adventure drama The Magician, with Bill Bixby (a favorite of mine when I was a kid) and the short-lived 80s series Sable (I had completely forgotten that Rene Russo costarred in that!). Plus they have other features, including an audio hello from Larry Cohen (The Invaders, Coronet Blue, Branded), and podcasts.

Welcome back, Television Chronicles.

[via Lee Goldberg]