After buying a tv on craigslist in an attempt to get the most tv for the least money, I have learned some things:
1) Check, double-check, and triple-check all the various configurations on the tv before you buy it. Just because it works fine with one input initially doesn’t mean it will work using other inputs when you get it back to your house and set it up.
2) Pay attention to brand. I thought brand wasn’t a huge factor, but it turns out that the internet forums are full of descriptions of my tv (the Best Buy store brand: Insignia) that lament the low-quality components and multiple paths to failure which, incidentally, usually occurs immediately after the 1-year warranty expires.
3) Basically, you get what you pay for.
That said, after my tv disappointingly failed to turn on over the last few days, I managed to get it to power up last night, which was very timely. My friend R was over, and to celebrate the now-it-works-now-it-doesn’t-it-works-again!!! situation, I hooked up the Super Nintendo and challenged him to a series of Battle Mode races in the original Mario Kart. The game music is terrible, the graphics are amazingly low-quality, but those things only add to the awesomeness of the experience. After warming up on Mario Kart, we popped in NBA Jam, which in addition to allowing you to perform amazing feats of dunking from beyond the free throw line also turns a blind eye on any fouls other than goaltending. Plus, if you get two dunks in a row, the commentator says, rather optimistically, “he’s heating up…”, and for three in a row, you get “he’s on fire!” and the basketball net literally goes up in smoke. By the time we made it to double overtime and my winning shot at the buzzer bounced around the rim for what seemed like hours before dropping through the hoop, I felt like the early ’90s had returned, and I was strangely ok with that.