The most "celebrated graphic novel of all time."
20+ years to bring it to the screen.
Finally, Watchmen is released.
Judging by the lines at the theater I went to early this evening, it'll make a lot of money. Least this weekend.
Judging by the audience response throughout the movie, I'm not sure if it will make much after.
But what did you think? Vote and leave your comments.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Lost. I've devoted so much of my brain capacity to it that I've lost months of memory, developed a stutter, and drool when I get to close to a running microwave. Even last night, as my girlfriend and I caught this week's episode on my DVR, I began drawing diagrams and explaining theoretical quantum physics after she asked the all-too-common, "what the hell is going on?"

And this is what makes Lost the best show on television. You never know what's going to happen. Main characters die. The universe gets twisted and rebuilt. And it's the hope of all viewers that this is leading toward some sort of ultimate resolution. And for this day in age, it's the perfect show.

Boldly featuring a horrific plane crash a mere 3 years after 9/11, Lost seemed to tweak our sensibilities. Further, it featured a former Iraqi Republican Guard as a sympathetic main character just as our country was fighting against his people. And finally, now that we've hit some of our darkest hours, and things have become so chaotic and tangled, (or the record is skipping) we're hoping our leaders are making the best decisions and cutting through the mess in order to put us back on track.

It's these reasons that make Lost one of the finest hours on television. Poignant, interesting, and it forces you to think. Now if someone can explain to me what the hell that four-toed statue is, I'd be a happy man.

Also written by this author, "The Next 100 Years for Lehman Brothers." David Elias, who had the misfortune of writing this book back in 1999, couldn't have foreseen the plague of dropping stock points we're now facing, could he? My favorite quote is from this review of the book on Amazon:

To a growing number of analysts, it's not a question of if the Dow Jones Industrial Average will blast into the financial stratosphere, but how high it will go.

Whoops.

Saturday Morning Cartoon? The results I'm afraid would not make the fans happy.

I know what you're thinking. Only a Top 10? It's napkins for goodness sake! There's got to be, well, at least 23 3/4 great ways to fold them.

And you'd be right.

But we've got to single out the best. The folds that showcase napkins for what they truly are: the unsung hero of every meal. The star of the place setting.

Now I looked at a lot of napkin folding techniques, considered 20 of the coolest, (as recommended by Mrs Beeton and listed by Quamut) and narrowed the list to the ten which virtually anyone can make.

Haterade here, with a special edition of the Top 13 column. Now that we have the final (bakers) dozen on stage, It's time to anal-yse them.

Call him a young hustler. Future Marlo. Future addict. Or just an inquisitive kid. But he shows us a way to simulate smoking using a candy you can find at your corner store: Smarties.
At the same time I'm appalled, I'm amazed.
Turns out I'm just an old dude way behind the times. The web is filled with kids doing similar videos. Like Relentless505, these tweens, or these young ladies.

Smarties are "America's Favorite Candy", according to Ce De Candy. Guess we now know why.

PS - Nice placement of the dictionary.

On the day Watchmen is finally released (to somewhat mixed reviews), I thought I'd share a couple of sketches from my collection. The first is a Rorschach sketch by Watchmen artist, Dave Gibbons. It's the standard headshot he does for all fans, but I like that I got it in "2000 AD", which is also the British comic that gave him his big break.

The second is an inked by Transmetropolitan artist Darick Robertson of The Comedian. I commissioned this soon after 9-11, which inspired me to think that if we were living in the Watchmen Universe, this is exactly the kind of poster the US would be using to recruit for the military.

Click either image for a larger version