The Smarmy Carny

Even though it was just a click away, I finally discovered Lists of Bests, which is part of the 43 Things family. Read more about my 43 Things at Random Fodder.

Lists of Bests allows you to create and find lists of products, places, goals and people. From the Pulitzer Prize to the Oscars and beyond; you can start the list yourself or find existing lists. For example, I have already added myself to several lists, such as:

• Academy Award's "Best Picture"
• Roger Ebert's "The Great Movies"
• 50 States of the USA

You can also start your own personal lists like "My Top 10 Favorite Books," "My Films for Computer Geeks," etc. There are three types of lists: award lists (lists of particular award winners), definitive lists (lists from other publications that are set in stone), and personal lists (created and edited only by you).

The most fun part about Lists of Bests is that when you add or create a list to your profile, you can easily check off your progress item by item. Especially useful is that, when I checked all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners that I had seen, those movies were already checked off in the "Roger Ebert's 'The Great Movies'" list when I visited it.

Here are the lists I have completed:

Here are the 5 lists I am still working on, but closest to completing:

What are you waiting for? Go get started today!

The Spider-Man 3 teaser is out now, and it's clear that the third installment will deal with the Venom plot line. I highly doubt they'll get into the Secret Wars plot simply to introduce Venom, so that development will be interesting to watch. My guess is that they'll stick with yet another lab experiment gone awry. Expect to see SM3 in May 2007.

Topher Grace is slated to play Eddie Brock, which should be fun. You may or may not have noticed the Eddie Brock reference in the original Spider-Man: J. J. Jameson mentions that Eddie couldn't get a decent photo of Spider-Man.

In the comics, Venom knows Spider-Man's secret identity, but since Spider-Man 2 seemed to be titled "Hey everyone, I'm Peter Parker!", the Venom plot line will hopefully be a good distraction from that mess.

If you're not a fan of Spider-Man, however, you can always watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles teaser. Based solely on the teaser, the movie looks pretty good. At first, I was worried that they might have dropped the lighter side of TMNT, but you'll notice that's not the case. One thing, though: I can't yet verify that Corey Feldman is not slated to voice Donatello. Once I can confirm that, I will be much more excited about the movie. TNMT is slated to be released on March 30, 2007.

Let's get ready to RUUUMBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE!!!

It's on now, dog! Lucky Charms and Grape Nuts are battling head to head in the Champion of Breakfasts final!

Who will you vote for? Who will it be — Lucky Charms or Grape Nuts?

VOTE NOW!

No, really . . . why are you still reading this? You should be voting. Yeah, up there . . . and yet, you still read. There's no teaching these kids these days!

Here's a cool site I ran across months ago and never got around to posting about. Now that people with time on their hands are streaming through this joint, this should be a great time to bring up.

Retrievr gives you a small square box that you can paint in. Various colors (probably 255 or more) are available, and you can paint whatever you want. Big deal, right? What's cool is that Retrievr then goes to Flickr and gets images that roughly match what you've drawn. It's really awesome.

A flower!

If you're bored, see if you can get these results:

• A sunset
• A flower
• A smiley face
• A seashell
• A fire truck
• Anything else — challenge yourself!

I couldn't get the fire truck, but I was able to get a small red car.