Feeling Blue

While listicles (articles that are simply lists, as cataloged on great sites like Listicles) are often the laziest form of journalism, they can also be among the most delightful. Something about the "I'm just phoning this in" nature of this form of journalism encourages flights of whimsy. Or maybe it's just that, by the time you get twenty items in on Yet Another List Story, even editors have stopped reading all of the items that carefully.

Regardless of the reason, I was delighted by this Entertainment Weekly photo gallery, pegged to the release of the Watchmen movie, which uses the Dr. Manhattan character as an excuse to create a list of... blue men. Extraordinarily, the list does not feature the Blue Man Group (or maybe it does, I didn't read it that closely), but it includes some remarkably inappropriate inclusions such as:

• Robert Johnson ("He was the king of the Delta blues.")
• Papa Smurf ("Someone had to keep those little blue bastards in line.")
• Babe, the Blue Ox — notable for not being a person at all!
• And, inevitably, Tobias Funke

Blue!