The traditional gift is leather. The modern gift is crystal.

June 26, 1483: Richard III becomes King of England.

June 26, 1819: The bicycle is patented, the same day the inventor of baseball, Abner Doubleday, is born.

June 26, 1963: John F. Kennedy delivers his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

June 26, 2003: Strom Thurmond dies, at 387 years of age.

June 26 births: Pearl S. Buck, 1892. Peter Lorre, 1904. Babe Didrikson Zaharias, 1911. Mick Jones, 1955. P.T. Anderson, 1970. Derek Jeter, 1974. Jason Schwartzman, 1980.

This blog, 2004.

I'll let you decide which event is the coolest and most significant.

No, I won't. It's this one! This blog right here! Yay me!

It's been three long years since I began this goofy thing, and, mirabile visu, it's still going strong. In some ways, stronger than ever: I think some of my most interesting, entertaining, original, and, if nothing else, lengthy posts have come in the past couple months. Such as my third annual Unfair Previews of the Fall TV season (now added to the Sidebar). Or there was my rundown of the cancelled shows from last year, which a lot of people seemed to like. There was that completely random salute to Neil Flynn, which not a lot of people seemed to like, but at least I got a kick out of it. There was my tribute to the Discovery Channel, and my comparison of Showtime and HBO, both of which I thought turned out nicely. And there was the Pussification of the American R-Rated Franchise, which I plan on revising into list form and submitting to Cracked.com, so no stealing! I'll know you did it!

I've also started experimenting with picture posts a little more, such as the one about Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, and Robert De Niro. There was also the Joe Francis/Paris Hilton/Zombie Tom picture, the lolzombie, and of course, the sad little dead cat (which I thought was hilarious, but which garnered exactly zero comments; note to self: dead cats are not as funny to everyone else as they are to you and Stephen Lynch, apparently).

In other ways, the blog has not been going as strongly as it was about a year ago. Traffic has dropped off somewhat since the Comic Weblog Updates page went kerplooey; that page was the single best funnel for traffic this site has ever had. And my dropping regular posting about comic books (due to my dropping regular buying of comic books), I think, had already lost the majority of that comics weblogging crowd anyway. Now, when I post about comics, such as my two huge entries on Free Comic Book Day, or my Supergirl/Milo Manara post -- they generate scarcely a ripple of interest. I mean, come on, you've all seen how easily comics fans get bent out of shape over nothing. I can't get even one person outraged at me for comparing the new, supposedly more youth-friendly Supergirl art to work by a legendary hardcore porn artist? That disappointed me, I have to admit. That hurt.

And also, there's been some real-world stuff taking precedence over the blog for much of 2007. Things have gotten stabilized, thanks for asking, and I've gone back to trying to post every day (and I'm coming pretty darn close -- for me, anyway), which, really, in the end, is the best thing a blogger can do to build up traffic. How some of you people never miss a day on your own blogs boggles my mind, and more power to you. This will be my 828th published post, which, if you do the math, and I did, is 267 less than one daily post over three years. Oh well. I don't think I'll ever quite get there, but I hope what I do manage to throw up here keeps you coming back.

Anyhoo. Thanks for visiting, folks! Looking back on what I've written over the last three years -- an awful lot of it has made me happy. I hope some of that rubbed off on you, too. And as your reward for making it through this self-indulgent post, here's a self-indulgent finale: the greatest ending to any movie since "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Get your hankies ready!