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Generally, Hollywood is one of the first to latch onto whatever the latest trend becomes in marketing and technology. Trailers helped pave the way for online video. Studios were amongst the first to push the boundaries of mobile. TV shows embraced online communities and blogs well before most. But they seem to be lagging in one crucial new trend – transparency. Big brands have slowly started to open up. Even the new government is on board. But Tinseltown seems more reluctant than anyone to embrace the idea beyond a few behind the scenes features and a gag reel on the DVD.

And we’re back with the “Top 5,” wherein an employee asks another employee their Top 5 “blanks” and they answer for all to judge. Last time Durbin asked Dan a very specific music-related Top 5. Dan was a bit less specific with my Top 5 – but arguably better than Durbin (although admittedly it’s not too hard to top Durbin). With that little bit of truth – I present to you – my top 5 Muppets.

It was with great anticipation that I set my DVR for a date with Jack, as in Bauer, this past Sunday night.  So excited in fact, that my Facebook status update faked out a few of my friends and family into thinking I actually had a real date–they were very sad to hear it was of the TV fantasy variety only.  But I digress.  Sunday night was the first of a two night 4 hour (really only 98 minutes once you fast forward through commercials) season premier; a considerable amount of time for me to invest in TV viewing but so worth it.

Sure, Barack Obama won an election, but the hearts and minds of the internet and media in general were won by Chicago’s other political wunderkind, Nate Silver. Having predicted the results of the 2008 presidential election almost to the exact result, Silver’s a fairly popular guy right now, earning multimillion dollar book deals and appearing on news programs almost daily. However, The Internet has elevated him from your typical popular political analyst to a pop culture icon. Example below, kids.

10am: Wife and I are speeding the mean streets of suburbia en route to the matinee showing of “Twilight,” the apparent heir apparent to the Harry Potter throne of nerdish literature obsession and fantasy-lite followers everywhere. Everything in me screams that this thing is going to suck. Being a vampire movie, the pun isn’t lost on my wife, who laughs every time I say that. We’re meeting her work buddies, who are all female and all fans of the books. I’m expecting their boyfriends and husbands to share the same lost look I’ll have, our gazes wandering to posters of the upcoming Punisher movie and politely smiling while they swoon at press photos of Twilight’s cast.

Maybe this little jaunt will give me clarity to recognize why this thing came out of nowhere to suck up the minds and hearts of Hot Topic consumers everywhere. Maybe this will just make me want to see the new Punisher movie. Maybe I should just eat my popcorn, endure, and use the experience as Cohabitation Credit toward one day of uninterrupted Xbox gaming. Anyways, we arrive, park, pay, and we’re strapped in for monster melodrama. On with the show!