[jQuery] google reader slick animation using jquery

[Kia Niskavaara]

How can I achieve a similar animation like the one used in google reader?

I have a container and want to append a lot of elements. I'm not using jquery 
at all today and use

for (var i = 0; i < itemlength; i++) {
   container.appendChild(items[i]);
}

All I've achieved is this:

for (var i = 0; i < itemlength; i++) {
   var it = $(items[i]);
   $it.hide();
   $(container).append($it);
   $it.show('fast');
   // sleep ...
}

Is this the way to do it? I can't see any animations at all. And also all the 
items get the style 
"display: block;" when showing them. Is this necessary?

Kia