gogo

If you changed your name but not your avatar, I really don't think I'd notice. And if someone else appropriated your avatar, I'd be sure that it was you posting. The avatar is definitely the first thing I notice when I'm reading a post. I agree with this. Sometimes I'll wonder who the hell a poster is, think they're new, and then notice that they've got 10,000 posts.

Jesse, I'm going to have to check this out again when I get home (and get to a decent monitor and speakers), but even with my crappy set-up here, it looks pretty cool.

Watch it! I think there are enough clues, what with sig lines, member titles, avatars, etc., that it shouldn't be all that confusing. Plus, I think I'd recognize some people (Beltmann, Sir Stewart, ms yvon, etc.) just by their posting styles, no matter what they were called.

Going to the movies alone means I can see what I want, read before the lights go down, sit as close as I like, and no one bogarts the junior mints. A perfect evening out! My freshman roommate in college used to give me the face anytime I left for a solo movie trip. I think she thought I didn't have any friends, but really, I just needed a break from my friends.

Ha! OK, yeah, that second "only" makes all the difference. Also: [moderator]One more reference to The Rock, Michael Bay, or douchebags in this thread, and I'm going back and deleting and/or editing all of those posts.[/moderator]

Quotes from that movie make up a large portion of the conversation around our house. And everyone is classified as a Del or a Neil. When we go on family vacations, rooms are assigned based on those categories.

Wait... what? You don't watch movies alone?? I'm a loner by nature. I go out to the movies by myself.

Oh man. He made a lot of crap, but he also made some of the most important movies of my youth. The Breakfast Club was my first favorite-favorite movie. I recently turned up an old ring box, where I kept all the stubs from the many times I saw that movie.

I forgot, I truly did mean to asterisk that with ***"party hats" is not a bad yarmulke joke.

Yeah, Susan keeps upping the ante. As soon as she hits "party hats will be provided", I'm booking my flight.

I'm not saying that the technically excellent work necessarily lacks soul. I'm saying it doesn't touch everyone in that same way. I know there are people around here who feel that Nels Cline's guitar playing is technically excellent, but soulless, and there are just as many people who are deeply touched by his playing. I just think that "favorite" implies an emotional connection that, for whatever reason, is not based on any technical achievement. Which also doesn't necessarily mean that a favorite is not technically excellent, just that that's not where the emotional connection is formed.

I realized last night that I recently chided a name-changer, before my own change. I told him that if you change your name, you should at least keep the same avatar so that people will still recognize you.

This very issue came up last night on So You Think You Can Dance. Adam Shankman said that Kayla was the best dancer in the final four, but she probably won't be crowned America's Favorite Dancer. I think in a lot of cases it's a comparison of technical excellence, which doesn't touch the heart or soul or whatever, in the same way that a flawed performer or performance can do. The beautiful flaws are what make the imperfect, perfect.

It's just for kicks. No big whoop!

Someday the kids are going to get on here and read what I post about them, and they're not going to be the least bit happy!

My nieces and nephew. I had just returned from a class reunion, and this was taken mostly to show off how well I did picking out VC (the other VC ) stuff that actually fit them.

This isn't a picture of me so much as it is a picture of my very heart and soul: The little bit of my heart on the right is also wearing Vassar socks, but they had to be cropped out because the litte piece of my soul on the left didn't want it to be made public that he's only wearing boxer shorts in this pic.

I don't frequent this thread, so both of these might have been mentioned previously, but last night I saw In The Loop, and enjoyed it very much. Frightening, depressing, but above all, hilarious. While we were there, a huge crowd was heading in to a special screening of The Cove. Saw the trailer before In The Loop, it also looks to be frightening and depressing, but not so much with the hilarious.

I'd say this is it: Top 12 Bands (featuring some seriously old-school UK and Irish VCers, who sadly no longer frequent this joint)

Yeah, that one looks a bit annoying, but it also looks like something I can zip through fairly quickly, so I'm figuring, I'll cross it off the list anyway. I like seeing those school reading lists, they always remind me how many "important" books I should have read by now (while instead, I'm wasting a week with Janelle Brown ), and give me great ideas for what to read next. It's a long time since I read any John Irving, but I remember liking A Prayer for Owen Meany. I may need to dip back into Hotel New Hampshire one of these days, too.

I'm going to read along with some of my niece's assigned summer reading: And I'm still trying to keep up with the SF library's On The Same Page list:

I saw it again this weekend, and the plan is to see it again in IMAX 3D next week, when the kids are all home from camp. I'm looking forward to that (I saw Prisoner of Azkaban in IMAX), but kind of disappointed about the 3D business. Although, does that mean I can take off the stupid glasses after the Death Eaters' flight through London? The people I went with this time, who don't read the books, also agreed that the story was easier to follow than the other movies. They did ask, though, what the deal was with Snape being the Half-Blood Prince. Despite being the title, it was kind of a

Check out Owl & Bear's archive, they've got it: http://www.owlandbear.com/wilco-archive/

There comes a time when you just have to go off the list. I feel like I've been working off the same list of half-finished and can't-quite-get-to-them books forever now (some of them I have managed to finish...), so I picked one at random from the big list, and I'm going over to the library after work to pick up this one: Of that batch that took forever/I couldn't quite get through, Ishi was the cream of the crop. I am haunted/obsessed by his story. On hold for now: Columbine and the Brooklyn Bridge. And although I've been trying not to buy as many books these days, I have a us

In defense of the "just because" camp: Sometimes I don't know why I like a song. Maybe it just makes me happy (or sad) to hear it, or it reminds me of something that I can't quite put my finger on, and I just like that feeling, and don't want to think about it any more deeply than that. Sometimes I feel like digging deeper might place my feelings about the song on a too-conscious level, and destroy those feelings for me. And so when I'm asked why I like or dislike a particular song, and don't have an immediate answer and don't really want to come up with one, I can get defensive. That's