The definition of awesome. Beer, art, and a sense of humor, all rolled into one. There is hope for the human race after all.

One word, Wil: WordPress. I run four blogs (yeah, I know) on WordPress without any issues. Great support community, supports multiple levels of geekness (you can know anything from nothing to HTML, CSS, and PHP and still have a successful blog), lots of themes available. If you have ads, you're the one controlling where and when they appear and you're the one making the money. I make enough to cover my hosting fees, and my audience is probably 0.00001% of yours. Just one example of what can be done: http://blog.kjodle.net If you want help getting up and running with WP, let me know.

"a custody Cold War" -- what an excellent metaphor! Thanks for a fantastic (re)post. What a great way to end the weekend. I shall sleep soundly with wistful memories of an 80's middle school experience floating through my head, when my friends and I thought for sure that "Gary Gygax" had to be a made up name--it was just too alliterative and cool.

I'm using Firefox. Guess what happened? The "Post" button decided not to work. Had to ctl-a, ctl-c, reload the page, and then ctl-v. Now the "Post" button works. C'mon, Mozilla, you can do better, goddammit. IE isn't high a bar to hurdle.

Firefox hung for ten minutes We noticed this a couple of months ago: http://forum.khairul-syahir.com/graphene-support/ken-please-advise But we've never had it hang for so long or crash. Definitely strange. I didn't do the ctl-c that was so pretty much automatic a few years ago WordPress does this, which is why I'm glad I use WordPress. Posted from Chrome, which is now my default browser goddammit. Well, at least now you can play Angry Birds in your browser, goddammit. Hope you broke a leg on the audition.

Thank you for this. Most of us were so incredibly uncomfortable in our own skins at that time of our lives; being in the spotlight only magnifies that discomfort. In a lot of the teen magazine pictures, my smile never reaches my eyes, so I'm grateful for those rare occasions when it did. Perhaps you are thinking of this "deer in the headlights" shot? http://chambers1986.tumblr.com/post/15419129350

It's always a bit of a shock when life comes full circle but you don't notice it until someone points it out. You feel a bit weak in the knees and need to sit down for a while. I grew up near Lake Michigan and we used to do the same thing on the pier. A storm over water has some sort of deep, primordial magic that calls to youth. Now, of course, I warn youngsters against this particular siren song.

Just to pop a few more cogs on the whole "original" thing (no pun intended), the original film was based on a lousy/mediocre/good/excellent (take your pick) novella titled "Who Goes There?" written by John W. Campbell, the famed editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog Science Fiction and Fact). You can read it online here: http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/rearick/readings/manuscri/Who%20Goes%20There/Who%20Goes%20There%20Index.htm. It's a lousy/mediocre/good/excellent (take your pick) read. Ken