To our regular commenters: You may have noticed that we’ve added avatars to our comments this week. If you want your very own avatar, you can register and upload one. It’s super fancy!

So, I guess since no one else is leaping at the opportunity, I'll go ahead and do it.

Yesterday, TiFaux turned one.  If TiFaux were an actual baby we'd be walking with a little help, turning pages in a book and imitating animal noises.  But we're not a baby.  We're just folks who sit on our asses, watch TV and then write about it on the internet the next day.

On Feb. 5, 2006, Maggie wrote an admittedly inauspicious post about Medium, soon to be followed by posts about Superbowl ads, Jon Stewart's new baby and Cristin's musings on Doogie Howser and various members of the cast of Saved by the Bell.  Kyle lived in Germany and talked about the Simpsons and well-dubbed episodes of Gilmore Girls.  Then I'd enter the fold five days later to tell Meredith Grey to fuck off.

It's been a fun year.  Chloe won PR2 and none of us called it.  Maggie went on a crazy Buffy bender and tried to rationalize her own behavior.  Cristin and I invested way more energy into the Real World/Road Rules Fresh Meat

Challenge than it ever deserved.  We told Aaron Sorkin, Lost's John Locke, Rory Gilmore and Johnny Cougar himself that we were sick of their shit.  I consciously tried to not make all my posts homo-pertinent, with limited success.  Kyle carved out his own niche as TV on the Internet correspondent.  We learned to hate/love/hate/love Studio 60.  We devoted a lot space in our brains to Project Runway.  We collected our own bunch of TiFaux sweethearts: Hiro from Heroes, Jim and Pam from The Office (but especially Toby), Jack Bauer, Tim Gunn, Veronica Mars, etc.

Along the way, we got selected as a finalist for some sort of weird award and then lost.  We got some unexpected visits from the outside world.  We went through two bandwidth blackouts.  We loved, we laughed, we learned.

There's no moral to this and I, personally, don't really have any reflections to share.  But it's just weird (good weird) that this has gone on so long. 

So thanks for reading.  Keep checking the site.  I don't know what anyone else has cooked up, but I'm probably going to talk about Top Design and do another one of those little charty things at some point this week.

Love,

Dan

Sorry for the outage this morning. We’ve recently seen our traffic double and we’ve had to upgrade our hosting package twice in the past few months because you people visit our site so damn much. I thought we would make it to the end of January, but it didn’t work out.

On a related subject, free shipping on TiFaux shirts ends tomorrow. The coupon code is FREESHIPPING07. We also have lovely context-based sponsors on the sidebar who have very interesting products and services.

Now through January 31st, standard shipping on most TiFaux merchandise is free! There’s never been a better time to promote your favorite word for off-brand Tivos. Just use coupon code FREESHIPPING07 at checkout.

I just wanted to take a second to thank everyone who voted for TiFaux for the Weblog awards.  We faced insurmountable odds and even though we were unable to, um, surmount them, we went down swinging.  Which is just the way TiFaux would go down if we were all bareknuckle boxers.

So, I'd like to extend a hug and an affectionate pat on the ass to everyone who took the time to vote.  I'd also like to offer an unexpected European double cheek kiss to everyone who voted every day.  An uncomfortably lingering hug with full hip contact to everyone who voted from more than one computer.  An intimate slow dance to Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This" to everyone who linked to us or told their friends to vote.

Fifth place isn't so bad, especially when you're still kind of flabbergasted to be nominated in the first place. 

It's an uphill battle, we know.  We're going up against juggernauts like Ain't It Cool News and Pop Candy.

That said, please vote for TiFaux for Best Culture Blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards!  Tell your friends, co-workers, children and childrens' children.  One vote per computer, per day!

We know we don't have much of a chance, but we at TiFaux are like pirates.  We're scrappy and ruthless in pursuit of our goals.  That, plus Maggie has a hook for a hand.

As part of our money initiative that Kyle wrote about earlier, we've designed some TiFaux brand ™ ® © t-shirts (and a cap) that you can now purchase for your very own self. Some of them just say "TiFaux." Some of them say "TiFaux" with "I'm Sick of Your Shit" on the back. You'll have to determine which is which for yourself.

In a day or two, we'll also introduce a third design that's the coolest of cool, which I won't bother describing because it's so cool I'd never be able to do it justice. So check back often for new stuff. 

Also, Kyle wants me to tell you that these shirts are not CafePress, the crappy internet-t-shirts-on-demand you may have seen on other sites. We're all about quality here. The shirts are printed with some sort of indestructible flexible plastic junk that's way better than silkscreening or iron-on inkjet printouts. These shirts will last approximately a thousand years. They make spacesuits out of this stuff.

Impress your family and friends! The perfect stocking stuffer! 

Blair, right, with future PE teacher Jo.

This is kind of TV-related, but I thought it was funny, so I thought I'd share.

Last Saturday I met my friend Louisa at a gay bar on Capitol Hill, as one of her gays was having a birthday.  I ended up chatting with her friend Pete and his boyfriend, and we all decided to meet up the following Thursday (last night) in Dupont Circle.

We settled the details about the when and the where over e-mail, and during the e-mail chit chat Pete indicated that I looked familiar.  Wiseass that I am, I wrote:

Not sure who I could remind you of.  Perhaps you recognize me from my brief childhood stint on "The Facts of Life" as Blair Warner's mischevious little brother. 

So, that's funny, right?

Well, I guess it just proves that I repeatedly fail to realize that not everyone gets my sense of humor right away, as my newfound pal shared this information with co-workers and was whistling the Facts of Life theme song all day.

This post will be brief, and not really about Buffy, or television. Not because I didn’t love Season Three, because I did, but really, Season Three is very much like Season Two, and there’s not too much more to say.

Strangely, the mysteries of the universe are not being revealed the way I thought they’d be when I started this experiment. Maybe if I had attempted to read all 10,000 pages of Remembrance of Things Past, I’d on the verge of some sort of spiritual breakthough. But 56 episodes of Buffy just makes me want to watch more Buffy, and speak only of Buffy, and compare all other forms of entertainment to Buffy and find them all wanting. It’s a sort of enlightenment, I guess — but it’s empty; it feeds on itself, collapsing into a black hole of only Buffy, where the extent of my critical and analytic judgment is reduced to comments such as “Look, it’s a new opening credts sequence!” and “That prom dress makes her look all lopsided.”

By the by, when did the world decide to start calling Remembrance of Things Past “In Search of Lost Time”? Where was I? Not that I’m going to read it. But I’d like to know, just in case I’m on Jeopardy and they say something about eating madelines and I buzz in and say the wrong damn title. Once, my mom and I accidentally went to a three-hour-long movie adaptation of that book in French. Well, we didn’t go to the movie accidentally, but we were totally unprepared when it was AWFUL and ENDLESS and nonsensical and furniture would occasionally move around all on its own while an orchestra played and a midget cried. Hey, don’t you hate movies? Yeah, being entertained totally blows. I know, let’s make a movie about PROUST. And then critics will like it and they will fool poor suburban mothers and daughters to sit through it. We are geniuses. Marry me.

Up next: Season Four. This is the season I have seen the most of before starting the experiment, so I will have to power through. Also, Riley = blandsville, so there’s that to not look forward to. But at least he isn’t 10,000 pages of Proust.

Time Warner has crapped out on us, and they can’t send anyone to do anything about it until Thursday. So… I guess I’ll be playing a lot of Babble.