MeFi Anniversaries

March 14, 2002 7:40 AM

I just noticed this! As of a few days ago, I've officially been in MetaFilter for two whole years! Well, except for a couple self-exiles where I left for weeks at a time due to offline crap or my just being a type B personality. How many other regulars are there who have been around at least as long? Speak up! When's your 2 year anniversary? Maybe we can throw a party for ya!
posted by ZachsMind to MetaFilter-related at 7:40 AM (49 comments total)

Also, the next time I put up a Front Page Post to MeFi, it'll be my 100th. Whee!
posted by ZachsMind at 7:50 AM on March 14, 2002

You look a bit like me.
posted by Spoon at 7:51 AM on March 14, 2002

march 30 will be my two year anniversary. i wish i had more time to get involved here.
posted by phooey at 7:58 AM on March 14, 2002

I don't know when my 2 year will be since my bio just says member since: sometime in 1999
posted by corpse at 8:08 AM on March 14, 2002

On April 21, I will have had an account on MetaFilter for two years.

More importantly, it is only two weeks until I am 9000 days old.
posted by iceberg273 at 8:10 AM on March 14, 2002

October 20 is my 2-year mark (though I began lurking here about two months before that). Do we get a commemorative pin?
posted by briank at 8:14 AM on March 14, 2002

Wow, I feel so young and new. I've got a good 8 months to go before the two year mark (November).
posted by croutonsupafreak at 8:33 AM on March 14, 2002

I have 59 days to go to my 2-year anniversary; May 12.

My Amazon wish list is on my user page.
posted by aaron at 8:36 AM on March 14, 2002

Commemorative pin, nothing: Zach got two commemorative towers of light. One for each year.
posted by rory at 8:37 AM on March 14, 2002

I had my two year anniversary about three weeks ago on February 21st.

[mumble I didn't get any party mumble mumble]
posted by adrianhon at 9:16 AM on March 14, 2002

April 11, 2002 - W00t! Actually, I've been thinking about this anniversary a lot lately and I'm glad you posted that, Zachsmind! Aren't two Internet years like 10 realtime years or something? Also, my birthday is March 31 (it's a milestone one this year...:)
posted by Lynsey at 9:33 AM on March 14, 2002

Mine's next week. It certainly doesn't seem like it's been two years. Wow.
posted by misterioso at 10:16 AM on March 14, 2002

2 years on March 1st. I still didn't get that pony.
posted by owillis at 10:16 AM on March 14, 2002

On April 1st, it will be my two month anniversary, Whee! Seems like I've been here forever. I'm already sick of this place.


Kidding!




Sort of.
posted by evanizer at 10:46 AM on March 14, 2002

Two Years? Rookies.

The THREE YEAR anniversary of my first appearance on Metafilter will be December 5, 2002. Forget about a party, I deserve one of these.


posted by jonmc at 11:25 AM on March 14, 2002

...and that was my 200th MeTa comment! Break out the champagne!
posted by jonmc at 11:30 AM on March 14, 2002

Jonmc, if I roast is what you want, all you have to do is ask and I'm sure we'd be willing to insult you mercilessly for a couple hours.
posted by Hildago at 12:52 PM on March 14, 2002

John, you beat me by just over a month for my first front pager. And boy, did it just go over like a wet sock puppet. Message 503, though, baby.

Ever notice how much matt used to post a front page post in a single day?
posted by rich at 1:32 PM on March 14, 2002

MetaRoast! It's available, apparently. In another thread I was talking with someone about the possibility of Matt making a third forum which was more lenient on posting rules. I said it couldn't be done, but maybe if it was metaroast.metafilter.com and the purpose of the forum was for avid participants to roast their MeFi buddies... nah. But one can dream. =)
posted by ZachsMind at 2:50 PM on March 14, 2002

Sorry - roast? In Australia, we 'toast' somebody's success, and give them a good 'roasting' if we're unhappy with them. Does the American term mean something different a la 'pissed'?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:07 PM on March 14, 2002

Obiwanwasabi: the Friars' Club in New York will roast anybody, no matter how famous, at any time. All the top comedians gather to say the filthiest, most objectionable things about a new member they can think of. It's the roast of roasts, civilization-wize. We're lucky, believe me!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:46 PM on March 14, 2002

obiwan - since you explained fairy bread to me, I'll tell you about "roasts." Roasts are when a famous celebrity is given a banquet where his freinds and colleagues pummel him with insults and emabarassing stories. It's a "insults-being-the-sincerest-form-of-tribute" sort of deal. The tapes sold at the site I linked to give a good example and were staples of TV in my childhood. Dean Martin, with his "tarbender, tee martooni's and a fricken chickasee..." manner was the master of the form.
posted by jonmc at 4:50 PM on March 14, 2002

Here's an account, by Frank de Giacomo, in The New York Observer, of the late Jerry Stiller's roasting - you know, father of Ben in real life and of George Costanza in Seinfeld. And it's censored...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 4:53 PM on March 14, 2002

may 13, 2002 will be my 2 year anniversary. i rather doubt anyone is throwing a party though :-)
posted by quonsar at 4:58 PM on March 14, 2002

Miguel, there's a branch of the Friar's Club in Los Angeles too; I went to a party there a few months ago.
posted by bingo at 5:07 PM on March 14, 2002

Yes I know - home of roasts, toasts and fine cigars. Is it as savage as the NY club? Or more Hollywoodesque and politically correct?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:13 PM on March 14, 2002

Damn. I need three more years to have been on metafilter for two years.
posted by fuq at 6:11 PM on March 14, 2002

*boggle*

Let me see if I get this straight. You put somebody on a dais, and then proceed to insult them with the lowest gutter-humour you can muster - dribbling cocks, Chinese-eating Jews and Dr Ruth's pussy indeed! - in front of their friends and family, for the whole evening.

How, where and when did this practice begin? For the love of God, why?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 6:12 PM on March 14, 2002

We are a perverse people obiwanwasabi. It's kind of like celebrities volunteering to be spoofed on The Simpsons or being flattered that their show was spoofed in Mad. If someone can accurately satirize you without alienating you, it's a clue that they've been paying close enough attention to dig you.

For instance, what Miguel did here could be described as "roasting" me. He makes fun, but the detail in the humor shows that he digs what I'm about, so I'm not offended. The Hollywood roasts are the same think on steroids and methamphetamine.
posted by jonmc at 6:41 PM on March 14, 2002

Did roasting start with the Ratpack then? Sure sounds like the sort of viciousness-lacquered-with-camaraderie thing that they excelled at. Of course, it would have helped that they oozed cool and charm.

I'm sure I could ooze like that if I wanted.
posted by MUD at 7:12 PM on March 14, 2002

I think it's the steroids and meth that bother me. 'Taking the piss' out of somebody is a national sport here, and the example in your link was in much the same vein as our local prduct, but this seems like really spiteful, hurtful stuff. I can see these people making arse-wiping and erection jokes with Christopher Reeve on the stand.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:00 PM on March 14, 2002

are when a famous celebrity

from the jonmc department of redundancy department.
posted by jonmc at 8:03 PM on March 14, 2002

Obi - I just realized. This has to be the most outrageous assault ever - don't think derailment; think Great Train Robbery - by us snivelling 10K+ babes on the quiet celebration of the crusty 2-year-old MetaFilter vets. How an old-timer's MeTa thread can turn into a Q&A on the American sport of roasting and its Australasian equivalents is surely a source for shame. Of course, elder statesman jonmc led us on. ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:14 PM on March 14, 2002

Miguel, Jerry Stiller's not dead.
posted by evanizer at 8:45 PM on March 14, 2002

Well, Evan - you've made my day! Not the first time. either. I love the man and immensely enjoyed his autobiography. I must be getting old myself. A month ago my wife told another favourite of mine, Leslie Nielsen, whom I'd thought dead for a year, was alive and well. I confused him with Lloyd Bridges or something. I blame my nightmares and fear of death, myself...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:01 PM on March 14, 2002

think Great Train Robbery

Now that we're Bandidos, and presumably fleeing to South America, I guess I'll have to learn the lingo. Estou com fome! Quanto que é aquele abacaxi?

posted by obiwanwasabi at 9:04 PM on March 14, 2002

What abacaxi, pardner? In Portuguese: "Quanto é que custa aquele ananás?" Watch those Brazilians; they're wily. Ned Kelly wrote a book, though.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:08 PM on March 14, 2002

The Train Robbery moves away, with each syllable, from the two-year celebrations. Perhaps we should rerail the thread: what will you do when you've been two years on MetaFilter? Feel at ease?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:13 PM on March 14, 2002

The Train Robbery moves away, with each syllable, from the two-year celebrations.

Are you kidding this is thread drift at it's best. The only way it would be better is if evanizer photoshopped my profile pic. :)



posted by jonmc at 9:22 PM on March 14, 2002

Evanizer would eat you alive, jonmc, if only for the laurels. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:26 PM on March 14, 2002

Bigotry is still alive? Damn. When's that gonna give up the ghost?

Yes the concept of roasting one's friends does date back to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts but I think that's just when it was first turned into a public display for purposes of self-publicity & moneymaking among the bratpack, their entourage, hangers-on, and anyone who wanted to be fashionably cool among the old farts of the 1970s. I think the concept actually dates back before it became a featured series of specials on NBC, but I'm having difficulty finding historical precedence for that. I can't imagine Dean Martin invented this. He must have gotten the idea from someone else but goodness knows who. Maybe it was Martin's idea of a parody of the many more serious "Man of the Year" presentations that uncool people would throw.

As memory serves (not that I was there but I was a kid back in the 1970s and remember reading about it and stuff), Martin, Sinatra and their cronies started doing this in an informal manner without the cameras, around the 1960s when they were forging their bad boy image. They were always looking for reasons to celebrate, as an excuse to go get drunk, and sometimes they'd throw parties for each other, or one of the thousands of their closest friends, and during the festivities someone would stand up before the throng of admirers, followers and stalkers, and they'd propose a toast.

Outdoing each other's toasts became part of the badboy regimen among the bratpackers. They got addicted to making audiences laugh so hard they would blow champagne through their nose -- in unison. By the early 80s though they were running out of steam. I think when they roasted Angie Dickinson, it was time for them to throw in the towel.

The toasts were often anything from backhanded compliments to outright insults - anything to outdo the previous toaster at the expense of the person being toasted. It was funny. Everybody loved it. I mean let's face it, having Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. saying something demeaning about you is infinitely better than knowing they would never return your phone calls.

So it started as a series of toasts, and evolved into outright roasts. Others have since tried similar things but I don't think anyone has done it as well as the roastmasters of the bratpack.

Anyone game to try it? We could pick a target and make a go of it.
posted by ZachsMind at 11:46 PM on March 14, 2002

Ask and you shall receive, jonmc...
posted by evanizer at 12:06 AM on March 15, 2002

great train robbery occured in Enland, 1963. most got away, along with the cash, most successful in history. )i,m here to pull miguel out of the big-boy room. "miguel, let the vets have a party"
posted by clavdivs at 8:33 AM on March 15, 2002

ev, that was beautiful...you make a very convincing sullen thug, by the way...
posted by jonmc at 10:26 AM on March 15, 2002

sometime before 1999...
posted by dangerman at 12:10 PM on March 15, 2002

Wow. My two-year Metafilter anniversary passed last month and I didn't even notice.
posted by litlnemo at 3:17 PM on March 15, 2002

jeebus! i'm aware it's far after the fact but frank, dino, sammy, et al were the rat pack. the brat pack was the group of young actors in st. elmo's fire... rob lowe, judd nelson, ally sheedy, emilio estevez, etc. now if you'll pardon me, after all this lather i need to change into a dry martini.
posted by boogah at 3:04 AM on March 16, 2002

boogah: You are absolutely right. I stand corrected and apologize. The distinction is subtle but historically relevant. Thank you for pointing out my typo.
posted by ZachsMind at 1:57 AM on March 18, 2002

I got a big kick out of the fact that you spelled out Front Page Post this time ;)
posted by iconomy at 4:58 AM on March 18, 2002