brothermanOG 2004

A 6'3" redheaded single father from Succasunna, New Jersey, Dan Hall arrived on eZabel in March 2004 and immediately began doing two things he would never stop doing: passionately defending the New York Mets and picking fights about music with anyone foolish enough to engage. His very first comment was a declaration of allegiance — "The 2112 Overture by Rush rocks" — and from that moment forward, he planted his flag as the site's most unapologetic classic rock purist. Rush, U2, Bon Jovi, Duran Duran, Journey, Pink Floyd: these were the pillars of civilization, and everything else — punk, ska, indie, hip-hop — was varying degrees of "veloci-raptor mating call." He once generated a 140-comment thread in under 24 hours by declaring indie music categorically inferior to mainstream rock, prompting thefunkyfresh to plead "dan dan dan dan DAN.... you're making yourself sound so silly because you are speaking out of ignorance" and theremin to compile an entire music history lesson in the replies. Dan's response to all of it was pure, unrepentant glee: "I should make movie/documentaries like Michael Moore. A thread with 140 comments in less than 24 hours is a crowning achievement."

But Dan was far more than a provocateur. He joined eZabel at one of the hardest points in his life — recently separated, raising two small children alone after his wife left, sleeping on a futon in his parents' half-finished attic while handing over nearly half his salary. He was bracingly honest about all of it, writing with a rawness that cut through the usual forum banter: "Sorry girls, but being HOT isn't enough" he quipped after describing his job as a draftsman and his crumbling marriage in the same breath. He talked openly about the pain of his kids growing up in a split household, about his daughter Emily's behavioral struggles at school, about fighting the Hackettstown school system when they shuffled her between programs for two months. He described himself as an onion — "You need to peel away the top layer. Unfortunately, not many want to do that" — and there was real truth in it. Beneath the guy who bragged about his Bowflex results and challenged everyone at Gold's Gym to witness his greatness was a father who stayed up past midnight playing his son's Revenge of the Sith PS2 game after the kids went to bed, who celebrated getting permission to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays like he'd won the lottery, and who once admitted that going to the gym was the most exciting part of his week.

His relationship with iwz was quietly one of the more genuine friendships on the site. Dan would ask Ian about congregation logistics, territory boundaries, rental leads, and babysitters — but also about personal matters that revealed how isolated single parenthood could be. He organized movie outings, proposed camping trips, tried to get board game nights going with Risk at Sal Castelli's house, and once told Ian he just needed "some people to hang out with somewhat regularly." His crew was anchored by socalgal, fivezero, juicymango, and rocksupastar, though his relationship with socalgal was the kind where she would call him out without mercy — after he broke things off with a girlfriend he wasn't fully invested in, she lit into him: telling him he'd known about his walls before getting involved and had hurt a good person in the process. Dan took it. He respected people who shot straight. He also had a running rivalry with the younger specialk's circle and especially with a user named Alex, whose enthusiasm for football over baseball was a personal affront to Dan's worldview. Their debates about hand-eye coordination versus athletic conditioning were legendary in their sheer stamina — Dan once wrote a dissertation-length comment about Mariano Rivera's cut fastball and Barry Zito's 12-6 curveball to prove that hitting a baseball was the single hardest skill in all of sports.

Star Wars was the other great love. He created the "Official Revenge of the Sith Thread," debated the Mace Windu versus Darth Sidious fight with Talmudic intensity ("Here we have a dark lord who deceived a whole galaxy... and a Jedi whose only credit to his name is chopping off a bounty hunter's head, defeats him, making the chosen one obsolete"), and wrote a journal entry drawing parallels between the fall of the Jedi and the fall of Adam and Eve — complete with an extended metaphor about Luke's mechanical hand and the torturous bolts of lightning from "the epitome of evil, Lord Sidious." He watched the Transformers movie twice in theaters and spent the ride home pondering whether Megatron would scan an Earth vehicle in the sequel. He could quote the original trilogy at will, once dropping into the forums with "The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner... Now I am the master!!" followed by "(Mechanical breathing)" on the anniversary of A New Hope. After Ian gave a talk that referenced Sherlock Holmes, Dan's review was instant: "I could totally envision him with a dorky British hat and a pipe."

Through the years — the apartment disasters bailed out by a generous friend, the custody battles, the sprained ankle from a baseball league that kept him limping for weeks, the knee that cracked every time he moved it — Dan kept showing up. He got remarried in the summer of 2008, announcing it with characteristic understatement: "I got married over the weekend for those who don't know. :o)" He found an apartment on Harvey Street in Hackettstown, then eventually moved back to Succasunna to refinance his parents' house — the one his great-grandfather built. He mountain-biked 27 miles from Hackettstown to Andover and back, dodging a black bear, a ten-point buck, three groundhogs, and a fox along the way, plus "about 87 bugs got in my eyes and mouth. Yum... Protein." His peak year was 2007 with an astonishing 1,589 comments, and his 3,880 total — overwhelmingly concentrated in Musings — made him one of the site's most prolific voices. He was still posting in 2010, one of the last guards still keeping the lights on.

eZabel Personality Type: ESTJ — "The Debater." Blunt, opinionated, and utterly allergic to sugar-coating, Dan turned every topic into a spirited argument and every argument into an event. But behind every hot take about indie music and every baseball statistic was a man doing the hardest job he knew — raising two kids alone with no safety net — and using eZabel as the one place he could unwind, stir up trouble, and feel like something other than Mr. Mom for an hour after the kids went to bed.