Roger Ebert's long glorious career of loving movies has come to an end.

I used to watch these two guys religiously. I especially loved it when they disagreed on a movie, which seemed to be quite often though that may be a trick of memory.

When they did disagree it seemed that Ebert's take on the film was usually in sync with my own. Not always of course, but more times than not, and certainly more times than Gene Siskel.

So as hard as it was for me to accept the passing of Siskel, I took solace in the fact that Roger Ebert would still be there giving me advice as to which movies were worth my hard earned money, and which were not.

Sadly yesterday he followed the lead of his long time partner and also shuffled off this mortal coil.

You have NO idea how close I came in 2004 to starting a blog dedicated to movies, instead of politics. In fact if I had not been so pissed off about George W. Bush winning that second term you might right now be reading about the new information that has leaked about newly discovered outtakes from the Avengers movie instead of about Sarah Palin giving a speech at the Terri Schiavo fund raising dinner or Republicans freaking out over the possibility of school vouchers being used to open Islamic charter schools.

Like Roger Ebert I also love movies, and in fact see just about every big movie that comes out each year. If I can't make it to the theater I put it in my Netflix's queue and watch it while riding my exercise bike in my office.

I once thought it would be my dream job to get paid to watch movies and then write about them for the newspaper. However the idea of watching a movie in order to critique it later on seemed like a good way to miss out on the magic, and to start dreading the very idea of sitting in a darkened theater.

So I never pursued that dream.

Which is why I have always appreciated Roger Ebert. In many ways he proved my fears wrong, in that it seemed he NEVER got tired of seeing the movies, and he NEVER missed out on the magic while doing so.

Still I think I'll stick to politics.

Goodbye Roger, and let me just give you two thumbs up for all of the GREAT movies I saw that I very well might have missed if you had not insisted that they were movies "not to be missed."

More often than not, you were right.