holy cow. 80 queries. thanks for the heads up.
Crikey. I had a look inside the plugin. I think it is not so much the avatar (he pretty much copypasted the entire inc_functions_forumlist) - but the popup menu thing. If it was stripped down to just the avatar and a profile link it would have a lot less queries I think. I will have a better look at it tomorrow.
Alice - I have no interest in avatars on thread listing tutorials. I already have them, and I don't really want them on my index, I am just curious.