I've had similar problems yesterday and again today with Ben's Buddies and also with Darnell's Penthouse. The problem has been that sometimes but not every time it can take almost a minute to get through to the thread, I have eventually got through though so no error messages to report. Both threads have a substantial number of pages which may be a factor. Sounds like one of the servers has been having a bit of a slowdown.
I don't think my computer specifications are relevant but am using Windows XP Professional service pack 3 with Firefox 11.0.