Interesting thread.
From perusing the responses, I'm getting the impression that snake people are lazy, and lizard people hate bugs! LOL!
My first love as a kid was the boa constrictor. I will always love the snakes, and most of my collection is snakes.
But my favorite? Gotta be the large monitors and tegus. I'm not sure whether it's because they can hear you and thus make interaction more meaningful (every one of my lizards has a distinct "call" for feeding time, and they all respond accordingly), or because you can actually tell when they "like" you easier than with snakes, I don't know. I just love them.
And midtx350z, get rid of that hot rock and do some research on your V. exanthematicus.
Chris