Tricky question (to me anyways...)

[Theater]

I'm editing my showthread template to display the title differently. I want to show the thread starter's avatar next to the news title. Anyone have a clue how to do that? Here is how far I've gotten, and note that the broken image is because I tried to use the postbit_avatar template contents for the avatar:

Also if someone could figure out how to hide that table (since the avatar is in its own) if the user doesn't have one. Believe it would be those <if condition> things.