I like it like that ♫

[Jesper]

Variety is key, in my mind. While "he said" can stick out like a sore thumb like you said, avoiding it can be just as distracting. Sometimes people try so hard to find another word for "said" or "asked" (i.e. spoke, inquired, etc) where the simple approach would have worked just fine. Avoiding using the character's name too much annoys me too. You can get so many synonyms or descriptive words in its place that you can sometimes forget who the writer is talking about. Of course, saying the character's name fifty times in a paragraph is distracting, too. So, again, variety.

Also, it takes a writer that knows the characters well to write quick, successive lines of dialogue without any tag, like Rad displayed in his sample. Well-developed character traits and quirks really help in those cases.