Nerd. Geek. Poindexter. All of these are monikers to which I aspire but seem to fall hopelessly short.
Why? I would like to say that it has something to do with my innate sense of style, or my legions of admirers who turn all of my interests and expressions into the next trucker cap, fedora, or way of wearing one's bangs; but seeing as I never quite got the "don't mix brown with black" memo, in addition to the fact that this blog has only two followers, I don't think really think that either is that likely.
No, what keeps me from truly obtaining and wielding with pride the heavyweight belt of 833k is laziness, impatience, and a decided lack of dedication.
To illustrate my point, I offer the following example:
I am an event planner by profession. Technically, an event manager, but seeing as there are some days where a considerable part of my job comprises answering the age-old question of "Chicken or Fish?" I try not to take titles too seriously. I recently found out that with some of the larger hotel chains, I earn points for planning meetings. By coincidence, we had planned several large-scale events with the same hotel chain. Without trying, I had earned enough of these "points" to set me up for a few night's stay at any hotel I wanted, any place in the country. Seeing as I had previously only experienced "perks" by way of free cheese and steno pad holders, this was a nice surprise.
I knew immediately what I wanted to do and who I wanted to go with: Comic-Con with my brother. At this point you may say that it is promising in terms of my lack-of-cool that this was my first thought when I heard "free trip". Where others would consider areas tropical or scenic and skillyfully choose for company the most impressive specimen with loose morals available, I immediately thought of an overcrowded location devoid of sunlight with the one person that I knew appreciated the "Tremors" ouevre as much as I. ::sigh:: If only it was that easy.
I made my hotel reservations and pulled my brother on my geek train. He planned to meet Stan Lee. I promised to kiss the hem of the robes of Joss Whedon. (Yeah, I am one of those.) I went to the Comic-Con website and saw that the registration was currently closed. Tickets for the three-day passes were quite affordable however, and I planned to check back at the website each day until they were on sale again. In the mean time, I went and priced out a t-shirt that read "There are 10 types of people that understand binary- those that do and those that don't."
Life though, she got in the way. I made this promise to myself that I would attempt to be cultured and watch all of the Academy Award for Best Picture noms, and within a week, I had plans to go out with friends and/or awkward computer-fixing members of the opposite sex a record-breaking FOUR times. A hermit by choice, this type of socialization had been heretofore unheard of since the days when it took me 20 minutes and all my concentration to send a text message ("You send a note with the PHONE????")
When next I logged on to my computer and pulled up Comic-Con's website, I saw that tickets for Wonder-Con in September were available online, but that Comic-Con had already SOLD OUT. Stunned, I sat like a deer in the LCD, Red Vine hanging from my open mouth, furiously clicking the mouse in an attempt to find any link that would explain why 127,000 tickets were no longer available for purchase.
I will not describe to you the fit that followed- only that I am happy that I do not have any roommates to have recorded my reaction with a hidden camera, as I suspect that it would have surely gone beyond Leroy Jenkins-viral and into Star Wars Kid-plague. Suffice it to say that the Biblically-rumored weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth made an appearance, and I had to make a very shamefaced trip to IKEA to replace a lamp.
There followed the phone calls to my brother, and to my best friend in California who had planned to join us. The stunned silence, followed by the catch in each of their throats as they promised sentiments like, "Hey, there's always next year," only added to my feelings of nerd-otence and sent me into a shame spiral of pop music, Panda Express, and favoring Andy Samberg over the amazing comedic genius that is Bill Hader.
My geexistential crisis forced me to examine how something like this could happen. Had I not been on 12,000 "Lost" forums over the last seven years- first to debate what the fuck a polar bear was doing in the jungle and later whether they actually expected us to believe that everyone was dead in the last season? Was I not infuriated at the choice of that kid from "Friday Night Lights" for Gambit in the Wolverine movie? I knew all the words to "Re: Your Brains", and loathed Apple for making Jonathon Hodgman into the PC as well as Bunsen Honeydew on the those stupid "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" commercials. I had read Wil Wheaton's autobiography and forgiven him for Wesley Crusher. How was I still falling short?
What I came to was this: I love what the geeks give me. I love the graphic novels; I love the crazy classic TV series re-made into kickass action/adventure shows (Hawaii Five-O excluding); I love the celebrated careers of people like Bruce Campbell, David Cross, and Judd Apatow; and I love the zombies. My gosh, how I love the ZOMBIES. Here is what I don't love: the absolute devotion entailed in being a member of the fold.
Geeks are monk-like Zen masters who are born for queueing up and giving their entire mind and body to that which they love. They stand in line for midnight showings of event movies while I am at home enjoying actual sleep before work on Friday, completely oblivious to the fact that the new Star Wars movie sucks. They kill upwards of eight pedestrians reading while driving home from the Borders where they bought "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and then do not eat, drink, poop, or allow others within their home to do the same until they have finished every last word. Most would rather see Felicia Day's wan smile than that of the Mona Lisa, and have tents in the trunk of their car to place on the sidewalk in front of that event's location within five minutes of its announcement.
I simply don't have it in me. I am not saying that I am better than geeks, or even that I have a life that is so much more interesting than theirs that I cannot give my time to the pursuit of that which I love. I just hate lines. I hate waiting. I didn't watch "Battlestar Galactica" until the final season, and even then, I was annoyed at having to wait a week between each episode, the expression of which compromised my personal safety in the presence of those who had endured the wait between Season 3 and the first half of Season 4. I would love to be included in these nerdvents, but would only really be happy if I could go and be allowed to cut the line, and since I do not look like Princess Leia in a gold bikini or Alice from "Resident Evil" in a torn red dress and combat boots, I am pretty much S.O.L. on that desire.
In the weeks since my disappointment, I have come to accept my place as the sucker fish on the skin of the shark that is n34dc0r3. I will never truly be one of the pasty legions, and I am fine with that. I am instead somewhere between Jane Goodall and Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, going through the motions of assimilation but eventually being called out as a fraud and lead around on a leash by those that have declared themselves my superiors.
So nerds, I thank you for a re-writing history to depict Lady Catherine de Bourgh as a ninja assassin and giving me hope for a future populated with both cowboys AND aliens. Just do me a favor and text me when the line lets up, will ya?
3 comments:
I absolutely love reading your blog! I just had to let you know that. Also, I am right there with you on the waiting thing. And it always takes me much longer to start watching a TV series that everyone raves about. If you ever find out the reason for the polar bear, please enlighten me. Soooo weird.
The funny thing about self-reflection is that we almost always come to the conclusion that there is in-fact, someone better than us. I don't mean better in the all-encompassing way, I mean better in the "this that and the other thing" way. We aspire to the great heights of Mt. Everest only to find that some punk with a thermal jacket is planting his freaking flag at the top of K2.
I think though, that when we disregard our own accomplishments in light of others', we're really just beating ourselves up for the same reasons that most of us did in Junior High. We desperately wanted to be accepted and appreciated by the group.
The irony is that geekdom/nerdcore has always been the group for the outcasts. Sometime in the early 2000's people started realizing that so-called geeks and nerds weren't really that different, just interested in different things. Cons became popular, Computers were neat, and SciFi (Star Wars notwithstanding) was cool.
It's not that you're not a geek or a nerd, it's just that the definition enlarged and suddenly there were a bunch of people scrambling to be back at the top. When I was in high school, it was easy to be nerdy. There were relatively so few of us that we didn't need to prove ourselves to each other. We were already the only people who knew what we were talking about. We were at the top of our social hierarchy, the giant fish in a pond filled with only a few giant koi. Now in 2011, the pond is a lake, and there are hundreds of thousands of fish. "It's not fair!" we cry out. "We were here first!".
When I was a kid, my family used to make yearly trips down to Anaheim. My sister and I became very familiar visitors to Disneyland. At the time the park was typically thinly-attended because it was the middle of the off-season. In my adulthood, attending at roughly the same time of year I've found it to be much different. The crowds are bigger, and more things are going on. I initially attributed this to Disneyland's greater marketing, but I've also come to realize this: I'm a different person than I was as a kid. I have less patience, and more concerns. My time is precious to me. I hate waiting in lines, and I get irritated at people who are in my way when I'm trying to get to the Jungle Cruise. I worry about the cellphone in my pocket getting wet at Splash Mountain.
It's not that I'm less of a Disneyland nerd. I'm probably more of one, but I'm also an adult and less tolerant of the world around me (And probably because I know better).
So I hate lines, I read Deathly Hallows over the course of a week, and I didn't like the prequels. Will you really attempt to call Aaron Eiche not a nerd?
You're a nerd Laurie. In more ways than I imagine I can count. Stop worrying about the K2 of nerdery and get back to enjoying your Zombies ;)
but but but.
did you say where you are going INSTEAD of Comic-con with your free hotelery?
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