The season of the dork is upon us. Nerd, geek, dweeb, what ever your pleasure is. There’s something about the Olympics that is a rally cry for those of us who are painfully uncool. I don’t suspect the jocks of the world sit around and watch the Olympics. It is almost as if the nerds have hijacked the holly grail of the jocks…their sports. At what other time does Bravo put aside the queer eye makeovers and James Lipton to broadcast athletes?
I don’t suspect we would be as amicable if the jocks suddenly took over Latin class and NPR. They seem to take it in stride and that is great. Football season is right around the corner, but until then I’ll get to enjoy watching sports for once and routing for a 5’3” athlete from New Zealand who throws her basketball like a girl, because quite frankly she is one, but she has the free throw and three point shot that Shaq would kill for. Who am I kidding? I have an outside game Shaq would kill for. I, of course, do not have my own video game, unless you count the ones I wrote in BASIC when I was in grade school. On the other hand, I’m not haunted by “Kazaam.”
I suppose my open embracing of my own nerdiness is the result of a unique weekend. It all kicked off when I was asked to wrap the computers at work, since I was the only one who could disassemble them. I was wrapping them so we could flee the office and the possible hurricane that was bearing down on us. So when work closed early I headed inland to my brother’s house. He has always been a unique character in my book because he is so very much in denial about his own nerdiness. He’ll hold a wide-eyed discourse about laying CAT 5 cable as the backbone for the network he built in his house. I swear his kids were born with PDAs. Yet he’ll quickly express a love for conservative politics and accuse his little brother of wearing “girlie jeans.” These cries for help make me want to take him to the next sci-fi convention and allow him to cut loose.
So Saturday was spent watching athletes do such nerdy pastimes as synchronized diving and gymnastics on TV with my brother. I’m sure these events happen every day in gymnasiums that no one ever speaks of, but they don’t happen on 5 channels with millions of viewers and with a captivated live audience. These are the dorks of sports. To end the day, I sat with my sister in the restaurant where her son, my nephew, works. We both tried to work out the deeper meaning of life over some less than healthy fried chicken. This former math club member and drama club historian sat across from a former cheerleader and we both decided neither of us was cool anymore judging from the way we managed to embarrass the teenager we came to visit. I sat there clinging to the twilight of my twenties and she stared down middle age. Time has a way of making us all uncool.
Today, between renting “Hellboy” and trying hard to score allergy medication from a rules conscious pharmacist, I managed to squeeze in a visit to the library to pick up my reserved copy of Sarah Vowell’s “The Partly Cloudy Patriot.” Many of the essays in her book hint at the very level of dork/geek/nerd that I have both embraced and denied over the years. Part of me wants to write this woman a letter professing my love to her. She gives a voice to those of us who have lived a life of being ridiculed for not being stupid. She is the pied piper of geek with a biting wit and a voice like a Muppet. She gives me hope that somewhere, out there, is some female counterpart who understands my quirks, sees the world from my very skewed perspective and might even have a taste for the beautiful parts of society that aren’t shrink wrapped and sold between episodes of “MTV’s Cribs.” The truth is we are probably both just socially inept enough and self-sustaining enough to ever lack the interest or energy to get my imagined romance off the ground. I figured, what is a more fitting ending to Geekfest ‘04 than to write a blog entry to share with some admiring bog all the livelong day?
“I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow”
~Elliott Smith
I don’t suspect we would be as amicable if the jocks suddenly took over Latin class and NPR. They seem to take it in stride and that is great. Football season is right around the corner, but until then I’ll get to enjoy watching sports for once and routing for a 5’3” athlete from New Zealand who throws her basketball like a girl, because quite frankly she is one, but she has the free throw and three point shot that Shaq would kill for. Who am I kidding? I have an outside game Shaq would kill for. I, of course, do not have my own video game, unless you count the ones I wrote in BASIC when I was in grade school. On the other hand, I’m not haunted by “Kazaam.”
I suppose my open embracing of my own nerdiness is the result of a unique weekend. It all kicked off when I was asked to wrap the computers at work, since I was the only one who could disassemble them. I was wrapping them so we could flee the office and the possible hurricane that was bearing down on us. So when work closed early I headed inland to my brother’s house. He has always been a unique character in my book because he is so very much in denial about his own nerdiness. He’ll hold a wide-eyed discourse about laying CAT 5 cable as the backbone for the network he built in his house. I swear his kids were born with PDAs. Yet he’ll quickly express a love for conservative politics and accuse his little brother of wearing “girlie jeans.” These cries for help make me want to take him to the next sci-fi convention and allow him to cut loose.
So Saturday was spent watching athletes do such nerdy pastimes as synchronized diving and gymnastics on TV with my brother. I’m sure these events happen every day in gymnasiums that no one ever speaks of, but they don’t happen on 5 channels with millions of viewers and with a captivated live audience. These are the dorks of sports. To end the day, I sat with my sister in the restaurant where her son, my nephew, works. We both tried to work out the deeper meaning of life over some less than healthy fried chicken. This former math club member and drama club historian sat across from a former cheerleader and we both decided neither of us was cool anymore judging from the way we managed to embarrass the teenager we came to visit. I sat there clinging to the twilight of my twenties and she stared down middle age. Time has a way of making us all uncool.
Today, between renting “Hellboy” and trying hard to score allergy medication from a rules conscious pharmacist, I managed to squeeze in a visit to the library to pick up my reserved copy of Sarah Vowell’s “The Partly Cloudy Patriot.” Many of the essays in her book hint at the very level of dork/geek/nerd that I have both embraced and denied over the years. Part of me wants to write this woman a letter professing my love to her. She gives a voice to those of us who have lived a life of being ridiculed for not being stupid. She is the pied piper of geek with a biting wit and a voice like a Muppet. She gives me hope that somewhere, out there, is some female counterpart who understands my quirks, sees the world from my very skewed perspective and might even have a taste for the beautiful parts of society that aren’t shrink wrapped and sold between episodes of “MTV’s Cribs.” The truth is we are probably both just socially inept enough and self-sustaining enough to ever lack the interest or energy to get my imagined romance off the ground. I figured, what is a more fitting ending to Geekfest ‘04 than to write a blog entry to share with some admiring bog all the livelong day?
“I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow”
~Elliott Smith
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