Hijacking the Batmobile

Back in high school, I never really had a "clique." I never fit in with any certain group of kids. I loitered with the rockers. I made fun of the punks. I daydreamed of cheerleaders. I was on good terms, if nothing else, with the jocks (at least the wrestlers and some of the football players; I thought the basketball team were jerks and the baseball team was cocky). But at lunch, I always sat with the geeks. And although I didn't watch anime and I've never been tech-savvy (it's by the grace of God that I can actually operate a computer, insomuch as turning on, blogging, and turning it off), I feel this is the group with which I mix best. It's time to claim my rightful position amongst the geek population. I know that's a position that has to be earned, but I believe I'm qualified. Besides looking the part (sorry, if I don't fit the bronzed, chiseled specimen you were hoping for, ladies - assuming there are any females in the audience), here are some of my credentials;

(this is what I would look like with a beard)

1) I'm a comic book geek. But I don't care so much for Batman or Spiderman as I do for some of their seedier counterparts, i.e. Usagi Yojimbo (a rabbit samurai), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (trust me, the comic books are way better than the cartoons or the movies), Amalgam Comics (an amalgamation of the DC and Marvel universes; clever, right?), and Deadpool (please disregard the version portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins; the "real" Deadpool is like a demented, sarcastic, masked version of The Punisher).

2) I'm a Star Wars geek. That's not to say I know every nook and cranny and obscure character in the saga (especially taking into consideration there are many novelizations thereof which are considered canonical). But don't let that put you off. Let me put it this way; I could write a thesis on the complexity of relationships using the characters from Star Wars. That being said, I think the prequels could have sucked considerably less if Qui-Gon Jinn had just let Jar Jar Binks die.

3) I am movie geek. My love of movies extends far beyond a galaxy far, far away. I tend to be the guy people look to if they're trying to remember who played who in what movie (Q: Who's the guy that auditioned to sing at Drew Barrymore's wedding in The Wedding Singer? Jon Lovitz). And I like good movies; I've seen Casablanca and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and a number of other classics. But I love bad movies. Not so much the movies that try to be good and end up bad, but the ones you know are going to be awful from the get-go, i.e. old Japanese monster movies, '50s science fiction, low-budget horror films (esp. from the '80s), and any Syfy original movie.

4) I am a philosophy geek. Increasingly often, I find myself trying to categorize people into branches philosophy. For example, Emperor Palpatine is clearly a Machiavellian realist, whereas Han Solo appears to be more of a pragmatic skeptic. I consider myself a postmodern transcendental idealist. Only a geek could be that obsessive over social theory.

5) I am a documentary geek. I often find myself drawn into documentaries on the History Channel or the Travel Channel or, more often than not, the Food Network. Aside from casually watching them on television, there are documentaries I actively seek out, particularly those about serial killers, the Soviet Union (I've recently developed an obsession with Communism; weird, I know), or Nazi occultism. While we're on the subject, what is with America's obsession with Nazism? It seems that the only thing they play on the History Channel is crap about Hitler. Don't get me wrong. I like playing video games, killing Nazi Zombies as much as anyone (probably more so). And I enjoy the occasional campy Nazi-related movie. But can't we do something about Commie Zombies? Somebody should look into that. Get on it, fellow geeks!