Happy pride day, nerds!
Instead of parading down the streets, we’re just flying out Geek flag throughout the blogosphere, so to speak. We jotted down our geekiest moments for your amusement, but remember, fair is fair. We’ll show you ours if you show us yours.
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Doug Aamoth:
Back in the late ’90s I had an unhealthy obsession with the idea of rigging up some sort of apparatus in my car that would allow me to play as many MP3 files as possible. Portable players existed but most of them held only a handful of songs, a full car PC would have been too large and expensive, and portable MP3 CD players hadn’t quite made it to market yet. I eventually plunked down almost $300 for the MP-ROM, which was basically a big MP3 controller that plugged into an equally-large desktop CD-ROM drive and played MP3 files burned to a CD. So I had this big clump of computer peripherals sitting haphazardly up on my dashboard and the ability to fit over 100 songs on a single CD, which was pretty rare in 1999. The reaction from most passengers was a mish-mash of “That’s incredible!” and “What the hell is wrong with you?”
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Evan Narcisse:
There have been many, but one that stands out is the time I recited the Green Lantern oath to a girl I was dating. Let’s just say she did not become the Star Sapphire to my John Stewart. It’s a good thing Ryan Reynolds is married already, because, while the oath may charge up your ring, it does nothing for your love life.
Lev Grossman:
In college I made my girlfriends read WAITING FOR GODOT aloud with me. To be fair they could pick their role — EITHER Estragon OR Vladimir. I sure showed them a good time.
Douglas Wolk:
I once inserted references to Thom Kallor and Earth-3 into a political essay I wrote for The New Republic. (Actually, at my first magazine job I didn’t want people to know I was writing half the magazine, so I used the names of a bunch of members of the Legion of Super-Heroes as pseudonyms.) Geek heaven moment: being kissed on the cheek by Jane Wiedlin while surrounded by stormtroopers.
But my most abject geek moment? Uh, you realize I’m the guy who blogged about 52 every week for a year, right?
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Peter Ha:
I have come to realize this: One day I am going to buy a French bulldog with blacked out eyes and an English bulldog. I will name them Batman and Robin.
Steven James Snyder:
Senior year of high school, my best friend and I skipped school for two days to set up lawn chairs outside the local IMAX and await the moment when Phantom Menace tickets went on sale. This was three weeks before opening night, well before the era of Fandango, so there we were, with about 300 other Star Wars fanatics, chatting away the day, getting food delivered to the parking lot, reminiscing about our favorite memories of Luke, Han, Chewie and Boba. It was silly sure, and probably unwise given that we were going into finals, but now looking back – at Dave and I eating our delivered enchiladas on our lawn furniture – it was worth every second.
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Graeme MacMillan:
I’m a professional blogger. Isn’t that enough?
I have just remembered this, which I have clearly been keeping buried in my brain for years out of shame: When I was a kid, my mother was very, very strict when it came to cursing. As in, it was not allowed whatsoever in the house; even my dad’s occasional exclamations (normally connected to something political) were greeted with frowns that said “We do not use such language in this household, thank you very much.” So, as a ten year old geek wanting to rebel without actually, you know, rebelling or pissing off his mother, I came up with the following solution: I would only curse using the fictional swearing as seen in the Micronauts comic book.
I can’t even remember what the cursing was – Just exclamations of the names of their fictional gods, I think? – but I remember that I used it for a few months before my mother, having clearly worked out something was going on, asked me what I kept saying when I was annoyed. I explained that I was simply using exclamations of displeasure from a comic I read and, even though she was clearly unconvinced that it wasn’t really some new street slang that all the dangerous kids were using, told me that, because it was fictional, she guessed it was okay.
That kind of took all the fun out of it, so I stopped.
Mike Williams:
I was at Great Adventure all day. I bought the Flash Pass. It was friggin awesome. I know I missed the post but my geekiest moment was probably when I bought Tunnels and Trolls. Basically a single player D&D clone becuase I didn’t have any friends to play actual D&D with.
Allie Townsend:
As a kid in elementary school, I gave up recess to work in the library. No, this was not a school-wide volunteer program. Yes, it was just me. Everyone thought I was super cool.