I Am Not A Geek

WARNING!! WHINY RANT COMING!!

In the past few weeks, two shows have caused me to review my claim to Geekdom; the BLIZZCON opening ceremonies on DirecTV, and the Spike Awards on the Spike TV cable channel.

I hadn't planned on watching the Spike Awards, since previous years viewings had caused me to wish I had spikes jammed deep into my eyes. Corny, clownish, and embarrassing, the past shows had all tried to be cute and funny, and failed miserably. This years was no exception, but there were a couple clever bits that sucked me in to watching for a few minutes. (Full disclosure; I dvr'd it and fast forwarded through probably 80%) One neat gimmick was, when a winner couldn't be there to accept an award, instead of just putting up a video on a screen of them giving a quick thank you speech, they would project the actors head on a head-shaped screen that would rise up out of the pool of water in the middle of the stage. Neat.

Blizzard is a video game company that makes World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. For the past several years they've held a giant convention in California that celebrates their games and gives cosplayers another excuse to break out that home-made metal bikini or foam sword. Blizzard likes to make big announcements regarding their games during the con, and they offer the whole thing as a pay-per-view event. Like all good pushers, they give you a taste for free in the form of the opening ceremonies, broadcast live with a couple of hosts sitting at a news-type desk offering commentary between the speeches that constitute 'opening ceremonies'.

It was during the Blizzcon show that I really started to get the feeling that I was even more of an outsider than I had previously thought. For years, whenever I would see some form of entertainment that I loved being mocked by mainstream society, I just figured that my fellow geeks felt the same way I did; a combination of anger and sadness. But the more I see people who ostensibly share the same loves I do participate in events and displays that I find atrocious and borderline offensive, I guess I have to accept the fact that I'm not even a part of that group. The attendees hooting and hollering at the Spike Awards were a freak show and generally behaved in what I consider an embarrassing manner, lapping up every lame joke at their expense. I wasn't really upset with the folks at Blizzcon, but the announcers were terrible. Would it be too much to expect professional broadcast types doing a professional broadcast, not stumbling through the tele-prompter or unable to execute even the simplest of ad-libs? Bleh.

The same thing happens around Halloween every year. I love horror movies, so October should be a great month for me, but with the excellent exception of Turner Classic Movies, those 31 days are generally treated as a joke on television. It's not often you see the genre treated with any respect. And don't even get me started on comic books, a subject often treated with ridicule and derision. The Big Bang Theory is one of the worst offenders in this area.

(I had a bit on the music I listen to here, but it basically boiled down to "everything I like is cool, and everything I don't like sucks, and if you disagree you're wrong, 'cuz I'm the coolest mutherfucker I know", so maybe I'll save that for a separate post. That'll be fun & polarizing.)

Looking back over this post, I realize it seems a bit whiny and pointless, but it's frustrating to see things I value treated as worthy only of mockery. Rant over, at least until my post on Ron Santo.