Being Geek Chic is the yammerings of a Midwestern nerd named Elizabeth Giorgi. My vision impairment is real, which is frustrating because I really would like to see a 3D movie.
Send questions, requests and ideas to [email protected]. Please put your complaints on a napkin and toss it.
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Note
13th May 2012
Here’s to the mommas with the nerdy babies
There’s this video of me at age four at my brother’s birthday party where I’m trying to steal his new watercolor paint set and my mom catches me trying to slink out of the room. I immediately start a tantrum and say:
“But he’s only 2 - he doesn’t even know how to use watercolors!”
And of course Adam was chill as ever. If you know my bro in real life, you know that basically nothing sets him off. He’s the calmest damn cucumber I know. Anyway, as I was having a massive meltdown, he was preoccupied with rolling his big bird truck back and forth, back and forth.
My mom tried to reason with me by suggesting that perhaps I could teach him how to use the watercolors later, which was a totally awesome solution, if you’re a patient young lady. I was never much good with patience.
I won the lottery three years later. Sort of. When I was six, my mom was diagnosed with leukemia and by the time I was eight, she was cancer free. This isn’t to say that your mom getting cancer is like winning the lottery, but for me it’s been a blessing in disguise. I thoroughly believe that my propensity to live life at maximum pleasure and honest happiness is the direct result of having a somewhat worrisome childhood. The other upside is that because I was at the hospital with nothing to do, my brother and I became incredibly close. When there are literally no other kids to play with, you figure out really quickly that fighting with your brother isn’t really worth it. So, he drew Kermit the Frog in sailor suits and I wrote poetry. In a weird way, things haven’t really changed.
Mommas with nerdy kiddos have a choice: accept it or ignore it. My mom always accepted it. Every week, she drove us to the library. She was perplexed a bit when I wanted to stop playing sports to start pursuing other interests like writing for the student newspaper and taking photography classes, but she never discouraged it. She always let me follow my passions.
On top of that, my mom and other mommas with nerdy teenagers have to face the heart-braking reality that their kids are often the ones who are called names, get tripped in the hallway and are the target of sideways eyes. It takes a strong kid to get through high school unscathed. And it takes a strong mom to continue to provide support and love when you just want to punch the bullies in their guts. (At least, that’s what my reaction would be…)
Thanks mom, for always loving your two nerds and never asking why we spend our hard-earned salaries on LEGO and trips to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Happy Mother’s Day.
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Note
2nd May 2012
Don’t lose your sense of wonder
Cuddling up for a great movie on rainy night. Even better with the wafting aroma of microwave popcorn. Losing track of time while reading. Licking an ice cream cone on a sunny afternoon. Even better if you’re ditching out of work to eat it.I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of forgetting the big things and focusing on the small. The sense of wonder you feel when you allow yourself to forget obligation and zero in on life’s delights.
I don’t drink much and I’ve never been a recreational drug user. I’ve often wondered why these things were often “required” for friends and family when they wanted to have a good time. It’s like a focus mitigation device … “drink me now and forget your worries.” But when discussing it with my boyf and bro the other night, we started to realize that what may be even more difficult is to have a great time without it. My brother said:
“The reason people like us don’t need drugs and alcohol for our enjoyment is because we’re SO amused by the smallest of things in our lives.”
And it’s true.
It’s perhaps one of the most important qualities of being a geek too. If you’re able to experience child-like joy while reading a comic book, watching a movie or making a meme - then you won’t need as many outside influences to distance yourself from the depressing trappings of adult life. For me, happiness is only a page or play button away.
On occasion, the boyf and I will talk about things that we wished other adults would have told us. Things like, “when you buy a home, shit will surely break. Not ten years from now - like, next week.” And, “Good furniture and haircuts are worth the extra money.” This is definitely going on the list:
As you grow old, you will have more responsibilities, more obligations and more bills. You will have to schedule time to “have fun” and you may require libations to forget your troubles. Therefore, make it a priority to hold tightly and passionately to your sense of wonder. Because if you lose it - unlike the perfect pair of jeans - you can’t buy it back.
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Note
22nd April 2012
The haunting qualities of self-doubt
I went to bed on Friday night supremely nervous and excited. See, I wasn’t going to be waking up to an ordinary Saturday of grocery shopping, DIYing for this blog (P.S. I’m sorry no DIY this weekend!) and catching up on a movie.
A few weeks prior, I had managed to schedule a meeting with an Academy Award-winning producer to talk about a script I co-wrote. And it was happening in less than 24 hours.
I was a mild wreck. Not full-on wreck where I couldn’t eat or shower. More like, pacing around the kitchen wondering if I was a complete fool for trying to do this. But now or never, right?
When I closed my eyes on Friday night, I was trying my damnedest to keep my expectations low, but I was obviously hoping for the best.
That night I had the second most intense nightmare of my life. The first was this reoccurring dream I had around the time my parent’s divorced that my dad ran my brother over with his truck. When we went to bury him, his remains were too mangled, so we had to bury a garden gnome statuette. It was supremely fucked up and, I believe, contributes to my overall hatred of garden gnomes. (For those of you wondering, no, there was no logic to this dream. My dad didn’t even drive a truck. He does have a love of garden statuettes, though.) In the dream, all the people who had ever bullied or ostracized me put me in a van and berated me. They told me repeatedly that I deserved to be cussed at and left out. And it wasn’t surface level shit either. It was intense, specific instances from my memory. One boy told me that if I hadn’t gotten 100 percent on a 10th grade history test which required me to put the U.S. president’s in order, that he wouldn’t have called me a fat bitch. Another girl told me if I would have just stopped talking so much, she would have continued to be my friend.
I woke up on the defensive. As I showered, I could feel myself mentally rebutting. I was standing there pointlessly contesting dream versions of past classmates and colleagues:
“Well, yes, I was an obnoxious know-it-all, but why shouldn’t I get every question right if I know every answer?” And, “I’m glad we didn’t stay friends! Now, you’re in that fucking bullshit tiny town and I’m here!”
I tried desperately to shake it all damn day. And what a fucking shame. I spent more than 2 years working on the screenplay, because I believed it was a story worth telling. Here was my chance to take it to the next step and I was wallowing in self-doubt and fighting off the projections of my innermost insecurities.
I’m not a good enough writer. The pacing isn’t right. Is the end good enough? You don’t even have an agent. You aren’t ready for this.
Before I knew it, I was emotionally torturing myself like the people in my dream.
To try and boost my confidence, I put on my leather jacket and wore it all day. It’s weird, my leather jacket makes me feel protected. Insulated. It helped.
Once the meeting arrived, the producer in question immediately eased my fears. He was totally cool and just an all around awesome dude. His insights were sharp and he was inquisitive and encouraging.
I wish someone would have taken a picture of the two of us mid-conversation, because I’m sure it was a totally ridiculous sight. I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat and he had his feet on the table. I shit you not, I thought I was going to fall off my chair. But I soaked it up. Eyes wide. Pen scribbling. I tried to relax and push all my fear back.
I won’t let my self-doubt define my future. I’ve worked too hard for that.
The meeting ended on a high note. He agreed to read the screenplay.
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Note
2nd April 2012
A commentary on “fake” geeks & acceptance
“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.” - Simon Pegg
Last week was a banner week for having meta discussions about geek culture. First, Tara Tiger Brown wrote this piece in Forbes called Dear Fake Geek Girls: Please Go Away and The Mary Sue rebutted. Kotaku called the “fake geek girl” a “fake threat” and Twitter was abuzz with the pros and cons of “accepting all people showing an interest in geek culture” and “shunning anyone who is a self-proclaimed geek.”
I didn’t think there was anything to add to the conversation really, so I didn’t say anything last week. Now, with the benefit of a weekend’s worth of drinking and chatting with friends, I’ve come to realize that I have a different opinion on the issue that is worth discussing.
I don’t believe that most people CHOOSE to be a geek. I think you sort of find it out by accident. Or your interests end up merging with this identity. Here’s what I mean:
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Note
14th March 2012
I just love the movies
I just love the movies.
There’s this moment I wish could capture for you and share. It’s this 5 second period of pure quiet before the soundtrack picks up and the screen fades in.
It’s accompanied by the sweet scent of popped corn.
And appreciated in the noise of the next morning when you find the ticket stub in your pocket and remember a scene or a song.
I will see a romantic comedy, dark thriller, suspenseful drama or documentary. Nothing is really off limits. OK, maybe horror flicks. (They’re just not my thing.) Especially, if it’s at the cinema.
Yes, I’ll pay the $6 for a small bag of popcorn. I’ll hand over my $12 for a movie ticket. I’ll fight for a parking spot. Despite it all, I’ll be happy. Especially when I sit in my favorite spot. One row from the back. Center. No one to my left. No one in front of me. Boyfriend to my right. Everything glorious.
It’s a place to be quiet. A place to think. A place to escape. A place to explore.
Even when I see a terrible movie - I don’t leave. I appreciate the time to just be. To just absorb. The time I spend at the movies.
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Note
21st February 2012
The importance of spoiler alerts
Nothing. I mean nothing. Nothing irks me more than a blog post or news article that doesn’t contain a spoiler alert. I don’t care how simple it may be, this is very important stuff.Just in the last year alone, I’ve had the following spoilers occur:
(SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen the 2nd season of Downton Abbey, the last Harry Potter movie or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie, American version, skip this section!)
1. New York Magazine’s profile of Tom Felton gives away the fact that the Goyle dies instead of Crabbe in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2.
2. New York Times movie reviewer gives away the big reveal at the end of American The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie that Harriet Vanger doesn’t live in Australia, a diversion from the book.
3. US Wikipedia entries use the last names of the characters at the end of the 2nd season of Downton Abbey before the first episode of the season has aired in the US, giving away Sybil’s new last name, therefore revealing that she does indeed shack up with Branson. (And Anna and Daisy! Three times the spoiler!)
Why does this bother me?
Because when you love something the way nerds love something, you live and breathe for those moments of discovery in your current book, TV and movie series. There isn’t a day that will go by between today and March 23rd that I’m not going to think about The Hunger Games movie. When you think about something every day, of course you are compelled to read things as you seen them on your Twitter feed. However, it’s not too much to ask that writers consider the feelings of their audience. (SPOILER ALERT!) The fact that Draco Malfoy’s family walks off into the dust in HP7P2 might not mean much to the average person or the blogger who has been randomly assigned to interview Tom Felton, but it means a hell of a lot to a person who has spent months thinking about how it will all play out on the big screen.
Now, let me give credit where credit is due. Over at The Mary Sue, where I’m a contributing writer, there’s a high importance placed on warning readers of possible spoilers. In fact, the technology we use (at left) shadows the said spoiler, so you can’t even accidentally see the spoiler in question. You have to actively hover over it to read it.
This should be standard practice on all major blogs at the very least. I’m sure we’d have a much harder time lobbying newspapers and traditional media to follow suit, but for the love of nerding out, PLEASE, PLEASE consider a simple “(SPOILER ALERT)” designation before the condemning statement.
I don’t know if the New York Times was trying to poke fun at nerds like me or pay respect to our needs when they posted this spoiler alert on their Q and A with Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton Abbey, this Sunday:
Warning: this post contains spoilers. If you don’t want to know how World War I turned out, don’t read any further.
I don’t care what they were doing. I’m just glad they did it.
Most geeks become geeks because of what they liked, read, played, watched or experienced in their formative years. It’s hard for me to know this with any amount of certainty because it’s been a LONG time since high school, but my guess is that the vast majority of people who ID as “geek” do so because their interests somehow put them outside of the social norm. For example, as a dystopian fiction lover and the only person on my block with the internet in the late 90s who wanted to learn HTML, I was a “nerd” and an outcast. I didn’t have the benefit of message boards and blogs to help me find friends who had the same interest.
Today, I’m highly employable because I have those foundational internet skills and as it turns out, dystopian fiction is having a real moment with the release of The Hunger Games.
So where does the “fake” geek pop up? Well, typically they see a movie or read a book that falls into geek culture and discover what we have to offer. They may not have lived through high school as a geek, but their interests match up at this point in time.
Why is this happening? Much of “geek” culture is out the in open more so than ever before. Batman is one of the biggest movie phenoms of the decade. Game of Thrones is the most hotly anticipated HBO series this spring.
Pop culture, by and large, is geek culture at this point in history.
The downside is that there are millions of casual fans of these properties. The upside is that the things we love are getting more attention.
There was one commenter on The Mary Sue who really stuck with me, because he pointed out another, equally important social upside. James Strocel of Rain Geek said:
“Here’s what you do when you encounter a “Fake” Geek Girl or Guy: Humor them. Sure, we all like being King Geek of Nerd Mountain, but we should, under no circumstances mistake what the “fake” geeks are trying to do: They are trying to make friends.”
This is exactly right. Don’t mistake friendliness for fakeness. I was able to find a few friends in high school, but most of my nerd friends are from the web or from college.
Over time, I’ve come to realize that I’m SO HAPPY I didn’t change when I was 16 and had the choice to pretend to be someone else. I truly took hold of my passions and owned them. I live a life that is built on a foundation of what TRULY makes me happy.
Simon Pegg said it best. I feel liberated by the fact that I love the things I love with zero restrictions. I live it out loud and I’m not that interested in the validation of others. Sure, people tell me all the time that it’s not very “grown up,” but ultimately, I accept that this isn’t the lifestyle for them. But it’s working out great for me.
It all comes down to acceptance. Both of yourself and others.