April 08, 2009
Aisha Tyler: And The Geeks Shall Pwn The Earth
When I was a kid, my parents predicted it. Years ago, somehow, they knew.
I would stumble home wailing after another humiliating encounter with the school jackass or neighborhood bully, the cackling taunts of the "cool kids" still ringing in my ears, they would coo soothingly, "don't worry about that stupid bully, honey. Buck up, hose that burning bag of poop off the front porch, and go do your Calculus homework. When you're grown, you'll be successful and that same jerk will be pumping your gas." 1 A Cold comfort when you're blubbering through a face full of tears and a steaming geyser of a nosebleed. How was I to know, how were any of us to know, in those early days, how eerily prescient our parents would be?
Eerie indeed, because thankfully for recovering childhood nerds like me, geeks have recently, finally, come into vogue. Witness the ambivalent, doughy sexiness of a Seth Rogen, or the oddly attractive post-pubescent cool of a Michael Cera, or the dry, vegan post-irony of an Ellen Page. At long last, the socially inept are fulfilling that long-predicted destiny to rule the world -- or at least the internet and the magical realm of Apatow.
I would stumble home wailing after another humiliating encounter with the school jackass or neighborhood bully, the cackling taunts of the "cool kids" still ringing in my ears, they would coo soothingly, "don't worry about that stupid bully, honey. Buck up, hose that burning bag of poop off the front porch, and go do your Calculus homework. When you're grown, you'll be successful and that same jerk will be pumping your gas." 1 A Cold comfort when you're blubbering through a face full of tears and a steaming geyser of a nosebleed. How was I to know, how were any of us to know, in those early days, how eerily prescient our parents would be?
Eerie indeed, because thankfully for recovering childhood nerds like me, geeks have recently, finally, come into vogue. Witness the ambivalent, doughy sexiness of a Seth Rogen, or the oddly attractive post-pubescent cool of a Michael Cera, or the dry, vegan post-irony of an Ellen Page. At long last, the socially inept are fulfilling that long-predicted destiny to rule the world -- or at least the internet and the magical realm of Apatow.
