Sunday, October 6, 2013

Perks and Pitfalls of Bringing Non-Nerds to See a Geek God

Meeting the creators of my favorite art is one of the best experiences I've ever had and meeting them after they've just made new art is even better.

Sometimes, life gets in the way. Wil Wheaton was in Philadelphia on Friday night, but due to the fact that I'm poor and the holidays are looming and my car decided now would be a good time to shit out its transmission, I instead signed up to work a double shift. Now, for clarity's sake, I should note that my love for Wil Wheaton began in earnest when I read this post. I never was a big fan of Star Trek (and before anyone spams the shit out of me, I'll get around to watching all the Trekkie goodness eventually. It's just never been my thing). The point is, I love Wil Wheaton the writer/comedian/professional awesome dude/Sheldon nemesis, and I am unabashedly nerdy in professing such love. I am, in fact proud to call myself a nerd in all respects. And undaunted, I wanted to see me some Wil Wheaton, and no time and a half with a $.50 pay differential second shift was going to get in my way.

Hence a 60-minute car drive followed by a 90-minute train ride and a 20-minute cab ride from Philly to New York so I could catch his show the following night.

And it was glorious.

However, 170 minutes is a long time for a solitary journey, so I enlisted reinforcements in the form of my three good co-worker friends, among whom there are a total of zero nerds. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Want to head up to New York on Saturday?
Friends: Why?
Me: Wil Wheaton is doing a show.
Friends: *crickets*
Me: He was on Star Trek: The Next Generation
Friends: *slightly louder crickets*
Me: He was the main kid in Stand By Me.
Friends: *hooting of an owl over the sound of crickets*
Me: He's Sheldon's arch-nemesis on The Big Bang Theory
Friends: Oh, right, that guy. What kind of show?
Me: Stand up
Friends: Is he funny?

If we were allowed access to YouTube at work, I would've pulled up a few vids of his past stand-up and let that do the talking. But since we're not, the better part of the next hour was spent convincing my friends that Wil Wheaton was funny and ultimately, they decided that I rarely steer them wrong and plans were made to visit the home of the Yankees (who suck harder than a Hoover, for the record).


At this juncture, just so you know what a magical night it was, I bring you "Kitty Corliss", first brought to me by co-headliners Paul and Storm.

To be fair and honest, you do not need to be a nerd to appreciate either the hilarity of Paul and Storm, whose song "My Favorite Band" perfectly encapsulates how I feel about My Chemical Romance, or Wil Wheaton's story about spicy dick milk (the name of my Michael Jackson cover band). The non-nerds I brought into the fray were cracking up over Wil's hysterical stories and the awesome Paul and Storm songs. And after we left, each of them declared themselves brand new but very enthusiastic fans of both.

However...

In a room full of geeks, I was sitting next to the people quietly, politely smiling during the references to Han shooting first, aiming to misbehave, and why his shirt was confusing to normal people. While I love converting the uninitiated, it's hard to explain the shorthand of nerd culture when you're rolling on the floor in glee. And the end of the evening is somewhat decimated when you recount the evening to your buddies and the explanation leaves them more baffled than the initial joke. There's a reason nerds gather amongst each other. We have the gene, and those who don't are confounded by our ways.

Since Wil Wheaton's name appears in this post a whopping nine times, I owe him one. He and his wife,  the lovely and sweet Anne Wheaton, are raising money for the Pasadena Humane Society and you can help them out with that here.

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