Breakfast with Pandora

When myth makes national news

I would not normally have anything useful to say about the unspeakable tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. That is the type of thing that warrants grief-filled silence.

But there is one aspect of the event that comes into the bailiwick of Breakfast with Pandora: the connection between the shooter and the intense, violent story being told where he chose to shoot.

Did "The Dark Knight Rises" bear any responsibility for the shooter's act? Does myth-- deeply-felt stories told over and over again by a particular culture-- adversely affect our behavior?

This particular shooter has gone on record as having been directly affected by the Batman story that "Rises" tells: he said he "was the Joker," a villain from the iconic comic book series. The Joker is violent, so he decided to take on that persona and commit violent acts.

So did the story drive the shooter to his crime?

Here is a suggestion from movie reviewer Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Can we at least consider the possibility that our movies have become a feedback loop for national neurosis, celebrating it, glorifying it and nourishing it?

It has long been clear to me that our current cinema — in the United States — has lost the Female Principle, that our cinema, especially our most popular cinema, is concerned only with external things, to the exclusion of inner values, and the external thing that it’s mainly concerned with is violence.

I bent myself into contortions trying to say something nice about THE DARK KNIGHT RISES in my review today, knowing that this is not, generically, my kind of movie and thus I should make some kind of allowance for the bias of personal predilection.  But there is something in this kind of cinema that strikes me as essentially anti-human — a cinema where human interaction is a kind of unreal expression standing in for real emotion — and where the only things that actually feel real are chaos and calamity.

I understand Mr. LaSalle's point, and I agree with him in some particulars. But I wouldn't agree that our popular cinema feeds a "national" neurosis-- just, in this case, one particular deranged mind.

In fact, I think it is a real blessing that it in this country, where violence is glorified in stories, where there is so much dark, difficult material out there, not only in movies but in comic books, novels, TV shows (ever seen "Dangerous Minds"?), and where guns are so readily available for legal sale, it's truly a blessing that this type of tragedy does not happen more often.

In fact, maybe violence in stories REDUCES violence in real life.

Aristotle the Greek philosopher would contend that violence in stories should calm a person down. He wrote that the action of a tragic drama (such as "Oedipus the King," one of the most intense stories ever created) should bring about a psychological "cleansing" or "purgation" (catharsis) of emotions. Scholars differ as to what that actually means, but it's clear Aristotle considered it a good thing. In my course on Greek mythology I called it the "wet noodle" effect-- the calming, centering effect that an overwhelming rush of adrenaline has on a person.

Would this shooter have done what he did without the fantasy of becoming a character in a drama? I think he would have. I think he would have found some outlet or excuse or pretense.

Is "The Dark Knight Rising" dehumanizing? Does it, rather than purge one's emotions, incite one to violence? Possibly. I can't judge because I haven't seen it and probably won't. I don't need that type of adrenaline rush very often.

Most likely, we are dealing with one person who is mentally ill, or disordered personality-wise, and it is as simple as that. As long as we have people who can't cope with their world, we will have trouble. I don't think myth causes that, or that there's anything that myth can do about it.

Tebow time, resurrection moment

Today America watches the most important football game of the year.

No, it's not the Super Bowl.

It's the game where we get to see whether God still loves Tim Tebow.

This is a great story, American myth at its finest. Because it is not a story about authentic Christianity, or even Tim Tebow himself.

Photo found here.

It's a story overlaid on the resurrection template followed by most if not all American stories.

What do I mean by "resurrection template"? That there is a story pattern in American myth-- mainly Hollywood stories, but lots of others-- lifted directly from the gospel stories of Jesus' resurrection in AD 30 or thereabouts. The pattern goes like this: the good guys start out hoping for a great victory over evil, and there is some promise it will happen. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse, and suddenly you're staring at defeat.

But somehow, out of nowhere, a miracle occurs and the good guys win anyway.

Just like the resurrection of Jesus after his death and three-day stay in the tomb.

I saw this pattern most recently in the 1999 movie "Never Been Kissed" starring one of my very favorite actresses, Drew Barrymore. It's not a spoiler to say that the resurrection moment in this movie (a romantic resurrection) takes place on an athletic field, the prime place for American miracles to occur.

So far, so good. But what makes Tim Tebow's potential resurrection any different from that of the other seven quarterbacks who will be vying for glory this weekend?

Tim Tebow himself is a supremely gifted athlete who grew up a missionary kid. That type of combination usually results in a very successful person. The athletic ability confers confidence, decisiveness and courage. The MK background makes for a mature, humble, resourceful and resilient Christian. MKs go in the same maturity category as military brats, who also spend a lot of time having to sacrifice their own wishes and desires for the good of others-- and travel a lot to boot.

But this story goes way beyond Tebow the person.

Tebow is already an underdog with a history of miracles achieved. He took over a mediocre team at mid-season, won 6 straight games in dramatic fashion, then lost 3 in a row, then won his most recent game with a dazzling 80-yard touchdown on the first play of overtime. He will be playing against the hated New England Patriots with their rock star quarterback, Tom Brady, and the devil incarnate coach Bill Bellichick (who has been actually convicted of cheating).

That might be enough to make this the biggest game of the year.

But Tebow, through his public confession of faith in Christ, has also made the specific connection between God, Christianity, and the generic resurrection story pattern, which is not thought of a Christian by most Americans. 

This high octane mix of faith and myth combusts American imaginations. We are romantics. We are resurrectionists, as a people. Even non-Christians want to believe that God really does exist and resurrection is real.

Many of us will go into this game hoping that Tim Tebow will win, against all odds. Some of us will be rooting against him (mostly Patriot fans). And the rest of us will at least be curious.

Some people might believe this game is a referendum on evangelical Christianity. If Tebow loses, somehow God is against people who are in your face about Jesus their Lord and personal savior. Or maybe there's no God at all and it was just random what Tebow was doing.

Folks. It's just a game. Really, it's a story. A live, unfolding by the minute story. It will be entertaining and energizing. But it's not about just Tebow. He has 50 teammates, including a phenomenal field goal kicker, Matt Prater, and a receiver, Demaryius Thomas, who can catch a pass and take an 80-yard broken-field run.

And whether God is there or not is not dependent on the outcome of this story. Those who believe have already heard The Story, and that is enough for us.

Tintin take

It's a sign of the times when a family goes to an eye-popping, spectacular, exquisitely animated computer-generated animated feature film and the composite score (out of 10) is a smidge north of a 6.

That was Tintin's fate tonight, premiere night, when my particular group of relational units went to see the newest Spielberg project.

Movie poster from here.

To be fair, there were only 2 true Tintin fans in the focus group, my son and I. Bedtimes were our favorite time to read all the classic graphic novels by Herge, the Belgian genius storyteller. We also watched all the animated TV shows that were out there on VHS tape back in the day. I first saw one of those way way back in the seventies, and for me, it was the greatest thing ever, the books brought to life.

The movie was a careful tribute to the original books, including references and Easter eggs throughout.

Yet for all that, I couldn't give it more than a 7. There was something tiresome about the whole thing. I have read the books so many times there was no suspense as to the ending (the plot is, if you don't know and do care, based on The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure). And all the unlikely chase scenes and explosions and hotels with tanks inside them ended up feeling contrived, as if thousands of people had worked on them to get them perfect.

Which, I think, is what actually happened.

Plus, this idea of a one-on-one duel with the bad guy at the end that lasts for about 20 minutes is getting boring as well. (Do not worry, I am not spoiling anything by saying this. You probably won't see it coming, and it has a lot of unusual elements that are somewhat surprising.)

I liked Tintin the character. I like Jamie Bell, who voices Tintin, and the animation does a good job capturing him and his dog Snowy. Snowy was the consensus favorite character among our crowd. We do have a little white dog at home. Maybe this influenced things.

There will be a sequel. I will go see it. But I don't think that it will ever replace the memory of that TV show in my young heart. Often, nostalgia for a thing is better than someone else's vision of the thing itself.

The Muppets: nostalgia on steroids

I never watched a lot of the original Muppets television show, although I knew it was a very big phenomenon. All the characters, all the inside jokes, all the celebs who made appearances-- it was a big deal.

Image from here.

But that was back-- I don't know-- 25 years ago?

(No, more.)

And there's no way the Muppets are going to make a comeback.

But everyone in Hollywood does make a comeback, and the Muppets have, too. And even if the voices don't sound quite exactly like they used to, the trademark Muppet comedy is back and better than ever.

The original Muppets show started in 1976, which is actually 35 years ago, but one thing they did is still very "now:" self-consciously play with the idea of show.

The Muppets never just did a show where you saw the performance and that was it. They interspersed scenes behind the scenes, showing the sausage-making quality of putting on a stage show. Kermit the Frog's ultra-nerd nervousness and neuroticism added humor as he tried to make sure all was well amidst the floating chaos of bahk-bahk chickens, prop mishaps, and Miss Piggy divadom.

All that comes back in spades in the new movie, along with plenty of self-referential break-the-fourth-wall intertextual inside joke stuff. Which means that the adorable and star-powered Amy Adams, looking very wholesome with long, curled hair, actually has very little to do in the picture. 

Yes, there is plenty of show in this Muppets show. To spare, in fact. Almost as if they took the original show and pumped it up on Muppet-Growth-Hormone. At the end, despite all the self-consciousness, it would not be surprising if you wipe away a bit of a tear.

Congrats to the people behind all this. And congrats to everyone who kept the flame burning all these years.

It was worth it.

The United States of Entertainment

Amanda Knox, the student who stayed a whole lot longer in Italy than she wanted, has been front page in the news lately-- not only for her ordeal, but for her coming fame back home.

Soon after she was acquitted, a story came up on the Internet with the headline, "Amanda Knox already getting job offers."

Apparently, Knox's suffering is going to turn into a cash spigot turned on all the way.

Good for her-- sources say she has racked up over $1 million in legal fees. My concern, however, is not Miss Knox, but something someone said about the money-making ability of true-life stories:

“I think that anything with [Knox's] name on it and her face on it will create an interest,” Gene Grabowski, a crisis management expert with Levick Strategic Communications, told MSNBC. “This is the United States of Entertainment. There’s a constant market for entertainment.”

(quote from here)

It's true. I don't know if we've ratcheted up our need for entertainment, or whether entertainment deliverers have all pumped their stuff into the Internet and made it seem like we are content-crazy, but I have never read a more apt, timely phrase than "This is the United States of Entertainment."

I cannot believe, for example, the amount of micro-video online nowadays, commercials disguised as information.

That's why I think books, especially e-books, are going to continue to sell and sell like crazy. We are not going to buy $24.95 hardbacks as often, but we are going to buy 4 e-books at $5.99 each. More bang for the buck, but also more of a sense that content is available and that we can feed our addiction cheaply. Call it the carton of cigarettes analogy: when you buy a whole carton of cigarettes at a discount, you use them up faster because they are there to be consumed. Plus, you don't feel as bad about using a lot, because they didn't cost that much in the first place.

Micropayments are all the rage, even with me. Recently, I paid a fantasy baseball blogger the equivalent of a one-year magazine subscription in gratitude for the hundreds of thousands of words of free, high-quality content he pumped out this year.

Related thought: some time ago, I speculated that Facebook would become a new place where we would shift our entertainment attention-span. Instead of reading books or watching TV shows, we'd take in a myriad of 140-characters bursts of micro-myth. Actual storytellers would suffer.

That has turned out not to be true, in my opinion. Maybe it's only my (boring?) Facebook friends, but I rarely read anything original on my Facebook feed that I find entertaining (exception: anyone who came here through my Facebook link!).

My Facebook friends have taken to bombarding the news feed with links to other content, often political. As 2012 approaches, I don't see that trend bottoming out. Out with the entertainment, in with the megaphone.

So even as more and more people get online and share more and more of themselves, I am optimistic that the financial winners will be those content purveyors who have taken some time and care with their offerings. The cream will rise to the top. It may not be a lot of money at first-- a magazine subscription payment here and there,maybe. But hey, anything helps in these United States of Shaky Economy.

Netflix Follies: "Mad Men"

I know, I'm about 4 years late. But think of the time I can waste.

 

Graphic found here.

 

Like many, I'd heard about "Mad Men", the AMC original series that will soon start its fifth season. It is now on Netflix streaming, so it is possible to hole oneself up in a mountain cabin and watch until the only option left on the red screen at the end of the show is "Back to Browsing."

 

And I might have done it, had I started watching earlier in the summer.

 

"Mad Men" is famous for its political incorrectness-- its willingness to depict a time, early 60's New York City, and workplace, advertising agency, where it was still okay for white men to diss everyone else.

 

Adding to the verbal naughtiness: inordinate amounts of alcohol, smoking (the actors are absolutely sacrificing themselves) and bed-hopping.

 

The period detail, especially the women's fashions, are a draw, but more enticing are the period attitudes. "Mad Men" takes place on the cusp of the feminist revolution. The post-World War II marriage and family boom is still in force; women still think the best and easiest life is to be married to a successful man. Successful men have the freedom to worry about whether they are successful enough; wives of successful men sit at home with the kids and go quietly nuts.

 

I have watched only Episodes 1-5 of Season 1, so I have no spoilers for you, but I did want to mention, for all three of you out there who have not seen this superbly imagined and executed creation, what may be the decisive aspect that makes "Mad Men" so watchable: Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm.

 

Draper is brilliant, great with words, confident with the women, flat-stomached, the go-to guy in the office. He is on the one hand kind of a jerk, but on the other a real knight in shining armor. He is also a decorated World War II veteran. But he is also a man of mystery, tortured by some unseen hurt in his past, which may or may not have something to do with the war. As the episodes have unfolded, we have learned bits and pieces about Don's past, but nothing terribly revealing. Who is Don Draper, really? That's the appeal of "Mad Men."

 

This type of story has the makings of a fine tragedy, in the style of "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles. In this ancient Athenian play, Oedipus is master both of Thebes and himself. A strong, intelligent king, he is also good-hearted, a good husband. But his past begins to haunt him, and as he investigates his past, as his past is revealed to the audience, the more he falls.

 

The opening of "Mad Men" depicts the silhouette of a man in a suit very much like Don Draper who puts down his briefcase in his office, which then fades out and leaves him falling between skyscrapers plastered with popular advertising posters. But he doesn't hit the pavement: instead, he ends up sitting in an easy chair, back to us, with a cigarette in his hand. An apt summing up of the story of Don Draper.

At least so far.

"The Booth at the End": what do you really want?

Imagine a TV show where the only action takes place at a booth in a 1950's style southern California diner. A middle-aged man with ice-blue eyes sits all day at the booth, receiving clients who come to him for extraordinary wishes. They tell him what they want, he tells them what they must do, and if they do it, their wish comes true.

 

Such is the premise of the hulu.com TV show "The Booth at the End," written by Christopher Kubasik. In episode 1, a nun who wants to "hear God again" asks The Man who sits in the booth (we don't know his name) if there is any way to tell if he is the Devil or not. Nope, there's no way, says the man.

 

The tasks are often illegal and immoral, which makes the audience wonder if we are in fact dealing with the Devil. Sometimes, however, the tasks are just the opposite. One person is told she must rob a bank; another is told she must befriend a man with agoraphobia and coax him out of his house. The key seems to be not the morality of the task but the difficulty for that particular person in accomplishing it.

 

The deal makers are repeatedly told they are free to walk away from the deal at any time; they are also told that The Man does not cause the wishes to come true, but that the people's accomplishing the task effects it. The drama comes in the askers' decisions to act or not act.

 

It's a great idea for a story, and as with many stories, has been done before with variations. Stephen King wrote a similar story called "Needful Things." The screenwriter Mr. Kubasik, who helpfully posts online wherever comments are being made about the show, adds such precedents as "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson, "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and all the way back to the European deal-with-the-devil folktale, "Faust."

 

In the ancient world, we might add the story of Alcestis, the wife of the young king of Pherae in Thessaly, Admetus. Admetus is fated to die young, but because of his great hospitality to the god Apollo, Apollo makes him a deal. If he can find someone else to die in his place, he can live. Admetus asks his aged parents to die for him, and they refuse. Finally, Admetus' wife Alcestis consents to die in his place. Admetus then tries to find a way out for Alcestis.

 

I've always loved the story of Alcestis because it goes against the grain of typical Greek myths. The ancient world is dominantly fatalist, meaning that it often doesn't matter what you do, the result has already been decided beforehand. Alcestis shows a streak of defiance that I think is native to human beings.

 

"The Booth at the End" is purely about choice and action. One's fate is in one's hands, and even wildly unlikely things-- such as having lots of money-- become possible when The Man has made a deal with you.

 

Now, complications ensue for all the characters that make the choice-action-result less pure, but there is never a sense that what The Man asks is impossible or beyond a character's reach. This is strongly an American way of looking at the world; we are dreamers who want our wishes fulfilled, and we are can-do folks who believe if only we act, our dreams will come true.

 

Most of the time in American entertainment, the choices are moral and the outcome good for everyone except for the villain. "The Booth at the End" is blessedly more complex.

 

But aside from the (real) complications of life, there is more than a kernel of truth in the idea of choice-action-result. Recently I saw a poster implying that true happiness results only from actions taken to promote that happiness. If you're happy, keep doing the same thing. If you're not, but want to be, change something. Seems simple. And yet we tend not to see our own agency in our own happiness. Rather, we would like to blame circumstances or other people.

"The Booth at the End" distills everything in life down to a couple of principles:

1) If you want something, go after it. 

2) make sure that's what you want.

I like it.

The World Cup and the American ethos - II

I guess I should've seen it coming.

For about 90 minutes during the USA's last World Cup soccer game, I kept waiting for the Americans to score a goal. They had many chances. Algeria, their opponent, was very obliging. Time after time, our guys would kick, or head, or nudge the ball somehow at the goal, sometimes from ridiculously short distances. And after about 90 minutes these professionals, who do nothing but practice putting the ball in the net, couldn't do so.

For sure earlier in the game they had scored a goal that the referee waved off questionably. So it wasn't as if they hadn't scored at all. But the point was, they could've scored multiple goals, if only they'd actually put their mind to it.

Then, in "injury" or "stoppage" time (after the first 90 minutes-- "overtime," as a student of mine aptly put it), Algeria finally committed some people forward and almost scored themselves. Tim Howard, the American goalkeeper, threw the ball out to Landon Donovan, the American star soccer player. He passed ahead to striker Jozy Altidore, who gave it to the much-talked about Clint Dempsey right in front of the goalmouth. Dempsey didn't have much time and he kicked it right at the goalkeeper. It rebounded out and Donovan was there to bash it over the prone goalie and into the net.

The announcers went wild, calling it a "fairy-tale ending, a Hollywood ending."

It was as if the American team had conspired to write a myth that would be sure to thrill their American audience. How many movies end this way, with the amazing finish that lifts an underdog to the status of a champion?

And everyone bit on the storyline. In a baseball chatroom I sometimes frequent, the normally jaded and cynical participants were saying, "I thought soccer was supposed to be boring" or "I'm committed to the World Cup now" or "That was the best game I've ever seen."

Later, American goalkeeper Tim Howard summed up the mythological impact on the nation: "That's probably going to capture more people's attention than if we won the game 3-0 and it was easy. That emotion, that passion is what American sports fans thrive on."

Perception is everything. This was a pretty simple game against an opponent the USA should beat. And it had the chance of being an easy 3-0 game. The fact that eventually the Americans got the job done, to me, is more like the propensity in American business of procrastinating until the last minute and then finally delivering the service that could've been done and finished hours or days before.

I am a fan of USA soccer and I would've loved to see another "Miracle on Ice" type of game. This wasn't the moment or the opponent. But the team kind of conspired with the broadcasters to manufacture some myth. Nice for them, nice for the status of soccer in the United States.

PS: for a real "Miracle on Ice" story from the World Cup, try Italy versus Slovakia. The Italians were the reigning world champions, and tiny Slovakia (independence 1992, population 5 million, area the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) beat the pants off of them, 3-2.

On jumping the shark: Vaynerchuk and Berry

Content is fascinating to me as a mythologist. What captures our attention and keeps it? What are the components of a good story or a charismatic storyteller? Conversely, what makes us turn away from content or personalities? When has a show or a person "jumped the shark" or lost its edge?

I don't spend a whole lot of time on conventional TV anymore except for sports, but I do still access entertainment-- especially online. Two of my favorites in the past few years have been Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Library TV, and the ESPN Fantasy Focus Baseball podcast of Matthew Berry and Nate Ravitz.

"Past few years" indicates these guys have kept my attention. Vaynerchuk is an ultra-charismatic host, someone who built a huge audience just by tasting wine and telling us his impressions. Along the way, he became a consultant, speaker, and author, and he continues his rise.

Berry is also charismatic, a very funny, charming, witty guy, who makes for great diversion while gathering information for your fantasy baseball league team. With his partner, the straight man Ravitz, he tells listeners who's doing well in baseball and who's not, who he thinks will do well, and who you should have on your team. He's a pundit and a prognosticator and is substantially responsible for the rise of fantasy sports in the past couple of decades.

I like both these guys a lot. They are not for everyone: they are in, frankly, niche markets. But for those who are in the markets, they provide high quality entertainment for free. You just have to be, well, a geek.

Recently, however, I have found myself turning away a bit from both Berry and Vaynerchuk, and for similar reasons, hopefully beneficial for them.

Both of these guys have become more famous than they were when they started their shows. They travel a lot and put their energies into many things. They appealed to me at the beginning because they were focused more wholly and closely on their shows. Nowadays-- at least to me-- they don't as much.

It's possible I never would have had this impression with Berry unless I had listened to him guest on the ESPN Bill Simmons podcast (April 29 of this year), which is apparently very popular. Berry worships Simmons, and he was very candid in telling Simmons that he wanted to be more like Simmons-- more of a general sports personality, not just known for fantasy sports. He made it clear that he had a very good job making money for playing and talking about a leisure activity. But he yearned for more.

Ever since then, I have listened to Berry's part of the podcast a little differently. Is his advice a little more slapdash than it would've been? Does he joke more about not giving good advice? And when he is not on the podcast, do the other guests with Ravitz stick more on topic? Just me, but yes on all counts.

Vaynerchuk, similarly, seems to have lost a little energy, a little passion, and perhaps he's noticed this.  I was really astonished to receive a group email from him (one day before the Simmons podcast, April 28) letting me and others know who had not been commenting lately that he missed us.

There must have been something in the stars those two days.

Part of my turning away from Wine Library TV is just that I can't afford wine. But part of it is that after almost 900 fun and entertaining episodes, Gary Vaynerchuk, like Matthew Berry, is bound for better, or at least bigger, things, and for me that makes each episode have a farewell type of character. And I hate goodbyes.

Vaynerchuk talks a lot about passion-- doing what you love as much as you can do, and he is living it in moving beyond wine alone and into things like motivational speaking, brand consulting, and prophecy about the future of the Internet and social media. I'll continue to follow him, but probably drink just a little less wine along the way.

As to Berry, I'll continue to listen to the podcast and take whatever advice he has to give until he moves on. Unlike wine, fantasy baseball costs nothing but the time it takes to do it. Wait a minute... I knew there was a novel I was supposed to be working on...

John Hodgman, my hero

I really do not know how I missed this when it happened in June 2009, and I apologize to any reader who was looking for something fresh from this blog, but the address of John Hodgman to the White House Correspondents' Dinner is so brilliant I had to link it here.

John Hodgman, "middle-aged, round-faced, weak-chinned nerd." Watch for the crack about "March Madness Brackets." Killer.

This is funny stuff, and it is also true and poignant. All the funniest stuff is true and poignant, as a matter of fact. And I will never again apologize for being a nerd after this address.

Now and then I have wondered why it is that some people's eyes glaze over when I start talking about the Anatolian Bronze Age or the layering of animism and gnosticism in American popular culture. I wonder why sometimes, even though I'm trying my hardest, I can't make my explanation of Greek Mythology both simple and fun and yet accurate.

I wonder no more. I'm a nerd and people aren't supposed to care about what's important to me.

I have fought being a nerd most of my life. Though, like many of my peers in the late seventies, I was a big Dungeons and Dragons player (we called it FRP -- Fantasy Role-Playing), I was also an athlete and at one time had aspirations of being a professional baseball and then professional soccer player. And though my favorite class was Latin, which, next to Esperanto is the biggest nerd language of all, I also got C's in Math and thought of myself as somewhat of a troublemaker in school.

And, of course, though I was mostly a failure at dating until I was a sophomore in college, my biggest aspiration was to get a girlfriend, though in some ways I had no idea what that meant and had a kind of rude awakening once I did meet an adult woman who actually cared about me.

I didn't have a pocket protector and I could turn to people and look them in the eye. I didn't say "obviously" every third word and I mostly didn't snort my laughter through my nose.

Nerd, however, I was, and continued to deepen my nerd credentials into graduate school and beyond.

I am beginning, finally, to embrace my nerdiness, since I do fall into the category of "cute nerd" that some nerdettes find attractive. John Hodgman, himself, is no looker, but he's come to realize that confidence, as Jack Palance once famously said, is the sexiest thing going.

So look for me walking tall and spouting my passion for discussing the religious function of Cycladic stone idols; playing Scrabble (not online, that levels the playing field shamefully) and winning, baby; using words like "anthropomorphic" and making my students learn them; and all manner of other nerd activities.

Hello, I am a nerd. That's the way the pastry disintegrates.