Drift Reality

“You’re a nerd,” a friend told me in response to something I said the other day, which was probably quite nerdy.

“Oh yeah?” I responded.

“Yeah, but that’s okay, I like nerds,” she shot back.

A flurry of memories gushed into my conscious, of similar statements made along the way. There was the friend in San Diego who had once said she liked guys who wore thick black-rimmed glasses, the friend in London who was constantly on the look-out for guys reading Hume in coffee shops, and there was my own fixation with girls who wear glasses and wear their hair in pig-tails.

At any rate, it was at that moment that I realized something had shifted in the universal fabric of reality over the past several years, which had ultimately resulted in the ascension of the nerd on the social scale.

I decided it was time to look back on the nerd archetype in an effort to better understand how we got here.

According to Wikipedia, the word ‘nerd’ first appeared in a book by Dr. Seuss published in 1950, used in reference to an imaginary animal. From there, the term made its way into the mainstream, gradually evolving into what Merriam-Webster now defines as an ‘unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person: especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits.’

In 1984, a story of nerd persecution and redemption launched the nerd into the public view. Revenge of the Nerds proved to be one of the hits of the mid-80s and spawned a variety of cultural forms that celebrated the nerd.

A young and virile Robert Carradine

The mid-80s represented the nerd as misunderstood and alienated from mainstream society, cast as the classic underdog who must use ingenuity to ultimately succeed and gain mainstream acceptance. Nerds were also closely associated with young Asian males – seen in characters like Toshiro from Revenge and Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles, which I personally find a bit distasteful because even in comparison to white nerds, these asian males seemed nerdy but I digress.

So what was happening to compel this celebration of the nerd?

The mid-80s was also a time during which the personal computer was beginning to diffuse throughout the United States and a new class of computer-savvy nerds was beginning to emerge in society. The personal computer empowered the nerd to a great extent – a situation personnified in the 1985 hit Weird Science, in which two nerds use a computer to ‘manufacture’ a smoking hot Kelly LeBrock.

The 90s hit and the nerd experienced a temporary setback when their monopoly on the alienated lovable reject was temporarily marginalized by a new breed of grunge and alternative rockers (with the exception of Weezer, whose ‘Blue Album’ was most certainly a nerd-oriented product).

Then the Internet arrived in the mid-90s and along with it came a resurgence of the nerd.

With figures like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gaining prominence, along with a host of Silicon Valley nerdlings, the world had to once again account for the increasing power and influence of the nerd. The dot-com crash was a temporary set back and n 2007, I believe we are seeing yet another revitalization of the power of the nerd.

The growing influence of Internet sites like Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, and Facebook, pioneered by a new generation of nerds signals a new age in which the nerd, once reviled and looked down upon, has now become something to be revered. Well, maybe that is taking it a little too far. Then again, I suppose I am a nerd.

I walked into my apartment the other day and was not surprised to see a piece of junk mail that someone had slipped under my door. What I was surprised to see, was the new marketing message that Pizza Boli’s is using in their direct mail campaign.

I am no nutritionist but I am pretty sure that eating Pizza Boli’s is not considered healthy, nor is it the ‘healthier choice’ unless the alternative is eating a bowl of rusty nails covered with formaldehyde.

Whoever put their mailer together also could have chosen a better image than a plate of chicken wings and a ramican of ranch dressing to use in conjunction with their ‘eat healthy’ campaign.  They might as well have gotten Kirstie Alley to be their spokesmodel.

Pizza Boli’s direct mail campaign did give me a solution to a marketing challenge I had been working on:

In 1986, a young boy went to see a film about sacrifice, growth, and redemption that captivated his imagination and stirred his spirit.  That movie was The Transformers and it scored a 10/10 on the bad-ass scale.

In 2007, a 29-year old young(I think) man went to see a movie with the same name and left feeling dirty and used by the Michael Bay piece of crap that he had just spent the past two hours watching.

It will never cease to amaze me how Hollywood continues to destroy the relics of my childhood by overly contriving and commodifying stories that I used to love.  First, they gave the Dark Phoenix saga a golden shower; then they castrated Venom; and now this - they have turned the Transformers into a CGI-ed up version of the Village People.

Oh, it wasn’t that bad Jiyan.  With a budget of around $200 million, surely there must be some redeeming elements in the film?

Sure - there was some redeeming elements in the film:

The one thing I enjoyed about Transformers

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that the one redeeming quality of Transformers would be the fact that it sold sex considering that Michael Bay got his start directing Playboy video centerfolds, which in fact is the only Michael Bay film I would be willing to watch in the future given the fact that he pimped the Transformers like Terrence Howard pimped Taryn Manning in Hustle & Flow.

Instead of listing out the 100 things I found disgusting about Transformers, I’m going to provide 5 suggestions for how they could have made this film bearable.  Spielberg you senile S.O.B, I hope you are listening:

1. Include characters in the movie - Guess what idiots?  People like characters.  There were no characters in this movie.  There was a crap load of boring stereotypes and some CGI robots that I couldn’t care less about.  I literally vomited in my mouth during Bernie Mac’s cameo and during Anthony Anderson’s introductory scenes (both of whom have talent), when they were both essentially asked to use their blackness to bring some flavor to the film; I almost spat out my $10 aquafina when they had the audacity to play a tragic composition when Bumblebee was trapped by the police (guess what a$%holes, you only play a tragic composition when something tragic happens); and I almost walked out during the ‘is man worth saving’ dialogue between Optimus Prime and Megatron as they rolled around like two extras from ‘Rent’ in the ”climax” to the film.  I’m not even joking when I say this movie had no characters and would have been less of a joke had there not been one word uttered in it, which brings me to my second point:  
2. Hire a screenwriter who didn’t learn to read and write from Hooked on Phonics - Immediately after the film ended I ran to the bathroom and began beating my head against the sink in an effort to forget all of the movie dialogue that had entered into my short-term memory because I realized that my IQ would drop 50 points if I committed any of the dialogue to long-term memory.  In all honesty, the dialogue from the film made me feel embarassed.  They literally tried to inject some message about humanity into the film.  Obviously, this film was not intended to be An Inconvenient Truth so why even try? 
3. Include a plot in the movie - I know it is hard to impose a narrative structure onto a two-hour long car commercial but they honestly could have tried.  There was no sense of narrative coherence in the movie, no pacing, and no plot.  It was literally a bunch of people and robots running around and speaking incoherently to one another for two hours.  Next time, try to put some semblance of a plot together - maybe even think about copying a plot from the original Transfomers series?
4. Don’t give me an epileptic seizure - I couldn’t understand what was happening in any of the battle scenes.  They wasted millions of dollars on CGI when they could have hired a bunch of Korean kids to animate the film for $10,000 bucks because no one had any idea what was happening at any point when the robots were on-screen.  The final scene was so confusing to watch that there was a kid crying in the audience.  I’m lying - that kid was me.
5. Hire a real director next time - It is one thing to hire Bay to direct The Rock or Bad Boys - stories that no one really cares about and will be gone from our culture in a few years.  It is another to hand the reigns of a brand like The Transformers over to Bay.  Next time hire someone who actually understands the cultural significance of the Transformers and cares enough to actually put some effort in.

Allright - I’m getting bored with trashing the film.  Do yourself a favor and save $10 bucks by skipping this movie and just renting the original.