Recently in conversations with geeks Category

The man who brought geekiness to New York theater, Charles Ross is this weekend wrapping up his Off-Broadway run of One Man Star Wars [my review here]. But it -- and his new show, One Man Lord of the Rings -- will be touring all sorts of interesting places in the next few months, including California, Georgia, Florida, and Wisconsin. Charles spoke to me recently about memorizing movies, getting dissed by The New York Times, and how weird geek audiences can be.

MAJ: I want you to know from the outset that I’m a big geek, I think it’s a good thing, and there’s not going to be any derogatory comments about geekiness.

CR: Actually, to tell the truth, I’m not even worried about when people do derogatory things. I think when they’re a little bit myopic, like, the review that came out in The New York Times...

MAJ: Uh! That was horrible!

CR: It was rather telling of... I don’t know if you want to call it. Audience discrimination? As though there’s some kind of upper echelon of the public. As though there’s only one kind of audience patron allowed and other people just aren’t welcome.

MAJ: Yeah, I was really stunned by that piece... especially since apparently The Times is supposedly trying to bring in more younger readers. And by younger, I mean people our age, not kids. Because we’re not reading The Times anymore, and you have to wonder why... It’s no surprise, because they obviously do not understand our culture.

CR: Well, the guy [from The Times] is a younger guy... he’s sort of mid-30s, I think. I don’t entirely know what it is. I guess any reviewer has a bit of soap box. It’s just kind of unfortunate -- it’s like somebody trying to bully somebody outside of high school. Like only certain people are cool and other people are not.

Mmm, tastes like chicken. If you’re missing Gary Larson and his Far Side cartoons, fill the void with Doug Savage’s Savage Chickens, where you’ll find chicken-flavored insight and weirdness every day. I talked to Doug recently about creativity, geekiness, and why Jim Henson is to blame for Generation X.

MAJ: What does “geek” mean to you, and do you consider yourself a geek?

DS: I guess I’ve always thought of a geek as a person who has a passion for something that most people consider unimportant. A sort of healthy obsession. And if the obsession becomes unhealthy, that’s when you’re veering into nerd territory. I have to admit that I’m a geek on several fronts -- I’m a B-movie buff and I love anything to do with 80s pop culture. And I’m also a music geek -- collecting 70s R&B on vinyl. And you can tell from some of the cartoons that I’m also a bit of Shakespeare geek.

Neil Gaiman -- writer, genius, rock star of speculative fiction -- has a new movie opening in limited release on September 30: Mirrormask isn’t based on one of his books or graphic novels but was written directly for the screen. (My review coming soon to FlickFilosopher.com.) As if that weren’t cool enough, his new book, Anansi Boys, just hit stores. (Gaiman signed a copy of the book for me; I’ll be giving it away to a micropatron supporter of FlickFilosopher.com soon.)

I sat down with Neil recently (along with journalists Hal Johnson from Midtown Comics/Buzzscope.com and Valerie Reupert from Jim Hanley’s Universe) to talk about art, literature, and being a geek. Neil claims he isn’t a geek, though his description of himself pretty much aligns with the positive image of geekiness I’m trying to promulgate: the geek as smart, creative, and in touch with the world, not the stereotypical clueless nerd locked in his room with his Xbox.

(This interview was transcribed by Reupert, and also appears on Newsarama.com.)

MAJ: Do you consider yourself a geek?

NG: Well, no. I have a son who is a geek and I know he's a geek because he is very proud of his geekdom. He wears glasses even though he doesn't have to. He likes the fact that he figures he looks less like a 6'2’ blue-eyed kid who used to play hockey when he wears glasses. He is a self-proclaimed geek. To me the idea of geekdom came along too late in life. People say, "Were you a geek or a nerd when you were at school?" I said, "Well, neither. I went to school in England. We didn't have those kinds of divisions then."

Here’s the first in a new series: Conversations with Geeks, in which I chat about all things geeky with professional geeks. First up: author John Kenneth Muir, who thinks a lot about TV and movies and shares his insights in too many books to count, including The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television, An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith, The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi, An Analytical Guide to Television's Battlestar Galactica, and many more. I met John at a science fiction convention a couple years ago, when we were both sat on panels talking about film and TV, and we hit it off instantly. Check out John’s blog, Reflections on Film/TV, for a regular fix of pop culture wisdom.

MAJ: Was there a point in your childhood when you realized there was something different, something geeky, about yourself?

JKM: I think I felt the first stirrings of my own geekiness in 1975 or 1976 when the other kids on the playground wanted to play dodge ball or kickball, but I wanted to re-enact scenes from Saturday's episode of Land of the Lost. And if memory serves, I think I wanted to play Enik (the smart Sleestak who wore a red lame gown and could control the crystal matrix tables...).