Well, here it is, the first episode of Men in Gorilla Suits! So…wondering what the first episode is about?
Learn the secret origins of hosts Shawn Kupfer and Christopher Gronlund…when the geek bug bit and what was to blame for the lifetime of geekery that followed. Find out what Shawn almost did in a space suit and what name Christopher insisted even teachers call him after he saw Star Wars. But it’s not all about us — it’s as much a discussion about how it’s become acceptable for adults to embrace their inner nerd as it is about the nerdy things that have become life-long obsessions for so many.
We’d love to hear from you: join in the comments below and share what hooked you and how you balance being a grown-up with being a geek!
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Good luck with the new podcast, and have fun! Really looking forward to hearing more of the shows. š
Thank you, Cynthia. Next week we chat about creating our own realities, which sounds weird, but it ties into this episode. It’s about creating creative spaces tailored to personalities, fitness hacks, meditation and lucid dreaming…all kinds of stuff!
I guess I was a “closet geek” all through high school and college. My geekiness crystallized after I discovered the original Dr. Who series. It accrued mass with my discovery of Douglas Adams, and went supernova when I started watching re-runs of Star Trek TNG. I’m a late-blooming geek. š How do I balance adult geekiness? I was never that good at “balance.” My current microfocus is exponentially accelerating technology.
Congratulations on a great first episode, my fellow geeks!
Thanks for the reply, CMS! When I was young, I tried the original Dr. Who, but it never stuck with me. But, like you, it led to Douglas Adams and other British shows and writers. (Especially the British invasion of comics in the late 80s/early 90s.) I am into Star Trek by default; friends watched, so I knew enough about ST:TNG, but I never really watched until my wife got me watching re runs. Now I can say that I’ve seen much more Star Trek than not. (I haven’t really seen any Deep Space Nine stuff, though.)
Your interest in the singularity gets me thinking about it more than I ever did, so your work is done! š
You need to get on that DS9, son!
Shawn: Cynthia’s slowly been working her way through them, but I think I’ve only seen two full episodes of the show. She took a detour and has ended up going through X-Files, but I plan to catch a little more DS9 when she gets back to it.
I have a Boba Fett Pez dispenser on my desk at work. Let’s see, I also spy a Space Shuttle pen and a tiki mug.
Perhaps I’m not as cool as I thought I was.
Great show, guys!
All three of those things = cool in our book, Mitch! Thanks for listening.
I get the part of keeping the outsiders outside with the nerd culture.
It might be old-man syndrome with me, but when I see people on FB who I went to school with (not necessarily friends with back then) and see them make a comment about how much they’ve always LOVED Star Wars (or Doctor Who or whatever) I think back when I did and didn’t keep it hidden during my days at school and how I was frowned upon ’cause it was so nerdy.
But now that it’s acceptable, it’s okay to come out of the nerd closest (or as some suggested it’s cool to be nerdy now)
However, just because I understand where they’re coming from, doesn’t mean I agree.
I definitely understand the feeling. I totally understand the sentiment in this video. On the subject of Felicia Day (she’s singing in this video), I get that she’s the genuine article and when other people saw her success, many — not even into the culture — were like, “If I act like a cute gamer chick and play it up, geeks will give me money!” San Diego Comic Con is more a media thing than a comic convention, and has been for quite a while, so I understand being defensive.
As you point out, the very people who once teased us are now wearing brand-new weathered-looking geek t-shirts and getting into geeky things. For me, it’s hard to hold it totally against them, as much as I want to shout, “You damn jocks get off my geeky lawn!!!” One of the people who tormented me when I was younger is now a friend. I would never say I should forget the horrible things this person did to me, or that their actions were in any way justifiable, but I now have a better insight into where their head was at back then. And in many ways, they were even more messed up than they made me. (In this particular person’s case, they struggled with a long heroin addiction, and it’s only been in recent years that they’ve come up from their low. They partially ended up an addict because they were desperate to be accepted, so…they picked on people like me and later would do anything to appear cool to their peers.)
Trust me: like every geek, I had that fantasy of being a success and bumping into the people who messed with me. And…I hoped they’d be scraping by. As I got older, though, I let go of most of those feelings, and I know — had I bumped into my tormenting heroin addict at their worse — I would have felt like crap kicking them when they were down. Knowing that so many people secretly hid the things they liked because they wanted to appear cool, or worse: now being adults still craving that desire to be a part of something and embracing geek culture, I can’t be too mad about it. But I definitely understand the feelings of, “Where was your love of Star Trek back then?!” and even the resentment of those who have rushed into the whole scene and seen it as a money-making thing, even though they really couldn’t care less about the subculture.
It’s like when Tim Burton’s Batman came out and everybody had a Batman logo t-shirt (including neon logos…gah!). They were not the same people dressing up and going to cons. It was something they did one summer and moved on; they didn’t live it like many of us did and still do.
They did not grieve when Dave Steven’s died, and they will never make a rocket pack as awesome as yours!
I think a lot of it is a feeling of no apology. A couple people who eventually became geeks have truly been like, “Man, I get why you liked this stuff all those years ago.” There’s acknowledgement in that statement that borders on an apology. I wouldn’t expect an adult to necessarily apologize for something crappy they did to me when we were kids, but that acknowledgement goes a long way. So, when people act like they’ve been there the whole time, it still smacks of that mentality of junior high or high school where they glom onto whatever seems popular at all costs and claim it as their own.
Going back to the ’80s? It can go back further! I always enjoyed my father’s stories about his childhood, reading Gernsback and Campbell pulp science fiction magazines in the 1930s. Back then I think nerds were referred to as Poindexters. Among other things.
Greg: I agree that it can go back further, but…it really seemed that in the late 70s/early 80s that geeks started coming out of their shells a bit and things once deemed geeky became the norm. Probably, in large part, from PCs. But there’s no doubt that people were reading writers like Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and others. Hell, fantasy was around long before Tolkien came along.
But the people who read all that stuff…it was rare that they brought more than just the books into their lives. They didn’t dress the part (other than everyone wore suits back in the day), and their offices and other places were not much different than others. Now, though, you can wear your geek with pride, and it’s the rare office where I haven’t seen somebody proudly flying their geeky nature by decorating their cubicle with action figures and other things.
My father-in-law was considerably older than my mother-in-law, and they had my wife later in their lives. My father-in-law was a geeky kid who broke his nose leaping off his front porch and shouting “Shazam!” hoping the powers of Captain Marvel flowed through him. He loved sci-fi, comic books, and blockbuster movies. If you chatted with him, you found out these interests, but just looking at him or the home where he lived, you didn’t see the geek, even though it was there since the 30s š
(Now I wonder who the first geek was! I’m sure it goes further back than the 1900s…)
Hi Guys! I really dug this and can relate. I know Lisa and I have continued to geek out on certain movies and music we were raised on. I still have a love for the “Aliens” flicks as we watched them with our dad when we were maybe 5 and 7 years old. I still have my Ren and Stimpy comics and recently blew $100 on three She-Ra collectibles. I still shop at thrift stores. I met Helen Slater a few years back and got her autograph for my Supergirl poster- a movie I will defend until my last breath.
I can say as a kid I did get made fun of quite a bit, as most kids do, and was apart of the “Nerd Herd” as the upper-crust children called our rag-tag team of misfits. At the time, I can say being a geek was definitely not accepted, this was in the late 80’s to mid 90’s at private schools. However as I’ve gotten older, now being 31, I find that folks have seemed to come around I suppose in the past 5 years and the things I geek out on have kinda made a comeback with the masses maybe? I’m hoping this new acceptance of all things geeky is not a fad. I’m hoping it really is a cultural shift that will stick around for a long time. If anything I think being a geek as a kid, toughens you up and ends up sticking with you as an adult. I think it allows you to be open-minded in general while being maybe a role model for kids that are suppressing who they are just for the sake of fitting in with the “normal” folk.
I think my geek-ness if you will has helped me out professionally speaking. I work at a casino where you’re supposed to have fun at your job- I’ve been called quirky many times by my bosses and while they chuckle at my odd-ball phrases they see me as approachable and it allows me to interact well with guests. I guess that’s how I balance me being a geek and getting my work done.
During the winter here, I wore snow pants to work and while not a popular item to wear they got more than a few laughs but this time around it wasn’t like the cruel cackles I heard from my youth it was like hey I’m wearing these and I don’t care and since I’m already known as goofy folks kinda warmed up to them.
I think being an adult geek is kind of freeing- you don’t worry about trends or if someone is going to accept you. I suppose that goes with being an adult in general but I’ve finally learned that it’s much easier to just let it all out. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself as a kid all of this so the best I’m going to do, is when I have kids, encourage confidence in them to be proud of who they are, geek or not.
Thanks for the great reply, Karen! My wife will defend Supergirl to her last breath as well; you can team up and keep the movie safe for future generations! š
You bring up how being a geek has helped you at work. I know so many geeks get pegged as being too shy to interact with people (I was that way for so long), but there’s a genuineness I really admire in those who do it well at work and in life. It’s taken me quite a long time to get there, but I know people who always loved geeky things who have always been extroverts and communicate so well in all the connections they’ve made. It really is, as you mentioned, very freeing.