If you head to the multiplex this weekend to catch a showing of The Dark Knight Rises, and leave disappointed, as I did, be sure to wait until you are in the safety of?your car, with doors locked and alarm activated before you start criticizing it.
You’re in dangerous territory; completely outnumbered by nerds and geeks, who’ve come to see the bookend to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight?series for the fifth time, no doubt dressed in a cape and cowl they ordered online from a Halloween costume wholesaler, and they are ready to do grevious harm to anyone who even so much as points out that Bane sounds like Orson Welles in his drunken Paul Masson wine commercial. But it’s true, and I said it when I was coming out of showing last week, causing a spindly man with the wet, plastered down hair that could only come from?the knight costume he had worn earlier to the Renessaince Fair, to shoot me a dirty look.
The theatre is a dangerous place to be – especially in the days following?the release of a comic book movie. The nerds are angry. Again. And this time they’re sharperning their pocket protectors into shivs and setting upon anyone not willing to label a three-hour Batman movie where Batman spends two-and-a-half hours on a cane or in traction, a masterpiece to rival The Godfather and Taxi Driver.
They’ve already?unleashed their rage on movie reviewers (sending death threats to one and shutting down the Rotten Tomatoes comment system) and you?can expect to find yourself in trouble if you come across a pack of them hopped up on Orange Crush from the concession stand and adrenaline from a Magic:?the Gathering tournament.
I'm not the least bit surprised that comic book afficianados reacted this way once their revered movie dipped below 100% of the RT meter. In fact, I expected it. It only reinforces my opinion that nerds are among the most dangerous people on the planet.
Don’t let the Nerd’s appearance fool you
The gaming, the split ends and the acne only disguise the fact a nerd has the mad jingoistic and violent bend of a small-time Okie cop with thoughts of blasting black people with a fire hose and drunken Oakland Raiders fans after a narrow loss.
Shrouded in a simple world of good and evil, powered by years of loneliness and unrequited love, the nerd is ready and willing to take a plastic light saber?upside the head of anyone whose?first instinct upon hearing that Batman and an orphan are palling around in tights in a secret underground cave is to call the authorities.
The last decade of nerd movies like Superbad and American Pie have us convinced nerds are sweet, misunderstood and clumsy fellows who remains virgins not because most girls?want to club themselves over the head?with a hot curling iron when they spend an hour ranting on whether Han Solo?or Greedo shot first but because an unfair world has conspired against them.
The truth is, nerds are?intolerant of differing opinions and condescending to those they know they are smarter than.
Don’t believe me? Try calling Star Trek Star Track and see the rage dance behind his eyes. If you take a snap shot of the exact moment he realizes you’ve misspoke, you can see the?his plot to beat you in an alley take form.
Nerds are as blood thirsty as a pack of hyenas
If you flip through a nerd’s comic book collection you’d be shocked at what a violent, fascist world most comics are set in. Each page drips with oiled and impossibly ripped Aryans brandishing M16 assault rifles with Bowie knives in their jackboot, rescuing Boobs Brooks from the path of a ray gun or destroying an evil foreigner with a Fu Manchu who threatens to destroy the American Way.
Whatever the American Way is supposed to mean in these sordid times when they are kicking the shit out of a defenseless country for oil reserves and reconstruction contracts, rampant mortgage defaults and an overblown banking industry that will never be held accountable for their largess, is anyone’s guess.
They are, down to last man, the emblem of masculinity; silent, brooding, single and ready at all moments to maim, murder and level a city block if they don’t get their ways.
It’s odd that the asthmatics too afraid to ask a girl out for coffee worship their exact opposites.
Nerds?have warped opinions on women
Women in comics are no less obvious or strange?than the men. They are always buxom, saline implants bursting out of their corsets and?waists so?tiny their belts must be bought in the H&M kid?s section.
These women ? if not entirely helpless, trussed up or unconscious ? are supposed to stand as beacons of feminism yet they show up to thwart bank robberies and back alley muggings?wearing latex catsuits or shredded unitards.
You can be sure that these 87-lbs of boobs, butt and bone will dispatch burly men with ease and pose over their unconscious bodies in?the downward dog position.
Now, of course, it can be said that every form of male entertainment involves half-naked and empty-headed women. I mean, is there really any point to cheerleaders aside from providing the players with a rolling docket of sexual harassment charges and paternity suits? But at least the Average Joe has some interaction with real women in the real world to balance out the objectification they witness every Sunday.
And no,?stalking the one middle-aged women who stuffs herself into a Wonder Woman costume at Comic Con does not classify as real interaction.
The War Against Jocks
The scary thing about comic book obsessions is how closely the low notes of the genre (sex, blood and murder) match the interests of the nerd?s greatest enemy: the sports jock. A jock has the genetics that allow him to inflict suffering and pain on his fellow human where the nerd must only imagine it.
It leads me to think most nerds would play sports if they had the bodies to do so; in fact, the world might be a safer place if they had a real flesh and blood outlet for their aggression.
Instead, they watch as these meatheads?are worshiped by faculty and spectators and lusted after by the women they fanticize about all day for pulverizing other meatheads over a pigskin sphere while the nerd’s superior intelligence is treated as though it is?an airborne virus.
It's unfair.?In nerd’s world, sitting at the front of the class in a Tron shirt and making phaser noises under his breath should lead, at any moment, to a bite from a radioactive spider or an errant blast from a gamma ray.? From there, it’s only a matter of time before that fine piece of ass he's had his eye on for three semesters?is stretched up?on his bunk bed?raptly listening as he lectures her on why Batman didn’t kill Bane when he had the chance.
Nerds, reenacting the?battle scenes in 300 is not well adjusted behavior
Let me make clear I’m not saying reading reading the Knightfall series will have?kids shattering spines in?Homeroom the next day.?Nor am I trying to say cool people don't like comic books ? I can't think of anyone who didn't grow up reading Spiderman, Superman, X-Men and the Dark Knight himself.
What I mean to say is when comics and D&D and Warcraft are a man’s ONLY interests, it’s only a matter of time before he’s posing for a mug shot in a Captain America uniform.
Those types of interests?lack the subtlety needed to?open a man’s mind to?disagreement?and unfairness without throwing on a 300 toga and blasting society on a Lord of the Rings message board.
If there’s one piece of advice I can give the hardcore nerds out there it’s this: spring for a prostitute every once in a while. The world will be a safer place.