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12 April 2006
Team Awkward! This thread is for uncool people only. If you're hip, bite your lip.
Can we read Archie comics and play with the Etch-A-Sketch, too?
(note: there exists an official Etch-A-Sketch club. When you join they give you a cool patch. I so want to sew that patch on the upper sleeve of my autograph fatigue jacket. This reveals the depths of my dorkery)
c'mon, let's flip baseball cards and play with our chemistry sets.
(also, sports fandom is the geekiest pursuit in the world. It involves worship of men in colorful outfits, massive merchandising, endless analysis and bickering over statistics (SABRmetrics? APBA games?) and a gigantic body of lore that must be absorbed if one is to properly appreciate things. I rest my case)
Lola, when I was twelve I had a subscription to Discover magazine (which did not do much for my popularity in 6th Grade*), and there was an article about how some sports statisticians had come up with a new equation to measure the offensive prowess of baseball players. The article included the formula, so I took at stack of Topps' and sat down at my Vic-20 (complete with cassette adapter, both purchased with paper route money) with the BASIC guide and wrote a rather elegant program for calculating and ranking players. I then submitted it to COMPUTE! magazine (which I bought regularly at the corner newsstand as well) and got a form rejection letter. My first intro to the vagaries of the adult world. I'll be collecting my Ultimate Dork Champeen trophy now.
*I was waaay out on the social periphery during those years, being a skinny, overbright loudmouth with a history of hyperactivity, echophenomena, bad coordination, and a mom with horrible taste in clothes. I was also a December baby, which meant I was always a half step behind everyone in social development. But I had my little posse, which included Chris-who was going to our school illegaly with the pothead older brother and the single mom with the shirtless boyfriend with a waterbed, Ralphie who years later I got caught helping cheat on a proofless geometry** test and is now a pothead animator, Mikey - who dropped out of school in like 8th grade, and Aaron, who liked making movies of his toys but who later became a badass delinquent in the dork to hescher traditon we all seemed to follow by high school.
**yes, proofless geometry. my loss of enthusiasm for academics and potsmoking had combined to diminish my math prowess. I was taking Honors English the same year, and it was really something to see the contrast between the two classes. One was like Paper Chase meets Mensa, the other like Beavis & Butthead meets Feeding Time At The Zoo.
I spent four years in photo club AND I took the game movies for the varsity football team. That one year in ham radio club was a temporary diversion. Plus I was in history honors classes.
Given how desireable it is not to be "cool" in any sense that has heretofore been defined, how are we really supposed to answer this? The new cool is anti-cool. This is one of those questions to which the only real answer is:
"I am sorry. I no speak English. Please where the bathroom."
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
