By my estimation, 1984 witnessed three truly epic events: my birth, the reelection of Ronald Reagan and the release of the American film classic "Revenge of the Nerds." Which of these three cultural milestones will have the greatest impact on Western civilization has yet to be determined, but I must say, the film (which saw Anthony Edwards as a geek before he became Tom Cruise's wingman Goose in 1986) is losing ground every day. And with this movie dies the last gasp of hope for nerds everywhere.
The slightly awkward heroes of this movie spend most of the 90 minutes on the defensive against a culture of boys from no-necked sports frats and the gorgeous girls who flock to them. By the end of the movie, nerds have scored several tactical victories against the forces of beauty and oppression.
The largest win, however, comes when one of the nerd protagonists steals the hottest of the sorority sisters from the captain of the football team. She defects to the nerd camp after mistakenly copulating with the nerd instead of her boo. Her anger at being tricked is overcome by her amazement over just how great the sex was. When she asks how this is possible, he replies: "Because jocks only think about sports; nerds only think about sex." In the battle over the fairer sex, the movie proposes, nerds can level the playing field by being dynamite in bed (or, in the case of the movie, dynamite in the dimly-lit Moonwalk — how kinky is that?).
The jock contingent of the world saw all of sexual selection hanging in the balance, so they countered with the deadliest weapon known to geeks: the video game. The football player could play football, but now the nerd could too; and with every subsequent game console came increased realism. No drug is more addictive than the Xbox or the PS2, and while I have yet to master either console, I already love the ergonomic feel of the PlayStation controller in my hands, even when I'm using it to skip non-nude scenes on a DVD (making me the first person, I think, to play "Love Actually: The Video Game").
The video game has ravaged Geekdom in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan. through a retirement home. I first noticed the symptoms this summer, when I had an apartment in D.C. that was practically guaranteed to make its occupants into sex symbols — but my roommate developed a track record for continuing to play his "NCAA Football 2004" (and later, 2005) even when we had gorgeous guests in attendance in a most favorable ratio. I would be mixing drinks and stumbling over my words like any good nerd should, but he would continue playing Georgia-Florida in hopes that the Dawgs might pull it out this time.
The epidemic can be witnessed in its most serious incarnation at my eating club, which has a game room outfit with back-to-back HDTVs and networked game consoles. Multiplayer games stretch long into the night. On any given night, I witness a modern-day Vietnam: scores of our young men being sent off to fight a meaningless war in a faraway place, often a ring-world called Halo. And this insidious jock plot has served to siphon off the libido of our most virile nerds, who emerge bleary-eyed after hours of gameplay with little desire to go hit on that group of 23 cute underclasswomen (thanks, Dean Fred) standing by the jukebox. The limerick destined to emerge from this miscarriage of justice might go something like: "The problem with the guys at Quad is / The odds are good but the goods are odd."
So if you're a guy — we won't call you a nerd, because that's become stigmatized again — learn from the character Brodie in Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" who initially chooses his Harford vs. Vancouver hockey video game over his girlfriend. Later in the movie he realizes his idiocy and remarks, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." Remember this, guys, and put down the controller and hit on the girls like a man. Because if you don't, I'm sure there's some meathead who's more than willing to step up to the plate.
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