1/22/2011

More NonSense: The Geek shall Inherit the Earth?

American Splendor, by Harvey Pekar and Bill Knapp
Harvey and Toby on "Revenge of the Nerds"
from American Splendor, by Harvey Pekar and Bill Knapp

Noah Berlatsky's social critique of The Big Bang Theory instantly reminded me of the late Harvey Pekar's takedown of Revenge of the Nerds (not the film adaptation, but the original comic story). But at least he ends his piece with a backhanded compliment that recognizes its particular brand of humor.

Sean T. Collins posts the first truly critical commentary on Dirk Deppey's long running Journalista. I don't disagree with a lot of what he wrote, especially with his own distaste for Dirk's later style of industry analysis, which could be grating at times for being relentlessly contrarian just for its own sake. But as much as I like Tom Spurgeon as a news source, I'm still a big fan of Dirk's digest-format approach to link-blogging. The TCJ site looks all the more poorer without his daily postings. What does TCJ do these days?

Roland Kelts reports on the fallout over the passing of Bill 156 in Japan. So much for practicing wa. The otaku are rebelling.

Patton Oswalt mourns the death of classic geek culture as he sees it. Weren't we supposed to outgrow those things anyway? Oh yeah, we didn't.

Christopher Butcher and Kevin Melrose comment on the nominations for this year's GLAAD Media Awards, one of the more superhero-friendly (read biased) comic awards.