Talking hobbies amongst friends is cool. Sharing them with Grandma is generous of you, but will frighten and confuse her. (Pictured: “Eltingville Club” art from Evan Dorkin’s Dork #6.)
From my own day-to-day standpoint, it’s as simple as this: if I talk about a given subject at either church, work, or family gatherings and receive nothing but blank stares or furrowed brows in return, those are the ordinary people. In those settings, I know that my version of “small talk” would wander too far past the geek boundary and I keep my mouth shut, except about the weather or whatever subjects they bring up first.
All of this sets aside the fact that I do embrace ordinary aspects about myself and my life as well, as longtime MCC readers should recognize by now, considering the number of past entries that were overtly not about geek-relevant topics, but were usually (hopefully?) informed in subtle ways by my interests and skill sets. (Tomorrow night’s entry will be one of those, in fact, 100% guaranteed.) Suffice it to say I’m not mocking anyone who’s 100% ordinary/0% geek — merely observing there are pronounced differences when those percentages fluctuate.
I had been looking forward to last week’s new episode of Community, “Conventions of Space and Time”, which invited us into the inner workings of an official Inspector Spacetime convention, a place where Troy and Abed could meet other fans of the obscure British TV series, indulge in a few hobby-related purchases, and generally be themselves. As someone who’s been to C2E2 twice, Wizard World Chicago four times, three GenCons so far, two Star Wars Celebrations, and several local Trek conventions, I was curious to see how the generally geek-approved series would approach such a setting. I tried to keep my expectations modest — without creator Dan Harmon around anymore, this season’s first two episodes were a little shaky. I’ve stuck with the show and keep hoping for the best.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 