The Geek Gods

Ten minutes into G.I. Joe and I’d finally understood why Channing Tatum was the source for many a salivary gland’s stimulation. A line or two delivered with such “bro”-caded modulation — the sort of tender speech jerky frat boys chew on after chugging a sixer of Coors Light — was enough to leave me frothing at the mouth, wondering where my brain cells had drifted off to. To put it simply, Channing Tatum has the acting chops to affect an audience. So much so that after an hour and a half faced with eyes that evoke such raw nothingness, your speech begins to slacken and your frontal lobe begins to turn to mush.

If it wasn’t for a couple of Delta-6 Accelerator Suits aiding Tatum and that wiry Wayans brother as they made a mad dash through Paris, leaving fractured buildings and twisted metal in their wake, I would have needed an inflatable travel pillow; my two-minute power naps during snippets of dialogue maybe stretching into an actual siesta. The scene with the Accelerator Suits (you-think-it-and-it-does-it technology) may have held the interest of my mind’s child for 10 or so minutes, but the absolute himbo-ness of G.I. Joe’s main man was nothing short of nauseating.

Great casting, though, considering the role of thick-necked First Sergeant Duke — a codename spoken with a grunt, of course — is to Channing Tatum as the roles of Dork — self-deprecating, overly analytical tubs of flub — are to Seth Rogen. But undoubtedly, the latter is just more compelling.

Dawn of the Dork

The exact moment when the man strapped with big guns began to bend over for the man who possessed much ire — the kind of irony emblazoned on the T-shirts of Rogen himself — can’t be pinpointed. If you’d been snickering through American Pie, though, you must have gotten the memo that Schwarzenegger had given way to Stiller. Or the likes of Jason Biggs, even.

By the end of Pie, a proto-dork like Jim, the character Biggs would immortalize by shagging an actual pie, would bag a hot foreign girl like Nadya and then some. And the character of Chuck Sherman, with his deployment of Arnold-influenced macho-isms while tragically tagging himself The Shermanator, would just end up peeing his pants. Or, as in the movie’s sequel, getting the lowdown from the class bitch on how dated and desperate his act was: “Drop the whole Shermanator thing…(The Terminator) was a big movie, like, what, 10 years ago? But you can’t really tell me a girl’s ever gone for it.” Indeed, by 1999, when the coming-of-age movie had assumed a new and dirtier definition, legions of teen males were beginning to warm up to the possibility that within the loser was a lothario.

Today, there’s enough evidence to suggest that freaks and geeks are getting a lot more action. Sure, we haven’t gone so far as to do away entirely with our mindless Tatum flicks or ditch craggy Craig for Bond and pitch Jon Heder (you know, Napoleon Dynamite), but with Rogen currently suiting up as dapper vigilante the Green Hornet, there’s a better chance a schlub today could become savior tomorrow.

We’ve certainly come a long way from the skin-deep ‘80s — where Anthony Michael Hall could only fit the nerd bill, from weepy wimp Brian in The Breakfast Club to a more mature turn as Bill Gates in 1999’s The Pirates of Silicon Valley. Had Hall, Chris Farley (gone too soon), or David Spade (schlepped through obscure projects later on) driven into Hollywood about this time, they might have joined Rogen as one of the knights at Judd Apatow’s roundtable. They would have been discussing, with backslapping zingers, the fine points of pleasuring oneself in Superbad. Maybe even waxing philosophical about the survival of the fittest and which classification of hot girl corresponds to which douchebag genus in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  

Thing is, the joke has been on the alpha male for quite some time now. If it wasn’t for comedy’s overstepping of boundaries in the past decade and giving us reason to chuckle about all kinds of ugliness, even that of our own, we wouldn’t have been able to stagger out of our own insecurities. We wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the undiluted sarcasm of Jon Stewart or decide, without a hint of mockery, that the bespectacled Kiwi in Flight of the Concords is “an effing cool guy.”

Call it real evolution that’s taken us from Arnie’s circa-‘82 Conan The Barbarian to getting Conan O’Brien on The Tonight Show; from great-haired chick magnets like Keanu (the Bill & Ted movies) and Brendan (Encino Man) in the ‘90s to the John Chos and Michael Ceras of today; from every Tom, Dick and Juan boasting what martial art they’d taken up to claiming real estate in the vast landscape of nerdiness — be it wearing glasses for irony, having a penchant for ‘80s power ballads, or bragging: “Seriously, dude, that’s my favorite program on the Discovery Channel.” 

If only this had all happened sooner. When my eight-year-old self was wondering whether there was something wrong with the fact that G.I. Joes held no fascination for him, he probably wouldn’t have ditched that old chemistry set so hastily.

Nerd Herd

We are now well within the Age of the Awkward Man, where, thanks to our evolved tastes, nerds finally rule over Neanderthals. Some Poindexters of interest:

• Rising Geek God: Christopher Mintz-Plasse

The world loved McLovin, Mintz-Plasse’s iconic zero-turned-sex-hero, in Apatow’s magnum opus to sweet virginity, Superbad. While you’d expect the nick to stick after such an indelible performance, several lined-up films (the upcoming Year One, for example) could raise the 19-year-old’s actual name to dork divinity. Dropping by a Playboy Playmate’s radio show and snagging a GQ fashion shoot may also help.    

Four-Eyed First Lady: Charlyne Yi

You’d think the gawky little Asian girl look would make Charlyne Yi a preyed-on audience member at a comedy club, but it’s all part of her shtick when she gets onstage. The naiveté you’d expect, offset by lines like “I love f*cking kids! I mean, I f*cking love kids!” in Apatow’s Knocked Up, where she played a stoner named Jodi. Next, she bares dimples and a hesitance as thick as her glasses in Paper Heart, which won her a screenwriting award at Sundance and where she sets hipster hearts aflutter by her attempt to figure out the love game with rumored real-life squeeze and Apatow alum Michael Cera. 

• Emergence of the Louche Dork: James Franco

From his role as the Rufio of deadbeats in Freaks & Geeks to his mock-commencement speech for UCLA’s graduating class (check funnyordie.com) — tell me he doesn’t do louche really well.  

New Discovery: Time Warp (8 p.m. ET/PT, Wednesday on The Discovery Channel) 

An MIT scientist and digital-imaging expert press ultra-slow-mo on a variety of natural events whose intricate processes elude the naked eye. Basically, you get to see the play-by-play of a whole lot of explosions and a dude getting socked in the face. What, you’ve got plans on a Wednesday night? Runner-up: Infomania—what Esquire called “The Daily Show’s wiseass kid brother.”  

• Preoccupation: Passive-aggressive blogging 

The blogosphere has become the neo-nerd’s promised land, where insight and sarcasm on sad realities (www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com) and biting social commentary (“Look at this f**king hipster”—www.latfh.com) find their voluble outlet. Power to the feeble!