Of course some women drink too much. Of course it's a problem.

Last week, I had to write a 400-word article about famous female alcoholics who became sober. I figured that since it’s only 400 words on a topic that should be easy to research through Google, it wouldn’t take me that long to write it.

Well, it turns out I was wrong. I spent more time than anybody ever should on 400 words to write that article, simply because there simply wasn’t much information on famous female alcoholics. Yes, there was Betty Ford, but she was about the only name who came up on most sites. Nearly every other article I could find talked at great length about Eric Clapton, Robert Downey, Jr. and other famous men who struggled with alcoholism, but I had a lot of trouble finding any information on famous women who sobered up aside from stupid tabloid articles that print any salacious rumor out there as absolute fact.

So basically there was a severe shortage of information on famous female alcoholics compared to information on famous male alcoholics. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why this was the case. Just because alcoholism is 2 ½ times more common among men than women doesn’t mean that women don’t have drinking problems, so why did I have so much trouble finding information about female alcoholics? I know Google occasionally drops the research ball for me thanks to overzealous SEO Internet marketers clogging up the web with pointless articles, but I didn't think I would have that much trouble finding relevant information.

I know part of the problem is good old fashioned misogyny. Since men are more “important” than women in society’s eyes whether people like to admit it or not, we’re less likely to hear about women or their problems. We want to hear about strong men of integrity who overcome deadly addictions to live good, long healthy lives, but apparently the same thing can’t be said about women. It’s a real shame, and as a feminist it’s something that I’ve always found irritating. Even when we’re not talking about people overcoming dangerous vices, women are basically dismissed by society. If a man accomplishes something important, it’s because he’s smart, strong and everything a man is supposed to be. If a woman does the same thing, people are in awe of the fact that something important was accomplished by a woman instead of a man. It’s not nearly as bad as it once was, but that attitude still exists in our society even when people like to pretend that it doesn’t.

Another reason why I think it was so hard to find the information I needed  was because in my experiences people react differently to drunk men than they do to drunk women. Specifically, they’re far more likely to notice a man who drinks to excess and see it as a problem. Although there always seem to be guys who encourage their friends’ wild, “funny” drunken behavior, I often notice that people regard male drunks as problems waiting to happen. Guys are seen as more likely to be the kind of destructive, occasionally violent drunks that do really stupid things and cause trouble. People try to stay away from them, or at least I do. Meanwhile, girls who get drunk are just seen as having fun. They’re letting their hair down and having a blast with their girlfriends. They’re laughing, dancing and flirting with guys. People don’t look at these women and see them as having a problem.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve noticed that society is dismissive of the problem of alcohol abuse in women. I’ve been to plenty of parties where people think the giggly drunk girls who are flirting with all the guys are fun while thinking that the drunk guys are obnoxious. They rarely saw the girls’ behavior as problematic, which was problematic in itself. The guys at these parties didn't seem to realize (or care) that some of those drunk girls who were flirting with them would get drunk regularly and be just as self-destructive as that guy who trashes his friends' houses, starts fights and crashes his car when he has too much to drink.

These are just my own opinions and theories, but I really think this dismissive attitude towards women who drink extends into our fascination with celebrities. The famous men who have beaten alcoholism become role models for young and old men because of their strength, courage and determination. From what I could tell in my research for my article last week, women don’t have the same role models. I don’t doubt that there are plenty of famous women who have conquered alcoholism and other vices, but it doesn’t seem that people talk about them quite as much. I think it’s time for that to change.

Then again, maybe I'm thinking too much about this, and my inner rabble-rousing feminist is seeing a bigger problem that isn't there while I rage about the occasional uselessness of Google.

What do you think?

This Is Why I Belong to My Church

I'm not particularly religious. In fact, I'm pretty damn close to being an agnostic. I question everything in the Bible and in traditional Christian dogma, and the only thing that I feel sure of is that there is such a thing as God. I only feel sure of that because I can't imagine the universe appearing out of nothing; some force had to have created it.

To anybody who knows me or who has read some of the previous entries on my blog, this is old news. I will gladly discuss my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to anybody who listens. However, what I don't think I've talked about here a whole lot is that I actually do go to church. I am a member of Living Table United Church of Christ, and if it wasn't for that church I'm pretty sure I would've turned my back on Christianity long ago.

I guess the reason why I love being a member of Living Table is because everyone is welcome there, even those who wouldn't be welcome at other so-called "Christian" churches. Much of the congregation is made up of members of the GLBTQ community, a group that I feel has been unfairly ostracized and vilified all too often in mainstream Christianity for things that I've come to believe aren't even sinful. I have to admit to being a little nervous the first time I went to Living Table. I may be a GLBTQ ally, but I'm not part of that community. I half expected someone in the congregation to question my reasons for being there and tell me that I don't belong. That never happened. I was welcomed with open arms, just like everyone else who attends a service either as a visitor or member of the congregation. There are Christians, agnostics, pagans and at least one person who was raised Jewish in the congregation, and while most of them are GLBTQ it's clear that Living Table isn't intended as a "gay church" like I'm sure certain people would call it. Everyone is welcome and accepted there, and nobody is called upon to change who they are and repent their "sinful" lifestyles. That's what attracted me to the church, and that's why I'm proud to be a member.

And yet, my membership of Living Table doesn't change the fact that I think Christianity in America is royally screwed up for the most part. I got a sad reminder of that yesterday when I had heard that our pastor was performing a funeral service. Of course, that's not unusual. Pastors perform funeral services all the time. The thing that bothered me about this was that our pastor was the fifth pastor asked to perform the funeral. The first four who were asked refused to do it.

Why would four different pastors refuse to honor the passing of one of God's own children? Well, it turns out that this particular child of God was a transgender sex worker and therefore a sinner whose life is apparently better served as an example of how not to live.

I was stunned when I heard this news, but I probably shouldn't have been. I came to the conclusion long ago that much of mainstream American Christianity is horribly intolerant. I'm not sure if it's getting worse or if people these days are more likely to express things that conservative Christians frown upon, but it's getting harder and harder for me to hear about Christians and not imagine a group of elitist bigots who are quick to pass judgment on anybody different from them. I understand that not everybody will be comfortable with someone who is transgender, and I know plenty of people think sex work is amoral, but refusing to show respect for a person by not performing their funeral goes against everything that Christianity is supposed to stand for. I was taught that Christians should not only be compassionate and caring, but also forgiving. The fact that four pastors refused to perform this person's funeral is just sickening.

I like to call myself an agnostic Christian. The only reason why I don't call myself completely agnostic is because of Living Table and the brand of Christianity of the United Church of Christ. As far as I'm concerned, that is real Christianity; refusing to honor someone who has just died because you didn't approve of their lifestyle is not Christian.

A Blog Post that You Need to Read

I didn't write the post I'm about to link this blog to, but it is something that absolutely needs to be read.

I would like to think that any decent human being would do all that they can to help out a victim of domestic abuse, but many people don't seem to understand exactly what that entails. We would like to think that it's a simple matter of giving the abuse victim a place to stay or to help them escape a bad situation, but it's not that simple. Without going into any concrete details, I'll just say that this is something my wife and I are learning about first-hand.

Fortunately, my wonderful wife wrote this handy guide to providing assistance and shelter to a victim of abuse. It's kind of a long post, but I would encourage everybody to read it. You can find it here. 

The Remake Nobody Asked For

This November, a modern day remake of the Cold War era classic Red Dawn will be hitting theaters.

For those of you too young to know what I'm talking about, the original Red Dawn was a 1984 war movie in which the United States is invaded by the Soviet Union. The Soviet army takes over much of the country, but a group of teenage resistance fighters calling themselves the Wolverines fight back and go to war against the invaders. It's not a bad movie, and it certainly hit a nerve with people who believed that such an invasion could happen. I was only four when the movie came out, so I didn't see it until it was broadcast on TV a few years later. Even at a young age, I heard the movie's message loud and clear. It was totally believable at the time, almost to the point where I had to remind myself that what I was watching was fictional. It's as blatant as propaganda gets, but I have to admire any movie that can grab its audience and make them believe what they're seeing.

As for the remake, well...take a look at the trailer yourself:

The trailer looks like what I would expect from a Red Dawn remake. Most of the elements that I remember from the original seem to be present. There's an invasion from a foreign country, teenage rebels calling themselves Wolverines and lots of stuff blowing up. Sadly, there are no Russians this time. The threat of the Soviet Union is twenty years gone, so the Wolverines will need new commies to kill. Originally, that role was going to be played by the Chinese, but somebody thought it was unwise to make a movie depicting the country that is poised to become the next major world superpower as the enemy, so they did the next best thing.

Instead of an invading Chinese army, we get an invading North Korean army. After all, nobody likes North Korea, right?

*Sigh*

Where do I begin?

First of all, a Red Dawn remake set in the present day seems pretty pointless. Like I said before, the original Red Dawn worked because it took place during the Cold War when a Soviet invasion seemed plausible. It played on people's fears and added a healthy dose of "Die, commie! Die!" jingoism in the process. While a war against North Korea could conceivably happen, chances are that they don't have the resources to actually invade us like they do in this movie. A war against North Korea would most likely be fought on Korean soil, making a movie about a powerful North Korean invasion force taking over a large part of our country laughably unrealistic.

Second of all, the decision to turn the invading Chinese army into an invading North Korean army came so late in the film's production that editors had to digitally alter much of the footage. Chinese flags and uniforms had to be changed to North Korean flags and uniforms, and any dialogue that was originally in Chinese had to be re-dubbed into Korean. No effort was made to make the Asian actors playing the invading Chinese army look Korean. They're Asian, and that's all that apparently matters to us dumbass Americans who believe that all Asians look alike.

Finally, the thing about all of this that bothers me the most is that people are going to get the wrong idea about this movie. North Korea was chosen as the enemy because any remake of Red Dawn needs evil Communists, and the real North Korea is the Communist nation most likely to be hostile towards us. And yet, what I'm seeing is a movie where good, heroic, mostly white Americans fight off an army of evil Asians. Maybe I'm wrong and the movie will be much more racially sensitive than I expect, but any movie with a trailer that has a white man point at an Asian man while telling his kids to "kill this piece of shit" probably isn't striving for political correctness. Something tells me that this movie could very well have been called Yellow Peril without missing a beat.

When I was a child in the 1980s, I believed that Russians were inherently evil. I learned that from movies and TV shows that said as much, and that includes the original Red Dawn. I seriously doubt people will develop that kind of hatred and fear for North Korea or those of Asian descent after seeing the Red Dawn remake, but I can't help thinking that it will at least encourage the most xenophobic and racist people in our country.

This whole thing is especially troubling to me because I have members in my family that are of Korean descent. My wife is Korean, and her two sons are half-Korean. My youngest stepson already has idiots at school telling him things like "We kicked your ass in the Korean War." What's going to happen when these kids or others like them see stuff like the new Red Dawn and start to think that they should watch out for those shifty Koreans? I know I'm probably just being paranoid, but the fact that a movie that could so easily be interpreted in this way could be released in 2012 is a little disturbing.

The new Red Dawn has got to be the stupidest idea to come out of Hollywood in some time. Not only is it the latest in a long line of pointless remakes, but the whole thing comes off as insensitive or even offensive to me. I'm not calling for a boycott of this movie or anything like that, but it's safe to say that I'm going to pass on it.

Superheroes Aren't "Realistic"

This should come as a surprise to nobody who has known me for longer than a year, but I love superheroes. I grew up reading comic books, and I've enjoyed most of the superhero movies that have made it into theaters since they practically became their own genre a decade ago. In fact, my last post on this blog was even a review of The Amazing Spider-man. I'm that geek who gets more excited than anybody really should whenever a new superhero movie comes out, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Despite the fact that we seem to be in a "golden age" of sorts of superhero movies, I can't help but think that there are still some people who just don't get what makes these movies work. I remember when every movie based on a comic book was expected to be a mindless action movie that appealed only to kids and adults who acted like kids. This approach has fallen by the wayside and deemed disrespectful to the source material, but in some respects it seems like people are expecting the complete opposite. Right now, it seems like critics and filmmakers who don't know any better seem to think that the best way to make a superhero movie is to try to make it "gritty" and "realistic." Yes, Christopher Nolan's Batman movies ran with this approach and turned out to be some of the greatest superhero movies of all time, but part of the reason why that approach worked so well is because Batman is (mostly) a gritty and realistic character. It's always been part of his appeal. Batman is a normal guy who just happens to have undergone enough training to hold his own in nightly fights against criminals. Anything he cannot do himself he makes up for with the kind of state-of-the-art crime-fighting equipment that only a billionaire can afford. The idea of Batman has always been that he could exist in the real world, so the Nolan Batman films benefited from a more realistic approach.

The kind of realism of Nolan's Batman trilogy doesn't work so well for other superheroes, however. I was more than a little dismayed when Spider-man was going to get a similar treatment, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results. The Amazing Spider-man was the closest anybody will ever come to a "realistic" take on Spider-man, and it was still about a teenager who gains superpowers from a spider bite and uses them to fight a giant lizard man. It was a smart and believable take on the classic character, but in the end what worked was that the director just ran with the fact that the movie was about a teenager who gains superpowers from a spider bite and fights a giant lizard man. That's not a realistic concept, but it fit the world of the movie.

That's really what makes a superhero movie work: it's set within a world where characters like Spider-man, Batman or Superman can believably exist even if that world isn't our own. Superheroes aren't realistic; they cannot exist in the real world, so they need to be placed in a world where they can exist. I think the most satisfying superhero movies so far have been the movies made by Marvel Studios, and the reason why I believe that is because they exist in their own world with their own rules. Yes, those rules are very close to those of our real world, but they are just different enough to have a billionaire fly around in a robotic suit of armor or a mild-mannered scientist turn into a monster when he gets angry. It's the stuff of pure fantasy, but it fits perfectly in the Marvel Universe. The filmmakers commit to this world and its rules, which is why the colorful heroes that inhabit it never seem silly or out of place like they would in our world. The world is taken seriously, and by the third act of The Avengers (a.k.a. the most satisfying superhero movie ever made) I was able to suspend my disbelief even as the heroes were fighting off an army of aliens led by the Norse god of mischief in New York.

Aside from Nolan's Batman films, superhero movies shouldn't be realistic because superheroes themselves aren't realistic. They cannot and should not exist in the real world, but they can exist in their own world, and it's the commitment to this world that makes superhero movies work. Sadly, with Hollywood being the way it is, I can't help but think we'll bee seeing a lot of really poor attempts at "gritty realism" in movies starring the colorful heroes of my youth.

The Amazing Spider-man: A Review

When I heard that the Spider-man film franchise was being rebooted, I wasn’t happy.  Not only is Sam Raimi’s Spider-man trilogy not even ten years old, but it was actually good.  Sure, Spider-man 3 wasn’t as good as the first two, but I don’t think it was a bad movie.  I certainly didn’t think it was any justification to start over with a reboot so soon.  I could’ve seen a reboot in ten years, but not now.

That’s what I was telling myself when The Amazing Spider-man was first announced.  I had no interest in it, and figured it was just following the current trend of rebooting stalled or failed movie franchises.  After all, the recent reboots for Batman, James Bond and Star Trek all made a ton of money, so why not Spider-man?  Never mind that the last Spider-man movie came out just five years ago.

I started to change my mind about the concept when I saw the trailers though.  Andrew Garfield looked like a great Peter Parker, and while the movie looked darker than the Raimi Films it also looked exciting.  I was intrigued, so I decided to check it out for myself at a midnight showing last night.

It’s been said that The Amazing Spider-man borrows a lot from Christopher Nolan’s Batman films with its darker tone and attempts to ground the movie in reality.  In fact, it’s been said so often that it’s almost a cliche by now.  A lot of hack critics love to compare new movies to whatever is popular at the time, and I’m sure I could find a review that describes this movie as The Avengers meets The Dark Knight.  As much as I hate to think that I’m stooping to the level of a hack film critic, I have to say that this movie’s comparison to the Nolan Batman films isn’t entirely inappropriate.  It’s darker in that Spider-man starts out as an angry, vengeance-driven vigilante obsessed with finding his uncle’s killer, and it’s more grounded in reality in that the action scenes feel more realistic than those in Raimi’s films.  This sounds pretty horrible for a movie about Spider-man, a character that’s supposed to be fantastic and fun, but it’s better in execution than it is on paper.  Yes, Spider-man starts out wanting to find his uncle’s killer, but he soon learns that he should be using his powers to help people instead of just beating up thugs.  It’s how he learns the lesson of great power and great responsibility here; he has the power to help people, so it’s his responsibility to do just that.  It allows him to grow as a character in a way that wasn’t apparent in the earlier films.  As for the action scenes, they look more realistic this time around.  When we see Spider-man swinging through the city or flipping around during fight scenes, it looks like it’s actually happening.  I’m sure there was no small amount of CGI used, but at least it’s more convincing that a lot of CGI we’ve seen in previous Spider-man movies..  It feels organic.  I believed that what I was seeing was really happening when before I felt like I was watching a cartoon or video game. A visually impressive cartoon or video game, but a cartoon or video game all the same.

The rest of the movie worked just fine for me, although it’s not perfect.  It’s basically a retelling of Spider-man’s origin story.  This time around, Peter Parker is a quirky yet charming loner instead of an awkward nerd.  He’s still bitten by a mutated spider, but this time it happens when he’s snooping around the mysterious laboratory where his deceased father used to work.  His beloved Uncle Ben still gets killed by someone he could’ve stopped.  He still becomes a hero, but it’s a slower progression in which he goes from being a maskless vigilante to a masked vigilante to a full-blown superhero who realizes that he should be helping people in need instead of just beating up criminals.  Like I said before, it gives Peter a logical and smart character arc that is totally believable.

Speaking of Peter Parker, I can’t write a review of this movie without mentioning Andrew Garfield’s excellent portrayal of the character.  He’s odd and quirky, but also very sweet and charming.  He has moments of angst, but he never gets too dark.  He can be very funny, especially when he goes into full Spider-man mode and tosses quips left and right (something that was sorely lacking in Raimi’s films).  He’s incredibly likable, and he carries the movie well.  He also has great chemistry with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy.  Both Garfield and Stone come off as awkward, smitten teenagers, and they have exactly the kind of relationship a good coming-of-age teenage drama needs.

Unfortunately, this movie isn’t perfect.  First of all, I didn’t feel that Uncle Ben’s death carried as much weight as it should have.  It felt a little like he was killed off just because that’s how the story goes.  Uncle Ben has to die in a Spider-man origin story, just like Krypton has to explode in a Superman origin story, and Bruce Wayne’s parents have to be murdered in a Batman story.  It’s too integral to Spider-man’s origin not to be included.  Ben’s actual death scene is handled well enough, but the rest of the movie treats it almost as an afterthought.  We get a couple of scenes of Peter angsting about it and a revenge subplot that gets dropped as soon as Peter figures out what his true calling is, but that’s about it.  Uncle Ben’s presence should be felt throughout the movie even after he’s killed, yet when it’s finally brought up again towards the end I found myself thinking, “Oh yeah, that’s right, his uncle died,” as if it was a minor footnote in the script.  The loss of a beloved father figure should have a greater impact than that.

Another complaint that I have is that the villain is uninteresting.  Rhys Ifans plays Curt Connors and the Lizard well enough, but I never really bought into the character.  He starts out as a benevolent scientist wanting to do something to help humanity, but after injecting himself with a serum and turning into a giant lizard creature he almost immediately becomes a mad scientist bent on "fixing" the human race with his serum.  He even has a secret lab in the sewers.  I can understand that his transformation affects his mind, but he goes from benevolent scientist to supervillain too quickly and with little motivation.  At least his fight scenes with Spider-man look cool.

There’s also some business of trying to set up a sequel by leaving some plot threads unresolved.  There are hints of an evil corporate overlord/criminal mastermind pulling everyone’s strings, and the mystery of why Peter’s parents disappeared is never resolved.  It’s fairly transparent sequel baiting that’s common in movies these days.  It’s frustrating to see in most movies, but what we’re given is intriguing enough to pique my curiosity, so I'm more willing to give it a pass this time.

Overall, I have to say that The Amazing Spider-man is a smarter and more satisfying reboot than I expected it to be.  It has its flaws, but the good outweighs the bad.  I’m not sure I like it as much as Spider-man or Spider-man 2, but it’s definitely better than Spider-man 3.  For what it’s worth, I hope it does well enough to warrant a couple of sequels.  I’d love to see where this story is headed.

The Geek Elite, or I Was a Geek Before It Was Cool

Next month, I will be attending CONvergence, an annual sci-fi/fantasy convention that is held every July in Bloomington, MN.  This will be my fourth year there, and as always I’m excited.  For me, it’s basically one big weekend-long party with a bunch of geeks who love sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, video games and lots of other things that I’ve loved since I was a kid.  

Of course, like any good convention, CONvergence is host to lots of panels to discuss all things geeky.  I took a look at some of the panels available.  Just like every year, some of them really spoke to me while some probably won’t hold my interest.  I haven’t made much of a game plan as far as hitting these panels is concerned (I never do; it’s more fun for me to make plans on the fly), but one panel that caught my attention that’s been on my mind is one discussing when geek shows and movies go mainstream.  

To this longtime self-described geek, the idea of mainstream geek properties is intriguing to me.  When I was growing up, being a geek was anything but mainstream.  Most of the people I knew were at best dimly aware that things like comic books, anime, sci-fi/fantasy novels and roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons even existed, and many who did know of them thought they only appealed to socially awkward kids with no friends or weird middle-aged virgins who still lived with their parents.  Being a geek was decidedly not cool, and all the things that us geeks liked were pushed to the fringes of society where they were all but invisible to mainstreamers.

Things started to change sometime in the early 2000s.  Movies like Spider-man, X-Men and the Lord of the Rings trilogy became huge hits in theaters, TV shows like Lost, Heroes and Battlestar Galactica became ratings giants, and the mainstream press started to treat events like the San Diego Comic Con with respect as opposed to weird sideshows.  Today, one of the most popular shows on TV is an adaptation of a series of medieval fantasy novels, the biggest movie of the summer so far is based on a 50 year-old comic book series, and video games are a bigger business than movies.  On top of all of this, practically everyone uses a computer and an Internet connection to communicate with each other, something that only the hardcore computer nerds did when I was growing up.  In other words, geekiness has gone mainstream.

How do I feel about some of my favorite past times and properties stepping out of the shadows to be embraced by all the “normal” people of the world?  I love it.  Whenever I hear about someone picking up a George R.R. Martin novel after watching Game of Thrones on HBO or buying a bunch of comic books after seeing The Avengers in theaters, I can’t help but smile.  I’ve known for years that comic books, anime and fantasy novels can tell great stories, and now that the rest of the world is starting to catch on it kind of feels like my geek friends and I are being vindicated.  

Unfortunately, not everyone feels the way that I do.  There will always be folks out there who shun all things that are mainstream and embrace obscure alternatives in an attempt to look cool and contrary.  I think these people are called “hipsters,” but I tend to be out of touch with most pop culture movements that don’t involve comic books or science fiction, so I could be mistaken (I’ll call them hipsters anyway because it makes things easier).  These people often think of entertainment as “theirs,” and they don’t want to share it.  When something that isn’t well-known or well-liked is suddenly embraced by the mainstream, one of two things happen: either the hipster elite shuns the now-popular thing and decry its creators as “sellouts,” or they decry the new fans as “posers.”  After all, they liked the now-popular thing “before it was cool,” so they’re the only ones who have earned the right to like it.  This attitude is mostly associated with the indie music scene, but I think it applies to geek culture as well.

Just like the hipsters in the indie music scene, geeks can be very protective of the things that are “theirs.”  They’ve been on the fringes of popular culture for so long that it’s become a point of pride.  It makes them unique, and they don’t like it when the “cool” people trespass on what has added to their uniqueness.  I’ve seen geeks take people to task for things such as liking superheroes for the movies they appear in and not the comics, calling themselves gamers when they play “casual” games or for watching anime dubbed instead of subtitled.  It’s as if people need to gain a certain amount of geek cred before they can truly be accepted by the “geek elite.”  If you don’t have the cred (i.e., act and think as the elite geeks tell you to act and think), you have no business calling yourself a geek.  It’s a sad, pathetic and hypocritical way to act, especially for a subculture that for years was so unfairly shunned.  I know there are posers out there who call themselves geeks just because they happen to have watched Game of Thrones a few times or saw The Avengers once during its opening weekend, but the elitist bullshit has to stop.  I know not all geeks are like this; I don’t even think most geeks are like this.  Still, the fact that even some geeks are like this annoys me to no end, especially since I’ll be forced to interact with them sooner or later.

As I said before, I’m thrilled that being a geek (or at least liking geeky things) is cool now.  I see it as people finding out what I’ve known for years, and I welcome the chance to talk to new converts to the geek culture.  I’d like to think any rational human being who likes what I like would agree with me.  If you find that your favorite geeky pastime or property is becoming popular with the mainstream, be happy.  It means that more people are starting to agree with you about what’s cool.

As for the panel at CONvergence, I might check it out when I’m there.  I think it would be interesting, even if to see if people see things the way I do or if I’m just crazy. In any case, I plan to spend that weekend hanging out with the geek "posers" and those where were geeks "before it was cool."