Welcome to the Geekscape!

Let’s face it. People like us don’t have many places we can go. I know I don’t. And I never really have.

Take a look at me. Age 11. Yup. Big Pimpin’. That’s what I look like when I’m up to my ears in all of the granny pinches and “you’re so cute” comments I can take over a holiday at Grandma’s. But I wasn’t cute. I was a geek. I’m standing in the back row to hide my painted wolf Christmas sweater behind a relative’s beehive. I’ve got glasses that could scorch bugs under the proper sunlight. My mullet is a mix of Lou Diamond Philips’ in Young Guns and a rat’s greasy tail and if I was smiling in this photo you’d see a metal picket fence worth of braces stretched across my forced smile (which is why I NEVER smiled).

I know I’m not much better looking now… if at all. But you have to admit the physical changes are there. The internal ones? Not so much. The face you see in this photo is of a kid that couldn’t wait to take Holiday pictures so he could slink off to the guest bedroom to finish reading a copy of Avengers Annual #17. I HAD to see if the High Evolutionary actually succeeded in setting off his mutation bomb on the living island of Krakatoa (he didn’t)!

Today I experience a similar problem. I’ll find myself at a social event (why do I even leave the house, right?) and within the first five minutes of a conversation with a newfound stranger will hear myself contributing to it in one of the following ways:

a) “Yeah, it’s like that one movie…”

b) “Did you ever play that old game…”

c) “What’s more magical? The magestic Pegasus or the mystical Unicorn?”

And that’s all I’ll have to say! I know! What is wrong with me!?! Well, what is RIGHT with me is a shorter list…

Almost without fail, I fail.

It’s okay. The outside world isn’t always for people like you and me. And it’s not because it’s a bad place. It’s not because it doesn’t understand us. It’s not because it thinks that we’re weird.

It’s us! The problem is us! It’s always been us!

From an early age, we discovered that these stories and games and worlds of escapism were so cool and so great and so stimulating that the REAL world never stood a chance! At every chance we sidestepped our responsibilities as members of society to partake in worlds of adventure and feats of heroism beyond compare!

And this is where we find ourselves today… standing with a blank look on our faces in the middle of a cocktail party with nothing to add to a conversation about subprime mortgages than “It was a trick question… the Griffin is actually more magical than both the Unicorn AND the Pegasus because the Griffin is THREE animals in ONE! And the female ones have titties! Yeah! Titties!”

So now that we’re all socially retarded (and if you’re getting defensive reading that… you’re insecure enough to be pretty socially retarded) what do we do? Where do we go? Who do we talk to?

I would say it. But it’s obvious. And if it’s not, we are all here for you regardless.

Welcome to the new Geekscape website. I’d love to outline all of the features of the site but I think it’d be more fun for you all to click around and discover them for yourself. I have a lot of far reaching plans and ideas for Geekscape (the show, the site, the theme park) but this website is the starting point. Our little flag in the ground. If I was a serpent-themed leader of an international terror group made up from the DNA of the greatest war leaders of days gone past, this would be our terrordrome! Cobra-lalalalalalala-

BUT I’M NOT! So let’s just get to it…

This website would not be here if not for the help, advice and contributions of the following people:

Jarrett Gossett – Jarrett coded this site based on a pretty crappy Word document I had written up back during the Geekdrome days based on what my perfect Geekdrome website would be. We now have something better! A Geekscape site! Jarrett has taken the little ideas I wrote down and run with them. This site is full of ideas and opinions that Jarrett put in after a lot of time (as you all know!) and care. We could have slapped together another quick fix site just to get something here but Jarrett and I decided on making sure that all of the features should be present and functional from the beginning, if only in an initial state. We got it down. We’re putting it up. And we’ll grow from here. For the past month he’s been sending me IMs and e-mails stating “I already have some cool ideas for the next phase of the website… let me bounce them off of you real quick.” Yeah. The guy gets ahead of himself. But now that we’re launched… let’s hear those ideas, buddy! His enthusiam is contagious and his patience with my tech-retarded questions is massive. If something breaks… let him know. It’s my fault but I have no idea how to fix it…

Georg Kallert – My old friend, producer and business partner. Georg’s first impression of me came while watching our college
television network. El Phantasmo Blanco had just made a crash introduction on the closed circuit TV network and was in the middle of hitting The Golden Comet across the head with a phone book. Whoever this masked moron was, Georg knew he wanted to work with him. My first impression of Georg was probably “you thought that was funny? Cool! I have this script…” Now I owe Georg money, patience and friendship until the end of time. Yeah. Bum deal on his end! I made out like a masked bandit on the other hand… Can’t say he didn’t know what he was getting into from the very start!

Brian Gilmore – Yeah. He makes me crazy. He makes you crazy. He doesn’t know this (but by now he should at least be getting the sense that) every time I see the guy, about 10 seconds before I see him, I’m still deciding on whether to hug the guy or push him into oncoming traffic. Regardless of how the coin lands (he’s had an incredible run of good luck so far), Gilmore put a lot of work into this site. You won’t be shocked to know that he had plenty of opinions about its inception but he also put in a lot of hours and nights in the content of the features site. From the start, Brian volunteered to make sure that the content on the site was up to par with our peers and that the writing was fun and in on time. He’s also been a good guy to bounce ideas off of and for midnight pep talks when I “just want to walk away from the whole thing and move to Montana”. Now I think that he has so much invested in seeing Geekscape continue out of fear that he’ll have nothing else to do if it disappears! Regardless, he’s here and his contributions have been substantial.

Martin Scherer – It’s true. Canadians are the nicest people in the world. Martin and I met in Toronto last year and we shared a bed together in a hotel room for one night (but it’s cool… I bought him breakfast the next day which is more than I got Gilmore at Comic Con ’07 and we spent FOUR nights sharing a bed). Martin is always quick to help us out with a technical, server or community problem and his advice is without fail. The one draw back may be one of his greatest strengths. He’s in Canada. If he moved to the States would he still be this nice to us? Martin is our resident work horse and without him we’d just be a bunch of studs eyeing each other with no real example to lead us. I work hard because Martin works harder. Read this paragraph again quickly and you’ll read: “Martin and I met in Toronto… shared a bed… bought him breakfast… quick… back… strength… studs… hard… harder…” Yeah. Total man crush. Guilty as charged.

Jeff “Thundercat” Wilkerson – This polarizing listener and forum member is the reason we have all these snazzy banners at the top of our articles. The man is a graphics wizard and his proficiency with Photoshop is only second to his biting (but incredibly hilarious) comments on the forums. The man is a master of observing, deconstucting and then making the subject wish they’d never been born. And those banners look f’ing awesome.

Matt Kelly – Matt IMs me on average every 20 minutes. Keep in mind that I am pretty strict about getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night. So I think that moves the average time of his IMs to every 7 minutes during the waking hours. Most people would be annoyed by this behavior. I see it as invigorating. Either Pennsylvania is REALLY that boring or the guy is EXTREMELY excited about writing and contributing to the Geekscape website! You’ll read more from Matt… especially if he starts posting his relentless IM conversations.

Noel Nocciolo – This girl is as proficient as she is lovely. Noel is our resident music writer and her articles are to be trusted. I’ve never been steered wrong or dissapointed in a recommendation from Noel and my parents adore her. Not in a “we want Jonathan to marry Noel” sort of way either. They like her too much. So it’s more of a “we want to build a time machine, go back to his infancy and replace Jonathan with Noel” sort of thing. She definitely would have done better in sports than I did.

Jim Pelligrinelli – Jim’s a buddy from film school and the one man who I trust the most when it comes to running a gauntlet. If The Gauntlet was The Bermuda Triangle or The Amazon, Jim’s the guy I would hire to take me in… because I know at least some of us would make it back. Almost from the moment Jim said “wait… you’re telling me you’ve never seen Deep Rising with Treat Williams?” it’s been a match made in the deepest, darkest depths of cinematic hell.

And of course I have to thank you guys. As much as we collectively shun society in lieu of movies, comics, videogames and anything else we choose to geek out on… it’s not much fun doing it alone or to four blank walls. Some of you have been here from the start and the rest of you are here to keep things getting started. Thanks for giving me an outlet and a mission.