I was watching NBC's "Bionic Woman" the other day, (yeah, I'm not sure why, either), when I was struck with the sudden and unexpected sensation of actually, "enjoying myself." No, it wasn't because of Katee Sackhoff. Nope, it was this guy, fulfilling a rich legacy far greater than his role on an average show. He plays the "nerdy tech guy" that works for the top-secret, black ops agency that also employs the Bionic Woman.

The nerdy tech guy is awesome. Not all of them. Certainly not the ones in the real word. And even fictional NTGs don't mean much to me when working in offices, businesses or other mundane outfits. Nope, the only kind that matter must work at some sort of ass-kicking gov't agency. FBI, CIA, SD-6, NTAC -- fictional or real, I don't care.

I guess this type originated with James Bond's Q but has undergone radical changes since then. My favorite is easily Marshall Flinkman from "Alias." Other examples are "4400's" Marco (a pretty obvious clone of the Flinkman character), The Lone Gunmen from the "X-Files," and from comics Microchip from "The Punisher." Much looser variations on this type are Mac from "Veronica Mars," Willow from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Winifred Burkle from "Angel," and... that's about it. For such an iconic character type, I can't seem to think of any more...

NTGs are invaluable to the hero. They provide countless weapons, gadgets and surveillance gear (they're always very picky with this shit, as it's usually a prototype weapon or one of five on the planet that each cost a billion dollars.)

They also offer moral and tech support when you're in the field through those headset earpiece things... Need to jam a frequency? Unlock an electronic safe? Use Google? They'll help you out... (This isn't really help, but, if you're maneuvering through a laser beamed alarm system, if they've got video capabilities they'll often say shit like "Watch it!" And when you make it they'll often collapse on the keyboard in an exhausted heap and say something like "Whew, that was, close... too close.")

Regardless of what you ask them, they need, "more time." This is always going to be, "time you don't have." When they're reminded of this they'll start to yell back, then suddenly have an epiphany, rush off, returning moments later with the decoded file/antidote/green ooze you needed.

They'll often make jokes that no one will laugh at. In fact, if you're at a top secret board meeting filled with blueprints, 3-D maps and intensely furrowed brows, and everyone suddenly looks annoyed, it's usually because the tech guy tried to make a joke. (Quick sidebar, these jokes fall into two categories: 1) Nerdy techno-babble, computer jokes that maybe other nerds would've gotten, and 2) something casual and pop culture-based that may've been mildly funny under other circumstances but, dude, what the fuck, we're trying to storm a lair here and people could die, could you get serious for two goddamn seconds?)

They also seem to eat a lot of junk food and, oddly enough, are usually the characters that dress most like real people. Clad in shorts, T-shirts and sloppy, open button-downs while everyone else scurries about with rock-solid abs, shoulder holsters and windblown blazers.

Perhaps the NTGs are in danger, on NBC's "Chuck" they made the hero and the tech guy the same person... But, I hope that's not the case. Without them, the heroes would be nowhere, we'd have no one relate to in the meeting scenes and no one would be there to work in a goofball reference (well, I guess there's always the "maverick, wild card hero," but that's another topic.)

The fake spy game just wouldn't be the same without them.




TheCoolerKing thought about including The Wire's Roland Pryzbylewski but thought it was a stretch.

My train ride to Comic-Con from Los Angeles was filled with Hollywood fucks, talking too loudly on their cell phones, bitching out their assistants, and trying to impress each other with how many scripts they had brought along to read.

Oh man, I thought, is this what Comic-Con is going to be like? A bunch of industry douchebags who think we're just a big focus group of nerds?

My fears appeared to be realized when I opened up McPaper, and read a story on page one of the Life section all about how Hollywood executives come down to Comic-Con to use the largest gathering of Nerds this side of Mos Eisley Spaceport as a giant focus group.

The article mentioned something about a movie called Watchmen, which was about "a slain superhero."

Oh for fuck's sake. Why not just call Star Wars a movie about "a captured princess"?

I read my book (the 2007 Nebula Awards Showcase, for those of you scoring at home), turned on my noise canceling headphones, and did my best to lose myself in Dark Side of the Moon and the planet Mars. Hrm, come to think of it, that's what people have been doing with Dark Side of the Moon since it was released in 1973.

Once I arrived at Comic-Con, my fears were put entirely to rest. My fellow geeks were everywhere: guys with ponytails and trench coats, mostly-naked women and the men who think they have a chance to score with them, and some of the most elaborate and awesome Transformers costumes I've ever seen. After suffering through the highest concentration of Hollywood fuckery I've seen in a decade, it felt good to be back among my people, even if the Hollywood fucks just thought of us all as a giant focus group and invaded our party as a result.

This makes me wonder something: if we actually are a huge focus group, wouldn't they, you know, listen to us? We're not just a huge market with a lot of disposable income for you to exploit; we actually care about this stuff, and if you keep fucking it up, we're going to stop buying it. Think I’m bluffing? Go talk to anyone associated with Elektra. Or Captain America. Or Fantastic Four. Or Ghostrider. Or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or Daredevil.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Lord of the Rings proved that it’s possible to please the geeks and the mainstream audiences by simply serving the story that’s endured for decades, not making it “fresh” or “new” or “dumbed down by an industry fuck because he’s too stupid to understand it.”

Now, it’s not entirely Hollywood's fault. It’s not that they don’t want to understand us, it’s that they’re incapable of understanding us. A studio fuck who wants to bury his face in a mountain of blow while two whores he picked up at the Rainbow Room spit on each other doesn’t live in the same world as a comic book geek who wants to bury his face in the collected works of Neil Gaiman while his girlfriend gets dressed up as slave girl Leia.

For those executives, I present a very brief, very simple primer in understanding geeks: We want this stuff to be done right because we’ve lived it for our entire lives and know it better than any of you ever will. We’ve played with the action figures and written the fan fiction and crammed fifteen of our friends into the hotel room so we could afford to go to the conventions where we buy T-shirts that say HAN SHOT FIRST because, goddammit, this stuff is our lives. Before we could talk to girls, there was Princess Leia. Before we had cars, there was the Batmobile. Before we could find escape from the horrors of modren life in a bottle, we escaped into the pages of comic books and science fiction magazines.

These stories that you buy and put on the big screen may just be numbers on a yearly accounting to you, but they are more than that to us. To us, they are something that brings us together and makes us part of an exclusive (and frequently stinky, unfortunately) club.

For example, while I walked down the middle aisle of the convention hall on Thursday, I passed a huge Lucasfilm booth. A scene from Star Wars played on a giant LCD screen: Darth Vader tells Grand Moff Tarkin that he senses something he hasn’t sensed in a long time. Without even thinking about it, I spoke along with Vader as he said, “Obi-Wan is here. The Force is with him!” There were about two dozen Star Wars Geeks watching the scene. All of us unselfconsciously spoke the quote aloud, and then immediately grinned at the shared experience.

How many of us do you think were really excited to find out that the Force is a fuckin’ virus?

Batman Begins, Sin City, and V for Vendetta worked because the actors never overwhelmed the characters, and the screenplays were all true to the source material that made the comics worth optioning in the first place.

Hollywood faces its greatest challenge in the history of adapting comic books to movies with Watchmen. Many executives won’t understand what it’s about. Neither will their young, allegedly hip assistants they hired out of Harvard Business School.

If Hollywood really wants to do this right, and really doesn’t want to fuck it up, my advice is to listen to the focus group at Comic-Con. I mean, really listen, because if Hollywood fucks up Watchmen, there’s going to be a nerd riot so terrifying, it will be like a thousand studio executives cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Wil Wheaton went to school with 27 Jennifers.

If you've always wanted to live in The Shire, but found yourself stuck in this annoying Real World -- and you have about a half-million dollars -- you could live in an Oregon development inspired by Tolkien's classic story.

Sounds magical, doesn't it? Don't bother looking for Tom Bombadil, though. Just like Peter Jackson, Meyer will exclude the popular character from his version of The Shire.