Hello, Geek?

...if you don't rate, just overcompensate/ At least you'll know you can always go on Ricki Lake ....


I turn from the phone to my gaggle of friends. The Animal seems the likeliest candidate.

From which season was 'I, Mudd'?

"What?"

Star Trek. 'I, Mudd.' Which season?

"Honey, I don't even know how many seasons Star Trek ran. I'm not that much of a geek."

Three seasons. DUH. Seventy-two episodes. DU-UH.

"Geek," he replies.

"What?" asks DesdemonaOne from the other end of the table.

"Why are you asking this, anyway?" the Animal wants to know.

My son just called, and he said "Hey, you know that episode where Spock says, 'I love you' to one girl and then 'but I hate you' to the other and the other says 'but I'm exactly like Whoeveritwas' and Spock says 'that's why I hate you' and the two girls go 'blelbeeeeblalbella'? What episode was that, and do we have it?" and of course that's 'I, Mudd,' and what we've got is Season One, with 'Mudd's Women', so I know it's got to be one of the other seasons, but which? I thought you'd know.

I take a breath and a sip of the Animal's beer. Mine has disappeared.

BuddaPat has gone home to rest, in order be better prepared in the morning to make the world safe for craneocracy, protecting it from the evils of forkliftism. BuddaPat would know. He's geekier than I am, at least StarTrekly.

None of the geeks at the table with me know.

"Riiight, Harry Mudd, he was on 'The Trouble With Tribbles', I remember him," says DesdemonaOne.

"Okay, I'm geeky enough to not only know the title 'The Trouble With Tribbles', but to also know who wrote it," says the Animal.

We say the name 'David Gerrold' together.

"Geek," whispers Lifter, on my right, out for the first time with my gang of freaks.

The conversation drifts into which elderly Hollywood celebrities we'd sleep with, a conversation in which 'Shatner' is used as a verb to describe men who've gone all pinkish and puffy.

I arrive home later and realize I let DesdemonaOne's gaffe slip. That wasn't Harry Mudd in 'The Trouble With Tribbles', it was another character a lot like him, by the name of Cyrano Jones.

Go on, all together now:


Geek.


(Pretty Fly (For A White Guy); Offspring)