Nerdcore Rising: Cool to be Uncool

Is it just me, or does it seem like recently everybody's been scrambling to label themselves as nerds or geeks? This trend is especially visible (and ridiculous) in interviews with high profile actresses and models, yet I also meet kids everyday who proudly declare themselves as nerds, geeks, dorks, or other variations thereof. I have to say that I'm not quite on board with this fad. I'm from the school of thought that if you have to convince me that you're X, then you're probably actually Y. Know what I'm saying? It goes back to the whole "show don't tell" thing.

So with that said I acknowledge that perhaps I'm not in the intended audience for Nerdcore Rising, a 2008 documentary chronicling the concert tour of one Damian "MC Frontalot" Hess. So why did I watch it? Because it was available, looked passably entertaining in an oddball sort of way, and I needed to fill some time. Yes perhaps I don't always have the highest standards, but there you go.

I'll let you know right now that I didn't really like this movie. I didn't actively dislike it, I just walked away feeling a bit "whatever" about the whole thing. This isn't to say that I didn't want to like it a lot. Damian, aka Frontalot was a genuinely likeable person. His bandmates similarly came across as a group of down-to-earth guys with great senses of humor. The sense of camaraderie amongst Frontalot and his merry band, which often manifests itself in wookie imitations, was also inspiring. Everybody seemed to enjoy each other's company and accept each other's faults and limitations. Thus Nerdcore Rising thankfully remains devoid of the usual petty drama that you often see in movies about bands such as this.

MC Frontalot's fans were generally sympathetic characters as well. Many of these fans were quite obviously true blue nerds and outcasts who found some solace and sense of belonging in Frontalot's so-called "nerdcore" brand of hip-hop.

So what's my problem then? Honestly, I just couldn't get into the music. Nerdcore, a genre that MC Frontalot claims to have invented, is simply hip-hop with stereotypically "nerdy" lyrics. Thus we get songs about Internet porn, Star Wars conventions, and slave Leia outfits. Yawn. Don't get me wrong, I love Star Wars as much as the next person, but I'm pretty bored with generic references to "the trilogy" in geek culture. To make matters worse, behind the cliche lyrics the songs weren't all that catchy. In another movie the strength of the characters might have pushed these issues out of my thoughts, but since the music is the centerpiece here it's hard to ignore its mediocrity.

But as I stated earlier I don't think I'm a part of the intended audience for this movie. MC Frontalot's tour ends at the Penny Arcade Expo where he gets to feel like a rock star whilst performing in front of a massive crowd of fans. Cut into this final segment are interviews with various online video game personalities, most notably the creators of the popular webcomic Penny Arcade. Now back in my early teens I used to read Penny Arcade regularly. I was up on my video game news then, so I understood every obscure in-joke in the comic and I reveled in the fact that I got these jokes. Perhaps if I had discovered nerdcore then I would have thought it was cool, but alas that time is over and now I just couldn't get into it.

Damn. Now I feel old.