Geek rock (also known as nerd rock, but distinct from the hip hop subgenre nerdcore) is a musical subgenre of alternative rock, although unlike many genres, the term is somewhat loosely applied as far as the style of music performed is concerned. Rather, the phrase is more often used to describe the artists and performers, whose personalities and/or appearance are considered “geeky” or “nerdy.”1 The entry goes on to...

Today’s last installment of my series on assimilating kids into geek culture focuses on the ultimate in geekdom: the gaming convention. I’d originally thought I’d do what I did last time and give some tips. As I started researching, however, things started to take a different turn. I’m going to give a few tips and also fill local parents in on what kinds of kid programming1 is available at your friendly neighborhood con. First, I...

If you think about it, children are natural gamers. From an early age, most children are able to immerse themselves in imaginary play. Your kid wants to be a pirate? Boom! This empty paper towel roll is a telescope. That big box in the basement? Now it’s a pirate ship. A few “arrgh matey” and “ahoy captains” later and you’ve got a full fledged pirate adventure happening right in your own living room. From there, it’s not much...

Let’s face it; we all want the best for our kids. Every generation wants the next to be better off than the last. We want them to grow up with more opportunities than we did. We don’t want them to have to struggle through life. We want to arm them with enough emotional stability and moral ammo to defend against the most brutal attack of peer pressure. I believe there’s a part of every parent, however, that wants our kids to be like...

So I’d been trying to come up with an idea for my next bog post. Since it’s the end of the year, and the end of the decade, I thought I would write something along those lines. I started doing research. I went to my 3 favorite sources: the interwebs, Facebook and Entertainment Weekly. I know, I’m addicted to pop culture. What can I say? First, I started with some simple Google searches. Keywords: best of the decade, geeky movies 2009,...