w00t!

Or, more accurately, w00tstock!

As you may know, this weekend in San Diego is all about Comic-Con. Mike and I aren’t actually attending this year, for various complicated reasons I won’t get into here, but we did snag tickets to a sold-out Thursday evening event: w00tstock. And it was glorious.

Little did I know, there is an entire world of nerds (or geeks, if you prefer) who aren’t entirely stereotypically weird. Yes, many dress awkwardly and smell bad. But they like things like science, math, music, video games, comic books, bad puns, photoshop, double rainbows, and “that’s what she said” jokes. I like most of those things, too. So last night’s w00tstock was basically a celebration of nerdacity in a concert-like venue, hosted by Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, and Paul & Storm. Yes, I’ll wait patiently while you google those individuals.

The best description I have come up with for w00tstock is “the internet without the tubes.” More specifically, the parts of the internet I find so enjoyable and amusing: science blogs, good music, apt comments about internet-related phenomena (such as being glued to one’s smartphone during a live event), Hitler memes, om-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom, annoying comment threads, etc. You get the picture. So for four hours, Mike and I sat in possibly the best seats in the house (pure luck!) and soaked it all in.

The best part? Aaron Douglas, aka Chief Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica, came on stage IN HIS FLIGHT SUIT when Wil was telling a story involving  a toaster and exclaimed “frak you, Wil Wheaton.” I foolishly left my camera at home because I forgot that w00tstock operates under the creative commons license, i.e. feel free to photograph and video anything and everything, so I couldn’t run up to get a picture with the chief during intermission because my iPhone wasn’t up to the task in the poorly lit venue. Thanks to said license, however, I can guarantee that there are (or will very soon be) scads of youtube videos from the evening. Simply search “w00tstock 2.4” or “w00tstock San Diego” to share in a bit of the fun.

Oh, and the second- and third-best parts? Phil Plait pointing out genitalia-shaped nebulae in Hubble photos during his “astronomy lecture” before announcing his upcoming show on the Discovery Channel (Phil Plait’s Bad Universe), and the four hosts spending half an hour on stage cracking one bad joke after another while trying to get through the final act (a pirate song). They kept getting derailed when the audience’s cued “arrrrr!” didn’t express quite the nuanced emotion they were going for – dejected, hopeful, dyslexic, etc. They each had at least one bottle of beer onstage with them.

I was worried that I wasn’t nerdy enough to know who all the people involved with w00tstock were, and that I wouldn’t get all their nerdy comic book jokes. While that was mildly true, I had an absolute blast and would go again in a heartbeat. Heck, during the event an artist sat on the side of the stage and created the poster for the night, which we ordered for $30 since it was only available then and there.

In sum: if w00tstock ever happens near you, you know what to do.