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King of the Nerds commentary. Episode 6: Nerdy Dancing

===Introduction===

Okay, for those of you who don’t know, this is the episode in which I perish. I was indeed sad about this. But honestly I should have been elminated in episode 4 by SFO putting me into the comic book nerd-off versus Alana, and then Alana winning. So the fact that I’m still alive at all is luck.

After Alana left, Genevieve, Celeste, and myself all closely bonded to emerge as the new Blextrophy. This was seen in episode 5 and it continues here. I am going into this episode feeling emotionally tightly bound to these two excellent players who fully command my respect and camaraderie.

All of you are invited to join me for a G+ hangout I’m doing on Sunday. https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cvokc6mtur7imgik6jd3gbi1084

When I saw Bobby and Curtis my first thought really was we were going to be making drugs—I was waiting for something related to Science!!!!

Seeing how much screen time I got it was obviously I was going to die this episode. So sad!

Some of you have written saying there’s no point to watch the show anymore, NOT TRUE! The producers told me just this morning that I’ll be making a cameo in the future episodes. Keep watching!

===NERD WAR===

Jared the music producer was in fact wizardly. If you ever need a song, call him. Really. He crafted us a fantastic song within two hours. He’s at:

Genevieve is quite correct, I’m indeed not that good at carrying a tune :P

Several people asked me about my Napolean comment. I consider it an open question whether Napolean Bonaparte (who I presume Napolean was named after) is a positive historical figure! Obviously the French love Napolean, but does humanity think positively of Napolean? I’m really not sure. I think of Napolean like a French Genghis Khan with somewhat less rape.

BTW Napolean, you were great! Thanks for coaching us!

Celeste took the lead on the dancing. She was by far the best dancer among the three of us. Celeste was a strict disciplinarian making Genevieve and I work LATE and then wake up EARLY to PRACTICE and PRACTICE those moves AGAIN and AGAIN!

Sweet baby Allah Moo truly has fantastic singing voice and dancing booty. In all of her pursuits I hope Moo wields the power of her voice/booty combo responsibily.

OMG I loved seeing our Talk Nerdy to Me song again. Like the High-IQ puzzle challenge, this performance would not have come together without substantial support from both Genevieve and Celeste. Genevieve took the lead role in singing, and she was fantastic; Celeste took the lead role in the dancing, and she was fantastic. I truly loved our Blextrophy trio. And in this episode I am exerting substantial effort to show that Blextrophy doesn’t always lose and to keep our trio together.

The lyrics and references in SFO’s song were superb. Hands down. And WTF Moo just rhymed with Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Spot on girlfriend! SFO’s lyrics are substantially better than I could have done—Ivan is this excellence due to your managerial influence? Who wrote SFO’s lyrics?

But despite their wonderful lyrics at the end of the day I still feel Blextrophy’s song will carry the day. Our choreography is definitely better, and our song is definitely catchier.

God after watching that I just fucking re-experienced all of the feelings I felt after that Nerd War. Fortunately for you my dear readers this means you get to re-experience it with me. My feelings are as follows:

I accept that there are practical considerations in the number of judges, but I’m tired of there only being three judges. I am feeling that Orange’s win is due to insufficient sample size of judges instead of a genuinely better performance. If there were 101 judges and 61 of them voted SFO and 40 voted Blextrophy, then I would graciously accept that SFO bested us, and move forward. However, given that there are only three judges, the judge-based nerd wars feel very random. Maybe five judges next time? Or one vote for each wing of the audience? I just want more judges. Badly. It hurts so much to put so much work into something and then it come to nothing due to a coin-toss. If the judges determinations felt more predictable it would be much easier to emotionally handle. But at this point I just want to say, “I’m tired of putting so much emotional energy and care into something this unpredictable.”
In episode 2, “Imaginary Realms”, SFO won because their performance had “cohesion”. Taking this lesson to heart we on Blextrophy aimed for high cohesion in our song and choreography. It feels annoying that when cohesion won the day in episode 2, it didn’t matter here. I feel that George Takei judging Orange here could have just as easily said about Orange, “Their performance was great, but it was … disconnected.”
I’m tired of being so fucking stressed out about competitions. I’m tired of not having my Starbucks, my yoga, and my soft bed. I’m tired of working so hard and then losing it all to the unpredictable judges. I feel the desire to go back to my research where things are calm, peaceful, and I can continue excelling in my field.
I’m tired of judges. We’ve lost every judge-based decision—we even lost in episode 1 with Alana choosing Orange as the “stronger team”. Blextrophy has lost every judgement competition—no exceptions. On the other hand, Blextrophy has won every objective competition—no exceptions. What is the deal here? In presidential elections the taller candidate is often perceived as superior. What is the deal here, is it Ivan’s height? Is it Danielle’s eye-catching pink hair?
I’m so upset that after we (Blextrophy) worked so hard post-Alana to emotionally bring our team together, and it’s now destructing and working against us. It’s so frustrating.
Ugh I just want to take a nap and then reassess the situation.

===Intermission===

Here’s your reference for your Rat King needs. It’s actually kinda tragic.
I wish to thank the blog BetterThanEnglish.com, which I read regularly, for this unusual word:

Ashrag (Hebrew) - Noun used to refer to a male animal that has one testicle larger than the other.

I guess if any language would have a category for this it would be a middle eastern one. These cultures possess a marked proclivity towards genitalia obsession.

===NERD OFF===

Genevieve is wholly correct that she’s dealing with the emotional difficulty of breaking the trio much better than I am—and having Celeste to back her up certainly makes it easier. Where Genevieve is losing one person, I am losing two, and I’m not handling it well at all. I desperately want like a day or two to take a breather and regenerate my emotional energy.

I understand that Celeste was going with what she thought was the strongest team going forward, and as such I didn’t fault her for it. But I confess I was hurt by Celeste exclusively helping Genevieve. Moreover Celeste was going through some lengths to avoid me. Again I want to make it clear that I respect both of these girls, but on my side it felt terrible—it felt like shunning.

The whole experience would have been substantially easier if Celeste was physically present while I was practicing even if she refused help me actually practice. That way I wouldn’t have felt completely disconnected from the trio.

Moo did very well in coaching me. And I thank her for that. I knew it was self-serving, but it’s cool. I’ll take whatever I can to not be crushed under the might of Celeste’s superb coaching. Genevieve had the added benefit of having additional practice on the song from watching YouTube videos (it didn’t occur to me to do this—I presumed that that because Dance Central 3 was in only in beta there wouldn’t be anything useful online).

The staff tried several times to get a female avatar for Genevieve and a male avatar for me. In the end they gave up and gave us both male avatars :P It was funny to see them struggle with this. I thought about offerring to help, but I decided to save my energies for the nerd-off.

Several people have asked about how Genevieve won. Genevieve and I each had one hour to practice. Genevieve practiced first (which was fine by me—I thought going second would be helpful anyway).

Celeste worked with Genevieve. Moo/Danielle worked with me.

What happened was that during Genevieve’s hour of practice, Celeste MEMORIZED THE ENTIRE DANCE SEQUENCE. Then while I was doing my hour of practicing, Celeste had Genevieve copy her moves.

Woah. Damn Celeste. That’s impressive.

Anyway, in short Genevieve got in some extra practice due to Celeste’s memorization of the routine. And in the end, the Genevieve+Celeste combo bested me fair and square. Hats off to them.

I could be wrong, but I believe that without that extra practice with Celeste, that I would have defeated Genevieve.

I am amused that my exiting Blextrophy cheer was immediately followed by the teams disbanding. If I had known that was going to happen I would’ve had a better chance at winning the nerd-off because I would’ve emotionally prepared myself for the teams eventually disintegrating.

===Quotes===

Virgil: “My first thought is that we’re going to be making a meth lab.”

Genevieve: “The loss sent Virgil into an emotional tailspin, and he doesn’t deal with his emotions as well as I can deal with my own.”

Curtis: “You came to Nerdvana as the Internet Man of Mystery, but you are no longer a mystery to your fellow nerds. They think of you now simply as a good friend.”

I was curious what Curtis would say to me when I lost. I was startled and touched by his line. It took me over a day to process it.