If you weren’t aware of the utter sh*t storm our video/article Hot Girls Pandering to Nerds caused on Twitter yesterday, consider yourself lucky.  And I apologize in advance for making you aware of it now.  If you just want to sit this one out until we’re back to our regularly-scheduled clowning and asshattery, I totally understand. So, the backstory is this: some people read our article about the “I love Star Wars!” cliché, which I suspect they only skimmed and/or misunderstood, and somehow interpreted it as an attack on all fangirls, or as an accusation that attractive women aren’t allowed to be geeky (one popular retweet: “Pretty ladies can be geeks too. It’s allowed.” as if I’d somehow implied that it wasn’t).  Odd, because I thought I was on their side.  I was variously referred to as “sexist” and/or “disgusting.” (Though there were some people who did get it — thanks, Salon).   Now, I’m not one to shout about how not sexist and not disgusting I am, but out of all the things I’ve said or written, I was a little dumbfounded that this was the one for which I was being called sexist.  Normally, I’d just say, “Okay, you got me, I’m sexist,” if only to avoid having a conversation with the kind of people who like to shout about things being sexist, which I generally try to avoid. (I’m male, my only place in that discussion is silent in the corner trying to look penitent). But in this case, I think what I wrote was totally misread, and God help me, I feel compelled to respond.  And I don’t feel like doing it 140 characters at a time like a godd*mned animal, so hopefully I can just get this out of the way here and now and we can never speak of it again.

All we were trying to do was to point out the now sadly predictable dance where a talk show host asks an actress from a comic book movie about herself and the actress spouts about how much of a geek she is, which almost always involves invoking a love of Star Wars.  As I wrote in the first place, the hosts asking the questions are as much at fault for the pandering as the actresses are, as are we for constantly buying into it.  They say “I love Star Wars!” and we clap as if it’s a bold statement.  But guys pander too — why didn’t we bust on guys for doing the same thing?  Because in our minds, it hasn’t yet become as easily identifiable a cliché.  It’s not that they don’t also pander just as much, they just pander differently.  I haven’t seen Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans on talk shows being asked to prove that they read comic books (or volunteering their Chewbacca impressions).  I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but there seems to be this need for attractive women (the women themselves and the men who want to project on them) to prove that they’re not some bitchy, Mean Girls cheerleader stereotype. We’re NOT saying anyone should have to act a certain way.  We’re only saying that they should act how they act, and not feel like they have to prove anything.

Don’t misunderstand what “pandering” means.  It doesn’t mean lying.  When a politician says, “I LIKE PUPPIES AND ICE CREAM!” I don’t say he’s pandering because he doesn’t actually like puppies and ice cream. Only that that’s an obvious and superficial method of ingratiating himself.  The negative reaction to the hot-girls-pandering piece seems on some level to be HOW DARE YOU SAY I’M NOT ALLOWED TO LIKE PUPPIES AND ICE CREAM! I’M GOING TO SHOUT MY LOVE OF PUPPIES AND ICE CREAM TO THE HEAVENS AND I DON’T CARE WHO TRIES TO STOP ME!  No.  We’re not saying it’s not entirely possible for attractive people to be geeky.  Only that it’s become a little obnoxious and predictable for them to say they are publicly.  Does that mean none of them are being truthful?  Not at all.  As I pointed out in the original post, Rosario Dawson seemed entirely genuine in her love of Star Trek.  (And full disclosure, we left Rosario’s segment in there less because it seemed pandery and more because she says “QAPLAH!”, which has been a staple proclamation of the FilmDrunk comments section and sort of an inside joke around here. But it’s also a good illustration that, when done right, PANDERING TOTALLY WORKS).

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Whoa whoa whoa, slow down, there, cowboy, I’m pretty sure that bison’s got an open container. [via Buzzfeed]

MORNING LINKS

• Want more audio from the Quentin Tarantino roast?  Here’s clips from Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin, Pat Cooper, and Whitney Cummings, the only place you’ll find them. |Frotcast 26|

• 3 Easy Steps to Surviving an Alien Abduction. |Uproxx|

• Today’s Top Story: Bison Rides in Cars, Goes to Bars. |UproxxNews|

• Here’s what Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson was drawing in college. Surprisingly not included: Calvin peeing on the word “Dodge”. |GammaSquad|

• Corgi fan art? Corgi fan art. |WarmingGlow|

• Bob Costas thinks he’s super smart because he knows French phrases. |KSK|

Picture via Daniel Polevoy

• This 7th grade basketball prodigy crushes dunks, white peoples’ egos. |BroBible|

• Here’s that crap hole stadium in Minnesota collapsing under the weight of too much snow.  “Oh, it snows in Minnesota? Our bad.” -Metrodome Designers |NYCBarstoolSports|

• Here’s a crazy Finnish guy with no teeth jabbering about licorice.  This guy shows up every time I do too much coke. |TheDailyWhat|

• Good advice for parents with obese children. |BestWorstAdvice|

• Top 10 TV shows of 2010. Also known as “The death of network television and the rise of FX”. Oh, you mean 16 shows about sassy lawyers was too many? |Fark|

• Here’s a scantily-clad lass named Peaches. Wouldn’t mind shaking her tree. |GorillaMask|

• 25 Hanukkah products of questionable taste. |HolyTaco|

• Bigger badass: David Keith or Keith David? |ScreenJunkies|

• Big Fish and the Movies of Tim Burton as Viewed Through His Art. |NERDS!|

• Sexy womens of Sci-Fi. |TheSmokingJacket|

Today’s awesome headline comes from MSNBC: “Jedi master jailed for beating.”  What, that’s a crime now?

A Warminster man who was so high on a mixture of prescription pills and alcohol that he believed he was a “Star Wars” character when he viciously beat up his roommate was sentenced Tuesday to eight to 20 years in a state prison.

Jeez, I mean I’ve been so high on booze and pills that I’ve almost killed a guy before, but… wait, what were we talking about again?

Milan Marinkovic, 36, pleaded guilty before Bucks County Judge Albert Cepparulo in Doylestown to aggravated assault and related charges.  He apologized for the attack, but said he didn’t remember it.

“I woke up in a holding cell at the police station,” he said.

Marinkovic was arrested on July 28, after a witness called police to the Madison Court apartments parking lot to report a fight. Officers found Marinkovic standing over Shawn Delp, 30, who was unconscious and covered with blood. The judge gasped while viewing photos of the victim’s wounds, calling it one of the worst beating cases he’d ever seen.

Marinkovic told police that he was Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that he was on a mission to “kill all evil.” Officers noted that he appeared “highly intoxicated,” court records say.

A witness told police that the men were walking around the parking lot before Marinkovic attacked Delp, apparently for no reason. He choked him, punched and elbowed him in the face, then stomped on his head when he fell to the ground unconscious.

Police photos of Delp’s injuries showed his face completely covered in blood. He sustained bruises, broken teeth and cuts that required stitches. Delp told the judge he still suffers from headaches and other complications as a result of the beating.

Worst. Craigslist apartment share. Ever.  Personally, I try to surround myself with drunk Jedis who use their powers only for slaying fatties.  But at least he took responsibility for his actions and didn’t pull some stupid defense like saying the other guy shot first. (*rimshot*)

(Right-Click, —> “View Image” for full-size)

There’s a new coffee-table book coming out this month called The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Vanity Fair just published some of the pictures.  While I’ve seen a few of them before — I published the one about how they created the text-crawl effect a while back — there’s still a ton of cool stuff from the days before George Lucas could just add a stupid family of CGI squirrels in the background if he wanted to (and it’s only by the grace of God that he ever gets talked out of it).  The shot of Harrison Ford sitting on the X-wing makes it look like they created the X-wing fighter effect by pretty much just building an entire X-wing fighter.  It even says that they considered using a monkey for the walking shots of Yoda because a model wouldn’t look right (they made the monkey wear pants, because with George Lucas around, you never know).  A monkey!  Christ, what did you do if you had to masturbate back then?  Chisel your porn out of marble?

[more pics bigger over at VanityFair]

Jeez, the Backstreet Boys have really let themselves go.

If you thought the Star Wars prequels were a huge letdown and a waste of money (i.e., you’re older than six), I’ve got great news!  Now you can see the SAME movies AGAIN, but for MORE MONEY!  Thanks, 3D, you done changed my game!  ….Hey, where’s my wallet?

Lucasfilm disclosed Tuesday that work is already under way on converting the “Star Wars” saga to 3D. All six pics will get theatrical re-release in stereoscopic starting [I accidentally read this as "stereoscopic sharting", which is way more accurate] with “Episode I: The Phantom Menace,” which returns to theaters in 2012. (The animated “Clone Wars” feature was not included in the announcement.)

Awesome, I can’t wait to see the one out of those six that still holds up.  Now then, let’s translate this press release Variety article into plain speech, shall we?

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