On the eve of the biggest release since Lewinsky, nerds of all stripes seem to be sitting pretty. They’ve got a nice little web trend going (that whole 2.0 thing), Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are back with a vengeance and–hang on, was that the sound of 6 million thumbs cracking?–Halo 3 comes out tonight.
That’s right, almost exactly five years after Halo: Combat Evolved was released to go along with the X-Box, the third and final game in the series by Bungie hits shelves at 12:01 Tuesday morning.
Much of the series’ massive popularity has to do with its online play, which is the kind of technology making a whole new generation of computer science majors rich, in theory. But while social interaction has crept into more and more technologies and online fora, some nerds stick to the good old-fashioned handing-down-of-smart-ideas-from-atop-an-ivory-tower method.
Take, for example, the professional queer studies majors over at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation who conducted this study.
Apparently, only about 1.1 percent of characters on scripted network shows are gay this season. That’s down from 1.5 percent in 2005. But cable seems to be picking up the slack, with 40 series regulars being attracted to their own gender–a 60 percent increase from last season.
So when will the nerds at GLAAD and the nerds at Bungie (and Ubisoft and Rockstar and EA, etc.) get together and start including each other. It’s probably safe to say there are few, if any gay characters in video games now, but it’d be nice to see GLAAD prove that.
Oooh, looks like Stephen Colbert has a roll on the Simpsons’ millionth season premier Sunday. We love that. The comic genius seething through that studio during production must have been nauseating. Also Lionel Richie is on there as himself.
Whatever else Fox has going that you might find interesting, you have to love that they’re putting all their season premiers on iTunes for free. That will make the “what to watch, what to record” choice a little easier Sunday, but not much.
I doubt Ken Burns will make a documentary about how rad the Simpsons is (are?), But he sure did make one about that big war that happened a while ago in black and white, and that seems to be the nutritional main course on a lot of plates this season.
Burns has been talking, one or two paragraphs at a time, apparently, with Time. He said most of the doc’s themes that evoke that other war that’s on news channels these days are pretty much universal and not a direct allusion. Okay, whatever.
Everybody says The War is totally great, but it seems like the televised equivalent of vegetables to us. MeeVee said it’s good for you, and Tim Goodman thinks you most definitely should “slog” through it. Enticing. But we will definitely be watching because deep down, we’re suckers for grainy footage of big explosions.
While we really do feel the Simpsons is the best thing ever to happen to images and sound, there’s a good chance, given the free download of that show, that we’ll be vicariously on a transport Sunday night, heading across the Atlantic to an epic, seven-part struggle.
