Geeking Out

I am a geek. It's been well-established at this point so let's not beat around the bush. I might dress the part of a normal young professional woman with a good East Coast education and a love for skiing, sailing, and reading Jane Austen novels, but in all reality, there's a dark underbelly to that pink and green side of me, and that dark underbelly is the serious fangirl within. (Less dark, more murky and awkward.)

Let's explore the evidence of my geekdom for a moment. In my birth announcement that ran in a Maine newspaper back in 1984, there is a picture of my brother holding baby Me, with the underlying quote reading "I can't wait until she's old enough to play Princess Leia." Obi Wan, you're my only hope--I'm a geek since the womb. I was raised on the Star Wars movies, and descended from a grandfather obsessed with Star Trek, Isaac Asimov novels, and tinkering with various appliances around the house. The first books I read and loved were Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series, A Wrinkle in Time, Redwall, The Chronicles of Narnia, Enders's Game, the entire David Eddings Belgariad collection, and my favorite (which I still re-read about once a year,) Watership Down. When I was a little older I started reading The Hobbit and all of The Lord of the Rings, and I think my heart skipped a beat when I fell in love with The Golden Compass and the entire His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. I was a huge bookworm as a kid (clearly), in the science fiction and fantasy genres only (clearly), and this was really just a precursor to all the television I would ultimately fall in love and become obsessed with.

Nowadays, I walk into a bookstore and always wander over to the Sci Fi/Fantasy section, as well as Young Adult. I might look creepy, but that's were the good stuff is. Old habits stick with me, even though I've moved onto reading "normal" fare. I get so excited every time I glance over a book I loved as a kid. Thing is, I don't think anything makes me "geek out" quite like The X-Files.

And with that smooth and well-planned segue, I am going to tie this whole rambling post about my weirdness together... and yes, it's about The X-Files. The thing is, I came into work this morning, picked up the trades and saw on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter a little blurb about The X-Files at the Paley Fest last night. I rushed to my computer and checked out my favorite website for X-Files news (true sign of a dork--reads fan forums and knows all the best websites for up to the minute spoilers and gossip). There I found it--what appears to be the official trailer for the new X-Files movie, as well as a nice retrospective video commemorating the brilliant show. Ahh, serenity!

As a side note, I would like to encourage all those who can relate to my nerdiness to embrace it. Go find whatever it is your a huge fan over--be it comic books, the Monkees, or Han Solo--and go ahead, geek out!