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“Why do so many favorite geek movies completely suck?”

I loathe getting questions like this.

They’re uncalled for, meant to stir the pot, and worst of all – they are completely and 100% true. They force us to defend something that we know deep in our hearts isn’t worth defending any more.

How many times have you excitedly stumbled upon a favorite movie from your childhood on late night television, only to sit and watch it and have your memory of its greatness tarnished by the fact that it is now totally unwatchable?

Take the classic Tron for example.

When I was a kid, this movie blew my budding geek MIND.

It was the story of a programmer and video game creator who gets boned by a co-worker in the real world, and then sucked into a virtual world in which people fight with laser discs and light cycles. He goes on a grand adventure full of twists and turns and fantastic encounters until he is finally able to escape his digital imprisonment and right the wrongs done to him in the physical world.

A computer geek getting sucked into a program? Into a GAME? Deadly motorcycles that pit speed with timing and skill? Identity discs that can be hucked like a weapon and used to kill?

BLUE NEON EVERYTHING?

This movie was fantastic, and at the time – nothing touched it. Yet if you try to watch it now, even knowing the story and how amazing and spellbinding it truly was, you can’t help but to think:

“Wow. This is f***ing LAME.”

or

“A Frisbee? Really? A killer f***ing Frisbee? What kind of dirty stoner hippy thought THAT shit up? I bet they play “Ultimate” in the park and have been known to O.D. on Cheetos.”

or

“Who thought those clothes were actually COOL? If I were forced to wear that crap, I’d shift-delete myself out of embarrassment.

Yet I still love Tron, even if it is painful to watch and my memory has made it infinitely cooler than it really is.

So why do we love these movies and covet them when even we can’t deny how horrible they are by today’s standards? Well, I always akin it to people in weird third world countries eating bugs.

Whenever you see one of those National Geographic specials about some country with a name like “Kerplunkastan” that you never knew existed, you inevitably get to the gratuitous bug munching scene.

The camera crew stumbles upon a debris strewn bazaar or market and some over eager villager with a big steaming bowl rushes up and tries to sell them “delicacies” that look like they were picked fresh that morning from a roach motel. After a bit of teasing and cajoling the host of said documentary finally succumbs to peer pressure and buys a heaping handful of steamed maggot faces and grasshopper asses, and while grimacing for the audience – gags it down.

….never once realizing that for all their mock puking, teasing and cries of “eeewww” and “disgusting!” that they are openly mocking the food that these people eat on a daily basis in order to survive.

Which is why the world hates us. Because only Americans will go to a starving country, where people die of malnutrition by the second, and make fun of what little food they DO have.

“Haha! Look! I’m going to eat this weird and disgusting slop! It’s all full of bugs and larva! How brave am I?”

“… … … Dude. You must have the weirdest poo that has ever been pooped. The mere thought of your bug filled droppings is enough to give me nightmares for the rest of my natural life.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that these people not only catch a bunch of weird and slimy insects, but then they fry them up and eat them, or even try to SELL THEM TO OTHER PEOPLE. How frigging stone age is your country of origin when there is a MARKET for steamed cricket heads and bee testicles?

Yet these people eat them, enjoy them, and then kiss up on each other with no one minding that the person you’re sucking face with has a spider leg stuck between his or her teeth. And this isn’t some matter of cultural differences as the intellectuals among us would have you believe.

They do this because they just don’t know any better.

They’ve never heard of Big Macs or Pizza Hut. They just know boiled flies and deep fried worms. The first time you take one of these loincloth wearing cavemen out of the wild and hand them a Pepsi and a slice of Papa John’s Meat and Cheese Lovers, they’re NEVER EATING BUGS AGAIN.

Why?

Because you just taught them that there is REAL food in the world, and that eating bugs is gross, even if you do try to use herbs and spices and shit.

They simply had no alternative.

And once you’ve had a Pepsi, you’ll never go back to a big ol’ glass of freshly squeezed bug juice without wincing again. You might have loved bug juice. You might have drank it everyday for a year; HELL, you might have brushed your teeth with its gooey green goodness and gargled mouthfuls of liquid thorax…

But now? Now you can’t go back.

The same goes for the cool-yet-crappy-movies of our past – we just didn’t know any better. At the time, they were amazing. They were cutting edge and spellbinding and like nothing we had ever seen before. These films grabbed our minds and our imaginations and helped shape us into the lumps of pasty and sarcastic cookie dough that you see today. We loved them then, and we still love them now – but only because they were better than the alternative…

…which was pretty much nothing.

When your choices are eating bugs, dirt, or big heaping plates of nothing – you’ll eventually start chowing down on the creepy crawlers, and you might even find that you like it. Your mind will associate happy memories to times of crunching crickets, and you’ll glorify the days of past.

But once a bit of time has gone by, and that space is filled with real food and non-buggy treats, you’ll find that you can never go back.

And if you do?

You’ll realize that those fond memories of joyous, happy, bug munching days were a lie, and that you are now standing there with a mouthful of fruit flies.

-Coyote