You see, I’m pretty comfortable in the geek world.  To me, being a fan of Mythbusters or Firefly or Lord of the Rings is, frankly, mainstream.  And I’ve noticed that some things that geeks will list as guilty pleasures – like singing along to Dr. Horrible or building a theremin – are not their guilty pleasures at all.  They might not bring it up at work, but for one, they don’t really feel guilty talking about it, and for another, they know it will earn them geek cred.

On the other hand, if I bring up Dancing With the Stars on my Twitter, I get a few crickets and a tumbleweed blowing by.

Yes, somehow, entertainment designed for the masses has become my guilty pleasure.  It always has been, really.  When I was in high school and my friends were listening to Atari Teenage Riot, I had a Savage Garden CD.  I always seem to have one foot in several countercultures, but I never jump all the way into any one of them, and my love for pop culture (call me a modern history buff) has endured.

So here I am, coming out of the closet.  I’m a musician that can go on for hours about Rachmaninoff or Cursive, but when I turn on Pandora it’s usually on the channel for Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.”  I’m excited on Wednesday mornings because I can go on Hulu and watch the previous night’s episode of Make It or Break It. I know that these things aren’t cool, in the mainstream world or the geek one, but it’s the kind of nerd I really am.

And I want to know, really – what are your guilty pleasures?

There’s more than one weather-watcher in my family.  Tornadoes were kind of a family thing, though there aren’t any actual storm-chasers.  I, myself, come from the lightning capital of the country, the land of Really Bad Weather.  Thunder is comforting to me.  So are bad action movies.  So guess what was right up my alley  (pun possibly intended)!

If you haven’t seen Twister, the plot is fairly simple.  A team of scientists/storm chasers have a contraption filled with probes.  The goal is to get the contraption in the path of a tornado, so that when it is sucked up, it’ll open and radio back information about wind speeds, etc.  The overarching hope is that with the information the team gleans, they’ll be able to increase the warning time in future storms, and hopefully save lives.

The cast is loaded with stars, both past and future: Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Jami Gertz (featuring a particularly comical accent), Cary Elwes (even worse accent, oh my God), and my personal favorite, a Mr. Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  Oh, and written by Michael Crichton, so it’s got just enough science to make it seem plausible if you don’t look too hard (I’ve heard Joss Whedon was involved in the script at some point, too).

Twister came out when I was twelve years old, and I instantly loved it.  Saw it at least a few times in the regular movie theater, once in the dollar theater.  To this day I remember a scene that does not exist in the DVD, and it will forever be a mystery to me (a short clip of one of the junior members of the team freaking out and bowing out of the next chase).  I loved the soundtrack (not the Goo-Goo Dolls song, the Van Halen one).

Now, right away my family discussed the anachronisms and off science (“Talking about an F5 in 1969? We didn’t have the Fujita scale back then!”), but it didn’t really matter.  What mattered was what the film got right, and that was, let’s face it, the geeks.  Who didn’t want to be a part of that team, tearing down country roads in vans singing show tunes and probably debating Star Trek?

Even better was the fact that there were multiple kinds of geeks.  Other geek teams of the time, like the Lone Gunmen, could sort of be taken as one unit, but these people seemed far more multi-dimensional to me.  These were the kind of people I would want to hang out with if I were an adult (and, gee, these are the kinds of people I hang out with as adults).  I didn’t want to be Helen Hunt driving a truck into a tornado; I wanted to be Wendle Josepher a couple cars back.

Now, yes, the movie was silly; to say you’ll need to suspend disbelief is putting it mildly.  But it’s fun, and I love watching it.  Oh, and gorgeous.  The scenery, the storm clouds, so perfect, and Mark Mancina’s score compliments them nicely.

Also, when you really know the movie, you’ll find you can work Twister quotes into most situations.  Hungry?  “Fooood!” Someone bring up an embarrassing incident from your youth?  “You see, there was once a bad (insert name), an evil (insert name), and I killed him (her).” Lost in the middle of nowhere? “It’s like Bob’s Road.” I won’t even go into the many hilarious instances where “We’ve got debris!” might fit.

So, if these summer movies aren’t doing it for you and you’re looking for something fun, give Twister a try.  Or a rewatch!  Trust me, Rabbit is good, Rabbit is wise.

I wasn’t completely ignorant about the show.  I knew what the basic premise was, and other little details that seem to creep in from cultural consciousness.  And after awhile, like many other people, the show began to annoy me.   Every year at the Golden Globes, there they were.   How many mysteries could there still be?  Were they still on the freaking island?   Since network TV isn’t particularly well-known for their stellar dramas anymore, I assumed this was another show that was overexposed, overhyped, bloated with its own importance.

Then, a few weeks ago, most of the series was available to watch instantly on Netflix.   I made the decision to watch the show in its entirety, for the first time ever.  And I am not an easy audience, especially when it comes to writing.  I may be forgiving of silly sitcoms, but dramas that get acclaim for writing have to deserve it.

I tend to be even harsher when it comes to shows aimed at “smarter” audiences.  One trend, that I’ve come to loathe, is unnatural, overly-clever dialogue.  Whedon walks a fine line with this, and the Gilmore Girls took the line and used it as a lasso in a bad strip club routine.  Since LOST is acclaimed for its writing, you can imagine I sat down to watch with trepidation.

I watched the whole show in a few weeks.  Five-plus seasons, with an average of about 20 episodes each.  I stayed up ’til around 3am every night for at least a week.   I am so not kidding.

I can’t really speak for the show as a whole, because obviously the show hasn’t ended yet, and we all know that the ending is very important in a show like this.  Still, here’s what I’ve found so far:

Holy cow, the show has been deserving of all the acclaim it’s received.  Not only does the show avoid the too-clever dialogue trap – indeed, it’s some of the most natural dialogue I’ve seen in quite awhile – but in terms of the plot twists and turns, it manages to tie most things together without a single eye-roll on my part.  The writing as a whole – even in the dreaded Writer’s Strike truncated season – is remarkably consistent at a high level.  It’s much more consistent than, say, Battlestar: Galactica.

One of the neatest things I noticed is that I can’t tell when filming began and ended for each season.  Since the scenes intertwine so well, I originally assumed some of the initial scenes from Season 2 must have been filmed at the end of Season 1, for example.  But you can’t really tell, and once I got a few episodes into Season 2 I learned that that intertwining would happen through the entire show, season after season.  Since I watched everything in a row, differences in hair, for example, should stand out… but it mostly didn’t.  Beautiful.

All in all, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.  Extremely pleasantly.   I won’t go so far as to call myself a fangirl, because somehow I feel that title should go to those loyal viewers who waited, year after year, with their theories and speculation.  But I’m an appreciator, that’s for sure.  And I’ve got my fingers crossed that this quality will continue to the very end.

Well, I realized last week that I’ve done it again – I’ve settled right back into my knee-jerk, resist-what-people-are-fawning-over ways.  And no, I’m not talking about Avatar.

I’m talking about Felicia Day.

It’s not her fault, really.  I didn’t even really know who she was.  My snobbery started with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  Everyone, from friends all the way to Wil Wheaton, said I should watch it – and it was usually in the same breath with “Joss Whedon omg!”  Now, I liked Buffy, and I really liked Firefly, but something in my cynical soul has always kept me from really jumping on that man’s bandwagon.  So… I just didn’t watch it.

Then, when I heard about The Guild, it was always in the context of, “If you like Dr. Horrible…”  or “influenced Dr. Horrible!” or “Joss loves this girl!”  So… yeah.  You can guess what happened next – or didn’t happen, really.

So then last weekend I was in the company of lots of people who said I should watch those things.  And I couldn’t get away, and they had laptops.  Up went Dr. Horrible.  Surprisingly, I liked it much more than I thought I would (Whedon’s songs usually grate on me).  Then they showed me the first episode of The Guild.

Oh my God.  I laughed so hard I was crying.  I’ve played World of Warcraft for years, but most of the time I was solo – I’ve only belonged to an actual guild for six months or so.  In that respect, I’m almost glad I didn’t see The Guild until now, when I can appreciate it all the more.  I only saw the first episode that day, but then I went home and watched the rest of it.   All in one sitting.

Now I’m something of an instant fangirl.  One way late to the party, but there just the same – and I’m not afraid to admit it.  And as for Felicia Day herself… I’m not going to pretend I’m as cool as she is, but she’s easy to relate to.  She reminds me of some of my friends.  Now I’m following her on Twitter, and she’s probably my second-favorite celebrity to read, behind Grant Imahara.

My name is J, and I like discovering things on my own, in my own time – but I’m trying to change that.

So tell me: what else should I be watching?  Or reading?