The Journey Begins

Greetings All,

    I thought the most logical place to start this blog would be with a little background:

    I was reminded recently of a friend of a friend that was a true nerd.  He loved Star Trek; talked about things in terms of bandwidth; dressed up for the Ren-Fest; and was completely into video games.  He was very much out of shape though (a common malady among my kind).  He decided it was time to get in shape.  His trainer saw potential in him and pushed him in the direction of bodybuilding.  Sounds great right?  Well the problem was that as he got further and further into the muscle pumping world, the more distant he got with his nerd world friends.  He began to act self absorbed and became even a little condescending to his former friends.  He was now too cool to go to any geek events anymore.  Eventually he never spoke to any of his nerd crew at all.  I never knew this person as anything more than a casual acquaintance, but it seemed somewhat slimy to me that someone would cut off loyal friends just because their interests had changed. 

    I am a true nerd myself.  I love Star Wars; I grieved for months when Firefly was cancelled, and I have a DVD of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn signed by William Shatner AND Ricardo Montalban.  I also pride myself on my objectivity.  After hearing that story I began to ask myself, “Can a person co-exist in both the bodybuilding world and the nerd/geek world simultaneously?” 

    I think of stories of people like Henry Rollins who was a geek in high school until a benevolent coach trained him in the ways of muscle building.  I never heard if he retained any of his geek presence and judging by his public persona (which I know is not a very objective analysis) he didn’t.  What about the old Charles Atlas ads?  The ones where the skinny dork gets sand kicked in his face by some muscle-bound bully.  According to the ads, the skinny guys works out, gets muscular and beats down the bully.  They never show if the newly muscular guy still has dorky interests.  Would the girls be so mesmerized by his muscles that they don’t care that all he talks about is Boba Fhet and whether Han Solo is a model for Captain Malcolm Reynolds? 

    So with all these mysteries in mind, I am going to take a hesitant quest through the world of bodybuilding.  I will set aside any preconceived notions about bodybuilders I have and try to learn about their world as much as I can.  I will chronicle my quest in this blog and try to measure my experiences in both worlds.  Hopefully I can combine the best of both worlds and achieve the status of true Muscle Nerd without having to take the ship to Valendor. 

Super Jerry

04-02-12