Revenge of the Geek

Tonight marked the return of my favorite trashy reality program - Beauty and the Geek. If you've not seen it, they put 9 of the geekiest-geeks in a house with 9 smokin-hot beauties. It's a bit of a social experiment to see how the geeks come out of their shell, and how the beauties learn to take some compassion and be less vain.

Picture 'The Bachelor' meets 'Miss America' meets 'Revenge of the Nerds'.

The show invites us to celebrate ourselves while marvelling at the social ineptitude of its geeks, mocking the vacuity of its beauties, and, of course, criticising or ogling their always available bodies, according to preference.

The Beauty and the Geek Theorem of Inverse Social Dynamics has it that if you take an air-headed party girl out of her environment, she might become desperate enough for attention to accept a different measure of attraction. There may be some truth in this (it's how law school students have been getting action for decades). I wish someone had explained this to me in junior high....

I think maybe I relate to this show because I have a shady past as a nerd-bomber. My favorite class in high school was chemistry. I used to wear turtlenecks. I've been to a 'halo party'. So now that I'm cut straight out of GQ, I like to reminisce by watching the young nerdlings make a run at glory, and root for them to climb Mount Boobalicious - and raise the trophy over their pale stickly shoulders.