Doritos, C-SPAN and Psycho Analysis

I guess it takes someone else to show us who we really are sometimes. Such is the case this week. Andrew is entertaining some friends who are in town. He's beer-ing and dining them all over the Anchorage Bowl. It's been great to see people from our past life in Minnesota, albeit a strain. To call our apartment small is an understatement and squeezing four adults into it is testing its tensile strength.

But the real challenge for me has not been finding a safe route from the kitchen to the bedroom, pinpointing the origin of strange odors or understanding where all the food is going. Nay, it's been finding common ground. The guests openly play World of Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering. They are the kind of dudes who make no bones about it. Fine. Fair enough. I simply don't do these things. I don't know the lingo or understand why 96 percent of the things they laugh at are funny.

So I thought I'd try my hand with my strong suits for small talk -- pop culture and current events. I watch a ton of TV and work at a news station, I'm well versed in both. It seems innocuous enough, "Can't believe how old McCain is, "How 'bout that earthquake in China?" "Can you believe Carrie is finally going to marry Big? (Okay, that one I only expect to work with a certain cross-section, few of whom also play Magic) But they all fell flat. Completely flat.

I think the most embarrassing attempt was when I started talking about Ralph Nader publicly calling for Bush's impeachment. I watched it on C-SPAN the other night. It was a sad little press conference with Nader and about six other people, he stumbled over words and looked generally disheveled. He was a shell of the guy I came to love in the documentary about his life.

I realized as I prattled on about Nader that I may be one of only six people in the world who care. I saw eyes gloss over in the room, attentions drift to errant shoelaces and a pitiful look from Andrew. I realized, while I was sitting in muted judgement of these guys who spend their days with lightening bolts, stone taps and white mages, I was showing my own profound nerdiness. Am I any better? Does my elitism preclude me from being considered a nerd? Am I a better person because I'm swilling cheap wine while watching oil executives testify before a sub-committee on C-SPAN at 3 a.m. instead of eating cheesy snacks and slaying a fictional dragon?

I don't know. But while they stink up my living room and eat all my Doritos, they're making me thing twice about what I care about and what it makes me. They're also reminding me how much I want a bigger apartment.