Renovating Geekville

Grrr....Arrggg! I've been away from my blog for far too long! For those of you who are subscribers or regular readers, I'm sorry about that - my time just got eaten up by the career monster (grrr...arrggg) that's the sound he makes - yup, just like Joss Whedon's cute little Mutant Enemy guy- our monsters are friends, or at least my little guy follows the little mutant on Twitter and I hope they'll be friends one day...along with JJ's Bad Robot.

'Star Trek' rocks!!! (thanks @bonniegrrl for the fab Bones pic) 'Dollhouse' gets renewed!!! 'After Judgment' is now sponsored by Microsoft!! (well 2 out of 3 ain't too shabby)

So, what's new? Besides that you loved 'Star Trek' and want to see it again? (yup me too!) Have you been discovering your creative voice? Been mulling over the social ramifications of para-social relationships? Or have I just created a 'Twilight'/ Robert Pattinson fan out of you? 'New Moon' is almost done shooting...I won't be able to hold off blogging about that for long...though I really should (note to self: find new pale, lanky actor with accent, who stars in films that are indie art house hits, thus blog worthy, to fixate on). Wow, It's kinda freeing being able to write again like this. Ironically one of the numerous things that kept me away from this little creative outlet of mine for the past few months was a fashion writing gig that required me to be entertaining (while writing about tiered mini dresses), but still grammatically correct, plus I could only use one space between sentences (huh?). But that gig is already over (a little prematurely I might add), but I've also been up to a lot of other good things that hopefully won't have a premature ending, ie. lots of usage and reruns! I shot two national commercials - one directed by the Coen Bros. (you can see the behind the scenes footage here) and a Clairol campaign directed by Barry Levinson also starring Angela Kinsey from 'The Office'. I did a small spot on 'Lie to Me' and a few print jobs. I also shot a festival caliber short called 'Beaverton' that is a passion piece for a bunch of people and had amazing, top level crew and talent involved including Peter Jason and 'Gentleman' Jim Planette because of it. Valesca Cnossen directed it and Keri Smith wrote it and I am honored to have been able to bring such a beautiful role to life. I felt like all the 'trauma drama' scenes that I had done over the years in acting class prepped me for being an veritable open wound for three days (doesn't that sound pretty!?). 

Then there's 'After Judgment' - that difficult, demanding and draining child of mine that I love with all of my heart, like any good parent. We were nominated for 5 Streamy Awards as well as being named a finalist for the Audience Choice Award! I was even nominated in the Best Actress category whoo hoo!! We didn't win anything! Whoo hoo! Great experience though, especially being able to experience my first red carpet with the cast and presenting an award (to Neil Patrick Harris no less). I thought things would settle down after the awards but how wrong was I. No heaps of money or network deals fell on our lap, just a few more doors that were left slightly ajar. Needless to say we (my partners Mike and Stephanie and I) have been working tirelessly to keep 'After Judgment' going, raise money for Season 2 and get our other brilliant ideas into script form so that we can continue down the road to web TV domination with new projects as well. We have some really great ideas too so I better get to the point of this blog post fast as I have to get back to work on one of the treatments!

Becoming truly immersed and even having my work recognized in the Web TV/ digital landscape has presented an interesting opportunity. I can validate my inner geek. Now, if you've read my musings before you already know that I've talked about my geekdom a lot (I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon): from holiday thoughts in A Holiday in Geekville to wondering if I can still have geek street cred if I'm not a gamer (unless karaoke on Playstation counts). As many of you readers know, there's been a bit of a kerfuffle over the I Am A Geek video in the past week. Because of the Twitter revolution, some mainstream celebs have embraced the microblogging tool that were initially, solely used by early adopter folks already invested in the online space. Jeff MacPherson, aka Dr. Tiki used Twitter long before I had ever heard of it, and when he tried to explain it to me a full year before I started using it, my response was 'but I don't have a Blackberry.' ? Needless to say, he's a pioneer in Web TV and embraced the digital space as a new platform for video content, before YouTube even existed, and is an active Twitter user...but he wasn't on the I Am A Geek video. Shaq, MC Hammer and Ashton were. They are all on Twitter and they all have hundreds of thousands of followers, even a million in Ashton's case. They are seen as mainstream media successes. So why were they in a Geek video? Because they like and use Twitter? Does utilizing a social media application that connects you to adoring fans make you a geek? Probably not. It makes you a narcissist with an iPhone. Maybe. And that's what I sensed a lot of people on Twitter were thinking; that it was a joke that those celebs were included in a Geek video, that the makers behind the video were just looking for added publicity. So GeekDad quickly followed up with a list of top 100 geeks to follow on Twitter, because we have to get a hold of Geekville and make sure that the borders are patrolled! But, whoa....hold on there you geeky minuteman! Just because someone happens to be a celebrity, who might be a narcissist with a good PR rep, doesn't mean that they aren't still a geek. They just might be a well paid and an often photographed one. Does the fact that someone really not know the ins and outs of Linux and wordpress mean that they can't be classified as a geek? Does geek really have to mean computer geek? So don't go getting your panties in a bunch over a few B-List celebs involved in a random video celebrating geek culture which ultimately benefited a literacy charity. Why don't we, instead, step back and realize in a time when a re-booted 'Star Trek' can kick butt at the box office, a low-rated 'Dollhouse' can get renewed, and a strange little 140 microblogging tool can suddenly connect millions of people and their inner monologues, that the term geek actually needs to be addressed and redefined in this day and age?

Hi, it's future Taryn (I feel like I've gone through a worm hole and done a Star Trek/Lost time travel thing). I've been writing for many hours now and I've decided to end this part of the post here as I am diving into some pretty crazy waters below (of which you obviously can't see yet but you will), and it deserves its own separate post. So think about what geek means to you and I will be back with Part 2 before you know it!

Rom-halan! Be back soon...

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