More than the earlier 14 many years, this column has explored a extensive vary of Central Florida’s arts and sights, from spouse and children-helpful topic parks to planet-course theater but from Stay Active Cultures’ quite to start with installment, I have often openly declared that my primary allegiance is to all things geeky. No matter whether it was comic and sci-fi fandom, movie gaming or nerdcore audio, I have been reporting on the revenge of the nerds due to the fact very long prior to the hobbies I was at the time mercilessly mocked for arrived to dominate well known lifestyle. So when word came that N3RD Night (fb.com/then3rdnight) — which I initially wrote about during its freshman year way back again in Oct 2021 — was being resurrected for an ’80s prom–themed 10th anniversary reunion social gathering at Lil Indies and Will’s Pub, I was fast to dust off my infant-blue ruffled tuxedo shirt.
Sad to say, it turns out I am going to be out of city in the course of the March 12 party, but I experienced the possibility to speak with Myk Media, the multi-talented musician, cartoonist and filmmaker who co-founded N3RD Night time with Emily “R3troGrl” Fidler, and is helming this revival. As Media states, the occasion has absent as a result of quite a few spelling improvements and location shifts over its existence, but “the concept has constantly remained the same: A chill night time with new music and online video video games where folks can hang out and have a fantastic time.”
A Colorado transplant who graduated from Whole Sail College in the early aughts, Media was encouraged by the motion picture Social gathering Monster to begin developing events while laboring as an unpaid intern in the film industry.
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“I desired to make big, elaborate, concerned occasions. There weren’t truly factors like that in Orlando at the time,” recalls Media. “I wished to make a little something that was more immersive. I wished to sort of get the movie training that I experienced and then change it three-dimensional.”
Immediately after internet hosting some embryonic “Alice in Wonderland” and activity show–themed evenings (“none of them stuck to the wall”), Media credits his then-girlfriend with suggesting a nerd-themed demonstrate.
“I bought in contact with a whole lot of neighborhood nerd musicians, and it just sort of blew up and it got a large amount larger,” says Media, who ultimately incorporated his possess multimedia artwork, comedian books, and interactive change ego people like ScribbleMan and Nerd Knight, into his have fictional “unifying universe.”
Like me, Media grew up watching the phrase “nerd” go from an insult to a badge of satisfaction. “When I was youthful, nerd intended weirdo, distinct, outcast, [but] the connotation behind ‘nerd’ has adjusted appreciably,” states Media. “When we named it Nerd Night time, the intention was to build something that was for the outsiders the solution tagline was ‘a position for individuals who have no put.’ … Anything that felt more mellow [and] felt secure … exactly where if you went out to the dance ground and you just were being foolish, you wouldn’t get ridiculed.”
Now that nerdy obsessions are mainstream, Media claims pinpointing as a nerd “genuinely comes down to escapism, and a celebration of creativity [and] a celebration of intelligence.”
Immediately after several productive yrs that spawned a slew of imitators, the N3RD Night gatherings finally went on hiatus as Media concentrated on his unbiased new music label Scribbleland Amusement. But with the 10th anniversary approaching, Media considered, “Perhaps I’ll deliver a single back, just type of previous times’ sake … like a celebration,” and turned to longtime collaborators like DJ Spank and Jeremy Gloff to fill out the lineup.
In an emailed assertion, Goff calls N3RD Night time “an all-inclusive space where geniuses and eccentrics acquire to share their creative imagination and artwork. There’s often a treasure to find out.”
Of program, the lively nerd tunes scene has altered drastically because I first attended N3RD Night at Bikkuri, which I then called my “go-to spot” for downtown sushi all through the B.K. period (Just before Kabooki). Again then, the headliner was nerd rock pioneer Marc With a C, who not long ago retired his stage persona and entered “Stage II” of his recording occupation beneath new label Needlejuice Documents.
Media, who claims he has “found Nerdapaloozas occur and go,” observes that today “there is mainstream musicians who are referencing video clip online games, making use of video clip activity sounds, and the nerd musicians that would be thought of nerdcore are now executing points that are mainstream [and] extra available,” noting that even Kanye “Ye” West designed an unreleased album named following the obscure TurboGrafix-16 recreation console.
“Finally, I assume a large amount of the nerd musicians or nerdy artists are noticing that they have to keep one foot in their roots, but they know they have to evolve.”
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