Word: nerdly
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...even broke the cardinal rule of teen soaps; he hijacked school-locker-heartthrob status from the troubled, handsome blond lead character on Fox's The O.C. I couldn't figure out how, until I met Brody. He's not really a nerd. He's tall. He's good-looking. He surfs. He's a drummer in a band. He's got passable scruff. He's from San Diego. He dropped out after a year of community college to move to Los Angeles to try acting for the first time in his life because, you know, he really liked movies...
...intellectual," he says while wearing giant sunglasses and eating his first meal of the day--a cheeseburger--at 1 p.m. "I'm not that well read. Which I'm insecure about since I've gotten the [intellectual] niche." He's not even sure how he pulled off the fake-nerd scam. "Maybe the sarcasm reads a little bit as intellect, even if it's not," he says. "My best jokes are so cheap. All I do is say things sarcastically. I just say, 'Yeah. Cool.'" As he says this, I feel the confusing disappointment that I imagine young women painters...
...really a nerd, whatever, guy's my hero. He played one on The O.C. and redefined the type. As Seth Cohen, he was into comic books and erudite references and pushing Chrismukkah onto the national calendar, but he owned it. None of that David Schwimmer cautiousness, that Tom Hanks self-mockery, that Rainn Wilson hipster alternative cluelessness--not even the John Cusack exasperation at the idiots running everything. Brody's nerdiness was unapologetic, So Cal slow and so self-assured, the network let his character have a hot girlfriend. His new archetype was successful enough that two years into...
...sweet and adorkable, but there's some anger there. He was able to give the character some dignity. Seth Cohen was a guy who had no friends, but it was almost as much his choice as the Newport Beach water-polo players'." In other words, he's the first nerd to tell the cool kids that giving noogies is lame...
Plus, as Brody points out, his nerdiness didn't hold him back because even nerdiness isn't so nerdy anymore. "Comic books aren't nerdy. You'd have to be an idiot to think computers are nerdy. The nerd now is the Bush Administration--supporting, anti-intellectual dumb ass." Whether that's true or not, it's clear the once desirable macho-jock type hasn't got such pull. There's a reason the Rock and Vin Diesel haven't filled the gap left by Schwarzenegger and Stallone: nobody minds the gap. And in a world without heroes...