• Ah, but V could've been anybody; therefore, it's entirely possible that I am him.

• this isn't all that nerdy, but should get an honorable mention for the ending. awesome quote!

• Well said. So basically Spielberg had a direct mainline to every child's worst anxieties.

• Addendum: The more i think about it, the more I realize that this story is by far more disturbing than anything in "The Other Story".

• That's okay It's not like I'm going to feel bad about that dead man anyway.

• LOL!!!!! He to this day will prolly never tell that story!! I forgot about that! For you it was always he-man or thumbar the lombarian LOL He did the theme party for me at wings when TMNT 3 came out we went and saw it in the theater and went back to the resturant to my turtles cake and got a load of turtles figures and thank god no cameos from the heroes in the half shell! The movie sucked but the party rocked!

• My birthday is on March 31st too! It's exciting to have someone else who understands all things geeky to celebrate with. :D

• good call. i may have gotten that quote wrong, but at least my dad's not a drunk. Just sayin' :P

• For my birthday last year, I treated myself to a ticket to "Star Wars in Concert". I wanted to really make a night of it, so I bought a floor ticket and ended up in row 8. It was INCREDIBLE. But somehow I felt like my evening wasn't over when the curtains closed... The programs were really nice (and really expensive). I wasn't really sure what would happen to it when I got home; most of the time, those sorts of things end up in a box and years later are a tattered shell of themselves. Something about this particular program though felt like it needed to be saved. So, how could I possibly make it worthy of more than just a spot on my closet shelf? How about getting it signed by the host of the event, none other than Mr. C-3PO himself, Anthony Daniels... I asked around when the concert was over and an usher told me where the entrance was that the orchestra and others would likely be exiting from. I went and waited for nearly 45 minutes until a limo service showed up and backed their vehicle into the fenced off loading area. When Mr. Daniels walked down the ramp and was putting his bags into the limo, I simply yelled out "MR. DANIELS! OVER HERE!" I figured the worst that could happen was he'd smile and wave. But no, he walked on over! I shook his hand and we chatted for a moment. He was hesitant at first to sign an autograph; I promised him I wouldn't be selling the program anytime soon. This was just for me. :) So, he signed... "To Tony, With Force, Anthony Daniels C-3PO". That program has it's own spot on my media cabinet, right next to all the Star Wars VHS, DVDs, and CDs... (yes, I still have my VHS copies)...

• Well, not sure how "nerdy" this is, other than it felt like the sort of thing a nerd has happen to them... For my 12th birthday, my parents did a birthday party at the local skating rink. Yes, real roller skates (not rollerblades). They invited all the kids from the neighborhood... including the girl I had a MAD crush on. She and I had been friends since kindergarten and she never gave me much of the time of day, other than to be nice because our dads worked together. Well, that day, I got the nerve up to go and get a little flirty with her. I figured, "well, we're going to be going to Jr High together next year, it's time to give it a shot". What happened? I don't remember the exact conversation, but the part that did sting me was... "No way! I'm not going to go out with a guy that roller skates!" She said this WHILE WEARING ROLLER SKATES... Needless to say, it ruined my day and nothing my parents did could cheer me up...

• Okay, this tale needs a little backstory in order to make sense and for you to understand why it made my birthday so great. I'm a huge horror nerd and Friday the 13th is my main obsession. I buy the toys, the comics, the movies, everything. When we first started dating my wife was into horror movies too. Our first few dates were all to see horror movies in fact. But over time she enjoyment of them has decreased, to the point where she doesn't like them at all now. So gone are the late nights watching horror movies together. Anyway, recently I saw an ad for an Ecko Friday the 13th themed hoody. It was beyond awesome, the hood zipped up all the way to give you your own Jason mask. My first thought, "It will be mine." Then I made the mistake of showing it to my wife. She immediately shot down the idea, saying that it creeped her out and made her uncomfortable. So the dream died. Cut to my birthday. I get home from work, and she's just finished doing the laundry. So she asks me to put away my clothes while she gets dinner ready. I open the drawer to my dresser and there's a note sitting on the top of the clothing. I take it out and read it. It says, "I may not watch horror movies with you any more but I still love you." So I take the note into the kitchen and tell her that I love her too. I lean in for a kiss but she's just staring at me. When I ask what's wrong she answers, "You idiot, go open the drawer again." If you haven't guessed by now when I got back into the room and openned the draw the Jason hoody was sitting there waiting for me, I hadn't even noticed it under the note! http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs071.snc3/13857_103861202963466_100000187615734_106283_4353557_n.jpg

• This reminds me of this great creepy show called American Gothic, that ran right after the X-Files back when it was on Friday nights (remember that?). Something about small-town evil, with (??) Gary Cole as the Devil. Anyway, two kids are in school talking, and it goes like this: 1: I hate birthdays. My last birthday, I lost my house. 2: how? 1: burned it down. all totally deadpan. They're like nine years old. Awesome.

• In July of last year I celebrated my 20th Birthday. I got awesome presents, a huge vintage Batman comics book among other things. But one of the presents led to the one unfortunate event that would just about ruin my birthday. Based on an inside joke and the fact that Bacon is god's gift to man - one of my presents was wrapped in three packages of - that's right - bacon. After a couple of Jägermeister shots (and shitloads of other alcoholic beverages one drinks at the age of twenty before realizing they taste like shit and move on to more classy drinks like cognac and fine whiskeys or.. I dont know since I'm still just twenty years old and still drink very irresponsibly.) -someone decided it was time to bring out the bacon. We were pretty drunk and some of us decided there was no time to actually fry the bacon so they started eating the strips raw, Rambo-style. Having been somewhat drunk someone dropped a piece of sweet delicious bacon on the floor. As these events occured I was just heading into the kitchen to refill my drink and to get my share of the godly, great bacon. Little did I know there was a strip waiting for me on the floor and even less did I know that I was not to digest it. Nope, I stepped on it and slipped, I fell to the floor with my right foot under me. How we laughed! I had just fallen on a piece of bacon, it is pretty hilarious. I got escorted to a couch and proceeded my partying from there, as I couldn't step on my foot. We all just thought I had sprained my ankle and that everything was going to be okay. The party went on and I went to sleep. The next morning I woke up to a slight hangover and an ankle the size of.. I don't really know, but it had swollen up as hell. My friend drove me to the hospital and as it turns out I had: ...broken my ankle in two places torn a ligament, snapped the little bugger right off and a small fracture in my shin. These injuries were so bad they had to use srugery and metal to fix it. The next morning I was put under the knife and they stapled three long titanium studs into my ankle to hold it together. My right leg was in a cast after this for three months and I had to walk on crutches until the middle of November. Somewhere in my morphine dreams (turns out getting metal spikes piercing your bones requires a great deal of opiats) during my hospital stay I realized that this was the closest I will ever get to being a cyborg. So thank you and fuck you, sweet treacherous bacon.

• I had my 18th birthday party at Laserforce, and we played laser tag all night, from 10pm to 6am. It was the greatest nerd party ever. Note that normal people have their 18th parties at bars or some place with liquor. I rocked out by shooting twelve year olds with laser beams. YEAH!

• You..... you MEANIE! Even reading it is freaky, I'm serious! Don't toy with people's emotions this WAAAAY! *sobs uncontrollably*

• Happy Birthday! And thank you both :)

• When I read your comments, I picture you as V from V for Vendetta. There, I've said it.

• congratulations! i hope your little nerdling has a life full of happiness!

• Neil Gaiman wrote "Happy Batsday" on my copy of Whatever Happened to the Cape Crusader? after my friend told him it was my birthday. I nerded out so bad over that.

• I saw Star Wars episode 1 for my seventh birthday. Being a small nerdling who had watched the originals nearly once a day and whose first imaginary friend was Chewbacca, I was quite excited. I left the theater with my friends and family, feeling like my soul was sucked out and a strange desire to murder Jaja Binks. Star Wars was never the same after that.

• This year for my 22nd birthday (March 10th), I went to a convention in Seattle to meet Leonard Nimoy. I even shaved off half of my luscious eyebrows so I could dress up as a Vulcan Starfleet science officer. He said I was cute! Though I'm still waiting on my eyebrows to fully grow back...

• It isn't exactly the best birthday I ever have, but it is one of the better birthday due to a certain significant detail... Let's me explain the root of why the coming detail is so significant... As much as you guys seem to adore nerd girls in this website, almost every guy around me seem to consider my nerdiness a turn-off. They don't dig the fact that I am an online game maniac. They don't like the fact that the number of comic books in my house probably triple theirs. They don't think it is hot for a girl to prefer a sci-fi/fantasy rather than chick flick. They are freaked out by the fact that I buy comics, games and movies four times more than I buy cloths. One guy even went as far as suggesting that I should drop all my nerdy 'un-girl-like' hobbies should we ever decide to go out (We didn't ever go out... I don't think that I have to explain why...) Then, suddenly, on my nineteenth birthday, after years of discouragement from most guys I know, a guy (that I quite like) bought me a Japanese copy of my favorite manga! He is a nerd too, and we like the same manga. Since the manga's name is 'Eyesheild 21', he bought the 21st volume for me. I can't really read Japanese that well, but he knew that I would love to have it in my collection. It definitely is one of my most favorite birthday presents ever. Hope that my little sappy story is interesting for you to read.

• God, I hope you win. Fr rls.

• My nerdiest birthday was my 13th birthday, or known in the jewish world as my bar mitzvah. other bat and bar mitzvahs I had been to were lavish with all sorts of over the top expenses in an attempt to outspend other families. mine, not so much. we could not afford anything too fancy or outrageous, but things ended up turning better and nerdier than expected. we had invited about 160 people, including 30 kids, and my bar mitzvah was the year when Star Wars was making a comeback, the special editions having been made the year before. So, we had set our blasters on a Star Wars themed party and bought tons of SW merchandise. as gifts to the kids, they would get a random tape from the special edition, star wars pez dispenser, and keychain. unfortunately, my bar mitzvah weekend happened to coincide with three funerals and a wedding, so 160 turned to about 80 with only 10 kids. This meant that each kid now took home a set of five star wars pez dispensers, set of diecast metal keychains, and a boxed set of all three original movies! how is that for a haul! my parents surprised me with lifesized cut-outs of boba fett, darth vader and the emperors royal guard, and my cake was based off a drawing of myself as boba fett (my friends fought over who got to eat my head). so in the end, it might not have been the nerdiest birthday compared to others, but it was the nerdiest bar mitzvah i have been to!

• My nerdiest birthday was my 13th birthday, or known in the jewish world as my bar mitzvah. other bat and bar mitzvahs I had been to were lavish with all sorts of over the top expenses in an attempt to outspend other families. mine, not so much. we could not afford anything too fancy or outrageous, but things ended up turning better and nerdier than expected. we had invited about 160 people, including 30 kids, and my bar mitzvah was the year when Star Wars was making a comeback, the special editions having been made the year before. So, we had set our blasters on a Star Wars themed party and bought tons of SW merchandise. as gifts to the kids, they would get a random tape from the special edition, star wars pez dispenser, and keychain. unfortunately, my bar mitzvah weekend happened to coincide with three funerals and a wedding, so 160 turned to about 80 with only 10 kids. This meant that each kid now took home a set of five star wars pez dispensers, set of diecast metal keychains, and a boxed set of all three original movies! how is that for a haul! my parents surprised me with lifesized cut-outs of boba fett, darth vader and the emperors royal guard, and my cake was based off a drawing of myself as boba fett (my friends fought over who got to eat my head). so in the end, it might not have been the nerdiest birthday compared to others, but it was the nerdiest bar mitzvah i have been to!

• For my 8th birthday,my parents took me to Godfather Pizza. There we had pizza served with candles,sans cake. The only present i remember is the Ugnaught i got that was almost as large as the other Star Wars figures i had. I loved that little figure and it went with me everywhere until the day a so called freind, talked me into blowing up my beloved Ug with fire crackers... I was like 10 so it seemed like a good idea at the time. Little did i know, that much later that figure, being a rare varient is worth some dough. Sometimes at night i cry for my Ug...

• One year instead of ignoring me, my dad beat me with a signed standee of Billy Dee Williams and then let me play with some pogs that he had found in a sandbox while spying on the neighbors children. I didn't have a slammer so he helped me make one out of coors light bottle caps. He told me that real pogs came with staples in them, and that if I was lucky i'd get a stapler next year to remedy my fake ones. That night, once he had forgiven my mother for spilling salt on his beeferoni, we watched Aldo Lado's L'umanoide. Everytime Richard Kiel appeared on the screen I was forced to dash from the sofa and give "the giant mongoloid" a kiss. 10 kisses earned me a Freezie. I'll never forget my best Nerdy Birthday ever.

• Much more frightening actually. The subtle implications of such an act are more pregnant with evil possibility (whereas my example, while visceral, left little to the imagination). Even still, however, existant within that dream are the same themes of abandonment and a lack of control at the heart of the film.

• So, last year, turning 21, my birthday is in March. I'm Canadian so turning 21 isn't that big a deal, but, still, black jack, right? My parents weren't loaded growing up, so I never had the mini-putt or movie theater birthdays like the other kids, but my Mother is made of epic win when it comes to this kinda stuff, so I was never depraved. Still, 21, and never had an event birthday in my life. I decided I wanted to go to laser quest. I show up with around 8 people, a few of which came from out of town. I inform the girl of that it's my birthday, and (jokingly) ask if there's some sort of birthday hat I get. Even though we didn't book, they gave us the special party rate and the girl MADE ME A PINK CARDBOARD CROWN and wrote "LQ Princess" with a sticker on it. I still have that thing. Made me a prime target in game though. And my friends all turned everyone else we happened to be playing with against me. Jerks. Still placed in the top half though. And during the random "Get this question right and we'll give you free stuff" thing, we were so odd and entertaining (busted into the "how do you burn a witch?" scene pretty quickly actually) that they gave us each a poster. Of Watchmen. I got two "because it was my birthday after all" Rorschach watches me sleep now.

• When I was 13 my mother left the birthday cake alone and the candles caught a curtain on fire and started a house fire which (along with the living room) destroyed all my presents. We had to move out while they were rebuilding the house... worst birthday EVAR.

• I wont even try to put down a best birthday. Nothing can compare to accidentally driving onto the batman set and playing with the batmobile. NOTHING! The worst birthday was my 19th and sadly my entry into the obscure nerd love contest 2 weeks ago. My freshman year in college my parents split and 10 years of nerd collection got tossed by my mother when she redecorated my room. I didnt mind the divorce. They were difunctional together and i thought they should have split long ago. I didnt go home over xmas break because it was finally getting nasty while they split everything up so the 1st time i went home was for my birthday weekend. My momsaid she had a suprise for me and that it was something i had wanted since my 16th birthday. I swear i thought it was a new car. I got on the plane thinking it was a new car. I had a shitbox, it was my shitbox and i loved it but it was a 6 yr old toyota corolla and the sunroof had started to leak. So i get off the plane and get home looking for a car and find my room redone and all of my original star wars collection gone. My signed sports gear gone. My life size han solo gone. My shelves of figurines and legos gone. I asked to have my room redone when i was 16 because it was a little girls room and it was full of flowers (totally not me) so i guess she thought i would love it. Ýeah, i liked the room, it was grey and red but all my stuff was gone. I freaked out for about an hour, screaming and pulling out drawers looking for something that had been left behind. Nothing. I spent the rest of the weekend sulking and sobbing.

• My best birthday was when i was ten and my parents rented out the basement of the local dairy queen so me and my friends partyied and smashed hotwheels in the cake. had a blast. worse was when i was 12 and my one friend decided to bring the care bears movie to watch plus then said ment for the porno instead had the thing started and i threw the tape away. and also said the porno in front of yes my relitives and other friends no more parties with the guy again. and took me along time to live that one down.

• LOL That's good stuff. I never thought of it like that. Although I must say, I loved me some Santa, but it wasn't as deep as my love of the Man. He-Man.

• Haha. Yeah, after I said that, I realized, "Pants-shitting in public is quite nerdy." Sorry for doubting your nerdiness.

• I feel blessed now that my father is a nerd. He buys me One Piece manga, and is responsible for introducing me to comics and punk rock... I honestly can not say that I feel your pain... But at least you have us other nerds. And ToplessRobot. Hope your future birthdays maybe get better.

• I liked him, too, he was great. He just wasn't any good compared to Fox Mulder.

• Lily Kal-el was born at 3:17 pm. She is the most beautiful thing in the world. thanks, TR, for being there with us.

• The Nerd Birthday Timeline: The years are 1977-1982. I don't remember these years much. Birthdays might be Sesame Street or Looney Toons related. The Year is 1983. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is the biggest thing in my life. The setting brand new home just built less than six months ago. The event planner is Mom. The guests my first grade classmates. The theme He-Man/Barbarians party. Guest feedback it was the greatest kid party ever. Parents start to emulate Master Mom. Presents awesome to lame. Best gift Ertl Mr. T A-Team Van. Worst gift G.I. Joe Flash figure. Lesson learned, some kids are cool others suck. The Year is 1984. Transformers is the biggest thing in my life. The setting same house from the last party. The event planner is Mom. The guests my second grade classmates. The theme Transformers/Robots party. Guest feedback it was even better than the last year. Best gift generic bootleg Transformer Seeker (Jet) robot. Worst gift... where do I start? The gifts were lame after all the work that went into the party. Lesson learned, I hate my classmates. The Years are 1985-1995. Birthday parties are overated. My classmates ask me when I will have another birthday party. My answer is never again. My nerd factor rises. I become more introverted and jaded. Comics, cartoons, toys, and videogames become my friends. Birthdays are limited to a few close friends and family, but no more extravagant parties. I leave all big parties to my sister and her friends. The Years are 1996-2001. Birthday is limited to a nice restaurant meal with family. I hate birthdays. The Years are 2001-today. Okay, I've come around. Birthdays can be fun again. I still like them somewhat lowkey, but adult parties are so different than kid parties. One year my friends made a Spider-man cake for me. It shows they care for this dumbass nerd. This year I hope that my best friend who is born on the same day, month, and year as me and is a super-geek too can meet me on June 11th one day before our birthday to watch the A-Team movie and then nerd out somewhere. If not I guess we could meet all the rest of the friends on the 12th for A-Team and dinner. Okay so this wasn't the best, but I think we can all agree we've had awesome birthdays and some that were real heartbreakers/downers.

• Hey look, less then 400 entries.. lol.

• Well this the best nerdy birthday. You see I'm Mexican American and female. That means by birthright for my 15th birthday I must have a huge freaking party with friends and relatives paying homage to me in loads of gifts and jewels because at that age I'm recognized as a woman. When I was younger I expected something huge and grand because my parents spent $5,000 on my older sister's birthday. She was given a huge princess dress and I was forced to be her back up dancer in a very intricate introduction dance thing. Mind you she is 7 years older than me so there was plenty of time to save up money for my party... Well my father unfortunately lost his job many months before my birthday and we were hardly making ends meet to the point we were expecting our water to be shut off and were very scared that my whole family and I were going to be homeless. I wasn't expecting a birthday at all but my mom pulled some strings and my closest relatives came and made a pot luck. They prepared all of my favorite foods but the kicker was they made them all Legend of Zelda themed. So everything was green: green salsa, green tamales, green cheesecake, green punch, etc. My mom even made a multi-layered fruit cake with green frosting and a bright yellow triforce made from peaches and pears in the middle. The whole thing from scratch and she must of stayed up all night to make it in order to keep it a secret. And I bawled and bawled my eyes out. Not because she pulled all this together our of no where but because with making a Legend of Zelda themed party she accepted that I was a complete nerd. Because unlike my siblings and my female cousins I didn't dress myself up, I didn't play with make-up, I played video games.

• GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra opened the day before my 22nd birthday. I wasn't expecting much from the trailers, but I like GI Joe and I love Christopher Eccleston (especially as the Doctor). My sister and I were the only girls in the theater, got quite a few catcalls from middle-aged men, and then sat through the horror that is Rise of the Cobra. At least we can laugh about it now?

• Okay so my worst is easy and a fairly short explanation too. My father, a trekker is his own right, decided for my 17th bday we would go to vegas for a 2 day one night stay and go to Star Trek: The Experience. I was looking forward to it for weeks. Then the night before we're supposed to leave I begin to feel ill. I spend all night throwing up and by the middle of the next day we've missed our flight as I am now in the hospital with a fever of 104.1 and terrible stomach pains. I was bedridden for 2 weeks. I didn't get to go on my big bday experience. Didn't even get to celebrate my bday. Plus my dad wasn't able to get all his money back. We always meant to make up the trip but never quite had to opportunity before the experience closed. Now on to the best. Maybe it's because I'm a pervy geek but this one is easy for me. It was my 21st bday and I was determined to spend the whole day watching the extended versions of the LotR movies. Just as Return of the King was wrapping up my friends stopped by and told me to get cleaned up that we were all going out. So I showered changed and we all left. I was blindfolded and taken to a hotel where my friends had rented adjoining rooms. I was finally allowed to remove the blindfold and lo and behold there were my friends and even a couple of their girlfriends and there was booze aplenty. I was directed to sit in a chair they had set in the center of one of the rooms and they opened the door to the adjoining room to reveal: Slave Leia. I was freaking. Not to mention, ahem, excited. I received a glorious lapdance from a rather attractive stripper who even asked if we could meet up later so I could 'show her my lightsaber' as she put it. Long story short. Awesome geeky lapdance. Full day of LotR. And much booze. Not to mention waking up with a stripper's phone number on my hand :D :D :D I will never again have such an awesome bday. God bless my friends.

• I don't actually remember my nerdiest birthday, I learned about it when I was 8 or 9. For whatever reason I was going through photographs my Mom had taken when I was a toddler and found out that for my 3rd birthday I had a Spider-Man cake! Apparently I loved it so much I slammed my face into the cake and chowed down like any three year old nerd would. The picture was of a grinning little Me with a facefull of frosting and chocolate cake crumblies sitting in front of a Spider-Man cake whose chest had been mauled by a voracious toddler.

• My best was probably the one held at Chuck E. Cheese. I had Optimus Prime on my ice cream cake, got to dance with the giant rat monster that they call a mascot, and all of my presents were either a video game or a toy of some sort. I turned 18 that year. Why the hell were the parties I was given as a legal adult a lot more fun than the ones I had when I was little? The worst? My mom's friend gave me an Xbox, since I only had Playstation consoles. A used Xbox. With no games. And the reason they gave it to me was because it had the Red Ring of Death and they didn't feel like messing with it anymore. And there was gum stuck to it. We just threw it out and my mom bought me a new one the next month for Christmas. And that is part of the reason why we don't talk to those people anymore.

• The best would definently be my 18th Birthday. When most dudes turn 18, they want like, a fucking car and to feel all cool, maybe go to a strip club, have some fun, feel like an adult. I said, fuck that. My 18th shindig was Super Mario theme. My family and friends threw me a party with decorations themed from the Mario world. We had bricks, coins, ? Blocks and Mushrooms hanging from the ceiling. Mario Party spaces on the floor. Candy coins and pizza and stuff on the tables. Cut outs hanging on the walls of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Bowser and every other character imaginable. Top off with a cake that was topped with Mario figures I already owned that they clearly stole. It was awesome. I became an adult by throwing the most childish party ever. My worst probably isn't that bad in comparison to some people, but it takes place back when I was in middle school and Yu-Gi-Oh was cool for like three months. During those three months, I was big into Yu-Gi-Oh and all I wanted was Yu-Gi-Oh cards for my birthday. My friends and family all came through. Except for one person. My best friend. The one person who should know what I like best and get me the best gifts did not. Instead he got me a Dart board. A dart board. Cause I not only played darts but had plenty of room to have a dart board in my small as room. FUCK NO! I was so pissed and underwhelmed. It's like, it's not even cause I didn't get Yu-Gi-Oh cards, it was just that it was such a bad gift. I always would get him kickass stuff like cool figures or video games and he got me an electric dart board that he couldn't even buy batteries for. Fuck that noise.

• Eh, it's not nerdy related, but this is still the worst birthday I ever had. I had just turned 15. My mom woke me up at like 5 am, yelling at me for not doing my English homework. That pissed me off enough, since I'd been planning on doing it first period before my English class. That night, my dad and step-mom took me out to dinner at a hibachi place. Dinner was good, but when the staff came out to sing for my birthday, they tried to force me to stand up and dance, which was embarrassing. And, finally, on the ride back, my dad asked me if I was a lesbian. No, it wasn't tactfully worded, it was more like, "Do you even like boys at all?" Thanks, dad. Really.

• My worst Birthday was when I turned 10. I have an older brother (we are separated by less than a year...and apparently I'm an accident :P) and since I was born Jan 2 and he was born Jan 3, my parents always combined our parties. It was an amazing TMNT party (I have 2 brothers and despite me being a girl, I grew up playing with the guys). We had a pinata that looked like Shredder and a cake with all of the turtles and Splinter on it kicking Shredder and his Foot-squad's ass. The downside to such a kickass thing you ask? My brother and I were each allowed to invite 5 friends. All of my older brother's friends showed up and gave him kickass TMNT toys, whereas none of my friends came. All of them were out of town. So I had to sit and watch my brother open and play with all these awesome toys with this friends, and they wouldn't let me join in since I was a girl. I ran into my room crying and fell asleep under the bed (my bed had one of those skirt things so you couldn't see under it without moving the skirt out of the way). When I woke up, it was to a very angry father. Evidently, my parents freaked out when they couldn't find me and called all the neighbors trying to organize a search party. So I got a spanken as soon as my ass was pulled out from under my bed. So I ended up with no toys, no friends, and a very painful ass; and just to top that off, I slept through the pinata while hiding/crying under my bed, so I didn't even get to beat up Shredder. It was a very depressing birthday.

• Christ, I would've been utterly disappointed, too, and I didn't even plan anything for my 21st birthday. I think you win for worst. Because that would've been the most epic party every. =(

• Plus all the swag! Can't forget all the awesome swag I got! It was kind of like a Hanukkah Birthday.. But instead of 7 days it was 3 and I had to dance of my presents...

• Actually, I won't have to think hard.. My most Nerdy Birthday took place this weekend. I'm kind of a closeted nerd-girl, but this weekend, I attended the very first PAX East. I know there are a lot of you out there who would probably think that's nothing... But I got to do two things that made it fantastic! First off, I got to meet people I'm huge fans of, like Major Nelson and the crew from his podcast and the people of X-play! It was awesome! My first day I went to Microsoft's NERD and got to play with Surface! Then, I got to meet and talk with Major Nelson, Stepto, E, and Lollip0p. It was great. From there, I went to PAX East and ran around meeting all the different developers. I met the guy behind The Dishwasher on XBLA and he was really cool! I got to talk to him for a little bit and he signed a couple of poster for me. The Rock Band lounge was fantastic! People got together and played all the Rock Band music, plus I got a sneak peek of Rock Band: Green Day. (wicked awesome, by the way!) Today, I got to meet the X-Play crew! I've watched their show since before I owned any game system and was in awe! They were even cool enough to do autographs for people after their panel! It was just a great weekend on the whole! I will never forget my 29th birthday!

• All I can think about when it comes to the rerelease of ET is that when it came out in theaters, I was going to see Blade II...and the local movie place somehow mixed up the signs for the individual theaters. So while I'm sitting there, I'm staring at previews like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and I can only assume that all the little kids going to watch ET were treated to previews like Jason X. The theater did catch the mistake before the actual films started, at least.

• Anyone who shits thier pants IS A NERD! Well the tan Dockers were nerdy! SO THERE!

• But.... but Kal-El is a boy! *tears out hair*

• Actually, he never did that in my dreams. I had a recurring nightmare for years where I was left alone in my house, then he came down the corridor, picked me up over my shoulder and simply touched me with his finger (it didn't heal wounds in my dreams.... quite the opposite). It went black and I woke up, my pants steaming :D

• I stopped reading all the other entries after this. You are the clear winner.

• Girl :) It's funny, when I wrote that I didn't start out all depressed and *sniff sniff* because honestly, it doesn't bother me much at all, but by the end I was like hey...wait a minute...what gives?! I get inundated with gardening gear b/c I have a mildly green thumb (I got a portable greenhouse for Christmas once, and a cedar gardening shed despite being apartment-bound), but no nerd stuff? At some point it starts to make you question what your family really thinks about you.

• YOU MONSTEEEEEER

• By putting the announcement of your daughter's birth on here you have made the whole event nerdy, you did the right thing. Congratulations!

• Ok, so I don't know how well this qualifies as nerdy, nor if it works for best or worst, but here goes: My little sister's 16th birthday was this past December. She's on the bowling team at school, and one of the more preppy-types. So, while picking up cake mix and frosting, my older sister and I spotted a bunch of different candles. Wanting to personalize her cake like the loving older sisters we are, we picked up some candles shaped like bowling pins and bowling balls. My older sister saw some Barbie-themed candles and grabbed them, too, just because they'd be funny. It was then that I saw the most AWESOME candle that the store offered, so we had to get that, too, just to make her cake special. Now, my younger sister had a bunch of friends over, including her boyfriend, so when we finally presented her finished cake, so just imagine the level of frustration in her face because she wants to freak out and yell at us, but can't because she's trying to impress her friends and act all cool, when you take these factors into account: Neither of my sisters, nor I have ever seen Star Wars and Her cake had, in the middle, a wax Darth Vader, complete with candle-lightsaber, and all of the bowling pin-candles, bowling balls, and Barbie candles stuck in at odd angles, like Darth was blowing them all away with the Force (he can do that, right?) Her friends certainly liked the cake. She, however, did not. This may fall under the best category for my older sister and myself, and worst for my younger sister. Fortunately for us, the Darth figure is wax, while his lightsaber is the candle, so we can use Darth for many cakes to come and not have to worry about him melting. He may, however, need to have his lightsaber replaced every now and again...

• BTW, the entire party album is absolutely safe for work. Not sure if that makes you more or less likely to look through the pics.

• Several nerdy parties come to mind, as we ALWAYS have themed parties and I am a huge nerd. There was the classic WWF party complete with Hulk cake and 15 20 somethings and their girlfriends dressed as professional wrestlers... My 30th Birthday was classic Star Wars themed, had a Darth vader pinata, required everyone in attendance to wear a classic Star Wars t-shirt or hat and featured pin the lightsabre on the jedi, three-P-O twister, Death Star darts and Vintage Empire decorations, invites, cetnerpiece, etc. But my FAVORITE is my 27th birthday. It was a Comic Book heroes and villians bash. Lobo, Cheetarah, Supergirl and others were in attendance. I was a classic, ie green trunks, NAMOR and my flagon never went empty. (Which is why Namor's trist with my then girlfriend SUPERGIRL didn't happen til later... but thats' a story for another time.) I feel this picture sums up the joy of having 50 or so people revel in your nerdiness regardless of their own nerdiness. NAMOR passed out with a smile on his face on a bed made with Star Wars and Batman blankets. http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/photo.php?pid=1909435&id=514673220

• The seven Flushomatics are actually pretty funny in retrospect - no? Although I'm sure you were mortified at the time!

• My best nerdy birthday was my 20th. My best friend made me a cake and we had a Princess Princess D marathon. If you've never heard of Princess Princess D, you're not alone. It's the bat-shit insane live-action adaptation of the already ridiculous Princess Princess anime. Stupid, but incredibly fun to snark. I know that probably sounds lame, but it was a great way to unwind after spending a week stressing out over a remarkably stupid vertebrate biology paper. My worst was without a doubt my 16th. I'm originally from a town in rural Canada, so anime was something that was hard to come by, and I could never see most of the awesome anime that I heard about. After school on my 16th birthday, on a trip to a nearby town that had a (*gasp*) half-sized Walmart, I came across the Geneon dub of Akira. Jubilations! I had wanted to see this ever since I first read about it in an anime magazine in 7th grade! So I get home, put in the DVD, watch most of the movie, watch Tetsuo grow into an eldritch horror and crush his girlfriend, have my parents rush me to the hospital because I'm having a massive anxiety attack, hyperventilate making my left arm go numb, think I'm having a heart attack, tense up my strained chest muscles, think I'm DEFINITELY having an heart attack, and hyperventilate some more. After five hours in the ER waiting room of repeatedly coming close to passing out and doing what I like to call the "Anxiety Attack Freak-Out Dance", I finally see a doctor. He doctor tells me to calm down because I'm apparently not dying and obviously just being a massive hypochondriac, and I instantly I feel better, making me feel stupid for the entire ordeal. I finished the movie the next day and I've never been able to watch the entire thing since.

• I'm typing this from the delivery room. It's 11:30 am, we've been here since 4 am. When my daughter is finally born, we are naming her Kal-El. Yes, my wife rocks.

• Yeah, it had to have been seven years, because I was a freshman in high school when I first saw 2001.

• For my 12th Birthday my parents rented me a 32 foot stretch limousine for the day. It picked me and a couple of friends up from our various schools in the area. Now this may not sound nerdy, in actuality it sounds like the most awesome thing a sixth grader could accomplish. Literally walking into a limousine in front of hundreds of kids? Fucking blew their minds. What *is* nerdy is what went on before, after, and during this trip. We drove to the local gaming store and comic store, which is hilarious because I wasn't exactly on good terms with the owners of either store at the time.. Some serious ass kissing occurred for some time after this. While riding around, the driver rented us some *ahem* entertainment, the videos included The Digimon Movie, Dinosaurs, and various pornography that we probably weren't supposed to find.. What kind of group of teenage boys decides to watch Digimon and Dinosaurs over porn? Us. Finally, our trip ended with us stopping at a local pizzeria where we enjoyed a few slices. My mom had a professional caterer put Young Link from Ocarina of Time on my cake, which is among the coolest cakes I've ever had. Then we pulled out a Pikachu pinata and beat the shit out of the yellow rat with one of those wooden pizza spatula things. As for the gifts, I got almost exclusively money, which was epically enough for me to purchase the then new SEGA Dreamcast, with a VMU, and Sonic Adventure. I've had some pretty awesome Birthdays over the years, but this one takes the cake. As for worst.. My pet Zebrafish Shadow (Named after the hedgehog.) died on my Birthday one year. :/

• There is no way I am going to win for worst. Many of you have had much worse birthdays than my worst one was. But I think I might have a shot at best. So here they are. WORST: I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I was looking forward to my brithday. It started out pretty standard. I did not have a party that year, it was just me and my family and I was fine with that. The thing that was so terrible happened later in the day with my birthday cake. Now when I saw the cake I was sure this birthday would be great because standing on top of the cake was a VF-1 Valkyrie from Robotech. My parents said something like, "look we got you a transformer on your cake." I was so excited I did not feel like I needed to correct their mistake that the VF-1 Valkyrie was not a transformer but a transforming Veritech fighter. I wanted to snatch the VF-1 Valkyrie off the cake right away and start changing it back and forth from fighter mode to gerwalk mode to battroid mode. But for some reason my parents decided that I had to blow out the candles on the cake first. Now seeing the VF-1 Valkyrie surrounded by burning candles made me nervous but I did as my parents said and waited. Just as they were finishing singing me happy birthday and I was getting ready to blow out the candles, the VF-1 Valkyrie caught on fire. I tried to blow everything out and my parents freaked out that something was on fire beyond the birthday cake candles. We all reacted just a few seconds too late. The VF-1 Valkyrie was not completely destroyed but now half of its chest was a big black charred mess. I was very upset and inconsolable for the rest of my birthday. My dad tried to fix the VF-1 Valkyrie with paint but it was not the same. BEST: I have heard some epic birthdays described in this contest so far but I think this one of mine was the best. I did not have a lot of big birthday partys when I was a kid. I think I had maybe 2 or 3 that I invited my whole class to. For the most part when I had a birthday party only my closest freinds were invited. I was in 5th grade as I recall. My birthday party was at one of those bolwing alley/video game arcades. I did not like bowling so my mom got a party package for the arcade. My three best friends were invited. Everyone got a role of tokens. As the birthday boy I got a my own plastic bag full of game tokens. There was only one game in that arcade that I reall wanted to play. That game was the Aliens vs. Predator arcade game from Capcom. My freinds and I were all fans of Alien vs. Predator. There was no Alien vs. Predator movie back then but there were plenty of comic books and we read them all and we had the Alien vs. predator toys being released at the time and we played this arcade game. I played the warrior predator while my friends played the hunter predator and the two human characters which were muscle guy with arm rocket launcher thing and chick with a sword. We spent almost the whole time at the arcade just playing Alien vs. Predator and it was awesome. It was perhaps the most epic birthday experience I have ever had. Now we died a few times but we had that bag of tokens to keep us going. We played through the entire game. We fough the various alien bosses, the mad predator boss, the human in a power loader boss. the final boss in the game was of course a queen alien. And purely by random chance I got to strike the killing blow on the queen alien thus beating the game. It was the perfect end to our evening of arcade game playing. But that was not the end of that birthday. Afterwards we went back to my house for a sleepover. But we did not do much sleeping. At my house the basement was pretty much a big playroom for me and my sisters. although my collection of action figures outnumbered my sisters' barbies and little ponys. My three friends and I cleared a space on the floor and set up a circle of boxes. And we had ourselves a tournament. Any action figure we happened to have could take part in the tournament. We took turns coming up with the matches and playing them out. For some reason my parents kept their extra checkbooks in the basement and we found them and starting writing out checks to make fake bets on the fights. We had all kinds of battles. There was J.T. Marsh in his E-Frame vs. Nightcrawler. Snake-Eyes vs. the Thunder Megazord. Captain Jean-luc Picard vs. the Flying Queen Alien. We had Ghostbusters fighting G.I. Joe, Ninja Turtles fighting Dinosaurs, and much more. My favorite one and perhaps the longest, bloodiest and most brutal of the fights was the White Power Ranger vs. the Predator. It was the only fight that ended in a draw requiring a rematch later. So the best birthday for me was not a theme party. It was not because I got a special gift I was looking forward to. I did not meet a celebrity or go to some special nerdy place. It was just me and my best friends being nerds together. Together the four of us enjoyed our obsession with the mid 90's Alien vs. Predator franchise. And then later we let our nerdy imaginations run wild in a basement action figure tournament where it did not matter how unrealistically one sided the fights would have been in any other setting. I don't know if I will win this contest or even get an honorable mention. But I just wanted to share this experience. I still look back fondly on that time n my life and the 90's overall. I am the only one of my friends that is still a nerd. The rest of them decided to pursue other interests once they got into high school and some as early as Jr. high. I have had other good birthdays but I will always remember that one as the best so far in my life.

• On the fifth anniversary of my birth, mine madre secured me both a limousine ride (she knew a guy) and a birthday party at Bullwinkle's. I don't even know if Bullwinkle's still exists, but it was awesome! When you first walk in, you can see Snidely Whiplash behind bars directly to your right. Besides the fact that there were Chuck-E-Cheese-like rides everywhere, there were also tiny theaters where you could go and watch Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons! Also, my cake was He-Man themed and my mom made sure all my friends gave me Thundercats figures (I already had all the He-Man, Super Powers and Secret Wars toys)! Best. Birthday. Ever...

• PUBLISH MY FAN FIC ROB!!!!!!!!! THE UNIVERSE DESERVES IT.

• For my 12th birthday my parents made me a cake decorated with the bat symbol. When it came time to cut it, we found a note declaring that the Joker had stolen it, and a clue showing where to look for it. I immediately grabbed my cape and cowl, and the whole party of kids ran around my house on a treasure hunt, finding little clues and messages. The cake was finally discovered in the laundry room with a note from the Dark Knight himself, who had defeated the Joker and saved my birthday!

• This isn't nerdy by any means. But it did happen 2 days ago, so I am hoping for a little sympathy nod here. Maybe just a shout out in the intro saying how sorry you are for me. That'd be nice. Anywho, my birthday was Friday, March 26. I had plans to get out of work and play some video games until my boyfriend got out of work. Then, we were going to go out to dinner, maybe cuddle down on his bed while watching "Hard Day's Night", and just spend the rest of the day on me. Well, Thursday, I get a call from my mom telling me that my grandmother is in the hospital dying and most likely will not live through the night. I drive the 3 hours it takes to get home in the hopes that I'll get to see her once more before she dies. I get there, and she's still hanging on, but barely. I learn that the only reason most of my family thinks she's still alive is because she's waiting for her last child, my uncle, to return home from the Philippines, where he's been for the past two weeks. He was supposed to get in Thursday, only nobody knew what flight was going to be on or when he was coming in. My aunt called a bunch of people at the airport, none of which could give her information, but somebody said they'd send out announcements looking for him every 45 mins and whenever a flight came in. Eventually we found him. It was an emotional moment when he cried; I saw two of my aunts cry that I've never seen cry before. He came to the hospital and sat in her room and talked with her. We all thought that she'd let go soon and be dead before Friday. Eventually, I go home to get some sleep. I come back on Friday, my birthday, and find that she's not dying anymore. She wants to, but she's no longer deteriorating. Also, she's already been in the hospital for a week, so soon, they're going to kick her out so the family should start looking at nursing homes or hospice care. She doesn't want that. She wants to stay in the hospital. She wants to die. She's angry, slightly delirious, and wants nothing more than to go see her twin sister, who died 23 years ago. She starts picking at her IV insert, so there's blood all over her hospital gown, her arm, and the blankets she's laying in. She starts yelling at us to go home, and then starts acting like we're in her apartment, telling my brother to go check the fridge to see if there's anything in there he'll eat. She yells at my one aunt to get off the phone, but she's not in the hospital at the time. She starts pushing spots on her pillow like she's calling someone and saying the numbers 3-7-0, which starts my house phone, so my cousin leaves to get my mom. She can barely speak, and she's losing touch with reality, but still, she's hanging on. Despite not wanting to. Eventually, they moved her to a different floor, because they wanted her bed for "someone who wants to live". At around 6 that evening, my mom decides to take me to dinner for my birthday. We leave in one car and my cousin and my brother leave in another to join us. We drive to a generic parking lot down town and walk to three different restaurants, all really busy, until we find one in the back that's fairly empty. While inside, my mom guilts me into ending my birthday, which I'd spent watching my grandmother dying and then losing her mind, by going with her to see Michael Bolton in concert. My brother then turns to me and says "You know, you could probably win some 'Worst Birthday Ever' contest with today." Turns out, I can't. Because it's a Worst Nerdy Birthday Ever. Ugh.

• That's not very nerdy.

• Best: Going to the theaters and riffed Dragonball: Evolution with my friends. Yeah, that's the best I could do... I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not nerdy enough.

• Not even trying to win, just trying to vent. Worst nerd birthday: ten years old. My parents asked me what i wanted, I told them the only thing in the entire world I wanted was a Super Scope for the SNES. My mom had mistakenly bought me BattleClash the previous Christmas, and dammit, i wanted to play it. SO we pile in the car and drive to pick up my present. I am so psyched I can barely contain myself. Parents both smiling in the front seat. We pull into the parking lot of the Toys R Us. I bound out of the car, smiling like a goon. We walk up to the storefront, and my Dad wheels out a bike. A BIKE. I hated the one I had, so i definitely did not need a new one. . I wanted my damn Super Scope. This was not a good birthday present. SO I did what any brat would do... I threw a fit. So much so that my mom threatened to return the bike and get me absolutely nothing for my birthday that year. I was so pissed off I agreed to those terms... So for my tenth birthday I got absolutely nothing, and in fact ended up grounded for a month. I'm still bitter about it. My parents are great people, but I have no idea what possessed them to think I wanted a bike. I was already a full-fledged nerd even then, and it wasnt like I had any friends who lived nearby to ride bikes with. The happy ending? I told the story to a family friend who has kind of become a second mother to me, and months later on my 22nd birthday I opened up a huge present from her. She'd gone on Ebay and found me a Super Scope. Good Lord do I love her.

• I don't have a distinctively memorable birthday dominated by nerdiness. Once, however, I received a Skeletor figure for Easter. My father put it in my basket of candy; however, being the odd sort, he beheaded my chocolate bunny. Then, he positioned the action figure to make it seem as if Skeletor had decapitated my chocolate. Then, as I complained that a full third of my chocolate bonny was gone, Pop showed up and said, with a completely straight face, "Oh No! Looks like Skeletor killed your bunny!" Immediately, he took the bunny head from behind his back and took a large bite. Then Grandpa walked in the room and said "Why is there a demon in Matt's easter basket?" to which Pop replied "That's Skeletor dad. He's the evil emperor of Castle Grayskull." Of course, I eventually got a replacement bunny. But still, to this day it bothers me that Pop got Skeletor's title wrong.

• As a story of outright misery and woe, this is trumped only by the fictional story of the fate of Santa Claus in Gremlins (which, being fictional, obviously fails to compare).

• Of course, it's also arguable that ET truly is an evil creature seeking to wrap his delicate, elongated fingers around your neck late one evening so he can squeeeeeeeeze. Your name will slither from his mouth in three long syllables as his obscene grin opens to expose serrated teeth glistening at the thought of tearing into your vulnerable flesh. The last thing you'll see is his too-wide eyes, his flaring nostrils and the burning sulfur of Hell that emanates from his gaping maw. BOW BEFORE THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL MOTHERFUCKER!!

• Perhaps an individual needs to have been lost in a department store as a child to truly empathize with ET's plight. It's a nightmarish scenario that elongates into infinity because of your childish mind; you almost forget what life was like before you were lost. The moment just streeeeetches and streeeeeeeeeeeetches until you think you're going to be there forever. Imagine those children actually stolen away from home for an extended period of time. ET has it rough. Ness, my man Ebert identifies something similar to what you're talking about regarding POV: the movie is mostly shown from Elliot or ET's perspective. The government men and scientists are specifically worrisome because we interact with them from a child's POV; instinctively, we know what they're doing, but they don't explain their actions with expositionary technobabble. They simply act. I would argue that the most unsettling thing about the film is its ability to connect us to that distinctively childish fear of abandonment and neglect. Additionally, I agree that the film has lasting appeal for adults as well. Ebert identified something else about the ending of the film. Upon watching the scene wherein a creature's silhouette can be seen waiting for ET in the ship, Ebert's grandson blurted out "That's ET's mommy." Essentially, Ebert was hinting that the culmination of the film was arguably about a lost boy finding his way back to his mother. So it makes sense that the film would have about as much appeal for a parent as it would for a child. Childhood friendships can often seem like another world (and grown-ups like aliens themselves) but those maternal bonds are strong.

• do it! it IS the answer! i've been planning my HHGTTG-themed 42nd birthday for many years, and it's still a while away. it will be a grand, epic, party.

• Well, I typically have bad birthdays just in general so I try to avoid birthday parties or any big celebrations. I mean from having fat strippers show up to the bar I went to for my 21st to having my hair catch fire from trick candles (thanks dad) on my 8th it has been a pile of suck. So, last years birthday landed on the night we typically play D&D, so I said "what the hell, let's just play and skip partying". Sure enough, one of my party members falls to their doom and my Paladin dives in after to save them. On the way down she is hit by flaming arrows from the goblin archers and the impact with the water knocked her to -2 HP, unconscious and underwater... balls. Also, she was in heavy army so sank to the bottom, so the character she went in to save managed to survive the fall and attempted to pull her out of the water. Meanwhile my DM announces (just to be an ass) a shark type crocodile creature starts to move in for the attack. So another one of my party members has to dive to their doom to fight the beast while my dying character is pulled to safety. Now meanwhile (thanks drowning rules) I'm having to roll Con to live (which, happened to be a dump stat. She was a ranged Paladin, don't ask) and just as the party dwarf (thanks 20ft movement speed) gets to the edge of the water with my carcass I failed my save or die roll. So yeah, my very first character to ever die did so on my birthday... and not even to an epic fight, but to drowning.... talk about insult to injury.

• Best one saw Star Wars with eight on my closest friends while in kindergarten... now I'm not pretending to really remember this but my mom says all eight of us sat for the entire movie with a look of genuine awe and not ONE person moved for the 2 hours! Plus I've got pics somewhere from that party... nice!

• Easy... shit my pants on my 23rd Birthday at Mongolian BBQ (oh and it was watery diarrhea too, not something you can easily hide)! Found out the hard way you should NOT wear tan dockers to Mongolian BBQ on one's Birthday!

• Eh heh heh... I'm sure most of y'all will be shaking your heads as you read this, but here goes. In my sister's sixteen birthday, we had three good friends over, and there happened to be a carnival in town. Which would be fun enough as it was, however... We can't leave a good thing well enough alone. SO! We all got on our tin foil hats and Jedi robes, grabbed our lightsabers and made perfect fools of ourselves by running up to helpless passers by and asking "Are you a Jedi?" Most of them said 'No' (how boring) so we told them they had to die. Not a very Jedi-like thing to say, but we were also wearing tin foil on our heads. And then we road the Berry-Go-Round till we got sick, and sang very badly to the random music playing. So yeah.

• This... God, it's like the perfect storm of childhood trauma. Get this man a shirt.

• Long story short, my dad got really drunk on my 18th birthday and made me aware of the fact that he called my mom Chewbacca on the day of my conception... Thanks Dad, it burns my eyes to just think about it.

• Good Lord, she had literal eggshells over her eyes? If I were your mom, I'd be worried if my four-year-old *didn't* run away screaming. It's funny how so many of these stories involve "heartwarmingly (or not) misguided" parental decisions...

• This birthday is a bit of a mystery to me, but that will be explained in due time. When I was around 5 or 6, my favorite cartoon was Darkwing Duck; I think that it was preparing me for my eventual love of Batman. For my birthday, my mother got someone in a Darkwing Duck costume to show up. The sentiment was appreciated, but the costume was terrifying. It was as though Darkwing Duck had been proportioned like Popeye. In all honesty, I still wonder if this entire party is the result of fever dreaming, but I am too ashamed to ask anyone in my family about it.

• This is terrible. I grew up in a household very friendly to all manner of geekery since both of my parents were born during the depression in the deep south and there was nothing to do except see movies and read comics, so from Day One I was indoctrinated. My parents eventually (and thankfully) split up, but my mom continued to support my comics and movies habit (she benefited from the comics portion by getting to read what I brought home). What sucked about it was that my mom, a geek herself, could never figure out what to get me for birthday gifts, or Christmas for that matter. I'd say the worst ever gift from my mom was a hideous set of those creepy, toothy-grinned nutcrackers fashioned to look like Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow. Not only had I been done with THE WIZARD OF OZ for years, they were completely fucking hideous nightmare fuel, and I received them when I was around thirty-five. Fortunately my mom and I have a policy of being honest with each other if we aren't into a gift we've received from the other, so when I politely rejected the nutcracking Oz crew she kept them for herself. They are now on prominent display in a hutch in her living room, standing eternal vigil and mocking me whenever I go home for a visit. I'd like to chuck the whole fucking lot of them onto an improvised bonfire in my mom's driveway.

• Don't feel too bad; you were *five*! For a kid that age, seeing a costumed version of a fictional character basically makes their minimal but still pretty reliable understanding of reality get ripped out from under them. You can see this every year in the South Fla. Sun-Sentinel's annual Bad Santa Photo gallery (linked above).

• That's just fucking depressing.

• I don't have a good or bad birthday story (Though I did spend my latest b-day in EPCOT Center, which has to count for something), but I need to chime in on this "E.T." issue. I wonder sometimes if "E.T." was ever even meant to be a children's film. Looking back, my sister and I weren't really that into E.T. when we were little – but our *Mom* was, and it's still one of her favorite movies. You know what movie gave me the same feeling I had from watching "E.T." as a child? The first third of "A.I." It's filmed almost the exact same way, all from a child's POV. There's something instinctively unnerving about that.

• That's sad man (Or girl...)... I feel really bad for you. It's ashame when nerdy things are viewed as unacceptable. People only see the negative aspects of those things, so they assume it's all negative.

• Any birthday you can walk away from is a good birthday and any birthday you can walk away from holding the severed head of a really hot filipino ladyboy is a great birthday!

• I feel a little bad writing this, but every birthday is my worst nerd birthday ever. Why? Because my nerdish pastimes are viewed with extreme suspicion and disapproval by my family, and as such they will probably never be celebrated. I was not allowed to watch Masters of the Universe as a child, even the Smurfs were considered borderline. TV in general was a bad thing. Video games? FORGET IT. The only video games I was allowed to play were the old cartridge DOS games that you couldn't survive more than 15 minutes in. Comics were huge no-noes (I was a rabid reader, so sci-fi/fantasy novels wound up being my way of getting around that particular barrier). Consequently I grew up craving cartoons and games, comics, etc., which eventually morphed into D&D, anime, Playstations, manga and all sorts of things my parents couldn't ban me from once I was old enough to pay for them with my own money and get away with doing behind closed doors. Regardless of the fact that my family knows how near and dear all of these things are to my heart, I will never, ever, EVER receive a gift that feeds my nerdish passions simply because those passions are viewed as unacceptable pastimes. I am not bitter, I understand this attitude fully, but at some point I do get a little annoyed when a family member says they have no idea what to get me for a gift, despite knowing there is ample nerd-fodder all over the place. The day I get a nerdy gift, I will be so happy - it won't be just a Star Wars/Saiyuki/Legacy of Kain/[insert nerd franchise here] gift, it will be an acceptance of a huge part of who I am. *sniff*

• My family knew I loved star wars. I watched the movies whenever they were on tv I got action figures for every holiday. My older cousin graciously sold me his death star play set for $10 when he decided he was too old for star wars and started collecting comics. My best birthday was seeing Return of the Jedi in a lovely air conditioned theater at the end of August after spending a whole day at the Nebraska State Fair. Sacks full of loot from the booths and Rancor life-size on the big screen. Best birthday ever.

• kenny Baker?

• Sorry, "GIVE ME THE HARD FUCK." Sweet Satan, I'm so exhausted I can't even get my insults right... Well, time to stop mindlessly commenting on an article that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about and a make a One Piece video...

• One of my best friends was turning 21 during Otakon a few years back, and since we had I think 13 people crammed into a hotel room, we knew a celebration was going to have to take place. So we made all these plans behind his back leading him to wonder why exactly nobody was talking to him concerning the convention. I won this huge auction on Ebay for a bunch of vintage Sailor Moon party supplies, and other friends provided Pokemon, Dragon Ball, and Hello Kitty, and Star Trek, and Star Wars, and Transfromers and...well you get the idea. I ordered this almost lifesize cardboard fully possible Stephanie from Lazytown from Mexico. The night of the party we got another friend to take him out then "accidentally" loose and ditch him on the streets of Baltimore at which point he pretty much assumed everybody hated him. He arrived back to the hotel completely pissed off only to find pretty much every available space of wall and ceiling was plastered in nerdy balloons and streamers and anything else nerdy we could find that could possibly be considered party decor. We even had a nerdy cake. Pretty much the entire floor of the hotel turned into his birthday party, as it's amazing how many people you can amass with free cake and freely flowing liquor. It spilled out of our room into the hallway and beyond. The look on housekeeping's face the next morning was priceless. For worst, on my 18th birthday, as I was the last of my friends to turn 18, my friends decided that since it was now legal for me to own porn, they were going to start corrupting anything I held dear. So my gift from them was a porno Pokemon doujin, of which page one line one was, "Wow Ash, it's so great it's your 18th birthday today!" said by Misty while taking it from Ash while Pikachu watched.

• Hey Rob, how much do you wanna bet that somebody buys you a t-shirt that says "THE HARD FUCK" on it? I would never stoop so low... I'll get ya a coffee mug.

• BEST: My best nerdy birthday was probably my 14'th where I wanted a nerd cake. My mom (after staring at me like i was a freak) finally gave in and bought it. At my party, all my friends (who were naturally too "cool" for a nerd cake) said it was weird and stupid. But it was my nerd cake and I was damn proud of it. WORST: A few days on my last birthday, I entered a Topless Robot contest. On my birthday, I went to see if I had won a topless robot tshirt, and to my dismay, hadn't even gotten an honorable mention.

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