The GeekDads are back with everyone who wasn’t watching the LOST season opener to talk about the iPad, and National Black History Month. Enjoy!

GeekDad.com is the parenting blog at Wired.com, edited by Ken Denmead, Matt Blum and Chris Anderson. It is a community of like-minded geeky parents writing about our experiences raising our kids in the digital age, and about our obsessions with technology, family-friendly projects, and pop-culture. The GeekDads podcast is a bi-weekly discussion of anything and everything that impacts us as geeks and parents.

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He was 18 months old the first time he touched a Matchbox car. On that day, in the early spring of 2008, my son wrapped his chubby little fingers around the cool metal of a paint-chipped 1970 Impala, and his life has never been the same since.

You may think I’m exaggerating, and there are days I wish that was the case. But our son is now three, and as the last Christmas season reiterated, there is nothing—nothing—on the face of this planet that amazes him more than a 99 cent Matchbox or Hotwheels car. Not knights, not Lego, not trains, not Play-Doh. Well-meaning family members and friends have only given him more cars, wanting to please him. While he loves books, he will find the one car in the entire book and obsess over it. Sometimes the only way I can get him to watch a movie is to promise there are cars in it, somewhere. We find cars in the sink, in the toilet, in our beds, in our shoes.

This is my life with cars.

Sure, my husband and I joked about what our son would be like in high school, how just to spite his geeky parents he’d play baseball and listen to crappy music and wear “popular kid” clothes (whatever that will be in the 2020s). I imagined that his formative years would be the easy ones, where I could force him—I mean, encourage him—to love the geekery I love, and that later he’d rebel. I wasn’t prepared for this.

While it’s been frustrating at times, I’ve learned a few things from my three-year-old that have surprised me, and hopefully might help you, too.

Cut your losses. About a year ago, I was sitting with our son, moving his cars around the lot and trying my best to keep him entertained. He sighed and looked up at me and said, “Mommy, you’re not good at playing cars.” It’s true. I like cars, but driving around a parking lot and getting gas is about as exciting as watching a file download. I have a huge imagination, but if it’s not steampunked or carrying a sword, it’s a little tough. Since that day, he’s not been terribly interested in including me. But that’s okay, because I’ve learned to…

Work hard to include them in the daily routine. While not exactly playing, cooking is something that I’ve worked to keep him involved. At the end of the day it gives him a sense of accomplishment to “help” me with dinner, and gives him a break from the cars. Because really, if given the choice, he’d do nothing else but play with the cars. But the kitchen is like a cool chemistry experiment, and even at three he loves seeing what happens and how food comes together. It’s something that we share together, and it’s blessedly car-free.

Never belittle. It occurred to me that my son’s car obsession is, in essence, his first form of geekery. Just because it’s my thing doesn’t mean he’s not a geek. In fact, my son is a car connoisseur. He doesn’t like flashy cars, or tricked out cars. No, he wants cars that look like they drove off the dealership parking lot. He wants Honda Civics and Dodge Rams. He can also spot a Saab at 100 feet. That’s pretty geeky, I must say.

Consider the long-run. Our son’s obsession with cars has led to a never-ending quest to figure out how they work. Suffice it to say, if you search my couches you will likely find many dismembered vehicle parts. While at first I chalked it up to a destructive nature, I’ve since realized that he’s just trying to understand the basic concepts of how cars work. Maybe this will lead to a career as a mechanic or an engineer. In the mean time, he’s recently become fascinated with Lego car sets, which he can take apart and put back together. Baby steps.

Find common ground (and be persistent). Sometimes our son is extremely resilient when it comes to thinking outside of the box. The first few times I suggested that you know, dragons could ride around in cars or that there were knights defending the bridge, I got some quizzical looks. But anachronism is fun, and stretching the imagination is always a good idea. I couldn’t get him to play with Play-Doh, either, until we designated some all-terrain cars. Also, Transformers have been a surprising success (although, sadly, Bumblebee has been um, permanently disassembled.)

Regardless, keep in mind that if you don’t share an interest with your child that, truly, you should be proud. Why? Because your kid is exploring the world of their own volition, and finding joy in something. It’s their first hobby, and that’s pretty special.

(image by user jelielsdistrurbance from Photobucket.com)

I am a geek. I am not however, a nerd. There was a time when I would upend nerds into the trash can just for being nerds. Of course, being labeled a nerd is quite subjective and sometimes the label was applied to those less deserving, but still deserving (by adolescent factors) of being tossed in the trash. This was based on purely socially derived factors, nothing more. Intelligence quotient wasn’t taken into effect. It was shallow, callous and wrong. It’s this logic that has prompted Professor David Anderegg of Bennington College to suggest that the terms “nerd” and “geek” be banned from the general lexicon.

Seeing that I write for a site entitled “GeekDad” you’d think that my first response would be confusion, followed by outrage. Perhaps. But I come from a logical school of thought with massive failures in psychology in college. So it’s my thinking that there is more to this statement than what’s on the cover. In order to understand Dr. Anderegg’s meaning, we have to understand the terms. To much debate up to this point we can agree on a majority vote that “geek” implies a certain expertise on one subject. Such as photography, computers, comics, television and so on. Whereas “nerd” has an almost strictly social connotation based on the way someone appears and behaves. You can be a geek and not a nerd, or you can be both. To me, “nerd” has not always just meant someone of great intelligence, so when I read an article about the need for more “cool nerds” in the future, what I see is simply a call for more geeks as they lack the social ineptitude that seems to plague nerds.

When Dr. Anderegg calls for the abolition of these terms from the language, he’s got to be referring more to abolishing the stereotype that comes along with them, right? I pose that as a question to Anderegg, because he must know that even if the terms themselves (which are just words) were to be stricken from the lexicon, the individuals that they describe would not cease to be and new words would be created to replace them. Then it becomes a twisted little paradox with nerds still getting tossed into the trash bin for wearing glasses from the 1950’s.

In Dr. Anderegg’s defense, this statement was meant as a wry hypothetical theory. I know that’s a bit redundant, but I phrase it that way to be clear that he’s not running a headstrong and misguided campaign to remove those words. In fact, his book “Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them” is quite contradictory to his statement, but says a lot about why he made that statement in the first place.

The world does need more nerds and geeks. Math and computer sciences, green science and so on are growing fields of study and employment. The world will need intelligent people to function in these roles. This is under the assumption that all nerds and geeks are intelligent. As I mentioned before, that’s not always the case as the terms are social identifiers. So the world needs smart nerds and smart geeks, who are classed with the rest of the nerds and geeks who are just plain social outcasts.

Which is why it makes perfect sense to obliterate the stereotype itself! Easier said than done. Growing up is rough. Especially those teenage years where in most public schools social behavior is more important to children than excelling in the classroom. This further stigmatizes the geeks and nerds and proliferates their exoneration from the circle of social acceptance. For a child to admit and embrace their geekiness or nerdiness is difficult. They will face constant opposition in their behavior but it’s for the greater good. Geeks believe in what they love and geek out about, nerds believe that suspenders and a belt are cool. See, even I’m doing it.

So it’s up to society to change the stereotype, which is exactly what is happening mostly due to the outpouring of new technologies. Every kid sitting in class texting on their phones is a cell phone geek. When I was growing up, a kid talking endlessly about video games would be labeled a nerd and ostracized. Now every kid is talking about video games. Are they all nerds? I’m a little out of touch, but not too far removed from the high school set. What constitutes a nerd these days? How about a geek? I’m thinking that one is pretty much the same.

Then there are movements such as the ‘nerdcore’ music scene. Not only does it celebrate being a nerd or geek and accepting that fact as an adult, but it expands that message to the upcoming generation that there is a community and a part of the world that accepts you for what you are, that you don’t have to pander to the rest of society.

Society has to take a role in this because the more nerds and geeks (which we are assuming are the smart people that will run this tech heavy world someday) that withdraw from the world due to social stigma the worse off we’ll be for it. The nerd that is getting pantsed right now at some high school just for being a math honk, could be the kid that was going to grow up to invent the cure for cancer. Instead, his constant social torture at the hands of his so-called peers cause him to withdraw and spend his life collecting turtles. Yeah, that’s a bit extreme, but you get my drift. This kind of behavior and stigma attacks their self confidence, things they carry with them into adulthood. I don’t expect that knowing this will change a tormentors mind, but knowing this might change the nerd or geeks mind about how they handle such behavior.

On the other hand, the world has taken a lighter view of nerds and geeks in society. They are more accepted and common place among adults with less of a social stigma. Children however, have not changed their views. That will be hard to change, and probably never will. Kids will always make fun of other kids for being different. Those are the trials we have to go through to shape us for adulthood.

So then once again it comes right around to good parenting and the role of the teacher in the classroom. If nerds and geeks aren’t stigmatized at home (sadly, as they often are) or in the classroom, perhaps the jocks and so-called “popular” kids will give them less of a hassle. I really doubt it though. What geeks and nerds need to do is exactly what they are doing: what they love to do, without regard to what other people think of them.

Which is exactly what I believe Dr. Anderegg is saying and what is being misinterpreted by the NY Times. Get rid of the negative stereotypes of being a nerd or geek, replace them with the positive stereotypes of being a nerd or a geek. There will always be nerds and geeks; how society views them is the only thing we can change.

This means Harry Potter gets in because all the movies belong to the 21st century. But Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel started in the 20th century, so we excluded them. No worries, Joss Whedon, Dr. Horrible made the cut.

Websites were trickier, given how much frequently they update their content, so we did not enforce start dates on them.

Overall, the big winner appears to be: Pixar!

Pixar appears to have nowhere to go but up.

There was also a heavy dose of Star Wars among the geek kids’ favorites. Not the prequel movies, but various videogames and the Clone Wars cartoon, which had the nice effect of bonding old-school Star Wars geek parents with their kids in many geek homes. And, under comics, we noticed that many independent creators made the list for producing some awesome books and strips that appeal to all ages, including Owly, Girl Genius and Bone, none of which originally came from the big publishers.

Note: Game consoles were put together with the toys, while the accompanying videogames went under, well, videogames.

And now, onto the lists:

Best Movies

Best Books

Best Toys & Videogames

Best Websites

Best Television

Best Comic Books

Best Music

LED menorah photo by Windell H. Oskay, www.evilmadscientist.com, used under CC attribution license.

While all of the gentiles (or goyim) are celebrating a holiday where all the gifts are opened at once — after being delivered through the chimney by an overweight icon in a red suit — I’ll be lighting a candle and opening one gift a night. Starting tonight at sundown. That’s right folks, I celebrate Chanukah. Or Hanukah, Hanuka, Hannukah, Hanukkah, Channukah or just חֲנֻכָּה. Basically, the spelling is up in the air as it’s a translation of sounds like any language based on symbols. I like to use Chanukah for some reason, maybe because the CH sound at the beginning forces me to make it sound like a Klingon word.

Now that we’ve established my religious preference (though if my wife would let me I’d convert to Pastafarian in a heartbeat) let’s take a look at eight random ways you can make Chanukah as geeky (or at least as fun) as humanly (or robotically) possible whether you celebrate it or not.

8. Light ‘Em Up!

Jewish or not, you probably know that Chanukah is traditionally called “The Festival of Lights” and includes the tradition of lighting the Menorah, one candle a night. How can lighting candles be geeky? Well, even if you’re not sitting in a giant LEGO menorah the lighting of the candles doesn’t have to be boring. You could build your own flamethrower to light the candles, or my personal favorite – just use your craft torch!

7. Plate Full of Latkes

One of the foods consumed (in great quantities in my house) around this time of year are Latkes. Simply put, they are fried potato pancakes. Imagine chopped up french fries, covered in onion rings and deep fried in hot oil. I like a little beer batter on mine. Latkes make the perfect all-night gaming snack, and go great with a Mountain Dew and an 8-hour session of WoW.

6. Everyone Can Sing

Jews don’t just say prayers, we sing them. Seriously. Over the years I’ve learned something — no-one in my family can sing. When reciting the blessings every night while lighting the candles, I cringe. Thanks to the magic of the iPhone and the genius of T-Pain, we have the I am T-Pain iPhone app, so you can simply record the blessing into your iPhone and auto-tune it! Amazing! Also, it can be used for all the other blessings, as well as Nana’s kvetching about how things were when she was young and poor.

5. Chanukah Viewing Party

Similar to the tradition of viewing A Christmas Story over and over and over on Christmas Eve, in my household we like to view Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights every night after we open gifts. It’s a hilarious animated movie that teaches a great lesson to kids about behavior and charity. Recently my brother suggested we add a new film to the Chanukah viewing rotation, for after the kids are in bed. Adam Goldberg’s The Hebrew Hammer. Probably the strangest and most original holiday film ever made. Though I’ve always preferred The Frisco Kid.

4. Go Read Comics

Stan "The Man" Lee. Image from the Wikimedia Commons and used under Creative Commons license. Excelsior!

It’s well known that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are both Jewish and are responsible for creating a lot of the comic book characters out there. But those guys are real. Here’s a short list of some comic book characters that you may be familiar with that are lighting the Menorah this Chanukah. Except for Magneto, as he was born Jewish but turned his back on religion. Iceman (his mom is Jewish), Marvel Boy (Justice), Microchip (the Punisher’s assistant), Prime and of course, Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) who wears her faith around her neck.

3. Chanukah Through Music

While we all are familiar with Adam Sandler’s now infamous Chanukah ballads, delighting in naming all the famous Jews and making pot jokes, fellow GeekDad Z helped me compile a list of some other great Chanukah-related music you may not have heard. From nerdcore to TMBG to Sarah Silverman, there is some good stuff here that you can easily find a place to download from (like iTunes, Amazon, etc.) and make yourself the perfect Chanukah mixtape.

Erran Barron Cohen (brother of Sasha) released an album of traditional Chanukah songs called Songs In The Key Of Hanukkah.

A great mashup from DJ Flack called “Dreidl-Bells.”

Senator Orrin Hatch wrote a Chanukah song. Go figure. It’s called “A Melody Fit for a Maccabee.”

A bit of musical comedy from the group Da Vinci’s Notebook (two of whom went on to become Paul and Storm), with their Alice in Chains-inspired cover of “Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel.” Wicked.

Music group The LeeVees put out an excellent album of modern Chanukah songs, Hanukkah Rocks. Among the songs are the very funny “At the Timeshare” and “Kugel.”

The Barenaked Ladies holiday album, Barenaked for the Holidays contains some Chanukah songs in that distinctive BNL style. Side note: Their song “Hanukkah Blessings” made it onto Rock Band.

They Might Be Giants also released a holiday EP a couple years back, with one Chanukah song on it, called “Feast of Lights.”

In the chiptune category, 8 Bit Weapon has included a Chanukah song on their new holiday album, It’s a Chiptune Holiday.

Let us also not forget the timeless Christmas Jews album released by the hilarious 2 Live Jews comedy music duo. It’s a contradiction of sorts, since it’s Jews ripping apart Christmas music with some Chanukah songs sprinkled in.

Finally, for your viewing pleasure (though not all safe for the geeklets) there is Sarah Silverman’s “Give the Jew Girl Toys” and the less inappropriate though still classic Kyle Broflovski’s “Lonely Jew on Christmas” ballad.

2. Record It All

As geeks, it’s our duty to get in everyone’s face with the new video camera. It’s our obligation to Twitter while opening gifts. It’s also in our best interest to take digital picture frames scattered throughout the house. But you already knew all that, you do it every weekend.

1. If You Build It, Presents Will Come

Whenever possible, a true geek doesn’t buy it. A true geek builds it. That rule holds for the centerpiece of the Chanukah holiday, the Menorah. For you gentiles, that’s the thing that holds the candles. For the kids, might I suggest a D.I.Y. Menorah kit? Just remember, whatever you build the Menorah out of, try not to make it flammable. Personally, I like a good solid metal one or one made out of old computer parts. If you are feeling lazy however, you can head over to Thinkgeek and buy one made from a motherboard with LED lighting. Pretty. Though if you want to get really hardcore geek with your Menorah, go with the Star Trek Pez LED Menorah. If you think making a Menorah is too tough, then go make a Droidel.

That’s it! So from all of us here at GeekDad have a fun and geeky Chanukah! Hope you get all eight gifts you asked for and more! I know I’m getting a handful of giftcards. L’Chaim y’all!

Jonathan Coulton, classy.

As I’m sitting here, listening to “The Future Soon” by geek rock troubadour Jonathan Coulton, I have to remember that while it might be the future soon, it is currently the present, or it was just the present and now it’s the past. Or the present was the past and that past is now the future. Really, there is no present, not that we can perceive anyway. That is how the music and satirical lyrical styling of Jonathan Coulton makes my brain feel, and that is why I’d like to take a moment out of my day and on behalf of all us at GeekDad wish Jonathan Coulton a very happy undisclosed numbered (39th) birthday!

Unlike many comical or tongue in cheek artists, when you listen to Coulton’s music you get the feeling that he’s completely serious about his subject matter. While there are plenty of in-jokes and sideways thoughts, to me it never seems like Coulton thinks he’s making a joke. With his mix of guitar driven folk and calm lyrics, Coulton creates believable tales of strange love, robotic housekeepers, the joy of talking squirrels and their suggestions of lovemaking outdoors, what it’s like to be Tom Cruise and the rational negotiations of zombies.

Coulton hit super geek stardom with his “Thing a Week” project, where he crafted an original tune every week for a year. Out of this came four great albums and the mega hit “Code Monkey” which was used as the theme song for the show of the same name. He’s held on to his geek cred with constant touring and his website where you can listen to all of his music before purchasing, or downloading some tracks for free. Solidly cementing Coulton in geek lore however was his track “Still Alive” created for the Valve game Portal. Today doesn’t seem like the day to talk about there not being any cake though.

So happy birthday Jonathan, from all of us here at GeekDad and all the music loving geeks around the world! Including Neil Gaiman (who celebrated a birthday last week) who posted this nugget on his Twitter account this morning: “Today we recall the birth of @jonathancoulton, & sing mournful songs about women kidnapped by robotic giant squid-zombies in his memory.”

Here’s a great Anime video mash-up between Coulton’s “Code Monkey” and “Black Heaven.” Or check out this fan made video of Coulton’s “Having a Party” celebrating his birthday.

For the record, my favorite Jonathan Coulton song has to be “Kenesaw Mountain Landis” because it uses banjo and creates a great fantasy tale around a true Baseball legend. What is your favorite Coulton song? Leave it in the comments or just general birthday wishes!