I know all the lyrics to “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.  But they’re Danish, so that makes it “art,” right?

Everybody knows that geeks rock out harder than “normal” people.  So, with this new feature, Gimorozo hopes to chronicle the best that Geek Rock has to offer.

We’re going to kick things off with the Number 1 Geek Rock song of all time: Mr. Roboto.

Artist: Styx
Released: 1983
Album: Kilroy Was Here
Geek Credentials: It’s about freakin’ robots!  The chorus is in Japanese and everyone knows that Japan is the Mecca of all geekdom.  Vocoder and synths are played throughout.  The robots in the video were designed by Stan Winston.  It’s from a concept album by a band that named themselves after the mythological river that forms the boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead.  Seriously, how much geekier could this get?
Best Line: “My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM”
Geek Factor (out of 10): 10
Overall Rating (out of 10): 10

The awesomeness of Mr. Roboto is enough to drive one to tears.  Geekdom is so beautifully represented in these 5 minutes and 34 seconds that I doubt there is anything I can add.  However, I shall show you why this is the number one geek rock song of all time.  Come, sail away with me to a dark future where rock and roll is dead and the Majority for Musical Morality rules.

Mr. Roboto is the opening track to Styx’s (Styx’?) rock opera Kilroy Was Here.  The album tells the story of a young man whose name is Robert Orin Charles Kilroy, which oh-so-cleverly forms the acronym “ROCK.”  Blind chance?  Or fate?  Anyway, young Kilroy is in jail for rock and roll (it’s the future, after all) and escapes by wearing a robot disguise…a Mr. Roboto disguise, that is!  Talk about a concept we can all relate to.

But, pure, unadulterated geekiness does not a perfect song make.  Knowing this, Dennis DeYoung wrapped his convoluted burrito of sci-fi awesomeness in a scrumptuous tortilla of catchy melodies and covered it all in a salsa of SYNTH MADNESS!  I bet you couldn’t find one person, geek or non-geek, who can’t sing the opening lines of this song to you.  And if that’s not a testiment of the glorious power of this song, I don’t know what is.

Please excuse the advertisement at the beginning of this video…it is decidedly unmanly and I apologize.

Who’s in it: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck
What it’s about: A gate to hell, zombies, acid-related deaths (among many other gruesome fates)
Best line: “You have carte blanche, but not a blank check.”
Released: 1981

The Beyond is part two of Lucio Fulci’s “Gates of Hell” trilogy.  It is also the Best Movie Ever!  Do you like crucifixion?  It’s here.  Death by acid?  Got it–twice!  Zombies?  Check.  Acts of violence against eyeballs?  Times three, buddy-boy!  Awful overdubbing?  It’s here.  Loopy plot that makes absolutely no sense?  Got that in spades!  Basically, if there is anything worth seeing in a movie, The Beyond probably has it.  Additionally, it has a whole bunch of freaking awesome posters.

Basic plot is something about a hotel in Louisiana that is built over one of the seven gateways to hell.  Of course, there’s always some moron opening those kinds of gateways.  Evil enters the world, rubber spiders eat people’s faces, dog hand-puppets rip out people’s throats, blind people appear out of nowhere, zombies do zombiific things.  Yeah, it’s pretty evil.

This is one of those movies that you can never really explain to someone who doesn’t appreciate Italian gore movies already.  Many of the special effects are fairly unspecial.  The acting/dialogue/overdubbing varies from distracting to painful.  The plot leaves you dumbfounded.  And yet…and yet there is something compelling about this movie.

I was first introduced to director Lucio Fulci via Zombie (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh-Eaters), which will get its own Best Movie Ever! entry someday.  I loved that movie instantly and quickly ran out to find more Fulcirific fun.  Having read much on the internets about The Beyond, I decided that it would be my next foray into the Italian horror genre.

But The Beyond left me puzzled.  I hated it.  Where Zombie has a simple plot that continuously builds until the climax, The Beyond feels like it was pieced together from several leftover ideas that become so convoluted that you can make neither heads nor tails.  Where Zombie chooses its gory set-pieces carefully and deliberately, The Beyond takes a kitchen sink approach.  Where Zombie’s gore pieces are all very convincing, The Beyond’s…not so much.  So, I wrote it off as that inevitable crappy movie that every film-maker is bound to make and went on my merry way.

Oh, but fate had so much more in store for our relationship.  I happened to watch it again some time later and, without any preconceived ideas of what The Beyond should be, I gradually fell in love with what The Beyond is.  Of course, to this day I have absolutely no idea what it is, but I love it none the less.  Watch the trailer below and tell me that doesn’t tug at your heartstrings.

“A shuriken is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man’s attention and to inflame his ambition.” -President John “Don’t call me ‘Quincy’ or I’ll rip your arms off” Adams

John Adams was a prominent member of the first American ninja death brigade known as “The Founding Fathers.”  During the American Revolution, Adams killed 326 redcoats.  In one day.  With his bare teeth.  He was also instrumental in the writing and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the document that declared the United States a “free and independent country for the advancement of Ninjaism and all Ninja-related activities.”

There is absolutely  no good reason to run unless zombies are chasing you.  And even then, you should only run once you are out of ammo.

YES!  This is the kind of movie that we here at Gimorozo live for.  Outlander tells the true story of a bunch of Vikings who capture a Caucasian alien who speaks their language perfectly.  But wait, there’s also some sort of evil, video-game-influenced alien that is hunting the good alien.

How bad is the bad alien?  He lights on fire, that’s how bad!

How good is the good alien?  He’s Jesus from The Passion!  You don’t get any gooder than that!

This astonishing piece of art captures that lovable snowman after the holidays…he don’t look so happy, does he?  Maybe it’s because his scarf is so tight?

I hated Metallica long before the whole Napster debacle made it popular to hate them.  In fact, I used to call them “Mephallica.” 

Yeah, I’m pretty clever with words…

I like this vid.

Big surprise here: Microsoft is the one pulling the trigger in the most egregious assassination in history.  Yes, Songsmith will allow you–YOU–to make beautiful music even (especially?) if you have absolutely no musical talent or skill!  Haha, take THAT John and Paul!

Go ahead and watch the video/commercial.  I dare you.  It’s awful.  The actors make me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a rusty spork and shove them into my ears so I won’t have to see or hear them…I probably should have just closed down the browser before I took such drastic measures…Oh well.  These people could be selling robotic-ninja-dragons and I wouldn’t buy them based on the acting alone.  I can’t decide who is more embarrassingly annoying in this commercial, but I think it’s a tie between everybody involved.

And just think: somewhere, somebody who gets paid waaay more than you or me ok’d this video for public consumption.  If that doesn’t prove the existence of the devil, I don’t know what does.

Ugh.

P.S. This travesty doesn’t make me hate Apple any less.