We gave up on worrying about the hurricane. We still have almost all the emergency supplies from last time (kinda hard to use them up in a fricking week), so we just decided to pretend it wasn't there.

A little before noon, we headed out, got some emergency cash from the ATM (our last bit of storm prep work), grabbed some lunch at Arby's, a coffee at the new Barnes & Noble, then went to see a movie. All afternoon, we've been laughing our asses off at Napoleon Dynamite.

Oh my freaking hell, that was one of the funniest movies I've seen all year. It's not a movie that everyone is going to understand, I'm sure. But for our strange family of geeks, it was hilarious.

Jon Heder plays Napoleon Dynamite (a pseudonym Elvis Costello once used, but somehow the movie's writer/director claims not to have known). He is a nerd that other nerds would be ashamed to be seen with.

But this isn't just another Revenge of the Nerds or Steve Urkel caricature of a nerd. This is the painful reality of geekdom and teen awkwardness taken to absurd extremes. This is me in high school on a good day!

Right from the start I identified with Napoleon, either from the echoes of a past life or from the soundalike sighs, the sullen stares, the overly agressive answers to innocent questions, or the break-in-the-clouds sounds of "sweeeet" coming from the current teenage boy nerd residing at Chez Norton. When Napoleon gets on the bus and another kid asks, "What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?" After he responds with an exasperated "Whatever I want! Gosh!" I immediately looked over at my son (but only 'cuz there were no mirrors handy).

The writers don't try to make Napoleon likable. He's not a cuddly nerd. He's not smart or funny but *wink, wink* the rest of the world just doesn't know it. He makes up stories like spending the summer shooting wolverines in Alaska or needing to clean out his locker so he can fit his nunchucks in it. He is what he is. And you either laugh at him because you get to feel superior, or you laugh at him because you know you're laughing at yourself. Either way, it's pretty fricking funny.

One thing I do know is that if I ever feel the need to impress the ladies, I'll be using this line: "I caught you a delicious bass."

How could any woman resist that?