Prostitutinator: Rise of the Nerds

Last night I watched The Center of the World, a fairly forgettable and highly overrated indie release from 2001 which played like a much raunchier and less interesting take on the bright-young-thing-meets-older-man-with-money than Shopgirl. In this case, the older man was an only slightly older, but much richer internet nerd millionaire, and the filmmakers certainly had the opportunity to make some really interesting statements, but ultimately it was like a model airplane kit with no glue.

It had its moments, though. I noticed as the credits rolled one Jason McCabe Calacanis as an "Advisor," which explained some of what they got right. But what reminded me that it was shot eight years ago was the obligatory scene early on where the indie-rock-chick-cum-hooker played by Molly Parker asks her Client #9 what it's like to be away from his computer for so long, as though it were an accordion, or something else you ought to be embarassed to be seen in public with. Needless to say, we know far more today about this sort of thing than we did back then, and got our first pictures of Eliot Spitzer's squeeze "Kristen" from, natch, her MySpace page, while the ever-brilliant copy desk of the NY Post slugged one story "OMG! I just did the governor!"

Say whatever you want about today's kids--no, I mean it, they're really quite dreadful--but don't call them nerds. They'd take it as a compliment.