Weekly Features to Ring in the Madness

As we close out February and prepare for March, we have a new batch of weekly features to prepare.

As you may have heard, a big event here at Transformer Generation Dad will be taking place during the month of March, our inaugural Geek Tournament. I decided on sixty-five items with significant geekiness and paired them up. However, as with the NCAA tournament, there are some worthy contestants who had to be left out. This week's top 5 list is compiled of the best of the rest:

5. The Harry Potter Books - Perhaps their initial appeal and intention for children and the mainstream nature of the movies they have spawned caused me to leave this off.

4. Army of Darkness - The selection committee and I decided we could only go with one of the movies from the Evil Dead series and it ended up being Evil Dead 2, though I seriously respect Bruce Campbell's performance in this film.

3. The Bone Books - A classic tale of fantasy and magic in graphic novel form. I'm a big fan of this nine book series.

2. Office Space - I still shout, "PC load letter?! What the f--- does that mean?!" at work when the printer or fax machine gives me problems. Then I look around for someone to get the joke while I listen to crickets chirping. While I think this has a lot of geek references but it also is enjoyed by a lot of people who are not at all geeks. When on the bubble, mainstream acceptance did more to get contenders excluded.

1. The Legend of Zelda - When a game that altered the face of video gaming gets left out, that makes me a sad panda. However, the only reason this hallowed title was left off is because there was a stronger candidate from its own series, The Ocarina of Time, which completely blew previous RPGs out of the water.

This week's cool-ass thing you will never own is the train cake that my sons made for my birthday. It's impossible to reproduce because one of the special ingredients in it is their love for their father. You can also taste a mild hint of resentment of my authority in there, but they don't even realize they it yet and you can only taste it if you're really paying attention.

This week's sign you are a nerd is that when you peruse the Geek Tournament brackets, you can come up with sixty-five completely different items that you think should have been listed instead of what I have. No repeats either, but sixty-five completely new things.

This week's nemesis is any business that I happen to pass buy that still has a "Go Bears!" sign somewhere on it. I get it, you wanted to capitalize off their success and act like you were paying attention to their performance to attract customers. But at least take the damn thing down now and stop reminding me about what happened.

This week's lesson learned is to buy beer in thirty packs as often as possible. Don't get all high and mighty about the quality of such beers. When you haven't kept an eye on your stash for a while and you start to get low, the thirty pack is a life saver. After all, the best friends are the ones that are always there for you.

This week's equation helps you figure out how bushy and out of control your eyebrows (E) are going to be when you get older:

This can be calculated by taking the number of kids you have (k) and multiplying it by your level of affinity for evil geniuses (v) then dividing this product by the sum of your likelihood of performing self-grooming (g) and your spouse or significant other's attention to your hygiene (a) multiplied by the average number of hours of sleep you get per night (s). This should then be multiplied by your age in years (t).

Finally, this week's Star Wars quote is: "Han will have that shield down. We've got to give him more time!"

Stay tuned for the launch of our Geek Tournament! It will be posted within just hours from now. Check back often and vote regularly. New match-ups will be posted every few days.