... le geek chic, freak clique ...

... and then there's the France we all know is there ... that passionate place subsumed in a sediment of stereotypes simultaneously endured and embodied ... this is a recreationally varied culture, from eating to painting, ball sports to politics, making wine to making whoopee ... the inevitability that other cultures also claim these characteristics doesn't detract from France's reputation at the top of this scale ...

... not surprisingly, like most everywhere else, the republique is also experiencing a growing demographic phenomenon centered around the cult of technology and the virtual worship of toys and gadgetry ... swelling ranks of increasingly tech-savvy, matrix-minds is producing a movement of men and women who have come to be known, somewhat endearingly, as geeks ... whatever the language ... in France they even have their own TV show called, interestingly enough, "No Life"...














... destination Midi-Pyrennees, the Toulouse Game Show ... there I enter a world that adds overt, fun-loving dimensions to escapism and fantasy ... Sci-Fi meets Halloween at the intersection of Toulouse and Lautrec one might say ...




















... among the de rigeur zombies and aliens, superheroes, Manga and Cosplay afficionados, were some straight-up Wii-the-people, channeling inner drummers while gettin' their Nintendo on ...









... others were there to connect with Kinect, the au courant offering from industry-giant Microsoft, featuring controller-free, sensory interaction with your best friends, via Xbox 360 ...

... on this November weekend, playful geeks of every description came in from the cold to welcome geeks-by-association Peter Williams from "Stargate SG-1", Richard Hatch from "Battlestar Galactica", Shinji Hashimoto, a pre-eminent Japanese game producer ... and the home-grown bad boys from "No Life" ...

... uber-geeks Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and more recently, Sean "Napster" Parker and Time Magazine's Person-of-the-Year Mark "Facebook" Zuckerberg, emerge from these ranks to suggest geek as the new cool, making it monumental folly to overlook this burgeoning bloc of binary brains ...