With Black Friday behind us and December only a few hours away, I think it's fair for me to bring up the topic of holiday shopping. It's sort of like breaking trump in a card game - once US Thanksgiving is over, it's every shopper for themselves.

I have a good reason for wanting to broach the topic early - shipping. If you are going to attempt to buy something really fantastic for a television fan, the chances of you finding it locally are slim to none. You'll have to order it online, and wait for the package to turn up in the mail. It's funny, isn't it? We can punch a series of numbers into our magical machines which convert the numbers into even more numbers and have little conversations with other machines, and the outcome is much the same as it was in the 19th century - something gets put in the mail.

This sounds like a really odd new show from G4. It's Slasher School, a new animated show that features the voices of Attack of the Show hosts Kevin Pereira, Olivia Munn, and Blair Butler. The show debuts tonight at 7PM on AOTS.

The plot? It's about a school where killers learn to kill.

You know John Hodgman as the PC guy in all of those Mac commercials (or perhaps from The Daily Show). I don't know if he really uses a PC in real life (he could very well be a Mac guy), but I do know that he's a very funny man. Last night he spoke at the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner, and gave a very clever speech about President Obama, nerds, geeks, jocks, and Star Trek. You can tell Obama genuinely enjoyed the speech.

If you're a fan of The Big Bang Theory, you've probably wondered at some point where they get all the fun nerdy t-shirts that the character of Sheldon wears on the show. Well, I'm sure most of you, being internet-savvy and resourceful, have probably Googled each and every shirt and already have a spreadsheet up on Google Docs that is cross-referenced by episode and topic. But what about the lazy among us, who'd rather eat glass than stare at a spreadsheet all day?

SheldonShirts.com comes to the rescue. It shows screen shots of every shirt Sheldon wears in each episode and where you can get that particular shirt. It also shows where you can get the shirts that the other main character, Leonard, wears, as well as the the belt buckles worn by their perverted buddy Howard. They also make some suggestions for shirts the nerd heroes should wear in the future, as well as provide links to some other stuff that was shown on the program. It's a good way to waste a couple of hours, whether you're a nerd, a geek, or neither. It's especially good for those who are need to find their favorite geek or nerd a birthday present. To those people, you're welcome in advance.

[via Pop Candy]

In an age where Josh Schwartz, Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, and Judd Apatow are writing true-to-life examples of what being a nerd or a geek is like, you'd think that the whiny, sniveling, tape-on-the-glasses, Urkel version of geekdom would be out of favor in TV land.

Big Bang Theory, which premieres Monday at 8:30 PM ET on CBS, proves otherwise. And, while it's not a complete disaster, it's too weighed down by its geek stereotypes to work on a weekly basis.

(S01E01) "I am pretty sure a lot of us are going to crash and burn pretty horribly." - Fred, the 45-year-old virgin

Okay, let me start by saying I won't follow this show on a consistent basis unless you guys beg me to. Really there is not much of a point. There isn't a whole lot to analyze here, nothing to obsess over, nothing to make this an addictive reality competition on par with your So You Think You Can Dances and those Dancing with the Starses.

Geeks get treated pretty badly in the media. Thanks to the fact that most people who get above-the-line credit in Hollywood are anything but geeky, when a script calls for a socially maladjusted character, it's almost always a terrible caricature of true geek culture. For years little geeklings only had the likes of Steve Urkel to look up to and that's not right (believe me, Jaleel White, when the geek revolution comes, you'll be the first one guillotined).

The fact that I'm about to become the father of my own little geek-spawn has led me to start looking around the current TV landscape, looking for appropriate geek role models. I was surprised to find so many...

Star Wars tribute band So Long Princess is about to get a few thousand friend requests. Last night's premiere of Beauty and the Geek introduced us to Nate Dern, the Harvard student who fronts the band and took the prize in the show's first two challenges. The band has an EP out - Alderaan is Asteroids. You can check out the fun, punky tracks "Stormtrooper," "Kessel Run," "Shades of Darth" and "Pining for Mynock" at the band's MySpace page.

As I pointed out in my "early look" at the show, I think Nate has a bit of leg up on the other geeks. He fronts a band, which automatically makes him a tad more extroverted than, say, Mario, the guy with 25,000 comics. My guess is that Nate cleans up pretty well, too. Not that he should let the show temper his fashion sense. Honestly, most of these geeks are pretty freaking cool dudes. (Heck, Neils is even a professional dating coach now.) They may give the state college sorority sisters the willies, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a few hipsters chicks throwing up a fan site or two. I've got dibs on www.TeamPiao.com.

In October I hepped you guys to a bit of insider-y information about a Robot Chicken / Star Wars special being created with the help of LucasFilm and the man himself, George Lucas. A recent glance at the Adult Swim schedule showed the special was set to air on Sunday, February 4 at 11:30 pm. However, a few days later, that particular grid in the schedule was blacked out. There was also a note scrawled at the bottom of the schedule informing viewers that Lucas himself absolutely loved Robot Chicken's parody featuring the Emperor, and was the one who contacted the show, but that note has also been removed.

So what does this mean? I honestly have no idea. Hopefully the special will still pop up at some point. I'll keep my eyes peeled for you.