Whether or not anyone else will find this tale to be of interest, I still feel it should be told as I think every blog should have an origin story. It may of course be retconned later in some elaborate fashion involving multiple time streams and shape shifting aliens from another dimension, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The 4 AM Genius was spawned from any number of ideas blossoming at the aforementioned hour, but there is one event in particular that drove me to choose the namesake for what will surely be a collection of rambling, silly, and brilliant if I do say so ideas.
A few years ago, somewhere around hour three of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air marathon that my roommate and I were watching at roughly 4 AM, it came to my attention that she had never seen either of the Fantastic Four movies. Now don't get me wrong, I am well aware that those films were two of the most atrocious atrocities ever put to film, but as a fellow nerd and a fan of the F4 comics, I felt that she needed to see them even if only to truly experience the horror for herself. Since neither of us had owned a copy we just decided to ask around and see if any of our other friends had been stupid enough to buy or download it. Around the same time as this discussion was going on (multitasking brilliant ideas seems to get miraculously easier at 4 AM as well...) I also remembered that I had recently bought a copy of the game Apples to Apples and thought it would be a good idea to invite some people over for a small gathering to get together and play. We decided it would be best to just kill two birds with one stone and ended up constructing a random, abstract, almost completely incoherent form e-mail just replacing the names of the recipients and changing one line of text to customize it. Somewhere between asking about the movies and Apples to Apples we started rambling on including Zoolander quotes and comparing people's level of hairiness with Sean Connery. It is a great regret of mine that neither one of us saved copies of this e-mail but it turned out to be one of the crowning achievements of my young life.
Surprisingly, nobody responded with a WTF, but instead informed us as to whether or not they had the movie and would love to come over to play Apples to Apples. I think all in all we probably e-mailed about 5, maybe 6 people tops but the following week we probably had had close to 20 or 25 in the apartment throughout the evening. People came that we invited, people came that we didn't invite, people came we didn't think would come, people came that we thought were too cool to come—people even started wandering in from adjacent apartments. It turned out to be one of the most hilarious, and completely accidental parties that I've ever been to. All in all, not bad for a bunch of nerd girls who never left the apartment looking to borrow one of the most terrible set of films ever made I'd say.
Sadly, nobody had either of the movies, but we did vow to continue brainstorming at what is easily the most magical and mysterious times of the day. So 4 AM, this blog is dedicated to you and the inexplicable clarity I seem to have upon visiting you. I become.... a 4 AM genius!
