As I listen to talk radio on my way home from an adventurous day of cubicle sitting, I hear this radio spot for the show 'heroes'. Now I haven't seen this show and I've heard it's highly addicting in a 'I just found out that I'm a superhero' sort of way...which to me would get old after oh...2 episodes. How many natural disasters can be accidentally averted thanks to someone who was running away from a hurricane, tripped, somehow started to fly, rode on the back of said hurricane like a man who doesn't look like Jesus (but who has a lot of class) and steered the menacing breeze away from a lone trailer park by sheer will of mind? I guess there is no end to how one can save the planet. Intentionally is one thing, but an accidental rescue of the entire human race can  carry you for at least 4-5 seasons on national television with an echo of awes and sighs and a choir consisting of all humanity collectively singing, 'I didn't see that coming!!'.

The premise is great. Save a puppy....save the elderly...oops…I just saved the world....but I have a problem. If you have a show and your dramatic arc and episode climax is "save the cheerleader, save the world", then there is a problem. Why the cheerleader? Why not the angry little emo kid who sits in the hallway, stares at people and writes angry songs on his black guitar? Why not save the band-geek or the mathlete? Why is the fate of all civilization hanging on the balance because a cheerleader is in danger? I'd like to meet this cheerleader. She must be amazingly cheerful. So cheerful, in fact, that an entire television show will be based around her safety! 30 minutes of someone trying to save a cheerleader. 30 minutes that one can never get back. And do cheerleaders really need saving?  If there is going to be a meteor attack or some terrorist organization is planning on abducting a high schooler in order to negotiate for more biological weapons and some prisoner releases, let's instead focus on saving the group of 6 giggling nerds talking about dungeons and dragons and how many magic points they got from their last warlock kill and how star trek was better in the next generation and how the playstation 3 could possibly be THE holy grail that has been searched for and adulated in myth and legend.

If anyone is going to advance mankind and better humanity and be a terrorist bargaining tool, it will be a nerd. No offense to any cheerleaders, you are beautiful creations, you just don't hear about a nobel peace prize winning rocket scientist Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. No no. They do, however, make the sporting world a little better, one pom-pom shake at a time. Bill Gates is a geek, yet he's giving, what? 500 billion dollars to charity. Many other nerdy people have made the world a better and scientifically more comfortable place to live. I just can't research at work.

As a former fat kid, goth hallway performer, and basic highschool outcast, I say no, don't save the cheerleaders! Not in 'highschool world' at least. I am not going to do the whole dissertation on life after highschool and what I've learned now that I'm 25. There are realities, and I knew them while in highschool. Johnny Mayer wrote a song about about it anyway, and that is all anyone could possibly need.

So forget the cheerleaders, eating disorders are better than ridicule and getting the crap kicked out of you for no reason anyway. Forget the football players and the homecoming queens, forget the beautiful people of the world who live in the OC and the Laguna Beach and can't form a coherent thought on their own. Forget the rich kids named Hunter and Ascot who whine because daddy bought them a BMW and not a Mercedes for their 17^th birthday. Sniffle.

Instead, remember the socially inept and inadequate, the screechy voiced, the acne ridden, the steely smiled, the awkward, the creatively strange and dramatic, the eccentric, the shamed, and even the smelly kid.

Save these, and then you will have saved the world Hollywood.