Back in November of 2008, I wrote a post entitled In Defense of the Nerd concerning the growing trend of celebrities claiming that they are nerds to sound cool or endear themselves to a nerdly fanbase when they are in fact clearly not nerds. As a nerd, this angered me personally.
Well, here at Yes. Yes It Is., we pride ourselves on not only deriding celebrities when they say things we disagree with, but lauding them when they say something we like. In that vein, I would like to applaud Vin Diesel for being an enormous nerd and having the chutzpah to proclaim his nerdliness on national TV in a way that is undeniable (i.e. not just saying that you are a nerd, but backing it up with specific examples of your nerd cred).
Diesel was a guest on Monday's Jimmy Kimmel Live. During the interview*, Kimmel asked Vin if he played Dungeons and Dragons and he responded that yes, he had played for many years. This alone would not be enough to confirm nerd status. A claim that you played Dungeons and Dragons with no follow up details is dubious at best. Kimmel however was game enough to probe and find out just how far Diesel's knowledge of D&D went, so he asked Diesel about any favorite characters that he may have had and that's when Diesel's true nerd cred was revealed.
Diesel said that his favorite character was named Melkor, which I can confirm for you as a traditional name for a fantasy character. As any nerd worth his salt will tell you, Melkor was the name** of one of the greatest evils that J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth has ever seen and was the principal antagonist in the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Silmarillion. Additionally, the name is most likely derived from "Melchior", who was one of the three Biblical Magi. The name Melchior has been a favorite of video-game maker Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) and was used prominently in their landmark RPGs Chrono Trigger (in which Melchior was a famous sword maker later revealed as the Guru of Life) and Xenogears (in which Melchior was one of the three sages of Shevat). Also, although I do not claim to be a Harry Potter expert, I believe there is a centaur named Melchior in the Harry Potter universe. Regardless, Diesel's decision to employ this particular name for his D&D character is indicative of a rich knowledge of fantasy tradition, attainable only by someone who was steeped in the nerd arts for many years. Diesel also revealed that in the movie XXX, his character had the name "Melkor" tatooed across his abdomen.
Secondly, Diesel reveals the race of his character to be half-drow***, which is a race that only an advanced D&D player or a reader of the Forgotten Realms series of fantasy novels would know of. The drow are a sub-race of elves characterized by their dark skin and nefarious temperment. To the best of my knowledge, this was not even a playable race in D&D until the 90's, when the extreme popularity of The Icewind Dale Trilogy and its main protagonist, Drizzt Do'Urden, convinced TSR to release a Forgotten Realms campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. The point is, Diesel easily could've just said that his character was an elf, but offering the "half-drow" detail reveals him to be a nerd of exceptional caliber.
Finally, Diesel remarked that he had been playing Dungeons and Dragons for many years with the same group of friends and that one of them had become a cop and used to bring his gun with him when he played. This shows that Diesel played D&D at least post-high school and possibly even post-college and beyond. You have to be a pretty big nerd to play Dungeons and Dragons past middle school. You have to be en epic nerd to play in college. But it takes a nerd of Lamar Latrellian proportions to play after college. Vin Diesel, I salute you. You are a way, way bigger nerd than me.
I'd also like to point out that Vin Diesel is reportedly quite short. On the show, he was shorter than Jimmy Kimmel, but I don't know how tall Kimmel is, so it was difficult to accurately judge Diesel's height. On his Monday podcast, Bill Simmons claimed that Diesel was 5'7" or 5'8" at the most. I have found other websites that quote the 5'8" number, but his official bio lists him at 6'0", although it is common for actors and athletes and other famous people to lie about their height in official bios. Regardless, it is clear that he has succeeded against enormous odds and for this reason and his incredible nerd cred, I have decided to name Vin Diesel an official Friend of the Yes. Yes It Is. blog! Congratulations, Vin! It is our sincerest hope that this designation and your starring turn in the most recent incarnation of the beloved Fast and the Furious franchise gets your career back on track where it belongs. Here here!
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*I was unable to find a working Youtube clip of this interview. You have my sincerest apologies. Also note that this is not the first time that Diesel has talked about his favorite Dungeons and Dragons character, but it was the first time that I personally saw it.
** Also known as "Morgoth" in one of Tolkien's other languages.
***It is a bit of a cop-out to make your character only half-drow, but we're splitting hairs at this point.
