The Nerds

"The Nerds" is a series of sketches on American sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. The protagonists of the sketch are Lisa Loopner (played by Gilda Radner) and Todd DiLaMuca (played by Bill Murray), whose repartée with one another would be the focus of the sketch, and regular character Mrs. Loopner (played by Jane Curtin), Lisa's mother, in whose home the sketches were usually set. Virtually all the time Mrs. Loopner, a widow, would wear a housecoat. She often referred to her "wifely duties" concerning her late husband, and told Lisa Loopner to "...go warm up the Gremlin..." before they went out somewhere.

Todd would often give Lisa noogies by getting her in a headlock and knocking her on the top of the head, and a regular element of the sketches would be Todd making fun of her flat chest. He'd look down her shirt to see whether there were "any new developments" and then make a disparaging comment such as "Better put some Band-Aids on those mosquito bites," to which Lisa's weary reply was often "That's so funny I forgot to laugh," or "The last time I heard that I fell off my dinosaur".

Nerd (disambiguation)

Nerd is a term for a person who is intellectually knowledgeable or bright, but socially inept.

Nerd or nerds may also refer to:

In entertainment:

Other uses:

Nerds (candy)

Nerds are an American candy sold by Nestlé under The Willy Wonka Candy Company. Their unusual shape and thin candy-coating is comparable to rock candy. With their anthropomorphic covers, Nerds usually contain two flavors per box, and each flavor has a separate compartment and opening. Larger packages may contain various colors—sometimes referred to as "Rainbow Nerds."

History

Angelo Fraggos launched the production of Nerds in 1983. By 1985, Nerds were recognized as "Candy of the Year" by the National Candy Wholesalers Association (NCWA). The United Kingdom sold a three-box chambered package of Nerds, with strawberry cola as one of the flavors (the United States never sold this type of box or flavor). Throughout the years, the product has been sold in a box with two separate compartments, each compartment containing a different flavor .

Production process

The television show Unwrapped explains how Nerds are made. A factory worker states, "Basically we start off with a sugar crystal and we just keep coating it with more sugar." The factory spins huge barrel-like containers of sugar crystals, which receive coats of sugar until the Nerds are formed. Their original color is pure white; they receive their colors in separate barrels. Each barrel is then transferred into the different nerd boxes. For instance, strawberry and grape go together—the most famous flavor combination among Nerds.

Nerds 2.0.1

Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet - a.k.a. Glory of the Geeks - is a 1998 American PBS television documentary that explores the development of the Arpanet, the Internet, and the World Wide Web in from 1969 to 1998. It was created during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. The documentary was hosted and co-written by Robert X. Cringely (Mark Stephens), and is the sequel to the 1996 documentary, Triumph of the Nerds. It was first broadcast as Glory of the Geeks in three weekly episodes between September 19 and October 3, 1998 on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, and as Nerds 2.0.1 on consecutive days between November 25, 1998 by PBS in the United States.

Episodes

As broadcast by Channel 4/PBS:

Partial cast