Never were nerds so proud. Ask the members of 7 Foot Midget to show proof of geekness, and they'll lay piece after piece of evidence on the table.

"I play chess," says bass player Jonn Losey.

"We're always on the computer," admits guitarist Nick Whalen.

"I got straight As in high school," adds lead singer/guitarist Nick Vincent.

"We never get any chicks," pouts drummer Jason Losey.

And the clincher: Jonn's sobering admission that just the other night, he was listening to ELO.

This whole nerd thing isn't some post-hip image-mongering, mind you. The members of 7 Foot Midget are, in fact, pretty damn nerdy. More proof: That pair of women's panties hanging from the ceiling were thrown to them at a show purely as a joke. ("We sniffed 'em to see if they were, um, normal," confesses Jonn, "but they just smelled like cigarettes.") And, best of all, drummer Jason receives a call on his cell phone in the middle of practice. It's his mom. She wants to know what kind of cereal her two boys want from the grocery store. When this outfit named its four-song tape Nerdcore, they were only half-joking. "It was a our little anti-thing," says Vincent. "Every punk band has its own little 'core' thing, so that was our response to it."

Just like those nerds to play the gadfly, something which 7 Foot Midget enjoys doing as much as mouse-clicking at computer games and pining for chicks they'll never get. Indeed, besides being purveyors of tricked-out speedball punk rock, the members of 7 Foot Midget serve as unofficial brainiacs to V-town rock culture. They've been known to express heretical opinions concerning that vaunted collective known as the "local music scene," and they've brain-wrestled with more than their share of music-scene heavies and lived to tell about it. But giving the Vegas musicscape a bonk upside the head is all in a day's work for the these four friends who only recently graduated from Cimarron Memorial High School. As they break between songs--songs like the rubber-and-metal mix of "Family Values," which will appear on the band's full-length CD next early next year--a clearer picture of these four upstarts emerges: four talented guys who happen to be smart.

And smart-asses. Ask them about their recipe for their smirking, sometimes head-jarringly complex punk and they'll tell you the operative word is grossness. "We'll usually start with a line or a melody, and see how we can make it grosser," says Whalen. "We mean 'gross' in a good way, like keeping it melodic but throwing in something that you usually wouldn't hear on the radio." Like Whalen's tight guitar fills on "Idiotic Patriotic," a tune riffing on Uncle Sam, or just the sudden choral sunburst thrown shining at the end of the fast-tumbling "Tightrope Without a Net." Or Vincent's vocals, which are as nasal and whiny as that bespectacled freshman whose lunch money you extorted. Vincent sounds every bit as smart as well--his takes on sundry topics like patriotism, xenophobia and responsibility aren't those of your typical college freshman. And his take on the local music scene isn't that of your typical cheerleading local musician.

"I don't agree with having this thing called 'the local music scene' as some ideal that everyone should work for," Vincent says. "If bands just focus on themselves, doing stuff because it's good for the band and not necessarily because it's 'good for the scene,' that's what's going to make things happen. Some of the bands we admire most don't ever think about the scene. They think about their own bands, and that makes the scene better. This isn't to say we don't have good intentions for the scene, but talking about 'supporting the scene' isn't going to make people go to shows."

But good music will, and what 7 Foot Midget might lack in scene-consciousness, they make up for with blazing chops. The four songs on Nerdcore zip along with manic but tightly harnessed energy as Vincent plays the wiseacre against a blaze of Black & Decker guitars firing off hooky speedball chords as head-turning as the band's, ahem, colorful lyrics--something that has landed the Midgets in hot water on more than one occasion. The instance that really raises Vincent's ire, however, is an all-locals gig last year at the Huntridge. After playing a new tune dubbed, innocently enough, "I Wanna Fuck Your Mom," the Midgets had a post-concert tete-a-tete with head honcho Richard Lenz, who subsequently banned 7 Foot Midget from the venue for three months.

"He gave us this big speech about how he found the song offensive and how it wasn't appropriate and all that," Vincent says. "And I said to him, 'Is that the same speech you give to Guttermouth and Gwar when they play?' Of course not, because they bring in money. If he's going to be that way, he should do it to all the bands, not just the shitty local bands."

Lenz counters: "When people give $15 to say Gwar or Guttermouth, they know exactly what they're getting," he says. "Nobody comes in blind to what their material is. But when kids come in to see bands on a local night, they're not exactly expecting to be shocked and offended. It's not a money issue, it's a representation issue."

So perhaps it's ironic that the band has a Dec. 22 gig slated at the theater with the aptly named Guttermouth, though 7 Foot Midget is mum on whether they'll play the controversial mother-lust song. But probably not: At three and half years into their punk rock careers, Midget members have begun to take the band a bit more seriously with each new song. Even college--gasp!--is sliding lower on the priority list.

"College blows," says Whalen in a moment of un-nerd-like defiance. "We were all told how easy it was, how you wouldn't have to show up till the last few classes and stuff, and here my professors are taking attendance just like in high school."

Adds Jonn: "Yeah, and what's with the pop quizzes? I thought they only did that in high school."

All the more reason for the midgets to rock out harder. And if the band thing doesn't work out? Whalen and Vincent will go into computers, Jonn will become a stock broker and brother Jason will get a degree in music. And, of course, they'll all be valedictorians.

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