Earlier on Tuesday, Activision raised its quarterly financial outlook on robust sales of its latest “Guitar Hero” and “Call of Duty” games.

So it was no surprise when he joined us at the Reuters Media Summit to boast a bit about the success of the third version of the popular rhythm game franchise and how that success has made them, well, heroes.

Kotick: Seventeen years I’ve been doing this and while we’ve always participated in the popular culture I don’t think there’s been a product we’ve created that was defining popular culture … It was featured in ‘Gossip Girl’ last week and ‘South Park’ did an entire episode called ‘Guitar Queer-o.’ It’s just an unbelievable infiltration of the popular culture

Geek habits die hard, like calling it “popular culture.” Or carrying a Batman-utility belt-like array of cellphones. Kotick tells what happens to guys like that: 

I was at the BA terminal a few weeks ago and I had to take my belt off and it was 20 minutes before the plane was leaving and it was an international flight.

I started running and realized I need my belt. My pants fell down.

Listen to the rest of the cautionary tale in the following (edited) clip.