WWdN: In Exile

DEFCON 5

Well, I did it. With a lot of help from my editor and friend Andrew, I made my keynote go from Good Enough to Awesome. I am now excited to deliver it, and I think it's going to entertain whoever decides to show up.

I am officially done panicking, and have returned to DefCon 5.

I will likely be updating the usual places while I'm /away.

klingons crossing the delaware

This. Is. Awesome.

It also pairs nicely with this excerpt about Star Trek: The Experience from Just A Geek:

We finally make our way to the end of a short line of people waiting to get into the ride. We are in a passageway, standing right next to a large display about the Klingon Empire. A visual record of Klingon history plays on a monitor, next to a display featuring weapons and costumes worn by Michael Dorn. I look at them, and I can hear Michael's deep voice as he whines about how uncomfortable his makeup is. I smile to myself.

The Experience is closed to the public, so all the people in this line are hardcore Trekkies, most of them in costume. The people ahead of us are wearing Next Generation Starfleet uniforms. We exchange greetings, as a group of Trekkies dressed as Klingons arrive behind us.

My Trekkiesense begins to tingle again.

There is a certain, uh, psychology,  that inhabits the minds of people who dress up like Klingons . . . they tend to be very extroverted and a little obnoxious from time to time. These Klingons fit that description completely. Before long, they've begun an argument with the people in front of us. Something about Klingon honor versus the Federation's Prime Directive. The whole thing is amusing to me, but it's beginning to scare my wife. I forget that she hasn't been around this type of thing for years, like I have.

The argument escalates, and both groups try to get me on their side.

“Wil! You were in Starfleet!” the “Federation” fans say. “Surely you're with us!”

The “Klingon” fans grunt and snarl at me in what I imagine is the Klingon tongue. One of them shows off a dangerous looking Klingon batleth.

Of course, I side with my now completely freaked-out wife: “I gotta go, you guys.”

If you haven't read Just A Geek, and you don't want to buy the print or audio version, you may be interested in renting it from bookswim. (Thanks, Aaron!)

(awesome picture link via boingboing)

my PAX schedule

I worked on my keynote all day today. I got it to Good Enough, and tomorrow, I'll nudge it up to Awesome. Well, I hope. I'm still anxious, which is why I'm still at Defcon 3.

To keep things in perspective, I took an unscheduled break in the late morning when Anne got stung by a wasp in the yard, and had such a severe allergic reaction I had to rush her to the doctor; everything's fine now, but it was scary for a little bit.

A lot of people have asked what my PAX schedule is, so here's what I have so far:

• My keynote is at 5PM 4PM on Friday. (It turns out that I can't read a schedule as well as I once could). I have an hour, but I think I'll go more like 40 minutes. Normally, I'd set up to sell and sign books right after, but Mike and Jerry will be going on stage after me, and I'd much rather listen to them than sell my books. If you can only come on Friday and you want a book, let me know if you see me after the keynote; I'll keep a few in my backpack just in case. I will also have one copy of Just A Geek: Teh Audiobook.
• I understand that I'll have a table in some area where tables are allowed, so I'll spend some time in there on Saturday, provided I don't slink back home in shame before then. I'll post a schedule when I figure out what panels and stuff I want to do. I can only ship two boxes of books up, but it's over 100 so there should be enough for everyone who wants one. I'm charging for my books, but not for autographs or pictures, because that would be lame.
• Provided that I don't crash and burn on Friday, I plan to spend the remainder of PAX goofing off and playing games. I'm bringing my DS and Mariokart, so even though I suck at it, I'll totally take any challengers.
• My friend Andrew is coming up, and he's bringing a ton of awesome analog games to demo, and I'll probably be playing them with him a lot of the time, as well.

Finally, considering this is a gaming con, I want to spend as much time as I can, uh, gaming. There are also some panels I want to attend, but if you're a WWdN reader and you see me, please introduce yourself, okay? (Unless I'm rocking out to Guitar Hero, in that case, the appropriate greeting involves throwing lingerie).

good company

Wow, this is really cool:

"The Trek Life" cartoonist David Reddick appeared once again at Creation Entertainment's official "Star Trek" convention, held this month in Las Vegas. Among the "Trek" series stars also there were William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Kate Mulgrew, and Wil Wheaton.

I met David at the con. He's very cool, very talented, and very funny. We talked about maybe working together on something in the future, but that's still a secret, so keep it to yourself.

But here's the thing that's so cool about that paragraph from E&P: everyone in the entire Trek universe was at this convention, and E&P put me in the same breath as some of the most recognizable names in Star Trek.

I've wanted to be in E&P for years, and though I never thought it would be in this context, I still think it's pretty cool that I was mentioned in this company.

Don't tell anyone, but you'd almost think that I was part of the Trek family, wouldn't you?

regarding the PAX panic

It's been a long time since I felt this uncertain and doubted myself this severely. I guess that's a consequence of really caring about putting on a good show so the audience feels it's worth their time, but also so the guys at Penny Arcade don't look and feel like idiots for inviting me.

I've spent this morning reading your comments (there's 109 right now, holy crap,) working over what I'd written and thrown away and rescuing parts that, in the light of day, aren't as bad as I thought they were. I've put it all together into an outline so I know what I'm talking about and where I'm going, and a speech that doesn't suck it is beginning to emerge.

I've also taken several breaks to play Mariokart DS, Cooking Mama, and Guitar Hero 2, which seems entirely appropriate given my stress and the task at hand.

Thank you all for your kind words, your encouragement, and most of all letting me know that, though I may feel old and out of touch (sending my son to college has given me a bit of an existential crisis, it appears, at least temporarily) it's clear from your comments that I can still tell stories that matter to you damn kids today. :)

Seriously. Thank you. I'm dialing it back to Defcon 3.

PAX Panic

I was always nervous about speaking at PAX, because I'm 35, I don't play FPS or MMORPG games, and the younger gaming generation has probably never heard of me, other than via the mob at Digg, which isn't the best introduction in the world.

I thought I was talking to a crowd with an average age of 31-32 at PAX, though, so I wrote a keynote specifically to that generation. They are slightly younger than me, and would get all of my cultural references to things like arcades, and the other 80s gaming stuff I'd planned to talk about.

Then I found out this afternoon that, in fact, the average age will be more like 26.

That's nearly a decade younger than me.

That's just a few years older than my kids.

Watch me go from "relevant" to "out of touch" faster than you can say "Xbox Live" or "get off my lawn."

I scrapped the entire thing, and restarted. Now I plan to talk about the NES, console gaming, and how the Wii and Guitar Hero make gaming a social experience again . . . I hope. I don't know if I can pull this off, but the plan is to talk about the common threads in gaming that tie us all together and hope for the best.

It's incredible -- and quite disconcerting -- that I can go from confident to terrified so quickly, but having spent nearly two decades dealing with people who hate me, you'll understand that I'm a little gun shy about speaking to an audience who likely have no idea why I am there instead of some dude who worked on Halo.

The original plan for me was to goof off and play games all weekend long, and enjoy the con. However, if this goes the way I'm terrified it will go, I'll be sneaking home with my tail between my legs on the first flight out Saturday morning, massively hungover.

The next two days just went from relaxing to panicked. I'm pretty sure I'm going to crash and burn and they're all going to hate me.

Awesome.

a few more Happiest Days of Our Lives items

Several readers have expressed some concern that they won't be able to get copies of The Happiest Days of Our Lives unless they can come to one of these conventions I'm attending this summer, and I wanted to assure everyone that it won't be a problem.

Once I get back from PAX and life is back to normal, we will get online ordering via Monolith Press all set up. There will be several options, including the paperback, the signed and numbered version, the signed and lettered version, and eventually the audio version. As far as I can tell, I'll be able to handle international orders as well, though I hope to reach some agreements with bookstores in Australia and the UK, because shipping there is so outrageously expensive.

Once things are all in order at MP, we'll have a media kit you can download, a form to submit your own reviews, some neat-o buttons and banners you can add to your own blog or website, and all the different things we did for Dancing Barefoot. We're also working on a super-awesome website where you can join the Barefoot Army to help promote my books, but don't tell anyone I said anything about it, because it's still a secret.

Oh, crap.

Uh, in all seriousness, I plan to make it as easy as possible for you to get a copy of my book, and to give you the tools to easily share it with friends and family, because this whole thing is a very real test of my philosophy on book promotion: publicists don't sell books, readers sell books. If authors make it easy for their readers to share their books with new readers, authors will quickly be able to afford a boat armed with laser beams and an army of killer robots to do whatever you'd do with an army of killer robots.

(Okay, seriously: what is it with boys and our desires for laser beams and killer robots? I'm thirty-freakin-five and if you gave me a treehouse with a robot right now, I would move out of the fort I built in the living room faster than you can say No Girls Allowed).

yet another reason why going to the movies sucks

A few years ago, we bought a spiffy home theater system, complete with the surround sound and the HDTV and the comfy chairs. I'm sure it's a coincidence that this matches up almost exactly with when we stopped going out to the movies except for extremely special events.

I know this is different for everyone, but for me, going to the movies has been only slightly less annoying than going to the DMV, thanks to outrageous ticket prices, mega-multiplexes that leave stains on their screens and never enforce the "Hey, shut the hell up" rule beyond an entirely ineffective announcement at the beginning of the film, parents who think it's entirely appropriate to bring small children into R-rated movies, and the latest joy: teenagers who leave their goddamn cellphones on and when they're not talking to each other light up the theater with hundreds of tiny screens while they send and read text messages.

Yeah, I'm really glad I have this home theater system, because going to the Arclight isn't always an option, and there's a good chance I'm going to snap one day and force feed some fucking idiot his goddamn cell phone.

Well, as if all this isn't bad enough, now you can enjoy being filmed by a studio thug while you attempt to view the film you paid out the ass to watch:

"[I]mmediately I notice an older gentleman who looked to be about 60 standing in the corner of the theater. Sporting a black suit and a black briefcase, he began to film the audience during the movie. Every 5-10 minutes he would sweep the audience with his video camera, then turn it off and just watch us, then turn the camera back on and sweep again."

Isn't that great? I know that I can't *wait* to have my privacy violated by some studio douchebag when I'm just trying to watch their fucking movie.

All furious indignation aside, can the theaters get away with this? I've never seen a notice that by entering a theater I'm giving my consent to be filmed (other than at special screenings, and certainly never at a regularly-scheduled screening.)

If theaters are going to be complicit in this sort of thing, they should:

• be forced to disclose to their customers that they will be filmed in the theater,
• post a privacy policy so audience members know what will happen with the video tapes,
• offer refunds to customers who don't wish to be filmed, or
• give audiences a choice of sitting in a surveillance theater or a non-surveillance theater.

It's annoying enough already to go out to the movies these days, and I while I understand why a studio would want to use this sort of intimidation tactic to stop people from making shitty camcorder videos of movies, I also understand why some potential customers would choose a shitty camcorder version of a film over sitting in a theater to watch it.

A question regarding PAX and my books

From now until it's done, I'm working on my speech for PAX, pulling together all the notes and ideas I've had over the past several months into what I hope will be an entertaining talk about arcades, classic gaming, and the current games I love. Even though I've read and entirely agree with Charles Stross' advice on readings, I'm still as nervous as I ever get when I prepare to speak to a group of people who I consider my peers. I have to keep reminding myself that the idiots who comment at Digg are not representative of the people I meet in real life. Eargh.

Anyway, enough people have asked in comments or e-mail about books to make me wonder how many I should bring with me. I haven't had much time to think about it, and here's where I could use some help from anyone who is reading this: Have you been to PAX before? Should I bring like 50 books or 200 books? I have no idea how many people will be there, or if anyone other than the dozen or so readers who mentioned it to me already will even be interested in getting a copy of The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I don't want to bring up more than I need and feel like an idiot, but I also don't want to discover I didn't bring enough and feel like a jerk.

I would be most grateful for advice and comments from any current or past PAX attendees.

notes from an empty nest

We had the greatest time ever, yesterday. The beach looked like it was going to suck, as a huge fog bank rolled in while we were unloading the car, but it blew out just as fast leaving clear blue skies and sand so hot it burned your feet if you weren't careful.

There was much boogie boarding, skim boarding, throwing of the tiny Nerf football, and the obligatory rash on the inner thighs. I am so sore today, the first thing I said when I woke up was, "Man, I really hurt my old yesterday."

When we got home from the beach to get cleaned up for dinner, I opened up my laptop to see if anyone had joined me in wishing Nolan happy birthday, and discovered 56 comments. I called him over so he could see, and I couldn't tell what excited him more: that I mentioned his birthday in my blog, or that so many people posted so many kind wishes for him. If you're a parent, you probably know that particular joy you get when you see your child light up with happiness, right? I got to see a whole lot of that yesterday, and I just wanted to thank everyone who took a minute to wish him well. WWdN reader Clay's comment about hitting old ladies in crosswalks was one of his favorites, and was repeated to several of his friends at dinner last night.

Right now, there are 91 comments, from all over the world, in several different languages, all wishing my little guy (sorry, he'll always be my little guy) happiness and joy. This is one of those things that I'll print out and make into a little booklet for him, and it means a lot to me, as his stepdad, that you all helped make him smile just a little bit bigger yesterday.

We took him to this teppanyaki restaurant where they sing an awesomely obnoxious birthday song (to the tune of Whalers on the Moon, as it turns out) and give away a wonderfully silly crown, which he wore until he went to sleep last night, even while we were playing Guitar Hero 2. Nolan totally owned me, and we both realized that, with Ryan away at college, Nolan is now the best Guitar Hero player in the house . . . I really need to practice Jordan on Expert more. (For those of you scoring at home, our favorite song in the entire game is "Yes We Can" by Made in Mexico. It's weird and silly and totally awesome, and we both thought the best practical joke ever would be making the main phrase of the song just repeat over and over again without ever ending. It'd be pretty funny to see how long people would keep playing before they realized something hinky was going on).

This morning, Nolan's dad picked him up for his annual weekly vacation with him, so Anne and I are totally empty-nesters this week. I'm always miss him when he goes for the week, but it's especially tough this year; I wish he was coming with me to PAX, because if there was a con that was designed specifically for him, this one is it.