WWdN: In Exile

i am from space and the future

I'm putting the finishing touches on my long-overdue Datalore story for TV Squad. It's taken so long, because it just wasn't coming together the way I wanted it to, and I couldn't figure out why until this morning. I'd written some really funny raps for Picard, but they just didn't fit in with the rest of the story. It's funny, but it wasn't serving the larger piece, so it had to go.

Talk about killing your precious babies! This is part of what I sent upstate to live on a farm with other words:

I'm Jean-Luc Picard, I'm chillin' in my yard
Underneath my chrome dome in the ship I call my home
Kickin' it with Data, my homeboy, my brotha
I wanna get freaky with Wesley Crusher's motha!

It's hilarious to me, but that's probably because I can hear the music in my head (and other voices that want me to do bad things, but I won't! I'll show them! I'll show them all! HAHAHAHAHAAAAaa!!11)

Cutting out all the rapping let me write stuff that's far more amusing to me, like:

Riker looks around the bridge, sees all the commissioned officers he has available to him, does a quick scan of the ship's manifest to see who's on duty . . .  and decides to send Wesley Freakin' Crusher to "discreetly" sneak a peek at Data. Worf says, "Uh, excuse me, Commander, but since I'm kind of in the security department and all, and I'm a big old Klingon, shouldn't maybe I go check this out?"

Riker replies, "I'm not going to lie to you, Worf: we all know that if there's anything funky going on down there, you're just going to get your ass kicked. So I'm sending the Boy Wonder and his giant brain instead."

Wesley jumps up from his console and shouts, "Wheee! I'm in Starfleet!" as he runs like a pixie to the turbolift.

Worf growls, but inside he's secretly grateful that he's staying safely on the bridge.

Lore, disguised as Data, is contacting the crystalline entity when Wesley shows up, and discreetly checks up on him thusly:

Wesley: Hi Data! Look at how totally in Starfleet I am!
Lore: Hello, Wesley! I am not Lore, I am Data! Look at Lore who is on the floor while I, Data, am standing here doing nothing suspicious!
Wesley: Wow, that sure does look like Lore! Neat! I'd better not call security or anything since nothing suspicious is going on here. Oh, before I leave, here are all the reasons I, and everyone else on the ship would suspect that you were actually Lore, disguised as Data, contacting the crystalline entity so it could come and eat our brains.
Lore: Hey, it's not unreasonable, I mean, it's not going to eat your eyes.
Wesley: Hey, did you know that I'm in Starfleet? I talk to the captain! I think I'll go talk to him now! Wheeee!
Lore: Thanks for dropping in and observing that there's nothing suspicious going on here. Run along now, you little scamp!
Wesley: Wheeee!

I also realized that my memory of Datalore is as divorced from reality as George W. Bush. I liked this episode a lot when it first aired, but watching it now, all I can see are gigantic plot holes and inconsistencies that never should have made it past the first draft. Gene is credited as the writer on this one, but it was done at a time when his health was rapidly failing, and I see Maurice Hurley's hacky fingerprints all over it.

I'm turning it in to my editor at TV Squad later today, and I'll link it when he pushes it live.

made of 100% win

One of Jonathan Coulton's fans sent him a French translation of RE: Your Brains. JoCo (which I suppose I need to call him now, since that's what his fans call him, and I'm quite obviously a fan) recorded the French version, and released it yesterday:

While recording I couldn’t help but notice an opportunity in the third verse for a reference to “Alouette,” that famous old French song about plucking feathers off a bird. My first ever joke in French! Vive me!

The result is this new version of Re: Your Brains for French speaking zombies everywhere (yes, even Canada). I hope zat you like eet.

Re: Vos Cerveaux

Freaking. Awesome. Please to be Propelling eet?

nearly all hardbacks have shipped

It's a strange day here in Los Angeles. It's cloudy and gray, and if you looked out a window you'd think there was a chill in the air.

But it's 78 degrees in my back yard right now, and tonight? It's forecast to get as low as 46, just in case anyone was delusional enough to think that Los Angeles is not in the middle of a desert.

Anyway, if you're in the 300, I thought you'd like to know that all the domestic hardbacks -- except a couple of eChecks that found their way into the wrong box and will ship tomorrow -- have just been dropped off at the post office.

International orders will start shipping ASAP. I'd hoped to have everything done by today, but with my writing deadline being moved up from mid-January to Tuesday, I sort of need to put as much of my time and energy as I can into finishing the story. Please accept my deepest apologies on the delays. I wish there was a simpler way to get the goddamn customs and postage done, but unless I'm willing to charge international customers an outrageous amount of shipping, this is the best I can do.

Can media conglomerates afford to pay the writers?

As someone who hopes to be in the WGA one day, and as a current SAG member (and former member of the Board of Directors) I am in complete and total solidarity with the Writer's Guild. It's quite heartening to me, also,  to see that so many people refuse to be fooled by the lies that the six companies who control all of the media have been trying to spread.

The AMPTP has been successful (and helped by the news media they own) in spreading FUD about the things the writers are asking for. This post at United Hollywood puts some important numbers into perspective:

"But can the corporations really afford to pay you what you're asking for?"

Let's set aside for the moment the issue of what the congloms say in their press releases to us (which is basically "There's no money! Ever! And if there was, we spent it all on other projects that lost money so it's gone! Forever! We're broke! We're having to rent our yachts!") and focus on some hard numbers thoughtfully provided by Jonathan Handel on the Huffington Post yesterday.

He writes an excellent (I think) and even-handed analysis that takes into account the effect pattern bargaining will have in calculating real numbers of what we're asking for, and what it will cost the companies, individually, to pay us.

It comes, by his calculation, to $125 million per conglomerate per year -- if we got every single thing we're asking for.

That, by the way, is less than the $140 million Disney spent to fire Michael Ovitz for 15 months of work.

Also, Carson Daly is still an epic douche.

Also, also:

And finally, a meager contribution from the actor half of me:

MWM seeks SF Anthology for Casual Reading

I love SF novels, and count stories like The Forever War and The Ghost Brigades among my all-time favorites, but in the last year, I've grown very fond of the SF short story. Since an SF short story is what I hope to scrape out of my brains as my next writing project, I've been reading as many short stories as I can get my hands on, in places like Subterranean online, the Subterranean magazine, and in various anthologies.

I recently finished a great anthology called the Nebula Awards Showcase 2007, edited by Mike Resnick. In addition to some great SF from established writers, it included some fantasy (Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners was wonderful), some poetry, and a novellette from Harlan Ellison that, while not SF or Fantasy, was probably my favorite tale in the book.

Now that I'm done with it, I'm looking for a new SF anthology. I've spent some time in the bookstore and on the googles trying to pick out a new one, but it's tricky. Most anthologies are, by their nature, uneven, and some are downright garbage. I haven't red enough to know if there's one editor who I can rely upon more than another, of if there's one publisher who puts out books with pretty covers and not much else.

While I wait for my sample issues of F&SF to arrive, I'm looking for a new anthology that's not huge (some are over 800 pages, which is just too big for me to schlep around town) that focuses on speculative fiction.

Any suggestions?

oh my fucking god pictures from the set of watchmen

Apparently, I'm the last Watchmen geek on the planet to hear that Zack Snyder is keeping a rarely-updated blog during the film's production.

I discovered the blog on a good day, though, because today he posted some pictures from the set that gave me a serious geekgasm.

I have a lot of hope for this film, though I seriously doubt it's possible to make it into anything less than 12 hours long and truly do the book justice, because Zack Snyder managed to turn 300 into something not only watchable, but something that was a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. When I saw these pictures this morning -- especially the ones that are almost 1:1 recreations of panels in the book -- I upgraded my condition from guarded to cautiously optimistic.

However, I am putting the studio on notice: if you pull any studiofuckery with Watchmen, you will see a rampaging horde of geek rage that will make The Phantom Menace look like a Fred Thompson campaign rally.

Tech Universe reviews Happiest Days

I promise this isn't going to turn into "The Happiest Days Reviews: in Exile." It's just that I needed to come up for air for a minute, and saw this review of Happiest Days at Tech Universe:

Reading the well-written Happiest Days was a fun experience, and you can't help but feel like Wheaton is telling you these stories himself . . .and these really are some happy and fun stories, including one about his love of Star Wars action figures, or his family run for the Susan G. Komen foundation, or his great poker game . . . or even his return to the stages that once housed Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he played Wesley Crusher.

I have to hand it to Wil, he brought back my own memories. I think he's around three years older than I am, and I fell in love with Star Wars figures at the same time; I was stuck wearing corduroys in the late 70s/early 80s (thank God they went out of style by the time my family moved to South Florida in 1984), and more.

Two themes are emerging in reviews and reader comments and e-mails: it feels like we're sitting together (possibly in a nice pub, having a few pints) while I tell you these stories myself, and the stories I tell are awakening shared memories from readers who, like me, are in Generation X.

Last night, I packaged the remaining hardcover book orders. I'll take all the domestic orders to the post office a little later today, and Anne and I will get started on the customs forms for the international orders just as soon as I get this writing assignment finished so I make my deadline a week from now. It's a cool fiction project that I should be able to talk about relatively soon, but at the moment I'm in a serious panic over it. Once again, I wish I could stop time, or at least slow it down.

(Speaking of stopping time, is anyone else totally over Heroes this season? I haven't been this disappointed by a series since the third season of Lost.)

Dr. Pauly reviews The Happiest Days

My friend Dr. Pauly reviewed The Happiest Days of Our Lives!

Very few authors are able to connect with their readers, but Wil Wheaton is not like most writers. His words are like a sleeper cell. You have no idea they have penetrated deep inside of you, then they spring to life and attack your senses when you least expect it.

[...]

Probably the hardest part about reading any of Wheaton's books is that I'm constantly day dreaming while I'm supposed to be reading it. My thoughts drift because his words instantly trigger flashbacks and old memories. That's a powerful gift to have.

My only complaint was that the book was too short. I wanted more. I equate Wheaton's style to Hemingway in the sense that he has an amazing economy of words. The result is short but powerfully loaded pieces. Although the book physically contains only thirteen short stories, the impact is much greater. The stories, images, and memories that Wheaton stirs up inside your head continues to fester and entertain and inspire you long after you're done reading his last page.

Pauly is an inspiration to me, and I aspire to write as well as he does one day. His praise of my work means a lot to me. 

I hear that a lot of the 300 are getting their books. This is awesome, and I'm happy to hear that those of you who've gotten your books are as excited to have them as I am for them to be in your hands. Because I've processed all the hardbacks out of the computer (the outstanding orders are just waiting to be sorted and filled with books), I was able to put softcovers back up for order again.

In non-HDoOL news, I just found out that a deadline was moved up from the middle of January to December 4, so I'm probably going to be AFK (well, AFB, anyway) for the next week or so, except when my brain demands a break from it all and forces me to come post psychotic ramblings in my blog about the time a Nosferatu became a Deadhead and lived out of a converted school bus for six years, tripping his fangs off by drinking the blood of spun out hippies in 1960.

. . . uh-oh. It's starting already.

186, and some other NUMB3RS

The good news is that I packed and labeled 186 books to be shipped. Of  those 186, about 30 are international orders that still need customs forms and postage, but the rest are ready to go. This brings us to the bad news, which is that I just finished now, an hour after the post office closed, the day before a holiday. So if you were in the first 186 and you're in the US, your book will ship Friday morning. If you were in the first 186 and you're somewhere other than the US, it will ship by Saturday. (According to my fuzzy math and hazy memory, the first 186 would be between noon and 2pm PST on Sunday, if you're wondering.)

Ryan's coming home for Thanksgiving, so I think I'll have non-computer priorities until he goes back to school on Sunday, so this is a weekend farewell from me. Thanks for being part of an awesome (if short) week, and if you're traveling in the next few days, I hope it's as hassle-free and enjoyable as possible. Airborne is sugary crap; take Emergen-C. And wash your hands. A lot.

Oh! I keep forgetting to mention: I'm on NUMB3RS this Friday night. The episode is called "Graphic." I'll have a post at TV Squad about working on the show sometime on Friday.

G3: GiR, Gridskipper, Geekdads

I'm having a lot of fun processing book orders. The floor of my living room is a carefully-designed collection of alphabetized order and shipping labels, numbered boxes of books, and the all-important List of 300. I should get through the first half today, and the remaining half should go out on Friday or Saturday. This probably means that all domestic orders should arrive before the end of next week. International orders seem to be taking about 2 weeks, depending on where they're going.

Since I'm too busy to come up with anything worth reading on my blog, I thought I'd direct you to some offsite stuff I've done this week, starting with this week's Geek in Review: Turkey Stuffing.

My new book was reviewed on Slashdot yesterday, and while I was writing and reading comments, I noticed that the current Slashdot poll question is, simply put, “Best Star Trek?”

I was actually surprised that in all the years Slashdot has been bringing us news for nerds this is the first time this question has been asked, and when I went to vote for TNG, I remembered a story I liked to tell at conventions, back in the day.

In my first book, Dancing Barefoot, I wrote a story called The Saga of SpongeBob VegasPants (which, if nothing else, is a lesson to all you aspiring writers out there, and a reminder to the rest of us: put some fucking thought into your titles, guys, because if you don’t, you’ll be talking about The Saga of SpongeBob VegasPants for the rest of your life.) The story is about my experiences at a convention celebrating the 35th anniversary of the original Star Trek series. I’ve excerpted it for the GiR before, but I’ve never shared the particular story that the Slashdot poll brought to mind until today.

My fellow blogging.la contributor and former SG News editor Helen Jupiter interviewed me for Gridskipper. The result is Wil Wheaton's Geek Guide to Los Angeles.

I asked Wil, a fellow blogging.la contributor of mine, to put together his own personal guide to LA. In addition to listing popular destinations like Amoeba Records, LACMA, and Dodger Stadium, and lamenting the loss of spots like the Pak Mann Arcade, Wil let us in on some of his more original and admittedly geeky favorites.

Finally, I joined some of the Geek Dads last night for this week's Geekdad Podcast: Activate the Nostalgia Center - Zombies are the New Pirates.

Our special guest this week is writer/actor Wil Wheaton.  Wil joins us to talk about his new book, the demise of the classic videogame arcade, and why Tremors may be the Best. Film. Ever!  Enjoy!

And why does this post's title stop at 3? Because if it went to 4, it would, by definition, suck. Ba-dum.