WWdN: In Exile

somehow this ends up being about comedy

After ignoring the hype for as long as I could, I finally checked out Hulu, mostly because I knew they had shows I watched when I was a kid, like Emergency! and S.W.A.T., along with nostalgic classics I'd always wanted to watch but had never seen, like The Time Tunnel .

Turns out there's a lot of movies there, too, as well as a ton of classic SNL clips. There are short commercials in most of the programming, but they're not that intrusive or offensive to me; at least they don't crank the volume up to ear-bleeding levels like they do on broadcast TV. Overall, it seems like a fair trade to me as a television viewer (as an actor whose residual checks are ever-smaller because of online reuse, I'm not crazy about it, but that's not the point of this post.)

I have this nifty new iMac, with a monitor that's bigger than the first TV I bought for myself with Star Trek money when I was in my teens. It's got a better picture than the first TV I bought when I was officially an adult, and I won't even address how vastly superior it is in memory and performance to pretty much every computer I've owned so far, including the MacBook Pro I'm using right now.

Suffice to say that it makes a great replacement television while my big screen HDTV is awaiting a replacement lamp, and I've been relaxing a little bit every day with some of those classic shows I mentioned above.

It was the SNL clips, though, that I've loved the most, and they've sent me down memory lane to my teen years, when I was just discovering stand-up comedy.

Remember when we'd get together to watch HBO comedy specials from people like Steven Wright and George Carlin? Remember the first time you saw Delirious and Raw? I miss those days. I guess it's cool that Comedy Central provides an outlet for today's comedians and the comedians who rip them off, but I miss the excitement of watching a new special or going to a theater to watch a comedy movie.

Anyway, I was thinking about some of my favorite comedy films and specials, and came up with this incomplete list:

Delirious

Raw

Everything Bill Hicks ever did

Bob Saget at the 9th Annual Young Comedians Special

Howie Mandel at the Young Comedians All-Star Reunion

A Steven Wright Special (which is inexplicably available anywhere I looked online. Sad)

You are all Diseased

Bill Cosby Himself

That's just what I get off the top of my head; I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff that I just haven't thought about in years. Oh! Like comedy albums. Damn, I could go on forever with those. Arizona Bay, Meat Bob, I Have a Pony, Class Clown, Louder than Hell . . . damn. Do they even make comedy albums any more?

I didn't know it at the time, of course, but all that stuff would become a huge influence on me, as a writer and performer. All the time I spent listening to those albums and watching those specials on crappy VHS copies that I wore out paid off the first time I set foot on the stage at ACME so many years ago.

I was really attracted to comedy as social commentary (surprise), but there was stuff that I enjoyed just for yucks, like Howie Mandel blowing up a glove on his head and Emo Phillips . . . well, being Emo Phillips.

There are some great comedians coming up today. I love Paul F. Tompkins, Dimitri Martin and Patton Oswalt. Again, I'm sure there are others, but those are the guys who come to mind right away.

Feel free to add and share your faves in the comments.

this is awesome. awesome in pants!

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
I've been hearing about this for weeks, but didn't have time to watch the trailer until this morning. I was super excited to see that my fellow ACME-alumnus Felicia Day (one of the mad geniuses behind the hilarious-because-it's-painfully-true series The Guild) got to work with Neil Patrick Harris and Joss Whedon.
I can't wait to see this, and I thought I'd share it with WWdN readers, because it seems to be the sort of thing a lot of you guys probably already know about -- er, I mean, would really dig.

i saw david sedaris last night

We saw David Sedaris last night. He's the reason I'm a writer, so I was pretty excited to see him for the first time.

I was not disappointed.

We sat in the balcony of a sold-out Royce Hall at UCLA, and listened to him read for about 90 minutes. A few things struck me during the performance:

He does the same thing with his feet that I do when I perform from my books. I know it's best to keep both of them planted firmly on the ground and stay relatively still, but I always find myself lifting one foot up, and pointing it toe-down to the floor behind me. It's kind of a ballet-looking move, and I always feel a little silly when I catch myself doing it. After seeing him do it, though . . . ah, who am I kidding? I'll still feel silly.

At one point, I looked at the audience, and saw people leaning forward in their chairs, doubled over with laughter. He'll never see that, because they're hidden by the footlights and he's focused on his material. He doesn't need to see the audience to know that they're enjoying themselves, but I wonder if he knows just how much they are.

He signs books before and after his performance. I always sign after mine, but I'm always such a ball of nerves before, I can't imagine sitting in the lobby of the theater, meeting the audience -- and expending the energy that is necessary for a good signing -- before I go on stage.

Anne has his new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I won't get to read it until she's finished, but she loves it. She read it on the plane next to me the whole way to Hawaii. She shook our seats because she was laughing so much. He read a story from it called Crybaby, and I understood why.

My favorite piece of the night, though, was one said just wouldn't work unless he read it. I don't even know how to describe it, but if you get a chance to hear him tell the story about Nicaragua, drop everything and get to the theater.

He seems like a kind, intelligent, sensitive guy who appreciates his success. I wanted to meet him and tell him that he's the reason I'm a writer, but the line was three hours long just moments after the show ended. I know he doesn't use computers or read reviews, but I wonder . . . if someone reading this sees him, and has the opportunity, would you tell him I said thank you?

i think the planet is trying to tell us something . . .

North Pole ice 'may disappear by September'

Arctic sea ice is now retreating so quickly that scientists say there is now a 50-50 chance that it will have gone completely by September.

[...]

The Arctic is seen as an important indicator of the potentially catastrophic changes that scientists say will come as the planet warms.

Honeybee collapse claims record number of hives this year

A record 36 percent of U.S. commercial bee colonies have been lost to mysterious causes so far this year and worse may be yet to come, experts told a congressional panel Thursday.

The year's bee colony losses are about twice the usual seen following a typical winter, scientists warn. Despite ambitious new research efforts, the causes remain a mystery.

Um. I like this planet. It's really beautiful, and it's currently the only one I can live on. Could we maybe work together as a species to stop shit like this from happening?

wil's big news of the day

I was picking tomatoes in my back yard yesterday afternoon when the phone rang. Caller ID said it was my manager. I picked it up and said, "Mister Black! What's up?"

"Seth Macfarlane wants to work with you tomorrow," he said.

The next thing I knew, I was looking into the concerned faces of my wife and kids, while a machine behind me went ping!

"What happened?" I said.

"You answered the phone, screamed like a little girl, and fainted," Anne said.

"So it wasn't a dream!" I said. I leapt to my feet, doffed a Fedora, twirled my mustache and added, "Quickly! To the auto-gyro!"

Minutes later, I was airborne, soaring over the Los Angeles basin, while striped-shirt-wearing nogoodniks chased after me in pedal-powered flying contraptions. It was perilous, to be sure, but my superior piloting and my trusty manservant Kwame's peerless skill with curare-tipped darts assured my escape.

My brief and unexpected foray into a 1930s pulp novel concluded, I returned to my home, where I got back on the phone.

"What just happened to you?" He said.

"Um. Nothing," I said. "What am I doing tomorrow?"

"Seth Macfarlane has a new online project called Cavalcade, and he wants you to work on it." He said.

"Seth Macfarlane wants to work with me? Are you sure he didn't mean the other Will Wheaton, the well-known jazz singer?"

"Yes, you." He said. "I'm e-mailing you the script right now."

The script arrived, I laughed myself silly, and called my manager back. "This is hilarious! There isn't a single thing about this that I don't like."

"I knew you'd say that," he said. "I'll call them now and confirm you."

. . . and that's the story of how I got to work on Cavalcade this afternoon, where Seth Macfarlane complimented my beard and told me I was funny.

I am, without a doubt, the luckiest guy in this room right now.

Some parts of this story have been mildly exaggerated for dramatic effect.

moon over a ruined castle

You know you've spent a little too much time on the Internet when you're in Maui, taking pictures of a beautiful Sea Turtle, and the first thing you think is, "Oh man, I can't wait to LOLCat this when I get home!"

This, my friends, is how my damaged brain works.

I'm still on island time, both literally and emotionally, though I'm steadily working my way back into the whole real life thing, knocking down the towering To Do list that built up while I was gone.

It's so hard to get motivated to sit down and work, when what I really want to do is play frisbee with Nolan, swim with Ryan, and snorkel with Anne. Since this was the first long distance family vacation we've taken in several years, I'm willing to grant myself a couple of days to get ease back into real life . . . of course, eating pineapple with breakfast, having a peanut butter and guava jelly sandwich while drinking Pog, and listening to Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Arthur Lyman while I do my Propelling is making the transition a little less jarring.

A couple of quick notes before I head downtown to meet some friends for lunch (talk about a jarring return to real life!):

Some people I used to work for at PokerStars have started a new online poker site called Fleet Street Games. It's got Mac, Windows, and Linux clients (a Linux client! How cool is that?!) and is in a free beta right now. I played in -- and won -- a $150 freeroll tourney last night. SHIP IT!

I called Creation this morning to find out, once and for all, if I was persona non grata or persona we're coola, and if they were intersted in having me come to the Vegas convention or not. It turns out that my e-mails were going to people who are no longer with the company. The girl I spoke with this morning seemed very interested in bringing me out to the show, and though it would unprofessional to talk too much about the contents of our conversation, I felt that it was very positive and there's a pretty good chance that I will end up being at the Big Honkin' Vegas Convention this year after all. More details to come later.

I tried not to follow the news too closely while I was on vacation, but I care deeply about Bush's domestic spying operation, and the efforts of idiots like Steny Hoyer to defy his constituents and give AT&T retroactive amnesty for breaking the law and helping Bush spy on innocent Americans without a warrant. I'm pretty disgusted with the Democratic leadership in the House for caving in to Mister 28%, but I'm positively appalled that Barack Obama has been effectively silent (other than a weak and intelligence-insulting statement) on the entire debate. I commented at DailyKos:

Wouldn't it be awesome if a senator who had expressed non-ambiguous opposition to the Protect AT&T act in the past joined in the filibuster against it?

Wouldn't it be even more awesome if the vast majority of that senator's base -- oh hell, forget the base, let's open it up to the vast majority of all Americans -- opposed amnesty for law-breaking telcos and expanded spying powers for the White House, making this a slam dunk win for that senator, giving him a chance to show some serious leadership?

Oh! Oh! Oh! And wouldn't it be the most awesome EVER if that senator was running for president, and could use this issue to show Americans that he was seriously committed to changing the way things happen in Washington?!

Yeah, that sure sounds like a perfect dream scenario, doesn't it?

Oh well. A guy can dream. Yeah . . . a guy can dream.

I'm really, really tan. I've actively avoided being in the sun for the last several years, but it was pretty much impossible to do that while I was in Hawaii. I don't think I've been this tanned since I was a teenager. Rawr.

People Magazine put out one of those "Where are they now?" issues about kid actors who are all grown up now. I didn't want to participate, because I usually get ratfucked by the media in things like this, but since they were going to include me anyway, I decided that it was worth the risk to talk with them and hope for the best. The issue came out this week, and we saw it at the grocery store yesterday. I was very surprised that it was really positive and -- get ready for the shocker of all shockers -- accurate. They talked about how much I love being a dad, and how important Ryan and Nolan are to me. Anne showed it to Ryan, who was adorably excited to see that he was mentioned in the article.

I'm going to play the hell out of Descent this afternoon and tonight.

Yesterday, I Rickrolled 12000 people. All of them, as far as I can tell, took it in good humor. And no, Internet, Rickrolling will NEVER get old.

Twitter is riding the failwhale to failtown. I love Twitter, and watching it die a slow death is breaking my heart. Now that replies and tracking are down, what's the point?

You know what would be awesome? A real life Rickroll: you go to a concert, expecting to see a particular band, but when the lights come down, holy shit there's Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up on stage FOR REAL. Just the one song, then the band you were there to see comes out.

I have to go to the dentist tomorrow.

I've run out of interesting things to say.

home again, home again

Well, we're back from vacation. I'm still not motivated to do much of anything except look at pictures and listen to surf music, though.

wil's summer vacation

I am on vacation with my family, and I'm not especially motivated to do a whole lot of blogging.

Regular posts will resume in about a week.

windows open and raining in

I came across some really interesting items while Propelling today, which I wanted to share, because I can:

Farmers Put 220 Acres Under Glass to Create Vast Artificial Environment

On the chilly Isle of Thanet in Kent, England, farmers are placing 220 acres of land under glass so they can grow vegetables all year round. The greenhouse, when completed, will house 1.3 million plants and increase the UK's crop of green vegetables by 15%. Called Thanet Earth, the project will be a series of 7 connected grenhouses with a relatively small carbon footprint. And nothing grown inside Thanet Earth will ever touch soil.

This interests me a great deal because I'm considering some hydroponic gardening in addition to my regular gardening here, as we attempt to reduce our carbon footprint and become more self-sufficient. Climate change played an important part in the worldbuilding of the novella I'm working on, so I've spent a lot of time researching the future of agriculture; it's interesting to me to see people experimenting with different techniques in the present.

A Professional Gambler's Take on the Tim Donaghy Scandal

Haralabos Voulgaris leads a rare life.

He's one of very few people -- Voulgaris estimates there may be as few as four or five -- who have achieved a high level of success betting full-time on the NBA.

And he does very well at it. "In the last eight years," he explains, "the 2004-2005 season was the only year where I didn't turn a nice profit, and I lost very small."

His approach is intensively evidence-based. He has his own massive database that would be the envy of any stat geek. For instance: Given two line-ups of players on the floor, his database does, he says, a good job of predicting which players will guard each other. The database also tracks the tendencies of individual referees, and factors all that and much more into forecasts. Voulgaris also watches close to 1,000 games a year.

He designed the database as a tool to outwit oddsmakers, and it works for that.

But it's also a fine-tuned machine for researching the claims and career of Tim Donaghy. And having used this database, and his contacts in the sports betting world, Voulgaris says that his confidence in the integrity of the NBA has been shaken, to the point that, despite his big income, he's looking for ways to stop betting altogether.

"The league has made a big mistake," he says.

I sort of knew Haralabos back in my poker-playing days, and really liked him because he was one of the first players who was really kind to me, even though he had no reason to be. I knew he bet on sports, but I had no idea he was as serious as he appears to be. His perspective on this whole scandal was fascinating to me, especially how his data and analysis support Donaghy's claims. He says the NBA has done a great job of sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Unfortunately, I agree with him.

The Watchmen Motion Comic

Warner Bros. plans on releasing about a dozen 22 to 26 minute webisodes to help make the complex story of Watchmen easier for the uninitiated to digest. Recently, WatchmenComicMovie was shown a teaser trailer for these webisodes by an anonymous source. From what we saw these webisodes are going to be really well done.

The series of webisodes, which will be titled Watchmen: A Digital Graphic Novel, will be less like a slide show of original comic panels and more of the comic book “brought to life” with rudimentary animation techniques.

The teaser is simply a conglomeration of different scenes from the comic book given motion and set to dramatic orchestral music. In order to animate the comic, the production team has apparently dissected the elements from each panel that they wanted to move — such as a cloud or a character — and animated it in front of a restored or “filled in” background.

For example — they animated the iconic comic panel that shows The Comedian’s funeral from above to not only have falling rain and lightning, but wind that realistically blows the coats and clothing of the mourners surrounding the open grave. In another, Ozymandias sits in front of his monitor bank — each commercial and T.V. program on the screens in motion — scratching the back of his pet Bubastis’ head. For lack of a better way to describe the trailer, it’s like you’re watching an episode of Watchmen: The Animated Series.

DUDE! Even though living in a post-Phantom Menace world has made my default position on all these thing "apprehensively optimistic" I can't wait to watch these. It seems like everyone involved in Watchmen truly gets it, so it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep my hopes nice and low . . . they want to go up and up and up.

This last story isn't my submission, but that's just because my fellow scout Keith beat me to it:

The Prisoner remake: details emerge?

The Prisoner Appreciation Society (Six of One) is reporting that this classic, surreal sci-fi/adventure series is set to return for a six-episode miniseries run. The announcement coincides with The Prisoner's 40th anniversary.

Reports have Jim Caviezel playing the heroic Number Six -- actor with a penchant for playing long-suffering characters (Bobby Jones, Jesus). Sir Ian McKellen would play arch-nemesis Number Two, while cementing his status alongside Christopher Lee as the greatest nerd project actors of their generation. Between the two of them, they'd own Star Wars, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Frankenstein and X-Men).

The Prisoner is my all-time favorite TV show, ever. EVER! After watching marathon after marathon of The Prisoner, I grokked what makes people become Trekkies or Browncoats. It did more than entertain me, it inspired me. I know that's weird to say about something that's so Orwellian, but it's true. The Prisoner spoke to me when I was a teenager. I bought the GURPS book, bought all the video tapes, and picked up every fan-made book and map of The Village I could find. I bought rub-on transfer letters in the Albertus font so I could make my own signs for my dressing room, and I painstakingly drew my own Number Six badge to wear on my jackets. I read and re-read the graphic Novel Shattered Visage fruitlessly looking for clues about . . . stuff. My first big external SCSI Mac II hard disk, which I think weighed in at a mighty 30 Megabytes, was named KAR120C. Again, living in a post-Phantom Menace world makes me a little nervous, and we've been talking about this remake almost as long as we were talking about a Watchmen movie, so I don't even know if this is as reliable as it seems. Regardless, I'm hopeful that there's someone out there who can treat it right. And a six episode mini-series would be freaking brilliant.

Okay, one last bonus link before I go: years ago, I did an episode of The Outer Limits called The Light Brigade. I was watching The Time Tunnel last night on Hulu, and saw that The Light Brigade is there, as well. It's useless for non-US visitors (can you use a proxy to fool Hulu? I haven't tried) but if you're in the US and want to spend 44 minutes watching me . . . um . . . act, I guess is the word I'm looking for . . . now you can.

2008 geek tour updates (with an update)

This is how the GeekTour ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Bad news, everyone: I'm not going to San Diego Comic-Con. I was planning on attending with TokyoPop, and when they laid off a ton of staff (including my editor, which made me sad) they also pulled out of Comic-Con.

There is a very slim chance that I may crash a booth with a couple of friends, but I honestly don't know if I'll be able to justify the expense; it's become increasingly difficult for me to break even, let alone turn a profit, at Comic-Con. I've got a kid in college, so justifying expenses, even for superhappygoodtimes like SDCC is increasingly difficult.

More bad news, everyone: I've sent a couple of e-mails to Creation about the Big Honkin' Vegas convention in August, and I haven't heard anything back; not even a "No. Now please go away."

Last year, they'd sent me an invite by May. Since I haven't heard anything yet, it's already mid-June, and several people have asked via e-mail and comments here if I'll be going, I went ahead and contacted the same guy who's booked me the last two years. He hasn't replied, so I'm left to assume that they're not interested in having me participate in the con.

I have to say, this makes me really, really sad. I was really looking forward to both of these shows. I can't do anything about TokyoPop pulling out of SDCC, but I've made what I feel are reasonable efforts to contact Creation. If I keep asking, "Hey, guys! Can I please come to your show and help you make money? Can I? Can I? Please? Please? PUH-LEEZE?!" I will start to feel like a chump. In fact, I already feel like a chump. And pretty demoralized, to boot. Maybe I'm "not part of the Star Trek family" again. Sigh.

UPDATED 6-14-08: I just double-checked my spam folders, and I see that the e-mails I've been sending to my contact at Creation have been bouncing back to me, getting marked as Spam. I've just tried a different contact at Creation, so hopefully this one will get through. Now I'm hopeful that perhaps Creation isn't ignoring me, but just didn't know that I was trying to make contact with them.

A little bit of good news, everyone: I'm still on for PAX, where I'll perform from Happiest Days, and rock your world on MarioKartDS. Also, Rock Band. Oh yes, there will be emm effing Rock Band, emm effers.