WWdN: In Exile

in which i fail a vital saving throw

It was the end of the day, and my blood sugar was dangerously low. Colors and sounds were louder than they should have been. My feet and legs had been replaced by two dull, throbbing stumps that barely supported the weight of my body.

Most of the day, I'd been signing autographs for and talking with countless excited fans. Some of them shook my hand too hard and too long with a sweaty grip that trembled a little too much. Some of them stared at me uncomfortably. Some of them rambled incoherently. All of them were genuinely friendly, though.

I took it all in stride, because I've done this convention thing for -- my god -- two decades, and even though I don't think I'm anything worth getting excited about, I know that it happens sometimes, and I know how people occasionally react. I never laugh at them or make them feel lame. I never make jokes at their expense. I am understanding and grateful that they want to talk to me at all. I wouldn't want to talk to me if I was trapped with me in an elevator, and I certainly wouldn't be excited about the prospect if faced with the option. I am always grateful, and take nothing for granted.

A voice boomed over my head, blasting right through my eardrums and exploding inside my skull. The convention floor was closing, it announced, and it was time for all of us to get the fuck out.

Red-jacketed security guards emerged from shadows I hadn't noticed during the day. A handful at first, then a dozen, like zombies pouring through a breach in a barricade. They shambled forward relentlessly, single-mindedly driving a mass of exhibitors and straggling fans toward the doors.

I picked up my backpack, inexplicably heavier than it was before I emptied pounds of books from it earlier in the day, and heaved it onto my shoulders. My back screamed.

"You have to vacate the hall," a girl said to me. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, but clearly wasn't going to take any shit from anyone, especially someone in my weakened state.

"I'm on my way," I said. I turned to say goodbye to my boothmates, and saw the unmistakable visage of Jeph Jacques walk past behind them.

I've done this convention thing for a long time, so I knew that it was unlikely that I'd have a chance to say more than three words to Jeph before the convention was over. If I didn't seize the moment, I probably wouldn't get another chance. I smiled at the girl, faked to my right, and spun to my left around her. I nearly fell over from the effort.

"Hey . . ." she began. I took two quick steps away from her with my last bits of strength.

"Jeph!" I called out. He kept walking. He's done this convention thing before, and, like me, knows that when someone calls out your name at the end of the day it's best to pretend you didn't hear them so you can just get the hell out of the hall and to a place where you can recover your hit points. This place is usually called a bar.

"Jeph! It's Wil Wheaton!" I called out. I don't know Jeph well enough to call him a friend, but we've talked at shows before, and I've always enjoyed our limited interactions. Maybe if he knew it was me, and not some random person, he'd stop so I could say hello. Maybe he wouldn't want to talk to me if we were trapped in an elevator, but I knew the security guards were closing in, and if I could get into his Circle of Protection: Exhibitor, maybe I could stay there for a couple of minutes.

He stopped and turned around. He smiled wearily, and said hello. We shook hands, and I noticed that he'd been walking with someone.

"Hey, have you ever met Randall?" He said.

His companion turned to me and extended his hand. My brain screamed at me, "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD THAT'S RANDALL MUNROE! BE COOL!"

Before I knew what was happening, my hand shot out from my body and grabbed his. I incoherently babbled something about how much I love his work. He tried to say something, but I just. kept. talking.

My brain screamed at me, "SHUT UP! YOU'RE MAKING A FOOL OF YOURSELF YOU ASSHOLE!"

My mouth, however, was out of my control. I continued to ramble, vomiting a turgid cascade of genuinely-excited praise and gratitude all over him.

A full minute later, I realized, to my abject horror, that my hand was still shaking his. I held it too hard in a sweaty, trembling hand. Darkness flashed at the edges of my vision, and I felt weak. I pulled my hand back, a little too quickly, mumbled an apology, and shut my mouth.

They said things to me, but I couldn't hear them over my own brain screaming at me, "GET OUT OF THERE YOU COCKASS. YOU HAD ONE CHANCE TO MEET RANDALL MUNROE AND YOU BLEW IT! I HATE YOU! YOU GO TO HELL NOW! YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE!"

A hand fell on my shoulder. I turned toward it, and saw the security girl.

"Sir, you need to leave the hall." She said. "Now." She had backup: a pair of similarly-aged teens, two boys working on their first mustaches. They fixed me with a steely-eyed gazes.

I have never been so relieved to be kicked out of anyplace in the world as I was then.

"I guess I better go," I said. I took a short breath, and lamely added, "it's really nice to meet you. I really do love your work."

My brain did the slow clap.

His reply did not penetrate the wall of shame I'd constructed around myself, though I clearly recall that he didn't make fun of me, or make me feel stupid, or let on that I was a sweaty, shaking, raving lunatic. He didn't appear to be grateful that we weren't trapped in an elevator, though I suspect he must have been. As I fled the hall, I was grateful for his kindness, patience, and understanding.

Once outside, I went to a place where I could forget my appalling embarrassment.

That place was called a bar.

cross yourselves, then cross the streams

Remind me to tell you how I totally failed my save against "OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU'RE RANDALL MUNROE" when I met Randall Munroe at Comic-Con.

this breaks my heart

James Doohan's son Erich wrote an essay about the failure of SpaceX to take is father's ashes into orbit last week. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

There have been many attempts to send my father on his way. On Saturday, the latest launch attempt by SpaceX, with a portion of my father's remains aboard, failed to achieve orbit. While there are many complicated reasons why this is a disappointment, mine is simple: I'd like to finish saying goodbye.

Every launch attempt is like reliving his funeral. There’s a lot of pomp and ceremony, and a retelling of his deeds in life. But at the end of these funerals, something goes awry, the body doesn't get buried, and you know you're going to have to come back to do it over again.

I knew Erich when we were kids, because he was good friends with my younger brother. He was around our house all the time, and I really liked him. I can't imagine the pain of having to say goodbye to your father over and over again, and in public, no less.

Space shuttle astronauts are allowed to take small amounts of personal items with them into space. Surely there is someone on an upcoming mission who can help give Jimmy a proper burial, right?

calling all geeks

I'm in Head Down mode while I race to the finishdeadline for the introduction to Your Hate Mail Will be Graded, which collects ten years (!) of John Scalzi's blog, Whatever. I care about this particular project more than I do the average project (which is already a lot, mind you) because John is my friend, and letting him down is not an option.

So there's not going to be a whole lot of stuff here (well, stuff with any deep commentary or extended content) until the deadline passes.

However, in this hour's (hours'? hours? stupid grammar is almost as hard as math) 12 minutes of "do whatever I want" time, I wanted to share a new group I created at Propeller 2.0, called the Geek Group:

This group is for me and my fellow geeks. There will be overlap with Science, I'm sure, but we can watch and share stories about comics, science fiction (books and movies), hobby games like D, geeky television shows like Heroes and LOST, and events like Comic-Con, GenCon, Dragon*Con and PAX.

This, I think, is the coolest part of Propeller 2.0: users can create and join groups that are tailored to our various interests, so we can find stories, information, and other people who have those interests in common. It dramatically improves the signal to noise ratio, and creates a more "social" social news experience. We've got 67 members, and some cool stories are starting to fill up our "stories this group is watching" thing, so come on down and get your geek on!

I can tell by watching this that he used to be cool.

This was shot by my friend Rich, presumably while I was driving home from Comic-Con. This video is awesome, but it makes me sad because it reminds me of one of the best things ever about working on TNG (Jonathan Frakes breaking into show tunes at random intervals) and it reminds me that I saw Jonathan at Comic-Con, but I couldn't get close enough to him to say hello.

You know, the worst part of being excluded from the Vegas con is that I'm missing the once-a-year opportunity to see some people I really like (and miss) who live very, very far away.

part three of my interview with comicmix

The final part of my three part interview with Comicmix is online.

COMICMIX: Okay, Wil, as a writer and reader of comics, what makes a good story to you?

WIL WHEATON: Comics are a visual medium, so the artwork is extremely important to me. There are tremendously talented writers who occasionally get paired up with artists whose art I don't like. And I won't read those books.

There are artists and writers who collaborate together. Matt [Fraction] gives Casanova artist Gabriel Ba as much credit for Casanova being awesome as people give Matt for making Casanova awesome. Ed [Brubaker] does the same thing with Criminal. And I think that says a lot about the importance of a good team-up. I'm lucky.

I've gotten to work with some great artists when I've done manga for TokyoPop.I don't know if the stories I've written would have the same emotional impact with the reader with different art. That really, really important combination of peanut butter and chocolate is really important to making comic books great.

Um. Wil? How about you answer the goddamn question?

What makes a book -- just a standard book -- very good, is the story and the dialogue and the interaction of the characters. So what makes a comic book great is those ingredients all put together, matched up with good pacing and really good artwork. A lot of the Alan Moore comics have all these wonderful elements that make reading comics fun, too. Top Ten is like playing "Where's Waldo," because after you've read the story you can go back through and read it again. Or if you read Watchmen and see the issues, there's the Rorschach issue that's in the middle where it mirrors itself -- that kind of stuff. A book like Sin City that uses positive and negative space really creatively, that's a great book, too.

Of course, I should disclaim all this stuff. I recently wrote that I was worried about the new Star Trek movie being good, and I was vilified by Star Trek fans for having the temerity for expressing an opinion about this. Like I don't deserve to have an opinion about this.

This is the end of about 2 hours of me and Chris talking, and this final part feels rambling to me, which is probably how I felt when we'd talked for about 2 hours. I got to talk about technology a little bit, though, which was kind of cool:

CMix: What about the one piece of technology you can't live without?

WW: The technology I can't live without? Does encryption count as technology? It would have to be encryption. Think about the Internet without encryption. Absolutely no shopping online at all. None. Ever.

Not a single financial transaction would be possible without encryption.

Sure, there are things that I like that are fun. But can't live without? I could not live without encryption -- and to make it clear, I'm talking about open source public encryption. R.S.A. standards.

Yay standards! Yay for stating the obvious! Yay for Neil Gaiman writing Batman next year!

Oh, my favorite part of the interview is when I go on and on about my creative process. It's really too long to excerpt, but I promise it's worth the effort to go read the whole interview at Comicmix.

See what I did there?

green grass and high tides forever (and ever and ever and ever and

Ryan goes back to school in just under 2 weeks, and I've been bugging him to play the Endless Setlist with me on Rock Band before he leaves.

If you're unfamiliar with Rock Band's multiplayer thing, the Endless Setlist is the last thing you unlock in the game when you're playing as a band. It is exactly what it sounds like: a concert featuring all 58 songs that come with the game. It takes about six hours to play if you don't take any extended breaks.

Today, Ryan and I tackled it on expert. He played guitar, and I played bass. It was awesome. We got five stars on pretty much everything for the first 20 or so songs, including three gold stars. I got the authentic strummer thing and 99% on about half of them.

We were seriously having a good time, striking the rock pose, putting our backs together while we jammed through epic songs, bonding through the power of rock.

Then, with five songs left to go, we got to Green Grass and High Tides.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rock Band, this is a fantastic southern rock song by the Outlaws. It's also one of the hardest in the game, and the longest, weighing in at around 10 minutes. It's a song that you don't play as much as survive, and it does its best to really beat you down. If a song could kick you in the junk, this would be it. If this song were a poker game, it would be Razz.

So, after already playing for 5 hours, (and not exactly conserving our energy) we started to play this rock epic, knowing it would be the greatest challenge we'd faced yet.

Our first time through, we failed at 84%. It was entirely my fault for holding my guitar too high and deploying our emergency overdrive when we didn't need it.

"Sorry about that," I said as we lost 360,000 fans. "I blame my guitar."

Ryan looked at me.

"Okay, I blame myself."

Ryan laughed and said it was no big deal. He was confident we'd get it on the next try, and when we started the song, I could see why. He was in the zone, nailing 97% of the first solo. I wanted to holler about how awesome he was, but I felt like it would have been the same as talking to my pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter, so I stayed quiet and did my best not to screw things up.

I screwed things up, and we failed the song at 96%. We lost another 360,000 fans, almost wiping out the million we'd picked up when we did the Southern Rock Marathon last week. Compared to the nearly 5 and a half hours we'd spent playing, that 18 minutes wasn't that long, but it sure felt demoralizing, especially because it was, again, entirely my fault we'd failed. See, there's this bass phrase that's repeated over and over and over, and if you're just a tiny bit off (like I was) you're screwed, and . . . well, you get the point.

I dropped my hands to my side and let the guitar hand around my neck. My arms were tired, my legs hurt, and my vision was getting blurry.

"I think I've identified the weak link in our band, and it's me," I said. "I'm really sorry."

"It's okay," Ryan said, "but I think I want to take a break."

"Good idea," I said. "Let's pause this, go out for something to eat, and come back later."

Ryan walked into his room and turned on his shower. I unplugged my guitar so we didn't have to worry about our dogs knocking it down and starting the game again while we were gone.

In my memory, the next few moments happen in slow motion:

• I pick up Ryan's guitar, the wireless PS2 guitar from GHIII.
• I hold down the button to get the control screen.
• The dashboard comes up, and it gives me the option to cancel, turn off the controller, or turn off the system.
• I click the strum bar to select "turn off the controller."
• I set the guitar on the ground -- carefully -- and reach up to click the green fret button.
• I hear the Xbox beep.
• I push the button.
• I realize that the beep was the strum bar clicking one more time when I set the guitar down, selecting "Shutdown the System."
• The system shuts down, taking all of our progress with it.
• Time resumes to normal. For the next 120 seconds, I use every curse word I know, until my throat is raw. It takes everything I have not to grab the guitar and get all Pete Townshend on it.

Ryan came out of his room.

"What happened?" He said.

I told him.

What happened next was astonishing to me: Ryan didn't freak out. He didn't get upset. Instead, he told me, "Calm down, Wil. It's just a game. We can do it again."

I was still really upset. It was an accident, yes, but it was my fault. In my head, I kept replaying all the different ways I could have powered down his guitar that were more careful. I really felt like an asshole, because I screwed up twice and caused us to fail both times. I felt like an asshole, because I screwed up and lost all the progress we'd made. Mostly, though, I felt like an asshole because I really wanted to accomplish this feat with my son. I really wanted to have that memory.

What I got, though, was better than what I'd hoped for. I got to see Ryan exhibit one of the key values I'd raised him with: he kept everything in perspective, and found all the good things in the experience, like the gold stars we scored, the fun we had playing all the other songs, and the time we spent together. He reminded me that it's not about winning, it's about playing the game.

If you've read my blog for any amount of time, I'm sure you can appreciate how great it felt to hear my words and my values come out of my son's mouth.

I don't write about my boys very often these days. Their friends read my blog, and they sometimes read my blog. They're not little kids any more and I feel like it's not cool to talk about everything we do together with the Internet . . .

. . . but in this case, I'm making an exception.

at long last, your wait to see me, wil wheaton, interviewed at comic-con has come to an end

I'm home from Comic-Con, and in that weird state where I'm too tired to be coherent, but too adrenalized to go to sleep. It's pretty common to feel this way (like I've eaten a bag of Guatemalan Insanity Peppers) at the end of a long day at a con. There's an accumulative effect, though, for epic shows like PAX and Comic-Con, and after thee days there plus a 2 hour drive home, my dogs are speaking to me in Johnny Cash's voice. Also, someone's built a pro shop shaped like a pyramid in my back yard, the doll's trying to kill me, and the toaster's been laughing at me.

Uhm. Right.

So. Until I can get my pictures uploaded and my thoughts organized, I thought I'd share this interview I did with Mahalo Daily from the Dumbrella booth yesterday. I'm slightly more coherent then, than I am now.

Woah. Paradox.

i'm off to nerd prom

It's so weird to have this great week working on Criminal Minds that I can't talk about in any detail until October. I have no mouth, and I must scream, you could say. How about I just give up one little non-spoilery thing, and nobody tells on me, okay?

At the end of the shoot, I was thanking a lot of the people I worked with for making it such a great experience. Every single one of them told me that they wished I worked on the show every day. I guess the feeling was mutual.

So, yeah, that made me feel pretty good. If you get a chance to work on Criminal Minds, I highly recommend it.

Now, to business:

Tomorrow, I'm heading down to San Diego for an abbreviated stay at Comic-Con. Here's my schedule:

• On Thursday, I'll be on a panel called Star Trek Without a Blueprint: How books and comics keep expanding the boundaries of the Star Trek universe. We'll be talking about the future of Star Trek publishing in room 32AB from 4:00-5:00. I'll be on the panel with Andy Mangels (moderator and Star Trek author), Margaret Clark (executive editor, Pocket Books), Andy Schmidt (senior editor, IDW) and Star Trek authors Kevin Dilmore, Dave Mack, Scott Tipton, and Dayton Ward.
• The rest of the time, I'll be with my friend Rich Stevens at the Dumbrella booth, which is number 1335. MC Frontalot is going to be there, too, so if you're looking to fill that final square on Nerd Bingo, come and see us.
  

Oh. I guess it would be useful to know what I'm taking with me to sign and sell, wouldn't it?

In addition to some 8x10s from Star Trek and Stand By Me, I'll have copies of The Happiest Days of Our Lives , which I'm kind of hoping will sell out.

I'll have a few copies of Dancing Barefoot and Just A Geek. I'll also have a few copies of Volume 2 of the Star Trek Manga. I won't have any copies of Volume 3 of the Star Trek Manga, but it's just been released, so I'm sure you'll be able to pick up a copy somewhere. If you bring it to the booth, I'm happy to sign it for you.

Finally, I will have copies of this year's Chapbook, which is called Sunken Treasure. What's that, you say? You don't know what that is? You don't have time to click a link, you say? Well, my lazy friend, allow me to show you part of the author's note:

Every summer, I make one of these limited chapbooks and take them with me on the inevitable summer convention tour. In the past, I’ve pulled material from whatever I’m working on, as sort of a fall preview, but this year the book I’m working on is so top secret, I’d have to print the chapbook on self-destructing paper, and while that would make it a very limited edition, the costs associated are kind of prohibitive.

So for 2008’s limited edition chapbook extravaganza, I’ve put together the first ever Wil Wheaton Sampler. With the help of my editor Andrew, who is a former ninja warrior and recreational time traveler, I’ve pulled together things I like from all three of my books, my blog, and this groovy collaborative fiction project I play with called Ficlets. I’ve also included, for the first time anywhere, one of the scripts I wrote for a sketch comedy show at the ACME Comedy Theater.

I am really proud of Sunken Treasure, and I think Andrew (my friend and editor) and I came up with something really special. I only sold about a dozen of them at San Jose Super-Con (there really weren't that many people there this year) and since I'm not welcome at the Creation convention in Vegas, the only places you can get copies of it will be Comic-Con and PAX. I'm anxious to get these little books out into the wild, though, so I hope you'll tell everyone you know, for a grand total of 150 people (you guys can coordinate this, right?) to come by the Dumbrella booth and check it out. It's so weird to make something I'm so proud of, and only get to share it with a handful of people so far.

I don't know if I'll be particularly motivated to post while I'm away. I'll likely be posting all sorts of things to Twitter, including where I am and when I'll be signing. There will also be pithy observations about my fellow geeks, so you don't want to miss that. Erm, provided I can avoid the fail whale, that is. Ahem.

The Internet is quiet as hell lately. I feel like I'm talking into an empty tube, so thanks for reading and commenting; it makes me feel a little less like a crazy old man with no pants standing on the corner ranting about the weather.

part two of my interview with comicmix

The second part of my interview with Comicmix is online, wherein I say things like:

I was one of the earliest Mac adopters. I had a Mac 128K in the first few months of its release. [. . .] I loved that computer. It was portable, which is funny to say now, because it only weighed like, 20-30 pounds. It had a handle on the top, so clearly, it was portable.

And:

I don't ever want to lose the experience of going to the comic shop on Wednesday and walking around -- even if I'm only there to get two books. Spending 40 minutes looking at everything and talking to the other geeks that are there and having the owner of the comic shop say, "I know you normally don't read this, but based on the years of you coming here I think you'd like it," I really like that.

And:

CMix: Do you read any of the Star Trek comics at all?

WW: No.

CMix: No desire to or you just don't care?

WW: It's not that I have no desire. It's not that I don't care. It's that I have a limited amount of time and I have to choose really carefully where I invest that time. If I'm forced to choose between a Star Trek comic or Criminal, I just enjoy Criminal more, so...

Um. In other words, I have no desire and I don't care, I guess. That sounds really harsh, but . . . well, I just don't know how to finish that without feeling like a dick. I guess that I like Star Trek a lot, but not enough to read the novels and comic books.

. . . yep, feeling like a dick right now.

Point of clarification: In the interview, I say "I've been reading Batman since Grant Morrison started working on it, because there are a few guys in the world that I'll read anything by. Grant Morrison does Teletubbies, I'm there." This makes it sound like I started reading Batman when Grant Morrison's run began, but I've actually been reading Batman since around 1987 or 1988.

You can read the entire interview (part two of three) at Comicmix. You may also want to read part one. Hell, for all I know, you may want to look at a picture of a duck*. Go nuts, I'm not the boss of you.

*I really wanted to link to a SFW picture of Jenna Jameson there, but I was pretty sure I'd get letters if I did.