WWdN: In Exile

anne and wil's excellent new york adventure, part two

When we last left our heroes, your humble narrator had just gathered up his droogs for a little bit of the old ultraviolence a--

Oops. Sorry. Wrong humble narrator. Allow me to begin again.

When we last left our heroes, your humble narrator had just suggested a quick walk uptown to see the Flatiron building.

We headed back up fifth avenue toward midtown. It was starting to get dark, and we'd planned to meet up with Kathleen and Atom for snacks and drink, so we had time for just one more silly sight seeing thing I wanted to do.

"I really want to see the Flatiron building," I said.

"I really wish you wouldn't talk in hyperlinks," Anne said.

"Sorry. I'm a blogger. I can't help it."

"What's the Flatiron building?" She said.

"Oh, you'll recognize it as soon as you see it, " I said. "It's only about a fifteen minute walk from here."

I hate to disappoint everyone who was waiting for the hilarious joke about how it took an hour when I made a wrong turn and ended up looking into the Hudson, but the boring truth is that it really did take just about fifteen minutes to walk from Washington Square Park up fifth avenue to 22nd street.

The journey was not unpleasant, though I did notice an unsettling amount of big chain stores along the way. Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting really sick and tired of seeing the same twenty stores wherever I go. At least they left the buildings alone on 5th, though. In California they tear the historical buildings down and replace them with peach stucco boxes that invariably have a Subway, Jamba Juice and Old Navy in them.

A question for New Yorkers: What's with all the scaffolds? They seem as impermanent as the going out of business sales you used to see in the camera shops on Times Square before it was gentrified into a giant fucking mall.

By the time we'd made it to 22nd street, I'd gotten Anne accustomed to walking across a street when it was safe, rather than only when permitted by a stoplight. This is a significant achievement for a couple of California kids. Please send flowers and awards.

"Okay, we just have to walk up one more block, and then you'll totally recognize it," I said.

One block later, Anne said, "Hey! I totally recognize this building!"

"I know it's stupid to walk all the way up here just to look at a building with a funny shape," I said, "but since we never do authentically 'touristy' things, I thought this was a better plan than going to the Hard Rock."

We walked up into Madison Square a little bit, while I took some pictures. "Man, this is going to be called 'Wil's trip to New York where he took pictures of the Flatiron building." I said. I took a few more and added, "If I take many more, I think I'm officially stalking it."

(The pictures are meh, but I'm particularly proud of this one, with the crescent moon sort of hanging around and saying, "Hey! I'm the moon! Soy la Luna!")

I put the camera away, and we walked into Madison Square Park. It was just as exciting and vibrant as Washington Square Park, without all the damn construction. We particularly enjoyed all the dogs getting their dog park on, juxtaposed against the tons of people sitting on benches using the WiFi on their laptops and iPhones. Living in Los Angeles with a huge back yard, we totally take public outdoor spaces for granted -- and let's face it, most of our urban parks here are crummy and filled with hobos -- so it was cool to see so many people outside, enjoying them in the midst of the concrete jungle.

We meandered though the park and passed a couple in their mid-twenties, sitting together on a bench on what was most likely a pre-third date meeting. The energy and excitement between them was electric. Anne squeezed my hand a little tighter and said, "I love that I'm in New York with my husband."

"I love that too," I said. "I'm really glad we could make this trip."

Just then her phone chirped at her. "It's Kat and Atom," she said, "they want to meet up at Galaxy in a few minutes."

"You mean Galaxy?"

"I really hate it when you do that."

"At least I didn't do this," I said.

"You can't Rickroll me in real life, dummy." She said.

"Oh yeah? Ask me a question."

She sighed and put her hand on her hip. "What time is it?"

"'Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down never gonna --"

"Just stop it. This conversation isn't even happening. You're just making it up to amuse yourself."

It was true.

"How am I doing?"

"The real me would probably make a comment that's a lot funnier than anything you can come up with, and since you're putting words into my mouth anyway, I'm just going to say that you're handsome, suave and charming."

"Oh go on," I said.

"Also, when we get home, you should buy several classic game cabinets and put them in your office."

"You're the boss, dear," I said.

And that's exactly how it happened, I swear to jeebus.

Still more to come . . .

anne and wil's excellent new york adventure, part one

My friends Kathleen and Atom got married to each other last week, and Anne and I went to New York for their wedding.

It's the first time I've been to New York and the first time Anne and I have been able to go anywhere together for more than two days in forever, so I decided to keep business to a minimum while we were there (as it turns out, a lot of people I work with in various capacities live in Manhattan, and it would have been all-too-easy to end up with six hours of meetings a day.)

During the height of my "Hey, you're that guy on TV" years, I went to New York every couple of months for press events, meetings, and other PR-related things. I'm sure I went there for at least one Star Trek convention, but in my memory, New York, Philly, and Pittsburgh are all conflated and I couldn't tell you which was which.

(Hey! Want to know how to piss off everyone who lives in New York, Philly and Pittsburgh? Tell them you've been to their cities but can't tell them apart. Before you send in angry cards and letters, I don't mean the cities. I mean the conventions. In fact, I've done so many conventions in my life, it's a miracle that I can keep any of them separate from another in my brain, which I've tried so hard to kill with beer over the years.)

Anne and I were very excited to go to New York. We absolutely adore our friends, who are absolutely perfect for each other, and we were both tremendously excited to get some time away together in one of the coolest cities on the planet.

We took the Red Eye out of LAX, planning to grab some sleep on the plane so we could get the most out of the next day when we arrived.

Guess how that worked out? They don't call it the Red Eye for nothing.

Actually, it's pretty funny in retrospect: I'm reading a book that is magnificent. I won't tell you what it is, because you'd lose a lot of respect for me upon learning that I didn't read this book a decade -- or more -- ago. Suffice to say, it's one of the best I've ever read, and I'm well into the point in the book where I don't want to do anything except fall into it and keep reading.

Our flight took off at 11:40, and I read this particular book until about 2:30  Pacific time. We were supposed to land just before 8 Eastern time, so I forced myself to put the book down and get some sleep.

I reclined my seat to the maximum four degrees allowed, put on a silly eye mask, and settled in for a few hours of sleep.

That's when the turbulence started. Seriously! It was like the air was just waiting for me to close my eyes so it could start shaking the plane. Imagine that you're starting to fall asleep, and someone comes up and shakes your chair: "Hey! Wake up! Dude! Wake up!"

Yeah, it's hilarious now, but at the time? Not that funny.

So we don't sleep at all, sit in horrible morning rush hour traffic fro JFK to Manhattan, and finally get to take a little nap around 10.

"I don't want to sleep the entire day away," I said when we got into our hotel, "and end up so jet lagged I'm staying up all night and missing the days while we're here."

"Don't worry," Anne said, closing the curtains, "I'll only sleep for an hour or so, and then I'll wake you up."

Four hours later, we woke up, groggy but rested enough to go explore Manhattan a little bit.

First stop: food. We were staying at the W on Union Square, so we walked to Dojo West by NYU. I had a bowl of lentil soup with an awesome soy burger, and Anne had a tofu salad with this incredible soy ginger carrot dressing that was the size of Delaware. There was so much food, we had to share it and still couldn't eat it all. Total bill? About 17 bucks, which seems like a lot, but for the amount of food we got it really wasn't.

Like I said, I wanted to keep business to a minimum, so I used a simple criteria: I only set up business meetings with people who are close friends, so we could pretend it wasn't business (even though it really was.) Ha! Take that, uh, thing-that-needs-a-finger-wagging-from-Wil. (That doesn't make sense to me, either. Let's never speak of it again.)

The first business-but-not-really stop was at Rockstar games, so we could visit with my friend Lazlow, who is responsible for all the awesome audio, dialog and music in the Grant Theft Auto games. Lazlow and I met years ago when I was promoting Dancing Barefoot and he interviewed me for his radio show, The Technophile. We hit it off, and eventually Lazlow cast me as Richard Burns in San Andreas.

Now I'm sure you're wondering what business we could possibly have had to discuss, what with GTA IV about to ship and take over all of our lives in ways that not even Halo 3 and Rock Band could achieve.

Well, I'm kinda sorta, well, in GTA IV. It's not a huge part, but it's massively entertaining, and Lazlow wanted to show me how my character ended up looking and how all the work we did looked when it was all put together. I can't say anything specific about it, but in my totally objective opinion, it's awesome and will be the most memorable part of the game, probably spinning off a multi-billion dollar franchise of its own.

And the Rockstar offices? Sofa king cool. There's great music playing everywhere, lots of bikes, arcade cabinets, and tons of extremely focused people who care deeply about making sure the games they release are as awesome as they can possibly be. I saw a lot of stuff that I'd get thrown out of a helicopter for revealing, but I think I can safely admire how they've got an entire department dedicated to researching the cities, people, culture, and history of the places they set their games.

And Lazlow's dog is adorable, smart, supports Obama and followed us all over the building. Because every day at Rockstar is Bring Your Dog to Work Day.

The excitement for GTA IV's release was palpable, and so was the pressure everyone was obviously under as the street date draws near. We could have spent hours there, (I could have stayed in the research department alone for the rest of the day) but it was clear that there was lots of real work to be done, and we didn't want to overstay our welcome, so we thanked Lazlow for showing us around and headed back out into the city.

Next stop: Washington Square Park, which I didn't know was reduced by 50% because they're doing some massive renovation on the whole thing. I haven't been there in over a decade, but the stuff I loved about it back then: the students, the various musicians, the dog walkers and the weirdoes were still there. We passed a bebop jazz duo, stopped to listen to a different jazz quartet and watched some film students screw light bulbs into the dirt beneath a tree (I hope they were filming in black and white, and the finished cut has a clown flipping pancakes before it says fin and fades to black.) We saw tons of families playing with their kids, students playing frisbee, religious nuts squawking about their particular flavor of Armageddon. It was like the city had managed to temporarily cut the park in half, but didn't reduce any of the things that made it a weird and wonderful place to visit.

We headed back up fifth avenue toward midtown. It was starting to get dark, and we'd planned to meet up with Kathleen and Atom for snacks and drink, so we had time for just one more silly sight seeing thing I wanted to do.

"I really want to see the Flatiron building," I said.

"I really wish you wouldn't talk in hyperlinks," Anne said.

"Sorry. I'm a blogger. I can't help it."

"What's the Flatiron building?" She said.

"Oh, you'll recognize it as soon as you see it, " I said. "It's only about a fifteen minute walk from here."

More later . . .

Gorgeous Tiny Chickens, Batman, and the Happiest Media Kit

I guess it's appropriate that I'm a computer geek, because I have a very binary lifestyle: my level of work is either 0 or 1, with nothing in between.

I'm currently set to 1, so my time to post is very limited (though I've been using Twitter like crazy, because it's fast, immediate, and portable.)

However, I wanted to take a moment and share three things for your pleasurable enjoying.

1. I did an episode of Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show last week. I don't know when it will be released, but I saw an edit of it last night that is hilarious.

2. I got permission from James Tucker, producer of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, to tell the world that I worked on the show Monday. I can't say anything about the content of the episode or the character I play -- apparently, it's a Darth Vader-is-his-father kind of secret -- but it was massively fun, and since I'm one of the world's biggest Batman Geeks, it was kind of a dream come true.

3. I can't believe how many orders of Happiest Days were recently placed! I guess I should run out of printings more frequently. Many of you asked for a media kit, like the one I did for Dancing Barefoot. Well, here's the Happiest Days of Our Lives media kit. Please download it and use it; it's under a Creative Commons license, so I encourage you to get crazy go nuts with it.

Shit. The robots are crawling all over the lab again. I have to get back to work.

the secret life of wheatons

And now, via reprinted text messages, a glimpse into the private lives of a geek, his wife, and their son:

Anne: Michelle was late, so I'm going to be at work longer than I thought. See you guys sometime around 9.

Me: Somehow, someway, between Battlestar Galactica, NHL playoffs, and Rock Band, we will find the strength to survive until you make it home.

For the record, it was Battlestar Galactica. BSG pre-dates TiVo in our house, so we've been DVD viewers until this season. TiVo is storing season 4 for us while we devour -- and thoroughly enjoy -- season 3. Also for the record, Nolan and I survived just fine until Anne got home. So say we all.

sitting on stairways is strictly prohibited

If you don't follow me on Twitter, you probably don't know that I was in New York until yesterday.

I'm working on a full-on trip report, with lots of pictures, a review of Spamalot, and a few jokes, but I'm busy getting actual work done so it'll have to wait a day or so.

Until I have time to properly show you New York the way I saw New York, please enjoy this example of why New York is so awesome:

For the photographically-challenged, that's a girl sitting on a stairway in Grand Central Station, next to a sign which explains that Sitting on Stairways is Strictly Prohibited. Yes, those are three New York City police officers watching -- and laughing -- at her audacity. I don't know if they wrote her up, but I doubt they did. I got the sense that the NYPD had much better things to do with their time than write stupid tickets to college students who were on their cell phones.

in which wheaton discovers something obvious about his writing process

Nolan is on Spring Break this week, so I've been working for the first half of the day, and then goofing off with him for the rest of the day. It's been really fun and fulfilling, with some added creative benefits. See, I started breaking this story about three weeks ago, and around the end of last week, I got seriously derailed. I'd reach out into the Mysterious Universe to find what happens next, and I'd keep coming back empty handed.

Since Nolan started Spring Break, though, this structure of buckling down and doing all the left brain stuff in the morning has freed up the right brain (where all the good ideas apparenly hide out) to spit ideas out at me for the rest of the day. We went to see Leatherheads yesterday (I enjoyed it very much: 3.9 muddy olde timey helmets out of 5) and in the middle of the movie, my brain said, "Hey! That problem you've been having? Here's how you solve it!" I had to walk out of the theater for a minute and scribble it down in my notebook.

This newly-discovered schedule is great because it satisfies both the crazy artist who is compelled to create and the responsible father who is compelled to provide for his family. My greatest dream in my life is to finally be able to satisfy both of these people by doing the same thing. The stuff I'm working on right now has a better chance than anything else in recent memory to accomplish that, so it's equally awesome and terrifying.

So far, the writing process for this story is very different from anything I've ever done before. It's a little awkward, but necessary for this particular project. Allow me to explain -- no, there is no time. Allow me to sum up: I usually find the characters, find the "wouldn't it be cool if . . ." and put them together with a very vague idea of where they'll end up. For this particular project, I need to have the whole Big Idea and its various plot points worked out before I can do anything else. I have that, so now I'm looking under rocks and in the couch cushions for characters I care about and find interesting enough to put into this Big Idea. Because it's so different from the way I usually work, I feel like I'm in a bit of a cage that I can't escape from until I find these characters to lead me out.

Hey! I like that metaphor. Go me.

So what was I talking about? Oh, yes. Stuff about the writing process that's probably only interesting to me. Right. Let's wrap up, shall we?

Nolan's Spring Break has given me a great excuse to work hard for a certain amount of time each day, so I can relax and enjoy myself the rest of the day. When I write columns and stuff, a looming, terrifying deadline is just what I need to force the words out of my head. I've only written a little bit of fiction, but I've learned that what works for non-fiction just doesn't work at all for fiction (makes sense, I know, but I didn't grok that until I said it out loud recently) A deadline is important because it keeps me motivated and provides a certain amount of fucos, but sitting down and writing it until it's done, which has worked very well for things like Games of Our Lives and Geek in Review, just doesn't work for [project name redacted]. I'm sure this seems elementary to everyone who has ever done anything like this, and now that I see it typed out here, it seems so obvious that I've considered just deleting most of this post . . . but this was like one of those posters that looks like a bunch of noise until your brain relaxes enough to reveal the space shuttle, which pops out at you in magical 3-D.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have space shuttles to find.

This is for Nolan . . .

Because if you can't do totally ridiculous and silly things with your blog for your kids, what's the point of even having one?

in which i co-write a special edition of PvP

Scott Kurtz, who is the mad genius behind PvP, recently took a week off while he had the bird flu or the bubonic plague or the Andromeda strain or something like that.*

While he was recovering, a bunch of people filled in for him and did guest strips at PvP Online. One of those guest strips was done by Rich Stevens, the mad genius behind Diesel Sweeties. When Rich told me that he was guesting and asked if I would I like to write the strip with him, I dropped everything (note to self: don't carry priceless works of historical pottery while reading e-mail from Rich in the future) and put on my thinking cap, which as it turns out was made of bacon.

Please to be enjoying Brent Sienna and his Amazing Nitrate-Free Porknicolor Dreamcoat, written by Rich and Wil, and drawn by Rich.

*all kidding aside, it was a pretty serious case of staph and I'm glad that Scott recovered fully, because he's a good person and I really like him.

i never get tired of this

what scalzi said

Atrios used to have this series of posts called "What Digby said."

Digby and Atrios are two of my favorite political writers and thinkers (Glenn Greenwald, Josh Marshall, John Cole and Bob Somerby probably round out the starting infield on my all-star team, if you care about that sort of thing) so I always enjoyed it when Atrios -- who is no slouch -- would quote Digby and simply say, "What Digby said."

I think I'm going to have to start a similar bunch of posts here, called What Scalzi Said, because I keep trying to write up my own take on something John's written, and I end up feeling massively inadequate. It would just be better to point to it and say, "What Scalzi said." Or, if I was on Fark, I'd quote it and add: THIS.

Today's edition of What Scalzi Said addresses a complicated issue that I could have written about myself if I wasn't so self conscious about the whole thing. He calls it Meeting Authors (and me):

One aspect of fame — even the rather meager portion of it that I and most authors have — is that more people know you than you know, and they have a relationship with you that you don’t have with them. I can’t individually know everyone who reads one of my books or reads Whatever; I’d have no time left at the end of the day. And once again it makes me feel sorry for people who are genuinely famous, who have this sort of unequal relationship with millions of people, not just a few sundry thousands. I do think it’s worth remembering that even though you’ve read our books (and our blogs) and feel friendly toward us, on our end of things you’re a stranger, even if we’ve interacted with you through blog comments or e-mail or whatever.

[...]

That said, you know: I’m just this guy. There’s no great science to meeting me or any author for the first time. Presuming that you are adult and socialized reasonably well, the way to introduce yourself to me is the same way you would introduce yourself to anyone you’ve not actually met before in real life. You come up, make sure I’m not currently engaged in a task that needs my full attention, say “excuse me” or “hello” to get my attention, and then introduce yourself. Wherein you and I will likely have a nice, brief chat, and after a minute or two we’ll disengage and go about our lives. Pretty simple.

It's hard for me to just excerpt a little bit of it, especially because I've been on both sides of the conversation, but all I can really add to it is, "THIS."  I really want to encourage everyone who may find themselves in a position to meet an author, actor, musician, or net.celebrity to go and read it. The conversation in the comments is great, too.

This has been the first installment of What Scalzi Said, brought to you by Slurm (it's highly addictive!) Please stay tuned for Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, coming up next!