WWdN: In Exile

WWdN tourneys at pokerstars

This is your semi-regular reminder that the WWdN Friday game on Tuesday is tonight, and while I have your attention, I'll also remind you that the Thursday game is the day after tomorrow.

After much tweaking of the schedules, I've decided that the games will always take place at 8:30 EST on Tuesday, and 8:30 PST on Thursday. This should give everyone a chance to make it home from work, school, or the Regal Beagle in time to play.

A question for European players: are there more than five of you? I'm happy to host a once-a-month European-friendly game that would start very early (around noon Pacific) to accomodate you guys, if there's enough interest.

Also, don't forget that everyone who enters the Tuesday game has a shot at the WWdN Tournament of Champions, which is a free-roll SNG, sponsored by PokerStars. If you win a Tuesday game, you'll get a chance to play against me and seven other winners for some serious money, just because PokerStars loves you that much. I've been remiss in getting the first ToC scheduled, and I'll take care of that shortly.

Here are the details for tonight's game, which is the first game to be named after a previous champion, who I also happen to consider a friend:

What: WWdN: penner42 Invitational
Where: PokerStars.
When: Tuesday, January 31. 8:30 EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 18610753
Buy-in: $10 1

We're averaging about 70 players per game. I'd love to get that number up over 100, so the final two tables pay. Any suggestions on how to do that?

(Crossposted to CardSquad.com, where you can also read my review of High Stakes Poker on GSN)

two follow-ups

Follow-up to Radio Free Burrito Episode Four: Like I thought, I did a great job on the voice audition, and they loved what I did. Also like I thought, my voice is too deep for the character, so I didn't get the part. Sadtimes, made less sad by the casting director telling my manager that everyone at Nick likes what I do, and they'll bring me back until they find a project that I can be part of.

Follow-up to the Walter post: Like I thought, I sucked out loud, and they were kind enough to simply say, "it's not going any further." I hope I didn't suck so hard they don't bring me back for future projects.

Walter!

While channel surfing, I just discovered that my episode of CSI, Compulsion, is about to start on the West Coast.

So if you'd like to see me and my sweater, put on your local CBS station, and enjoy!

Afterthought: I'm having a really shitty day, which included an absolutely terrible audition (my fault, not theirs), and accidentally discovering that this is on has brightened my spirits just a little bit. I'm real proud of the work I did on CSI, and it's nice to remember how good it felt to earn the part, work on the show, and watch the episode when it first aired.

"Finders keepers!"

Young Chuck Norris Facts

Many moons ago, my wife and I found ourselves at a Black Angus restaurant.

I'd like to welcome back those of you who just picked yourselves up off the floor. I don't know what we were thinking, either. See, my best friend works at The Arroyo Chophouse in Pasadena, whch is the best steak house in the entire city, possibly in the universe.

But it was a youthful indescretion, sort of like that one that that happened with that intern that one time in the elevator. Whatever, man. Like you wouldn't have. Quit judging me!

Ahem. Anyway, the waitress came over to our table after our food had been delivered, and asked, "Is everything excellent?" She said it just like that. I mean, I could hear the italics and everything.

I know that this poor girl was just doing her job, just as she'd been when she tried to upsell us on "a half-carafe or perhaps a full carafe of Fetzer merlot" ("Thanks, we'll just have iced tea," we politely responded) but something inside me snapped. Before I could stop myself, I heard the following come out of my mouth: "Excellent? Excellent? No," I said, "It's fine, and in fact I'll even tell you that it's nice, but excellent? If I said yes, I'd really be devaluing the whole word -- and concept -- of 'excellent.'"

Anne gasped. The muzak was interrupted by the scratching of a needle across vinyl.

Remember in Cable Guy, when they're at Medieval Times, and Janeane Garafolo looks at Matthew Broderick and just says, "Dude?" and we all know that he's the asshole?  It was like that. BUT! Before you freak out at me, I apologized for my little outburst, and over-tipped the girl for her suffering (I think it was in the 50% range.) But I did not -- and I will not -- waiver on whether the excellence, or lack therof.

On the way home, Anne turned to me out of nowhere and said, "Excellent? We're at Black Angus. Let's try for adequate and go from there."

"Well thanks for speaking up for me when we were in there," I said. "It was excellent that you had my back."

She punched me in the arm, which I whined about for the next several days.

I relate this story now, because I've been thinking about the word -- and concept of -- awesome, and how it applies to my life. Awesome is even more important than excellent, and I've discovered that I've probably devalued awesome a little bit in the last year or so.

Most of the time, I don't feel particularly awesome, though I harbor secret dreams of one day achieving a state of hawesome, which I seriously doubt will ever come. But today, I got my very first Well Placed Anonymous Source e-mail, and I have to admit, I feel kind of awesome.

So.

In response to my post about Young Chuck Norris, Deep Throat writes:

Hey Wil,

I have some facts I can share about Young Chuck Norris that may help to clear the air.

It was written October (by Andrew Steele), but it didn't get a green light until Lazy Sunday's success opened the doors for shorts like these. The Lonely Island guys weren't aware of the Chuck Norris Facts meme until after the short aired and everyone started emailing it to them.

It is a parody of 80's hair rock videos. They liked the American We Stand As One video and thought it would be a cool homage to dress the guy like him. Also it was a convenient way to describe the look to the costume department. The total shooting budget was zero dollars. All of the non-SNL people in the video were just random people from the park (including the kids).

Other than the wardrobe, any similarities are coincidental. They are all just cliches one finds in 80's rock videos.

Your Well Placed Anonymous Source

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my Well Placed Anonymous Source, (mine! if you want one, get your own, goddammit!) and again invite everyone who freaked out at me about my post to run as fast as they can into that brick wall over there. Trust me, it's the first step toward picking up a sense of humor.

If any other anonymous sources would like to communicate with me, put a red flower pot on your balcony, or a green "X" made from hand-colored duct tape in the right corner of your car's rear window. I'll be in touch.

peter packrat

This week's Games of our Lives is an extremely fun game that never really caught on, called Peter Packrat.

Gameplay: Okay, Peter, there's a ton of junk scattered around your neighborhood, just waiting for you to get your disease-ridden claws on it. You can climb, jump, and crawl your way around your neighborhood as you fill your nest with bottles, rings, watches, and cans.

However, you're a dirty little rat, and you're at the bottom of the Flatbush food chain. Enemies like Scrapper the dog, Clawd the cat, Sticky the spider, and the resident tough guy Riff Rat would love to make you into a nice snack. You can avoid them with deft footwork and judicious use of hidden shortcuts, or attack them by throwing some of your precious junk. If you manage to score a hit, you can turn the tables and ride them around, with the exception of Riff Rat, who isn't anybody's bitch, in spite of what you may have heard around town.

Could be mistaken for: Cheeky Mouse, Bagman, a walk along the Los Angeles River

It's a moderately amusing column (the bio is the best part, if you ask me), lacking the rapier-like wit of Jungle King and Triple Punch, but not every at bat can be a home run, you know?

Anyway, WWdN:iX Reader Larry Hastings (who wants you to know that he is so old skool, he remembers Battlezone when it was on field test as "Future Tank") sent me the following Peter Packrat story, which he's given me permission to reprint here:

Just a personal story about Peter Packrat... a footnote to history.

At one time in my life I was Intergalactic World High Score Champion at Peter Packrat.  That's because there was only one--on field test at Merlin's Castle in San Jose right near my house--and I was the main person playing it.

The game is deterministic; you develop patterns which will work every time.  I had worked out patterns for, I /think/, the first five levels or so... that was as far as I generally got.  One day while playing I discovered a bug: the "spider" in the creepy cavern level would occasionally stray out of its web, and if you conked it on the noggin with bric-a-brac you could stun it and ride it around.  Since it wasn't on the "spider web" anymore, the game didn't think it was a spider... so it decided it was a bat!  It even made the bat sound effect.  This delighted me, and it actually improved my pattern, so I worked it in.

One day I came in to Merlin's Castle and Peter Packrat was out of commission.  Some guy had the back open, where I could clearly see... a Commodore 1541 floppy drive, like you'd use with a Commodore 64.  After a minute or two of grinding and buzzing, it finished doing what it was doing.   He took out the disk and they restored the machine to active service  I started playing only to discover that the bug was fixed and my pattern didn't work anymore.  I think I mostly gave up on the game after that.

About ten years ago I corresponded a little with Lyle Rains, a now-ex-Atari guy, and mentioned all this.  He opined that the animations on Peter Packrat were just fantastic--really cute--and it was an utter shame that Atari botched it as a product.

And a bit of news that is quite exciting for me: Peter Packrat is internally known as "gool#52", which means that I've been writing Games of our Lives for one full year. How much does that rock? The answer is: totally.

 

the one with a lot of random bullshit

I made the (mistake?) of ordering a Venti coffee this morning, and I feel like a little hummingbird right now.

So how about a whole bunch of random crap?

• I love Colin Hay's album Company of Strangers, especially How Long Will It Last? and No Win Situation.

• Sen. Harry Reid (D, NV) nails it:

"After reviewing the Republican record, I know why Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove want to play politics with national security in 2006 instead of having an honest debate about who can keep Americans safe. It's because this is a debate Republicans cannot win.

Republicans run good campaigns, but when it comes to actually governing and protecting Americans, they have a record of incompetence."

Right on, Senator. Think you can get the rest of the Democrats together on this one, or are you guys going to totally screw it up again?

• We just added a bunch of new bloggers to blogging.la. I can't wait for the hazing to begin. I have my paddle and everything.

• Those people who freaked out at me because of my last post? Get a life. Failing that, get a sense of humor.

• I've read two amazing books recently, which I'll mention and recommend later on this week.

• One of the points Stephen King makes in On Writing . . . over and over again is that people who wish to be writers must make time to read. I find that the more I read, the more I want to write, because my writing monkey only digs his claws into my brains when I read something and think, Oh! I can do that, too! Watch me now! I can't wait to write about Friday night.

• Stephen King has a new book out today, about people who become zombies because of cell phones. It sounds really fun.

• iTunes Music Store use is up 247%, according to a survey which includes some rather interesting facts:

The survey also noted that iTunes Music Store customers were 2.2 times more likely to drive a Volkswagen than any other car. They also discovered that iTMS customers liked to drink cider and imported beer. So I guess that on the road of life there are passengers, and teenaged drunk drivers.

• One of my favorite bits on Futurama was, "I'm Roseanne, your guide to the world of facts." I love that line so much, I wish I could use it whenever I share some useless bit of information with someone, like, "Did you know that a baby's head weighs the same as a brick of gold on the moon? It's true. I'm Wil, your guide to the world of facts."

• I think I already knew this, but forgot: Good news, everyone! There's a Futurama movie in the works, and there's even a chance that Futurama could have a Family Guy-esque revival on television.

• Nolan told me the other night, "I love it when Professor Farnsworth says things like, 'I'm sending you on a mission to Planet Certain Death, where you'll have your faces crushed by killer robots as soon as you land . . . Enjoy!'"

• I got The Wilco Book + CD for Xmas, right before Santa came down and rained death upon the whole world, and it is really amazing. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because it's Wilco, after all, that the CD is as good as it is, but it wouldn't be shocking if they threw together some "B" material to release with the book (which is awesome on its own, by the way). They didn't. Several of the tracks have earned a coveted five star rating on my iPod.

• I watched I am Trying to Break Your Heart over the weekend. The best moment in the entire film is when Jeff Tweedy's son plays drums on his lap, and makes Jeff guess which song he's playing. When Jeff guesses that it's Heavy Metal Drummer, he starts to sing it while his son plays the drums on his legs. It's one of the sweetest and most awesome moments I've ever seen. In fact, it was awesome and a half.

• Mt friend Kat is taking me to see Jeff Tweedy when he comes to LA. Ding!

• Night before last, we had 70-80 MPH gusts of wind at my house, which knocked out our power for about 18 hours and destroyed several million-year-old oak trees in my neighborhood. One of them almost took out one of my neighbor's houses. Yipe. Last night, we expected the wind to come back, but it never did. On the way home from school yesterday, the kids and I discussed the wind, and came to the following conclusions:

• I hate the wind, because it's so destructive and loud.
• Nolan sleeps through it at night, and if he had to pick between wind and rain, he'd take wind.
• Ryan loves the wind, because it feels like it's cleaning everything up, and it's got all this raw, unfocused power.
• We all love days like today, after the wind has gone away, where it's so clear you feel like you could see to the other side of the world, if the damn horizon wasn't in the way.

• I had a bit of a panic recently when my Powerbook began acting weird. None of the disk utilities on my install discs worked, and I was on the verge of freaking out, when I was pointed toward Disk Warrior. I can't praise Disk Warrior enough. It completely fixed all the problems, in about an hour, and my Powerbook doesn't show any of the obvious signs of the abuse it takes from me, up here on the second floor.

• Though you won't be able to tell when you read this entry, I'm stopping right now to call Allentown, PA, to do an interview. I really liked the reporter, and we talked for about 45 minutes. I hope I made sense, and I'll link the article when it comes out.

• This post has way too many indents and sub-indents.

• Bill Hicks just came on iTunes. Who is the modern day Bill Hicks? I can't think of anyone off the top of my head.

• The movie The Comedians of Comedy is really great, and almost made me forgive Zach Galifianakis for completely stealing a bit from me that I used to do on the J.Keith vanStraaten Show, and using it on Jimmy Kimmel's show.

• Isaac Hayes' Joy just came on iTunes. Good thing Anne isn't home, or this post would be delayed by at least another three minutes.

• Eww! Gross!

• What?

• This post is really fun to write. I think I've been taking myself, my blog, and everything in general too seriously lately. (Deadbeats really fucking suck, man, and they can really take a lot of the happiness out of your life) Who cares if everything I write isn't so goddamned great or important? And who cares if I over-use italics?

• A friend of mine just pointed out to me that I'd created another Prove To Everyone . . . rather than write an entire book about it to slay it, the simple act of identifying the existance of this beast was like turning on the light and realizing that the monster I kept seeing in the corner was just a jacket slumped over the chair. In other words, it was never really there, and only existed because I created it. Wow. I feel like I've been breathing through a straw, and I just got to take my first deep breath in months. Thanks, J.

• I think I've said everything I need to say, and I'm incredibly satisfied right now. Where is my mind? It's right here. Rather than push it, I'm going to hit "publish," and go outside to enjoy a little bit of this amazing day we're having.

I'm Wil, your guide to the world of facts.

America, Young Chuck Norris Stands As One

On SNL this weekend, there was a short from The Lonely Island called Young Chuck Norris. It was remarkably funny, and it was also remarkably similar to my former Star Trek co-worker Dennis Madalone's video called America We Stand As One. In fact, it's a little too similar. When I was done laughing, I wondered, "Did they just rip Dennis off?"

Maybe I was just touchy, and still reeling from those Apple commercials that were, uh, "inspired" by The Postal Service and sent shockwaves of indifference across the Internets  . . .  until a friend of mine pointed out the following creepy similarities between YCN and AWSAO (Don't be afraid of needless acronyms. Acronymns are your friend, man. AAYF):

- bluejeans
- patriotic shirt
- completely rockin' attitude
- brown jacket
- spending time with children for no reason
- rock climbing
- long flaxen hair on his head
- long flaxen hair as his mantra
- awesome knee bandana
- beach-side action
- american flag scarf

That's an awful lot of similarities. It's almost too many to be coincidental. Now, there's a very fine line between parody and stealing, and as a sketch comedy writer I walk it myself. When I do a parody sketch, I always make sure the audience knows what the source material is, but it's (hopefully) funny because of the original writing. I thought that Young Chuck Norris was funny because of all the images and themes, and those images and themes are straight out of Dennis' video. Is it a parody, silently giving a nod to America We Stand As One? Or is it a moderately funny idea taken to the heights of hilarity with the addition of some long flaxen hair, an awesome knee bandana, and a completely rockin' attitude?

It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone's done a parody of Dennis' well-meaning but unintentionally hilarious song and video, and I want to believe that The Lonely Island is doing a level seven parody, instead of a level two rip off job, because they are producing some of the funniest stuff that's been on SNL in years, (without The Lonely Island, we'd never know that Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious, for example, and I think our lives would all be a little less awesome) and they're an incredibly talented group of writers and performers who have embraced Creative Commons, and didn't get discouraged when those luddites at Fox didn't understand how awesome it was in Awesometown. In fact, I bet those Philistines at Fox have never had Mr. Pibb or Red Vines. Jerks.

But if they were, uh, "inspired" by Dennis' totally rockin' attitude and patriotic shirt, I think they should give him some credit. Because I heard that Dennis owns some Chuck Norris pajamas, sleeps with a night light, and has a roundhouse kick that is second only to a Chuck Norris Roundhouse kick, but comes with an awesome knee bandana and a completely rockin' attitude.

Radio Free Burrito Episode 4

Yes, it is true! At long last, the long-overdue Episode Four is here. According to certain other episode-numbered series, this should be the episode that grabs everyone's attention and establishes me as a Force to be reckoned with . . . but it will be the next episode that proves to be my best ever, one which I'll never be able to top.

I guess I should figure out a way to get a hold of Lawrence Kasdan, huh?

This episode is another audio diary one, this time centered around an audition I had this morning for a new Nickelodeon animated series. It was an awesome audition, thanks entirely to the totally cool people who I read for, who made me feel welcome, and enthusiastically worked with me to bring my version of this character to life. (I know some of you read my blog, so thank you for doing that. I had an awesome time today. You guys rock.)

The audio diary is 33 minutes long, so I didn't do Q&A in this show, but it will be back in the next show. In fact, I'll devote most of the next show to Q&A, since many of you have written in that you like that, and it's pretty damn easy for me to answer questions about myself.

Show Notes:

• The intro music is "Gone for Good" by The Shins, from their album Chutes Too Narrow. In Garden State, Natalie Portman says that The Shins will change your life, and plays New Slang to back up this bold statement. I think New Slang is a great song, but it doesn't have the emotional resonance for me that Gone for Good does. Why? Listen to the podcast to find out. For those of you scoring at home, the updated board should read Garden State: 0 Wil: 1
• The link to save Teen Titans is: http://www.titanstower.com/source/animated/saveseason6.html
• The song you heard from Nada Surf is Neither Heaven Nor Space, and it's off their nearly-perfect album Let Go.
• There's a picture from inside Nickelodeon, which I snapped with my super-stealth cameraphone, in my Buzznet blog. I meant to mention this months ago, but Buzznet has this thing where you can make posters, calendars, books, or postcards from your Buzznet images. I have a book filled with images taken up until last summer, and it's really cool.
• Comments can be sent to podcast at wil wheaton dot net, questions can be sent to ask at wil wheaton dot net. Please use a descriptive subject line.
• Radio Free Burrito is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The entire show is 47 minutes long (ouch. sorry about that.) and weighs in at 18.8MB. Enjoy!

Download radio_free_burrito_episode_four.mp3

Update: WWdN:iX reader Brian has created the following .torrent low-fi mirrors:

High (orig):
http://athena.unearthed.org/torrents/radio_free_burrito_episode_four.mp3.torrent

Low (mono, VBR bit rate range 8-24, 8.1 megs):
http://athena.unearthed.org/torrents/radio_free_burrito_episode_four-low.mp3.torrent

Mirror for the Low..
http://www.badmonkies.com/rfb/radio_free_burrito_episode_one-low.mp3

Thanks, Brian!

every song's a comeback

An interesting (there's that word again) follow-up to my previous post, which was a funny follow-up to its previous post: Way back when I was eighteen or nineteen, my friend Damion, who wrote and directed  Neverland, stood in front of the Tower Records on Sunset the day Fabio's CD came out, with a cardboard sign which read, "I need twelve dollars to buy the Fabio CD." It took him about fifteen minutes to successfully panhandle his way into his own copy of Fabio After Dark.

A few years later, Damion was Garfield for Halloween, but not just any Garfield; the Garfield that was stuck into car windows all over Los Angeles in the early 1990s. He had the giant suction cups and everything, but what really made the costume was after a few drinks, when Damion told anyone who would listen, "Garfield has gingivitis!" It was a very surreal All Hallow's Eve, to say the very least, and I haven't even gotten to the part where the drag queen got into some sort of quasi-erotic (or disturbing, I suppose) dance off with a stripper that, strangely, had something to please almost everyone in the ad-hoc audience.

every moment's a little bit later

A funny follow-up to my previous post, that had completely washed out of my brains until moments ago, when for some inexplicable reason the theme to Get Smart made me remember:

About a year ago, Anne and I were driving home down Santa Monica near Highland in Hollywood. It was the beginning of afternoon rush hour traffic, so when I saw a person waiting to make a left from a side street, I stopped to let him go across in front of us. See, I try to do nice things like that, because I believe the world would be a much better place if everyone made an effort to do little things, like hold doors open, let people with fewer items cut in front in the checkout, say "thank you" . . . things like that.

Anyway, I stop to let this guy pull out across in front of us, and Anne says, "Dude! That's totally Fabio!"

"What? Where?!" I said.

"Driving the car you just let in front of us!"

I laughed, because Anne and I occasionally play the celebrity look alike game, too.

We were silent for a second or two, and we both realized that that the car was a Bentley, and the driver was, indeed, Fabio.

"Oh my god!" I said. "It really is Fabio!"

Anne and I decided that this momentous occasion warranted an immediate and vigorous high-five.

Fabio waved his hand at me in the universal "thank you," gesture, turned West onto Santa Monica, and drove into the Sunset. We continued East into our mundane, non-Fabio lives.