WWdN: In Exile

all that i ever wanted was a chance to catch my breath

Vegas Time currently owns me; no matter how hard I try, I am awake at 3 in the morning every single day. Last night, I had dinner with my friends, then turned down an offer of cigars, scotch, and playing poker to go back to my hotel room and get in bed relatively early.

I was so proud of myself when I rolled into the sack around 1am and quickly drifted off to sleep . . . until I woke up at three in the fucking morning. I don't know how long I was stuck awake, but it was long enough to keep me asleep until 11 this morning. I play in the WSOP again on Friday, so somehow I have to make my body turn itself around by Thursday. I think a trip to Whole Foods for some melatonin is in order.

Ah, a trip to Whole Foods . . . I never thought that driving to the market and shopping for food would be something to write home about, but living in a hotel and spending all my waking hours either in a casino or near a casino -- and living on this Vegas Time -- has made my entire existence a little surreal.

Okay, it is actually a lot surreal. It is, in fact, entirely unreal, so I have to go out and find things to do that are real -- that are normal -- like going to the store.

In fact, a couple of nights ago, after I drove my friend home, I drove around and took the long way home through a very nice suburban area West of the Strip. It looked just like the Valley where I grew up: tract houses from the 1970s and 1980s, separated into neighborhoods by cinder block walls with bits of grass growing up through cracks in the sidewalk.

It was well after midnight, but it was still in the 90s. I turned off my air conditioner, opened my sunroof and all my windows, and relished the hot, non-recirculated, non-smoky air as it blew on my face and swirled around my car.

Radiohead's You, from Pablo Honey -- one of my favorite Radiohead songs that I hardly ever hear -- came on XM, and I cranked it and sang along as I drove through someone's real life, normal neighborhood.

I stopped at a traffic light, next to a park. All the lights were on, and there were people playing basketball, kicking a soccer ball around, and jogging along a path. I guess that when it's over 105 by ten in the morning, this is the only time people can safely play sports outside; I guess this is real life out here in the desert.

I continued South, and as the residential area gave way to the ubiquitous strip mall, I noticed that I'd been making an effort to look to my right, away from the Strip. My eyes fell on a supermarket that was open 24 hours. A group of those damn kids today stood around a lowered sports car outside the doors.

Before I was entirely aware of it, I pulled into the parking lot and parked my car. Loud, thumping bass from whatever music the damn kids today were listening to bounced off the front of Smith's and rolled down the parking lot and into my car. Normally, I'd be annoyed by that, but this was different; it was normal.

I closed up my car, and walked past the damn kids today. The bass rattled my teeth like the old man I comparatively was, but I grinned anyway.

When I walked out of the Vegas heat and into the cool fluorescent supermarket air, I felt the first real wave of homesickness hit me. Though I've only been away from Anne for a few days, I've been away from home, my kids, my dogs and my garden for almost a month. This was the first time I'd walked into a grocery store in weeks, and though I immediately spotted the bottled water I was there to buy, I walked around the entire store, slowly up and down each aisle, just because I could; just because it was normal.

I picked up two half-gallon jugs of distilled water (I have half of one left back at the hotel) and a bag of pretzels.

"Ryan always calls them 'prentzels,'" I thought, and allowed myself to feel a little bit of sadness. "I really miss him."

My bill came to just over four dollars. I reached into my pocket to grab a five, and realized that I only had hundreds.

"I'm sorry about this," I said to the cashier, as I pulled it out and put it on the counter.

"No problem," he said, "this is Vegas."

This is normal.

He counted out 95 dollars and some change, and put it into my hand.

The damn kids today had vanished back into suburbia by the time I walked out of the supermarket, out of normal and back into Vegas.

It was four in the morning by the time I fell asleep.

Music from the Mushroom

A friend of mine sent me this link that is so hawesome, I felt compelled to share it with everyone who reads my blog.

These guys are a very talented classical guitar duo, and they play the sort of beautiful classical music you'd expect to hear, you know Scarlatti, Bach, etc. But they also did an arrangement of the music from Super Mario Brothers, including the main theme, the "under the ground" music, and the music from when Mario goes swimming. I'm sure Nintendogeeks will tell me the precise names for those songs, but that's what we called them when I was 13 and played Super Mario Brothers for 30 hours a day with my brother, so there.

Anyway, they're called threefifty duo, and you can hear the song (which is just over 4 minutes of perfect nostalgia) by heading to their MySpace page, and listening to Music from the Mushroom.

This is great stuff, so I hope you take a listen and enjoy it, too.

the weight is a gift

I did everything I could to get into bed early last night, even remaining disciplined enough to walk away from what was probably the best final table in the history of the WSOP -- minutes before Doyle Brunson was eliminated, no less -- in time to be in bed by my self-imposed bedtime of midnight.

Yeah. That was a great idea, but no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't fall asleep before three in the morning, and I overslept again today. When I overslept yesterday, I skipped breakfast and headed straight to the Rio, and I really paid for that around the middle of the day, so I'm actually eating breakfast right now, listening to Soul Coughing (who are telling me that it's 5am and I'm listening to Los Angeles,) and working on the stories I couldn't write yesterday, because there was so much great stuff happening right in front of me, I never got the stories started. (Heh. I'm a one-man version of Network: I kept preempting my planned stories to go with the breaking stuff, and I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore.)

Okay, I'm a little loopy this morning, but maybe it's just the coffee talking, Marge. Did you know they have these pretzels here that you can -- what? Five dollars?! MMrrggtahzaaaaxxhaggh . .

Err, I don't know what just happened, but let's see if I can get this back on track, mmmkay?

I'm having a fantastic time being here and writing about the experience. When I'm really writing well, I feel like I constantly have this sort of mild but pleasant buzz, like I'm in some kind of pseudo-out of body experience, and I almost feel like I'm floating along in a river that I can kind of control, but also enjoy just drifting down. The key is to stay out of my own way, so I can feel the flow, and holy crap can I feel the flow right now.

Here's some of the stuff I wrote yesterday:

Scenes from a Hospitality Suite
Barry Greenstein just came into the PokerStars suite to grab a snack. I waved hello to him, and he came over to talk for a minute. I don't think he's been to sleep since the last time I saw him.

"Long night," I said.

"Oh, I've plenty of long nights playing poker," he said.

"Ask a question for the blog! Ask a question for the blog!" I could hear Otis in my head.

"I was asleep when you guys were nearing the end last night -- uh, I mean, this morning, so I only know what I've read online . . . were you shortstacked for a while before you went out?"

If the Otis in my head had a commentary on my from-the-hip inquiry, he kept quiet about it. I wasn't too sure, myself, but it was out there, and I waited for an answer.

"Well, I was doing great once we neared and passed the bubble, but I ran two huge hands into Doyle, and . . ." he trailed off, and shrugged. What more needs to be said? That's poker.
--

Rousso and Greenstein In, Brenes Out
Dressed in a track suit and tennis shoes, with an iPod nano strapped to her arm and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, it would be easy to think that Team PokerStars' Vanessa Rousso was on her way to the gym, rather than back into the Amazon room where she is currently assaulting today's $2000 No Limit Hold'Em event.

Normally, I'm a little shy about talking to ass-kicking poker players, and I'm equally shy about talking to beautiful women, but in this case, it was a peak hitting a trough, and, spurred on by the Voice of Otis, I got up from the couch and introduced myself.

"Hi, Vanessa? I'm Wil Wheaton," I said.

Don't stare, Wil. Don't stare.

"I play for Team PokerStars, and I  --"

"Oh, I know you," she said, with a huge smile. "I mean, I don't know you, but I know you, you know?"

I just know that I blushed. I felt it in my cheeks and my neck. I'm pretty sure most of you would have done the same thing, if you'd been in my position.

Settle down, big guy. Talk about poker.

"I'm writing about PokerStars players for the blog," I said, pointing over toward my laptop, "how are you doing?"

. . .

Humberto Brenes just came in. On a king-high board, he got all his money in with KQ vs his opponent's AK.

"He had it in the big blind, and I was short on chips," he said.

"Lo siento, man," I said, "that sucks."

"Hey, it's this game," he said, still smiling. I'm starting to notice that Humberto is just that kind of guy. In fact, right now he's talking with two rather enthusiastic fans across the room.
--

Rousso Out, Greenstein In
Vanessa Rousso just came back into the suite, with slightly less spring in her step than when she last left

"I blew it," she said. "I didn't have to get all my money in, but I just . . . well, I blew it."

It turns out that Vanessa had a rather roller coaster run since the break, getting aces to hold up against kings and ace queen suited to build her stack, but losing a big hand against aces.

"I really messed up," she said, in that self-deprecating reflection that is common among poker players, (and, in fact, essential for every player's growth and development.) "I made top pair on a board with two flush draws, so I pushed the turn and he called with aces."

"Ugh." I said. "Are you sure it was such a bad play?"

"Yeah. I had enough chips to slow down, and I just . . . didn't."

"Well, for what it's worth, I would have done the same thing." somehow, I think, this statement coming from a donkey like me is going to make her feel better.
--

Greenstein Loses a Race
As far as I could tell, Team PokerStars' Barry Greenstein's stack didn't move much during the last couple of levels (maybe 1500 or so more), but Barry just stopped into the PokerStars suite, and gave me a recap of a pretty big hand that happened before the break.

Check me out, as I totally scoop Cardplayer:

"I lost a race," he said. Then, "Well, it wasn't exactly a 50-50 race, but it was still very close.

"I'd been playing a lot of hands, and I could feel that this guy was itching to get into a pot with me. I raised him in position for 1K with king jack of clubs, and he came back over the top of me for 2600. I had great odds to call, especially if he had an underpair to my cards, so I called, expecting a race.

He turned up ATo, which is actually closer than you'd think it is -- 55 to 45, or pretty close to that and . . . hey, do you want to run it?"

"Sure," I said. "Let's take a look."

Barry sat down on the couch next to me, and we fired up the poker odds calculator at twodimes.net.
--

Wow, I just realized that I wrote a ton of stuff yesterday, and what I reprinted here isn't even half of it. Are you still reading this? If you are, I'm guessing that you're part of about 6% of the WWdN readership; everyone else has probably thrown up their hands and vowed not to read my blog until the World Series is over. Sigh.

That actually brings up something that's been on my mind since yesterday morning: I have no idea if anyone is reading my work at the PokerStars blog. Well, that's not entirely correct: I know that people are reading it, of course, but I can't see stats on that blog, and I since there aren't any comments there, I haven't gotten any feedback. It's a weird feeling, you know? I really feel good about the stuff that's coming out of my brains, but it sort of felt like it was going into a vacuum, until I got this note this morning:

I'm a long time reader, and your pokerstars blog entries are off the hook. This year's WSOP is inspiring some great blogging all around. The "no live coverage" rule has done wonders for what I as a small   rolling wannabe wants to read. Color coverage. I don't need to know every hand. Just tell me the stories.  

 

Great job.  There's a book here for you to write.  

I squeed a little bit like a thirteen year-old girl when I read that, because the color coverage is exactly what I'm trying to do, not just because I simply can't get into the tournament area and get minute-by-minute coverage, but because putting you where I am, whether it's my backyard while I'm having some existential crisis or sitting in the hospitality suite at the Rio, is what I think I do best, and it's what I have the most fun doing. If you have feedback on what I'm writing -- good or bad -- I'd love to hear it.

The PokerStars blog has an RSS feed, too, if you'd like to subscribe, and you can e-mail blog at pokerstars dot com with comments and questions, or leave them here.

at long last, a chance to see me perform on dvd

A few weeks ago, I joined Shane Nickerson and a ton of other insanely talented bloggers for a performance of our original material in a show called Subject Line Here.

It was just amazing, and was one of those times where a show comes together so perfectly, we wish that more than the one hundred people who packed the theater could see it.

This time, you can. Shane had the presence of mind to film the show, and has made a DVD available. Unlike my lazy ass, he'll even ship to anywhere in the world.

All the details are available at the Subject Line Here blog, but here they are in glorious blockquote-o-vision:

Thanks to Michael Siskowic (the cameraman and media guru), the DVD from "Subject Line Here" is now available. Those of you who are not in Los Angeles or were unable to attend can now get in on the action. See all of the bloggers as they performed (and conveniently divided into chapters if you want to skip to your favorites), and pretend like you were there with us! Most importantly, all proceeds go directly to the Leukemia/Lymphoma society via Wil's Team in Training. The cost of the DVD will be 15 bucks, including shipping.

Are you interested?  Send an e-mail to SubjectLineHereDVD at gmail dot com. I'll send you the ordering details. 

This DVD will only be available for a short time, and all orders will be processed at once.

Orders are only being taken until Tuesday July 18th, so no complaining to me if you miss this one.

Note that I have nothing to do with handling or processing the orders, all that goes through Shane.

words and tricks that let us bet when you know we should fold

I was going to drive home a couple of days ago, after I busted out of event seventeen, but PokerStars gave me an opportunity to stay here in Vegas, and write about the World Series of Poker for the official PokerStars Blog. See, this year, the media rules make it impossible to get the minute-to-minute coverage that was popularized by guys like Dr. Pauly and Otis in 2005, so I get to contribute various narrative features, similar to the story I wrote for The AV Club about Guitar Hero II at E3.

As a writer, I couldn't ask for a better place to find inspiration; you have to work very, very hard to not find a story here. In fact, my notebook is so filled with observations and notes for potential stories, I'm currently enjoying optional paralysis as I look at them all.

So at this very moment, I'm the PokerStars hospitality suite at the Rio, updating the PokerStars blog and my blog from one of our ultra-modern couches, before I grab my notebook and head back out to find the next story to tell:

Continued from like a skillet full of oil . . .
Just before noon, I took my seat at table 15. I felt confident, prepared, and relaxed right up until about five minutes before the tourney began and my fellow author and poker blogger Double As came over and sat two seats to my right.

"Are you f-" I stopped myself. I didn't want to get a stupid F-bomb penalty before the cards were even in the air, "Are you kidding me? 2300 entrants and I have to sit with you?!"

He smiled a lazy and confident smile. "There are a lot of us in this event today."

In fact there were. This last weekend, the WPBT had another blogger gathering in Vegas (which I wasn't able to attend) and many of us stuck around to play in this event. "I know," I said. I pointed around the room where I knew other poker bloggers were seated. "Maybe one of us will make it deep."

Maybe it'll be me. I sure hope it's me.
--

50K HORSE, Day One.
I glanced to the left and saw Doyle Brunson, Devilfish, Johnny World, and Paul Phillips (who is my favorite to win the whole thing, because he's my closest friend in the field.) Seats one and eight were empty (they're playing eight handed) and I couldn't help but wonder, Who in the world puts up 50K and misses the first hour? Is Hellmuth in this event? I found out later that he was. In true Hellmuthian fashion, he showed up late. With 50K and a bracelet on the line. Incredible.

As I scribbled down in my notebook, a guy shoved past me on my right, excitedly pointed into the tournament area, and turned around to shout at someone, "There's Phil Ivey! He's right there with Fossilman!" I winced, partially because he was so loud, but mostly to lessen the impact of beer and partially digested meat that was blown into my face.
--

Barry Greenstein Finishes 12th in HORSE.
. . . walking through the halls last night, I heard several pros comment that the incredibly long days and surprisingly fast tournament structure was having as much of an impact on their game as the level of competition. You always need to get lucky to make it deep in a tournament, and near the end Barry found himself in and out of Lady Luck's good graces.

This is really fun, and a great gig. I love poker, I love writing, and I love writing about poker. I kinda flopped the nuts on this one, you know?

I'll be in here for much of the weekend, usually from ten in the morning until the middle of the afternoon. So if you're in Vegas between now and Monday, come on over and say hello.

ghosts

Last night, I went out to Greg Raymer's house for a barbecue with a bunch of my friends from PokerStars. It was a little surreal -- Greg is playing in the $50,000 HORSE event today, where the buy-in is more than two years of mortgage payments for me, and he invited all of us out to his place for dinner the night before.

Greg's place is way off the strip, and it's the farthest I've ever driven away from Las Vegas Boulevard in all the times I've come here. Once I got about ten blocks away from the cluster of hotels and casinos, the harsh reality of Las Vegas' location was apparent all around me: for miles at a time, I was surrounded by empty lots and open desert, and the few lots that had any sign of civilization in them were pawn shops, porn shops, or abandoned bars. When you get away from the shining neon and watered-down drinks, that's the side of Vegas that the department of tourism won't tell you about.

I stopped at a light way out on some highway, and saw the history of Vegas in two glances. To my left, there was a housing tract that looked like it had been built in the 1970s. The houses were small and were once brightly-colored stucco. Today, they are falling apart, and most had patches of dirt where a front lawn once was. About a third of them appeared empty. Just behind them, a new housing development was under construction. The houses were mostly frames, but many of them had piles of roofing tiles wrapped in plastic on their tops. They were built right on top of each other, were two stories tall, and looked to average about 8000 square feet each. I thought to myself, "Who in the world is going to live in one of those houses? Do any potential buyers look at the existing tract and think of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?"

I looked to my right, and saw a middle-aged man with a dirty face and an equally dirty once-white T-shirt, standing on the side of the road. He held a black canvas bag at one side, and drank deeply from a bottle of clear alcohol.

The light changed, and I pulled away from another Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.

like a skillet full of oil spits rattling on the burner.

"I'm dying to get to Vegas, but there's no way I'm dying to get to Vegas!" She was in her early twenties, pigtails beneath a stripper cowboy hat. She was remarkably attractive as she delivered this statement to who I presumed was her boyfriend, also in his early twenties and heavily tattooed.

As they passed me, I looked up at the counter. On the wall behind the gate agent, it said flight 1178. Beneath that: Las Vegas/Austin. Beneath that: Delayed.

I picked up my backpack, and walked to the counter. "How long has the flight been delayed?" I'd been reading a book and listening to Copeland on my iPod, and hadn't noticed any announcements.

"It looks like 9:30 tonight, at the earliest," she said. It was 5pm.

"Woah. Why?" I said.

"There's severe weather all around McCarran Airport," she said. "They're not letting any flights in or out right now. She spun her computer display to face me. What looked like thirty or forty airplane-shaped icons moved in a circular pattern around Las Vegas, which was covered in red.

I did some math in my head.

"I think I'll just drive," I said. "Can I get my bag back?"

"Sure," she said, "did you want me to refund your ticket?"

"No," I said, "It's one of those 'change it anytime' things, and I'll be back and forth between here and Vegas a lot for the next few weeks."

"Oh?" She said, as she typed my name and claim number into the computer, "why?"

"I'm playing in the World Series of Poker," I said.

"Really? Do you know Chris Moneymaker?"

I laughed. I hear this as often as I once heard, "Do you know" whoever happened to be a well-known actor at that particular moment.

"Actually, I do." Then, before she could ask the obligatory follow-up: "He's a really nice guy, and a much better player than he gets credit for."

"Okay, Mr. Wheaton, you're going to head out to the . . ." she stopped, and looked at my claim ticket, then back to me. She wrinkled her forehead and squinted. "Where did you go to high school?"

"La Crescenta," I said.

"God, you look so familiar," she said. "Anyway, you go to the Southwest Baggage office, and talk to Nina. She'll get you your bag, and you'll be on your -- Stand By Me!"

I chuckled and nodded. "Yeah, that's me."

"I love that movie!" She said. She turned to the other gate agent. "He was Gordie in Stand By Me!"

He looked up at me, and blinked. "Hey! I love that movie. It's nice to meet you." I shook his hand. "So you're not waiting to fly, huh?"

"I can drive there in the same amount of time, and while I normally enjoy sitting in airports drinking beer, I'd rather just get on my way and know that I won't be rolling in really late if it's delayed again, or cancelled."

A woman who had walked up next to me during this conversation said, "Hey, can I get a ride with you?"

Before I could think of the most diplomatic way of saying, "No fucking way, I don't even know who you are," she smiled and said, "I'm just kidding." Then to the gate agent, "I think I'll just go out tomorrow. Can you change my reservation?"

While they worked out her travel plan, a line of agitated travelers grew behind us. I thanked the gate agents for their help. They both wished me good luck, and I headed out to collect my bag, my car, and get on the freeway.

On my way out of the gate, I passed Stripper Cowboy Hat, who was on her cell phone. ". . . huge storms that could tear the plane apart like Lost. There's no way I'm doing that!" She paused. "Well, I don't know. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I need a Cosmo." Heavily-tattooed looked like he'd heard it all before as he pulled out a PSP and waited. I recalled a T-shirt I saw in a truck stop somewhere a few years ago: "No matter how hot she is, someone, somewhere, is sick of her shit" When I was a safe distance away, I let myself giggle. I was glad I wouldn't be sitting on the same plane as this sure-to-be-hysterical traveler, and thirty minutes later I was on the road, heading for Sin City.

The full moon rose to my right as the sun sank beneath the horizon on my left. The road was wide open the entire way, and I had a great drive across the Mojave desert. As my friend Ryan observed last week, the drive from Los Angeles to Vegas is "the perfect length for a mini-roadtrip, long enough to feel you’re actually getting somewhere, short enough that nobody gets restless in the car."

I made great time, and didn't hit any traffic until Stateline, where the Nevada DOT is taking away one lane for fifteen miles or so at a time on the weekends until the end of the year, or something crazy like that. But I didn't care, as my car slowed to a crawl for a half hour. I could see the beam of light shooting upward from the Luxor on the horizon, and I was less than 24 hours away from playing in my first WSOP event this year. What's to get upset about?

I finally rolled into my hotel's parking garage around 11. I figured that if my flight did go out at 9, I would have saved thirty minutes if I'd just waited in the airport, but now I had a car, I was entirely sober, and I'll be honest: the drive across the desert is important. It helps me leave Los Angeles in the dust, literally and figuratively, and lets me switch my brains from "home" mode into full-time writer mode. (Yes, even though I'm ostensibly here to play poker, this place is such a wealth of characters and incredible situations, I am always The Writer when I'm in Las Vegas, and I'm really cool with that.)

I got out of my car into the 90 degree night. I grabbed my bag out of my trunk, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and walked into the lobby. Check-in was a breeze, and I discovered -- to my absolute delight -- that I've somehow ended up in a swanky room that I'd never get for myself if I'd booked my travel and accommodations. Woo! Go Poker Stars!

After I unpacked and spent some time admiring the view out of my window, I headed back downstairs to get something to eat, and walk a few laps around the hotel -- I started the day at a wedding in Solvang, so I'd actually spent close to six hours sitting in the car by this time, and I needed some sort of exercise.

On my way through the casino, just after midnight on a Monday morning when the weekend travelers had gone home, I noticed that Las Vegas can be an intensely lonely town when you're here without someone, which is incredible, considering the nonstop party that this place is. There are people everywhere, but it can be like standing in a torrential downpour, and somehow not getting wet at all. I'm glad that I'm here with PokerStars, who are really like an extended family to me, so I don't have to experience those moments of lonely isolation that are so common in the flashing lights beneath the ever-present haze of smoke.

I ended up walking a few laps around the casino before I returned to my room and ordered a bowl of soup from room service. On my way up, I passed a middle-aged couple arguing in front of an ATM. It was clearly not their first trip to the cash machine that day. I walked past them quickly, and kept my head down.

I finally fell asleep around 2:30, and woke up every two hours until 8:30 when my breakfast arrived. I drank a cup of coffee, and looked out my window. In the distance, I could see the Rio. My first event in the 2006 World Series of Poker was just a few hours away.

The story continues at the official PokerStars blog . . .

Real Love / It's Only Life

Ah, at last the house is empty and quiet. Anne's at work, the kids are at summer school, the dogs are working really hard (also known as sleeping on the kitchen floor) and I have the entire place to myself.

It should be an easy and productive time to sit down and get some of these stories out of my head, but whenever I start, I feel almost ADD-stricken and immediately lose interest and motivation. It's been like this for weeks, and I've finally had enough. I vowed to figure out what exactly was giving me writer's block, so I could destroy it and move on down the road before it had a chance to rebuild itself.

I started out with what I figured would be the first chapter of the son of Spongebob Vega$pants, the still-untitled saga of CruiseTrek 2006, with book signings in Montreal and Boston.

I stood in a small empty room, one story above the street, and looked out the window. I clutched my well-worn copy of Just A Geek in my hands, and tried to ignore their slight trembling.

I've done this a hundred times before. Why am I so anxious today? A woman walking a dog caught my eye, and I followed them down the block and across the street. There was a knock at the door behind me.

It was Scarlett, the manager of the bookstore.

"Are you ready for me to introduce you?" I could hear the buzz of people in the room behind me. It was hot and humid, and though one fan was working very hard, it wasn't enough to keep the stuffiness entirely at bay.

I took a deep breath.  "Yeah," I said."

The Internal Critic peeked over my shoulder.

"That pretty much sucks," he said.

"You've been saying that about everything I write for months!" I said.

"Why don't you take a break?" He said.

I sighed. "Fine."

I went out onto my patio, and worked in my patio garden a little bit. My tomato plants are almost as tall as I am, and are both covered with little yellow flowers and even a few tiny green fruits. They got a little over-watered by my enthusiastic caretaker (Ryan) while I was gone, though, so they also have many yellow leaves that needed pruning.

I crouched down on the bricks, and began to pick off the dead and dying leaves as I listened to the ever-present sound of suburban life in summertime: the drone of a distant lawnmower, the squeal of children playing in the pool across the street and tag in the backyard behind my house, and the music of birdsong all around my yard. These sounds of domestic life were comforting. They simultaneously reminded me of my suburban childhood, and that I am lucky to provide a similar childhood for my own kids.

Ferris came out through the kitchen door, blinked her eyes in the bright morning sunlight, and exploded toward the Eastern wall of my yard, where a lizard ran across the top. The lizard population in our neighborhood is at a hundred year peak, it seems, and Ferris has decided that chasing them is her new favorite activity. I can even say to her, "Hey, Ferris, there's a lizard!" And she'll go running to the usual lizard-spotting places in the yard until she finds one. I watched her for a minute, and went back to work.

"This is why I planted this garden," I thought, as as the pile of pruned leaves grew at my feet and the slightly pungent (pointy?) smell of tomato stalks began to fill the air. "I planted this garden so I would have an excuse to walk out of the house, and just do this."

I finished up my work, and headed back into the house, happy and content, ready to sit down and let the creativity burst through my fingertips and fill several screens.

I stared at the blank screen for several minutes.

I clicked around on the Internets for several more.

I read e-mail, and skimmed Fark, Slashdot, and Kos.

"Well, this is certainly a productive day for you," the Internal Critic said.

"I can't get started!" I said. "This is pissing me off."

"Why don't you put the trip report story on hold for a bit, and write about something else, like the Fourth of July at Darin's."

Ding!

I selected all the text and erased it. I thought,"That story, while funny and hopefully engaging, isn't the story I really want need to tell today. Rather than force it, I'll see if I can get out this thing about the Fourth that was pretty significant. I really need to write more stories. I miss writing stories."

I began to type. Over the next forty-five minutes, I got the following out:

On Fourth of July at Darin's house this year, while I sat in his pool with his two year-old and our friend's six month-old, I realized how much I've changed in the last few years. The changes didn't happen all at once, and I wasn't even aware of any of them until that very moment, but the realization that I'm profoundly different now than I was just five years ago has occupied my subconscious -- and often my conscious -- constantly since then. It has demanded my attention and observation, and in doing so I have crossed a rubicon in my thirty-third year.

"That is the most pretentious pile of wordy shit I've ever heard," my Internal Critic said.

"I know," I said, "but I've been letting you paralyze me too much the last year or so, so I'm just going to keep going, and then edit it down once it's totally finished."

"I'll get off your back if you go play Katamari Damacy," He said.

"Really?" I said.

"Sure. Just go play for a half-hour or so, and let your mind drift. You'll find the perfect combination of words and images that you seek in the hand of the King of the Cosmos."

"Now who's being pretentious?"

I put a few stars into the sky, and made a couple of constellations. Sure enough, my mind drifted.

What I want to get across with this story is how my priorities have changed, and how I don't mind that; in fact, I welcome and cherish it. I want to convey how big a deal this is, because when I was younger I refused to give up any of those things that I thought defined who I was: my creative drive, my relentless quest to Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn't A Mistake, and the material thi -- wait. That's not even it. Goddammit.

I finished the level, saved my game, and walked around the house aimlessly, growing increasingly frustrated with each step, until I found myself standing in my bedroom.

"Man, this place is a mess. I think I'll make the bed and put away this pile of clothes I dumped on the floor last night."

When I was done, I sat on the edge of my bed and flipped Biko's Kitty Hooch catnip mouse around for him. He's almost thirteen years old, but he loves that little mouse -- which had its head eaten off by Riley a few days ago -- and whenever it comes out, he's like a kitten again.

I held its tail between my fingertips, and flicked it from side to side. His pupils grew so big, he had Betazed eyes, and he pounced! His right paw swung out at it, and knocked it from my hand. It flew across the bed, and landed on the floor near the hamper, which was overflowing with dirty post-vacation clothes and towels.

"Woah. That's a mess. I think I'll empty out the hamper, and wash these towels, so it's one less thing Anne feels like she has to do." (I try to wash all my own clothes, but Anne beats me to it too frequently, and I've neglected my share of the towel and sheet washing, lately.)

I filled up a basket, and walked out to the laundry room, which is actually  in the garage, and not its own room at all. Man, it was hot out there.

While I filled the washer with clothes my mind drifted again . . .

This story is about how I saw Darin playing with his daughter in the pool, and how I loved watching them, and how I loved it when she laughed at my silly antics -- going underwater and leaping out at her -- and how I told Ryan and Nolan to keep the splashing in the deep end to a minimum, because Mike's son is little, and we didn't want to scare him. Just ten years ago, I would have been so annoyed that there were babies in the pool, and we all had to be mellow and quiet and reserved, but when she giggled at me and said, in two year-old, "Go under again!" I had a sudden realization that everything in my life now revolves around family. Everything I do, even the things that I mostly do for myself, are really for them. The things that I think of as sacrifices, well . . . they aren't, really. Man, it's hot in here.

A huge drop of sweat ran down my forehead and into my eye. I realized that I'd been standing at the open washer, staring at the ripples and folds of about half my wardrobe much longer than a normal person would, considering the stifling heat. Somehow, I'd managed to not spill the cup of detergent in my left hand. I closed the door and started the cycle.

I filled my geek. glass with water, and sat back down at my desk.

On Fourth of July at Darin's house this year, while I sat in his pool with his two year-old and our friend's six month-old, I realized how much I've changed in the last few years. The realization that I'd changed wasn't as shocking to me as the reaction I had when it hit me: in the past, when I've felt like I'm "growing up," I've always felt a certain sadness, like I'm trading my cool BMX bike for a lawnmower, and finally admitting that my Metallica concert T-shirt from the late 80s isn't only too ratty and torn to keep wearing, but I'm too old to continue wearing it. As I sat there in the pool, watching my best friend since I'm fourteen hold his two year-old baby girl in his arms as they blew bubbles at each other, I wasn't sad that we are all grown up now. In fact, I was happy and content.

"Arrgh!" I slammed my fist onto the desk and nearly deleted the entire thing. "This isn't working at all!"

"Hey," the Internal Critic said, "don't cockblock me, man. I'll tell you when it's working and when it isn't."

"Okay," I said. "Is this working?"

"It's working better than you think it is, but you're not quite there. You should look into your archives and find stuff that you really like, you know, like watching game tapes to see what you did right."

"Is it a little weird that I'm talking out loud to you?"

"Yes, but it's not as weird and risky as a huge rambling existential meta-post that's cleverly disguised navel-gazing."

"I'm going to get shit for this, aren't I?" I said.

"Probably. Do you care?" He said.

"Let's find out."

I switched to firefox, and went to gada.be. I searched for my name, and found the obligatory "Wil is an asshole" BBS posts. There was one story that was just a huge fabrication, and another that was written with all the insight and maturity of a six year-old.

"Well?" The Internal Critic said.

"Before I answer, can I give you a different name? Because now you're more of an imaginary friend than an Internal Critic."

"Unless you want to call me Oh-So-Clever-and-Entirely-Overused Literary Device, no."

"Okay, Internal Critic," I said. "I honestly don't care."

"Do you know why?" He said.

I shook my head, and steadied myself against the desk as a bit of post-cruise vertigo threatened to send me to the floor.

"Because you've moved on and they haven't." He said. I was quiet for a minute and let that sink in.

I spun my chair back to my desk, put my hands on my keyboard, and began to write:

. . . As I sat there in the pool, watching my best friend since I'm fourteen hold his two year-old baby girl in his arms as they blew bubbles at each other, I wasn't sad that we are all grown up now. In fact, I was happy and content.

My own kids splashed around in the deep water behind us. My friend Mike adjusted his son's sun bonnet and said, "Mom wants you to keep this on, dude."

"This is the first of many battles you're going to have with your mom where she wants you to look lame because it's 'good for you,'" I said to his son. Mike laughed. "So I suggest you get your dad on your side as quickly as possible and choose your battles carefully."

"Hey! I heard that!" His wife said from the edge of the pool.

I winked at Mike's son, and we all laughed together.

Ten -- no, six years ago, I would have wanted nothing to do with babies in pools, and would probably have stood near the barbecue with one of my other friends, drinking beer and talking about how much the Dodgers suck. I did that this year, of course, but my favorite moment on this Fourth of July was right there, in the pool, watching my two friends adore their children, while my own swam around behind us. My friends are just beginning their journey down the path of parenting, and I'm nearing the end of mine. Oh, sure, I'll never stray too far from it, but I've carried my children about as far as I can, and now that they're learning how to navigate their adolescent life, I'm more comfortable than ever about gently nudging them into adulthood.

"Well, you had some good stuff there, but it got a little unfocused near the end." The Internal Critic said.

"I want to show the distinction between how I feel now, and how I felt before, and mark this moment so I don't forget it, but I want to -- hey! Wait a minute!" A slow but certain realization began to dawn around me.

"What is it?" He said, with the patience and anticipation of a master whose pupil is about to gain great insight.

"Okay, when I went to do the Subject Line Here show, I spent a lot of time digging through my Exile archives, but I couldn't find anything that I really liked. There were lots of commentaries, tons of pictures, and copious links to my work elsewhere, but none of the narrative non-fiction stories that I used to write all the time at WWdN. It was frustrating to me while I looked, and by the time I was done, I was positively depressed."

"Why?"

"Because the reason I want to be a writer in the first place is to tell stories. Like when I cite David Sedaris and This American Life as my influences --"

"This thing you're doing today? It's neither of those things. Sorry to point that out, but as the Internal Critic, that's my job. Go on."

"Yeah, I know. Anyway, when I cite them as my influences, I always say that I want to make other people feel the way I feel when I read or hear them, and for a long time I did that at WWdN with stories like The Trade, Fireworks, and all those stories about bonding with Ryan and Nolan. But when I moved to Exile, and I got jobs writing for Suicide Girls and CardSquad, I stopped doing that. I started writing for work, for pay, to support my family, instead of as a reason to feed that creative monkey on my back. Time that I used to spend crafting stories and sharing them with the audience was now spent tracking down stories for the newswire, and playing and writing about poker. When I did sit down to write in my blog, I think that I got caught up in the toys and nifty gadgets here in Exile, and lost the need to create stories like I used to."

"Is that why you're writing this in a text editor?"

"Yeah." I scratched the side of my head, and stared out the window at The Big Tree. The Big Tree is this Chinese elm that I have stared at over the years when I can't get a few words to go together. Its leaves shook a bit in a gentle breeze.

"I need to take a break for a second and process this."

I walked out of my office and around my house again. I stopped in the kitchen and washed some dishes.

I think that when people have asked me, "How much longer are you going to be in Exile?" What they were really asking was, "When is your blog going to be like it used to be? When are you going to write stories again? Because it's a big Internets out there, filled with a lot of tubes, and if you don't start making with the stories that I liked, I'm not going to give you my time any more."

"This is going to come off like I'm completely fucking nuts," I said to Ferris, who thumped her tail on the floor when I walked in.

She said, "Just don't put any talking dogs into your story, and you'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Don't push it, buddy. But as long as we're talking, how about a biscuit?"

"Do you want a cookie?" I said in the excited talking to a dog voice. She stood up and wagged her entire body. Riley heard her tail whacking the side of the oven, and came running in from another room. I gave them biscuits, and made myself a sandwich.

While I ate, I read Bloglines from my Powerbook, which had been left on the dining room table last night.

"Hey! Isabelle Mercier is at the final table in the 5000 NLHE event!" I quickly clicked over to CardSquad, and wrote a post about my Team PokerStars teammate. When I was done, I fired up iTunes and . . .

"I know what I need. I know how to find some inspiration and get this story out of me."

I made a smart playlist of Doughty, Soul Coughing, Mingus, Coltrane, Miles, and Sonny Rollins. I connected to Airtunes, and put it on party shuffle.

"This is the music I've always listened to and been inspired by," I thought. "Let's see if this helps."

Mingus played I'll Remember April. Rollins played Blue 7. Soul Coughing played Screenwriter's Blues. Doughty played Rising Sign.

Remember when you were a teenager and you listened to The Queen is Dead, and it seems like Morrissey wrote all those songs about you -- no, for you -- and that guy or girl who you furiously pined for? I swear to jeebus, Doughty's songs were written just for me.

"I find my dreams and inspirations leading toward a real love."
"40 grand in the hole. I’m gonna open it up and let my yearning shine."
"What is my life without the heart at risk?"
"It was open but I failed to use it"
"I am going to Los Angeles to see my own name on a screen, five feet long and luminous."
"Signal got lost to the satellite, Got lost in the rideup to the plungedown."
"Upon the rails, among the weeds, I had a moment of serenity"
"I feel as if I am looking at the world from the bottom of a well"
"I don't need to walk around in circles"
"Move aside and let the man go through, let the man go through"
"We are all in some way or another going to Reseda someday to die."
 
Incidentally, I really like 4 out of 5. It's hard to find deep and inspiring meaning in a bunch of lyrical equations (unless you're a Feynman, and I'm not) but that song rocks.

I finished my lunch, put my dishes in the dishwasher, and paced the house again.

"Man, there's a lot of dog hair on the carpet here. I think I'll vacuum."

Accompanied by the turbine action of a hoover wind tunnel, my mind drifted again.

It doesn't matter if I can turn this into a story or not. Hopefully, just coming to this realization will help me clear out this writer's block and set me back on the road to writing the stories that will eventually make up the next Dancing Barefoot.

"Do you remember when you woke up in April and heard a mysterious voice in your head say, 'embrace who you truly are, and the rest will follow'?" It was the Internal Critic. At least he wasn't criticizing me.

"Yes. That was . . . weird."

"That was me. Or your higher self. Or something else entirely."

"Uhh . . ." I turned off the vacuum.

"Look, who it was wasn't important, because it was actually just you, just like I'm you. And now you're doing another Wesley Dialogues, so you're dangerously close to being a hack if you keep this up." He shrugged. "Critic. It's my job.

"The point is, you've known all along who you are and what you're meant to do. You're a geek who is meant to create and perform. But you're also a family man. You adore your family, and even though your relationship with your boys has been consistently and steadily undermined, you've never given up on them, nor they on you. Even though you often feel like you're not doing enough as a husband, your wife has never given up on you, nor you on her. Even though you frequently feel like the black sheep of your conservative family, you've never given up on each other. You're domesticated, alright, but that is okay.

"You had to figure that out, because what you do is not who you are, but if you don't know and embrace who you are -- "

"I'll never be able to relax, settle down, and tell those stories I want to create." I said.

"Exactly. Do you know why you have had writer's block for so long? Do you understand why you've felt frustrated, uninspired, and unmotivated?"

"Because if I didn't push myself to a certain point, I wouldn't have taken the time to examine my life and realize that the domestication which I thought was so horrible isn't really domestication as much as it's a happy acceptance that I'm an adult now, and -- excuse me."

I walked to the kitchen window and shouted at some teenagers who may or may not have actually been there, "Hey you damn kids! Get off my lawn!"

"It isn't domestication." I said,  "It isn't trading my snakeskin jacket for a suit and tie. It's as simple as sitting in Darin's pool with Mike and their babies, and thinking, 'Man, this is so cool.'"

"It was so vitally important that you have this realization, all the voices in your head got together and had an intervention. We put up a nice big writer's block so you'd realize that everything is actually okay. Also, you need to stop playing with the nifty toys at Typepad and just start writing again. It's fine to write your geek news stories -- which, I can tell you as a critic, are actually pretty entertaining -- and it's fine to play and write about poker. But that is not your purpose, so budget your time and energy appropriately, and get back to telling stories."

I put the vacuum away, and walked back into my office. I sat back down at my computer and found the words I'd written earlier in the day. I selected all of it, and hit delete. I took a breath and began to type.

I don't know if I can really explain it, and you'd all think I was totally fucking nuts if I tried, but I crossed yet another rubicon this week. It essentially comes down to this: when I was younger, I put my career ahead of everything else, and I resented everything that got in its way. Then I got married, began to raise children, and watched my priorities slowly but steadily change. This week, I realized with shocking and stunning clarity that the most important thing in my life, and the reason I do everything I do, is my family. I know that I wrote about that in Just A Geek, but this thing that happened on Tuesday . . . well, I don't know if I can clearly articulate it, but it was even more powerful than the events detailed in the chapter Alone Again Or . . . (.pdf link) from Just A Geek. Fifteen or twenty years ago I scoffed at anyone who said that being a family man was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Today, I can speak from experience: those guys were right.

My blog hasn't been what it once was, because in ways I can't explain -- again, you'd think I was out of my mind -- in order for me to have this vitally important moment of clarity and growth, I had to lose and then find my creativity again. I've talked a lot about straying from the path, and how I keep thinking I've found my way back to it, but it seems like each time I think I'm on the main road I discover that I was just on another, almost parallel road to the one that matters. Who knows if this is the real one, or just another one that's so similar I can't tell the difference. I know that this road feels like one where I can tell more stories, though, and that feels right to me.

I'll start on the still-untitled saga of CruiseTrek 2006, with book signings in Montreal and Boston just as soon as I write this story about Fourth of July that I need to tell.

Anne came home. I heard her hang up her keys on the mirror by the front door. "Where's Wil?" She said to Ferris. I'm pretty sure Ferris said nothing in return. A minute or so later, she walked into my office.

"Hey, why's the house so clean?" She said.

"Oh," I said, "I was writing."

however you might feel, tonight is real

Hey, did you know that today was Wednesday?

Apparently, I did not, because it wasn't until shortly after eleven in the morning my time that I realized I had a Games of our Lives deadline to hit, so I spent much of the day working on next week's column (which is, in my humble opinion, one of the best ones I've turned in over the last couple of months.) Incidentally, this week's is pretty cool: Astro Blaster.

Before I get to all the fantastic links that were sent in per my last post: I absolutely love writing Games of our Lives. In the past few weeks, I've been positively flooded with very tangible memories of arcades like Pinball Plus (which eventually became The Enterprise,) and Malibu Grand Prix out by my Aunt Val's house, and playing lots of Atari and then NES with chlorine-burned lungs while sitting in a wet swimsuit on the floor of my parents' den in Sunland. I love those memories so much, and I can see and feel those places so clearly right now, I hope that I can turn them into a cool story sooner than later.

When I was done with Games of our Lives, I wrote a story for the Suicide Girls Geek wire that I really like: one about ants, (and a feature about the space shuttle later tonight that I also like.) While I was updating the newswire, I found out that Suicide Girl Alexis bought a Wil Has A Posse thong from the WWdN store, and shot a pretty cool (and quite tasteful, so just settle down) photoset featuring it. My new goal is to get other Suicide Girls to do WWdN clothing photosets.  I'm looking in the direction of my fellow geek editor, Posh. Ahem.

Anyway, this is all to make lots of excuses for not updating during the day like I said I would, which I will do now:

• Katrina sent in pictures and a blog.
• asalsman sent in some photos, and a blog post. He also has some video, which is forthcoming. (It's the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5  License, asalsman.) I, uh, also beat up his friend. But he asked me to. Honest!
• kerri wrote a blog.
• The Knitsmiths let us use their table in Brookline, and then let me sign the very same table!
• Chaz, who traveled over ten hours to come to Montreal, posted some pictures from The Magical Blend at his blog.
• Cathy sent a description of the carnage that was "The Day Wil Wheaton Met the Bar Candidate."
• starshine_diva sent in her blog and some  pics from Montreal.
• rantmaster wrote a Livejournal entry.
• geekgrl64 sent some pics from Boston.
• JaynesGirl wrote a blog about Boston.
• spi has a post with links to pics at flickr and audio (.torrent and mp3) from Boston.

Wow. That's a lot of stuff! Thank you so much to everyone who sent in links. I hope to get my own story written up before the end of the week, which is one say closer than I thought it was twelve hours ago.

no place like 127.0.0.1

By the end of our trip, we were really ready to be home. We missed our dogs and our kids, and though the beds we slept in were always comfy, we both missed our own bed, with our cat Biko and (usually) Ferris at our feet.

I've traveled a whole bunch in my life, and I've noticed that whenever I'm just done with the road, and I want nothing more in the world than to be back in my own house, the last flight of the trip seems to take an eternity, and this time was no different. It was choppy as hell, and the five and a half hours felt more like seven, but when we finally walked into our house at 11:30 at night, to the leaping and furious tail-wagging of our dogs, and the hugs and joy of our kids, it was all forgotten, including the equally embarrassing and hilarious moment when I opened the bathroom door on a guy who was taking a wicked yes and forgot to lock the door.

I've been catching up on e-mail and news and stuff, and I've got a mountain of notes to turn into stories, but until then, I just wanted to say "Hey! I'm home. Thanks for checking in and keeping the damn kids off my lawn while I was gone."

If I saw you on my trip, and you have pictures or a blog about it, leave your link in comments and I'll update this post while I work on other stuff today.