WWdN: In Exile

desert bus for hope 2008 begins

Hey Kids, it's your old pal Wil Wheaton here, and this is a post about a whale.

WAIT! NO IT ISN'T! IT'S A POST ABOUT AWESOME PEOPLE WHO DO AWESOME THINGS THAT MAKE WITH THE HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!

Ahem. Allow me to introduce a few things:

There's this fantastic charity that my friends from Penny Arcade created, called Child's Play:

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over 3.5 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

This year, we have continued expanding across the country and the globe. With around 60 partner hospitals and more arriving every month, you can be sure to find one from the map above that needs your help! You can choose to purchase requested items from their online retailer wish lists, or make a cash donation that helps out Child’s Play hospitals everywhere. Any items purchased through Amazon will be shipped directly to your hospital of choice, so please be sure to select their shipping address rather than your own.

When gamers give back, it makes a difference!

There's are these guys up in Canadia called LoadingReadyRun. They're really funny, and I did a sketch with them last year at the Child's Play dinner in Seattle:

Inspired in name and appearance by the Commdore 64 Home Computer System, LRR is a site run by-and for-geeks. You have to be at least a bit of a geek to think writing, shooting and producing a new, original short sketch every week is feasible. But you have to be a giant geek to actually do it. Since LoadingReadyRun's start in 2003, it has consistently updated with a new video, every week. Often more!
LRR videos have been featured in film festivals such as the Comic Con International Film Festival in San Diego, and shown on major TV networks, including G4 TechTV, The CW and even CNN.

There's this horrible old game called Desert Bus, that's really more of a cruel practical joke than an actual game:

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.

The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson—for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends).

So, if you put all this together, you will get the guys from LoadingReadyRun playing a marathon of Desert Bus to raise money for Child's Play charity! It's hilarious to watch them play it, especially as the hours go by, and this year it's going to be even more entertaining as they will be joined by the cast of ‘The Guild’, Sean from Harmonix, the Joystiq Podcast’s Justin McElroy, John Davison of What They Play and 1Up Yours, Microsoft’s Major Nelson, Jeremy Baker of http://www.thezone.fm, and Sam Logan of Sam and Fuzzy.

They will also be joined by yours truly, sometime on Sunday afternoon (Pacific time). If you've got nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon (or evening, or whatever time it is where you live) and you want to hear me and some hilarious Canadian sketch comedy geeks - who will most likely be in Batcountry by the time I get there - engage in the high quality grabassery and shenanigans you've come to expect from us, watch my Twitter Tweet-o-thingy for the announcement.

Throughout the entire marathon, you can watch them play, via the driver or bus cam (links on the top of their webpage). There's also a live chat where we can go encourage them and tell them how awesome they are. Of course, this entire thing is for charity, so if you can part with a couple of bucks, we could all join forces to make a real difference in the life of a child.

just in case you missed the macy's parade moment everyone is talking about

This is the best version I've seen. It came from MartiMcKenna on Twitter.

awesome news that is awesome

For those of you who are wondering about the audio version of Happiest Days of Our Lives : it's currently in post-production. My producer/partner/engineer/friend David, who should be working on it 24/7 and only stopping to occasionally eat and pee, had the nerve to go get cast as Eric Doyle on Heroes, and I guess the producers "like him" and "want to keep working with him" all the time, so he's "kind of busy" with "that" and he's working on the audiobook in his diminishing free time. GOSH! Uh, I hope it will be finished and available in the very near future. Like, maybe next week, but you didn't hear that from me.

I mention this because I've come up with something cool and special that involves the audiobook and the special expanded edition of the book that I'm doing with Subterranean Press.

Months ago, I talked with Bill at Subterranean about taking something from the audiobook and putting it at Subterranean Online to help promote the special edition, and hopefully sell audiobooks. Everyone wins!

The thing is, David and I are already very busy, and it's unlikely that we will be able to coordinate and record the extra material and get it edited together in time for a holiday release. I don't want to do two versions of the audiobook, so I've decided to kill several birds at once, make a necklace from their skulls, and attach their feathers to football shoulder pads, just like that guy in Mad Max: using my rig at home (which isn't nearly as nice as David's, but is good enough) I will record audio versions of the stories we added to the expanded edition, and give those to Bill to put on Subterranean Online.

For free.

Yes, you read that correctly: it's for free, as in, "Hey, look what Wil gave me for free! He sure is a neat guy!"

I hope that this will help sell the expanded edition by letting people who aren't familiar with my work hear me perform it, and I hope that it will create interest in the audio version I did with David. It may even generate sales of Just A Geek: teh Audiobook, but I don't want to get too close to crazy talk, so I won't count on that. Additionally - and this is really important to me - the people who don't want or can't afford the expanded edition, but already have the MP edition will have a chance to hear the stories that they're missing. This special edition wouldn't even be possible without those people, and this is my way of saying thank you. It's really important to me to take care of my customers, and I hope that this effort will convert unhappy people into happy people.

This plan was formulated in the middle of the night, when my brain wouldn't let me sleep and not even the pouring rain could drown out its incessant babbling, so I haven't worked out a release schedule yet. When it happens, I'll be sure to post about it.

Hooray for awesome news that is awesome!

in which wil is interviewed by the LA Weekly

Long before I was hired to write a column there, I gave an interview to a reporter for the LA Weekly. The piece never ran, which made me sad. I spent a lot of time sitting in the corner, listening to The Queen is Dead and crying softly while I wrote 88 kinds of bad poetry with a crazy kind of urgency. On a Pee Chee folder, of course.

Today, via one of my favorite blogs, Hero Complex, I saw that the Weekly ran the interview:

It’s three o’ clock on a weekday afternoon and I’m in an Old Town Pasadena bar having drinks with a former child star. Were this person a faded pop tartlet, or perhaps named Corey, we might be planning a trip to a nudie bar or recollecting days spent riding the silver bullet. But this star is Wil Wheaton, and instead of strippers and blow, we’re talking science fiction with the bartender — a squirrelly looking but pleasant British fellow who looks as if he’s been playing this moment on loop in his head for a decade, waiting for it to finally come true.

“I’d have to say the past two seasons of DSN [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine] are as good as anything I’ve seen on television,” he tells Wheaton provocatively. “The storyline with the Cardassian war is unparalleled.”

For many former Star Trek actors — Wheaton played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, or TNG in today’s parlance — I imagine this is the kind of conversation they dread getting sucked into. Out for a quiet afternoon drink when suddenly a nerdy fan-boy wants to talk phasers and Cardassians, the stuff of Galaxy Quest parody. But for Wheaton, such a statement can’t go unchallenged.

“No way!” he responds with genuine incredulity, jumping to his Chuck Taylor–clad feet to lean over the bar. “Better than Battlestar Gallactica?”

Wheaton, you see, is an unabashed geek. “It’s like high school,” he tells me later, “you’re either one of the cool kids or you’re not — and I am definitely not.”

I irrationally despise the term "child star." It conjures up images of total fuckups who are complete failures as adults. I could have easily followed that path, but I worked very hard to stay off of it. Sure, I was an actor when I was a child, and for a brief time in my early teens, I was one of the stupid famous kids who was in the damn teen magazines, but I don't think I was ever a child star in the common understanding of the words.

Nevertheless, it's a great interview that was a lot of fun to do, and to my great delight, Matthew Fleischer captured the moment perfectly.

everything counts

I mentioned earlier this morning that I couldn't convince my brain to write what I thought I wanted to write for my column this week. Unless I do some kind of Depeche Mode retrospective at some point, which seems unlikely because I'm not a music reporter, I'm probably not going to use most of the stuff I wrote and abandoned, so I thought I'd share some of it here. It's unpolished and very first-drafty.

I was 14, just starting high school, when I stumbled onto this radio station way over on the right side of the dial called KROQ. It was totally different than anything I'd heard before, and – more importantly – completely unlike the music I'd listened to my whole life, which served my coming teenage rebellion quite nicely. I had a musical awakening, that lead to the third significant event: The Concert for the Masses at the Rose Bowl on June 18, 1988.

It was the first (and only) stadium show I’ve ever attended, and it remains one of the greatest experiences of my life. I spent the whole day there, and watched the stadium fill up as Wired, then Thomas Dolby, then OMD played. By the time the sun went down and Depeche took the stage, I'd been there for at least six hours, but when Pimpf began and the crowd roared so furiously it seemed to shake the ground beneath our feet, I felt like I was at my generation's Woodstock. (I know, I know, but I was 15 and I defy anyone reading this to honestly claim that they didn't apply similarly disproportionate comparisons at the same age.)

* It rained, but only during Blasphemous Rumors; it was like god himself was watching the show and decided to get involved, if only for a moment ... a sick sense of humour, indeed.

* I knew all the songs, and they played every single thing I wanted to hear, even Nothing, which was one of my favorite songs on Music for the Masses, and a point of constant disagreement with my Behind the Wheel-loving friends.

* I sang Everything Counts with 65,000 other people as the concert ended, and I felt like I was part of something unique and special, something that would never happen again. Over the years, I've run into other people who were at the same show, and even the ones who weren't fifteen and given to over-romanticizing things tell me that they felt the same thing.

* When the show was over, I couldn't find the car that was supposed to pick me up. It was a little frightening, and I felt like a kid who had been separated from his mom in a crowded department store. Before I could completely panic, though, I saw a familiar face in the mob: KROQ's Richard Blade. I knew Richard because he was on the air from noon until Jed the Fish took over every day, and for several months, after going to school at Paramount in the morning, I'd stop at the KROQ studios in Burbank on my way home to hang out with him. I'm sure I overstayed my welcome, but nobody ever said, "Hey, kid, stop coming around here, you're overstaying your welcome." I wanted to be a KROQ DJ so badly in those days, and the jocks and interns at KROQ were all so fucking cool, I was a total groupie idiot. Richard was extremely kind and patient with me, though, and when he saw me wandering around the crowd after the concert, he offered to drive me home. So not only did I get to see the greatest concert of my life, I got to end it by getting a ride home with one of my favorite DJs and his girlfriend.

* I still get goosebumps when I listen to 101, and I'm afraid that if I watch the movie, I'll fall into a nostalgic black hole and never return.

I didn't go to another Depeche show until 1996, when I took my little sister to the Forum to see them play with The The. The crowd didn’t have much energy, and when they finished with Everything Counts, very few people sang, and the show ended with an anticlimactic fade out. We were close to the stage, and I swear I could see Dave Gahan’s shoulders slump as he walked through the curtain. Shortly after that show, he nearly died from an overdose; Grunge ruled the world at that time, and I always wondered if the lackluster audience response made him feel like the world had turned and left him and his music behind. It felt a little creepy to have been part of an audience that may have played a part in what I always thought was a suicide attempt.

It should be obvious why this all got cut out; it has little to do with the column I ended up writing, and if I'd left it in, it would have distracted from the point and made the whole thing too long. Hooray for personal blogs where I can tell people to shove it if they complain, right?
I mentioned once that, depending on your age, the seminal Depeche Mode album was probably Music for the Masses or Violator. I was smacked around by a lot of people for not offering Black Celebration as an option, but I just figured everyone who liked Depeche Mode loved that album and considered it a load-bearing pillar in the catalog; it's like Unknown Pleasures or The Queen is Dead, right? Maybe I'm over thinking it.
The Concert for the Masses was one of the most incredible things I've ever experienced, and it remains one of my most cherished memories, one I can only see it through the over-romanticizing eyes of a fifteen year-old who was on the cusp of figuring out who he was and where he was going.

SUPER HAPPY FUNTIME WITH WIL AND SCALZI

John Scalzi is in Los Angeles and will be the guest of honor at LosCon this weekend. John threatened to throw the hissy-est of fits if I didn't come down to the con and do a panel with him, and since he sends me velvet Wesley Crusher paintings when he's happy with me, I'm not going to tempt fate; I'm heading down to the con on Saturday afternoon for some super happy funtime.

John describes it on his blog in this fashion:

Saturday, 5:30pm (ish) SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME WITH WIL AND SCALZI

Wil Wheaton and I take to the stage and do… what? Hell if we know. We’re making this up as we go along. But we might take audience questions and suggestions.

This is going to be really fun and awesome. It's $25 for the whole day on Saturday, so if you're in LA, and you have the means, I highly recommend coming to the con.

it's only rock and roll but i like it

For this week's column at the LA Weekly, I planned to write about some significant moments in my musical education, including my discovery of KROQ around 1987 and attending the Concert for the Masses in 1988. I started at the beginning, and wrote about listening to music with my dad when I was a little kid in the 70s. My brain refused to let me write the column I thought I wanted to write, and instead created something very different. I fought it for a couple of days, until I finally just gave in and let my brain write what it wanted to write:

It's Only Rock and Roll but I Like It: Music as a Soundtrack to Life

My dad loved classic rock, so when I look back on my childhood, The Beatles, Boston, Heart, The Doobie Brothers, and Fleetwood Mac provide the soundtrack. Twenty-nine years later, I can't listen to "Second Hand News" without hearing the unique sound of his VW bus's engine just underneath it in my memory. Most people who listen to "Black Water" hear Patrick Simmons on vocals, but not me. I hear my dad, modulating his voice to hit all the different parts of the harmonies during the chorus. When I hear anything off Boston's eponymous debut, it's accompanied by the steady sound of a hammer driving nails into cedar wood. Dad listened to that album a lot while I helped him build a gate for our side yard in the usual eight year-old manner: by wearing an oversized tool belt and handing him nails while I stayed out of the way. I'm sure it's possible to listen to Dreamboat Annie without giant earphones and a 15-foot coiled black cord, but I don't know why anyone would want to.

My editor, Erin, heard the call for an RSS feed, and got the webmonkeys at the Weekly to make one available. It isn't the full content, but it's enough to know if you want to exert the mighty effort of clicking the title and reading the rest of the post. You can subscribe to Wil Wheaton's LA Weekly RSS feed here.

Comments are closed on this post, to encourage comments at the Weekly, which makes the people who let me put food on my family happy.

Subterranean Press to release special edition of Happiest Days of Our Lives

Shortly after I published The Happiest Days of Our Lives , Bill Schafer, who is the publisher and owner of Subterranean Press, contacted me about doing a special limited edition. I discovered Subterranean Press when they published John Scalzi's Questions for a Soldier, and I fell in love with their special editions when I got Charlie Stross' Missile Gap and Neil Gaiman's Coraline. The idea of having my little book treated the same as books by John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Ray Bradbury, and Neal Stephenson was awesome, but I wasn't sure if it was a good idea - I didn't want to put out yet another edition of a book people already owned, and I really didn't want to do something that would devalue the 300.

I talked it over with Anne, sought advice from my friend and editor Andrew, and I asked some friends who have worked with Bill what they thought (it turns out that everyone who works with him adores him, which ended up being very important to me). After a few weeks of consideration, I realized that this was a unique opportunity, and I would be a fool to pass it up.

I got in touch with Bill and accepted his offer. We decided that instead of just doing a different printing of a book people already had, I'd look through the material that just missed the final cut, and put together a special expanded edition. I would also take all those pictures that are on the cover, and create a special photo insert section. (I'm really excited about this; my idea is to create something that looks and feels like a family photo album, complete with handwritten captions.)

I'll be taking the Monolith Press edition (which has almost sold through its second printing!) offline in a couple of weeks, so Bill and I aren't competing with each other. If you've been waiting to get a Monolith Press edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives, or you wanted a copy of the book in time for the holidays, you should place your order soon. Like a set of car keys dropped into molten lava, it's gone, man.

The Special Edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives from Subterranean Press is now available for order, and it will ship in Spring of 2009. There are 2000 in the limited hardback edition, and 26 in the leatherbound lettered edition, which will come in a custom traycase.

Andrew and I have been working like crazy on this project for a couple of months, and over the weekend I finally felt like we'd put together something worthy of being called a special edition. I just love it, and I can't wait for everyone to see it.

Edited to add: you may want to check out this awesome news that is awesome, about an audio accompaniment to the special edition.

'tis a silly place

If you live in that part of the Venn Diagram where Star Trek and Monty Python overlap, (as I do) I suspect you will be glad you watched this.
(epic thanks to Sean L. for e-mailing this to me.)

in which i once again praise and thank mst3k

A few months ago, my dad gave me a copy of a James Michener book called The Eagle and the Raven. "Read the introduction," my dad said. "I think it will speak to you."

He was right. The introduction was all about how Michener saved everything he cut out of his novels, and described how the book I held in my hands was born from material he'd cut out of a different book he'd written years before. I never throw away anything, and it was spiffy to read that one of my behaviors as a writer is mimicked by someone who probably cut more words out of his novels than I'll write in my entire life. I thought about this earlier today when I came across a file called introduction.odt, which I assume it was going to be an introduction to something, at some time:

When I was twenty or twenty-one, I read an interview with Joel Hodgson, one of the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was asked about the uncommonly high number of obscure references and jokes that were lost on a large portion of the audience. Those obscure jokes were one of the main reasons I loved MST3K so much, so I paid very close attention when Joel said that they didn’t ask themselves, “Will anyone get this joke?” but instead they said to each other, “the right people will get this joke.” That philosophy was and continues to be a very strong influence in my writing, so

and then it just ends. I can't remember where I was going with this, or what it was for (I didn't check the date stamp on the file before I reflexively saved it after opening it this afternoon) but it remains true: MST3K was a huge influence on me during some of my formative years.

The MST3K crew reunited recently to give an interview to my old stomping grounds, The AV Club, and in it, Joel said:

No one was saying, "Don't put that in, no one will get that." We had a very open architecture in the writing room. The only person that could remove any joke was basically an individual who said, "I have a problem with that joke, it offends me." And then we would throw it out, no questions asked.

I'm doubt that Joel or anyone from MST3K will see this, but I want to publicly thank them all, not just for entertaining me during the exciting rock climbing portion of my youth, but for inspiring me to never worry about trying to be all things to all people.

I got some important work done today, and I'm going to celebrate by watching something from the 20th anniversary box set, probably First Spaceship on Venus .

Oh, while I'm talking about MST3K: People who can make this happen, please get Lost Continent and Rocketship X-M onto DVD, mmmkay? I haven't seen them since 1990, and after waiting all this time, my lungs are aching for air.