WWdN: In Exile

my 2009 PAX panel schedule and chapbook announcement

Yesterday, PAX 2009 completely sold out, days before the con even begins. I'm so happy for everyone involved, from my friends who make the show happen, to the over 50,000 gamers who are about to participate in the best three days of the year.

My panel schedule looks a lot like this:

Saturday, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Serpent Theatre

Pitch Your Game Idea

You’ve got 45 seconds to deliver your idea to our panel of experts. The top three pitches will be picked for prizes and swag! (Please note that this is an open forum -- there’s nothing keeping anyone, judges and attendees alike, from stealing your ideas! If you’re not comfortable with this, please don’t pitch your idea!)

Panelists Include: Jeff Kalles, Greg Hjertager, Wil Wheaton

Sunday, 2:30pm - 3:30pm, Serpent Theatre

Wil Wheaton presents: THE AWESOME HOUR!!1

Wil Wheaton first came to PAX in 2007, when he gave the keynote address that your parents won't stop making you listen to in the car. In 2008, he returned for a panel that asked and answered the burning question, "Can Wil Wheaton really be a panel all by himself?" This year, Commodore Wil Wheaton welcomes you aboard the USS AWESOME for 60 minutes of story-telling, lingerie-dodging, mirth-making, myth-making, iconoclasting, and the obligatory burning-questioning ... ing.

Presented by Wil Wheaton

I'm also tremendously excited to announce that I was able to put together a limited-edition chapbook of mostly-unpublished short fiction that will only be available at PAX. BEHOLD THE INTRODUCTION!

The Day After and Other Stories

Every year, before the summer convention season gets underway, I pull a few excerpts from whatever I plan to release in the fall, take them to my local print shop, and make a deliberately lo-fi, limited edition chapbook to take with me on the obligatory summer convention circuit.

I’ve done previews of Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Memories of the Future, and in 2008, I pulled together a sampler that eventually became Sunken Treasure. 

While Memories of the Future is 2009’s “big” fall release, it didn’t make sense to me to release a Memories-based chapbook this summer, because one already exists. 

It looked like there wasn’t going to be a 2009 entry in the traditional Wil Wheaton Zine-like Chapbook Extravaganza, until I realized that I have several pieces of unpublished fiction sitting in my office, just waiting to be published. 

“Hey,” I said to myself, “people keep asking me to write and release fiction, and I’ve been waiting until I have an actual novel to give them. But these things totally don’t suck, and I bet readers would enjoy them.”

“That is an excellent idea, me,” I said. “And have I mentioned how smart and pretty you are?”

“Oh, stop it. You’re embarrassing me,” I said.

Together, myself and I collected some of my (mostly unpublished) fiction and put it into this chapbook, for safe keeping.

Even though this is limited to just 200 copies, it represents a significant step for me in my life as a writer, because it’s the first time I’ve collected and published stories that I made up. (You know, like a writer does.) I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for your support!

Wil Wheaton

Pasadena 

2009

There will be just 200 signed and numbered copies of The Day After and Other Stories at PAX, which I'll have at my table in bandland. Depending on how it sells and the feedback I get from people who read it, I may decide to do a wide release, similar to what I did with Sunken Treasure.

This is the cover for Memories of the Future, Volume One

This is the cover for Memories of the Future, Volume One.

I looked at a bunch of different designs (and at least one of them may be a variant cover at some point) but when I saw the comp that ended up leading to this cover, I knew that this was the one I'd want to use, because I just love 1950s and 1960s pulp Sci-Fi covers. For me, they evoke a unique sense of nostalgia that is strangely timeless, and that's something I hope to do with the text in these books.

I asked my friend Will Hindmarch, who did the interior and cover design, to talk about the process a little bit, and here's what he had to say:

We went through a few cover designs before settling on this one. I see it as a mix between classic, pulpy Penguin covers and a bit of modern texture-driven design. The decision not to do an actual fake distressed cover, here, with ragged edges and all that, was deliberate. So it has some of that distressed texture, but it's cleaner than a beat-up, hand-me-down copy pulled out of an attic somewhere. This is some remarkably clean copy you found in a second-hand shop somewhere.

The thing also needed to intuitively evoke Star Trek memories without being too on-the-nose. I immediately latched on to that familiar uniform shape and did two or three variations on that idea. This is the one that Wil grabbed out of my various sketches. We wanted something that sort of looked back but was also sort of about the future, but we needed something that we could riff on for a series of books. So it's got a formula that we can tweak and alter as we move forward. I think, once we have two or three of these covers sitting next to each other, they'll interact in fun ways.

I'm already looking ahead to the imagery for volume two. 

Memories of the Future, Volume One will be released next month. I will announce the exact date soon. A little more information about Memories of the Future, Volume One can be found here.

Leverage - The Two Live Crew Job

Early feedback from tonight's episode of Leverage is overwhelmingly positive, which delights me. I'm so happy to hear that so many people liked it.

If you've seen the show already, you may get a kick out of the pictures I took during production and just added to Flickr, but there are spoilers, so don't look if you don't want to see them. (And no fair complaining at me if you don't listen and get spoiled.)

I'm sure John will have a post at his blog in the very near future where you can ask him questions about the spin-off (with robots!) that I'm getting.*

If you have questions or comments for me about the show, feel free to leave them here and I'll do my best to respond in a timely manner. Seriously, I'll really appreciate the distraction.

*I'm not really getting a spin-off. That's my little joke. Ha! Ha! I am using the Internet!

"Hi, I'm Wil, and I'll be playing the part of the Orange X."

Trying to think about something else for a moment ...

When we shoot a TV show or a movie, we often have to cheat our looks closer or farther away from the camera during our closeups. Most of the time, the place we're supposed to look is marked with a piece of tape, like an orange X, for example. 

When we shot the "showdown" sequence on Leverage, Aldis and I both had to cheat our looks on most of the shots, so whoever was on camera played a lot of the scene looking at a piece of tape while the other actor stood behind the camera and delivered his lines. There was one set up, though, where I was able to stand just to the side of the camera for him and he could talk directly to me. We were feeling silly that day, so I grabbed some tape and put an orange X right on my forehead. You know, for continuity.  

"Hi, I'm Wil, and I'll be playing the part of the Orange X," I told him. We all laughed, and I spent several minutes describing the different choices I make for different colors of tape.

 "Playing the Red X is very different from playing the Blue X, and though I've tried my best, I've never really been able to nail playing a Green X." 

My episode of Leverage, The 2 Live Crew Job, airs tonight on TNT.

I did a whole bunch of interviews last week to support tonight's show. If you'd like to read them all, here is a huge list that TNT publicity just sent me. Some of these links include video, too.

• IGN
• E! Online
• Television Without Pity
• SciFi Wire
• TV.com 
• USA Weekend
• Trek Movie
• CliqueClack TV
• Sofachip
• IF Magazine

(Thanks to Marc Roskin, who took this picture with his iPhone and e-mailed it to me.)

in which some comfort is found

I saw Ferris' empty dish last night when I fed Riley, and it unleashed an agonizing wave of sadness so overwhelming, I dropped to the floor in our living room and cried as hard and as long as I ever have in my life.

After she was finished eating, Riley came over to me and sniffed at my face. Through my tears and gasping sobs, I told her it was okay, I just missed Ferris a lot and I was sad.

She rubbed her face against my cheek and trotted into the family room. A moment later, she returned with her soggy tennis ball, which she gently put into my lap. She looked up at me, and then walked into the corner of the family room, where she picked up her rope - her favorite toy, which she brings with her to the front door whenever we come home - and brought it over to me. She set it on the ground next to me, and then laid down and put her head in my lap. I cried for a good long time, but I was comforted by Riley's actions, even if I'm projecting my own feelings onto her. I felt like she could tell I was grieving, so she brought me the things that make her happy, before letting me cry on her until the fur on her neck was soaked with my tears. When I finally stopped, mostly because I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I felt a tiny bit better. 

Anne is out of town and Ryan went back to school last week. This is Nolan's first major loss, and I haven't wanted to burden him with my own grief, so other than emails from friends and comments on my blog, I've been essentially alone with my pain the last three days. It's been incredibly difficult, and I'm glad Anne is coming home this afternoon, so I'll have someone to cry with.

i can't think of a title, so i'll just say thank you

I once had a terrible case of the flu. In addition to the body aches and chills and stuff, I was puking my brains out all over the place all the time. The worst part of it was that it would happen with no warning; one second I was fine, and then I'd suddenly feel my stomach turn, and I'd be throwing up whatever was left in my stomach from the last time. I couldn't control it at all, and after about 12 hours of it, my neck and throat just ached like they'd been kicked by a mule wearing 1930s baseball spikes.

For the last 24 hours, I've experienced the same thing, but instead of throwing up, I'm hit by these unexpected waves of incredibly powerful grief that seem to start in my stomach and explode into heartbreaking sobs in a matter of seconds. My whole body aches, but my throat, neck, and shoulders are especially sore and tired. I know I slept last night, but I don't feel like I got a whole lot of actual rest. 

This morning, I made it about 5 minutes before the first wave of sorrow hit me, but at least I knew what set it off: automatically looking for Ferris on her little doggie cot in the living room, where she'd greet me every morning, wagging just the tip of her tail, until I came over to pet her. Since then, it's been less like I'm crying every five minutes and more like there are these occasional breaks when I'm not. Maybe my body needs time to make and store new tears, I don't know.

I went to the comic shop to get my mind off of things. I haven't been in almost a year because I've been so busy, but figured I'd pick up some trades and recent issues of my friends' books, so I would have something to do. Besides, going to the comic shop always makes me happy.

I picked up a lot of books, and decided to give Green Lantern, which was one of my favorite titles in the 80s, a look. My comic guy recommended this one particular trade as an entry point, so I added it to the pile. When I went next door for some falafel at Zankou, I opened it up while I waited for my order to come up. In the first panel, Hal Jordan is talking to someone named Ferris. I felt the sob rise in my chest, but I caught it in my throat and managed to keep it down with some deep breaths until I got into the car a little bit later.

It's been an extraordinarily difficult day. Our other dog, Riley, who we got as a companion for Ferris when Ferris was 2, has realized that something is very wrong in the house, and keeps looking for Ferris. All day today she's never strayed very far from my side, and though I'm aware that I may be projecting and anthropomorphizing, it sure does seem like she has sadness in her eyes.

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to everyone who has offered condolences for our loss. Ferris was our dog, but she was as much a part of our family as any human, and loved us unconditionally. There is a gigantic open wound in my heart and a vast empty space in my house that feels like it's never going to heal (even though I know it eventually will.) I've always felt like telling someone "I'm sorry for your loss" wasn't ever enough, but being on this side of it, I can tell you that it's more comforting than I ever expected.

through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes

My dog Ferris, who was rescued from a bus stop in Monrovia by my wife Anne almost exactly 8 years ago, had a heart attack and died this morning. It happened very quickly, and I was with her, which is supposed to make me feel better, but at this moment all I can feel is nearly-unbearable sorrow, and the empty space in my life left behind by my awesome dog. 

Bye bye, Ferris. I love you and miss you. You were the best dog ever.

A small request: if you choose to comment, please don't post that Rainbow Bridge thing. I know you mean well, but it has always made me uncomfortable.

in which bad golf is played and news items are discussed

Last week, I took Nolan to the 3 par golf course I played on all the time as a teenager for a round of what we call Bad Golf. 

The rules of Bad Golf are pretty simple:

1. If you completely blow it on a shot, you get an automatic do-over, no penalty.

2. If you miss the cup by a distance equal to or less than the head on your putter, you count it as "in the hole", so long as you shout, "it's in the hole!"

3. If you somehow hit a squirrel (unintentionally) you automatically win the round.

4. Once a round, you can call "that was totally bullshit" and have a do-over.

5. You must quote Caddyshack whenever appropriate.

These rules were built by me and my friend Kevin when we were in our early 20s, because we loved golf, but were truly horrible at the actual playing of it. They worked out well for us, because they forced us to not take the game too seriously, and gave us a number of excuses to have fun, even when we were playing poorly (which was always.)

This was the first time Nolan or I had picked up a club since the last time we played on this course three years ago, when Nolan was still shorter than me. We played the front 9, invoked Rules 1 and 2 a few times, and had a blast. I shot 37 because I am the master of the four-putt, and Nolan shot 40 because he's taller and stronger than he was last time we played, and even trying to take it easy with his pitching wedge, he was flying over most of the greens. Like everything I do with my kids, though, it wasn't about the score of the game as much as it was about the time spent playing it.

On the way home, I saw a lot of signs around the golf course that pointed to a website called SaveTheGolfCourse.org. When I got home, I looked it up and was horrified to discover that a dirtbag developer is trying to destroy the Verdugo Hills Golf Course and build 320 condos on the land. A lot of residents are fighting it, and I hope they win. I love that place, it's a real treasure for everyone who lives in Sunland, Tujunga, and La Crescenta, and the last thing that area needs is more condos.

And now, various items for your Sunday reading, starting with some book-related things:

I have the final cover for Memories of the Future Volume One, and I'll be posting it next week. Yes, this means that the official release date is right around the corner.

I think I'm bringing a limited-edition chapbook to PAX. If I can get it all together, it will be a short fiction collection, including unpublished stories that I'm pretty sure don't suck.

Jim C. Hines, author of the wonderful book Goblin Quest, read Just A Geek and wrote some extraordinarily kind things about me and my book in his blog.

My columns at Suicide Girls and the LA Weekly, which have been on summer vacation, will be starting up again next month.

For the last two weeks, I've been jogging just a little bit every day, so I can get my skeleton and muscles used to the idea of me doing more physical activity than just sitting at my desk and writing (remember, I've resolved to play ice hockey again before the year is out, and with just four months left, I'm running out of time.) I take my iPod with me and listen to podcasts while I'm out, and I wanted to point out two recent episodes that I enjoyed: From Escape Pod, Carthago Delenda Est and from Stuff You Should Know, The Necronomicon. 

Back in March, I posted about the debut of my friend Ed's webseries, Angel of Death:

Angel of Death stars Zoe Bell (who you've seen double all kinds of people, but probably didn't know it. She also spent much of Death Proof riding around on the hood of a car being awesome) as an assassin who "gets stabbed through the skull; she survives, but the head injury leaves her with an awkward side effect: She suddenly develops a conscience."

Though Angel of Death was originally released as an episodic webseries, I guess they always intended to eventually release it as a feature film, and last night, Nolan and I finally got to watch that version on DVD. It looks and sounds great, and the story plays even better on TV than it did in my browser. If you liked Kill Bill, Grindhouse, or Sin City, I think you'll like Angel of Death.

I came across a blog called Study Hacks (via Reddit) that is worth a look, especially if you're a student.

As it turns out, I'm all over the damn place next week: Season 3 of The Guild premieres on Xbox Live on Tuesday the 25th, my episode of Leverage airs on Wednesday the 26th, and the newest D&D Penny Arcade Podcast begins on Friday the 28th.

the spambots on twitter are completely out of control

A few months ago, Twitter changed their @replies tab into something called @mentions. This had a significant impact on a lot of us who use Twitter, especially those of us with a large number of followers.

Originally, I'd only see a message with @wilw in it if that's the way the message began. It worked very well, and there was much rejoicing.

Then someone at Twitter decided to change the way it worked. From that day forward, whenever someone used @[your twitter name] anywhere in the body of the message, it would show up as a "mention" in tab that was until-recently-known as replies.

I know a lot of other Twitter users with lots of followers didn't like the change, because for many of them it turned an already-busy replies tab into an avalanche of mentions that was nearly-impossible to keep up with. I can only speak for myself, but I probably only see 10% of the actual @wilw messages that are sent now, because there are so many of them, I just can't keep up.

I have always said that Twitter is a free service, and it's pretty unseemly for us to complain about it because we're not paying for it, but I've also begged Twitter to let me give them money in exchange for a few features, or even just because I love the service so much. So far, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears (or maybe they're so buried in mentions that they never see them.)

Anyway, about a month or five weeks ago, I started to notice a severe spambot problem on Twitter. Obviously, some mother fucker douchebag pile of shit figured out a way to write a script that exploits weaknesses in the signup process, and every Friday (maybe to hide among the higher-volume "follow Friday" Tweets) my @mentions tab is flooded with these goddamn spam bots. 

For example, here's a screenshot of my @mentions, taken just a few minutes ago:

I hope that Twitter is taking proactive steps to do something about this, but I don't see any mention of it on their official blog or status page. I hope that they're not just ignoring it, because it's not like there's a whole lot of random crap that needs to be sorted out here: The bots all post from API, they all use identical phrasing, and there is certainly enough of a pattern to the abuse that someone at Twitter HQ should be able to automate blocking them. I've reported dozens of them to @spam, but it doesn't seem to be having an effect.

It's gotten so frustrating that I'm not using Twitter until the problem is resolved*. I genuinely enjoy the interaction I get to have with other people via @messages (I often call Twitter "time-shifted, asynchronous instant messaging") and I since this started yesterday, it's just too much work - and too infuriating - to dig through all the goddamn spammer bullshit to find the legitimate messages.

I've used nest.unclutterer, but the spambots are smart enough not to follow too many accounts. I've tried to use Twitblock, but it chokes before it can finish (that looks like it's going to be an incredibly useful app, once it's out of alpha and beta and gets to lambda lambda lambda.)

I know other high-profile Twitter users have been targeted by these scripts, and I know that a lot of them are expressing similar frustrations. I don't know if they use Twitter the same way I do, but for those who use it as an actual communication tool, and not just a broadcasting platform, it's got to be just as annoying as it is for me.

I love Twitter, and I am incredibly grateful for how it's helped me reach out to and interact with hundreds of thousands of new people. I just hope that someone at Twitter is listening, and is trying to do something about a spam and abuse problem that is threatening to overwhelm an otherwise-awesome service.

* I want need to clarify: THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT, and I wish people would stop suggesting that it is. This isn't some kind of stupid threat, or the suggestion that I'm taking my football and going home. It's more like deciding not to go to a place you've always loved until the owners clean it up, because it's gotten so filthy you can't stand it.

i never did national network tv interviews later on in life like the ones i did when i was twelve

When we filmed Stand By Me, none of us knew it was going to be the huge success that it became. None of us expected it to be part of that 50s revival that was so much fun in the mid-80s, and none of us knew that it would essentially launch all of our acting careers.

But I think that, if you asked any of us – actors or crew – who worked on the film, we'd all say that we knew we were working on something special, something that was definitely not going to suck, something that we could be proud of. The fact that audiences agreed with us was pretty awesome.

I don't know about the other guys, but I was totally unprepared for Stand By Me's success and the way it shoved a lot of us into the center of the spotlight. Maybe Corey knew what to expect, because he'd already been in a ton of popular movies (we all saw Goonies together while we were on location in Oregon) but I certainly didn't know what to do when I came home from a family vacation and saw several boxes on my porch, filled with fan mail. 

You know, I haven't thought about this in two decades, but I just got this almost-photographic memory of sitting on my parents couch long after the rest of the family had gone to sleep, listening to Led Zeppelin IV on my dad's huge stereo (with the multi-band graphic equalizer component attached) on a very hot night in late August of 1986, trying to read and answer all of that fan mail by myself. I recall feeling embarrassed by it all, a little weirded out, but also a little excited. I remember thinking that maybe, in those boxes, was a letter from a girl who might want to go to the movies with me.

As I said, I was totally unprepared for the whole thing.

After about a year of being part of that whole Teen Beat crowd, I was totally over it, I thought it was stupid and fake, and really wanted to just get back to being an actor and having a normal life ... but for the first few months, I will admit that it was pretty cool and a lot of fun to travel around the country for interviews on TV shows, like Good Morning America.

I forget what day this picture was taken, but it was 1986, right after Stand By Me had been released. There we are, sitting on chairs in the green room, waiting to go be interviewed by (I think) Ron Reagan, Jr. It was my first trip to New York, and I remember how excited I was to go to that huge, almost mythical city, see Times Square, ride the subway, visit the Statue of Liberty, and hang out with Jerry in his home town.

This photo captures our personalities perfectly: River and Corey are focused and serious (Corey is even wearing a tie and drinking coffee!) I am listening to the same person they are, but I'm not even trying to contain how excited I am to be going on a television show that I had been watching with my Aunt Val since I could remember, in front of the whole country, no less.

My favorite part of this picture, though, is Jerry. It's almost like he caught my mom or dad taking this picture of us, and decided to strike a pose, just to be silly. I just love that he isn't taking the thing too seriously, and that he's just having fun and enjoying the whole thing. As I got older and began to feel like the teen magazine publicity stuff was taking over my life, it stopped being fun, and it started to feel like a chore. I always envied that Jerry seemed to take it all in stride, keep it in perspective, and just have fun with it. I heard him on the Adam Carolla podcast about a week or so ago, and he hadn't changed a bit: still silly, still cracking me up, still keeping everything in perspective.

I've always said that Stand By Me was so successful because Rob cast four young actors who were so much like their characters, but I think it's spooky how the four of us ended up being so much like our characters: River died too young, Corey struggled like crazy to get his personal demons under control, Jerry found success and happiness, and I'm a writer.

...I have had a fucking weird life, man.