WWdN: In Exile

FedCon day two

I slept late, and woke to the room service guy knocking on my door. I vaguely recall signing the order receipt before falling back into bed for another hour, when my growling stomach finally won the battle between it and my tired brain.

I'd like to believe that my stomach told my brain, "Look, brain, when there's food in me, it gives you and the rest of this stupid body energy, and then none of us will be so damn tired. Christ, why couldn't I have been put into an athlete, instead of ... whatever the hell this old thing is."

Man, my stomach is a jerk, isn't it? It knows that I need it, though ... it's always one step ahead!

I had a coffee, too many croissants (the non-meat options for breakfast are rather limited here, and feature lots of bread), and the most delicious bowl of birchermuesli I've had since yesterday morning. Seriously, where has this been all my life?! If I can't get this stuff back in Los Angeles, I will register a complaint.

I wrote a blog, took a shower, and got down to my autograph session right on time. On my way, I passed Nicole De Boer, who looks so much like my friend Lynn, I keep doing double takes and wondering why the hell Lynn is here, and if she's here, why aren't we hanging out? (I told this to Nicole yesterday, before I realized it made me sound: a)crazy and b)like a bit of a creep. Whoops. It's a good thing she's really awesome, and we can speak the secret language of Star Trek actors.)

For the next four hours, I signed pictures of Wesley in his various sexytime and bullet-proof hair forms, a few Criminal Minds pictures, and more Big Bang Theory images of Evil Wil Wheaton than anything else. I also noticed something here that I've never seen at any other cons: Many people made truly awesome collages in photoshop or gimp, and printed them out on photo paper for me to sign.

In every signing, it's inevitable that most of the day will blur. It's just a fact of doing something that's repetitive, especially in an environment where I know that I can't stop and chat like I usually do, on account of the huge lines of people who are waiting.

Nevertheless, something is as clear in my mind as if it just happened. A man brought me a photo of the German poster for Stand By Me. "You are the only one left who hasn't signed this," he said.

I looked at it, and saw that Corey, Jerry ... and River had signed it.

The world stopped for a moment, and everything went silent. I looked at River's signature, knowing that he couldn't have been older than 23 when he signed it, and that it was likely the same age as one of my sons when he did.

Again, I thought about a life cut down too soon, an avoidable tragedy that has now hit me in the stomach twice in just a short period of time. I wondered how all the 25th anniversary mania is affecting River's family, and if this is stirring up feelings in them that are less painful when undisturbed.

"This is affecting you," a woman said, softly.

I looked up after I don't know how long and said, "Yes." I rubbed my thumb across River's name, and held a deliberate moment of silence for him. Putting my name next to his felt ... strange but also good.

As the day went on, I started to feel really weak and woozy. I think a few days of eating mostly bread-based food is pissing off my body, and I felt almost like I was going to crash. I got some juice and a granola bar into me, with some gummy bears on stand by just in case, but was able to pull myself back together in time for the photo session later in the day.

I think I took about 100 photos with a bunch of different people, but it all went by in such a blur, I could have imagined the whole thing. Everyone was, again, incredibly kind and friendly, which seems to be a theme here at Fedcon.

After my photo shoot was over, I wandered the vendor's room. I bought cufflinks that look like a Dalek and a Tardis, and a Tardis pin for my bag of holding. I told Stephan, who is taking care of me, that Anne would be very pleased for me to return him without a dozen new T-shirts. He laughed and said his girlfriend feels the same way about his T-shirt collection.

While I rode the elevator up to my floor, I looked out at the lobby. It was filled with people in all sorts of beautiful costumes, in groups of 3 and 4, or in large parties of 10 or more. Everyone spoke to each other with animated arm movements, people posed for and took pictures with and of each other, and everyone seemed to be having a great time getting their geek on.

"I'm looking at a con in Germany," I thought, "but I could really be anywhere in the world, even my own town, and I'd be looking at essentially the same thing. This is how enormous and inclusive our culture is."

I walked down the hallway and into my room, feeling lucky and proud to be part of this.

 

FedCon day one

The plan was to sleep for as close to 12 hours as possible, to reset my brain for local time. My brain, as usual, had plans of its own. I woke up after about four hours, and before I fully realized what was happening, I'd solved a fairly major story problem on this project I've been stalled on for months.

I got out of bed, wrote down everything I could, hoped it would make sense to me when I woke up for real, and went back to sleep. About 8 hours later, I woke up and felt great. It was just after 9am local time. I hopped out of bed, and while I made my coffee, I checked my notes from the middle of the night. They all made sense, and now it's just a matter of time before HOUSE OF CARDS is written.

My first day at FedCon was a lot of fun. We did a press conference in the morning, which was pretty much everyone who was not named Richard Dean Anderson listen to Richard Dean Anderson take questions about Stargate, which is incredibly popular here. I sat next to RDA, which is what I figured out his friends call him, and I was quite impressed with his humor and intellect.

After the press conference, I ate lunch with Marina Sirtis, Kates Vernon and Hewlett, and Paul McGillon. I caught Marina up on the last ten years or so, and made new friends. It was awesome.

I had a break after lunch, so I came back to my hotel room and did some writing and Redditing before going back downstairs for my first photo session. The photo sessions are a little unsatisfying to me, because I always want to talk to everyone, but can't because the line just has to keep moving. I did my best to share at least a few words with everyone, though, and I think the fans I took pictures with all had a good time. At one point, the photographer was saying something in German over and over again to a girl who was posing with me. She said to me, softly, "I don't understand what he wants me to do!" She had a Scottish accent. I resisted the urge to say "Come along, Pond," and just shrugged. "Neither do I," I said. One of the photographer's assistants heard us and said to him, "English!" Everyone laughed, and he told her that he was trying to get her to tilt her chin down, so her glasses didn't reflect the flash.

When my photo session was over, I did my first Q&A in the main ballroom. It was more heavily-attended than I expected, considering that it was 9pm on a Thursday night, and I guess there were about a thousand people who were just awesome. I got a standing ovation when I came out! I told them that Anne asked me if I was going to learn German before I came here. I said that I wasn't going to try, because I didn't think I'd learn enough to be useful, and it would take valuable time away from playing Portal 2. I said that it wasn't that important, though, because we'd all be conversing in the universal language of nerds this weekend. For the rest of the hour, that's what we did. I had a great time, even though I was way out of my comfort zone just answering questions instead of performing something from one of my books. I haven't done that at a Trek con in over ten years, and I didn't know if I'd be able to not suck, but it was like riding a bike, and I left the stage feeling like I'd entertained everyone there, and made it worth their time to see me. 

When I was all done, I went to the bar downstairs with Garret Wang and got a local Alt Bier, which is a darkish beer that's not as hoppy as what I usually drink, but is the local specialty. While Garret and I traded "We worked on Star Trek" stories, a DJ played incredibly loud American rock music. It was delightfully surreal to hear about two hundred Germans singing along in accented English with KISS, while colored lights flashed along the walls and ceiling.

I fell asleep listening the the FAX compilation on my iPad, and had dreams that I was a super hero who could fly.

No, really. 

 

In which Wil goes to Germany (updated)

The following was written about ten hours ago, on another continent. I thought I'd published it before I left, but it turns out I saved it as a draft, instead. Good times.

I'm sitting in the lounge at LAX, waiting to board my flight to Heathrow. Sometime tomorrow afternoon, I'll end up in Germany, do my best to adjust to jet lag, and then spend the weekend at FedCon.

I'm super excited to talk about Star Trek, read from Memories of the Future, talk about Eureka, and get my geek on with European fans for the first time since Anne and I went to London in 1996.

I'm not taking a cell with me, because it costs something like a million zillion eurobucks to do anything with it, so Anne and I will be out of instant concoct for the first time since we've known each other. That's going to be weird, but I understand that primitive people during the 20th century did that all the time, so I'm embracing the novelty. Until I get to my hotel room, connect my laptop to the Internet, and talk to her online.

I will be mostly Internet silent while in Germany, which will be weird for me, but I will make every effort to deploy the obligatory I AM IN YOU messages when I reach my various destinations.

Have a good week and weekend, everyone.

This was written more recently:

I'm sitting in a lounge at Heathrow, waiting to make my connection to Germany. Our flight here was pushed by a massive tailwind that got us here something like 40 minutes early, but also gave us the worst turbulence I've ever experienced. I hardly slept at all, so I feel a little blurry. My body thinks it's about 5am, and even though I keep showing it my watch, it isn't buying it.

I'm glad I have a day to adjust, so I'm not doing my Zombie Wil Wheaton impression all weekend.

And I may as well update this post again now, thusly:

I'm in my hotel room in Germany. The window is open, and I can hear the occasional European siren do the Doppler effect on one of the streets outside. I know it's silly, but it's one of those things that's romantic to us Yanks.

My flight to Germany was nice, and I got all stupid and giddy when we flew over London and I could pick out landmarks. I tried really hard to stay awake so I could see France (having seen London, I need to see France, and then someone's Underpants), but I didn't even make it to the Channel. The flight attendant woke me up about 15 minutes before we landed, so I missed the whole thing. Oh well, there's always the trip back on Monday.

I'm super excited for FedCon. The hotel is full of people who are also excited to be here, and the staff I've met totally have their shit together, which is pretty important to me.

My schedule is on the FedCon website, but here are some important things:

> I'm doing a Q&A Thursday night at 9pm.

> I'm doing a Q&A with Marina Sirtis on Sunday at 1pm.

There are also signings every day, and some photo sessions, too.

Okay, I think that's it. I'm hoping that if I make myself stay awake for a few more hours, I'll be able to sleep until something close to a normal time tomorrow morning, and I won't be too exhausted to see at least some of Dusseldorf while I'm here. I mean, it would pretty much suck to come all the way to Germany and not see any of it.

I really, really, REALLY hate DRM. Especially when it screws honest people.

I'm sure that many of you know that I hate DRM so much, it makes me want to punch babies. I have promised that I will never knowingly infect anything you buy from me with DRM.

So you'll probably be as surprised as I am to learn that Lulu put Memories of the Future, Volume 1 into the iBook store and into my Lulu shop (yay! awesome! Memories in a native eReader format!) but put that horrible, intrusive, disgusting, annoying, stupid Adobe DRM bullshit into the files.

I've heard from a non-zero number of readers who legally purchased MotFv1, and were (rightly) furious that they had to install some bullshit software they didn't want, just so they could read something that they paid for.

For example:

Adobe Digital Editions doesn't run on Linux and Lulu, like most companies who sell digital content (*cough* audible *cough*), doesn't care.
For Linux users like me there are three options:
a) Find a Windows machine or Mac at work or with friends, then install
ADE there (thereby also using one of my six devices I'm allowed to read
on for someone else's computer)
b) Spend hours getting it to work in wine on my Linux machine
c) Bittorrent it.

I think it's pretty obvious which one is the least work. If I'm inclined
to buy another ebook I'm much more likely to bittorrent it and the
donate on the author's web page than buying over Lulu.

I completely agree with this email, and others like it. This is the sort of thing that drives honest people to piracy, because the pirates are providing a better end user experience for them than the legal alternatives.

I tried to revise the file so that there is no DRM, but I can't do that without uploading an entirely new file. I tried to download the file Lulu made (which, other than the DRM bullshit is really nice and well-formatted; I would totally use their conversion service again in the future, if I was given the option to do it without DRM) so I can convert it to a non-DRM'd version and re-upload it, but it keeps telling me that there's an error with the file -- yeah, no shit, that "error" is what I'm trying to eliminate! -- and since I'm leaving for FedCon in just a few hours, I don't have the time to keep banging my head against the wall trying to fix it.

So: I want readers and potential readers to know that I'm aware of this problem, it is not my fault, and I'm doing everything I can to fix it ... it's just going to be a week or so until I can.

The silver lining in all of this is that I was able to do a really neat .mobi conversion that I uploaded to the KDP store yesterday. If everything goes according to plan, you should be able to buy Memories of the Future, Volume 1 for your Kindle by the weekend.

Help me help Safecast help people in Japan

This morning, my friend Sean Bonner e-mailed me this:

As you may or may not know I’ve spent the vast majority of the last month either in Tokyo or working with people in Japan on project I helped start called Safecast. Actually we just changed the name to Safecast, until last week it was called RDTN. We realized that the only information on radiation levels was coming from groups we couldn’t really trust, and decided we could do something better. Safecast has a goal of distributing geiger counters to people in Japan and creating an open data sensor network so anyone can access the information we gather with these devices. We’re also collecting data ourselves - if you have a few moments and want to read this post it’s a great example of what we’re doing right this second.

http://blog.safecast.org/2011/04/24/first-safecast/

If you don’t have a few moments I’ll sum it up for you - we drove up to Fukushima and took readings at schools that are in the “safe” zone. At one of those schools we measured over 50 µSv/hr outside on a playground. To put that in perspective outside today in Los Angeles I measured 0.072 µSv/hr. We also gave some counters to volunteers in the area who will take readings and report back to us, and measured over 5000 different points during the trip. We hope to do this on a regular basis.

Anyway, what I’m asking for your help with is this:

http://blog.safecast.org/2011/04/25/fundraising/

We have a kickstarter and are more than halfway to our goal, but only have 11 days left to hit that mark. While donations are helpful, what we really need is awareness. We need more people to know about what we’re doing, we need more people to know they can help.

I’ve known Sean for almost 12 years, and even though he does amazing things all the time, he never sends out e-mails like this. This is something Sean cares deeply about, and I want to help him however I can, starting with my blog, my Twitter, and my Tumblr.

I keep hearing from people that I have all this influence, people listen to me, I have lots of Twitter followers and blog readers blah blah blah. I think it’s way overestimated … but I’d love to get this project funded and find out that I actually do have a voice that occasionally rises above the background noise.

If you are comfortable with it, please help me give this a signal boost and tell your friends,  tell Reddit, tell your eccentric millionaire uncle who likes to fund projects ... you get the idea.

Thank you.

Wil buys a new game. It's super effective!

A pair of twenty-something Bros, dressed and posed in a manner that was such a hilarious cliche, if I described them exactly as I saw them, my editor would have said, "no, that's too cliche," stood near the front of the store, communicating in some kind of Broglish that leaned heavily on the word "fuck" and its many derivatives.

I guess I'm Old Man Wheaton, because I looked around at all the 7 and 8 year-olds in the store and felt mildly offended that these two Bros couldn't be bothered to make an effort to tone it down just a little bit.

But such is the way of The Bro. If they had common sense and a WIS stat higher than d6+2, they probably wouldn't be Bros.

I walked around them, went to the DS games, and felt like a teenager buying his first box of condoms. I felt my face get warm, I caught myself looking around to ensure I wasn't being watched, and I reached for the nearest copy of Pokémon Black Version.

I turned it over in my hand and read the back. "I can't believe I'm actually going to do this," I thought. "I'm 38 years-old, and I'm buying Pokémon for the first time in my life."

The Bros left the store, trailing expletives behind them. Something was, apparently, a lot of fucking bullshit. The precious children I was so concerned about moments earlier didn't seem to notice. Maybe they play a lot of Call of Duty online. Or maybe I'm just an a dad nearing forty.

I nervously drummed my fingers on the game as I replayed the conversation I had with my friend Jerry about two months ago, where he assured me that Pokémon on the DS is a fun RPG that starts anew with each release, and is incredibly fun when you play it with your friends. The last game Jerry recommended to me, Might and Magic Clash of Heroes remains one of the greatest games I've ever played on the DS, so I trust him.

I trust him enough to find myself standing in GameStop*, feeling like I was renting porn, and wanting to ensure that I was getting Big Wet Asses 4, instead of Wet Big Asses 4. I approached the counter.

"Can I help you with anything?" The guy asked me.

"Yes, but you have to promise that you're not going to make fun of me."

The other guy smirked, and the first guy told me that he would not make fun of me.

"Okay," I exhaled and realized that my shoulders were tense. I relaxed them. "Do you have ... Pokémon White Version?"

He sort of chuckled. The other guy failed to cover a laugh.

"Hey!" I said, "I can see you judging me!" I said to the other guy.

"No, man. I just thought that was funny. We both play Pokémon," The other guy said.

"Yeah, it's nothing to be embarrassed about; it's a really fun RPG," The first guy said.

"That's what my friend told me," I said, "so here I am at 38 years-old finally buying Pokémon for the first time.

"I am given to understand that they are essentially the same. Is that right?"

The other guy said that I had been correctly informed, and added that it pretty much depended on what box I liked better.

"Well, this thing kind of looks like ... a dragon? I guess? Yeah, a dragon ... and dragon's are cool, so..."

The first guy typed a few things on his computer. "We have White version, but we only have it used."

"I actually prefer to buy games new, to support the developer and stuff," I said, feeling a little self-conscious, like I had just extolled the virtues of fidelity while standing in a whorehouse, or giving a shit about the middle class while visiting Congress.

"No worries," he said.

"Okay, so I guess I'll take this, and Super Scribblenauts."

He rang me up.

"Hey, I ... really like the work you do on Big Bang Theory," he said.

I know this sounds weird, but I often forget that when I'm interacting with strangers, there's a non-zero chance that they know my name and have seen me act. It used to make me feel like I had an arm growing out of my head when it happened, but I've gotten over that, and now it actually makes me happy, because I'm proud of what I do.

"Oh, thanks, man! I like being on Big Bang Theory," I said.

"Did you want a bag for these?" He asked.

"No, I'm good," I said, "I'll carry them out in the open so the whole world can know my shame. Thanks for your help."

I walked out of the store, past another employee who was explaining the differences between a couple of FPS games to a guy who was about my age, and seemed as uncertain about his purchase decision as I was about mine, but not nearly as self-conscious.

*I get it; some of you hate GameStop. That's cool, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't need a list of reasons why it sucks, delivered in Broglish. Twitter already accomplished that for me earlier today, thanks.

in which a good choice is made

Yesterday morning, my dad called and asked me, "So are the Kings wearing a crown tonight, or a jester's hat?"

"It's a test of their maturity," I said. "They could easily be up 3-1 right now if they were a more mature team. If they can play their game tonight, instead of trying to out-Shark the Sharks like they did on Tuesday, I think they can win. If they win tonight, I think they win the series. But I'm pretty sure they're just not mature enough to settle down, and they're probably going to lose."

"So, jester's hat, then."

Did my dad just give me the tl;dr? Did I just get Trolldad'd?

"...yeah," I said, "probably."

"Well, go Kings!" He said.

"Yep. Go Kings. Love you, dad."

"Love you too."

While last night's game wasn't a collapse nearly as epic as Tuesday's disaster, the Kings still allowed three goals on five shots, including two on back-to-back shots. The defense looked like a bunch of beer leaguers, and I'll be astonished if my beloved LA Kings play more than one more game this year.

Contrary to what my only-mostly-joking Twitter Rageface may lead you to believe, this wasn't entirely unexpected. The Kings weren't even supposed to make the playoffs last year, so they're still a year ahead. This was the year they were supposed to get in (and had they not shit the bed at the end of the season, probably would have beaten Phoenix or Nashville) and maybe get to the second round. So, taking the long view, (say it with me, Cubs fans!) There's Always Next Year.

Later in the day, I was up the street talking with my neighbors, who have a five year-old and a twelve year-old. They know that Anne and I are empty nesters (SCORE) and they invited us up to their house to dye Easter eggs with their family.

I love that I live in a place where I get to stand on my lawn and visit with my neighbors, and I love even more that I live in a place where my neighbors invite my wife and me to spend some time with their family doing what is typically a family activity.

I had a choice to make: stay home and watch the hockey game, or miss at least the first two periods and go up the street. I love hockey, I love my Kings, and I love the playoffs ... but honestly, it's just a game. It wasn't a very difficult decision.

A little after seven last night, Anne and I walked up the street to their house, and spent about two hours with their family and another one of our neighbors, turning eggs into art -- well, some semblance of art, anyway. I'm one of those artists who can tell stories and perform characters, but I can't even make a good looking stickman with some pipe cleaners and a sign that says, "THIS IS A STICKMAN."

But it was still a really good time. It's been fourteen years since I dyed Easter eggs with a five year-old, and I'd forgotten just how much fun it is to watch that fragile eggshell mind in action, mixing colors, drawing shapes, and offering the unique perspective and commentary that comes from a lifetime that currently isn't much longer than sixty months.

We made eggs that were covered with glitter, eggs that had patterns drawn on in white crayon, and eggs that were shrink wrapped with pictures of duckies and bunnies.

To see my effort to nerd things up, look past the jump:

three incredible indie bands you should listen to

My brother has been making these cool time lapse videos of life on his ranch in Montana. In a recent video, he used music that I instantly loved ... but he didn't say who it was.

Luckily for me, I live in the future, so I fired up Shazam on my Android, let it do its thing, and in less than a minute, I was streaming Telekenisis' album Telekinesis! from Rhapsody through my Sonos.

While I listened to my new favorite album, I read Jeremy's blog. That led me to another video of his where he played music from a band called The Smith Westerns. Again, I went straight to Rhapsody, and added Dye It Blonde to my Sonos playlist. I had those two albums on repeat for much of the day, yesterday.

Seriously, living in the future is awesome, even if I still don't have a jet pack, death ray, or a flying car.

Those of you who are good at math will have noticed by now that I said there were three bands, but I've only linked to two. Good job, give yourself a gold star and a check plus!

The third band is actually on the page I linked above for Telekinesis. They are called The Love Language. I heard them about a year ago, when I got an e-mail from Merge records offering to share some new music with me, based on my loudly-proclaimed love of similar-sounding bands. I've been meaning to play The Love Language on Radio Free Burrito forever, but as I am reminded at least once a day, I haven't done a new RFB in months. (Also, if you like Camera Obscura and She & Him, spend some time at Merge; they have a ton of great artists you probably haven't heard, yet.)

Anyway, I wanted to use this experience as evidence that the music industry should make it easy for people to discover music this way. People like my brother who aren't looking to profit in any way from using music (and podcasters, and YouTubers and other bloggers) should be able to do it without applying for expensive licenses and bullshit. It's valuable - and free - promotion, Music Industry Guys! I don't listen to the radio very much, and when I do, it's mostly oldies stations that play music from my youth (FML). I don't like pop music at all, so I find new indie music via recommendations from friends, or when I tell LastFM to build me a station based on some band I already like. Because Jeremy played music from The Smith Westerns and Telekinesis on his videos, I was able to discover them, buy their albums, and hopefully introduce a few thousand other new listeners to their music. That's awesome.

Now, about that death ray and jet pack...

on video game reviews and the power and influence of marketing

I came across this post at No High Scores yesterday. It's about how mega publishers are starting to limit access to the media in terms of review copies, overall access, as well as in potential ad money.

There are a lot of great things about working in the games industry.

You know what the best thing is?

I work in the games industry.

Every day I get to play, talk, and write about games. I get to talk to people who make games. I get to share my opinions with other people who play games and they get to tell me how brilliant or how stupid I am when it comes to games. When people in the sleepy Ohio town in which I live ask me what I do and I tell them they stare at me with both amazement and sometimes derision.

“Yes, Marge, I’m a 39 year old child. Just give me my mail already.”

You know what I don’t like? The other stuff.

Fighting with PR over review copies. Being told that we can’t post a review of game X before the embargo “unless the grade is at least an 85 on Metacritic.” The sites to DO score that high get all the pre-release traffic so we’re forced to ether inflate a grade or lose the hits.

Being told that sites which use letter grades do not get advanced copies. (Because of the way those scores are translated on Metacritic.) Knowing this is untrue because 1Up sure does. Then realizing we aren’t 1Up.

Defending my writers’ competence when they “score” a game lower than the average for a game.

It's a super-interesting post that’s worth reading in its entirety. I don’t even pay attention to game reviews or critic scores any more, because the whole thing just seems like a corrupted process intended to generate positive PR, rather than give actual useful information to gamers.

I’ve pretty much stopped pre-ordering games because of this, which I know the games industry doesn’t like (pre-orders are super important to publishers, because of the GameStop effect), but what choice do I have? When I can’t trust sites like 1Up or Metacritic, I have to wait until people I do trust have actually played a game to tell me about it. And how do game journalists feel about this? If I were a game jouranlist, I would feel pretty gross being part of a system that's similar to the relationship between the right wing and FOX "news."

Gamers: how much influence to game reviews have on your buying choices? Is there a site that you know you can depend upon to give you a completely honest assessment of a game, like Penny Arcade does?

(No High Scores is a fantastic gaming site, by the way. I read it every day.)

drag your blanket blindly and fill your heart with smoke

Letters of Note is one of my favorite websites.

Yesterday, LoN shared this note from James Dean, which he wrote shortly after moving to New York to pursue an acting career, and before he became James Dean™:

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. The stage is like a religion you dedicate yourself to and then suddenly you find that you don’t have time to see friends and it’s not for them to understand you don’t have anybody. You’re all alone with your concentration and your imagination and that’s all you have. You’re an actor.

He wrote that note in 1952. During the next three years, he would star in East of Eden, Giant, and Rebel Without A Cause ... then his life was over. I can see him, sitting alone in New York -- a city that can make the most gregarious, confident person in thw world feel tiny and insignificant -- writing that down, staring at an uncertain future that stared right back at him. It's hard to separate the actor and his work from the legend, but when I read this yesterday, I wondered if he was able to enjoy the success that he eventually had, or if he was just one of those artists who need the pain and anguish to create.

But this stuff that he thought made being an actor feel so lonely? I think it’s what makes being an actor awesome. I love being left alone with my concentration and imagination. I love making something where something wasn't before, using my imagination and that weird thing in my artists' brain that makes me weird. (Come to think of it, that’s what I love about being a writer, too.) One of my favorite acting teachers, who helped me level up quite a bit, once told us that when we're performing, whether it's for an audience of thirty or an audience of three thousand, we have to be committed to our character, completely consumed by the scene, and intimately connected to the other actors. She said that acting was "quiet, public solitude," and for some reason I never bothered to examine too closely, I grokked that, and it's stayed with me ever since.

I always feel sad when I think about or watch James Dean, knowing that he died so young, before he really had a chance to figure things out the way we do when we get into our thirties. I hope that, if he had, the lonely kid who wrote that note would have once day found comfort in quiet, public solitude.