Below are the most recent 11 friends' journal entries.

Monday, December 21st, 2009
wilwheaton	3:05p	From The Vault: Cross the Blazing Bridge of Fire! http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/from-the-vault-cross-the-blazing-bridge-of-fire.html Did you know that I used to write a weekly column called The Games of Our Lives for The AV Club? It was about classic arcade (and occasionally console) video games that were just far enough off the mainstream radar for Gen Xers to realize that they remembered playing or seeing them, even if they hadn't thought about them since the 80s. I worked very hard to keep it funny, nostalgic, and even a little informative. Though I didn't always come up with heartbreaking works of staggering genius, I'm really happy with about 95% of the columns I turned in ... like this one for Satan's Hollow: The flyer from Bally advertises "The hot new battle game that dares you to cross the blazing Bridge of Fire to do battle with the Master of Darkness-Satan of the Hollow!" After languishing for years in the obscurity of role-playing games, Satan finally crossed into the mainstream of arcades everywhere. Parents panicked as kids eagerly coughed up pocketfuls of quarters to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. Gameplay: It's 1982, so of course you have to enter Satan's Hollow in a spaceship. To pull this off, you build a bridge across a river of fire by picking up pieces from the left side of the screen and dropping them onto the right side of the screen. You have a shield that will protect you (for about .08 seconds) from the gargoyles and demons dropping World War II-style bombs. When the bridge is completed, you cross into the game's eponymous locale and face down Satan himself. If you avoid his magic pitchforks and destroy him, you won't save mankind from eternal damnation, but you will earn bonus points and an extra laser blaster for your space ship. Before you complain that none of this makes sense, please remember that the number-one song of 1982 was "Centerfold" by J. Geils Band, and the number-one film was Tootsie. Could be mistaken for: Galaxian, Dark Tower, Phoenix Kids today may not like it because: Satan looks more like a sea monkey than like the Prince Of Darkness. Kids today may like it because: Freaking your parents out because you're playing a game with Satan in it is always cool, whether it's 1982 or 2005. Enduring contribution to gaming history: Doom wouldn't have been able to take players right into Hell in 1993 if Satan's Hollow hadn't opened the portal 11 years earlier.  Every column had a different byline, which I tried very hard to make some kind of clever "nobody's going to get this, except for those few people who do and totally love it" joke:  .mraf ynnuf eht, notaehW liW ot seilper rouy dnes esaelP .egassem terces eht dnuof ev'uoY !snoitalutargnoC See what I did there? It's a game with SATAN in the title, so I put at BACKWARDS MESSAGE in the column. Ha! Ha! Ha! I am using the Internet! I loved doing this column, and deliberately retired it while it was still going strong, so it didn't turn into [Pick some series that should have ended years ago while it was still funny. This is not a placeholder note to myself, it's a free option for you, dear reader. Merry Christmas.] (Comment on this)
wilwheaton	10:54a	From the Vault: The Fires of Mordor http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/from-the-vault-the-fires-of-mordor.html Yesterday, I decided that I'd reach into The Vault a few times this week, and reprint some holiday-related posts.  While I combed through the WWdN archives, I came across this post, which I haven't thought about pretty much since I wrote it. It has nothing to do with the holidays, but I still like it. I'm reprinting it today so I can remember a time when I didn't feel so self conscious about my writing, could totally lose myself in a moment, and do my very best to fearlessly capture it in words. We are under partly cloudy skies today here in Pasadena. All day long, the blue sky has been brilliant and beautiful. The few clouds that dot the sky are small and fluffy, blown at incredible speeds by the high altitude winds, and illuminated to a magnificently bright white by the sun. About 20 minutes ago, the sun began to set, and I watched as it put silver linings behind cloud after cloud as it sank into the west. Shortly after the horizon took it away for another day, the sun did an amazing thing: it illuminated the only cloud in the sky, a monstrous one — several thousand feet cross, at least — which hung over my house. The cloud acted as a giant reflector, bouncing yellow, then orange, then red light down upon my neighborhood. At first, the yellow light was beautiful, bringing out a brilliance in the lawns and leaves seldom seen in winter. Then, the orange light became a little creepy, casting the same muted color as sunlight filtered through the smoke of a brushfire. When the light turned red, though, it was positively scary. The red glow that it washed over the Earth was straight out of the fires of Mount Doom. As the light turned from orange to red, my mom called me, and asked me if it looked like the world was coming to an end over my house, too. I laughed, and told her that it did. Then a Ring Wraith knocked on my door, and I politely hung up the phone. Remember when Lord of the Rings ruled the world with a power and inevitability challenged and equalled only by frozen yogurt shops in the 80s? Those were some magical days, Precioussss. We loves them. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 20th, 2009
wilwheaton	10:54a	for all you last-minute shoppers out there... http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/for-all-you-lastminute-shoppers-out-there.html While you're out doing your last minute holiday shopping, you may happen upon a little device known as The Slap Chop. You may have seen it on TV, and you may have heard that it purports to: "Chop up vegetables, nuts, & fruits, quickly and easily" with just a few simple slaps. And who doesn't like slapping their food around into ever-smaller pieces? Now, some of you may wonder if this gizmo actually fulfills all of the nearly-unbelievable claims it makes, thereby making it a worthwhile gift for that lucky person on your list who you've put off shopping for, and who already has as many Chia Pets as any single person could be expected to care for. Well, Popular Mechanics says maybe not so much: The Slap Chop produces inconsistent, indiscriminate chunks, foodstuffs wedge in its numerous nooks and crannies, and it consumes as much kitchen real estate as a coffee grinder.  On the other hand... Happy shopping, everyone. No endorsement of the product mentioned should be assumed or implied. Use of Slap Chop does not automatically guarantee funky hip hop singing and dancing ability. In fact, you're probably better off spending your money on something else, and just watching the video over and over again, until you feel the tingling warmth of insanity spreading across your delicious brain. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
wilwheaton	9:10a	In which my friend @Muskrat_John is congratulated by me, @wilw. http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/in-which-my-friend-muskrat_john-is-congratulated-by-me-wilw.html The gaming industry, like the voiceover industry or the genre fiction industry is not very big, when you really get down to it. In fact, among creators, the overlap between "industry" and "community" makes almost a perfect circle. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else, and good news travels as quickly as bad. Yesterday, one of the truly great people in the gaming industry, who I think we all believed had reached maximum character level, surprised us all and leveled up a little bit more: John Kovalic's Dork Tower joins WIRED's GeekDad. If you know of Dork Tower, then you’re already squee-ing in excitement right alongside us. If you don’t know what Dork Tower is, then either you’re about to add a new layer of happiness to the Photoshop composite of your life, or you’re slowly beginning to realize you didn’t click through to the Monkey Bites blog. Dork Tower has, in its decade of life, existed as a standalone comic book, a featured comic in Dragon, Scrye and Games magazines, and one of the earliest regular webcomics online. Its creator, John Kovalic, is also the illustrator and co-creator of world-renown games Munchkin and Apples to Apples. But perhaps his greatest creation is his new daughter, whose existence has transformed him from a simple, Bruce Banner–like comics and game illustrator, into a hulking green(bay) GeekDad. Which is where we come in. This is kind of like my favorite indie television show getting picked up by a major network. It's such a perfect match, I can't believe nobody ever thought of it before. You know those people who are so delighted to be a parent, they sort of jingle and glow and levitate off the ground with joy when they talk about their kids? That's John. You know those guys who you know you can speak to in the most obscure geek dialect, secure in the knowledge that they'll grok you? That's John. Congratulations to John and GeekDad, and to all their individual readers who are about to discover an awesome new level of the dungeon to explore. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 18th, 2009
wilwheaton	2:40p	A few geeky games that are worth setting aside some Geek Time to play http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/a-few-games-that-are-worth-setting-aside-some-geek-time-to-play.html I've discovered that, unless I specifically set aside Geek Time for me, Wil Wheaton, I end up doing nothing but work. This isn't entirely bad, because most of the work I do is geek-related, but I eventually run out of HP, and I have to recharge. by doing some private geeky thing, like reading comics, playing a little Xbox, or getting together with my friends  Think of it this way: reading a comic book gives me a little HP, like 1d4. Reading a graphic novel gives me 1d6+2. Settling in with a good book (Currently reading Spook Country) gives me 1d10, but I can't do anything else for several turns and have to save versus distractions at -2. Playing a video game gives me 1d8+1, unless it's Rock Band with my friends or family, which gives me 2d10+5. In fact, doing any geeky thing with friends is an automatic additional d10, which is why I like to get together with my friends at least once a month to play hobby games. During these gatherings, I can usually count on going all the way back to my starting HP, and if I'm especially lucky, I'll gain 1d10 additional HP that is lost at a rate of about 1 point every two hours after we've all gone back to our regular lives. (Incidentally, writing those three paragraphs gave me 1d6-2, in addition to the 3d6+10 I got earlier today when I got to be a voice actor for four hours.) So recently, I had a bunch of friends over for a game day, and we played some games I loved so much, I wanted to share them with the rest of the class, in case some of you are dangerously low on HP and need some healing: Dominion This is a card game that plays like a CCG (think Magic: The Gathering) without requiring you to buy a bunch of booster packs and participate in the deck-building arms race that makes most CCGs a meta game of "who can spend the most on cards." BoardGameGeek says:  In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can "buy" as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end. Dominion is not a CCG, but the play of the game is similar to the construction and play of a CCG deck. The game comes with 500 cards. You select 10 of the 25 Kingdom card types to include in any given play -- leading to immense variety. Dominion plays very fast, and is one of those games that you can play while drinking a beer (or three) and still play (mostly) competently.  There are expansions, but I won't buy them on principle, because that path leads to the CCG stuff I'm trying to avoid or at least limit. Revolution! Steve Jackson Games is famous for putting out the classic RPG GURPS, irreverent card games like Munchkin and the Chez games, and war games like Ogre and Car Wars. This is the company's first offering that could be considered a Eurogame, and I absolutely love it. Quoth BGG: In Revolution! players take advantage of the fluid political situation by secretly bidding for a number of characters, each yielding a combination of territory control, points (popular support) and more currency with which to bid next round. Players win by gaining the support of the people (the most points). Players can gain bonus points by controlling an area of the city at the end of the game. This game is for 3-4 players and takes 60 minutes to play. What I love about Revolution! is the lack of one clear perfect strategy to win the game. In many respects, it's like poker: you win by playing against the other players as much (if not more) than you play the actual game. It's very simple to pick up (I'd say it takes about 5 minutes to teach) and really needs four players, though you can play with three. Bonus soon-to-be-released SJ Games: Cthulhu Dice (I played this at RinCon and loved it) and Zombie Dice (which I haven't played, but looks like a whole lot of fun.) Pandemic I love cooperative games, where the players are working together against the game itself. Some games, like Shadows Over Camelot, toss the uncertainty of a traitor into the game, while others, like Arkham Horror, are so purely cooperative, they can even be played as solo games. Pandemic is a purely cooperative game that BGG describes thusly: You are specialists at the CDC/Atlanta where you watch several virulent diseases break out simultaneously all over the world. The team mission is to prevent a world-wide pandemic outbreak, treating hotspots while researching cures for each of the four plagues before they get out of hand. Players must plan their strategy to mesh their specialist's strengths before the diseases overwhelm the world. For example, the Operations Specialist can build research stations, which are needed to find cures for the diseases. The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5. But the diseases are breaking out fast and time is running out: the team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while developing cures. If disease spreads uncontrolled, the players all lose. If they can cure all four diseases, they win. This game looks and feels beautiful, and though it's probably the most complicated to learn on this list, it's not nearly as complicated as an RPG, a historical wargame, or understanding one of us geeks. You can adjust the level of difficulty (from easy to legendary) and if you get the expansion, On The Brink, you can add mutations and virulent strains of the various diseases, as well as a bioterrorist who is working against the other players. You rarely breeze through a game of Pandemic, and even though you start out sort of losing, victory is almost always decided by a razor-thin margin.  Pandemic is so frakking hard to beat, it shouldn't be fun, but I have had more fun losing games of Pandemic than I've had winning a huge list of other games. Small World  Days of Wonder is probably best-known for games like Ticket To Ride and its sequels, Battlelore and its sequels, and Memoir '44 and its sequels. Small World is a very recent release from Days of Wonder, and I think it's one of the best games they've ever published. One more time, let's borrow from Board Game Geek: Small World is inhabited by a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs and even humans; who use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth. Picking the right combination from the 14 different fantasy races and 20 unique special powers, players rush to expand their empires - often at the expense of weaker neighbors. Yet they must also know when to push their own over-extended civilization into decline and ride a new one to victory! Okay, so that description doesn't really capture what's awesome about this game. Let me try to explain why I love it so much: first, it's a map conquest game that comes with different maps for different numbers of players, so you get a balanced game whether you're playing head-to-head or with three or four other friends. Second, the zany characters get different unique special powers every time you play, so there's no point in developing a strategy (or counter strategy) exclusively for Flying Amazons or Dragonmaster Ghouls, because you may not get to use it that often. Third, it employs an elegant scoring system that tends to keep the games close (are you sensing some commonality among the games I really like?). Fourth, it just looks beautiful. The counters and the boards feature great artwork, so it's easy to buy into the theme. Finally, it's a relatively quick game, which is important to a guy like me who doesn't have nearly enough time to play all the games he wants to play. All of these games are suitable for ages 12 and up, with the exception of Pandemic, which I think is >just< a little to complex for the under-14 set. Now that I've spent enough time on this post to have actually played one of these games, I'd like to close with three RPGs that I haven't played, but desperately want to play: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay from Fantasy Flight Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin Okay, now that I've regained some of my HP, I think I'm ready to go ahead and attempt the Drop Off Packages At The Post Office quest. If I don't come back, avenge my death and immortalize me in song. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
wilwheaton	7:33p	knock me your lobes http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/knock-me-your-lobes.html Did I mention that Radio Free Burrito finally grew up and moved into its own URL at Radio Free Burrito dot Com? You can get all 13 of the old Radio Free Burritos (which I've christened "the archives"), as well as two new shows (cleverly numbered 14 and 15) which were recently recorded by me, Wil Wheaton*. My plan is to do a RFB every week in place of the Futurecast, until the Futurecast gets going again in a few months, but I'm not promising anything. Unless you want to bribe me with Burrito money, in which case I'll make it a top priority, with a giant warehouse and wooden crates and everything. No, seriously. I know a guy who can get me a giant warehouse for, like, cheap. Yes, Virginia, there is an RSS feed for the Burrito, helpfully located at: feeds.feedburner.com/radiofreeburrito Yes, Virginia's shy roommate, you can subscribe to it in iTunes. No, Virginia's weird talking cat, I don't know if it's in the Zune Marketplace. Also, Virginia? I invited you over for Rock Band, and it's kind of a dick move that you brought your whole fuckin' apartment with you. And what's with all the questions? JEEZE! Of course, if I've already mentioned this but the information fell victim to the history eraser button in my brain, you have my apologies. *That's a callback I bet 99% of you won't get, so allow me to explain: a million years ago, I did a Classic Television Talk Show - I'm not sure why I capitalized that title but it feels right - at the ACME Comedy Theater. It was hosted by J. Keith vanStraaten, and I played the role of Ed McMahon (or Andy Richter, as the case may be.) When I started the show, we did a reoccurring bit where I wore this shit-eating grin, and talked about "Me, Wil Wheaton." For example, "Yes, Keith, it was a delightful evening, particularly because all the people in attendance were graced by the presence of me, Wil Wheaton." I think this is losing something in the translation, but now you know why I'm giggling right now. Which I guess I should have told you before, because then you would have been all, "Hey, Wil, why are you giggling when you say that?" And I could be all, "Well, that's a callback, so let me tell you about it.) (Comment on this)
wilwheaton	12:41p	a brilliant, genius, incredible idea: "...if only the bookstore could come to us" http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/a-brilliant-genius-incredible-idea-if-only-the-bookstore-could-come-to-us.html Catching up on my RSS subscriptions earlier today, I saw this at Boingboing: JC Hutchins -- he of the boundless energy! -- has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas holiday. Some of my favorite authors are in this compliation, including my friend Cherie Priest, Scott Sigler, Cory Doctorow, and of course JC himself. Seth Godin (whose Purple Cow helped form the foundation of my little self-publishing thing, which has grown into what I've recently begun half-jokingly calling "Wil Wheaton, Incorporated" with some of my friends) included an excerpt from Tribes, (plus something from a forthcoming book called Linchpin), and I can't wait to read the other authors I probably wouldn't have come across entirely on my own. This is such an incredibly good idea, and I salute the authors who were smart enough to include some of their work in it. I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, I wish I'd thought of this, or at least written something worthy of inclusion (he says, as an unfulfilled goal for 2009 is reborn for 2010.) They have even included links right in the pdf that will take you to retailers, should you enjoy one of the excerpts so much, you simply must have a copy of the full work for your very own to love and keep and pet and call George. This. Is. Genius. If you're interested, head on over to JC Hutchins' site, where you can check out the contents, and grab a copy for yourself or some lucky person you know. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
wilwheaton	12:50p	Something something something awesome weekend http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/something-something-something-awesome-weekend.html I had a rather ... interesting ... weekend. According to Paul and Storm on Sunday, I won the game of "What I did last night" that I didn't even know we were playing. It was so surreal, I'm mostly writing this down today so I never forget what an incredible time we had. Saturday, Anne and I were invited to a party at Seth Macfarlane's house for the release of Family Guy Something Something Something Dark Side (their parody of Empire Strikes Back). I almost didn't go, because I never know anyone at parties like that and end up feeling like a tourist, but I really like Seth and figured there was a non-zero chance I'd see at least one other person I knew while we were there. "Besides," I told Anne, "if we really feel like we don't fit in, we can always go out to dinner or something." We parked in a garage on Sunset and took a shuttle bus up terrifyingly narrow and winding roads into the Hollywood hills, while the last edge of a nasty winter storm did its best to convince us we were all going to die. When we got to Seth's house, I understood why we needed to park so far away: he lives on the top of a mountain and you could probably only park ten cars there. The whole thing is a blur, but I shared some highlights with Twitter, which I reprint here with added context and whatnot: Not only did I not expect paparazzi at this party, I didn't expect them to give a shit about me. That was really weird. We walked up his driveway, and I was totally unprepared to see an actual press line, with a red carpet and photographers and everything. Usually when there's a press line, there's also a normal walkway without press for normal people to use. I really don't like the whole press line thing, so I always try to go down the other walkway. It's never really been an issue, because for much of the last decade, nobody in the entertainment press has given a shit about me and I can sneak in under a radar that isn't exactly waiting for me to return a ping. This time, though, it was different. I walked down the normal person entrance, and when I was about two steps from the door, I realized that people were calling my name. From the press line. "That's weird," I thought. "Well, I'm almost in the door, so I'll just keep walking and they'll forget about me in five seconds." "Who's calling you?" Anne said. "Photographers, I think," I said. "Let's just keep going and they'll lose interest." That's when I saw that the people in front of us had stopped, and I was trapped. I realize this may seem strange to a lot of people, but I really hate having my picture taken, especially when it's by a ton of photographers who all yell my name over and over again while they fire off dozens of flashes and pictures each in the span of about 60 seconds. I can't stress how uncomfortable and self conscious that whole thing makes me feel, but I felt like I was really being a dick by refusing to walk ten feet away and let them do it, so I went over, tried to put on my "I'm happy to be here and not completely freaked out by this whole thing" face, and two profoundly uncomfortable minutes later, got to walk into the party. http://twitpic.com/tb62v - Ice sculpture of Stewie as Darth Vader. Cool! When we saw that ice sculpture, the total mindfuck of being in someone's house for a big-budget party with hundreds of strangers totally settled in. It was like, "Oh, you're not just here for a nifty thing at Seth's house. If the fucking press line out front didn't clue you in, Wheaton, you're at a Very Big Deal Event." But I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, that ice sculpture was even cooler (ha! ha! cooler!) in person than it appears in any of the photographs I've seen from the party. I'm in a room at Seth Macfarlane's house with a full orchestra, and a bar made entirely out of ice. This is so weird. After we saw the ice sculpture, we wandered around a little bit (Seth's house is one of those giant places that could fit my entire home in the garage) until we walked down some stairs and discovered that the wonderful big band music we'd been hearing since we walked in was actually being created by a live big band. Like, a 22 65-piece live big band. With a conductor and a dance floor and everything. We saw Seth (who looked every inch the Rat Packer in his white jacket and red carnation) and thanked him for inviting us. At first, he didn't recognize me (on account of my luxurious beard, a theme that would repeat itself again in a moment) but when he did, he got super excited to introduce me to his orchestra's conductor, Ron Jones. Ron scored Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Seth was such a huge TNG fan, he hired him to score Family Guy. When Seth introduced us, Ron smiled warmly and said, "It's so lovely to meet you. I scored your childhood." It was such a wonderful sentiment, and said with such joy and nostalgia, I looked at Anne and had to blink my eyes several times. Seth got pulled away by one of the hundreds of people who wanted to talk to him, and Anne and I talked with Ron for a little bit before he had to go back to conducting his orchestra. I just saw @levarburton. He didn't recognize me, on account of my luxurious beard. Ha! I saw LeVar and his family, and would have run across the room if it hadn't been packed with people. "Hi, I follow you on Twitter and you never reply to me," I said. LeVar laughed and said, "That's because I'm an asshole. What's your Twitter name?" I thought, "Ha! LB doesn't recognize me!" so I said, "It's WilW, but you can call me ... Whil Wheaton!" LeVar engulfed me with a hug and told me he didn't recognize me, on account of my luxurious beard. We talked for as long as you can reasonably talk in a room packed with people, an orchestra, and a bar made entirely from ice, before deciding that we'd just hook up in a week or so in a more quiet and normal location to catch up. I am about to have my picture taken with ... wait for it ... Chewbacca Claus. The printer they were using to make these photos jammed, so we don't have a copy of ours. Apparently, though, we'll be getting a copy via the magic of the internet soon. When that happens, I will produce the photographic proof that so many people on Twitter require before accepting that this event actually happened. So, uh, it turns out that Katie Sackhoff and I are in the mutual admiration society. (Squee!) Yeah, so ... that was weird. The next day, upon realizing I'd misspelled her name, I told Twitter: "So in my nerdglee last night, I misspelled Katee Sackhoff's name. As someone whose first name is frequently misspelled, I'm mortified." Katee was friendly and excited and told me that she grew up watching TNG with her dad, who would probably have a heart attack upon learning that she'd met me. I didn't tell her that I was fairly sure a lot of people in the Twitterverse would have a similar reaction upon learning that I had met her. (And they did, too. I felt a disturbance in the Force, like a million billion million people cried out a Sheldonesque WHHHHHEEEEEAAATTTOOONNNN! and were suddenly silenced.) We talked about working on Big Bang Theory and being nerds, and then I had to pee. I didn't Twitter this because my phone battery died, but I ran into Simon Helberg (Wolowitz on the aforementioned BBT, and Moist on the not-until-now mentioned Doctor Horrible) on my way to the restrooms, which was a cluster of port-a-potties arranged beneath a tent on one of Seth Macfarlane's numerous and spacious patios. Simon was on his way out, so I said, "Hey, how plush are those things?" "Oh, they're magnificent," he said. "Each one has a restroom attendant inside." Maybe this was only funny to us, but we riffed on the concept of not just a single restroom attendant inside an 8 square-foot port-a-pottie, but a different one inside each port-a-pottie, for a very long time. Simon is a tremendously funny and kind person. I loved everyone on Big Bang Theory, but I really hope I get to have scenes with him if they ever bring back Evil Wil Wheaton. Now I'm about 20 feet from Seth, as he sings Dean Martin's "I've got my love to keep me warm" with the orchestra. This is FUCKING AWESOME! This is unbelievable. We're getting a private Rat Pack-style show from Seth in his freakin' house. You know that Seth sings all the songs on Family Guy, right? He has made no secret of his love of show tunes and crooners, and the man can fucking sing, people. It was infectious how much fun he was having. Whatever the party cost, I'm bet he'd say it was worth it, just to sing for his friends (and a lot of strangers) backed up by an orchestra ... in his freakin' house. Draw a Venn Diagram of Weird, Awesome, Surreal, and How The Hell Did I Get Invited To This? And put me in the middle. That was my night. Someone actually made that diagram, which rules. As midnight approached, Anne and I felt old and tired, and we'd had an incredible time, so we rode a shuttle bus down the hill to the parking lot, and drove home to our delightfully normal lives, where we live in a small house with a lovely patio that can probably only accommodate a single port-a-pottie, if we move the table to one side. I doubt Seth Macfarlane will ever see this, and I know that for a party of this magnitude, he probably had no personal involvement with our invitation, but just in case: Thanks, Seth. We had a wonderful time, your home is beautiful, and you sang like an angel. Something Something Something Christmas. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
wilwheaton	1:48p	the turtle trick delivers ultimate victory http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/the-turtle-trick-delivers-ultimate-victory.html I once wrote a Geek in Review, called 8 Bits High and Rising (Content SFW; Site is NSFW), about my love of the Nintendo Entertainment System. I liked it so much, I adapted a great deal of it for my keynote address to PAX in 2007. Here's part of it that's relevant to this post: I was invited to a celebrity charity thing in Hollywood, which was sponsored by Nintendo. In addition to all the usual photographs and teen magazine interviews, shoulder pads and Aqua Net, there would be a Super Mario Bros. competition. This wasn't some silly Starcade competition with modified versions or timed levels on certain games. It was a serious high score competition, and Jeremy and I were determined to take down the Grand Prize: a complete NES system, featuring a light gun, a robot, over twenty games, and possibly First Prize: a 20 inch color TV. While all the other young teen heartthrobs were busy being seen, signing autographs and getting their picture taken, my brother and I prepared to claim what was rightfully ours. You see, we'd been unintentionally preparing for this very moment all summer long. Since that fateful day in Zody's, my brother and I had developed an affinity for Nintendo games. In fact, you could say we were protofanboys. We'd always liked Donkey Kong and Punch Out!!, but when a Super Mario Bros. machine was installed between Arkanoid and Pinbot at our local 7-11, we played with a cult-like dedication. Over that summer, we were those guys who nobody could beat, thanks largely to a trick we learned from one of Jeremy's friends at school. He called it "the turtle trick," and it was a way to earn almost limitless free men by freezing and jumping repeatedly on a turtle at the end of world 3-1. Though we never managed to actually beat the game during that time, using the turtle trick, we obtained and held the high score for months. (For you damn kids today, not just earning – but maintaining – the high score on an arcade machine was a very big deal back in those days.) The competition rules were simple: every kid in attendance could play twice and keep their highest score. At the end of the afternoon, the four highest scores would win prizes. Thanks to the turtle trick, a lot of patience, and a singular focus that the presence of several young starlets tested (Christina Applegate, Alyssa Milano, and Nicole Eggert among them,) my brother and I completely obliterated everyone else there, and took home the the grand and first prize.  Earlier this morning, a bunch of people messaged me on Twitter about a column at 1UP, which not only describes that fateful competition, but includes a picture of me and my brother that filled me with such joyful nostalgia, my vision temporarily blurred. You'll have to hit 1UP to see the awesome picture, but please indulge me this quote: ...all we know is that Wil Wheaton is better at Super Mario than Jason Bateman. Please feel free to pull out this fact the next time you are at a party. Bam, said the lady. Hey, speaking of my brother, have I mentioned that he takes phenomenal pictures and made awesome things with them? (Comment on this)
wilwheaton	10:52a	in which the secret identity of wesley crusher is revealed http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/in-which-the-secret-identity-of-wesley-crusher-is-revealed.html Imagine if Television Without Pity recappers had been writing about TNG back in 1987, only with more swearing, more digressions and more geeky in-jokes, plus behind-the-scenes memories for every episode. That’s what Vol. 1 does for the first half of the first season of TNG, from “Encounter at Farpoint” to “Datalore” — it’s just the thing for people who love TNG and snark. - Tracy V. Wilson, How Stuff Works. I mentioned on one of the Memories of the Futurecasts that writing Memories of the Future Volume One was unintentionally cathartic, as I was able to examine and gain further understanding of what I will call (without further definition) the Airlock Enthusiasts' Society. I didn't realize it while I was working on the book (I was just trying to write something funny and entertaining) but after fourteen weeks of Futurecasts, I can see evidence of that side quest spread out across the entire manuscript. In fact, several readers have commented on it, and now I kind of wish I'd seen it before the book went to press, so I could have smoothed it out a little bit more. Well, live and learn. While I work on Volume Two, though, I've noticed a real change in Wesley in the second half of the season: it's almost like he takes that uniform seriously, and though he's still an annoying kid, he's not nearly as consistently obnoxious as he was in the first half.  I mention all of this as prelude to a damn hilarious post on the How Stuff Works blog, which provides an entirely new view of Ensign Pumpkin Sweater: The Secret Identity of Wesley Crusher Wil talks about how working on Vol. 1 helped him come to terms with (and understand) the world’s hatred of Wesley Crusher. It’s a hatred I never had. I loved Wesley Crusher. When TNG premiered, I was just starting high school, and I was a serious know-it-all. Seeing a kid on TV who was essentially correcting his teachers, doing science projects and being a huge nerd all the time was kind of awesome. And enabling. I’m sure I was as annoying to the adults around me as Wesley was to adults trying to watch TNG. But in listening to and reading “Memories of the Future,” I found a whole new reason to love Wesley. In episode 12 of “Memories of the Futurecast” (and the corresponding book chapter), Wil talks about how Wesley repairs the malfunctioning holodeck in “The Big Goodbye” with one zap of a magical holodeck fixing thing. In the middle of my morning train commute, I thought, “Ha ha ha, Wesley has a sonic screwdriver.” Then, accompanied by lots of mental capital letters and exclamation points, and possibly even a ZOMG, came the follow-up thought: “Wesley Crusher is a Time Lord!” If you're experiencing the same amount of ZOMGLOL that I experienced when I read that yesterday, I think you'll want to check out the rest of the post, because it gets even better. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
wilwheaton	10:44a	thirty-two hours in three hundred words http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/12/thirtytwo-hours-in-three-hundred-words.html It was just above freezing when I got into the car Tuesday morning. The rising sun had just barely cleared my neighbor's roof, and did its best to melt the frost off of my roof and windshield. Anne and I sat in the passenger compartment shivering, surprisingly thick clouds of fog blooming in front of us with every breath, while we waited for the engine to warm up. "We should have started the car five minutes ago and waited in the house," I said, hugging myself to keep warm. "When we build the time machine, we'll make sure we do that." After a couple of minutes, the frost on the windshield began to soften, helped along by judicious use of the wipers. As we drove up the street, I noticed that every house, lawn, car -- hell, every surface -- that was still in shadow had at least some frost on it. I'm sure people who live in parts of the world that actually have seasons wouldn't be moved by it, but it made me happy to observe some tactile evidence of winter's impending, full-throated arrival. About fifty traffic-filled minutes later, Anne dropped me off at the airport. Four flight-delayed hours after that, I walked into the Seattle airport, and five hours after that I walked into the Child's Play Charity Auction. Seventeen hours after that, I walked out of my hotel into a crystal-clear thirteen degree Seattle morning that shocked me so much, I didn't actually feel how cold it was until I'd been sitting in my cab for almost a full minute. Finally, about thirty-two hours after I'd walked out of my house I walked back inside. My pets greeted me at the door, and made me feel like I’d been missing for a week. (2 Comments |Comment on this)