Wes Fantastic's Journal

I've had such a great experience using Lulu to sell Sunken Treasure and Memories of the Future, Volume One, I have decided to start out 2010 by moving the audio versions of The Happiest Days of Our Lives and Just A Geek to Lulu. It made a lot of sense to me to keep all of my self-published work together in one place, and hopefully this will make ordering even faster and easier than it already was.

Now, for the sake of completeness and making a post that's more than 70 words, here's a little bit about my audiobooks, which I yanked from the Audiobooks tag on Wil Wheaton Books dot Com:

The Happiest Days of Our Lives

You can buy the audio version of The Happiest Days of Our Lives right here, for just $19.72. "Why $19.72?" You ask? Because that's the year I was born, and since nobody else is the boss of me, I can do that sort of thing. "How long is it?" You say? "That's what she said!" I reply. Then I tell you that it's about three and a-half hours long, and we laugh and laugh before the episode ends with a hilarious freeze frame.

Like the audio version of Just A Geek, this is a super-annotated edition, filled with tons of what I call "audio footnotes" for lack of a less stupid-sounding term. I hope we've created something that's more like sitting down in a room with me while I tell you stories, than it is a typical audiobook. I don't think a traditional publisher would let me get away with doing it this way, which is a big reason I do these things on my own. If you've ever heard meperform my work at a show, or listened to any of my podcasts, you should have some idea of what you're getting into.

Just A Geek

I'm very proud of this, my first audio book. I've talked in the past about what a huge letdown my experience wih O'Reilly was on the print version of the book, and much of the joy I'd hoped to feel with its release has instead come from the recording of the audio version, which ended up being a performance, with asides, commentary, and reflections on the material that aren't in the print version of the book. I guess it's like I'm reading the book to you, and occasionally setting it down to give some meta-commentary on various passages.

So if you liked the print book, my PAX keynote, my performance of The Trade, or if you like my podcasts, I'm pretty sure you'll dig the audiobook.

For the Lulu release of Just A Geek: The Audiobook, I was able to include a PDF scan of the booklet I created for its previous release, which I think is pretty cool. (If you already own the audio version of JAG and would like a copy of the PDF booklet, just e-mail me and I'll get it to you as quickly as I can.)

My audiobooks are quite different from traditional audiobooks. Rather than create a dramatic interpretation of the literal text, which is what I do when I voice another author's book (Like Peter & Max: A Fables Novel, which I did for Bill Willingham), I am able to use my experience as an actor to bring the words and characters to life while adding my own commentary. The result is much closer to hearing or seeing me perform my material live than getting an audio version of the text.

For both of these books, I worked with my friend David Lawrence, who in addition to producing them, participated in some interesting conversations along the way. In fact, we added so much material through our conversations and my additional commentary, we only half-jokingly call them superannotated versions of the books. It's the sort of thing that I doubt I'd be able to get away with if I wasn't doing this entirely on my own, and I'm really glad that we did the books this way, because I think it makes them special and unique. The feedback I've gotten from customers is overwhelmingly positive, and it appears that my goal of making the listener feel like we're sitting down together while I read to them has been successfully achieved.

Okay, before I sign off, I'm going to address a couple of FAQs that usually come up when my aubiobooks are mentioned:

Q: How about some stats, man?

A: Happiest Days is $19.72, about 3.5 hours long, and is about a 200MB download. Just A Geek is $20.00, about 9 hours long, and is about a 400MB download.

Q: Why is Just a Geek only 28 cents more if it's so much longer?

A: That's what she said! Oh, um. Sorry. Because it's been available for so long, and the old pricing model we used when it was originally released needed to be updated. Look, I know that people can just steal it if they want to, so I figured it was better to make it more affordable for people who want to be honest.

Q: How about a discount if I get them together?

A: I wish I could do that, but I'd have to make a whole new project at Lulu, and I don't think there's enough market demand for that.

Q: Can I get this from Audible?

A: Not right now.

Q: Why not?

A: Two main reasons: Audible takes a huge cut of the purchase price, and for an indie guy like me it's not worth it. Audible also requires DRM, which I'd like to avoid as long as possible. Now, to be super-clear: if Audible could somehow open up my work to tens of thousands of new customers, I think it would be a fair trade off. However, my experience in traditional publishing leads me to believe that that isn't going to happen. I think I can reach 

Q: So why not do it anyway? Why not sell them directly yourself and also use Audible?

A: Hurm. That's a good question, and I can't come up with a very good reason that's more comprehensive than, "because I don't want to deal with the hassle and potential rejection from Audible." 

Q: So you're going to eventually do that?

A: Well ... it seems silly not to, now, doesn't it? Tell you what: once I get everything I need to do under control and I'm not behind on a crapton of deadlines, I'll look into Audible, assuming that they'll even be interested in having me.

Q: So should I just wait, then?

A: Facepalm.

Q: Are you going to do audio versions of your other books?

A: I've meant to do a Dancing Barefoot for years, and just never got around to it. If enough people are interested, though, I will. I bet I could give Barefoot a really neat superannotated treatment, especially since I've leveled up so much since I wrote it.

Q: What about Memories of the Future?

A: I really don't know. It takes a lot of time and energy to produce an audiobook, and I don't know if there are enough buyers to make it worth the time it would take to create a Memories audiobook all at once. I've thought about doing it episodically, so if only 20 people are interested, I've only wasted two hours instead of forty, but I'm not sure that would work. But there's always the Memories of the Futurecast, guys.

Q: Hey, is it weird to essentially have a conversation with yourself and present it as a FAQ?

A: Keep your questions on-topic, please.

Q: It's just that, I think it's kind of weird.

A: That isn't a question.

Q: Oh, so the voice in your head can say you're awesome and you'll let that slip by, but if I point out that it's a little weird, you're just going to blow me off?

A: Pretty much. Yes. Okay, um ... you in the back?

Q: Hey, I don't have a question, but I just wanted to say that you're awesome.

A: Why thank you. That's very kind of you.

Q: And tell us, once again, where we can get these fabulous audiobooks, please?

A: Great question. You can go to my storefront at Lulu to find just about everything I've recently published, or you can go directly to Just A Geek: The Audiobook or The Happiest Days of Our Lives: The Audiobook.

Annnd, scene. Thanks for reading and (hopefully) listening. Remember to tell all your friends, and be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

This post is not a number, it is a free man. It also continues my 2009 year in review from part five, and concludes this obscenely long series of posts that I hope was worth the time I put into creating them.

I revealed a fairly major secret, and there was much rejoicing. Yaaay.

About 24 hours later, JJ Abrams called me. It was an entertaining conversation; I couldn't believe he wanted me to do work on his film, and he couldn't believe that I wanted to do it. He asked me if I'd be interested in playing some Romulans, and I think I held my hand over the phone so he couldn't hear me squeal in delight before I calmly told him that, yes, I thought I could do that. I don't recall precisely why, but we agreed that it would be extra cool to keep it a secret until the heat death of the universe, an uncredited bit of awesome that only a handful of people in the world would know about ... unless we told them. (In fact, as far as I know, only a dozen people in the world knew about this until some meddling kids and their dog at Viacom found out about it this summer, and said we had to give me credit and stuff.)

I met JJ at an ADR stage a few days later, where he told me the entire plot of the movie (and, for the record, hearing JJ Freakin' Abrams tell you the plot of his Star Trek is even more awesome than you'd expect) and showed me some of the scenes that I'd be dubbing. I ended up providing voices for all the Romulans on Nero's ship, including the guy who tells him that "it's time" at the very beginning of the movie. (Yeah, how cool is that?)

I was distracted for the first 15 or 20 minutes before we started work, because I kept expecting someone to come out from behind a screen with a camera to laugh at me, but when I was given my dialog and recorded my first take, I knew that it was really happening.

I thought it would be really hard to keep my squee under control, but when I stood there in the darkened ADR stage, three pages of dialog in front of me, sitting in the soft glow of a single dim light clipped to a music stand, I was able to put my inner awkward superfan into check long enough to be a professional actor. I mean, I was working for JJ freakin' Abrams on Star frekin' Trek, so maybe I could rise to the occasion, you know?

We recorded dialog for about an hour or so, I guess, and when we were finished, JJ invited me to come with him over to the mixing stage, where he was going to watch a reel of the film.

Um. Okay. Yeah, I think I can do that. I texted Anne something like, "Probably never coming home again. I'm going to stay here with my new best friend JJ Abrams and watch as much of Star Trek as he'll let me."

I celebrated ten years of marriage to my awesome wife.

I wrote a brief history of my life as a Magic: the Gathering player, and played Magic online as part of the Xbox Game With Fame thingy.

I played the game a few times, but it didn't capture my imagination like the board games and RPGs I loved. The mechanics were interesting, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around advanced concepts, like "tapping" and the mysterious "upkeep." (Perhaps I was not the high-level gamer I thought I was.) I went back to that shop a few weeks later (it must have been near a casting office) and ended up talking to the owner about playing Magic. "It's okay," I said, "but I'm just not that into it."

He reached behind the counter and pulled out a long box. "Maybe you'd like the game better if you had access to all the cards."

"That box has one of every card in the whole game?"

"Yes. It's eighty dollars."

"Sorry, dude, there is no way I'm spending eighty dollars on that."

Yes, for those of you wondering, this particular box had a Black Lotus in it, among other things.

Because I was so excited about making things this year, I did my best to help other peopleget excited and make things.

In the old days, creators had to hope that:

1. A store would carry their Thing.

2. Once in the store, their Thing would be in a place where people could see it.

3. People would buy their Thing.

4. People would buy enough of their Thing to get the cycle to start over at step 1.

Oh, and to have any hope of being successful, they have to do this in different stores all over the place, competing for space and attention with huge companies that have massive advertising budgets. It was, to say the very least, daunting.

But look at how much things have changed! Creative people can get excited, make something, and get it to their customers without ever having to go through any of those steps. The financial risk has been almost entirely taken away, so now we can take chances on our really crazy ideas, just because we're excited about them.

In the comments to that post, there are dozens and dozens of links from other WWdN readers who got excited and made things. Dig through if you have some time; there are some treasures buried in there.

One of the things I got excited and made is the Memories of the Futuremug:

My mind ran off like a dog chasing an idea through the forest, returning a few minutes later with something awesome. If I were to create a dialog to dramatically illustrate the way it all came together, it might go something like this:

My Mind: DUDE! OMG! This is going to be so cool!

Me: Okay, I'm listening.

My Mind: We're going to make a mug that goes with Memories of the Future.

Me: Tell me more...

My Mind: On one side, it will have those beautiful space jellyfish that Will designed for the cover.

Me: I love how those look.

My Mind: Everyone does. Will did a great job with them. Now listen, because this is what takes this mug from cool to awesome: On the opposite side of the mug, it says:

Tea,

Earl Grey.

Hot.

Me: Holy crap, My Mind! That's awesome!

My Mind: I know, right?!

Me: High five!

My Neighbor's Kid: Why did Mister Wheaton just slap himself in the head?

My Neighbor: He's a writer, honey. They do weird things like that.

And ... scene.

My brother got excited and made some awesome calendars.

As the year drew to a close, I remembered the irrational immortality of youth:

We parked in a mostly-empty lot and walked down toward the water. There was a winter storm on its way, driving powerful waves ahead of it that were so huge, they crashed up against the bottom of the pier and occasionally broke over the end of it. Wrapped up in the irrational immortality that's endemic to 22 year-olds, we walked dangerously close to the end of the shuddering pier, angry waves boiling beneath, and dared the Pacific Ocean to reach up and touch us.

Anne and I went to a big deal Hollywood A-list party at Seth MacFarlane's house:

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'm still trying to convince myself that that actually happened, and that I wasn't invited by mistake.

When I finished the first series of Memories of the Futurecast, I restarted Radio Free Burrito and gave it its own home at RadioFreeBurrito.com. I release a new episode every Monday, children.

For the rest of the month, I pretty much dug into the vault for posts so I could enjoy some vacation time with my family, then I wrote a bunch of posts about what I did all year that I hoped to keep to three, but ended up going to six, because as it turns out ... it really was a great year after all.

You know, it's really easy to look back on the year and only see the things I didn't do, the things I didn't finish, the stuff I missed out on, and the things that I failed to accomplish. In fact, it's really hard not to do that. But when I put this whole series of posts together, though, a pretty clear picture emerged: 2009 was an awesome year for me professionally, easily the best year I've had as an actor this decade. As a writer, I didn't do the fiction I wanted to do (again) but I released two books that people seem to like a whole lot, and began work on another. For the first time since I started this stuff, I finally feel - for real - like I can really make a living doing this stuff. I'm not getting rich (and it's not like I'm not trying, guys) but I'm not starving or struggling, either.

Over all, I'm grateful for my friends, my family, my health, my success, and that I get to share all of those things with millions of people (wow, that's weird) who I'll probably never get to meet, but who seem to genuinely care about all that stuff, and give me the wonderful gift of listening to me when I tell them stories about it. You're reading this, so you're probably one of those people, right? Well, thank you. I sincerely mean that.

Yeah, 2009 was a pretty good year, so I'm putting 2010 on notice: you've got some big shoes to fill, buddy. I think you should get on the phone with some people and get to work.

Yeah, so it turns out I did a lot of cool stuff in 2009, and now this is up to five freakin' parts. Hey, at least they're small enough to read on a coffee break, right? This is continued from part four.

2009 was the best year I've had as an actor this entire decade. In addition to working on Leverage, I played Fawkes on Season Three of The Guild. I wore a kilt and battled ferocious flying beetles with my bare hands. Bravely. I also played an evil version of myself on The Big Bang Theory. I spent an incredible week on their set, where I leveled up as a comedy actor:

I remember being in drama school in my early twenties, and having at least a decade more experience than everyone else in the room except our teacher. I remember paying close attention all the time, even when I wasn't working on a scene in front of the class, or getting notes directly from her. I remember her telling the other kids in the school, many of whom were convinced that they were going to be The Next Big Thing (all of them except Salma Hyek were wrong) that they didn't learn anything about performing while they were actually doing it. They learned while watching other actors perform, and understanding why their choices worked or didn't work. 

I haven't done a show like this in years, and I want to make sure that I am completely back in shape, I guess you could say, by the time we perform the episode next week. To make sure I get there, I spent the entire day, even when I wasn't in the scene, watching and listening, and remembering skills that I once used every day, but haven't even thought about in a very long time. By the time we got to my last scene of the day (God, I wish I could describe it, because it's hilarious) I felt confident, I felt funny, and I felt weird but also good.

Wait. Not the last part. I'm saving that for the weekend, when I finally get to celebrate being on The Big Bang Theory.

I experienced The Big Bang Buzz

After lunch, the writers and producers came in so they could see us put the script up on its feet, and give us some comments and notes after each scene. I will admit that I was nervous; it was very important to me that I didn't kill any jokes or make them question their decision to cast me. I mean, I love this show, I love this script, I love the things they've given me to do, and I didn't want to screw anything up...

...so of course I stumbled over my first line, and had to say it a second time. But when everyone laughed anyway, (hopefully at my delivery and not at my nerves) I settled in, got out of my own way, did it how we rehearsed, and just enjoyed the experience of working with great actors to bring great material to life. When we finished, there was laughter and applause, and the general consensus was that we were all pretty funny, even Wil Wheaton.

I'm so happy and excited and grateful to be part of this show. After we finished the run through, and I was pretty much bouncing with joy the whole way home.

Even now, over five hours after I walked out of the stage, I can still feel what I'm calling The Big Bang Buzz.

I just realized that I never wrote all about my experience on the set in greater detail than this. I need to correct that in the coming weeks:

When he first talked to me about working on the show, Bill Prady told me that I'd be playing a "delightfully evil version" of myself. This sounded like a lot of fun to me, but it was more difficult to find that character than you'd think. When I'm playing Fawkes on The Guild it's easy to slip into his kilt and be a jerk, but wearing my own clothes and essentially playing a stylized version of myself made it a real challenge to hit "delightfully evil" without veering into "not committed to being delightfully evil" or "just plain evil." Keeping that twinkle in my eye, and knowing that Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Version) is planning to scam Sheldon from the moment he sits down, was essential to this particular characterization working out, and I didn't completely find it until we'd run the episode a couple of times.

During one of the run throughs, when Jim did his Klingon bit, I turned to Kevin and asked him, "Did he just say 'revenge is a dish best served cold' in Klingon?" like I was trying to figure out if that's actually what happened, like maybe I misunderstood him. Chuck Lorre told me that it would be funnier if I was more exasperated. "You're just here to play this game, and now some guy is quoting Klingon at you. This happens everywhere you go," he said. 

I sighed dramatically, and said, "Oh, it does." Everyone laughed, hard, and Chuck pointed his finger at me. "Yes. That is exactly the way to play that beat."

When Chuck gave me that note, I grokked how to play Evil Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Theory version), and I could see the comedy in every beat I played for the rest of the show. I totally grew a level in comedy acting, and learned something about letting go of who Ireally am, so I could embrace the Delightfully Evil version of myself (who I seriously hope will return in the future, because OMG was it fun to play him.)

I finally released Memories of the Future, Volume One, and there was much rejoicing.

I joined Paul and Storm, and Adam Savage for w00tstock. It was an experiment, to see if anyone wanted to come watch us do a show together ... yeah, it was so frakking awesome and successful, we're doing more shows in 2010.

Everything I could possibly say about w00tstock has already been said by Paul and Storm, who made a lovely list, and Molly, who made a comic that captures exactly how I felt the whole time we did our shows.

I loved feeling the terror and exhilaration of trying something totally new (The Trade, with music) that was raw and unrehearsed enough to allow for surprises every night.

I loved how totally geeked out we all were to be working with each other, too. I mean, I knew it would be cool to meet Adam Savage - the guy's a freakin' genius, after all - but I was unprepared for how completely and utterly cool, kind, and enthusiastic he was. And his100 wishes are wonderful, especially that he, like I, wishes for his children to have careers that they love.

I loved feeling like we were creating something unique and special, that people would be talking about long after it was finished.

I loved how much fun we had every night, even though I was exhausted down to my bones by the time we finished our last show Wednesday night (actually, Thursday morning).

I loved how wonderful the audiences were at all the shows. Geeks truly are the best crowd, because even when they heckle us (I'm looking at you, Los Angeles front row) it was done with enthusiasm and love. Yes, even the hecklers were, in their own way, supportive.

I loved that we released the entire show under a Creative Commons license, so anyone who wanted to could record and share the show online. There are tons of videos at YouTube andpictures at Flickr, as a result. 

I made a soup geyser:

"You're putting way too much soup in there," Anne said.

"I'm fine," I said, eager to get the pureeing over with so we could get down to the eating part of our dinner. "I'll just hold the lid down when I turn it on."

I pressed the lid down tightly and held it down with my left hand. With my right, I pressed the button marked "puree."

I probably would have taken a moment to stare at the resulting butternut squash soup geyser, if the explosion of hot liquid hadn't burned the hell out of my hand, face, chest, and arm. I probably would have admired the CSI-like splatters of orange puree on the wall, the coffee maker, the microwave, and the refrigerator, if I hadn't been frantically stabbing at the buttons in an effort to silence the whirring blades which created it. But it wasn't until the moment had passed - really just a few seconds of chaos - that I was able to pause and appreciate what had just happened. I mean, it's not every day that a geyser erupts in my kitchen. Thank Steve the Fruitbat.

I turned around and looked at my wife, who appeared to have chosen a seat outside of the splash zone. "Um. I didn't think that would happen."

"Really."

I grabbed a hand towel and wiped myself off. "Yeah. I, um. I thought it would blend."

"Oh it blended. It blended everywhere."

I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: that's one of my favorite things I've ever written.

To be continued in part six (Sheesh. Maybe I should have set the bar for inclusion a little higher, you think?)

Something something rearview mirror blog posts 2009. This is continued from part three.

I told the world what happens when you feed a dog chocolate while he wears a tinfoil hat in the microwave.

My friend Mike (@cwgabriel) and I engaged in the great retweeting madness of 2009, which I totally won.

I went to Comicon and, uh, got excited:

... and that's when I saw that Joss Whedon was sitting in the front row. About ten feet from me.

Let's take a look inside Wil's head, shall we:

Me: OMG OMG OMG

Brain: What?

Me: JOSS WHEDON IS RIGHT THERE! HE CAME TO THE PANEL AND HE'S RIGHT THERE!

Brain: Okay, just be cool.

Me: OKAY I'M BEING COOL.

Brain: No, you're staring.

Me: What?

Brain: You're staring. Stop staring.

Me: Shit. Okay. I'm not staring now. [pause] HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THAT JOSS WHEDON IS RIGHT THERE IN THE FRONT ROW?!

Brain: Yes, you mentioned that. Also, you're staring again.

Eventually, I broke out of the loop, which in WhetonIX looks like: (if near.joss=1, do {stare.like.idiot} fi;), and I enjoyed the rest of the panel.

Anne turned 40, and we had a radical bitchin' 80s costume party for her.

I found an old photograph of the four of us from Stand By Me that unlocked a flood of memories:

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.

[...]

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.

My dog Ferris, who Anne rescued from a bus stop in Monrovia where she'd been abandoned when she was just a puppy got cancer, and died. It was absolutely devastating.

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. 

Ferris was just eight years-old, and a huge part of our family. I still miss her every day.

I wrote some fiction, and released it as a limited-edition chapbook at PAX. It was my first foray into anything longer than a blog post, and scared the hell out of me to release. I still haven't decided if I'll publish it at Lulu like I did with Sunken Treasure.

I started a weekly podcast to promote Memories of the Future called, appropriately enough,Memories of the Futurecast. It eventually got so fun and so popular, I gave it its ownwebsite.

When I was at PAX, Jonathan Coulton, Molly Lewis, and Paul and Storm sang a song to me. Just thinking about it now still brings tears to my eyes. It was one of the highlights of the year, if not the entire decade. Know what else I got at PAX? H1N1. Yay.

The third series of the D&D Penny Arcade podcast began. It, uh, didn't end too well for Aeofel.

In memory of Ferris, Anne and I held a fundraiser for the Pasadena Humane Society's Wiggle Waggle Walk. Due to the generosity of WWdN readers, we ended up raising more money than any other individual - almost $14,000. Because so many people contributed to our effort, the humane society asked us to walk a shelter dog. We loved him so much, we adopted him and made him part of our family. His name is Seamus, and he's awesome. Yes, he'll get his own post with pictures and everything, just not right now.

To be continued in part five...

I'm looking back at 2009 the best way I can: by posting excerpts of memorable things from my blog. This is continued from part two.

I wrote a funny story about playing minigolf with my wife:

"I can't separate how this place really looked in the '80s from how I want to remember it," I said. "I wonder if I've just idealized it, or if it really did look and feel fitter, happier, and more productive when I was a kid."

She drew her putter back, and left herself in as good a position as any to get the inevitable six on the goddamn volcano hole. Behind us, the freeway was a wall of white noise, occasionally broken by the rumbling of a downshifting semi. The pond to our left was covered with a blanket of brown foam, broken by the nozzle of a dry fountain.

"Of course it looked better when you were a kid," she said, "it was new then."

"I can't believe I never thought of that before. You're exactly right." I put my golf ball, yellow and worn, on the middle tee, feeling heat radiate off the heavy black rubber against the back of my hand. A gentle breeze carried children's laughter and the unmistakable smell of that particular kind of pizza they only serve at minigolf courses past us.

I got as sick as I'd been in years (right up until I got the H1N1 in August, actually) and had to cancel Penguicon. Again. I gave my friend Andrew a letter to read on my behalf since he was already there.

If I'd been just a few seconds farther down the freeway, I probably would have been involved in a horrific car crash because some guy was driving like an asshole:

I was in the number 2 lane, cruising along with the flow of traffic. I saw that the number 1 lane was slowing down a lot, so I slowed down too, just in case people whipped out of that lane and into mine. It happens all the time, because people drive like assholes.

Sure enough, some asshole was speeding down the number 1 lane, and I don't know if he wasn't paying attention or what, but he whipped around into my lane - about 100 yards in front of me, I suppose - over corrected, spun sideways, and T-boned a van. The van flipped onto its side, and the asshole driver sped into the carpool lane. I'm not sure if he crashed into the wall or hit his brakes, but he stopped and got out of his car. I expected to see a 20 year-old kid, but it was a man in a suit who appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s.

The van, on its side, was about two car lengths in front of me. I realized that I'd been holding my breath, and my hands were shaking so hard I could hardly grip my steering wheel. Just when I snapped out of it and thought I should get out to help, the door of the van opened and the driver climbed out. I couldn't tell if he was hurt.

I picked up my phone to dial 911, and saw that every car around me was already doing that. I started to get out of my car, and I saw that about six or seven different people had already gotten out and were checking on the people who were involved in the crash. I decided that I'd just be in the way if I stopped, so – very carefully – I drove around the scene of the crash and – very carefully – I drove home.

I spent an incredible week in Portland, working on Leverage, playing a computer geek:

The costume designer is an incredibly kind and easy going woman. She was talking with me about who this character is, what he's like, and how those things would influence his decisions when it comes to his clothes. I was glad to have the discussion, because the clothes I wear for a show are very important to me. I always work hard to find something that is appropriate for the character, but that I'll also feel comfortable wearing.

She pulled a bunch of different shirts and things off the racks, and said, "So we thought we'd dress you like a nerd." She didn't say it unkindly, it was just matter of fact, the way you'd say, "You know, I think fish would be nice tonight."

I looked at the clothes she had in her hands: straight-legged jeans, slip-on Vans, a short-sleeved shirt with a collar and buttons.

"So, kind of like what I'm already wearing," I said.

I had a fantastic time bringing the character to life:

Most scripts have a scene that makes an actor go, "WOW, I really want to play this character so I can do that scene." This morning, I got to do that scene, and it was as challenging, fun, and ultimately rewarding as I thought it would be. I can't wait to see it in the final cut of the show.

Before we did that scene, I had a brief meeting with the director, because I wanted to make sure that my take on this character and his vision for the character had more in common than not. I performed some of the more important lines, talked about the arc I'd created in my mind, and made sure that we were on the same page.

He nodded while I did my thing, and when I was done, there was a long pause. I started to get a little nervous, and wondered if I was about to be sent home with a set of steak knives.

"You own this guy," he said.

I got to enjoy some unexpected improv:

We were shooting outside on a beautiful street up near the hills, southwest of downtown, and during one take a very friendly woman somehow got past everyone, didn't realize we were filming, and walked right up to me during a take.

She asked me a question that I can't repeat, because it would be sort of a spoiler. I noticed that nobody called cut, so I just stayed in character, answered her, watched her walk away, and then finished the scene. It wasn't quite "I'm walking here!" but it was still pretty cool.

I don't think we'll be able to use it in the show, because she was a civilian who clearly didn't know that we were filming, but it was exhilarating to just keep on rolling and keep on acting, even though something totally unexpected happened in the middle of the take.

Making television can be grueling, it can be frustrating, and it can be exhausting. I know how very lucky I am to have worked on a couple shows in the last year that haven't been like that, and I'm intensely grateful to be working on another one right now.

I went to Powell's with John Rogers and looked at D&D books:

"I just realized why these books and these games are so important to me," I said, pointing to all the D&D books that surrounded us.

"During a childhood that was completely abnormal, filled with things that I didn't choose for myself, these games were something I chose to read and play. These games were part of my normal."

"Oh, so you were like everyone else who played D&D when they were a kid," John said.

I smiled. "I guess so, yeah."

I was sad when I finished work and had to go home:

Whenever I finish a job, I feel some degree of sadness and loss. Working on a movie or doing a play gives me months to get to know the cast and crew, and when that journey ends, and we go our separate ways, I'm often the one who's cryin' now.

Guesting on a series, though, is a little different: I drop in for a week, and right around the time I've learned everyone's name, established some awesome running jokes, and started to feel like I'm part of the family, it's over. It guess it should be like ripping off a bandage but it's more like a different metaphor simile that I can't create at the moment; feel free to create your own.

As I wandered through downtown Portland I thought about the week, and how much fun I had while I worked on the show. I thought about how much I wanted to spend more time with this cast and crew, and I couldn't help but wonder how long it's going to be before I get to be an actor on the set again.

I don't know if I'll get to play Chaos (who, I decided, signs his name "C4[anarchy symbol] 05" when he autographs stuff at conventions while disguised as Wil Wheaton) but if they ask, I'll be there in a heartbeat.

To be continued in part four...

It's time for the annual look back at the year that was. This is continued from part one.

I saw Watchmen before it was released, and I loved it. When the screening was over, I got to be part of a Q&A with Watchmen's director:

Before I realized it, I was on my feet, getting in line, not to ask a question, but to make a comment.

When I approached the mic, I felt my hands get cold and I couldn't feel my feet. This is typically what happens to me when I'm really nervous.

I cleared my throat and said, "Hi, my name is Wil, and I'm from Pasadena."

He said, "Hey, I'm from Pasadena, too!"

"AWESOME!" I said, and felt stupid.

I steadied myself, as the entire theater faded away and all I could hear was the sound of my own voice, coming out of someone else, very far away. "I just wanted to tell you that I've wanted to see this movie for twenty years."

I took a breath, and was horrified to feel some very real emotion rising up in my chest.

"Oh fuck. Just say it and run away!"

"I just wanted to say thank you for making it worth the wait."

He said something, but I don't know what it was. I was too busy running away.

As I left the theater, and feeling returned to my hands and feet, I thought, "Shit. I forgot to tell him, "If they ask you to make Sandman, please say yes.'"

I doubt he'll ever read this, but just in case he does ... Zack Snyder, this is Wil from Pasadena. If they ever ask you to make Sandman, please say yes.

In 2007, I worked on Criminal Minds, rapin' and killin' and gettin' killed real good. I kept a production diary while I was on the set, and included it in Sunken Treasure. When my episode aired in March, I got this crazy idea to create an audio version of the production diary, which I released on Lulu for just five bucks.

The fundamental concept behind Operation Crazy Idea is to publish more things, more often, at lower price points. The simplicity and immediacy of POD technology, the Long Tail, and Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans Model (I hate that term, but I love the idea behind it) have all worked together to make the first effort in Operation Crazy Idea, Sunken Treasure, a huge success.

This morning, I got a genuinely Crazy Idea that I've spent much of today creating: An audio version of my Criminal Minds production diary.

"Why aren't you just doing an audio version of the whole book?" You may ask.

"Well," I would say, "because that wouldn't be a Crazy Idea."

What is a Crazy Idea, though, is recording the whole production diary, adding in the usual asides and extras, ending up with something that's about 78 minutes long, and selling it on Lulu for $5.

"Why $5?" You say.

You ask a lot of good questions, person-who-I-made-up-who-is-different-from-the-person-I-made-up-yesterday.

From the first time I colored in my dice and died repeatedly at the hands of the Rust Monster in that one cave (you know the one) I have loved D&D. I've played several other RPGs over the years (most notably GURPS) but with the release of D&D 4E, I've fallen back in love with the system.

Fueled by the Penny Arcade Podcasts and the simple joy of learning a new(ish) system, I began a campaign for my son and his friends:

I haven't DMed anything in ages, and I haven't DMed 4E ever, so rather than start them out in Winterhaven with the events of H1, I started them out in Fallcrest, and planned to run them through a slightly-modified version of the first level Dungeon Delve. I thought this would be a good way for me to remember how to ride the bike, and a good way to introduce them to the new combat mechanics in 4E. And I'll be honest, here: I love a good dungeon crawl as much as anyone. Because I'm running this campaign for teenagers, I didn't think it was wise to dump them into serious roleplaying right away, and I'd use a play session that was primarily combat-based to get them comfortable with each other as players, and with me as a DM.

We had a lot of fun, and played for just under five hours. I had planned for about four hours, but I had to spend more time than I thought I would refreshing my memory in the DMG.

We sat around the table, and I began...

I did my best to make the experience a memorable one:

"Sorry, all you know is that this dragon is pretty pissed that you're in her lair, and the Kobolds down here," I pointed to the end of the corridor, "are coming toward you, now."

"Oh! It's a she!" Nolan's other friend said. "That's so cool!"

"The dragon moves her head back and forth on her long, slender neck. She cocks her head to one side and then to the other. Her lips curl back, as she slowly opens her mouth."

I glanced up at them. Their eyes were all wide.

"She rears back, and a blast of freezing cold dragon breath surrounds you!"

As I rolled for each of them, Nolan noticed the change in the music. "Did you do that on purpose?" He said. I told him that I had.

"That's really cool," he said.

I planted the seed for the rest of the campaign:

"When you return to Fallcrest, you go straight to Douven's office to share your triumph with him. When the door opens, though, you find his wife, standing alone. Her eyes are puffy and red, and she clutches a small holy symbol in one hand.

"'Douven ... Douven is gone,' she says. 'He said that something terrible was happening near Winterhaven, but he wouldn't tell me what it was. He just said that if he didn't get there soon, it would be the end of us all!' She looks at you, expectantly." The music, which had been sort of triumphant and energized, had become soft and melancholy, another happy coincidence that I assured the kids was entirely planned in advance.

"Well, guys," Nolan's friend said, "I guess we're going to Winterhaven."

But, sadly, teenagers are flaky and playing D&D with your stepdad isn't nearly as fun as sitting in your room and clicking your mouse over and over again while you try to get armor to drop in WoW. Yes, I remain bitterly disappointed that we never played again, but I'm glad we played at all, because it was absolutely time well spent, and I was able to share some thoughts about things I learned while sitting behind the DM screen:

Today, I wanted to share some of the things that came to mind, as well as some other things from a lifetime of gaming that I hadn't thought about until this week. My hope is that this will be useful for DMs and players alike. I'd love it if you'd add your own comments, if anything related comes to your mind while you read this post.

First of all, in spite of our mistakes, we all had a lot of fun. As far as I'm concerned, the session was a HUGE SUCCESS as a result. The whole point of playing an RPG is to have fun while engaging the imagination, right? Mission accomplished, and not in the fake George Bush way.

Mostly, this session reaffirmed some of the core concepts that all DM guides share, fromGURPS to T20 to D&D and beyond. Among them are surprise! Fear! Ruthless Efficie – wait. Sorry. That's wrong. Put down the soft cushions and I'll try again.

I started a Flickr pool for my books, called Wheaton's Books in the Wild. Turns out my books have been to some very cool places.

I drew ascii dongs on my blog, as part of what I think is a pretty funny post about spammers and the people who believe them.

I played Whil Wheaton on Family Guy with the rest of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I went to Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, and performed some stories for the nice people.

Anne and I went to the Nebula Awards dinner, where I presented the award for best script:

I wanted some kind of introduction, so a few minutes before I walked up to the podium, I came up with this:

"Everyone I know who is successful reads books. Everyone I know who is successful andinteresting reads science fiction and fantasy. As a parent, you can imagine how important it is to me that my kids read science fiction and fantasy, so I've used television and movies as a gateway drug.

"The nominees for Best Script are..."

I'm not going to lie: I felt pretty good about that, especially considering that I came up with it pretty much on the fly.

To be continued in part three...

The first time I did one of these posts in 2006, it was to secretly collect material I was thinking about including in The Happiest Days of Our Lives. It ended up being a lot of fun to look back at the whole year, though, and it created a nice introduction to my writing (which is one of those things we writers kind of need to have) so I did it again in 2008 (I'm not sure why there's no 2007 entry; I guess nothing happened that year and we all slept through it) and here I am, about to do it again in 2009.

So, without any further parenthetical statements (except for this one), let's begin:

I recalled The Great Wheaton Hockey Scandal of 1991:

My friends at CliqueClack did an interview with Dean Devlin, creator of the sensational new series Leverage. Dean and I played hockey on the same team (with, I've just now remembered, Adam Baldwin, also) from around 1989-1991. He was a forward and I was a goalie. One night in Burbank, our team gave up a breakaway near the redline. I saw it happening when the puck was still in the offensive zone, so I was ready.

When the other guy crossed our blue line, I was already way out of the net, near the bottom of the faceoff circle on my left side. I skated backward with him to force him to shoot on my terms. I guess I was near the crease when I saw him pull his stick back way over his head."Oh good," I thought, "he's just going to try to blast it past me. Those shots almost always go wide, or right into my glove."

The next thing I knew, there was an explosion in the rink, and a bright flash of light before everything went dark. When the lights came back on, I was on my knees, surrounded by a semicircle of skates. I pulled my helmet off, and watched a whole bunch of blood pour down onto the ice.

"Oh, the way it beads up is really neat," I thought. Then, "Wait. That's my blood." 

I bought my first Fark headline T-shirt and semi-coherently formulated a vigorous defense of myself as an actor living in the shadow of Wesley Crusher:

I am not Wesley Crusher, and when someone says, "Wesley Crusher is playing [Some Character], so, you know, go hate [That Character] without even watching him," it is both unfair and profoundly insulting to me. Imagine having something you've worked so hard to create being dismissed out of hand, because of completely unrelated work you did when you were a teenager - work that you had no control over - and you may understand why this is so upsetting to me. This has happened to me for years, and when I read it tonight - especially related to something like Batman, that I'm so proud of, that I know has a big crossover audience - It infuriated me. I've been subjected to this same tired line for 15 years, and I've really had enough of it. Live in the now, man!

My episode of Batman: The Brave and The Bold aired, and it was awesome. I didn't know it at the time, but I am the first voice actor to play Ted Kord in an animated capacity.

I went to Phoenix for the 2009 Phoenix Comic-Con, where I did a lot of neat stuff, but nothing was better than the epic awesomeness of playing Rock Band 2 with a bunch of my fellow nerds:

After playing Rock Band 2 for 2 straight hours and struggling though some songs I've never played before, I was worried that when the videos started making their way online, I'd look like an asshole who didn't know how to play fake instruments, and that everyone would laugh at me. But when I watch this video of us doing Livin' on a Prayer, all I see is the evening distilled to its essence: a lot of geeks having a lot of fun pretending to be rock stars on a real stage playing for a real audience, which is exactly what I hoped for when I planned it. I mean, we were up there playing 80s anthems, and there were people dancingin front of the stage. When I sang to a girl in the front row, she screamed like we were at an actual concert. For reals! It was so awesome, it was hard not to get caught up in the fantasy of the thing, and I don't think any of us who played the game spent more than 10 seconds fighting it. 

Even though I've been using Twitter since 2007, this was the year it really exploded. For reasons I will never understand, the gang at TwitterHQ put me on some kind of "people you should follow" list, and I watched my follower count double every day for several weeks. It was weird, and I thought it was best to tell everyone how I was going to disappoint them if they followed me:

...if I can make something painfully, embarrassingly clear before I begin: my whole idea here is to manage expectations and explain my own personal limits. I'm not trying to go on and on about how fucking cool I think I am and how you have to follow rules to follow me, or anything like that. I'm saying this now because some of the things down below, you may not want to hear. It's not you, it's me, and I hope you believe that.

I started new categories called From The Vault and Things I Love.

After making several improbable saving throws vs. Layoff at Propeller, AOL finally sent me off to the land of wind and ghosts in February. Initially, this was terrifying. I had a kid in college and one about to graduate high school, very little reliable work, and though I wasn't getting rich from AOL, it was at least something I could count on month to month.

Just like Scalzi, though, getting laid off by AOL ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to get serious about being a full-time writer, and left me no option but to take control of my creative and financial life by writing and publishing more work on my own. I started with Sunken Treasure:

Every year, before the summer convention season gets underway, I pull some 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, and Memories of the Future, but in 2008, I couldn’t excerpt my planned fall release, because it was so top secret, I would have had to print it on self-destructing paper, and while that would have made it a very limited edition, the costs associated were … prohibitive.

The thing about these chapbooks is that you can only get them from me if you come see me at a convention. Since I don't do many conventions, this leaves a lot of you — Europe, Canada, and the East Coast, I'm looking in your direction— without a chance to get your hands on one. Later this week, I will correct this glaring error, by releasing last year's chapbook, Sunken Treasure, via a print on demand system that works like this: you place an order, they print your book, and the service I use ships it to you. A couple of my friends have used the same service I'm using, and they're super happy with the quality of their books, the customer service, and everything about the whole process. Print on demand services used to be kind of sketchy, but they've grown up a lot recently, and I'm willing to give this particular one a try.

If this works the way I think it will, it's going to be super awesome for all of us as I release books in the future: You don't have to worry about me screwing up your order, I don't have to invest in a thousand books at a time, you get your book in a few days instead of a few weeks because I'm not shipping it myself, and I can spend more time creating new stories while remaining independent. Best of all, I'll have the time to write and release more than one or two books a year.

Sunken Treasure was more successful than I ever dreamed, got great reviews, and continues to sell very well in print and digital editions.

I introduced my son to the joy of a game called Button Men, and reintroduced myself to the even greater joy of playing with him:

I walked out into the living room and found Nolan sitting at our iMac, playing Diablo.

"Hey, it's too dark and cold outside to throw the frisbee," I said, "but at the dining room table, it's perfect for throwing dice."

He spun around in his chair. "Two minutes. Then you are going down."

"Awesome."

I walked back into my office, deliberately did not look at my desk, grabbed the bag of Button Men, and a bag of dice. I took them all out to the dining room, and untied the bag. I gleefully watched polyhedra spill out and clatter across the table.

"I hope that the simple act of watching dice fall always makes me this happy," I thought.

I looked up, and saw that Nolan was intently focused on his game. I picked up the bag of Button Men and gently shook it.

The buttons clattered. He did not turn.

I shook the bag harder. Still, he did not turn.

I shook the bag harder still, cleared my throat, and stomped my foot.

I think he's talking to you!

I noticed Nolan's shoulders were twitching just a little bit.

You win this round, kid, but I'll win when it counts.

"Dude! Come on!" I said.

He was smiling as he turned around and walked over to the table.

"I don' t know why you're in such a hurry to get owned," he said.

It's not about the game, it's about playing the game with you.

I told a story about playing T-ball while my dad watched. Well, I told it the way I remember it:

When I was six years old, I set foot onto on a T-ball diamond for the first time.

I was skinny, awkward and unsure of myself - basically a smaller version of the teenager I'd eventually become - and I didn't have very good coordination, but my dad loved baseball, and I knew that if my dad loved it, I loved it too, because that's the way things work when you're six.

It was the spring of 1978, when smog alerts were as common as reality shows are today, and hazy, reddish gold sunlight shone down on the field at Sunland Park. The sounds of other kids playing on the swings and in the giant rocket ship at the playground mingled with the smell of barbecue smoke as I stepped up to the plate to take my first practice swings.

My first swing connected with the middle of the tee. The baseball - in those days of gas lines and national malaise, we didn't have the soft RIF balls my kids got to play with - fell off and landed in the batter's box on the other side of the plate. The other kids giggled while the coach clapped his hands and shouted encouraging words to me as I picked the ball up and put it back on the tee.

I looked up and saw my father's expectant face through the chainlink fence near the dugout. I slowly and deliberately lifted my bat, held it out at arm's length, and aimed at the top of the tee with one eye closed. I stuck out my tongue and furrowed my brow. I tasted sweat on the corners of my mouth, and felt my heart beat in my ears.

The bat touched the ball, and it fell off again. The kids giggled again. The coach clapped again. I replaced the ball on the tee again.

"Come on, Willow," my dad said. "You can do it!"

To be continued in part two...

I spent a couple hours tonight going through my blog for the annual year in review series of posts. I thought I'd make two or three posts, but so much awesome stuff happened, I ended up with six - yeah, six - posts worth of stuff to pull out and comment on. That lead me to write this, which will come at the end of part six. (Exactly why I'm posting spoilers for my own blog posts that will publish in two days remains a mystery. I guess I'm just so happy and grateful for the good stuff that happened this year, I wanted to share that joy and gratitude right now.)

You know, it's really easy to look back on the year and only see the things I didn't do, the things I didn't finish, the stuff I missed out on, and the things that I failed to accomplish. In fact, it's really hard not to do that. But when I put this whole series of posts together, a pretty clear picture emerged: 2009 was an awesome year for me professionally, easily the best year I've had as an actor this decade. As a writer, I didn't do the fiction I wanted to do (again) but I released two books that people seem to like a whole lot, and began work on another. For the first time since I started this stuff, I finally feel - for real - like I can really make a living doing this stuff. I'm not getting rich (and it's not like I'm not trying, guys) but I'm not starving or struggling, either.

Over all, I'm grateful for my friends, my family, my health, my success, and that I get to share all of those things with millions of people (wow, that's weird) who I'll probably never get to meet, but who seem to genuinely care about all that stuff, and give me the wonderful gift of listening to me when I tell them stories about it. You're reading this, so you're probably one of those people, right? Well, thank you. I sincerely mean that.

Yeah, 2009 was a pretty good year, so I'm putting 2010 on notice: you've got some big shoes to fill, buddy. I think you should get on the phone with some people and get to work.

The 2009 year in review starts tomorrow morning, right here on this station. Now, stay tuned for your local news.

I ended up watching Evolution on WGN late last night. I hadn't seen it since it first aired, so I'd forgotten that it was more commonly known to me as "the one with the Nanites."

When I see TNG on the guide, I usually click over and watch for a second before I go back to watching NHL on the Fly, but when I the picture resolved itself, and the first thing I saw and thought was, "Oh God. The Helmet Hair," (I even joked about it on Twitter), I didn't change the station; I just set the remote down and watched ... and I felt incredibly happy while I did. I don't know how I did it, but I was able to mentally flip between watching my teenage self acting on a TV show, and just watching Star Trek like a regular person who loves it.

Evolution is actually quite good, and we're all quite good in it. During the commercials, I tried to recall specific memories about filming it, but all I could get were some very vague, dreamlike recollections that were so faint, I'm not even sure they were real and not just my brain making things up so I'd stop entering search queries and taxing its server.

Some memories (of the Future, durr) were crystal clear: how great it was to have Gates back, how excited I was to have an episode where Wesley wasn't a weenie, and how cool it was to finally have scenes together where we interacted as mother and son in a believable way.

The strongest memories, though, were off-set, and more tied to that time in my life then they were to that actual episode: painting 40K minis in my dressing room between scenes, going to game cons with my friends to play with those minis, and driving down to the Forum after work to watch the Kings, listening to Depeche Mode, The Smiths, and The Cure the whole way. When the episode was over, I felt this weird combination of joy and sadness that I can't quite find the words to accurately describe. I guess "wistful nostalgia" probably comes closest to how I felt, but even that feels inadequate.

You know, I really hated the Helmet Hair (to this day, if I even smell Shaper hairspray I feel like I'm going to gag) and the grey spacesuit wasn't the coolest thing in the world, especially when everyone else got to wear those awesome two-piece spacesuits, but if wearing The Helmet Hair and The Iron Maiden were the price of admission to working with people I love on a show that I love, I'm glad I got to pay it.

While looking for something entirely-unrelated, I came across this old post from 2006. I read the entire post that it's excerpted from on Radio Free Burrito 17, but this part made me smile, so it gets its own spot right here on my bloggy-blog-blog:

Though I've been there for several auditions, I haven't been on the Universal Studio Tour since  A-Team and Knight Rider were in prime time.



I can mark that particular period of time with this degree of certainty, because I clearly recall talking with KITT, and wanting to ask it if it ever raced the A-Team van around the back lot, but actually asking something stupid about how fast it could go.



I also recall taking a scratch off game with me on the tour tram, where we were supposed to look for A-Team characters in various places, and scratch off the appropriate image on the map, with the promise of a prize for kids who turned in correctly completed games. I can't remember all of them, but Mr. T -- well, a model of Mr. T's head, anyway -- was in this out of control train that was supposed to come within inches of crashing into the tram, and I was so busy trying to figure out how they did it, I forgot to scratch him off . . . until the tour guide reminded all us kids to scratch off that circle on our map.



"That's stupid," I told my mom, "if they're just going to tell everyone where the A-Team is, why should we even look?"



"Maybe you can just enjoy the tour," she said.

2006 was a fantastic year for me as a writer. When I go through the 2005-2006 archives, I see a lot of creative writing and narrative non-fiction that I recall having a lot of fun writing, which remains a lot of fun for me to read today. I'm not entirely sure why that is, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with how much I was allowing myself to simply enjoy the tour.

Memories of the Future got a nice write up in the Toledo Free Press:

There’s one thing that Wil Wheaton wants to make very clear: “Memories of the Future” is not, repeat, NOT a “tell-all” book about his time working on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“It was extraordinarily important to me that this was not some kind of stupid, gossipy book,” Wheaton said. “I despise that kind of thing. I just hate it. It’s the reality television of literature, and I absolutely cannot stand it.”

Indeed, “Memories of the Future” is instead a funny review of, and a loving tribute to, the first season of “Next Generation,” which began its television run in 1987.

I also saw that Happiest Days of Our Lives was used as an example of one of those new-fangled paper-style books:

Today I picked up a paper book to read just for fun — The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton. Long-time (since this spring!) Kindle user that I am, I immediately noticed the dashing use of color on its front cover, but when I opened it, I was disappointed that I couldn’t scale the font size down from the default. It seems that paper books have only one font option — what are all these Kindle forum posters complaining about with its six sizes of a single font?

On the very first page, I encountered a word I wasn’t familiar with (Namaste). I thought I knew what it meant from the context clues, and even had the thought that on the Kindle, I could just highlight it and confirm my guess. But my paper dictionary was in the basement, so I didn’t bother looking it up until I wrote this post. (My hunch was reasonably correct.)

Interface-wise, the paper book is solid, and crashes, lockups, or other malfunctions are rare. I have, however, noted severe stability problems when attempting to read outdoors, especially when it’s windy (which, since I live in Kansas, is pretty much always). Pages start turning themselves, even without me making the “turn page” gesture. Sometimes the book will even lose its memory of my last page read. This is rather annoying, and might even involve a lengthy search for a suitable temporary replacement bookmark. Also, I haven’t tried it, but I suspect that the trick of putting a Kindle in a ziplock bag to read at the beach or in the tub without risk of getting it wet would be impractical with a paper book.

That entire post is really funny and clever, and I think you should read the whole thing. Go ahead, I'll wait.

See? Wasn't it funny? I like clever writing that is funny.

Speaking of The Happiest Days Of Our Lives, I know a non-zero number of people have been waiting very patiently for the special edition to be released by Subterranean Press. I wanted to explain, again, why it's been a year: After the book was announced, I spent almost two months digging through published and unpublished material for the expanded parts of the book, then I spent another month or so rewriting and polishing the stuff that made the cut. After that, I wrote additional introductions and notes to go with each chapter. That was the first delay (and, honestly, I thought it was entirely reasonable, since the book was announced as a pre-order) The biggest delay, and the first serious problem, though, was a software compatibility issue between me and the copy editor. OpenOffice and Word don't track notes the same way, but neither of us knew this until we'd both spent a lot of time working in our respective suites, completely oblivious to the work of the other. Finally, we realized what was wrong, and had to go all the way back to the beginning of the copy editing process the old way, printing the entire manuscript out on paper and making notes in the margins. It had a certain nostalgic value, but it took forever to get all that shit straightened out. 

So that process, which should have taken a couple weeks, took close to three months. Then, once we got that all squared away, I had to get a bunch of pictures together, caption them, fact-check the captions with my parents and siblings, then get all that stuff to Subterranean Press. I also held up this part of the process for a couple more weeks while I looked for even more unpublished pictures that neither me nor my mom could find. 

Finally, I asked my son Ryan (who is a creative writing student) if he wanted to write an afterword. He said he would, but it would take some time because he's in college and has his own responsibilities. I was willing to wait, because I thought it would be awesome to have his contribution to in the book, and I figured at this point (August) another couple weeks didn't make that big a difference. It ended up taking about 6 or 8 weeks, but I think it will ultimately be worth the delay (please note that I am not an objective source of information in this regard.)

Finally, the manuscript was turned in, the pictures were approved, the layout was all set ... and then the signature pages arrived. I had to sign something like 2500 pages, and it was important to me that each one looked like it was the only one I'd signed. I could have blown through it, of course, and gotten it done in a couple of days, but that would have guaranteed disappointment to everyone who bought the book and waited almost a year to get it. So I limited myself to between 50 and 75 pages at a "session," and it took several weeks to work my way through them all.

Oh, also, keep in mind that during all of these months, I was working on other projects, including several television shows that took me away from the Happiest Days project for weeks at a time.

So all of those delays stacked up on top of each other, until everything was finally finished about six or eight weeks ago. I realize that this is a very long time to wait for something, and I also realize that I've probably killed any chance of doing other special editions with Subterranean Press because this one took so long, but I sincerely believe that it will be worth the wait, because I've seen it, and it's something very special.

Steve Martin has a Christmas wish to share with you:

(If you can't see Hulu videos, or just want the audio, YouTube has you covered. It's a Christmas miracle!)

And here's my holiday wish, which isn't nearly as funny, but is at least (if not more) sincere: 

Whatever you choose to celebrate this time of year, I hope it's filled with all the stuff you like, none of the stuff you don't like, and that you're surrounded by people you love, because that's how I'm doing it, and it rules.

Happy and Merry, everyone.

Reader Brian B. sent me this yesterday, and it made me smile so much, I secured permission to share it.

"The Twelve Days of Pirate Christmas"

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me ... 

12 ships to plunder, 

11 cannons firing, 

10 crewmen leaping, 

9 sharks a' swimming, 

8 rum-filled bottles, 

7 lusty wenches, 

6 jolly rogers, 

5 gold doubloons, 

4 eyepatches, 

3 earrings, 

2 wooden legs, 

and a parrot for my shoulder - Arrr!