Today was, as the song goes, and the movie says, a good day.
I woke up before my alarm, feeling rested and relaxed. My dog met me before my feet hit the floor, and followed me to the kitchen, wagging her tail and nuzzling at my side the entire way. I grabbed a cup of coffee and wrote for about two hours, before I headed down into Hollywood to have breakfast with an old friend who I never get to see as much as I would like.
We talked for a couple hours, and then he had to go meet a director.
"I love it that I get to say, 'I have to go to Hollywood to meet a director,'" he told me.
"Yeah, when you get there, he'd better be wearing a beret and holding a megaphone, or I'm going to be disappointed."
It was wonderful to see my friend, who I'm keeping anonymous because I didn't ask him if I could blog about hanging out. He's awesome, though, and it meant the world to me to get together and catch up.
When he went to meet his director, I went to meet my friend Shane for lunch. Shane and I met at the ACME Comedy Theater years ago, and we've been friends ever since. I also don't get to see Shane as much as I'd like, but I always love it when we get together.
Lunch was awesome, and when it was over, Shane said that he was going to send something to Twitter about it.
"Dude," I said, "we have to do a coordinated message. It'll be hilarious."
We looked at each other for a second while we thought about it.
"Where do we start?"
I opened my phone and started typing. "How about … Having lunch with @ShaneNickerson. Cleverly coordinating tweets."
We giggled like idiots.
"That's funny," he said.
"But then what? Is it only going to be funny to us?"
We both looked up and typed simultaneously. "This is only funny to us."
"I still have a bunch of characters left," I said. "What are we going to do next?"
We thought about it a lot longer than we should have, and kept laughing about it the whole time.
"Let's take this to the writer's room," I said.
"Yeah," Shane added, "and we'll see how we can punch it up before we take it to the network."
We were really giggling like fools, now.
"How many characters do you have left?" I asked.
"Fourteen."
"I only have six."
"Wait. How do I have more than you?"
We looked at each other's phones.
"Oh," I said, "because my Twitter name is shorter than yours. Dude, you totally win at Twitter."
We shared a look, and knew what we had to do. We both erased whatever it was we thought we were going to send, and entered the new text.
"This is only funny to us, right?" I said.
"Probably, yeah."
"That's the best reason to do it. Okay, it's 3,2,1 and then we post it."
We steadied ourselves, and got ready to go.
"3, 2, 1, send!" I jammed my thumb down on the send key, and Shane did the same.
Here's the result, as seen by Twitteriffic (click to embiggen):
We walked back to Shane's office, working on one of my Crazy Ideas on the way.
"What are you going to do with this thing?" He said when we were done with it.
"I have no idea, but I really, really like it."
"Yeah, it's awesome. I totally love it."
We approached some paparazzi, who were staking out a film set.
"For about two minutes in the 80s, I was a guy who those jerks
bothered. I don't ever want to be that guy again," I said. "It really
sucked. I do not understand why people crave that kind of attention."
We passed them, and I resisted the urge to say anything. They're just guys doing their job, I guess, and standing on the sidewalk is certainly less intrusive than ambushing people at the airport.
"You know who they don't care about?" I asked when we were about a block away.
Shane held his hands out wide and pointed his thumbs inward. "These guys," we said in unison.
We waited for a light to change, and I looked around. We were right near Sunset and Gower, and had walked past Hollywood and Vine just a few minutes earlier.
"I love being here," I said. "Even though it's a dump, it feels like it's my dump."
Shane looked at me.
"That didn't come out the way I intended."
Shane looked at me again.
"Poop."
Yes, we're hilarious comedians (in our own minds) when we get together, and poop jokes are gold, Jerry. COMEDY GOLD! As the light changed and we walked across the street, I continued. "I mean that coming down here recharges my batteries, and reminds me why I haven't completely given up on being an actor."
"I know what you mean," he said.
"Even though going on auditions is like Sideshow Bob versus a dozen rakes."
I was quiet for a moment while every frustrating audition in my life flashed through my minds in a matter of seconds.
We got back to his office.
"It was great to see you today, Shane."
"Thanks. Good to see you too."
"Let's get together sooner than later, okay?"
"Yeah, totally."
I drove home, along the same route I took to get to Paramount in my teens, and drama school in my early 20s. Though my thoughts kept drifting to youthful dreams unrealized, I couldn't feel too sad. I don't have the acting career I wanted, but I have a writing career that's pretty awesome, and today I got to see two people who mean the world to me. When I got home, my dogs nearly knocked me over, and my family greeted me with open arms.
It was a good day.
Dude, was that a Mudhoney reference in the first line? Something Nineties? YOU ARE TOTALLY BRANCHING OUT I AM SO PROUD. XD
Wil, I love reading stuff like that. I’m older than you (by a few months) & still working on those as-yet-unrealized youthful dreams. I get very down about that & other things sometimes… If it turned out OK for you, maybe it’ll turn out OK for me too. So thanks for that.
-Alicia (@aliciawag)
So glad to see you comfortable in your life. Congrats on a Good Day!
And you didn’t even have to use your AK.
It’s great to have friends who just ‘get you’, isn’t it. It’s something I feel I’ve been lacking lately. Always make the effort to stay in touch, Wil (I say whilst possibly sagely smoking a pipe).
I thought the first line was an Ice Cube reference. . . and that would be branching out even more. Settle the dispute, eh, Wil?
“Poop.” is totally a legitimate joke. I laughed. Wait…
(Thanks for posting this. I love reading about other people’s good days. Cheers!)
That was really excellently put. You’ve impressed and inspired me. Thanks! Oh, and I enjoy you tweets as well!
Did you get a triple-double?
Poop jokes? You really have been hanging out with Kurtz to much.
Glad you had a good day, keep up the writing you have a great insight on life.
I haven’t had a day like that in forever. Not that MY day like that would resemble yours, obviously. Except for the dogs.
Woohoo! I made it into a WWdN blog! If you’ve never been blogged by WWdN, you’re really missing out. Seriously, it’s like that feeling you get when you’re a kid in 3rd grade and you get your picture in the paper doing something like petting a goat at the local Old Home Day with a caption like, “Local Youngster Shane Nickerson enjoys the Petting Zoo during Londonderry’s 107th Annual Olde Home Day,” but even more awesome.
Also, Wil’s secret Crazy Idea is funny, y’alls.
Take solace in the fact that, had you become the sort of celebrity presence that attracts pools of paparazzi following your every move, you would more than likely not be enjoying the sort of support and respect that you seem to have garnered from the hawesome horde of quality fans and fellow geeks that follow you Twitter and yon around the ‘Net these days. I’m sure if you searched long enough, you’d find someone out there who had a banner on their webpage the size (and shape) of a blimp boldly proclaiming “@Wilw is a Pimp!”.
Stay as accessible as you can, sir, for it is that accessibility that separates you from the paparrazi-plagued Hollywood pack.
Great post. And now I’m short on saying something clever. Love your writing, please keep it up.
Stand tall, chin up. Believe in what you do. Do it well! Be loved by others. That’s all that can be asked of a man. The Crazy Idea was funny!
LOL
You got a shout out at E! Online for your Family Guy voice appearance. For the first time in years I will be watching a cartoon, because of you Wil! Woot!
You have a real knack for taking something that is totally an inside joke and make it funny for everyone else. That takes some real talent.
Side note: I love commenting on your blog since it’s one of the few times I get to use my Yubikey’s One Time Password feature. (http://www.yubico.com). Too bad I don’t get a spiffy cool picture next to my name.
Rock over London, rock on Chicago.
Wendy’s: Where’s the Beef?
You went straight from breakfast to lunch? That is a good day, indeed.
Way to taunt us, Shane… Crazy Idea is funny? I think that’s our first hint!
Lovely story Wil, as always. I love these because I think that when you’ll re-read it someday, you’ll sit back and think, “Wow. This is my life.” and feel very lucky and (hopefully) very happy.
PS (and yes, I did tweet this already): Coordinating tweets is pretty geeky… but not as crazy as @replying to the person sitting next to you. Especially if you’re reading over each other’s shoulders.
Don’t know if it makes any difference Wil, but there are plenty of people who are quite happy you are such a good and successful writer. Great story though. I have a friend like that, and I wish I got together with him more often than I do. I can definitely say though that I am not where I thought I’d be (career-wise), but there is still alot to be happy about.
Woa! Like when I was in the first grade and my picture was in the paper with me pointing up to my history project on the wall in a very posed fashion. And My shirt was also pointing because it was the seventies and my collar was freaking huge and looked like it was eating my head. And my grandparents, who are now gone, are standing behind me, looking far more interested than I am.
And they misspell your very common name in the caption, but totally nail your grandparents whacked out names.
Yes! I totally get that reference!
And I have no idea why I am so excited about it!
Kevin Smith was right; everything DOES come down to dick and fart jokes. Then again, I’m not complaining, because I showed this to my friend Emma and we both laughed really hard at the poop jokes. There’s a reason we enjoy being 21, and it’s because it’s simply 12 backwards.
Glad you had a good day, and the synched-up Tweets are awesome too. Can’t wait to see the Family Guy episode! I’ve got my schedule (which consists of laughing at stuff online with Emma and putting off homework assignments…so as you can see, JAM-PACKED SCHEDULE) cleared for it, and I’m hoping my roommates don’t decide to bug the hell out of me while it’s on. If they do, it may be time for some Passive-Aggressive Markerboard Bitchery on my part.
While your life may not be where you planned, those rough spots are what made you who you are today, and help you to appreciate what you have today. If things HAD gone the way you planned back then I doubt that you would have been in the place to play D&D with your son, and that would have been a shame, and not just for your family, but for us too.
btw, for the record, I enjoyed you as Wesley Crusher. He was the character I related to most in the show. And to be fair, ALL the characters(actors) seemed a bit uncomfortable the first couple of seasons until they had a chance to figure out who they were. But, it’s still one of my favorite shows from back then.
Wil- Unrealized dreams of our youth lead us to our present. Your path brought you here, and I bet you dont want to imagine any place or situation that is different. You are a wealthy person in life.
Wil…………
You SO got the whole Hollywood thing right. I used to work at Sunset-Gower Studios, Hollywood-Warner and Seward-Romaine. You MADE TV shows and films and it was about the project. These days (makes me sound old…’THESE DAYS’) it’s all about the stars and the money. Stories are irrelevant. That’s why so much of what the big studios make is crap now. Whatever happened to the old days when making a movie was about making a GOOD movie???
Scott
Good days are few and far between. I’m glad you enjoyed yours! I just found out that some friends of my went to KSC with Shane. Small world, huh?
I’m so very glad you had a good day. Reading about it actually made me a bit misty. Catching up with friends, talking about crazy ideas, and sharing inside jokes is an awesome way to spend a day. Coming home to sweet puppies & loving family pretty much rocks too!
Here’s hoping your life is filled to overflowing with many more such days.
I love how the number of rakes Sideshow Bob is up against has become a unit of measure. This pleases me.
This is one of my favourite entries: good day, good friends, fabulous family, and a Seinfeld reference to boot!
Great post, Wil.