When I was reading back through my archives in preparation for Wil Wheaton versus Paul and Storm last week, I thought, more than once, "I really need to write more." Each time, though, my calendar grabbed focus and shouted at me like Jules in Pulp Fiction until I begged it to stop.
I miss writing every day, even though I'm grateful for all the other work I have had and continue to have that gets in between me and filling my stupid blog with stories about life, the universe, and everything. The truth is, I've been working on projects that I won't be able to talk about for months, so the majority of my life at the moment is Off The Record. Whatever I can talk about, I sort of do in mostly real-time on the Twitters and the G Plusses and the Tumblrs, which leaves me with nothing much to write about on my blog except crap like this.
But today, it is Sunday, and I have a bit of time to write. I don't know why, but I only needed to sleep for 5 hours last night, and I've been up since 6am. I have had a coffee, I'm eating some steel cut oats, and the rest of the house is asleep. I could read this stack of comics that's been piling up for two months, or I could settle into the couch with A Game Of Thrones (I'm 60% finished after reading until 1am)… but I feel that need to write that I hear real writers have, so here I am, writing about nothing so I can at least write about something.
Our trip to Portland and Seattle was amazing. Anne and I got to PDX a day early so we could go to Ground Kontrol and see some of our friends who live up there. Paul and Storm and Liz and Logan (and Ted and Carol and Alice) all came down a day early, as well, so we ended up having one hell of a goof off day before we had to work.
Our plan was to eat dinner at Deschutes before going to Ground Kontrol, but Deschutes was having their Abyss release party, and the wait for our large party was going to be a minimum of 90 minutes when we got there. I called Rogue, which is just a couple of blocks away, confirmed that they had room for us, and we went there instead. The food was pretty good, but the beers were just spectacular. I had the YSB, the Smoke (which won Gold at the Great American Beerfest for a very good reason) and samples of the Double Mocha Porter (ZOMG) and the Double Chocolate Stout (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE).
Yep, this is real. We sat in a room with a red neon sign that said WILLS ROOM.
Storm drank all the things, and we all staggered (some of us *cough*Storm*cough* more wobbly than others) to Ground Kontrol, where we played video games for about two hours.
This is the part where I'd try to write a narrative to recreate the awesome time we had, but the part of me that creatively needs to do that isn't responding at the moment, so here are a couple of pictures, instead:
Ground Kontrol to Major Us
I was a Robotron Hero, with Stars in my eyes.
Avoid spikes!
I beat Storm at Joust, even though I was feeling a little… blurry.
But Storm came back and OBLITERATED me in Dig Dug, even though he was playing from the bottom of about six beers at the time.
I suck at Punch Out, but that's never stopped me from playing it.
I signed their TNG pinball machine, then played the hell out of it. I never ranked higher than Ensign, though. It was like the machine knew, or something.
All pictures taken with Vignette and © 2011 Wil Wheaton.
It was an incredibly fun night, and when I fell into bed around 1am, I slept the sleep of the mostly victorious.
The next day, we slept late and took our time getting going. We ate breakfast at Mother's, one of my favorite places to eat in PDX, before going back to our hotel to take a nap. Yes, that's exactly what happened, and it's how I know I'm getting older: I love to take naps. Normally, I wouldn't take a nap when I'm visiting a city I love, but I was tired and knew I had to perform that night, so I was responsible, which is another way I know I'm getting older.
The show at the Aladdin was fantastic. Local musical duo The Doubleclicks opened for us, and — just as Paul promised — they stole the show in 15 minutes. Here, listen for yourself and be amazed.
The Doubleclicks are my favorite. They're sisters, they play the ukulele and the cello, and they sing about nerd stuff like D&D, dinosaurs, WoW. They are just delightful people, too, and I can't wait to perform with them again.
The audience in Portland was, as always, great. I told stories about gaming and how much I love my wife before Paul and Storm joined me to provide music for my final two stories about playing T-ball when I was 6, and WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER.
Anne and I took the train up to Seattle the next afternoon. It's a beautiful trip, and if you ever need to travel between the two cities, I highly recommend it.
Seattle was freezing cold (literally), raining and snowing when we got there. We dropped our stuff at our hotel and went to the Triple Door for soundcheck before the show. The Triple Door is fucking FANCY, man, and we sold that bitch out! Team Seattle turned out in force, and gave me many gifts of local craft beer to take home.
It was another great show, even though I think we went a little crazy with the Captain's Wife's Lament… but I blame John Roderick for bringing the Steamfunk groove back so many times. If you were there, I'm sure you understand (and I'm sorry.)
I told different stories than I told in Portland, including two things I've never done in public before (that was scary for me), but it seemed to go over better than I expected. After the show, we stayed out until 3am with everyone from the show. When I slept, I slept the horrible sleep of someone who is snoring because he's so tired so he keeps waking up his wife and she keeps waking him up so he'll stop snoring.
Our flight home on Friday was uneventful, exactly the way I like my flights to be. I finished reading Petrograd from Oni, (I highly recommend it), and then I fell back into A Game of Thrones until we landed.
Thank you to everyone who came to both our shows, and a very special thank you to The Doubleclicks, John Roderick, Molly Lewis, and Jason Finn for joining us.
A trip to Seattle and no time for beer bars? Crap!
Oh well, I’m sure the Rogue visit helped make up for it. Love that YSB…
Well, of course the machine knew you were an ensign. You signed it first!
STEAMFUNK TIME MACHINE BITCHES!
Thanks for the great Thursday night out.
I was so freaking tired on Friday at work, but it was so worth it. Awesome, fun show at the Triple Door!
Portland loves ya, Wil, and as usual you guys put on a great show. Even my 14- and 10-year-olds loved it! (Yes, I Am the Bad Mom.) Come back soon.
Hope you were able to get the C^3PA home in one (or 2) pieces. We drank some of its deliciousness from the keg last night, and I have to say it’s a damn fine brew. Hope it carbonates up properly for you.
Always enjoy when you come to pdx. Thanks again for a crazy awesome night of laughter to tears.
The Aladdin show was a blast, again. Thank you! Only complaint? More You. You are hilarious, Wil, and I am so happy to have heard WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER in person! You doing Gene Rodenberry was truly a highlight
Your life sounds really nice right now.
This sounds like so much fun!!!
Come to Melbourne please!
What? Snow? Here? Seattle? I must have missed it.
I used to live in Portland and I really loved ground kontrol, thanks for the reminder, I’ll check it out next time I’m down (Well, time after next, since next time I’m going is for Thanksgiving.) I like riding the train between Portland and Seattle, but my parents live out in the Gorge, so I usually drive.
“I suck at Punch Out, but that’s never stopped me from playing it.” I haven’t even finished reading your entry, but that line just hit me right in the gut. It’d be a great Zen motivational placard. Something like this, but with, uh, less, uh, MS Paint — http://toothopolis.tumblr.com/post/13096098537/philosophy
“never ranked higher than ensign…” – that is FUNNY! I always will love TNG Star Trek, including (of coarse! duh) awesome Wesley, and I am happy for you wife (that you love her). And I love your blog, after reading, it feels almost like I was there too.
Robotron Hero with stars in his eyes? Now that song is going to be stuck in my head all week. Curse you, Wheaton!
Man I wish I’d remembered about this! I think I read you mention it somewhere a while back and I was planning on buying a ticket to the Portland show but just completely forgot about it. Oh well. (Although I will be miffed if it was even half as good as Wootstock, which I will still aver is the best thing I’ve ever been to ever ever ever)
Looks like whoever did the artwork for the pinball game gave Data a promotion.
Though I know you’re a man with no shortage of projects and no great extent of free time, I strongly recommend you dive into the Game of Thrones series like your trying to level your new fav alt to the cap before the expansion release. Long story short I managed to get through the entire series in a little under three weeks as the rest of my time was spent applying for jobs just after I arrived to Cali. Not only as a writer, but as someone who was involved world building project (weren’t you in a tv show in the 90’s?) Martin’s Uber-epic is as dense, rich, shocking and engaging as anything I’ve ever read. Of course, now I know how the next five years of the tv show will go and I’ll have to find a reason to keep watching.
http://2media.nowpublic.net/images//0c/9b/0c9bf7edd25d12bc2fa1d96bf3411f1d.jpg
yeah that’ll probably work
Wil, All this reading you are doing (and I may have missed it) whatcha reading it on? Antique dead trees? or one of them fancy reader machines?
My own tale: I have been a voracious reader since I figured out what printed things mean. I have spent a good many of my 46 years messing with tech. But once e-readers came out, it was if the whole computing ecology had finally evolved a species *just for me*. I’m currently rocking a nook color (poor cover is beat to hell, it goes everywhere with me) and working through the Song of Ice and Fire (I’m late to the series, I blame all of the other fine authors out there) and a big pile of Paizo PDFs.
I used to prefer paper books to eReaders, but since I've spent so much of the last year traveling, the convenience and light weight of the eReader has made it my preferred content delivery system (at least for the moment.)
Since no one else will say it, I have to know: Did you mean to leave the title blank, or did you have so much fun that you forgot to title the post and went right on to the ‘main attraction’?
Aside from that, nice blog. Looked around, got acclimated, good work old bean.
Jolly good show.
The title is a reference that's related to Paul and Storm.
If you dig the chocalatey stoutness of the Double Black, there’s a number of AWESOME Kiwi beers I would recommend.
8 Wired’s iStout (for ‘Imperial’) is a delicious dark stout, if you can find it.
regarding a desire to write -now- about current projects to be later disclosed, does your blog software not allow you to date posts ahead? thus, you could write when the mood takes you, and allow them to pop when it’s legal for you to speak of them… -tj
Wil, have you seen what this guy did?!?
“UberFridge is a homebrew fermentation temperature controller that I have built from my old fridge. It runs on an Arduino Nano and an Asus WL520GU router. It can control the temperature of a fermenting beer with 0.1 °C accuracy. Temperature graphs and settings can be viewed in a web interface over WiFi.”
http://www.elcojacobs.com/uberfridge
Wait … what happened to Bob? Was he a no-show?
(as in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice)
So … you were … sleepless in Seattle???
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Congratulations on the sell-out. (of tickets, I mean. duh.)
Damn machines, taking control … who do they think they are, restricting you to Ensign?
Oh, and by the way, … naps happen, man.
So for thinking that you had nothing to contribute writing-wise, I think that was a hell of a post. Thanks for sharing.
ang
Don’t ever feel you need to apologize for Steamfunk groove back! Ever.
So glad you had a good time. And also so sorry I missed the show. Next time I’ll be ambulatory.
I’m actually currently listening to the Audio book of “Ready Player One” so it’s slightly ironic that you won at Joust.
Speaking of which, you really should do more audiobooks if you can get the work. You have a really great reading voice and your knack for character specific voices really fleshes out the story. Good work.
Comment in hopes of being read by the OP… Repetition of the title of the blog post. I look forward to seeing you guys again on 12/1 – woo, Largo!
“…filling my stupid blog with stories about life, the universe, and everything.”
Wil, I hate to be the one to point this out, but the above statement just isn’t true. I couldn’t find anywhere on your blog where you wrote, “42”.
Wil, happy Thanksgiving. I spent the day watching ST:TNG marathon on BBCA==Darmok, The Game (with Ashley Judd), etc., etc. We have lots to be thankful for.
random, but relevant to your interests: http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=How+We+Roll-zip-hoodie
i’m totally getting this. i missed the tshirt.
Have you been to VooDoo Doughnuts in PDX yet?
I started reading this post and almost immediately felt ashamed because while I don’t really follow Paul and Storm at all, I would see you or someone else mention them on twitter and read it as “paulandstrom” so for the longest time I thought it was just one guy named Paul Andstrom. Clearly I need to pay better attention to what I’m reading.