All posts by shanenickerson

Executive Producer of Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory and Ridiculousness on MTV. Father of three. I hate onions.

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: Endgame

Shane Nickerson is a guy who does stuff. He writes every day at nickerblog.com.

So, I never told you the Vegas story and now we’re out of time. Dammit. You would have liked it. It had laughs and drinks and delicious meals and gambling and foibles.

I have no idea what foibles means.

Point is, I’ll leave the Vegas story for another time. Unlike Wil, I didn’t take detailed notes all weekend in my Moleskine. Also, I don’t have a proper picture of three grown men holding giant plastic party drinks at a Let It Ride table because someone in the group (name rhymes with Bil) thought it would be hilarious and insisted on sticking with the bit even when we begged him for the bit to be over. BEGGED! I eventually paid our friend Ryan [drunk amount of] dollars to pound one of the stupid drinks in under a minute. He did. Like I said, there is video.

Also, there was a running Telly Savalas joke that I barely remember.

VEGAS!

Worst recap ever.

If my calendar is right, Wil and the rest of the singing, dancing, sunburned booze hounds aboard JoCo Cruise Crazy are almost home. Alas, my time here is at an end. It’s been fun borrowing Wil’s audience for a week. Will and Stepto and I did our best to keep his chair warm while he was gone. We were the Joan Rivers to Wil’s Johnny Carson. 3 or 4 of you will get that.

Thanks for having me.  This community is amazing. WWdN is an epicenter of creativity and connections, and it has always been one of my favorite places on the Internet.

If you need me, you know where to find me.

TELLY SAVALAS FOREVER!

See? Makes no sense.

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: bombed

 Shane Nickerson hates the word “selfies.” He inhabits nickerblog.com.

bombed

I know I joked about posting compromising photos of Wil, but let’s be honest, there aren’t any. Instead, here’s one of my favorite photos on my phone from Wil’s epic 40th surprise birthday party. A multi layered photo bomb featuring Wil (holding the coolest Dalek stein ever), Chris Mackenzie, Jesse Mackey, Philip “Photobomber” Plait, me and a few others. It was the best surprise party I’ve ever attended. Anne set the bar so high on throwing a surprise party that no one should ever even attempt to throw another one ever for the rest of time forever and ever infinity. That category is now closed out.

I seriously cannot get enough of photobombing. Please everyone keep doing this to pictures ALL OF THE TIMES.

 

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: Start

Shane Nickerson is a guy on a couch. You can find him at nickerblog.com.

You don’t have to start with something perfect, but you do have to start with something.

As someone who struggles daily to actually believe that I am an artist, I am constantly inspired by people who push through the darkest hour of creating new things: the self-doubt phase. It’s a gloomy time right after you have a big idea, because all of those negative brainbots activate to convince you that it won’t work/isn’t good enough/has probably been done/shouldn’t happen/is stupid. I’ve had an idea, gotten excited about it, let my mind imagine the possibilities, registered a relevant domain name, then murdered the idea in cold blood when that negativity prevails. All in under an hour.

The alternative, which is much more difficult, is to have faith in an idea. That faith, a firm belief in something for which there is no proof, becomes essential when the dark voices start piping up with the “dude, don’t bother!” or the “who are you kidding, you’re not an artist?” It carries me through the murky transitional zone between “ZOMG IDEA!” and “BEGIN BUILDING IDEA.”  Anyone can think of something. Doing something is much more difficult.

If you listen to critics of art and begin to believe them, you will never make anything. Critics are everywhere. They slam movies, writing, ideas, creative decisions, people, past work, future work and at their worst, assume they understand someone else’s motivation for creating something. They’re on Twitter, on Facebook, blogs, at your work, sometimes in your family. These people shit on other people’s efforts because being a critic is easy. It requires no skill, no effort, and no faith. Most of all, being critical justifies those dark voices in their own heads about why their ideas aren’t good enough. If you’re not careful, it will justify your own as well.

One of the loudest voices in my head, the real dick of all the voices, likes to tell me that what I’m making won’t be perfect. It’s an impossible standard to live up to, perfection, and is therefore an effective weapon against my own creativity. I’m often tempted to give up before I begin. But I’ve tried to stop doing that. After 41 years, I’ve finally begun to realize that you have to start. You have to begin to make something before you can worry about how it’s going to end up. If you don’t start, you have nothing.

I want to be like the people who keep pushing forward, in spite of the critics, self doubt, and uncomfortable odds. They try new things. They take risks. They eat shit sometimes. They get back up and try other new things. Their successes are widely embraced. Their misfires are lonely. Most of all, their art is inspiring.

If I’ve learned anything in my shaky life as an artist, it’s that you must stop talking and spinning and whining and start making your thing today. Pick up a camera. Pick up an easel. Open your laptop and turn off your Internet connection while you write. Find a starting point. Ignore the voices. Ignore the critics. Reward yourself for having ideas by valuing them enough to believe in them.

Failure does not exist.

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: Your Turn

Shane Nickerson is a great speller, but he makes up his own grammar. You can find him at nickerblog.com

If you live wrong for long enough, you can forget how to get back.

I’ve spent a significant portion of my life trying to impress people who barely know me. It’s a curse, I think. Unjustified vanity. I suppose it’s what drove me into a career in entertainment. It’s also probably why I blog, tweet, Facebook, Instagram, G+, Vine, and [insert new social media fad here]. It’s clearly what’s driving me to write this entry. I’ve heard theories about why certain people spend most of their lives trying to gain all of the social acceptance they missed out on as kids. Alas, understanding the character flaw does nothing to eliminate the character flaw.

Part of getting older is the discovery that there is no end plateau you eventually reach where everything is finally perfect. Maturity is a myth. You spend the first half of your life chasing maturity and the second half figuring out how to be escape it.  By the end of 2012, I was feeling lost. A show that I produced had recently ended after five seasons, I was on the tail end of a six month decline into party/pig mode, and I started to feel like I didn’t have a lot of real friends in my life. Three kids and a busy job make it difficult to invest time into old friendships, and before you know it, years have gone by and you’ve drifted into deep, lonely water.

Wil and I actually don’t see each other very often, IRL. He’s busy, I’m busy. It’s nothing to lament; it’s how life works. He is, however, one of those people who makes it easy to pick up where we left off, even if it’s been months (or years) since actually hanging out. Friends like that are important. They can, in an instant, remind you how to get back. They can help you to remember what matters and who you are. They can make it clear to you that you’ve been spending too much time trying to impress the people you barely know at the expense of the people you actually do. They can do all of these things without even knowing they’ve done them.

In spite of our separate schedules, we’ve always managed to stay in touch via email, Twitter and blogging. Each time I visit WWdN feels like visiting an old friend. I’ll bet most of you feel the same way…

What keeps you coming back here? His writing? His acting? Did TableTop change your life? Is beer also your spirit animal? Did he sign your boobs at a convention? (PIX OR IT DIDN’T HAPZ)

Now’s your chance, while he’s away at sea. What’s your Wil Wheaton story? What is it, specifically that connects you to him?

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: Backstory

shanewilbirdsShane Nickerson speaks bird. You can find him at nickerblog.com.

For some reason, Wil gave me the keys to the whole Internet by allowing me to guest post here on WWdN. WHAT THE WHAT? You can imagine my excitement, as WWdN is hallowed ground for some of us longtime bloggers and blog readers. And TNG fans. Oh my god, the one where Picard gets pwned by that Alien probe and lives a whole other life and learns to play a space flute? Hawesome. Wait, was Wil even in that one? What was I talking about. Oh, right. Keys to the Internet. WWdN. It’s the place we’ve watched a guy we wish we knew from movies and TV turn into a guy we really DO know, thanks to his writing and his willingness to share his life. It’s the blog that spawned thousands of blogs (mine included), and continues to be a fascinating (and generous) glimpse at the path our friend Wil is traveling. From a Geocities Burrito, to the birth of WWdN, to several years of exile, to occasional podcasts, to multiple books and the rebirth of an acting career, we’ve been there with him. We met Anne and watched his kids grow up. We know his pets (and still miss Ferris), we know what’s in his garage, and we see our own humanity in his musings and self discoveries. We shake our fists in solidarity at the trolls and feel his victories as if they are our own. He is our friend, and we keep reading WWdN because, as he makes clear in his writing, we are also his.

I met Wil in 1999 at ACME Comedy Theater in Los Angeles. We performed onstage together and we made each other laugh. A connection. You meet someone who laughs at the same things and BOOM, kinship. My best friends are the ones who laugh the best. I started reading his blog. I started watching Star Trek: TNG. I became a fan after I became his friend.

Fourteen mumblecough years later, Wil remains one of my favorite people. He’s generous, kind, hilarious, crude, surprisingly self aware, extremely smart (like, scary smart), multi-talented, and not at all interested in football. He loves Guinness. He hates reality television. He is obsessed with numbers and odds. He’s probably two steps ahead of you in any given conversation. He doesn’t miss a goddamn thing. Who am I telling? You already know these things.

In December, Wil and I played in a degenerate poker tournament of donkeys in Las Vegas called the WPBT. We traveled together from Los Angeles, and I got to spend the weekend with this guy most of you know from WWdN. We both talked about recounting the whole hilarious weekend on our respective blogs, but neither of us ever quite got around to it. Some experiences are too big and too fun to adequately capture with a bunch of words. Or pictures. Or a video of our friend Ryan drinking one of those two foot tall, antifreeze colored Vegas drinks in under a minute on a prop bet (I lost).

Maybe I’ll tell you that story this week. Or maybe I’ll tell you about the old ACME days, and share some compromising photos. Oh, or about the time we were sitting at a Blackjack table and someone yelled across the casino, “Hey, it’s WIL WHEATON!” and without missing a beat, Wil yelled back, “REALLY? I LOVE THAT GUY!”

I’m delighted to be one of his guest bloggers this week, while he is away drinking all the beer on the big boat. Don’t worry, I won’t play many songs off the new album. I know you’re just here for the hits.