I woke up this morning to the sound of Anne making the awful noise you make when something you like is destroyed by your puppy.
Anne, being the amazing person that she is, turned this particular troop of lemurs into lemurade:
Of course, I can’t be too mad at Marlowe, because Anne did do this to her while I was out of town this weekend:
I’m calling this one even.
People have been asking me for a T-shirt like this for a long, long time. Like, maybe a year, which is a long time if you’re a caterpillar because holy shit man you lived a whole year? Caterpillars usually live for a few weeks. What are you, some kind of Licherpillar? I cast magic missile!
My friend Joel and I have been kicking this idea around for almost as long as people have been asking for it, and when he put it on cartoon me in a comic, we finally decided to make it happen.
The year is 1994. I am 21 years-old, and though I’m convinced I’m so mature, I’m having a hard time finding my way out of a 10×10 room with one door and a map. I’m struggling to figure out who I am, what’s important to me, and what I’m going to do with my life. I’ve spent some time working for NewTek (making really embarrassing videos), and while I’m very proud of the work I’ve contributed to the Video Toaster 4000, something just doesn’t feel exactly right in my life. I’m not sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
I’m adrift in a sea of post-teenage confusion, and I’m profoundly immature. Luckily, I am self-aware enough to know how little I know, so I’ve been attempting to educate myself about the world. I’ve been reading philosophy books, because that seems like something smart, insightful people do … but I’ve gotten wrapped up in Beyond Good and Evil and become something of an obnoxious fucking intellectual.
I will eventually grow out of it, but at this moment, in 1994, I’m dealing with the aftermath of being this guy for my entire life to this point, and it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s pretty goddamn painful, but I don’t know how to talk about it or deal with it, so I project this aura of overconfidence that, in retrospect, is pretty embarrassing.
Yet something important happens at this moment in 1994, and it happens on a Star Trek cruise in Alaska. It will change my life, set me on a long and meandering course out of the sea of uncertainty and toward the man I will eventually become. It happens because I find out I am expected to perform with the other actors on the cruse in a talent show, and I am forced to confront the reality that I don’t have any talents beyond acting, and I’m not sure I’m even very good at that.
So I take a walk around the deck of this ship, and instead of pretending to be deep in thought like usual, I actually think. I really think about who I am and what’s important to me, and wonder what I can contribute to this talent show. Honestly? I’m terrified. I feel like a fraud. I wonder if there’s a way I can just sneak out of this thing and not be part of it. Then I remember that I’m on a boat and the water around me is very cold. I keep walking past Star Trek fans — very nice people, every last one of them — and forcing a smile, with some occasional small talk. I’m afraid someone will ask me what my plans are for the talent show, but nobody does.
I don’t remember exactly how I got there, but I eventually found myself alone in the ship’s library. It was quiet, peaceful. I sat in a comfortable chair and looked out the window at the breathtaking Alaskan coastline.
What am I going to do? How can I do anything as entertaining as the other actors? René Auberjonois is going to sing a song from Beauty and the Beast, for fuck’s sake! I hate myself! Why did I leave Star Trek? Why did I do Liar’s Club? Why did I do The Curse? Why can’t I do something better than Stand By Me? Why aren’t I famous and successful? Why am I living in Kansas instead of LA? What am I doing with my life?
I sat there for a long time, wallowing in self pity and self loathing, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, I had an idea.
I write stories from time to time, and they’re not all that bad. Maybe I could write an essay…
I jumped out of the chair, grabbed a few sheets of paper from an empty table nearby, and wrote across the top of it:
In Defence of Nerds by Wil Wheaton
I started where all 21 year-olds who think they’re clever and insightful start an essay: a dictionary definition.
Nerd – (nurd) n. slang. 1. a stupid, irritating, ineffectual or unattractive person.
Yep, that’s me.
I continued to write for three pages, philosophically pontificating the titular defense (oh, excuse me, I’m very cultured so I use the British spelling - defence) of nerds. What I didn’t know at the time and didn’t realize until just now is that I was writing both a defense and defiant declaration of who I was. For three pages, I defined myself by the things that were important to me — being a nerd and loving nerd things — instead of allowing myself to be defined by who I was — a former child actor who was struggling to find his ass with both hands.
When I finished writing, I felt pretty good about myself and what I’d written. I felt empowered. I felt a little less lame. The talent show I had been dreading couldn’t come soon enough, so I could take the stage and prove to the world that I was more than just a former child actor who had quit Star Trek and was now regretting it. (This may sound familiar to those of you who have read Just A Geek.)
I was on near the end of the program, if I remember correctly. I tucked my pages into my copy of Beyond Good and Evil (because, you see, I had to impress everyone with my deep understanding of Nietzsche, who was relevant to the essay, for, uh, reasons) and walked up onto the stage.
“I hate talent shows,” I began with self-deprecating humor, “because they remind me how singularly talented I actually am.”
Some laughter came out of the audience, and I finished introducing myself. I began reading my essay. I can’t recall specifically how the entire thing unfolded — it was almost 20 years ago, after all — but I do recall that it went well, that the audience enjoyed it.
I ended with: “…I will remind my critics that Albert Einsten, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates are all nerds and non-conformists.” I paused dramatically. “My name is Wil Wheaton - and I am a Nerd.”
In my memory, which I want to make extremely clear is not entirely reliable, the audience went crazy with applause, even though I’d had the audacity to compare myself to Einstein, Hawking, and Gates. Ah, the blind arrogance and surety of the 21 year-old philosopher, right?
In the years that followed, I’d occasionally think back to this day in 1994 when I wrote and performed something in public for the first time. I would wonder if it was as good as I remembered or as bad as I feared. I looked for the essay whenever I moved, but I never found it.
Until this weekend.
Going through my garage, clearing out space to build a homebrewery in there, I opened boxes that I haven’t opened since 1995 when I moved out of my parents’ house into my own. Those boxes were mostly filled with books that I didn’t want or need, and they painted a clear picture of who I was back then: lots of SF and Fantasy books, how-to guides on programming in C++, every book Henry Rollins had written up to that point, volume after volume of William Burroughs and some of the Beat writers. There were books on film and acting, and a large number of philosophy books. Among the philosophy books was Beyond Good And Evil.
“Ugh,” I thought to myself, “I know why I haven’t looked in these boxes in years. I was such an insufferable douchebag back then. I should have listened more and talked less.”
I grabbed the book and tossed it into the donation box. It landed on its front, with its spine facing me. I turned back to the box I was emptying, and my eye caught some pieces of paper, folded up and shoved into the book, like a bookmark.
I slowly turned back and looked at them for a long time, not sure I wanted to see what 1994 me had to say, but very sure that I had no choice. I slowly reached out for the book and picked it up. I turned it over, cringed, and pulled out the papers. I unfolded them and saw “In Defence of Nerds by Wil Wheaton”
Holy. Shit.
I sat down and read the entire thing. It’s … well, it’s written by the 21 year-old I’ve described above.
I kept it, and I scanned it this morning because it’s something I’d like to make sure I have forever.
Would you like to see it?
Here it is:
It’s not as good as I remember it, but it’s not as bad as I feared. It’s the very best 21 year-old me could do, and I’m proud of him for taking the chance, facing the fear of being laughed off the stage, and speaking passionately about something that mattered to him (that still matters to me).
I’m glad that, on that day in 1994, I set aside pretending to think about things and actually thought about things. It was a small but important step toward finding my way into the life I now have. In fact, if I looked around at the foundation upon which I built my adult life, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that essay awfully close to the keystone.
Have no fear. I have my best man guarding it.
UPDATED November 29:
The card has just cracked $1000 on eBay, so I added a little extra security.
If you follow me on Twitter (thank you and I’m sorry) you know that I spent the last four days cleaning out my garage to make room for a homebrewery. I came across a lot of awesome things from a lifetime in showbiz, as well as a bunch of 80s and 90s artifacts that I was able to afford due to the aforementioned lifetime and the showbiz in which it was spent.
I documented the more memorable things on Twitter, and a non-zero number of people on the Internet seemed to enjoy taking the nostalgic journey with me.
One of the things I got out of the garage was this Star Trek trading card:
The more observant among you are probably thinking something like, “Hey, Wil Wheaton, what gives, man? Wesley never wore the Sunglasses of Justice on Star Trek! In fact, I own or have seen that trading card, and I know for a fact that he isn’t wearing sunglasses at all! YOU’RE A PHONY WIL WHEATON! A BIG FAT PHONY!”
Okay, first of all, calm down. It’s all going to make sense in a moment. Please read on for the description I wrote to go with this trading card on eBay:
So imagine this: your friends Paul and Storm are in town to shoot some pick up shots for their soon-to-be hit webseries Learning Town. They ask you if they can come hang out, because they’re bored.
And then you’re like, “Oh, sure, because you’re bored. Not because you enjoy my delightful company and insightful commentary on current events as well as various aspects of popular culture and encyclopedic knowledge of internet memes. Good day, sir!”
But before you can say “I said GOOD DAY,” they promise to bring you a burrito.
“Curses,” you think to yourself, “my one weakness. How could they have known?!”
So they come over, with burritos and everything, and you hang out and eat a pretty rockin’ mojado-style burrito, and it’s great. Then, around the time they’re getting ready to leave, one of them, who we’ll call PAUL for this story, says, “Oh, hey, can you autograph a Star Trek thing for a person I know because you were on Star Trek and this person is, like, really all about Star Trek?”
You have been cleaning out your garage for four days, and you happen to have excavated a bunch of things from a lifetime in showbiz, including some trading cards from a science fiction television series you worked on as a teenager, so you say, “Yeah, I’d be happy to do that. In fact, I have a pretty cool one right here on the kitchen counter for some reason so let me whip out the Sharpie pen all famous actors carry with them at all time for use in occasions such as these and get to work.”
You uncap your pen and scrawl your magnificent autograph, which you’ve developed for years and years after tens of thousands of efforts, across one side of the card. But then, for reasons that may or may not be related to the two homebrewed beers you’ve enjoyed — and earned, because remember you have spent four surprisingly emotional days reliving pretty much your entire life through artifacts — you finish your signature with a flourish that drags an angry black line right across your face.
“Well, crap,” you might say. “I’ve ruined this, just like some angry people say I ruined that show they loved twenty-five years ago.
But then you get an idea! You know how to save it and turn it into a priceless work of collectible art that will surely sell on an online auction site for ones or even fives of dollars. I mean, we’re not talking dented ping pong ball money, but it’s still something nice to give to your local humane society. So you start to turn the line into sunglasses, and when you’re drawing the second lens, you realize that maybe you should have just turned it into an eye patch, because that would make Wesley Crusher cool like Snake Plissken.
“Man, I should have made this an eyepatch,” you say, “because sunglasses are so pedestrian.”
And that’s when it hits you: dude, you’ve got this. You know how to save this, because you’re a professional and you know exactly what the hell you’re doing. You turn the sunglasses into THE SUNGLASSES OF JUSTICE and write, “YEEEAAAHHHH!” right across the top. You slam the card down on the table and say, “Nailed it,” because you did.
That’s when your friend tells you that he forgot the name of the person he wanted the goddamn thing for in the first place, so if you could just go ahead and sign something different in the future that would be great and you are all OMG DUDE I MADE THIS JUST FOR YOU AND NOW YOU DON’T EVEN WANT IT WHAT THE HELL MAN.
And that is when you realize you could probably take this card and put it in the trash … or put it on eBay as a charity auction with a stupid description that isn’t as funny as it should be, considering how long you took writing it.
Okay, Person On The Internet, here’s what you’re bidding on: a Star Trek trading card of everyone’s favorite ensign (SHUT UP HE WAS THE MOST POPULAR CHARACTER EVER I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN), signed by Wil Wheaton, who is a pretty neat guy. It is ruined and restored exactly as described above and in the accompanying picture. If you want, he’ll even write the name of your choice on it (probably on the back or maybe in small print on the bottom) or draw a bird on it. It won’t be a good bird, because he can’t draw at all, but it will be in a nest and have a beak that really says, “I am such a bird! Look at this beak! It’s two triangles!” The bird may have wings, depending on things, but wings are NOT GUARANTEED.
This card will be put into an envelope, stamped with a REAL WESLEY CRUSHER STAMP THAT IS TOTALLY AMAZING BECAUSE I FOUND IT IN MY GARAGE THIS WEEKEND, and mailed to the address of your choosing. You won’t even have to pay for shipping, because Wil Wheaton is a pretty neat guy.
See? It all makes sense now, doesn’t it. Also, 100% of the final bid on this trading card will be given to the Pasadena Humane Society, because they help pets like Seamus and Marlowe find their forever families.
If you follow me on Twitter (thank you and I’m sorry), you know that I’ve been aggressively cleaning out my garage for the last three days. I’m building a pretty awesome homebrewery out there, and I have to get rid of all this stuff I’ve collected over the years to make space.
Most of the things I’m getting rid of are old clothes, books and CDs. I’ve also come across a bunch of obsolete bits of technology that are going to be amusing to take to the recycling place.
Mostly, I’ve had a lot of joyous memories as I go through these things. I’ve found things that date all the way back to the late 70s, things from all the stages of my acting career, and things from my writing career. Probably the best feeling I’ve had is getting rid of things that I don’t need any more, and reducing boxes of stuff I’ve hauled around since I was 23 and bought my first house from a dozen to half of one.
(Lots of people on Twitter thought it was hilarious to call me a hoarder, but I actually find that a little offensive. I had so much stuff from so long ago, I wasn’t sure I was prepared to emotionally deal with what I’d find, and it was pretty overwhelming to think about going through it all. Turns out making a brewery is good motivation.)
The best feeling isn’t actually finding these old things I forgot I had, though that’s been pretty great. The best feeling is realizing that there’s a lot of stuff in here I thought was really important to me, but just isn’t. Stuff that I held onto when I was struggling in my mid-20s because it reminded me of when I wasn’t struggling in my early 20s, and stuff I held onto when I was turning 30 because I wasn’t ready to completely let go of my 20s. I feel stupid to realize that I hauled around boxes of useless shit for 15 years for no good reason, except that it was a good reason at the time. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m so happy with my life and the people in it, I don’t need to hold onto something that was, because what is kicks ass. I’m grateful for that, and wanted to write it down before I got distracted by shiny things.
Anyway, I’m going to auction a lot of the things I’ve decided to keep for charity in the near future, so stay tuned if you’re into that sort of thing. And if you want to see whatever stupid thing I unearth next, complete with hilarious trenchant commentary, it’s happening on Twitter, where I’m @wilw.
From the ongoing “I am Easily Amused” series: something I did with this morning’s Flu Map from Weather Underground:
Alaska is fucked, you guys.
I realized this morning that I didn’t have any oranges or orange juice to make my world famous (inside my house) port wine cranberry sauce to go with dinner tonight, so I grabbed a bag and prepared to walk up to the grocery store.
“I need you to get blah blah blah blah blah,” Ryan said.
“I have no idea what you just said, so write me a list,” I said. Ryan tore a page out of his notebook and started writing things down on it.
Anne came out of our bedroom, and asked me where I was going.
“I need some things from the store,” I said, “so I’m walking up there to get them.”
“How about we walk Seamus and Marlowe up there? They can use the exercise, and then they’ll be calm for the rest of the day.”
I thought that was a fine idea, a fine, fine idea, Stuart, and I said as much. I went to the closet to get their leashes and harnesses. I imagine that the following went through their minds:
Seamus: THE DOOR TO THE CLOSET IS OPEN! A WALK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW AND WE ARE ON IT!
Marlowe: DOOR! DOOR! DOOR! WALK! WALK! WALK! WALK! WALK!
Riley: I’M A DOG!
Seamus and Marlowe ran to the closet, and showed their excitement to get at what’s inside the closet by making it impossible for me to open the closet. You know, like dogs do. This is when Riley realized what was going on.
Riley: OH SWEET DOGGIE JESUS A WALK IS HAPPENING AND WHEN I GO ON A WALK I GET TO SMELL THINGS AND SOMETIMES POOP ON A YARD AND THEN THERE’S A BIRD AND I BARK AT IT AND IT FLIES AWAY BUT I KNOW THAT I COULD CATCH IT IF I REALLY WANTED TO BUT I DON’T WANT TO BECAUSE ANOTHER DOG PEED ON THIS BUSH AND I HAVE TO ALSO PEE HERE BECAUSE OH MY GOD IS THAT A DOG IN THAT WINDOW? BARK BARK BARKBARKBARK!
Seamus: Welcome to, like, an hour ago in dog time, Riley.
So I found myself surrounded by three very excited dogs who were determined to show exactly how much they can jump and bark and generally turn my nice, quiet living room into a maelstrom of fur and jumping.
It took a minute or so (an eternity in “I-am-ready-to-go-on-a-walk” dog time) to get them all leashed up and ready to go.
“Okay, so you guys need to walk Riley,” I said to Ryan and Nolan, “because she can’t make it all the way to the store and back. Also there is no way the two of us can handle three dogs plus a bag of groceries on the way back.”
You’ll note that it never occurred to me to drive to the store, because it’s a gorgeous day here and walking places is usually better than not walking places, for distances under 5 miles.
Anne and I headed up to the store, and the kids took Riley around the block. About ten minutes into the walk, I realized that I’d forgotten my phone and Ryan’s list.
“Ryan wanted me to get things and I forgot the list,” I said.
“Call him,” Anne suggested.
“I also forgot my phone,” I said. We looked at each other. Seamus growled at something that only he could see. Marlowe wagged her tail so fast I briefly wondered how wagging dog tails could be employed to power small villages in the developing world.
“You’re on fire this morning,” Anne said.
“Yeah, I know. I’m awesome.”
We got to the store. Anne told me she needed mayonaise to make the wasabi deviled eggs, and waited with the dogs while I got the things I needed. That’s when I discovered that there is pretty much a wall of mayonaise options in our grocery store, in amounts ranging from “I need a little mayonaise” to “GORGE MYSELF ON GALLONS AND GALLONS OF DISGUSTING STUFF MADE FROM EGGS AND OIL AND SHAME.”
I completed my purchases, in the process reaffirming my superpower of wrecking whatever line I’m in simply by the act of choosing it: I got behind two guys who had two things: Pedialyte and Tums (clearly recovering from a hangover). Instead of it taking them less time to pay for them than it’s taken me to write this paragraph like it should have, they paid with a combination of dollar bills, grimy handfulls of change, a little bit on a debit card … and then remembered that they really needed cigarettes so the whole thing started over. Then we got to wait for the cigarettes to show up from wherever they keep them locked up in the store.
I met Anne and our dogs outside the store, and we began the walk home. Seamus and Marlowe were very excited to see children out with their parents, squirrels everywhere, and something on a yard that couldn’t be seen, but required enthusiastic rolling around and grunting to fully appreciate.
We got home, and Ryan met us at the door.
“You didn’t take my list!” He said.
“I know, I was distracted by dogmageddon when we were trying to leave.”
“I tried to call you and your phone just rang and rang!”
“That’s because it was left on the kitchen counter. Didn’t it raise any suspicions when you called my phone and then something playing my Doctor Who ringtone made noise in the house while I wasn’t picking up?”
“Shut up.”
That’s when I saw his list, which made me laugh so much, I wrote almost a thousand words just to introduce it on my blog:
Yep. He’s my son alright.
I am always thankful for my life and the people who are in it, especially my family. This morning’s walk to the market is just one small reason why.
Click to embiggen Marlowe’s report card for today.
I love my adorable puppy, but boy was she an asshole today.
