Vacation

I know this is going to upset you, but somehow I know you’ll find a way to struggle through… your Uncle Willie is heading out of town for a week, and won’t have net access.
Okay, okay, stop your cryin’, or I’ll give you something to cry about!
It’s Mrs. Uncle Willie’s birthday, and we’re heading up to fabulous Lake Tahoe with the kids and the dog. Sounds great, right?
Hold on a sec…we’re going up there in …a minivan.
That’s right. A mini-van. We had to rent a bigger car, so we could fit all our crap and the Ferris’ crate…and rather than get something sort of cool like a lame SUV, we got a mini-van. I’m driving for 8 hours in a minivan.
I am so lame.
Let’s talk about minivans for a second, shall we? Is there another mode of transportation, not regularly used by the Amish, that is more lame? When I see a minivan, I think, “That person’s just given up. they’ve reached their goal in life of having the 3.5 kids, the dog and the coveted PTA membership.”
There’s nothing more sad to me than seeing some dude, who you can tell used to be cool, or some woman, who was probably a hottie at one time, behind the wheel of a Ford Aerostar, the bumper covered with a protective layer of “my kid was the student of the month” bumper stickers, the windows smeared with greasy little kid handprints, and the sad, mournful sound of “Radio Disney” blaring out of the open windows.
The mini-van that we got is the Dodge Caravan. It’s the one with the easily removable seats. Last night, Anne and I were moving the seats out, and it was much easier than I thought it would be, and I caught myself thinking “This is kinda cool”….suddenly, and without warning, I screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” My wife looked at me, terror in her eyes, and asked what was wrong.
“I thought, for a millisecond, that there was something cool about this van.”
My wife walked around the minivan, came close to me, and punched me full in the mouth.
“Don’t ever think something like that again.”
“Thank you.”
So I won’t be able to update the site, obviously, and all that stuff that I wanted to do before I left town, like get the new site up and running, and opening the store and all that won’t happen until I get home.
But! Have no fear! I have a cool site for you to check out until I get back. It’s called “Killoggs“. It’s a very cool blogging site, created by the amazing bendependent and loren
Have a great weekend and week, and play nice. Don’t make me turn this minivan around, because I’ll do it.

Comments!

Hey kids. I am working really hard on getting the new site up, but it’s a lot harder than I thought.
Just part of being lame, I guess. But have no fear! I’m off the the book store to get a new HTML book. Hopefully, one which will actually help, rather than confuse.
Failing that, I’m gonna bite the bullet and resort to using frontpage.
Relax, Mae Ling…
But here is some cool news! I think I’ve gotten it set up so anyone can comment on my ramblings here.
Have fun, kids.
Wil

Screenshots

You must go here. Right now.

Auditions

Tuesday was my step-son’s 12th birthday.
It was also the first time in 3 months that I’d had an audition. (Apparently, a bunch of jackass producers, working for vertically integrated, multi-national media conglomerates were afraid that the writer’s guild and the screen actor’s guild may want to stop work, so that we can all make a living wage, so they didn’t “green light” any new projects. Go figure.
So, things have been tough the past few months. Money has been tight, and I’ve been super bored. If I hadn’t had my kick ass sketch comedy show to look forward to, I probably would have ended up on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room.
Just kidding. Jeeze, lighten up.
So the first call is at 11:15 am, to be a regular on this WB show called “The Young Person’s Guide To Being A Rockstar”. It’s to play a gay drummer. (Why does everyone think I’m gay?). The second call is at 4:45 pm, for a movie called “waiting…”, that is just about the funniest ^%$#ing script I’ve read in over a year.
So, I’m completely excited, but I’m torn, too, since I have way too much free time right now, and I would like to work. (You know, actors are the only people who are unhappy when they’re not working. Unlike most “normal” people, who can’t wait for a break from work…) The only problem was, Tuesday was Ryan’s birthday, and I was really torn about what to do. I need to work, and I really like both of these projects, but I really wanted to be part of Ryan’s 12th birthday party, which was a trip to the beach with some of his friends.
So I went over and over it, and made the tough choice to take the auditions, and see Ryan that evening.
Well, on my way to the first audition, I got a call from my agent, and she told me that the afternoon session was cancelled! So I went from my first audition (Where I kicked ass, thank you very much- I’m told that I’m “in the mix” which is hollywoodspeak for “we’re considering you”) to the beach. I must have been quite the vision in my jeans, skechers and black socks, walking down the sand.
Long story short, it was awesome. We skim boarded, played football and wiffleball, and barbecued hot dogs in the parking lot, which was majorly against the beach parking lot rules (yes! breakin’ the law! breakin’ the law!).
When we got back, I had email waiting for me from my friend Roger Avary. Roger is one of the coolest people on earth, and a fucking rad writer and director. (yes, that’s right, I have a potty mouth. Deal.) Roger won an Academy Award for writing “Pulp Fiction”, and is pretty much responsible for everything good the Tarantino has ever taken credit for. Roger also wrote and directed my absolute favorite movie that I’ve ever worked on, Mr. Stitch. So to get back to my point: I emailed Roger, because he’s doing a new movie, and I asked him if I could be in it, because he is the most fun director EVER, and always makes good movies. So he emails me back, and tells me, “of course” and sends me the script (which ^%$@*ing ROCKS, by the way) and we’re hooking up this week.
So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
That’s all for right now, kids. I’m going back to work on the new, improved, easy-to-remember website!
How about some email for your uncle willy?

Conventions

Okay, some of you aren’t Star Trek fans, and you guys must think Star Trek Cons are uber-geek-fests. Well, you’re right.
But they’re cool, too, believe it or not. I think it’s super cool that there’s a place for any subculture, be it hackers, soap opera nuts, gamers, drama geeks, or whatever to hang out. Not that I’m in a huge rush to run out and buy a space suit, you understand…
Well, I do some conventions from time to time. It’s really fun to have an audience to entertain, and most of the audience is really cool. Of course, some people just aren’t going to be happy with me, no matter what, but what are you gonna do?
Well, I recently did this convention in Waturbury, CT. It was the first convention I’d done in close to 7 years, and I was REALLY nervous about not sucking. I even did something I never do: I did it sober.
Just kidding. I just wanted to see if you were still with me. Anyway, I did something that I never do: I prepared a little list of “stuff I want to talk about”, so if I lost the audience I knew that I had a place to pick them back up…but it turned out that I didn’t need it, because they liked me! They really liked me!
Okay, enough of this stupid preamble…here is the point of this post: I found a review of my appearence on USENet, and it made me feel really good about myself. So I wanted to share it with all of you:

From: Shammie ([email protected])
Subject: The best part of the Con
Newsgroups: alt.tv.star-trek.next-gen
Date: 2001-03-04 08:24:54 PST
By far the most stand-out, entertaining, enjoyable section of the entire event
that I attended yesterday at http://www.sfedora.com/waterbur.htm
I am not makiing this up, I am not trolling, I am not kidding:
Wil Wheaton!!! OMG, he RULES as a speaker/guest!
Before he even got on stage, the director of the event introduced him and
actually warned us, as if we were little children, now please be polite and
remember that this is Wil’s first con appearance in 8 years because of bad
experiences of people not separating him from the Wesley Crusher character.
(Later on we found out that 8 years ago, he was not only booed on stage, but he
actually had death threats!!)
Well, there was no need for this warning whatsoever, because from the moment
this vivacious, hilarious, charismatic, 28-year-old cutie bounded on stage, he
had us in the palm of his hand!! I cannot begin to describe how absolutely
captured every single one of us was, we were laughing every other minute and he
was so engaging even when he wasn’t being funny!! I am now a huge Wil Wheaton
fan and so are 300 other Trekkers that were there. We gave him a loud standing
ovation.
OK, just a few things that he talked about, but I can’t possibly begin to
capture the wonderful energy that exuded from him. Well, after he left TNG, he
left acting and moved to Kansas. “Not a good idea” he says. He said going from
LA, a 24-hour-a-day city to Topeka was like moving to a 78-minute city. He was
in the computer industry. “I am a geek. I’m extremely proud of that fact.”
Well, then he left the computer business and went to drama school. He is
married about a year now with 2 step-kids (children of his wife), back in
entertainment, performing “sketch comedy” with a group. He is HiLARious.
He left Star Trek on what he thought were good terms, but he found out later
that apparently that wasn’t the case. When he mentioned Rick Berman’s name, he
stuck his finger down his throat in a gag-me gesture. He said it is very
unlikely that he’ll be involved in any Star Trek ever again. He was not
satisfied with how they wrote him out, though. Said he wished he had gone out
in some shuttlecraft explosion. [pause] “Because it would have ensured my
return.” LOL!
He talked about an Outer Limits ep that he did where he plays a bad guy and
drops a doomsday bomb on the world and destroys all of humanity. He said that
he thought that really balanced out all the times that Wesley saved the ship.
“So get off my back, huh?” We all cracked up big time.
He said he would have LOVED to have had a cameo in Galaxy Quest as a crazed fan
being right in the face of the kid telling him how much he hated him on the
show! ROFL! Man we laughed for several minutes.
Then he said, ooh, they should have had me back as the Traveler so I could go
to DS9 and make it interesting. hahaha we laughed, but some fan in a wheelchair
said hey for some of us who can’t get out, DS9 was very comforting, or some
mumbo jumbo like that. Wil mumbles (so we can all hear him). “Note to self – no
more jokes about DS9, could get ugly.”
When asked about all the negative letters etc against Wesley, he told us quite
frankly that it hurt a lot and he took it personally. He said he made the
mistake of trying to reason with people and get them to understand. He said
people would blame him, a 14-year-old, for some of his lines and actions,
instead of going to the writers. One time, he had some really pompous-sounding,
major technobabble stuff he had to say, and he actually called up TPTB asking
them please, PLEASE don’t make me say that. I can only imagine the torment the
poor kid must have had to endure. :-((((( It just really struck me.
He talked about River Phoenix and what a junkie he was and got on a small soap
box about how any one of the people surrounding him could have saved him by
getting him go into rehab, but that they are all such ass-kissers in Hollywood
and *everything* but everything is about money.
Then he felt bad that he brought us all down, so he closed by telling us of his
fondest memory on TNG. They were all on the bridge shooting a scene where they
are getting bonked by the Borg. They were preparing to do the biggest “shake”
they had ever done, they were calling it an “eleven.” Picard was supposed to
fall down. Wil was like No he’s the captain, he can’t fall down! And Stewart
didn’t like it either. Anyway, the director yelled action and everyone started
shaking, Frakes falls out of his seat, Wil crashes into his console, Spiner is
jerking around, etc. Stewart apparently decides to have some fun and totally
spazzes out, crashing into everything, falling down, getting back up, crashing
into something else, spinning around, crashing into yet something else, falling
again, getting back up, etc etc, until finally he crashes into a wall that
falls down! Suddenly everyone is hushed because they all know it’s gonna be at
least a four thousand dollar delay. So Wil quickly improvises with “Captain, we
have a hull breach!”
“AND I SAVED THE DAY,” announces Wil with his arms up in a victory post.
ROFLMAO. That was the end of his talk and we all jumped up to give him a
standing O.