I just finished adding captions to all the Eastbound – Texas pictures in the Road Trip gallery.
I love working on those pictures, because it reminds me how happy Anne and I were on that trip.

Several people have e-mailed me this, which was in Neil Gaiman’s journal this morning:

I’m going to be a guest at Penguincon next year, mostly because it struck me as something fun I could drag my son Mike to that he’d enjoy as much as, or more than, I would, and because Terry Pratchett had a great time last year. It won’t be a usual SF convention, and the guests include lots of people I’m looking forward to meeting in the flesh, like the Slashdot people, and Wil Wheaton, who long before he was an uberblogger I knew of as The Guy Who Started the Sandman Discussion On Genie…

It blows my mind that he’s looking forward to meeting me. Neil Gaiman’s been transformed from A Guy Whose Work I Really Love into A Guy Who Has Inspired Me And Made Me Want To Be A Better Writer, so I’ll be working extra hard to not be a complete geek when I’m there.
I love that he mentioned GEnie! That was my first ever Internet experience, in the old SF Roundtable.
The first time I logged on, I was sitting at a menu prompt, and I kept getting messages from people welcoming me to GEnie. I had no idea how the system worked, so I just typed (In all caps, of course) at the menu prompt. It looked something like this:

menu.prompt>HI THERE. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING HERE. WHERE CAN I GO?
menu.prompt> Error! You didn’t use a command!
menu.prompt>IT TOLD ME I DIDN’T USE A COMMAND. WHAT SHOULD I DO?
menu.prompt> Error! You didn’t use a command!

It went on and on like that until I ended up in the GEnie version of irc, where I learned that typing in all caps wasn’t cool like War Games, but was totally lame, like Short Circuit.
When I was using GEnie, I was the biggest Sandman fanboy on earth. I even created a character in GEnie’s MUD-like thing called “Morpheus,” who I described as “a tall thin man with black hair, pale skin, and piercing black eyes. You think you’ve seen him in a Dream.”
Man, just the mention of GEnie brings back a flood of memories. I spent hundreds of hours on GEnie over the years, at speeds up to 2400 baud. I bet an archive of my sf roundtable discussions would be really horrifying to me, because I was at the hight of my teenage lameness then. I don’t think I ever spoke in AOL kiddie-speak, but my idiocy and ignorance about everything in the world really shone through.

Well, one good night’s sleep later, I really regret totally losing my cool last night. See, this guy struck a very exposed nerve, and that part of my brain that says, “Dude, are you sure you want to do this?” was completely shorted out. But I think I’ll leave that post up, because it will serve as a reminder to me, (a scarlet letter, if you will) that it’s fine to love my family, and it’s fine to defend them when they are attacked . . . but sometimes it’s better to just go take a long walk and cool off. I think it’s fine to vent in one’s blog, but sometimes it’s just better to STFU and be a bigger person.
*Cue music for “The More You Know.”*

Some mothefucker calling himself “Bruce Cook” thinks that it’s okay to misrepresent me and my wife:

I had opportunity to go to a Star Trek Convention recently and Wil Wheaton was there. He has always been one of my favorite actors and I so looked forward to meeting him. Anyway, I did not know he sold his autograph. I bought a picture for $5 and,when it came time for me to meet him, he told me he needed $10 for the autograph. I was brought ,by my brother,in a wheelchair and it was explained we did not have $10. But,instead of showing compassion, his wife,who was there,said, “then wheel your crippled ass out of the way,we’re here to make money,not give out charity!” I looked at Wil and he said “You heard her,now fork over the 10 or get the hell out of here!”

It’s bad enough that this bastard made up some stupid lie about me. That I can ignore. But he crossed a line when he lied about my wife, who is the most loving, compassionate, caring and thoughtuful woman on this planet.
Bruce Cook, if you’re reading this, you have one chance to set the record straight. Nobody tells lies about my wife and gets away with it, you son of a bitch.
UPDATE 11:46 PM PST: Now that I’ve managed to calm down, and my rage has cooled to just 500 degrees, rather than 500,000, I’ve removed this pigfucker’s Yahoo profile info. As furious as I am, I think it would be pretty uncool to flood this idiot with e-mails and junk. For all I know, this could be some troll looking for lots of attention, in which case I’ve played right into his / her / its hands.
The thing is, when I perceive a threat against people I love, I tend to blast off and nuke the site for orbit. I just want this guy / gal / robot to set the record straight, then we can all get back to hanging out at the stick, looking at a thing in a bag.

On Friday, Nolan came racing into the living room and said, “Wil! I want to go to the LA Car Show this weekend! Just you and me, okay?!”
Nolan loves cars. When we see a cool sportscar, it’s not enough for Nolan to tell me that it’s a Nissan 350 Z. He needs to tell me exactly what size engine it has, how fast it does 0-60, and how it would do against a Ferrari.
Nolan has a subscription to Car and Driver, and was excited to have Project Gotham Racing because “It’s the closest I’ll get to racing a Mini for a few years, Wil.”
I, on the other hand, have serious problems hanging an air freshener tree from my mirror (“You’ll find one in every car, you’ll see.”) or adding washer fluid. but when the Car Show came to town last year, I saw an opportunity to do something with him, in an environment where I knew he’d enjoy himself. I had to seriously talk him into going, but I eventually succeeded, and we had a great time. So I was very excited when he came to me Friday and asked me if I’d take him again.
Yesterday, he had plans with friends all day, so we planned to go today.
At 11:30 a.m., we got into my car, and drove to the convention center. About ten miles into the drive, he said to me, “Do you ever listen to anything other than Fred when you drive?”
“Sure, I do,” I said, “I listen to the jazz station, and Ethel, and Special X.”
“Why don’t you listen to the regular radio?”
“Because the regular radio sucks. It all sounds the same and the DJs are lame.”
“You won’t even listen to KIIS FM?”
KIIS is a local Top 40 station. I’m pretty sure it’s one of those Clear Channel stations.
“I don’t think so. I used to listen to KROQ, but nowadays –”
“KROQ just sucks, doesn’t it?” He said.
“Mostly, yeah. Kevin and Bean are awesome, but the music on that station is just –”
“They play too many oldies,” he said.
I nearly lost control of the car.
“Too many oldies?”
“Yeah! It’s all from the eighties,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Man, did I ever feel like I was 31 and squarely in a different generation. Squarely, man. Squarely.
“Well, I was thinking of all that Korn and System of a Down noise, but . . .” I couldn’t even complete the thought.
“Do you think KIIS will be around in ten years?” He asked.
“Probably. It’s been on the air since I can remember.”
“Oh, that’s good,” he said, “I don’t know what I’d listen to if KIIS went off the air.”
Oh dear god. I am so out of touch with the kids today.
I reflexively turned up Fred, which was playing Joy Division, and self-consciously sang along.
The rest of the drive, Nolan spoke without stopping for breath about how excited he was to see cars from 2 Fast 2 Furious, and some new concept cars, and some Mitsubishi. I kept looking at him in the rearview mirror, but I was distracted by my steadily receeding hairline and the lines that have recently deepened around my eyes.
We pulled off the freeway at 9th street, and turned down Hope on the way to the convention center.
I was passing the Staples Center when I realized that there were no other cars around, and all the parking lots were empty.
“Nolan, did you say that the Car Show was at the Convention Center?”
“Yeah, it’s the Los Angeles Auto Show at the LA Convention Center in Anaheim.”
I pulled over and turned off the car.
“Nolan,” I said, as my old heart sank, “Do you mean the Anaheim Convention Center?”
“Yeah! That’s it!” He said, cheerfully.
“Nolan, that’s in Orange County. This is the Los Angeles Convention Center.”
“How far is the other one?”
“It’s over an hour away. We can’t go there.”
His smile fell from his face.
“Why?”
“Because it’s noon, and we have to be at my parent’s house at four for dinner. We don’t have time.”
At a time like this, it would be totally normal for the kid to cry, but I felt like I was going to cry. I felt like I’d let him down by not double-checking the location, and now our big day together was a total loss.
“Well, can we do something else instead?” he offered.
“Are you okay with that?”
“Well, I was really looking forward to going to the car show, but we can still hang out together until dinner. That’ll be cool.”
I actually felt the heaviness lift from my heart. For the next few minutes, we talked about where we could go, and settled on Universal Citywalk. We figured there were lots of restaurants there, and maybe we could catch a movie.
A cold wind and the end of tourist season conspired to keep Citywalk mostly empty. Top-40 music blared from huge speakers echoed off the mostly-empty walkways. It sounded hollow and eerie, too warm for this chilly November afternoon.
We walked up to the theater, and scanned the showtimes.
“How about Texas Chainsaw Massacre?” Nolan said.
I opened my mouth to answer and he said, “Just kidding, Wil. How about School of Rock?”
“Haven’t you already seen that?”
“Yeah, but I really liked it. I think you’ll like it too.”
“Okay,” I said.
He turned to the girl in the ticket booth.
“One child, and one . . . ” he paused and looked at me, “. . . senior for ‘School of Rock at one.”
“Senior?!” I said, “I don’t think so!”
He giggled at me while I paid for one adult and one child.
The movie was mildly amusing to me, and though I enjoy Jack Black, I think he’s better in a supporting role. I got serious Jack Black fatigue after about 40 minutes. During the film, though, I finally grokked why parents can sit through terrible movies like Anastasia because their kids want to see it. Nolan was rocking back and forth in his chair, and kept looking at me to make sure I was enjoying it as much as he was.
When the film was over, we had about 45 minutes to spend at Citywalk before we had to go up to my mom and dad’s, so we checked out some of the junk shops they have up there.
Citywalk is this very strange, ultra-sanitized, fake version of a scaled-down Los Angeles. It’s so hideous, it’s sort of cool, and I must admit that I enjoy walking around up there.

“I remember coming up here when I was a teenager,” I told him, “when none of this was here. There were just two themed restaurants, and the movie theater. And the theater only had 12 or so screens. ”
“There was no Hard Rock Cafe?”
“Nope. But there was this place called Whomphoppers, which was a western-themed steak house, and this other place called Victoria Station, which was a train-themed steakhouse.”
“No offense, Wil, but that sounds pretty lame.”
“Yeah, it was . . . but it was the 80s so we didn’t notice. We were distracted by the awful hair and leather ties.”
“Yeah, what were you thinking?” he asked.
“Uhm. I don’t know, but I can promise you that all your friends who wear their ironic trucker hats cocked to the side on their heads will have this conversation with their own kids in fifteen years.”
We both laughed and walked into a blast of obnoxiously loud hip-hop music that poured out of a store.
“Man, I must be getting old,” I said, “because I just can’t stand this crap. I’m totally out of touch with you damn kids today.”
“What do you mean, getting?” Nolan laughed.
“Dude!”
“I’m just kidding . . . ” he said, and took my hand as we walked out, “. . . but you are.”
I love that kid.