50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
I just came across some video of my PAX keynote:
This is me talking about the first time I played NES, with my brother, in a department store. It contains what is probably my favorite line of the entire keynote.
I watched a lot of video from PAX while I was supposed to be working on my GiR today (which actually makes sense, and fits this week’s column) and was viscerally reminded of how much fun I had there. If you can only attend one convention a year, make it PAX. Trust me.
Note: There’s a time change for Golden Apple. It’s updated below.
Hi, I’m Wil, and I like blog post titles that are obnoxiously long. Thanks for stopping by, San Diego.
Star Trek: The Manga – Kakan ni Shinkou has been released, and is showing up in comic shops and book stores all over the place. I had a bit of a squee moment this weekend when Nolan and I found it in a Borders, marking the first time in my life as a writer that one of my books was stocked in the correct section.
My story kicks off the collection, and is described by Comic Book Bin thusly:
In Cura Te Ipsum, the U.S.S. Enterprise
is crippled, far away from the nearest Federation Starbase, and badly
in need of dilithium crystals. They find dilithium on a planet in the
middle of a brutal civil war/blood feud. Captain James T. Kirk
sees an opportunity to guide the planet’s warring factions towards
peace, but will he be violating the Federation’s Prime Directive not to
interfere in the affairs of non-Federation planets?
Comic Book Bin gives us an A-, and says:
Star Trek: the
manga – Kakan ni Shinkou rings true enough to be more than fan fiction,
and for all practical purposes contains some of the best Star Trek
comics ever done. Veteran Trek creator Diane Duane, Trek actor Wil
Wheaton, rising star of manga Bettina Kurkoski deliver star
performances with their contributions to this volume.
Dude! Awesome!
I’ll be at Golden Apple Comics this Wednesday with many of the other writers and artists for a Q&A and signing as we continue our SoCal tour:
Wednesday, September 268pm-10pm
7pm-9pm
Golden Apple
7711 Melrose Ave., Hollywood
So recording Family Guy yesterday ranks in the top five most awesome moments of my acting and geek lives.
Seth MacFarlane directed my session, and when I met him, I said, "Okay, I’m not even going to try to pretend to keep it cool. I am a huge fan, and this is more exciting for me than I can quantify."
Yeah, I said quantify. I say stupid shit like that when I’m giddy and excited.
"Well, if you’re going to do that," he said, "then I’ll have to tell you that Next Generation is my favorite of all the Star Treks, and I’ve seen every episode about a thousand times. The First Duty is just great, man."
I did my best not to faint.
We had a meeting of the mutual admiration society for a few minutes, and then I went into the booth to record my lines. It was incredibly fun and creatively fulfilling, and even though we only worked together for fifteen or twenty minutes, I instantly liked him. He reminded me of my friends from ACME, and I hoped I earned another bit on the show at some point in the future, because he was really fun to work with.
When I was finished recording, I asked him if I could talk a little bit about my episode on my blog, without giving away too many details, and he said that would be fine, so . . .
I play myself, in a story that you could call a tribute to Next Generation. Pretty much everyone from the cast is on board for the episode, and holy shit is it funny.
I can’t divulge any specific story details, or give away any jokes, but there’s a joke with me that, if it makes it to the final cut of the episode, could quite possibly be the funniest thing I’ve ever done on television.
The show will air in about a year, I guess, and I can’t wait to see it.
The softcovers of The Happiest Days of Our Lives have just shipped, according to my printer, so I should be able to start taking orders next week. The limited edition hardcovers are taking much longer, and won’t be here until the week of October 8, but I think it’s close enough that I can start taking pre-orders for both versions next week.
I’m talking with David Lawrence about doing an audio version. We’re hoping to record the first week of October, so it’s ready to go at the same time as the printed versions.
Since I’m doing this book entirely on my own, I’m going to be drawing heavily on community support to help promote it, starting right now: if you got The Happiest Days of Our Lives this summer from one of my convention appearances, would you let me know what you thought, so I can make sure my marketing efforts reflect what readers are getting from the book?
From the people I’ve talked to already, I’m starting to get the sense that it inspires nostalgic memories of their own, which leads to discussing a lot of the shared experiences we who grew up in the 70s and came of age in the 80s share: Star Wars figures, video games, RPGS, things like that. I also hear that even if you’ve read these stories online, it’s an entirely different experience to read them in print.
Andrew and I are working on a media kit like the one we did for Dancing Barefoot, and Roughy and I are busy building all the appropriate ordering and product pages at Monolith Press.
Questions? Comments? You know what to do.
The Really Super-Awesome Trust Us You Totally Need To Have This One Even If You’ve Already Bought All The Other Ones DVD box set for Star Trek: The Next Generation is about to hit stores, and I got a chance yesterday to see a preview of the special documentaries John de Lancie and I shot, in this preview trailer at Star Trek dot Com.
If you are totally into TNG and don’t already own any of the seasons on DVD, I suppose it’s competitively priced at $40 or so per season. Otherwise, I think it’s grossly overpriced.
If you already own the good seasons (3-5, IMHO) you’re pretty much looking at this for the special features disc, which according to TV Shows on DVD contains:
So that looks pretty awesome to me, and I guess there are lots of specials added to each disc, including stuff that was once exclusive to Best Buy or something like that, but it still feels way too expensive to me with a suggested retail price of $440. I mean, WTF, CBS?
(Thanks to WWdN reader L.E.M. for the links!)