Hi there, I’m Wil, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Why is that? Well, allow me to present the following items to support this outrageous claim:
Quite some time ago, I engaged in correspondence with one of the guys who makes woot go. One thing lead to another, and I ended up designing a T-shirt for shirt.woot.com.
According to the woot newsletter, it’ll be available tomorrow (THURSDAY):
Ever Bought A T-Shirt Designed By Somebody On Star Trek? You Wil. Speaking of Shirt.Woot, noted actor, author, gambler, blogger, and android Wil Wheaton adds ”t-shirt designer” to his CV this Thursday, and it’s all going down at Shirt.Woot <http://shirt.woot.com> . This is like a true-cross thing for hardcore geeks (like us), except that Wil himself will never have laid eyes on your actual shirt, much less hands. But still. As for the design, we don’t want to give too much away, so we’ll just thank Wil for rolling the DICE with us to release this to-DIE-for tee.
Speaking of DICE, The first episode of the Penny Arcade/PvP/WWdN/D&D4E Podcast (MP3 link) has been released! Even if you subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, you owe it to yourself to go check out the D&D Podcast page, because Mike and Scott did incredibly awesome art to go with each episode.
Returning to Woot for a moment: there’s a woot-off happening right now, and you can follow wootoff on Twitter to get almost as many updates in an hour as I occasionally send.
Speaking of Twitter, as of right now, there are 105,547 accounts following me. Um. What? How the hell did that happen? I thought I was freaked out when it was at 51,000, but I didn’t know what freaked out truly was until I tried to compose a tweet, and ended up staring at it for five minutes before I sent it because the thought of sending it to that many accounts paralyzed me.
What was that tweet, you ask? Allow me to show you: When I got this invite today, I thought it was too good to be true, but it’s real: I get to see WATCHMEN *tomorrow* for this MTV thing!
Yeah, for at least four hours today, it won’t be so bad that MTV doesn’t play music videos like they did when I was a kid. They do a movie show called SPOILERS, and one of their producers invited me to come see the move. Because just seeing the movie wasn’t cool enough, the entire cast will be there. Because that wasn’t cool enough, Zack Snyder will be there, doing a Q&A after the movie. Because that wasn’t cool enough, they’re also going to show some preview clips of the new Star Trek movie. Because that isn’t cool enough, they want me to go on TV and talk about all this stuff as some kind of expert.
Don’t tell them I’m just a geek, okay? Or at least wait until after we’re done. I don’t want to mess this up.
The show will air on Saturday, but I think they’re putting some live updates on their website somewhere today. I’ll try to take my phone with me so I can Twitter about what’s going on, (without spoilers, of course) but I suspect this will be one of those “don’t bring your shitty little cell phone into the theater because the studio thinks you’re going to pirate the movie with your tiny 3MP camera that can’t even focus on the screen” kind of things.
I’ve gotten to do some really awesome things lately, and for the last week or so, I feel like I’m dreaming — in fact, last night, I dreamt that I was at PAX, and woke up all excited to go there — and I’m afraid that I’m going to wake up, and find out that none of this incredibly cool stuff has actually happened, so I’m working extra hard to appreciate every moment and not take a single thing for granted.
You know, if this recent explosion of attention and stuff translated into a huge surge in book sales, I’d think it was totally awesome and would really help me put food on my family … but so far, it’s just weird. I feel all this pressure now to hurry up and create some more cool stuff, before this rapidly-closing window of opportunity slams shut.
Don’t worry, I’m not forgetting about anyone or losing perspective about who I really am or what this all really means. When all this flurry of weird stuff passes, we’ll all still be here, right?
These D&D podcasts are entire buckets of awesome. My only complaint is that it seems to end rather sud
I can understand being freaked out by all the followers. I would be too. But I’ve been reading your blog and your tweets for a while now and you seem like a really nice guy. So for that reason, I hope that this means you get all the work you could ever want doing all the things you love to do!!
Oh – and that you get to go to more Cons because Cons are awesome and restore hp.
I do the same thing when I update my twitter, and I only have 19 followers!
I am officially too jealous for words.
So I present you with this string of random characters of jealousy.
q3 9oyq29oyhntfuhwiu4thfnq234uot3q263q
Way to go Wil; it all sounds fantastic.
Thanks for linking to the MP3! Wizards is blocked here at work, but I was able to download and listen to it. Mike and Jerry should learn from you! 🙂
So jealous that you get to play D&D with those guys.
I can’t remember where I saw it but some blog had a list of “internet celebrities who use twitter.” You were on the list and I added you from that. This was some time last week.
I would never tell them you’re just a geek.
I would tell them “Wil’s just this guy, you know?”
Of course we’ll still be here. The world can’t happen without geeks anymore!
/evilgrin
Well, damn. The sky is smiling and the sun is tipping its hat to you! *trying not to be jealous of the Watchman thing* I’m so pleased for you! *really. really trying not be jealous*
Poor “Al”… I love hard to pronounce names! An impossible to fuck with name is impossible in itself, sadly.
You.Lucky.Bastard.
Great podcast!!! Can’t wait for the others.
yay! I got a shirt. and a different one while I was waiting for midnight. Thanks for sucking me back into the woot world – I had been woot-free for almost 6 months, since the Roomba debacle. *sigh*
Sunken Treasure is sitting on my desktop, glossy cover gleaming in the glow of dome lighting above me, begging me to reach out and read from it; the new Penny Arcade D&D Podcast is primed and ready to roll in my download directory; insider reports are possibly upcoming from a sneak screening of the must-see geek genre picture of the year, if not possibly the damn decade, answering the soon-to-be ubiquitous question “Who watches the Watchmen?” It would seem that the fortune that has been smiling down is a two-way street for Wil Wheaton fans. The continuing good fortune you have been receiving more and more lately, due to your growing allure as a geek celeb, seems to be having an inspirational effect on you, providing the impetus in you to propel yourself forward with more special projects, which then get passed on to the eager waiting horde (strength and honor!) of an ever-increasing and appreciative fanbase, who then stump for you wherever they can thus increasing the aforementioned allure. It’s all a quid pro quo, reciprocating process in my eyes. Everyone seems to benefit from the boons your career keeps placing in your path.
I’m proud to help boost you up on our virtual shoulders to allow the rest of the world to get a glimpse of our Geek Prime. If anyone is going to represent the “face” of geekdom today to the square normals of the world, I couldn’t think of anyone better to don such a resplendent mantle.
Make us proud, sir. Make us, proud. Oh, and any more cool loot you wanna throw our way wouldn’t hurt either :). Seriously, it’s awesome to see awesome things piling up in your lap, Wil. You’ve worked hard, you’ve persevered, you’ve maintained your personal integrity in spite of what I can only imagine is a constant pressure-cooker to conform to what the entertainment world deems to be “cool” and “what the kids want.” I know I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’m glad that you have been seemingly able to come through such a crucible, forged into the likeness of someone likable. Someone we can all respect.
“It’s like [The Universe] gave you something man, all those stories you can make up. And [It] said, “this is what we got for ya kid, try not to lose it.”
Whatever you got, don’t lose it, man. Sincerely.
Wow, there really was a lot of awesome packed into this post! The shirt looks great by the way.
Dude! Spoilers was awesome yesterday! I was there too with a bunch of my friends. The Watchmen movie is so good it made my all misty eyed.
And then out of nowhere you popped up. That was such an unexpected and cool bonus. Nice Penny Arcade “Roll for Initiative” shirt, by the way!
How awesome was it when the crowd turned on that producer for not knowing who played Rorschach? God damn, that made me laugh so hard, and he just kept digging himself deeper and deeper.
The Hot Topic jokes killed me, too.
Oh yeah, that guy was horrible. But he had a hard job. He was trying to keep a group of die hard watchmen fans (who obviously knew way more about the book and movie than he did) entertained while MTV had to do their thing and get their shots set up.
Yeah, the Hot Topic jokes were great too. My friend Matt was the guy who yelled that he loved Hot Topic and didn’t care what anyone thought.
I was the guy who asked how many people in the room had actually read the book before coming to the screening. Matt and I had been arguing over how many people in the room were actually comic fans, and how many were just there because they found a ticket. He was convinced the majority of the room hadn’t read the book. I was glad when so many hands went up when I asked the question.
It’s always a great feeling to know you’re in a room full of like minded geeks.
Dude, I was sitting with one of the Executive Producers when you asked your question. He turned to me and he said, “that is an excellent question. I wish one of our people had asked that.”
Really? Awesome! From their point of view, that’s the all important question, isn’t it? How many people who have never ever read the book before are going to throw down $10 to see the movie? Is their marketing working to get a general mainstream audience in to fill seats?
I was suprised that MTV’s wrangler hadn’t asked that question yet.
After he had asked how many people in the audience hadn’t read the book, I should have followed up with another question, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I wanted to ask, “Of those people who answered to never having read the book before, how many of you were dragged here by people who had read it?”
I would have liked to have seen the answer to that.