Things I want you to know about today:
- My friend Mikey Neumann’s show Movies With Mikey is being considered for an Emmy. If you are eligible to vote, I hope you’ll vote for him.
- There’s a new Tabletop! It’s Mysterium.
- I did a new Radio Free Burrito, and I’m quite happy with this one.
- I backed this white noise machine on Kickstarter about a year ago, and I’ve had it for about a month. It is the best white noise machine I have ever owned in my life, and I’ve owned a lot of them. If you have trouble sleeping or wake up easily during the night, check out Snooz. (NOTE: This is not an endorsement and I didn’t get anything for mentioning this. I just wanted you to know about it because it’s awesome.)
- I traded in my Nexus 6P for a Pixel and holy balls, it’s an incredible smartphone. I think I’m going to trade in my iPad for a Pixel tablet.
- I bought about 50 Choose Your Own Adventure books from eBay. Starting with the next Storytime With Wil, we’re going to have a whole bunch of new stories to explore together!
- I’m working with my business team to make some Facebook changes, including changing my personal page to a fan page, so we can do more business … uh … stuff. It’s weird. But one of the things we’ll be doing is sharing stories and posts from other sources (I guess this is a thing people do on Facebook now? I’ve been doing it on Tumblr for years, so I guess it’s the same?) and I’m very interested to know what sorts of sites and topics you’re interested in, if you read my dumb Facebook page.
- I’m coming to Washington, DC, for Awesome Con this weekend.
- My friend Ashly Burch refused to cross a picket line to perform the voice of Chloe — a beloved character she created — for the prequel to Life is Strange. Gamers are, sadly and predictably, being shitty to her about it. I remind everyone that Square Enix could easily bring Ashly back, by signing an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA, and respecting the contributions Ashly has made to the game. I stand with her, and I wrote about why I do several months ago.
- John Doe, from the seminal punk band, X, wrote a memoir about punk in the 80s, called Under the Big Black Sun. In addition to his own memories, he asked other people who were there, like Jane Wiedlin, Henry Rollins, and Jack Grisham. The book is an incredible read, on part with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, or The Kid Stays In The Picture. But the audio version is sensational, because the essayists who contributed to the book read their own work. If you’re a fan of the music and the musicians, I can’t oversell how great it is to own both audio and print versions, because the photos in the print version are magnificent.
Okay, that’s ten things for you to know. Anything you want me to know?
If you haven’t seen it already, folks at Atlas Obscura went into the Choose Your Own Adventure books and actually mapped out the branching narratives.
http://www.tor.com/2017/06/13/mapping-the-choices-of-choose-your-own-adventure/
I want you to know that…
1. The biggest is that this past Tuesday, the library I work at had it’s Grand Opening for its new building. Richland Library: Ballentine in South Carolina went from a 2000 square foot building to a 13000 square foot building. And it is beautiful, with a lovely connection to nature through our floor to ceiling windows looking out onto 5 acres of woods (that we own, so they won’t be built on). I’m so excited to be a part of this! The feedback has been incredibly positive.
2. I took my Momma out to a movie last night. We saw Guardians 2 and it was wonderful to see her reactions. I loved it as much the second time.
3. The Latvian Summer Solstice celebration (Jāņi) is this coming weekend. My family has made our plans for the bonfire, food, and drink so we can stay up all night to usher in the longer days of summer.
4. I am giddy with nerd-glee that one of the writers for the comic Ash vs The Army of Darkness is the husband of the children’s librarian at my library.
5. I recently learned that if I’d been born a boy, my name would have been Augusts (OW-goo-sts), after my Latvian great grandfather.
Congratulations on the new library! That’s terrific! My library is going to be moving to a new building at least twice the size and with much more cool features, but that won’t actually happen until 2019. Hooray for expanding library systems!
Hi! Congrats on the new library. I work at one in Texas and a new library is on our wishlist. Unfortunately it’s not in the budget even though we desperately need the space. Can I ask how yours was funded?
I am still getting sued for standing up for what I believe in.
So are a bunch of other good people I know.
The world sucks.
1) I am glad your wife (and you) are doing better after that kind of health scare. I went through a similar scary experience with my wife and I am a doctor. Didn’t help. Still scary as hell. Maybe scarier if I let my imagination get away from me.
2) Just finished another great week at Origins Game Fair playing board games with a few thousand of my closest friends. Highlights: My 13 year old son competed in the National Championship for Dice Masters and i competed in the World Championship. I also got to play an old Steve Jackson game, Illuminati, that I first started playing when I was a teenager.
I say this to say thank you for all you have done to get us to play more games. I know Tabletop hit a bump, but I am glad that it didn’t stop you from evangelizing for the hobby. I bought almost everything you showed me from Season 1 and now i was delighted to see that I already owned and loved half of what you are showing us this year. Keep up the good work.
3) I love your new red hat.
That memoir sounds good…I’ll have to check that out…
if you’re a fan of that sort of thing, the book ‘this is a call’ about dave grohl is pretty fantastic….
I found that it’s almost less a book about him, as it is a love song to the music scene of that time….(80’s and 90’s) and mainly
the underground music scene. It brought back a lot of memories for me of the indie scene I was in… underground punk shows, DIY, doing posters and zines etc….
Hi Wil. I had the strangest sensation when you started talking about Under the Big Black Sun because I’m actually an assistant to the editor who acquired that book at Da Capo Press and I got to work on it (to an extent) with John Doe and Tom DeSavia. It’s gotten a lot of great reviews and we’ve been thrilled to have it on our tremendous music list. Let me know if you ever want me to hook you up with any of our titles. In the meantime, thanks for the plug!
Oh cool! Thanks for your kind offer!
Thanks for the heads-up on AwesomeCon. We happened to be in the area (DD is doing college tours), so went on Saturday. In 8 hours we spent almost 4 hours in line, did three photo ops (met Wil Wheaton! Yay!), saw John Barrowman’s Q&A, and walked through maybe 1/3 of the booths. It was…quite something.
1) I just wanted you to know, that I love your show and hope for a fifth season to come. Because of your show, I found my most beloved game: Five Tribes. Thanks for that.
2) Your episode of FATE at TableTop is a great introduction for players who are not familiar with player empowerment. Thanks for that.
3) If you ever wand to visit the SPIEL fair in Essen (Germany) and need a place to stay, don’t hesitate to make contact with me, because I live nearby.
4) A little suggestion: If there is a fifth season of TableTop, maybe you could make a charity contest, so that one fan can play with you at the show.
Greetings from Germany
I am behind on them, but I’m glad Radio Free Burrito is back. I enjoy them as they’re very real and personal, but still like to harp to the days of classic DJ’s and why you played certain tracks. Keep it up, I’m a big fan of a lot of your work.
Actually, there is something I want you to know! I just finished the Ready Player One audio book, performed by you, and I just wanted to say thank for your fantastic performance. Your subtle voices and intonations made the book come alive. I am not-so-secretly hoping that you make a cameo in the upcoming movie, perhaps in the form of a campaign ad. Thank you so much, I look forward to listening to more of your audio books!
I want you to know that I got it late but just finished Dead Trees, and blew me away. In many ways, it reminded me of early Stephen King.
I suggest you seriously take a look at iPad Pro running iOS 11. It’s a game changer.
I wanted to respond to Radio Free Burrito Episode 49 – a nice pair of stories, but I’m a moron and couldn’t find a link on the page to comment there, so I came here instead. Firstly, I want you to know how happy it made me when I finally went back to the gym after a month of not going, went to look at my podcasts (which is what I do when I work out) to discover there were new episodes of RFB! It totally made the pain of going back to the gym worth the effort. I hope that there will be more episodes again soon, very selfishly because it makes me happy.
Secondly, your story about Lucien brought tears to my eyes. Not always a good thing when you’re running on a treadmill, but I made it through unscathed. I’m sorry that the people had pushed you to the verge of a panic attack, but in a small way glad that they did because otherwise you wouldn’t have had that unique and uplifting experience. We all need a Lucien in our lives.
Speaking of which, your discussion of kindness resonated very strongly with me, as a friend of mine has recently begun blogging about that very thing (http://kindism.ca/) and I have been trying very hard to live up to her very wise words. This isn’t intended as a plug or anything (I am in no way affiliated with the above site, just a friend of the author’s), I just thought it might be something you and your listeners/readers might be interested in.
Anyway, I wanted to thank you. You bring brightness to my life. I love Tabletop and it’s got me back into gaming. The thoughts you share on RFB are entertaining, enlightening and thought-provoking and I appreciate you and your work. I hope to see more of it.
Cheers.