Author: Wil

My sound guy, Matt, helped me take off my mic. My wardrobe stylist, Kristin, helped me out of my jacket, while my makeup artist, Molly, handed me a wipe thing to get my makeup off my face.

Anne stood up from the audience and said, “we have something for you.”

“Dude, I don’t want anyone making a big deal about my birthday,” I said, “especially at work.”

“Well, it’s too late. I got you Batman cupcakes.”

From behind the green screen, my stage manager, Roger, handed me a chocolate cupcake with a batman cookie on top of it. It was pretty awesome.

“Holy shit that’s amazing and I’m so glad you did this!” I said. “Please don’t sing.”

“Nobody is going to sing. We also got enough cupcakes for the whole audience and crew, too,” Anne said.

I turned to the audience and told them. Someone shouted out that they knew, because they’d been let in on the secret while I was changing my wardrobe earlier.

I walked out the stage door, and saw boxes of cupcakes set up on a table. For the next few minutes, I thanked every person who came to the show, and handed them a cupcake and a Sharknado toy that our friends at Funko provided to us to give away. My crew and the show staff gathered around and wished me happy birthday, Kristin gave me some Star Wars Vans, Molly gave me some craft beer, and my writers gave me a card that was accompanied by even more beer. My people just get me, you guys.

After I changed into my normal clothes, Anne and I drove up to Santa Barbara — well, Anne drove while I drifted in and out of sleep — to spend a couple days for my birthday. Traffic was surprisingly light, and we got to our hotel early enough to watch the gorgeous sunset over the Pacific Ocean. We had a wonderful dinner, shared a fantastic bottle of wine, and fell asleep before 10pm.

12 hours of sleep later, we woke up. After five exhausting days at Comicon and a taping of The Wil Wheaton Project, I finally felt rested.

“Happy birthday,” Anne said to me as we stretched and tried to convince ourselves that getting out of bed was a thing we should probably do.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s totally my birthday.”

“All day long!”

We had breakfast, and then took a long walk on the beach. There weren’t too many people out, and most of the people who were there had adorable dogs running around. Anne and I are dog people, so we got to stop several times to throw a ball or scratch a scruffy neck.

“You know what I think would be awesome?” I said, as we reached a sea wall a couple miles away and began our walk back to the hotel. Before Anne could answer, I continued, “I think we should go to the spa and get massages.”

“That’s the best idea you’ve ever had,” she said.

“I know. I’m kind of amazing.”

We got back to the hotel,found out that we could book into the couple’s massage room, and got 80-minute massages in a beautiful room with windows open to the ocean, the sound of gently breaking waves carried in on a soft ocean breeze.

After our massage, we went back to our room to get ready for dinner … but first I had to take a nap, because when you’re 42, that’s how you spend your birthday.

I woke up two hours later, and got ready for dinner, which would be at one of my favorite restaurants in town. I looked for my nice shirt in the suitcase, and discovered that, in my exhaustion a day earlier, I had forgotten to pack it.

“I’m not as amazing as I said I was earlier. I forgot to bring my nice shirt.”

“It’s okay,” Anne said, “the restaurant isn’t fancy.”

“But I wanted to look nice for you.”

“I don’t care how you look,” she said.

“Even if I look like a hobo?” I said.

“You can’t look like a hobo, because you also forgot to pack your hobo bindle.”

“Dammit!” I pulled on a black t-shirt that was at least more appropriate than the Tabletop T-shirt I had been wearing.

We got to dinner, and it was awesome. I had all the food I wanted, and the restaurant even gave me a chocolate souffle with a candle in it, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY WIL written on the plate in chocolate. I’m always excited when someone spells my name correctly, and then I was even more excited when I found out that they knew how to spell my name because the servers were fans of The Wil Wheaton Project. I blew out the candle, and wished for the show to get picked up for more episodes, because I love working with the people who make it happen.

We went back to the hotel, watched the show I’d taped the day before, and almost immediately fell asleep afterward. We slept for another 10 hours, and took another long walk on the beach before we got back into the car to go home.

It was an absolutely perfect, beautiful day. There were some high clouds, and the sun was very warm, but the breeze off the ocean kept us cool. We were so happy and content, we didn’t want to leave, and by the time we got back to the hotel we realized that we’d walked almost eight miles.

On the way home, as we neared Ventura and were about to turn inland, leaving the ocean views to memory, I said to my wife, “This was the best birthday trip, ever. I feel totally rested, completely relaxed, and like I got all my hit points back. I really needed this. Thank you for making it happen.”

“You’re welcome. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I spent five days at Comicon this year, and discovered a new level of exhaustion and fatigue every day, surpassing the level I’d discovered the day before. By the time I was finally on the train back home, I had reached a point of burn out that I never though I’d experience: I pretty much don’t want to go to Comicon any more, because it’s stopped being fun for me.

Wednesday, we got on a much-delayed train (tragically, a northbound train hit a woman up near Ventura, so the southbound train was delayed by almost three hours) and headed down for Hop-Con at Stone’s Liberty Station. We celebrated the launch of w00tstout 2.0, and tapped some awesome limited collaboration brews, including my own white sage IPA, called the Tao of Sage. Much fun was had, and I drank as much beer as I’ve ever had in my life. I’m not sure how it got away from me so quickly (I suspect it was the 13.5% w00tstout on cask with s’mores) but my wife had to literally roll me into bed, because I sort of overdid it. Lesson learned, I woke up Thursday morning without a hangover (Anne says she kept giving me water) and vowed to institute Operation: Beer Just Drink One for the rest of the con (a quest I completed, I’m happy to note).

Thursday night, we did w00tstock 6.0. It was a great show, with some standout performances by Mega Ran, Marian Call, and Thomas Lennon. Craig Ferguson even came by to make jokes.

I always want to perform something new at w00tstock, but I’ve been so busy with The Wil Wheaton Project, I haven’t had time to write anything that isn’t specifically for the show. I had some stuff in my pocket that hadn’t been performed for w00tstock before, though, so I went with my story Blue Light Special, from The Happiest Days of Our Lives. It felt like a little bit of a cheat to me, but the audience loved it, and I had a hell of a good time performing it.

After the show was over, we tried to go to the Geek & Sundry lounge, but upon discovering that the rest of the world was there, in a room that I’m fairly sure was 500° Kelvin and 812% humidity, we ended up going back to our hotel, crashing into bed, and sleeping for almost 10 hours.

This was a theme for me at Comicon this year, and it’s probably the only reason I was able to survive it (emotionally and physically): I didn’t stay up too late, I didn’t overdo anything, and I made sure that I got to sleep as much as I needed, on every night that it was possible to do that.

Friday morning, I went down to the convention center and actually went inside for the first time. I was a surprise guest on the Big Bang Theory writer’s panel, and we showed a trailer for the imaginary film Serial Apeist 2: Monkey See, Monkey Kill. The audience loved it, and they really seemed to be happy that I was there, which made me feel good.

Friday night, I took a crew from The Wil Wheaton Project to Syfy’s Sharknado 2 party, where we made some funny stuff together. Some of it made it into this week’s show, if you’re into that.

Sidebar: How much fun was Sharknado 2?! I love that everyone in the film’s universe just accepts that there can be a massive shark-infested weather event, and then stuff happens. I also noticed that, according to some Twitter thing, I was the second most prolific Sharknado 2 Twittering person, behind the official account. I’m, uh, I’m not going to try to pretend that I’m not proud of that.

Saturday, we went back to the convention center, where Anne did a signing at Cupcake Quarterly, a really cool nerdy pin-up magazine that our friend publishes. After dropping her off, I tried my best to get through the con floor to visit some of my friends, and this is where I discovered that, maybe, I just can’t enjoy Comicon like I used to.

I realize that I’m on television every week, and even though that audience is smaller than we all hoped it would be (turns out promotion off the network is kind of important), that audience is maybe, um, oversampled at Comicon. There’s also the whole Big Bang Theory thing, and Tabletop is pretty popular with my people … so on the one hand, it was really exciting and awesome to meet so many people who love the shows I make as much as I do, and I tried to take pictures and stuff with as many people as I could, but I quickly learned that there’s no such thing as “just one quick selfie”.  I hate telling people no when they ask, but if I said yes to one person, that person quickly became ten people, and then a small crowd formed. I got a little panicky once, when I was literally surrounded, but everyone I interacted with was kind and understanding, and with the help of my friend Shawn, I was able to make it across the floor to visit with some people I don’t get to see as often as I’d like.

So, before I continue: I know this is a #firstworldproblem and a #celebrityproblem and whatever else you want to say about it. I get that, and I know that from a business position it’s an amazing problem to have. From a human being perspective, though, it’s a bummer, because I couldn’t wander the floor and look at art and talk to comic creators, because whenever I stopped  I got sort of mobbed, even with my friend doing his best to keep an eye on me. I suppose I could be one of those people with a couple of security goons, but that seems even worse. If I do go back next year, I think I’ll have to cosplay in a full mask or something, which is weird, but at least I’ll get a chance to maybe pick up some cool art and books.

After Anne was done signing, I did a quick interview for Rotten Tomatoes, and then we spent a little bit of time at a really nice cocktail party that Bill Prady has every year. Finally, I got to see a lot of my friends all in one place, and that was really nice.

Before we knew it, it was time for the Geek & Sundry panel, which I had to leave early because I had to get up to a theatre a couple miles away from the convention center to perform in the Welcome To Night Vale / Thrilling Adventure Hour crossover show.

“You look exhausted,” Ben Blacker (Thrilling Adventure co-writer) said to me when he saw me backstage.

“I am,” I said, “and I’m soaked through because of the humidity, but I’m really glad to be here for this show.”

I looked around the backstage area, and took in the curtain, the lights, the prop boxes, and all of the things that I only see backstage in a theater. I heard some of the other actors running their lines out on the stage, and flipped through my script to catch up to them.

“I’m so happy to be here, though, because I feel like I’m back in my element as a performer, back where I belong, back where I’m doing actual work, instead of being ‘that guy from TV’.” I wiped sweat off my face and took a deep breath. “It’s like I’ve been doing hundreds of performances for an audience of one for the last few days, and I’m looking forward to doing one performance for an audience of whatever fits in this theater.”

“I get that,” he said.

“I feel like it’ll be rejuvenating,” I said.

“That’s awesome,” he said, “and you’re up on the next page.”

I walked up to the mic and joined the rehearsal. It took me a few tries to find the character, but with the help of Ben Blacker and his co-writer Ben Acker, I brought the omniscient galactic being S’Tonge to life in a way that was incredibly fun and deeply satisfying. And not for nothing, I got to be in Welcome to Night Vale and The Thrilling Adventure Hour on the same stage in the same show, and I never thought I’d get to do that.

When the show was over, I thanked everyone for having me, found my wife, and went back to our hotel.

“I have found a new level of tired that I didn’t know existed,” I said, in the elevator.

“You said that yesterday,” she said.

“I know.” I said.

We went to sleep, and got up early Sunday morning so I could make it to Nerd HQ for a panel with Felicia. After that panel ended, Anne and I were rushed to the train station in a freaking golf cart motorcade — for reals — and a few hours later, were back in our house. The dogs were extremely excited to see us, and even the cats couldn’t pretend that they didn’t give a fuck about us for very long.

I unpacked my suitcase and repacked it with clean clothes, because the next day, Anne took me away for my birthday, which I’ll write about later.