All posts by Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

Eureka: This One Time At Space Camp

In a few hours, I will be picked up and taken to the set for my last day on Eureka. Though I've known this day was coming for a couple of weeks, and I've been trying to prepare myself for it, I'm not ready. I don't want this to be over. I don't want to say goodbye to my friends.

Monday, we had our last day of work in Cafe Diem. At the end of the day, Chris Gauthier and Nial Matter were wrapped for the entire series, along with some other actors who are [SPOILER]. I stood there, next to Neil and Felicia, and applauded for them. Then, without warning, I began to cry. It's real. It's really over. We're really done. In two days, I'll finish my last scene, and the first AD will call out, "That is a series wrap for Wil Wheaton," and I'll cry again.

I'm glad to feel sad, as strange as that may sound. I know I've said this about some other things, but it's true: I'm happy to be sad when something is ending, because if I wasn't, it would mean that nothing good happened that I will miss.

I will miss everything about Eureka. I'm going to be a wreck tonight.

So let's talk a bit about This One Time, At Space Camp, shall we? It's going to be Spoileriffic, so you have been warned (or you've already been spoiled, because you follow me on Twitter. Sorry about that.)

I learned to ride a recumbant bike for this episode. It was challenging, but not as difficult as I expected, and ended up being quite a lot of fun. I also think that "May the best man BLAH BLAH BLAH" is my favorite Parrish line of the series.

Wasn't Aaron Douglas magnificent? I loved seeing him play totally against his usual type, and I loved the way he interacted with the kids.

We talked a lot about how douchey Parrish should be in this episode. I wanted to let him be as supremely arrogant as possible, because he's convinced that all of this is just a formality at this point. I wanted him to lift himself up as high as he possibly could, so the fall at the end of the episode would be that much more brutal for him (and awesome for the audience, who are almost certainly cheering for Holly and Fargo at this point, if we've all done our jobs.) 

I watched the episode with Neil and Chris in Neil's trailer during breaks in filming, and when Fargo makes it but Parrish doesn't, Neil pointed at sad Parrish on the television, and did a Nelson Muntz HA HA right at him and then at me. It was really, really funny.

Can we just take a moment to marvel at how incredible Wallace Shawn was, too? I mean, holy shit was he incredible. We're so lucky he is part of the show, and you guys haven't even seen the best of it, yet.

Weeping for Titan,

#TeamParrish

How was your PAX?

I’m on set for Eureka, tethering to the Internets through a mobile hotspot, using my iPad to post with the Typepad app.

This is, as they say, less than optimal for blogging. However, I wanted to put a post up for PAX stuff, until I can write a proper post in the next few days.

I had a wonderful time, didn’t get sick, played games with friends, and was given some truly epic gifts, including a Cape Of Dicks (pictures forthcoming). There was also a D&D game for the ages.

Please use this as a PAX thread, to share your PAX stories and pictures. I’ll add my own as soon as I can.

3652 days later…

So, while I'm putting together the last few things I need to take to PAX, I realized I forgot to mention something: ten years ago yesterday, I started my blog at WWdN*. Ten years ago today, Metafilter declared that it was "lame,"** and most of the Internet was really shitty to me about the whole thing***. I was so sad and hurt by how cruel people were to me back then, I almost gave up before I'd even started… but for some reason, I was stubborn and just kept going.

I'm glad I made it across what Ira Glass calls The Gap, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be going to PAX (or doing any of the wonderful things I get to do these days) if I hadn't. Thank you to everyone who has shared the journey with me; I hope to continue earning your time and support for the next ten years.

*I'm going back there, eventually. I'm just, uh, kind of busy at the moment and haven't gotten around to it.

**In fairness to MeFi of ten years ago, it was kind of lame … but we all have to start somewhere, and I recall being judged not on the merits of whatever I was doing then, but on what I had been told to do in 1987. It seemed unfair to me. And holy fuck the haters were everywhere. When I was an insecure 29 year-old, struggling to make ends meet, that stuff really got to me.

***Thanks to a reader, who I'll keep anonymous, for reminding me. I'd completely forgotten.

Ryan and I totally made this.

 

Wheaton's Own California Pale Ale. Hosted by imgur.com

It's our beer! Click to embiggen at imgur

Today, at long last, the beer Ryan and I made together was ready to drink. We got on the phone and opened our first bottles together …. and it totally tastes like beer! It's sort of a slightly-hoppier version of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which is pretty much exactly what we were going for. I'll write all about this tomorrow, because right now, I'm going to go enjoy the beer that my son and I made, together, and try damn hard not to miss him.

bring me your tired, your poor, your polyhedral dice…

It's 4pm, and I've been awake for 12 hours, on almost 5 hours of wake-up-every-thirty-minutes-so-I-don't-oversleep, uh, sleep. Truly, I live an exciting life that doesn't afford me the opportunity to get much quality reszezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

*thunk*

*snore*

*drool*

Ah, that was nice. Okay, I'm back.

I have a request, which I hope is reasonable, for those of you who come to see me at PAX: I'm continuing to test the theory that it isn't possible to have too many gaming dice. I left GenCon last year with about 10 pounds of dice, and while it's certainly a lot, I can say with confidence that it isn't even close to being too many.

If you come to see me at PAX, and you have a gaming die or two that you're willing to part with, would you bring it to me? At GenCon, everyone who gave me dice had some kind of awesome story to go with it, which was a delightful and unexpectedly wonderful bonus. And I went home with ten pounds of dice. I'm not saying that GenCon set the bar very high, PAX, but that's exactly what I'm saying.*

I would love it if you helped me get a little bit closer to making this a reality, PAX:

See you on Friday!!

*Challenge accepted?

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