Author: Wil

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

in which i spend a day as both father and a son

Posted on By Wil

My son Ryan came home for Thanksgiving, and before he left, my dad and I had planned to take him and his brother to play Frisbee golf.

When I got up today, it was fifty-seven degrees below zero, and the wind was gusting with gusto (HA HA HA), and I knew the conditions were not, shall we say, optimal for the playing of disc golf. Or being outside, for that matter.

I called my dad, and asked him if he wanted to go out to lunch, instead. He suggested that we go bowling, and then go to lunch.

Now, I am a terrible bowler, and not a huge fan, but I love doing things with my dad, and I love doing things with my boys, so bowling was more of an excuse to spend more time together than we would if we only went to lunch.

I put on the best bowling shirt I own and drove over to the bowling alley, where my first three frames went like this: 0-1, 0-3, X. I went on to win that game with something around 150. I told Twitter: I just won at bowling, and didn't have to break anyone up to do it. Today, life does not imitate art.

The second game, I bowled spares through the first 7 frames, but my dad was matching me and dropping a few strikes in there himself, so by the 10th frame, I needed to throw a turkey (two strikes followed by a spare, incidentally, is now called a TOFURKEY in the Wheaton Hall of Bowling Nomenclature.) I didn't pull it off, and my dad edged me for the win. I told Twitter: I shanked my last ball, and didn't want to break up my parents to win, so my dad edged me out to win the second game.

Ryan and Nolan had a blast, too, giving out high fives, sincere and mocking applause as appropriate, and issuing the required number of Team Homer and Lebowski references.

After bowling, we went to Lucky Baldwin's for some pub food. When I got home, I made this stupid cell phone video in my living room:

It was truly wonderful to have three generations of Wheaton Men together, and it meant the world to me to spend the day with people I love, as both father and son.

In this video, I say that I won at bowling, but the more I think about it, today I feel kind of like I won at life.

in which teenage me is a deer in the headlights

Posted on By Wil

Most of us are awkward teenagers; it's a class feature that stays with us until we level up to our twenties.

But most of you didn't have your awkward teenage years play out in front of the world, preserved for future generations to enjoy, thusly:

Awkward_teenaged_wil_wheaton_is_awkward

Talk about deer in the headlights! Everything about my awkward teenage years is captured in that photo: I'm nervous, self-conscious, and forcing a smile so whoever is taking this picture will please just go away as quickly as possible. I haven't looked in a teen magazine since I was, well, in them, (and I don't know if non-Bieber-specific ones ever exist) but I wonder if the people who are in them today (Bieber and otherwise) are photographed in the same harsh flash and unflattering awkwardness that seemed to be endemic to the teen magazines in the late 80s.

(Thanks … I think … to @jennabryson, who says, "Look what my mom found, @wilw – she cleaned out & sold my childhood dresser & this was inside" for sharing that photo.)

the circling hawks

Posted on By Wil

Two days in a row, in two different places, twenty miles apart, I’ve seen two hawks circle in the sky above me.

I know it’s simple coincidence, but I like to believe that they’re the same pair, soaring gracefully and beautifully on thermal currents just for me, so I don’t forget to appreciate the simple beauty of the world around me.

(Of course, it's also possible that they are stalking me, waiting for me to fall to the ground dead, because they’re from the future and know something that I don’t.)

I suppose the moral is: Don't forget to appreciate the simple beauty of the world around you, because you never know when deathhawks from the future will show up and ruin your day.

 

Short Fiction: 239 Sycamore St.

Posted on By Wil

While walking through my neighborhood yesterday, I wondered what actually went on behind those manicured lawns and drawn curtains. I wondered how much I really knew my neighbors.

This is what my brain spat out:

Ian missed living in a city that didn’t keep any secrets from him, where everything was out in the open: junkies, hookers, pan handlers, rich snobs and bad cops. You knew where you stood with everyone in the city, and everyone in the city knew where they stood with you.

In the suburbs, though, everyone had a secret. Two houses up, the Doyles were overdue on three months’ of bills, but they kept paying the gardener to come and keep up appearances. Across the street, Mrs. Canton practically begged every delivery boy who came to the door to fuck her, except on Sunday when she went door to door, passing out bible tracts. Next door, Doctor and Mrs. Thompson argued quietly and intensely almost every night about their son, who they’d put into a group home for troubled youth.

Day after day, Ian smiled and waved to his neighbors, while recording all of their secrets in journals and photo albums.

When the police finally found the bodies buried in the loose dirt of his basement, his neighbors were shocked: “He was quiet,” Doctor Thompson said. “He kept to himself,” Mrs. Thompson added.

“He never left his garbage cans out. He kept a lovely lawn,” The Doyles told investigators.

When the handsome young reporter from Channel 6 came to her door, Mrs. Canton smiled carefully and said, “Would you like to come inside and talk about it over a cup of coffee?” 

I worked on it a little bit yesterday, and again this morning, mostly focusing it on the beats I wanted to put together. I'll be honest: I'm nervous to release fiction, even short fiction like this (just 239 words) to the world without even showing it to an editor, first … but the point of this isn't to be perfect, it's to be creative. So, writers who are afraid to show their work to readers: if I can do this, so can you.

NB: My neighbors are actually quite lovely … as far as I know.

i got a new t-shirt today …

Posted on By Wil

I did a bunch of writing this morning, but I still don't have a monster to unleash on the villagers. I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, it's kind of frustrating, and my goddamn inner critic is screaming at me that I'm terrible and it's stupid and they're all going to laugh at me, which doesn't help even a tiny bit. Don't worry, I'll get over it.

Still, it was enough that I felt like I'd earned the right to make an X on the calendar in the "Creative" box, which is kind of the whole point right now. To continue the running comparison, I'm still just trying to make it around the track without throwing up, which is fine. 

I also got a stupid idea for a stupid cell phone video, and made this:

Context, for the seven of you who don't know what the Alot is.

I also customized my band in Rock Band 3 (I bet you didn't know that a large part of writing is not actually writing, but doing all sorts of other things when you should be writing and calling it "letting my mind wander" or something like that), which could also be considered creative. We're three hot girls and me, and we're called Abby Nermal. Our logo is a cute cat who has swallowed a fish that glows inside its tummy.