All posts by Wil

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

about that recursive wil wheaton t-shirt…

I'm guessing a non-zero number of you have seen this picture:

Recursive_wheaton_t_shirt_by_basic_instructions 

I further imagine that some of you have seen the animated version. (Warning! May cause seizures, nausea, trips to Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.)

Like all awesome things, this comes with a story.

Paul (of Paul and Storm) texted me one day and said, "Storm and I wanted to give you a surprise gift, but you have to grant permission for it to be made. You're going to get an e-mail asking for permission to use your image. I promise you that it's going to be for something awesome, so please say yes."

I am very good at following directions, so when the e-mail arrived, I did what Paul asked, and then waited for the arrival of a pen with a cartoon version of me on it that, when clicked, revealed my epic wang.

Thus began a saga wherein Paul would say, "Hey, go get your mail. Something awesome is waiting for you."

I would reply, "I'm working on my keynote. I'll pick it up when I get some time."

About 45 days later, I finally picked it up. I opened it in my office, saw myself looking back at me from infinity, and couldn't believe that I'd waited so long to pick it up. (On the other hand, it was a wonderful reward for completing the first draft of my keynote.)

I called Anne into my office, and revealed it in the usual manner, by slowly lifting it up to my chin and showing it off.

"Oh my god," Anne said. "It's you … and you … and you … and you …"

"All the way to infinity," I said.

We shared a Sci-Five, to commemorate the occasion. You know, like you do.

I wore this shirt to Emerald City Comicon, where it was photographed a few times, always to much laughter and occasional applause. I wore it again at PAX, where this now-famous picture was taken by Paul.

This picture has been sent around the Internets in all the usual places, first appearing on Reddit, then Fark, then Epic Win, and today it got to Digg. It's been pretty awesome and a lot of fun to see it compared to the Infamous Clown Sweater and the Velvet Wesley (and its own recursion), but I feel sad that the man responsible for actually making the thing isn't getting the attention and congratulations that I believe he deserves.

I intend to correct that, right now:

The Recursive Wheaton (also known as the Wheaton Singularity) is an Infini-tee, created by Scott Meyer, who also creates an amazing and wonderful webcomic called Basic Instructions. This is the strip where the Infini-Tee was born. I understand that, once a year or so, Scott will accept commissions for your very own Inifini-Tee, if you ask him nicely (and throw him some shiny gold rocks, or a chest of electrum pieces.)

I come across cool stuff online all the time, and I always like to know where it came from. I don't know if Scott even cares, but speaking as a creator, it's really important to me that credit is given where it is due. If you see this, Scott, thanks for making such an awesome T-shirt and entertaining webcomic. And thanks to Paul and Storm for giving me such an epic gift.

from the vault: april’s fool

Every year, I dream up some epic April Fool's thing, realize how much work it would take to do it well, and end up just waiting to see whatever Think Geek does.

This year, I ended up doing something fairly (hey, my fingers just automatically typed fail while my brain was thinking fair. That's funny.) Anyway, I ended up doing something fairly quick and silly. On Twitter, I posted: Dbrentspiner I'm grabbing lunch with levar and frakes before the super-secret TNG reunion show table read. You want to join us?

I wish I'd had enough characters to add, "Just call me on LeVar's cell, because my battery is almost dead," but I think it was pretty funny on its own, so consider this paragraph the Director's Cut, I guess.

For those of you keeping score, replies were about 80% "I see what you did there", "5% HA HA YOUR STUPID AND CANT USE TEH TWITTER", and 5% "Dude, that's so awesome I ca– oh. FFFFFFUUUUUUUUU." The final 10% replied to Pat Buchanan.

And because it's funny to me, here's something from behind the scenes: the first time I tried to send a "fake" DM to Brent, Twitter sent a real one, so I had to send another one to tell him what I was doing. He replied, "Where are you? We're already here, waiting for you at the Paramount Commissary." Brent, as he has since 1987, wins.

So this is all prologue to the one actual April Fool's prank I ever pulled since I started blogging, back in the good old days when digital watches were a pretty neat idea.

Reaching into the vault, I pulled out this, from Chapter 8 of Just a Geek:

"Creativity is the absence of fear," a friend of mine liked to say. After Vegas and The Galaxy Ball, a lot of the fear that Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn't A Mistake and The Voice of Self Doubt relied upon to survive was gone, and my creativity blossomed as a result. When I wrote in my weblog, I produced entries that were genuinely funny, and entertaining . . . to me at least. Things like:

10 March 2002

Make it burn!

As I write this, Anne is behind me, doing some workout video tape, and I can only hear the breathless voice of the girl who is leading the workout saying, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, doesn't that feel good? Don't stop, you're almost there *pant* *pant*"

If I didn't know any better, I'd think she was watching "Debbie Does 7 Minute Abs."

But seriously folks, try the fish, and be sure to stick around for the comedy and magic stylings of Johnny Funnypants! I hear the late show gets a little naughty.

I was overflowing with creative energy, and on April first, I pulled a notorious April Fool's joke.

01 April 2002

Good News, Bad News

Good morning, everyone and happy April! I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Okay, let's get straight to business: here's the bad news: the entire site has crashed and we can't figure out why. I don't know when the crash happened, or why, because I was offline all weekend, but I'm working on it. I suppose that if you can read this, it means things are working again, which will bring us to our second bad news: I tried to upgrade to Movable Type 2.0 on Friday and it broke. Goddammit! I swear, I am fucking cursed. I know what went wrong and I'm going to start pleading with the authors for some help. They seem like cool people, so hopefully they will be willing to give me a hand. *sigh*

On to the good news! Oh, this is such amazingly good news and it's been so hard to keep this to myself, but there have been contract talks and all sorts of negotiations and all that . . . but I can finally make the big big announcement:

The official announcement will be made on Thursday, but I've been given permission by Paramount's hired goons to make the announcement today.

In four weeks, I will be joining the cast of Enterprise in a recurring role!

The details are still being worked out, but basically what they plan to do is have Wesley use his Time Traveler abilities to move through space and time to the NX-01. He'll be more like the dark, troubled Wesley of “The First Duty” and “Final Mission” and less like the gee-whiz Wesley of days gone by.

Here's a little history: Nemesis is testing very well and Paramount is extremely excited that this lame little website has generated such a huge following. I guess some people started a letter-writing campaign, without my knowledge and Paramount listened. I spent most of last week on conference calls with Rick and Brannon, as well as some of the brass at Paramount, working out the details, making sure that Wesley will not be saving the NX-01 all the time. 

*grin*

I'll be in 8 of 22 episodes for the two seasons, with an option to renegotiate at the end of the second season. I'm only recurring to allow me the freedom to participate in other shows, and pursue other projects.

I'm so freakin’ excited, I don't even know what else to say. I can't believe that I'm going to be working on “Star Trek” again and I can't believe that I'm going to be working on Stages 8 and 9 again.

I have to go to a fitting right now. I'll write more when I have more details. I hope everyone has a great day!!

The Internet bought it completely. My announcement was posted on mega sites Slashdot and Fark (who were in on the joke), and the "news" was carried by many Sci-Fi newswires (who were not). I had very carefully crafted the news, working it out over the course of several of days, adding in difficult-to-verify yet plausible details, like the testing status of Nemesis (they didn't even have a rough cut at the time) and talking with the producers about the nature of Wesley's character upon his return. 

Minutes after I'd posted the prank, the e-mails began to pour in. Hundreds of Trekkies joined the regular readers of my website in expressing the joy I would have felt had it been real. The genuine happiness and kindness, pouring in from people all over the world, was the opposite of the reaction I expected, and as the happy e-mails piled up, I began to feel like I was misleading these people, and taking advantage of their good will. By the afternoon, I felt awful, and I decided to set the record straight.

    April Fool's!

Well, most of you have figured it out, by now, but the truth is . . . 

 . . . I'm not gonna be on Enterprise. Even as a computer voice, or within the secret, dirty, late-night thoughts of Capt. Archer.

I hope everyone takes this in good humor. Lots of people sent really kind and sweet congratulatory messages and I actually feel pretty badly for fooling such nice people. All the idiots who thought it was a really good idea to fill my inbox with “Wesley is gonna ruin Enterprise” crap should get a life and direct any further comments to /dev/null.

To be honest I was surprised at how many people were wishing me well; I was expecting the Kill Wesley Crowd to come out instead.

I think the greatest highlight of the day came when my mom called Anne while I was out..

The conversation went something like this:

Mom: Do you have something to tell me?

Anne: Uh, no.

Mom: Do you have some big news about Wil?

Anne: Oh, that. Uh, what day is today?

Mom: It's Monday!

Anne: Right. And the date is . . . ?

Mom: It's April Fir- OH! Damn you!

Heh. I guess my dad was all pissed off, stomping around my parent's house because I didn't tell them myself and he “had to read it on Wil's fucking website!"

Thanks go to the Frodo Crew(tm) who helped me take this scheme from stupid idea to stupid fruition: Spudnuts, jbay, JSc, Roughy, Bobby The Mat and Greeny. Also to /. and FARK, for getting on board.

All those people really did want me to succeed and they really were happy for me. The joy that I thought I would have felt, had I been given a chance to do Star Trek again, became real and undeniable when I realized that I had redefined myself with my weblog. Some people would still see me as That Washed Up Guy Who Used To Be An Actor When He Was A Kid, but many more people, including myself, saw me as That Guy With The Cool Weblog Who Is Just A Geek Like The Rest Of Us.

It's so weird to look back on the time that is covered in Just A Geek, because my life has changed so profoundly since then. I can so clearly recall thinking, "This will be great. All these people will be angry and go on and on about how I'll ruin Star Trek because they hate Wesley so much, and then I can be all, HA HA YOU GOT MAD FOR NOTHING IT WAS ALL A JOKE HA HA." It never occurred to me that anyone would be legitimately happy for me, let alone excited about the whole thing.

And you know what? Every single time I read anything from Just A Geek, I really want to do the Obligatory One Man Show called "Wil Wheaton is Just A Geek" where I distill the entire thing into 90 minutes or two hours, and perform it. I've done a lot of writing since I wrote this book, but it still means more to me than I can express in words (or pictures, which isn't really saying much because I can't draw for shit.)

Finally, this is probably a good time to mention that you can get your very own copy of Just A Geek: Teh Audio Book from my store at Lulu. As a bonus, if you buy it today and enter the code APRILFOOLS at checkout, you'll save 10%.

Happy April, everyone. The First Of May is just one month away…

one of my favorite moments from PAX East

This is what happens when Paul and Storm and I Get Excited And Make Things:

I forget precisely how this whole thing came together, but I remember Paul showing me the video, which prompted some sort of "this is the most amazing thing I've seen since the last time I said that" response from me. He and Storm and I ended up talking about how we wanted to do something like this for w00tstock, then realizing that, duh, PAX was just around the corner.

Storm wrote up the choreography, Paul did the graphics and bought the suits (for a total of $18), and I picked up the wigs. We rehearsed the whole thing about four times in the hour before we went out on stage, and I was really worried that I would screw it up, because I am not so much with the "staying on time when you're dancing" thing.

I love that you can hear the people around the cameraman in this video sort of go through stages from WTF to OMG to LOL. When we finished it, I got the sense that half the audience got the reference, half didn't, but they were all entertained by it.

I don't know if we'll ever do this again, because a huge part of it being amusing is not knowing that it's coming, but it was insanely fun, and I'm glad we took the risk. I don't know how we'll top this at Prime, so I guess I'll be down in the lab working on something.

in which the case for buying an iPad is almost made

When Apple announced the iPad, I was so unimpressed and bored with it, I couldn't even muster a "meh." It seemed to solve a problem that didn't exist, and while I kept waiting for Apple to make the case for it, I don't think they ever did.

I mean, if I'm going to spend five hundred fucking dollars on a device, the company had better make a very compelling case for why I need it. They should also not tie it into the worst mobile service provider in the history of known space, but I didn't even get that far on the decision tree, on account of it costing five hundred fucking dollars and just being a big iPod Touch.

I'm not knocking anyone who thinks it's awesome and shiny and a must-have precious, I'm just saying that at the moment, the iPad (oh, what a truly unfortunate name) isn't for me.

However, I saw an article this morning that made the first move toward a compelling case for the iPad: boardgames. I'm not talking about checkers and chess or even Monopoly … I'm talking Ogre, Car Wars, Settlers, Battlelore, Talisman, Arkham Horror, Dungeon … I think you get my drift.

It would be incredible to play boardgames that look like boardgames on a tablet device. You know that awesome Carcassonne game on Xbox Live? Like that. Imagine how awesome it would be to play Car Wars on a tablet: it would look just like the Deluxe Edition, with counters and a map grid and everything, but all the math and DCs would be done by the computer – unless you really wanted to overlay a turn key, I guess. You'd never have to worry about the dog crashing into the table and knocking your vehicles around, you could play against an AI, and you could flip over to another window to go shopping at Uncle Albert's, all the way back (or, uh, forward) to the fantastic 2037 catalog.

If I could take books, and movies, and boardgames I love with me when I went on trips (even if it was just a commuter train trip for an hour) then I would have to make a substantially more difficult saving throw versus WANT. Right now, I just have to roll a positive number, with a +20 bonus and no chance of critical failure.

in which wil feels homesick

One of the themes of my PAX keynote was Welcome Home, which everyone who had been to a PAX before could understand. For the first timers, though, I wanted to help them understand exactly why it is we say that, so I said:

All of the things that make us weird and strange in the real world? Those things that people tease us for loving, those things that we seem to care about more than everyone else at work or school? Those things make us who we are, and when we’re at PAX, we don’t have to hide them or explain them or justify them to anyone; instead, we celebrate and share them.

We have come here this weekend, and we will go to PAX Prime in Seattle in August, and we will be back here in a year, and back there next year, and the year after, and the year after that, because just playing games isn’t nearly as fun as playing them – together – surrounded by thousands of people who love them as much as you do. The next 72 hours are going to go by faster than you realize, so make sure you stop and look around a few times every day and appreciate this time. It will be over before you know it. 

I'm glad I took my own advice, because the weekend flew by and was over before I knew it. I'm truly grateful that I carved out some time for myself, and spent nearly all of it playing in the classic arcade and classic console rooms. I even played 4-player Warlords on Atari for the first time ever (2-player being the best we could do in the 80s, since nobody I knew had 4 paddle controllers – well, two controllers, since … aw, forget it. If you know what I mean, I don't have to explain it to you and if you don't, it's not that important.) and made it farther in Dragon's Lair than I think I ever did when I was a kid.

I was completely exhausted by the end of the day on Sunday – but not sick! HA! HA! I WIN AT NOT GETTING SICK AT PAX! – and as I sat on my bed in the hotel, zoning out at something stupid on television while my HP and Manna bars slowly climbed out of the red, I began to feel a familiar sense of ennui. I feel this way every time a PAX is over: a sense of sadness and loss that I've never really been able to identify more eloquently than "post-PAX blues." A fellow PAX attendee e-mailed me this morning, though, and summed up the feeling in one word: Homesickness. I'm home, yet I feel homesick. I know that may sound weird, but it perfectly sums up how I feel today.

I spent a lot of this weekend feeling grateful, and that feeling continues today: I'm grateful for my friendly local game shop, I'm grateful for my game group, and I'm especially grateful that I only have to wait about 3700 hours for PAX Prime, instead of the usual 8760. 

Uh, not that I'm counting down, or anything. (Except that I am.)

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