Author: Wil

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

the obligatory phoenix comicon schedule post

Posted on By Wil

My official and complete schedule for the Phoenix Comicon has been finalized and posted. It looks an awful lot like this:

Wil Wheaton Presents: The Awesome Hour! – Fri at 4:30 pm
Wil Wheaton RockBand – Fri 10:00 pm at the Hyatt
Felicia Day & Wil Wheaton: The Guild  - Sat at noon
Star Trek: TNG Reunion  - Sat at 4:30 pm
Geek Prom with Felicia Day- Sat 10:00 pm at the Hyatt
Super Happy Fun Time with John and Wil – Sunday at 3:00 pm

In addition, there is a non-zero chance that I'll drop into the Eureka panel on Sunday, and I think the con has me doing at least one of those photo-op things, too.

When I'm not at one of the scheduled events, I'll be at a table in the exhibitor's hall, signing autographs and stuff. I will, as usual, sign just about anything reasonable you bring me, though I reserve the right to determine what does and does not fall under that description. For your convenience, I'm bringing some 8x10s, Memories of the Future, Sunken Treasure, and a small number of Happiest Days of Our Lives Special Editions. 

I'm really looking forward to this con, and all of the panels I'm doing, especially the TNG reunion panel. In fact, thinking about that panel inspired quite a bit of bloggery, and I just cut 2000 words out of this post, because I thought it deserved its own entry, which will post in a little bit.

The Empire Strikes Back (1950)

Posted on By Wil

I think this may be the most impressive Star Wars parody/tribute/whatever I've ever seen, and I've seen some truly great ones.

This makes me want to do a 13 episode webseries, probably serialized 3 minutes at a time, that's entirely done in the 1950s Sci-Fi style, with locations at Vasquez Rocks, sets that look like the inside of a submarine, with square-jawed heroes and bullet-bra'd heroines. 

From the Vault: “Foster is down!”

Posted on By Wil

Today is the first day in a week that I didn't get up at 4am to go to work. I really wish I could say what I've been working on, because it's awesome, but I have to keep that information in a secure location for at least a few more days.

It was pretty great that I got to sleep late – I rolled out of bed at 8, despite my efforts to convince my brain that it should shut the fuck up and sleep while it can – and it was especially nice to see that my dogs were so happy to see me.

Both of the dogs met me at my bedroom door and proceeded to follow me all around the house while I made breakfast and stuff. I texted Anne: The dogs must have missed me, because they've been following me everywhere since I got out of bed 20 minutes ago." She texted back "Oh, I didn't feed them before I left." I replied, "Awwww DAMMIT!"

It's been a pretty great day already, what with the sleeping in and basically earning a day off, but it's about to get a whole lot better, since Red Dead Redemption came out today, and I can play a whole bunch of it without feeling guilty.

Some of you may know that I'm a character in RDR … now all of you know that I'm a character in RDR … and it's always fun and weird to play a game where I can hear my own voice come out of one of the characters. Thinking about that while I made my coffee this morning reminded me of this post from the vault about a character I played in Ghost Recon 2 many years ago:

I play David Foster in Ghost Recon 2. I've been waiting for months to play it (ever since I recorded my first few lines of dialogue), and last night, I finally got my chance to try it out.

I couldn't sleep, so rather than lie in bed and toss around until I woke Anne and got The Wrath, I quietly went down to the living room to play.

Okay, the first mission? SO @!#$^%ING HARD! But that's good, because it sets it up for the player that this isn't going to be a cake walk. Save early, and save often, as the saying goes.

After several tries, I finally completed it with my entire squad intact, if slightly wounded. Funtimes!

On to mission two: blew the bridge with no problem, and lead my squad around the left side of the building complex, where we took a big group of hostiles completely by surprise! Yes! A few times, I heard me (Foster) tell myself, "Great shot!" or "Fire in the hole!" I must say, I am quite the badass . . . and so is David Foster.

So.

After we cleared this courtyard, I consulted my map and saw that we had a few hundred meters to cover before we met up with the British squad, so decided to send my men on the right flank while I went up the left side.

"Copy that," is that last thing I heard myself (Foster) say before a hail of gunfire errupted from behind some bushes.

"GARRAGGHHH!!!!!" I (Foster)screamed.

"Foster's been hit, captain!" Someone in my squad said, while I listened to myself (Foster) writhe in agony. "Oh shit!" I thought. "I have to save myself!"

I ordered my squad to lay down suppressive fire on the two North Koreans who had me (Foster) pinned down, and I crawled through the grass until I was close enough to adminster aid.

I heard the zip of the bullet cut through the air in front of me, just before it buried itself into my (Foster's) head.

"Foster is down!"

"We've lost Foster!"

"NOOOOO!" I shouted, loud enough to wake my entire house.

Luckily, the doors were all closed, and maybe my scream was louder in my head than it was in my living room, because The Wrath I would have gotten when Anne realized I was mourning my (Foster's) death in a video game would not have been pretty.

I reloaded the mission and tried again. This time, I ordered Foster to hang back while I tossed way too many grenades near the area where I knew the hostiles were lurking. Yeah, I spammed 'em good.

We hooked up with the Brits, held off a pretty nasty assault while we waited for extraction, and made it into the chopper relatively unscathed.

I don't know why, but I left out a key detail when I wrote that: I had Foster park himself in the start area, and didn't let him move until the entire area was cleared. It was a tough mission, and I made it tougher by doing it without one of my key party members, because I was so traumatized by his (my) untimely demise.

I cringe when I hear my writing voice from those days, but I'm willing cut myself a tiny bit of slack, because I was young and foolish then (I feel old and foolish now). The story still makes me smile, though, so I think it's a fair trade off. As Chuck Lorre would say, "Not so funny then, very funny now."

some of us are looking at the stars

Posted on By Wil

On January 28, 1986, I was home from school with the flu. I remember that, no matter what I did, I couldn't get warm, so I was sitting in a hot bath when my mom knocked on the bathroom door. 

"There was an accident with the space shuttle," she said, in the same voice she used when she told me that my grandmother had died.

For the next few hours, I sat on the couch, wrapped up in as many blankets as we had, and watched one of the local news networks – probably ABC – cover the unfolding disaster. Because of the fever and the years between now and then, I can't recall a single detail other than how impossible the whole thing felt. How could something like that even happen? And did it mean that we'd never put people into space again?

This morning, I sat in my office and watched the shuttle Atlantis launch into space via a NASA TV stream through VLC on a monitor that is bigger than my family's 1986 television. When mission control gave the order to go with throttle up, I held my breath like I have every single time since the shuttle program was reinstated in 1988, and when the shuttle separated from the boosters and glided into orbit, I got something in my eye. Just take a moment, if you don't mind, and think about what it means that we can leave our planet, even if we've "only" gotten as far as the dark side of the moon. Think about what it means that something as incredible as putting humans into space and bringing them back safely to Earth today earns less media attention and public excitement than the typical celebrity breakup.

It is amazing that we can do this, and even though I've come to believe the shuttle program isn't the best way to spend NASA's tiny budget (which is a pitiful fraction of what it should be), I hope that there was a child watching the launch today who will feel inspired to reach out to the stars and see what's out there.

We humans are a flawed species, to put it mildly, and I think we could do a much better job taking care of our planet and each other … but when I see what we're capable of doing, it gives me hope that the future I pretended to live in twenty years ago will actually arrive some day.

FSMspeed, Atlantis.

pico and sepulveda … pico and sepulveda … pico and sepulveda

Posted on By Wil

Even the best day can be improved by a little Pico and Sepulveda …

(Of course, a day which requires me crossing the intersection at the actual Pico and Sepulveda is usually a very bad day, indeed.)

I took my first visit to the Forbidden Zone a few months ago, and though I Twittered the hell out of it, I don't recall if I wrote about it on my blog. Alas, maybe one day there will be a way to search the online universe for things we wish to find.

I love this movie so much, and I wish I'd seen it when I was younger. If I had a litmus test for friends, "loves Forbidden Zone" would certainly be on it.