Author: Wil

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

Eureka: all the rage – day zero

Posted on 8 April, 2010 By Wil

Greetings from Vancouver, where I sit high above the city, looking out over a balcony, through a sliding glass door that I dare not open, because single digit temperatures in Celsius are just as cold as their Fahrenheit cousins.

If you're joining the broadcast late, I'm here for an episode of Eureka, playing a brilliant-but-sarcastic scientist who is sort of a nemesis to Fargo, and my episode airs July 23rd on the Sci-Fi – *grumble* I mean SyFy – channel.

My day started at areyoufuckingserious in the morning, so I'm more than a little blurry in the brain, but I had some stuff I wanted to share:

The cast and crew of Eureka are, without exception, awesome. Every single person I've interacted with has been incredibly kind and welcoming, and I instantly felt at home on the set. I've only been here two days, but it feels like everyone likes each other, which confirms what I'd heard from people who have worked on the show when I asked about it.

We did a read through of the episode yesterday, but not all of the actors could be there, so a lot of the regulars just filled in for them. I thought I was going to fall out of my chair laughing when Colin Ferguson read one of them – who will remain nameless – in a voice that was disturbingly (or amazingly, depending on your point of view) similar to Mayor McCheese. After fifteen minutes with him, I could see where Carter's wry humor comes from.

Last night, I had dinner with my friend Aaron, who is also an actor and lives here. While we were waiting for our check, he asked me if I was excited to "go be an actor for a week."

"I really am," I said, "but I'm also a little nervous. I've spent so much time being a writer, I'm afraid that I'll get stuck in my head once I'm on the set."

I was talking about this thing that can happen to actors who are over-prepared or inexperienced. To really live in a scene and to really be connected to the other actors, we have to stay in each moment, reacting honestly and simply to what the other actors are doing. I do a ton of character preparation. In addition to knowing what my lines are, I know why I say each one. I know all sorts of stuff about my characters, because the more I know about a character, the wider my range is when I play him. I need to know what I want from each other character, what my purpose is in a scene, and then let all of that stuff fall away into some kind of subconscious background noise while I'm actually performing the scene … or I'm stuck in my head, thinking about things and watching things, instead of living in the scene.

I continued, "so I think I'll probably be a little rusty at first, but I've done this long enough to trust that I'll settle in. Not as quickly as I'd like, but I'll settle in."

"Well, I'm sure you're going to have a great time," he said, in that way one actor tells another to get the frak out of his own way, trust his instincts, and just enjoy the work, without really saying that. It's sort of a pep talk between friends, I guess, and it's one of those things that I just love about being an actor with some good friends.

I got to work with Neil and Erica for 6/8 of a page today, and though it took me longer to find my character and settle in than I wanted, it was, as they say, like riding a bike … and I didn't even fall off and scrape my knees.

Between rehearsal and filming today, I walked around the set a little bit. It's magnificent; I felt a sense of wonder and awe that I haven't felt since the first time I walked through the Enterprise on stage nine in 1987. The little details, like the signs on the walls, fingerprint scanners at the doors and the texture of the fake concrete make it feel like it's an actual building that happens to extend fourteen stories underground. I just love that I get to use my imagination to pretend I'm a person who works in this place.

Vancouver is as beautiful as I remember it, and since I have the next three days off, I plan to put on my tourist hat (which is actually just a PAN Fleece to carry my geek gear) and see as much of it as I can.

If any locals want to mention some must-see places – especially art, non-touristy or geek-related – in the comments, I'd love that.

the most beguiling, horrible, opposite-of-fun experience I’d ever had

Posted on 6 April, 2010 By Wil

Reader G.M. e-mailed this picture and said, "How the f**k I ever believed that THIS was E.T., I'll never know — but I still played it for hours and hours."

The picture unlocked a memory I haven't thought about in a long time, but wanted to share:

Around 1982 or 1983, before City Walk at Universal Studios was even an idea, there was a big E.T. thing at the top of the hill, by the Whomphoppers and Victoria Station restaurants. Part of it was a giant silver spaceship (just like E.T.'s) that had eight or twelve Atari consoles around a pillar in the middle, all of them playing the E.T. video game.

I was seriously into video games then, and my parents had given me permission to play the E.T. game for like an hour or something while they did whatever parents did at an E.T. exhibit. (Eat lots of Reese's Pieces, I suppose.) I was beside myself with glee … until I played it for about ten minutes. It was the most beguiling, horrible, opposite-of-fun experience I'd ever had. I found my parents and asked if we could leave.

We've all heard the legend of the landfill, and the way I remember it, that's probably where this game belongs, but maybe I'll dig up E.T. on Stella and see if it really is as awful as I remember it.

the fountain of youth

Posted on 5 April, 2010 By Wil

I spend a lot of time remembering and writing about the video games I played while growing up, mostly because it's the closest I can come to actually playing them, until the magical day arrives when I have an entire room in my house dedicated to housing a classic arcade and console collection.

I've written before about books and games as time machines and portals, but I've recently realized that the father away I get from the times those things transport me, the more important they both become. Maybe it's a geek's midlife crisis, or something, but I've really missed arcades recently.

Whenever I play any classic arcade or console game, it's like I'm flipping very rapidly through a book with different places and years on each page; I see just enough to make an emotional connection, but it never enough to capture any details. I don't know what it's like for anyone else, but for me, when I pick up a joystick controller today, I pick it up in 1979, 1980, 1983, 1985. When I played Pitfall! at PAX, I played it in my living room in Sunland, my bedroom in La Crescenta, at Joey's house, at Josh's house, at Bobby's house.

It's awesome that I can play every Atari game ever written using Stella, and it's a lot of fun to plug in an Atari Flashback for a quick Combat battle (I'm still training for our Thunderdome showdown, Shawn Powers), but those experiences aren't quite the same as playing an actual vintage Atari. It's pretty easy to walk into a Target or a Best Buy these days and get one of those joysticks that has a dozen or so games in it, and being able to play them in some form is always better than not being able to play them at all, but the joy I feel when I get to play on an actual console just can't be emulated. There's something about searching a box for exactly the right game, flipping the switches, and picking up an actual joystick to play Yar's Revenge or Keystone Kapers or Air Sea Battle that emulation just can't capture.

It will be unsurprising, then, to learn that my favorite rooms at PAX were the Classic Arcade room, and the Classic Console Freeplay room. They were exactly what they sound like: the Arcade room had about a dozen games, including Sinistar, Dragon's Lair, Frogger, and a prototype game called Crazy Otto that eventually became Ms. Pac Man. The Classic Console Freeplay room had everything from Atari to Colecovision to NES to PSX to Intellivision to Sega Genesis.

They also had one of my favorite consoles of all time, Vectrex, which I played with Storm. BEHOLD:

Photo credit to Enforcer David Johnson, who took many awesome pictures of PAX East.

While we played, Storm and I channeled our inner 12 year-olds with such classic phrases as, "No way! I shot him!" and "It cheated! The computer cheated!" and "MMMMOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!"

I remember when I got my Vectrex in 1982 or 1983; it felt like I had a miniature arcade game, because – unlike even the best Atari versions – it recreated games like Scramble, Armor Attack, and Star Castle almost perfectly. Minestorm was like Advanced Asteroids, and Starhawk was pretty much Luke Skywalker's attack on the Death Star, brought directly into my bedroom, under my control. I may have played the Star Wars soundtrack on my record player while I assumed the role of Red Five. Many times. I'm just saying.

Storm and I got a little misty-eyed when we watched a father teach his son how to play, and I noticed that both of them were having an incredibly fun time, for entirely different reasons. Storm said that the picture I took of them was like a geek's version of the Norman Rockwell painting where the dad is teaching his son to fish. I thought that was awesome.

But I think the best thing Storm said was in reply to an e-mail I sent him and Paul with a link to those pictures: "Ponce de Leon was completely wrong about the fountain of youth."

Eureka!

Posted on 5 April, 2010 By Wil

I'm heading up to Vancouver later this week to shoot an episode of Eureka!

The SyFy (I know they're my new employers, but it still pains me to write that) Channel put out the following press release this morning:

Actor, author and blogger Wil Wheaton of the popular television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and the classic film Stand By Me, has signed for a guest starring appearance on the 4th season of Eureka, one of Syfy’s most popular original series. The new season is slated to return to Syfy on Friday, July 9 at 9:00PM ET/PT.

In episode 403 of Eureka titled “All The Rage,” sci-fi fan favorite Wheaton plays the brilliant Dr. Isaac Parrish, head of the Non-Lethal Weapons Lab at Global Dynamics. Parrish’s dry wit and superior attitude make him a thorn in Fargo’s (Neil Grayston) side — with potentially disastrous consequences. The episode featuring Wheaton is scheduled to air on Friday, July 23rd.

I've had the script for a little while, now, and I've been getting to know Dr. Isaac Parrish as I convert the words on the page into a person you'll see on television. I obviously can't go into any specifics, but I've had a great time developing his backstory, creating his relationships with the characters, giving him secrets and beliefs, and doing all the other parts of character creation that make being an actor so much fun.

As part of my homework, I spent the entire weekend watching DVDs and reading about the show on the Internets so I could understand the tone and see the characters in action … it wasn't a bad way to spend several hours, I tell you what. (In my professional opinion, time you currently spend watching a show that you hope will get better would be much more wisely spent watching reruns of Eureka.)

I'm not sure how much I'll be allowed to Twitter/Twitpic/blog from the set, but I'll keep notes like I always do and hopefully have something interesting to share when the show airs in July.

Enormous thanks go to my friend Amy Berg (who wrote The Two Live Crew Job and created my character Chaos on Leverage) who joined Eureka this season and found a way for me to visit it.

about that recursive wil wheaton t-shirt…

Posted on 4 April, 2010 By Wil

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

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.