Author: Wil

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

Podcasts I love: Stuff You Should Know

Posted on By Wil

So did you spend some time in your driveway listening to yesterday's suggestion? Well, maybe not your actual driveway, but that metaphorical driveway that's next to the little birdhouse in your soul? Oh, good. I knew you would.

Kids, learning isn't just fun, it's awesome. There is a huge world out there and it is just filled with all kinds of interesting and astonishing information. It's also filled with Stuff You Should Know, which is an appropriately-named podcast from the guys at How Stuff Works.

This podcast usually runs between 15 and 25 minutes, and covers diverse topics like How Moonshine Works, How Cannibalism Works, and How Abandoned Cities Work. Our two hosts, Chuck and Josh, are staff writers for How Stuff Works, and the podcast is worth listening to for their amusing interaction as much as it is the fascinating "wow, I did not know that" information they dispense.

Earlier this week, they did a show called Why Do Some People Believe The Moon Landing Was A Hoax? which is a great example of why I love this podcast. It'd be really easy to say, "because some people are so fucking stupid they believe every conspiracy theory, no matter how outrageous and disproved by science. Thank you for listening. The end." but they actually dig much deeper, and truly examine the question in an entertaining and informative way.

I've told iTunes to keep and sync all unheard episodes of just a few podcasts, because I love them so much I don't want to miss a single one. Stuff You Should Know is one of them, and listening to it has made several commutes and short-haul business flights more enjoyable than I ever thought possible.

Next time: it comes from a land down under

the one about that time i worked in a movie with ron jeremy. yes, that ron jeremy.

Posted on By Wil

I can't recall exactly how it came up, but I recently mentioned that I'd once worked in a movie with Ron Jeremy. This revelation was met with some interest and a look that sort of goes like this: O_o so I thought it would make an entertaining (to me, at least) post.

The movie was called Mr. Stitch. It was a weird science fiction retelling of the Prometheus myth. I play the title character, a creature who was sewn together from the parts of 44 men and 44 women. It was written and directed by Roger Avary.

Roger did Mr. Stitch right after the massive success of his film Killing Zoe, and on the heels of his Academy Award for Pulp Fiction. Everyone in the world wanted to work with him then, and he assembled a mostly incredible cast[1]. He got Ron Perlman and Nia Peeples for major roles, Taylor Negron for a small but important role, and a guy you may have heard of called Ron Jeremy for a cameo.

While Ron is very well known for his … other work … he had also worked on a few indie movies at the time, including Killing Zoe, where he played the bank manager, who was shot in the face before he could deliver a single line. Roger liked him, so he hired Ron for a scene in Mr. Stitch that I don't think made the final cut, as a military medic in a flashback.

Ron came— you know, I'm going to go ahead and rephrase that. Ron arrived in Nice about a week before his scenes were to be shot, and he hung around on the set the whole time. He was incredibly funny, very friendly, constantly falling asleep, and when asked about pretty much any porn starlet from the time would reply, "Oh yes, I've had sex with her many times." I don't know if that was actually true or not, but it always made me laugh when he said it.

Ron told me that I could visit the set of one of his … other films … when we got back to Los Angeles, and though a certain part of me thought that would be hurr hurr hurr awesome, a more rational part of me thought it would just be weird and uncomfortable, so I never availed myself of the opportunity.

I grew so much as an artist and person during the end of 1994 when I lived in Nice and worked on that film, even though many aspects of the production were miserable, it remains one of the most fondly-remembered times in my life.

[1] I say "mostly" because the other lead actor, Rutger Hauer, was an absolute nightmare to work with and almost single-handedly ruined the film.

hear me on the geek cred podcast

Posted on By Wil

I don't do many interviews (blitz of Batman interviews to make Warner Brothers happy excluded) but last week, I did an interview for the Geek Cred podcast. It was streamed live…ish on UStream, which I guess kept dropping out the entire time, and making baby jesus cry, but the whole thing is now available for download at the Geek Cred website.

It's 35 minutes long, but I think you'll be pleased if you stay until the very end, and hear me describe the geekiest thing I ever did.

from the vault: fifty-one seconds in the kitchen

Posted on By Wil

I needed to double-check a date for the final Podcasts I Love post on Saturday, so I found myself in my old blog archives yesterday afternoon. An hour later, I was surprised to discover that I had been reading my own blog for an hour. It was like I was reading something someone else had written, and I really enjoyed the stories from that particular time.

I'm not sure where you're all coming from, but there are an astonishingly huge number of recent new visitors to my little hunk of Internet, and I thought I'd share something from the vault that you probably haven't seen before:

fifty-one seconds in the kitchen

I stood in front of the open refrigerator, and scanned the shelves. Anne spoke to me from the dining room.

"What are you doing?" She said.

"I'm thinking about having a Homer Simpson," I said.

"Donuts and a beer?" She said.

I stood up, a pink box in one hand, an Arrogant Bastard Ale in the other.

"Yeah," I said. "Isn't that horrible?"

"What's horrible," she said, "is that I knew what you were talking about without looking."

I opened up the box. A glazed donut clung to one side, and a devil's food with rainbow jimmies rested next to it. The crumbs and remains of their brothers surrounded them.

"You want to join me?" I said. "There are two donuts left."

"No. That's disgusting." She said. "I think I'll have a Flaming Moe instead."

"Okay," I said, "I'll get the cough syrup."

I love this silly little short story because it tells you almost everything you need to know about me and Anne, and what we're like together. Though the idea of eating a donut totally grosses me out now, if I close my eyes, I can see myself standing in our kitchen, in front of our old refrigerator, holding that flimsy pink box so many years ago.

I'm my own worst critic, and when I look at my acting and writing work, it's hard for me to see anything other than the flaws. But there's enough distance between me and these old entries to just let them exist on their own, and accept that they were the best I could do at the time.

I liked some of the things I read yesterday so much, I'm considering polishing them up and re-releasing them in some nifty way with a bit of context and commentary. Whether that's on my blog, on a podcast, in a book, or some combination of all three is yet to be determined, but I'm putting it on my short list of Crazy Ideas That May Be Awesome, Or Just Crazy.

Podcasts I love: Driveway Moments

Posted on By Wil

Is your brain embiggened from last time when we talked about 60-Second Science? Good, good. Glad to hear it. Take good care of your brain, and it'll take good care of you.

Today, we're turning to one of my favorite old media broadcasters, who have done an outstanding job embracing new media: National Public Radio. NPR offers a huge selection of podcasts, including powerhouses like This American Life[1] and Fresh Air,[2] but since everyone in the universe know about those, today I will share something that never fails to entertain, inform, or inspire me, and is rarely longer than 5 or 6 minutes: NPR's Driveway Moments.

This ingeniously-named podcast is chosen by listeners from NPR stories that are so compelling, they stay in the driveway when they get home and listen to them until they're over.

Some of them are inspiring. Some of them are funny. Some of them are so sad it's hard to listen to them. All of them are incredibly awesome, and make me grateful that NPR embraced podcasting as long ago as they did.

Way back in podcasting's early days, I gushed about the technology and its implications to a good friend of mine who has enjoyed a very long and very successful career in radio. He was unmoved, and figured that, like blogging, "a thousand flowers will bloom, and we'll be left with 999 weeds." He has since changed his tune.

At the time, I thought he was missing the point, but he was correct in a certain sense: radio isn't easy, and not everyone can find success as a broadcaster or producer. I don't know how many podcasts from the early days are still around, and if any of podcasting's early breakout stars are now laughing at us from their private yachts, but the point is, they were there at the beginning, and they helped prove to the world that this on-demand style of radio was viable. Without those pioneers, I don't think the list I'm doing this week would exist. The next time you listen to one of your favorite podcasts, honestly ask yourself: would I make this appointment listening? All the podcasts I'm talking about this week — and they represent just a small percentage of all the ones I listen to — are wonderful, but I wouldn't be able to stop everything I'm doing to listen to them if they weren't available when it was convenient to me. This, I believe, is the future of radio, and even television.

Next time: …i did not know that.

[1] Did you know that I'm a writer because of This American Life? It's true, and is a story I should tell one day. Perhaps on a podcast of my own.

[2] Just in case anyone from either one of these shows sees this: I dream of one day earning the chance to be on your program.