Author: Wil

We had our last preview show for ACME A Day In The Life on Saturday night. Previews are scary, because they’re the first time we put our material up for a real audience, but they’re also extremely important. Previews help us figure out what sketches need work, what sketches can be left alone, and what sketches need to be quietly taken behind the shed and told a story about the Rabbit Farm.
In this show, we’ve got a fairly complicated stunt to work out, as well: we’re doing this thing where the whole show takes place in one day, and the same characters show up in more than one sketch, with some incredibly hilarious call backs. We were unsure if the audience would get what we were doing, and worried that even if they did, they may not think it’s as clever and funny as we do. But over both previews it’s worked incredibly well, and I think it’s going to reward audiences who are paying attention.
We open this Saturday night:

WHAT: ACME A Day In The Life
WHERE: Acme Comedy Theatre
135 N. La Brea
Hollywood, CA 90036
(323) 525-0202
WHEN: Saturday, 8 pm.

I was blown away by the number of WWdN readers who came to see Love Machine. I hope you will all come out and see A Day In The Life, too. I promise you won’t regret it.

I think it’s time to open the WWdN mailbag . . .

Subject:Wil how a terrible news that ya are a lefty
Date: April 10, 2005 1159
From:Craig R.
To:Wil Wheaton
Message:Will sorry to hear that you are one of those lefty’s from Holly Wood … Though it should not surprise me much of what comes out of Holly Wood these days . You are just like the other sewer crap that comes out of Tensile town , I’m referring to the Pathetic schmucks such as Whopi Goldberg , Ya know her a as the faithful bar tender on the Enterprise . Martin Shean , Susan Surandan and Sean Pen . Ya all just have to face it Bush got over 51 to 52% of the vote just look at the map. So face the facts hippie and live with it BUSH WON BY A LAND SLIDE !!!! NOW I KNOW IT DON’T SET WELL WITH UR INTELLECT . HAVE A NICE LIFE AND LEARN TO SUFFER IN SCONCE … OH BY THE WAY KERRY VOTED TO CUT THE INTEL.. BUDGET BY 80% READ THE SENATE VOTING RECORDS. GUESS YOU WILL BE OFF MY MOVIE LIST WHEN YA COME OUT IN THEATERS AT LEAST PATRICK STEWART KNOWS WHEN TO KEEP SILENT. YA CAN LEARN ALLOT FROM HIM ON CLASSY BEHAVIOR. YOUR JUVENAL AND CHILDISHNESS IS STILL SHOWING SO WHY DON’T YA GROW UP.

FORMER NEXT GENERATION FAN.
CRAIG R.

Dear Craig,
I learned allot from your classy e-mail. I was unaware that 51 to 52% of anything was a landslide, but we sewer crap probably use a different kind of math than you do. I apologize if that don’t set well with ur intellect.
Next time I see Martin Shean, Susan Surandan or Sean Pen I’ll be sure to share your insights with them. Maybe we can all trade our juvenal and childishness for suffering in sconce.
Best Wishes from Tensile town,
Will Wheaton
(I’m not sure if this is real, or not. If it’s not, it’s the funniest satire in history. If it is . . . it explains so much.)

Holy shit.
I just realized something.
My website is one of the ugliest things on all the Internets.
Isn’t that weird? I’ve looked at it every single day since 2001, and it just suddenly hit me this morning: I need to redesign and update the site, and I need to do it about a year ago.
So watch for some massive overhauling very, very soon.
Update: I’m not going to fill this up with stupid “bells and whistles,” as some people have feared. I’m mostly going to move some things around, optimize the site so it hopefully loads faster, and remove a lot of the visual clutter that’s all over the place right now. Don’t worry. I’m doing everything I can to ensure that it doesn’t suck.
UpdateUpdate: I also think the BlogAds have got to go. I’ve tried them out for a little while, and it just doesn’t feel right to me anymore. If I was making a huge pile of “Indecent Proposal” money with them each month, it’d be one thing . . . but I really don’t, and I think the “sell-out-ish-ness” I’m currently feeling isn’t offset by the small amount of revenue they generate. So when the current ads run out, they’ll be gone. I’m also working with my friends at igrep to get a smaller, more seamlessly-integrated search box for my site. Right now, I feel like WWdN is an explosion of advertising, and the content is struggling to get a seat at the table. The opposite should be true, and I’ll take care of that in the next week or so.
And I looked at WordPress, because it sounds like it does all the things I want to do . . . I started the “five minute” install around 10 this morning . . . and I’m still trying to make the goddamn thing work at 7:30 tonight. Which is not a comment on WordPress, at all. It’s a shining testament to how shitty my computer skills have become lately. Heh — it’s almost like my creative and techincal skills are inversely proportional to each other.
Now I have to leave and somehow make it to Hollywood for rehearsal in 4.5 minutes. Bending Spacetime is getting *really* hard, you guys.
Oh, and I keep trying to comment on my own goddamn blog, but TypeKey is acting really weird and keeps logging me out and pissing me off. So if that’s happening to anyone else, you’re not alone, and I’ll see what I can do about it.
As soon as I have time. Which I don’t. Now I have to be in Hollywood 2 minutes ago.

I worked in the yard most of the weekend. All the rain has finally gone away, and now there are a mountain of weeds to remove.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about getting into my overgrown backyard with the garden claw, a shovel, a rake, some pruning shears, a beer, and taming the wild overgrowth.
It was pretty sad that Felix wasn’t there to walk over and talk to me while I tore through the dandelion patch that’s constantly trying to move in under the orange tree. I know he’s not coming back, but I can’t help it — I keep looking for him, and expecting him to show up in all his regular places. I think I’m going to talk with a grief counselor, because my level of sadness seems very disproportional to the loss. I think there’s some other stuff wrapped up in my mourning, maybe about my Aunt Val, and a family friend who we lost in November of last year. I really appreciate all the kind comments and e-mails from so many WWdN readers. Thank you, everyone.
We had a preview show at ACME on Saturday night for the new sketch show Acme: A Day In The Life. I was really nervous and felt like I was totally unprepared to get out there and give up the funny . . . but I think we did really well. There were some sketches that didn’t work and others that I thought wouldn’t work (including one of mine) that killed. I felt like the company is in exactly the same place right now as Love Machine was when we were three weeks from opening, and I’m confident that this show is going to be just as great. We open on April 16th.
The kids are on Spring Break this week, so we stayed up late last night, listened to A Ghost Is Born (The kids are getting as sick of Wilco as they are of The Pixies. I remember feeling so sick to death of The Beatles when I was a kid, and I love them now . . . so we’ll have to check back with Ryan in Nolan in twenty years or so and see how they’re doing.) and played the Radica World Poker Tour game that plugs into your TV. It was a consolation prize when I played in the WPT Invitational, and it’s surprisingly fun.
We played against three computer opponents, all set on Expert. I went out first when my AK got busted when the computer opponent called me with AJ and caught his J on the flop. Ryan went down shortly after that, not realizing that it’s pretty tough to go on a stone bluff against a computer. This left Nolan to defeat the computer menace and prove once and for all (for one game, at least) that humans are superior to computers.
It looked dicey a few times, but Nolan caught cards when he needed to, and ended up winning it all.
Yeah, it was as anti-climactic as it sounds, but it was fun to hang out with them until we could no longer stay awake around midnight.
Three unrelated things that don’t really fit anywhere else:

• I’m an official Spokesman for igrep! It’s incredibly cool, and I’ll get into the details later today. Until then, you can read the press release

  and those bright lights

  Posted on 1 April, 2005 By Wil

  Just after 9 Wednesday morning, we said goodbye to Felix The Bear. He left us peacefully and quietly, surrounded by his staff who love him.
  It’s been a really sad and difficult few days for me and my family. I keep looking for The Bear in the usual places (not because I think he’s still alive, but out of habit) and when he’s not there, the tears come. I discovered yesterday that I have this totally illogical construct in my mind where I somehow hoped that we could trade the sick, sad, dying Felix for the healthy, tough, stumpy little Bear we used to know . . . but he’s never coming back, and he really is gone. This reality keeps hitting me with varying severity and no warning. I’m kind of a wreck right now. I really, really miss him.
  I’ve got some Onion, Dungeon and ACME work to do and I’m not feeling particularly creative or inspired right now . . . so I need to put what little energy I have into fulfilling those commitments. I don’t think I’ll be posting here much for the next few days.