Author: Wil

Last week, Entertainment Weekly called my manager, and said that they were going to write announce Just A Geek in this week’s issue. I told my manager that I was concerned, because Entertainment Weekly has always written really cruel and misleading stories about me and my website, but the reporter assured him that this would just be a nice blurb announcing the release of my book.
Since the mainstream media have completely ignored me and Just A Geek, I was pretty excited that an influential magazine like Entertainment Weekly was going to give me a little ink.
That “nice blurb?” I just saw it on page 83:

“Whiner of the Week”
In his blog-cum-memoir Just a Geek, the former Star Trek, TNG cast member, now 32, fills 260 pages endlessly lamenting, “I used to be an actor when I was a kid.”

It’s pretty clear that the person hack who wrote this awful, mean-spirited, and misleading blurb didn’t read the entire book, because I DON’T spend 260 pages “lamenting I used to be an actor when I was a kid.” I spend the first chapter talking about those feelings, because it’s an important foundation for the rest of the story. A responsible journalist would know that.
It’s one thing to criticize the way I write, or opine that I spend too much time on one thing, and not enough time on another. That’s totally valid opinion . . . but to completely misrepresent me and the content of my book this way is despicable.
Someone at that magazine must have a vendetta against me, because Entertainment Weekly has tried very hard to portray me in a consistently negative light. When they reviewed WWdN about two years ago, they selectively quoted me out of context, and made me look really bad, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re at it again, but it still hurts.

Around 6:30 PM Pacific Time tonight, I’m going to be on Your Mac Life to talk about Just A Geek, my iBook woes (and what looks like a very positive resolution to said woes), and some other geeky goodness.
Details on the show, like how you can listen and stuff, are in the link above.
As I did last time I was on the radio, I’ll probably update this entry with a running critique of my performance.
Update: There weren’t any breaks, so I can’t do a running commentary . . . so I’ll just assess: I felt good. I think I was able to talk about the book enough to promote it, but also not just shill for it, you know?
I also said “You know?” WAY too many times. I am *so* from The Valley (really, I am.)
I felt a good rapport with Shawn, the host, which is always a bonus. I was a little surprised that he was so stricken by the honesty of my book . . . I mean, I knew it was honest because I wrote it, but that’s a theme that keeps coming back around: readers are stunned by how honest and direct I am in it. Maybe we (me, O’Reilly, and my publicist) should be talking about that in the marketing?
Anyway, I am mostly happy with the show. I can’t sit here and pick out any major moments that I liked or hated, which usually means that I was focused, and didn’t suck out loud.
Cool!

I’m sort of a baseball geek. I read the Baseball Prospectus every year, Rob Neyer is one of my favorite sportswriters of all time, and I positively HATE Paul DePodesta for Kevin Malone-ing my Dodgers.
Okay, so the last one has more to do with being a life-long Dodger fan, and less to do with stats . . . unless you believe, as I do, that pitching wins in the baseball playoffs the same way goaltending wins in hockey playoffs.
But anyway, the whole point of this post is to share a cool item, brought to us by my Baseball Page-A-Day calendar:

On this date, in 1911, Grover Cleveland Alexander, who was a rookie at the time and playing for the Phillies, outlasted Cy Young, who was playing for the Braves. The final score was 1-0.

So that’s cool and all, because Alexander went on to 373 career victories . . . but Cy Young, who held his own against the rookie, was forty-four.
I say that, in their honor, we re-raise the mound, eliminate the DH, and tell the crybabies players who wear body armor that if they’re going to crowd the plate, they may just get brushed back.

On Friday night, I watched the DVD of Goodfellas. It’s as good as I remember it.
On Saturday, Anne and the kids went down to her friend’s house at the beach, and I met up with several of my friends from ACME, including Shane, (who you should be reading if you’re not already) and went to Canter’s Deli in the Fairfax district. Canter’s is a true Los Angeles institution, where hipsters routinely share the room with octogenarians, and you’re just as likely to get cussed out by the 70 year-old waitress as you are to get patted on the head and called “honey.” It’s rad. Saturday night I played poker for about 3 hours. I’m saving the details for a cool poker story . . . but oh my god. I’m back on my game, and it feels good!
On Sunday, Anne and the kids came home fairly early. We dropped them at the movies, and ran tons of errands while we were “kid-free.” For dinner on Sunday night, I made Beercan Chicken on my grill, which is usually really good, but this time something went horribly wrong, and when I opened the grill to turn the bird around, there was fire shooting out its ass, and smoke shooting out its head! I figure that there was a lot of fat on the bird that caught fire as it was dripping off. The whole skin got charred, and popped off in one piece when I touched it (think the Turkey in Christmas Vacation) but the chicken itself was incredibly good. Nolan declared that it was the “best chicken ever.”
Yesterday, my parents invited us up to their house for an end of summer barbeque, and swimming. It was the first time all summer I went in their pool, which is really kind of sad. We played swimming pool wiffle ball, and had our first and last family dinner of the summer.
It was over 100 all weekend, but we finally have air conditioning! I got one of those wireless thermometers, so I can see what the outside temperature is compared to the inside, and I loved seeing OUTSIDE: 104 INSIDE: 79
Ryan started school today. Holy crap. I’m the parent of a 10th grader.

Okay, so it’s not quite April 5, 2063 just yet, but . . .

LONDON (Reuters) – An unexplained radio signal from deep space could — just might be — contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday.
The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries
constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico.
New Scientist said the signal could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon or even be a by-product from the telescope itself.
But the mystery beam has excited astronomers across the world.
“If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get
exciting,” Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western
England told the magazine.
It was broadcast on the main frequency at which the universe’s most common element, hydrogen, absorbs and emits energy, and which astronomers say is the most likely means by which aliens would advertise their presence.
The potentially extraterrestrial signals were picked up through the
SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through the huge amount of data picked up by the telescope.

Linky
My whole life, I have hoped that we would look to the stars, and find undeniable proof that we are not alone in the universe. Could this be it?
Update: Aw, dammit. As synchronicity points out in comments, probably not:

A recent (September 1) article in New Scientist magazine, entitled ? Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away,? implies that the UC Berkeley SETI@home project has uncovered a very convincing candidate signal that might be the first strong evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Alas, this story is misleading. According to Dan Werthimer, who heads up the UC Berkeley SERENDIP SETI project, this is a case of a reporter failing to understand the workings of their search. He says that misquotes and statements taken out of context give the impression that his team is exceptionally impressed with one of the many candidate signals, SHGb02+14a, uncovered using the popular SETI@home software. They are not.

Well, I still say we are not alone. So there. Nyah.