SpongeBob Vega$ Pants

Vega$ baby! Vega$!
It’s the battle cry often heard coming from our car as my wife and I tear up I 15, making the 4 hours drive in 3 and a half. I mean, driving to Vega$ is half the fun. The excitement, the boredom, the constant, “Are we there yet?” Answered by, “Yes, just around this corner,” or “We passed it. I have to turn around.”
The stop at Barstow for In-N-Out Burgers, and slowing down past the Bunboy to see how hot it is at “the world’s tallest thermometer“. Reading every single billboard, announcing that the Stardust has ROOMS AVAILABLE TONIGHT! And Circus Circus has FREE CIRCUS ACTS EVERY HOUR!
The drive is usually as much fun, if not more fun, than the time we spend in Vega$.
I bring this up, because the last two times we’ve gone there, we’ve flown (because we weren’t paying for it), and flying to Vega$ just sucks. I mean, where is The Mad Greek? Where is Lake Delores? And you know what? You can’t listen to Joshua Tree on the way, when you’re in a plane. The flight isn’t long enough, and you look lame when tears roll down your face while listening to “Running To Stand Still” on an plane. In a car it’s okay, but not on a plane. I don’t know why, it’s just one of those things that we’ll never understand. Like overalls on adults, or George Bush in the White House.
So I’m gonna give you all the stories from Vega$, including the Con and stuff. The plan right now is to split them up over a few days, because I’m so damn long-winded, but we’ll see where we are in a little bit.
Here goes.
The Flight
We went out on Southwest Airlines from Burbank. I love flying Southwest for less than an hour. It’s easy, it’s cheap, and the flight attendants out here are always really friendly and funny. Friendly and funny goes a LONG way with me, FYI.
We were scheduled to go out at 3:50 PM, meaning that we’d need to get to the airport around 3, which means we leave our house at 2:15 or so.
So it’s 3:15 and we’re walking out the door…and somehow we get to the airport on time.
You know how southwest gives you those boarding cards? I got number 42!! YES! Check out what a dork I am. I was so excited, because, you know…
So the flight was nice and bumpy, which is my favorite. OH! LeVar Burton was on the plane with us, and when we landed in Vega$, Anne and I ran, and I mean, ran into the bathrooms, and LeVar comes walking over to me, and tells me, “W W, [he always calls me that, which I think is cool] when you showed me that picture of your wife in South Pasadena [when we were at the TCAs for TNG on TNN -nice use of acronyms, Wil], you did not do her justice.” Dramatic pause. “Wil Wheaton, your wife is a fox!”
So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
So we get a ride to our hotel, which is The Bellagio (again, because we’re not paying for it. I am *so* not into the pretentious BS. The whole time we were there, I felt like I was playing dress up). We check in, and now we have exactly 30 minutes to get changed, and all that before my sketch comedy group meets us for a quick dinner and rehearsal.
Let me talk for a minute about my sketch comedy group.
I am a member of the ACME comedy theatre in Hollywood. The ACME is one of the best comedy theatres, ever, and it’s one of the few achievements I’ve made that I am extremely proud of. I love the ACME. Matter of fact, I’ll be teaching at our school very soon. So if you’re in Los Angeles, and want to learn how to give up the funny, you should call us. You’ll be glad you did! Alright. Enough gushing.
From this exceptional company,I chose some of the best improvisers/writers/performers I could find. Because I chose the best, they were all working on their various projects and things, and it was EXTREMELY hard to set up a rehearsal schedule that everyone could commit to. So we’re doing a show with 10 sketches, most of which we’ve never done as a group before, and we’ve never really had a full rehearsal until the night before we’re supposed to perform. Holy shit. I am freaking out, because I am a perfectionist, and I feel like these Trekkies have all paid lots of money to see our show (which sold out! Yes!), and I want to give them a really good one. One that they’ll remember. It also doesn’t help that I’m feeling like I have to win these people over (which is how I feel every time I go to one of these conventions) and prove to them that I can do something other than re-align the warp core or whatever.
So it’s 5:30PM on Wednesday, and we’re meeting at 6PM in the lobby to eat before we get rehearse in our hotel room. It’s 6:15, and Kevin still isn’t there, and I am freaking out. I am pacing in the lobby, pulling at my hair, and all that stuff. And I’m cursing Kevin’s name, until he shows up at 6:20. Well, it turns out that I had forgotten to tell him what time we were meeting. My bad.
4:32 PM PDT:
There’s more to come very soon, but I just remembered that there is a blood drive and fundraiser as the Rose Bowl, and I want to get there before it’s over.
6:00 PM PDT:
I just got back home. I gave money to the Fireman’s fund, and the Red Cross. I felt good about doing that, but the jingoistic attitude that pervaded the whole area really bothered me. Especially in light of this and this. I think this may cost me some readers, and maybe get me some hate mail, but I have to say it: the attitude for vengence and revenge that seems palpable everywhere I go really scares me. I’d rather feel a demand for justice.
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming:
Kevin finally shows up, and we decide to go to the buffet. But when we get there, we notice that it’s $24.95. Holy shit. Question: does anyone ever really get their money’s worth at a buffet? I don’t ever feel like I do. And I always end up combining foods that I really shouldn’t combine. Like shrimp and chocolate cake, or miso soup and some alfredo pasta (back in the pre-lactose intolerant days). So I suggest that maybe $24.95 is too much for a bunch of us starving actors (hey, I haven’t found my pennies yet) to pay, and maybe we should go to the Cafe instead. So we shlep all the way across the damn casino to the Cafe.
Tangent: When you go to Vega$, have you ever noticed that everything is through the casino? I mean, I bet if you go to the hospital in Vega$, you have to go through a bank of slot machines to get to the ER. You have to go through a casino to get to the casino. Bastards.
So we go to the cafe, and because it’s the Bellagio, everything costs so damn much that it would have been cheaper for us all to eat at the Buffet. So there was much shit given to your old pal Wil, and we had to eat Sir Robin’s Minstrels. And there was much rejoicing.
Yaaay.
After dinner, we headed upstairs and finally ran our whole show. I had made a very big deal to everyone about how important it was to know all of their lines, so they could work on character tweaks, instead of memorizing lines. And everyone stepped up. They all knew their lines, they all knew their characters, and it was great. All except one person, who couldn’t remember his lines for shit.
Me.
Oh, how awful I felt. How embarassed I was. But it happens sometimes to me. It used to happen back on Trek. When I would have a really important scene, ususally one with Patrick, and I wanted to do really well, and impress everyone. I would just get a brain freeze, and even know I knew that I knew the lines, they wouldn’t come. Like “I know that joke, but I forgot it” times a million.
So I was still pretty freaked, but we got through it, and I did get the lines down, mostly, enough so I felt like we could all go out and have a drink and do a little gambling.
It was decided that we’d all head back to our respective hotels, and meet at Cleopatra’s Barge at Caesar’s Palace in something like a half-hour.
So here’s the deal: This place, Cleopatra’s Barge…I felt like I’d walked into someone else’s mid-life crisis. Someone please explain to me why all the cover bands play “Brick House”? And someone else explain to me why they can never get the words right? Oh! And here’s a newsflash for you: Creed sucks. Playing bad covers of Creed songs sucks even more. So just stop the insanity!
We sat at this place for the prescribed half-hour, and as soon as everyone else was there, we bailed out, and fast. Cleopatra’s Barge was more like the Titanic. We did a teeny little bit of gambling, and Tracy won 40 bucks in quarters, which was cool.
We ended up across the street at The Barbary Coast, where the dealers were cool, I won some money on Craps (my favorite game, for those of you scoring at home), and Anne won some money at the Wheel of Fortune slot machines. We went into the Coffee Shop, and had REASONABLY PRICED steak and eggs, with a side of extra-well done hasbrowns, thankyouverymuch, and that was it. We went in about 3 AM, which isn’t bad, Vega$-time, because I had looked at the schedule for the con the next day, and I wasn’t on until 5PM. Cool. Time to sleep in.
Morning. 8AM. I’ve been asleep for 5 hours. Phone rings. It’s Jackie Scott, one of the convention promoters. She says, “We need you here at 10 for an autograph signing. Do you want to be picked up at 9:30, or do you want to take a cab?”
“Mrphhzzzzgggggthphbbt” was all I could muster.
[NEXT:]
DAY ONE AT THE CON:
AUTOGRAPHS!
MY ON STAGE TALK!
THE SKETCH SHOW!
And…
Let the rudeness begin!

Button, button, who’s got the button?

Check out this cool button that was made for me by MizRedHead:

And check out this one, made by Steve Albright:

If you’d like to make a button, I think that’d be cool, because these are already cooler than anything I could have com up with. If you want to, it should be a .gif file, no larger than 3K, and no bigger than 35×100. email it to me, and I’ll post the ones I think are the coolest, along with the aforementioned hellamadprops.

He didn’t know what to do. But he’d think of something.

I wasn’t going to talk about this, because it’s all anyone is talking about. I mean, I turn on TLC to get away from it, and they’re just running a feed of FOX News. Same for Discovery. Even ESPN has a ticker with updates scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
So since I can’t get away from it, I give in. I will write about it. Because I am scared. I am distraught. I am upset. I am depressed. I am angry. Mostly, I don’t know what to do, and I’m not quite sure how to feel. It reminds me of when my friend hung himself. How helpless I felt, how angry, sad, scared, etc.
But the thing that really pushed me over the edge, the thing that made me sit down here tonight, was when I took Ryan to the mall tonight to buy a book for his book report. On the way he asked me if our local mall was popular. I looked in the rearview mirror, and told him that it was. Lots of people go there. He looked back at me, and asked me, “does that mean they’re going to bomb our mall?”
So I spent the next hour explaining to him what had happened, and why (as best as I understand it, which is not very).
And I don’t have much to say, really. I just know that when my dad got sick, I wrote about it and felt better. And when I got the shaft on the movie, I wrote about it, and I felt better, and when the bastards came for me, I wrote about it and I felt better.
And I really do want to tell all about Vega$ and the convention, but I can’t, until I get this out of me. So here goes:
My wife woke me up Tuesday, much earlier than we normally get up, because my mom had called, and told her about the attack on the WTC. So sat up, turned on the TV, and watched in horror as that plane crashed into the tower, over and over and over and over.
I felt like I was watching a bad Steven Segal movie. I mean, this just doesn’t happen in real life, right?
Anyway, I’m not gonna rehash the whole thing, because we’ve all been doing that, and I don’t want to turn into what the news networks are all doing: just saying the same thing, over an dover, with a different pundit to agree with them.
But here’s the deal: I can’t cry. I really want to. I feel it well up in my chest, but the tears won’t come. And that is the hardest thing, so far. That and the fear.
I was walking Ferris last night, and I kept getting this completely irrational fear that something awful was going to happen while I was away from the house. Didn’t help that she kept stopping, and looking behind us, like there was something there.
I am supposed to travel at the end of the month to the east coast for another Star Trek Convention, and I really don’t want to go now. At all. I know that is totally irrational, and totally lame, and exactly what the terrorists want, but I keep imagining what those people on those planes were feeling, knowing that they were going to die. I wonder what I would do if that ever happened to me…?
So, here I find myself at an uncommon loss for words. I don’t think I really have much to add, so that’s it for tonight.
Hrm. Worst. Entry. Ever.

Barlow

This comes from John Perry Barlow, via Loren, via Scripting.com:

As most of you know, I believe that the United States has gradually, subtly, invisibly to most of us, become a police state over the last 30 years.
This morning’s events are roughly equivalent to the Reichstag fire that provided the social opportunity for the Nazi take-over of Germany.
I am *not* suggesting that, like the Nazis, the authoritarian forces in America actually had a direct role in perpetrating this mind-blistering tragedy. (Though their indirect role deserves a much longer discussion.)
Nevertheless, nothing could serve those who believe that American “safety” is more important than American liberty better than something like this. Control freaks will dine on this day for the
rest of our lives.
Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little – largely illusory – safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously.
I beg you to begin NOW to do whatever you can – whether writing your public officials, joining the ACLU or EFF, taking to the streets, or living visibly free and fearless lives – to prevent the spasm of
control mania from destroying the dreams that far more have died for over the last two hundred twenty five years than died this morning.
Don’t let the terrorists or (their natural allies) the fascists win. Remember that the goal of terrorism is to create increasingly paralytic totalitarianism in the government it attacks. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
Fear nothing. Live free.
And, please, let us try to forgive those who have committed these appalling crimes. If we hate them, we will become them.
May God – or Whatever you want to call It – bless us all. We’ll need it.
Barlow

The World Has Turned

It’s all anyone is talking about, so I’m not going to say much beyond this:
The World Has Turned, and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I have this feeling that things will never be the same.
Here’s my number one fear: I fear that Bush (who disgusts me, so just know that, and save your flames for someone who cares) will see this as an opportunity to look “Presidential”, and bomb “Them” back to the stone age, and figure out who “They” are later. Sure, I think that we should find out who did this, and deal with them…but I fear the way it’s going to be handled.
Loren makes a great point: there is all this talk about how our intelligence missed this, and whatnot. I greatly fear the laws that are going to come out of this thing. I am really afraid of what’s going to happen to our privacy because of this. Just something to think about, while we all try to process this stuff.
This site seems to have a good timeline, if you’re interested, and Slashdot has a good discussion going. I suggest listening very carefully to what you hear on the news, especially as there is less new info to report, and the carefully coiffed anchors begin speculating and exploiting, in an effort to hold your attention. I suggest reading IndyMedia and CommonDreams, as good alternative sources of information, free of spin and agenda.
In the mean time, please go and give blood. Especially if you’re O-. I know that the thing I feel the most right now is helpless, and giving blood is something, however small, that we can do to help out, and maybe not feel so helpless.
Okay, I’ve said enough, which is more than I wanted to in the first place. I have cool Vega$ stories to tell, but I just don’t feel like telling them today. Maybe tomorrow.