Today is Towel Day, a day when all geeks can carry their towels with them in tribute to the hoopiest frood of them all, Douglas Adams.
I absolutely love that I’m recording an all-geek podcast on this most sacred of days.
Updated: Oh! You know what I love even more? Spending 2.5 hours working on the podcast, then losing the entire thing to some weird confluence of system lockups and crashes.
I’m taking a long, long, long don’t-break-anything walk, and I’ll try again in the morning. Sigh.
Anne and Ryan were out on Friday, which left Nolan and me to goof off at home when I got back from working on Legion of Super Heroes.
We had big plans: some Magic: The Gathering, a little Brawl, and maybe some OGRE and heads-up poker.
But when I got home, the goddamn pine tree in the front yard dropped a huge ball of pollen down on my car, and I spent the next four hours on the couch sneezing and trying to fight off the allergy-induced headache that felt like it was going to split my head in twain. Good times. Good times.
Nolan ended up playing Diablo II while I watched the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles pwn the Los Angeles Angels of Not Los Angeles Because We Play In Orange County But Our Idiot Owner Wants To Have Los Angeles In Our Name Because He’s A Moron.
For those of you who missed the sixth inning massacre, the final board was:
LAD – 16 25 1
LAANLABWPOCBOIOWHLAIOWBHAM: 3 10 2
Of course, the Dodgers did their best to blow their fifteen run lead, by letting Carter come in and give up three hits and a run, and though I normally don’t like games that are total blowouts, watching the Dodgers on the winning side of it for a change, and especially at the expense of the stupid Angels who swept us last year, was awesome. I should also add that the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles shutout the Los Angeles Because We Play In Orange County But Our Idiot Owner Wants To Have Los Angeles In Our Name Because He’s A Moron to complete the sweep, and move up to 1/2 a game out of first in what is probably the weakest division this side of 7 year-olds playing little league.
Speaking of the Dodgers, yesterday, my dad took me to Chavez Ravine for some LAD vs LAANLABWPOCBOIOWHLAIOWBHAM action, and it was awesome. There are pictures in my buzznet blog, including a shot of Tommy Lasorda, who is the closest to royalty you’ll see at Dodger Stadium, who got a standing ovation from our entire section when he walked from his seat to wherever it is you go when you’re Tommy Fucking Lasorda and you rule.
Anyway, back to Friday: After the only team on the field worthy of having Los Angeles in their name blew the game wide open, I picked up my bag of comics from Free Comic Book Day, and finally had a look at the books I picked up. Most of them were a solid "meh," but that’s the whole point of FCBD: to see new stuff that may not excite everyone, but introduce new readers to new material. If you’re a guy like me who is already pretty narrow in tastes, it’s unlikely you’re going to find much that excites you. However, there were a few things that I really liked that I’ll pick up next time I’m at my friendly local comics shop:
The Bongo freebie was also funny (and funnier than the average episode of the Simpsons these days, which is not meant as a backhanded complement) and the Fantagraphics Funnybook was fantastic.
Around ten, my antihistamines finally started to work, and my headache began to subside as it was overtaken by drowsiness. I fell asleep watching Dark City, which is still a hell of a lot of fun to watch, whether you’ve got a head filled with antihistamines or not.
Today, Anne and I opened up a new front in the War on Shit All Over Our House and Yard (Operation Enduring Yardwork) and pruned the hell out of a tree in the front yard, as well as tearing out all the weeds that had attempted to establish a beachhead in one of our front yard planters. Rain threatened all day today, but never arrived, which was great, because the combination of breeze and humidity provided just the right level of comfort for fighting the forces of Bermuda grass and their allies the tree-looking things that spring up all over the goddamn place. In a fit of planning ahead, I did my best Sean Penn imitation and snorted a whole bunch of Flonase (relax, I have a prescription) before I started the work today, and I was able to work for about five hours before simple exhaustion overcame me (rather than the sneezing and allergy-related misery I experienced Friday night.)
After all my yard work was done, I decided to take a break and play a little poker at PokerStars, so I hopped into a 4-player heads-up sit-n-go (I was inspired after watching the Heads-up Championship on NBC this morning.) I really like those matches, because most of the players at the lower buy-ins are very straightforward (so you know your pair of kings is no good when they bet into you on an A-high board) and you only have to beat two players to win three buy-ins, instead of 8 players in a regular sit-n-go. At one point, my first round opponent had me down to just a few big blinds, but I got insanely lucky and bounced back, tilting him in the process and taking it down. My second round opponent had the classic online tell: he’d check the "check/fold" box when he was in the BB if he didn’t like his hand, so I’d call and if he insta-checked, I knew I could bet no matter what on the flop and get him to fold. I rode the right combination of luck and trusting my reads to victory, turning my mighty five dollar buy-in into twenty dollars when I flopped TP and a flush draw with AT and got him to call me with KT when my flush missed.
Okay, now it’s time to go watch The Simpsons, in the lame hope that it manges to be funny this week.
Uh, okay, the whole opening bit with the attacking couches? Brilliant. Even if the rest of the show veers off into that weird Jesusland they’ve been hitting so frequently this season, that was worth the price of admission.
Wait. The baseball bit? Very funny. This "homer is the relationship counselor" bit? The polar opposite of funny. Are they hiring old 1970s sit-com writers? This is like a rejected Three’s Company script. Give me another monorail, please. Please, I beg you.
I‘ve been too busy to write about some cool things that I’ve
experienced, recently. I’m taking the next few hours to catch up . . .
Free Comic Book Day
In 2003, I took Ryan and Nolan to Free Comic Book Day at my local comic shop, Comics Factory in Pasadena (Colorado, just West of Hill, if you’re ever in the area). It’s a great shop, run by people who love comics and really take care of their customers.
FCBD is exactly what it sounds like: a day when you get to choose from a bunch of different comics — for free — at your friendly local comic shop. The idea is to get new people interested in reading comics and graphic novels, as well as convincing current readers to give a different book or genre a risk-free try. (Note to industry: how about Free Game Day?)
When I took the kids two years ago, they picked up a bunch of X-Men and Batman and stuff, and were really into comic books for about three weeks before losing interest and returning to Harry Potter (Ryan) and Reading Sucks (Nolan, who has grown into quite the reader in the last 1 months) I, on the other hand, picked up Fables, which is the coolest Vertigo title since Sandman, and found my love of comic books re-kindled. For most of a year, I went into the comic shop twice a month and picked up new books and read them all. I was terribly sad when I had to admit that I couldn’t justify the time and money invested, though, and I didn’t read much more than a few graphic novels for most of 2005.
So I have a pile of great books from Free Comic Book Day that I think
I’m going to read this afternoon, as soon as I finish my writing
commitments for today.
Uh-oh. Commence rambling:
I love to watch and read Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I love to play geeky games like Illuminati and Talisman and Frank’s Zoo. I love to read comic books, and I wish I had the time to paint 40K armies and go to gaming cons and comic cons and just be a total nerd. I want to go for a hike to Echo Mountain, and I want to go Geocaching. I wish I had time to go out to plays and hear live music and see midnight movies and take my family on trips to see things like Yellowstone and the Smithsonian, or just go to the beach and enjoy one of the reasons we still live in Southern California.
Somewhere in the last couple of years, I’ve allowed my sense of responsibility and my need to be a good father, husband, and provider completely overwhelm me. I’ve lost a sense of Balance in my life, and all those cool nerdy things that defined me for so much of my life are struggling to get up there and have the floor, too.
When I went to Free Comic Book Day this year, I felt a connection to some of the happiest days of my life, those days when I sat on the floor at Darin’s house and we read Sandman, and Killing Joke, and Dark Knight Returns together. The smell of paper and cardboard and books and that nerd-funk that can’t be described reminded me of all the hours I spent in game stores like The Last Grenadier, and the hours I spent at home reading Uncle Albert’s and rolling up GURPS characters, just because I could.
I fully realize that an adult with two kids and a mortgage can’t have the sort of time and freedom to goof off the way he did when he was a teenager, but I think there has to be some way, even as an adult, to find Balance, and give yourself permission to goof off from time to time. You know that saying, "We don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing"? I grok.
Oh, which actually brings up another interesting observation: In On Writing, Stephen King says that you can’t expect to be a creative writer if you don’t make the time to read. All the really good poker players I know say a similar thing about playing cards: if you don’t make time to study your game, and talk with other players who you respect, you can’t expect to play your best game. The same thing goes for athletes; they say that Tony Gwynn and Ted Williams took more batting practice than anyone else on their teams, and Michael Jordan spent more time practicing free throws and anyone else on the Bulls. It makes sense, doesn’t it?
I wrote earlier today about not having time, and feeling like there isn’t enough time for things, and I think the conclusion I’ve reached from this already-too-long post is that we have to give ourselves permission to make time for the things we really want to do. In my case, I need to have full access to my creative brain. Fear is the enemy of creativity, and I have to just stop being afraid of not providing for my family enough, so, uh, I can write some creative things that will provide for us.
That segues nicely into part three, coming later.
I wanted to have something new and cool to show off when I went to the Grand Slam Sci-Fi Summit back in March, so I worked like crazy and made a very limited edition chapbook called More Than This, which is a few stories from the Do You Want Kids With That? manuscript (which is a book similar to Dancing Barefoot, but all about stepparenting.)
I wanted it to be something really cool and worth having, so in addition to three stories that I really like, I asked Ben Claassen to do an illustration like the ones he did for Dancing Barefoot, and I asked my stepson Ryan if he’d write a foreword. Luckily for us all, they both agreed, and the result is really cool, if I say so myself.
I only made 200 of these books, and sold 51 58 of them at the convention. Since I gave Ryan and Nolan numbers one and two respectively, that means there are 147 140 left in the whole entire universe, including the far off Dangot (that’s pronounced "dang-oh," not "dan-got," which you may have heard) Nebula.
I was only going to make 100 for the convention, but it didn’t cost that much to increase the run to 200, and I figured that I’d be able to offer whatever was left on this here website.
See where I’m going with this? I knew ya did!
If you’d like to pick up one of these limited-edition chapbooks, you can use the "Buy Now" button below. I’ll sign the chapbook to whomever you want, and number it by hand with my very favorite squishy-handled pen. I’ll keep this offer up as long as I have books, and of course I’ll refund any orders that come in after they’re all gone (assuming they sell out.)
One last thing: in the writing and editing process of Do You Want Kids With That?, my editor and I have come to the conclusion that it probably doesn’t work as a full-length book (long story) but will almost certainly work very well as a 60-minute audiobook. So it’s quite likely that this will be the only way you can get your hands on this material in any sort of book form.
If you’re interested, here are the details:
More Than This – A Personalized, Autographed Chapbook by Wil Wheaton, featuring a foreword from my stepson Ryan.
Length: 20 pages.
Price: $25.00 (includes shipping)
Please allow 3-5 weeks for processing and shipping. At this time, I can only accept domestic US orders (international
shipping is a real bitch for a small time operation like mine, and I
have to increase the costs quite a bit to justify the extra time and
work. Sorry.) If you have questions, put them in comments, so I can sort of FAQ it up. Thanks.
UPDATE: As of 8:30 PM PDT, there are just 75 left. 74 left (I thought I should probably set one aside for my mom.)
UPDATE AGAIN: As of 9:38 PM PDT there are just 32 left. Wow.
UPDATED AGAIN AGAIN: At 11:05 PM PDT, there are only 11 books left.
UPDATED ONE LAST TIME: It’s 11:44 PM PDT, and all the books have
been ordered, so I’m going to bed now. I’ll start processing orders
tomorrow after breakfast. Thanks to everyone who placed orders!
So it turns out that Eventful Demands really work! Thanks to everyone who demanded me in Boston (currently a staggering 209,) I was able to confidently contact a few bookstores and tell them that I was coming to town, with about 200 people who would come to their store, spend some money, and freak out the regulars.
As I’ve tried to put this together, I’ve learned that Boston has no shortage of outstanding bookstores, (especially indie book stores) and scheduling something for two days before the Fourth of July holiday is really, really hard . . . but I stuck at it, because this is such a unique opportunity to find out if decentralized tools and the power of the internets really does work for a guy like me.
On the advice of several WWdN:iX readers, I focused my attention and my efforts on Brookline Booksmith and Porter Square Books. If I was going to be in town for more than two days, I could probably do events at both stores, but since I’m only there for a brief time, (and because they called back first) I’ll be at Brookline Booksmith on July 2nd. The store is working with the theatre across the street from the store to set up a screening of Stand By Me, followed by a Q&A with me. If they can get a print of the film, it will start at noon; otherwise, I’ll just take the stage at one, do a reading from Just A Geek, and take some questions after. Either way, it’s going to be really, really fun.
More details will come as they get worked out, but so far, here’s what I have in easy-to-cut-n-paste form:
Who: Wil Wheaton, author, actor, cad, knave, raconteur.
What: Reading from Just A Geek, possible screening of Stand By Me.
Where: Brookline Booksmith – 279 Harvard Street Brookline, MA 02446
When: Sunday, July 2, 2006 – 12:00pm
This is really exciting for me. I feel the same level of anticipation and giddiness I felt when I was about to release Dancing Barefoot through Monolith Press, because this is something that I never could have done on my own (both practically, and courageously) and I can’t wait to see how this whole thing turns out.
Now, I can turn my attention to taking care of Montreal, which is going to be a hell of a lot easier, I think.
