Free Dimitry

I’m working on some other stuff right now, but I just saw this webpage. I’ve followed Dimitry’s story for awhile, and I think everyone should be pretty pissed off about what’s being done to this guy.

Procrastination

Look at me! I’m a cowboy! Howdy, howdy, howdy!
Anyone remember that from The Far Side? It was one of my favorites when I was in school.
Well, kids, it’s too damn hot today to do anything but stay inside, and since my house is such a complete and utter disaster, I’m putting off cleaning it up, and bringing the old Burrito Blog up to date. I’m going to go in reverse order, starting with last night’s excursion for Anne’s birthday, yesterday afternoons Improv show, and yesterday morning’s meeting with Roger. Then I’ll give up the promised stories from the Tahoe trip.
I really need to get a digital camera, so I can include cool picture links in these stories, don’t you think?
Before I get started, I want to clarify something, so you can understand a little something about your Sweet Uncle Willie:
I hate, and I mean hate places like “the mall” or these big shopping/dining/consumption oriented places, like The Bock At Orange, and The Irvine Spectrum. I’d MUCH rather go to a little community-oriented street fair or shopping district, and give my money to and spend time around real people, rather than big corporate behemoths.
But Anne’s friend Michelle lives near Irvine, and there is this one cool place there, so I sucked it up, and met them, and our friend Stephanie (who introduced me to and Anne) for dinner, and entertainment.

Dinner, or When The Waiter Came, I said “eww! Look! The waiter came!”

The plan was to meet Anne and the girls at The Cheesecake Factory, but I guess the wait there was 45-70 minutes. 45-70 minutes?! does anyone really want to wait that long for a seat in a restaurant? Sure, at Hooters I can understand that, but at The Cheesecake Factory?
I guess the girls all felt the same way, so they went to some place called “Champps Americana”, which is sort of a sportsbar/micro-brewery/I’m-having-a-mid-life-crisis-and-I-want-to-eat-at-a-place-like-the-ones-I-went-to-in-college place.
So we get seated, and we’re ordering, and, right in the middle of Anne giving her order, the waiter cuts her off, points towards me, and says, “Hey! The kid from Stand By Me!”…Now, whenever that happens, I don’t quite know what to say. Should I jump up and shout “Traaiiiiinnnn!” or tell him a story, or what? I never know how to handle that…I don’t want to say, “Yes! You are correct, sir! Now please treat me differently the entire course of our meal, for I am from movies!”. So there’s this tiny, uncomfortable pause, and my friend Stephanie follows the waiter’s pointing finger, over my shoulder and says, “You know, I think that is Corey Feldman, right over there!” And we all laughed, and it was okay.
So we’re waiting for our dinner to come, and waiting, and waiting, and getting hungrier and hungrier, and this runner finally comes by with some food. He sets Steph’s ribs down in front of her, and as he’s leaning over, he dumps a huge, Ron Jeremy-sized load of alfredo juice all down the shoulder and back of my cool fairview t-shirt! Suddenly, he realizes two things: The food is not ours, it goes to the table next to us, and he just spooged pasta sauce all over my back. So what does he do? He picks up the ribs, says NOTHING about my back! Nothing at all! Not even, “sorry” or “who’s your daddy, wesley?”
So this is a huge mess down my back, and it takes two napkins to wipe it all off…and Stephanie says, “The lest he could have done is bought you dinner before he came on your back.” And my wife says, “Yeah, now you are totally his bitch.”
I realize that some of you are having your image of sweet little Gordie and uber-square Wesley completely shattered right now, but I think it’s best that you get to know the real me sooner than later, that way it won’t hurt so badly when we break up.
Okay, back to the story: FINALLY, our food comes, and it is brought to us by the manager. So I see this guy in a tie coming over, and I think, “Sweet! This turkey burger is on the house!”
He sets our food down, apologizes for the wait, and leaves!! He doesn’t even acknowledge the stain down my back! Now, maybe he didn’t know….I can’t imagine this conversation:

Runner: Uh, sir? I just came on the back of Tv’s Wil Wheaton
Manager: Good job, Darryl! I always hated Wesley Crusher anyway!

But you know what I really think? I think the huge, corporate, “sportsbar/micro-brewery/I’m-having-a-mid-life-crisis-and-I-want-to-eat-at-a-place-like-the-ones-I-went-to-in-college place” doesn’t care about your Uncle Willie, and you know why? Because he isn’t the target audience. He wasn’t wearing penny loafers without socks and corduroy shorts. He didn’t have a ponytail, and he wasn’t drinking Smirnoff Ice when the Zima ran out!!
Oh well. The food wasn’t too bad, and the waitstaff did come and sing “Happy Birthday” to my wife…and our waiter was pretty cool…he could keep up with our sarcasm and jokes and stuff…Oh, and there were lots of interesting people to watch while we ate…which reminds me, and get out a pencil and write this down, people: Just because they make a babydoll t-shirt that says “sexy” in rhinestone across the chest in a size 18 doesn’t mean anyone should wear it! Because, damn, man, dimples, okay? Okay.
Is anyone still with me?
The next place we went was actually really really cool:

Sing Sing With A Swing

“Sing Sing” is a cool piano bar, where 2 guys sit at facing pianos and sing popular tunes and stuff. It is really rowdy, kinda raunchy, and super fun. They play all sorts of songs, from blink 182 to elvis to freebird (because skynard isn’t really a band anyway, they’re just that one song, and ‘sweet home alabama’, right? Oh! interesting fact about skynard: their high school guidence counsellor told them that they’d never make it as a rock band. His name? Leonard Skynard. No shit. And the guy who started FedEx? He presented the idea as a thesis in college, and he professor gave him a terrible grade, because “this will never work.” So let that be a lesson to you. Don’t let anyone tell you what you can’t do. Unless it’s me, and I’m telling you to stop wearing those damn babydoll t-shirts, okay? Okay.)
So there is much singing, much dancing, and a very eclectic crowd, which is rare in cookie-cutter Orange County. And they take requests, so we request “Jesse’s Girl” and “Don’t Stop Believin'”…and they played them, and the whole place went CRAZY! It was really cool. If you can find a Sing-Sing near you, check it out.
Okay, I’m posting this, so I can work on the Improvathon story, and the meeting with Roger story, before I get into the Tahoe saga.
I am spending entirely too much time on this weblong and website thing. I really need to get a life. Or a job. Or a ride to the arcade.

A/S/L

I wonder if anyone wants to bug me in realtime?
If you do, try ICQ 126829884.
Or AOL IM tvswilwheaton.
You know what’s super lame?
Besides my website, jackass.
I had an ICQ number under 100,000. But I can’t remember what it was, and I can’t remember what the password was anyway.
Dammit.

Bendependent

Ben is a really, really cool guy.
He’s also a really great artist, and has a great sense of humor.
He draws all the heads for Killoggs, and he does really funny animations, too.
You must see this right now.

Lefty

I’m left-handed, and it’s really influenced the way I live my life.
See, I pride myself on living outside of the mainstream. I don’t want to be part of the teeming masses.
I must be different.
I must be anti-.
But being left handed has sort of…uh…shaded…that desire a little bit. I realized that this morning, as I was responding to Email about my PDA, which is a Palm, rather than a Visor.

I’ve got a Palm, but it’s looking more and more like the cool kids have a handspring. See, I got a Palm because I am left handed. Let me explain: being a lefty, once a year, as a child, I’d walk into the sporting goods store, and walk past aisle after aisle of right-handed gloves on my way to the half of a shelf of left-handed gloves. And I would pick over the dusty gloves that I didn’t pick last year. Or the year before.
I had a Mac way back in the day (it was a 128), and I would go to the software store, and walk past aisle after aisle of PC software, past “Doom” and “SimEverything” on my way to the Mac shelf on the back, where I would look excitedly at “MacDraw” and “MacPaint”. So when it was time to buy a PDA, I went in and said “I want the most widely used one.”
It’s the only time I’ve been willing and eager to be part of the masses.
But I think I want to be one of the cool kids, now. Or at least pretend that I am.

Wesley is Dead, Long Live Wesley!

Indie sent me a really entertaining email while I was /away, and she mentioned to me that she started the “Wesley doesn’t suck” thread on this message board. Indie sounds really cool, and her website is cool too. And I’m not just saying that because she said “Wesley Crusher was sexy”.
So there.