radio dot wil wheaton dot net

I’ve been experimenting with a Shoutcast music stream that Mysterious Kevin helped me set up. I have a bunch of different playlists that I rotate through, including 70s punk, 80s metal, 90s ambient electronica, and 90s grunge. I mix in a bunch of random weird and strange files that I find online, including excerpts from Star Trek Power records, ancient European commercials, audio bloopers from various TV shows, and other things you’d expect to find on a mixtape. If you’ve ever heard my podcast mixtapes, you know what to expect.

You should be able to listen to this in any browser, or you can download the .pls file to stream in VLC or the media thingy of your choice. I also think this little player thingy should work right here. ~~If I configured it the way I want, it should even be playing AUTOMATICALLY LIKE MAGIC~~ (I reconfigured this so it doesn’t autoplay, based on your feedback.):

The current playlist (which I expect to keep live all week) is the 80s metal collection. It features some Sabbath, Maiden, Van Halen, Metallica, Scorpions, and stuff like that.

Unrelated: this new WordPress composer (BLOCKS AND BLOCKS AND OTHER BLOCKS IS HOW WE DO IT NOW) is really weird and makes me feel like a very old man who used to hand-code blog entries in raw HTML. I’m sure it’s very powerful and flexible when you get used to it, but right now I feel like I’m writing with someone else’s hands.

ALSO UNRELATED: The Star Trek cruise was amazing and deserves its own entry, but I’ve been decompressing and catching up on work since we got back, and I haven’t had time to sit down to properly compose my thoughts.

RELATED: Van Hagar sucks.

Oh, and also…

this is brilliant

When we worked on Next Generation, Brent Spiner and I would sit at our consoles on the bridge, and make up lyrics to our show’s theme song. I vaguely recall coming up with some pretty funny and clever stuff, but nothing that held together as perfectly as this, from the weirdos over at meh.com:

…and then Pete Townsend says, “Can anybody play the drums?”

I was thinking about reinstalling Rock Band again recently, but I decided that, even though I really loved playing it back in the day, I am at a point in my life where I would rather spend that time actually learning an instrument, instead. I have played bass guitar and ukulele in the past. I also played guitar in the way that every lame college dude does, which means I never learned any theory, but I memorized some guitar tabs and chords, and sort of faked my way through a few songs for friends who were either too polite or embarrassed to tell me how bad I was.

I was sort of thinking that doing it as a game would be fun, so I gave Rocksmith guitar a try, but after about two hours of different game modes, it’s not for me. It was like all the frustration of Rock Band or Guitar hero, but without any of the fun of pretending that I was a rock star. I may plug in my old bass guitar (which is now a vintage instrument because I’m old) and try that mode, but for now, I’m going to try something different.

I have always wanted to learn to play the drums, and I was pretty good at the Rock Band drums when we played all the time, so I decided to pick up a small, inexpensive, student kit, and use YouTube videos to master the basics. While I was shopping around about a week ago, there was a shiny little kit on sale at woot, and it had more pieces and cost less than the three piece kit I was looking it, so I bought it. It was delivered today.

I’ve been putting it together, which is really fun, but murder on my old hands and knuckle joints, so I took a break to write this dumb post about the new experimental hobby thingy I’m doing: Is it possible for a 45 year-old dude like me to learn how to play the drums, using only the resources available online?

I intend to find out. I’ll document the process here.

Look what you made me do! Here’s my first impression of Taylor Swift’s Reputation.

I am so far out of the demo, this feels maybe like an Abrictosaurus reviewing an opera, but for the six of you who have asked me if I’ve listened to the new Taylor Swift record, Reputation, (because I’m such a big dumb fan of 1989), here are my first impressions.

I just finished the first playthrough, and I like it. I haven’t paid super close to the lyrics, because I’ve literally listened to it one time, so this is just based on the general musical tone and pacing of the album.

Thoughts on the rest of the record:

…Ready For It? kicks off with a punch that winds me up for the rest of the record. I’m generally not a big fan of that dubstep wuuuubbbbvvvvsszzzzzzsound, but it works for me in this context.

End Game is a collaboration with Ed Sheeran and Future that left me cold. It feels out of place on this album, but especially after …Ready For It? got me so pumped up to hear what comes next. The vocals are so overproduced, the whole thing is a little much for me, but I suspect that the legion of Taylor fans who love Ed Sheeran will eat it up. (See above about how I’m not in the demo for the album.)

I Did Something Bad is glorious, lyrically and musically. I love that Taylor Swift is just dropping a huge DEAL WITH IT to everyone. This is probably my favorite song on the album.

Don’t Blame Me feels like a Lorde song, which sort of made me go “Buh? Wha? Fluh? Huh?” because I listened to Melodrama right before I listened to Reputation.

Delicate didn’t do much for me.

Look What You Made Me Do didn’t floor me when it was a single, but I feel like it works so much better in the context of the album, which isn’t what I expect from a pop album that is usually designed to have a bunch of singles (notable exception is Tove Lo’s Queen of the Clouds, which is a pop concept album and damn near perfect. Also, her new record, Blue Lips, is great).

So It Goes… feels like a song that could have been on 1989, and I mean that in the very best way.

Gorgeous is another one that could have been on 1989, the emotional B-side to Blank Space. I expect it to come back around in summer.

Getaway Car feels like a song that didn’t quite make the cut for 1989. I wasn’t crazy about it.

King of My Heart has this particular beat that’s common in pop right now that isn’t my favorite thing, and the vocals are way over processed, but for some reason those two things come together to make this track the exception that proves the rule.

Dancing With Our Hands Tied feels sort of like if Imogen Heap collaborated with Everything But The Girl in like 2002. It’s lush in a way that I haven’t heard Taylor Swift before, and I really liked that.

I’m not crazy about the falsetto in Dress, but maybe that’ll change.

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things is a lot of fun, and feels like it would be right at home in a modern Broadway musical. (And honestly, I just don’t care who – if anyone – that song is about. Music critics just need to get over the tired trope that Taylor Swift writes songs about everyone she has dated or known or whatever. Maybe this song is about someone in particular, but why does that even matter? Maybe it’s about you, stupid music critic, you big dummy.)

New Year’s Day is a great album closer. The stripped down vocals, simple harmony, and solo piano are such a great counterpoint to the production of the rest of the album. I can feel the brief moment of darkness at the end of it, before the house lights come up, as the lights go out on the stage. I think this song is going to be in a lot of graduation videos this year.

So, overall, 4 out of 5. One track I just don’t like at all, two tracks that I can take or leave, and 12 songs I really liked. Reputation didn’t grab me on its first listen the way 1989 did, but I feel like I’m going to get into it more upon subsequent plays.

But not grabbing me right away and compelling me to restart the album right away doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a great record; it just means that it wants me to do a little work to find my way into it. It’s like, The Bends grabbed me right away and I played it to death. OK Computer took me several listens to appreciate and love, and all these years later, I never play The Bends, and will put OK Computer on pretty much always.

Did I just compare Taylor Swift to Radiohead? You bet your face I did. Don’t @ me. I contain multitudes.

5 things I want you to know

Here are five things I want you to know:

My friends, Kumail and Emily, wrote and produced a movie called The Big Sick. It’s about how they met and fell in love, and it’s wonderful. It’s a great date movie. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming without being saccharine, and it’s a true story! It’s a little indie movie, but it’s holding its own against big summer blockbusters, which is awesome. I want everyone to see it because it’s a great film (it should absolutely be considered during the award-o-rama season), but also because the way the studios work, it’ll only stay in theaters if it continues to outperform expectations. So please go see it, and tell your friends about it. (Those of you who are old enough to remember the early MeFi days will know where I got my linking style.)
Yesterday morning, Anne woke me up twenty minutes before my alarm did, because she needed me to hear the noise our air conditioner was making. It couldn’t have waited until I was ready to wake up, when I was starting to come out of my deep sleep cycle, because it was making a noise similar to putting a handful of ball bearings and some broken glass into a blender. It turns out that the motor blew out during the hottest three days of the year so far, because I am a fucking idiot who forgot to change the ten dollar air filter (in my defense, we did the math on the calendar and realized that Anne was in emergency surgery when I should have been changing it, so I may have gotten the reminder from my task list a whole second before I dismissed it forever). It was so hot in our house, things in our pantry were melting. I’m grateful that we had eighteen hundred dollars in a sock just for such an occasion, and by the time the sun had done its worst, it was repaired. So consider this your reminder to go look at your air filter and change it, if necessary.
I played games for the first time in months yesterday. My group was dealt a TPK when the last two members moved away in January, and I haven’t had anyone to play with. At first, I was happy to take the break, because gaming has been my job for the last four years. But as time went by, I became acutely aware of how significant gaming is to my life, my joy, and my reason for being. Tabletop is complicated for me, (and, honestly, Board Game Subreddit: maybe it just isn’t the right snow for you and you don’t need to rage at me about every single episode we do) and while I’m grateful as hell for everything it’s done to promote the hobby, the way Legendary has handled the fourth season and the relentless shitting on it and me by random internet strangers has taken its toll. I’d been so consumed by the things that made the show a bummer this season, and I’d been unable to play games for the sake of playing games for so long, I completely lost sight of how much I love gaming, how proud I am of our show, and the good it has done not just for my life, but for the thousands of other people who have shared their stories with me. So when we played Lords of Waterdeep and Splendor yesterday, it was like coming out of a fog of sadness for the first time in at least half a year.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Marley recently, and just this morning I came across a record I didn’t know about: Dreams of Freedom (Ambient Translation of Bob Marley in Dub). If you enjoyed the ambient tracks or the dub reggae I played on Radio Free Burrito, you have got to check out this record. It’s beautiful.
Speaking of RFB, I had an episode about 3/4 finished two weeks ago, but I really just hated it so I sent it to the land of wind and ghosts. I know that I’m overdue to release a new show, but I didn’t appreciate just how challenging it is to do a weekly podcast that isn’t about current events, or features interviews. I feel like I have to go to this mental box to find stuff to talk about, and recently it’s been empty and sad (HEY JUST LIKE ME HA HA THAT IS A JOKE AND NOT REAL AT ALL EVERYTHING IS FINE I AM FINE HA HA HA). So rather than force something that I think is shitty garbage that sucks, I’ve just been waiting until I have something worthwhile to make.

So that’s five things I want you to know on this lovely Sunday that’s way too fucking hot. What do you want me to know?

EDIT OH SHIT I FORGOT I WANTED YOU TO KNOW THIS ALSO BUT SIX THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW IS WEIRD TITLE SO I’M NOT CHANGING IT: I am honored to be a guest on this week’s Lovett or Leave It podcast.