Category: Uncategorized

Technorati added  a new service to the already useful search, explore and watchlist functions they offer, which allows users to create a list of their favorite blogs. Though WWdN dropped out of their top 100 when I hosed the database back in September, I was still invited to participate in a "featured favorites" thing, with people like Arianna Huffington and David Sifry.

You can see which blogs I chose here. If you’d like to add WWdN:iX to your own list of favorites, you can use the handy link over on the right side there, where you can also add my blog to several different RSS readers.

All this stuff will be built into the redesign of WWdN, which should be finished and launched shortly before Duke Nuke’Em Forever ships.

I just realized that the Grand Slam convention in Pasadena is coming up in just ten days, running from the 10th until the 12th at the Pasadena Convention center.

I haven’t done any conventions since this show last year, because I didn’t feel like I had any new material, I thought it made sense to take a break from cons, yadda, yadda, yadda, but since I have Just A Geek: The Audio Book, and some advance material on Do You Want Kids With That? I thought it made sense to attend this show.

I also thought it would be a fantastic and unique opportunity to do a Star Trek podcast, with interviews of anyone I could talk to, as well as an audio diary of my experiences at the show.

So I gave Adam at Creation a call, and even though it’s super last minute, he added me to the schedule. I doubt I’ll be doing anything up on stage (everything is booked already) but there’s a chance I may sneak on to introduce someone, or do something cool.

Hope to see some of you there!

Hi, my name is Wil, and I’m a baseball fan.

It all started when I was a little kid, and my dad took me to Dodger Stadium for an afternoon game. I don’t remember much about the game itself (I couldn’t tell you the opposing team, starting pitchers, or final score), but I can close my eyes and instantly hear the din of the crowd, the ever-present Vin Scully coming out of a thousand hand-held radios, and feel the warm summer sun on my face. I can taste the Dodgerdogs and Cracker Jacks, and hear Nancy B. on the Dodger Stadium organ. Yeah, they say you never forget your first time.

As I got older, just watching the game wasn’t enough for me. I needed to take a scorecard to the game, then I needed to take a transistor radio, then I found myself with . . . binoculars.

I knew I had a problem when I couldn’t get tickets for opening day, so I bought hot dogs, beer, cracker jacks, peanuts and red vines, grabbed my booklet of score cards, sat in front of my  television, and pretended that I was in Chavez Ravine.

Luckily, I was able to get some help for my addiction, when Kevin "Dodger Boy" Malone came to Los Angeles, and thoroughly fucked up the team on the field and decimated the farm system. The new Dodger ownership, by turning my beloved Dodger Stadium into a a series of billboards with empty rich jerk seats where the foul territory once was have helped me maintain my sobriety.

I have a bit of baseball methadone, though, and it’s still on TV. Well, on Playstation and Xbox, actually, and this week, I put on my best Rock Star impression, and turned my addition into cash.

First up, a review of MVP06 NCAA Baseball:

Overpaid, underperforming marquee players, steroid scandals, Scott
Boras… Major League Baseball isn’t exactly the classic summer pastime
that Ken Burns made it out to be. So where do fans go when they long
for a simpler time when stadiums were smaller, players didn’t wear
enough body armor to walk straight from the dugout into a joust, and
batters actually hustled to beat out that grounder to short? College,
of course. There, kids who have benefited from a lifetime of screaming
Little League dads finally have their shot at meeting Scott Boras and
becoming an overpaid, underperforming marquee player embroiled in a
steroid scandal.

And to dovetail with that review, I made Champion Baseball the subject of this week’s Games of our Lives:

In 1983, most arcade denizens were looking to live out lives in space,
magic mazes, or other extraordinary realities. Other than lackluster
efforts like Extra Bases, America’s pastime was curiously absent from arcades until Sega released Champion Baseball,
giving Leo Durocher wannabes a chance to manage one of 12 MLB-esque
teams to victory in a pixelated little field where the weather was
always perfect and the stands were always filled to capacity.

Kids today might not like it because: They choose to play as
California, (which is what the Angels were called before they were the
Los Angeles Angels of
we’re-really-in-Orange-County-but-want-Los-Angeles-in-our-name fame),
and find that their pitcher is "Bert" instead of Nolan Ryan. Sorry,
kids, it’s 1983, and licensing for video games is still a decade away.

So, does anyone know when pitchers and catchers report to Spring training? I have, uh, a friend who wants to know.

Remember when I asked you all to go vote for my friend Dawn to be the MySpace Girl of the Week on Attack of the Show? Well, thanks to the Dieboldeqsue voting of WWdN readers and Farkers, she won! Her segment is on Attack of the Show today, and I understand it involves a Poison Ivy costume and a trampoline. I’m not sure if they asked her "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" but I suspect the average ATOS viewer is more interested girls than crossing the bridge of death, which is why I don’t watch it.

The show airs at 7PM Eastern and Pacific.

Now fetch me a shrubbery!

Anne plays a lot of Scrabble, and she’s really good. It’s not uncommon for her to score between 270-350 in a two player game, and she hasn’t even mastered the art of sneaking fake words past a challenge, memorizing word lists, or counting how many of a certain letter are left in the bag to work out some complex probability game theory thing.

A few weeks ago, she called me from her friend’s house. I picked up the phone while I poked some coals around the fireplace.

"Hello?" I said.

"Wil! I got venereal!" She shouted.

"WHAT?!" I dropped the fireplace poker onto the hearth.

"Venereal! I got venereal as my first word, and scored –"

"Anne, you can’t just call me up without warning and tell me that you’ve ‘got venereal.’"

She cracked up. "Oh, sorry about that."

"It’s okay," I said. "If you don’t win this game, I’ll be very disappointed."[1]

"I’ll do my best. I have to go. I love you."

"I love you, too. Bye."

Score: Anne – 1 Wil – 0

Today, she called me from her salon and told me about this thing she’d heard about called The Miracle Ball. I guess it’s some pain management, muscle fixing hoo hah that one of her clients swears by. Anne and I are doing the marathon again this year, and I still have pretty constant pain in my right hip that nothing is curing. Massage, acupuncture, yoga, cursing, deals-with-the-devil . . . nothing is working. So Anne suggested that I try the Miracle Ball, which she could also use to help her back and neck.

Before I can run, I need to walk at least thirty minutes a day for the next three weeks or so, which means that I’m not driving myself many places right now. I put on my walking shoes, grabbed my nano, pulled on my ultracool San Andreas jacket, and walked myself over to the bookstore, where I found the Miracle Ball book in the fitness section.

After I paid, I pulled out my cell, and sent her the following text message: i have your miracle balls

I wish she was a farker, so she could send back something like, O RLY?

Alas, she is not, so the score is currently: Anne – 1 Wil – 1 There’s a lot of time left in the game, though, and she still has all her time outs.

This is probably 800% funnier to me than it is to anyone reading this. Welcome to my world.

[1] She went on to win with something like 450 or 490. Insane.