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I’m working on a recap of some convention highlights, before the memories sink to the bottom of a pint of Guinness. While I take care of that, check this out . . .
I have a few selections in this new anthology that came out today called Never Threaten To Eat Your Co-Workers – The Best of the Blogs.
It’s co-edited by fellow O’Reilly Author (okay, that sounds too cool!) Alan Graham, and Bonnie Burton.
Alan is the guest blogger at bOINGbOING this month, and he announced the book this morning.
Best Blogs has more information about the book:

The Best of Blogs features the most provocative online writing by unknown writers and underground celebs. MTV’s The Real World’s cast member Neil Forrester gives new meaning to the phrase “Bite your tongue.” Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton gives his take on the Hollywood system and fleeting stardom. Web designer Heather Hamilton finds herself in the unemployment line after publishing work stories in her blog, Dooce.com. Humorist Choire Sicha gives advice on broken hearts and timeshares. Illustrator Mark Frauenfelder throws out his cell phone and uproots his family from Los Angeles to the sandy beaches of Rarotonga. Plus tales of creepy video store customers, online love lies, Iraqi politics, office pranks gone wrong, jury duty, a childhood meeting with Darth Vader and so much more.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Well, you should really read the Forward by Doc Searls, which Alan sent to me when he asked me if I’d be part of the book. Here’s the part that grabbed my interest:

A lot of what I write is about journalism, which I am pleased to see reequipped and transformed by weblog technologies. By transforming millions of passive users into active journalists, blog tech is equipping the Huns to overrun Rome. It’s a wonderful thing to watch. I hated Rome.
Amazingly, Big-J journalism hardly knows it’s being sacked and taken over by all these little-j journalist because Big-J media, on the whole, hardly know what to make of the Web that’s been around since 1995, much less of the latest developments there. So they trivialize blogging and dismiss it as “noise.” I still haven’t seen a good major media story about blogging that isn’t by a blogger.
Even my favorite broadcast journalist, Scott Simon of NPR, had an essay on blogging last November that was wrong and dumb from start to finish. In the absence of knowledge he offered nothing but dismissive prejudice. It was disappointing but understandable. He’s a Roman, doing what the Romans do.

I guess the “literary elite” (Alan’s words, not mine) totally blew off this book as “just a lame collection of online ramblings” (my words, not Alan’s), and I think that Doc Searls is onto something in his forward up there: this whole blogging phenomenon threatens to shake up the accepted order of things (see: Dean, Howard — Campaign of) and the Establishment doesn’t understand it, but they know they should be a little afraid of it. (I was recently contacted by a major magazine writer, who was looking for very negative stories about blogging: do I know any bloggers who have lost their jobs becase of their blog, or eaten any dead babies, or set fire to any churches . . . because, you know, they’re bloggers.) I’m all about shaking up The Establishment (and stopping The Man from keepin’ me down, yo. \m/), and even though I am nowhere NEAR the top in this group, I’m proud to be collected alongside these writers.
Check it out.
. . .
Go on, do it. Do it.
/stiller

I love it when I hit command-Q when I mean to hit command-W, and Camino doesn’t say something like, “Hey, stupid! Are you sure you want to close down the entire operation? You sure you don’t just mean ‘close the Fark tab, so I can finish up the weblog entry?'” I heart my iBook, but I REALLY need to get it together and fix whatever the gdm / kdm issue is on my RedHat machine, so I can go back to using Konqueror.
Oh well. It’s my fault for not composing offline like I usually do. Let’s blame my tired little brain, mmmkay?
Here’s the incredibly brief version of what I just sent off to the depths of nowhere:
I had a fantastic time at the convention yesterday. I performed material from Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot to a mostly-full theatre, and I think it was my best performance to date. I took material from both books, and I put it together in what I hoped would be a dramatically interesting order. I started out with two pieces from Just A Geek: the “Didn’t you used to be an actor?” story, which is a good introduction to me and my material, followed by a selection from “Still Cool.”
After that, I read “Can’t See Useless, which isn’t in any book (yet), but I think it’s cool, and I wanted to see how an audience reacted to it, especially an audience that expected mostly Star Trek material. (I think they liked it. It got some good laughs, and applause that was more than just polite when I finished.)
I read a selection from SpongeBob Vega$ Pants that I call “If you lived here you’d be home now.” It’s about the first time I went on Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas, and how it affected me. Then I read “Spare Us the Cutter” from JAG.
The auction thing that preceeded me ran way long (I was supposed to start at 2:10, and I don’t think I started until around 2:30) so I stopped at this point in my reading and told the audience, “I know that I’m running late, and William Shatner is about to start his talk in the big room, so if you want to go catch that, you should probably head out now.”
A couple of people got up, and a woman about 15 rows back shouted out, “I’d rather listen to five hours of you than five minutes of him!”
Applause. Applause. Applause. I’m pretty sure I blushed, and I thanked her . . . I was a little embarrassed . . . but I must admit, that felt pretty fuckin’ cool!
Most of the audience that started had left by this point, but there were still between 30 and 40 people in the room, so I took a moment look to look out at them.
These people are here to see you, Wil. That’s awesome!
“Can I read you one more?” I said.
“YES!!11!” They called back, in one mighty voice. (It was insanely cool, but not as cool as what happened next.)
“Okay. Cool!” I said, and turned to a new page in my notes.
“I first met William Shatner on the set of Star Trek V in 1988 . . . ” I said, as I started the WFS story from Dancing Barefoot, but that’s as far as I got, because they went NUTS!
Screaming, hollering, clapping, whistling . . . it was one of those Rock Star moments that happens from time to time, and I’d be the biggest liar in the world if I said I didn’t love it. I don’t feel “cool” very often, but I did when that happened, if only for a few seconds. I think it’s okay to enjoy that feeling when it happens, as long as I don’t let it consume me the way it would have when I was 18.
I finished the story, and then ended my performance with an epilogue from Just A Geek called “Hooters 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

Throughout the whole performance, I felt like the audience was 100% “with me.” I never felt like I was working to keep their attention, or that I wasn’t giving them what they expected. I had a wonderful time, and I’m grateful to everyone who showed up, even if it was only for a few minutes, to listen to me.
There is also a brief recap of some other stuff in my AudioBlog.

What an amazing day!
I got up at 5:30 so I could to an East Coast radio interview. The DJs totally “got” me, and seemed very excited about my book, and my website. It went really well, and the day just got better from there.
The convention today was AMAZING. I guess there were about 500 or 700 people there, and I think I saw all of them at least once.
The whole thing is (more or less) wrapped up in . . . a new AudioBlog post!
Now I’m home, and I’m going to watch Futurama with Anne for as long as I can stay awake.
It looks like I’m going to get a little more than 60 minutes tomorrow for my performance, and I may be able to push it to 75 . . . which means I can do material from Barefoot, Geek, and even something . . . unpublished. \m/
Yeah, today totally went to eleven.

Hey, if you’re into hearing the sound of my smooth chocolately voice, point your browser to Taste of the Goods tonight at 7PM Eastern Standard Time, and tune in.
I’m talking about Dancing Barefoot, Shark vs. Croc, and some other stuff that’s so top secret, I don’t even know what it is.

And now, another entry from the “I really need a break from the Just A Geek rewrite” department . . .
Last Wednesday, I had the awesome session for Super Robot Monkey Hyper Force Terrific Mega Madness Hella Hella Bitchin GO! That session led to an audition on Friday for the freakin’ head of voice over casting at Disney Feature Animation for a new Disney project. If I book that job, I’ll be one of two leads on the show!
It was a very different experience from what I’m used to in the “on-camera” world, and I think I may have cost myself the job by tensing up, but I won’t know for sure for another few days.
Here’s how on-camera auditions work: I walk into the room, hope they don’t immediately hate me, then read the scene. Usually, there are several scenes I have to prepare, and if the casting people don’t hate me after one of them, they tell me to read another one. (Of course, I have to prepare all seven scenes, or whatever, just to be sure. Can I tell you how much I love it when I spend the time it takes to put together seven scenes, and then they only let me do one of them? Almost as much as I love it when I prepare seven scenes, they only let me do one, and then they never take three fucking minutes to call us back and give us any feedback. That’s the best.)
Lots of things can happen during that one scene that sort of tip me off that they may not be giving me maximum love: talking to each other, looking out the window, flipping through other people’s headshots and resumes — oh, sighing heavily is my personal favorite. When something like that happens, I know I’m done, and everyone’s time has been wasted.
Because it’s like that in on-camera auditions, I have to be a perfectly oiled fighting machine when I go into that room. If I’m Voltron with five lions, I’m good. But if I’m Voltron with all those little spaceships, I’m doomed. If I’m Donkey Kong on Colecovison, I’m in like flynn (from Tron, of course.) But if I’m Pac Man on Atari 2600, I am on my way to the landfill of ET cartridges in the middle of the desert.
I’ve done enough of these on-camera auditions to perfectly read the room. I have a Sixth Sense about things that lets me know if the Signs tell me I’m Unbreakable.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Okay. The point of all that is, if people look at each other, or talk, or whatever, I know I’m sunk.
Let’s contrast this with my very limited experience in Voice Over calls, shall we?
On Thursday afternoon last week, I got the sides for Friday’s audition. They contained a picture of the character, accompanied by a written description of his personality (13 years old, thinks he’s tough, sort of sarcastic, give his partner lots of shit but is ready to defend her in an instant, etc.) and two pages of sides that I am supposed to prepare and perform. Before the session on Wednesday, I would have been way too scared to attempt a character voice, but I felt confident, and I gave myself permission to do one.
I walked around my neighborhood, with one hand cupped to my ear, and just fooled around with different voices. One was too pinched, another sounded too much like Beast Boy, still another was just too “mature.”
After about a mile or so, I found one that I liked. I went home and tried it out for Ryan and Nolan, and they thought it sounded cool, so that’s the voice I took with me into the booth on Friday afternoon.
When I walked in, it was the same thing as Wednesday’s session: a lone music stand, headphones and a microphone to keep me company on my side of the glass. A director, a casting director, and a producer sat on the other side.
This time, I remembered to put my headphones on right away.
The director talked to me a bit, and one of the producers told me that he’d bought an old game of mine at a game shop in Burbank. (Okay — that was really weird.)
I read my first line, and waited for someone to read the other part. After an awkward pause, I looked up, and they were all looking back.
Oh fuck. I’m supposed to just keep going. Way to look like an amateur, Wheaton.
Now, if this was an on-camera audition, that would have been the mistake that extinguished my torch, and sent me off the island, but I just cleared my throat, apologized, and started over. I read the entire script, performing the other character’s voice in my head between my lines.
When I was done, the director told me I’d done well, and they all began talking. It was the most disconcerting thing in the world to watch them talk about me, see their lips moving, and have no idea what they were saying.
I felt a slight tightness begin in my chest when she pushed the TALK button.
“We’re going to go through the whole thing now, bit by bit. Let’s just start with lines one through four.” She gave me some direction, and I took it. The tightness in my chest relaxed.
We did this all the way through the rest of the script. After a few unsuccessful tries on line . . . I think it was eight, that tightness came back, and my eye began to twitch (it’s been doing that a lot the last week or so, as the JAG deadline draws looms closer.) The old Voice of Self-Doubt, that’s always ready to jump in and whisper in my ear when the voice of Calm Reason would be so much more useful said, “Dude, you suck at this. You know that your voice sounds too deep, they know your voice sounds too deep, and they’re getting impatient with you. Just do the fucking line and let’s go home.”
I read the line again, and the director said, kindly, “Wil, your voice is getting a little tense and pinched. See if you can relax it some more.”
It wasn’t until later, when I was driving home, that I realized how I’d screwed myself. I listened to the Voice of Self-Doubt, and when I became tense and nervous, so did my voice. It’s a good learning experience, and I won’t repeat the mistake on other VO auditions, but I wish I’d learned this lesson in a risk-free environment, instead of an audition for the head of freakin’ voice casting at Disney Feature Animation.
After each take, they’d tell me to hold on, then conference with each other. By this time, I was so totally insecure, I was certain that I could read their lips: “Forget it. He’s just not right.” “His voice is too deep.” “He’s fine for on-camera, but he doesn’t have what it takes to be a voice actor.”
Of course, they weren’t saying anything like that, but the good old Voice of Self-Doubt was doing a great job of dubbing them. With each conference, I grew less and less confident, but I ultimately finished the audition.
I looked at my watch, and noticed that I’d been in there for almost 35 minutes. That’s unheard of in on-camera auditions. I realized then that they must have been into what I was doing, and they were trying to help me sound my best, to do my best work.
I punched the Voice of Self-Doubt squarely in the fucking nuts when I walked out of the booth, and saw my friend Hynden, from Teen Titans, sitting in the waiting room.
“How did it go?” She said.
I told her all about the stupid Voice of Self-Doubt, and asked her what it meant if they kept someone in the room for a long time. She told me that it meant they liked what I was doing as an actor, and they were trying to help me iron out a few kinks, and settle into the character’s voice.
I told her about my experiences in on-camera auditions, and she said that VO auditions are completely different.
I was so stupid, man. I was SofaKing stupid. I’m chalking it up to inexperience, though. Now that I know what to expect, the fucking Voice of Self-Doubt can just stay wrapped up in electrical tape and bailing wire in the trunk, next to Corey Haim.
So here’s what happens now: They’ll take all the takes I did, and cut together the very best performance they can. They’ll do the same for the other actors they saw for this part, and then they’ll all sit down and listen to all our tapes. After this Aural Thunderdome, one of us will get the part. I honestly don’t think I’ll get it. I had to work very hard to stay in this character’s voice when I freaked out, and if it came down to me (who had to talk around the stupid Voice of Self-Doubt) and someone else who didn’t, they’d obviously hire the other guy.
But I think I did a decent enough job taking their direction to at least remain in consideration for other parts.
In other news, I’ve been asked to write for another magazine. If that happens, I think I’ll be ready to officially call myself a writer, because I’ll have more things to do than write this weblog and work on a book. I’ll have actual regular deadlines and everything! It’s crazy, isn’t it? Just a year ago I never would have thought any of this would be possible . . . but here I am. 🙂
On top of that, I’ve just been added as a contributor to VH1’s Best Week Ever blog (maybe I’ll end up on the show more, too. I mean, c’mon, “Liquid Ice . . . also known as water?” You should see the stuff that didn’t make it. Seriously. I slay me. Or something. Heh.)
I would like to close by pointing out that I haven’t made a single Pixies reference in this entire post, even though I typed it with Bony Fingers.
(d’oh.)