in which i am grateful

Los Angeles totally turned out for our show at Largo last night. I think the house was about 80% full, which is incredible for a show on a Tuesday, anywhere, but expecially in Hollywood.

We all had a great time, and the new material I did with Paul and Storm seemed to play as well as we hoped it would. Some of it will definitely make it into w00tstock 3.0.

A little earlier today, I was reflecting on the show, and I kept thinking about two things. One, how relieved I was when my set was finished. I didn't run too long, the audience seemed to enjoy all of it, and I had a lot of fun while I performed. The other thing, which is why I wanted to write this post in the first place, was how awesome the people are who come to see us perform. If you've ever come to a w00tstock, a Coulton show, or to a Paul and Storm show, I think you'll recognize what I'm talking about: the audience is always full of fun, relaxed, friendly, generally happy people, and the this atmosphere before, during, and after the show is incredibly positive and inclusive. I don't want to ever take for granted how lucky I am to have this kind of relationship with an audience, to work with friends I admire and adore, and I hope this never changes.

I'm so grateful to perform for audiences like these, and I'd like to believe that one of the reasons we get the same kind of people wherever we go is somehow related to the atmosphere we work hard to create and maintain. We work hard to give you a good show that respects the investment of time and money you've made, we want everyone to have a good time, and after tons of shows, I don't think we've ever attracted a statistically significant number of people who would qualify as not-awesome, let alone people who qualify as dicks. I'm really happy to be part of something that is so consistently positive. I also love seeing so many parents bring their teens and tweens to the show (and sorry about my foul mouth, guys; I am a little too in touch with my inner dirty pirate hooker.)

Though I am completely exhausted after every show, when we've signed the last poster and photobombed the last picture, I can't wait to do the next one. If our audiences weren't so awesome, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel that way, so thank you.

tl;dr: Thank you for coming to our shows, and thank you for consistently being awesome audience members. Maybe it's silly to say it out loud, but I'm grateful for it, and it's important to me that you know that.

wil wheaton vs. paul and storm at Largo this Tuesday

REMINDER: Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm is this coming Tuesday, March 29, at Largo.

As you might possibly guess (if you are incredibly perceptive), we are doing a show with our old w00tstock fellow-traveler Wil Wheaton. This time, we’ll meet on the battlefields of Los Angeles at one of our favorite venues everwhereplace: Largo at the Coronet. There will be music from us, stories from Wil, more special surprise guests, and pirates everywhere. This will be one for the ages, folks. (All ages, that is) (Get it?)

Tuesday, March 29 – Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm
Largo at the Coronet, Los Angeles, CA – 7:30 pm
Tickets:

At w00tstock, I only have time to do one story with musical accompaniment from Paul and Storm. At this show, I will have time to perform a couple of stories that were not part of w00tstock 1.x and 2.x. You could say it's ALL NEW ZIPPY WHOOO YEAH if you wanted to do that sort of thing, even. Paul and Storm will join me for some things, and I'll do some things on my own. Also, we're putting together something kind of rad for this show that you absolutely want to see.

Paul and Storm will play a set, we will all sing a song about pirates, and we have some secret (and awesome) special guests dropping by. Tell your friends, and come on down, because it's going to be a really fun show.

w00tstock presents: Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm at Largo

Later this month — March 29, to be precise — I will be joining Paul and Storm for a show at Largo, here in Los Angeles. This show will be a sort of concentrated w00tstock, expanding my 20 minute set of one story to about 60 minutes of probably 3 stories, and doing approximately the same for Paul and Storm. There will also be as much Captain's Wife's Lament as the audience can stand.

Look:

Tuesday, March 29 – Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm
Largo at the Coronet, Los Angeles, CA – 7:30 pm
Tickets:

I'm excited for this show, and if it's well-received, we'll know that we can take it on the road with a reasonable expectation of success.

See, w00tstock is awesome, but it's expensive and complicated to produce. The four of us who are in the core of the show have busy schedules that don't always compliment each other, so blocking out a few days where we can all go to the same place at the same time isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world. If we can produce shows with some of us, instead of all of us — a sort of w00tstock presents kind of thing — then it significantly increases the chances of a w00tstock-style show coming to your town.

Yes! Your town! Can you believe it!? It's just that easy! Act now!

Um.

So, to the point: I've loved performing the same two stories at the various w00tstocks we've already done, but it's time to retire them and do something new. This is where you come in: if you're familiar with my published work, it would be really helpful to me if you would tell me what story or stories you would like to see performed live, with musical madness provided by Paul and Storm.

Here are a couple of examples from w00tstocks past, to inspire and entertain you.

Rocky Horror Picture Show at Chicago (w00tstock 2.2)

The Trade at w00tstock San Francisco (1.0)

Wow, watching about 5 minutes of those clips made me simultaneously nostalgic for those shows, proud as hell of what we already did, and positively giddy with excitement for what we're going to do in the mysterious future.

If you're in or near Los Angeles on March 29, I hope you'll come out to see us. It's no secret that Los Angeles sucks balls for live shows, because people just won't come out to see shows unless you tell them things like, "Hey, San Francisco sold out two shows, and you can't even sell out one?" and "What happened to you, Los Angeles? You used to be cool." Or maybe just, "This is a new show, different from the last one you saw, and I promise you'll have fun."

So, tell me, potential-future-w00tstocker: what would you like to see me perform at a w00tstock near you?

random thoughts from vancouver

I have a late call today, so I have some time to write. Yaaaaay. Here's a few things that have been on my mind in the last, oh, 36 hours or so.

So that silly thing Paul and Storm and Adam and I did sort of took off, didn't it? I'm thrilled that so many people found it as entertaining and amusing as we did; it was a lot of fun to put it all together.

You know, it almost didn't happen. Storm suggested it on Thursday, and I was on my way to Vancouver on Friday, so I wouldn't be able to do my part until Saturday, and we were positive that someone else would beat us to the punch. It was pretty cool when Saturday morning rolled around and nobody had done our joke, yet, so we all soldiered on. Paul and Storm took their photos backstage at a show, Adam did his picture in his secret underground evil genius lair (it's not a secret that he has one of those, right? Because if it is, let's just forget that I said that, okay?) and I just figured that I'd bug Felicia to take my pictures … but she was working second unit all day Saturday, and I had to figure out a way to do it all on my own.

First, I tried holding my cell phone camera, but that didn't work and left me with just one hand to gesture and stuff, so I thought that I could maybe use photobooth on my Mac. I knew it would look like I'd used photobooth, so I thought it would be fun to take advantage of that and embrace its limitations. That's how I ended up putting in all those fake backgrounds. (I have to say, the Paris one is my favorite.)

The app I used on my iPad is called Penultimate. Molly Lewis turned me on to it, and for what it does, it's totally worth a couple bucks.

I also wanted to make sure that The Chive was properly credited: we're just standing on their shoulders, riffing on their original idea, and this obviously wouldn't have happened on its own.

Speaking of w00tstock: I just heard that the San Francisco w00tstock shows are selling out, fast. Thursday has more tickets available than Friday, but I'm pretty sure both shows will be SRO, because SF seems to really like our show.

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Yesterday, Stan Lee had a cameo on Eureka. I can't divulge any details, but I can say that he's one of the nicest people I've ever met – certainly the nicest living legend – and he was just wonderful to everyone. It was adorable how excited and nerdy everyone in the cast and crew was, and how great Stan was to all of us. Also? The cameo they wrote for him was just fucking perfect. I just know it's going to kill when this episode airs.

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Facebook continues its all-out assault on its users' privacy with the new Places feature, which is (of course) on by default, with no warning. Lifehacker has the lowdown, including how to turn it off. As I've said before, if you dig Facebook, I'm not going to give you a hard time about it, but I strongly encourage you to turn this feature off. The world doesn't need to know where you live, and when you are (and aren't) home. Also: Fuck you, Facebook, for turning this on by default and not warning your users about it. You're one of the most profoundly immoral companies in the history of the Internet.

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When I was at Gencon, I got to play this storytelling RPG called Fiasco that is simply amazing. I will write an entire post about it in the near future, but until then, check out Gnome Stew and Critical Hits for posts about the greatest storytelling RPG this side of A Penny For My Thoughts. One of the great thing about Fiasco is how easy it is to write settings for the game, like this time traveler setting my friend Will is developing. (Warning: if you haven't played the game, this is not a good setting for your first time.)

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I keep running up against content and licensing restrictions, since I'm in Canada. It's making me show my rageface a lot, but that's a rant for a Techland column, I think. The short version: it's really fucking stupid to apply geographic restrictions to the Internet, which is sort of its own place that doesn't give a shit about geography. Media companies could go a long way toward combating piracy simply by acknowledging this reality and making it easier for honest people like me to watch the goddamn on-demand videos they bought from Amazon while they were in the United States, regardless of what country they're currently visiting.

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I've been taking pictures and Twittering like crazy from the set. If you are interested in that sort of thing, you can follow me on Twitter for more updates than you ever wanted to see.

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One last thing: Slacker Radio works just fine in Canada (go Slacker!) and I've been enjoying the hell out of my Camera Obscura and Catherine Wheel stations. The problems I used to have with the Android app have all been fixed, and it's been a real joy to walk around Vancouver, streaming music right into my head. (Right now, it's playing Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is weird to hear outside of Rock Band.)

It's unlikely I'll have time to write again before the weekend, so let me take this moment to wish you all a great weekend. Take deep breaths, and be kind.

Thanks for spending this moment with me.

In which I am a HPOA

I'm working very long hours on Eureka, so I don't have a lot of time or energy to post more than silly things on Twitter, but I did this over the weekend, and I wanted to share:

The w00tstock organization wishes to post the following photo correspondence from “Wil”—which is most certainly not a hoax, and is not just a derivative attempt to cash in on some meme that was funny for 36 hours last week—without comment.

We will, however, attempt to rise above this hardship and continue somehow. The next w00tstock shows will occur September 16 & 17 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

We’re working our contact for “Wil’s” last name.

This idea was entirely Storm's. He wrote most of it, and then we all brainstormed (brainSTORMed! HA! HA!) some of the other bits. I improvised the photo effects part, and it was Storm's idea to put me on a boat.

And no, I'm not really quitting w00tstock.