In any case, “Heroes” creator Tim Kring said Monday that “there is nothing in the works for him at this point – although a bunch of us over here are big fans of his and would love nothing more than to find some part for him.”
So there’s 10 ways to look at this:
0) It ain’t gonna happen.
1) It may happen in the mysterious future.
As I’ve gotten e-mails and comments about this all day, something’s come up that I want to make painfully clear: It’s really important to me is that this is not misunderstood as some pathetic, desperate attempt to land a role on a show that I’ve had two chances to audition for and totally tanked both times because I wanted it so badly. That’s not how I operate, and I can’t imagine that it would ever have the desired result if it was.
Instead, I hope that this whole thing will be seen the way I’ve seen it: as something cool that happened thanks to Twitter, and as an example of how profoundly our lives have been changed by the technological advances of just the last few years – we really are living in the future, you know.
I thought I’d completed this week’s LA Daily column on Friday, but when I opened it up yesterday afternoon to give it one final look, I realized that it didn’t work at all. It’s fine for a blog post (and will likely show up here sooner or later) but it just doesn’t work as a column.
As you can imagine, I panicked, and spent the next five hours trying to come up with something to replace it. (Pro Tip: The hard part isn’t writing the column; the hard part is figuring out what the hell to write about every week.)
Around 10 last night, I stopped banging my head against my desk and took a sanity break online. While I was looking at TotalFark, TwitterFox popped up with the following Tweet:
Normally, I’d think this was a prank, but my friend David (who plays Eric Doyle on Heroes) mentioned to me last week that he’d joined Twitter, and that he was following me and Greg Grunberg. So I went O_o and replied:
I couldn’t put it into 140 characters, but I’m pretty sure I know what Tim’s going to think, and it’s going to rhyme with “No way, that guy sucks.” See, I’ve had two opportunities for good roles on Heroes, and both times I was so excited about the opportunity, I completely tanked the audition. It was like the audition was a cute little bunny, and I was Lenny Small. I mean, I fucked them up badly. It was embarrassing. The room I read in at Universal is still blocked off by the HazMat control team because the stink I left there is so horrible.
I’m not going to pretend that I wouldn’t love it, especially if I got to play a villain, but I’m keeping my squee level really under control at the moment. I’ve done this long enough to know that actually working on Heroes is a real long shot for me. But if it does happen, it would be super awesome on countless levels, not the least of which is the whole thing happened because of Twitter, which pleases my inner geek greatly.
Codeweavers makes really cool software called CrossOver that lets Mac and Linux users run Windows software on their computers. There are two versions: CrossOver Pro, which installs and runs lots of office-y stuff, and CrossOver Games, which does exactly what it sounds like. Quoth Wikipedia:
CrossOver (known before version 6.0 as CrossOver Office) is the collective name for three commercial and proprietary programs developed by CodeWeavers that allows many Windows-based applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris using a compatibility layer. The programs include CrossOver Mac, CrossOver Linux and CrossOver Games.
The programs are tweaked, proprietary versions of the public Wine source tree with various compatibility patches added, more user-friendly configuration tools and commercial support. CodeWeavers employs several Wine developers and contributes code back to the free software/open source software Wine project as per the GNU LGPL, although CrossOver itself is proprietary software.
I’m a big fan of CrossOver. Before Pokerstars released their Mac client, I used CrossOver to play in tourneys for years on both my Linux machine and my Mac. If you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want or need to run Windows software on your machine, including a bunch of spiffy games, head over to Codeweavers and get to downloading.
I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I wrote Dancing Barefoot, but I still look back on it with extreme joy, because it was such an exciting and uncertain time for me.
This is where it all began, really, and though I’d really like you to actually buy a copy, I agree with Cory Doctorow when he says that obscurity is a greater threat to artists than piracy. So if you ever wanted to see how I started out, and see some wonderful illustrations by Ben Classen, without ever leaving the comfort and security of my blog, Google has made that possible with some nifty embeddable code that lets us put selections from Google Books (like this one) on our blogs.
Caveat: it appears that only a portion of Barefoot is available here, though I was able to page thorough most of it at the actual site. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right?
So it turns out that I do, in fact, have a sinus infection. Because it’s the first one post-sinus surgery, my doctor decided that the best course of action would be to blast off and nuke the site from orbit.
I asked him if maybe we could do something a little less extreme, but he assured me that it was the only way to be sure. Since my sneezes weren’t going “achoo!” like they’re supposed to, but going “Ftagn!” instead, I’ve decided to follow his advice, and I’m on Prednisone + Zithromax for the next five days.
I’m already feeling better, if not entirely back to normal, but I’m looking forward to getting my command and control systems back online within the next 24 hours. I have this overwhelming urge to blast my quads and rip out my delts, but I understand that will go away IN JUST A FUCKING MINUTE GODDAMMIT WHAT?!
Oh. Um. Sorry. Meds talking and whatnot.
In place of an actual blog entry, here are a few things that have been on my mind:
I was going to write this myself, but Charlie Stross explains why I won’t be using Google Chrome better than I can. He even manages to avoid the phrase EPIC FAIL which I wouldn’t have been able to do. Competing with IE = good. Competing with Firefox = profoundly stupid. Having the most abusive EULA I’ve seen in years? That’s just fucking priceles, Google. Nice work on that one. I’d like to amend this paragraph, after hours of consideration and lengthy discussion with other people. Apparently, Google claims the EULA was “boilerplate” and they’re going to update it. If they update it, great. But does anyone really believe that a company like Google puts out a new browser, one that is as highly-anticipated as Chrome, and doesn’t fully vet the EULA? What did they do, borrow lawyers from John McCain? If Google is going to change their EULA to something less evil, that’s fantastic, but I don’t believe for a moment that this was a mistake. Google isn’t that incompetent. As for my statement: “Competing with IE = good. Competing with Firefox = profoundly stupid.” Yeah. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I’d like to blame the sinus meds, but that’s a pretty 80s excuse, isn’t it? I haven’t felt well for several days, and I typed without really thinking things through. Competition, as a commenter said, is very good, even (and maybe especially) for Open Source products. I hope I’ve earned the right over the years to ask for a little slack. If I haven’t, I’d like to point out that this mountain is covered with wolves, and the bar is right over there. Thanks.
Doctor Horrible @ checked me on Twitter. I don’t think this should make me as excited as it does, but OMGOMGOMG! The Doctor Horrible soundtrack is #2 on iTunes US, #1 in the UK and Australia. The number one album in the US is some rap thing that makes me stabby just to look at. Come on, American geeks, let’s show the rest of the world what we’re made of! (Also, the soundtrack is really awesome and fun to listen to.)
Moe’s just isn’t the same since he got rid of the dank. Come on, Moe! The dank!
I played a little bit of D&D 4e with Jerry, Mike, The Other Mike, and Scott Kurtz when I was at PAX. I got to play a Tiefling Rogue who was trying out to be the new intern at Acquisitions, Incorporated. It was massively fun, and it made me want to play D&D about as badly as I’ve ever wanted. I’m taking advantage of my . . . current condition . . . to read all of Keep on the Shadowfell in the hopes that I’ll be able to convince Nolan and some of his friends to let me run it for them.
I got an insanely cool D&D thing via John Kovalic, but I’m forbidden to reveal it until he does.
I was mentioned rather favorably, in some very nice company, by one of the executive producers on Criminal Minds! “…we have scary locations and amazing guest stars like Jason Alexander, Luke Perry and Wil Wheaton.” OMGOMGOMGOMG.
We’re late to the party on this, but Anne and I have been watching Weeds on Netflix via our Roku box. We’re into the 3rd season (which we had to get on DVD) and I’m not as crazy about it as I was the first two. The acting and writing is wonderful, but the storylines that dominate the 3rd season are leaving me a little cold. I don’t believe a single Nancy does in this season, even though Mary-louise Parker is a phenomenal actor.
Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere is online for free from his publisher. This is one of my favorites, and I heartily recommend it, even though I’m pretty sure most of you reading this have already read it. However, Neil says, “For those people who grumbled about reading American Gods online, here’s Neverwhere. You can read it online, and it’s also downloadable. That’s the good news. The bad news is you don’t get to keep it forever. It’s yours for thirty days from download, and then the pdf file returns to its electrons. But if you’ve ever wondered about Neverwhere or wanted to read it for free, now is your chance. And free is free…”
During my panel at PAX, I was asked a great question that I couldn’t answer to my satisfaction: What episode of Next Generation best defines the series? The answer depends heavily on how you’d define the series as a whole, and the best I could come up with is “Star Trek is all about possibilities. It’s about hope, so when you look around our totally fucked up world, you see that there is a better future for us.” Which TNG episode best exemplifies that? Is that even what Star Trek is about? My answer sucked so hard, I can’t even remember what I said. I blame the ConSARS.
A bit of blasphemy: I finally saw Dark Knight, and I was not blown away. Heath Ledger was spectacular, but I felt like the movie climaxed in the first 10 minutes, and was 2 reels too long. Maybe I’ll refine my feelings on subsequent viewings, but it didn’t send me into a Batgasm like Batman Begins did. However, it’s the second act of the trilogy, and if it’s anything like all the other trilogies I’ve seen, it’ll end up being my favorite when the dust settles.
I first became aware of the Xbox 360 game Braid when Buckman mentioned on his blog that the developer licensed a bunch of Magnatune music (which I’ve listened to and love) for the game. Monday night, I couldn’t sleep, so I downloaded the trial. 30 minutes later, I bought the full game, which is similar to Portal in a lot of ways. It’s one of the most visually beautiful games I’ve ever played. Check it out if you’ve got XBLA.
You can listen to one of the artists, Jami Sieber, with this nifty little gizmo:
