Category: WWdN in Exile

On the meeting of Nathan Fillion (or: The Obligatory Comicon Post)

Posted on By Wil

Comicon was awesome. The Eureka panel was funny and everyone in the audience seemed to enjoy themselves. The consensus from the cast and producers was that I did a good job moderating, and I felt like I managed to get out the talking points the network wanted me to get out under pain of death without making it sound or feel like I was delivering talking points.

Hey! Speaking of talking points:

  • Eureka airs Mondays at 8pm with Alphas and Warehouse 13. Don't worry, Audience SyFy Seems Very Interested In Courting: there's still plenty of wrestling and ghost-hunting on other nights.
  • This season, Stan Lee cameos (tonight!), and there's a freaking armada of awesome guest stars, including Wallace Shawn, Matt Frewer, Dave Foley, some guy called Wil Wheaton who I guess posts cat dialog on the Internet or something, and Felicia Day.
  • The story arc in season 4.5 (or, as we called it, "the last ten episodes of season 4") is all about GD launching a manned mission to Titan, called Astraeus. There's also a little bit of a love triangle between Doctor Parrish, Fargo, and Doctor Marten (I love that Felicia's character is called Doc Marten, but she never once wears stompy shoes.)
  • Also, the Christmas episode this year is going to be ANIMATED. I know everything about it on account of I'm, like, plugged into this shit, but I can't tell you anything more than that … except that you're going to love it.

Okay, talking points are over. I don't even feel dirty about it, because I freaking love Eureka, I'm incredibly proud of the show and my work on it, and I want everyone in the world to love it as much as I do.

Oh! You can watch Felicia's first episode at Hulu, if you're in the United States, not on an iPad or iPhone, and have successfully sacrificed the correct number of chickens and goats. (Way to make it nice and easy for people to enjoy things legally, Hulu. Cough.)

Eureka was my only official responsibility this year, so once I was finished with that, I was able to almost enjoy the rest of Comicon. I say "almost" because it was too crowded this year for me to do anything more than walk about 1/3 of the show floor before the claustrophobia of being surrounded by a million people drove me back into the streets of San Diego. Did it feel massively crowded to anyone else, like seriously more than last year, or was it just me?

I didn't make it into any panels, mostly because all the panels I tried to get into last year required multi-hour waits with the very real possibility of getting cut off ten people from the door (Comicon absolutely needs to clear the big halls between panels. The only people who seem to disagree with this are the ones who take up seats all day in panels they don't give a shit about so they can see the one panel they actually care about at 6pm) but I still had a great time, mostly because I took Ryan with me and we did everything together all weekend.

Saturday evening, I was a surprise guest on the Nerdist podcast … which means that I got to meet and sit on the stage with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan for an hour. It was awesome, and I'm sure Chris will post the show in the very near future. SPOILER ALERT: they're really nice people.

After the podcast was done, Ryan and I went to the SyFy party. I wasn't going to go to this party because I was afraid it would be really "Hollywood" and douchey, and I would feel weird and strange, but Felicia talked me into it. "You'll meet a lot of really cool people, who also happen to be people who will want to work with you," she told me, "as your manager, I think it would be in your best interest to go." There's one thing I've learned in all the years that we've been friends: Felicia is a genius, and she's never wrong about anything. I'm really glad I listened to her, because the party was awesome fun.

So now I have a choice to make: I can share some highlights, or I can try real hard to turn the entire weekend into a narrative piece that will most likely never get written because I don't have time. So … here are some Highlights from the rest of Saturday night:

  • I met Allison Scagliotti, who plays Claudia on Warehouse 13. It turns out that we're in the mutual admiration society, and now we're best friends forever.
  • I met and hung out with Alison Haislip, who it turns out is made from concentrated Awesome that was quarried out of the deepest heart of Mount Awesome, at the center of Awesome Island. If you care about this sort of thing, it may interest you to know that she's 100% real geek, just like me.
  • Awesome business thing I shouldn't talk about.
  • The other awesome business thing that may turn into me getting to write for REDACTED someday.
  • I photobombed Felicia.
  • I saw David Latt, who wrote and directed Jane White is Sick and Twisted. It's one of my favorite things I've ever been in, and I'm really proud of it. It was super fun to work with him and his wife Kim in the movie, and I felt sad that we lost touch over the years. We traded numbers and I can finally meet their kids. Oh, I also pitched David my can't-miss movie idea: MegaShark vs. MECHAShark, starring me and Debbie Gibson. Mostly, we just make out for 90 minutes, but there's shark stuff going on in the background and someone learns something. Bam! Nailed it.
  • I introduced Ryan to John Dimaggio, and this happened:

Me: "John, this is my son, Ryan. Ryan, this is John. He plays Bender on Futurama."

John [in Bender's voice]: "That's right, Ryan, I'm Bender. Doot de doot do dooo doo doo bah doot doot doo."

Ryan for the rest of the night: "Oh my God. John Dimaggio shook my hand, and sang and danced like Bender for me!"

Around midnight, we decided to go over to the Nerd HQ, because Nathan Fillion was there. Felicia has been trying to get us both into the same place for years, because we both want to meet each other, but it's never worked out … until Saturday (well, Sunday morning if you want to be pedantic about it, which I do.)

Felicia introduced us, and it was awesome. Then, after dancing like idiots (the only way I know how) for a little bit, Nathan hugged me and said, "When I was a teenager, you were living my dream." I told him, "When I was in my twenties, you were living mine."

Then this happened:

Wil_wheaton_nathan_fillion_felicia_day_comicon_photobomb

That's Ryan, turning the tables on Nathan and photobombing him for a change.

Shortly after that happened, this happened.

I guess it was about 230am at this point, and we were all exhausted. We walked Felicia back to her hotel, past people who were camped out waiting for stuff (See, Comicon? You're doing something wrong when people have to camp out for things), and around 3am, Ryan and I finally walked back into our hotel room, our bodies aching from dancing, our ears ringing from the music, our faces sore from smiling so much.

"Everyone you introduced me to tonight was just awesome," he said. "I'm so glad we went out and did all this cool stuff!"

"Everyone who met you told me how much they enjoyed your company, and that you were as awesome as my Twitter feed regularly says you are. That was pretty much the best part of the whole thing for me." I said.

We turned off the lights. A minute or so went by, and Ryan said, "Dude. John Dimaggio shook my hand, and sang and danced like Bender for me."

"Yeah, that was epic."

"Best night ever."

"Totally."

"Okay I'm going to sleep now."

"Me too."

"ZZzzzzzzzz."

Thanks for being awesome, Comicon. See you next year.

being a geek is about having a great community

Posted on By Wil

In a couple hours, I'm heading down to San Diego for the craziest, most exhausting, most awesome four days of the year: Comicon.

Earlier this morning, Felicia and I were Google Plussing about how to survive the con. I'm assuming some of you are not among the eleventy billion people who have the G+, so I thought I'd reprint it here, especially for you (yes, for  you):

Felicia said:

If you are at Comicon this weekend a few things:

1) Bring deodorant, it's hot
2) Here's an updated Guild signing/panel schedule: http://t.co/K2NtZG0
3) If you see me rush by, I'm not being rude, I'm probably just late for something. Feel free to tweet something about how pale/short I am, that's relatively common reaction.
4) Have fun with your friends, because being a geek is about having a great community most of all.

Then I said:

I can add a couple of things to this:

5) Wear comfortable shoes. It isn't uncommon to walk five miles a day.
6) Stay hydrated. It's hot, you're excited, you're walking five miles a day. You're going to need water. Soda and coffee dehydrate you, so they don't count. If you find yourself thinking, "Man, I am really drinking a ton of water," then you're doing it right.
7) Be patient with your fellow fans, and with the people you're there to see and meet. For some of the big movie and TV stars, this will be the first time they've ever been around a hundred thousand superfans like us, and it scares the hell out of them.
8) For the love of the FSM, don't stop in the middle of a walkway to look at your phone.
9) Come to w00tstock on Thursday!
10) Come to the Eureka panel on Friday!
11) Come to the Nerdist podcast on Saturday!
12) Support the indie artists!

Here are five rules I wrote Concerning Conventions in my Geek In Review column at Suicide Girls a few years ago (This page is SFW, but the site is deliciously NSFW) http://suicidegirls.com/news/geek/22107/Wil-Wheatons-Geek-in-Review-Concerning-Conventions/

And to reiterate what the short and pale +Felicia Day said: Have fun with your friends, because being a geek is about having a great community most of all.

We all talk about how Hollywood has pretty much taken over Comicon, and fundamentally changed it forever. That has its up and downsides, but regardless of how the final math on that shakes out, there is one scientific fact: We who attend conventions get to decide how awesome they are going to be. A promoter can set the tone, and volunteers can keep things running smoothly, but there are more of us than there are of them, and if we commit to being awesome to each other and to the guests, the con can't help but be awesome in return.

Oh, and don't forget: it is dangerous to go alone!

probably the best idea i’ve ever had

Posted on By Wil

Last week, I saw this at Reddit.

I KNOW RIGHT?! I told the Twitter and the Google Plus and the Tumblr that we all need to print these things out and hang them up everywhere (it's legally allowed for us to do so. cough.) For the past four days, I've gotten lots of image links from people on the Twitters who have done precisely that, and it amuses me greatly each time I see it. This morning, Think Geek picked it up and tagged it #OldMan, which is also amusing … but gives the thing a signal boost that can make this ZOMG EPIC.

Ready for this? Okay, here's my idea:

We take tons of these flyers to Comic-Con, hang them up (where it's legally allowed for us to do so. cough.) and make this A Thing. I think that would be hilarious and awesome and also awesome and hilarious.

And you know why? Because it's silly, and not everyone will get it … but the people who do get it will love it. That's why.

(Major thanks go to Redditor possibly_all_3 for making this in the first place.)

“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies: Goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

Posted on By Wil

The list of Stuff I Need to Write About just keeps getting bigger and bigger … so instead of trying to tackle it right now, I give you this, from my Twittersbox a little bit ago:

When you're fortunate enough to have success and love what you do, you have a choice: Be kind and grateful, or be a dick. I choose the first.

When I see someone who is successful, whose work I enjoy, treat other people badly, it just makes me sick inside, and sad for them.

So I do my best to live by example, treat everyone with kindness, and never lose perspective on how lucky I am. Okay, thanks for listening.

It's easy to be a dick, to never be happy with what you have, and to treat someone else's success as your failure … but how does that make you happier? How does that make you feel good about yourself? Every single day, we have hundreds of opportunities to make a choice: Kindess or Cruelty, Gratitude or Bitterness, Generosity or Selfishness … the list goes on and on forever.

Our lives are the result of our choices, and every choice we make affects another person, often in ways we can't even imagine.

…so what kind of life do you choose to live?

(title quote from Kurt Vonnegut)

In which my son and I make our own beer

Posted on By Wil

Ryan is going to be 22 at the end of the month. For those of you who have been here since I wrote the 13 on 31 post, you now know how I feel every single day. The rest of you can get off my lawn before I call your parents.

So the other day, he and I were having a beer together, and Ryan said, "We should make our own beer while I'm home this summer."

I tried homebrewing once when I was about Ryan's age, and it ended … poorly … I've wanted to try again, but I've always been intimidated by what I remembered was a complex and peril-fraught process. When Ryan suggested that we do this, though, the excitement and joy of doing something together gave me a natural 20 on my Save Versus Fear. Besides, even if it's a spectacular failure, it's still something we did together, something we can bond over, and something that will stay with us — success or failure — for the rest of our lives.

"That would be the most awesome father/son activity, ever," I said. "Plus, we get beer when we're finished!"

The next morning, we did a little research online, and the entire process actually looked a lot simpler and more straightforward that I remembered it being coughmumble years ago when I was 22. As long as we could follow a recipe and do our fermentation in a place that was temperature-controlled, we'd probably be able to make some beer that didn't suck.

We found a local homebrewing supply store, and went there yesterday to get our kit and ingredients.

The late afternoon had given way to early evening, but it was still 90 degrees as we parked the car and walked up the sidewalk toward the shop.

"I'm really excited about this," I said, partially because it was true, and partially because I needed to calm the nerves that were working themselves up. What if they laughed at us when we walked in? What if whoever worked there wasn't interested in helping a couple of noobs get started? What if I said something stupid and embarrassed my son?

"Yep," Ryan said.

'Yep'? That's it? 'Yep'? Not "Me too dad this will be awesome!" Not "Yeah, I'm looking forward to this, too." Not even, "Don't embarrass me, dude." Just 'yep'. Okay, Wil, don't blow this.

We walked into the store. It was cool inside, and smelled delightful from all the different types of grain that were in tubs along the walls. A man sat behind a counter at the far side of the room, reading a computer screen. I took a breath, and decided that it was go time.

"Hi," I said, "I tried homebreaing once about 15 years ago, and it was a disaster. My son's home for the summer, though, and we wanted to make our own beer together. Can you help us get started?"

He looked up at me, and smiled. "Sure, just give me one minute."

Awesome.

For the next twenty minutes or so, he literally and figuratively walked us through the entire process, showing us equipment and ingredients, and explaining in simple and precise terms exactly how the whole thing worked. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this guy could cast Dispel Fear as a free action, because by the time he was done, I felt like I was ready to go home and start brewing right away.

"Is there one type of beer that's more difficult than another?"

"Not really," he said. "Most of the beers you're going to make are pretty simple and forgiving. The hardest thing to make, honestly, is something like Budweiser."

Before I could say, "I said beer," he continued: "That's a very pale lager that doesn't leave much margin for error."

So they make that shit taste that way on purpose? And it's difficult? Wow, I learned something today.

"What about a California-style Pale Ale?" I asked, hopefully.

"That's very easy," he told us, "it's one of the most popular styles." He gave us a recipe to follow, and helped us pick out the various ingredients to make it. I thought it was really cool that he didn't just show us where things were, but also explained to us what made each specialty grain unique, how different types yeast worked, and the benefits and risks associated with each one. I never felt like he was trying to sell us anything, but that he was educating and truly helping us. It was really great.

Ryan and I gathered up all our individual ingredients, including Caramel 10L, Caramel 40L, and Columbus and Cascade hops. We paid for everything, and I thanked the guy on our way out.

The whole way home, we talked about what we'd just learned, and I may have repeated several times that I was excited to get started and do this together.

We're going to do our brewing on Sunday, so we can continue to research and learn about the proper way to make it go. I asked Twitter for advice on forums, and here are the most frequently-recommended sites:

Are you a homebrewer? I'd love to hear any advice/warnings/stories you have.