Category: WWdN in Exile

Reader Robin Got Excited and Made 100 cupcakes. 

I know what you're thinking: "Well, that's a lot of cupcakes, but so what?"

Well, doubtful-person-I-just-invented, let me tell you what: each cupcake depicts a different board or video game, and she put them all up on a website where you can identify as many of them correctly as you can, with a mouseover button to reveal the answer. 

Allow me to share just two of my favorites:

Trust me on this: you simply must go spend a couple minutes and check them out. I promise that you will have your mind blown at least once.

I can't say anything specific about the job, but I got to be a voice actor again today, working with people I love, on a show that I love. 

While we were all in the booth together between acts, waiting to hear from the director about our pickups, I took a moment to look around and appreciate where I was, who I was working with, and what I was working on. 

I talked a little bit about truly appreciating things a little bit on this week's Radio Free Burrito. My biggest regret from my years on TNG is that I was too young and immature to truly and fully appreciate how lucky I was to work with such wonderful people, even though I was able to enjoy it while I was there. I guess the only way to unlock the "appreciate" ability is by leveling up your Wisdom attribute, in other words.

In my life experience, I've come to believe that enjoying something and appreciating something each involve a sense of gratitude, but when you put both feelings together, you end up with something that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. The two don't go hand-in-hand unless you actively make the effort, but when you do … well, you end up having a day like today, where I enjoyed working with wonderful people while creating a fantastic characters, and I also appreciated the opportunity to be there.

This post is not a number, it is a free man. It also continues my 2009 year in review from part five, and concludes this obscenely long series of posts that I hope was worth the time I put into creating them.

I revealed a fairly major secret, and there was much rejoicing. Yaaay.

About 24 hours later, JJ Abrams called me. It was an entertaining conversation; I couldn't believe he wanted me to do work on his film, and he couldn't believe that I wanted to do it. He asked me if I'd be interested in playing some Romulans, and I think I held my hand over the phone so he couldn't hear me squeal in delight before I calmly told him that, yes, I thought I could do that. I don't recall precisely why, but we agreed that it would be extra cool to keep it a secret until the heat death of the universe, an uncredited bit of awesome that only a handful of people in the world would know about … unless we told them. (In fact, as far as I know, only a dozen people in the world knew about this until some meddling kids and their dog at Viacom found out about it this summer, and said we had to give me credit and stuff.)

I met JJ at an ADR stage a few days later, where he told me the entire plot of the movie (and, for the record, hearing JJ Freakin' Abrams tell you the plot of his Star Trek is even more awesome than you'd expect) and showed me some of the scenes that I'd be dubbing. I ended up providing voices for all the Romulans on Nero's ship, including the guy who tells him that "it's time" at the very beginning of the movie. (Yeah, how cool is that?)

I was distracted for the first 15 or 20 minutes before we started work, because I kept expecting someone to come out from behind a screen with a camera to laugh at me, but when I was given my dialog and recorded my first take, I knew that it was really happening.

I thought it would be really hard to keep my squee under control, but when I stood there in the darkened ADR stage, three pages of dialog in front of me, sitting in the soft glow of a single dim light clipped to a music stand, I was able to put my inner awkward superfan into check long enough to be a professional actor. I mean, I was working for JJ freakin' Abrams on Star frekin' Trek, so maybe I could rise to the occasion, you know?

We recorded dialog for about an hour or so, I guess, and when we were finished, JJ invited me to come with him over to the mixing stage, where he was going to watch a reel of the film.

Um. Okay. Yeah, I think I can do that. I texted Anne something like, "Probably never coming home again. I'm going to stay here with my new best friend JJ Abrams and watch as much of Star Trek as he'll let me."

I celebrated ten years of marriage to my awesome wife.

I wrote a brief history of my life as a Magic: the Gathering player, and played Magic online as part of the Xbox Game With Fame thingy.

I played the game a few times, but it didn't capture my imagination like the board games and RPGs I loved. The mechanics were interesting, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around advanced concepts, like "tapping" and the mysterious "upkeep." (Perhaps I was not the high-level gamer I thought I was.) I went back to that shop a few weeks later (it must have been near a casting office) and ended up talking to the owner about playing Magic. "It's okay," I said, "but I'm just not that into it."

He reached behind the counter and pulled out a long box. "Maybe you'd like the game better if you had access to all the cards."

"That box has one of every card in the whole game?"

"Yes. It's eighty dollars."

"Sorry, dude, there is no way I'm spending eighty dollars on that."

Yes, for those of you wondering, this particular box had a Black Lotus in it, among other things.

Because I was so excited about making things this year, I did my best to help other peopleget excited and make things.

In the old days, creators had to hope that:

1. A store would carry their Thing.

2. Once in the store, their Thing would be in a place where people could see it.

3. People would buy their Thing.

4. People would buy enough of their Thing to get the cycle to start over at step 1.

Oh, and to have any hope of being successful, they have to do this in different stores all over the place, competing for space and attention with huge companies that have massive advertising budgets. It was, to say the very least, daunting.

But look at how much things have changed! Creative people can get excited, make something, and get it to their customers without ever having to go through any of those steps. The financial risk has been almost entirely taken away, so now we can take chances on our really crazy ideas, just because we're excited about them.

In the comments to that post, there are dozens and dozens of links from other WWdN readers who got excited and made things. Dig through if you have some time; there are some treasures buried in there.

One of the things I got excited and made is the Memories of the Futuremug:

My mind ran off like a dog chasing an idea through the forest, returning a few minutes later with something awesome. If I were to create a dialog to dramatically illustrate the way it all came together, it might go something like this:

My Mind: DUDE! OMG! This is going to be so cool!

Me: Okay, I'm listening.

My Mind: We're going to make a mug that goes with Memories of the Future.

Me: Tell me more…

My Mind: On one side, it will have those beautiful space jellyfish that Will designed for the cover.

Me: I love how those look.

My Mind: Everyone does. Will did a great job with them. Now listen, because this is what takes this mug from cool to awesome: On the opposite side of the mug, it says:

Tea,

Earl Grey.

Hot.

Me: Holy crap, My Mind! That's awesome!

My Mind: I know, right?!

Me: High five!

My Neighbor's Kid: Why did Mister Wheaton just slap himself in the head?

My Neighbor: He's a writer, honey. They do weird things like that.

And … scene.

My brother got excited and made some awesome calendars.

As the year drew to a close, I remembered the irrational immortality of youth:

We parked in a mostly-empty lot and walked down toward the water. There was a winter storm on its way, driving powerful waves ahead of it that were so huge, they crashed up against the bottom of the pier and occasionally broke over the end of it. Wrapped up in the irrational immortality that's endemic to 22 year-olds, we walked dangerously close to the end of the shuddering pier, angry waves boiling beneath, and dared the Pacific Ocean to reach up and touch us.

Anne and I went to a big deal Hollywood A-list party at Seth MacFarlane's house:

We saw Seth (who looked every inch the Rat Packer in his white jacket and red carnation) and thanked him for inviting us. At first, he didn't recognize me (on account of my luxurious beard, a theme that would repeat itself again in a moment) but when he did, he got super excited to introduce me to his orchestra's conductor, Ron Jones. Ron scored Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Seth was such a huge TNG fan, he hired him to score Family Guy. When Seth introduced us, Ron smiled warmly and said, "It's so lovely to meet you. I scored your childhood."

It was such a wonderful sentiment, and said with such joy and nostalgia, I looked at Anne and had to blink my eyes several times. Seth got pulled away by one of the hundreds of people who wanted to talk to him, and Anne and I talked with Ron for a little bit before he had to go back to conducting his orchestra.

I'm still trying to convince myself that that actually happened, and that I wasn't invited by mistake.

When I finished the first series of Memories of the Futurecast, I restarted Radio Free Burrito and gave it its own home at RadioFreeBurrito.com. I release a new episode every Monday, children.

For the rest of the month, I pretty much dug into the vault for posts so I could enjoy some vacation time with my family, then I wrote a bunch of posts about what I did all year that I hoped to keep to three, but ended up going to six, because as it turns out … it really was a great year after all.

You know, it's really easy to look back on the year and only see the things I didn't do, the things I didn't finish, the stuff I missed out on, and the things that I failed to accomplish. In fact, it's really hard not to do that. But when I put this whole series of posts together, though, a pretty clear picture emerged: 2009 was an awesome year for me professionally, easily the best year I've had as an actor this decade. As a writer, I didn't do the fiction I wanted to do (again) but I released two books that people seem to like a whole lot, and began work on another. For the first time since I started this stuff, I finally feel – for real – like I can really make a living doing this stuff. I'm not getting rich (and it's not like I'm not trying, guys) but I'm not starving or struggling, either.

Over all, I'm grateful for my friends, my family, my health, my success, and that I get to share all of those things with millions of people (wow, that's weird) who I'll probably never get to meet, but who seem to genuinely care about all that stuff, and give me the wonderful gift of listening to me when I tell them stories about it. You're reading this, so you're probably one of those people, right? Well, thank you. I sincerely mean that.

Yeah, 2009 was a pretty good year, so I'm putting 2010 on notice: you've got some big shoes to fill, buddy. I think you should get on the phone with some people and get to work.

Yeah, so it turns out I did a lot of cool stuff in 2009, and now this is up to five freakin' parts. Hey, at least they're small enough to read on a coffee break, right? This is continued from part four.

2009 was the best year I've had as an actor this entire decade. In addition to working on Leverage, I played Fawkes on Season Three of The Guild. I wore a kilt and battled ferocious flying beetles with my bare hands. Bravely. I also played an evil version of myself on The Big Bang Theory. I spent an incredible week on their set, where I leveled up as a comedy actor:

I remember being in drama school in my early twenties, and having at least a decade more experience than everyone else in the room except our teacher. I remember paying close attention all the time, even when I wasn't working on a scene in front of the class, or getting notes directly from her. I remember her telling the other kids in the school, many of whom were convinced that they were going to be The Next Big Thing (all of them except Salma Hyek were wrong) that they didn't learn anything about performing while they were actually doing it. They learned while watching other actors perform, and understanding why their choices worked or didn't work. 

I haven't done a show like this in years, and I want to make sure that I am completely back in shape, I guess you could say, by the time we perform the episode next week. To make sure I get there, I spent the entire day, even when I wasn't in the scene, watching and listening, and remembering skills that I once used every day, but haven't even thought about in a very long time. By the time we got to my last scene of the day (God, I wish I could describe it, because it's hilarious) I felt confident, I felt funny, and I felt weird but also good.

Wait. Not the last part. I'm saving that for the weekend, when I finally get to celebrate being on The Big Bang Theory.

I experienced The Big Bang Buzz

After lunch, the writers and producers came in so they could see us put the script up on its feet, and give us some comments and notes after each scene. I will admit that I was nervous; it was very important to me that I didn't kill any jokes or make them question their decision to cast me. I mean, I love this show, I love this script, I love the things they've given me to do, and I didn't want to screw anything up…

…so of course I stumbled over my first line, and had to say it a second time. But when everyone laughed anyway, (hopefully at my delivery and not at my nerves) I settled in, got out of my own way, did it how we rehearsed, and just enjoyed the experience of working with great actors to bring great material to life. When we finished, there was laughter and applause, and the general consensus was that we were all pretty funny, even Wil Wheaton.

I'm so happy and excited and grateful to be part of this show. After we finished the run through, and I was pretty much bouncing with joy the whole way home.

Even now, over five hours after I walked out of the stage, I can still feel what I'm calling The Big Bang Buzz.

I just realized that I never wrote all about my experience on the set in greater detail than this. I need to correct that in the coming weeks:

When he first talked to me about working on the show, Bill Prady told me that I'd be playing a "delightfully evil version" of myself. This sounded like a lot of fun to me, but it was more difficult to find that character than you'd think. When I'm playing Fawkes on The Guild it's easy to slip into his kilt and be a jerk, but wearing my own clothes and essentially playing a stylized version of myself made it a real challenge to hit "delightfully evil" without veering into "not committed to being delightfully evil" or "just plain evil." Keeping that twinkle in my eye, and knowing that Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Version) is planning to scam Sheldon from the moment he sits down, was essential to this particular characterization working out, and I didn't completely find it until we'd run the episode a couple of times.

During one of the run throughs, when Jim did his Klingon bit, I turned to Kevin and asked him, "Did he just say 'revenge is a dish best served cold' in Klingon?" like I was trying to figure out if that's actually what happened, like maybe I misunderstood him. Chuck Lorre told me that it would be funnier if I was more exasperated. "You're just here to play this game, and now some guy is quoting Klingon at you. This happens everywhere you go," he said. 

I sighed dramatically, and said, "Oh, it does." Everyone laughed, hard, and Chuck pointed his finger at me. "Yes. That is exactly the way to play that beat."

When Chuck gave me that note, I grokked how to play Evil Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Theory version), and I could see the comedy in every beat I played for the rest of the show. I totally grew a level in comedy acting, and learned something about letting go of who Ireally am, so I could embrace the Delightfully Evil version of myself (who I seriously hope will return in the future, because OMG was it fun to play him.)

I finally released Memories of the Future, Volume One, and there was much rejoicing.

I joined Paul and Storm, and Adam Savage for w00tstock. It was an experiment, to see if anyone wanted to come watch us do a show together … yeah, it was so frakking awesome and successful, we're doing more shows in 2010.

Everything I could possibly say about w00tstock has already been said by Paul and Storm, who made a lovely list, and Molly, who made a comic that captures exactly how I felt the whole time we did our shows.

I loved feeling the terror and exhilaration of trying something totally new (The Trade, with music) that was raw and unrehearsed enough to allow for surprises every night.

I loved how totally geeked out we all were to be working with each other, too. I mean, I knew it would be cool to meet Adam Savage – the guy's a freakin' genius, after all – but I was unprepared for how completely and utterly cool, kind, and enthusiastic he was. And his100 wishes are wonderful, especially that he, like I, wishes for his children to have careers that they love.

I loved feeling like we were creating something unique and special, that people would be talking about long after it was finished.

I loved how much fun we had every night, even though I was exhausted down to my bones by the time we finished our last show Wednesday night (actually, Thursday morning).

I loved how wonderful the audiences were at all the shows. Geeks truly are the best crowd, because even when they heckle us (I'm looking at you, Los Angeles front row) it was done with enthusiasm and love. Yes, even the hecklers were, in their own way, supportive.

I loved that we released the entire show under a Creative Commons license, so anyone who wanted to could record and share the show online. There are tons of videos at YouTube andpictures at Flickr, as a result. 

I made a soup geyser:

"You're putting way too much soup in there," Anne said.

"I'm fine," I said, eager to get the pureeing over with so we could get down to the eating part of our dinner. "I'll just hold the lid down when I turn it on."

I pressed the lid down tightly and held it down with my left hand. With my right, I pressed the button marked "puree."

I probably would have taken a moment to stare at the resulting butternut squash soup geyser, if the explosion of hot liquid hadn't burned the hell out of my hand, face, chest, and arm. I probably would have admired the CSI-like splatters of orange puree on the wall, the coffee maker, the microwave, and the refrigerator, if I hadn't been frantically stabbing at the buttons in an effort to silence the whirring blades which created it. But it wasn't until the moment had passed – really just a few seconds of chaos – that I was able to pause and appreciate what had just happened. I mean, it's not every day that a geyser erupts in my kitchen. Thank Steve the Fruitbat.

I turned around and looked at my wife, who appeared to have chosen a seat outside of the splash zone. "Um. I didn't think that would happen."

"Really."

I grabbed a hand towel and wiped myself off. "Yeah. I, um. I thought it would blend."

"Oh it blended. It blended everywhere."

I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: that's one of my favorite things I've ever written.

To be continued in part six (Sheesh. Maybe I should have set the bar for inclusion a little higher, you think?)

Something something rearview mirror blog posts 2009. This is continued from part three.

I told the world what happens when you feed a dog chocolate while he wears a tinfoil hat in the microwave.

My friend Mike (@cwgabriel) and I engaged in the great retweeting madness of 2009, which I totally won.

I went to Comicon and, uh, got excited:

… and that's when I saw that Joss Whedon was sitting in the front row. About ten feet from me.

Let's take a look inside Wil's head, shall we:

Me: OMG OMG OMG

Brain: What?

Me: JOSS WHEDON IS RIGHT THERE! HE CAME TO THE PANEL AND HE'S RIGHT THERE!

Brain: Okay, just be cool.

Me: OKAY I'M BEING COOL.

Brain: No, you're staring.

Me: What?

Brain: You're staring. Stop staring.

Me: Shit. Okay. I'm not staring now. [pause] HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THAT JOSS WHEDON IS RIGHT THERE IN THE FRONT ROW?!

Brain: Yes, you mentioned that. Also, you're staring again.

Eventually, I broke out of the loop, which in WhetonIX looks like: (if near.joss=1, do {stare.like.idiot} fi;), and I enjoyed the rest of the panel.

Anne turned 40, and we had a radical bitchin' 80s costume party for her.

I found an old photograph of the four of us from Stand By Me that unlocked a flood of memories:

I forget what day this picture was taken, but it was 1986, right after Stand By Me had been released. There we are, sitting on chairs in the green room, waiting to go be interviewed by (I think) Ron Reagan, Jr. It was my first trip to New York, and I remember how excited I was to go to that huge, almost mythical city, see Times Square, ride the subway, visit the Statue of Liberty, and hang out with Jerry in his home town.

[…]

I've always said that Stand By Me was so successful because Rob cast four young actors who were so much like their characters, but I think it's spooky how the four of us ended up being so much like our characters: River died too young, Corey struggled like crazy to get his personal demons under control, Jerry found success and happiness, and I'm a writer.

…I have had a fucking weird life, man.

My dog Ferris, who Anne rescued from a bus stop in Monrovia where she'd been abandoned when she was just a puppy got cancer, and died. It was absolutely devastating.

I saw Ferris' empty dish last night when I fed Riley, and it unleashed an agonizing wave of sadness so overwhelming, I dropped to the floor in our living room and cried as hard and as long as I ever have in my life.

After she was finished eating, Riley came over to me and sniffed at my face. Through my tears and gasping sobs, I told her it was okay, I just missed Ferris a lot and I was sad.

She rubbed her face against my cheek and trotted into the family room. A moment later, she returned with her soggy tennis ball, which she gently put into my lap. She looked up at me, and then walked into the corner of the family room, where she picked up her rope – her favorite toy, which she brings with her to the front door whenever we come home – and brought it over to me. She set it on the ground next to me, and then laid down and put her head in my lap. I cried for a good long time, but I was comforted by Riley's actions, even if I'm projecting my own feelings onto her. I felt like she could tell I was grieving, so she brought me the things that make her happy, before letting me cry on her until the fur on her neck was soaked with my tears. When I finally stopped, mostly because I was physically and emotionally exhausted, I felt a tiny bit better. 

Ferris was just eight years-old, and a huge part of our family. I still miss her every day.

I wrote some fiction, and released it as a limited-edition chapbook at PAX. It was my first foray into anything longer than a blog post, and scared the hell out of me to release. I still haven't decided if I'll publish it at Lulu like I did with Sunken Treasure.

I started a weekly podcast to
promote Memories of the Future called, appropriately enough,Memories of the Futurecast. It eventually got so fun and so popular, I gave it its ownwebsite.

When I was at PAX, Jonathan Coulton, Molly Lewis, and Paul and Storm sang a song to me. Just thinking about it now still brings tears to my eyes. It was one of the highlights of the year, if not the entire decade. Know what else I got at PAX? H1N1. Yay.

The third series of the D&D Penny Arcade podcast began. It, uh, didn't end too well for Aeofel.

In memory of Ferris, Anne and I held a fundraiser for the Pasadena Humane Society's Wiggle Waggle Walk. Due to the generosity of WWdN readers, we ended up raising more money than any other individual – almost $14,000. Because so many people contributed to our effort, the humane society asked us to walk a shelter dog. We loved him so much, we adopted him and made him part of our family. His name is Seamus, and he's awesome. Yes, he'll get his own post with pictures and everything, just not right now.

To be continued in part five…