50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
Two awesome things have already happened today:
1. I woke up at 8:05, and it felt like I'd really slept in.
2. My friend Rich put me in today's Diesel Sweeties:
see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts
The theme I use in Typepad doesn't support dynamic resizing, so I had to shrink the image down. You can click on it, though, to see it full size at the Diesel Sweeties website.
This week's LA Daily is about one of my favorite off-the-radar places:
Did you know that around a century ago there was an exclusive, 70-room resort hotel in the hills above Altadena? How about a casino? A zoo? An observatory? A funicular railway that climbed 1400 feet up the mountain at a 62 percent angle to get visitors there and back?
Well, it's true. All of this and more was part of a massive complex of buildings connected by railways that sprawled out across the San Gabriel Mountains from Rubio Canyon to Mount Lowe from 1893 to around 1938. Fires and windstorms repeatedly damaged or destroyed the various buildings, and they eventually gave up trying to go all Swamp Castle on the place and abandoned it, but you can still take a relatively easy hike up the Sam Merrill trail in Altadena to see the ruins, as well as some sensational views of Los Angeles.
Depending on the feedback I get from this column, I may do some more in the future about other off-the-radar places I love, because who doesn't love discovering new places that have been sitting in plain sight for their whole lives?
It is the 29th of December, 2022. The world I live in today is nothing at all like the one I lived in when I wrote this, in 2009. In a ton of ways, this world and this life is so much better now. I am so much better, now. But as you know since you live in this world at this moment, holy shit so much is so terrible. America walked about waist deep into full-on Fascism and hasn’t fully gotten out of the water, yet. And a huge part of that, it turns out, can be traced to Twitter. Millions of words have been written about it since 2009, so I’m just going to say this: I left Twitter when I realized it was amplifying and spotlighting white nationalists, fascist authoritarians, and vicious brigades of trolls and bullies. I believed then, as I do now, that Twitter’s policies regarding bullying and misinformation proved the Tolerance Paradox. I walked away from roughly 3 million followers, and looked back only once, in 2022, to let them know about my memoir. I have not regretted that decision for a second.
About three months ago, Apartheid Nepo Baby Elon Musk took over Twitter, and in a matter of days, managed to make it even less safe, more toxic, more dangerous, than it already was. I believe his ownership of Twitter presents a meaningful danger to the most vulnerable people in our society, and any fleeting thoughts I ever had about giving Twitter a try again were quickly banished to the cornfield. I won’t be part of anything that despicable man touches.
I want/need to clear something up real quick. I have to keep @wilw active so some piece of shit doesn’t grab it and do who even knows what with it. But I locked my account and deleted my entire archive the day Musk bought it, long before I wrote this.
Twitter under Elon Musk does not take safety (physical, emotional, societal) seriously at all, and the consequences of that in the years to come are going to be dire. Twitter is well on its way to becoming 4chan, and Elon Musk is its Head Troll. Since taking over, he’s eliminated safety teams, spread misinformation, and brought the most vile, hateful, literal Nazis back into the platform, where he engages with them and promotes their rhetoric.
Twitter is like that awesome punk club that you used to love, that slowly got filled up with Nazis from out of town until they took over. And now one of them owns the place. Why in the world would you want to go there and be around Nazis, when there are countless other places to go where Nazis aren’t welcome?
My original post continues below, unedited.
Yesterday, my friend Alan tweeted a link to this story of how Twitter was born. If you use Twitter at all, you should totally check it out because it’s awesome. If you don’t use Twitter, you should totally check it out, because a lot of what you may have heard about Twitter is probably filtered through the traditional media lens, and Twitter is off in a completely different direction.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter lately, mostly because I have a whole lot of fun using it, but also because the number of people who read my stupid messages on Twitter has exploded by several thousand in just the last few days. Yesterday morning I said Things I didn’t expect to see when I woke up today: 4714 people have looked at a picture of my socks. 51000 people are reading this. Um. I also said Now I have self conscious performance anxiety. Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it don-PENIS! Sigh. Dammit. Ha. I slay me.
The truth is, that’s really weird to me. Even accounting for the damn spambots that auto-follow everyone, that’s a hell of a lot of people. I bet a lot of them don’t read my blog, and only know me as Gordie LaChance or Wesley Crusher, or the gangly kid who played those characters and was a lot more concerned about whether girls liked him than he was being honest and true to himself. The problem with being in the public eye is that the media always filters everything you do, highlights every stupid mistake you make, and aren’t as interested in showing people what you’re really like as they are in printing the story that will sell the most papers.
On Twitter, and on my blog, you’re seeing me, the husband, geek, and stepdad. You’re not seeing the kid in the Bop poster. (I don’t currently own that many watches or Batman painter’s caps, among other things) or the guy who is occasionally on your TV. This disconcerts some people — not a lot, but enough that I feel compelled to write Wil’s Quick Guide To Following Me On Twitter, mostly so people know what they’re getting themselves into, what to expect, and how much I’m going to disappoint them. (Pro Tip: No one is ever going to publish a tell-all biography about my life. Except maybe Wired, if I’m really lucky and earn it.)
Oh, and if I can make something painfully, embarrassingly clear before I begin: my whole idea here is to manage expectations and explain my own personal limits. I’m not trying to go on and on about how fucking cool I think I am and how you have to follow rules to follow me, or anything like that. I’m saying this now because some of the things down below, you may not want to hear. It’s not you, it’s me, and I hope you believe that.
So. We cool? Cool.
Message begins:
Hey there, @you! Welcome to my Twitter thingy. I’m @wilw, and I’ve been using this service for a long, long time, because my friend @seanbonner told me that it would be fun. At first, I didn’t understand what the point was, until @warrenellis said that our mutual friend @rstevens was fun to follow on Twitter because he was this constant stream of jokes and puns and wry observations. It was then that I realized that Twitter didn’t have to be about What are you doing? but could be about What’s on your mind right now? It was, as the saying goes, a light bulb moment for me, and I started using Twitter for off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts that didn’t warrant their own post here on my blog.
Since that day, I’ve sent out nearly 4000 updates (also called Tweets, because some people got together and decided that we needed a term that was even sillier and more embarrassing to say than ‘blog-o-sphere’) to a bunch of people, including, probably, @you.
I’m not going to tell you what Twitter is, or how you should use it. As @Pogue said in his NYT column about Twitter, The Web is full of “rules” about the proper way to Twitter, and a lot of them are just knowier-than-thou garbage. I couldn’t agree more, and encourage you to ignore them all, choosing instead to use Twitter however it amuses you.
Now, having said that, if you plan to follow me on Twitter, here are some things you should probably know, so you know what to expect from me:
1. I send out a lot of Tweets, frequently about stupid stuff that’s just amusing to me. From time to time I will send out several in just a few minutes. You probably shouldn’t follow me on your phone, because it’s going to get annoying. I have friends who are so prolific, I don’t follow them on my phone, and they’re my friends! I have friends who don’t follow me, because I tweet way too much for them. It’s cool, I know text message charges can be expensive, and I wouldn’t follow me, because I use Twitter a LOT. I don’t plan to change that, either. It’s fun and I like it.
2. I’m probably not going to follow you. I follow a few close friends, a few people whose work I really admire or whose Tweets really entertain me, and a couple of news sources. I can’t possibly follow all 53,000 of you (it went up since I sent those Tweets yesterday. Weird.) — or even one percent of that number — and still get any work done. I’m easily distracted, so I have to draw the circle very small so I can step out of it when I need to.
3. I do try to keep up with all the @replies to my messages, but most of the time when I’m at my computer, I’m working, and I can’t afford to stop what I’m doing every time a reply comes in. (Easily distracted, remember?) The extended conversations at Twitter can be awesome, especially when we’re all playing a global Improv game of Yes, and…, but ultimately I have to focus first on what pays my kids’ bills and keeps our roof up. Please know that even if I don’t reply, I do pay attention, and I thank you for taking the time to respond.
4. There is no number four.
5. If you’re expecting some kind of weird “celebrity” experience, I’m not your guy, and this is where some of you can point and scoff and pat yourselves on the back for saying, “Dude, you’re not a celebrity! Hurr hurr hurr.” That’s, um, kind of the point I’m trying to make. If you’re looking for a real celebrity, you want to follow someone else, and there are plenty of guides to who those people are. I’m just a geek, and I’m just this guy, you know? No one’s following me around with a camera hoping to catch me not wearing underwear under my skirt. I know, I’ve tried. Sigh.
6. The last thing I want to say really makes me feel like a dick, but it’s come up a lot and I owe it to all of you to be honest and open. I’m not going to lie to you, @you, it’s overwhelming, really cool, and a little scary that there are about 53,000 people following me on Twitter. If I think about it too much, like right now, I get freaked out. The way I continue having fun with Twitter is that I do what I want with it, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride if you think it’s worth it. But if you do follow me, please don’t @ complain at me about how often I’m tweeting or what I tweet about. I’m not interested in censoring myself for anyone — not for @you, not for @youtoo, and not even for you, @wilsmom. If you’re disappointed that I’m not the kid I used to be, or you decide I talk too much, or you just don’t think I’m very interesting, that’s cool — no one likes everything or everyone. But don’t ask me to change to please you. Just unfollow, and we’ll each go our own way, cherishing the time we had together and moving on. No regrets. We’ll always have Paris.
7. Lastly, a small request from me to @you: I’m not Gordie and I’m not Wesley. I’m Wil. Please show me the courtesy of using my real name, not the name of some guy you saw in a theater or on TV 20 years ago. I hope this explains why I’m sensitive about that, but if it doesn’t, think of it as someone using a nickname you really hate. They may not know any better, they may mean well, but it still gives you that little pain behind your eyes, doesn’t it?
Finally, on the off-chance that someone who makes Twitter go sees this: please let me give you money. I love Twitter and I really want to support it so it doesn’t go away.
Okay, that’s it. I hope this handy little guide has made it a little easier to know what to expect from me with this neat new toy. See you in the Twitterverse, @you!
Message ends.
Whew. That was really tough to write, because I’m so afraid of coming off wrong, or being misunderstood. Well, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, right? I will just hope that this is received in the way it was intended, and not the other way.
Operation Crazy Awesome Idea is nearing the “Time to find out if this is crazy awesome or just crazy,” moment of truth, so that’s where I’m sort of living at the moment. I also have a writing deadline in two hours, so I’m trying not to run around my office waving my hands over my head and screaming like I’m on fire.
Um. Not that I have any personal experience in running around offices while set on fire and — I’ve said too much.
So, while I work on these projects, please enjoy…
This is one of those things that I should have thought of on my own, but was actually suggested by a whole bunch of different people on Twitter and here in comments. As always, you can click to embiggen at Flickr.
Stats say there are like … an insane number of first-time visitors lately. If you’re one of them (thanks for coming by!) and you want to know what this is all about, you can check out evil and awesome (but mostly awesome) which tells the story of the Infamous Velvet Wesley Crusher, and in which my already nerdy office gets a little bit nerdier, which tells the story of the paint by numbers version of the photo of me holding the Infamous Velvet Wesley Crusher.
Crazy ideas that may or may not be crazy are taking up pretty much all of my free time this week, so my Phoenix Comicon trip report will have to wait until Monday, but since I promised to deliver a Rock Band roundup before the end of this week, here we go.
First up is Karen B., seriously rocking to You Oughta Know. Funny story about this: right before we started playing this song, I said to her, “You know, you have to sing ‘thinking of me when you fuck her,’ even though it’s going to say something like ‘think of me when you carebears’ on the lyrics.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, clearly uncertain about using the potty mouth.
“I will totally take all the wrath if anyone gives you shit for it,” I said. “Trust me, you have to do it.”
“Okay,” she said.
When the appropriate moment arrived in the song, she belted the FUCK out of that lyric, and I peed a little. Awesome.
Next, we have a little story that I told the kids after struggling through Give It Away, which is totally not a “1” on the Drums, contrary to what the game claims:
THE BEAT, WE HAZ IT!:
Tararebeka shared this picture of me pretending to be cool at the end of the night:
And this picture of me not even trying to hide what a total dork I am just before I pretend to be cool:
Check out Joe’s awesome rock face and stance behind me! FTW, Joe. F.T.W.
You may want to check out Tararebeka’s Phoenix Comicon Rockband photoset, especially if you’re me and you had so much fun that you want to remember what it was like. If you were there, and want to tag yourself, that would be awesome.
Okay, next we have another angle on the now-legen…wait for it…dary Livin’ on a Prayer:
I find it moderately ironic and exceptionally funny that the song I really didn’t want to do ended up being the one that’s viewed the most times, and is actually my best performance of the night. Now I’m stuck with it. Damn you, Bon Jovi. (Not really. Call me. Mean it!)
Here’s a short clip that Ken from XCast put up. It gives you an idea of how much fun we were having, even when we weren’t getting the rock on:
Here were are nearing the end of the evening. If you ever wanted to: 1) Hear me make a Star Trek joke about an Offspring Song or 2) watch a bunch of guys dressed up as EM EFFING GHOSTBUSTERS play that same song, this is the clip you want to see:
And, finally, here is the finale. I can’t sing Steve Perry to save my life, and I wish the vocal track from my Mic was turned all the way off, but at this point, it’s not even about sounding good or even looking good; at this point it’s all about having fun and finishing an epic night with motherfucking JOURNEY, goddammit:
One last time, I want to thank Sean from Harmonix for supporting this event, Lee and Joe and everyone else at Phoenix Comicon for giving us the room and the time to make it happen, but most of all, everyone who came out to be part of the event. It was something really special to me, and though we’ll certainly do this at future cons, this is where it all began and you were part of it. Tell your kids and make them jealous.