In Which I Interview Patton Oswalt for Playboy

Posted on By Wil

This is a big deal for me. A few months ago, my friend introduced me to Marc Bernardin, who is a new editor for Playboy. My friend told me that Marc is helping bring back the kind of writing that Playboy had in the 70s and 80s, when it was held up next to Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone. They both thought that I should become a contributor, and be part of that effort.

It was an incredible honor when Marc asked me to interview Patton Oswalt for The Playboy Conversation, and I’m really happy with how this turned out. Here’s an excerpt.

Geographically, Los Angeles isn’t that big. In fact, we say that pretty much everything, from The Valley to the South Bay is about a 20-minute drive, until you account for the traffic. It’s just past eleven in the morning, and I’m stuck on Highland, just six miles (but almost 22 minutes) away from my destination, because I didn’t account for the traffic.

I call my assistant and ask her to “let them know that I’m stuck in traffic, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She calls me back a few minutes later and tells me that everything’s okay. “Patton’s already there, so just drive safely and get there when you can.”

I try and fail to be patient. I can’t make the traffic move faster any more than I can go back in time to take a different route to Hollywood from The Valley, but I’m late, and the only thing I hate more than waiting for someone is making someone wait for me.

Twenty-five minutes later (parking is a bitch in Hollywood) I walk into BLD restaurant on Beverly. I look around and find Patton, sitting at a small table, facing the door, sipping from a mug while he looks at his phone.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” I say.

He looks up, cradling his mug in one hand. “It’s okay. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” I say, sitting down. “There was construction on Barham and an accident on the 101 and–”

“And you’re fucked,” he says.

“Pretty much,” I say. The waitress comes by and I order some coffee. I pull out my recorder, and set it on the table between us.

Where do I start? I’ve known Patton Oswalt for almost 15 years, though we’ve never been particularly close. When our orbits intersect — most frequently at Comic-Con or in the lobby of a theatre in Los Angeles — we talk for a few moments before going on our respective ways, until we meet again. I like Patton, and we’re friendly, but we’re not friends. This isn’t the first time I’ve interviewed someone, but the uncertain intimacy between us, combined with my general anxiousness about being late, has made me a little off balance. Whether he senses this or not, I don’t know, but Patton takes the pressure off.
PATTON OSWALT: So you’re interviewing me for Playboy?
WIL WHEATON: Yeah. And I’m not going to lie; I think it’s pretty cool. It’s such an interesting part of our culture. Magazines like Playboy are so different to the current generation than they were to ours. Like, if you want to look at boobs today, you just go to the internet, but when we were younger, we had to, like, actually find a magazine, find that one kid who for whatever reason, had an older brother or something who got it.
PATTON: I think I actually wrote a thing for Playboy about telling the new generation buy Playboys and go leave them in the woods, just so those kids can still, it gets them out of the house. I think I actually wrote that down for them. Gets them out of the house. Because the sense of that quest, it doesn’t really exist anymore. Not only the quest, but the currency. Now you’re the kid that has a Playboy: What can you trade for it? What can you get for it, you know?

(My friends and I hid  a Playboy in a tree, covered up with some rocks, in the wash behind our house. I remember that the playmate of the month was Hope Marie Carlton, and the Internet tells me that that means we had the July 1985 issue.) The waitress comes back, and sets a small press pot down in front of it. It probably has three cups in it. “Would you like to order some breakfast?”

I look at Patton. “Yes, I’ll have the huevos,” he says.

I order the first thing that I see on the menu. “Blueberry pancakes, with a side of bacon or sausage.”

She writes on her notepad, stops, and looks at me. “Did you want bacon or sausage?”

I notice that she has blue eyes, and is pretty. She has a cool tattoo on her left forearm. “I don’t care. You choose.” I hope I’m not being flirty. That happens sometimes when I’m nervous.

You can read the rest, where we talk about Twitter, fatherhood, stand-up comedy, The Interview, and his new book, Silver Screen Fiend, at Playboy.com (the site is probably NSFW, but the page where our conversation lives is SFW)

Secret Vacation 2015

Posted on By Wil

We used to feel comfortable talking about where we were when we went on vacation, but that didn’t always turn out so well for us, so now we go on Secret Vacations instead.

This secret vacation features lots and lots of snow, reading books by the fireplace, and convincing ourselves that we can eat more junk food, because our bodies need the calories to keep warm. If you listen to today’s abbreviated Radio Free Burrito, you can hear what I think the best part of this Secret Vacation is.

Now, please enjoy two pictures that capture our long walk today: Anne, with her delightful Kermit the Frog hat thing, and me, trying to decide if having a nearly-frozen beard is the best thing, or the best thing ever.

Kermit loves snow There's ice in my beard

a brief history of Radio Free Burrito

Posted on By Wil

Way back in 2005, when I was trying to figure out where the next mortgage payment would come from, I tried just about anything creative that I could think of to help support my family.

Mostly, I did that by writing. I did columns and freelance work, and wrote a few books. It was creatively satisfying, and it helped us get through each day, then each week, and eventually through a few years.

Way back in 2005, the whole podcasting thing was just getting started, and I saw an opportunity to live out my childhood dream of having a radio show (in fact, even earlier in the 2000s, I had done a live broadcast where I played music and did my best DJ impression. I had to give it up for reasons that are lost to history). Just as blogging tools like Greymatter and Blogger had made it easy for me to become a self-published writer, Garageband made it easy for me to become a self-published radio sort of guy. Back then, I felt incredibly guilty if I did something or spent money on something that was just for fun, without also supporting my family. I couldn’t really afford to do a radio show or podcast just for fun, but maybe I could get sponsors or sell ads or take donations or whatever.

So way back in 2005, Radio Free Burrito was born. It never really helped me support my family, but it helped me find some more creative confidence, and it gave me an opportunity to pretend I was one of those late night DJs I grew up loving, listening to on a tiny transistor radio in my bedroom long after I was supposed to have gone to sleep.

I did Radio Free Burrito with some regularity for several years, trying my best to stick to a weekly schedule, but since this was back before I got treated for Depression, it was really, really hard to stick to it. I put a lot of work into each episode, and sometime around 2008, it just felt like it wasn’t worth the effort.

But something happened around the end of 2009. I don’t remember what it was, but — wait. I think I know what it was. I think that’s when I finally got treated for Depression.

Huh. That’s weird. I hadn’t really put these two things together until just now. Which is ironic, because I’ve been struggling to hold a pretty bad Depression and Anxiety thing at arm’s length for at least a week.

ANYway, around the end of 2009, I found a groove, and I got comfortable with the sound of my own stupid voice. Radio Free Burrito hit what I’ll call its golden age during 2010, and I looked forward to it so much, I started another podcast to support my book Memories of the Future, Volume 1.

After almost a year of consistent releases, my life started to really turn around. Not to mistake correlation for causation, but this was when I started to work like crazy as an actor again. I think it was around 2011 that I started working on Leverage, then Eureka, then Big Bang Theory, and then Tabletop was born. As much as I had loved working on the Burrito every week, I actually didn’t have a lot of time to spend on it, and since I felt like it never really passed more than a couple hundred listeners, anyway, I had to make a choice to let it go and invest my time and creative energy in other places.

The last show I did was in February of 2013. People asked me about it all the time, but I was pretty sure that Radio Free Burrito was done.

Until this weekend, when I had an idea.

See, I’ve been listening to Serial and Snap Judgment and 99% Invisible and Nerdist and Dan Carlin.  Thanks to all of that, something landed in my brain and refused to leave. See, I’m sort of between big projects at the moment (finishing Tabletop and getting started on our RPG spinoff), and I think that The Thing I’m Going To Do Between Things is Radio Free Burrito. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay on a weekly schedule, but I think I can. I think that, if I remember that the point is not to make something perfect, but is actually to just make a thing, I’ll enjoy it, and maybe a couple hundred people will enjoy it with me.

So yesterday, I did a brand new Radio Free Burrito. It isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible, and it’s a thing where there wasn’t a thing before. I had fun when I was making it, and all I’ve been able to think about since I made it was what I’m going to do when I make the next one, which is pretty cool.

I won’t do this with every episode, but I wanted to share it and its show notes, here on the mothership, so as many people as possible can know about it.

Well, it looks like we’re really back, for reals, and on an actual schedule. Welcome to Radio Free Burrito Episode 35 – Ring of Fire

This week, I talk about the first thing to come to my mind, including trains and books. I tell a pretty gross story that gives the episode its title. This will also be the first episode that has an actual name, because some day I’d like to come up with something as magnificent as #Torsoshorts.

Okay, that’s everything. Please enjoy Radio Free Burrito Episode 35 – Ring of Fire.

Radio Free Burrito’s Experimental Episode

Posted on By Wil

I had an idea, so I tried it out. I’m publishing it now, before I have a chance to back out and change my mind.

  • Show Notes:
  • The audio isn’t perfectly clean. That is by design. This is an experiment.
  • Radio Free Burrito doesn’t work as hard as Memories of the Futurecast did to earn its NSFW rating, but listener discretion is still advised.
  • If you want to introduce yourself, join this post. Maybe you’ll make a new friend.
  • The theme music was just called “flight.mp3” and I have no idea where it came from.
  • There’s no art, because it’s an experimental episode.
  • I’m not sure if this will work with typical podcast clients. Apologies in advance if it isn’t available in your preferred thing.
  • The episode is 19.26 and is 28MB.

Enjoy the Burrito!

If the embeded player doesn’t work, try this link: RFB-Experimental