wil wheaton project tickets, music, tabletop, rampart

Posted on By Wil

A couple quick things before I leave for work:

 

 

that time I met Albert Einstein

Posted on By Wil

I took a lot of pictures when I was in Washington, DC, but I think this one is my favorite:

Wil Wheaton and Albert Einstein

“…and I want a Higgs Boson, and a unified field theory, and the solution to Maxwell’s last equation…”

It’s important to be easily amused, everyone.

KOOOOPPPPPIIIITTTTTAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!

Posted on By Wil

I am in an undisclosed location on the East Coast for something very important, so I had to go to sleep last night before the Kings game was over. Just before I turned off the lights and shut down my laptop, I saw the great Anze Kopitar score what would become the game winning goal, to lead the LA Kings to an historic comeback against the San Jose Chokes Sharks. (They are now just the fourth team in NHL history to come back from a 3-0 game deficit in the playoffs and advance to the next round).

Had I been at home, I would have reposted this vine to celebrate the occasion:

Now, I’m not saying that I called it on April 17, but … maybe I called it on April 17.

All good-natured ribbing aside, what an incredible series this was. I’m looking forward to the next round, because it’s Duck Season.

A Live Preview of the Wil Wheaton Project, in Hollywood this Sunday

Posted on By Wil

I spent most of yesterday with my writers and producers, working on a script for The Wil Wheaton Project. We watched a ton of clips, and then worked out jokes that went with them. At one point, we were trying to make a funny joke even funnier than it was, and realized that we’d gotten “room drunk,” which is what happens when you’re having so much fun in the writer’s room, you just get completely goofy and too silly for the task at hand.

There’s a strange thing that happens in a writer’s room (at least a comedy writers’ room, based on my limited experience doing this show and several years of sketch comedy) where we’ll come up with something really hilarious, but nobody will laugh. Someone will just say, very calmly, “oh man, that’s really funny,” and we know that we have a winning joke or premise. Other times, we’re just riffing about bullshit, completely cracking each other up, and though we don’t get anything out of it that we can use directly, it’s an important part of the process that gets us to “oh man, that’s really funny.”

A lot of that happened yesterday, and though I was creatively, physically, and emotionally exhausted by the time I got home, it was a very good day.

Anne and I had dinner, shared a Ruination IPA, and watched The Americans (one of our very favourite shows on television) before we went to sleep early, because we were going to be picked up at 6:15 to go to the airport. Because our brains hate us, we couldn’t fall asleep until around 11, and we both woke up at 4:15am. Because that wasn’t enough, our brains wouldn’t let us sleep on the plane, and now it’s just about 9:30 here in our Undisclosed East Coast Location, where we will remain until Saturday.

Now to the important part of this post: Sunday, I am going to do a live show at the IO West in Hollywood, and I’d really love it if any of you reading this in Los Angeles would come to the show.

MY DETAILS LET ME SHOW YOU THEM:

Whether you’re a hardcore nerd or just dig Sci-fi, join us this May Fourth (Star Wars Day) for a special event at the iO West!

The Wil Wheaton Project premieres on the SYFY Channel May 27th, but you can catch a sneak peak with a special live performance with host Wil Wheaton May 4th 7pm at the iO West!

The Wil Wheaton Project covers the entire Sci-Fi umbrella with the latest news, as well as the best clips from TV, film, gaming and the web.

With special guest Jonah Ray (The Meltdown on Comedy Central)

http://www.syfy.com/wilwheaton

A lot of the stuff we’ve been working on for the last several weeks will be in this show, which is designed for us to try some things out in front of an audience, and get a sense of what does and doesn’t work. My instinct is that most of it will be really funny and entertaining, and even if some of it doesn’t work, the audience has my permission to give me a rousing BOOOOOO-URNS.

Now, listen, Internet, I know how this usually goes down: I say, “Hey, I’m doing a show in Los Angeles, and I hope you’ll come see it!” And instead of something like, “YES! WE WILL BE THERE AND BRING THREE FRIENDS AND ALSO BEER YOU LIKE” what usually happens is the Internet says, “Oh. Well. That’s great. Why aren’t you doing a show in $name.of.my-city.h?”

So I get it, that most of you aren’t in LA, and even if you are it’s a hassle to leave the house on a Sunday for a show that your favourite Internet scamp Wil Wheaton is performing, that won’t even take an hour, at a comedy club in Hollywood that has a great bar and even survived a car crashing right into it one time. I get that, and I want you to know that you get a free pass to miss this one, because of reasons.

But, seriously, if you’re in Los Angeles (or nearby) and you’d like to 1) get a sneak peek of what The Wil Wheaton Project is going to be like and B) help me, simply by being in the theater, to know how I’m doing, I would be ever so grateful.  The show starts at 7pm, and you’ll be on your way home by 8pm (unless you want to stay for the next show, which I hear is pretty great).

That said, this theater isn’t huge, and there’s a non-zero chance it’ll sell out, so if you want to go, I’d recommend getting your tickets now.

Guest Post by Will Hindmarch: Learning to Write

Posted on By Will Hindmarch

Writer and game designer Will Hindmarch is an occasional contributor to WWdN and constant mooncalf. In a good way.

When the writing is tough, I doubt a lot of my words and think hard about whether I really know what I’m doing or not. Where do I get the nerve to try to be heard or read?

As David Simon once put it, who died and made me Storyteller?

Thinking back to some of the lessons I’ve learned as a writer and narrative designer, I think about all the hours I’ve logged — through doubt and confidence, pain and passion — writing things I thought I might not be able to write. A lot of my knowledge was given to me by teachers and mentors but I think maybe none of it really made sense until I dared to fulfill or defy the lessons given unto me. I could train and train but only while I was writing did the full substance of the lessons make sense to me.

When the student is ready, the blank page shall appear.

It takes many forms. I’ve logged a gazillion hours telling collaborative stories through tabletop RPGs, which are a great way to learn adaptation, improvisation, and quick development of ideas as they happen. It’s a great medium for learning — you can imagine how excited I am by the prospect of a tabletop RPG show from my friend, games master Wil Wheaton. (So do fund the hell out of that, if you please.) We can all glean lessons from that kind of play.

Combine the experience points I’ve earned from RPGs with the  time I spent in the authorial batting cages of Ficlets (where I got to write stories in tandem with Wil) and you get my newest game design, which itself combines narrative gaming with actual writing.

That’s Storium.

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