Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: Backstory

Posted on By shanenickerson

shanewilbirdsShane Nickerson speaks bird. You can find him at nickerblog.com.

For some reason, Wil gave me the keys to the whole Internet by allowing me to guest post here on WWdN. WHAT THE WHAT? You can imagine my excitement, as WWdN is hallowed ground for some of us longtime bloggers and blog readers. And TNG fans. Oh my god, the one where Picard gets pwned by that Alien probe and lives a whole other life and learns to play a space flute? Hawesome. Wait, was Wil even in that one? What was I talking about. Oh, right. Keys to the Internet. WWdN. It’s the place we’ve watched a guy we wish we knew from movies and TV turn into a guy we really DO know, thanks to his writing and his willingness to share his life. It’s the blog that spawned thousands of blogs (mine included), and continues to be a fascinating (and generous) glimpse at the path our friend Wil is traveling. From a Geocities Burrito, to the birth of WWdN, to several years of exile, to occasional podcasts, to multiple books and the rebirth of an acting career, we’ve been there with him. We met Anne and watched his kids grow up. We know his pets (and still miss Ferris), we know what’s in his garage, and we see our own humanity in his musings and self discoveries. We shake our fists in solidarity at the trolls and feel his victories as if they are our own. He is our friend, and we keep reading WWdN because, as he makes clear in his writing, we are also his.

I met Wil in 1999 at ACME Comedy Theater in Los Angeles. We performed onstage together and we made each other laugh. A connection. You meet someone who laughs at the same things and BOOM, kinship. My best friends are the ones who laugh the best. I started reading his blog. I started watching Star Trek: TNG. I became a fan after I became his friend.

Fourteen mumblecough years later, Wil remains one of my favorite people. He’s generous, kind, hilarious, crude, surprisingly self aware, extremely smart (like, scary smart), multi-talented, and not at all interested in football. He loves Guinness. He hates reality television. He is obsessed with numbers and odds. He’s probably two steps ahead of you in any given conversation. He doesn’t miss a goddamn thing. Who am I telling? You already know these things.

In December, Wil and I played in a degenerate poker tournament of donkeys in Las Vegas called the WPBT. We traveled together from Los Angeles, and I got to spend the weekend with this guy most of you know from WWdN. We both talked about recounting the whole hilarious weekend on our respective blogs, but neither of us ever quite got around to it. Some experiences are too big and too fun to adequately capture with a bunch of words. Or pictures. Or a video of our friend Ryan drinking one of those two foot tall, antifreeze colored Vegas drinks in under a minute on a prop bet (I lost).

Maybe I’ll tell you that story this week. Or maybe I’ll tell you about the old ACME days, and share some compromising photos. Oh, or about the time we were sitting at a Blackjack table and someone yelled across the casino, “Hey, it’s WIL WHEATON!” and without missing a beat, Wil yelled back, “REALLY? I LOVE THAT GUY!”

I’m delighted to be one of his guest bloggers this week, while he is away drinking all the beer on the big boat. Don’t worry, I won’t play many songs off the new album. I know you’re just here for the hits.

Guest Blog by Stephen Toulouse: In the style of Wil.

Posted on By Stephen Toulouse

This guest post is by Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse. He made a comedy album you can get on Bandcamp (cheapest option), iTunes or Amazon and wrote a book called A Microsoft Life. He blogs at Stepto.com.

The island was lush and green and beautiful in the distance. It was 80 degrees in the Caribbean in the first week of January, the wind was light and the view from the aft end of the ship was fantastic. Next to me sat Wil and his son Ryan. We each had a fine Cuban cigar in one hand and double scotches in the other. The ship was called the Eurodam, and like most cruise ships during the days at sea it had activities and little contests on the back deck and what not. The DJ had been playing a really obnoxious version of one of these a minute ago with really loud music, but got the hint from the glares of ourselves and others who just wanted to relax. So the silence we were enjoying our cigars in felt brand new and welcome.

We were due into port the next day, and the final concerts and festivities of JocoCruiseCrazy 1 were just a few hours away. I had performed the night before. I had been crazy nervous about it, mainly because I was in the second to the last show and all of the shows were better than the one before. Secondly, up until a couple of hours before the show I still had not picked my final set from amongst my practiced material. So I was a bit of a bundle of nervous nerves that are super nervous. My wife Rochelle and I went on a morning excursion with Wil and his family to swim with dolphins* (!) and I talked over my nervousness with him on the way back. He told me which pieces I should read because they would be the funniest and as it turns out, he was right.

I split off from the group to return to the ship to practice, and unbeknownst to me Rochelle and Wil and company went off to shop where Wil procured the cigars. Suffice to say my performance went off without a hitch (here’s a small segment of it) and so the moment with the cigars was kind of an all-around decompress and celebration.

“That’s Cuba” I said, gesturing to that beautiful island. It’s funny because during the cruise essentially the cruise line, maps, almost everything just ignores Cuba’s existence. I can’t stress enough what a beautiful place it appears to be.

“Yes. Yes it is.” Wil said.

“We’re smoking Cuban cigars and drinking scotch just a mile off the coast of Cuba.” I said.

“Yes. Yes we are.”

After a moment our friend Andrew joined us, then Rochelle and Anne dropped by. We chatted quietly and relaxed and watched Cuba go by. That’s definitely in the top 200 moments of my life.

I mention this moment mainly because I really wanted to be on the boat most of my friends are on right now. But then I stop myself to remember I have been twice, I’m getting to work on some pretty amazing projects at the moment, and I get to guest blog here with Will and Shane. I promise to try and keep it interesting, and also (where possible) humorous.

Titty sprinkles,

Stepto

*Another top 200 life moment.

I’m on a boat: Welcome your guest bloggers!

Posted on By Wil

I’m on a boat! Or, maybe I’m on my way to being on a boat, or I have recently gotten off a boat, or I suppose I was on a boat at sometime in the past. (Boy, covering all the timelines is a lot of work, you guys. I see the benefits of just leaving things in a superposition… or, at least, I think about seeing them. I don’t want to observe them and ruin a perfectly good superposition.)

So.

Last year, while I was on JoCo Cruise Crazy 2: Cruise Harder, I programmed something from my archives to publish once a day. You know, for kids. Well, this year, I didn’t have the time to search for and curate posts, so I’m doing something a little different: I invited some of my friends to take over my blog while I’m gone. They’ve been instructed to post whatever they want as frequently or infrequently as they want, and I’d like to introduce you to them now.

Meet Will Hindmarch. Will is a writer, graphic artist, game designer, and better at all of these things than he gives himself credit for. If you’ve ever played a game from White Wolf, you’ve probably played something Will put his filthy hands all over. If you’ve played the Fiasco playset we played on Tabletop, you’ve played something that Will and I wrote together. If you’ve read Memories of the Future Volume 1, you’ve seen a cover that Will designed. He blogs at wordstudio.net and is @wordwill on the twitters.

Meet Shane Nickerson. I’ve known Shane for mumblecough years, ever since we did shows together at the ACME Comedy Theater. Shane is the executive producer of Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory and Ridiculousness. Shane is one of the funniest people I know, and that’s saying something. He’s also an incredible father to three kids, never uses Comic Sans, and has paid me off exactly the right number of times in poker games. Shane blogs at nickerblog.com and is @ShaneNickerson on the twitters.

Meet Stepto. Stepto is probably best known as the leader of The Steptos, and as the former banhammer at Xbox Live. Stepto is a wonderful, thoughtful writer, and once pulled a man’s finger in Reno just to watch him fart. He’s the author of A Microsoft Life, and just released a comedy album called A Geekster’s Paradise. He blogs at stepto.com and is @stepto on the Steptos.

Please welcome this team of talented, funny, smart, and interesting people to WWdN, and make them feel at home. I’ll expect a full report when I get home from my trip, and don’t even try to replace the fish if they die. I’ll know.

Tabletop’s Dragon Age RPG Outtakes (Part One)

Posted on By Wil

When I do my gag reel intros for Tabletop, I always get them to my producer on Tuesday, because they need to be edited and uploaded by noon on Wednesday for a release on Thursday.

And you just thought it all happened by magic! For shame. For shame.

I’ve been so busy lately, with various secret projects and w00tstock at Sketchfest and preparations for JoCo Cruise Crazy next week, I completely forgot to record my intro for this week’s gag reel. Nick, my producer, emailed me yesterday morning to remind me that I hadn’t sent it in, and that we were running out of time to get it done. I looked at the clock, realized that I didn’t have time to really put myself together and record it, so I asked Anne if she’d just shoot me for a minute or so at our dining room table.

This was also not as easy as it sounds, because she was doing online traffic school thanks to an epic bullshit ticket (70 in a 65 on the Interstate, no radar, she fought it and lost. Shasta County is corrupt IMHO) and could only take short breaks during the day. (By the way, she aced it: 100% on each section and the final. That’s my girl!)

Well, after seeing this all cut together, I can confidently say: worth it.

Watch Tabletop’s Dragon Age RPG Gag Reel (Part One)

wheatonbot needs moar coffee

Posted on By Wil

When I do my gag reel intros for Tabletop, I always get them to my producer on Tuesday, because they need to be edited and uploaded by noon on Wednesday for a release on Thursday.

And you just thought it all happened by magic! For shame. For shame.

I’ve been so busy lately, with various secret projects and w00tstock at Sketchfest and preparations for JoCo Cruise Crazy next week, I completely forgot to record my intro for this week’s gag reel. Nick, my producer, emailed me this morning to remind me that I hadn’t sent it in, and that we were running out of time to get it done. I looked at the clock, realized that I didn’t have time to really put myself together and record it, so I asked Anne if she’d just shoot me for a minute or so at our dining room table.

This was also not as easy as it sounds, because she’s doing online traffic school thanks to an epic bullshit ticket (70 in a 65 on the Interstate, no radar, she fought it and lost. Shasta County is corrupt IMHO) and can only take short breaks during the day.

Luckily for us and people who enjoy my bed head posts at G+, the stars aligned and we were able to shoot the intro. Here’s the (in my opinion hilarious) thumbnail that my shows up in my finder when I look at the file:

Wheatonbot needs more coffee.
Wheatonbot needs more coffee.

Yes, that’s the bathrobe I wear every day. I got it from Think Geek. It’s as awesome as you think.

You can see the intro I recorded, and the gag reel it introduces, tomorrow at Internet o’clock on Geek and Sundry. You can see a little tease from the gag reel right now.