From the Vault: An Open Letter to That Guy

Posted on By Wil

ESPN is running a wonderful and heartbreaking documentary called Catching Hell, about Steve Bartman and the Chicago Cubs in 2003.

If you don't have any idea what that means, you can skip this post.

For the rest of you, here's a repost of something I wrote to him back then, when he was Public Enemy Number One for Cubs fans:

An Open Letter to That Guy

Originally published at WWdN on October 16, 2003

Dear That Guy,

Like you, I am a huge Cubs fan. Like you, I've been telling people "next year! Next Year!" as long as I can remember. Like you, I am crushed that they aren't going to the World Series. Again.

Unlike you, most of Chicago (and the world, really) could give a shit about me. That's where this letter, from some guy you'll never meet and could probably care less about, comes in. See, I think we have a few things in common, and I just wanted to take a minute here and tell you that I think you're getting a bunch of shit that you don't deserve.

I used to be on this big cult TV show that had lots of very passionate fans. Many of those fans absolutely (and irrationally) hated the character I played on that show. Most of them wrote me nasty letters and heckled me whenever I'd show up at one of their events, they never called my house, or tried to hurt me, but I can sort of imagine what you're going through. That thing that makes a sports fan wear only paint and a diaper to a ball game when it's 15 degrees outside? It's the same thing that makes a Star Trek fan wear the same unwashed uniform for 5 days in a row at a big ass con.

I've read that just about every Cubs fan in the world is giving you hell for going after that foul ball. Well, That Guy, last time I checked, baseball fans like to catch foul balls. It's something we do, like paying too much for terrible beer and screaming at a player for not picking up that slider that we're so certain we'd be able to hit if they'd just put our fat asses in the game. Hell, I've been going to 20 or 30 games a season at Dodger Stadium for almost 30 years, and I try to catch a foul ball every single time I'm there. I've even had my hot wife flirt with the teenage bat boy in a pathetic effort to score one. To date, I am still empty-handed. But that bat boy, Jesse, is convinced that my wife's going to leave me just as soon as he gets out of high school.

Anyway, That Guy, enough about me. This is about you.

It's not your fault that the Cubs lost game 6. It's not your fault that Dusty Baker probably left Prior in too long, or that Alex Gonzalez chose game 6 to make his 11th error of the whole freakin' year. It's not your fault the Cubs stranded 7 runners. It's not your fault that they lost game 7. It's not your fault that Kerry Wood, normally one of the best pitchers in baseball, just couldn't get it together in game 7. (That was a sweet fuckin' homerun though, wasn't it?! I was screaming and cheering so loudly I scared both of my dogs!)

In short, it's not your fault the Cubs lost three in a row. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure it's the players fault they lost three in a row. Even Dusty Baker said, "We didn't lose the pennant, the Marlins won it. We were close and the Marlins took it from us, it's as simple as that." You'll notice that he didn't say "That Guy took it from us."

Yep. You know, now that I think about it, I'm positive that it wasn't your fault, and I'm pretty mad at anyone who's giving you shit about the loss.

It's pretty fucked up that those jackals in the news media printed your name, That Guy, and it's even more fucked up that they disclosed your workplace and forced you to change your phone number. But don't quit coaching the little league team, okay? Since you're not a dad, you're probably not coaching that team for your own personal glory, or doing it because it's the only way you know how to relate to your son. You're probably there for those kids, and you're probably having a positive impact on their lives. What are they going to learn if they lose their coach, That Guy?! Think of the children, okay? Don't be a quitter!

Tell you what. You keep coaching that team, and if you ever come to Los Angeles, I'll get some hired goons, and we'll take you out for a beer at one of the best pubs in the city. If anyone tries to fuck with you, those hired goons will kick their punk asses while we exchange high-fives. It will be sweet!

In the mean time, when someone gets in your face about the Cubs losing, you can say, "Hey! Wil Wheaton says back the fuck off!"

When they look confused and say, "Who the hell is Wil Wheaton?" you can just smile and laugh at them, because you know something they don't.

Rock on,

Wil Wheaton
Life-long Cubs Fan, 
living in Los Angeles

My life has changed so much, and gotten so much better, since 2003… I hope that, wherever he is, Steve Bartman can say the same thing.

Please stand by for a demonstration of relevancy (or: how to utterly fail at Public Relations)

Posted on By Wil

A lot of you know that I absolutely love Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess. I love her so much, I gave her a picture of me collating paper to send to PR idiots who spam her with stupid product pitches.

Jenny makes me furiously happy, so when I read on her blog last night that a PR douchebag called her a "fucking bitch", I got furiously angry. 

Please go read Jenny's blog, and then come back for the rest of this post.

…wow, right? Can you believe what a gigantic Douchecanoe Jose Martinez at Brand Link Communications is?

I've worked with PR people my whole life, and most of them are really great. They're enthusiastic, they understand that not everyone cares about the thing they have to promote, and — more than anything else — they're nice to everyone, because their entire job is to get people excited about whatever they're selling, if not now, than in the future.

Then there are the people at Brand Link Communications, like Jose, who apparently think that threatening and insulting the very people they're hoping to work with is the best way to conduct business. Of course, Brand Link Communications seems to think that spamming hundreds of bloggers with the same incorrectly-spelled e-mail (that reads like it was written by a 12 year-old) is actually doing good work for their client, so maybe they think threatening and insulting people is equally effective.

I've encountered people like this in the thirty years I've worked in the Entertainment Industry: they're self-important, arrogant, unprofessional, and have convinced themselves that, because they have some kind of "access" to celebrities, they're more important than people they consider "normal". This quote from Jose pretty much embodies that attitude:

maybe you should be flattered that you are even viewed relevant enough
to be pitched at all instead of alienated PR firms and PR people – who are actually the livelihood of any journalists business.

The arrogance and nerve of Jose Martinez is just appalling to me. Even if he truly believes this idiocy, he should know better than to actually say it in an e-mail, especially if he is a Vice President at the firm.

Yes, that's right: Jose Martinez is a Vice President at Brand Link Communications. This is the kind of person this company sees fit to promote to a position of great experience and authority.

Let me give you the correct response, Jose:

I'm sorry we bothered you. We'll take you off our mailing list. All the best.

See? It's not that tough, is it? I mean, unless you think your precious little ego is more important than the clients you represent, and you're profoundly unprofessional and unqualified for your job. Also, a free tip from me to you: Don't be a dick, Jose, and especially don't Twitter at me a big stupid lie that insults my intelligence after the fact. Don't make your #PRFail worse with your pathetic #PRFailDamageControlFail.

There are a lot of very good publicists and publicity firms out there, who represent their clients with passion and pride. They respect the people they pitch, and they respect the clients they're working for.

Then there are these clowns, who think that bullying and insulting people they think are beneath them is how you do business.

And that, more than anything else, is what makes me furiously angry: Jose Martinez believes that he is "the livelihood of any journalists business", so of course he can insult and threaten someone who he's decided is just some blogger who needs him more than he needs her. (This is further evidence of how unqualified this idiot is: not only did his company — where he is a Vice President and Media Director — pitch The Bloggess, they apparently didn't know that she is massively popular online, in no small part because she calls out PR idiots for doing exactly what his company did.)

If Jenny didn't have a huge following of people who adore her and got furiously angry like I did, nobody would ever know about this, and Jose Martinez would be high-fiving his bros about how he put that fucking bitch in her place. Maybe that's what Jose Martinez and Brand Link Communications was counting on. Maybe they're used to pushing people around, insulting them, and treating them like they should be grateful that they were spammed. Maybe they think they can be arrogant, condescending assholes without any consequences at all.

Maybe they just got a nice, loud, unambiguous wake-up call. Maybe future prospective clients will read this post and the other posts that are all over the Internet 12 hours later about Jose's treatment of Jenny when they're considering what firm they'll hire to represent them. Maybe future clients won't want to be associated with arrogant, unprofessional, self-important PR hacks.

While I was writing this, Jenny updated her blog. Jose and Brand Link Communications got a demonstration of relevancy that was apparently long overdue, and they apologized to Jenny. Good. That was the right thing to do, but my larger point still stands: would that apology have happened if Jenny didn't have an army of readers and Twitter followers to stand up for her? I seriously doubt it.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life

Posted on By Wil

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." -Steve Jobs at Stanford's Commencement Address in 2005

I feel so weird about Steve Jobs' passing. I never knew him, I never met him, I don't think I was ever in the same place with him… but he had such a huge impact on my life, I can honestly and without hyberbole say that I wouldn't be where I am today without him.

In 1984, I bought my first Macintosh. It was a 128 with one floppy drive. When I plugged it in and started it up for the first time, it was like I'd stepped into The Future from a science fiction novel.

Before my Mac, the two big computers we had were an Atari 400 that belonged to the entire family, and a TI-99/4A that was all mine. I learned how to program on both of them in BASIC, and I was able to do lots of cool things with them, mostly writing and playing games.

When I got my Mac, the first program I started up was Visual BASIC. It was this confusing jumble of windows and weirdness that didn't work at all like the BASIC I knew so well. After a few frustrating failures to write and run even the simplest program, I gave up; writing stories in MacWrite and drawing pictures in MacPaint was more fun, anyway.

I wrote my first story on that Mac, and my second, and my third, and pretty much all of them until I got a color Mac II in 1988. I wrote on that for years, until I got my first Powerbook in the 90s. I used that Powerbook to take my first steps onto the Internet, using a VT100 emulator, a 4800 baud modem, and the mysterious ftp and telnet protocols.

Today, I own and use a Macbook Pro and an iPad. I have so many iPods, most of them just live in a drawer at my desk. My wife has an iPhone and an iPad — the first two devices that made it possible for her to embrace her inner geek and understand the one she married — and both of my kids have Macbooks. Anne has an iMac in her office that she uses every day.

Hearing that Steve Jobs died today hit me in the stomach, even though I'm not an Apple Fanboy, and I love to tease and make fun of Apple Cultists. I use a rooted Android and spend almost as much time in a Linux VM as I do in Mac OS… but the world I live in was shaped by Steve Jobs and the people he inspired. I got to find the person I am because Apple tools made it easy for me to take my ideas and move them from my head onto paper when I was a kid, a teenager, a twentysomething, and today.

I don't agree with everything Apple does, but I feel like the world lost an important person today, and I feel like I lost a distant relative who I never got to meet, but knew everything about because for one reason or another his influence was everywhere I looked.

iRIP, Steve Jobs. Thank you for making the incredible things that made it possible for me to live in a real future that's even cooler than the one I pretended to live in when I was flying that spaceship so many years ago.

I don’t want to go on the cart

Posted on By Wil

I'm not quite dead! I just took a vacation that looked something like this:

Maui View

Click to embiggen at Imgur, and to see a few other pictures from our trip.

 

It was kind of a big deal for us, because it's the first non-working, non-kid-having vacation Anne and I have taken since we were dating almost fifteen years ago. 

I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: I feel like we earned it.

Anne and Wil in Maui.

One of the best things about this vacation for me was having the time to just relax, exhale, and recover from months and months of acting and tens of thousands of miles of travel. One day last week, we were sitting on the beach at Napili Bay, and my brain said to me, "Hey! I'm ready to write stories again!" A flood of ideas came to me that afternoon, and I wrote them into my notebook as fast I could, before they could escape into the clouds.

So now that I've fully restored my Mana and HP, I can get down to the business of being a writer for the rest of the year, which is awesome.