I love that this line has been immortalized in T-shirt form, not only because it's one of the funniest in the episode, but when we were rehearsing the scene it comes from, I grew a level in comedy acting:

During one of the run throughs, when Jim did his Klingon bit, I turned to Kevin and asked him, "Did he just say 'revenge is a dish best served cold' in Klingon?" like I was trying to figure out if that's actually what happened, like maybe I misunderstood him. Chuck Lorre told me that it would be funnier if I was more exasperated. "You're just here to play this game, and now some guy is quoting Klingon at you. This happens everywhere you go," he said. 

I sighed dramatically, and said, "Oh, it does." Everyone laughed, hard, and Chuck pointed his finger at me. "Yes. That is exactly the way to play that beat."

When Chuck gave me that note, I grokked how to play Evil Wil Wheaton (The Big Bang Theory version), and I could see the comedy in every beat I played for the rest of the show. I totally grew a level in comedy acting, and learned something about letting go of who I really am, so I could embrace the Delightfully Evil version of myself (who I seriously hope will return in the future, because OMG was it fun to play him.)

You know, it occurs to me that some of you may have questions about what it was like to work on Big Bang Theory. If you leave them in the comments, I'll do my best to answer as many of them as I can today.

Anne and I got to go see The Pee Wee Herman show last night. It was phenomenal, and I realized about 20 minutes into the show that I was sitting on the edge of my seat, grinning and jumping around like a little kid … because that's pretty much how I used to watch Pee Wee's Playhouse.

After the show, we were fortunate enough to listen to Paul Reubens do a Q&A with about 100 people. As much as I loved the show, I would go back every night just to listen to him talk about acting, writing, comedy, and performing.

I asked a question about the scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure that I talked about on RFB #19. I wanted to know if he improvised that, or if it was all in the script, and hoped that he would just talk about it a little bit, because I think that it's one of the most hilarious, perfect, subtle comedic acting performances I've ever seen.

He said that it was all in the script, confirmed that it was tremendously fun to do, and then told us how he did a show at the Groundlings a few years ago where he used that scene as inspiration. The show was a fake actor's showcase, where all the performers did actual scenes, but they did them the way really bad actors would do them. (The thing about showcases is that actors hope casting people to come see and hire them, but they never do. The audience ends up being friends and family – the same ones who have suffered through all the other showcases you've done – and it's all a little bit depressing.) The only catch was that, to be in the show, you couldn't do the same bad acting bit that someone else was doing. This was a tall order, because the were some extraordinarily talented comedic actors in the show. Paul said that he and Lynne Marie Stewart (Miss Yvonne) did an actual scene from an actual play, and he made the bad acting choice to mouth every single word of dialog she said, just like he did in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. He said that it was the only time in his career that he had to focus and concentrate really hard, so he wouldn't break and end up laughing.

Anne and I also got to meet him very briefly, and I talked with him for about 90 seconds, before I realized we were holding up the other people who wanted to meet him. He was incredibly gracious, humble, and kind. When I thanked him for providing me with a lifetime of joy, he thanked me back, and I could tell that he meant it, and I kind of wanted to hug him.

But all of that isn't the reason I wrote this post. The reason I wrote this post is to share with you a video he mentioned after the show. In a discussion about Jim Nabors and Charo, he told us to go to YouTube when we got home, and search for Charo doing Love Will Keep Us Together. He said it would change our lives.

Well, he was right, and now it is my great honor to change your lives. (You know, paying it forward and all).

Thank you, Pee Wee Herman, for a great show, a lifetime of joy, and changing my life through the magic of Charo.

If you're of a certain age, do you remember the first time you saw AKIRA, or any of the Dirty Pair or original Macross cartoons? Coming from a steady diet of Hannah Barbera cartoons, it was like trading a transistor radio for a high-end stereo or seeing the grand canyon with my own eyes. The cinematic scope of the entire thing just blew me away, and my world was fundamentally changed.

The first time I saw AKIRA, I was 13 or 14, and it was on a fifth generation VHS bootleg, purchased for some ungodly sum at a con. My friends and I watched it over and over again, without the benefit of subtitles or dubbing, developing our own storyline that we would eventually learn had nothing at all in common with what was really going on.

It was a very different world back then if you were into anime or just about anything outside of mainstream culture. The Internet didn't exist at all like it does today (the closest we had were large closed networks like GEnie and Compuserve – this even pre-dates AOL) so we just didn't have tons of cartoons and communities at our fingertips like we do now. We relied on whatever we could find at cons – often at great expense – or what we heard though a grapevine that was nearly as reliable as the one in Johnny Dangerously.

So when I saw a post on Reddit titled "I saw AKIRA for the first time last night. Would someone explain WTF happened at the ending?" this morning, it was with great amusement that I left the following comment:

You damn kids today. When I saw AKIRIA for the first time, it was a fifth generation VHS bootleg, without dubbing or subtitles. We had to make up our own story to go along with the animation, and when we finally saw the movie with dialog we could understand, we discovered that everything we thought was wrong. And we liked it!

I'll tell you what happens at the end of the movie: Tetsuo gets off my goddamned lawn, and then I call Kaneda's parents.

For those of you looking for a serious and more insightful answer, Redditor themanwhowas has got you covered. I highly recommend checking it out.

Seriously. How cool is this? In my little geekmind, the lamp on the left is related to Luxo Junior, and is wishing it had the necessary hardware to enjoy a nice mug of tea.

See more Wheaton's Mug in the Wild (including my friend Mer looking beautiful, and the best binary birthday celebration you'll see all day), or get your own mug from the Memories of the Futureshop.

Edited to add this comment from Tony Buser, who made this awesome thing that is awesome: 

Hey that's my picture! When I saw that mug and realized it would fit perfectly on my MakerBot build platform, I bought it specifically so that I could take a picture of it sitting inside. 🙂

In case people don't know, a MakerBot is a 3D printer, like a prototype replicator. It creates objects using molten plastic. I've named this makerbot "Tea". Right now I'm printing the parts for a new improved replicating 3D printer called a RepRap that can recreate most of it's own parts. The new printer will be named "Earl". By the 4th generation upgrade, "Hot", I hope to be able to scan and replicate this mug like a prototype transporter. It will probably take quite a few more versions before I can fabricate actual edible Earl Gray, though.

The Future! We live in it.

We totally do, Tony, we totally do.

Because I am too busy for a proper post, I offer a very brief trip report:

I went to Seattle at the end of last week, where I not only got to spend three days with my friends from Penny Arcade, I finally got to take a tour of the Wizards of the Coast offices after years of being invited to check them out.

While the offices weren't quite as Wonka-like as my inner 12 year-old (and outer 37 year-old) hoped they would be, it was still pretty awesome to see lots of dragons, several suits of armor, more dice than even I own (which is a lot of dice, guys), and three framed uncut sheets of original black bordered Magic cards.

I also got to visit and talk with the people who make D&D and Magic (they have all the same xkcd, PvP, and Penny Arcade comics hanging on their office walls that we all have, which was kind of neat), but I have an NDA with WotC so that's all I can say about that.

During my trip, I got to drop into my friend Mike's D&D game. His DM is this incredibly creative guy Rob, and Rob came up with a brilliant way to let me play a character who was more than just a hireling. He actually let me play a NPC who they'd interacted with the previous session, gave me a rich backstory, let me add some details of my own, and set up the evening's session so that it was mostly a massive (and incredibly fun) battle. He also let me make some choices and reveal some information that could have an impact on the rest of their campaign.

The session was incredibly fun, and I thought I'd refer to it in a column I'm working on about how you can keep the R in RPG, even when you're playing a session (or sessions) that are mostly combat, so I e-mailed Mike and asked him what Rob's last name was, so I could spell it correctly and everything.

"It's Rob Heinsoo," he wrote back.

Now, I'm guessing that a nonzero number of you are now picking yourselves up off the floor like I was when I got that e-mail this morning. For those of you who are wondering why the other kids in class are dazed for one round, allow me to explain why: Rob Heinsoo was the lead designer of D&D 4e, and wrote the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

In other words, it was kind of like getting to play Dragon Age RPG with Chris Pramas, or Magic with Richard Garfield, only you have no idea who you're playing with. In hindsight, I understand how Rob was able to effortlessly weave me into and out of the campaign, and how he was able to come up with some truly awesome combat effects and deal with unexpected situations entirely on the fly. All those times while playing that I thought to myself, Man, this guy really knows how to use this system suddenly make sense.

Okay, real quick, before I sign off and get back to work: y=2m+x.