Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
I’ve been hearing about this for weeks, but didn’t have time to watch the trailer until this morning. I was super excited to see that my fellow ACME-alumnus Felicia Day (one of the mad geniuses behind the hilarious-because-it’s-painfully-true series The Guild) got to work with Neil Patrick Harris and Joss Whedon.
I can’t wait to see this, and I thought I’d share it with WWdN readers, because it seems to be the sort of thing a lot of you guys probably already know about — er, I mean, would really dig.
i saw david sedaris last night
We saw David Sedaris last night. He’s the reason I’m a writer, so I was pretty excited to see him for the first time.
I was not disappointed.
We sat in the balcony of a sold-out Royce Hall at UCLA, and listened to him read for about 90 minutes. A few things struck me during the performance:
He does the same thing with his feet that I do when I perform from my books. I know it’s best to keep both of them planted firmly on the ground and stay relatively still, but I always find myself lifting one foot up, and pointing it toe-down to the floor behind me. It’s kind of a ballet-looking move, and I always feel a little silly when I catch myself doing it. After seeing him do it, though . . . ah, who am I kidding? I’ll still feel silly.
At one point, I looked at the audience, and saw people leaning forward in their chairs, doubled over with laughter. He’ll never see that, because they’re hidden by the footlights and he’s focused on his material. He doesn’t need to see the audience to know that they’re enjoying themselves, but I wonder if he knows just how much they are.
He signs books before and after his performance. I always sign after mine, but I’m always such a ball of nerves before, I can’t imagine sitting in the lobby of the theater, meeting the audience — and expending the energy that is necessary for a good signing — before I go on stage.
Anne has his new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I won’t get to read it until she’s finished, but she loves it. She read it on the plane next to me the whole way to Hawaii. She shook our seats because she was laughing so much. He read a story from it called Crybaby, and I understood why.
My favorite piece of the night, though, was one said just wouldn’t work unless he read it. I don’t even know how to describe it, but if you get a chance to hear him tell the story about Nicaragua, drop everything and get to the theater.
He seems like a kind, intelligent, sensitive guy who appreciates his success. I wanted to meet him and tell him that he’s the reason I’m a writer, but the line was three hours long just moments after the show ended. I know he doesn’t use computers or read reviews, but I wonder . . . if someone reading this sees him, and has the opportunity, would you tell him I said thank you?
i think the planet is trying to tell us something . . .
North Pole ice ‘may disappear by September’
Arctic sea ice is now retreating so quickly that scientists say there is now a 50-50 chance that it will have gone completely by September.
[…]
The Arctic is seen as an important indicator of the potentially catastrophic changes that scientists say will come as the planet warms.
Honeybee collapse claims record number of hives this year
A record 36 percent of U.S. commercial bee colonies have been lost to mysterious causes so far this year and worse may be yet to come, experts told a congressional panel Thursday.
The year’s bee colony losses are about twice the usual seen following a typical winter, scientists warn. Despite ambitious new research efforts, the causes remain a mystery.
Um. I like this planet. It’s really beautiful, and it’s currently the only one I can live on. Could we maybe work together as a species to stop shit like this from happening?
wil’s big news of the day
I was picking tomatoes in my back yard yesterday afternoon when the phone rang. Caller ID said it was my manager. I picked it up and said, “Mister Black! What’s up?”
“Seth Macfarlane wants to work with you tomorrow,” he said.
The next thing I knew, I was looking into the concerned faces of my wife and kids, while a machine behind me went ping!
“What happened?” I said.
“You answered the phone, screamed like a little girl, and fainted,” Anne said.
“So it wasn’t a dream!” I said. I leapt to my feet, doffed a Fedora, twirled my mustache and added, “Quickly! To the auto-gyro!”
Minutes later, I was airborne, soaring over the Los Angeles basin, while striped-shirt-wearing nogoodniks chased after me in pedal-powered flying contraptions. It was perilous, to be sure, but my superior piloting and my trusty manservant Kwame’s peerless skill with curare-tipped darts assured my escape.
My brief and unexpected foray into a 1930s pulp novel concluded, I returned to my home, where I got back on the phone.
“What just happened to you?” He said.
“Um. Nothing,” I said. “What am I doing tomorrow?”
“Seth Macfarlane has a new online project called Cavalcade, and he wants you to work on it.” He said.
“Seth Macfarlane wants to work with me? Are you sure he didn’t mean the other Will Wheaton, the well-known jazz singer?”
“Yes, you.” He said. “I’m e-mailing you the script right now.”
The script arrived, I laughed myself silly, and called my manager back. “This is hilarious! There isn’t a single thing about this that I don’t like.”
“I knew you’d say that,” he said. “I’ll call them now and confirm you.”
. . . and that’s the story of how I got to work on Cavalcade this afternoon, where Seth Macfarlane complimented my beard and told me I was funny.
I am, without a doubt, the luckiest guy in this room right now.
Some parts of this story have been mildly exaggerated for dramatic effect.
moon over a ruined castle
You know you’ve spent a little too much time on the Internet when you’re in Maui, taking pictures of a beautiful Sea Turtle, and the first thing you think is, "Oh man, I can’t wait to LOLCat this when I get home!"
This, my friends, is how my damaged brain works.
I’m still on island time, both literally and emotionally, though I’m steadily working my way back into the whole real life thing, knocking down the towering To Do list that built up while I was gone.
It’s so hard to get motivated to sit down and work, when what I really want to do is play frisbee with Nolan, swim with Ryan, and snorkel with Anne. Since this was the first long distance family vacation we’ve taken in several years, I’m willing to grant myself a couple of days to get ease back into real life . . . of course, eating pineapple with breakfast, having a peanut butter and guava jelly sandwich while drinking Pog, and listening to Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Arthur Lyman while I do my Propelling is making the transition a little less jarring.
A couple of quick notes before I head downtown to meet some friends for lunch (talk about a jarring return to real life!):
Some people I used to work for at PokerStars have started a new online poker site called Fleet Street Games. It’s got Mac, Windows, and Linux clients (a Linux client! How cool is that?!) and is in a free beta right now. I played in — and won — a $150 freeroll tourney last night. SHIP IT!
I called Creation this morning to find out, once and for all, if I was persona non grata or persona we’re coola, and if they were intersted in having me come to the Vegas convention or not. It turns out that my e-mails were going to people who are no longer with the company. The girl I spoke with this morning seemed very interested in bringing me out to the show, and though it would unprofessional to talk too much about the contents of our conversation, I felt that it was very positive and there’s a pretty good chance that I will end up being at the Big Honkin’ Vegas Convention this year after all. More details to come later.
I tried not to follow the news too closely while I was on vacation, but I care deeply about Bush’s domestic spying operation, and the efforts of idiots like Steny Hoyer to defy his constituents and give AT&T retroactive amnesty for breaking the law and helping Bush spy on innocent Americans without a warrant. I’m pretty disgusted with the Democratic leadership in the House for caving in to Mister 28%, but I’m positively appalled that Barack Obama has been effectively silent (other than a weak and intelligence-insulting statement) on the entire debate. I commented at DailyKos:
Wouldn’t it be awesome if a senator who had expressed non-ambiguous
opposition to the Protect AT&T act in the past joined in the
filibuster against it?Wouldn’t it be even more awesome if the vast majority of that
senator’s base — oh hell, forget the base, let’s open it up to the
vast majority of all Americans — opposed amnesty for law-breaking
telcos and expanded spying powers for the White House, making this a
slam dunk win for that senator, giving him a chance to show some
serious leadership?Oh! Oh! Oh! And wouldn’t it be the most awesome EVER if that senator was running
for president, and could use this issue to show Americans that he was
seriously committed to changing the way things happen in Washington?!Yeah, that sure sounds like a perfect dream scenario, doesn’t it?
Oh well. A guy can dream. Yeah . . . a guy can dream.
I’m really, really tan. I’ve actively avoided being in the sun for the last several years, but it was pretty much impossible to do that while I was in Hawaii. I don’t think I’ve been this tanned since I was a teenager. Rawr.
People Magazine put out one of those "Where are they now?" issues about kid actors who are all grown up now. I didn’t want to participate, because I usually get ratfucked by the media in things like this, but since they were going to include me anyway, I decided that it was worth the risk to talk with them and hope for the best. The issue came out this week, and we saw it at the grocery store yesterday. I was very surprised that it was really positive and — get ready for the shocker of all shockers — accurate. They talked about how much I love being a dad, and how important Ryan and Nolan are to me. Anne showed it to Ryan, who was adorably excited to see that he was mentioned in the article.
I’m going to play the hell out of Descent this afternoon and tonight.
Yesterday, I Rickrolled 12000 people. All of them, as far as I can tell, took it in good humor. And no, Internet, Rickrolling will NEVER get old.
Twitter is riding the failwhale to failtown. I love Twitter, and watching it die a slow death is breaking my heart. Now that replies and tracking are down, what’s the point?
You know what would be awesome? A real life Rickroll: you go to a concert, expecting to see a particular band, but when the lights come down, holy shit there’s Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up on stage FOR REAL. Just the one song, then the band you were there to see comes out.
I have to go to the dentist tomorrow.
I’ve run out of interesting things to say.