Geek Tour 2008: San Jose Super-Con – Updated

Posted on By Wil

This weekend, the 2008 Geek Tour rolls into San Jose for Super-Con!

Original Announcement:

May 17-18
Super-Con
San Jose, CA

When I worked on NUMB3RS, I met the guys in charge of Super-Con in
San Jose. In fact, they were a big part of making Alt Con 9 (the fake
con in the show) look and feel as real as it did. I haven’t been to San
Jose for a convention since the only way to get there was via mule
train, so I’m looking forward to traveling up the coast in more modren
style, perhaps by zeppelin or auto-gyro.

I don’t have a lot of details for this one, and I don’t even know if I’ll get a chance to perform from my books, make balloon animals or just stand around making lists of things.

However, I’ll have a booth of awesome, where I’ll be hanging out on Saturday and Sunday, trading books and pictures for shiny gold rocks. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to visit with some cool people while and angry guy complains about it. That’s always pretty fun.

I’m hoping the copies of Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot that I ordered at great expense to myself arrive today, because if they don’t, I won’t have any of them for this show, which would be sad. [see Update at bottom]However, I should have shiny new copies of the second printing of Happiest Days, and 2008’s chapbook-o-rama, Sunken Treasure.

Uh, this is also pretty goddamn cool: The original cast of MST3K will be getting together — reuniting, if you will — for the first time since the exciting rock climbing portion of the film began. I’m kind of excited to listen to whatever they have to say, and hope I can trade them shiny gold rocks for their automagraphs on my copy of Manos: the Hands of Fate.

UPDATE: FedEx and UPS came through for me. I have the second printing of Happiest Days, as well as copies of Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot. This means that, if you like, you can trade me shiny gold rocks (or Kongbucks) for The Complete Works of Me, Wil Wheaton.

Of course, now I have so much stuff to take and no time to ship it, so it looks like me and the 101 are going to spend about 5 hours of quality time together tomorrow. And again on Sunday. Good thing I have Dimension X on my iPod.

crying hey man this is babylon

Posted on By Wil

I came to Soul Coughing at almost the same time I came to Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Underworld, and jazz that went beyond Kind of Blue.

See, this is why the loss of Tower Records is going to seriously hurt a generation of young artists, because it was in a Tower Records that I found all of these things. Sure, it’s great to have the convenience of buying and instantly downloading records and stuff, but the damn kids today who will grow up without ever setting foot in a record store or talking to a hardcore music geek who works there just don’t know what they’re missing.

And they’re missing a lot.

It was one of the most inspiring and eye-opening times of my life, and whenever I listen to Ruby Vroom (which I’m doing right now) I’m reminded of that time. I can feel it in my brain and in my bones. I remember staying out all night with my friend Dave just because we could, not really doing anything more than listening to music and being "artists" — whatever that meant.

We had no real responsibility other than getting home alive, and it was when I really started writing. I filled up tons of thick spiral-bound notebooks with my efforts to figure out who and why I was. When I read them now, they just make me sad.

It was a great time. I miss it sometimes. Okay, I miss it often.

I miss it right now.

introducing sunken treasure

Posted on By Wil

Tuesday night, I asked Andrew (my editor and good friend, for those of you who are just walking into the theater for the first time) if he thought we could put together a chapbook for the 2008 Geek Tour . . . and have it ready to give to the printer about 18 hours later.

Andrew is a fucking rockstar, and over the next 90 minutes or so of manic IMing we put together something that I’m massively proud of. The result of a fucos that can only be born in terror is something really, really special.

See, the other chapbooks I’ve done (and I try to do a different one each summer) are all pretty cool, with nifty bits of stuff that’s awesome, but this one is different than anything I’ve done so far.

My author’s note! Let me show you it!

Every summer, I make one of these limited chapbooks and  take them with me on the inevitable summer convention tour. In the past, I’ve pulled material from whatever I’m working  on, as sort of a fall preview, but this year the book I’m working on is so top secret, I’d have to print the chapbook on self-destructing paper, and while that would make it a very limited edition, the costs associated are kind of prohibitive.

So for 2008’s limited edition chapbook extravaganza, I’ve put together the first ever Wil Wheaton Sampler. With the help of my editor Andrew, who is a former ninja warrior and recreational time traveler, I’ve pulled together things I like from all three of my books, my blog, and this groovy collaborative fiction project I play with called Ficlets. I’ve also included, for the first time anywhere, one of the scripts I wrote for a sketch comedy show at the ACME Comedy Theater.

If you like what you see here, and would like to read more, come visit me online. I’m at wilwheaton.typepad.com.

Namaste.

Wil Wheaton
May 2008

I was going to call this Wil Wheaton’s Hot Cocoa Box Sampler (Farkisms FTW!) but I have a tradition of using song titles that I didn’t want to break, so this one is called Sunken Treasure, with the subtitle "Wil Wheaton’s Hot Cocoa Box Sampler." Hee. Awesome.

I am so proud of this. It’s one of the things I was working on during my massive deadline panic. The collected stories are some of my favorites, and I’m thrilled to include outtakes from Happiest Days as well as a script from ACME, which I’ve never reprinted anywhere before.

As always, this will be limited to 200 copies, and will become available at Super-Con this weekend in San Jose. If I’m lucky, I’ll sell about half of them this weekend, and I’ll have the remaining 100 to bring with me to the rest of the cons on the 2008 Geek Tour. I don’t have any plans to sell these online, but I like this little book so much I may change my mind on that later this year.

Oh, speaking of the 2008 Geek Tour, I’m adding another stop next month, which will be announced in its own post a little later today.

Emerald City ComiCon Memories

Posted on By Wil

I do the 48-minute work thing, and I’m as swamped and panicked as I think I’ve ever been as I prepare for a screen test tomorrow and a convention this weekend. This is certainly the worst since I was working on my PAX keynote, but I work well when I’m terrified. During this panic, blogging falls into the "do fun stuff for 12 minutes and then GBTW" part of the hour, so please forgive me if this is a bit . . . unfucosed.

Here goes:

Emerald City ComiCon was @!#$!%&(*ing awesome. It. Was. Just. Awesome. I met many people who I know online but not in real life, including Ed Brubaker and Cherie Priest, who are awesome. Ed even asked me if I’d come play in his D&D game during my Q&A . . . if I’d play a lesbian Druid. Apparently, he was bet a large sum of money that he wouldn’t do it.

I also got to finally slime Jeph Jacques in person and give him shiny gold rocks in exchange for some awesome QC shirts. He also gave me NUMBER ONE of the limited edition print they made for the show. NUMBER @$!@#%^&ING ONE!

I met some people from Wizkids, who heard through the geekvine that I’m a pretty big fan of HorrorClix and Pirates of the Spanish Main. They gave me many wonderful presents, including a Great Cthulhu HorrorClix dude and a complete set of Pirates ships. If you felt the Earth move in Seattle this weekend, (and you were alone, natch) it was likely me exploding into a geeksupernova.

My reading on Saturday and my Q&A on Sunday were also awesome. I had a ton of fun, and I think the audience had a good time, as well. I hope they did, because OMG they had to turn people away when both of my panels filled up and were standing room only. I know! I can’t believe it, either.

I got a lot of super great books that I don’t have time to read right now, but I’ve started (and totally love) Top Shelf’s Super Spy by Matt Kindt. I’m going to do my best to list and one-line review the other stuff I got, because everything I got looks really, really cool.

Shit. I only have 6 minutes. Shit shit shit!

I was asked to write for [Comic that I love] and maybe write an introduction to [Comic that I love]. I may be writing something for [Game that I love.] Again, geeksupernova + geekgammarayburst + geekgasm. It was very messy. Sorry about that, Seattle.

All the people I met this weekend will be crushed when they
find out the horrible truth about what a terrible person I am, but at
least we all had 48 glorious hours together.

Very Memorable Moment of the con: I was talking to Ed Brubaker, who waited in my line to give me copies of Criminal. It’s one of my favorite books in the world, and I asked him if he would sign it for me. Ed and I kind of know each other because Warren Ellis introduced us (I know, it feels like name dropping to me, too, but I swear it’s how it happened) and Ed’s given me a ton of reassurance and advice as a writer.  I was attempting to thank him for casting Dispel Fear and Self-Doubt when I failed my save vs. insecurity just before I started my second Star Trek manga story, and this really angry guy in my line yells at him for talking to me for so long.

I think we’d be talking for about 5 minutes, which is about how long I spend with everyone who waits to talk to me at a convention, because that’s just how I roll.

For those of you who don’t know who Ed is, he writes (and killed) Captain America, and that’s not even the coolest stuff he’s done. Yelling at Ed Brubaker at a comic convention is like yelling at Wayne Gretzky at a hockey convention.

When Angry Yelling Guy got to the front of the line, he just wanted to talk to me about Star Trek. For five minutes.

I ate lunch with Jamie Bamber and Julie Benz on Saturday. I felt really out of place with the two of them and desperately wanted to get back down with the other writers where I felt like I was among peers, but they were both very, very nice to me. Julie Benz is just as beautiful as you’d expect, and Jamie Bamber was an incredibly charming and friendly fellow.

I sold out of all of my books before 11 on Sunday morning! Happiest Days is now officially in its second printing, which is supposed to arrive tomorrow in time for me to take new books to Super-Con.

I’m working on an awesome new limited chapbook for Super-Con (and the 2008 Geek Tour) today. Details later this afternoon.

1 minute left! Which one is the blue wire?!

Comic Book Resources wrote a very kind report about my reading on Saturday. I also posed for some pretty cool pictures with some pretty cool people. I was mauled by a bunch of Suicide Girls. Sigh. Poor me. How will I ever recover?

Seattle was, as it always is, just wonderful. Every single person I met was kind and friendly, and I’m going to put this con down as a HUGE SUCCESS by every metric I use to determine this sort of thing: selling stuff, meeting cool people, having fun, getting cool stuff.

I know I’m forgetting a lot of stuff, but I’m out of time. More bloggy happy funtimes in 48 minutes . . . ish.

even more fun with twitter

Posted on By Wil

If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you missed this trio of Tweets on Friday:

wilw @ 09:06 AM May 09, 2008
Kenny Loggins was at the ticket counter near me. The girl checking me in was early 20s and had no idea why her cow orkers were so excited.

wilw @ 09:12 AM May 09, 2008
I was unable to see if his destination was the danger zone, but it was clear that he was alright, so there was no need to worry about him.

wilw @ 09:25 AM May 09, 2008
I heard that the TSA made him kick off his Sunday shoes, right in front of everybody, but he was cool with it and just cut loose.

I am easily amused, and so totally hands-on-hips proud of my stupid self.