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.

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.

So apparently Jerry O’Connell was on the Howard Stern Show this morning, and claimed that I bullied him when we made Stand By Me.

I haven’t heard the interview, so I don’t have
context beyond, "Hey, Jerry says you bullied him when you made that
movie," and normally, I’d just laugh this sort of thing off because it’s entirely untrue, but I’m a little sensitive to being misrepresented, especially on a show like Stern where there are eleventy million listeners.

So.

This isn’t true, and you’ll shortly see why it’s so important to me to set the record straight.

Keep in mind that Jerry was 10 or 11 when we shot Stand By Me, and I was 12, so neither one of us is the most reliable narrator in the world about events that are nearly 25 years in the past, but my memory on this particular issue is crystal clear: River and Corey really picked on Jerry and me, because I was the nerd and he was the fat kid. It wasn’t constant — River and I were pretty good friends for most of the production and remained that way for years after — and I’m sure there were moments when all of us formed temporary alliances because that’s what pre-teen boys do when they’re in any social situation like we were, but I never bullied Jerry or anyone else.

I know this to be an unimpeachable fact because I’ve only been a serious bully once in my entire life. I was 10, and my brother was 6. We were spending the weekend at my Aunt Val’s house with our older cousins. My brother and I were pretty sweet little kids, because that’s how our parents raised us. Our cousins, however, were not. They were really cruel teenagers who delighted in tormenting us whenever they could, so on this particular weekend, in the interest of self-preservation, I made a cowardly decision to gang up on my brother with them, so they’d leave me alone.

Jeremy had a little parakeet at Aunt Val’s, called Mister Feathers. Jeremy adored this little guy, and I thought he was pretty neat, too, but when our cousins thought it was real funny to run their fingers across his cage and scare the shit out of him so Jeremy would cry, I went along with it. Eventually, Aunt Val heard all the commotion and came to Jeremy’s rescue. I only saw Aunt Val angry one time in my life, and that was it.

I felt terrible that I made Jeremy cry, because I knew that big brothers were supposed to protect their little brothers, but our cousins were relentless and ruthless in their bullying of us, and on this particular day I wasn’t strong enough to stand up for us both. I don’t recall why, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the years unsuccessfully searching for a satisfactory answer, but the best I can do is "I was a kid, I was scared, and I didn’t know any better."

The thing is, I learned from that experience. I felt so sick about it, and so guilty (still do) that by the time I was 12 and we shot Stand By Me, it is absolutely impossible that I would have bullied anyone, especially Jerry, who I really liked.

12:12pm: In comments, casbar says:

It wasn’t that bad. When asked if any of the other kids were assholes to him, O’Connell said he got along with Phoenix but Feldman and Wil Wheaton would bully him a bit cause it was his first job and he was the youngest. He clarified that it was because you guys were all Hollywood kids so it was some kind of "professionalism" bullying.. if that makes any sense.

Man, that’s actually worse than what I thought he said. Corey was an absolute nightmare the entire shoot: totally unprofessional, always looking to be the center of attention, and excessively cruel to me (when we shot the "dog pile" thing right before we discover the leeches, he delighted in jamming his knee into the back of my knee, and that wasn’t even the worst thing he pulled during production) so to be lumped in with him in Jerry’s memory makes me really, really sad.

NB: I understand that Corey’s finally gotten his shit together. If so, good for him, and I don’t hold a grudge. It’s just that when we made the movie, he was pretty terrible to be around.