I’m in the train depot in San Diego, totally getting online through a WiFi hotspot that’s sponsored by bandwidthbay.org.
I think it’s beyond cool that I can sit here, and blog from my iBook!
Comic-con was really fun, but way too big. There was so much stuff to see, and so many people trying to see it, it’s all just a blur.
Oh! Know who I met today? Tiffany Taylor. Oh. My. God. She’s beautiful. And she took a picture with me.
I’m wearing my The Cheat shirt from Homestarrunner.com, and when I was walking around the con this morning, several people shouted “It’s The Cheat!!” to which I replied, “Hang on! We’re taking this baby to the moooon!!11!”
(Yes, just like On*Star, I pronounced the “11!” at the end of that sentence.)
Oh shit. My train is boarding right now. I gotta go!

Yesterday, I was on my very first author’s panel. I sat with *real* authors, who have written several books. I felt like I was playing dress-up, while I sat there with them, but I was surprised and validatied when I discovered that the way I approach writing was similar to the way they do.
The whole time I sat up there, I kept thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I get to sit here with these people!” and hoping tha tnobody noticed that “one of these things was not like the others” and that thing was me.
After the panel was done, I moved to the autograph area, where I signed copies of Dancing Barefoot for about 90 minutes. It was so cool!! There was a HUGE line of people, and everyone seemed very excited to read my book.
Something else happened yesterday that has never happened before: this guy had to pay us ten bucks, but only had a hundred. We didn’t have change yet, so I told him, “That’s okay, just get change somewhere and come back. I trust you.”
He thanked me, walked away, and never returned. It’s the first time I’ve ever been taken advantage of like that in my life.
I didn’t have time to check out the convention floor yesterday, but Anne is heading back up to Los Angeles today, and I’ll get to spend the day totally geeking out. Check the audioblog for geeky details.

Tomorrow morning, I head on down to San Diego for Comic-Con.
In years past, I’ve attended with the hopes of selling pictures and autographs, and taking home some desperately-needed bill paying money. I always tried to put the most positive face on it that I could, but the fact is, I was there as a has-been. That guy who “used to be” an actor. It was always humiliating and depressing for me to spend most of the day “under the sails.” I struggled to keep my chin up, and convince myself that I wasn’t a total loser.
Things have really changed in the last two years, though, and I’m giddy with excitement to attend this year.
This year, I get to attend as the author of Dancing Barefoot, the guy who runs this site, and Mrs. Wheaton’s Husband.
The super-cool people at Mysterious Galaxy have done some very cool things for me. Here’s my schedule this year, thanks to their extreme bad-assery:

Thursday
• 4 – 5:30pm Room 7B: From the Cradle to the Keyboard, Part I Authors discuss who they read in their youth, and how it influences their work today.
• 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm Signing in the Autograph Area in the Sails Pavilion.

Friday

• 12 Noon: Signing in the Mysterious Galaxy booth (#1846)

Saturday

• 11am: Signing in the Mysterious Galaxy booth (#1846)

At all the signings, I will have 8x10s, a very limited number of WWdN shirts, and of course, copies of Dancing Barefoot.
If you’re in Los Angeles this weekend, and you’re not able to make it down to Comic-Con, you must go see the show at my friends Sean and Caryn’s gallery:

We have an amazing opening scheduled for Saturday, July 19 by a Canadian duo, Kenn Sakurai (ESM Artificial ) and Dave O’Regan (Poplab). With an emphasis on text, this show of mass-produced and one-of-a-kind silk-screened pieces (postcards, posters, stickers) along with painted work will touch upon some of the best and the worst aspects of popular culture that often include models, cars, rock stars, song lyrics, the 80s, and television personalities. Their work also delves into other universal themes such as heartbreak and high school. ESM and Poplab utilize familiar images, subjects, and sayings that are always humorous, poignant, and thoughtful. “Modern Thought” opening reception is from 7-10pm at sixspace 549 west 23rd, LA 90027.

Finally, if you’re attending Comic-con, and you have a camera phone, you can contribute to the group Comic-Con photoblog project, by mailing any images you have to comic-con.2003-at-tamw.com. The subject is the title of the image, and the text is the description. Bonus points if we take a picture together and moblog it.
I’ll also be audioblogging from the show, so be sure to tune in!

I will do anything to be in this:

Watchmen Faithfully Adapted
Lloyd Levin, one of the producers of the upcoming sequel film Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, told SCI FI Wire that he is also producing a faithful film version of Alan Moore/Dave Gibbon’s seminal superhero graphic novel Watchmen, adapted by X-Men screenwriter David Hayter, who may also direct. “If you’re familiar with the graphic novel, it’s a great and challenging piece of work,” Levin said in an interview. “I think we have a screenplay now that is a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel and does it justice, written by David Hayter, who wrote the X-Men movies.”
Past efforts to adapt Watchmen for the movies-including one by producer Joel Silver, with Terry Gilliam directing-have stalled.
Levin-who is also producing Hellboy, based on Mike Mignola’s comic series-added, “I really love comics, but I also really love movies about interesting characters. So sometimes they come from comics, sometimes they come from books. I place no restrictions.” As for the current glut of comics-to-film, he said, “I think perhaps we’re in a time when there are a lot of filmmakers who were big, big fans of comic books [and who] are coming of age, and they’re more impassioned about telling those stories.” Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, based on the Eidos video game series, opens July 25

Time to dig my Rorschach mask out of the garage, and start camping out on David Hayter’s lawn.
(thanks to Dave, who e-mailed me this information!)

I came to an interesting realization while I was in Portland: since I published Dancing Barefoot, my life is happier, more fulfilling, and busier than in the last several years. I think I’ve got a cranial cron job that runs about once a minute that rotates the logs in /dev/brain/
The sad part of this is, I forget to do things, like finish the freakin’ CruiseTrek stories, even though it’s been sitting here on my iBook for three weeks.
Sorry. My bad.
Here’s is what happened on Day 6: Fanning Island, and my class.
CruiseTrek — Day 6 to
Thursday, 04 June, 2003
In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I am writing this from our family physical therapist’s office. Ryan severely hurt his shoulder and arm while we were gone (his coach left him in a baseball game too long while he was pitching, I guess) and he’s getting worked on right now.
The last two days of the cruise presented a couple of choices to me: sit inside and blog, or hang out with my wife and new friends, and enjoy the sun and sea. To be honest, it really wasn’t that difficult of a choice.
So this is all written from the banality of a grey-carpeted waiting room, beneath a wall covered with autographed pictures of famous sports figures our doctor works on Vlade Divac, Oscar de la Hoya, Magic Johnson, The New York Yankees), while “smooth jazz” assaults me from a radio on the receptionist’s desk.
When I last wrote from the cruise, — oh god. the DJ just informed me that there’s a “block of Kenny G coming right up.”
When I last wrote from the cruise, we were at Fanning Island, in the Republic of Kiribati. The cruise line visits Fanning Island because, as a foreign built ship, they are required by law to visit a foreign port before returning to a US port. So we travelled 1200 miles southwest from Hilo to Fanning.
Fanning Island is absolutely beautiful, and mostly untouched. It is just 220 miles North of the equator.
Because our ship blew out an engine, we arrived at Fanning almost three hours (maybe it was two, I can’t recall) late, so we were only there for a short time. But during our time there, Anne and I walked along a long stretch of totally deserted beach (picking up all sorts of trash left by previous passengers), floated in the lagoon, took tons of pictures, and enjoyed the unspoiled beauty of the island. About 40 minutes before the last tender left for the ship, we noticed that most of the other cruise passengers had already left. The area where we were was silent, and we stood in the ankle-deep water of the lagoon, listening to the water wash around our feet, while unseen birds sang in the jungle behind us. The solitude was unforgettable.
When we returned to the ship, I parked myself on our veranda and went over my notes for the class I was teaching on building, maintaining, and grokking a weblog. I’ve never taught a class like that before, and I was terrified that I was going to suck.
The class ended up going very well. There were only four real students, but Tom and Dori joined us, along with Randal and Andy. Sitting there at my iBook, surrounded by REALLY smart people, who are also accomplished writers and webloggers, I really felt like a total piker, and I was really happy when they would toss in their experiences and offer suggestions. I don’t know if the students realized what a great bunch of minds were in that room . . . but I sure did! I think the guys who showed up learned something, though, and they got blogs up and running at blogger before we finished. If any of you guys are reading this, send me an e-mail, and I’ll link ya.
When the class was finished, I attended another CruiseTrek event, another actor’s panel, this time with all of us: Chase, Manu, George, and Vaughn. I was asked something about Hollywood, and I quickly expressed how much I hate the entertainment industry, and how hard it’s been for me to find success like I had when I was a kid. I talked about how lousy casting people have treated me, and how I don’t understand why The Powers That Be have been so incredibly terrible to me since I left the show when I was 18. In retrospect, I felt like I totally brought the place down, but it’s what was on my mind when the question was asked. I told them all how much happier I am now, focusing my creative energy on writing, and how surprised and touched I am by the reaction to my book. When I was finished, a few people told me that they were glad I said the things I did, but if I could do it again, I’d keep my big mouth shut.
Anne and I spent the rest of the afternoon goofing off on the ship, enjoying the incredibly beautiful Pacific Ocean. At one point, we were looking out at the horizon, and I said to her, “This ship is so huge . . . but when we compare it to the ocean we’re sitting on . . . it is — we are — so insignificant. I kind of like that.”
NEXT: Maui and Kauai