I just got back from

I just got back from the hospital. My dad is really sick, and the scary thing is, nobody knows what the hell is wrong with him.
I can talk to someone, in real time, who is on the other side of the world.
Spacecraft are taking pictures of Mars.
My Palm Pilot has more memory than my first desktop computer.
But not one doctor can tell me what the %^$#@ is wrong with my dad.
I’ve been on the verge of tears all day.
Sorry, kids. I know you’ve come to expect a certain irreverence from your Sweet Uncle Willie, but I am scared shitless.
I love my dad. I’ve never known my dad as much as I wanted to, because he works all the time, and I work all the time. Then there’s the whole “You don’t understand me!” thing, which basically adds up to a bunch of wasted years from 14 to about 22. **Pay attention, young ‘uns: your parents are not as bad as you think, and someday they’ll be gone, and you’ll regret every single moment you wasted being mad at them because they wouldn’t let you go to your fuck-up friend’s house because they knew you’d get drunk there.**
I remember, when I was a little kid, like 7 or 8, my great grandfather died. I was in the kitchen of my house, and my dad was sitting on this high-chair stool thing we have, and he started to cry. Like really a lot. He cried hard. I was freaked. I didn’t know what to do. At all.
So I ran into the laundry room, and I said, “Mom. Dad needs you.” My mom came into the kitchen, and she did what I just didn’t know how to do at 7 or 8: she hugged my dad, and let him cry on her. I can see the two of them, my dad in his ultra groovy 1979 perm, and my mom in her pantsuit, holding each other in the beautifully wallpapered kitchen in Sunland.
Later, I asked my dad why he was crying so hard. I had hardly known my great grandfather,l and he was cool and all, but I just figured that if I didn’t know him that well, nobody else did, either. (Yes, the world did revolve around me, apparently.) My dad told me that he was thinking about his own dad, my grandfather, and how my grandfather was so sad, because his own father had just died. My dad then told me that he realized then, for the first time in his life, that someday his dad would die. Even at 7 years old that really struck me, and I think about it all the time.
A number of years ago, when I was working on Mr. Stitch in France, I awoke with a start one night. I thought “something horrible has just happened”, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I called my friend Dave, and told him what had happened, and asked if there had been an earthquake, or something. He told me I was just being lame (I am), and to that everything was fine. So I went back to sleep. Later that night, as I was going out the door of my apartment to dinner, my phone rang. It was my mom. She made some small talk, then told me that my dad wanted to talk to me. He got on the phone, and told me that his dad, my grandfather, had suffered a massive heart attack and died. I didn’t know what to say. I asked him how he was doing, and he choked back a sob and said, “sometimes okay, and sometimes not.” I had no comfort to offer my dad, and that really bothered me.
Months later, we had a funeral, and scattered my grandfather’s ashes out to sea. It was really cool, and I cried really hard, but not for myself. I cried for my dad, remembering what he had told me 15 years earlier.
So tonight, I spent as long as I could at the hospital, talking with my dad, reading my lame HTML book, and watching Blind Date and Letterman. I kept taking his temperature, which started out at 103 today (scary, since my dad’s 53) then went back to normal, and started a slow climb back up to 100.6 when I left.
I don’t know what to do now. I know I won’t sleep well, not knowing what’s happening with my dad. The doctor will be calling in someone from the CDC in the morning if my dad’s not better, since he was just in Indonesia on a surfing trip, and they think he may have brought something back.
But it’s the not knowing that is the worst.
That and replaying in my head every wasted moment with my dad. Every time I wouldn’t play catch with him, or go surfing, or acted embarrassed when he told a lame joke around some girl I was trying to impress.
Go call your mom. She’s worrying about you.
And for god’s sakes. Play catch with your dad.
–Wil

I just had a thought,

I just had a thought, as I am sitting here watching the TV:
Jurassic Park 3…
Why?
I mean, other than the obvious “the studio needs more money” reason.
Let’s look at the suspension of disbelief problem for a sec. Jurassic Park: The Franchise, as compared to Friday the 13th: The Franchise.
In one, you have killer dinosaurs. In the other, you have a killer killer.
In one, you have this island where you just know bad things are going to happen.
In the other, you have this creepy camp where you just know bad things are going to happen.
So the problem I’m having is, why do they keep going back? Everyone knows there is going to be chaos and mayhem.
And how long is it before the dinosaurs take on Manhattan in 3-D?

I posted the following in

I posted the following in the “Updates” page.
But the updates page will no longer hold things like this. The weblog will be the repository for ramblings like this. And when we get the new website, you’ll have a message board to discuss these little spurts of thought that occasionally errupt out of me, like cystic acne on a 15 year old boy who plays too much D&D. (Like me, for instance).
So the updates page will forever hold a nice, little list of, well, updates to the house of lame…Hey! Maybe I’ll change the title of the website to “Wil’s House of Lame”…what do you think?
Here is the message, from July 22nd:
Hey party people.
I’ve just come home from the San Diego Comic-Con, where it’s very possible I gave you a lame flyer for this very lame website.
So you actually came, eh? Suh-weet. I feel just slightly less lame than I did last night.
Want to know some cool stuff that’s happened in the recent past?
Tough. I’m telling you anyway.
Here we go:
See, TNN is re-branding themselves. Re-branding is when a network changes it’s image and programming, and goes after a new audience. Well, that’s what TNN is doing. I guess someone decided that there were more Gen-X-ers than rednecks out there (thank god), and they’ve changed The Nashville Network (home of NASCAR and Hee-Haw) into The National Network (home of Miami Vice, Starsky and Hutch, and Star Trek: The Next Generation).
So this is quite cool, if you ask me. I’ve been doing lots of stuff with the TNN folks in the last few days, and they are really some of the coolest people on earth. And I’m not just saying that because they gave me a free trip to New York. Okay, well, maybe a little.
But check this out: There is this big thing called “The Television Critic’s Association”. I think there are TV critics in it, or something. Anyway, they get together every year to run up huge tabs on their corporate credit accounts, and see what’s coming up on TV in the next quarter. That’s where I come in. TNN asked me to go to the “TCA” (when you’re a hip, edgy, media-savvy person, you use lots of acronyms, FYI) and be part of this TNG launch-thing. So I went, and it was sooo cool! I got to see some of the old TNG kids, who I don’t ever see anymore since they’re millionaires and I’m living in a refrigerator box, and, the coolest thing of all…I got to take a pee right next to BILLY FREAKIN IDOL!!!
Yes, you read that right. Here’s how it happened: I went into the bathroom, and I’m doing my business, and I notice the guy next to mee is rather dressed up, like in serious rocker clothes. So I try to just glance at him, without getting all gay and weird, and he looks right at me, sneer and all. That’s when I realize that it’s HIM! HOLY CRAP! So I say, “My wife and I just saw you on “Storytellers”. You really rocked, man!” (tap, tap). And he looks at me, and from behind his cool-guy sunglasses says, “Cheers, mate.” And he’s gone.
YES! How cool was that?
So after that, I’m off to New York to do a cool show called “Lifegame” which will be on TNN in a month or so. It’s an improv show where they asked me to tell stories about my life, and then they have improvisers act out scenes based on my so called life, in different styles. Like the time my parents cornered me in the bathroom and gave me “The Talk”—when I was 20, done as a reggae musical. Very funny. And I got to play the Devil in a scene. YES!
While I was there, I got a tour of MTV networks, met Carson Daly (!), and was given a CHIA MISTER T! That’s right. Let me tell you, everything after that was just Jibba Jabba.
So after NYC, I came home to LA, my wife picks me up at the airport, and I get on a train to San Diego for the Comic-Con, where I signed autographs and promoted TNG on TNN (I like that. It sounds like NBA on NBC), and this lame website. Honestly, it was mostly lame. I didn’t sell many pictures, so I barely even covered my costs for the trip, and there weren’t as many people there as last year. HOWEVER! There were a few cool thing, which I will relate now:
I met Oscar Gonzalez. He’s an artist for Bongo Comics, who make The Simpson’s comic. He drew, for me, a picture of me signing autographs for THE COMIC BOOK GUY! It’s totally cool. I’ll scan it at my brother’s house, and post it this week sometime. Two other cool guys, Jason Ho and Mike Rote, also Bongo artists, did cool Simpson’s caricatures of Ryan and Nolan (my step-kids). Thank you Bongo guys!
I also met Spike, of Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, (the first guys to recognize Mike Judge’s brilliance in the pre-Bevis days), and did a little soundbyte for their 25th anniversary special, so Spike gave me an autographed DVD of their greatest sick and twisted hits. Cool!
My buddies at TROMA, home of the Toxic Avenger and distributor of Fag Hag also gave me some DVDs, including Terror Firmer. Very cool.
Finally, I traded an autographed picture of yours truly for a copy of “College Girls Gone Wild.” You know the one you see on TV? Trading things is cool.
That’s it, kiddies. I’m back in LA now, and getting ready for my Big Birthday Bash next weekend. I’m turning 29 on the 29th! YES!
Your punching bag,
Littlest Giant