Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 127

Eureka: Up In The Air

Last night's episode of Eureka, Up In The Air, has my favorite moment of the entire season in it. I don't think it played as clearly in the edit as it read in the script, but it's when Carter gets so incredibly excited for a traditional bank robbery investigation, and then finds out from Andy that the bank was, literally, robbed. As in: it isn't there any more. When I read that in the script, I laughed so hard, I peed a little. In fact, I just had to go ahead and put on an adult diaper for the rest of the episode, because Colin's physical comedy was so perfect.

Even though we shot it a year ago, this episode stands out in my mind quite clearly because on the first day of production, during the first run through of the first setup for the first shot, I twisted my ankle so severely I had to walk with a cane for a month.

Remember when team Bravo is running those tires? Set dressing put them on uneven ground, and I was first in line, so while I was attempting to high-step through them, hold my sides, stay the correct distance from Felicia and the camera while rehearsing, I didn't see the slope underneath me. I'm not the most coordinated person in the world*, and I was probably at -10 or more to make this one ... so I ate shit. The crew all thought I was having a laugh (I have a certain reputation for comedy on the set), but I guess something about the way I was writhing in pain on the ground convinced them that I was serious, and not just committing to the bit.

So, to review: we haven't shot a single frame of film on this episode, and now I'm hurt so severely I can't stand up unassisted. The entire day is about us doing physical activity, and I'm in every single scene.

That sound you heard was the production manager having a heart attack.

The show, as they say, must go on, so we did some minor rewriting, changed the blocking on some scenes, and generally ensured that Doctor Parrish wouldn't be doing any physical activity**. In fact, if you watch the first scene with the three of us, you will see that I'm bent over, giving the impression of having just run the tires. In reality, someone from the crew is supporting me so I didn't put any weight on what was my rapidly-swelling ankle. When Fargo comes out of the tree and it looks like I walk away? I actually take one step, grab my cane from a PA, and take one more step so I'm completely out of frame.

Ah, the magic of making movies!

This episode also has my favorite pure character moment of the season in it, but it was cut up so much there's no way anyone in the audience could see it: when we're in the GD rotunda with Carter and Henry, talking about my Higgs Disruptor, Joe Morton and I had this exchange that I just loved. Doctor Parrish is talking about how his Disruptor is signed, but the authenticity of signatures from that era is questionable. You can barely see it, but during rehearsal, Joe and I realized that we're both scientists, and we're talking about a piece of antique equipment that was signed by Higgs himself! We decided that, being nerdy scientists, we'd get excited about that, and temporarily forget that there's a bunch of antimatter hanging out above Eureka waiting to deliver an Earth-shattering KABOOM***. Carter sees this, puts us back on track, and we figure out that he needs to go Up In The Air****.

It was exciting to us, as actors, when we found these beats during rehearsal, because we turned a scene that was pretty much an infodump to the audience (that set up the third act) into something that was an infodump with some real character moments behind it. In the final cut, though, a couple of lines were lost (I'm almost positive that the show was running long), and while the intention is still there, the exact character beats aren't. I'm sure this is a little Inside Baseball, but I learned a lot about who Parrish was during that scene, and how he feels about the people he interacts with at GD and in Eureka. Those little unexpected moments where I get some XP like that are one of the greatest joys for me as an actor.

In fact, this episode was when I finally got completely inside Isaac Parrish's skin and mind, and knew exactly who he was. I'm grateful to Colin, Joe, Felicia, Neil, and our director Alexandra for making all of that possible, because I could relax and enjoy being Doctor Parrish for the rest of the season.

Finally: Fargo is such a wanker! Way to abuse your power and force Isaac to do inventory so you get another shot at the girl, Doug. This isn't over. #TeamParrish

If you have any questions about this episode, please ask them in comments. I'll do my best to respond to them today.

 

* DEX is my dump stat.

** Doctor Parrish will be appearing at Kamp Krusty August 23-30.

***Doctor Parrish also owns an Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator, but he won't show it to you until the third date.

**** AHHH! There it is.

on birthdays and making beer

Anne and I took the train up to Santa Barbara for my birthday, and it was awesome. Because I've complained about Amtrak employees who were dicks in the past (K. Williams on the southbound Surfliner to Comicon, I'm looking in your snotty, sarcastic, condescending direction), it's important to me that I compliment everyone we interacted with on this trip, both Northbound and Southbound. The conductors were friendly and helpful, and so were the ticket agents in Santa Barbara. I love the idea of train travel, and I especially love going along the California coast. I always want to ride the train up to PAX, but I never have time ... one day though, I'm totally going to do that. I'm not sure what it is with Amtrak, but I always feel like I'm flipping a customer service coin, and I don't know if it's going to land on "friendly" or "asshat". Someone at Amtrak should do something about that, because I'm not the only person who feels this way.

While we were in Santa Barbara, we ate lunch at the Santa Barbara Brewing Company, where we had their IPA. As a fledgling homebrewer, it was probably more exciting to me than it should have been that I could watch their brewmaster tending to his beer, but Anne patiently listened to me while I pointed out every piece of equipment, and explained what it does. When I drank my IPA, I'm pretty sure I could taste Cascade hops, too, which made me stupidly excited because Ryan and I used Cascade hops in our IPA.

A lot* of people have been asking me how the homebrewing is going. The short answer is, pretty good, even though we made some mistakes with our first batch. Once it conditions in bottles, though, I think we're going to have a very drinkable beer.

I'm going to speak in beernerd right now, so if you may want to skip this paragraph if you aren't at least conversant in homebrewing. The longer answer is that we definitely screwed up our California Pale Ale in two pretty big ways: we boiled too long, so I think we boiled off a lot of fermentable sugars, and we racked to secondary about a week too soon. I've taken gravity readings the last two days, and it seems to have settled down right around 1.020. I know that's not where we want it to be, so we're going to let it sit for another week and hope that it drops. Right now, our potential ABV is only 4%, which seems low to me (but the Googles told me that most CPAs sit around 5%, so that's not too bad.) The really important thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that it tastes really good, and even though I don't think it's going to be exactly what we were going for, it's still going to be a tasty beer. It's still a little green, but it isn't bitter at all, it isn't too sweet, and the color and texture are terrific.

Ryan and I had so much fun brewing our CPA, I ordered two all-grain 1-gallon kits from Brooklyn Brew Shop: an IPA and a Porter. I figured that it was just one gallon, so if I completely screwed up the all-grain process, it wasn't that big a deal ... it turns out that it was incredibly easy, just as much fun as the first batch, and we used the lessons we learned from the first batch to prevent repeating the same mistakes. We won't bottle that until around August 8 (Anne's birthday, for those of you scoring at home), and I can't wait.

I can tell you, from my personal experience, that making beer is incredibly easy and incredibly fun. They say that if you can make oatmeal, you can make beer, and they're totally right. Oh, and the best part of doing an all-grain beer has been using the spent grains to make doggie biscuits for Seamus and Riley, and two loaves of bread for the rest of us. I made this one last night, and had a slice with breakfast, and I have a loaf of rosemary that's rising in the kitchen right now that will be ready in time for dinner tonight. AWESOME!

The funny thing (to me) about this whole experience is that I was always intimidated by the idea of making bread. But I figured, "Hey, I can make beer, and bread is pretty much the same ingredients assembled in a different way. Why not try it?" There's something tremendously satisfying about combining a bunch of ingredients that don't look or feel anything like the food I turn them into, and then eating (or drinking) it. It feels sort of ... magical, I guess.

I AM A FOOD WIZARD! COWER BEFORE MY SILICON SPATULA OF SCRAPING! MUWAHAHAHA!!

Um. Sorry about that.

Yesterday was Ryan's birthday. He turned 22, and a whole bunch of people on Twitter joined me to wish him #HappyBirthdayRyanWheaton. It was pretty amusing to me that I had to write my happy birthday message to him in a way that would make it clear to 1.8 million people that it was, in fact, me writing it, instead of him.

Before I get to work, I have two quick things:

1) Felicia and I are back on Eureka tonight! Come see us on the network-formerly-known as Sci-Fi at 8pm. #TeamParrish

2) DriveThruRPG and Bards & Sages are teaming up for an awesome charity sale called Operation Backpack. Check it out:

August usually means back to school shopping for most Americans. But each year, thousands of children living in homeless shelters and foster care return to school without even the most basic of necessities. Operation Backpack, a program operated by Volunteers of America, helps provided these needed supplies to our country's most vulnerable students and gives them a chance to continue their education.

In an effort to support this wonderful project, Bards and Sages has partnered with other independent authors and publishers to create a special charity ebook bundle. 100% of our profits from this bundle will be donated to Volunteers of America to support Operation Backpack.

This special charity collection includes seventeen independent speculative fiction titles with a retail value of almost $50. A complete list of participating authors can be found on the Bards and Sages website under the Charity tab.

This collection is comprised of two zip files, one containing PDF files and one containing mobi/kindle format files.  Both files contain the same titles, simply offered in different formats.

Oh, did I say two things? I meant three things. 3) In case you missed it, there's a new Humble Indie Bundle.

That's all for now. See you on the Twitters, the Tumblrs, and the Google Plusses.

*Or alot, if you prefer.

Spock is not impressed that it's my birthday

During w00tstock last week, I mentioned that I was turning 38 this week.

After the show, Anne told me that I was, in fact, turning 39. In the few seconds that it took me to do some math, I lost a year of my life.

Apparently, this is the sort of thing that happens when you get to be my age, which is ... 39.

So happy birthday to me, NASA, Geddy Lee, and everyone else who was born on July 29th, especially those of us who escaped from our mothers in 1972.

io9 really liked Glimpse! Go Team Eureka!

Alisdair Wilkins at io9 really liked this week's episode of Eureka:

"Glimpse" is my favorite episode of the still young season 4.5 - it had a great central threat, it did some nice, light work on the various relationships, it had some good jokes, and it gave plenty to do for the two main guest stars.

Yay! Go Team Eureka!

Oh, there's also this (he said, as nonchalantly as possible):

But really, this episode was almost completely stolen by Wil Wheaton, making his return as Dr. Parrish. One of the best ways to shake up a show like Eureka is to bring in a character whose energy completely contrasts with that of the cast. In previous cycles, that's generally meant bringing in someone mysterious and possibly sinister - James Callis last year, Eva Thorne before that - but Dr. Parrish is something else entirely: he's just a massive asshole. Wheaton is pretty damn brilliant in the role, giving no quarter to Fargo or Carter in his interactions with them while also revealing just why he's so thoroughly antisocial. His brief flirting with Holly was also great, being charming in the way that only a dude who is a total dick can be, and bodes very well for the mooted love triangle between Fargo, Holly, and Parrish.

Thanks, Alasdair! I think you're going to be very pleased with the rest of season 4.5.

EUREKA: Glimpse

Last night's Eureka, Glimpse, was my first episode as a non-enraged-by-the-enraginator-device Doctor Parrish. I had completely forgotten about Fargo's commercial for the Astraeus project at the top of the show; when I saw that, the excitement of shooting the entire season came flooding back to me all at once.

We filmed it so long ago, I don't remember much about it, but what I do recall, quite clearly, is how worried I was about finding the right "pitch" for Parrish's arrogance and irritation with everyone around him. He's supposed to be a guy you love to hate, a thorn in Fargo's side, and if he's just a straight out dick, I think we get tired of him really quickly.

The first scene I shot was actually at the beginning of the episode, in Café Diem, when I present the banana slugs to Fargo and Holly.* I was actually performing Parrish for the first time (remember, in All the Rage, he was only "normal" Parrish in two brief scenes before the enragenation enraginated), and I didn't really have a feel for his character beyond the notes I'd made in my script. Luckily for me, our producer Matt Hastings was on set that day, and I asked him to watch the choices I made during rehearsal. Matt assured me that I was portraying Parrish the way the writers and producers intended, and over the course of that day, I settled into him. Watching it last night, I saw a couple of moments I'd like to change, but that's just part of being an actor; I have to watch my performances with a critical eye, or I'll get lazy and stop learning.

Wasn't Felicia magnificent? I remember having so much fun with her and Neil when we shot the stuff in his office with Stan Lee**, but I had no idea that the three of us would grow so close over the next couple of months. I can't wait for Eureka viewers to see how the relationship among us develops in the weeks to come.

I also remember shooting the scene where Colin gets all that slug gel dumped on him. It was at the very end of a very long day, and none of us expected as much slug gel to come pouring out as we saw on TV. Erica and I were off camera for dialog, and I remember laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my face. He kept improvising lines like, "you -- you're a bad, bad person" and "I ... I thought we were friends," and [mournful sobbing]. By the time that take was over (and we only got one), the entire crew was laughing as hard as Erica and I were.

My favorite scene in this episode, though, is the scene with Carter and Parrish in the police station. Colin and I found this relationship between the two of them where he is patient and understanding, while Parrish thinks he is just a stupid hick who doesn't know a damn thing about anything. That relationship plays out in future episodes, and it's something I just loved discovering.

Did you notice that Parrish set aside his arrogance and irritation and tried to work with Fargo when it was clear that GD was about to get all explodey? If you blink, I think you'll miss it***, but it was an important, if subtle, character modulation for me. Parrish thinks he's the smartest guy in the room (and he's usually right), but even he knows that there's a time to set personal bullshit aside and stop the world from blowing up.

If you watched the show last night, I'd love to hear what you thought about it. I'll also do my best to answer any questions you have about it ... and I hope you'll join me on #TeamParrish.

*For those wondering, the "slugs" were actually made out of figs and dates. You never really got to see them up close, but they looked totally gross, like they really were dried slugs. Parrish ate some in one scene that was cut, and they actually tasted pretty good.

**ZOMG STAN LEE.

*** Don't blink, you fools! The Angels have the phonebox!

 

if you cut me, i will bleed

Pretty much all of Comicon was awesome. However, there was one thing that was decidedly not awesome, and though I had initially decided not to talk about it in public, it's bothered me since it happened, so I wrote about it on G+ earlier today.

I'm cross posting it here, though, because it's important to me:

On the way out of the Syfy party on Saturday night, a pretty horrible thing happened. I wasn't going to talk about it in public, but I can't stop thinking about it, and I think this needs to be said.

When I was a Teen Idol*, and I traveled to New York for publicity all the time, it was fairly common for a handful of super weird people to hang out all day in front of my hotel, or in the lobby of my hotel, so they could pounce on me whenever I tried to enter or leave, and demand as many autographs as they could. It was really creepy and awful, and I always hated it. It was more than a little scary. I mean, who in the world spends an entire day sitting in one place waiting for someone? Oh, I know: crazy people.

So, crazy people, pay attention: If you camp out in front of my hotel while I am on location or visiting a city, if you camp out in front of a party I'm attending ... basically, if you camp out anywhere so you can shove a stack of 8x10s into my face when I'm trying to enter or leave a location, I'm not going to sign them, and I'm not going to be nice about it.

I refuse to reward or validate that kind of behavior, and I'm done being polite about it.

When we walked out of the SyFy party on Saturday night, a pack of people -- probably 12 or 15, I'd guess -- appeared out of nowhere, and surrounded me. They shoved pictures into my face, thrust pens at me, and made it so that I couldn't even move. They separated me from my friends and my son, and, quite frankly, terrified me.

Let's stop for a second and think about this: in what kind of world is it acceptable to surround a person you do not know, separate them from the people they are with, and essentially trap them? Maybe in crazy entitled psycho world, but not the world I live in.

I tried to scrawl my signature on a couple of things, just so some of those people would move and let me keep on walking, but whenever someone took something away, something new immediately took its place. Somehow, +Felicia Day saved me. She reached through the mob, grabbed my hand, and said, "Sorry, we have to go meet some of our friends," before the literally pulled me away, to safety.

This is when the mob lost its shit. They yelled at me like I had done something wrong. They called me names, and they booed at me. (Seriously). A woman stormed up next to me and said, "If you don't sign these things for me, I'm going to tell Twitter what an asshole you really are."

I don't respond well to threats like that. Though my instinct was to explode at her, I took a deep breath, looked her square in the eye, turned on my dad voice, and said, "Really? Are you serious? We're done here." I quickened my pace, and for the next two blocks she followed us, screaming and ranting and raving about how she'd waited there for hours, driven all the way from someplace far, and that I basically owed her as a result of her choice. I eventually tuned her out, and I guess she went back to the Syfy party to harass whoever else came out next.

The whole thing was really scary, made me feel like a sideshow freak, and made me really, really angry. I was just trying to walk out of a hotel and go meet up with my friends. I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm not going to apologize forgetting upset about it.

This is important: I realize that just about anyone reading this on my blog isn't one of Those Guys. Please don't think the "you" here refers to, you know, you.

This is also important: When your motto is "don't be a dick," a certain kind of person is vigilantly looking for moments like this when you can be accused of violating your own motto, thereby proving to the entire world that you are, in fact, a giant lying pile of shit. I'm fairly certain that reasonable people can see who the dick was in this situation, and hopefully agree that it was not me. For everyone else: go fuck yourself.**

In Dancing Barefoot, I wrote about signing autographs at conventions:

Over the years, I've learned something from this experience: it's never about the signature. It's about that brief moment, that brief encounter with a Star Trek cast member, that is so important to the fans. That 30 seconds or so of hopefully undivided attention is what they're really paying for, and I always do my best to make sure they get their money's worth. Contrary to popular belief, sitting at a table signing hundreds of autographs for several hours without a break is hard. It's not just mindlessly scrawling my name; It's stopping and listening to the always excited, sometimes shaking, always sweating, sometimes scary dude who wants to know exactly why I did "X" on episode "Y" and would I please sign his picture in silver, because Marina signed it in gold and now he wants the men in silver and the women in gold, and I hated your character and here are 25 reasons why and I expect an answer for each one of them and I'm not leaving until I'm satisfied.

The crazy people who camp out don't care about that brief moment, that brief encounter. The crazy people only care about taking a piece of $Celebrity.person and possibly selling it, or hording it, or ... you know, I don't even want to think about where that path leads.But that's why they behave the way they do. It isn't about our work, or about saying "thank you" or "high-five!" or anything about that. It's about entitlement and being crazy, and I will not validate or condone that kind of behavior ever again.

I realize that a crazy person who thinks it's entirely normal and not psycho to camp out in front of a hotel for hours and hours so they can trap a person isn't going to understand why I will not validate that behavior, but I need to make this clear for the future: I'm a person. I am a  human being and if you cut me I will bleed. I'm happy to sign things and take pictures with people in appropriate situations, but if some dude violates my personal space or freaks me out, and then gets mad at me when I try to get away from him, I'm not going to do anything beyond telling that person to go fuck himself, and I'm not going to feel bad about it. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, I am not your bitch.

Finally: In before the inevitable "you're an actor and you chose this so you deserve what you get so suck it up because my life harder than yours because blah blah blah" comment (probably not here, but definitely at G+.)

*LOL.

**See? I don't even feel bad. (Well, maybe a little bit. I need to work harder on it, I suppose.)

On the meeting of Nathan Fillion (or: The Obligatory Comicon Post)

Comicon was awesome. The Eureka panel was funny and everyone in the audience seemed to enjoy themselves. The consensus from the cast and producers was that I did a good job moderating, and I felt like I managed to get out the talking points the network wanted me to get out under pain of death without making it sound or feel like I was delivering talking points.

Hey! Speaking of talking points:

Eureka airs Mondays at 8pm with Alphas and Warehouse 13. Don't worry, Audience SyFy Seems Very Interested In Courting: there's still plenty of wrestling and ghost-hunting on other nights.
This season, Stan Lee cameos (tonight!), and there's a freaking armada of awesome guest stars, including Wallace Shawn, Matt Frewer, Dave Foley, some guy called Wil Wheaton who I guess posts cat dialog on the Internet or something, and Felicia Day.
The story arc in season 4.5 (or, as we called it, "the last ten episodes of season 4") is all about GD launching a manned mission to Titan, called Astraeus. There's also a little bit of a love triangle between Doctor Parrish, Fargo, and Doctor Marten (I love that Felicia's character is called Doc Marten, but she never once wears stompy shoes.)
Also, the Christmas episode this year is going to be ANIMATED. I know everything about it on account of I'm, like, plugged into this shit, but I can't tell you anything more than that ... except that you're going to love it.

Okay, talking points are over. I don't even feel dirty about it, because I freaking love Eureka, I'm incredibly proud of the show and my work on it, and I want everyone in the world to love it as much as I do.

Oh! You can watch Felicia's first episode at Hulu, if you're in the United States, not on an iPad or iPhone, and have successfully sacrificed the correct number of chickens and goats. (Way to make it nice and easy for people to enjoy things legally, Hulu. Cough.)

Eureka was my only official responsibility this year, so once I was finished with that, I was able to almost enjoy the rest of Comicon. I say "almost" because it was too crowded this year for me to do anything more than walk about 1/3 of the show floor before the claustrophobia of being surrounded by a million people drove me back into the streets of San Diego. Did it feel massively crowded to anyone else, like seriously more than last year, or was it just me?

I didn't make it into any panels, mostly because all the panels I tried to get into last year required multi-hour waits with the very real possibility of getting cut off ten people from the door (Comicon absolutely needs to clear the big halls between panels. The only people who seem to disagree with this are the ones who take up seats all day in panels they don't give a shit about so they can see the one panel they actually care about at 6pm) but I still had a great time, mostly because I took Ryan with me and we did everything together all weekend.

Saturday evening, I was a surprise guest on the Nerdist podcast ... which means that I got to meet and sit on the stage with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan for an hour. It was awesome, and I'm sure Chris will post the show in the very near future. SPOILER ALERT: they're really nice people.

After the podcast was done, Ryan and I went to the SyFy party. I wasn't going to go to this party because I was afraid it would be really "Hollywood" and douchey, and I would feel weird and strange, but Felicia talked me into it. "You'll meet a lot of really cool people, who also happen to be people who will want to work with you," she told me, "as your manager, I think it would be in your best interest to go." There's one thing I've learned in all the years that we've been friends: Felicia is a genius, and she's never wrong about anything. I'm really glad I listened to her, because the party was awesome fun.

So now I have a choice to make: I can share some highlights, or I can try real hard to turn the entire weekend into a narrative piece that will most likely never get written because I don't have time. So ... here are some Highlights from the rest of Saturday night:

I met Allison Scagliotti, who plays Claudia on Warehouse 13. It turns out that we're in the mutual admiration society, and now we're best friends forever.
I met and hung out with Alison Haislip, who it turns out is made from concentrated Awesome that was quarried out of the deepest heart of Mount Awesome, at the center of Awesome Island. If you care about this sort of thing, it may interest you to know that she's 100% real geek, just like me.
Awesome business thing I shouldn't talk about.
The other awesome business thing that may turn into me getting to write for REDACTED someday.
I photobombed Felicia.
I saw David Latt, who wrote and directed Jane White is Sick and Twisted. It's one of my favorite things I've ever been in, and I'm really proud of it. It was super fun to work with him and his wife Kim in the movie, and I felt sad that we lost touch over the years. We traded numbers and I can finally meet their kids. Oh, I also pitched David my can't-miss movie idea: MegaShark vs. MECHAShark, starring me and Debbie Gibson. Mostly, we just make out for 90 minutes, but there's shark stuff going on in the background and someone learns something. Bam! Nailed it.


I introduced Ryan to John Dimaggio, and this happened:

Me: "John, this is my son, Ryan. Ryan, this is John. He plays Bender on Futurama."

John [in Bender's voice]: "That's right, Ryan, I'm Bender. Doot de doot do dooo doo doo bah doot doot doo."

Ryan for the rest of the night: "Oh my God. John Dimaggio shook my hand, and sang and danced like Bender for me!"

Around midnight, we decided to go over to the Nerd HQ, because Nathan Fillion was there. Felicia has been trying to get us both into the same place for years, because we both want to meet each other, but it's never worked out ... until Saturday (well, Sunday morning if you want to be pedantic about it, which I do.)

Felicia introduced us, and it was awesome. Then, after dancing like idiots (the only way I know how) for a little bit, Nathan hugged me and said, "When I was a teenager, you were living my dream." I told him, "When I was in my twenties, you were living mine."

Then this happened:

That's Ryan, turning the tables on Nathan and photobombing him for a change.

Shortly after that happened, this happened.

I guess it was about 230am at this point, and we were all exhausted. We walked Felicia back to her hotel, past people who were camped out waiting for stuff (See, Comicon? You're doing something wrong when people have to camp out for things), and around 3am, Ryan and I finally walked back into our hotel room, our bodies aching from dancing, our ears ringing from the music, our faces sore from smiling so much.

"Everyone you introduced me to tonight was just awesome," he said. "I'm so glad we went out and did all this cool stuff!"

"Everyone who met you told me how much they enjoyed your company, and that you were as awesome as my Twitter feed regularly says you are. That was pretty much the best part of the whole thing for me." I said.

We turned off the lights. A minute or so went by, and Ryan said, "Dude. John Dimaggio shook my hand, and sang and danced like Bender for me."

"Yeah, that was epic."

"Best night ever."

"Totally."

"Okay I'm going to sleep now."

"Me too."

"ZZzzzzzzzz."

Thanks for being awesome, Comicon. See you next year.

being a geek is about having a great community

In a couple hours, I'm heading down to San Diego for the craziest, most exhausting, most awesome four days of the year: Comicon.

Earlier this morning, Felicia and I were Google Plussing about how to survive the con. I'm assuming some of you are not among the eleventy billion people who have the G+, so I thought I'd reprint it here, especially for you (yes, for  you):

Felicia said:

If you are at Comicon this weekend a few things:

1) Bring deodorant, it's hot
2) Here's an updated Guild signing/panel schedule: http://t.co/K2NtZG0
3) If you see me rush by, I'm not being rude, I'm probably just late for something. Feel free to tweet something about how pale/short I am, that's relatively common reaction.
4) Have fun with your friends, because being a geek is about having a great community most of all.

Then I said:

I can add a couple of things to this:

5) Wear comfortable shoes. It isn't uncommon to walk five miles a day.
6) Stay hydrated. It's hot, you're excited, you're walking five miles a day. You're going to need water. Soda and coffee dehydrate you, so they don't count. If you find yourself thinking, "Man, I am really drinking a ton of water," then you're doing it right.
7) Be patient with your fellow fans, and with the people you're there to see and meet. For some of the big movie and TV stars, this will be the first time they've ever been around a hundred thousand superfans like us, and it scares the hell out of them.
8) For the love of the FSM, don't stop in the middle of a walkway to look at your phone.
9) Come to w00tstock on Thursday!
10) Come to the Eureka panel on Friday!
11) Come to the Nerdist podcast on Saturday!
12) Support the indie artists!

Here are five rules I wrote Concerning Conventions in my Geek In Review column at Suicide Girls a few years ago (This page is SFW, but the site is deliciously NSFW) http://suicidegirls.com/news/geek/22107/Wil-Wheatons-Geek-in-Review-Concerning-Conventions/

And to reiterate what the short and pale +Felicia Day said: Have fun with your friends, because being a geek is about having a great community most of all.

We all talk about how Hollywood has pretty much taken over Comicon, and fundamentally changed it forever. That has its up and downsides, but regardless of how the final math on that shakes out, there is one scientific fact: We who attend conventions get to decide how awesome they are going to be. A promoter can set the tone, and volunteers can keep things running smoothly, but there are more of us than there are of them, and if we commit to being awesome to each other and to the guests, the con can't help but be awesome in return.

Oh, and don't forget: it is dangerous to go alone!

an update on the wheaton and son homebrewing experience

Today, Ryan and I racked (that's fancy homebrew language for "moved") our beer from its primary fermentation into its secondary fermentation. We know now that we probably moved it a little early, but since we're learning and everything, we'll just chalk it up to experience and hope for the best.

I've been worried about our beer (I know, I know, that's explicitly contraindicated by the system's operating instructions, but it's part of my firmware), because we made some mistakes: we didn't oxygenate it nearly enough after the coldbreak, we didn't rehydrate the yeast, and we forgot to put liquid into our fermentation lock for close to 24 hours.

Whoops. Kind of important things, there, it turns out. I understand that it isn't the biggest of deals, and we're going to learn from our mistakes for our next batch, but I still feel a little silly for making, well, rookie mistakes.

I never saw bubbles in the fermentation lock (our primary was a bucket), even after we put some vodak into the fermentation lock, but I just hoped for the best ... and got a plesant surprise a few days ago when I bumped the lid and the lock bubbled, indicating positive pressure inside, and GOOD THINGS HAPPENING GO YEAST GO HUZZAH! This morning, we took a SG reading and saw that it had moved from 1.045 to 1.022 (temperature corrected). I couldn't find anything in our notes or on the recipe that told me when it was safe to rack it to secondary (which, I also know, isn't something you need to do with an APA, but a choice we made anyway) so I assumed that, since it was a bit more than a week later and the SG had fallen, we were safe to move it and let it keep fermenting in the carboy.

I think we may have racked it too soon, because I'm told by the Twitters that I should have waited until it was closer to 1.018 ... and I may have screwed my FG if I didn't get enough active yeast into the secondary.

But even if we messed up, I'm not all that upset about it. It was still really fun and exciting to see and smell our beer for the first time since we locked it away in the fermentor. We're not giving up on this one, and we planned to do another batch pretty soon, anyway. In fact, I have two kits coming from the Brooklyn Brew Shop that we're going to make next week.

Question for the Homebrewers: did we screw up? If we did, how badly did we screw up? I don't think we got enough yeast into the secondary, because there was a huge yeastcake on the bottom of the primary when we were done. Can/should we pitch some more yeast into the carboy?

probably the best idea i've ever had

Last week, I saw this at Reddit.

I KNOW RIGHT?! I told the Twitter and the Google Plus and the Tumblr that we all need to print these things out and hang them up everywhere (it's legally allowed for us to do so. cough.) For the past four days, I've gotten lots of image links from people on the Twitters who have done precisely that, and it amuses me greatly each time I see it. This morning, Think Geek picked it up and tagged it #OldMan, which is also amusing ... but gives the thing a signal boost that can make this ZOMG EPIC.

Ready for this? Okay, here's my idea:

We take tons of these flyers to Comic-Con, hang them up (where it's legally allowed for us to do so. cough.) and make this A Thing. I think that would be hilarious and awesome and also awesome and hilarious.

And you know why? Because it's silly, and not everyone will get it ... but the people who do get it will love it. That's why.

(Major thanks go to Redditor possibly_all_3 for making this in the first place.)