Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 162

Molly Lewis is a national treasure

In the world of entertainment, there are things that make me laugh, there are things that make me cry, and there are the rare things that work on so many different levels, or are so surprising, they simply drop my jaw to the floor and blow my mind.

This cover of Poker Face by Molly Lewis is one of those things.

Molly Lewis, you are a national treasure. It is an honor to occasionally share the stage with you.

you can relax on both sides of the tracks

I've struggled for most of the morning to come up with some profound and lyrical way to mark the day, but the words I usually find so easy to command just refuse to reveal themselves ... so I'm just going to keep this post simple and to the point: Thank you, veterans, for your service.

in place of a title, imagine Ric Ocasek walking around on the surface of a pool

I guess I could just say, "Hey, I'm playing Magic on Xbox Live this weekend, so check out the details here," but it's more fun to tell a story, first.

In 1993, while killing time between appointments, I wandered into a game shop in the valley. I looked around the aisles, thumbed through the RPG books, talked myself into and then out of buying a ton of unpainted lead figures, and eventually found myself in conversation with the owner.

He picked up a deck of cards, and asked me if I'd heard...

to mark the passage of three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days together

We went to Napa for our tenth anniversary. 

For the record: being married to your best friend rules.

to mark the passage of three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days together

We went to Napa for our tenth anniversary. 

For the record: being married to your best friend rules.

on the hunting down of ideas

I've been struggling lately to turn a lot of ideas I have into actual stories. I kind of feel like my writing mojo has taken a temporary leave of absence, and the harder I look for it, the harder it is to find. It has been incredibly frustrating.

This morning, in Warren Ellis' BAD SIGNAL e-mail, he said:

At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth.

This is...

the obligatory addendum to the obligatory w00tstock post

When I wrote my w00tstock post, I totally forgot to mention that we put some video interludes into the show, to make sure that we were giving the maximum A/V Club experience to the audience.

There were some very funny shorts, including Mister Bungle getting the Riff Trax treatment, the credits for Jonathan Coulton's television series, Monkey Shines, (that was cancelled after the first commercial break), and this parody commercial for Trader Joe's, which is exceptionally hilarious if you've...

in which a fairly major secret is made secret no more

Back in the old days, before Twitter exploded into the phenomenon that it is now, I got a message from Greg Grunberg. Greg plays Matt Parkman on Heroes (this information, which most of you don't need, is provided as a public service to the seven of you who do), and has been in every JJ Abrams project since JJ started making movies in the pre-old days.

Greg and I traded several messages about a bunch of different things, and then he sent me a private message that said something like, "JJ...

the obligatory w00tstock post

Everything I could possibly say about w00tstock has already been said by Paul and Storm, who made a lovely list, and Molly, who made a comic that captures exactly how I felt the whole time we did our shows.

I loved feeling the terror and exhilaration of trying something totally new (The Trade, with music) that was raw and unrehearsed enough to allow for surprises every night.

I loved how totally geeked out we all were to be working with each other, too. I mean, I knew it would be cool to...

Memories of the Futurecast: Episode Nine

Holy crap! It's time for Memories of the Futurecast.

Memories of the Future, Volume One, covers the first 13 episodes of TNG, so each week, I'm choosing something from one episode, and performing an excerpt for you. It will mostly be from the synopses, which is where I think the real humor of the book lives, but from time to time, I may work in some things from the other parts.

Three important things:

This does not mean the book comes out in 13 weeks. It comes out much sooner than that.