Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 26

See you on the Trek Side of the Moon

Several months ago, I got this silly idea to combine two things I love, and make something that I wanted to own. I am not skilled at design, so I asked my friend, Rich Stevens, if he could turn my idea into a reality.

Rich delivered, in a big way:

Get it?

I love it, and my recent experience with Cotton Bureau was so positive, I thought I’d give this design a try on a T-shirt.

Isn’t that cool?! It’s available in Men’s, Women’s, and Junior sizes, on a couple of different fabrics.

I love it, and I hope you and five thousand of your friends love it, too.

Get Trek Side of the Moon by Wil Wheaton at Cotton Bureau, he said in an SEO-friendly way, painfully aware of how awkward he sounded.

that’s a wrap

Last night, I went to Stage 25, now known as The Big Bang Theory Stage, and watched the taping of the final episode of the show that has brought more joy into my life than anything else I’ve ever done in my professional career.

I have a lot of feelings and emotions to unpack, and they are all too raw and turbulent to do that today. Maybe after I go to the wrap party tonight. Maybe in a few days. Maybe it’s too personal to ever properly convey what it means and has meant to me since I joined the show in the second season. Maybe I’ll try right now and see what comes out.

I think it’s fair to say that if I built a tripod out of my career, the main legs would be Stand By Me, Star Trek, and The Big Bang Theory. It kind of blows me away that I get to say that. It is remarkable to me that I have gotten to have all of these things in my life, when honestly just ONE of them would be more than anyone could hope for on his or her resume.

Mainstream Hollywood doesn’t seem to be especially interested in me and what I bring to a production these days. I don’t know why, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do anything to change that, but I can confidently say that I probably have an on-camera acting career today because of Big Bang Theory, and anything I do on camera for the rest of my career will stand on the shoulders of the work I’ve had the privilege and honor to perform over the last decade.

But all of that is just math and *work*, and while I’m grateful for the work, and proud of the work, what I will cherish for the rest of my life are the friends I’ve made among the cast, writers, and crew.

This is a picture of me with Kevin Sussman, who was in my very first episode way back before I had any grey in my beard, and I love it, because it’s this silly thing we did whenever we worked together on the stage.

“Hey, let’s take a super awkward selfie,” I would say to Kevin, and then this would happen. It’s moments like this, and relationships like this, that truly matter and make the difference in a life, and I’m so lucky and grateful that I have had so many moments like this, with these amazing humans.

coming soon: a limited edition hardcover novella

In 2017, I wrote and published a novella called Dead Trees Give No Shelter. It’s a supernatural horror story about a man who is haunted by the memory of his younger brother’s death when they were children. In my story, he returns to the town he grew up in, looking for some closure and resolution to his brother’s senseless death, and he finds much, much more than he was expecting.

It gets really wonderful reviews on Goodreads (3.99/5.0), which is pretty cool, and a nice surprise for me, because I never looked until just now.

If you’re intrigued (and I hope you are), you can get it on Kindle, as an audiobook that I narrated, from Overdrive, or from me directly in multiple formats with no DRM.

It hasn’t been available in print, because I didn’t think it was a big enough piece of work to justify the expense and time involved in putting together a print run, but that’s about to change.

Earlier this year, I read this novella from Stephen King called ELEVATION. It didn’t feel too small to be in print, and I didn’t feel like I’d spent too much money on it, so I decided to take a chance, and hired my pal Will Hindmarch to do a hardback book design for me. He put together something beautiful and special, that I just love.

It’s going to be a very short print run, of just 250 books. I just uploaded the files for the printer, so it should be available in a few weeks. Normally, I wouldn’t say anything until it was ready, but I’m super excited to share this, and I hope 250 of you will be as excited to have a copy of your own.

horsin’ around

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the most emotionally profound game I have ever played. When I finished it a couple months ago, I felt a kind of wonderful sadness that something I loved was over, secure in the knowledge that I’d be able to experience the story, spend time with the characters, and explore the world all over again whenever I did a replay.

So about a week ago, after I had finished replaying the story in Red Dead Redemption 1, I started my replay. I already have a deeper appreciation for the early character interactions, because I’ve spent a hundred hours more with them than I had the first time around, and I know now that I really want to spend as much time in chapter 2 as I possibly can.

But I know that you’re not here for my philosophical ruminations on the deeper story that is happening around Arthur and his gang, and I know you aren’t here to read a thousand words about why it feels so good to leave this awful world behind for a few hours every night.

You’re here for horse names. I see you.

So Hosea wants me to go hunting with him. I know there’s a legendary bear in our future, and I know that we aren’t going to take it down on our first try, because I’ve been here before. But what I don’t remember is that Hosea wants me to take this old draft horse to the stables in Valentine and sell it, so I can get a new horse of my own.

I already have a horse, and he’s fine, but there’s nothing special about him. He’s sort of a starter horse, and he’s a good boah, but he isn’t that fast, even after we’ve reached our maximum bonding level.

So I go to the stables, I sell this big draft horse, and I pick up a Palomino. She’s beautiful, with a gorgeous white mane and some dappling on her haunches. She’s fast, and she’s going to cost me $150 of my $155.

It’s a lot of money to spend on my horse, and it’s going to be challenging to rebuild my savings this early in the game, but the alternative is a $50 horse who I don’t feel anything for. Even in a video game, an emotional connection with my horse is important to me, so I spend nearly all of my money, and buy her.

Now the game lets me give her a name, and I have to make the most important decision I’m going to make in this game for the next 24 hours of gameplay.

I have already used Mane Weidlin and Neighlor Swift. I briefly consider Nagnes Moorehead, but it’s kind of a walk, and it’s too long for the number of characters I get, anyway.

So I start thinking about horse-related terms, and I end up with “Steed” in my head…

Which is why I am delighted to introduce you all to my new horse, Tara Steed. She’s a little bit of a mess, but she means well and is doing the best she can.

She’s no Neighlor Swift, but who is, really?

A flock of Seagals

So my friend Bonnie Burton and I were making puns with Anne, and somehow we came up with “A flock of Steven Seagals“.

I got the image you see below in my head, commissioned artist Joshua Ellingson to draw it for me, and submitted the design to Cotton Bureau, where it will be available for two weeks before it’s gone forever.

This is one of those visual pun jokes that not everyone will get, but the people who get it will *totally* get it, you know? If you’re one of those people, I hope you’ll pick one up because I’d love to see one of these on someone out in the world, someday.

They are available in heather grey, light pink, and light blue, for maximum 80s.

doubled up inside

It’s warm and windy in the valley today. The sun feels so good on my skin, as the breeze swirls little cyclones of leaves and trash against the buildings I’m walking past. A palm frond waves at me as I pass. It is barely clinging to the trunk of its tree, and will probably come down with the first real gust that hits it at dusk.

I have my headphones in my pocket, but I decide to leave them there and let my mind wander. It’s good to be bored. It’s good to rely on my own imagination to entertain me as I walk home from lunch with my friends, who I haven’t seen in months.

I have this story idea I’ve been working on. It’s kind of silly, but it’s entertaining to me, and it should be fun to write. I spend most of my walk working on its first line, which is currently sounding like, “Matthew woke up with the kind of hangover that can only be described apocryphally. ”

I try lots of variations, but that’s the one I keep coming back to. I don’t know if it’s as good as I think it is. Maybe it’s lazy and not as evocative as I think it is, but it’s what I can do right now.

The wind blows some dust into my face and I have to take off my glasses to wipe out my eyes. A kid, probably in 10th or 11th grade, walks past me, backpack slung over one shoulder, face buried in their phone. I can relate to this kid. They are dressed a little punk rock, with torn jeans and a T-shirt from a band I’ve never heard of. Many piercings, brightly colored hair that’s cut into a style I haven’t seen before.

I want to tell this kid that they’re awesome for being weird. I decide to keep my mouth shut because this kid doesn’t care what an old man thinks, and neither do I, it turns out.

Maybe it’s being adjacent to what I have labeled as youthful rebellion, but I cross the street against a red light. I’m not going to stand here on the corner when there’s no traffic, and wait for a light that is just slowing me down, man.

As I cross the center line, I see a motorcycle cop, who has pulled someone over and is writing them a ticket. Yeah. I’m jaywalking. Fuck the police. I’m a middle-aged rebel and what are you going to do about it?

Last night, we went to a screening for our friend’s new Netflix series, BLACK SUMMER. It’s set in a zombie apocalypse, but it’s really about what happens when society collapses and we have to rely on strangers to survive. It’s about the sacrifices we make for our children. It’s about authoritarianism and violence for violence’s sake.

As I walk down the quiet, suburban street, on the most beautiful day we’ve had in months, I think about what we watched. I think about what I would do if something catastrophic happens and I have to protect myself and the people I love. I think about how terrible the world is right now, how loud the voices of hate and anger are, and how grateful I am to be outside, in the warm sunshine, walking home to my dogs. I think about how powerless I feel. I think about how afraid I am of my country, my community, my entire world being slowly torn apart. I don’t know if a zombie apocalypse would bring out the best in us, or if it would just exacerbate our divisions.

I want to have faith in humanity. I want to expect the best of people. But fool me once and so forth.

I’m so tired.

The sun is at my back. My black T-shirt is a heat sink and a small bead of sweat runs down my spine.

It feels good to be outside. The world is a terrible place right now, but it feels good to be out in it, alone with my thoughts and aspirations. It is good to be outside, enjoying a beautiful day, being grateful for my life and the people in it.

It has been an indescribably painful seven months. Every day has been a struggle, but every day has been a gift.

I’m doing the best I can, and I have to remind myself that my best will have to be enough, and I’ll have to keep doing it, even when it feels like it isn’t enough, because it’s all I can do.

The wind is at my back now, and it blows my hair up into an approximation of my bedhead. That makes me smile. I leave it alone, resist the reflex to smooth it out and make myself more presentable. Nobody cares, and neither should I.

Could I survive the zombie apocalypse? Or would I welcome it? I’m not ready to honestly explore the question, because whatever the answer is, I don’t think I’m prepared for it.

Grouchy about Marx

This is from my Tumblr thingy:

You know what’s great about this? Groucho Marx is remembered as one of the greatest comedians of all time. It’s close to a century since he made any films, yet the films he made STILL echo and reverberate in comedy that’s being written and performed today.

He is a legend, and someone whose legacy massively outshines millions of people who lived at the same time as he did.

And Mrs. Kenneth Van Etten of Corona, California, didn’t think he was funny (though he seemed to think he is). She thought he was so unfunny, she wrote a letter to the editor, put it in an envelope, paid for a stamp, and walked it straight into the post office to make sure it found its recipient. And the editor printed her letter, so her fellow Mrs. Kenneth Van Ettens would know that they were not alone in their disdain for the comic sensibilities of Mr. Marx.

So take heart, all of my wonderful babies in the world who are working so hard to make things that matter to you, and to share them with our fellow humans! You can be one of the most influential artists in your generation, and there’s gonna be someone out there who just doesn’t get you. There’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t waste your time trying to win over the Mrs. Kenneth Van Ettens of the world.

Just do the thing. Make the thing. And keep making good art.

Snooch By Me

I stole this title from a guy called Sean who follows me on Facebook.

So I posted this morning’s bedhead, as one does…

A nonzero number of people asked about the painting behind me, which shows up in a lot of bedhead photos, since it’s in my office.

So I posted a picture of it, along with a story…

This is for everyone who wanted to see a full shot of the painting that was behind this morning’s bedhead.

This was done by David Mac Dowell, and it was in the Crazy4Cult show that @thatkevinsmith curated back in 2008.

In 2008, Anne and I were living paycheck to paycheck, and there was no way we could afford to buy art, but I wanted to see it in person, so we went to the show. It was many thousands of dollars that we couldn’t afford, but that didn’t matter, because it had already been bought.

Five or six weeks later, the show closed. A week or so after that, this painting arrived at my door with a note that said, “Dear Wil, you can’t not have this. -Kevin”

Yeah. Kevin Smith bought this for me and gave it to me as a gift.

I love it, and I look at it every day, because it reminds me of the time that Kevin did something so kind and generous for me, because that’s the kind of person he is.

Then I linked it to Facebook, and someone there said “Snooch By Me” and now the circle is complete.

It’s Friday afternoon, so I narrated another pulp story.

Yesterday, I finally turned in the manuscript of my novel. I’d been revising it for seven months, and by “revising” I mean, “trying to fit a scene in that I wanted to put into it, but which doesn’t seem to fit anywhere and also staring at page after page wondering why I ever thought I should tell this story in the first place.”

Yeah, it was fun. Thanks, depression brain!

Anyway, doing that narration last week did the thing I hoped it would do, and it opened up the door to the place in my brain where the creativity lives. With access to that room, I was able to step out of the room where Everything Sucks And It’s All My Fault And I’m Terrible At Everything So I Should Just Stop Trying and look at my creative work without fear or judgment.

I could be wrong (my agent and eventual editor will tell me if I am), but I feel like I spent all this time trying to make something better for the sake of making it better, when I had gotten it as good as I was going to get it on my own already. There’s a lesson in here about knowing when your desire to work hard becomes a self-defeating exercise in impossible expectations.

So anyway, it’s Friday, and I wanted to be creative and to feel productive, but I’m giving my writing brain a few days off because it’s been working really hard for a long time and it needs to recharge. Luckily for me, my performer brain was inspired to do another pulp fiction magazine audiobook narration, because it was so much fun the last time I did it, and the feedback was so positive and effusive.

Therefore, I am happy to present to you, Please Help Me To Die! from 1938, written by Leon Byrne, and found at the Pulp Magazines Project.

As before, you can stream or download from my SoundCloud. BUT FIRST YOU HAVE TO KNOW that the mic was hot, and I really needed a pop filter. The audio quality is not particularly great on this one, which is a shame because the story is awesome. But, I promise to give you a full refund for your purchase price if the audio quality does not meet your expectations.

In which I narrate a story from 1930

I took a vacation (the first real vacation I’ve ever taken in my life, where I just got to relax and enjoy myself without ever feeling like I was a Pokemon for people to catch), and it seems to have restored a lot of access to my creative self.

I’m still working through some story problems that I need to solve so I can do the revisions and add the scenes to All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, but I’m doing the work, even if I don’t have words added to the manuscript to show for it. That feels pretty good.

I’ve also been, while not exactly feeling great, getting better and feeling closer to “good” every day. Jesus, it’s been so long since I felt good, I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to have a day without sadness and anxiety in it.

But today, rather than feel creatively stifled and stuck in the mire of depression, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and make a thing.

So I went to Project Gutenberg, clicked through a few bookshelves until I got to classic Science Fiction, and decided to do an unrehearsed, essentially live narration of a story that was published in Astounding Stories of Super Science in 1931.

It’s not the greatest story I’ve ever read (if I’d read it before I narrated it, I wouldn’t have chosen it), but it’s a fine representative of that era’s genre fiction writing. I had some fun doing my best impression of someone reading it in 1931, and I recorded it to share with any of you who are interested in this sort of thing.

I can’t get WordPress to let me upload it, so you can stream it from my Soundcloud, download it to listen to later, or totally skip it. I’m not the boss of you.

However, if you do listen to it, I’d like to know what you think about the story, the experiment, and … um … I think that’s all.