Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 87

has anyone else had this uncomfortable experience with an Uber driver recently?

I really like Uber, and I’ll take Uber over a taxi every single time I can. I really like being in a clean car, with a friendly driver who genuinely cares about my experience, because I’m rating them and that matters to them. Basically, they work a little harder to give me better service, and I pay about a 5% premium for that.

Earlier this week, though, I took Uber to and from the Stone Company Store in Pasadena, and both drivers gave me this aggressive sales pitch that made me very uncomfortable. They both wanted me to contact them directly when I needed an Uber car, so they could drive to wherever I was, wait for me to request an Uber car, and then they’d answer the request.

Both times, the pitch was a very hard sell, accompanied by boasts about their clients in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, and left me feeling like I’d rather not ride with either of these guys again. When I’ve hired a driver, I just want that driver to get me where I’m going safely and comfortably. I don’t want to feel like I’m getting a high-pressure sales pitch when I’m basically a captive audience.

I’m putting this out there because I want to know if this is happening to anyone else in LA or any other cities? Is this some new kind of official Uber policy? Or did I just happen to get two seemingly random guys who were working off of almost the exact same script?

a million seconds of perspective

We’re having work done on our house, and today they’re in the attic over my office. It’s so loud I can’t think in there, so I’m in my bed with my laptop, still in my jammies at 1:30pm. Talk about dressing for the job you want! I’m living the dream, surrounded by my very happy dogs and one very unhappy cat.

Our cat, Luna, is all black, so she spends October 28-November 1 inside every year, for her safety, because some people really suck. This doesn’t really bother her on the 28th, but by the middle of the day on the 29th, she makes it really clear that she hates us and would very much kill our faces in our sleep with murder death.

Now, because of the loud work in the house, and the construction crew walking in and out the front door, Luna is confined to the bedroom with me and the dogs, where she can let everyone know how truly and completely pissed off she is.

For much of the last hour, she has: tried to lay down on top of my hands while I type, made pancakes on my stomach while showing me her butthole, groomed my beard, bitten my chin, hissed and swatted at two of our three dogs (which Marlowe thought was an invitation to play, which was quite a disappointment to them both.)

Now she seems to have temporarily tantrumed herself out, and she’s at the foot of my bed, pointedly facing away from me, ears shoved back in righteous indignation and furious anger.

And people wonder why I’m a dog person.

Anyway, I’ve just taken a break from writing to watch some YouTube, including one of the most important videos I’ve ever seen from John Green. It’s something I needed to see today, and I think it’s something at least some of you will want to see, too. Take a few minutes and watch it, and I think you’ll be glad that you did.

I will pour you w00tstout tonight in Pasadena

Attention Pasadena and surrounding villages! Tonight, I’m joining my friend Greg Koch for a special tap takeover at the Stone Company Store!

We’re pouring a bunch of very special and rare Stone beers (2004 Double Bastard, anyone? How about the 03.03.03 Vertical Epic?) including our very own Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout. I’m going to get behind the bar and pour beers, and I’ll probably drink some beers, too.

It’s going to be a whole lot of fun, it’s going to benefit the Pasadena Humane Society, and Anne’s going to be there with some of our 2014 celebrity pet adoption calendars for sale and autographing.

We’re doing our thing from 6-8pm tonight at 220 South Raymond. You can take the Gold Line to the Del Mar station, or if you’ve wanted an excuse to use Uber, they’ll give new customers $20 off your ride if you use the code “PHS” when you sign up.

some kind of verb, some kind of moving thing

This guest post was written by Will Hindmarch, a freelance writer and designer of games and fiction. Read more at his blog at wordstudio.net.

A few years ago, inspiration struck me a few times in a row and I started work on a new tabletop game. It was a story game about journeys. I knew that much. Sitting down at my kitchen table, writing in my notebook, ideas collided and threw off sparks that I distilled in handwriting as quick as I could.

One idea sparked another. I wrote down design questions and then answered them, right there on the spot. Not every answer was right. I learned that much. Actually playing the game showed me new questions and confounded some of my answers. No worries, though, that’s just the way that goes. Onward.

A few months ago, I described this game to a friend of mine who digs these sorts of things. I discovered as I talked that the game felt pretty finished. I’d been testing it for years, playing it with a myriad of new players, but I didn’t know how to tell myself it was ready to show people. So when I described the game to this friend of mine and he said “That sounds great!” it gave me the jolt I needed to turn my notes into a manuscript.

I’d been sort of writing this thing, in bits and pieces in my head, for a year. I knew what I wanted to say but I had been slow to turn my thoughts into text. Part of it was fear: this was a new kind of game for me and I’d be measured against giants when it was done. Another part of it was … also fear: what if what I wrote sucked out loud? I write for a living and I still feel that way sometimes.

Odyssey by Will Hindmarch

A few hours ago, I launched the crowdfunding campaign to pay artists (and me) to finish the game book. The game’s called Odyssey. I think it’s pretty good.

I wanted to make this thing. I’ve wanted to make this thing for a while. What I needed was to get excited. It was a spark of enthusiasm — from a friend I wanted to inspire — that helped make this thing.

We participate in the creation of so many things, sometimes without knowing it. I don’t know if my friend knows that his casual enthusiasm powered this project’s creation like a life-giving bolt, but it did. Sparks start engines.

I will rejoice as the madness consumes him.

Tonight, Anne and I took some friends who are visiting from out of town to ride the Ghost Train in Griffith Park. Unlike the Haunted Hayride, it’s not designed to be scary, just to be fun. We had a great time, and it was delightful. HOWEVER  …

…while we waited in the line, we were subjected to a nightmarish collection of Kidz Bop Halloween songs. This unspeakably horrible experience lead me to resolve that, when I am King Of The Universe, the asshole who made Kidz Bop a thing will be forced to live the rest of his life in a dark, damp, inescapable pit of misery where the Kidz Bop music he vomited upon an innocent and undeserving world plays on infinite repeat.

I will rejoice as the madness consumes him.

remembering lou reed and marcia wallace

So in 24 hours, two people who were hugely influential on my life have died.

I almost wrote “passed away” or “left us” because they feel more gentle, while “died” feels more raw, more uncompromising, more brutal, more … final. But that’s the way I feel this morning, so I’m leaving it. It’s an interesting example of how different words can mean the same thing but say it in distinctive ways.

I wasn’t into Velvet Underground when I was a kid, but I fucking loved Bowie. When I learned that there would probably not be a Bowie without Lou Reed, I dug into his catalog. I was in my early 20s, and mostly listening to punk and electronic music at the time. I fell in love with The Velvet underground, though, and it was very common for me to listen to Lords of Acid’s Lust, Tool’s Opiate, and the Velvets’ The Velvet Underground & Nico back to back to back.

I’ve written before about my introduction to The Simpsons when I was about 17 or maybe 18. Those first five season of the show, along with Ren and Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead, and MST3K basically created my sense of humor at a time when I was looking to cast off the trappings of youth and don the mantle of adulthood, not realizing that I was still very much a child.

I met Marcia Wallace once, briefly, when I worked with my friend Keith on his live talkshow in a theatre. She was kind and awesome and insanely funny. I never worked with her, but everyone I know who did just loved her. John Dimaggio positively adored her. The voiceover community is very small, much smaller than you’d think, but even within this tiny community there are a couple islands few people ever get to visit, and The Simpsons is one of them. Futurama was another, and it’s not surprising to me that they shared a few very talented performers.

I’m 41, and I have at least another 50 years ahead of me. Hell, by the time I’m an old man, science and medicine will probably done something to extend our lives even longer than that, but when two people who were so fundamental to my coming of age die, it makes me face my own mortality in a way that is a little more visceral than I’d like.

It seems like a lot of us who are in the creative community and in our 40s are hit pretty hard by Lou Reed’s death. By all accounts, he wasn’t the nicest person in the world, and one of those “don’t meet your heroes” kind of guys. But the music he created spoke to us at important times in our lives.

I was never part of the drug culture that Lou Reed wrote about, and I never had any interest in being part of it, but it was positively fascinating for me to read and hear about it from afar. His willingness to write plainly and honestly about being a junkie made me feel like he was saying to me, “Hey, kid, it’s okay to be a weird outsider. Let’s be weird outsiders together.”

I feel the same way about Kurt Cobain, for almost the exact same reason.

I think it’s kind of weird when people die and those of us who didn’t know them feel obligated to memorialize them, but here we are: Thank you, Marcia Wallace and Lou Reed, for being part of my life, even though you never knew you were.

I got better

“Is everything okay?” Anne asked me. She sat at our counter, and I stood on the other side, next to the microwave, watching my bowl of soup slowly turn around inside it.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, “I’m having a terrible day, and I know it’s because my brain is fucked up and I know it’s going to eventually get better but right now I just want to fucking scream because I feel irritable and anxious and overwhelmed and I know that there’s no logical reason to feel any of these things, but I also know that it’s my fucked up broken brain and I can’t do anything about it so I feel helpless and angry.”

I am, as you can tell, the master of the run on sentence.

“I’m trying really hard not to blow up at you for something you didn’t do, or yell at the dogs for barking, or just freaking out at everything … but it is really fucking hard and I’m just sick of this shit.”

The microwave beeped and I reached in to take the soup out.

“OUCH GODDAMMIT MOTHER FUCKER SHIT COCK FUCK SHIT FUCK!” I shouted, which is “Wil’s having a bad depression day” for “This bowl is very hot and I should have used something to protect my hands before I touched it.”

I yanked my hands out of the microwave, and took several deep breaths. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really struggling today.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“It’s not okay, but I appreciate you being patient with me.” I thought about the years — at least a decade — we were together before I got help for my depression. I thought about all the years that Anne and our kids had to deal with me freaking out at stupid things for no rational reason. I felt guilty, like I always do, even though I know that it wasn’t my fault.

I got a hot pad, and took my soup out. I waited several minutes for it to cool off, and I ate it. It was delicious.

Anne went to bed a little earlier than I did, and Seamus was snuggled up next to her when I got into bed. I slept soundly through the night, and woke up to Marlowe’s little puppy face just a few inches from mine. I kind of love it that she gets it into her head between 930 and 10 every morning that it’s time for me to get out of bed, so I get to wake up to a happy puppy every morning.

I pet her little face, and took a sort of emotional inventory. I noticed that all my systems were running normally, and the Very Bad No Good Day of Depression had passed. I felt as close to normal as I can feel, which is probably about 97% of normal (but who really wants to be completely normal anyway? Normal is boring.)

I got out of bed, made some coffee and oatmeal, and started my day. A few hours later, I went to a very important meeting. I can’t talk about the meeting I had, but it’s for something I love, something I’m super excited and proud to be part of, and something I hope I can talk about soon. The meeting could not have gone better, and as I walked to my car after it was finished, I was grateful for the incredible creative team I’m working with, and excited for our future together.

So I got better, and that’s the reason I’m putting these words down right now. I have depression, but depression doesn’t have me. I have bad days, I have really terrible days, and I have MMMMMARRAAAHHH days, like I did yesterday. Those days suck, but they always pass, and knowing why they happen, even if I can’t control them, gives me a great deal of comfort on the truly awful days.

If you’d told me yesterday, when I was at the nadir of my MMMMMARRAAAHHH that I would spend significant time today sitting in a room with people I like, alternately laughing my ass off and marveling at how clever and creative they are, I probably would have told you to stop being mean to me, because there was no way I’d ever be happy again.

And yet.

Thank you, hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-I’ve-never-met, for being kind to me when I was having a really MMMMMARRAAAHHH day. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

MMMMMARRAAAHHH

There’s this classic commercial with Orson Welles where he’s struggling with the whole thing, and makes this primal, existential expression of frustration that sounds like sort of like MMMMMARRAAAHHH. People look at the video and laugh at an old guy who may be drunk, but I see one of the greatest creative minds of his generation struggling like crazy to  make it through something he knows he needs to do. It’s not that hard, it shouldn’t be that hard, but still, when staring into the abyss that only he can see, MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

Today, I heavily identify with the MMMMMARRAAAHHH. I’ve spent hours trying to customize my blog, only to end up where I was, visually, about a year ago. I gave up, decided to write something instead, and just found my brain refusing to cooperate. I get out a couple of paragraphs, declare, “this is fucking stupid” and then … MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

So I’m caught in this MMMMMARRAAAHHH cycle, and this is my attempt to get out of it.

Last night, I blocked a dickhead on Twitter. I noticed that this particular dickhead declared that he was “proudly blocked by” a couple of people in his bio, and I said: These people on Twitter who proclaim that they are “proudly blocked by” people may want to reconsider their priorities in life … speaking only for myself, I block people who are dicks, and people who are obnoxious. So if that makes someone proud … um … good job?

My friend Nika observed, “@wilw Everyone wants a reason to feel important in life. Being unpleasant is one of the easiest ways to assert power.”

That made me think about how different things are now than they were

…

Annnnnd MMMMMARRAAAHHH

Jesus Shit Cock. Let me try again.

While I worked on the backend (hurr hurrr hurr) of my blog today, I thought about that exchange last night. I thought about the years I spent playing whack-a-mole with dickheads, dealing with trolls and griefers, and keeping my blog running as smoothly as I could. I thought about how much has changed since then, from a technology standpoint, a cultural standpoint, and how different my life is.

While I was having my coffee this morning, I responded to a comment on Reddit about the reasons I left Star Trek. I’ve covered this in books, so I’m not going to go into it again, but I wanted to share this part of it:

Me: The tl;dr from me is that I was treated quite badly by the producers, and they were actively sabotaging my career outside of Star Trek, preventing me from working in movies that would have been a huge boost to my standing in the industry.

Redditor: Do you think their sabotage has affected you to this day or do you think as a celebrity you have moved past it?

Me: I’ve moved past it. I have learned a lot in the years since that happened (among them the fact that all producers aren’t automatically jerks) and coming to grips with my experience back then allowed me to let it go, focus on what was important to me now, and …. [sunglasses] plot my own course in life.

Now, I’m sure that I would have a very different life if I’d been able to work in the movies they prevented me from working on. For example, I wouldn’t have wanted out of my contract, and I probably would have stayed with the show as long as they would have had me, through all the movies. I probably would have worked on other serious films, and would be in a very different place right now.

But if that had happened, I probably would have grown up to be a douchebag, because I would have been stupidly rich, stupidly famous, and I never would have grown up.

I love my life right now, and I’m grateful for the pain and the struggles that I went through to get to where I am today.

tl;dr Yeah, I’m fine.

Redditor: You’re an amazing, down-to-earth guy. I’m impressed that you’ve moved past everything as well as you have, and I’m glad that you’re doing well. I’m also glad that you appreciate what you have, because so many people don’t.

I appreciate the response and wish you nothing but happiness.

… MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

I’m not going to give up and delete this. I’m going to keep going.

My life is awesome, and I’m so grateful for all the great stuff that I get to do with it. I really, really am.

But today? Today, I just can’t shake the MMMMMARRAAAHHH.

What’s your favorite Halloween or Horror Tabletop Game?

Today, we’re shooting a Very Special Episode of Not The Flog, where I’m going to share some of my favorite horror-themed tabletop games. I have a pretty big list in my head, but I’m sure there’s something awesome that I’m forgetting, so if you wanted to maybe get onto Not The Flog, tell me the title of the game you love, why you love it, and what your favorite Halloween candy is. I’ll pick some and put them into the show, which is coming out sooooooon.

Soooooon.

Soon.

I haven’t thought about the kid who bullied me in over twenty years.

Trigger Warning: Bullying and Abuse.

When I was in elementary school, I was bullied by the kid who lived across the street. It started the day we moved in, and it continued until the day we moved out.

His bullying was relentless: I’d be sitting in my front yard playing with my Star Wars figures, and he’d come over and start threatening to take them, break them, hurt me, whatever he had on his broken little mind, until I either started crying or ran into my house. I remember riding my Big Wheel on my sidewalk, and this kid rode up behind me on his dirt bike, crashed it into my back, knocked my legs under my big wheel, and pushed me up the sidewalk until my screams brought parents out of houses. I had skin torn off my spine, and I still have two scars on my knees, and one on the top of my left foot. He shot me with his BB gun one day, narrowly missing my eye. The one time I punched him in the nose, he ran to his dad, who came out of his house and yelled at me. I remember being terrified that he was going to hit me, or worse.

This kid was abusive and cruel. If he’d been an adult, the things he did to me would have qualified as assault, but whenever my parents confronted his parents, nothing happened. I remember being angry with them for not doing more to protect me, but realize in retrospect that they probably did everything they could; this kid’s father was a gun nut, ran with bikers, had friends in the local police department, and basically got away with anything. Eventually, I just stopped telling my parents about my bully, because he’d just bully me worse when I did.

I don’t know what happened to that kid as he grew up. His older siblings were in and out of jail a lot, has father beat his mother, and I would be very surprised if anyone in that family went on to live a happy and fulfilling life. If I’m being honest, I hope that kid is in jail somewhere where he can’t hurt anybody else.

I haven’t thought about that kid in years — these aren’t the kinds of memories that I want to revisit — but I saw some people talking about stopping bullying on Twitter today, including this from Anne:

 

My son was repeatedly bullied by a kid in 4th grade. The principal made excuses for the kid such as “He comes from a single parent home.”

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

I couldn’t get any teachers, counselors or even the principal to stop this kid from bullying Ryan. The kid did it for years&it was horrible

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

The school finally did suspended the kid who kept bullying Ryan in 7th grade after having to pay for medical bills for Ryan.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

Ryan was shoved over a railing & hit his head,causing a concussion & whiplash. Because it happened on school grounds, they had to pay for it

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

No one should have to endure bullying. It shouldn’t take physical injury for a school to step in & stop years of emotional injury.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

Be a good parent, whether you’re single or not. Teach your child to love & respect themselves enough to treat others the same way.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

I was a single parent for years. That is the worst excuse for allowing bullying, ever. I told the principal that & he had no comment.

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

 

My mom rant is done. #StopBullying

— Anne Witchon (@AnneWheaton) October 17, 2013

Anne and I are both sitting here, in our hotel in Texas, crying at these memories. Years later, bullying still hurts.

I also hadn’t thought about all the torment that Ryan had to endure, until I read Anne’s Twitter. I remembered how helpless we felt, how we tried and tried and tried to get someone at the school to do something — to do anything — to help our son, and how the school just made excuses until our son was seriously injured. The school didn’t care at all that he was emotionally abused, and never bothered to address the physical abuse until it cost them money.

The thing is, the bullying that Ryan and I both endured was entirely random. Though our experiences were roughly 20 years apart, they fit a pattern: We did nothing to deserve it. Some kid who was unhappy decided to make us a target, we were helpless to stop it, and the people we turned to who should have helped stop it either couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Just sitting here right now, remembering it, I want to go back in time and make that goddamn school, starting with the coward who was the principal at Ryan’s elementary school, do something about it, so I could save my son from suffering torment that he didn’t deserve, that no child deserves.

Ryan and I both grew up to be successful and happy adults. I don’t know what happened to my bully, but Ryan’s bully is stuck in the community he grew up in, working a dead end job. He looks miserable, and I’m not proud to admit that I’m glad. I hope he suffers for a long time. I’m ashamed to admit that whenever I see him, I want to hurt him the way he hurt my son, but it seems that life is doing that for me.

Who knows what that kid could have done with his life if he’d gotten the help he needed to choose a different path? Who knows how many other kids he hurt, because nobody did anything to stop him?

All people deserve to be happy, and all children deserve to grow up in an environment where they feel safe and free. Schools need to have clear policies in place to stop bullying. Communities need to make it very clear that bullying won’t be tolerated, and bullies — and their parents — need to be held accountable for their actions.

I often feel like Twitter hashtag things are great for making a lot of noise, but not very useful for actually accomplishing meaningful goals. I sincerely hope that this one will be different. Don’t just talk about how we need to #StopBullying, actually do something about it. Talk to parents and kids, live your life by example, and let’s break the cycle, together.