Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 99

Will Hindmarch and Stepto and Shane Nickerson Are The Best Ever: A Post by the Real Wil Wheaton

INTERNET I AM IN YOU.

So, you guys, I’ve decided to let Will Hindmarch and Stepto and Shane Nickerson stay on at the blog forever and ever because they are so great at blogging. I mean, I’m great at it, too, but together I figure we’re like a great rock-and-roll band like what’s that band that’s made out of robotic lions? We’re like that band. I’ll form the head!

Seriously, these guest bloggers totally blew me away. They’re phenomenal writers, each and every. I think I felt every feel just now as I went back and read all their posts from this week. What generous and wise and funny and did I mention wise fellows these once-guest, now-forever bloggers were. I’m buying them all burritos.

I’m going to go brew the beers now, like you do, and let these guys do some more blogging because, like I promised, they get to blog here with me from now on forever and no take-backs. Okay? Okay. Burritos.

Signed,

Totally the Real Wil Wheaton Totally

Guest Blog by Will Hindmarch: We, Geeks

Will Hindmarch writes and designs stories and games. You can find some of his stories at venues like Amazon and DriveThruFiction. He blogs at wordstudio.net and teaches at the Shared Worlds creative-writing camp—registration’s still open!

A few years ago, I spent a month of blog posts writing about people I admire. On February 11th of that year, I wrote about Wil Wheaton:

… [H]e’s an energetic creator who strives to promote positivity and enthusiasm by creating fun, funny, touching things and spreading them to his friends and fans. He’s always creating—when it’s hard, when it’s tough, when it’s easier not to, he’s always making something new to post, to share, to publish. [...] His enthusiasm spreads and warms like good scotch. Let’s get drunk.

One summer night, on a high-rise building in an emerald city, a flock of geeks like us gathered to play. We sat at a handful of tables to play myriad games. I sat at a Fiasco table with Wil and our friend Andrew and a few people I didn’t know very well but I’d admired because Wil had spoken highly of them. We elected to play one of my playsets, “The Zoo,” so I was excited to show off my work and nervous that it would somehow suck.

It totally didn’t suck.

One of those players I didn’t really know was Stepto. He wrote about that game earlier this week. At the time, I felt like Wil had climbed high up a tree for the view and was reaching out to help us climb up, too. I feel like everyone at that table took up Wil’s dare. It was a great fiasco, though we didn’t get to see the whole thing because we spent so much time digging into our characters in the first Act that we, uh, sort of ran out of time to play.

Partway through that first Act of play, people behind me started to sing the happy-birthday song. Wil smiled. They were getting closer. My friend, Lily, was singing in Hebrew. I don’t know what my face was doing but my insides fluttered. The hard candy shell on my heart formed a craquelure. It was my birthday.

I turned around and saw a host of friends—new friends, many of them—gather around, singing. I admit, part of my brain panicked. What was I supposed to do? But a part of my brain also immediately transported through time. I thought of ancient people singing to warm themselves around winter fires. I thought of people trilling together on tall ships swaying in the sea. I thought of packed pubs and bars where people raised their glasses in a chorus of cheers. Not all of us knew each other that night, but we all knew the song—in different tongues, with different memories of birthdays past and absent friends—we all knew the song.

Honestly, I don’t know whose idea that was. I don’t want to know. I like doling out my thanks in equal portions to everyone that night.

I bring it up now, though, because it’s one of my favorite memories of things happening around Wil. I met a lot of those people through Wil. I used to say that Wil’s built something remarkable here at WWdN, but the truth is that I think he’s gathered it—gathered us. So, here’s to this place. Here’s to the refrains we recite among friends. Here’s to singing in the comments section.

Cheers.

Guest Post by Stephen Toulouse: Goodbye, Farewell, and Thank You for Your Attention

This guest post is by Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse. He made a comedy album you can get on Bandcamp (cheapest option), iTunes or Amazon and wrote a book called A Microsoft Life. He blogs at Stepto.com.

I was in Vancouver with Rochelle. It’s one of our favorite cities.  We were up to visit Remy  (the puppy I mentioned in the previous post) before we could take him home, and Wil suggested we all have lunch together since we were all in the area with him filming Eureka episodes.  Adia, our “middle” Golden, was the aunt of Remy (likewise Eowyn) so we brought her along on the trip.  Our plan was to visit a dog friendly restaurant since we would have her with us.

We’re all partial to Granville island, both the beer from the brewery, the locale, and the food. Wil, like me, hates cabs but that was the only way for us to get together. We arrived to find the hotel spot that was pet friendly was closed for construction.  We wandered around with Adia.  We ended up finding a place, but they wanted us to tie up Adia outside the patio eating area due to regulations.  We tried to keep her close but she was insistent on being with us so we gave her a long leash lead about 20 feet from where we were in the neighboring park.  Before long she was entangled in her lead with the stimulation of so many nice people around her and seeing us just a few feet away.

I was trying to concentrate on what Wil was saying, while at the same time he was concentrating on Adia trying to tie her long lead in knots to try and just be with us.

Wil was inviting me to perform at w00tstock. I was trying to understand why anyone would ask me to do that. After a bit, none of us could really deal with Adia being so uncomfortable so I took Adia to the car and put her on her travel pillow. She curled up immediately and slept. I returned to the table in the sunny, crisp late-March Vancouver weather.

“I’m going to let my brain reboot for a minute before I answer” I told Wil, about w00tstock.

“Of course.” he said and talked to Rochelle while I processed being invited to perform at  something I had already bought tickets for because I wanted to see it. Before I took care of Adia, who by the way is a healthy and energetic 8 years old today, Wil had asked me “Have Paul and Storm talked to you about w00tstock?” and I thought he meant there was something wrong with my tickets or something. It was his simply seeing if I had been asked to perform.

Several years later a mail arrives in my inbox, “Would you like to guest blog for me while I am gone?” My brain went through the same reboot because I know how big and essentially awesome his blog audience (you guys) is.

We had flatbread pizza that day on Granville island, and the last of the brewery’s Winter ale (outstanding). It was a bright sunny day, and Wil got to meet Adia and I got an invitation to perform on a stage for the first time in my life.

This week Will and Shane and I have had the privilege of you guys reading our stuff.  We chatted in email and tried to time our entries to not be too overwhelming or overlap.  But above it all we wanted to achieve the quality of Wil’s blog.  I read what Will and Shane wrote and I think we hit it, And above all your comments and interaction made us feel welcome.

In just a few hours Wil and Anne will get off a boat, early in the morning and probably slightly hung over.  I can tell you from experience they will walk with shaky legs down a ramp, and stand and sway slightly while customs processes them.  They will probably get on a plane immediately (a fate I wish no enemy, much less a friend in their condition because sea legs are hard to overcome) and they will fly home.

And at the door will be Seamus, and Marlowe, and Riley, Watson, and Luna.

Welcome home brother!  Here’s your blog back! I hope we did it justice!

And to you dear reader, thanks. 

Guest post by Stephen Toulouse: Life is a Series of Dogs

This guest post is by Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse. He made a comedy album you can get on Bandcamp (cheapest option), iTunes or Amazon and wrote a book called A Microsoft Life. He blogs at Stepto.com.

This is Eowyn, our youngest Golden retriever:

She’s sort of a rescue, we owned her brother Remington and he died at 18 months of a blood disorder. Just a week after that happened our breeder had to take Eowyn away from the family she’d been placed with. My wife Rochelle and I try to alternate between rescues and breeder pups (our oldest Golden, Buddy, is a rescue and going strong at 12 and a half!) and because she was related to Remy we took her in.  Best decision ever.

Point being, though we have a cat, we’re mostly dog people. And here’s why.

Last night Eowyn farted, startled herself, and barked at her own ass for a full minute. I was laughing too hard to get video. I feel like I let you all down, because that shit was hilarious.

(Yes that’s a ribbon in her hair, and yes that’s a skull and crossbones on her collar.  Eowyn is Hard.  Core.)

(Except when she barks at her own ass.  It’s difficult to be hard core when your own orifices surprise you)

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: Endgame

Shane Nickerson is a guy who does stuff. He writes every day at nickerblog.com.

So, I never told you the Vegas story and now we’re out of time. Dammit. You would have liked it. It had laughs and drinks and delicious meals and gambling and foibles.

I have no idea what foibles means.

Point is, I’ll leave the Vegas story for another time. Unlike Wil, I didn’t take detailed notes all weekend in my Moleskine. Also, I don’t have a proper picture of three grown men holding giant plastic party drinks at a Let It Ride table because someone in the group (name rhymes with Bil) thought it would be hilarious and insisted on sticking with the bit even when we begged him for the bit to be over. BEGGED! I eventually paid our friend Ryan [drunk amount of] dollars to pound one of the stupid drinks in under a minute. He did. Like I said, there is video.

Also, there was a running Telly Savalas joke that I barely remember.

VEGAS!

Worst recap ever.

If my calendar is right, Wil and the rest of the singing, dancing, sunburned booze hounds aboard JoCo Cruise Crazy are almost home. Alas, my time here is at an end. It’s been fun borrowing Wil’s audience for a week. Will and Stepto and I did our best to keep his chair warm while he was gone. We were the Joan Rivers to Wil’s Johnny Carson. 3 or 4 of you will get that.

Thanks for having me.  This community is amazing. WWdN is an epicenter of creativity and connections, and it has always been one of my favorite places on the Internet.

If you need me, you know where to find me.

TELLY SAVALAS FOREVER!

See? Makes no sense.

Guest Blog by Will Hindmarch: Flow

Will Hindmarch is a writer, designer, and mooncalf. You can find some of his stories for sale online at Amazon, DriveThruFiction, and other sites. Long ago, in ages past, he wrote things at wordstudio.net.

(Update: Looking back, I feel sort of silly sharing this. To be clear, I don’t think my changing relationship with video games is due to the games or gamers—not really. I’m just musing here, wondering why it is that I can’t dive into games like I used to. I still don’t know what’s up there. So it goes.)

Listen, can I confess something to you? Lately I’ve been having some trouble with video games.

I’m super excited to play some of the games on my to-play list but I don’t know when I’m supposed to do that. The impulse that used to signal me to play video games often gets met by different pastimes right now—for me, at least. By the end of my day, when I might otherwise power up my console, I find myself torn.

Music: “The Last Man,” from The Fountain, music by Clint Mansell

It’s a multifaceted problem. For comparison’s sake, consider how I operate at my desk. When I’m there, I’m almost always doing two things at once, whether I’m working or not.

When I’m working on something largely visual, like the layout for a book, I listen to podcasts at the same time. I listen to Wil and friends talk gaming with Gabe Newell and Co. at Valve. I listen to writers talk shop on the Nerdist Writer’s Panel. I listen to Ken Hite and Robin D. Laws talk about stuff. I get to take in know-how and stories at the same time I get to create things. I like that.

When I’m writing, I put on music. I get to absorb music and generate prose at the same time. This helps me escape my environment a little bit and put myself into a headspace that’s a few mental clicks away from the pressures of the blank page.

I often devise a playlist for the project I’m working on. For example, while writing “A Desert is Implicit,” I listened to a playlist I called “Future Desert,” populated with things like the soundtracks from Halo: ODST, Journey, Caprica, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Other playlists, like “Futuristic Operatic,” “Mission Driven,” and “Epic Fantastic” get played for a variety of projects that sort of sync up thematically.

Music: ”Goodbye Renegade” from Tron: Uprising, music by Joseph Trapanese

These sorts of support structures aren’t necessary, though; they’re luxuries. They give me a chance to do two things once and get more day out of my day. They help work feel more like play.

I say this because it’s important, in my experience, to be able to write without rituals. I don’t need music to write. One way I know the work’s going well is when a playlist runs out and I discover I’ve been writing in silence for an hour. That’s flow.

When I can, I use music to influence mood and pacing in RPG play, too. (I’ve written about the DM as DJ before.) It creates this wonderful second channel of information at the game table. There, again, I’m trying to do two things at once.

Music: ”A Man, A Plan, A Code, Dubai,” from Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, music by Michael Giacchino

Some games make it easier for me do two things at once. When I’m playing an MMO like LOTRO, I can put on a podcast or chat with friends while I’m also traversing Middle-earth, reading little quest stories, and battling orcs. So I’ve been questing in LOTRO rather a lot lately.

When it comes to actual play, I feel like devoting all of my attention to one game isn’t as good a use of my time as taking in a podcast and doing some work all at the same time. Sometimes this is because I’m excited about work and sometimes this is because I haven’t earned the time to play yet. (I often make an exception for tabletop RPGs, though. Because.)

That’s not the whole problem, though.

Music:“Imposter,” The Doubleclicks

When I want to play a game, I also want to explore a world. I want to absorb a creative work. I want to take in a good story, maybe.

Sometimes playing a video game feels like the hardest way to experience a world I want to explore. I want to travel the wonderfully peculiar world of Dishonored but I don’t want to mess up the experience by, you know, sucking at the game. Sometimes I love that tension between the player and the game—that tension that turns on the idea that the fate of this character, this story, this world is up to you, so don’t mess it up. Sometimes, though, I just want to be able to tour a game world without all the blaring and shooting and ticking time-bombs. I don’t want to have to fight every step of the way.

(Maybe it’s no surprise that my favorite games are probably Thief and Thief 2, which allow players a lot of control over their pacing. Those games couple great world-building with compelling tactical play and a lot of meaningful exploration. I love them so.)

To be honest, my taste for game violence is changing. I love a good action sequence but I’m moving away from games that revel in death-dealing. For me, at least, the difference between a game that says “Go slay 10 orcs” and a game that says “Go slay 10 people, fuck yeah!” is a tangible, affecting difference.

Music: ”Atlantis of the Sands” from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, music by Greg Edmonson

Here’s where I’m a hypocrite, though. I’ve played the Uncharted games over and over even though they do something that irks me about a lot of games: they ask me to strike down hordes of faceless goons. The thing, though, is that those Uncharted games are well modulated, rising and falling in their action and suspense and punctuating it all with humor and character beats that go a long way with me. (Yes, we could also see that as making light of violence in a different way—I said I’m a hypocrite.)

Honestly, and this is just coming out of my head now, I think part of the problem is also this: The video games on my to-play list sometimes feel like homework. I mean, I want to play them, but I also want to poke around and explore them. Instead, though, I feel like I’m playing them too slowly to keep up with the online discussion of them before the Next Big Game comes out.

When I hear about how many hours it takes to finish a game, I get sort of disappointed. That leads me to think the goal isn’t to enjoy a game—to savor or explore—but to chug it down. I don’t want to rush through a game so I can lament how short it was. I want to stop and look at the art, hear from the NPCs, and study the gameplay.

That seems like a richer experience to me, engaging both my player’s aesthetics and my designer’s appreciation. I need to make more time to play—it won’t make itself—in part so I can stay up on the tech and the talk, but also so that I can play to appreciate. That’s always a good time for me. That feels like doing two things at once.

Music: “You Were Right About Everything,” Erin McKeown

 

 

Guest Post by Stephen Toulouse: A Mythending Adventure Ends in Fiasco for Munchausen

This guest post is by Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse. He made a comedy album you can get on Bandcamp (cheapest option), iTunes or Amazon and wrote a book called A Microsoft Life. He blogs at Stepto.com.

If I had to pick three of my new favorite games my gaming circle has introduced me to this past year, it would be Fiasco, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and Mythender. All three of these games involve basic improvisation skills and TERRIFY ME BEYOND ALL BELIEF. They are also terribly fun not just to play but to kibitz as well. (note I’m using the non-dick meaning of kibitz where you don’t constantly interrupt the game.)

The problem is I travel in some circles that involve people who write or perform for a living, so playing Fiasco with Wil, or Munchausen with Pat Rothfoss and Mike Selniker, or Mythender with Ryan Macklin can be mega super daunting. I’ll give you a for-instance: during a Fiasco game, Wil’s character was to meet my friend Eric’s character in a cheap bar. It was not the kind of place Wil’s character would ever go if he didn’t have to. Here’s how Wil opened the scene:

“I sit in the seedy bar, noting with disdain and disgust the rips in the vinyl cover of the dirty booth. With a sigh I slowly stir my cheap blend scotch rocks (the best this place could offer) with my finger watching the oily swirls of the cheap booze and the water. The tumbler is dirty and heavy, made from some poor cloudy looking glass. The smell of greasy beef coming from the kitchen well within view of the dining area is making me sick. I see [Eric’s Character] enter from the side, he looks shabby as always.”*

I mean, that’s how he opened. Eric played up to it perfectly but if you’re playing these games and people who have a lot of fun and a background of creativity and improv are playing with you, it can quickly put you in performance anxiety mode.

Thusly, I have tips for playing these games. These aren’t improv or story telling tips, they are just tips centered around the game experience itself.

#1: Don’t feel like you have to play to win.

Yes, most of these games have a form of scoring. But their structure is far more oriented towards everyone enjoying the game itself. I’ve “lost” many a game of Fiasco but much like losing at Chess I had a great time playing and learned something. I find I can relax my mind in these games quite a bit by simply not caring if I win.

#2: Role playing skills vary widely among people, don’t force yourself to try and play at the level of others.

This is by far the handiest tip I can give you, because it helps me the most. So when someone at the table absolutely knocks a scene or moment out of the park, don’t let that little voice who says “Well, I shouldn’t even speak at this point that was so good” stop you. I’ve played Fiasco games where the best role player or improv person actually didn’t win. It’s not about who can consistently turn their scenes into Shakespeare.

#3: Embrace the absurd or impossible when it’s presented.

This is by far the hardest tip to do. During a session of Munchausen, Pat was explaining how his rudimentary space ship reached the moon when Mike interjected and introduced a game challenge:

“But sir, what I do not understand is how you managed the trip being dead the entire time!”

Had I gotten that challenge I would have locked up and probably pushed back the challenge (you can do that in Munchausen), but it’s such a good challenge the other players would have forced it back on me. Pat took it in stride and wove a quick aside of what it truly means to be dead. I saw a similar scene in Fiasco where one character started off the scene describing the other character standing over their character’s own dead body, bloody knife in hand. This forced the other player to completely change what they were planning and explain how the situation came to be.

This is a hard piece of advice for these games because situations like this can happen often and force you into total and pure improv even if you already felt good about where you wanted to go. Take a moment, think about how you really would explain such a thing, and go for it.

#4: Have fun. It’s perfectly ok to stumble a bit or fail.

The most frustrating thing about these games is when people want to play them but feel they just aren’t good enough. Chances are if you are playing these games you are playing them with friends or, believe me, soon to be friends. If you take a moment to react to dialogue, or feel a story you are telling just isn’t working out, that’s ok. Sometimes there’s great fun in these games to playing in a more minimalist fashion with story telling and instead play the role of kingmaker by using your challenges or points to decide the winner. The point being if you’re going to sit at the table because this looks like fun, no one wants you to feel like this 20 minutes into it:

I hope those tips help. If these games are new to you and you have no idea what I am talking about try watching the episode of TableTop featuring Fiasco!

Stepto

*I exaggerate only slightly. That’s more or less how Wil opened the scene. It was hysterical.

Guest Blog by Will Hindmarch: Tabletop’s Dragon Age, Part Two!

Will Hindmarch was one of the guys next to the guy who did the thing. No, to the other side. Yeah, that guy. Will used to blog at wordstudio.net.

I imagine Wil would want you to know, as I want you to know, that the new episode of Tabletop—featuring the exciting conclusion of the two-part star-studded Dragon Age adventure—is now live online and you can watch it online because it is live online right now, online, here.

Go and watch and subscribe to the channel and if you like the video click Like, like you do. Okay? Okay.

Guest Blog by Shane Nickerson: bombed

 Shane Nickerson hates the word “selfies.” He inhabits nickerblog.com.

I know I joked about posting compromising photos of Wil, but let’s be honest, there aren’t any. Instead, here’s one of my favorite photos on my phone from Wil’s epic 40th surprise birthday party. A multi layered photo bomb featuring Wil (holding the coolest Dalek stein ever), Chris Mackenzie, Jesse Mackey, Philip “Photobomber” Plait, me and a few others. It was the best surprise party I’ve ever attended. Anne set the bar so high on throwing a surprise party that no one should ever even attempt to throw another one ever for the rest of time forever and ever infinity. That category is now closed out.

I seriously cannot get enough of photobombing. Please everyone keep doing this to pictures ALL OF THE TIMES.

 

Guest Post by Will Hindmarch: Fireworks Outside

Will Hindmarch is a freelance writer and designer who co-produces the occasional off-shoot event with Story Club Chicago. (New South Side shows are coming this spring!) It’s possible he drank the last of the almond milk.

(Now and again, I  plug into Chicago’s rich and varied live lit scene. Watching people tell their stories live—and trying to tell my own—has taught me a lot about story construction, audience dynamics, and how to let people into your work. The following is the first thing I ever read at one of these events. I read it at Dana Norris’s amazing Story Club series in Chicago. Though I’d read in front of audiences before—on stage, in bookshops and auditoriums, on the radio—the experience with the audience there was a delight. If you can find storytelling events in your town, maybe give them a shot as audience or reader.)

(You can also hear me read a variation of this piece on Installment 4 of the Broad Shoulders podcast, for grown-ups.)

In summertime, the sky above my neighborhood gets loud. Explosions live there. They set off car alarms. Sometimes the echoes of the explosions get drowned out by cheers or laughter, sometimes by what sounds like panic. Most of the time, they’re followed by silence. From my desk, I hear the blasts whistle and pop, crackle and boom.

I’m inside, at my computer, making a big deal out of stuff someone wrote on an Internet forum or on Google+ or wherever. I fret and fidget and dwell and obsess. I mistake forum posts for, pardon me, actual writing. I sometimes spend time trying to get the language and nuance of a forum post just right, to reward a deep reading for context and subtext and what I didn’t say in addition to what I did say. I craft tweets to work in series, to counterbalance doldrums with guffaws, to modulate the ups and downs to convey the ongoing arc of the character I portray online. I open the browser like it was a leather case and I fiddle. It’s like busking, except I tweet out in the hopes that others will send tweets back. I tweet for tweets and wonder why my novel’s not finished.

And my modem keeps cutting out, like it’s trying to spare me from something, like it’s trying to hide a newspaper from me at the breakfast table. For a few days, I dreaded what was happening on the Internet without me. What gags and dramas passed by? What glimpses into other people’s lives? Was I falling out of the conversation, falling behind the discourse?

Outside, a firework booms.

Fireworks are both grand and nerve-wracking for me. I like my fingers. I want to keep my fingers. Yet I don’t think too hard about the explosions going off outside my building. They zoom and pop and light up the night for a second—just a second—and then they’re gone. I think of them as atmosphere.

But I’m sitting at my desk, facing the Internet, when another big boom rattles the joint and knocks a thought off a shelf in my head.

Have I been packing powder into cans? Have I been clicking Like buttons as if flicking a lighter? Have I been lighting the fuses on tweets hoping that they’d give off enough light to dazzle? Have I been thinking that the momentary flare of an explosive status update would last in people’s minds? Have I been distracting myself with Internet fireworks until it’s all just smoke in the sky, noise you tune out while you read actual writing of actual substance by actual light?

I don’t ignore the fireworks outside, but neither do I rush to the windows to scan the sky for them. I certainly don’t sit at the window all night just in case somebody sets one off. So why do I do that at the browser window? Who gives a damn about a tweet that’s bright for a fleeting moment, becomes a smoky ghost, and then is gone forever?

The fireworks continue for a couple of days. I disregard them, using them as a mantra for disregarding the Internet, thinking I’m being willful and smart, thinking I’m teaching myself to reduce my dependence on outside validation by blocking out the booms. I’ve found a metaphor that I think has substance and will make me understand. The Internet, I tell myself—and post on Tumblr—is a bunch of fireworks going off outside.

The fireworks keep coming. This one pops and then sizzles. That one plays a high-pitched slide whistle.

Some go off in a sequence of blasts, like somebody working the pump on a shotgun. Boom. Boom. Boom.

One of them rattles like a rain of dry spaghetti poured onto a tile floor for a straight minute.

Another one sounds like a cannon with no ball. I picture a wooden ship rocking in recoil on the street behind our building. Later I’ll learn that this one trades light for sound, that’s it’s all boom no flash—less of a firework and more of an ignited sound shot into the air.

Finally, on the Fourth of July, day of, my wife says “Let’s go.” Let’s go out and walk around and see what’s happening in the sky. So I go.

It’s 98º outside in the dark. There’s fire in the sky and the ground is so hot that Columbus Drive swells and buckles, curling open at its seams. I’m overdressed in full jeans, a sweaty Decemberists ringer-tee, and a loose button-down shirt. The dudes with the high-grade fireworks go half-dressed in just jeans or long denim shorts. One of them rubs his leg when stray embers spray across his shin. The culprit firecracker goes off not a foot from the belly of an SUV, breaking what I took to be an important rule of fireworks shows: Aim up.

Teens shoot bottle rockets that bounce off telephone poles and wires. Kids run laughing through their yards with sparklers in their hands. Their fathers and uncles walk around in tattoos, not shirts. Their mothers and aunts have their sleeves rolled up over their shoulders.

One of the rocket men looks detached, either Zen or exhausted. He doesn’t crouch down when he preps a rocket, he bends over it, like a plumber looking down a pipe. An unlit cigarette dangles from his lips. He presses a smoldering stick of incense to the fuse and waits. I imagine the incense is sandalwood. When the fuse starts sparking, he turns and steps away. I’m not even sure he looks up when the firework goes spinning off, its tail arcing between houses, between wires, and explodes above us, its cinders blossoming and crackling in the sky, in the windshields, in our eyes.

The guys handling the works are all casual, even bored—bored of the blares and the spectacle, maybe, after years of it. I imagine they’re setting the sky on fire just so the kids can have a Fourth of July. Which is when I realize the rocket men are doing something risky and important, keeping us awake for a few hours over a few nights so their kids can see these fireworks from years away. They’re lighting the fuse on a memory that will fondly flare and crackle again and again over twenty, thirty summers, until these kids blow up the sky for their kids.

A rocket’s glare lights up the night for a second—just a second—but lighting the night isn’t what a rocket’s really for. The sky is not what they’re meant to ignite. The fireworks were momentary only because I’d forgotten to go and look at them. So much is like that.

We walk back to our apartment and the sky keeps shuddering past midnight. The night rattles, people laugh and holler, and the street turns red from the spent papers of blasted fireworks, the husks of explosions drifting in the wakes of cars.