WIL WHEATON dot NET: 1.5

Don't you love it when you chase some links down the Internets rabbit hole and discover something hawesome you wouldn't have discovered on your own?

I started at boingboing, where Cory linked to a blog created by Pixar employees who offer advice to Disney on how to improve Disneyland. I love Disneyland (I've been a nerd for MiceAge, Laughing Place, and Yesterland for years) and I really hate what they did to the park in the last decade or so, especially the absolutely horrifying "updating" of Tomorrowland. It was cool to read this post where Merlin Jones says many of the same things I've been saying for years:

The utopian, ultramodern design of 1967's New Tomorrowland, gleaming like a moonscape in stark white, black and cool shades of blue and silver, was unsucessfully updated in 1998 to reflect a bronzed Victorian/Vernian mechanical view of the future. While this was great at Disneyland Paris, where the concept was fully realized, it never gelled here in Anaheim, particularly as a layover to the modernist original.

[. . .]

Tomorrowland's apocalypse is the elephant-in-the-room at Disneyland. It should be fixed immediately - - and before any new expansion or additions. This decay impacts the guest's experience and memory of the park. The imminent return of Submarine Voyage and new Monorail trains will help get the ball rolling. Why not drop the other shoe and revive the entire land at the same time? It would be a marketing coup.

The blog is still relatively young, and I read the entire thing in about thirty well-spent minutes. I hope that the new management at Disneyland will listen up: it's not about selling plush toys or trading pins, guys. It's not about "synergy" with whatever movie is going to be forgotten in two years. Disneyland is about escaping from the cares and troubles of real life, and immersing ourselves in a world of Adventure, Fantasy, and a great big beautiful Tomorrow.

Continuing down the rabbit hole: I looked at some of the links on their blog, and found myself at Don Shank's blog, which has some really amzing artwork he did for The Incredibles (one of my favorite movies of all-time) as well as some ultra cool artwork he's done for himself. I can do a lot of things, but drawing is a skill that has always eluded me. As far back as fifth grade, I remember my dodge ball nemesis Jimmie Just could draw the most amazing monsters and things, while I struggled to do a step-by-step Garfield (which Donald Garwood could draw flawlessly.) I've favorited and bloglines-ed Don's blog, and some day I'll get the courage to ask him if he'll do a drawing for one of my books.

I hope this illustrates how cool the internets is: I never would have seen Don Shank's blog if I didn't read boingboing, and I wouldn't read boingboing if I hadn't met Cory at the Boxing with Barney EFF event several years ago. (Even though I read the 'zine version of boingboing back in the day, I didn't know it was a website until 2002-ish.) It's sort of like following real-life hyperlinks to a website, where you follow traditional hyperlinks long enough to find that place down the Long Tail that seems to speak only to you.

Photo of Space Mountain via Flickr user Sky Traveler
Image of Noobly Squirbulette via Don Shank's blog.

Posted by Wil at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (1)

From time to time, I really enjoy a nice grilled cheese sandwich. Melt a bit of sharp cheddar (Tillamook extra sharp is my favorite, if I can find it here in LA -- there's some embargo which usually prevents anything better than plain old sharp from making it to our stores) and dip it in a spot of French's plain old yellow mustard before each bite, and I am a happy, happy guy. (I just wrote "man," then erased it. Then I wrote "dude" and erased that and tried "man" again. Then, I wrote "Dennis," which made me laugh really hard. Then I settled on "guy."

So. I'm trying my very best not to get some sort of unhappy cold thing which currently involves a whole lot of coughing and this weird heaviness in my chest. It started after the 5K yesterday, and by last night it required the use of some Advil. Today, I've mostly felt like shit, but this afternoon, my body said, "Hey! You there! Old Woman!"

Nah, I'm just kidding. I really want to go into a whole Holy Grail quote-fest, but this entry is already far too silly.

My body said, "Hey, guy, dude, dennis, man, dude, manguy, guymanndude, guy, I want a grilled cheese."

"Whatever you say, Mr. BIllboard," I said.[1]

I grabbed two pieces of the best bread ever, which is called Sheepherder's Bread (it comes from Trader Joe's.) Then I grabbed two slices of Tillamook sharp cheddar and shook my fist Northward at whoever is preventing the extra sharp goodness from making its way to my door. I decided that since I'd be burping cheese the rest of the night (gross!) I may as well burp ham and cheese, so I grabbed some ham out of the meat drawer and put it on the bread and closed the whole thing up. Then, I did something really white trash: instead of butter, I sprayed some cooking spray on the pan . . . and on the bread, too.

I know. Gross. Deal.

So I turned on the burner, and began turning this mass of meat, bread, cheese, and cooking spray into the glory which is a grilled ham and cheese.

Until, uh, I forgot to turn the heat down after a second, and the bread charred a little bit.

No worries, I thought, I'll just flip it over, turn the heat down, and when it's time to eat this bitch, I'll do it after-school-1982-style: scraped with a knife into the sink. Yeeeeaaargghh!

I flipped it, turned down the heat, and walked to the dining room hutch to get a plate. When I came back into the kitchen, there was far too much smoke coming off the skillet to be good.

I learned an important lesson: spraying with cooking spray may be easier than slathering with butter, but it burns at a much lower temperature than butter does, which results in an after-school-1979-style grilled ham and cheeese: scraped with a knife into the sink, with most of the cheese still cold and unmelted except at the edges. And the ham is lukewarm too.

Not even the mustard could save it, and I'm burping ham and cheese for nothing.

[1] After the abomination that was last night's sad attempt to do a tired old parody of My Fair Lady, I hereby announce that The Simpsons has leaped the shark, and harpooned it from orbit. AAaayyy.

Posted by Wil at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (80) | TrackBacks (1)

via Bruce Schneier:

More on Port Security

From Defective Yeti:

Sark Defends Port Deal

Sark today sought to quell the growing controversy over his decision to grant the MCP control of several major ports throughout the region.

"I believe that this arrangement with the Master Control Program should go forward," Sark told reporters aboard Solar Sailer One. He emphasized that security would continued to be handled by Tank and Recognizer programs, with the MCP only be in charge of port operations.

But Dumont, guardian of the I/O towers, voiced skepticism. "I could understand ceding authority over ports 21 and 80," said Dumont. "But port 443? That's supposed to be secure!"

The public's reaction to the plan has also been overwhelmingly negative. "No no no," said a bit upon hearing the news. "No no no no." Others were more blunt. "Sark should be de-rezzed for even proposing this," said Ram, a financial program.

Sark, who has repeatedly denied having ties to the MCP, has insisted that the hand-over go through, and says that he will vigorously resist any effort to block it. But programs such as Yori are equally adamant that the deal be scuttled. "My User," she said, "have we already forgotten the lessons of 1000222846?"

Posted by Wil at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Anne and I ran in the Race for the Cure at the Rose Bowl yesterday. It was a perfect day for a run: mostly cloudy, not too humid, and around 65 when we started. I haven't run very much the last year, thanks to this stupid chronic pain in my right hip (the Miracle Balls are helping a lot. I'll write about that another time) but I've been jogging and walking almost every day for the last couple of weeks, so I was able to run the entire first mile, about half of the second mile, and about 2/3 of the last mile for a time of 35:21. It's not my best 5K time, but considering how little training I've done, I'll take it. Anne jogged the entire way, and she finished right around 38:00. Go Anne!

I don't know for sure, but I think I heard that there were about 17000 people walking and jogging in celebration of and in memory of their loved ones who have fought breast cancer. I remember this from the Avon 3 Day, the Rock N Roll Marathon, and the Race for the Cure last year: there are people of all ages, at all levels of fitness, who are walking, running, and jogging with the names and pictures of people they love pinned to their clothes, and it is impossible to be unaffected by them.

A few WWdN:iX readers sent some small contributions to me, which I've collected and will pass on to the Susan G. Komen foundation later this week. If anyone else wants to be added, you can send whatever you'd like to my paypal address (it's my first name at wilwheaton.net). I'll add it to the total I send on Friday, and I'll post the names of everyone who contributes in a special post at the end of the week.

Did you know that 1 in 7 women in America will be diagnosed with breast cancer sometime in her life? I had no idea it was so common, and I am proud to support the people who help women and their families, as well as the people who are seeking a cure.

Posted by Wil at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)

I finished 23rd (or 21st, depending on who you ask) out of 317 players in the WPT Invitational last night, and I was the last "celebrity" player left standing, so I won $10,000 for the City of Hope in Duarte. It was really weird when I did my exit interviews, and they kept trying to get me to say I was the best celebrity poker player. I told them that I was probably the only player in the entire field who hosts two poker tournaments a week at PokerStars, and I owed a lot of my success and confidence to honing my skills online, and discussing the game with the WPBT.

I'm working on a write-up of the event, but this has been a rather hectic morning and I doubt I'll get a chance to post anything in-depth until later on. Until then, I absolutely have to thank Ryan Kallberg, aka Absinthe, who sent me a Dannenman-esqe strategy sheet that seriously helped me out. In fact, I'm confident that I wouldn't have made it past the first level of the day without Ryan's advice and support. There's a reason he cashed five times in the LA Poker Classic, including a first place finish in event number one. Thanks, Ryan. I owe you several beers.

If you missed it yesterday, and you'd like to retroactively view the action, you can head over to Pauly's blog, and read the live-updates from last night.

(Photo Credit: Dr. Pauly)

Posted by Wil at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (42) | TrackBacks (1)

Well, I survived the first day of the World Poker Tour Invitational, and I've written up a recap of the day's action over at CardSquad:

If Maxim did a poker issue, it would be this tournament: the room is filled with big celebrities, beautiful models, and virtually every poker pro you could imagine. The atmosphere is more like a party than any other tourney I've ever played, and everyone is having a good time.

At the end of day one, there are 98 players left. I am in 68th, with T17500, which is just about half of the average stack of T32000. BJ has a complete list of the players and their stacks over at PokerPages, and of course Pauly has the best live blog on the Internets, which includes a ton of pictures.

I didn't get many cards to play all day, but when I did, I got paid off nicely. I took a couple of pots from Jason Alexander, and I even busted John Juanda when he ran his KQ into my pocket Aces.

Some of you may have read that I busted John. This is true, but it's not as exciting or masterful as you may think. John was crippled when Jason flopped Broadway for the nuts, and John made aces up on the turn. A few hands later, Daniel Negreanu came running over to our table with some guy I didn't recognize, and said to John, "Can you eat ten Saltines in sixty seconds?"

"What?" John said, and everyone else at the table thought.

"Saltine crackers. Can you eat ten of them in sixty seconds?"

John thought for a second while he looked at his cards.

"Yeah, I think I can," he said.

"Okay!" Daniel said, with a little hop. "Juanda is my horse! You get half my action, John."

"Let's do it!" John said, and shoved his last 1000 or so into the pot. It was folded to me, and I figured that the BB and I were calling based strictly on odds and probably checkint it down. That is, until I woke up with pocket aces.

"I have to raise," I said. While I thought about what amount would get the BB to maybe call with something that I could survive, he folded J2o face up.

"Go ahead and play it out," he said. "I'm not playing this."

I flipped up my aces, and John flipped up KQ. I flopped an ace, busted John Juanda, and ended up with about 16K after the whole thing was said and done. John and I shook hands, and the WPT cameras captured the whole thing. Daniel was putting on quite a show for them, calling for cards and stuff, and it was pretty funny, so it stands a good chance of making the broadcast, especially if I make it deep today.

I have a tough table today, with Scott Fischman immediately to my left, but I also know that I essentially have one steal, and after that it's push-or-fold time. If you're interested in tracking my action, Pauly will be live blogging me and the rest of the field at Tao of Poker.

Posted by Wil at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

I was up way too late last night, because I played in a 180 player Sit-n-go tournament at PokerStars, to warm myself up for the World Poker Tour Invitational, which I play in later today at the Commerce Casino.

I finished tenth, one off the final table, when I made a great call with A9 against QT when I flopped a pair of nines and he pushed. Sadly, he paired his queen on the turn and I didn't catch up on the river. I made $43 bucks for my trouble, though, a bunch of my WPBT friends sweated me through the whole thing, and I confirmed that my large-ish field tournament strategy is solid. I'll take my iRiver with me to the tourney, and put together an audio diary for RFB #5.

Anyway, the tourney went super late, and I was wound up when it was done and didn't settle down until well after midnight, so I ended up sleeping much later today than I normally do. I'm in a bit of a panic about hitting my various deadlines since I have two less hours to work with, but I wanted to point you all to this week's Games of our Lives: Shark! Shark!

In the great console wars of the '80s, Mattel's Intellivision was severely handicapped by its weird controllers and faux wood-grain finish. The Atari 2600, though technologically inferior, had a lower price, plus companies like Activision and Imagic cranking out tons of future classics for the system. But in 1982, Intellivision released Shark! Shark!, a game that was so successful, it even caught Mattel's marketing department off guard.

I loved playing Shark! Shark! and I'm going to do lots of Intellivision games for future columns. I wish I'd been able to get over its weird controllers and faux wood-grain finish -- oh, and had the $299 to purchase one -- back in the 1980s, because those Intellivision games rule.

Posted by Wil at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Nolan and I ended up brushing our teeth at the same time last night, and while we stood next to each other in the bathroom, he looked at me in the mirror and said, "I had a really good time this weekend, Wil."

I dumped toothpaste foam all over the place as I said, "I did, too."

Friday

I was supposed to head out to the Infamous Murderer's Row homegame for some crazy poker action, but several events conspired to keep me home, where I played in the Donkeys Always Draw Heads-Up Championship. My results are over at CardSquad.

Saturday

My brother has this hawesome remote controlled car that he got from woot last year. Nolan has this equally hawesome remote controlled car that he got from the remote controlled car place last month. I have this cool barbeque and a freezer filled with meat.

Nolan put those things together and planned on a Saturday barbeque and car race, but the weather babe on KCAL kept telling us it was going to rain, so Jeremy and Nolan rescheduled Saturday's festivites for Monday, which was a school and work holiday.

Anne was out for the day with her friend, so the kids and I spent the day in true guys-home-aone fashion: even though it didn't rain, it was freezing cold here (by Los Angeles standards) so we spent most of the day inside watching movies and playing Pirates! on Xbox. I think we reheated some food, but mostly ate chips and salsa. Hawesome.

Late in the afternoon, while I stood in front of the refrigerator and tried to talk myself into preparing dinner (rather than ordering pizza), the kids walked into the kitchen together.

"Hey, Wil," Ryan said, "can we play D&D?"

"Yeah," Nolan said, "you keep saying that we'll play, but we never do."

"Guys," I said, "you know that I haven't had time to put together an adventure."

Their shoulders slumped.

"But!" I said, "I have an idea that may be even more fun than D&D."

I closed the refrigerator door, and went to the phone to order pizza.

"Go to my Big Trunk of Games, and bring out Munchkin."

I ordered a large pepperoni, and met them at the dining room table. Nolan held the box in his hands.

"So this is just like D&D," I said, "without any of the annoying role playing."

I opened the box, and split the cards into treasure and door piles.

"The thing is," I said, "you can't take this game seriously. At all. Even a little bit. The whole point here is to screw with each other and come up with really lame ways to beat each other up."

"I think I'm going to love this," Ryan said.

I walked them through the rules, and we started our first game. I desperately hoped that they'd grok the game, and wondered if they'd get into the spirit of Munchkin.

A few hands into the game, when I was at about level four or five, I used up a few cards to defeat a level 10 Floating Nose.

"Uh, that's an Ancient Floating Nose Ryan said, tossing down a card an pumping it up to level 16. Okay,  Ryan gets it.

I played a most of my remaining cards, and said, "Okay, I defeat the Floating Nose!"

"Yeah, you sure did," Nolan said, "but guess what?" He drew a card from his hand and slammed it down on the table. "It has a mate! Ohhhhh, sorry about that." Okay, Nolan gets it, too.

"Aw, crap!" I said. I looked through my hand, and pulled out a +2 Buckler of Swashing, worth 400. "Okay, I bribe the Floating Nose's mate and make a masterful escape."

"Oh man!" Nolan said. "I'll get you next time!" He made a fist at me and shook it. I couldn't recall the last time I'd had so much fun with the two of them.

During our second game, I asked Ryan to help me defeat a Pukachu, which Nolan had made Humongous.

"What's in it for me?" He said.

"Well, how about I let you take half the treasure, and I give you this +2 Singing and Dancing Sword?"

"Well, I'll ask heem, but ah don't think he'll be very keen," he said, in a bad French accent, "he's already got one, you see!"

I blinked at him. Did he just quote Holy Grail at me?

He snickered into his hand. "I told heem we already got one!"

"You realize there is only one +2 Singing and Dancing Sword in the game, right?"

"I don't want to talk to you no more!" He said. "I blow my nose at you, and fart in your general direction!"

I glanced at Nolan. He looked back at me like we were speaking a foreign language. Which we were.

"What are you talking about?" He said to Ryan.

"Oh my god, Nolan, it's from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's the funniest movie ever." He turned to me. "You're on your own there, big guy."

I looked at Nolan. "Little help?"

Nolan just laughed, and  I had to discard my entire hand when I rolled a two.

We played several games, messing with each other, helping each other, double-crossing each other, and scarfing down an entire large pizza. Yes, it was just like D&D, but without all the annoying role playing.

We finished the night on the couch, watching the Super G from Torino in HDTV. We may have played some more Pirates! too, before we all went to our respective beds around midnight.

Sunday

The kids organized a football game with their friends, and I stayed home with my dogs and watched the Olympics. I may have played Pirates! for three hours, too, but the record is unclear on that. I can confirm that I jogged a little bit, wrote a little bit, washed some clothes, and told Anne over and over again how much fun I had with the kids on Saturday night.

"It was more than just playing games and goofing off," I told her, "it was that they could have gone to  a friend's house, or watched TV, or played games without me, but they both came to me to do stuff together. After all these years," I said, "I'm really feeling like they're bonding to me."

Monday

Nolan got up early, and built his race course in the front yard. Jeremy has a street car, and Nolan has an off-road car, so Nolan had spent a lot of time during the week beta testing various designs which he felt would balance Jeremy's speed with his own off-road advantage. The rain on Friday night had compacted down a lot of the soft dirt at the edge of the driveway, so Nolan worked on a quick redesign, which he was certain would be perfect for the two of them when Jeremy arrived.

Sadly, when my brother got here, they discovered that their cars have the same frequency, so they settled on time trials instead. Ryan and I threw a football around in the grass while the two of them raced, and though I love my brother, I have to say that he never stood a chance. Nolan is a master of the remote controlled car, and he pwned Jeremy.

A little past noon, I headed out to the barbeque to grill some cheeseburgers. I'll spare you all the details, but I managed to turn the lovely little sirloin patties into carbonized drink coasters. We ended up driving to this place on Hill called Tops, which is an awesome hamburger joint, in the style of Tommy's or In-N-Out.

We took it back home, and made a real mess of ourselves. And by "we" I mean "me," because the whole point of eating a chilicheeseburger is to wear as much of it as possible.

After Jeremy left around 3:30, Ryan made some really cool songs in Garageband (which I'll probably include in a future episode of Radio Free Burrito) while Nolan watched me play Pirates! a little bit more. I was determined to get the Governor of Maricaibo's Daughter to marry me, which I figured would be a slam-dunk since I was such a great dancer, and captured the damn city for the Dutch in the first place. It turned out that she wanted all these presents, and for me to waste her fiance and for me to rescue her when she was kidnapped. Sheesh! Women! Good thing she was beautiful (and I had to marry her as a Pirate Quest) or I think I may have married the Governor of Trinidad's rather plain daughter, who wasn't so high maintenence.

We goofed off until Anne came home from work, and we all had dinner together. They all sat together and watched House, which I'm not that into, while I went up to my office and caught up on all the e-mails and bloglines subscriptions I'd been ignoring while I had the best weekend ever with my kids.

When it was time for bed, Nolan and I ended up brushing our teeth at the same time. While we stood next to each other in the bathroom, he looked at me in the mirror and said, "I had a really good time this weekend, Wil."

I dumped toothpaste foam all over the place as I said, "I did, too."

Posted by Wil at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (38)

Hi, my name is Wil, and I'm a baseball fan.

It all started when I was a little kid, and my dad took me to Dodger Stadium for an afternoon game. I don't remember much about the game itself (I couldn't tell you the opposing team, starting pitchers, or final score), but I can close my eyes and instantly hear the din of the crowd, the ever-present Vin Scully coming out of a thousand hand-held radios, and feel the warm summer sun on my face. I can taste the Dodgerdogs and Cracker Jacks, and hear Nancy B. on the Dodger Stadium organ. Yeah, they say you never forget your first time.

As I got older, just watching the game wasn't enough for me. I needed to take a scorecard to the game, then I needed to take a transistor radio, then I found myself with . . . binoculars.

I knew I had a problem when I couldn't get tickets for opening day, so I bought hot dogs, beer, cracker jacks, peanuts and red vines, grabbed my booklet of score cards, sat in front of my  television, and pretended that I was in Chavez Ravine.

Luckily, I was able to get some help for my addiction, when Kevin "Dodger Boy" Malone came to Los Angeles, and thoroughly fucked up the team on the field and decimated the farm system. The new Dodger ownership, by turning my beloved Dodger Stadium into a a series of billboards with empty rich jerk seats where the foul territory once was have helped me maintain my sobriety.

I have a bit of baseball methadone, though, and it's still on TV. Well, on Playstation and Xbox, actually, and this week, I put on my best Rock Star impression, and turned my addition into cash.

First up, a review of MVP06 NCAA Baseball:

Overpaid, underperforming marquee players, steroid scandals, Scott Boras... Major League Baseball isn't exactly the classic summer pastime that Ken Burns made it out to be. So where do fans go when they long for a simpler time when stadiums were smaller, players didn't wear enough body armor to walk straight from the dugout into a joust, and batters actually hustled to beat out that grounder to short? College, of course. There, kids who have benefited from a lifetime of screaming Little League dads finally have their shot at meeting Scott Boras and becoming an overpaid, underperforming marquee player embroiled in a steroid scandal.

And to dovetail with that review, I made Champion Baseball the subject of this week's Games of our Lives:

In 1983, most arcade denizens were looking to live out lives in space, magic mazes, or other extraordinary realities. Other than lackluster efforts like Extra Bases, America's pastime was curiously absent from arcades until Sega released Champion Baseball, giving Leo Durocher wannabes a chance to manage one of 12 MLB-esque teams to victory in a pixelated little field where the weather was always perfect and the stands were always filled to capacity.

Kids today might not like it because: They choose to play as California, (which is what the Angels were called before they were the Los Angeles Angels of we're-really-in-Orange-County-but-want-Los-Angeles-in-our-name fame), and find that their pitcher is "Bert" instead of Nolan Ryan. Sorry, kids, it's 1983, and licensing for video games is still a decade away.

So, does anyone know when pitchers and catchers report to Spring training? I have, uh, a friend who wants to know.

Posted by Wil at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

"We are no longer the knights who say 'Ni!' We are now the knights who say 'Ecky-ecky-ecky-ecky-pikang-zoop-boing-goodem-zoo-owli-zhiv'!' We must give you a test."

"What is this test, oh Knights of . . . Knights who until recently said 'Ni!'"

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Night before last, Ryan and I got some take out for dinner, and ended up spending about three hours sitting at our dining room table, talking about all sorts of things. Our relationship grew several levels, and while I'm keeping the details of that to myself, I will do something I rarely do: I'll take some credit for being a good parent. I will also do something I quite often do: I'll marvel at how wise Ryan is. Both of the kids have their pod-people days, of course, but over the last several months, those days are fewer and farther between than ever before, and I'm grateful for that.

Late on Wednesday night, while we cleaned up our dinner dishes, Ryan said, "You know, I've wanted to watch Monty Python for a really long time."

"I have Holy Grail in the living room," I said.

"Do you think I'll like it?" He said.

"Well, I'm not sure. It's a blend of absurdity and dry British humor. It's one of those things that you either grok right away, or just don't respond to."

"Will you watch it with me?" He said.

"Sure," I said, "we'll watch it tomorrow after dinner."

And that's what we did. Anne and Nolan went back into our bedroom to watch TV, and Ryan and I fired up Monty Python and the Holy Grail on our home theater.

I was unsure if he'd like it or not, because his generation has been raised on the comedic stylings of films like Anchorman and televison shows like MAD TV -- not exactly the type of humor you'll find in Flying Circus.

I dimmed the lights, and hit play.

"Why are there subtitles?" He said.

"Just watch."

Around the time "a moose bit my sister once . . . " came up on the screen, he was holding his stomach, convulsing in giggles.

"Ah, good. He gets it." I proudly thought.

He loved all the things I loved when I was his age: the French Taunter, The Black Knight, The Castle Anthrax, and the Killer Rabbit.

"I can see why you liked this so much," he said when it was over. "How many times have you seen this?"

"Between eighty and a hundred, I guess," I said.

"Will you watch it with me again?" he said, "I feel like I missed some funny stuff that I'll catch next time."

"Of course," I said.

"Okay, I'm going to bed now," he said.

He walked back to his room singing, "Brave Sir Robin ran away . . . bravely ran away, away . . ."

He laughed to himself as he closed his bedroom door.

Posted by Wil at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBacks (1)

I've been fooling around with Intellivision Lives! on Xbox, and it's lead me down one of the most enjoyable rabbit holes I've ever dug on the Internets. The Intellivision Lives homepage has a metric assload of information about "Intelligent television," including catalogues, screenshots, history, programmers, all that cool stuff. I hit up WikiPedia for some extra information on the console itself (I had no idea that Intellivision was 16-bit all the way back in 1980!) and eventually found myself at The Dot Eaters.

Okay, If you're a 1980s gamer geek, you could easily spend an entire day at this website, which is a comprehensive history of video games, beginning in the years that preceeded Pong, and heading all the way up to the Vectrex/ Atari 7800 years. The whole site is wonderfully put together, with old adverts, screen shots, and pictures of consoles, machines and designers. You know what it feels like? If Ken Burns did a documentary on video games, this material would be the companion book. So if you damn kids today want to research your Xbox's family tree, or understand where your PSP came from, go check it out, but only if you have a lot of free time.

Posted by Wil at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)

I just read the following over at Iggy's:

Somebody was once asked to define blogs. They refused and said:

I don’t care. There is no need to define “blog.” I doubt there ever was such a call to define “newspaper” or “television” or “radio” or “book” — or, for that matter, “telephone” or “instant messenger.” A blog is merely a tool that lets you do anything from change the world to share your shopping list. People will use it however they wish. And it is way too soon in the invention of uses for this tool to limit it with a set definition. That’s why I resist even calling it a medium; it is a means of sharing information and also of interacting: It’s more about conversation than content… so far. I think it is equally tiresome and useless to argue about whether blogs are journalism, for journalism is not limited by the tool or medium or person used in the act. Blogs are whatever they want to be. Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining “blog” is a fool’s errand.

Iggy agrees, and so do I.

Posted by Wil at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (1)

 I didn't go to Jeff Tweedy last night. Because of the blizzard in New York, my friend's friends were stuck in town, and I gave up my ticket so one of her friends, who loves Wilco as much as I do and was stranded here for an extra day, could go to the show. (It helps to draw a little picture with arrows connecting friends, so you can see who is who in that paragraph.)

Instead, I had dinner with them before they headed to the show, and came back home, intent on spending the evening with the family.

When I walked in the door, Nolan and the dogs greeted me in the entryway.

"Hey, Wil!" He said before I even had the door closed, "do you have any plans tonight?"

"I'm just hanging out with you guys," I said, as I hung my keys on the designated key hook (you'll find one in every house, you'll see.)

"Cool! Can we play a game?"

"Sure," I said, "figure something out while I check my e-mail."

Nolan ran off to the back of the house, and dug through the big trunk of games. I opened my laptop and did a little TCBing from the dining room table.

He dug through all sorts of games, as simple as Jenga and as complicated as Illuminati. Finally, we settled on Gold Digger, which is a simple but incredibly entertaining game (especially when you call the mine with all the fool's gold in it 'the booty mine,' and you sing a song that goes, "It's booty time, in the booty mine; it's mighty fine in the booty mine!")

So. We played several games of Gold Digger at the dining room table, while Ryan and Anne watched this total trainwreck of a show called Wife Swap.

Oh. My. God. Okay, seriously. How in the hell did that pile of shit get on television? How many great dramatic shows or brilliant comedies were passed over so that monument to completely disfunctional fuckups could pollute the airwaves? When it was about 2/3 of the way through, I asked Anne if she'd ever seen it before. She said that she hadn't, and would never watch it again, but it was like picking at a scab: once she'd started she couldn't stop. Ugh.

Anyway, Nolan and I did our best to tune out the "reality" television that snuck in from the other room like stink from the dump, and we had an absolute blast while we played.

We played three games, and Nolan ended up beating me by one point, thanks to his genius card-counting skills, and a bonehead play by me which set him ahead by four after the second game.

When we were done, he went to get ready for bed, while I cleaned up the cards and put the game away. Alone in the dining room, I thought about how totally awesome it is that my fourteen year-old kid wants to play games with me, and asks me to do things with him all the time. When I was fourteen the last thing in the world I wanted to do was hang out with my totally lame parents, much less play games with them, because they so totally didn't understand me.

I have prided myself, these last ten years, on never trying to be a friend to Ryan and Nolan. I have always taken my responsibilities as a parent very seriously, and I believe that trying to be your kids' friend is one of the fastest ways to screw them up. My thinking goes: they make friends at school, and they need parents at home. But this never meant that I didn't want to play whiffle ball with them, or introduce them to geeky games, or anything like that. I guess it's a parenting philosophy that one either intuitively groks or doesn't, so I won't spend a lot of time trying to explain it. The point is, even though he's fourteen, (and occasionally has serious pod-person days,) he still wants to hang out with me. We make an effort to do things together, and I always feel like it's important and rewarding to us both. It's more than awesome. It is the hawesome. In fact, it is the reason hawesome was invented.

Posted by Wil at 09:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (43) | TrackBacks (2)

John Scalzi has a couple of must-read posts for aspiring writers that I meant to link to over the weekend:

• Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want To Work at Writing filters the best of On Writing through Strunk & White, and delivers outstanding advice for anyone who writes, whether it's for fun, for profit, or fot for both.

• The John Scalzi Agent FAQ is exactly what it sounds like.

John takes what could be boring and dry HOWTOs, and makes them interesting and informative. Even if you're not an aspiring writer it's still a fascinating behind-the-binding look at two essential parts of the publishing process.

Posted by Wil at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (2)

The kids spent the weekend with their dad, so Anne and I got to hang out together the entire weekend. It was hawesome.

During the day on Friday, I played poker and Anne headed to downtown with our friend Stephanie (who introduced us, and was part of the best man triad in my wedding, with Dave and Darin) to enjoy the insane bargains and donut-throwing crack whores that can only be found in the garment district.

Around four in the afternoon, they called and said they were finished, and wanted me to join them for dinner and drinks in Old Town. I successfully lobbied for a change of venue to Dave and Buster's, and we rolled in just after five. Over the next five hours or so, I had . . . a few . . . Newcastles and Guinnessessessssses, and had an absolute blast playing Dayton Racing (the trick is to completely spin around when you miss a turn, and take out a computer car if you can. You may not win the race, but you look so cool doing it! And don't drink and drive, unless it's in a video game. Duh.) and the coin-shooting game with them. (Yeah, check me out: I have 17000 tickets on my D&B card, baby. One of these days, daddy is going to get a Yacht.)

Remarkably, when Saturday morning rolled around, my body gave me just enough of a headache to remind me that I'm 33, not 23, but apparently the fifteen gallons of water I drank between pints did something to ease what could have been a repeat of an incident that is just called The Hangover of '97.

Anyway, we met some friends for lunch on Saturday afternoon, and stayed in on Saturday night, watching Cops (guilty pleasure) and A River Runs Through It on DVD. You know, I am a huge fan of Robert Redford's work, as an actor and as a director, and I'm an equally big fan of Brad Pitt's work, yet somehow I'd managed to never see this movie.

Wow. Quite an incredible bit of filmmaking there, and one of the very few movies I've watched at home that I regretted not seeing on a big screen.

Yesterday, we both woke up at 8 (WTF?) and spent the entire morning pulling weeds in the front yard, and cleaning up leaves from our neighbor's oak tree that her idiot gardener blows into our planters. Can I just say how fucking sick to death I am of cleaning up other people's messes? She pays the damn gardener to clean up her yard (she's 900 years old) and this jerk takes her money, and makes the clean-up my responsibility. Guess who's getting a cockpunch next time he turns on the leaf blower on her driveway?

After we completely filled our yard cans -- all six of them -- with leaves and weeds and junk, we took the dogs for a nice long walk, then did our weekly grocery shopping. This week is going to be filled with insanely good meals, because we spent a lot of time with the Whole Foods Cookbook and Sunset Magazine, planning out some --

Okay. It's just occurred to me that this is an incredibly boring, dry, and uninteresting factual recounting of the last three days. I mean, I'm writing the goddamn thing, and I'm already bored with it. I chalk it up to a bad night of sleep, incredibly sore muscles from working in the yard all morning and the fact that my heart just isn't in this right now. This is the downside of committing to ten minutes a day: sometimes, it just sucks.

I guess the important thing to take out of this, and the reason I even felt like writing about my weekend in the first place, is that even after ten years together, I look forward to, and totally love spending a weekend hanging out with my wife.

Posted by Wil at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (43)

One of my fellow Los Angeles Poker Bloggers, StudioGlyphic (who won the WPBT Winter Classic last December) is looking for some help for one of his friends, whose girlfriend is very sick with cancer, and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. The odds of finding a donor match are about 1:20,000, but this girl's odds are even longer because she is Fillipino:

Medically, the only option Christine has left is a Bone Marrow Transplant. The survival rate of this procedure is 30-40%. Of those who do survive the procedure itself, only 50% survive the next two years. However, if she does survive those two years, it means the cancer won't come back.

This is a pretty terrible option. However, the non medical option is also horrible. Her doctor says that if she chooses not to have the Bone Marrow Transplant, she'll be dead within a year.

This is hard enough for the average person. There are over 20,000 types of bone marrow, so the average person has a 1 in 20,000 chance of finding a match. These numbers are even worse for Christine. Because she is Filipino, she needs to find a donor of the same ethnic background, and there are hardly any Filipinos on the National Registry.

Because we caught the cancer early, right now is our best chance of having the Bone Marrow Transplant work. Every day we lose her chances of surviving drop.

So please, contact your friends, and ask them to contact their friends. Anyone you know who is Filipino and between the ages of 18 and 61 is a potential donor. The system is nationwide, so it doesn't matter where they live. Signing up on the registry is easy and painless. All it requires is a simple blood test. Some hospitals charge a small fee for this blood test, however if your friends contact me directly, I can put them in touch with one of the hundreds of local organizations that will do the blood test for free. They can use this email address:

jacobkrueger@gmail.com

You can reassure your friends that signing up for the registry does not require donating any bone marrow. If it turns out they are a match, they will be contacted, and can make the decision at that point about becoming a donor.

There are lots of misconceptions about donating bone marrow. (I know I was terrified of doing it before I learned how minor the procedure actually is.) The procedure is simple and safe. You will be anesthetized the whole time, so you will not feel anything. When the procedure is over, you may have some soreness in the area for a few days and you may feel a little tired. That's it. The bone marrow you donate is replenished within 3-4 weeks. And again, you will only undergo this procedure if your blood sample shows that you are a match and you decide to donate, in which case the slight soreness you'll be feeling will be saving someone's life.

All medical expenses for the donor will be covered by Christine's insurance. And as I mentioned before, if they contact me directly, I can put them in touch with an organization near them that will put them on the National Registry for free and also make sure they are listed as a Sponsor for Christine.

Even if you aren't a match yourself, and even if you can't personally help Christine, please link to this post, and spread the word around. I know there are about a million of you who read this lame blog every month, and if just half of you make some effort to spread the word around, we may be able to help save Christine's life.

Posted by Wil at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBacks (3)

Unless I crash into something that makes me think, "OMG I HAVE TO BLOG THIS RIGHT NOW KTHXBYELOLORZ," I find that it's much easier for me to write in the very early morning, or very late at night. Sitting down here in the middle of the day is a little weird, and I don't quite know where I'm going to go. (I guess this thought process is not exactly the sort of thing one writes down when attempting to engage an audience, huh?)

Ah! I know where I'll start!

To continue this week's, uh, theme: why am I pushing myself to write for at least ten minutes a day?

Because I've done so much writing lately that isn't really story-telling, those muscles have atrophied quite a bit. Because somedays there just isn't anything obviously worth writing about, and on those days I have to dig a little deeper for something that's at least moderately interesting to me. Because it's easier for me to write when I fell happy than when I feel sad, and blogging every single day has the bonus side effect of making me seek out and focus on happier things. I find that I appreciate things much more, and that I'm more observant of the things around me, because I'm always on the look out for something cool to write about.

A friend of mine who is a hell of a writer once told me that being a writer can make otherwise emotional and sensitive people become detached and distant, because we're so busy observing things, we forget to experience them. After this week, I totally grok that. On the one hand, it's important to always have my senses as open as possible, but at the same time, I can't lose the forest for the trees.

Okay, navel-gazing over.

Last night, my friend Kevin came over to have dinner with us. Kevin and I have been really good friends for over a decade, but as we've grown older and our various commitments have grown larger, we have had less and less time to hang out. In fact, before last night, I hadn't seen Kevin in over three years, which meant I hadn't met his girlfriend (we love her, by the way), who he decided to bring with him at just about the last minute, turning our "let's get together with Kevin" dinner into a "oh my god we're having a new person into the house quick get the vaccuum and I'll clean the bathroom" experience.

It was totally worth it. Not only did we get a nice clean house in forty-five minutes, we had a really great time, and it was quite amusing to watch my two teenaged boys deal with the presense of a very pretty 20-something girl in their house.

After dinner, I played in the WWdN Thursday night game at PokerStars (where I busted out early because I made the mistake of getting my money in as a dominating favorite) while Anne and the kids watched CSI. The kids went to sleep around ten, and Anne stayed to watch Without A Trace, so I grabbed The Dark Tower, which I've been close to finishing for several days now, and settled into the couch to finish it.

You know, one of my strongest criticisms of Stephen King is that he just can't end a story, and the closer I got to the final page of this one, the more knotted my stomach became. I've invested at least fifteen years in this series, and I was really worried that I was going to feel the way I felt when I finished It. I won't get into specifics, because publishing spoilers totally fucking sucks, but I can honestly say that I was not disappointed with the way The Dark Tower finally ended, and I appreciated Stephen King's honesty about it in the afterword very much. It's far from perfect, especially what would be the last two reels if it was a movie, but it was still a satisfying finish for me, and I felt like all the characters I'd grown to care so much about were given the appropriate resolutions.

How's that for muddled?

Speakng of caring about characters, Nolan has been absolutely glued to this book called Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson. As a writer, parent, and book-lover, I can tell you that there are few things as wonderful as seeing him turn off the TV and walk away from Xbox so he can read this book. Last night, he came up to me with a pale face, and red eyes and said, in a quivering voice, "My book just got really sad. A boy I cared a lot about died."

He could have been telling me about the loss of a friend. I felt like I should hug him.

"I totally understand," I said, and pointed to my copy of The Dark Tower, "One of my favorite characters in this book died about two hundred pages ago, and I felt like I'd lost a friend."

"It's weird how a book can make you feel that way," he said.

"I think it's really wonderful that you are sensitive and intelligent enough to let a writer affect you like that, Nolan," I said, "that makes me feel really good as a writer and as a parent."

"You should totally read this book, Wil," he said, "and Speak, too. You'd really like them."

"Okay," I said, "your recommendation means a lot to me. I'll put them into my pile."

He ran into his room, and came out with Speak. He handed it to me, and I saw what a beautiful forest I was in. I marveled at every single tree.

Posted by Wil at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (3)

I run these weekly tourneys at PokerStars, at 5:30 PST on Tuesday and 8:30 PST on Thursday.

These games are filled with a really cool mix of players from hee-haw (me) to HAWESOME (GRob) and everywhere in between (Pauly, CJ, PokerGeek, Heather), but there aren't that many players from the other side of the pond, because the game just starts too damn late for them.

Tomorrow, I've cleared a couple of hours in the middle of my morning, so I can host a game specifically designed to be Eurofriendly. In fact, it's called WWdN: Eurofriendly Friday.

If you're interested in playing, head over to PokerStars, and from the lobby go to tourneys -> private, and look for tourney number 19345283. The buy-in is $10 +1, and the game starts at 1:30 PM EST (5:30 PM GMT) which should make it "friendly" for the bulk of European players.

Posted by Wil at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (2)

Last week, I spoke with Michael and Evo for their Slice of Sci-Fi podcast. Our interview is around twenty minutes or so, I guess, and is included in Episode #43.

I dig their podcast, and I especially dig how they've built the website for Slice of Sci-Fi. I think I'm going to steal take a lot of inspiration from their design when I make Radio Free Burrito a real, once-a-week, I'm-serious-about-this-after-all podcast.

Posted by Wil at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This morning, my ten-minutes-a-day thing is kind of a challenge, because there's really nothing to write about. Honestly. Nothing has happened since yesterday that I can make even remotely interesting.

I thought about joking, thusly:

So long, suckers!

I sat down to check e-mail this morning, and discovered that I hit the trifecta: I won a lottery in New Zealand, another one in Nigeria, and got an offer to become the legal guardian for some Irish billionaire who'll give me a whole bunch of money just for showing up.

If anyone needs me, I'll be under a pile of money.

But that's cheap and too easy, and I wasn't really willing to go all the way with it and tell you about how I'm going to have the biggest penis in the universe that's built for maximum loving, daring . . .  so I'll see if I can dig anything else interesting out of my skull.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Nope. Nothing.

OH! I know. I'm quite proud of this week's Games of our Lives, which is a game called Astro Fighter. I wish you'd all go over to the AV Club to read it. Thankyouverymuch.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day writing next week's Games of our Lives, as well as a review of a new game (I probably shouldn't discuss specifics right now) but it was really fun to pick a classic arcade game that dovetailed with the current console game I reviewed.

When I was done with that, I did a short training walk with Anne and the dogs. We're nowhere near running, yet, but it still feels great to get out and walk every single day.

OH! This is cool: Anne, the kids, and I are going to run in the 10th Annual Race For the Cure at the Rosebowl on February 26th. We did it last year, and it was Hawesome. We're not going to do any fundraising for this race, but we will be fundraising for the RnR Marathon later this year. I am planning some REALLY cool fundraising events, and I've even convinced Anne to write in a special blog that we're building just for that.

Of course, if any of you reading this are interested in contributing $5 or $10 for the Race for the Cure, I bet we could raise a few hundred dollars for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. If you're interested, send me an e-mail or mention it in comments, and we'll figure out a way to take your donation. In fact, now that I think about it, it would be Hawesome (and probably pretty easy) to raise at least $500 in tiny donations, if the stats about people who read my blog are true.

Okay, so this entry isn't entirely lame, and at least I've stayed on target for writing something every morning. That's helping wake up the part of my creative monkey that needs to be jumping around my head to finish the book.

Posted by Wil at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)

E-mail from a WWdN:iX reader:

Wil,

I wanted to touch base with you about your books "Just A Geek" and "Dancing Barefoot"

Who knew they would be so hard to find? Granted I don't live in the biggest town I still thought Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million would have them in stock.

Turns out they both file your works under "Star Trek", oops. I guess they haven't read your blog.

Barnes & Noble won't even stock it, because "Star Trek bios don't sell," according to one of their buyers.

Sigh.

Posted by Wil at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (49)

A late afternoon mug of Yerba Mate tea, and the sugar from a glass (okay, two glasses) of chianti with dinner resulted in my favorite middle of the night activity: the 2:30 AM wide-awake-racing-brain.

I sat up in bed, reached over to my nightstand, and picked up my glass of water. In the soft glow of my alarm clock, I saw my kitty, Biko, stir in the laundry basket of clothes I've been meaning to put away for three days.

I gulped down about half the glass, and when I lay back down into bed, Biko jumped up, walked across the comforter, and snuggled into my chest, purring so loudly it was like a little massage on my mighty pectoral muscles.

I rubbed his little face for a few minutes, and tried to convince my brain to stop singing Sade and reciting Lewis Black jokes so I could fall back asleep. In that weird fuge state that often comes in the middle of the night, I'm not sure when I drifted back to sleep, but I woke again at 4:25 AM, my brain blasting "Slave Song," joined now by my stomach which really wanted to get rid of the sweet Italian sausage I had with dinner.

I sat back up, drained the remaining half of my water, and lay down onto my back. I let my brain sing at me while I tried to convince my stomach that it should do a lot of digesting, instead of throwing up.

"Throwing up is exactly what they'd expect," I reasoned, "if you throw up, they win."

I have no idea who "they" were, but it was the middle of the night, so it made perfect sense to me.

While my stomach formulated a response, which was something like, "Blarrghhh . . . . squarrrrrllooogeee . . .  fweeeennnn . . ." Biko jumped back up onto the bed, and walked back over to me. He was still purring, but this time he snuggled down into the comforter next to my shoulder, and pressed his little face against my cheek, just like his brother Sketch used to do.

I turned my attention away from my bitchy stomach, tuned out my singing brain, and focused on Biko's little purrbox. I drifted quickly back to sleep, and woke up to Riley sniffing at my face, while Ferris sat at the foot of my bed, head cocked to one side while she waited for me to get out of bed.

My brain was silent, and though I had a little bit of a red wine headache, my stomach just felt hungry. I reached out and scratched Riley's little monster face. Ferris thumped her tail against my dresser as I got out of bed and pulled on my robe. Biko was back in the laundry basket, happily sleeping on his back, as I walked out to the kitchen.

"Is there coffee?" I asked Anne. "I'm dead 'til I gets me coffee."

Posted by Wil at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

After dinner tonight, Nolan ran off to IM one of his friends, and left Anne, Ryan, and me in the dining room.

"Dude, you totally need to get me a shirt like that," Ryan said. He pointed to my "Choose your weapon" shirt from Jinx, that features six polyhedral dice.

"Like this?" I said. "What qualifies you for a shirt like this?"

"Dude!" He said, "I totally have a bag filled with those dice in my bedroom!"

"And you use them to actually play . . . when?"

"Well, I'd use them all the time, but someone never made a campaign for me!"

A little bit of me died inside.

"So, you see, I'm still qualified." He leaned back in his chair, and took a long, satisfied drink from his water glass.

"Dude, I've been playing D&D longer than you've been . . . well . . . anything." I said. "I think I'm a better judge of who is qualified and who is not."

We were playing nerd chicken and I could sense Ryan searching for his next play.

"Besides," I said, "It's nerdtopia in there -- " I pointed toward my office, "so if you really wanted to 'choose your weapon,' you could easily take care of business."

Now, here's the thing: I can't remember what Ryan said next, but it was a great burn. It was an awesome, classic, soundtrack-stopping burn.

I came back the only way I could: empty parental threats.

"I am such a huge geek," I said. "I will embarrass you so hardcore, you won't know what hit you." I snorted, for effect.

"Oh yeah? What are you going to do to embarrass me?" He said.

"Anne," I said, "You should sleep in tomorrow. I'll take the kids to school, and I'll pick them up, too."

"Mom!" Nolan called from the living room, "I think I'm going to ride my bike to school tomorrow, okay?"

Ryan gulped. I went to the kitchen. As soon as I was around the corner, and he couldn't see me, I smiled to myself. From the dining room, I head Ryan chuckle.

This is how we live. This is why I do, well, everything.

Posted by Wil at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

Remember when I asked you all to go vote for my friend Dawn to be the MySpace Girl of the Week on Attack of the Show? Well, thanks to the Dieboldeqsue voting of WWdN readers and Farkers, she won! Her segment is on Attack of the Show today, and I understand it involves a Poison Ivy costume and a trampoline. I'm not sure if they asked her "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" but I suspect the average ATOS viewer is more interested girls than crossing the bridge of death, which is why I don't watch it.

The show airs at 7PM Eastern and Pacific.

Now fetch me a shrubbery!

Posted by Wil at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I'm hellabusy this morning, so ten minutes is a limit for me today, rather than a goal.

I enjoyed the Superbowl this year, even if it was one of the worst halftime shows in history, and all but two of the commercials completely sucked. (The ones that I liked were the spinning refrigerator in the wall, which absolutely killed me, and the streaking sheep, which I found  moderately amusing. I can sum up the rest of the commecrials thusly: I wanted to pack an Escalade with Diet Pepsi, and crash it into Burger King.)

As far as the game goes, I thought there were some questionable calls, one terrible call, and a weird implosion by Seattle in the 4th. (I told Ryan that the holding penalty that took away what would have been 1st and goal was the turning point for them.) I didn't really have a team in the game, though, and just wanted to be entertained by some good football, so I was mostly happy, especially because I got to watch the game with the kids. This was the first year in my thirty-three on the planet that I've regularly watched, and cared about football. I blame it entirely on HDTV, which for some reason made a game I used to find tedious and stupid exciting and compelling.

Yesterday, Anne and I did our first official training walk for the marathon: four miles. Today, we'll do another four, and we should start jogging in ten days or so. I'm really excited for the marathon this year, and we'll have our own special TK421 fundraising/training/happyfuntimes blog up real soon.

Last night, it was unseasonably warm, and we were able to put a fire in the outdoor fireplace Anne and the kids got me for Festivus, put some teriyaki chicken on the barbeque, and enjoy how cool it was that we could stand out on our patio in short-sleeves and eat dinner in February.

I'm really happy that so many of you enjoyed my post about Disneyland, and shared some of your own Disney experiences with me via e-mail or comments. It was one of those things, like writing Dancing Barefoot, where I got to relive the experience of being there as I recreated it, and that is my absolute favorite kind of work.

And speaking of work, I gotta go.

Posted by Wil at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (1)

As many of you know, I love my Chuck Taylors. They're comfy, simple, and allow me to maintain just a little bit of my former punk rock attitude as I take meetings with my kids' teachers.

Recently, though, I've developed a bit of a conflict about my Chucks, seeing as how they are no longer made in the USA, and are, in fact, outsourced to one of the beautiful Nike sweatshops happy factories that are such an important part of the Chinese economy (especially among 10 year olds young go-getters.)

I just now came across a company which sells shoes that look almost exactly like Chuck Taylors, but are made by union workers in completely non-sweatshop conditions. And the best part? They cost just about the same as Chucks.

The company is called No Sweat Apparel. They sell their low tops for $40  and their high tops for $42. Shipping to Los Angeles cost me $6, so when all is said and done, I figure that I'm spending about $3 more than if I went to Shoe City or something, but I have the convenience of shopping in my underpants while drinking a Stone Pale Ale, easy shipping to my office, and the warm, fuzzy, happytown knowledge that no people were exploited in the production of my future footwear.

For the cynical among you: I'm not getting anything from No Sweat. I just think this is a really cool company, doing a really cool thing, and  any group of people who are supporting the concept of Trade, Not Aid are doing good stuff, as far as I am concerned. There's a bunch of news stories about the company at their website, and you can learn more about truly fair trade (not the bullshit Republican kind) at Wikipedia.

My nifty new shoes should arrive in a few weeks. I'll follow up and let you all know if they're as swell as I hope they are.

(discovered via boingboing.)

Posted by Wil at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (34) | TrackBacks (2)

One of Anne's clients, who works for Disney, hooked us up with passes to Disneyland, so we took the kids on Saturday. Holy shit - did you know that it costs over $80 for an adult ticket now? That's insane.

So we started out in California Adventure: Tower of Terror (awesome), California Screamin' (awesome, but made me sick this time) and Soarin' over California (probably my favorite ride in DCA). We then made our way across the entry plaza to Disneyland.

"Where do you guys want to go first?" Anne said.

"Space Mountain!" Ryan said.

"Yeah! Space Mountain!" Nolan said.

"Back to the tortilla factory in DCA!" I said.

Believe it or not, there were actually crickets chirping near the turnstiles. Weird.

Disneyland wasn't crowded at all, even though it was a Saturday, and we quickly made it over to Tomorrowland, where we discovered that, even at 11 in the morning, there was already a 90 minute wait for Space Mountain. We picked up Fast Passes, and decided to head over to Indiana Jones.

You know what would be so cool? If Disney redesigned Tomorrowland to look and feel very similar to the way it did in 1955. Bring back the people movers, and move the rockets back up to the top of the people mover loading platform. Get rid of that stupid Innoventions atrocity, and put Inner Space back in its place. The idea is that our world is dangerous and uncertain, and looks to stay that way for a long time, so why not give people a place where they can enjoy the safety of 1950s nostalgia, and a "future" world that's ultra modern? I bet it'd be a big success.

On the way to Indiana Jones, Ryan suggested that we go to Haunted Mansion, then Pirates, the Indiana Jones, so we could work our way back through what little crowd there was.

"The thing is," I said, "Pirates is closed for four months."

"Why?" Anne said.

"Because they have to totally screw it up, and make it tie in with the movies."

Anne gasped a little bit, as we passed the Tiki Room.

"Yeah," I said, "I read about it at blogging.la and Miceage. They're replacing the big old pirate ship with the Black Pearl, and they're putting animatronics of actors from the movie into the ride. They closed it down yesterday."

We rounded the corner into the heart of Adventureland. 

"That's sad," Anne said, "but there are a lot of people who will see the movie before they've ever been on the ride, so maybe that makes sense to Disney."

"But the ride has been fine for over thirty years," I said, "even if they made those stupid PC changes in the 90s. I don't know if the movies have that sort of trans-generational appeal."

We walked into a huge crowd of people around Indiana Jones.

"Did you just say 'trans-generational appeal?" She said.

Before I could answer, I saw something I didn't expect: a huge line of people, going into Pirates of the Caribbean!

I squealed, hopped, and pointed.

"Look! Pirates! Open! Wheee!"

I grabbed Anne's hand, and pulled her with me, as I ran like a