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Winter Break won't officially end until tomorrow . . . but I have a Dungeon deadline, plus I'm >this< close to signing on for a totally badass weekly writing gig, and those things will need my attention before I can sit here and make pithy WWdN contributions . . . but it's just too weird to have nothing here for so long, so how about a tiny little update right now?

Winter Break was spent with family and friends, and there was much rejoicing. We had some wonderful experiences this season that will form much of the foundation for a short (fictional) story I'm writing called "Little Christmas," which I will pitch to some magazines this fall. If nobody picks it up, I'll publish it myself in November or thereabouts. (It's a little-known fact that books published in the month of thereabouts always win awards, so I'm leaning in that direction.)

My iBook died again yesterday. This time it wasn't the logic board, though. In an exciting new twist, the harddrive decided to start making a chirping noise, then a beeping noise, then a "I think I'm going to crap out now, Wil. Enjoy another trip to the Apple Store and seven days without me" noise.

"I'm taking my iBook up to the Apple Store," I told Anne as I headed out the door into the rain.

"Again?" was all I heard before a cone of silence poured down between us.

It's about a three minute drive to Old Town, but today it took almost twenty minutes . . . because it's the last day of a holiday weekend, and there were about 65000 tourists swarming all over the place.

I don't know why I didn't realize that it would be a nightmare up there, but as Napoleon once said, "Come on, dude, lighten up! What could possibly go wrong?"

Fifteen minutes of driving around the block later (which isn't as bad as it sounds . . . I am on Disc 3 of "America, The Audiobook" and it RULES. Jon Stewarts rant about the media on track 2, alone, is worth double the price of admission.) I realized my folly, and drove back home. I'll try again tomorrow morning.

In happier news, we picked up Season Five of the Simpsons today, and I forsee several hours of hilarity ensuing just as soon as I hit submit.

Okay, hilarity will ensue right . . . about . . . now.

No. Wait. I need to spell check this thing.

Okay.

Now.

A few readers have told me that WWdN is nominated for Best Big Name Blog in the 2004 Best of the Blogs awards, so I headed over there to see who else was nominated, and to perhaps correct the assertion that I'm a Big Name anything.

Holy crap, am I in some good company. Namely, Tony Pierce and Dooce.

So look, here's the thing: If you're going to go there and vote, you'd better vote for Tony. Right now he only has 13 votes, and that's because I can only vote once a day. I'm serious. This isn't some sort of false humility -- it's a fact. Tony Pierce writes one of the best (and more often than not THE best) blogs on the Internets. Go read his site if you doubt me. Tony is fearless, funny, and talented. And pick up his book How To Blog while you're there.

I love that I can look out my office window, and watch a steady curtain of rain fall gently into my backyard. It looks like the powdered milk they used in Singin' In The Rain.

Occasionally, it knocks a leaf off this old maple tree that is in one corner of my yard.

The opposite corner is flooding.

There are about a dozen finches hopping around on my chinese elm tree. The rain doesn't seem to bother them.

It's chilly out, but I opened the window a bit so I can listen to them sing.

The always hilarious BBspot hits it out of the park again. Today, they give us The Top Eleven Geek Break Up Lines.

My personal favorite is number eleven:

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? F
Relationship failed.

Good news, everyone!

When the press release went out about MacWorld, a lot of WWdN readers asked if there would be a reading or signing for people who were unable to afford admission to the conference.

Well, it turns out that we have a mole at Borders in Union Square. She made an introduction for me, and I am super excited to announce that I've been invited to their store for a reading and signing when I'm in town!

It looks like the Borders website hasn't been updated yet, but I'm scheduled for Friday January 14th at 7pm.

Oh! I just got a Really Big Idea™, that could be a whole bunch of Supercool: I have a short list of stories from Just A Geek that I choose from when I perform at bookstores. Based on comments and e-mail, I know there are a lot of WWdN readers in NorCal. How about, instead of me choosing what to read, I let you guys pick what you'd like to hear? If you're planning to come out on the 14th, say so in the comments, and leave a brief description, or chapter number, or page number, or whatever, and the majority will rule.

I was two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday, and in Oregon filming Stand By Me, when Live Aid happened in 1985, and I was a little too young (and focused on making the movie) to fully appreciate it. When I was old enough to understand what I'd missed, I never thought I'd get a chance to experience the show.

Never that is, until the good kids at Rhino released Live Aid on DVD, which Anne gave me for Christmas. For the past two days, I've turned off Fred and let the DVD run while I work on various writing projects. I'd heard a little bit of it over the Thanksgiving weekend, when XM played it on the 80s channel, so I expected to enjoy it, but I'm a little surprised at just how much it rocks. The performances really hold up, and one of them even made an impression on Ryan and Nolan.

After listening to Paul Young perform one of my all-time favorite songs, (Come Back And Stay), I moved to the couch to watch U2 perform. In order to fully recreate the concert experience, I cranked up the Onkyo to a million, and bounced a beach ball around my living room.

Ryan walked into the room, and sat down on the couch next to me. He and Nolan have grown up with U2 the way I grew up with The Beatles, so he recognized the song right away.

"Is that U2?" He said.

I told him that it was, and while Bono continued to sing, I gave him a brief history of Live Aid.

". . . so Bob Geldof decided to —"

"Wait. I'm sorry to interrupt, but what's up with Bono's boots?" He pointed to the screen, and for the first time I noticed that Bono was wearing leather pants, tucked into knee-high suede boots. They had an impressive heel.

"Uhh . . ." I began.

"And is that . . . oh my god. It is." The color drained from his face. "He has a mullet."

Before I could reply, Nolan walked into the room.

"Hey!" He said. "What are you watching?"

"It's Live Aid," I said. "They were raising money for —"

"Woah! That is a sweet mullet!" Nolan pointed at the screen and erupted into peals of laughter.

I paused the DVD, and turned to face them.

"Listen, you guys. It was 1985."

They looked back at me, blankly.

"Oh, nice." It's yet another 'I've-just-become-my-parents' moment, just replace 'it was the sixties' with 'it was the eighties.'"

"The mullet was the official haircut of rock and roll," I said.

Before either of them could point out how ludicrous this statement was, even if it was true, I tried to explain: "This concert was a really important event! Not only are these all incredible bands at the height of their popularity, but you can see what happened when a bunch of people came together to make a difference in the . . . in the world . . " I realized that they weren't listening to me. Ryan's face was turning red and Nolan was choking back massive giggles.

"What?" I said.

Ryan's face cracked, and he howled with laughter as he pointed at the TV. I looked up, and saw that I'd paused the movie on a shot of Bono, his head thrown back, eyes clamped shut, microphone held high . . . and mullet in full-effect.

"I'm sorry, Wil." Ryan said. "What were you saying?"

I laughed in spite of myself. Bono did look pretty ridiculous. "I'll tell you another time. For now, just try to enjoy the music."

"Oh, we can do that," Nolan said, and made a big production of putting his hands over his eyes.

"Hey, let's see how well your rock and roll heroes hold up in twenty years," I said.

"As long as they don't have mullets, I think we'll be fine," Ryan said.

I pressed play and we watched — well, I watched and they listened, to the rest of Sunday Bloody Sunday, followed by Bad.

"See?" I said. "That was during Unforgettable Fire, just before Joshua Tree. Those two songs they just played are the reason you have heard U2 since you were too little to know what music was."

As the final strains of Bad echoed over an aerial shot of Wembley Stadium, they cut to footage of Phil Collins about to board the Concorde.

"Who's that?" Nolan asked.

"That's Phil Collins. He just finished performing in London, and now he's going to fly to Philly to perform there too," I said. "It was pretty cool."

"Phil Collins?!" Ryan said, "The wussy Tarzan guy?!"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Well . . . yeah."

"He was cool?"

"Phil Collins was . . . " I cleared my throat. "He was an international superstar."

Ryan looked at me, genuinely confused. "Why?"

I took a deep breath and gave the only answer I could.

"It . . . it was 1985." I said, suddenly not that uncomfortable to take another step toward becoming my parents, and silently grateful that the kids hadn't been in the room when I was rocking out to Adam Ant.

After a three week Winter break, the ACME players (including yours truly) retun to the stage tonight.

That's right, people! We've turned the ACME Love Machine back on, and tonight we're cranking it up to eleven.

Now let's be honest, we live in Los Angeles, and when that weird watery stuff falls from the sky, we like to stay home and enjoy WEATHER WATCH!!! on the local news, but I've seen tonight's WEATHER WATCH!!!, and the truth is . . . it kind of sucks. It's pretty much a rehash of last week's WEATHER WATCH!!! with a few new shots of that flooding street out in Devore. Your time would be much better spent enjoying the Love Machine. Trust me. I'm totally impartial on this one, folks.

Of course, if you have a Love Machine of your very own, you probably wait months for a night like this so you can stay home and crank it up. If you're one of those people, enjoy the Cinemax. We all hope to see you at the show next week.

WHAT: ACME Love Machine
WHERE: Acme Comedy Theatre
135 N. La Brea
Hollywood, CA 90036
(323) 525-0202
WHEN: Tonight, 8 pm.

A few weeks ago, I did an interview with NPR station WSKG in New York. We talked about the road that lead to WWdN and Just A Geek, and I was able to read a little bit from "The Trade." I'm quite honored to be part of the program, because it is entirely about authors and their books. It was supercool to do an interview where I was Wil Wheaton the Author, rather than Wil Wheaton Who Used To Be Blah Blah Blah and He Wrote A Book.

Though we had some pretty significant technical issues at the top of the program which rattled me quite a bit, and I was in the early stages of a nasty cold, I'm very happy with the end result.

I meant to link to the interview when I did it, but I spent the first three weeks of December with that cold, and then I got swallowed up by The Holidays™. Follow this link if you'd like to listen. The interview runs just under an hour.

For the past week or so, I've been furiously working on my MacWorld presentation, trying to find exactly what I want to say, and just the right way to say it. It's been a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. This is going to be a very different type of experience than what people are used to at keynotes. I'm not going to talk about the future of anything, or pontificate about how Apple is doing this or not doing that . . . I'm strictly there to entertain the audience. I'm a little nervous about how they'll respond, so I've thrown out everything and started over too many times to count. The entire time, I've watched the clock get closer and closer to 9:30 Thursday morning.

When I least expected it (around seven this morning as I packed lunches for Ryan and Nolan), the whole thing sprung into my head fully formed. What a relief! This is my favorite way to write: I can see the entire thing in my mind, like I'm looking down on a huge map. Because I know how the general landscape looks, I can zoom in on some areas and discover really interesting and unexpected details, then pull back to see the whole thing. The entire time, I know where I'm headed, so I'm not afraid to take some side trips as I transcribe what my brain's come up with when I wasn't paying attention.

I'm not going to publish all my remarks ahead of time like I usually do, because I think there will be a webcast, and I don't want to give it all away . . . but it's been so much fun to develop, I don't want to wait two whole days to share it with an audience, so I'm going to preview a little bit of it right now:

I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a Macintosh computer. It happened in the summer of 1984 -- a long time ago; even longer if you measure according to Moore's Law.

I was in a bookstore in the San Fernando Valley, looking for a magazine (I think it was called "Byte.") My friend Brian told me that this magazine was filled with playable arcade games — all I had to do was copy the programs, written in BASIC, to my TI 99/4a.

"Wil, we're late for dinner. We have to leave now." It was my father. He held my brother's hand, and my six year-old sister sat atop his shoulders.

I looked at the rack in front of me: the magazine I had hoped to find wasn't there, and now I would have to leave empty-handed. I tried to stall him.

"Hey, did you see this, dad?" I took a book off the shelf. The picture on the cover showed that someone had written "hello" in cursive on a computer's built-in monitor.

He took it from me and looked at it.

"That should keep him occupied for a minute, and I can find this maga—"

"Jeremy," he said to my kid brother, "take this to mommy and tell her we're ready to leave."

Before I could protest, my brother ran the book across the store, my mother paid for it, and we were on our way to The Jolly Roger restaurant to celebrate my being cast in a movie called "The Body."

In 1984, my family had almost achieved escape velocity from our white trash roots, but we were still poor. It was a big deal to go out to dinner, it was a big deal to buy a book, and I didn't want to tell my dad that he'd paid for something I didn't want. So I masked my disappointment and began to read.

"This is made by Apple? Oh, man! Kevin has that Apple ][, and it's totally lame! It doesn't play Pac Man like the arcade, and you can't even hook it up to the television!"

To give this thought some context: in 1984 I thought that Thriller was "awesome" and letting my boxers hang out the bottom of my corduroy OP shorts was "rad," so perhaps I wasn't the best judge of what was and wasn't lame.

It took less than fifteen minutes to drive from the bookstore to the restaurant, and I read that book the entire way. By the time we got out of the car, I had completely forgotten about my silly TI 99/4a. This "Macintosh" computer, I had decided, was the future.

"Dad! This is so cool!" I said as we got out of the car. "You use this thing called a 'mouse' to tell the computer what to do!"

My dad nodded politely while he helped my mom get my sister out of her car seat.

"Oh really?"

"Yeah! And it's got this puzzle game built right into it, and you can use this mouse thing to draw pictures, and it's got something called 'MacWrite' that I could use to write stories, and there's a clock, and it makes a happy face when you turn it on, and . . ."

I took the book with me into the restaurant, and by the end of the meal I had convinced myself that I had to own one of these machines.

"Mom," I said, in my most grown-up voice, as we finished dinner, "a lot of other kids at school have computers, and they use them for homework, and to learn math and stuff."

"What about your Texas Instruments thing?" She said.

"Pish!" I said, "That thing? All that can do is play games! And it doesn't have a mouse. I hear that all the new computers will have mouses. They're very important."

My parents looked at each other.

"We'll think about it," they said, in unison.

"Oh? Good. Because, you know, it has a built-in monitor, so I wouldn't have to hook it up to the television when you guys want to watch TV."

"Thank you for thinking of us," my father said, dryly.

I beamed. This was going very well.

"And it's portable, too! See?" I opened the book, and showed them a picture of the handle that was built into the top. "I could get a carrying case, and take it with me to Aunt Val's when we go to visit. I could totally entertain myself, and I wouldn't bother you guys at all."

"That's very thoughtful," my mother said.

"Have you thought about selling cars?" my father asked.

"No. Why?"

After I tell the story of how I got my first Mac, and give a quick synopsis of my history from then until now:

"In 1988, I attended my first MacWorld, and after about an hour here, I realized that, even though I'd upgraded it to four megabytes of RAM, my MacPlus was woefully out of date. I was flush with cash from my weekly gig on Star Trek, so I went nuts: I bought a Macintosh IIx, a 30MB SCSI hard drive, a 2400 baud modem, and eight 1MB SIMMS. When I booted it the first time, I experienced a rush of excitement that I hadn't felt since I first completed that cool built-in puzzle back in 1984: two hundred and fifty-six fabulous, vibrant, living colors splashed across my screen."

Then, I plan to segue into Just A Geek. I'll talk a bit about how I wrote my entire final draft on my iBook, and then I have this thing that I hope Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak will maybe hear someday: "Steve and Woz? Thank you for being such a big part of my life. Thank you for showing people like me that if you dream it, you can do it, even — especially — when nobody else believes in you."

I'll read two stories that I hope have a little bit of a universal appeal: The Trade, and Fireworks. If everything goes well, I'll come in at just under an hour, and everyone will enjoy themselves.

And remember, if you're in the area and are not coming to MacWorld, you can still come out to Borders in Union Square on Friday night, where I'll be reading from and signing Just A Geek. I start at 7pm.

Okay, first off: I've got a massive MacWorld / Borders / Trip to SF and back report to write up. It's coming, and I hope it will be worth the wait. Until I can get it done, there are some wonderful links in the comments for my previous entry, from other bloggers who came to MacWorld, Borders, or both.

My short version? It was awesome. It was everything I'd hoped it would be, and more than I could have ever expected. The drive up was great, and the drive home (without Anne, because she went over to Tahoe to spend the weekend with her friend) was lonely, but enjoyable because I listened to Jay Mohr's book Gasping for Airtime most of the way. It's a interesting story . . . but you have to hear him read it. It's the difference between listening to Dark Side of the Moon and reading the sheet music.

Okay. Enough about the trip report that's coming. Here's the thing that made me fire up this nifty browser called "Epiphany," and write these words: I totally, completely, utterly b0rked my Debian machine before I left for MacWorld. I don't know what I did, exactly, but somehow it completely lost my mouse. modprobe psmouse and modprobe mousedev did nothing, and I couldn't find anything in a single online forum that would help me make my goddamn mouse work again. I tried dpkg-reconfigure gpm. I tried mouseconfig I tried cursing in lots of different languages, and making Faustian bargains with gods I'm pretty sure I just made up . . . I even taught myself how to recompile a linux kernel (the debian way and the other way) . . . but no dice.

Finally, I gave up, and decided to just start over with a clean partition and a new install. So I did mv /home/wil /mnt/hda1/backedup/, did a diff to make sure I didn't miss anything, and burned myself a copy of the latest Debian (Sarge) Network installer.

Oh. My. God. Becky. It was so easy.

Okay. Seriously. Back in the old days of 1999, everyone told me how easy it was to set Red Hat up, but how much cooler Debian was if you could just get past the nightmare install . . . well, this was about as easy an install of anything I've ever done. It was literally a handful of commands, and then a bunch of waiting while it grabbed a ton of packages and set them up.

I'm now sitting here with a honest-to-goodness Debian system, running kernel 2.6.8!

Check it out:

wil@bender:~$ uname -a
Linux bender 2.6.8-1-386 #1 Thu Nov 11 12:18:43 EST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux

Okay, this is probably not as exciting to anyone else as it is to me . . . but the fact that I got this working, and took all the HAM radio and isdn stuff out of the kernel, and still got it to work . . . it's a pretty big deal to me.

I'm logged into Gnome right now,( which I usually don't use -- I'm a KDE or Enlightenment kind of guy -- but it looks beautiful) and I've got apt installing Firefox and Thunderbird in a terminal, and then I've got to restore some of the backups, but I'm very proud of myself. Until I totally screw something else up, I feel like I can put on my propeller hat and give it a mighty spin. *snort*

I've got an audition tomorrow morning, then I'm working on the audio book of Just A Geek in the afternoon. Check back around Friday for the full SF trip report, and some other cool news.

Oh, man! And if this moment needed to get any better . . . They Might Be Giants just started singing Ana Ng on the radio behind me.

Backstage West has a review of ACME Love Machine!

Acme Love Machine
Reviewed By Jenelle Riley
BACKSTAGE WEST
JAN. 19, 2005

Acme Love Machine
presented by and at the Acme Comedy Theatre, 135 N. La Brea Ave., L.A. Fri. 8 pm through Jan. 28, Sat. 8 pm through Feb. 26. $15. (323) 525-0202.

When watching sketch comedy, most of us inevitably finds ourselves hoping the percentages work in our favor. In other words, there's probably bound to be a few groaners, but we hope there will be more good than bad. In the Acme Comedy Theatre's latest offering, it's a pleasant surprise to say the good far outweighs the bad. There's a tendency for a few strong segments to run a little too long, and we can count on standard sketch fallbacks--funny voices, some easy bathroom humor--but overall this production packs triple the laughs of a typical episode of Saturday Night Live in roughly the same amount of time.

Director Travis Oates confidently helms a flawless ensemble of eight talented and distinctive actors in sketches that run the gamut of humor both high- and low-brow. It's hard to miss with a great physical bit about three football fans (Kevin Small, Chris MacKenzie, and Greg Benson) shaking their groove with goofy choreography to hit songs, or the sight of a underwear inspector (MacKenzie) personally testing his product, but these bits are balanced with several moments of clever wordplay. In "Your Witness," an undeservedly confident attorney (Matt Knudsen) is prone to spewing hilarious misinformation. And in the witty "Word Up," the stellar Wil Wheaton plays a slow-witted suitor who manages to seduce a crisp and efficient accountant (Kimberly Lewis) with sweet talk provided by a thesaurus. Still, it's the nonverbal "Untitled Office Sketch #9"--in which the most mundane activities turn into a beautifully staged musical number--that achieves a sublime absurdity.

It's also worth mentioning the trio of female actors (Lewis, Kim Evey, and Jodi Miller) who prove that women don't have to be relegated to the background in comedy. Although the cast is uniformly excellent, standouts include MacKenzie and Small, who can garner huge laughs with the simplest delivery or expression. Lighting and sound by Mike Cernicky are outstanding, with a production value far higher than any sketch show I've seen. And musical director Jonathan Green and drummer Christian Malmin keep the energy high with live musical accompaniment.

I hope this is the most clever of clever pranks . . . because it's much, much better that way.

"The JL421 Badonkadonk is a completely unique, extremely rare land vehicle and battle tank.

Standard drive is an air-cooled, 6hp Tecumseh gasoline (unleaded only) engine, with centrifugal clutch, giving the Donk a top speed of 40 mph. This vehicle is not licensed for use on public roads, and is intended as a recreational vehicle only.

1 person recommended Star Wars A New Hope 12" Figure: Obi-Wan Kenobi Tatooine Encounter instead of JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank"

Be sure to read the user reviews, for maximum enjoyment.

Can't get enough of my sweet, sweet voice? You're in luck!

(Hrm. That's supposed to be mildly amusing . . . but it seems more creepy, doesn't it? Oh well)

Anyway, I did an interview with The Dragon Page and it's up on their website. You can podcast it, tune in online and listen to the stream, or just grab the damn mp3 file yourself and listen in xmms, or winamp, or whatever audio player you like.

Or not. I'm not the boss of you.

And while you're there, you should take a second and read the review of Just A Geek by Evo Terra. The most important bit, I think, which I would appreciate everyone who reads my blog spreading around is:

Uber-geek Trek fans looking for the dirty nasties which happened behind-the-scenes of the show are going to be disappointed. There are no tales of late night coke-parties which ended with Dr. Crusher and Councilor Troy bumping uglies, no recitations of the time Picard stuck a flattened tribble on his head and ran around the set saying "I’M WILLAM FUCKING SHATNER!"

But what you will find is always honest, often heart wrenching and other times hilarious accounts of his life during, after and orbiting around TNG. It’s not been a rosy ride for Wil, but rather than bottle it up inside or turn to the ever-so-tempting lure of sweet, sweet heroin, he talked about it.

Embiggened by the success I had installing Debian Sarge on my desktop machine, I upgraded to Movable Type 3.14 from 2.661 today.

So far, the upgrade has been mostly painless, but I have encountered a few headaches, which I may go into another time. I'm glad that I exported my entire blog before I started, that's for sure.

It looks like the comments have vanished all the way back until December, and I don't know if they're even working right now, but I've been here for hours, and now it's time for dinner. I kinda hate computers right now.

If anyone notices anything strange, post a comment (if you can) or drop me an e-mail, if you don't mind.

Update: Comments don't work. They time out for me, and I hear via e-mail from a lot of WWdN readers that they are encountering various errors that sound MT-Blacklist related.

I'd love to sit here for another few hours and figure it out, but I'm tired, my back is sore, and I have an audition tomorrow. I'll try to fix it later this week if I get some time.

Other than this incredibly annoying problem (which is probably my fault, like I forgot to set some stupid file to 755 or something) and a massive slowdown (which is probably server-related) the upgrade looks great. I especially like how 3.14 handles plugins.

So if you're having problems commenting, I know. No need to e-mail about it. However, if you're an MT user, and you've had any problems like this upgrading, I'd love to hear how you got around it.

Oh, if you're looking for actual weblog content, I recorded an audioblog on Friday called "Wanting . . . ".

Update the second: Comments are making it through, because MT-Blacklist (2.04b) is e-mailing them to me, which is weird because I didn't configure it to force moderation of new comments . . . but even when I approve them, they're still not showing up. Maybe it's a template thing.

Tell you what, I've learned a whole lot about MT because of this little snag . . . sort of how I learned a whole lot about recompiling a kernel when my machine puked recently.

So to review — things breaking: bad. Learning stuff while you fix things: good.

Update the last: I converted my database from Berkeley db to MySQL, and everything seems to be magically working. Cool!

The conversion was 100% painless. I edited two lines of mt.cfg (with vim, of course) and ran a perl script to do the conversion. I have about sixteen billion entries and comments and stuff, though, so it took about three hours to convert . . . but I just sat here at my desk and watched the update scroll by while I worked on my audition.

By the way, this pilot I'm reading for today is the best pilot I've seen in ages. Maybe five years or so (I use five, six, and nine years as benchmarks, because that's how long I've been married, lived in this house, and known Anne, respectively).

Update the last, for reals this time: Got back from the audition to find a blog positively overflowing with spam. Tried to login to MTBL, discovered that since I switched to the new database, MTBL thinks I have an invalid username. D'oh! Until I get that worked out, I've turned on a MT feature which will only allow comments from people who are registered Typekey users. It's free, it's not that big a hassle, and it could be a week or more before I finally work out all these issues . . . so if you'd like to post a comment, get yourself an account, just like my typekey profile whydontcha.

They say that when you have an audition, you have to walk in there like you don't give a shit. You walk in there like you don't give a shit, and you walk out with the part, because if you don't give a shit, that's when they want you.

But you've read the script, and it is good. So good, in fact, you fall in love with it. You fall madly, passionately, crazy in love with the script, and you'll do anything to be one of the people chosen to bring the script to life.

You think about it all the time. You wake up in the middle of the night, imagining what it would be like to spend ten weeks on location or four seasons on the set. You get lost on your way to the post office, because you're wondering who your competition is. You can't eat, you can't sleep, you can't focus on anything else . . . you are in love, after all.

In the days before your audition, you do everything you can to be ready. First, you get to know your character. If you're lucky, he's a guy you know. Maybe he's even you. Not the current you, usually, but still You. A younger you, a more passionate you, a more idealistic you; the You who you were before you fell in love with too many scripts and had your heart broken too many times to count . . . the you who was incapable of walking in there like you didn't give a shit, because it felt so good to be in love. Then you learn your lines. You spend hours in your house or your apartment reading them out loud, scaring your dogs, worrying your neighbors, annoying your roommates who are sick to death of hearing about The Script. They've heard it all before, and you've made an unspoken pact among you: you don't tell them how crushed you are when you don't get the job, and they pretend not to notice how you wear the same clothes and drink heavily for five days after you get The Call.

The day of the audition finally comes. Your first date. Your big date. Your only date. You spend too much time putting yourself together. You carefully choose your clothes and style your hair a minimum of three different times. Maybe you spray on some cologne, because it makes you feel attractive. Maybe.

You drive to the studio, and hope your voice doesn't break when you tell the guard that you're going to Bungalow 15. You park, walk across the lot, and your palms sweat when you sign in. You wait for what seems like an eternity, surrounded by actors who are younger, taller, better looking than you. Actors who clearly don't give a shit because they don't have to. You know that they don't love The Script like you do, haven't put in the time that you have . . . but it doesn't matter. You've been here before and you'll be here again, long after they've left for location.

Your heart throbs in your chest when they call your name. You smile, take a deep breath, and stand up.

And then you walk into the room, and you're supposed to act like you don't give a shit.

Yeah. Right.

I've run into a database error with MT-Blacklist, and until I get it worked out, I have to manually approve or deny comments, and it's taking up a lot of time. It turns out that spammers totally ::heart:: my blog. It also means that if I'm AFK for an extended time, non-typekey users won't get their comments added to the site for a loooong time.

So until I get this issue worked out, I'm changing my blog configuration to only accept comments from TypeKey users.

Now, listen, privacy is a big deal with me. Here's what they say about it:

What about my privacy?

We're committed to providing a service that respects user privacy. Therefore, we will not publish information that you have not chosen to make public, nor will we share your information without your explicit permission. We're not in the business of selling email addresses, and we give users the option to choose whether they'd like to send their email address to the sites which they are commenting on.

I'm pretty comfortable using Typekey, for what that's worth. I don't mind being held accountable for my comments, either, and I believe that the vast majority of WWdN readers feel the same way. Actually, we'll see how it goes with Typekey enabled. Maybe it will bring back some of the cool interaction that we used to have here a few years ago.

There's more information about the service in the Extended TypeKey FAQ, and readers are always encouraged to privately share their thoughts with me via e-mail.

I am joining a growing list of Americans who oppose the confirmation, of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.

As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.

In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales's endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."

[. . .]

With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

While it is vital that we defeat our enemies, we must not become them in the process. As a nation, we must stand united against Albert Gonzales and everything he represents. Torture is not an American value.

I just got off the phone with my manager.

The casting people loved me, and thought I gave a great reading, but . . . (wait for it) I'm not going to get a chance to bring The Script to life. The producers want to go in a different direction, and some of my essences (too smart for my own good, Passionate with a capital "P") worked against me. The tiny silver lining is that the people I read for know what I look like and what I'm bring to a role now. That's good, because there will be other shows . . . sigh.

I still haven't heard anything about the amazing movie, and it's getting harder by the day to maintain hope.

I'm really sad right now.

Do you ever have something really exciting that you want to share with the world, but you're not allowed to talk about it? It drives you nuts that you have to keep it to yourself, so you quietly mention it to Janet, but Chrissy overhears you from the kitchen, and thinks you're dying, so she tells Larry, and pretty soon you're attending your own wake down at the Regal Beagle. You think this could be a chance to get Mr. Roper to give you a break on the rent, and maybe get a little something-something from that Kaylnn girl who passes out skates at the roller rink, but Mrs. Roper finds out the truth, and somehow you're learning an embarassing lesson in front of all your friends, rather than getting lucky on the waterbed in your cousin's van conversion.

In other words, I've been sitting on this big news for weeks, and I just got the green light to announce it. So pay attention, Chrissy:

I am writing a weekly column for The Onion A/V Club! Yeah, that's right! The Onion A/V Club! Wooo!

Check out the spiffy announcement:

The Onion A.V. Club also extends a hearty welcome to a new contributor who comes to us from Hollywood via the Internet. Each week, actor/author/gaming enthusiast/icon/renaissance man Wil Wheaton, who maintains an online presence at wilwheaton.net, will take a look back to games past with his Games Of Our Lives column, reaching beyond Pac-Man and Donkey Kong to find the dusty arcade games and worn-out cartridges that paved the way for the games of today.

(When I read that, I told my editor, "I love it. Can I just tell you how happy I am that it's not all 'Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek (tiny font: writes some stuff too.)'?"

He said, "Well, the original draft referred to you as 'the spunky lad who saved the universe' and then went on to say 'Star Trek, Star Trek, Star Trek.' Then I had second thoughts.")

Can you freakin' believe that I get to write for them?! Holy shit! Writing this column is as much fun as doing Love Machine at ACME each week. I get a chance to be funny, add something pretty prestigious to my resume, and I finally have an excuse for playing so many classic video games. I mean, how many people do you know who could deduct an X-arcade Controller? :)

I did an interview with The Onion A/V Club in 2002. If you haven't seen it, you can read it here.

My first Games of Our Lives appears tomorrow. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

I feel like I'm on a roller coaster right now . . .

My cat Sketch will be eleven years old in April. I've had him since he was five weeks old.

Friday night, I came home from ACME, and he was acting strangely: he was in the hallway (not on my bed where he usually is) breathing very heavily and rapidly. There was something clearly wrong with him.

Saturday morning, I took him to the vet, and she took some Xrays. They showed that his lungs were about 1/2 full of fluid, and none of the vets could figure out why. They think it may be something with his heart.

He spent the weekend at this 24 hour emergency vet, where they gave him some oxygen and some other medication, to help clear out his lungs. They took more Xrays yesterday evening, and there wasn't any significant change.

This afternoon, the vet told me that he hasn't responded to any of the medication, so tomorrow morning I'm taking him to get a cardiac ultrasound. The vet told me and Anne that he should be okay to stay with us overnight, so Anne brought him home, where he can sleep on our bed with us, and be close to his brother, Biko.

I just got back from ACME (the running joke is that I secretly live under the stage there now) and Sketch is in my bedroom with Anne.He's really struggling. He hasn't gotten worse (if he does, I will take him right back to the emergency vet), but he's not getting better, either. If the ultrasound shows that he's got some heart thing that I can't remember the name of right now, he'll get on medication right away, and it should clear out his lungs and put him back together.

But if it's inconclusive, or shows something worse, I'm not going to let him suffer because I can't say goodbye. I hope I don't have to make that decision, and I've been appealing to The Universe all day to give Sketch a natural 20 on his saving throw. Please?

He's such a tough little guy, I never thought that he would get sick like this, and so suddenly. Biko is the runt of their litter, and Felix has been in and out of the vet so many times, they're naming a boat after him . . . but I love Sketch so much, I don't want him to go. It would mean a lot to me if anyone who reads this would take a moment and send Sketch some kitty mojo, especially to his heart and lungs.

You can call him "Tubby," or "Fatty," or "Fat Boy," or "Chunk," too, because he responds to all those names. He's my tubby little guy.

Thanks.