Just a Geek

by Wil Wheaton

  YES! How cool was that?

  So after that, I’m off to New York to do a cool show called Lifegame, which will be on TNN in a month or so. It’s an improv show where they asked me to tell stories about my life and then they have improvisers act out scenes based on my so-called life, in different styles. Like the time my parents cornered me in the bathroom and gave me “The Talk” . . . when I was 20, done as a reggae musical. Very funny. And I got to play the Devil in a scene. YES!

  While I was there, I got a tour of MTV networks, met Carson Daly (!) and was given a CHIA MISTER T! That’s right. Let me tell you, everything after that was just Jibba Jabba.

  So after NYC, I came home to LA, my wife picked me up at the airport and I got on a train to San Diego for the Comic-Con, where I signed autographs and promoted TNG on TNN (I like that. It sounds like NBA on NBC) and this lame website. Honestly, it was mostly lame. I didn’t sell many pictures, so I barely even covered my costs for the trip and there weren’t as many people there as last year. HOWEVER! There were a few cool things, which I will relate now:

  I met Oscar Gonzalez. He’s an artist for Bongo Comics, who make “The Simpsons” comic. He drew, for me, a picture of me signing autographs for THE COMIC BOOK GUY! It’s totally cool. I’ll scan it at my brother’s house and post it this week sometime. Two other cool guys, Jason Ho and Mike Rote, also Bongo artists, did cool Simpson’s caricatures of Ryan and Nolan (my stepkids). Thank you Bongo guys!

  I also met Spike, of Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, (the first guys to recognize Mike Judge’s brilliance in the pre-Beavis days), and did a little sound bite for their 25th anniversary special, so Spike gave me an autographed DVD of their greatest sick and twisted hits. Cool!

  My buddies at TROMA, home of the Toxic Avenger and distributor of Fag Hag also gave me some DVDs, including Terror Firmer. Very cool.

  Finally, I traded an autographed picture of yours truly for a copy of “College Girls Gone Wild.” You know the one you see on TV? Trading things is cool.

  That’s it, kiddies. I’m back in LA now and getting ready for my Big Birthday Bash next weekend. I’m turning 29 on the 29th! YES!

  Your punching bag,

  Littlest Giant

  I am so embarrassed when I read that and compare it to the way I write now. It’s a horrible mangling of the English language, I change from present to past tense and back again, and use an annoying passive voice throughout the whole thing. Oh, and all the ComicCon stuff is bullshit. I may have been at the keyboard, but Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn’t A Mistake was definitely in the driver’s seat, so I projected my idealized self: I was a devil-may-care Gatsby, funny and irreverent, and living the celebrity dream.

  ComiCon was nothing like I had expected, and the truth is, it was a horrible experience. I went there expecting to sell hundreds of autographed pictures to hundreds of adoring fans, but hardly anyone was interested. I sat in a cavernous and undecorated area far away from the main convention floor, surrounded by people who were definitely on the downside of their careers. The hundreds of adoring fans I’d hoped to see did show up . . . when people like Kevin Smith and the cast of the short-lived Witchblade took up temporary residence at tables near mine. When they left, so did the fans, who glanced dismissively at me, if they noticed me at all. I was humiliated and depressed.“This is what my life has come to,” I thought, "I am a has-been.” Prove To Everyone made sure I left those details out, and encouraged me to play up the success of the TCA event and the subsequent trip to New York for Lifegame. So that’s what I did. (By the way, it was pretty cool to take a pee next to Billy Idol. If you get a chance to pee next to a rock star, make sure you do it.)

  Though the dishonesty bothered me, Prove To Everyone spoke with a silver tongue, and I convinced myself that if I projected a successful image, it would somehow become a reality. It was a lot of work to fictionalize my own life, though, so I wrote about things that were safe and mundane. I posted links to other websites and talked about my experiences building my self-described “incredibly lame website.” I issued pathetic pleas for e-mail and comments, but I avoided talking about myself or revealing anything too personal. That all changed when my dad came home from a surfing trip in Indonesia. He was so sick I thought he was going to die.

  27 JULY, 2001

  Surfer Rosa

  I just got back from the hospital. My dad is really sick and the scary thing is nobody knows what the hell is wrong with him.

  I can talk to someone, in real time, who is on the other side of the world.

  Spacecraft are taking pictures of Mars.

  My Palm Pilot has more memory than my first desktop computer.

  But not one doctor can tell me what the %^$#@ is wrong with my dad.

  I’ve been on the verge of tears all day.

  Sorry, kids. I know you’ve come to expect a certain irreverence from your Sweet Uncle Willie, but I am scared shitless.

  I love my dad. I’ve never known my dad as much as I wanted to, because he works all the time and I work all the time. Then there’s the whole “You don’t understand me!” thing, which basically adds up to a bunch of wasted years from 14 to about 22. **Pay attention, young ‘uns: your parents are not as bad as you think and someday they’ll be gone and you’ll regret every single moment you wasted being mad at them because they wouldn’t let you go to your fuck-up friend’s house because they knew you’d get drunk there.**

  I remember, when I was a little kid, like 7 or 8, my great-grandfather died. I was in the kitchen of my house and my dad was sitting on this high-chair stool thing we have and he started to cry. Like really a lot. He cried hard. I was freaked. I didn’t know what to do. At all. So I ran into the laundry room and I said, “Mom. Dad needs you.” My mom came into the kitchen and she did what I just didn’t know how to do at 7 or 8: she hugged my dad and let him cry on her. I can see the two of them, my dad in his ultra-groovy 1979 perm and my mom in her pantsuit, holding each other in the beautifully wallpapered kitchen in Sunland.

  Later, I asked my dad why he was crying so hard. I had hardly known my great-grandfather and he was cool and all, but I just figured that if I didn’t know him that well, nobody else did, either. (Yes, the world did revolve around me, apparently.) My dad told me that he was thinking about his own dad, my grandfather and how my grandfather was so sad, because his own father had just died. My dad then told me that he realized then, for the first time in his life, that someday his dad would die. Even at 7 years old that really struck me and I think about it all the time.

  A number of years ago, when I was working on Mr. Stitch in France I awoke with a start one night. I thought “something horrible has just happened” and I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I called my friend Dave and told him what had happened and asked if there had been an earthquake, or something. He told me I was just being lame (I am) and that everything was fine. So I went back to sleep. Later that night, as I was going out the door of my apartment to dinner, my phone rang. It was my mom. She made some small talk, then told me that my dad wanted to talk to me. He got on the phone and told me that his dad, my grandfather, had suffered a massive heart attack and died. I didn’t know what to say. I asked him how he was doing and he choked back a sob and said, “sometimes okay and sometimes not.” I had no comfort to offer my dad and that really bothered me.

  Months later, we had a funeral and scattered my grandfather’s ashes out to sea. It was really cool and I cried really hard, but not for myself. I cried for my dad, remembering what he had told me 15 years earlier.

  So tonight, I spent as long as I could at the hospital, talking with my dad, reading my lame HTML book and watching Blind Date and Letterman. I kept taking his temperature, which started out at 103 today (scary, since my dad’s 53), then went back to normal and started a slow climb back up to 100.6 when I left.

  I don’t know what to do now. I know I won’t sleep well, not knowing what’s happening with my dad. The doctor will be cal
ling in someone from the CDC in the morning if my dad’s not better, since he was just in Indonesia on a surfing trip and they think he may have brought something back.

  But it’s the not knowing that is the worst.

  That and replaying in my head every wasted moment with my dad. Every time I wouldn’t play catch with him, or go surfing, or acted embarrassed when he told a lame joke around some girl I was trying to impress.

  Go call your mom. She’s worrying about you.

  And for god’s sakes, play catch with your dad.

  For the longest 48 hours of my life, I was terrified that I was going to lose my father. After two days, the doctor from the CDC determined that my dad had contracted a blood infection when he stubbed his toe on a boat anchor during his trip. If he hadn’t been in the United States when he’d gotten sick, he would have died. Thankfully, he managed to fight off the infection and made a full recovery.

  I still don’t know why I chose to write about my dad, and my very real and unprotected feelings, but when I was face to face with my father’s mortality, Prove To Everyone was silenced and releasing my fears and doubts was liberating.

  The few people who were reading my website appreciated the raw honesty. In the days after I wrote that entry, I got several e-mails and comments from people who shared similar experiences with their own fathers, and while I read them, I thought that it might be okay to talk about some of my real feelings.

  “As long as you don’t let on about how much you’re struggling in your career,” Prove To Everyone said.

  “Oh, you’re still here,” I said. “I thought you’d found something else to do.”

  “I think I’ll be sticking around for quite some time,” he said. “With The Voice of Self Doubt to keep us company.”

  He was right. After that brief moment of honesty, Prove To Everyone regained control over everything I wrote and I was back to attention whoring and posting links to other websites. About two weeks later, Prove To Everyone and I sort of collaborated on a weblog post. He got to talk about Auditions, and I got to talk about my family.

  02 AUGUST, 2001

  Beach-o-rama

  Tuesday was my stepson’s 12th birthday. It was also the first time in 3 months that I’d had an audition. (Apparently, a bunch of jackass producers, working for vertically integrated, multinational media conglomerates were afraid that the Writer’s Guild and the Screen Actor’s Guild may want to stop work, so that we can all make a living wage, so they didn’t “green light” any new projects. Go figure.)

  Things have been tough the past few months. Money has been tight and I’ve been super bored. If I didn’t have my kick-ass sketch comedy show at ACME to look forward to, I probably would have ended up on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room.

  Just kidding. Jeeze, lighten up.

  The first call is at 11:15 a.m., to be a regular on this WB show called The Young Person’s Guide To Being A Rockstar. It’s to play a gay drummer. (Why does everyone think I’m gay?). The second call is at 4:45 p.m., for a movie called Waiting . . . that is just about the funniest ^%$#ing script I’ve read in over a year.

  I’m completely excited, since I have way too much free time right now and I would like to work. (You know, actors are the only people who are unhappy when they’re not working. Unlike most “normal” people, who can’t wait for a break from work . . .) The only problem was, Tuesday was Ryan’s birthday and I was really torn about what to do. I need to work and I really like both of these projects, but I really wanted to be part of Ryan’s 12th birthday party, which was a trip to the beach with some of his friends.

  I went over and over it and made the tough choice to take the auditions and see Ryan that evening.

  Well, on my way to the first audition, I got a call from my agent and she told me that the afternoon session was canceled! So I went from my first audition (where I kicked ass, thank you very much . . . I’m told that I’m “in the mix” which is Hollywood-speak for “we’re considering you”) to the beach. I must have been quite the vision in my jeans, Sketchers and black socks, walking down the sand.

  Long story short, it was awesome. We skim-boarded, played football and wiffleball and barbecued hot dogs in the parking lot, which was majorly against the beach parking lot rules (yes! breakin’ the law! breakin’ the law!).

  When we got back, I had e-mail waiting for me from my friend Roger Avary. Roger is one of the coolest people on earth and a fucking rad writer and director.

  Roger won an Academy Award for writing Pulp Fiction and is pretty much responsible for everything good that Tarantino has ever taken credit for. Roger also wrote and directed my absolute favorite movie that I’ve ever worked on, Mr. Stitch. To get back to my point: I e-mailed Roger, because he’s doing a new movie and I asked him if I could be in it, because he is the most fun director EVER and always makes good movies. He e-mails me back and tells me, “of course,” and sends me the script (which ^%$@*ing ROCKS, by the way) and we’re hooking up this week.

  So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

  That’s all for right now, kids. I’m going back to work on the new, improved, easy-to-remember website!

  How about some e-mail for your uncle willy?

  How about that pathetic plea for attention? Yeah, that’s nice. Prove To Everyone said I was bored, which was partially true, but he stopped me before I could continue with, “I’m scared, and I’m horribly depressed. I am a husband and stepfather who can’t provide for his family. I `used to be’ an actor when I was a kid.”

  The total absence of acting work was hard on my ego, but it was also a terrible financial strain on my family. My wife and I often borrowed money from my parents, and she was working over 40 hours a week just so we could have food on our table. I felt guilty that I didn’t go with them to the beach for Ryan’s birthday, and I told myself that if we hadn’t been getting calls from bill collectors every day, I would have blown the auditions off to spend the entire day with him. But the insistent voice of the collectors was nothing compared to the Voice of Self Doubt and my good friend Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn’t A Mistake. They were the real reason I went on the auditions, which didn’t result in any work, because the part I was “in the mix” for went to someone who was—wait for it—edgy, and the other was already cast when I got there.

  When I e-mailed Roger Avary and I told him that I wanted to work with him again, I meant it. Mr. Stitch was an amazing experience and Roger is a talented writer/director, as well as a great person to be around. However, Prove To Everyone knew that this movie, called The Rules of Attraction, would be noticed by Hollywood when it was released. If Roger gave me a part in his movie, I would silence Prove To Everyone, The Voice of Self Doubt, and the Voice of Bill Collectors.

  For the first time in years, I had some hope that my stalled acting career would begin to climb again. I relaxed a little bit, and when I wrote in my weblog, Prove To Everyone took a break, and I was able to talk some more about my stepkids.

  14 AUGUST, 2001

  Kids Are Cool

  Tonight, while I was sitting here, cursing up a storm while I tried to get the new site closer to operation, my stepkids decided that they wanted to watch The Mummy on DVD.

  I told them that they could, but Ryan had to shower before he could start it and Nolan would have to wait for him.

  Ryan runs off to his room, (kids have two speeds at 12: the excited run and the sullen stalk) and shouts back to Nolan, “Make some popcorn!”

  Nolan looks at me and says, “I’m really burnt out on popcorn, Wil.”

  “So just make some for Ryan,” I replied, “that would be a really cool thing to do.”

  He goes into the kitchen, (he hasn’t hit the two-speed phase yet) and gets out the popcorn (I can’t endorse Newman’s Own enough . . . it rules and the profits go to charity, so we all win).

  I sit back at the computer, trying to make the new site look less lame (it’s not coming along as well as I’d like, d
ammit) and Nolan calls to me from the kitchen.

  “Wil! There’s a lot of smoke coming out of the microwave!”

  I get up and as I get closer to the kitchen, I recognize that smell that is so familiar to college dorms . . . no, not weed, jackass. The smell of burnt microwave popcorn.

  Nolan is standing there, looking perplexed, like he can’t figure out what is wrong with the microwave. So I stop it and asked him how long it’s been in there and he tells me 4 minutes, because that’s what it says on the bag. Now, whenever I make it, it’s 2 minutes 25 seconds. I’ve gotten it figured out. But I somehow didn’t pass that knowledge on to the next generation; even now, at 2:50 a.m., my house STILL smells like burning popcorn!

  Well, Ryan comes out of his room and Nolan looks crestfallen.

  “Ryan, I ruined the popcorn and it was the last one,” he says, looking like a puppy who’s just been caught chewing up your Boba Fett that was still in the blister pack.

  Ryan looks at me and back to his upset little brother and he totally says, “That’s okay, Nolan, I’ll eat it anyway.”

  So we open the bag and take out a black ball of burning popcorn, toss it into the sink and Ryan pours the rest of the popcorn into our popcorn bowl. (You see, when you’re married, all of a sudden you get all this stuff that only has one use. Like The Popcorn Bowl, or The Water Glasses. I don’t know about you, but when I was a bachelor, I only had two bowls and about five glasses and they pulled serious double and triple duty.)

  Sorry. Tangent.