Sometimes it's a good thing when you don't pull yourself out of our time. Happy Birthday!

Always two there are...a master and an apprentice.

I know this isn't entirely true, but... "I never had any fellow actors later on, like the ones I had when I was eighteen...Jesus....does anyone?" I just watched the entire panel through YouTube and it was the first time since the 1988 Winter Olympics that I wished I were in Calgary at a particular point in time -- and I've talked to you at two different Emerald City ComicCons. I miss the series more because of you and the rest of the cast than because of the stories -- and there were quite a few unforgettable stories.

JoCoCrazy Cruise stories, Eureka stories, Guild stories, Sparks McGee ideas, the TrollDad story (has Ryan had his revenge yet?). Looking forward to it (missed the Awesome Hour last year, but not the Guild panel)

Sorry, that should've read "Pascotimes". This is what happens when I try to read small type on a computer screen past 1 AM.

Seeing Paseotimes' annotated version of your story reminded me of when I saw "Dune" opening night in December of 1984 and all of the moviegoers were given a sheet of standard letter-size glossy paper with terminology from/for the movie on the front and back. My first thought was, "What the hell am I about to see that I need this to help me understand it?" I read the entire series right after I saw the movie. The casting and sets helped, but the first book told me how silly the end of the movie was. I still have that sheet of paper in a scrapbook because I have yet to have that happen again in almost 1,000 subsequent trips to theatres hence. :)

I can't remember the last time I played an RPG. It might have been during the mid-80s when a friend of mine was the game-master for some kind of Marvel Comics RPG. He jumped all over me and our other friends for picking five characters who couldn't possibly ever fight together for anything. :) I still have a lot of the classic board games. Life, Careers, Sorry, Trouble, Trivial Pursuit, even a signed-by-the-creator edition of Pictionary. I need to start taking one of them with me whenever I go over to someone else's house. I also have a board game that two friends created for me and gave to me as a birthday present about 15 years ago combining my interest in baseball and just about everything that happened to me between the time I met these two people and when I got the game. FIMO-clay game pieces, an inner path, several inner paths, two stacks of cards (one affects players' funds and the other affects players' movements). The winner of the game is the first person to collect one piece from each inner path (half of them need a certain dice roll and the other half need a certain amount of game money). After the first game, the rules were tweaked a bit because it was playing like Monopoly (too long for the average non-D&D party). I've played it almost a dozen times and even though it's a game for me and about me, I've still yet to win a game of it.

"Come back to carbon...please?" Great photo.

Kevin: Mom! Dad! It's evil! Don't touch it! [Kevin's parents explode] Kevin: Mom? Dad? The above quotes describe what I thought the ending of the story would look like. As much as I love "Time Bandits", I also love the way you went with the story. Bravo.

Re: Last Will & Testament of James Darkmagic I -- might it then be time to bequeath a few boots to the head? Re: the 80s pinup poster -- I really mean this as a compliment, but it looks like you borrowed the outfit of the guy who played Will Scarlett in "Robin Hood: Men In Tights" Have fun at PAX!

It's really getting old seeing tired reality-TV crap (all of it) go on forever and seeing smart, funny, clever, interesting shows go four or five "seasons" or less and disappear. FlashForward -- gone. V -- gone. Caprica -- gone. Numbers -- gone. The Lone Gunmen -- gone. Harsh Realm -- gone. Greg The Bunny -- gone. Firefly -- gone. Raines -- gone. Now Eureka -- gone. I'm down to Warehouse 13 and Falling Skies now. I need TV -- and I would love to bask in its glowing warm warming glow -- but I'm starting to get the impression that TV doesn't need me as much as I need it.

So who would win a battle of wills (no pun intended...at first) between Dr. Parrish and Evil Wil Wheaton? Also, I liked how getting into the background of the suspended explosion reminded me of "Blade Runner". I didn't use to like Mondays -- until Eureka and Warehouse 13 came back. :)

...and it would make my week if/when I could save a celeb from a crazy person someday. I wouldn't even need an autograph or pic in return. :)

I can't decide if being one of the few honored convention celebs who doesn't charge for their autograph makes this kind of situation more likely or less so. It doesn't do me any good to think rationally about these types of people because there's apparently nothing rational about doing what they did. I'm grateful for the item you signed for me at the 2010 ECCC every time I look at it and after I read about how you feel about handshakes from strangers (for good reason, I should add), I even felt guilty for not knowing the preferred procedure ("Iron Guard salutes", etc.). :) Fortunately, I believe there are a lot more people like us on your blog (and among your twitter followers) than there are people like this crowd outside the party (also reminds me of Ray Bradbury's "The Crowd"). And if this woman's really going to post a tweet insulting Wil for his more-than-patient-and-mature response to her insanity, I have a feeling she's really not sure how twitter works. :)

I agree with everyone else, more specifically whatupdog, about mid-80s music. I listened to -- and wrote down -- Casey Kasem's American Top 40 from the summer of 1978 until October 1986. I gave up, finally, not because I got a life (that was still years away), but because I liked the music so little, I just didn't care anymore whether it went up or down the music charts. I miss "Starship 1", the "Black Knight" and "Comet" pinball games -- and a "Star Wars" game (the one with the vector graphics that actually gives you bonuses for NOT shooting at targets) with a controller that feels like it hasn't been held 100,000 times.

Doctor Hoobajoo? I ran into her the other day -- and her friend Joey Jo-Jo...Junior...Shabadoo.

I think the TSA is going to have serious regrets about their behavior once someone invents transporter technology. How much longer do we have to wait for that again? Damn. YOU WIN THIS ROUND, TSA!!!

I'm still bummed that I missed your ECCC Awesome Hour because I had to work until 3:30, but at least I got to see your Guild panel. In my head, I put "Stand By Me" in the same place as "Explorers". Both were released around the same time and River looked so innocent in both of them. It was fun to see him in "Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (forever, at least to me, known as "the last watchable Indiana Jones movie") and "Sneakers" and one can only imagine how many Oscars he might have by now. All that being said, I couldn't help but think -- as I read yet another great blog post by you -- that maybe the interview session seemed like "Stand By Me" all over again -- in that no one was really sure whether or not they want to see that body or what they would say about it once they found it. River seemed like the only difficult subject you guys all had to talk about. I could be wrong about the analogy, but I hope I'm not. :) And this line of River's character always gets me because of how things turned out in real life: "Wish the hell I was your dad. You wouldn't be goin' around talkin' about takin' these stupid shop courses if I was. It's like God gave you something, man, all those stories you can make up. And He said, "This is what we got for ya, kid. Try not to lose it." Kids lose everything unless there's someone there to look out for them. And if your parents are too f*cked up to do it, then maybe I should."

When I read the italicized text from your wonderful piece, I instantly thought of Eric Idle's universe speech from "Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life". Whenever I read anything about all of the universe's continuously moving parts (just like your waving at the astronauts in the ISS as it flies by), I can't *not* do it.

Hhappy Bhelated Bhirthday Whil Wheaton!

So, then, one of these "premakes" based on "Return Of The Jedi" could very well feature the furry thing on the wing of the plane in the original Twilight Zone's "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet". *Sigh* There was so much good bad sci-fi back in the 50s...

I was just over 21 years old on January 28, 1986, and sleeping in after the previous night's work at the movie theatre and when I turned on the TV, CNN was going to commercial with footage of an American flag at half-mast. My first thought was, "Uh oh. Who died?" I hung around long enough to find out and I couldn't believe it, either. I had another shift at the theatre that day and the entire time I was outside, I found myself staring at birds in flight, wishing we could do it as easily as they did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvJVIXxb4Mw I saw this video on MTV later that year and bought the 7" single. Jean-Michel Jarre dedicated the tune to the seven Challenger astronauts. Now when I hear it, I think of the video -- and I get something in my eye. My wife and I would love to be able to coordinate a Florida visit with some kind of space-vehicle launch, but no luck yet.

So, I was wondering. How many TBBT appearances by Evil Wil Wheaton will it take before a repairman shows up, lifts up the back of his (sufficiently geeky) t-shirt and says, "Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to ``Evil'' and flips the switch?

"You see, I remember a time when our headsets were nothing more than plastic tubes with uncomfortable foam cylinders on the ends. We paid up to $4 to use them, and we watched the most banal and idiotic programming ever, because it was all we had. I remember airlines switching to headsets that were deliberately incompatible with our Walkman (remember those?) headsets, so they could continue to charge us outrageous fees to be "entertained" in-flight." Please tell me that I wasn't the only one hearing this in Dana Carvey's "Grumpy Old Man" voice.

Wil, last weekend was my second ECCC and I had more fun this time around because I had/made time for four speakers instead of two (you, Nimoy, Stan Lee and Aaron Douglas -- who mentioned you several times during his speech, BTW). I only planned to get one autograph while I was there -- yours. For one, I'm a fan of yours from the TNG days and -- more recently -- the TVSquad reviews which have become the MOTF stories. For another, you don't charge an autograph fee like (seemingly) everyone else who signs at these things. I was the guy who brought the black TNG glitter-globe toward the end of your morning session. Your signature on the globe means it's gone from something I might keep (I've had it for about 20 years already, I think) to something I will definitely keep and show to my future kids someday. Like everyone else in line, I wanted to spend about 20-30 minutes going on about everything I just mentioned above, but I knew the people in line in front of me and behind me wanted to do the same thing (and you only had about 20 minutes left), so I decided to just say thanks for the autograph and head upstairs for the Awesome Hour. I got another guy to take a photo of you signing the globe (my wife scrapbooks), so if you'd like to see that, let me know. I have to go get Sunken Treasure and Memories because I want to read these stories more often than just when you roll into town. Oh, and I heard from Aaron about your next bet with him (or so he said). Go Kings! :) Hope you can make it to ECCC in 2011.