So how hard was it not to channel Carl Sagan while making the video?

I've heard that one of the reasons why LA Kings players like playing in LA is because Los Angeles isn't a huge hockey town (well, it's not), and because with Hollywood in close proximity, the populace has kinda gotten used to living around celebrities. Apparently hockey players like being able to go out for dinner with their family and not being mobbed by rabid fans. (I remember hearing a story about a couple of players who went out for food together, no one said a word to them, figured that no one recognized them. . . then as they got up to leave, the entire restaurant started chanting, "GO KINGS!") My point, and I do have one, is that people have lives and we should let them live it for a bit when they're not working. Also, Go Kings.

I loved my 10th grade English teacher because he taught the story, not the meaning behind it. His teaching of the Odyssey as a badass action-movie style tale of a mushroom-cloud-laying motherfucker traveling all around the world kicking ass, scoring with chicks, and then coming home to beat the shit out of some assholes who were bothering his wife and kid scored many points among the teenage male audience, and instilled an interest in epic poetry that continues to this day. The teenage girls, however, were unanimous in believing that it was bullshit that Odysseus could go around the world scoring with nymphs and sorceresses, but Penelope was expected to sit at home waiting for him for 20 years.

It begins with the Stone Pale Ale. It will escalate to the Ruination. It can only end with the Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

It's Thursday at 10am. I am ten years old at elementary school. I am being led with my classmates to a bungalow behind the rest of the school, and led to a seat in front of a beige box with a warmly beeping screen. There are words on that box: "Apple IIgs". There are words on the screen: "Oregon Trail." Thirty minutes later, I have died of dysentery after depopulating most of the prarie of buffalo (that's what happens when you kill ten buffalo, two bears, and a scattering of rabbits, taking back 100 pounds of meat and leaving 5000 to rot on the prarie.) I don't want to leave, but the next class is coming in, and my teacher tells me it's time to go and let some other kid try to reach Oregon. ----- I am sitting at that same computer. I am running a lemonade stand. I have my cups, my sugar, and my lemons. I have set my price. The weather report says 20% chance of rain. No problem. I press enter. It's raining. All the lemons I've bought are now wasted. I've just learned a vital lesson in risk management. ----- I am sitting at that same computer. There is a strange, monochrome image of two hands on a keyboard. My teacher is telling me to keep my fingers on something called the home row, but my fingers are too small and the keyboard is too big. Why can't I just look down and use my first two fingers the way I do at home on my Dad's 80/86? I keep at it. The screen sends scrolling words down to block my race car as it races around the track. I quickly type them out to make them disappear and keep racing. I beat a high score. I realize I never once looked down at my hands. ----- I have never owned an Apple computer, but thanks to Steve Jobs and his generous donations to public schools, they're an integral part of my childhood. RIP, Steve. One more thing. . .

I'll have to give this a try, even though I know that down the end of this dark road lies the place where I wind up with a closet containing over nine thousand different GBP cultures made of every possible type of yeast known to man. After that, the only place left to go will be to cultivate a sentient SCOBY and become a supervillain.

I'm currently working on a project to create my own Ginger Beer Plant and brew an alcoholic ginger beer like our forefathers used to do. As an initial foray, I tried out Alton Brown's ginger ale recipe using whatever yeast I happened to have lying around, which happened to be all purpose baking yeast. The end result was an overcarbonated drink that burst in a totally non-suggestive manner out of the bottles whenever opened, making a sticky mess, and tasted like ginger ale, but smelled like bread dough. . . at least, until allowed to "breathe" in the glass for a time, after which it smelled like cleanness and tasted like crisp refreshment. Regardless, I've now put in an order for some champagne yeast to do my actual GBP.

Yup! Can't wait to see what happens with the new venue. More floor space, better location, closer to food (though the folks at Lee's Hoagie House will probably be sad to see the gamer crowd leave), college kids just a block or two down the street. . . and the added bonus that, after many years of languishing as a dance studio and furniture shop, the old building shall be host to nerds once more.

You know, if you somehow manage to place it near Game Empire's new location just down the street from PCC, you'd have a clientele right there. . . college kids and gamers. It'll be like printing money.

Hey, you're only as old as they'll let you be. :) Enjoy your Wombic Emergence Day. :D

The worst part of living in LA is leaving LA, feeling homesick for LA, then coming back and feeling like a chump for missing this, of all places. But you still know that the next time you leave town, you're gonna wind up missing those stupid imported palm trees, the shitty public transportation system, and the vapid assholes who think common courtesy is the new sitcom starring Courtney Cox. On the other hand, LA also created the french dip sandwich, so for that alone, I forgive her all her many sins.

AH DEED NAHT HEET HEHR! AH DEED NAHT!! Oh, hi Wil.

I am one year older than the Space Shuttle program, and about three years younger than its big brother that never got to space (Enterprise). I was in first grade when Challenger touched the face of God, I was twenty-three when Columbia folded its wings. So yeah, the fact that the fleet is being retired as I approach my 30th birthday has some resonance with me. I wouldn't feel as bad if there were a replacement program in the wings, but there isn't, and President Obama's well-meaning but wrong-headed efforts to cut "unnecessary government spending" by further reducing NASA's already shoe-string budget frustrates, but also excites me. I believe that scientific progress moves fastest in two cases: when militaries realize they can kill people with it, and when corporations realize they can make tons of money with it. The military is fine using unmanned space flights to launch their spy satellites into orbit, so it's up to the greedy people to figure out how to make tons of money from human space travel and truly kick off the space age.

Ian McKellan is fictional? =O I never knew. He seems so real in the movies. On a more serious note. . . yeah. Although, I wonder if it's those very same accomplishments that made it so hard for him to come out. I mean, people cheat on their wives and crash cars every day, but when someone who's good at hitting a little white ball with a metal stick does it. . .

George Takei, Ian McKellan, Albus Dumbledore, and now James Randi. All badass old men. All gay. Randi is in good company.

I'm still amazingly tickled and amused that Wil Wheaton goes to my game shop. :P

The Star Wars Arcade Game (the sit down version, not the cabinet version) will, for me, forever be associated with not just a place, but a person: the place is Bullwinkle's Pizza and Games in Claremont, CA. The person is my father. This was the one game he would play on those days he took us kids out for arcade games and pizza. Given the rather turbulent relationship I had with my dad (what young man doesn't?) I look back on those times I saw him zapping TIE fighters in that darkened, ray-traced booth with a new sense of. . . fellowship. It also occurs to me that I am now as old as he was back then. :P Goddamn it.

I'm helping a friend of mine build a budget Vampires deck. Lots of fun. On a side note: did you have any thoughts on Team USA's silver medal performance in men's Ice Hockey last night? Ryan Miller has nothing to be ashamed of, IMO.

If PAX East gets annihilated by a janitor freaking out and turning into the Incredible Hulk while holding a small green globule he calls the Loc-Nar and howling that Wil Wheaton is a scumbag blankety-blank, I just want to say it right now: I called it!

As a PC gamer mostly, my usual injury is the dreaded "Half-Life Neck" which is caused by leaning forward towards the screen with bad posture for hours on end. Which is often exacerbated, these days, with "F.E.A.R. Whiplash," caused by screaming and recoiling from my leaning-forward position when something horrible leaps at me from the shadows.

Awesomeness incarnate. Thanks for taking the time.

Were there any meetings of the Mutual Admiration Society?

The first two analogies aren't bad, honestly: Gretzky and Jordan didn't invent hockey and basketball, (like how Heinsoo and Garfield didn't invent D&D or card games), but they certainly had a huge impact on the way it is played. A better example, however, I think, would be being invited to play flag football in a park, and finding out afterwards that your team's quarterback, the guy who was calling all those cool, fun plays that you never would have thought of, was Peyton Manning.

Not quite related, and I'm sure you've heard about this already, but this little news article courtesy of Penny Arcade might be of interest to you: http://www.insidebayarea.com/weird-news/ci_14265049

My first D&D game was 2e in the 1990s. I was an elven mage/thief. We played for over a year and never made it past level 1. We didn't follow the rules much further than to adjudicate combat once in a while. I had a blast. I think most of what gets lost when you age and become a more experienced gamer is that you let the rules and rulings start to become more and more a part of the game: when I was a kid, I never had the patience to sit through reading all the damn rules: We never figured out how damage from falling and such worked, but we were smart kids, and we figured that if you fall off a giant cliff onto some spikes, you're not gonna survive. Lately, I've felt that my games have gotten back a bit of that youthful sense of wonder because as a DM, I've shifted my focus away from rules and towards rulings: simply by saying, "I'm not sure what the rule is on that right now, but given the situation, I'm going to say this happens:" generally tends to keep the game moving and prevents players from bogging down the game too much. The other thing I've started doing is employing the Rule of Awesome: if it makes me smile or laugh, it's gonna work. No matter what the dice say. Maybe there will be complications: maybe Han Solo's Intimidate check only lasts long enough to chase the stormtroopers around the corner before they turn around and start shooting at him, but it'll work to some extent at least. Players tend to do a lot less, "I move and attack" if they know that they can dive across the table and kick it over to provide cover before picking up a bowl of fruit and throwing it into the face of the charging orc without having to make a dive check, a kick check, a pick up a bowl of fruit check, yada yada yada. . . Anyway, does anyone ever play RPGs later on in life like the ones you play when you're 12? Nah. But that doesn't mean that it can't still be good gaming. :)