We went to Napa for our tenth anniversary. 

For the record: being married to your best friend rules.

I've been struggling lately to turn a lot of ideas I have into actual stories. I kind of feel like my writing mojo has taken a temporary leave of absence, and the harder I look for it, the harder it is to find. It has been incredibly frustrating.

This morning, in Warren Ellis' BAD SIGNAL e-mail, he said:

At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth.

This is something that I knew to be true, but had temporarily forgotten. As writers, it's vital that we meet our deadlines, of course, but we also have to build time into our work schedule to read books, take walks, visit doctor whisky, play with our dogs, and do the other things that may not look or feel like work, but are integral to our creative process.

Thanks for the reminder, Warren, I needed to hear that.

When I wrote my w00tstock post, I totally forgot to mention that we put some video interludes into the show, to make sure that we were giving the maximum A/V Club experience to the audience.

There were some very funny shorts, including Mister Bungle getting the Riff Trax treatment, the credits for Jonathan Coulton's television series, Monkey Shines, (that was cancelled after the first commercial break), and this parody commercial for Trader Joe's, which is exceptionally hilarious if you've ever shopped there:

I also neglected to mention that Kid Beyond wrote a book of puzzles he created called BOGGLE Crossdoku, and Molly Lewis has a CD of her kickass music ... you know, because it's getting to be that time of year when people typically give gifts to other people. 

Also, whenever I say "...forgot to mention," I have to say "BEWARE OF HITCHHIKING GHOSTS!!1"

Back in the old days, before Twitter exploded into the phenomenon that it is now, I got a message from Greg Grunberg. Greg plays Matt Parkman on Heroes (this information, which most of you don't need, is provided as a public service to the seven of you who do), and has been in every JJ Abrams project since JJ started making movies in the pre-old days.

Greg and I traded several messages about a bunch of different things, and then he sent me a private message that said something like, "JJ needs voice actors for Star Trek. Would you be interested in doing that?"

"Well, let me think about this for .00005 seconds," I thought. "I love Star Trek, I love voice acting, and ... why am I still thinking about this?!"

I replied in the affirmative as quickly as my fingers could get the thoughts out of my head.

Shortly after I sent my reply, I had a different series of thoughts that went something like this: "This is way too good to be true. This has to be a prank. Someone is fucking with me and I'm going to be the butt of a pretty mean joke." But then I had still another thought: "I'm not famous enough to be Punk'd, and Greg Grunberg doesn't seem like the kind of person who would do something mean, anyway." I was, as they say, cautiously optimistic.

About 24 hours later, JJ Abrams called me. It was an entertaining conversation; I couldn't believe he wanted me to do work on his film, and he couldn't believe that I wanted to do it. He asked me if I'd be interested in playing some Romulans, and I think I held my hand over the phone so he couldn't hear me squeal in delight before I calmly told him that, yes, I thought I could do that. I don't recall precisely why, but we agreed that it would be extra cool to keep it a secret until the heat death of the universe, an uncredited bit of awesome that only a handful of people in the world would know about ... unless we told them. (In fact, as far as I know, only a dozen people in the world knew about this until some meddling kids and their dog at Viacom found out about it this summer, and said we had to give me credit and stuff.)

I met JJ at an ADR stage a few days later, where he told me the entire plot of the movie (and, for the record, hearing JJ Freakin' Abrams tell you the plot of his Star Trek is even more awesome than you'd expect) and showed me some of the scenes that I'd be dubbing. I ended up providing voices for all the Romulans on Nero's ship, including the guy who tells him that "it's time" at the very beginning of the movie. (Yeah, how cool is that?)

I was distracted for the first 15 or 20 minutes before we started work, because I kept expecting someone to come out from behind a screen with a camera to laugh at me, but when I was given my dialog and recorded my first take, I knew that it was really happening.

I thought it would be really hard to keep my squee under control, but when I stood there in the darkened ADR stage, three pages of dialog in front of me, sitting in the soft glow of a single dim light clipped to a music stand, I was able to put my inner awkward superfan into check long enough to be a professional actor. I mean, I was working for JJ freakin' Abrams on Star frekin' Trek, so maybe I could rise to the occasion, you know?

We recorded dialog for about an hour or so, I guess, and when we were finished, JJ invited me to come with him over to the mixing stage, where he was going to watch a reel of the film.

Um. Okay. Yeah, I think I can do that. I texted Anne something like, "Probably never coming home again. I'm going to stay here with my new best friend JJ Abrams and watch as much of Star Trek as he'll let me."

So you know that scene where Kirk climbs out of the pod, runs away from the monster, and eventually meets Spock Prime in the cave? I got to watch that scene over and over, as they made the wind sound colder, then warmer, then colder and more fierce. I got to hear the roar of the monsters deepened, softened, made more terrifying, made louder, made softer. I got to hear the fire in Spock Prime's cave crackle more, then less, then more again, because the wind outside was now colder and more fierce, so it should probably be a warmer fire.

It was one of the coolest things in the world to watch, not just on screen, but in the room, too. The way JJ interacted with the other creative people in the room as they mixed the sound, the music, the foley, and everything else that we tend to just take for granted when we're in the theatre watching a movie was just fascinating. I don't know if all directors are like this, but he didn't let a single second go by like it was any less important than another.

Sooner than I'd would have liked, though, I began to feel like I was just hanging out, and even though I knew I could have stayed longer and watched more, I decided that it was best for me to leave before I overstayed my welcome.

JJ and I thanked each other, talked the way you do in Hollywood about maybe working together again in the future (ohpleaseohpleaseohplease oh please, Steve the Fruitbat, please make that happen) and I walked down the now-dark streets of the studio toward my car. I kept it under control until I drove out of the lot, at which time I bounced around in my chair like ... well, like a guy who loves Star Trek and just got to work on Star Trek would bounce around.

They digitally-altered my voice to sound like different people, but when I saw the movie, I could definitely tell that it was me underneath the effects. In fact, there's one moment near the end of the movie where one of the Romulans is yelling at Nero, and it's my plain old voice without any alterations. I bounced in my seat when I saw that in the theater just like ... well, you know.

Everything I could possibly say about w00tstock has already been said by Paul and Storm, who made a lovely list, and Molly, who made a comic that captures exactly how I felt the whole time we did our shows.

I loved feeling the terror and exhilaration of trying something totally new (The Trade, with music) that was raw and unrehearsed enough to allow for surprises every night.

I loved how totally geeked out we all were to be working with each other, too. I mean, I knew it would be cool to meet Adam Savage - the guy's a freakin' genius, after all - but I was unprepared for how completely and utterly cool, kind, and enthusiastic he was. And his 100 wishes are wonderful, especially that he, like I, wishes for his children to have careers that they love.

I loved feeling like we were creating something unique and special, that people would be talking about long after it was finished.

I loved how much fun we had every night, even though I was exhausted down to my bones by the time we finished our last show Wednesday night (actually, Thursday morning).

I loved how wonderful the audiences were at all the shows. Geeks truly are the best crowd, because even when they heckle us (I'm looking at you, Los Angeles front row) it was done with enthusiasm and love. Yes, even the hecklers were, in their own way, supportive.

I loved that we released the entire show under a Creative Commons license, so anyone who wanted to could record and share the show online. There are tons of videos at YouTube and pictures at Flickr, as a result. 

I love that I can blockquote myself right now:

someone recorded all of w00tstock 1.1 from Los Angeles, and uploaded it. It's an audience recording, so you can pretend you are actually sitting at Largo next to the guy who recorded it! If it's the guy I think it was, he had a magnificent pimp hat on. If it's not ... well, now you know that there was a guy at w00tstock in LA with a magnificent pimp hat, and you have yet another reason to wish you were there, sukka.

>I love that that recording was done on a freakin' iPhone, and it sounds fantastic.

I saw a post this morning that pretty faithfully recreates the show in Los Angeles from YouTube videos, so rather than try to duplicate that for all three shows, I thought I'd share a couple of my personal highlights, in video form:

First up, a wonderful compilation ... almost a montage ... from the LA show:

Here I am, recreating the moment when Luke Skywalker saw the smoking hulks of his aunt and uncle. This probably isn't as funny out of context, but if you were at the show, you'll know why I was so amused by this. By the way, the flapping hair in the wind was all Molly's idea, and it killed at all three shows.

Kid Beyond absolutely blew my mind when he performed Wandering Star by Portishead ... using only his voice to create loops. If you think this is incredible on video (and it is) you should see him perform live, especially if he brings his video mashups.

Finally, everything Molly did was simply brilliant, and her cover of Toxic is sensational, but I just adore her song about breaking up with Wikipedia:

There's more, of course. Paul and Storm got a lovely pair of, um, undergarments thrown at them in Los Angeles. The acoustic Date My Avatar was great. Jeff Lewis did comedy as Vork, and completely killed. Kasper Hauser made me laugh so hard at the 1.0 show I bruised my medulla oblongata. I've known Chris and Mike forever, but I'd never actually seen them perform as Hard 'n Phirm in person until the Los Angeles show, and I wish I hadn't waited so long to enjoy the majestic wonder of El Corazon live. Josh Cagan seemed a little bemused that we'd added him to the show, but after seeing what he did to just 30 seconds of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four craptacular, I hope he'll come with us for 2.0. And, oh yes, three different versions of The Captain's Wife's Lament, each longer and more ARRRRRRRRRtful than the last. Those two videos (I can't find a video from 1.0 at the moment), do a great job of capturing how much fun we all had together.

When Paul and I talked about w00tstock a million years (or a couple months) ago, we hoped that it would be successful enough to justify the time we would need to put into creating it, we hoped we'd have fun working together, and we really hoped we'd draw enough people to make it worth doing future w00tstocks.

I don't think we ever seriously worried about having fun together, but I was very worried about actually drawing an audience. When we sold out two shows in San Franciso, and only had 20 or so seats left vacant in Los Angeles - where it is notoriously difficult to get people to come out to see shows - we knew that in the future, there will be w00tstock v2.x.

I want to thank everyone who was in the show, and especially everyone who came to watch us, for making the three days of w00tstock so memorable and wonderful. I can't wait to do it again.

Holy crap! It's time for Memories of the Futurecast.

Memories of the Future, Volume One, covers the first 13 episodes of TNG, so each week, I'm choosing something from one episode, and performing an excerpt for you. It will mostly be from the synopses, which is where I think the real humor of the book lives, but from time to time, I may work in some things from the other parts.

Three important things:

1. This does not mean the book comes out in 13 weeks. It comes out much sooner than that. In fact, it is available right now! Woo!
2. These are not excerpted from an audiobook. These are recorded specifically for this podcast. I'm not sure if I'll do a full-length audiobook, yet, but I'm open to the idea.
3. Did I mention that you can get your very own copy of Memories of the Future, Volume One, right now, for $19.87, or as a $10 DRM-free PDF? Okay, just checking.

Episode Notes:

• The Memories of the Futurecast works hard to earn its [EXPLICIT] tag. You have been warned.
• Our theme music this week is Harvey Danger's Wine, Women and Song, from their third album Little by Little. HD has made the entire album available for download, for free, from their website. I think it's worth paying for, though, so toss some coins their way if you agree.
• This week's show features THE BATTLE (or, "What's that Rattle? It's a Ferengi exacting his blood revenge.")
• Memories of the Futurecast finally grew up and moved into its own apartment. From now on, you can find new episodes at MemoriesOfTheFuturecast.com. It probably won't work for a couple of days, but should be working by Wednesday at the latest. 
• Single! Turgid! Episode!
• Memories of the Futurecast has its own Podcast feed, too! For your convenience (and great justice) you can get your podcast fetcher-o-doodle and stick feeds.feedburner.com/futurecast into it.
• This is the last full episode that I'll post here at WWdN:iX, so subscribe or bookmark or tattoo the new URL if you don't want to miss a 
• Memories of the Futurecast takes the A train.
• Memories of the Futurecast is 12.4 MB this week.
• Memories of the Futurecast is 26 minutes long this week.
• Memories of the Futurecast wonders if anyone even reads the shownotes it works so hard to write.
• Memories of the Futurecast gets busy ... sometimes.

Okay enough notes! Let's get to business:

Download Memories of the Futurecast Episode Nine

More spooky pictures from past Halloweens in my Flickr stream.

Last year's Halloween edition of Radio Free Burrito.

Anne is helping a friend move today, so she went down to The OC last night, in order to avoid the hellish traffic that exists on the Southern California freeways between 6am and 10pm just about every day of the week. 

This meant that Nolan and I were alone last night, free to watch the original Rollerball while dining on Bachelor Chow (Last night's particular version of Bachelor Chow took the form of a quesadilla, dressed up with diced Ortega chiles, fresh pico de gallo, and of course jalapeños ... now that I think of it, this is more like advanced Bachelor Chow.)

But the tale I wish to spin for you today is not about how much we loved the art direction in Rollerball, or how I burned the everlivingfuck out of my hand on the pan while cooking what ended up being a fantastic dinner. No, the tale I wish to spin for you today is about something that happened earlier this week, when Anne was home and we made an absolutely sensational butternut squash soup using a recipe in the Whole Foods Cookbook.

"It's going to be cold and windy tonight," Anne said that afternoon as we stood in the kitchen and contemplated dinner.

"It's cold and windy right now," I said.

"Yes. That's how I know it's going to be cold and windy tonight. It feels like fall, so I want to make something hearty for dinner."

"Something Autumnal?" I said.

"Um..."

"Something that screams HARVEST!" I said, punctuating the word with jazz hands.

"Sure. Whatever. Let's make some soup with that squash you bought yesterday."

I picked the squash up off the counter and cradled it in my arms like it was a baby. "Do you want to be soup? Do you want to be soup?! I bet you'd be a delicious soup! Yes you would! Yes you would! Yummy, yummy soup!"

Anne and I have been together for 14 years, married for just a few weeks shy of 10 of those years, and it wasn't until that moment that I learned just how much she doesn't like it when people use baby talk with squash. (So just keep in mind, kids: even when you're old like we are, and you've been together for something in the neighborhood of 5000 days, there are still exciting new things to discover about each other.)

A withering glance was delivered, an apology was issued, and a squash was gingerly placed back on the counter without any cooing. Then, a list of needed ingredients was made, taken to the store and filled, and 40 minutes later we were peeling and chopping vegetables for our soup.

Our dog, Riley, came into the kitchen while we worked. "HEY GUISE I WANT TO GO OUTSIDE!" 

"No you don't," I said, scooping seeds out of the squash, "it's cold and windy out there."

"WANT TO GO OUTSIDE! OPEN DOOR NOW PLEASE OKAY!"

"You'd better let her out," Anne said.

"She's just going to turn around and come right back in," I said, but I let her out anyway.

A gust of cold wind blew some leaves into our kitchen, and I closed the door quickly behind her. "Holy crap, it's cold out there," I said.

I took four steps back toward the counter when I heard Riley scratching at the door. I gave Anne the "told you so" look (I learned it by watching her, I swear!) and let Riley back into the house.

"OH MY GOD YOU GUISE IT'S SO COLD AND WINDY OUT THERE!" She said. "DO NOT WANT!"

"I know," I said, and went back to preparing dinner. i didn't bother with the "told you so" look, because dogs just aren't that perceptive.

Now, before I continue my little tale, I should point out that my dog didn't actually speak. Truly, a talking dog would be a wondrous thing, worthy of a special report on the news and millions of dollars in television contracts and merchandising for her owner. No, my dog doesn't exactly speak, but over the years, I have developed an ability to pick up on and translate certain canine behaviors. Okay, back to business:

The vegetables were chopped, the spices were ground, the broth was poured and they were all combined in a large stockpot. Within minutes, our entire house was filled with the delicious and comforting aroma of our impending HARVEST-style meal.

Did I mention that I made Guinness bread? I don't think I did. I guess I should mention that, because it's important: I made Guinness bread, and that was also in the oven while the soup cooked. Seriously, the only thing our house was missing was Hobbits.

While the soup cooked and the bread baked, we cleaned up after ourselves. You know, like grown-ups do. "I think we should puree the soup when it's done," Anne said, as I washed a cutting board.

"That's going to be a problem," I said, "because we only have the blender and it's not nearly big enough for all this soup."

She looked at me, incredulous. "I'm pretty sure we don't have to do it all at once."

I set the cutting board into the drying rack.

"Okay," I said, "we'll puree the soup in the blender."

I thought, but did not say, "WILL IT BLEND?!"

"What are you giggling about?" She asked.

"Nerd stuff."

We had enough time to play a quick gin rummy before the timer went off. We've played a lot of this game, recently, which Nolan, apparently unfamiliar with bridge, has declared is "the official game of old people."

"You take the bread out of the oven," I said after Anne extended her undefeated gin rummy streak well into the double digits, "and I'll start ladling the soup into the blender."

It was a foolproof plan, and the first two cups of soup to be pureed came out beautifully. It smelled so good, my stomach said, "HEY WIL PUT FOOD IN ME RIGHT NOW."

"I'm working on it," I thought (please note that I can talk to my stomach with my thoughts) as I began putting the second batch of soup into the blender.

"You're putting way too much soup in there," Anne said.

"I'm fine," I said, eager to get the pureeing over with so we could get down to the eating part of our dinner. "I'll just hold the lid down when I turn it on."

I pressed the lid down tightly and held it down with my left hand. With my right, I pressed the button marked "puree."

I probably would have taken a moment to stare at the resulting butternut squash soup geyser, if the explosion of hot liquid hadn't burned the hell out of my hand, face, chest, and arm. I probably would have admired the CSI-like splatters of orange puree on the wall, the coffee maker, the microwave, and the refrigerator, if I hadn't been frantically stabbing at the buttons in an effort to silence the whirring blades which created it. But it wasn't until the moment had passed - really just a few seconds of chaos - that I was able to pause and appreciate what had just happened. I mean, it's not every day that a geyser erupts in my kitchen. Thank Steve the Fruitbat.

I turned around and looked at my wife, who appeared to have chosen a seat outside of the splash zone. "Um. I didn't think that would happen."

"Really."

I grabbed a hand towel and wiped myself off. "Yeah. I, um. I thought it would blend."

"Oh it blended. It blended everywhere."

I wiped soup off the wall, the coffee maker, the microwave, and the refrigerator. Our dog came in and helped me clean up some spots I hadn't noticed on the floor.

"Just clean it up so we can finish this and eat, please."

I did, and then I made sure that the remaining soup was pureed no more than 16 ounces at a time. I also held a towel down over the lid, just in case. When we finally ate our bowls of soup - with thick slices of Guinness bread, I might add - it was truly wonderful, and exactly the kind of HARVEST (with jazz hands) meal we wanted ... even if I was still cleaning up bits of dried soup off the freezer and dishwasher this morning.

Anne and I stayed with my friends Steve and Julie when we went up to San Francisco for w00tstock. I've known Steve since high school, and Julie's sister was friends with my brother when they were younger, in case anyone was wondering how small the world actually is.

Steve and I were in the same gaming group (with Darin, Cal, and some of my other friends you may recall me mentioning from time to time) so when we got to their house, I went straight to his gaming shelf to see what overlap we have now (Dominion, Settlers, Pandemic, etc.) I saw, on top of a bookcase, a complete set of first edition AD&D core books. Sitting on top of them was a thick stack of TSR-era AD&D modules, including classics like Tomb of Horrors and Village of Hommlet.

"I can't believe you still have these!" I said.

"Do you want them?" He asked. "I don't have room for them here, so they were going to get thrown out or —"

"THROWN OUT?! THEY BELONG IN A MUSEUM!"

From the living room behind us, I heard Anne apologize to Julie.

"It's okay," I may have heard her say. "I'm married to one, too."

Steve and I spent some time (not nearly enough) looking at all those old modules, as well as his AD&D core books. I even made most of my saves vs. Nostalgic Overload (Rogers will be happy to learn that I didn't once say that I felt like I was visiting with old friends).

"You can have all of these," he said, "because I know I'm not going to have time or space to use them any time soon."

"I would love to keep these, if for no other reason than to preserve the history," I told him. In my mind, I was already sitting on the floor of my office, the smell of a freshly-sharpened pencil rising in the air to meet the sound of Rush on the Sonos while I surrounded myself with open books, graph paper, and piles of dice.

Alas, when it was time to return to Los Angeles, we didn't have room or spare weight in our suitcase to bring them with us, so it's going to be a little while before my dream becomes reality.

As I pored over these three books, pausing frequently to feel the comforting warmth of a nostalgic childhood memory wrap around me, I remembered why I fell in love with D&D and then AD&D when I was growing up: when you get down to their fundamentals, D&D and AD&D provide a framework for imaginative, collaborative storytelling.

As I read the Keep on the Borderlands, and I crawled through the Caves of Chaos for the first time in 25 years, I let my imagination take over. I could see the same places I visited when I was a kid. I could see the wide and winding dirt road, coiled around towering mountains and steep cliffs, that I traveled from the Keep to the caves. (Well, I could see it the way 10 or 11 year-old me created it in his youthful imagination, which is to say it looked an awful lot like that 1978 animated Lord of the Rings movie.)

I could see the Lizardmen (who were more than a little reminiscent of the Sleestaks), I could hear the clang of my fighter Thorin's sword against the cave wall, after he cleaved a kobold in two (just like that animation from Dragon's Lair) and the jingling bag of electrum pieces he took off the corpse (which sounded a lot like the pocket of quarters I kept around for sudden outbreaks of Pac-Man fever). I could smell the crackling fire of braziers (summer campfires), and feel the terror of facing down a minotaur who never seemed to miss when he attacked (pop quizes in math class).

If you played Keep on the Borderlands, some of the encounters that sparked my own memories may be familiar, but I bet that any images of the caves they may have stirred up for you different than mine, because when we played this game in the 80s, every single place we went was made real by our imaginations. In fact, that's one of the things I love and miss the most about the earliest days of tabletop RPGs: I miss gaming that was entirely independent of minis and combat maps. I miss being able to close my eyes and picture the zombies and skeletons lining that hallway, knowing that the way I saw them was different from the way my friend Simon saw them, even though he was sitting right next to me. 

I stopped playing AD&D during 2nd edition, when I felt like it was more about complicated math, charts, and THAC0 than it was about using your imagination to explore a wondrous fantasy world. I switched to GURPS, and even though I know that's a system that can easily lead to min/maxing and metagaming, I played with a group of guys who were into storytelling, with a GM who made you think very carefully about what disadvantages you took. When that group grew broke up, I didn't play seriously again until 4E, which as everyone knows I really enjoy.

Still, when I opened The Keep on the Borderlands and read "Welcome to the land of imagination. You are about to begin a journey into the worlds where magic and monsters are the order of the day, where law and chaos are forever at odds, where adventure and heroism are the meat and drink of all who would seek their fortunes in uncommon pursuits..." I realized something: I never played RPGs later on in life like the ones I played when I was 12.

... Jesus, did anyone?

So I'm doing other things to try and trick it into rebooting the server, like cleaning up my house, playing with my dog, and wishing that I had this book again:

and this:

and this:

Well, I'm not a lot closer to getting this story out, but I'm certainly a lot happier in general than I was a couple hours ago. Funny how just looking at old AD&D stuff can do that for me.

(Images borrowed from The Acaeum, which is a fantastic D&D historical reference site.)