Blizzcon. I was terrified. I thought I was prepared, but I just couldn’t shake the voices in my head that insisted the people who were going to hate me no matter what were right about how much I suck at everything. The stage was bigger than I expected (even though I expected it to be big), and the audience was enormous. At over 12,000 people, it was tremendously difficult to keep them all engaged at once, and even when I had around 7,000 people responding to what I was doing, I couldn’t think, “Wow, 7000 people are enjoying this!” all I could think was “You suck, Wheaton. Half the audience hates you.” For the first part of my hosting, my IFB was turned up way too loud in my ear, and I could hear myself cranked up to 11 in just my right ear. It was very distracting, and it really threw me off. I couldn’t take the IFB out, either, in case the director needed to say anything to me. Which he didn’t. Yay.
I thought I was … okay … but the feedback I got from everyone there, tons of people online, and everyone at Blizzard was very positive. In fact, other than the people who were always going to hate me, and the people who are determined to be angry about all sorts of things, everyone seems to feel that I did a good job.
If I were grading myself, I’d give myself a solid B. I made some embarrassing mistakes, like saying it was 2016 several times (I blame my brain for being excited that the next day was my 16th wedding anniversary) and for saying “Etcetera” when I was supposed to say “E T C” during the talent contest. In my (weak) defense, I didn’t (and still don’t) know who ETC was, which I guess will confirm that guy who was all “WIL WHEATON IS NOT QUALIFIED TO HOST BLIZZCON” so congratulations to him. Maybe they’ll find that guy and hire him for net time. To further defend myself, I read what was on my card, which said “Etc.” and not “E.T.C.” which probably would have saved me some embarrassment and some hardcore WoW players consternation.
The stuff I wrote, though? It seemed to work out mostly well. I asked Ryan to help me write some journal entries from the point of view of a character we called Boogers the Boggit, and while I felt like it died in most of the room, a ton of people have told me they thought it was clever and funny. I’ll repost it here in the next few days and you can decide for yourself if I’m the worst thing, ever.
Blizzcon itself, though, was incredible! The enthusiasm and passion and excitement was infectious, and I honestly feel sad for anyone who loves the Blizzard games who can’t embrace that sense of community because they need to be mad about stuff. The gatekeepers are really missing out on something wonderful.
After Blizzcon, a bunch of us went over to Trader Sam’s at the Disneyland Hotel, and we had all the flaming drinks until it closed. I may have been partially responsible for giving Randi Harper one of her first hangover, but I’d never admit to that. The next day, Anne and I celebrated our anniversary with some of our friends at Disneyland and California Adventure. It was incredibly fun, and Chris Hardwick and I posted a bunch of dumb pictures of us being silly while we were there. They’re on our Instagrams if you want to see them.
Monday, I flew out to Atlanta to work on Powers. I can’t say anything about it, but maybe I can after the episode airs. I guess that I can say that my day started at 430am, which was 130am as far as my body was concerned, but I was wrapped by 1pm, which is good because I was approaching an exhaustion I haven’t felt since we wrapped on Eureka and I went straight form an 18 hour day on the set to Dragon*Con without going to sleep.
I wasn’t prepared for how excited the cast of Powers was to meet me and to welcome me to the set, but I’m looking forward to going back next week to work with them again … right after I do another Big Bang Theory! Tomorrow, I start a few days on an episode that also features Bob Newhart.
Holy shit, I can’t believe that I get to meet Bob Newhart! I’m going to do my best not to go all When I Met Henry Rollins on him, but I will say that there’s a non-zero chance that, in the future, I’ll be doing a bit in my stand-up set that’s Bob Newhart’s agent taking a call from him about meeting a nerd who was embarrassingly excited to be there and made it really weird.
