Just got back from the Wil Wheaton book event in San Francisco. Very well attended. I ended up sitting very close to the front on the floor. And he probably read, spoke, and took questions for nearly 90 minutes. Was a good time and I got my copies of Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek signed.

He said he is working on a novella at present, and I’m very curious to read that. I can’t wait to read something that isn’t of the “used to be an actor” or “My wife rocks!” stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I like that stuff. It’s just a pet peeve of mine. For example, when I read Zoe Trope’s book, which was based on her chapbook of the same name, my disconnect with that material after the initial chapbook (which was the beginning of the full-on book in its printed form) referenced the chapbook. So, halfway through the book, you were reading about… the book. Like, seemingly the same book you are still only halfway through reading. It just seemed surreal to be hearing about the book you were holding in your hand as part of the book. And how people reacted well to the book, and her friends liked being in the book, and she was out promoting the book… was all part of the book?! And, with Wil, there is some of that, too, albeit to a much lesser degree. Parts of Just a Geek reference the existence of Dancing Barefoot. Like I said, it is just a pet peeve of mine.

I guess my role model as far as a lot of that goes is David Sedaris. You very rarely hear him write about or reference the fact that he is a writer, and a best-selling author at that. When he writes about getting a part-time job in Paris, and his boss has a rubber hand, you never say, why does he need a job? In fact, he writes about it being difficult to get a job in Paris as though he needs one. That’s just my style, I guess. For example, some of his stories of meeting interesting people might happen while he’s on book tour, but I doubt he would ever say he was in Berkeley promoting Me Talk Pretty One Day. He would just be in Berkeley and tell the story about the interaction, and you don’t really care why.

Obviously, Wil’s story about being on stage at a Star Trek convention requires him to be an actor, who had a role on a show, and that show has conventions, etc. So, it is a necessary evil, one that is usually absent when he talks about his family.

I never have said this on the blog before, that I’m aware of, but I actually plan to write some memoirish essays in the near future, probably what I will do in the time Stephen King says I have to be working on something else between drafts later this spring. They will be posted here or, if my book sells quickly, I might even try to place them in actual periodicals. At some point, they will be published as a collection called “Getting By,” after the name of my first failed screenplay that led to my “coming out catharsis.”

Speaking of Stephen King, he wrote a piece in this week’s Entertainment Weekly about the Tom Wolfe book, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” where he agreed with some of the criticism of that book, but lauded the fact that Wolfe still sets out to write big books with a lot of ideas and ambition. Not that I should be writing myself into a sentence with Stephen King and Tom Wolfe, but I couldn’t agree more. Personally, one of the hardest things I am dealing with on my book is that I don’t feel it is “big” enough. I just don’t want to repeat myself, and this subject matter will not lend itself to a series of books (there’s the pullout quote for a future journalist, when I contradict myself and write my fourth book on the same landscape), so I want to stuff this book full of every thought I can. I want it to be definitive and I want to feel sapped of all rational thought on this particular subject when I’m done writing it. I want it to be part of a national dialogue, asking big questions and being a launching point for overdue discussions. I never admit this in person, or when I speak about my book with people (which I do less and less these days anyway, for my sanity), but I can’t conceive of NOT writing to do that. I really can’t. (Don’t ask me about this in real life, this is really all I want to say about this subject. Sorry I’m being passive-aggressive about this book writing topic lately).

Back to our original story…

Part of my preparation for going to the Wil event tonight was that I decided I should wear this WilPower T-shirt that is one of the many, many, many T-shirts I have here in storage. I should explain, if I can. I apparently love capitalism in an unhealthy way. For quite some time in my life, I wore XXL shirts.

Now, when you go to concerts and such, the XXL is a rare treat. It isn’t often that you can just buy those size shirts. Around the time of Lollapalooza 1992, with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, I started buying XL shirts despite my inability to wear them. Part of it was incentive, and part of it was that no one overweight thinks they are going to remain overweight. Why buy the size I intend to shrink out of?

I’m sure it happened before Lollapalooza, but that seems to be the turning point of specifically buying shirts that didn’t fit me and immediately storing them. Sometimes, I would just buy two concert shirts, one XXL and one XL, in different designs, and just wear the XXL one at that point in time.

Now that I am easily (once again) in XL shirts, I just keep cycling the same ones over and over, and I have all of these other, antique ones all packed up in boxes in my kitchen pantry. The interesting thing is that within this year, I may actually get into L sized shirts, rendering all of these shirts old AND baggy.

Going through them today looking for the “Only Official Wil Wheaton Fan Club” T-shirt, I was amazed at how many shirts I had amassed. Some are totally cool and I actually plan to put a bunch in my dresser drawers now and rotate some of the ones I wear all the time. Others were like… when did I love Everclear/Marcy Playground/Sugar Ray enough to buy a T-shirt?! In some cases followed by… I really saw Marcy Playground live?

As expected, I found the Wilpower shirt and wore it tonight to the event. Wil immediately knew what it was when I approached him. He said his mom would have flipped if she saw someone still wearing it, as she was involved in running the fan club. I mentioned writing the piece about him in XY, and how I got hundreds of e-mails (and still do to this day) asking how I know he is gay (which the article never even says) and why Wil told me he is gay (which, he never did. He’s not even interviewed for the piece). I even told him that I interviewed him twice, once on a Philadelphia press junket before Toy Soldiers was released and another time where the article never materialized. He asked about it, and I told him a condensed version of the Splice story, and how I wrote a non-glossy piece for a magazine about how there was drug use on the Stand By Me set, and how he doubted River Phoenix losing his virginity during the filming and all of this stuff you’d NEVER read in a teen magazine. He seemed to be amused by that. Then, we compared notes on fiction writing, and took a photo with me wearing the Wilpower shirt.

Of course, when I come home, my kitchen is just filled with PILES of T-shirts, and I don’t think a lot of them should be put back into storage. I think it might be time to toss a lot of them on ebay and see if people care to get some vintage concert T-shirts. Some of them, I doubt will sell online (I have MULTIPLE Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat T-shirts for some unexplained reason, although it may have to do with my seeing the gayest touring company of that show EVER, while I worked backstage security in Pennsylvania). So, I will post here when I put the auction online.

Some of the stuff, like Bends and OK Computer-era Radiohead shirts are just great. They marketed themselves so well back when they made good albums. I also have some REM Monster-era stuff that just rules. So, I will be wearing some of that in the near future, before it is too big on me.

But, hopefully a lot of it will sell online and find new, happy homes. I’m keeping the Wil Wheaton shirt for now, though.

Postscript: Just went through the PILES of T-shirts and found that I had 149 of them, 150 counting the Wil Wheaton shirt. Yikes. Given that a lot of these are concert and Broadway shirts, I don’t even want to think of how much all of these shirts cost me. Oh well, maybe they’re worth more online? I doubt it, but we’ll see…

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