After his appearance on the Today Show, that TV show 20/20 flew him back to New York to interview him. And they lubbed him so much they actually agreed to fly a film crew out to Seattle to film him performing his musics as Three Ninjas.

So @NatheLawver and @tacomachickadee and picked me up and we drove the 40 minutes up to West Seattle to see Three Ninjas & Tangentbot (and special guest Pop Star Shannon O’Brien) perform their tiny open-mic set at the Skylark Café with a 20/20 film crew filming it, then we drove all the way back to Tacoma.

From left: Tangentbot, Three Ninjas, Pop Star Shannon O'Brien

Total drive time was 1hr 20min. Total show time was approx 20 minutes.

TOTALLY WORTH IT.

So there’s a slim chance that I might appear on a soon-to-air episode of 20/20 in an audience reaction shot. No biggie.

The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard announced that they would be honoring Stephen Fry at an event on Tuesday evening. Similarly, Molly Lewis posted a cryptic plea on her website asking if her fans could perhaps help with airfare so she could fly out to some event in Massachusetts…

Well, tl;dr — I’ll let their own Tweets tell some of the story:

Those darling darling darling people at Harvard. Made so welcome felt so at home.Thank you humanist association thank you all who attended.

22 February 2011 8:46 PM via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@stephenfry

Stephen Fry

The adorable @molly23 sang her song to me and I didn't know where to look - how sweet she is

22 February 2011 9:04 PM via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@stephenfry

Stephen Fry

@stephenfry I'd like to mention that our hypothetical child would have excellent hair.It was an honor and a privilege to serenade you. <3

23 February 2011 1:52 AM via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@Molly23

Molly

@Molly23 And just as much an honour for me to be serenaded by you. Even of I blushed to the roots of my hair ...

23 February 2011 5:06 AM via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@stephenfry

Stephen Fry

And now that your curiosity is no doubt piqued, here is the serenade in question. There’s no video of the actual event, but you can watch Molly Lewis’s original video (or if you don’t want to watch it, you can just listen to the song below the video).

Adobo, no? Here’s a nice recap of the whole event. Now be a good little jellybean and support Molly Lewis by tossing four quarters into her coffers: Buy that song!

The day started off pleasantly enough:

But at 2:39 in the afternoon he tweeted a rather more ominous message:

He tweeted again in the next few minutes (titling them simply “Uh-oh” and “Snaking its way down…”). Each tweet was accompanied by a photograph showing the progress of the tornado:

Then Mr. Fry’s tweeting ceased. This caused a bit of a sit in the Twitterverse—had he been swallowed up by the meteorological menace? Eventually, just over a half-hour later, Mr. Fry returned to reassure everyone:

Whew! And here we have another example of what a wondrous future we live in, wherein a man armed only with an iPhone and a Twitter account can give an immediate account of astounding weather phenomena. We don’t have to rely on the hope that someone caught some footage of it that might make it to the local news that evening, which might then possibly be picked up by a national news (or perhaps end up as footage in Mr. Fry’s Louisiana project a while down the road). Instead the connection is instant between the witness and the audience, without need for any pesky middle-men sticking their thumbs in it.

It also helps that I just so happen to have an incredible fascination with tornadoes.

We play this game where he tries to hijack my Twitter account when he comes home … which he is currently winning by a VERY wide margin. ¹

So a few weeks ago during a rather regular day of tweeting from Wil, we suddenly get this:

Hey Ryan is the best!
6:29 PM May 31st via Twitter for Android²

Me: DAMMIT!
Ryan (slowly, is if to a child): What did we learn?
Me: rassum frassum rassa…
6:38 PM May 31st via Twitter for Android³

And then, a few minutes later…

Seriously Wil…. Ryan is amazing.
6:52 PM May 31st via Twitter for iPhone⁴

SON OF A!
6:57 PM May 31st via Twitter for Android⁵

And then again just last week:

Ryan sure is awesome. Yes he is.
Sun Jun 13 2010 19:06:16 (Pacific Daylight Time) via web⁶

@wilw DAMMIT RYAN! I’m out at the barbecue, making *YOUR* dinner! rassum frassum sassum …
Sun Jun 13 2010 19:15:56 (Pacific Daylight Time) via web⁷

I always look forward to these Ryan hijackings. And besides which, Wil Wheaton is one of the more entertaining celebrity tweeters out there, so follow him if’n ye ain’t already (though ye probably already are).

(sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 )

Here I’m going to round-up a big random heaping of things I’ve found interesting recently. Artists, websites, musics, games, whatever. In random order:

Michaela Eaves

I saw her at a studio open house where she had some paintings and prints out for display. I really dug the way her paintings have heavy outlines, and the way the lines break up the colors in such a way that her paintings almost look like stained glass.

She also had an adorable painting of a rocket ship, done in a soft, children’s book style of painting. I dug it, but I can’t find a picture on her website (which is mostly about her graphic design & illustration business):
www.michaelaeaves.com

8-Bit Jesus

I thought this was pretty spectacular. Not only did Doctor Octoroc (sic) make 8-bit chiptune versions of many Christmas songs for his album 8-Bit Jesus, but he also wrote them in the specific styles of various 8-bit video games. My favorites are definitely “Carol of the Belmonts,” “Bubbles We Have Heard on High,” and “8 Days of Master Robots,” which very excellently captures the essence of the Mega Man experience. Also, “Icarus! The Herald Angels Sing” is quite accurate. Check it out:
http://www.doctoroctoroc.com/8BitJesus/

Machinarium

Machinarium is a beautifully done, old-style, point-and-click adventure video game, unbelievably done entirely in Flash. I like it ’cause it’s about robots. But more than that, the world is completely enthralling, and the puzzles all involve robot logic more than real-world logic.

The art style is pretty much spectacular. You can play a demo for free, or buy and download the full version here:
http://machinarium.net/

Kaiju Dance to Thriller

Just what the title says: a bunch of Kaiju dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Wonder Woman Pumps

This woman takes shoes and tastefully collages them with pages from Wonder Woman comic books. She tends to use mostly monochromatic images, so the effect is a little subtler than you might expect.

She has an etsy shop where she makes all kinds of shoes and boots (not just Wonder Woman):
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Pachainkapink

Regurgitated Thanksgiving Dinner Scarf

Taisha McGee sells what she calls “Ugly Scarves.” They’re mostly actually quite pretty, but she nevertheless gives them hilarious names based loosely on their color schemes, names like “Mulched Roses,” “Tidy Bowl,” “Moldy Cheese,” “Mushy Froot Loops,” and my favorite, “Regurgitated Thanksgiving Dinner.” She also has the sense of humor to take photos of the scarves wrapped around a cardboard stand-up of John Wayne. Bravo!

Check them all out at her etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/TaishaMcGee

Alexis St.John

An artist whose work I saw in a tea shop in Downtown Tacoma (Mad Hat Tea, 1130 Commerce Street) and I liked the humor and simplicity in it. I also really appreciated how most of the paintings were really small; a lot of ‘em were only like 6″ × 6″, and I don’t think anything of hers gets over 20″ in any direction.

You can buy the actual artwork, of if you’d prefer you can buy frameable prints of it.
http://alexisstjohn.com/Gallery.html

TheSixtyOne

TheSixtyOne.com is a fascinating idea for a democratic music website, where the more people like a song the more popular it becomes, and ANYONE can upload ANY song they’ve created (as long as they’re legally allowed to blah, blah, blah, y’know).

Not only that, but it turns listening to music into kind of an RPG. You gain experience (called “reputation”) and rise in levels. There are quests (like “Listen to 7 recently-uploaded songs” or “Listen to the radio stations of 5 other people for 5 minutes each”) that let you earn experience and “hearts,” which you can use to mark a song as a favorite (i.e., you heart the song). And you also earn experience as other people later heart songs that you previously hearted. The more reputation you have, the more likely other people are to listen to your opinions (in theory at least). So you get tangible rewards for finding new, unheard songs that you really like and then getting other people to like them as well, other than the reward of discovering good music.

Also, TheSixtyOne.com is the only place right now where you can hear Taisha’s musc (yes, the same Taisha that makes those scarves). Just go here:
http://www.thesixtyone.com/taisha/

A Very Alan Thickemas

THE Alan Thicke, Leeni, and puppets. Lots and lots of puppets. And Blake Lewis is somehow involved. It exists, I just have no idea of how to see it. Other than these:

That’s about it for now.

Well, recently John Hodgman himself made a post about my post at his website, The Areas of My Expertise. It’s true! Look!

What a pleasure it is to be quite enormously and unrepentantly drunk. Hic! xxxxxxx 

Then a couple of hours later:

I am now putting my rather fragile and oopsy self gently to bed. Love to you all and then more love and a spot more just for luck.Oh dear x 

And then again this morning:

Right. Well. Water. Down throat. Splashed on face. Bwaah! Better. Not too grim a hangover. My room a bomb site. Two hours to pack for home x