Radio Free Burrito: Episode Twenty-Seven
wil, · Categories: BooksHoly Crap, it's time for a new episode of Radio Free Burrito!
Let's all celebrate the departure of the Goddamn Motherfucking Bulldozer with a reading from Just A Geek!
Show Notes:
- The logo was designed by WWdN:iX reader Marc, who asked that I not link to his "in progress" website. Thanks, Marc!
- Radio Free Burrito doesn't work as hard to earn its [EXPLICIT] tag as Memories of the Futurecast does, but it still manages to upset mom and get Twitter breakup messages from sensitive people. You have been warned.
- This week's theme music is Enjoy The Silence
, by Depeche Mode, from their seminal album Violator
. - The Reddit post about DM, in case you wanted to see it.
- The volume of nostalgic commercials at YouTube is staggering and wonderful. Here's the Commodore 64 commercial I played today.
- Here's William Fucking Shatner beaming in from the future to tell us all about the wonder computer of the 1980s.
- The song I wanted to play but ended up having to cut is called Misery, by The Dynamics. It seems a little silly that I can link to a version of it and that's fine, but if I actually played it in the podcast, I could get into trouble.
- Last week, I said, "I just realized that I have friends who do awesome things, and I should make them the unofficial sponsors of RFB each week, so RFB listeners can discover nifty things. I hope I remember to do that next week." Oh shit. I forgot to do that this week.
- Today, I read a modified version of The Wesley Dialogs from Just A Geek.
- This episode is about 35MB.
- This episode is about 36 minutes long.
- I am aware that the tags are screwed up and the feed doesn't validate, so unless you're grabbing RFB from iTunes or getting it directly here, it's a giant hassle to get it. I am aware of this problem, but it's a gigantic pain in the ass for me to correct it, given the tools I have available to me. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and I'm very annoyed by it, but I can make a podcast, or I can be a bug-squashing code monkey. I can't do both, and I quite frankly prefer making the podcast. Listener Dave K. built a workaround that you can learn all about here. Thanks, Dave!
- Again, no embedded artwork. This distresses me, but it's Apple's fault, not mine, and it's too much of a pain in the ass to get it done. Hopefully, they'll fix the bug REALLY SOON.
- This is the end of the notes.
Ready? Then turn out the lights, relax, take a deep breath, and
Download Radio Free Burrito Episode 27!
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Cheers and thanks, sir! Your books, blogs, and burrito have been the stuff that helped me get through the long hours of my first big comic book gig (well, the audio things were… not great at reading and drawing at the same time). I shall be a lifelong RFB fan!
Yay! I knew I woke up at 1:15 am because I was hungry for a “burrito”. Thanks Wil. Oh, one more thank you- you’ve inspired my 16 yr old to want to be a writer. She loved Just A Geek!! Thanks Wil for inspiring the inner geek in today’s youth.
🙂
“It’s Wednesday May 4th” is it?
p.s. thanks for the reminder of FCBD on Saturday.
thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and emotions with all of us.
i feel kind of geek-adjacent listening to rfb, and i love that.
I expected a DING after that silence. 😉
The story of digging out the Cadet Crusher figure and coming to terms with your inner
demonsGollum will always be a good one and, I think, the one that contributed mainly to the person you are today. Do you think if you hadn’t taken that step, Memories of the Future would have happened?“Do I need to remind you who waxed Robin Lefler’s ass?” made me snort my green tea through my nose the wrong way, thanks a lot. ;P
Another wonderful RFB, thank you.
Was a lovely surprise this morning to find. Loved it thank-you 🙂
I also love ‘The Mode’…. may go listen now… Black Celebration / Violator era.
Dutch Tobacco ad ftw! 😀 The guy’s pronunciation was so extreme, it took me a moment to realize it was Dutch till about two sentences in! 🙂
A new Radio Free Burrito? Now that’s what I’m talking about!
“Nostalgia Oblongata”…absolutely brilliant. Wil, you have such a gift with words that it is always a pleasure to consume your media in every form. Thanks so much for sharing & just being awesome.
Huzzah! A new Burrito! I always get so excited when I see you announce on twitter that there is a new episode:-) It makes me go “eep!”
http://www.livingwithanerd.com
Love your writing, and the podcasts. Cannot wait to see you in Portland this weekend! If I bring Just a Geek will you be doing autographs after the show?
Yeah, we'll all be hanging out after the show to sign stuff.
Will you have any copies of Happiest Days? Good luck with MofF2 I really enjoyed the first one!
I may have a few, yeah, but if I do, they'll be the Subterranean Press edition, which is more expensive than the Monolith Press edition.
That’s OK it is my Mothers Day present! It can be a little expensive.
Thanks so much!
Thank you for all of the additional story about your frame of mind when you wrote The Wesley Dialogues. That particular collection of writings has always touched and amused me. I find a very strong parallel in my own life to a lot of the things you said in this episode and in those dialogues, and it is very comforting to learn that someone you admire has experienced some of the same struggles and hardships that you yourself have.
You’re a brilliant writer and a damn funny guy. Thanks for continuing to share that with the rest of us!
Cheers!
Wow, the Wonder Computer of the 80’s for under $300! Using an inflation calculator, that would put its price at around $700 today.
It does make me wonder what products the future will hold that will make my now-2-year-old-daughter marvel at how old-fashioned the iPod, cell phone, and wireless routers were.
It has a keyboard! Video games don't have keyboards!
Nice that you got in a Weird Al reference in episode 27.
Is there really such a thing as non-jaunty kazoo music?
Perhaps an album of kazoo dirges would be just the thing to to accompany the more dramatic moments of ‘Wil Wheaton performs Just A Geek with Wil Wheaton’.
"Sessions presents: Wil Wheaton plays Kazoo Dirges and Sad Songs on the Banjo! Available on two LPs or one 8-track cassette!"
OMG. The video commercial – OMG. When I got my first teaching job (mumble mumble 19 yrs ago mumble mumble) I was to teach a “computer” class which included programming. You know what I am talking about: for/next, if/then, loop, data, etc. The Radio Shack computers were in the computer lab when the principal brought me in to see the lab. omg. Tape cassette players for hard drives. That was almost laughable. I had used the Apple IIe in college and I felt like I hit a time warp backwards!
Tape cassette players for hard drives… best reuse for nerdy mix-tapes ever.
Wil, I listened to RFB 27 on my way to and from work today. The reading of the Wesley Dialogs has reminded me how much I enjoy your stories and perhaps I should go back and read them all again. Thanks.
Wil, PLEASE perform the Just a Geek Stageshow with Wil Wheaton somewhere on the East Coast! The Philadelphia area would be perfect, but my wife and I will definitely travel if we have to 🙂
or the "recorded off the radio on the jambox" tapes!
Sent from Theresa's iPhone
I recently started listening to R.F.B. with your most recent show, 27. Â I’ve always enjoyed your blog and random Twitterness. The R.F.B. show sparked an interesting memory of Wesley Crusher who I honestly had almost completely forgotten about. I was about 11 when Mr Crusher entered into the TNG. I had always been a Star Trek fan but never really related to it as much as my father, who absolutely loved TOS. The show stilled appealed to younger crowds but seemed to rarely have good strong younger heroes. Star Trek was always filled with older heroes. They fit the bill nicely but I never really identified with them much. Enter stage left (beam in stage earth?) Wesley Crusher. Suddenly we have this new character that is incredibly geeky, but obviously highly intelligent. He slowly develops into this superhero like character that quickly integrates as the crews personal saviour. As a geeky kid growing up I think he was the first hero character I identified with personally or at the very least idealized. So if I could say one thing to Wesley Crusher it would be: thank you for making Star Trek about something other than old farts in space and for giving the younger geeky crowd something fun to relate to.
Of course now that I’m older, younger heroes annoy me. So turns the wheel of time….
PS – See you this month at Phoenix Comic Con. Should be a good show, as you probably know it’s a new location this year. Moving up in the world, or so we hope. Love the show and blog, keep it up.
Love this story.
The wife and I had a great time at Seattle w00tstock! Jason Finn was a great addition, further proving why it is dangerous to give a drummer a microphone. Also loved the “Oh f*ck, am I on?!?!” moment.
Thanks again for an awesome experience…. and for the nostalgic love kudos to the C64.
Since you’re an early adapter and all, maybe video recordings of the show could be made available on Betamax and even *gasp* Laserdisc!
Hey Wil, loved the Burrito, sorry I missed Woot in PDX, I got nailed by some lady on Western by the UCLA County Hospital, who was texting AND talking on her cell, good news is I only spent a week in the hospital ICU (Harbor County, and it was awful!), and I WILL be at Woot in Min. Minn. in June! Look forward to seeing you there and hope it’s also 4 hours as the PDX show was! Heard GREAT things, wish me luck as I am still recovering, but Dammit, I’ll be there in June to see the show and get a T-Shirt!!! Idiots that text and drive should be shot with their own I-Phones! -Ethan Tudor W.
Hey Wil, loved the Burrito, sorry I missed Woot in PDX, I got nailed by some lady on Western by the UCLA County Hospital, who was texting AND talking on her cell, good news is I only spent a week in the hospital ICU (Harbor County, and it was awful!), and I WILL be at Woot in Min. Minn. in June! Look forward to seeing you there and hope it’s also 4 hours as the PDX show was! Heard GREAT things, wish me luck as I am still recovering, but Dammit, I’ll be there in June to see the show and get a T-Shirt!!! Idiots that text and drive should be shot with their own I-Phones! -Ethan Tudor W.
But WAIT there’s MORE! Maybe you can throw in a free CLOWN sweater with every purchase! (You should get one to wear to Woot In Min. Minn. in June), that would be too funny!
I remember that commercial Traceylee, just for the record, Gary Coleman, and Mac Culkin were ALSO really into the Commodore Amiga back in the day, both used to be on my Amiga BBS (Fly By Night BBS), and traded warez at the Pizza Parlor with us, why do geeks like us LOVE Commodore so much? Too bad Escom screwed them up so badly…-Ethan Tudor W. Host of The Neverhood www,blogtalkradio.com/ethantudorw
Oh man, OUCH!
I hope that idiot who hit you loses her license, and I hope you heal up really quick and painlessly.
Thanks Wil, I'm getting there. I DID squeeze out a quick Neverhood Podcast this morning to talk about people that text/talk and drive, I tell you mate, I'm like a dog with a bone on this now. Glad PDX treated you well, I'll be at the Min. Minn. gig, looking forward to seeing the show, you guys look like your having too much fun, glad you got back safely….Neopolitan Pizza, ok now I have to google that, sounds good. Have a great week! -Ethan Tudor W.
Wil, I loved this episode, as much as every other episode of RFB. I saw you at ECCC and wanted to gush on and on about how much I loved RFB and your writing, but I saw the line behind me and told you briefly how much I loved RFB and fed the burrito. I look forward to the next episode. I’m glad to hear that the bulldozer is gone!
For all it’s worth Wil, thank you so much for being you! My daughter has just had me download and send pics of you as Wesley Crusher to her cel phone (and none of them in the pumpkin sweater, I promise!)… Now she can join me in driving my husband crazy by DVR-ing all episodes of TNG… Wow.. I guess being a Geek transcends all generations!
She’s got a huge crush on Brent Spiner’s “Data” too… It’s so darned cute, it reminds me of when I was her age and totally enamored with the TNG…
Thanks Wil for giving us something we can share!
Dude! Thanks for the trip down C64 memory lane. I kept watching all the related commercials that went along with your linked one. Y’know, my mom still has ours packed away in her closet somewhere. Tape drive and all. I’ll bet if I look real hard I may even find some of our old “Load * Magazine” disks.
Ahh… the days when it was all one little dot running around after another little dot…
Every time you read excerpts from one of your books, it really makes me want to be a writer. I just personally feel I never have any stories interesting enough to write down. But, I shall just keep writing for my own amusement until I feel I have something of substance.
Hey Will, first time I’ve listened to the show, all the way from sunny Cyprus. Just want to say keep up the good work, I’ve downloaded a fair few of these now and enjoying them all. Thanks very much. p.s I am British not Cypriot, in case you were curious
OK, I’m just gonna nitpick because I have nothing better to do… wait…
Anyway. Happened to look this up the other day before listening and Depeche Mode doesn’t mean Fast Fashion as is commonly held. It IS taken from a french magazine of the same name, and was taken because they liked how it sounded. But the name roughly translates to fashion news.
source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_Depeche_Mode_mean_and_how_do_you_pronounce_it
Wow, I'm surprised I didn't know that. Interesting!
What happened to that Burrito you were going to post a couple of weeks ago?
I was going to try to email or PM, but apparently nsm.
I’m a regular blog-reader, and I used to listen to RFB, but the Internet Ate My Subscription. Through whatever chain of events, I downloaded the episodes that are up on iTunes last week and have been listening to them over the past couple of days.
I have a copy of Just a Geek. I got it years ago and enjoyed it immensely. But, listening to that piece, and, even more, the comments on it afterwards, really Spoke To My Life, Man (You can hear me rolling my eyes at myself, right?). The combination of Prove To Everyone and Another Fucking Thing is uncomfortably familiar. But it was nice to hear someone who’s come out the other side not try to trivialize or heroicize it.
In summary, in 10 years, I hope to be Just Like Wil. Only with boobs.
Hi Wil!
I just finished listening to the episode 27, and I found very interesting and moving the part in which you talk about Wesley, and the hardships you faced, etc. It meant a lot to me, both because I’ve known the ups and downs of artist’s life, as my father was a musician, and also because I’m a trekker.
I’ve found your blog just last week, when I finished watching all the 7 seasons of TNG, and I loved your character. I had never really watched the series before, just a few episodes over 15 years ago, so it was a dream come true to buy the DVDs, which I’ve been wanting to do for years, but could never afford it.
Then after finishing watching it, I just felt like knowing what happened to all of you, the main actors of the series, and I was very happy to find out you’re doing well.
By this long message, I just wanted to let know that I’m really enjoying your work on the blog and the podcasts, to let you know (for the umpteenth time) what you and the other guys mean to a fan, and I wish you and your family the best. Greetings from Brazil! 🙂