GGotS Event Review: Welcome to W00tstock!

By Tally Heilke

Greetings nerds and nerdettes. Welcome to W00TSTOCK.

These were the opening words of W00tstock 2.0 and 2.1 this past weekend, first in Seattle and then Portland. The words, displayed on a vast screen, were accompanied by the epic music of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and by the ecstatic cheering of hundreds of nerds and nerdettes anticipating three hours of geek heaven.

I attended W00tstock 2.0 and 2.1 with Canadian online sketch-comedy troupe LoadingReadyRun, who had been invited to perform. (I’m a member of the LoadingReadyRun Girlfriends and Contributors Club. And seller of their merchandise, and hunter-downer of lost or forgotten sharpies. That kind of thing.) We road-tripped down to the Seattle and Portland shows, had way too little sleep and an absolutely fantastic time. And I, moving between backstage and audience, was able to get a full view of the breathtaking creature that is W00tstock.

Headlined by Wil Wheaton, Paul and Storm, and Adam Savage, W00tstock is best defined as a geek variety show, a sampling of the best and funniest that geek culture has to offer. It includes music, storytelling, videos, talks, pantomimes, sketches and, at least in Portland, 28 pairs of thrown underwear. Though it’s billed as a three-hour experience, both the show in Seattle and the one in Portland went well over the four-hour mark. Nobody was unhappy about this. Except maybe the poor security folks for the venue.

Seeing two shows back-to-back was a remarkable experience, for W00tstock is never the same twice. Apart from the fact that each city includes a slightly different lineup of guest appearances depending on who is available or — sometimes — local, much of W00tstock has an improvisational feel. The folks on stage told mostly the same stories both nights, but never in exactly the same way. Unplanned and unscripted, performers in Seattle made callbacks to the LoadingReadyRun video shown at the beginning of the evening. In Portland, James Turner‘s fumbled introduction of Matt Fraction became a running gag for the rest of the night.

It was a wonderful time. Wil Wheaton told stories and wore recursive T-shirts. Paul and Storm sang songs and chatted with the audience. Adam Savage explained the difficulties of purchasing a latex jumpsuit, as well as the challenges of wearing one to speed down a massive water slide into a “balls-cold” lake. There was Molly Lewis with her open letter to Stephen Fry, offering to bear his child; Hank Green with a song about that “sperm-producing parasite,” the male anglerfish, and a little ditty about quarks; LoadingReadyRun miming an alien invasion and showing a video about the anxieties inherent in installing Linux on a microwave; Stephen Toulouse with a solemn reading from the XBox Live Book of Enforcement; Mike Selinker and James Earnest presenting juggling tricks and puzzles; MC Frontalot and his band with their brightly colored ties and incredible onstage energy; and Jason Finn, monitor of jokes and bestower of rimshots for those he found worthy.

In Portland we were without MC Frontalot, and instead heard a humorous yet thought-provoking talk on comics from Matt Fraction and a discussion of feline dating services from Frayn Masters. Both evenings were also punctuated by numerous silly videos and random musical interludes.

While the audience cheered, laughed, swooned, and roared in turns, the performers watched from the wings and tried not to get so caught up in the fun that they forgot their entrances. In the green room, Wil Wheaton debated whether or not to reference a solid but possibly too obscure joke. Guesses were made as to what percentage of the audience was likely to get the reference. Adam Savage entertained LoadingReadyRun by describing the delights of going through airport security with residue from explosives on your shoes. Like you do. Hank Green was proclaimed a hero for locating the “on” button on the air conditioner.

All this backstage camaraderie, a fair amount of it between people who knew each other not at all or very little, relates to one of the two things that I believe make W00tstock uniquely remarkable.

The geek celebrities and artists onstage are clearly having just as much fun as the audience — possibly more. They love sharing these aspects of their lives and personalities with hundreds of people who share that same geeky sense of humor, that same love of the Commodore 64, that same attraction to T-shirts bearing polyhedral dice and obscure gaming references, that same desire to spend 20 minutes singing a three-minute song centered around one outrageously awful pun. Both audience and performers enjoy every minute.

The second unique aspect is the relationship between audience and performers. Much of what caused the show to go overtime both nights was conversation between the people onstage and the people watching. I’m not just talking about Paul jumping off the stage to sing the Frogger musical song to a member of the audience. (Though that was great.) No, I’m talking about the constant interaction. I’m talking about those moments when Paul and Storm mock-lectured the audience for shouting “Arrr!” out of turn, or when any of the performers responded to shouted comments from the crowd. “I love you guys,” Wil proclaimed when the whole audience responded appropriately to his Rocky Horror cue. “Antici…,” he said. “Pation!” we all shouted.

And Hank Green could not fail to remark on the wonder of 1,500 individuals “cheering for a song about particle physics.” It was a special time with special people.

In Portland, Paul and Storm brought the house lights up and commanded the audience to look around at each other. “This,” proclaimed Storm, “is what the Internet looks like.”

And you know what? Viewed that way, the Internet doesn’t look as scary as people often proclaim it to be. It looks like a lot of fun, interesting, and creative people dressed in the best T-shirts life has to offer, having a wonderful evening together.

Tally Heilke is a writer, crafter, and contributor to loadingreadyrun.com. Check out her blog, I Could Make That, and follow her on Twitter: @Tally_LRR

[All photos courtesy of Tally Heilke... who we are wickedly jealous of.]