ETA: More pics added below mine!
After a busy year which involved Debbie Gibson serenading him on his 40th birthday, playing board games with Colin Ferguson and chatting about aliens with Noah Wyle, raising over $10,000 to aid homeless doggies and kitties in need, re-launching his blog on his own website, and being able to tell his shipmates how much he really loves them for the first time since he was 18, Wil Wheaton and his wonderful wife Anne decided to go to Hawaii for a private vacation.
And despite his re-emergence into the mainstream public eye courtesy of recurring guest appearances on shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” “Leverage,” and “Eureka,” where he gets to relish in playing “evil”, I still find it hard to believe that the Wil Wheaton we know as that guy who loves brewing beer, telling stories through words and film, and being generally geeky is a celebrity.
It’s something that Wheaton’s gotten used to over the years, and he’s certainly had his share of “crazy” and “scary” fan moments—but I don’t think that even Wil Wheaton ever thought that he’d be stalked by the paparazzi while on vacation. I’ll let him explain:
We’ve had an absolutely amazing trip, relaxing and reading and swimming and having beers and mostly just enjoying that, after a year spent mostly apart due to my work, we finally get ten days together.
Well, today, a shitbag decided to intrude on our private vacation. He set himself up on the beach where we’re staying, pulled out a telephoto lens, and decided to take pictures of us for hours this morning.
I saw this guy around 10 this morning, and I thought to myself, “No, that guy isn’t taking my picture; I’m just being paranoid. Nobody cares about me enough to camp out on a beach and take that kind of paparazzi picture.”
Around 3, Anne and I got up from the beach, and walked back to our condo to make lunch. I saw the same guy, in the same place, with the same camera. I sort of glared at him, and he said something to me that I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I said.
“I said, ‘thank you, Wil.’” He said.
“Dude, I’m on vacation, and taking pictures like that of me and my wife isn’t cool. Would you please delete them?” I said.
“Sorry, brah,” he said, “I gotta make a living.”
“Are you serious?” I said. “I’m just trying to be on vacation with my wife, man.”
“Sorry, brah,” he said.
I absorbed the reality of what this parasite had done, and I said, “Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit.”
“Hey, if you don’t like it, go home, brah,” he said.
I was enraged. I was shaking and sick to my stomach. I walked back to my condo, and ate a sandwich (delicious PB&J with Guava Jam!) while I processed the invasion of my privacy I’d just experienced.
I was furious that this piece of shit would spend hours sitting on a beach, taking I don’t even know how many pictures of us, and then have the audacity to tell me that I should just go home if I didn’t like it. Like I was in the wrong for expecting to enjoy some time on the beach without some fucking creep using a telephoto lens to take pictures of me.
But of course, rather than continue to let his vacation be ruined by this breach in privacy and courtesy, he and his wife decided to ruin the chance that the creepy stalker photos will ever be purchased by publishing their own photos of themselves in their bathing suits.
And then… the Internet got creative in that way that only a geek-defending, Photoshop and GIMP-happy, meme-creating Internet can:
And, of course, I had to get my kicks in as well:
I can’t wait to see what other ‘shops come out of this. ETA: I hit “Publish” too soon…
