An Annotated Memoir
“Never met your heroes.” Is a common refrain from fans who regularly attend Conventions. The actors who play your favorite characters, are not, in fact, your favorite characters. Most of them aren’t even fans of the shows they star in. If you ask them about the character they played, the odds are good that they’ll talk about the sets, the props, and a bunch of stuff that is interesting to them, but not so much to you. They’ll also bitch and moan about all the stuff you love. And they will definitely have a William Fucking Shatner story.
I mean, is that really offensive?
Listening to Wil Wheaton constantly interrupting Wil Wheaton for 20 hours is a bit of a slog. In one of the many introductions, 50 year old Wil Wheaton tells you that he is sorry about, well, just about everything that 30 year old Wil Wheaton says in the original Just A Geek. The current model of Wil Wheaton finds a lot of things offensive. Like, a lot.
Listening to the audio book is a bit of a challenge. The many Wils from many time periods are very easy to get mixed up. 50 year old Wil was easy enough to pick out most of the time since he was the one bitching and moaning about objectifying woman, being ableist, and over using a few words like ‘cool.’ 30 year old Wil was the one who still had ambitions about becoming a Movie Star and was quite fond of objectifying women, being ableist, and over using words like ‘cool.’
Wil Wheaton is a love him or hate him kind of guy. And Wil Wheaton wavers pretty strongly on whether he loves or hates his younger self. He is positive he hates his parents for forcing him to become an actor. He’s also not a fan of Rick Berman who cost him his last real chance at starring in a big movie. Fellow child star Henry Thomas got the role instead. The fact that this role didn’t make Thomas a movie star hasn’t lessoned Wil’s resentment at not being allowed to take the role himself.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
The current model of Wil Wheaton has settled into the good life being an actor, and being a Star Trek actor in particular, now affords him. He mentions in passing that he buys new action figures as they come out and signs and sells them for a profit. Wil works at Conventions and his current on air project is a Star Trek talk show called The Ready Room on Paramount Plus. He says that if he had remained on Star Trek:The Next Generation he would be really rich now, but he wouldn’t be happy. Wil Wheaton says that he is living his best life.
My favorite work from Wil Wheaton from the past few years has been his audiobook narrator work. He did a great job on Red Shirts and more recently I enjoyed his work on The Kaiju Preservation Society. He’s narrated over 60 books and will no doubt continue to narrate many more books in the future. But I have to say that Still Just A Geek was not his best work. It’s a collection of twenty year old blog posts being critiqued by a man twenty years older and wiser. There are a few fun bits here and there, and a few moments where Wil breaks down and cries over his lost youth, but it doesn’t feel like a book. It plays more like a Podcast doing a rewatch. A little of Wil ranting and raving goes a long way.
It’s a long book.
Still Just A Geek clocks in at close to 20 hours. It’s really two books fighting for dominance. One is the orignal Just A Geek and the other is current model Wil Wheaton constantly interrupting that book with an apology or an explanation or a rant. It’s worth a listen, but you might want to take it an hour or two at a time.
