Just for funz

I've liked Wil Wheaton for a long time. I was one of the few who actually liked Wesley Crusher early on in ST:TNG (even though he had a lot of dopey lines--"We're from Starfleet! We don't lie!"), largely because Wheaton played him with such a constant sense of wonder and excitement. But he also had some genuinely great scenes, such as the dramatic confrontation with Captain Picard in "The First Duty," where he takes a serious verbal drubbing from the captain in the process of realizing that he has been loyal to the wrong ideal, and has to endure the pain of admitting he screwed up. Jumping ahead to more recent stuff, his writing is funny and insightful, and his appearances on shows such as "The Big Bang Theory" and "Eureka" are enjoyable without fail.

Wheaton and I have several friends in common, and played poker at adjacent tables once, but I've still never actually met him. Wil is also worth knowing about if you do crossword puzzles, because puzzle makers apparently find the unusual spelling of his name very useful, and it shows up a lot.

I read his blog and tweets. Recently he and his wife watched on TV a movie that he was in: "Toy Soldiers," released in 1991, when Wheaton was 19. He sent a few Twitter messages about it, including a photo of him pointing in shame to the dumb-looking earring he wore. He later wrote a blog post about the experience, and said that he still liked the movie in spite of some of its silliness.

I had either never heard of this movie or had forgotten about it. I thought it would be fun to watch, so bumped it up to the top of my Netflix queue, and watched it today. I recognized from his post the scene in which Wil gets shot (kid can handle a phaser, but not a 9mm submachine gun!), and managed to pause the DVD on the same frame that he had used in the picture, and took a screen shot of the one superimposed on the other.

Which was way more fun than is strictly reasonable.