How many of you are thinking, “Who in the heck is Wil Wheaton?” You remember him. He was the smart kid in that classic movie “Stand By Me”, the film where the four boys set off on a trek to see a dead body (Wil is the kid on the left). That movie was released in 1986 when Wil was 13 or 14 years old. He also played the role of Wesley Crusher on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. That was from 1987 to 1990.
Think about that for a minute. What if your glory years were between the ages of 13 and 18 and then you suddenly plunge to a lower level of success, or at least a lower level of public recognition? That’s a difficult thing to deal with and we’ve seen many kid actors and athletes struggle with this situation of being "over the hill" at an age when most people are just setting out for the peak.
With Wheaton, the term "over the hill" would be a little harsh and inaccurate. As this Wil Wheaton Wikipedia entry shows, he has quite a varied career going with writing, acting, blogging, speaking, and even professional poker (the third photo is Wil playing cards in a "Big Bang Theory" episode). It’s the blogging aspect that has recently caught my attention. Not his written blog (which I might get to some day), but his Radio Free Burrito podcasts which talk about his blogging and serves as somewhat of a verbal blog.
I've been listening to quite a few of these podcasts. There was apparently a Radio Free Burrito series that ran in 2001 (*see note below), but the series I'm listening to started in 2005 and has been an on and off project that now numbers 25 episodes. What I like about the podcasts is their slice of life nature. Naturally there are stories about Star Trek, current auditions, and various Hollywood type things, but it's the day-to-day incidents I like. For example:
---Someone came up to him at a grocery store and said "Are you Wil Wheaton? I read your blog." He was so excited about being recognized because of the blog and I could relate because it happened to me once at the Laundromat. I too was so excited/surprised!!!
---He talked about worrying that the blog wasn't interesting to other people and about keeping an eye on the number of hits per day. Yeah, I can relate.
---I already mentioned last week about how he takes off his seatbelt just before he reaches home--that's a habit I do for reasons unknown. Then there's his excitement about discovering new music, his need to write, the way his mind jumps from thing to thing, plans for the blog that seemed to get derailed by some new plan 24 hours later, various things that bring him down and other things that lift him up.
There were a lot of small things that hit home with me. If you listened, you would probably find some different small things that hit home with you. It just felt like I was listening to someone who was willing to be totally honest about their life and it made me feel a little more comfortable about the quirks and oddities of my life.
Maybe what I liked most about his podcasts is that it made me feel like the trivial things I write about might actually strike a chord with some of you. Sometimes I'll proofread a post and it will feel like the entire thing is totally worthless, but maybe there's some small thing that will hit home with one or more of you. Maybe some story will spur you into action, or it will bring back a pleasant memory in your life, or maybe you'll laugh with me or about me, or possibly you will find relief in knowing that you aren't the only one with some odd habit or mental defect.
With the summer break coming, my hope is to do a little better with my blog entries. More variety, more time to write, and a little more focus on the project. It's something that I look forward to after this final push on the photos.
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*Here's the "see below" part that might be too long for too little:
Sometimes it's hard to get a grip on just how fast technology changes. I saw something on Wil's blog that made me laugh and it also amazed me. There was a webpage about the original Radio Free Burrito series. It's easier to cut and paste his note about the end of that project, and then I'll get to what followed that amused and amazed me. Here's the note:
"For a few golden months last year, I was able to realize my youthful dream of being an radio DJ. I started at Live365, streaming out to tens of listeners all over the internet, and topped out at something like 50 listeners, a few weeks later. After about 3 months, I was offered some server space by one of the insanely cool guys who works at WinAmp, and the RFB kept rollin' along...but, sometime in December of 2001, the stream dried up, and I haven't heard back from the Shoutcast guys, as of February 18th, 2002. It's probably all for the best, because my poor little old computer wasn't really able to handle the stream any more, but, when I am finally able to upgrade to a better computer, I'll look into getting some space from live365 again.
Until that day comes, I leave the page as it originally was, below this line: "
Okay, that was the note and then what follows is his original Radio Free Burrito page with some explanation and links you could click. One of the links had the following about a file you could download:
"A very lame looking, WinAmp-generated playlist is HERE. (warning: it's 93K)"
Did you notice the warning. We are talking about less than 10 years ago and he adds a warning about the large file size of the download. AND IT'S ONLY A 93K FILE!
For those of you who don't deal with file sizes very often, let me illustrate. A typical digital photo file is probably going to be 3MB (3 megabytes). That single photo file would be over 30 times larger than a 93K file which was considered large less than a decade ago. Many of these Wil Wheaton podcasts are several hundred times larger than a 93K file and by today's standards they aren't large files.
A decade from now people will look back at the technology that we currently consider fast, powerful, and sophisticated and they will wonder how we ever accomplished anything with such antiquated equipment. The speed of life keeps getting faster and faster.
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