Still Cool

Imagine if you can that it’s the summer of 1988. Not too hard, what with the terrible economy, deficit spending and incompetent president.
Still with me?
So it’s 1988, and a little show called Star Trek: The Next Generation is in it’s second season. It’s struggling a little bit, experiencing the typical sophomore slump of any new series, and a writer’s strike is not helping very much.
In the summer of 1988, I turned 16 years old, and, just like the Corey’s, I got a License to Drive!
It’s well documented within the Star Trek community that Patrick Stewart and I bought almost the same car, a 1989 Honda Prelude…the, uh, only problem is, I bought a model that was just slightly cooler than his. (He got the si, and I got the si4WS, baby.) Patrick has really had fun over the years, teasing me about how, since then, he’s always had cooler cars than I do, to which I reply something about his driver.
What’s not well documented, however, is this thing that happened, in the summer of 1988, in the parking garage at Paramount, where we all parked our cars.
We were all working late one night, probably shooting blue screen on the bridge, so we were all wrapped at the same time (a rarity). I excitedly walked to the parking garage with Jonathan Frakes, who I was already looking up to.
So we’re walking back to our cars, and we’re talking about something, I can’t quite remember what, and I really feel like Jonathan is treating me like an equal. He’s not treating me like I’m a kid. It really makes me feel good, and I say to him, “You know, Jonathan, I can tell, just from talking to you, that when you were younger? You used to be cool.”
He laughs, and I think to myself that I’ve cemented my position with him as cool contemporary, rather than lame ass kid.
Then he says, “What do you mean, used to be?!”
I realized what I’d said, and how it didn’t match up with what was in my head, which was, “Gee, man. You are so cool now, as an adult, I bet that you were a really cool guy, who I’d like to hang out with, when you were my age.”
He knew what I meant, I could tell, and he really tortured me about that, for years. Every time I see him nowadays, he turns to a person nearby, and he says, “You know, Wheaton here told me that I used to be cool.” We laugh about it, and I make the appropriate apologies, and explanations, while Jonathan makes faces and gestures indicating that I am full of shit.
Now, when I was working on Trek, I always wanted to be:

  • As good an actor as Patrick,
  • As funny as Brent,
  • And as cool as Jonathan.

I’m still working on those things, and Jonathan just recently showed me how cool he still is.
Jonathan directed this new movie, called “Clockstoppers“. It’s a movie geared towards kids, but it seems smart enough for their parents to sit through it without dreaming up ways of eviscerating the writer responsible for robbing them of 90 minutes of their weekend, which sets it well apart from most “family” films.
Ryan and Nolan have been talking about how they can’t wait to see this movie, and I mentioned to them last week that I was friends with the director, and I had heard that it was going to be really cool, and I was pretty sure that I could get us into a screening.
So I called up Jonathan’s office, and asked if I could get some tickets to a screening, so I could take the kids, and be a hero to them. Jonathan’s assistant said that it would be no problem, and I’d hear from someone at Nickelodeon about the screening.
The next day, the phone rings, and it’s totally Jonathan himself, calling me back, telling me how happy he is that I want to take my step-kids to see his movie, and that he’s really happy to get me into the screening on Saturday.
See, the thing is, Jonathan is what we in Hollywood call A Big Deal(tm), and usually people who become A Big Deal(tm) don’t usually talk to people who aren’t also A Big Deal(tm).
But Jonathan is not only A Big Deal(tm), he’s also A Really Great Guy(tm), and he didn’t need to call me back, personally. Actually, I really didn’t expect him to.
But he did, and that proves that he is now, and always has been, cool. Despite my fumbled proclamations as a 16 year old dorkus.

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167 thoughts on “Still Cool”

  2. If that Frakes fellow gives you any shit, remind him that you’re the only member of the TNG cast that actually looks better now than when they did the show. Assuming that none of the other cast members have had plastic surgery or something.

  3. Chuck Jones. Crap. My earliest memory of color TV is the prime time Bugs Bunny Show. Back when color TV was something strange and wonderful. Fare thee well, Wile E. . He deserves at least a 10 minute tribute at the Oscars this year.
    Riker
    With or without liposuction?

  4. Haven’t heard from Television’s Wil Wheaton on whether I’ll be co-authoring “The Wil Wheaton Story,” nor have Wil’s people contacted me regarding our motorcoach venture between Glendale and Richland.
    So.
    That means I am free to go to Best Buy today to buy a game for my kid and then some doughnuts.
    For the both of us.
    And if you’re wondering…
    Tonight I am going to fix my shed all up (bought a utility light AND a space heater) so’s I can begin work on…
    “Spudnuts: A Life Lived in ASCII.”
    Available at fine bookstores everywhere in the Spring of 2032.

  6. How about’
    Spudnuts: A Legend In His Own Mind
    or
    Who Moved the Spudnuts?
    or
    Don’t Sweat the Spudnuts?
    Just helpin ya out…..

  10. Reminds me of a recent story I heard.
    A well known songwriter/singer was noticed by a group of young girls.
    After a while one of them plucked up enough courage to go up to him and said.
    ‘Excuse me, didn’t you used to be David Bowie’

  11. Just thought you should know, down here in New Zealand – not THAT far behind you. Getting ‘Enterprise’ next week, and repeats of ‘The Next Generation’ and ‘Original Show’ on the same night after the premiere. Can’t wait to see a young Wesley Crusher again. Yes, I will admit to a slight case of young teenage lust, I was 11 (I think), when it started and 18 when it finished. Ah, the Coreys!! I remember those years well.

  12. Notice he didn’t say
    * As good an actor as Jonathan,
    * As funny as Patrick,
    * And as cool as Brent.
    There’s a reason for that.

  13. Good posts about Frakes. I always thought he seems like a really cool guy, even before the beard. But I can’t let this other part of the message slide…
    “Imagine if you can that it’s the summer of 1988. Not too hard, what with the terrible economy, deficit spending and incompetent president.”
    Dude, NOTHING in your post was about politics. So what’s up with this crap? If Reagan was incompetent, then Clinton was useless, inept, doubly INCOMPETENT, ineffectual, and very dangerous. A great politician, a HORRIBLE leader.
    Terrible economy? The “decade of greed”? You owe part of your success to the “decade of greed”, so get over it. Let’s remember that people wanted to find a way to get Reagan to run for a third term, and Bush 41 get elected solely on Reagan’s economy, so things couldn’t have been THAT bad…
    You’ve grown up a lot Wil, but to just throw out a line like that in an otherwise non-political post, you’ve got some left to go. 🙂
    And Mike, your movie “UHF” will be on DVD in June. Cool!

  14. Tiana is right, it’s cool having 2 episodes each sunday of TNG. However, I’m a guy and only had teen spirit for Tasha Yar.
    I wish I was lucky enough just to have a story written about me getting a blowjob in the Turbolift by Tasha Yar.
    Actually, you were a pretty cool actor. Hope you get some good movie roles soon, you deserve respect for being cool, funny and good as an actor.

  16. How do you know it, Lermontov? Unless you know that you are indeed dirty pervert.
    ——-
    I tried to get a table, but the surly Mandarin maitre d’hotel just pointed to a sign written in Chinese characters.
    I don’t read (much) Chinese, but I’m fairly certain the sign read: “We Chinese HOLLYWOOD (my emphasis)
    restauranteurs reserve the right to refuse service to disgusting, boneless reprobate pervert-fucks who finger
    themselves in back alleys and don’t wash their hands afterward, so get out!”

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