PrivateTim

I think you way over generalize and put people in too many boxes. I see a lot of skinny twinks who like other skinny twinks, especially at the younger ages because big guys intimidate them since those are the guys who they tend to get bullied by. And if Alistair wants to explore his sexuality, someone very inexperienced like himself (assuming he is still rather inexperienced) is pretty attractive rather then intimidating. As to JJ needing someone to call his on his bullshit, have you forgotten that when we first met him it was little Alistair that called the much bigger Ryan Grafton on his BS bullying. That is one of the reasons I love this kid, he might be slight and prim and proper, but he isn't afraid to stand up and speak his mind. That is a main reason I see him as a great future partner for William, because he'd certainly call BS on him, keep him in line, but also support him when he is in the right. As to Zach and football, even if he is a good player you needed to be great at your position, top 10 or so in the country to get a USC to notice you in the Carroll era. There is a lot more to college football in CA than the Pac 10 (12 now), San Jose State, Fresno State, UC Davis and San Diego State have certainly all placed players in the NFL and there are the small schools like Claremont McKenna, Pomona Pitzer, Azusa Pacific etc that play a tough brand of football and have sent the occasional player to the NFL like Christian Okoye.

Ha ha me either, thanks

Me either, never ever have heard the expression until I just read it now. "Blue, what do you call it then when someone's trying to mack on a girl, and his friend/brother, etc etc says embarrassing things about him that leads to a cock block?" I believe the proper expression is, "that's fucked up bro" As to would an Ohioan or anyone else be confused by slang, like a car being sick, to be confused to the point of thinking something is wrong with the car, that is the stuff of bad Hollywood scriptwriters. An Ohio teen might not know if the expression was good or bad, but they would understand it was slang, not literal.

There is a huge difference between the law and the reality of how people behave. I don't know anyone who obeys those laws about not driving friends around when you are 16 or any parents who care. The law came about because of a series of high profile accidents where teen drivers killed friends and sometimes themselves. This Newport one being memorable and it tore the City of Newport Beach apart for awhile because the police had stopped the teen driver earlier and didn't arrest everyone, they just told them to go home. Survivors reflect on Irvine Ave accident That is technically the law in most states probably. If you move to a new state you are supposed to get a new license and change your car registration within 10 days. In CA the reality has been that you almost never change your registration if you come from a low fee registration state like Oregon or NV and in fact some people who buy high end cars get those addresses from Mailboxes Etc that give you a street address (i.e. 120 Main Street, Suite 100, Salem OR instead of PO Box 100) instead of a PO Box to cut the registration fee. I am voting for JJ to lose his virginity by the end of the story..... hell, you want him to wait 5 more years before he gets some? What kind of a sadistic bastard are you?

Nice to find a chapter this morning, I wasn't sure how long the drought would last, thanks Mark I know there are some that don't like JJ, but I always have because I've always believed JJ was essentially the same sweet kid he always was. His bitchy behavior and attitude were always symptoms of something else, whether it was being overshadowed by his older brother or younger brother. JJ has always had the classic middle kid syndrome and it is probably more pronounced in the bizarre family he has. I was hoping for a hook up with Alistair, who remains my favorite peripheral character, but I still hope Alistair is in Will's future, maybe college or maybe after, but I still think Alistair would be good for JJ too. I also see some hope for Zach although I think I'd have had him at Georgetown Prep for two reasons, 1) the Jesuits would really straighten him out and 2) it would put him in the Beltway sphere where some think Wade will wind up. Even if Wade never does wind up in WDC, a new generation with Zach there is an intriguing idea. I actually see Zach now as a potential narrator. On a side note, we've become used to these epic long stories, but not all of CAP is, there were some really short books. Some 15-20 chapter stories along the way with Zach as a narrator, JJ as a narrator, even John, could advance the storyline. I don't know Mark if you know the exact place you are heading, but some small books could be a nice device and fun

I think people are selling Frank short. I don't think he is as fragile as some paint him. I also find JJ interesting and he has gotten more interesting as Mark as revealed more of his inside voice.

We don't know that Matt's parents weren't there, in fact I would assume they were. Mark just didn't have time, room or the priority to show them in a scene with Matt, the chapter was already packed. As to Ethan, I am sure we'll find out soon.

No one thought Sarah Hughes would win in 2002 because Michelle Kwan had finished 1st or 2nd in the previous 6 World Championships, she had won Silver in 1998 and the years Kwan didn't win the Worlds Irina Slutskaya did, so Hughes was forecast no better than 3rd, which is where she had finished the in the Worlds the previous year. When you look at the scores Hughes got in her free skate, the judges left room for Kwan and Slutskaya to move past her, but both had such epic fails in their free skates, Hughes held her position. But Hughes wasn't a surprise. She wasn't someone who had had come from 6th & 7th to suddenly be Olympic Champion, she'd had a lot of solid medal in 2001 & 2002 leading up to the Olympics and was poised to move up from the bronze position, where she'd finished in the Grand Prix FInal, the last tune-up before the Olympics, should Kwan and Slutskaya falter. That they both choked was what was unusual, not Hughes move from 3rd to 1st. Point being, she was the heir apparent to Kwan, but no one expected her to win in 2002, 2006 was supposed to be her year. After she won the Olympics in 2002, her interest waned in skating, after all what was left to accomplish? Maybe you missed the Oslo chapters? The 2002 Olympics are significant because Mitt Romney runs them and it gives Wade a chance to interact with Mitt, become charmed by him, and work on Mitt's ill-fated 2012 campaign. A trip to Salt Lake in 2002 would be a nice distraction for every one after the events of 9-11 and Stef could obsess about how good his figure looks in ski pants. A lot of drama in CAP has gone on, in and around, ice rinks in the last two or three stories and they have been pivotal scenes and created pivotal situations. Without JJ's skating Jeanine might have been around more for Will and there wouldn't have been a meltdown, without JJ's skating there wouldn't have been the key scenes in Norway, there wouldn't have been the privy counsel meeting that Will was let in on where the decision to maybe off JJ's coach was made. All of those were important plot points and may crop up again in the future.

I don't think JJ is going to be that surprised or disappointed that he doesn't win an Olympic medal. As a 14 year old on the junior national team that is always your goal and dream, but as you get older reality sets in. The skating world is pretty predictable. If you haven't won a bunch of men's national titles and placed in the World's a few times you know that the odds of you winning an Olympic medal are remote. There are very few upsets in figure skating in the Olympics because the judging is so subjective and the favorites get the benefit of the doubt. JJ will have a good idea of his realistic chances starting in 2005 and probably even before that.

Not much to say. I just want to stop crying. No more crying chapters.

The decline in private school attendance has more to do with the reduced buying power of the middle class than anything. Among the well heeled, private school is the only way they go these days.

The Judson School in PHX, AZ.

In someone's wet dream can you get from Anaheim to Claremont in 34 minutes....... maybe at 3AM Christmas night. The Judson School in Phoenix, AZ.

How you behave in public and what you do in private are two very different things. "Straight acting" is a different way of saying masculine rather than effeminate. Some guys just hate nelly queens, especially when it is 90% acting and airs. My gay friends, who when they find out I am going to a football game, and are like, "oh my gaaawd, why would you want to do that? Lady Gaga's new video comes out today", just drive me nuts. They have their own stereotype and type that they like. OMG, if you were in Claremont CA you'd so be ready for a change, but Ethan may have friends at Webb he wants to stay with, so who knows. As to Cubans, one of my best friends is Cuban and he is blonde haired and blue eyed. His mother and grandparents are from Cuba and they escaped in the early 60's, but his great-grandparents were from Italy and de' Medicis. No one ever expects him to speak perfect Spanish so it is always fun when he freaks out waiters and busboys at restaurants when they are talking about us or our group and they assume we are all stupid gringos (as if we don't know what maricon anyway). St. Catherine's an interesting idea. Ethan would be right at home, it has a lot of foreign students, many of whom probably can't go home easily because of the distances.

Great, they are friends again..... NOW can fuckin' Tony die?? Pleeeeaase! Interesting choice Webb, personally I'd have gone with Cate or Thatcher, much nicer neighborhoods and no smog..... but maybe we can get Ethan to Malibu and someone can finally finish at damn Harvard Westlake

Don't you have a bull shit filter??

At some point logic has to kick in. If the Lord High Arbour has gone through the trouble to create a character like Ethan it stands to reason that Ethan has a role to play in the story that no one else could fulfill, not Beau, not Wade, no one else. The next step in the logic is that there are not many main players in the story who are straight.

Not to mention all the fab gay sex at all boy boarding schools......

So does any adult male of a certain age in CAP NOT have an illegitimate child??? The beautiful thing of this literary device is it lets you add new characters or make relatives out of old characters. Looking very much to finding out more about Ethan

Again, maybe I am confusing characters, but Brad was not born out of wedlock. His mother was married...... just not to the man who was his father. Brad's mother had a reason for keeping his parentage secret and one has to assume it was an "accident". While Will's conception might have been an accident, there was no need for any mystery or embarrassment over his parentage. I recall that Brad was pretty okay with it. That Brad treated Jeanine like hired help was just Brad. A lot of men treat their partners like hired help.

I agree with Mark. While JJ might put up this elitist front and airs, he is a very insecure kid looking for attention. That was the opening his skate coach saw and took advantage of. A lot of the kids who fall to someone like the coach think it is an equal caring relationship at the time, only later do they see what really happened. We often criticize in others what we fear in ourselves. I think any cute guy who paid attention to JJ, complimented JJ, fed his insecurities (in a positive way) would have JJ eating out of his hands. But Will is Brad's natural son and it wasn't some hidden, quiet affair, it was an open three-way with Jeanine as I recall and they were waiting to see who the father was, Robbie or Brad, and they had already agreed to live as a thr-ouple.

Thanks Jeremy, that is awesome..... but especially with Marcel, I kept hearing a voice in my head saying.... "like sands through the hourglass....."

I too think we need a cast of characters that reminds us who Billy, Lou, Father Tim (who is he dating again?), Mouse, etc and those above were, especially when they get referred back to.

The S&L crisis had many fathers, but like all disasters became an orphan quickly. The first deregulation under Carter and the high interest rates of the Carter era coupled with the second deregulation under Reagan and ironically falling interest rates, both took their toll. The ACRS of Kemp Roth only lasted one year, being repealed by TEFRA in 1982 so it wasn't much of a contributor to the S&L crisis. Lack of oversight was a problem, "deregulation" didn't mean all the laws were repealed and there was no regulation, but some of the controls on the outright fraudsters like Keating were not exercised and in no small part to the "Keating Five" who all seemed to escape culpability. Clinton's boom was because he worked with the Republican controlled House to restrain spending and because he, with the full acquiescence of the GOP House, drastically cut military spending, the so called "peace dividend". Military spending dropped from $427b in Reagan's last year to as low as as $296b under Clinton. I am not blaming Clinton, it didn't seem unreasonable at the time, but hindsight being 20/20, it was and having to rebuild the military back to acceptable levels was a big part of Bush II's deficits. Military spending was back up to $536b by 2006 and that excludes the expenses for Iran and Afghanistan, which were separate budgets. Would Clinton ever have had a surplus if military spending had maintained where it was under Reagan? Not likely. Would Bush have had as high of deficits if his DoD didn't have to make up for lost years? Probably not. But those are discussions to be had 20 years from now or 30 years from now in the hindsight of history and among those who have emotional stock in one side or the other. If Bush II had wielded his veto pen and forced the Republicans who became born again spending hogs in the House to follow the fiscal restraint they preached, they might never have lost the House to begin with. I have no sympathy for the House leadership that thought they could spend money like drunken sailors in port and thought no one would notice.

Oh.... and I had ZERO sympathy for George Bush, he got exactly what he deserved for being swayed by his former colleagues in the House to break his no new taxes pledge.