PrivateTim

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.

I said the "expansion of the 80's", I very pointedly did not call it the "Reagan Boom" because I do believe Presidents have limited ability to stimulate growth. There are policies they have that can allow capital to accumulate and tax policy that rewards or encourages risk. Also there are policies that can reduce the regulatory burden and you have to factor in who is in power in Congress because that will temper the results somewhat too. A lot of people focus on Clinton's raising the income tax on the wealthy as proof that high marginal rates don't kill growth fail to remember that Clinton (with the GOP House) lowered the capital gains rate to 21% and that was when his economy really roared, the deficit dropped and went positive. But a lot of the successful companies of the 1990's had their founding in both the capital formation of the 1980's and the deregulation, whether by statute or lawsuit, of the 1980's. The MFJ that broke up AT&T fueled a telecommunications/technology boom that is still going on. So many factors came into play for both Reagan and Clinton, but in each case the president worked with Congress and things got done. That all changed in 2001 (2000 election) and the bitterness that ensued. While I think some of the partisan bickering can be traced to the borking of Robert Bork (1987), I think it intensified and magnified in 2000 and things have never been the same since. As to JJ, why in the hell would he like outlet shopping?? I am with Kitt, he'd be in the boutiques of Princeton or heading to 5th Ave in NYC.

Except that the Clinton economic boom was just a continuation the the 1980's expansion and we already were at war, we just didn't recognize it as such, or didn't respond militarily. Starting with the first WTC bombing in 1993, through the attacks on the USS Cole, the embassies in Africa and Khobar Towers, Al-Qaeda was striking at the U.S., but no one took those attacks seriously and as a mission for the military to solve. The focus was, "we don't the military anymore". And it was Bush's breaking his "no new taxes" pledge and his jump in spending that led to the rise of Perot and his defeat. Don't forget Clinton only got 43% of the vote.

Interesting chapter.... I guess I'd forgotten that Mouse and JP were lovers. I mean Mouse was a classmate of Robbie's & Brad's and Gunn, right? It seems like JP & Stef have been together forever, but it really hasn't been that long, just a few years. It was nice to see Elizabeth temporarily thwarted and to see Wade and Em having a good time with each other. The question is, will she stay thus?

Aww, c'mon.. you KNEW this was coming...

Just a quick answer so as to not sidetrack the conversation too much..... I've noticed that different gay areas have their own "zeitgeist" for lack of a better term (tone, tenor, flavor?). I saw more "salt and pepper" couples in the ATL than I had ever seen in LA. I've seen very few in LA. SF was an older scene, very few spots for youngin's (thank gawd for JR's when I was in college), NYC had its quirks and DC too. LA obviously has a large Asian population and a large Hispanic population. There were club nights specifically for Asians like Buddha Lounge and GAMeBoi, Club Chilie and Rebelde for Latin, and of course the various, leather, daddy, etc club nights.... Anyway, to the point.... a lot of Asian guys don't like Asians, they only like white guys (potato queens), but the white guys they like (twinks) are never the white guys that like them (older white guys, rice queens). It can be complicated.... then there are the Asians guys who ONLY like Asians (sticky rice) and give crap to any Asian who dates Hispanic guys (bean queen) and white guys. Then of course the older white guys who date the Asian twinks get the double whammy of being chicken hawks and rice queens. Like I said... LA is a complicated scene...