PrivateTim

Ummm if he started Kindergarten at age 5 in 1992, he be turning 14 in 2001 and going into 9th grade and he'd be in the Class of '04 1992 5 K 1993 6 1st 1994 7 2nd 1995 8 3rd 1996 9 4th 1997 10 5th 1998 11 6th 1999 12 7th 2000 13 8th 2001 14 9th 2002 15 10th 2003 16 11th 2004 17 12th

Every one knows a promise and every one breaks promises, but that is a different issue from whether or not John understands he should apologize to Will. We are talking a 6th grader here and I think people expect far too much from him As to Age of Consent laws for sex, all 50 states set their own ages. The age of consent in most states is 16, 34 states have 16 as the AOC in part or entirely, only 11 have 18 in part or entirely. There are 6 with 17, 3 with 15 and 3 with 14 as the AOC. The age for voting in national elections is 18, which is also the age of majority. In theory each state also gets to set its own drinking age, but any state with a drinking age of under 21 would risk losing federal highway funds.

We got our first computer on the late 80's and I got online in 1990 or so using CompuServe to get onto bulletin boards, then Prodigy and of course onto AOL. My first speed was that 2400 bit Hayes modem with the screechy noise as you went through trying to get a handshake. You were charged by the minute, Prodigy charged 25 cents an email and since there weren't chat programs yet we used emails like IM's. Pops blew his stack at my first $400 Prodigy bill. Progressed through all the speed upgrades (4800, 9600, 28k) and I remember thinking when we hit 56k, how would I use all that speed? Now I am 500x faster than that and I bitch about how slow it is. I couldn't wait for the new issues of Boardwatch and 2600. Netscape was the coolest thing ever, it made browsing so much easier, but it cost like $25 dollars. The computer lab at school (high school) still used punch cards and you had to learn FORTRAN and COBOL even though BASIC was starting to dominate. Hard to believe we have come so far so fast.

Sorry at 12 you don't know dank about relationships. It isn't like breaking a lamp or shaving the cat.

d I see Stef as Mark's surrogate. I understand the need at his age to have the illusion that you can still can get wood and perform CA AOC is 18, but please.... there was so much sex happening in the days of Prodigy and AOL and the authorities didn't get wind of 99.999999999999999999% of it. It has only gotten more so that way in the world of Stickam and Cam4. The odds of being caught when you hook up with someone you don't know from online are remote. With someone you actually know it is even remoter and there would need to be someone to make a complaint. Who is going to complain to the authorities? I knew a guy that was 23 dating a junior in high school and the parents of the 'kid' knew the boyfriend, loved him and were thrilled their son was dating someone mature & responsible. Welcome to California. Ummmm, John is 12. What does a 12 year old know about commitments and how able is he to keep them especially when hit upon by a 14 year old. Does he even know he should apologize?

I got this text message from a friend: "if I like a guy whose really a girl and wants to keep her girl parts am I still gay?" I just didn't know what to say.

I really enjoyed the dual narration. Note to Mark and his editors, Internet should be capitalized. It is nice to see the technology finally coming into the stories. The Internet and WWW became such a huge part of youths lives in the late 90's and it has just grown exponentially. The ultimate status symbol in the mid 90's wasn't a BMer or Benz, but having a T1 line to your house.

Ok, a little seriousness from me and not flippancy Johns Hopkins is fine med school, I actually had friends go there, but a kid born and raised in Palo Alto in a Stanford household is generally dying to go there. Stanford (note I am spelling it correctly for my seriousness and not the traditional Cal spelling of Stanfurd) like Cal or USC is a very generational school. I have cousins who are 4th generation at USC and I was 3rd generation at Cal. Stanford is very similar, growing up with kids whose parents and grandparents had gone to Stanford, that was the only place they wanted to go. But I get someone wanting to going Ivy, especially for law school or to a school like Johns Hopkins for med school or U of Chicago for economics. Now to Florida. Florida beautiful? Say what? It is flat, humid and half swamp, there is little of beauty in FL compared to CA's rugged coast with cliffs and coves, redwood forests, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, the Sierras in general and just the varied topography that is beautiful because of its variety. CA has the highest and lowest places in the 48 states. The highest place in FL is 485 ft above sea level. I am not saying I don't like FL or haven't had fun in many places there, but I haven't stopped at any physical feature in FL and gone "wow, that's amazing". Darius, having grown up in the Colony, would be exposed to Hollywood types all around him including one of his fathers. The Hollywood people in the colony are also more likely to be in the business end as opposed to the acting. Yes the Colony has its share of stars, but far more executives live there than actors. Like college, many kids, especially in Hollywood, follow their parents into "the industry." If Darius has never shown any interest in the film biz, he has shown even less interest in the law or business, he has been mostly a "hail fellow, well met" skirt chaser. Maybe 9-11 will shake him up and he will join NROTC and wind up with his 'uncle' in the navy. I don't see Darius as an enlisted type.

Dude, why the frick would Will leave California with the two finest schools of marine science in the country in CA (Scripps at UCSD and Wrigley at USC) not to mention the UCSB's and Cal State Monterey Bay programs. The surfing in FL sucks, a CA surfer would never go to school there. Once Gathan hits CA he ain't ever going back to OH. That is how it works. Midwesterner visits CA, never leaves. Damn Rose Bowl. The best medical school in the country is Stanfurd, why would John go to Baltimore other than for crab cakes? Darius isn't a beach person, he and Ella are going to live in the Hollywood Hills or Bel Air when Darius goes into the movie business. Brad is too driven to retire at that young of an age and as JP gets older, Brad will assume more leadership in the family.

The age of consent in most states is 16, 34 states have 16 as the AOC in part or entirely, only 11 have 18 in part or entirely. There are 6 with 17, 3 with 15 and 3 with 14 as the AOC. Many of these laws on the books are old and reflect a different time when marriage wasn't uncommon at 18 or younger. As a side note, OH is 16, CT is 15 and NY is 17, so Mann Act considerations aside, there was nothing illegal in the acts. You can argue morality, but you'd be hard pressed on the legal side.

If I missed the point entirely, it is because you failed to articulate it. There is no correlation between the SM room Brad and Robbie's house and what has happened with any of the kids. It was the "stop the pedo stuff" comment that really irked me given that there was nothing "pedo" at all since that would involve pre-pubescent children and none of the children are pre-pubescent. And I would change that too. Either move the voting age back to 21 or move the drinking age back to 18.

Dark Road? I had my first sexual encounters at 13 and thought I had made the greatest discovery ever. Dark road? I don't get that. If we've all had experience with all ages, then what is the point? In case you don't get it, teens are very active sexually these days and are much more sexually aware than ever. I am not saying it is good or bad, but I don't get this artificial attitude built around the age of 18. I had an umteenth grandfather serving in the Connecticut Regiment at age 13 in the Revolution and his grandson (or great grandson) served in the Pennsylvania Regiment at 16 in the Civil War. Somehow we have this attitude where at under 17 we have to shield them from everything and then bang, the next day they turn 18 and now they can vote, make all their own life decisions and live in a world we don't want to prepare them for.

I remember when every freaking gay boy had a crush on JTT and the rumors about him flew hot and heavy around L.A.

Yeah, but clubs and raves are totally different. Stef & Greg would have done the club scene, at least a little and so would Robbie and Brad. The clubs were the one place you could really let your hair down. For all of the hype about San Francisco being this gay Mecca, there weren't any 18+ gay clubs in the 90's. There was one in Concord, whose name escapes me, but you could see just about every gay boy from as far south as Palo Alto & San Jose there on a Friday night. My friend Dave from Stanfurd would swing by and pick me up and we'd dance and flirt and mack the night away. I know we are well past the 1970's and 80's, but the clubs were even more important in the gay community in those days. There are some amazing stories online about Studio One (now the Factory) and its place in the community.

I think a lot of club music is missing and maybe stuff that Jeremy isn't even aware of because if you weren't in the club scene, you'd never know it existed. No Black Box, Ultra Nate, Labouche, Nikki French, Real McCoy, Los del Rio, Gillette, TLC, N Trance and more. It is funny how Total Eclipse of the Heart can take me back to Axis in West Hollywood in 1995. I'll never forget the first time I walked in there with the music rattling the old tin walls, hundreds of half dressed, happy, hot young men. It was the happy that struck me more than the hot or half dressed. It was the first time I ever thought I was going to be okay. I think club and rave need more attention.

So can I neg the chapter for its outrageous and false claim that Stanfurd is the best school in the country? It isn't even the best school in the Bay Area. Other than that, a cool story and nice beginning.

AbsolutelyBrill Mark (as I might say if I were Harry Potter). Loved the story and I am amazed at how prodigious a writer you are. Thank you for all the time and effort that it takes to write like you do. I know how time consuming it can be. Can't wait for what comes next in the CAP Saga. One final, parting thought. Had I been the assassin I wouldn't have let Carson finish his business.

Yeah, I was off by a year, but that's okay, I hated, hated, hated American Beauty as a story while loving the acting done by Annette and Kevin Spacey.

To be honest I skipped through most of the sex scenes, that isn't what made the story great, they would be called 'gratuitous' in Hollywood. I know Mark doesn't use them that way, he really enjoys writing them and sees them as integral to the story.

I guess I am confused on several levels. Certainly Triton's executives would have signed a non-compete agreement, so Elliott wouldn't be able to work with them and any work he did do with them before this or any collusion would certainly have been illegal. Even in cases where companies work together on some projects and compete on others they construct 'Chinese walls' to prevent flows of information between the groups. It is also a shareholder lawsuit waiting to happen if Elliott did anything that harmed shareholder value. The other thing I am confused on is Robbie and the Academy Awards night. He should have been ecstatic. His production company had a great award season. They had five Academy nominations and a major win and Soderbergh did win for Director, albeit for Traffic, it would still reflect well on Robbie's company. Besides the Academy they had wins and nominations from SAG, DGA, PGA, BAFTA and Golden Globes. Most production companies would kill for a year like that and a $250m+ movie, they only do three, maybe four tops and they are happy if they don't lose money, but good production companies seldom do because they wisely use Other People's Money to finance projects. The only danger in flops is that too many and projects dry up, but when you have a Julia Roberts and Steven Soderbergh the projects and money find you.

Can't you just see him in a quidditch uniform??

I am right there with centexhairysub on Brad. He has the maturity of a 15 year old. Claire is more qualified to be the head of the family when JP passes. And I see Will at UCSD or USC in Marine Biology, two of the finest schools. And you can't make any conclusions about Will at this point given that he is 13. I think he has been a sweet kid so far and I don't see the bad attributes of Brad in him at all. And finally, I love that I got negged for pointing out that the Bush Administration happily employed openly gay people.

But of course you have to look at the years the Cramptons and the Schluters of JP's childhood were born and what the life expectancy was of people of that era vs baby boomers and the conditions under which they lived, the harsh winters of Ohio compared to the mildness of CA.

Catholic school for Darius, and Jesuit no less??

You say age 80 as if it were old. 80 is elderly, but not old these days. When I visit my grandparents in the senior community they live in (15,000 of the geezers, with a median age of 81) I meet people in the gym in their late 80's to mid 90's. They play volleyball, swim, golf, ride horse back and my 81 year old grandfather surfs with his other octogenarian friends a couple of whom he has been surfing with since 1945. As a man of means there is no reason JP shouldn't be active well into his 90's or beyond.