PrivateTim

Okay, so I've finished MiM and I am still not wild about Brad. I just don't get how the "love of your life" can be in a French jail and you are flirting with other guys and have sex with a woman. At points in my life I have been in situations, not quite like a BF in a French prison, but stressful enough where sex was the furthest thing from my mind. And if I had the love of my life (Brian in my case) as a BF, I would have ever needed anyone else ever. There would have been nothing that could have tempted me away from him. I also don't get Brad's lingering anger at Jake given that Jake doesn't do anything that Brad and all the men around him aren't doing, it seems the height of hypocrisy to me. Why is Jack the only faithful one (so far)? I also don't get how JP so easily moved onto the relationship with Mouse after Roger's death. When I've lost someone it takes me months to recover. We also didn't hear much about the vineyard this story, I suppose that will change in A Summer of Love. I must say though, the trial and that whole part was spectacular. I hope to be caught up by the end of the year.

Water polo is huge in California, especially along the coast usually because of the connections of the water. A lot of polo players are surfers and summer lifeguards. It is also closely tied to the elite universities, the top Division 1 polo programs are Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Pepperdine, UCI, UCSB and the top D2 schools are Pomona-Pitzer, Claremont's Men's College, Occidental & Redlands so when you play polo, you know if you want to go to a top school you have to have top grades and coaches drill that into you and check you all the time. If you look at the US Men's National & Olympic team is all CA guys and 16 of 23 went to Cal, SC, Stanford or UCLA.

Malibu Sharks go down in the D6 water polo finals to Rio Mesa (Oxnard) 9-4, Corona del Mar beats Murrietta 11-10 in the D2 finals behind 5 goals from monster Chase Watson, 6'7", 250, sure to be CIF player of the year and Mater Dei takes down El Toro 11-10 in the D1 finals. Surfs up and 3 feet of snow hit Lake Tahoe, 2 feet in the LA ski resorts.

That is Boo Boo Stewart who first came to my attention in The Conrad Boys, a great gay love story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJaBGVm29rY

Lovely, but this has more meaning to me and message that really speaks to me. I am what I am I am my own special creation. So come take a look, Give me the hook or the ovation. It's my world that I want to take a little pride in, My world, and it's not a place I have to hide in. Life's not worth a damn, 'Til you can say, "Hey world, I am what I am." I am what I am, I don't want praise, I don't want pity. I bang my own drum, Some think it's noise, I think it's pretty. And so what, if I love each feather and each spangle, Why not try to see things from a diff'rent angle? Your life is a sham 'til you can shout out loud I am what I am! I am what I am And what I am needs no excuses. I deal my own deck Sometimes the ace, sometimes the deuces. There's one life, and there's no return and no deposit; One life, so it's time to open up your closet. Life's not worth a damn 'til you can say, "Hey world, I am what I am!" This song changed my life.

You are incorrigible!

So yeah, not sure if I like Brad or not. The last couple of chapters of Be Rad he turned around a little, but the lack of respect he had for people before that and how he treated people really pissed me off. I found him spoiled, self centered, hypocritical and down right mean. I thought he was awful to Jake. Jake didn't break up Sam & JP, Sam did. Brad was so into Jake, but Brad cheated on Jake, yet got pissed off at Jake when Jake cheated on him. Brad was the same way with everyone he dated or did. Brad could get all he wanted, but if his partner did, Brad went nuts. I thought it was totally wrong that Brad discussed Roger's and Mouse's troubles with Roger's brother. It wasn't Brads place as to betray their confidences, certainly at 17 he didn't have the maturity to make an informed decision as to what the best course was. Brad also pissed me off in Paris. As if at 17, he couldn't have fought off Marc who had to be in his 40's by then. I was as horny as the next guy in high school, but I didn't get laid twice a day, or with three guys in a day, or at really inappropriate times. I also had enough self control that if I was dating someone I didn't have to do them, just because my dick got hard. So then, when Robbie has his fling with Gary, I thought Brad's reaction was incredibly hypocritical and if he is supposed to be this insightful, sharp young guy he should have recognized that the times with Gary were probably a reaction to the abuse he suffered back in Claremont. Instead of his petulant reaction, he should have gotten Robbie professional help to deal with the underlying issues that made him want to have sex like that. Lastly, when he beat up Billy the SECOND time and beat him so badly to break his nose and rupture a testicle I would have had Brad arrested and then gotten him court mandated anger management therapy. Everyone deplored how the Hayes brothers beat on Jeff, yet what Brad did to Billy was worse than anything they did to him. Okay, I'm done venting.... Brad is showing promise at the end of Be Rad, but he has a lot of growing up to do before he is back in my good graces.

I just finished Be Rad after going through CAP and the Land Whore and I am still pretty pissed off at Brad. I think he is a totally self absorbed, self centered, spoiled beeatch. Yeah maybe by Chapter 40 he had started to turn a corner, but for 39 chapters he was hypocritical, self righteous and a general pain in the ass. I liked the Stefan of CAP and 1968. I didn't like the flamey, femme him. In the first two stories he was feline, sexy, French..... then he became a typical over the top Hollywood fag. I think Jeff is my favorite character so far and Sam my least favorite. Although if I can have a minor character as a fave, then maybe Mouse, I really liked him and Greg seems pretty normal and the kind of guy that would be fun to run with and maybe because he didn't seem as slutty as the rest.

Actually, they say it was real and that Radcliffe and Watson didn't know how undressed they would be until the day before the shoot. Watson wore a strapless bra and it was painted to add to the shimmer effect, but both were nearly naked. MTV on Harry & Hermoine

I liked this song much better, but they don't hold a candle to Donald O'Connor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1GE0qP73-o&feature=related

Okay.... the most unrealistic scene ever in a Mark Arbour story...... no, not f**king Rock Hudson, hell everyone did that.... not the great wealth and power of the families.... or getting f**ked by an admiral... no this!!

I'm trying to not read this topic too much so I don't encounter spoilers, but I am in Chapter 9 of Be Rad and just have to make some comments. But before I start, Mark, in Chapter 7 I think it was when Jake gives Ace, Lark & Brad a ride home you say "Jake, Ace & I squeezed into the back seat" when Jake was driving, you clearly meant Lark since you went on to say "Lark had his arm around me". You also have Brad meeting Jackie Diamond as if he was meeting her for the first time, you said "Jackie greeted us warmly. Apparently she and Stef were old friends", well of course had to know and love Jackie already since she was the one who got him into the studio to draw with the animator, he surely wouldn't have forgotten her in six years. And I don't like the picture of Stef, he sounds like a Hollywood poofter and Paul Lynde like character when I always thought of being very masculine, albeit with maybe feline like characteristics, but not femme. I also am not wild about the idea of Sam, the committed partner of JP doing the 16 year old boyfriend of his step son Brad. It is creepy on so many levels and just so wrong on so many levels. Maybe consequences come about later in the story, but it is very disappointing. I somewhat get Jake's new found sense of being who he is, but given his infatuation with Brad for so long, it seems odd he would cheat so quickly. I'm not wild about the drug use either. I get a little pot, but coke crosses into a whole new territory and a new level of bad people to deal with. And what happened to Mike, the hot gardner/concubine?

Pretty complicated.... as to the schools, Malibu had a growing population of school aged children and the parents in Malibu who paid considerable property taxes to support the school district felt they needed a school in Malibu, especially as traffic got worse on PCH and made the drive to school 45 minutes or more. A lot of the Malibu kids do go to private school, mostly local, but I know of kids that from the Colony that went to Phillips Exeter and Phillips Academy, Cate and Thatcher and a few to Switzerland or France. The story said Scott "used the address so he could go to Malibu schools", but the only schools in Malibu were the junior high and elementary schools, not a high school. Oh and if they lived "near LAX" he could go to El Segundo High or Westchester, which are both fine schools, but the other side of the 405 would be Lennox High, but Lennox High closed and the city has two charter highs now.

Chortled, guffawed, sniggered, snorted, smirked, cracked up.......

California school's get out in late June because they have so many damn days off during the year. I looked at the list of schools that people are going to (went to actually) and several thoughts struck me. One student was going to FIDM, a great school for gay boys to go to. It also made me think about Cal Arts, a university started by Walt & Roy Disney, partly to educate future animators and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, another fine school for gay boys or macho boys who want to design cars and the like. It also reminded me of Matt Nechak who played football at Malibu High (along with lacrosse) and then was a starting defensive end for the Naval Academy. I think you had asked earlier how likely it was to know someone from Malibu in the service. Matt is a good example. Most of the Malibu kids are likely to have entered the service through an academy or ROTC program. The smart Malibu kids who go to JC go to Santa Barbara City College, not SaMoCity. They can still have fun and party like they are at a 4 year school, but they don't need to be home and under mom and dad's rules.

The UK gets a lot of tourism from the US and Asia because of the mystique of the monarchy. Royal Wedding to provide two-year tourism boost for UK

Well not CAP, but the Land Whore, but there was no Malibu High School when Scott Palladin and Armand were in high school, Malibu kids were bussed to Samohi.

I thought will was at his best during his mother's funeral. He was so composed and grown up.

Ummm.... photos of Wills?? Really? Hmmmm And one reason I enjoy the Wall Street Journal is they use the old time form of calling people Mr., Ms. and Mrs. or other appropriate title throughout their stories.

Actually the kid, Graeme Taylor, doesn't go to that school and this isn't one of his teachers. Graeme is from Ann Arbor and this school is in Howell, about 30 miles north of Ann Arbor. The teacher also was NOT suspended for asking another student to remove a Confederate belt buckle, he was suspended because after he (the teacher) got in a heated argument with a student, he kicked him out of class with a referral when the student said he "didn't accept gays" because of his Catholic faith. Edge Boston has the best article on it. Michigan Teacher Reprimanded in Free Speech Flap

Edeg Boston has a more complete version of the whole story. I am not sure the teachers suspension wasn't correct if the facts are as laid out by the paper. Michigan Teacher Reprimanded in Free Speech Flap

Odd topic... I grew up sailing, starting on small boats like sabots and sailfish and graduated to cats and then bigger boats. Done a good many cruises on various sized ships but my biggest thrill was to go a tiger cruise with my father when I was about 12. I got to sail on his ship from Pearl to San Diego.

I was troubled by JP for a lot of reasons and I agree with Adam on his thoughts. I don't like Sam either. I thought JP too easily through Jeff over when Jeff became inconvenient, took up with Sam too easily and too easily accepted Sam's part in Jeff's death. JP made Jeff who he was in a lot of ways and people seem to forget how young Jeff was. He was only 23 or so and had been with JP a significant portion of his life and during crucial years of growth and maturity. JP needed to do more, should have done more and if he were a better person, he would have.

What stories are you reading?? JP's father might have struggled initially with JP's homosexuality, but he has never been anything but a loving father and a typical father of the 1950's and 60's who didn't gush emotions, worked very hard at his business for his family and he was incredibly generous. You couldn't have asked for a better brother than Jim who was never anything but fair with JP and accepted his being gay immediately. JP's mom was.... well French. She was lonely because of JP's fathers driven work schedule. She was certainly discrete since so few people knew of her affairs, so hardly a whore, just a person with needs.