PrivateTim

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.

I am pretty shocked (not really since I have seen it up close) that a bunch of people (gblt) who don't want to be judged by people for whom they choose to sleep with can turn around and use phrases like "nastiest thing ever" and "disgusted by" on who somebody else chooses to sleep with. I have a lot of older gay friends, 50's to 70's and there is nothing I love more than hearing their stories of gay life in the 1950's through the 1990's. One friend met his first partner when he was 17, the partner was 54. They were together for twenty years until the older partner passed away from natural causes. So here he was, suddenly single again at 37 and he never really dated so he had to start from scratch in 1977. He met a 19 year old lifeguard at the beach and they fell in love and became partnered for ten years until the younger partner drowned during a bad rescue. In both cases there was a pretty good age range, but it never mattered to them, why should anyone else give a flying frig? What I find disgusting is the comments I hear from my friends and I am out with them and an old guy comes in with a younger guy. Or the comments I hear about a guy in his 50's or 60's in a club. Most of the stupid little gints making the comments have no idea that the club they are in or the bars and restaurants on Santa Monica Blvd (West Hollywood) wouldn't exist and sure wouldn't be open air and have patios where cars driving can see who is in them except for those old men they revile who made it possible through their struggle to be treated equally. If a 65 year old can get an 18 year old for what ever reason, that is their business.

I blame JP for a lot of Jeff's issues and he threw Jeff aside for a second time (Andre being the first) for a guy he knew only 4 months, Sam. I think it especially bad given that he first hooked up with Jeff when Jeff was only a junior in high school so I blame JP for retarding Jeff's growth and maturity. I find JP incredibly self absorbed and selfish emotionally and personally. Giving away material possessions doesn't make you not selfish, in fact I know a lot of guys in the gay community who are 'generous' like JP, but in reality it is all about them, not the person on the receiving end. I am a few chapters into the Land Whore and resent JP even more at how easily he moved on from Jeff given that Jeff is the probably father of two of his kids and how easily he let the kids forget "Papa".

When you go to Roscoe's House of Chicken & Waffles you have to have a side order of deep fried chicken livers if you don't get an E-Z Ed's Omelet that is stuffed with chicken livers.

Five chapters into 1968 I am liking JP even less..........

Oh gawd, in Arbour's wildest wet dream was he ever that cute

So I finished Chronicles of an Academic Predator. I really like walking through the 1960's and the interplay of history and people's lives. What I don't like is most of the sex, to me it distracts from a great story of personal relationships and people interrelating. I'm also not terribly fond of JP, I think he is a bit of a bully. Or I should say I liked the JP of the first few chapters when he was more contained, more cautious and more considerate. There also seems to be a lot of guys wanting to have sex and finding each other pretty easily which wasn't all that easy in the early 1960's if I understand how gay life was back then. And given the number of gay guys who could have been pissed at JP and ruined his career at a conservative campus like Northwestern in the 1960's it seems like there should have been some drama from Willie, Ronnie, Scott or Jason. Anyway, as I work my way through the series I hope I come to like JP better.

Not from "it gets better", but Ellen.

While I have been a pretty consistent reader of the Bridgemont series I never read CAP because the "predator" word turned me off. But I finally decided to break down and read it and I am liking it. I am only in Chapter 19, but something really confuses me and I am sure it is discussed someplace, but I couldn't scroll through page after page looking for the topic. Why does JP do what he does with Scott Mallory? Surely JP had Scott right where he wanted him and he could have found stuff that was humiliating like scrubbing toilets, etc. to "bully" him with, but with the sex stuff, surely the table is turned and that gives the power to Scott if he wanted to destroy JP. Maybe it is answered later on, but it seems out of the norm for cold, calculating JP.

Not to bruise your fragile psyche, but in Chapter 6 you talk about the "execution of Edmond Jouhaud", but he was merely sentenced to die, the execution never took place and he was actually rehabilitated under Mitterand. General Jouhaud died at age 90 in 1995.

That is the University of Southern California Marching Band. I can only say that Tommy's grandparents have warped him by taking him to USC football games. I am hoping a trip up north can restore him to normalcy.

I like the AFI lists, they take you through all the classics. Moulin Rouge gave me a headache with the movie never being on one scene longer than 3 seconds. No wonder youth have ADD. Chicago on the other hand was brilliant. Love musicals, My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, Paint Your Wagon, Funny Girl, Oklahoma, Show Boat, South Pacific, West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and the King and I. There are also the classic Westerns, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, High Noon, Big Country, Shane, How the West Was Won and Fort Apache. Or pick an actor and go through his work. My two faves are Cary Grant and Peter O'Toole, both could do any genre; drama, comedy, sports, western it didn't matter. Cary Grant's best are Bringing up Baby, His Girl Friday, Operation Petticoat, Walk, Don't Run, Father Goose, Arsenic and Old Lace, Houseboat, That Touch of Mink, North by Northwest.... gawd I could go on forever on his movies. Peter O'Toole has Lawrence of Arabia, The Stuntman, My Favorite Year, Zulu Dawn, Murphy's War, Lion In Winter, Beckett, How to Steal a Million, The Ruling Class, Goodbye Mr. Chips..... and many more. Love John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Katherine and Audrey Hepburn...... Damn I love movies......