Matthew k

I see Lark more like this.

I hope Mr. Arbour leaves Robbie & Brad alone...... they've head enough damn drama

I don't know any polo players that aren't surf rats too, most also are on the swim team. Water polo is kind of the elitist sport in CA, maybe like Lacrosse is in eastern prep schools. It is a very small community, everyone knows everyone and it is very generational. People who played at USC 60 years ago are still involved and are seeing their great grand kids in the sport. Since polo is biggest at the elite universities in CA, Cal, Stanford, USC, Pepperdine, UCLA, UCI, UCSD, Harvey Mudd, Pomona-Pitzer, etc high school polo players know they need good grades to get to the next level. Most of the top water polo high schools in southern California like Corona del Mar, Harvard Westlake, Loyola, Newport Harbor, Long Beach Wilson, Laguna Beach, Malibu, Coronado, the Bishop's School, La Jolla High, Carlsbad and so on are from wealthy areas. The hard work and discipline it takes to be great at this sport blows the image of the idol rich out of the water. The guys are tough, dedicated and disciplined. You have to be when your first practice of the day starts at 5:45AM. It would be cool to have Will as the narrator of the next CAP story (or one of them) and have Will playing polo.

It's My Party

TLA is based in Philthydelphia. I saw the movie in Palm Springs Film Festival and it was cute, a bit cheesy and not terribly original. There are a lot of other similar movies out there. If you can stream it for $3.99, it is probably worth the effort.

I live in California, but I was born and raised in Wyoming. On my father's side they were pure German although our name got Anglicized a few years after we got here in 1709. My early ancestors were from the Palatinate in Germany, but once they got here they intermarried with English, Scottish a few more Germans. My mother's side is mostly English, with a few Danes and Swedes slipped in.

I like choirs And here is an Austrian one for you

Here he is on Ellen. http://ellen.warnerbros.com/videos/?autoplay=true&mediaKey=c7d9cc8f-da9b-48c8-a791-0b3e53aab37a

"Mark Arbour Needs Help!" Well that is a topic starter that could go in a lot of different directions right out the gate, but the help he needs in this instance is a bunch of new words or phrases to replace "tent" and "tenting" as in 'his khaki slacks were tenting as he looked hungrily at me". I mean c'mon, tent and tenting have to be the most commonly used words in the CAP series other than "the" "and" and "is". So everyone pitch in! Come up with words and phrases to replace tenting!

I really liked this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wvsYCaAEds&feature=related

I am kind of in the both camp, but lean to lyrics. The lyrics are always there and some singers might do it better than others, but the lyrics are always there. That is why I hate songs in English where I can't understand a bunch of the words because they are slurred together or butchered. I couldn't think of an example, but I am sure you all know what I mean so I googled it. Here is what I got

Something by Dom Luca. I think it was Desert Dropping, but it might have been The Ordinary Us.

Do you mean at a theater or to rent (is Netflix in the Netherlands?) I would go through the AFI (American Film Institute) 100 Years of Film list or maybe their 10 Top 10 list. Or you could watch a bunch of movies in one movie, That's Entertainment! 50 years of MGM's best movies.

Well a state that would be ranked 23rd in size geographically if it were a county in CA and 13th in population is probably too small for a CA boy. NYU is perfectly acceptable to Malibu people, everyone knows a director or actor who went there and Boston/Cambridge is perfectly acceptable, Boston is a real city. New Jersey probably wouldn't work since black & orange is such a garish combination, despite some fine Hollywood types who've come from there. Of course Georgetown is acceptable, but who wants to live in DC?

And small compared to Mammoth, Squaw and the rest of the resorts in Central Cal, but the point is they are from 45 minutes (Mt. Baldy) to 1 1/2 hours (Bear Mtn) from downtown L.A., which most people don't realize. Southern Cal is one of the few places you can legitimately surf in the morning and snow ski at a resort in the afternoon.

Are you as totally hot as the Rory in my mind??

When you are a world class athlete you push through the pain or even a little dizziness because you have experienced before and been okay. The course probably required several laps so there may have been a place where he could more easily talk to his coach and get some Goo because you need nutrition in a race like that, but given he won the last race and was second overall in the world cup, when he didn't finish in the top 5 that should have set off alarm bells. When you stroke out in the water or lose consciousness, you just slip under quietly, it isn't like you even know you are in trouble to ask for help. If you've ever seen an open water race, you can barely see the competitors over the swells in the ocean sometimes. Tragedy for the kid in Ventura too and another thing that happens before you know you are in trouble.

Damn.... did you miss the picture of Los Angeles??? Or these? All maybe an hour maybe 1 1/2hours from downtown. Where is this Dell Aware you speak of???

I would think it highly unlikely for a Malibu High student to go to college in the south absent some family connection. The Malibu kids who go back east tend to go to the northeast to the Ivy League or the liberal arts colleges or the Catholic universities. If he is a committed surfer he is REALLY unlikely to go back east, Cal Poly SLO to UC San Diego (I mean that whole geographic swath that takes in those schools plus USC, UCLA, UCI, Pepperdine, LMU, Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, etc.) would probably be the schools on his radar unless he was a solid Harvard, Yale, Princeton type and had enough foresight to know you don't skip Harvard for San Luis Obispo just 'cuz the break is rad.

In a sense I think Mark does need to finish the story; to bring closure to it. He never needed to start it and he never needed to post it online, but once he did I think there is an obligation to see it through and I feel that away about any author who starts a story. Lots of people have gone through pain in recalling and writing stories. I know James Savick did and there are many professional writers who have had to dredge up painful memories, but they did so because they were stories that needed to be told and maybe partly because they were catharsis.

You have to remember CA is not a "beach state", it is like several different states or even countries. Along the coast are most of the major cities, but inland is totally different and then you have the mountain areas and the wooded areas. CA is mostly an agricultural and cow state. In Bakersfield you'd swear you are in Oklahoma and you wouldn't be too far wrong since lots of Okies moved there in the Dust Bowl days to work in the oil fields. In Tahoe, you'd think you were in CO or UT and even Los Angeles has 6 or seven major ski areas with in an hour and half from downtown. You'd more likely find Northface in northern Cal, than southern, although some people do wear it. Uggs used to be a big thing in the surfing/swimming/water polo crowd, but i think a bit less now. Northern Cal isn't even really San Francisco, that is actually the middle of the state, northern Cal is more like Chico, Arcata, Yreka, Redding and those cities and as different from rest of the populous coastal part of the state as Bakersfield is. Those areas are more like Oregon than what people think of CA being. You would for sure see Northface gear at Humboldt & Chico State. Fall at So Cal colleges you'd still see shorts and sandals, they won't wear a jacket until winter starts to show up in Nov. I know that is fall still technically, but feels like the start of winter.

I am not into myth, sci-fi or fantasy, but there is no one better at historical fiction than Mark Arbour. And the best author on GA, hands down, any genre is Dom Luka.

Arbour doesn't need to finish "On The Mark" per se, he just needs to do an epilogue on what happened to "Mark", how and why he left CA and what happened to the other characters. And I haven't abandoned any stories (I just take long breaks), but as anyone who writes can tell you, your "muse" sometimes leaves. Sometimes real life intervenes when the writing is a hobby. And when you start out writing well, it is very hard to keep up the quality. As much as I love John Grisham, nothing he has written since his first book, A Time to Kill, has been as good as that first book, except maybe Playing For Pizza. That is one reason I admired Tony Hillerman so much, his quality never wavered.