methodwriter85

Darius wouldn't, but JJ's never exactly been Mr. Macho. Didn't Darius pretty much say that it was JJ who was into girly shit? I think Daisy's point was that it was something particular to the skating community, not necessarily something that all California guys did. It depends on whether or not JJ is supposed to be along the lines of a Johnny Weir or more of an Evan Lysacek. I do see JJ as more of a Chic Euro type than someone who'd act like a typical SoCali boy. Man-purses were more socially acceptable in Europe, if I'm remembering correctly. I'm not saying that it's absolute sure that JJ would carry a purse, but him not carrying one around because it'd be too feminine seems a bit weird considering that he likely wears sequined costumes and the like for figure skating. In the U.S., I do remember messenger bags being big among guys, although it wasn't quite a purse. Finally, I think it's been pretty consistent throughout at least Poor Man's Son that JJ doesn't look up to Darius like Will and John do, so I think using Darius as an example for what JJ wouldn't do doesn't make a lot of sense. JJ doesn't model his behavior on Darius at all. He's probably much more influenced by what he sees in his figure skating friends, and JJ has never stuck me as caring about whether or not he comes off as masculine to people. I would imagine Darius, Will, and John care about having a masculine image, but JJ doesn't seem like he would.

That was pretty funny, and made me wish that we could've seen Will and JJ skip off Friday at Harvard-Westlake to attend Coachella, which would have been in it's second or so year in 2004. Maybe JJ will return to HW in time for his senior year? *gives hopeful, adorable puppy dog eyes at Mark* Anyway, I thought the bit about how much money SAT tutors are making seems to be pretty true to life on both sides of the coast, because college entrances got just that insanely competitive. Although it doesn't seem like stressing about academics or about getting into college are really ever going to be any kind of problem for Will. Maybe if we follow John, possibly. JJ doesn't even seem like he's interested in college. One thing I've noticed about CAP is that while they do spend excessively, they're kept at least somewhat grounded in some ways. No one doing's any crazy, trendy diets. No one's doing any crazy new exercise trends. And since girls don't really get a point of view in CAP, we haven't seen them spend 40k on dresses to wear to debutante balls in Paris. Although the purse thing made me wonder...have we had a bit yet where it's explicitly said that JJ carries around Louis Vuitton purses? I know that was a suggestion that Daisy made about JJ being into purses, and it would fit his characters, but I'm not sure yet if Mark incorporated that into JJ.It'd be funny if he did. I would think JJ probably has some insanely expensive overnight bags considering the amount of travel he has to do.

After 10 years, you're letting that 23-year old young man sitting on the beach during his final undergrad spring break finally go off into his future instead of ruminating on his past. What a wonderful thing.

Yeah, but let's be honest- she could pass for her late 50's/early 60's pretty easily, which would put her at Tonto's age for CAP.

I think that funny old lady from those Activia commericials would make a great Tonto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C09IONl-R5w Can't you guys just see her as that really cool old broad with lots of great things to say about life? She's like the hip grandmother you wished you had.

I found this really well-written blog post about Ronald Reagan's rise from B-movie stardom to the Republican President Idol he became. Ronald Reagan Plays the President The blog basically contends that Ronald Reagan mastered the art of looking sympathetic while simultaneously screwing over the people he was supposed to represent while he was SAG president. I gotta say, she makes her case pretty well. I can't believe the amount of actors he fucked over- no residuals for films that actors made before 1960? Damn, that's horrible. Here's my favorite passage about from the blog: I obviously love stars, and what stars can mean to different swaths of people. But what draws me and other scholars to study them isn't their glamour but their tremendous ideological potency — a potency that can be wielded, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, for good or for evil, for justice or for exploitation. Oftentimes, the star him- or herself has very little to do with what their image is made to represent, which, as so many of these columns have pointed out, can also be stardom's tragedy. Reagan was obviously manipulated by others, but he did not hesitate to manipulate in turn. What he did to the members of the Screen Actors Guild, he did again, only on a larger scale, to the people of the United States. And because he was a star, because his image of compassionate American goodness was so strong, it was easy to see what he appeared to represent instead of what he was actually doing. I don't remember the Reagan presidency, but I do think it's interesting how he seems to be one of the most polarizing presidents I've come across. People either idolize him to mythological proportions, or they hate everything he represented about America in the 1980's. (This AIDS documentary called We Were Here particularly crucifies him for his lack of action in the wake of the AIDS crisis.) The Reagan that this author tries to paint basically comes off as a middling actor with not much to commend him but a pretty face, who at middle-age and realizing his screen idol sell-by date had come to pass, made deals that made him insanely wealthy while simultaneously stabbing his fellow actors in the back. But because his deals had made him a mainstay on American television, the American public grew to like his wholesome, likeable image, which combined with said wealth would eventually help him ride his way into the White House. So not a nice guy, not quite a devil...but someone who looked out for himself, got rich doing it, and convinced people that he was a swell guy by looking pretty while saying the right lines written by other people along the way. As a result, Reagan grew more and more powerful, until he literally became the most powerful man in the Western Hempisphere for 8 years. What I find interesting about Reagan is that he represents the culmination of "star power" and "political power"...that was true of JFK to some extent, but it really gelled with him. Do you guys think that Reagan took his star power and yielded it to eventually screw over not just actors but the entire country, or was there some good that came out of his presidency?

I'm with Mari on this, but I really do hope that as Will gets older and more in control of his affairs, he doesn't follow in Stefan and JP's tendencies of sleeping with people that are employed by him. Stefan and JP are relics of a different time where it was okay to sleep with the help; Will's growing up in a litigation-happy culture. It would make Will look stupid if he opened himself up to sexual harrassment lawsuits like that.

Did you know that in the 1960's, Los Angeles was offered a free monorail system and the car industry basically lobbied to turn that down? Now they're stuck trying to build a massively expensive subway system. I've never been to L.A., but from what I understand, traffic there is unreal. Forget being stuck in 6 lane-high traffic; you've got like 10 lanes to deal with. Dallas, Houston, DC, Boston, and Atlanta are also apparently really horrible places to drive as well.

That is incredibly insightful, and likely very true about how Brad serves as Mark's "life unlived". You're right that there are a lot of Be Rad parallels to On the Mark. And I think you're right that Will's generation is the one that he's making much more fictional. Part of it is because he doesn't want a repeat, another part of it is that the stories of men who grew up in the 1990's and the 2000's are just going to be much different than men who grew up in the 1950's/1960's or the 1970's/1980's. So closeted characters like Tony, while still being around, aren't really the rule anymore when it comes to masculine gay guys. And characters like Will, who've literally never been in the closet, pop up to show how the world has evolved enough that someone like Will can be openly gay by 8th grade and it's not a big deal. Then you're getting characters like John and Gathan, who are "murky" but don't run screaming into the closet. These are experiences Mark doesn't relate to as much, hence why there's more fiction here.

I'm not sure Will could survive a Brad/Robbie kind of relationship. Look how badly he's reacted to Tony, and they didn't even have a committment. I think on some level, the drama IS part of who Brad and Robbie are as a couple. Brad would have never done well with a Max or someone else that didn't make things a challenge. Will on the other hand probably would settle down with someone who complimented him, rather than clashed with him.

I'm going to think outside the box of what I've been thinking for when it comes to Tony i.e. buff Italian guy with a smoldering hot face...Sal Mineo had a sweet Italian boy face with a buffed out buddy, and he was the face for Sam. So thinking in terms of "sweet Italian boy face" with a rocking body...John Deluca from Teen Beach Movie? He does look like a believable soccer jock, which Tony was supposed to be. I could also see why you'd trust him on looks alone. Tony hasn't been described in great detail, just that he's got a great body and typical Italian boy looks, which makes me think that his face is probably somewhat generic.But still, overall a really hot guy. John Delucca just looks like that protypical Italian-American boy-next door type, with a face you feel like you can trust.

As someone who's afraid of heights, that road would scare the ever-loving shit out of me.

Yeah, the old version is fun in a campy early 80's way, but the remake is something that stands up well even today. It's got more of a classic feel to it- I could see the Shaggy remake being a hit today. Reggae never really gets old. I'm pretty sure I used "Angel of the Morning" for a Be Rad pick.

I don't really see how it's a contradiction. It's not about Will being too immature to settle down. It's more about letting Will figure himself out what he likes as he gets older. Plus, the things you're attracted to change quite often. When I was 15, I found punk/skater bois to be the hottest. At 25, I started finding 30-something preppy suburban dads hot. People change. Just because Will is more mature than your average 15-year old doesn't mean he won't have a different viewpoint(and things he finds attractive) when he's 25. I'm sure when I'm 35, what I'm attracted to will change again. I will say though that I did think it was being set up for Will and Tony to wind up soulmates- it's such a common soap trope for legacy characters to wind up together, especially if you have the kind of backstory that Tony's dad and Will's grandfather have. But I'm not so sure about that anymore. All that said though...I'm kinda rooting for either Jeff, or someone that we've never met. If Will settles down young like Jack and Claire did it's going to make things so boring.

Will's in 10th grade. Let him at least be done with high school before we start thinking up lifetime partners for him. There are a lot of ways to be accomplished without having a college degree. While I can't see Will with a stupid guy, I think Will would have a broad view of what "accomplished" means.

This is a pretty long read, but still pretty damned funny. Whole Foods Employee Hilariously Blasts Company In Resignation Letter Delaware has been longing for a Whole Foods for a long time, but I'm now totally glad we don't have one yet. "A faux hippier Wal-Mart"...damn. I think anyone who's ever worked a McJob in food would really get this. Retail is still pretty bad, but not quite as bad as the food industry.

When I was a teenager and furiously counting down to the days when I would turn 21, I tended to think of myself as the next age whenever I got about 8 or so weeks within it, so Will and everyone calling him 15 makes sense to me. His birthday is in less than two months. It's like when I called myself 17 and a half, and the guys I said that to said, "You're still young enough to go by half for your age." You want to be older until you're 21, and then you start dreading hitting the big 3-0. The Malcolm stuff made me wince a little, but I'm not cringing as much as I did during Poor Man's Son when Will was still 13. JJ at 15 would make me cringe if I read about him hooking up with a guy in his 20's, but Will at 15 doing it doesn't feel as cringeworthy because I don't really think Will is getting taken advantage of by the 20-something guys he's hooking up with. There isn't this power differential going on- it's not like Will is some innocent kid being seduced by his teacher or his coach or anything.

Lucas Grabeel as Jake, the amoral mistress that led to the break-up of JP and Sam in Be Rad? I have Jake pictured as a nerdy but cute blond guy, with a disarmingly sweet face. I think it's hilarious that the guy is 28 and can still pass for high school. Man, that's "raw", as Mark would put it.

On the other hand, the fact that you can buy a Apple products without having to pay any taxes on them makes it worth it, right? The Christiana Mall area is trying to turn itself into a mega-shopping area on the order of King of Prussia- hence them adding a new anchor, a new movie theater, and a new sister shopping center. Hence all the road contruction to try and handle it.

Delaware traffic is rountinely awful. This is what happens when you're a suburban state who builds strip mall shopping centers for out-of-staters while not having the taxes or the room to build sufficent roads. The worst though is summer beach traffic on Route 1: Route 1 is my most-hated route, as they are always crowded, and the interchange between Route 1 and I-95 by Christiana Mall is going through construction as they add fly-over lanes and the like.

This whole episode reminded me of when I was having dinner with my frend and her boyfriend at his house. They told me that the grandfather had lost his voice box from cancer and had to use a tube to speak- they just wanted to prepare me for that. In any event, I really liked that you brought someone in with a major disability. That's not something any of the characters have really dealt with, barring JP's friend Fritz being castrated and paralyzed in Vietnam.

I liked including Kai's dad. I don't think Mark's ever had a character dealing with someone who had a major disability before- there was Fritz, who was castrated and paralyzed in Vietnam, but he killed himself rather than living with it.

Chapter 23 -When Will has some dirty sex with Malcolm. "Oochie Wally" (Dirty Version) by Nas Ft. QB It's really convenient that Will's horny teen years are coinciding with the rise of dirty, sexually graphic hip-hop songs. -When Will realizes that Kai is caring for his very sick father. "Will I?" from Rent -When Will and Kai have sex, after Kai lets Will get to know a huge part about his life. "Angel" by Shaggy ft. Rayvon I was waiting to use this one. Definitely one of my favorites from '01.

Here's a big one: IPods were released on October 23rd, 2001- so a little late for Brad's 39th birthday, but I'd bet anything this family would have the connections to get them a couple of weeks before they went on the market. Maybe Claire would get one from Jack on her 37th birthday? Jack, Brad, and Robbie seem the most likely to have them first- IPods were first popular with older adult consumers. Because they were only compatible with Mac and pretty pricey, they weren't really that popular with teenagers until later on, like 2003-2004. I remember the Ipod Nano being really popular with teenagers in 2004. It's pretty funny when you think that because of IPods, cd's are disapearing. But because IPods don't have the kind of sound that records do, records are experiencing a resurgence. Records might be the first obsolete technology that manages to replace what was designed to replace them.

There's this awesome article I just read, written by a 14-year old girl who took part in the protests against the Texas State legislature for the restrictive abortion laws that were passed. She held up a sign with her father saying, "Jesus Isn't A Vagina So Keep Him Out of My Vagina" : This is the article she wrote in response to internet trolls who've called her a slut: I'm The 14-Year-Old Who Wrote The "Jesus Isn't A Dick So Keep Him Out of My Vagina" Sign In Texas And Was Labeled A "Whore" By Strangers Online My dad came to my defense online, but for the first time I am outing myself publicly. I'm 14. Please stop calling me a whore. Tuesday Cain I'm a 14-year-old girl who has lived in Austin, Texas, my whole life. I like art, music and talking on the phone with my friends. When I grow up, I'd like to become a science teacher. I also believe in the right to choose and the separation of church and state. Or to put it another way -- to put it the way I wrote it when I was protesting at the Capitol last week: "Jesus isn't a dick so keep him out of my vagina." Yes, that's my sign. I came up with it last week when my friend and I were trying to think of ideas for what would get people's attention to protest the scary restrictions that are happening in my state trying to take away a woman's right to safe and accessible abortions. It worked. When my friend and I took turns holding the sign, one of the pictures of her went viral. Then my dad went online to defend the sign on Twitter and other online forums. That's when people started calling me a "whore." I'm going to be honest about what it feels like to be called that as a 14-year-old girl who has never had sex and who doesn't plan to have sex anytime soon. I feel disappointed. It's hard for me to understand why adults would be calling me this. It's hard for me to understand why anyone would use this term for a 14-year-old girl. It's not anyone's business, but as I said, I am a virgin, and I don't plan to have sex until I am an adult. But none of those facts make me feel any less passionate about fighting for a woman's right to choose and the separation of church and state in my home state of Texas. I also don't think this makes me -- or any other 14-year-old girl who agrees with me -- a whore. It simply makes us people. People who believe that abortion should be safe, legal and accessible for women. People who believe women should be in control of their bodies and should not ever have to put their lives at risk so that we don't go backwards in women's rights in this country. I know someone who has had a few abortions. She now says that abortion is bad and she fights against a woman's right to choose. This makes it all the more important for me to protest, even if I am only 14. In fact, my dad woke me up so that I could watch the Wendy Davis filibuster the night that she tried to prevent this legislation from passing the first time. I remember thinking that I was proud to be from Texas watching her stand up for what is right. That was when I told my parents that I wanted to join in the protests. I have seen anti-abortion protesters at a clinic near our house, and it makes me upset to see women who are facing this hard decision being told that Jesus condemns them. I guess I don't think it seems very Christian to me. Then again, neither does calling a 14-year-old girl a whore. The first day that we were out protesting at the Capitol, my friend and I took turns holding up the sign I wrote, and an older man came up to us yelling right in our faces. "You two should shave your heads! You should become lesbians! No man will ever want you! You're ugly!" The police had to ask him to stop yelling at us. It was scary. But more than scaring me, what it did was make me feel even more determined to stand up and protest even louder. I'm not going to let someone calling me a whore stop me from fighting for what is right for all women. I'm not going to let the bullies win in the fight over women's bodies. I read some of the comments online that people said about me, and I was so proud of my dad for sticking up for me and for the sign I wrote. After a certain point, I really couldn't believe some of the comments people were writing. One person said that my parents should be arrested for child abuse and in another unbelievable comment, someone suggested that my dad must invite all my friends over to "play abortion clinic." I'm done feeling disappointed by these attacks. That is why I'm speaking out -- even if I am only 14 years old. But the way things are playing out everything feels reversed. Adults are not acting like adults. Normally, I prefer to look up to adults as role models. But what is happening in Texas right now it's hard to find adults who I want to look up to. I don't look up to an adult who is taking away a woman's right to choose. I don't look up to an adult who is calling a 14-year-old girl a whore. I don't look up to an adult who is screaming in my face and saying I am ugly. And I certainly don't look up to anyone who says they are Christian but treats women the way I've been treated these past few days as a teenage girl. *** What an incredibly well-spoken young lady. This is someone who's parents did their jobs right- I know college kids who couldn't articulate their thoughts as well. One thing that she's learning from this is that "age" doesn't really equal wisdom, and that hypocrisy is always around you. I've met old people that were dumb little fools, and I've met kids her age who have impressed me with their profound wisdom. I wish I could be stunned that people who claim to love children so much that they want to save every unborn child from being killed could turn around and act so hateful towards a child, but I'm really not.