methodwriter85

If he does, that'd be a rather hilarious call-back to Brad's tailing of Robbie in Man In Motion. Ultimately, I don't think Will would- that would violate his "live and let live" attitude. I thought it was kind of weird that someone who grew up a coastal area wouldn't be big into seafood. I grew up in the Chesapeake Bay/Delaware Bay area and there's a major focus on seafood here(especially with crabs) that I noticed wasn't really around in the Western P.A. area. (Which isn't a costal area.) But then I saw Will's earlier comment that it's a karma thing, which I liked. What a fantastic little character quirk. Mark's gotten better at adding little touches like that. Finally, I love that Tony's issues go beyond just not wanting to be gay. As Will's realizing, even if Tony were openly gay, he'd still be a shitty boyfriend who'd feel a need to have a mistress on the side. That's the ugly side of the Italian machismo that Will finds so hot. It also makes me think that Jake was sooooo not the first secret mistress that Sam had.

Wade's family doesn't strike me as people who'd buy a private jet even though they could afford it. They'd probably be old-school fiscally conservative types. If you've noticed with Wade, he's much less likely to "splurge" on things- other than his big dinner for the hockey team, we haven't seen Wade spend lavishly on things that weren't solid investments. I'm guessing that's because the Danfields usually don't, in stark contrast to how the Cramptons and Schluters buy fancy cars left and right for their friends. There is a shot that a Danfield could find themselves at Dulles Airport on 9/11, I think...

I kind of wish I had grown up in California then, because the UC system sounds like an absurdly easy system to get into, barring Berkley. Damned true. Check out the "Racism is alive and well" montage from USA Big Brother 15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok9c5Sv9xPc The thing that you've got to keep in mind is that racism isn't something you can reason with or put some kind of logic to. For example, in the comment about how Candice couldn't be seen in the dark...Candice Stewart isn't really all that dark. She's not. But that doesn't matter to a racist. The same deal- it doesn't matter if Darius isn't that dark and isn't praising Allah. All that it takes is someone with a prejudice to be put in a situation where they can push their hate onto someone, and having people who sit around and do nothing (or laugh and join in) when that happens. CBS is editing out a lot of the racist stuff from their broadcast, but the feed has caught some really incredible stuff. Anyway...back to the thread...I really do wonder if Mark will have some characters get seriously injured in 9/11. It'd be interesting to see a character deal with a traumatic brain injury...that's a place Mark's never gone before. I'm also thinking that it'd be interesting if we lost a character that hasn't been in the story for awhile.

I'm the "keeper of ages" so to speak, and we have Darius's birthdate set as January 19th, 1982. He's currently going into his sophomore year, and should graduate for the spring 2004 school year. Although it is possible for him to graduate a semester or a year early, taking him into the first year of the Iraq War. But since Darius is a transfer to UCLA, that seems really unlikely he could graduate early. (Although that in itself had me scratching my head...didn't his first-semester grades at Santa Clara suck? Why would have UCLA taken him?)

It's not about it being an active history of discrimination. It's about it being the very real anti-Middle Eastern sentiment that crossed throughout the United States after 9/11. It's also not about whether or not Darius is involved with Islamic culture. It's about the fact that ignorant people make snap judgements about who someone is based on how they percieve the color of a person's skin (and it's been established since Man In Motion that Darius is not seen as white, not even his Uncle Nick who called him the n-word), and treat them accordingly. If you're "ambigious" racially in this country, you're open to a lot of assumptions from strangers about what you are. I've been asked if I'm black, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, Puerto Rican, etc etc. And Mark's even reflected that with Darius, because in nearly every time Darius has been described by a protagonist, the protagonist wonders what Darius's ethnicity is. That's why I picked an ethnically ambigious guy for Darius.

I'm going to re-iterate Matt Bomer for Lou. Can't yinz just SEE him as a chic gay TV news reporter in Toronto? The man was just born to wear a suit and look the part of a fashionista.

Here's a great tune from '03 that I can't wait to incorporate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km_8JLt6MPA 2003 really has to be one of my favorite music years. Can't you just picture a 19-year old Blue dancing his ass off to "Satisfaction" at a California night club?

On Day 8 (which was Friday, July 5th) and Day 9 (July 9th), I worked on the inventory for my 4th box. This particular box was mainly the files of paperwork from the parades, going from the 1980's to the 2000's. I had a conversation with the museum leader about the box- he agreed with me that it wasn't really necessary for me to inventory each and every single piece of paper, so I did the inventory by the folder. Some of the paperwork was pretty tedious(I found memos about catering the event from 2005 to about 2007), but there were some pretty cool things about the guests and the participants of the parade. I also found some newspaper clippings- some going all the way back to 1984. I'm guessing that the person who donated the collection joined the Memorial Day Committee around the mid-80's, since none of the paperwork goes further back than the mid-1980's. The photos do, but not the paperwork or the newspaper clippings I've found. It was for the most part one of the easier boxes to go through, because a lot of the files had already been labeled with dates. You guys have no clue how useful that is for future archivists.

Yeah, that's where I know him from. I thought the Conrad Boys was an interesting case of a movie that was decent but could have been much better if the director/writer realized that he shouldn't have cast himself in the lead. Boo Boo (his real name is Nils), the love interest, and the father were all pretty good actors, but not really the case with the director. The kid sure did grow up nicely: Great combo of sweet face with rockin' body. He just looks the part of a very nice surfer guy, especially with that long hair. If you wanna feel old, Tim, he's about 19 now. That people born in 1994/1995 are now old enough to be in college weirds the hell out of me. (He would have been born the summer before your senior year of high school, Tim, and when I was about to enter second grade.) The summer of 1994 doesn't feel like it was 19 years ago, but it was.

It's possible that my view of the time is shaded by the fact that I was in 9th grade, and my friends were emo kids who liked to bitch about how awful life is. Also by the fact that 9/11 effectively ended the boyband/Britney and Co. pop explosion in the U.S. and by that time we were sitting around and whining about life to Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, and Dashboard Confessional. I did think it was funny though when people were saying that American society would become "deeper" as a result of 9/11...and then in 2002 The Osbournes became the hot new cable show.

You can't even go to community college for 500 dollars a semester. I really wish the government would do something to prevent colleges that recieve federal funds from raising the prices, but I get that's a pipe dream. As bad as it was for me, I think about how bad it will be for college students a few years down the road.

Me, too. By the way, the flights didn't come in from Europe- Flight 11 (North Tower) was Boston to Los Angeles, Flight 175 (South Tower) was Boston to Los Angeles, Flight 77 (Pentagon) was Dulles, Virginia to Los Angeles, and Flight 93 (Shanksville) was Newark, NJ to San Francisco. The Shanksville one was of particular interest to me, because I had a grad schoolmate who worked at the 9/11 Memorial site there. Do any of them fly commericial? It seems strongly implied that they all use private jets. I do think John Carullo would make sense as a possible victim as well, especially if he was working as a summer internship or something in NYC. (He might have graduated from Stanford at this point- I don't think it's been explicitly said that John was in Matt and Wade's class.) I also wonder about possibly of having people who aren't killed, but are seriously injured by it. How would Will react to being paralyzed or maybe blinded, even if temporarily? Or how would Matt handle brain damage, especially given that he's in his senior year at Stanford? That's something Mark's never really covered in CAP. There was Fitz in CAP, but he killed himself before we could see how he coped with living a disabled life. And if Mark does go with having people there, the PSTD issues should be interesting. We got some of that with Will after his kidnapping, but I would imagine that the PSTD stuff would be even more intense if our characters are actually at the site. It's going to be really interesting, given that Mark can't really do a "happy" ending here like he normally does. America was in a funk for a pretty long time.

I can see what you're saying here...for me, it wasn't so much the lyrics(he IS pretty green when it comes to doing original music), but the beautiful visuals of the videos as well as the storyline that got me.

Kai? My orginial thought was Taylor Lautner, but Taylor has too much of a frat bro look to him. Kai needs a sweet, exotically pretty face.

I really thought you'd have a much more enthusastic reaction to this song.

Chapter 20 -When Will and Kai go shopping. "Love Don't Cost A Thing" by J.Lo There. I finally allowed the J.Lo fame of the late 90's/early '00s to show through. God, she annoys the shit out of me. -When Will admonishes Stefan and Brad for getting judgemental about Kai. "What Would You Do?" by City High This song was kind of anti-thetical of popular 2001 hip-hop...socially concious hip-hop wasn't that popular by this time period, so it kind of stands out for that.

I think the only person I can see flat out not being involved in the family business at all, in any capacity, would be JJ. He very much strikes me as somebody who'd want to set up his own life, free of the family expectations and obligations, in an area that isn't anywhere close to the family base. Even if he got interested in acting, I don't think he'd hit up Robbie for connections- I see him toughing it out in New York City instead of the L.A. scene. The biggest difference between Brad and Will is that Will doesn't care about having power over other people...he wants to control his own life, but not the lives of others. Brad in Be Rad pretty much treated his friends like they were his Chess pieces to move around, or they were his status symbols of how powerful he was at Gunn High. Will has never treated his friends like that, and he's never been one to fake friendship with people in order to further his social game.

Hey, guys, our esteemed Adam Phillips gave his group a heads-up about this new gay-themed country song by an amateur Youtube singer/songwriter that's going viral. I think we've all been there, but what I really love about the message of the video is that it's becoming a reality that a straight guy can be kissed by his gay friend, and it wouldn't end in a bashing and destroy their relationship. Pretty cool. I really do love YouTube's ability to allow people to showcase their talent that they'd otherwise never get a chance to do.

It's interesting to think about. 9/11 directly impacted me because it happened when I was 15, and really becoming aware of the world. I think if I had been Tommy's age (he would have been about 9), it probably would have been a blurred childhood memory like the way the Oklahoma City bombing was, but 9/11 hit exactly at a very vivid time in my life- the teenage years, when all those hormones/emotions are surging through you. Here's an interesting article by the Huffington Post about how 9/11 shaped the Millenial generation: Post-9/11 Generation: Millenials Reflect I think when 9/11 happened, I was old enough to really internalize what happened, but not old enough like Mark to really work through the emotions of it. It's such a vivid day to me- my biggest worry that day was whether or not I'd get a part in our school's production of Arsenic and Old Lace. I remember finding out about it when I went to my computer applications class. A guy was talking about, and I (being a very young 15), asked if any of the people on the plane survived. He just gave me this look, and said, "A jumbo jet crashed into the World Trade Center. No one on the plane would have survived that." We spent that period looking up the information online and freaking out over all the mis-information...I posted about it on the I Hate Jen message board, and everyone thought I was making it up until it was on the news. Then school got cancelled, and I'll never forget looking up into the sky, and seeing that the big beautiful blue sky was eerily empty and quiet. Then going home and seeing that MTV had completely cancelled all programming in order to run videos that were themed around 9/11, and asking for Red Cross donations. This was a video that ran on MTV during that period...still gets me choked up now.

Okay, this is a debate we already went through with Private Tim, and I'm not going there again. We'll just agree to disagree. One thing that I do wonder about...would Darius drop out of UCLA in order to sign up? Mark has said no way because of the way his family is, but I don't know- it'd be one thing to drop out just because, but another to drop out because you want to enlist. It'd be harder for JP to argue against, considering the military history tradition of the family.That could be interesting. It does happen.Or Darius could join the UCLA ROTC and graduate in 2004, which would be a year into the Iraq War. So...the teen characters like Marie and Will...shouldn't they be school on 9/11, anyway? If JJ had stayed a junior figure skater, he would have been at the Junior Grand Prix in Bulgaria...he could still skate in junior events, I believe- as long as you're under 19 and you don't skate as both a senior and a junior at the international events. Both Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek did both, especially Evan. Allthough I think we have JJ going to the 2001 Nebelhorn Trophy in Germany from September 4th to September 7th. Did classes get cancelled on 9/11 on the West Coast? I know they did here in Delaware, as our governor declared a state of Emergency because we were 3 hours away from NYC, 90 minutes away from D.C., and Philadelphia was an hour north and a considered a target, but Cali would have been a different story.

It's doesn't matter if Darius isn't particularly Persian-looking. Since day 1 of Darius's existence in the story, he has been seen as "not white" by the characters in the story- and it's something that's been commented on by almost every protagonist we've had- that Darius is a little more exotic than anyone else in his lily-white family. He's going to get comments after 9/11. I could see a character joining up with the military to prove he's straight. I thought that might have been Tony, but I'm thinking that it's not so much Tony's angst about being gay that's the problem. I'm not sure I can see Tony being that desperate to make himself straight now.

Yeah. Now, it's not really my concern what tuitition is at UD, but man does it suck for anyone currently going to school.

From Delaware Online: *** Tuition and fees for in-state undergraduate students at the University of Delaware will increase by about $430 next school year – the lowest percent increase in about a decade, university officials said today. The 3.7 percent increase brings UD’s in-state tuition and mandatory fees to $12,112 for the 2013-2014 school year. Out-of-state students will pay $1,160 more, bringing tuition and fees to about $29,932 – an increase of 4 percent. Graduate students at UD will pay $1,578 per credit hour, an increase of 4.25 percent, which is $65 more per credit hour. The tuition rates for in-state and out-of-state students were announced this afternoon. The university waits each year until after the state’s budget is approved to announce tuition rates. Those costs were approved by the university board of trustees earlier this summer, but they only announced dorm and dining hall costs at that meeting. The cost of living in campus housing and eating in dining halls varies based on why type of dorm or meal plan a student selects. The costs for “standard” housing and dining is about $11,200. **** It does boggle my mind though- when I went to University of Delaware, tuition ranged between 7k to 9k a year...pretty crazy that just four years later it's now 12k for in-state, 29k for out-of-state. It's still not quite as ridiculous as what it costs to go to Penn State, but still. University of Delaware has been on this decades-long building binge, which to me explains why the tuition is going up so high...I did notice that this year's increase was smaller than in year's past, so hopefuly it'll stay steady. I do think that if/when college enrollments in the country start to decrease, UD is sooo screwed.

I was thinking though...what if Hank doesn't die at 9/11, but she dies of cancer that she develops as a result of breathing in the debris at the WTC? I'm also thinking that at least a few characters will wind up in the War on Terror.

Tim must be so disapointed you don't have Tony as an option. That's also a pretty limited list there. I'm surprised Wade's parents aren't on the list, or that Ella Hayes isn't on the list, either- isn't she going to FIT in Manhattan for school?