methodwriter85

I was 8-9 years old when I watched My So-Called Life. My family wasn't exactly strict with me when it came to shows... You can't mention 90's teen drama without showing this: This is more Private Tim's generation than mine, but damn it, this was a great show. The reboot doesn't even come close. "Donna Martin Graduates!"

And here's another "Child of the 90's" memory of mine... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KsqDCPKA2w Dear god, watching that intro just makes me miss the 90's so much.

That's craziness you didn't have Pogs. Hmm. There are a lot of 90's child videos on YouTube, but the soundtrack on this is awsome.

Here's a tune from the Disco Era... "You Make Me Feel" (Mighty Real) by Sylvester, 1978

Well, he wasn't going to keep it forever, of course, but I figured he wouldn't get to the kind of sexual development and active sex life that Will has until he was at least around 17. I think that's the most interesting thing about the 12-16 age group- so much of what happens to you is based on how developed you are. Hot, very developed guys like John and Will get attention and interest that can lead to all sorts of temptation, while the late bloomers like JJ tend to not have that much happen to them until they finally "bloom". Although sadly, in JJ's case, his being a late bloomer is precisely what attracted his sicko coach to him. I will say though that the contrast of sexual development between JJ and Will has been pretty interesting, and not something you've done before, which is good. I think left to his own devices, JJ would have been the type of high school kid who was relatively chaste with his partners- satisfied with hand-holding and making out, until he got towards the end of high school/ start of college. Sometimes kids just aren't ready until they're older, and I think JJ would fall into that group instead. I do think when JJ gets to that stage, it's going to cause conflict, because he's expected to repress his sexuality and present the Disney Virginal Image that skating demands. I think for now, he'd be okay with it, because I think given his trauma and his relatively immature sexual development JJ's not exactly going to chase tail like a typical Crampton/Schluter guy, but that'll probably change in a few years. I think it's not much of a stretch to ask a 15-year old with the body of a 12-year old who's very focused on his career to present that image, but ask a 20-year old JJ with what will likely be a hot 20-year old body to still project that kind of image and I think it'll be really hard to do so. I feel like most people hit the peak of their sluttiness in their early 20's. LOL. Anyway, I wonder exactly what height JJ is supposed to be, and if he's about to have a growth spurt or not. I see him as 5'2" or 5'3"- I think the average height for a guy his age should be about 5'7", so that would still make him short enough that he'd get teased all the time. Will's already 5'10", right? And I figured that Darius should be about 6 foot.

I thought it was pretty interesting how Will's optmistic, "I'll blackmail you guys into being cool with openly gay skaters" deal was replaced with a more realistic viewpoint about what would happen to JJ's career if this ever got out and JJ found himself branded as "gay". JJ wouldn't be blacklisted, but I'm betting he'll have significantly lowered scores at his competitions, and I'm seriously doubting that sponsors are going to come calling. Even though it sucks, JJ would no longer be seen as an innocent, virginal figure skater if his name got linked to this scandal. I really liked how JJ's innocence and purity was contrasted against Will and John Hobart's more horny, sexually precocious teenaged antics. It pisses me off that he no longer really gets to have that.

Alright, let's hear it for the former Blue Hen, Joe Flacco! Woo-hoo! http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/ravens/2013/01/28/joe-flacco-delaware/1871301/ And we will fight, fight for Delaware...fight for the Blue and Gold...and when we hit that line let foes beware...

The song's called "Til I Collapse".

That's a really nice thought, but tabloids and the like aren't exactly known for their discretion, and the son of a famous movie producer getting molested by a well-known, Olympic-medaling coach would not be something that you could hush them up about to keep low-profile, lawsuits be damned. And it's not like the coach is like a football coach who teaches dozens of people- he's a figure skating coach, which means he likely only coaches maybe 4 or 5 people at most. If his coach's name got out, then people would automatically connect JJ to this coach. We've talked to Daisy about this, and she didn't find the storyline, or the need to keep things from going to court, to be all that impossible. This was her feedback: Anyway...I was filled with a lot of trepidation about this storyline, because I feel like I'm JJ's character guardian, but Mark's handled it pretty well. This was pretty well-done. I definitely thought it was better than the one Mark had about Brad getting molested in The Land Whore. This felt more grounded in realisim, and the signs were a lot better placed here. I liked how it's been noted that JJ has been acting more and more child-like...I think that's probably because being forced into becoming a sexual being before you're ready to would probably make JJ want to cling more into being a child and less interested in doing teenaged antics like Will and Darius.

I don't think Mark's going to linger again in a year as much as he did for 2000- I thought the point of having three stories set in 2000 was the fact that he really wanted to set up a base for this new generation, and then build from there. I'm thinking 2001 is going to go by a lot faster, and i wouldn't be shocked if we skipped over 2002 and went straight to 2003 and the Iraq War. (And consequently, when Will and JJ are entering their last year of high school.)

That's a good choice. I also recomend that you listen to Eminem's The Eminem Show Album. Eminem was huge with guy's Will's age back in 2000-2001. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xXYeNrW9k

Alexander Ludwig from The Hunger Games as Carter? If this were the 80's, he probably would have been typecast in Billy Zabka-type roles. I do think it's funny that he's got the SoCal accent even though he's Canadian...I think his IMDB page said he goes to USC, so I'm guessing he just picked it up there.

This isn't technically gay, but come on.

I don't count getting raped as having sex. I still see JJ as a virgin, because what happened to him I do not count as him losing his virginity. But you're right...I think by his 20's, JJ could probably get to the point where he's okay with getting with older people. I'm just not seeing it when he's still a teenager. I can't see him taking on Will's modus operandi of wanting guys in their 20's while ignoring guys his own age. I think JJ's going to have this need to forge connections with people his age, partly because of the rape and partly because he doesn't really get to socialize much with kids his age. Anyway, I pretty much figured that they'd want to keep this quiet. There's no way they can let this go to the media vultures. JJ's career would be destroyed.

I really don't think there is a single person between the ages of 8 to 10 in 1995 who didn't own at least pogs. I mean really, they were cheap and you could get them everywhere. I even remember that Cookie Crisp had Pogs in their cereal boxes.

So every once in awhile, I get into a mode of getting rid of stuff that I have, whether it's old clothes I never wear anymore, books I no longer want to read, or newspaper articles that I once saved but decided to get rid of. I'm in that mode right now...I'm selling off my old books from college(Don't worry, I saved the books I really love), and I went through my old newspaper collection(stuff saved from 1998 all the way up to 2008)...I'm probably going to look at my clothes at some point, as well as old papers I saved from high school. I think everyone in my family has somewhat of the pack rat mentality(my middle sister has it the worst), so we tend to save things. But every once in awhile, I get this urge and this itch to go through my things and criqitue whether or not I really want or need to keep this. I think there's something about lessening the amount of possessions I have that makes me feel more free and less tied down, like I become more portable with the less I'd need to pack if I ever decided to just pick up and go. It's a good feeling. I remember when I was a kid, I read this book about a guy who only allowed himself to have 99 possessions, and therefore if he got something, he'd give away something. I don't think I've been quite that strict, but sometimes I feel like acquring material objects just to have them, or keeping far too many items for sentimental reasons can be like piling on emotional baggage. It's great to pare things down once in a while, don't you think? It also makes you reassess why something had value to you, and if it still does, and when you do that...I think it makes you realize how your viewpoint and priorities change as you get older.

I'm wondering now if Will or JJ will have any friends who wind up joining the new start-up Facebook in 2004, considering that they have strong ties to Silicon Valley. It'd be great if Noah ended up being part of Facebook and became rich that way. We already know that Matt has a Google fortune coming his way. By the way Mark, have you watched the Social Network yet? It really does nail what the college experience was like for people during the circa 2003-2006 era.

Word on the first point. In my thread, "The Rules of CAP", one of the rules is that every protagonist must have sex with someone either significantly younger or significantly older. This goes all the way back to when 26-year old JP was having sex with 16 and 17-year olds with Stefan, Jeff, and Sam. (The black son of Vella, his family housekeeper.) There's never been a single protagonist who hasn't had sex with someone where there was a significant age difference. Mark once joked that the reason why this is so is because he's so hot for Adam Phillips and he's keeping that fantasy of being the Mrs. Robinson to Adam's Benjamin Braddock alive. LOL. I'm wondering though if JJ will break that trend, because I'm thinking he'll wind up being pretty screamish around older guys who try hitting on him because it might evoke memories of his own abuse. I think JJ, because of what happened to him, will have a strong need to forge sexual connections to people his own age when he's ready to start having a voluntary sex life, because the opportunity to have his first sexual encounters with his peers was taken from him. As for the other bit...there's no possible way this wouldn't be high-profile. If JJ believes this guy is taking him to the Olympics, then it means that his coach HAS taken skaters to the Olympics. That means this coach must be very high profile, and El Segundo has to be a well-known figure skating club. This is a post-Meghan's Law, post-Mary Kay Letourneau, post-Catholic Child Sex Abuse Scandal United States. CNN would be all over this like vultures. If it were the 80's, I could see the media being quiet, but no way in 2001. As for the techno stuff...Mark's team has been pretty good about catching goofs. The only goof in recent years I remember was when Mark was having Gathan showing cell phone photos to his Claremont friends in Poor Man's Son...cell phone cameras were in existence, but they weren't on the U.S. domestic market until 2002. I do like that Mark likes incorporating then-cutting edge technology into his stories, like when John Hobart showed Will his USB flash drive, or Matt's plasma screen t.v. in Bloodlines. I figure that Mark's love of new technology was likely ingrained on him because he grew up in the Silicon Valley in the 1970's and early 1980's, when it truly was the cutting-edge home of everything going on. It's almost 2001, which means that the IPod is getting ready to arrive. If I understand correctly, it was first getting used by affluent 30-somethings, so Brad, Robbie, and Jack should probably be getting them soon. The teenagers would probably get them in 2002-2003. I remember how huge the first ones were. It's almost boggling when you think just how swiftly technology changed in the 2000's- even faster than it did in the 1990's. I found an old newspaper artcle this week that showed one of my friends working at a video store in 2002- now there are very, very few left.

I'm actually with you on that. If it were the Homecoming King and football quarterback, I would have been more shocked and impressed.

Get ready to feel old, fellow Generation Yers. I wonder if this is how Baby Boomers felt when they started running nostaglic ads for them back in the '80's. I thought the shot of the kid getting the Dutch Boy haircut was hilarious. How many freaking blond guys got that haircut when we were in elementary school?

JJ really did sacrifice his childhood for this shot at Olympic Gold. Which is actually never going to happen for him. (Unless Mark decides to re-write figure skating history.) Poor guy. There was one scene from Poor Man's Son that I'm looking at differently now- the scene where Will masturbates in front of JJ and JJ tells him he doesn't like porn. I'm betting that at that time the coach was already trying to start "grooming" him by plying him with alcohol and porn, but JJ being physically immature just wasn't that into it. But he had to watch it anyway because the coach was telling him to. I think it's going to be interesting to see what JJ is thinking when he's around 17- giving him a few years to process what happened to him.

You dirty old man. But yeah, I don't think this kid will have any hard time finding dates in college.

I actually like his look a lot, but I think JJ has been described as being conventionally handsome in a somewhat effeminate way. Imagine a minature, 15-year old GQ Junior model. I don't think he'd be good looking in a quirky, somewhat geeky way like this guy is. I think we're going with Lucas Till's face on a short, scrawny body. I'd love Joffrey for Alistair, though. Slap him in a suit and I think he's perfect. I've been picturing Alistair brunette, but he could be blonde. Mark's been very general with Alistair- all we know is that he's short and he wears suits and glasses. I don't think Mark's even specified if Alistair is white or not. Emmy Rossum as Young Isidore? She's hot, but most importantly Emmy Rossum just has this certain air of good breeding and class that Isidore would have. Wasn't Isidore bred in a somewhat affluent French family who kicked her out once she got pregnant with Ace? She definitely didn't feel like someone who had grown up a street urchin, and if she had I don't think JP would have been nearly as comfortable with her as he had been.

Any of you catch the Discovery Channel show called ? It's such delightful trash and I enjoy the hell out of it. Another show I'm enjoying right now is called Buckwild. Basically, it's the Jersey Shore, but if the people were all rednecks from West Virginia. And of course, it's generating controversary from West Virginians. I've got a soft spot for rednecks because of my two years in Western Pennsylvania, so the show appeals to me because of that. Any of you seen either of those shows? They're great trashy reality tv.