methodwriter85

Jessica Lange from American Horror Story IS Nana, as far as I'm concerned. She's truly that classy-looking, still beautiful older woman. God, doesn't she look fantastic for her age? I'm sure she's had some work done, but it was great, understated work, as opposed to Cher's alien-like face. If not her, I also see Vanessa Redgrave.

I should be the short wacky best friend of the lead who comes up with all these crazy schemes that make life difficult for the protagonst, but all is forgiven when I shrug my shoulders, smile, and say my catchphrase.

I'm just kind of surprised that it's still considered so newsworthy for you to be an openly gay college football player that you're getting harrassed by reporters. Back in the 1990's or the 2000's I could see it being a big deal, but it's 2012. (Or was, anyway.) Then again, I'm coming from the perspective of someone who grew up in the Philly metro area.

Here are my choices in terms of indie/adult contemporary songs. Seriously, I felt so boss walking out of the theater while this played over the closing credits for the Hunger Games. Great tune, and I've heard it's in the running to get nominated for an Academy Award. I'm at a pretty open-ended period in my life right now, where other than student loans, nothing's really decided or committed to right now. This song captures my feelings about that. And I strongly associate this song with my weekend at Firefly Music Festival. I'm so glad I went to that show when this song was like 80 or something on the Billboard chart, because there's something really cool about having seen a band play right at the moment when they started taking off. Set Fire to the Rain by Adele I mean, don't get me wrong- I enjoy the hell out of dancing to Sexy and I Know It or Shots by LMFAO at a club, but I'm glad that Adele has brought back adult contemporary songs to the radio airwaves. It's been a long time, it feels, since mature music written by adults for adults has been this popular. Not since the era of Billy Joel and Phil Collins in the 1980's, I believe. It kind of feels like for the past 20 years, the bulk of the billboard-topping music(even the grunge of the 90's) was aimed towards a sense of adolescent rebellion or longing, so there's something great about a singer who is so thoroughly adult in how she writes and sings making the top of the charts alongside the Taylor Swifts of the world. I feel a similiar sentiment for the Black Keys as well. After a decade of corporate rock like Nickelback, it's great to hear something so raw and bluesy on the radio again. I feel like the Black Keys are signaling that good rock is back- like the kind of rock that made the 1970's such a great decade for music.

What were your songs for 2012? Here were mine, in terms of pop. I think the band Karmin is pretty fresh and interesting, and I loved how simple and effective the storyline in the video is. What a solid example of a fun pop song. I mean, really- there was just no escaping that song. Feel So Close- Calvin Harris Great summer dance tune. I guess The Wanted as serving the function as the "edgy" boyband as part of the current revival. Great throwback to the 90's boyband era, I thought. I felt like I was 12 years old again, blushing while watching the Backstreet Boys.

Marius from Les Miserables, aka Eddie Redmayne, as the Red-Headed College Republican that Arbour hooks up with in On The Mark? Mark really seems to have a thing for tall, slender, red-headed guys with geeky, quirky features, so when I saw Eddie Redmayne in My Week with Marilyn, I kept thinking, "I could see Mark wanting to hook up with that kind of look." And Eddie Redmayne just looks like he'd be well-cast as a high strung, geeky conservative Republican closet case during the ascendancy of the the Reagan Years. It's interesting though- you seem to have a thing for both the hunky jock AND the geek. I've noticed that in your writing. Conversely, you don't seem that interested in guys that don't fall into either category, like skater punks or drama freaks.

You'll never see Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake as cute little kids on the Mickey Mouse Club again.

You just live to rip into me, don't you? LOL. I mean, I get the point but damn it, I consider myself a half 80's/half 90's kid, and damn it, that's how I feel. You did do a much better job of explaining why I shouldn't though, than Private Tim ever did.

I kind of figured that Robbie's supposed to represent the worst of the "New Rich"- all about materialism and acquiring the next trophy status symbol, and very little about classy behavior or noblesse oblige. Re: The Kardashians. Eww.

My model for for is Joshua Bowman...he's on Revenge. God, he's cute. See, the problem I'd have with Tony being a stockier guy like Cole would be the fact that Tony is supposed to be good enough at soccer that he can play the collegiate level. I've never seen a stocky soccer jock. They're all usually pretty lithe. (I mean, I was a stocky cross-country runner, but I was also never any good and I was only on the team because they needed numbers.) If he were a football player, I could see that. Steven R. McQueen is actually pretty big, though. Here's a picture where you can see that: When he started on the Vampire Diaires, he was actually a pretty convincing 15-year old, but by the end of that season Steven had filled out so much that it was hard to buy him as 15. I guess Steven R. McQueen was one of those late bloomer types, and man did he bloom beautifully: Anyway, since we're on dark-haired guys now...I could kinda see West from the t.v. show Heroes (Claire's boyfriend with the power of flight) as Gabe, the latino journalist. (Nicholas D'Agosto is Italian-American, but I wouldn't have a problem buying him as a Latino, especially with this haircut and the facial hair.) I have Gabe pictured as good-looking, but in a kind of nerdy intellectual way with a tall, slim body. D'Agosto's one of those TV actors who work a ton, but hasn't quite hit on the starmaking role, which is a shame. It's pretty funny though- he had a really young face for a very long time that allowed him to play teenagers up until two years ago.

*Looks at Private Tim and Matty K in the corner over there* Hello, Gen Xer yuppies. Anyway, this is a reference that is way concentrated to people my age. You'll never see Nickelodeon be this cool again: Pete and Pete was sooooo steeped in the quirky grunge mentality of the 90's. I can't see it ever working on present-day Nickelodeon- all the current Nick shows are about kids who want to be famous, or are famous. There's nothing on there that's about quirky, interesting kids who see the everyday life in a different kind of way.

You will never see a children's tv show cover issues like this again, no way in hell. Parents are way too anal-retentive these days. Baby Boomer parents were far more relaxed than Gen Xers are.

Mark, you're doing this for free. And for fun. As a guy who grew up on soaps and is sad to see their passing, I enjoy reading a well-written soap.

My alternate Tony pick would be Steven R. McQueen from the Vampire Diaries, but I'm not sure Mark would see Tony that way. There's a touch of "sensitive artist" type to his look and I'm not sure Steven R. McQueen is as thoroughly masculine-looking as Tony needs to be, but damn it, I just like the look. I'd be just as hung up on THAT as Will is on Tony. I could concievably buy someone with Steven R. McQueen's look as a soccer player at a prestigious college who rides BMX bikes on the side. He's got the bod of a college jock, but some edginess to him. Hot damn, this man is gorgeous. I'm sucker for any guy with thick, dark hair and big soulful dark eyes. What do you think about my Tony picks, Blue?

Anyone remember the Disney TV show, Kids Incorporated? Guess the now well-known lead singer here, back when she was known as Stacey.

I was inspired by your reminsces of the 1980's in my "Memories of the 1980's" thread.

I love the 80's and 90's a lot, but I think the 90's gets the edge because the downside of the 80's were that it's the last decade in which it was totally okay to be homophobic. The 90's were much more socially concious. However, there's something about the cheesiness and bright colors of the 80's that just feel fun to me, like here:

I think I can explain it better this time around. I have three older siblings who were born in 1977, 1981, and 1982. That put them squarely as "80's children", and I was familiar with a lot of their childhood toys like Cabbage Patch Dolls, the Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, etc etc. I was also familiar with a lot of 80's movies and t.v. shows....one sister could not get enough of that movie. And I watched with them a lot. Hell, I even remember my sisters having that perfume that Debbie Gibson named after her song. As a consequence of having older siblings, I experienced more of 80's culture than I would have if I had been an eldest child with siblings born in the late 80's/early 90's instead. I was also one of those latch-key kids who had been raised by television back in the early/mid-90s, and at the time a lot of 80's shows were being re-run on TV, like The Facts of Life, , (why were there so many shows about adoption back in the '80s?), , (yes, kids, before there was a movie there was a tv show starring Johnny Deep), etc etc. I actually once had someone who believed that I was lying about my age because of the references that I was making would point to me not being a 15-year old in 2001, but meh. I missed most of the 80's in terms of a physically tangible sense, but I experienced a lot of the culture, hence the nostalgia. I mean, I get all the references in Bowling for Soup's 1985: I totally feel justified in my 80's nostalgia, because I "get" that decade. Sometimes I wish I had been born in 1974-ish instead of 1985, so I could have experienced the 80's as a teenager. (And then later on, experiencing the grunge era as a college student. That would have awesome.)

I was born in 1985, but I consider myself to be a historian of the 1980's, so I understand more about the decade than someone my age normally would. Private Tim thought it was weird that I'm nostalgic for the 80's, but I really consumed a lot of the pop culture of the time period so I "get" that decade more than a typical person in their 20's would.

My impression of the 80's was that the early 1980's was the "transition" period, as the early part always are. I knew about the economic recession of the early 80's, and it seemed like the UK was on more of an "up" at that time period as Thatcherite policies kicked in. I felt like the 80's boom hit first in the UK, which is why it seemed like you saw a lot of emulation of UK "New Wave" culture in the early 1980's. Reagan conservatism was on it's way in, but you still had that relaxed late 70's mindset of everyone's free to be you and me. It doesn't seem like that was completely over until about 1984-1985, with Regan's second term coming in and the emerging hysteria of AIDS, coupled with the rising evangelicalism. There are two movies that I think really reflect the mindset of circa 1980 America: with Jodie Foster and Foxes to me represented the tail-end-of-the-70's America- the malaise, the haziness, the anti-kid sentiment, and a time period where latch-key teenagers were really allowed to run around and do whatever they wanted to because the grown-ups were too busy discovering themselves as a consequence of the "Me" decade. Fast Times At Ridgemont High also represented the openess about teen sex and teen drug use, but you also saw the rising materialism. You could easily see these kids, who were all about having jobs so they could afford brand-name clothes and pay for cars, becoming yuppies by 1986-1987.

Right, that's why I'm saying "heading towards", not that it's actually there. But Mark has slowly and steadily given the clan ties to the East Coast, which is why I get the vibe that the influence is becoming bi-coastal. The other thing was that up til the 1960's, Crampton Construction was the big family business, where you were supposed to grow up and take over. Now they've got all these different companies being run, and those companies can't just get run by family, so that adds to the feeling that it's less of the French model of the family head.

I actually agree with you that I don't really see "one" head of the family, at least going into the newer generations. The reason why that worked for JP's generation was that everyone was tightly focused in Claremont. It also worked for Be Rad's generation because everyone was stationed in Stanford, and JP as the head of the department made the natural leader for this generation. But the Cramptons/Schluters/Hayes seems like they're moving from being a regional power to being bi-coastal, with influences ranging from the West Coast to the mid-West and now in D.C., and if/when the kids start going off and moving on their own I can't see how the "one person at the center" deal would work. I actually think that's realistic...it's like the du Ponts of Delaware. They were very well focused and powerful in Delaware, and they followed the French deal with the head of family and the like. But nowaways, the company is global, and the family is so spread out that while they have a greater global influence, they're less of a player provincially.

Hey, for those of you who have been missing my doing music recs for CAP, I'm currently doing music recs for JWolf's story, The English Year. I got to a point where I just couldn't hear music anymore for these particular characters in this particular year, so rather than forcing it, I decided to wait until I could again. In the meantime, I've been focusing on the 2004-2008 music era for Jwolf's story, The English Year. Please check out the story, and here are the music recs: https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/topic/36047-music-recs-for-the-english-year/

You do realize I was trying to be loyal and defending you and your writing, right?

I'm not saying it's ridiculous, but I'm saying that it's never going to happen, because CAP has never been nor will ever be a realistic coming of age story about gay teenagers. It's a soap opera with a gay erotic wish fufillment angle to it. Imagine Dynasty from the 1980's, but if Steven Carrington was actually allowed to have lots and lots of gay sex instead of just giving his boyfriend a hug and then deciding to bang Heather Locklear.