methodwriter85

When was CAP ever NOT a soap opera? The story started off with a young gay guy hitting a cop over the head with a fire extinguisher so he could take his trick for a romantic interlude down at the future gay destination Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, but not before a shopping spree at the best department stores in Philadelphia. One thing I will agree with is that I don't think typical high school angst stories are going to work with Will, save for "I'm a gay guy among all these straight couples at my school" angst or "I'm working my fucking ass off to get into my choice college" angst. Those stories worked with Brad at Gunn High and Matt at The University School, because both really needed and wanted the social power that came with being top dog at their respective schools. High school angst is often rooted in just how insular it is, and how you can't really see past the b.s. because it's your entire world. That's why every little thing in high school just seems so important and matters so much. I just can't see Will having that kind of viewpoint, where he sees his high school as his world to try and rule, because he doesn't have the same kind of power-hungry instinct that Brad and Matt have about expecting people to follow them without questioning it. And it doesn't make sense to play Will as the wide-eyed freshmen getting introduced to the world of ragers by cool and intimidating juniors and seniors a la The Perks of Being A Wallflower, because there isn't an ounce of naievte left in Will. I mean the dude has stripped in European clubs and has gone to more than one college rager- a simple high school party isn't going to move him that much. Will looks, acts, and basically feels like an 18-year old, so he's going to see these guys as his peers, not people to look up to. I mean seriously- why would a guy who just blackmailed his family into letting him become an adult four years early then turn around and let high school fashion edicts dictate how he dresses? That's what I loved about the end of the chapter- Will flirts with the idea of being an Abercrombie drone because he thought he was friends with Ella and therefore wanted to make friends with her crowd, until he realized that Carter's an asshole and Ella's turned into kind of a bitch. Then he went back into Will mode and completely refused to play by their rules while not caring if it kills his social game because it's just not Will's deal to be Social King the way it is with Matt and Darius. Speaking of Darius...man...what a great catch he got there. *rolls eyes* Seriously, I would have loved to have seen either Claire or Kristin there so they could have ripped Ella a new one for not having Will's back.

Chapter 66 -When Will gives himself a pep talk in the mirror, leading to sexytimes with a college guy named Pat. -When Will finds himself in the middle of a fight. -When Will's unrepentant to Ella about pissing off the captain of the varsity polo team and potentially wrecking both their social standings. "The Way I Am" by Eminem I got sick of how overexposed Eminem was back then, but he really was one of the best things going on in the musical wasteland that was pre-9/11 music. I can see why every straight teenage guy in 2000 was into his music. Remember Eminem wannabes?

I'm really looking forward to this movie called The Silver Linings Playbook. Based on a pretty awesome book by Matthew Quick, this movie follows Pat(Bradley Cooper), a thirtysomething man trying to rebuild his life after a mental breakdown led to a stint in a mental institution. Divorced but determined to get his wife back, Pat moves back in with his parents where he obsessively works out and reads books in a constant quest for self-improvement. When Pat meets a grieving widow named Tiffany(Jennifer Lawrence), he strikes up an unconventional friendship with her while learning some life lessons along the way. The book was really good, and I'm reading a lot of good movie reivews for this. I can't wait for this to come out.

This is a decade off, but hey. I know "That's pretty chill" would be already be getting said by 2000, same with "klutch". Sick seems likely. Of course, "Facebook me" wouldn't be getting said, and I'm not sure "Moodle" is a reference that would work in 2000. But generally I think this nails the vocal cadences of 2000's/early 2010's teenagers. Like I was with Harvard-Westlake, I'm kind of surprised at how casual these kids dressed. I thought they'd all be uber-preppy. I bought way too much into the East Coast preppy private school stereotype- Tim's right, it really is a completely different mindset for West Coast private schools. I mean, they don't even wear uniforms.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday!

Yeah. It's shitty no matter what and if I had it do all over again I would have gone to community college first, but you've got to make the best with your life choices. Another example of the good "new"- I know people who've said they're in the same amount of debt that I am for just undergrad. As in people actually took out 60 to 70k in student loans just to get their B.A. in English or something like that. So the good news is that I have so much debt, but at least I have two degrees to show for it. The other possibility is that I could fake my own death and move to Canada.

Not the most flattering photo, but a happy life moment for me nonetheless: I'm standing on a cliff in the Tennessee wilderness, as part of a spring break trip to build nature trails. I'm seriously afraid of heights, so that was a great life moment. I was also in Chattanooga, and absolutely loved it there:

Since we're going to see the Danfields for Thanksgiving, it'd be fun to speculate some more on how they look (We have Wade settled, and by default Wade's dad settled because they're supposed to look like each other, to the point that Wade used to hate looking into a mirror.) I like Joshua Bowman for Beau: I have Beau pictured as being swarthier than Wade(with a hint that he just might not be the Senator's son), with happy puppy dog eyes and a "I'm cool and happy with everyone" kind of smile. Joshua Bowman has that in spades. As for Beau's girlfriend,I'm picturing her like Bianca Lawson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Vampire Diaries: Bianca Lawson's always just had a bitchy look to her, and I think it'd be hilarious(and fitting) if Beau's girlfriend was a complete and total bitch, but he was completely blind to it.

I like the distinction of how Will is a control freak with himself, but doesn't try to control over people, whereas Brad is all about total control. That makes so much sense in how Will is so laidback in one way and such a control freak in another wau. Also, I kind of liked Robbie and JJ being lumped together as work-a-holics...maybe JJ will wind up bonding a little with his Dads?

The bad news is that my student loans are due on December 18th. The good news is that according to the longer 25-year repayment plan I picked, I don't have to pay any money because of how little money I made in 2011. The plan I'm doing bases how much you have to pay on how much money you made. I mean, obviously I'm going to still put money in rather than just let the interest run wild, but if I had gone with the standard 10-year plan I'd be looking at 700 dollars a month in payments. The bad thing about this is that I'll see much higher interest back dollars in this and take longer to pay, but the good news is that if I get a job and start making decent money I'll be able to start making more than the minimum payment. Also, you're allowed to switch repayment plans, so that helps. I've got a pretty frugal life planned ahead for me- no house, no kids- so I should be able to swing that. I would like to be paid off by the time I'm 50. Then I'll work for 5 more years until I hit the retirement age of 55. When that happens, I'll retire, buy a trailer, and travel the North American continent. I'll start by visiting a 78-year old Mark Arbour in St. Louis, who can regale me with tales of greed in the corporate world in Reagan-era America, to research my future 1980's history book. I want to become the Ken Burns of 1980's Americana by my late 50's.

I was thinking about the chapter again, and another thing I really liked about this chapter was the observation that while Brad and Will are both control freaks, Brad's a control freak about other people, while Will's only really a control freak about himself. I thought that was a pretty astute distinction, and one I can see- going back to Be Rad, you can tell that Brad really, really liked bossing people around, and that was evident in the way in which he ruled Gunn High School's social scene. Whereas Will is just about doing his own thing and not being told what to do, and as such he doesn't really try to control other people the way his dad does. I really like how Mark's given Will a lot of similiar Brad qualities, because nature does set a lot of traits, but at the same time, Will hasn't felt like a redux of Be Rad. That was my biggest fear going into the Will stuff- that Mark would just recycle Brad's storylines with younger models like long-running showrunners tend to do. But Mark hasn't done that, and I'm really glad that he's creating different dynamics for this generation than he did for Brad's. I like that Will isn't about being a Tryant Social King like Brad, or a fashion plate like Brad, and even the touch that Will is more of a math/science kind of guy while Brad was written as being strong in English/history. (I would bet that Will likely got that from Jeanine, which would probably piss him off to think that, LOL.)

I'm really shocked that Private Tim hasn't shown up here to tell us all the times he's been personally invited to all of these fabulous homes.

Happy birthday!

Good points, Tim. I know what the environment is of an elite charter school, but not that of elite prep schools. We all have our worlds that we understand- you understand elite private schools; I understand the environment of mid/late 2000's colleges as well as performing arts schools and math/science charter schools. We've even got someone who understands the world of competitive figure skating and has been consulting Mark on how to write JJ's figure skating drama. How great is it for Mark that he's able to incorporate the viewpoints of people with a myriad of experiences and perspectives into giving CAP a sense of what the mindset was for a given era? His biological mother was Bitty, but Jeanine pretty much has acted as Darius's mother since he was 3 because Bitty was caught up into the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's. That's actually been a pretty consistent thread throughout all of the CAP- it's not blood that makes a family, but how you interact with each other. Which makes it all the more interesting that Jeanine is so close to her adopted sons but can't stand her biological one.

Weezer was giving a free concert at the Christiana Mall today, which was pretty cool. They were there to celebrate the opening of the new Microsoft store at the mall. They closed it with Say It Ain't So, which was awesome.

That does make sense. I remember my transition to college was really emotional and hard to deal with and I did a lot of things I wish I hadn't, like riding around in cars with people who were drunk. It is a confusing time- to go from being a senior who understands everything about his high school world to then being a nameless face in a crowd of new people who don't know anything about you. Especially when you factor in that Darius did his education at Malibu Middle and High School, which means that he also went to high school with a lot of people he had gone to middle school with. It's got to be a shock to go from being around the same people for 6, 7 years and then switch to being around thousands of strangers. If we're going with how Will's being written, he's going to clash majorly with his water polo coach because sports teams don't exactly encourage independent "I'm doing my own thing" thought. Which actually would be pretty interesting. Although if Will's only an okay player and just doing it to get into the pants of other water polo players, he probably won't clash that much with his coach- coaches only really act like hardasses with the really good players. It depends on if Will's meant to be a star player like the way Matt is, or if Will's meant to be serviceable player like Wade is. As for JJ and his annoying ways, I can't help but cringe and remember that I could be equally that bitchy when I was 14/15. I think when JJ transitions into senior level figure skating and has to contend with the likes of Evengi Plushenko and Johnny Weir, I imagine that some humility will be made. Finally, I appreciated that we didn't get the obligatory "Let's have the past protagonists and main characters show up!" deal that we always get when Thanksgiving and Christmas hits in CAP. I mean, I mean, it's nice to see the past characters once in awhile, but to do it every time the story hits Thanksgiving or Christmas kind of gets gratuitous, especially since we haven't skipped a Holiday season in CAP since 1998. There's so much tension with this family that having past players like Marcel or Lou show up instead of the people that are really involved with the current story would have been really superfluous.

Happy birthday!

I'm starting to think that Darius is regretting that decision and tying himself so tightly to one girl. I always appreciated the fact that Mark DIDN'T have Brad and Robbie decide to go to the same colleges back during Be Rad- it always pisses me off when in real life and reel life people decide to give up the college of their dreams for a relationship. I knew a girl who turned down a full-ride at Columbia for a guy, and of course it didn't work out for her. If the bond is as tight as you think it is, it can stand being separated in college. That's why I love that JJ is a guy who's going to be completely focused on his career, not someone who goes crazy in romance or anything like that, like his brothers got. Anyway, I really loved the end conversation- Darius's estrangement from both of his brothers is completely believable, as well as the idea that Jeanine was just never as close to Will as she was to Darius and JJ. I loved the call-back to If It Fits- but it kind of make me think...what happened to the 13-year old Darius that had a way with words and could have argued his way with an attorney? He wasn't book smart but Darius was people smart...so where did that guy go?

One Direction's Live While We're Young.

You should secretly record them and put it on Youtube. Anyway...Minnesota Style.

The switch happened in the late 90's/early '00s, right? I could have sworn on an episode of the Mole from 2003 the lira was still being used in Italy.

I came across the video recently. I was pretty shocked- I crushed on Tom Bridegroom when I saw him in this Nintendo DS Jam Sessions commercial, and I followed him on Twitter. What an incredibly sad story. I hope his parents rot in hell.

Naming often reflects the mindset of a time period. It's social history, which I'm more interested in, as opposed to the more traditional historical school of thought that follows political and economic events. But you're right, there is a mix of sociology to it, which is why it's not quite the same kind of history that you're thinking of. It's a history that looks at the common people and why they did the things who did, rather than looking at big historical figures like FDR and the like.

I know this has been awhile, but dude, I'm a historian. I went to school for it and everything.That means that pondering things like this- historical trends over time- are the things I should be pondering.