methodwriter85

I didn't get a gay/bi vibe from Beau- I feel like if Beau was gay or bi Wade would have known that by now. You really just don't want Will winding up with Tony, do you? I actually like Tony a lot, but I'm not sure I see them working out well together. But we'll see what happens. Tony does have four years in California- a lot can happen between 2000 and graduation in 2004. (Not to say he doesn't wind up settling in CA, but it's not a given- all depends on where Tony gets a job after graduation. He does seem like he's pretty tight with his family, so that might be a deciding factor.) I'm just glad Mark isn't pushing the whole "soulmates" deal with Will yet and getting him settled into a deep relationship. He did that with Brad/Robbie, and he's doing that with Matt/Wade. Aside from Will only being 14, having someone wind up his "soulmate" and getting into a permanent relationship with said guy can be problematic for the kind of series that this is. Happily ever after is sweet and nice, but it's not compelling soap. It's why long-running soap supercouples have to constantly break up and then get back together again. Hence, after Brad and Robbie got their "happily ever after" with MiM, we didn't see Brad again as protagonist until their relationship got into some trouble. We also didn't see Wade again as a protagonist until his relationship got into trouble, but now that they're in sync with each other....as Tim noticed, Wade's chapters don't seem to be as popular as Will's. I'm kind of wondering if that might have something to do with it. Now that Mark's covering every year instead of skipping a few years here or there, that means we need a lot more stories. It's better, story-wise, to have things wide open with Will instead of having him tied into any one character. The same would go for JJ and John, if they wind up as narrators. I would love to see Gathan narrate another story, but I'm not sure that's a popular viewpoint.

Does this mean we're finally going to see Beau again? I liked the kid- he should be a senior this year, and likely have all this interesting stuff going on. It'd be cool if being an uncle bonds Beau and Wade into being closer again. I could see Riley as the impetus for the Danfield family to try and get together more often.

It was the big upcoming album. I'm sure Wade got his hands on some bootleg MP3's via Napster and burned it onto his CD.

Chapter 42 -When Wade blasts Linkin Park in his car after getting out of a session with Dr. David. "Crawling" by Linkin Park -When Wade finds out that Carl's brother just beat the shit out of MaryEllen. "Bitches Ain't Shit" by Dr. Dre

Mark's been writing constantly for almost four years now, with just a small break he took back in the fall of 2011. It's okay he takes a little longer to post than usual.

I'd been wondering about what happened to Robbie's siblings ever since we got to Man In Motion and they disappeared, so I'm really glad you filled us in. Not that surprising that his brother went religious whacko and his sister went crackhead. It was the 1980's crack epidemic, after all. I was kind of surprised they weren't mentioned during Poor Man's Son, since that had a focus on the Hayes family. (Until Will hijacked Gathan's story. )

- Wade's A-Ho party, where he has some fun with John Carullo.

MGMT(back when they were amateurs in 2003), doing a cover of This Must Be The Place by the Talking Heads. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTiFNQBRwwU They are so stoned that it's hilarious, especially when they get hit with the giggles towards the end. Another Youtube cover by a band called Before You Exit. Here, they're taking on What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction.

Next up... Warm Bodies, by Issac Marion. It's the story of R, a young man with an existential crisis - he's a zombie in a dying world. He shuffles through his day-to-day existence craving for more than just blood and brains.One day, R eats the brains of one of his victims- a 19-year old named Perry. Experiencing his memories, R decides to protect Perry's girlfriend, Julie. Embarking on a strange new friendship with her, R sets in motion a revolution that will change the relationships between the living and the living dead. I mean, it's got a premise that horror purists are probably going to shudder at, but it's actually a pretty touching and well-written novel about what it means to do more than going through the motions in life.

It reminded me of Hot Donna on That 70's Show.

Alright, so I just read this really good YA book, Unwind by Neil Shusterman. It comes with a pretty intriguing premise. It's about 20 or so years after a Heartland War between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life factions tore the United States apart. As a compromise, they came up with the idea of "unwinding." Abortion is illegal, but there's a catch. When a child reaches the age of 13, and until they reach age 18, they can be subjected to what amounts to a retro-active abortion. Unwanted teenagers can be "unwound", with their body parts taken apart piece by piece and then given to people that want/need the parts. This way, they're not technically dead- they're just living in a divided state. The book follows 3 teenagers- one a rebellious boy his parents had decided to be unwound, one an orphan who was an unfortunate victim of budget cuts, and the third a boy who was planned to be unwound since birth as his parents' religious tithe. I've gotten into dystopian stuff lately, and this one was pretty damn good. The characters were interesting, the premise was gripping, and I gotta say it makes a great summer read. Give it a shot. Here's a fan film that kind of captures the mood of the book: "Sweetie, you don't die. You just stop living." My sister's a nurse, and I thought the actress there nailed the nurse voice. I saw the fan film first, and it intrigued me enough that I decided to read the book. Glad I did.

Are you saying that Amber Stevens doesn't look like a sweet girl next-door that'd be appropriate date material for John because she's black? Because only white blond girls can be sweet girlfriends to WASP lacrosse players? Is that what the "hell no" is about? Why couldn't John have a girlfriend that wasn't his own race? It's early 2000's California, not 1950's Mississippi. Hell, John would have grown up watching an interracial relationship on Boy Meets World- it's much less of a taboo at this point in history. That's why it might have been interesting to see how John's grandmother would react- you could say in 2000(and somewhat now) that you disapproved of your grandson dating someone of his own sex. But by 2000, it wasn't politically correct to say that you didn't want your grandkid dating a girl outside of his race. What would her reaction be if her grandson had a girlfriend who was pretty, sweet, from an affluent family- but just happened to be black? Would her reaction be different than the one she had about John having a boyfriend? You know how many white blond girls we've had in this story already? Why not add some diversity? We started with Ryan's girl, why not add some more? I mean, if there's a part where Mark already described the girlfriend as being a particular race, I get it- but if not...why not?

Dear Teenaged Jeremy, Phil is a loser. Stop trying so hard to impress people that don't like you anyway. Don't skip school so much. And get a math tutor before 10th grade. Kayla and Alexandra are actually pretty good friends to make. Don't worry about Sean; he'll turn out fine. Sincerely, Your 26-year old self

I really loved that Robbie talked about his siblings and their kids. That was something I've been curious about for a long time. Note that Robbie mentions the falling out happened circa 1985, which puts it squarely into Man In Motion territory. I wonder if Robbie's descent into his emotionally abusive relationship with Neal was at least in part inspired by his family turning their backs on him. It's an interesting thought, but I thought it was just getting to know what JJ was like- that he gets focused on something and doesn't want to do anything else, and doesn't realize how rude he can be. I think that fits fairly in line with what we already know about him- that JJ is pretty superficially friendly when he wants to be but doesn't build deep relationships, therefore doesn't fully understand how to interact with people on a deeper basis. Maybe JJ has Asperger's Syndrome?

Mark hasn't described John's girlfriend yet, but I'm kind of picturing her like this... It'd be interesting to see how the ultra-Wasp Hobarts would react if one of their kids/grandkids dated someone African-American/not-white. Namely, the grandmother- she was pissed at the idea of John having a boyfriend, but would she be better with John having a black girlfriend?

Chapter 41 -When Will and John Hobart have some fun, and then John admits he's pretty serious about this girl. I've worked my way through the A and B-list boy bands...now it's time for the C-list. LOL. -When Will gets into his fight with Darius.

I'm just going off with what I've read and filling in the blanks from there. Plus, Mark wrote JJ as having a lot of similar personality traits to me, so I extrapolate from there.

I think that you're pretty much on-target. Well, we know going into JJ's skating career that he WON'T win Olympic gold- Evengi Plushenko wins the gold in '06, and Evan Lysacek gets the gold in 2010. That won't change. Mark doesn't re-write history like that. How JJ deals with being one of the best but not THE best seems like a prime opportunity for character growth.

Dude, it seems like you're almost offended by the idea that JJ doesn't have some tight-knit bond with his fathers the way Will does. Aside from a love of shopping(we know he dresses like a GQ model), what else does he really have in common with his family? JJ can't go on vacations with them, he can't just casually hang out with Will or John because he's always off into the skating rink, he can't smoke pot because he's subjected to random drug testing, etc etc. The other thing is, the vibe I've been getting from JJ, and the vibe that has been fairly consistent, is that JJ is superficially friendly(if you haven't pissed him off), but he's not someone who puts in the work needed to maintain deep relationships and bonds. Partly because he doesn't know how, and partly because EVERYTHING is focused on skating.

Hmm. Interesting thought there. So it really doesn't seem like JJ has all that strong of a paternal figure period. There's love between him and his fathers, obviously, but they're not that close. I kind of like that Mark showcased two different types of paternal bonds here- the strong, tight one between Will and Brad, and JJ being more bonded to his mother and to Tiffany than he is to his dads. The contrast is pretty cool, I think.

So I spent basically five hours in the ER with my friend Josh and this guy, Steve(no, not Stoner Steve or Long Island Hipster Steve). Steve was a guest at Josh's party in the University Courtyards at Newark. I didn't know him, but Josh somewhat knew him. A bunch of the guests decided to hop the fence surrounding the UC pool for a late night swim. To impress some pretty girl, Steve decided he'd do a cannonball into the pool- only he did it at the shallow end. He got a gnarly gash on his head and apparently broke the sixth vertebrae in his neck. I found Steve on the balcony of the apartment and he looked like he had a small gash at his hairline, so I took him over into Josh's room so Josh could put a bandaid. That's when we saw the large gash on his scalp, and realized that he needed medical attention. The dude's friend, who was there at the apartment, seemed more interested in getting back into the pool than his bleeding friend. I felt bad for Steve so I went with the contingent that took him to the hospital. We got there at 4, and stayed there until 9, when his parents got there. He wound up needing to get two staples in his head, and they said he was going to have to stay there to get a consult for surgery. My sister was working in the E.R., so I had to get her to promise not to say anything to my Mom because knowing my mom she'd overreact and accuse me of being on drugs or something. We were up so late that I couldn't drive by the time we got back to Josh's apartment, so I had to crash on the couch for two hours, with the lovely smell of cheap alcohol wafting in my nose. It was a crazy night, and it just seemed so stupid- this guy wanted to impress some pretty girl, and now he's in a neck brace for a month. He's damned lucky that he didn't die or get paralyzed. It made me think about this line I heard from the tv show Girls - "You couldn't pay me to be 24 again." It's seriously a wonder that we survive our 20's at all- we make so many dumb mistakes and stupid decisions. Is it my 30th birthday yet???

What Mari said. Sexist pig.

I just enjoy the hate comments that parodies are getting from Directioners. (That's the fandom name.) Comments Con't

Over in the reviews, Mark wrote: Damn. That's kind of interesting to think that way. I mean, in some ways you do kind of figure that Tiffany's getting some vicarious thrills out of it because her own figure skating career tanked, but I didn't think that it would be the actual draw. If JJ did stop skating, or he just suddenly wasn't one of the best, would the bond between the two of them(that you could argue is stronger than the one JJ has with either of his dads) still exist? I do wonder if Mark's going to address JJ's paternal bonds in Norway, or if we're staying strictly on Will and his two dads there. Addressing that might be better saved for if and when JJ gets a turn at narrating, instead of having it get filtered through Will's eyes.