methodwriter85

See, that's why I called them "trustafarians", not hippy dippys, because I figured they were both rich kids who got swept up into the Berkeley Movement of the 1960's and 1970's and played around with hippie commune lifestyles, but then went back into the establishment while still retaining some of those deals, kind of like Kirsten on the O.C. or Jake and Helen Morgendorfer on Daria. The dad was an alum of Harvard School for Boys back in the late 60's, and Raine picked the school based on that. If Harvard-Westlake came off as a really conservative school, I could see hippie-dippie parents not being into it, but the school seems to be on the liberal side and I think they'd be swayed by the social responsibility programs like Squid and the like. I mean, I know kids who went to really top-notch "establishment" schools and their parents were obviously hippie dippie types at one point in their life. Would it be more likely they'd send their kid to one of those schools were kids are allowed to chose their own curriculum in an attempt to teach them to be their own person? Perhaps, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, particularly if one of the parents were alums. If anything, HW sounded way too liberal for someone like Ryan's dad to want to send their kid there, but we assumed that the wife really pushed for it to try and get Ryan an "in" with the creme de la creme of L.A. society, which did work. Julian, do you want to weigh in on this? I just don't think it's THAT out there for someone to have extremely liberal and free-love type parents and go to a school like HW, given the impression I've got of the school. I've had friends who've gone to a top-notch charter school who had parents like that, and this IS Generation Y, with Baby Boomer parents, so you kind of figure there have to be some former hippie parents mixed in there with these schools. All schools have parents that don't quite fit the profile of the school- my high school was about as liberal and gay-loving as you can get, and we had parents who were conservative types who still sent their kids there because they knew that Cab Calloway was still a pretty decent high school, especially compared to places like Glasgow or McKean. *shudders*

I don't think conservative pro-lifers would name their daughter Raine, raise her to be comfortable around gay guys at a young age, or let her go on the pill at the age of 14. I kind of picture Raine as having parents who were once trusterfarians in the 1960's and 1970's, then settled down into an affluent(yet environmentally sustainable) domestic life partnership before actually getting married in the '90's, with Raine as their flower girl. I had an aquaintance in high school who's parents named her Ruby Tuesday Rock n Roll...you can guess what her parents were like. And you're right, Brad and Robbie have no moral authority whatsoever. Kids are pretty tuned into what their parents are like, and they'll recognize hypocrisy when they see it. I can't see Brad or Robbie ever realistically trying to disclipline Will and JJ. JJ would flat-out walk out the door if they even tried.

I don't think "subtle" is in JJ's vocab.

It did for me, too. When someone's the "favored" child, like Will was/is, there's a little bit of satisfaction in seeing them fall/fail at something. Will was clearly the golden kid at Malibu, and it looks like things are heading that way here at HW, so I can't help but think that annoys JJ just a bit. Not to the point where JJ is deathly jealous of Will(I don't think they're Cal and Aron from East of Eden), but there's going to be a little bit of a grin when the Golden Boy falls off his pedestal.

This is really hard to admit this, but god, if I were in JJ's position, I so would have sold Will out like he did. It's such a dick move, but when you're an attention whore, you'll do anything to get it and you don't think so much about whether or not what you're saying is hurtful or not. JJ really does remind me of myself at 14, and not in the best ways. I liked Raine just being Ms. Open and Free and not so hung up on labels, and I liked that Will enjoyed his experience. It kind of reminded me of Kelly and Danny on Real World- Danny was gay, but they did have an attraction to each other, and explored that by making out. Finally...yay! We get to see how strict and not as taking-of-b.s. HW is! I've felt like so far they've been exceedingly lax on Will, with the amount of time they've let him take off to attend JJ's meets, so it's nice to see them in action.

Chapter 30 -When the gang has their making out contest. -When Will experiments with girl sex. -When Ryan and Will have sex, and Ryan completely shuts him out afterwards.

I don't know, I kind of thought both Robbie and Brad took some major character hits for their behavior during Millennium, and the cutesy little wedding scene didn't really make up for it.

This sounds like a Nifty story I would have read in 2002.

-In true CAP modus operandi, Will and whoever his partner is decide to have sex with Raine to create a baby somewhere in Will's mid/late 20's. I'm leaning more towards when Will is around 24, because Mark likes his characters having their first kids at young ages. No Schluter/Hayes/Crampton is allowed to wait until their 30's before procreation. (The notable exception being Ace.) Raine willingly obliges, as long as they promise to raise the baby with organic, free-range food and make regular donations to Amnesty International.

Yeah. I kinda figure myself a character continuity consultant.

From Chapter 44 of PMS: Before he could say anything, three really hot girls came up to our area. I knew two of them, Felicity and Mariah, but the third I’d never met. She was really cute, with hair the same color as Stef’s: a strawberry blond. Our eyes met and that embarrassed me, so I looked away. I felt my face warm up, and knew I was blushing. When I turned back to look at her again, she was standing right next to me. “I’m Raine,” she said. That was kind of a cool name.

Elle Fanning(Dakota's little sister) is TOTALLY how I'm picturing Raine... Blond and pretty, but in this warm ethereal kind of way, instead of the hot blond bombshell kind of way that Kristin would be. It helps that Elle Fanning is actually 14.

I think my favorite thing about high school overnight trips was seeing how much shit people got away with. I didn't know the kids who got away with bringing bud and the like, but I'm sure it happened. Kids always find a way. I remember one time I snuck out and hung out with some kids who were watching the stars- some people were cuddling and the like and I'm sure sex happened, but I wasn't in on any of that. I just had friends that were doing it. Yes. I really was JJ in high school. LOL. I'm kinda surprised JJ hasn't gone into a bitch fit about the reality of being out in the woods. You would think he'd be more soft than that, and moan about how his Luis Vuitton baggage has been ruined. (Not that I ever bitched when I've spent time in the great outdoors bemoaning the lack of amenities and like. No siree.) Brad and Robbie don't seem like the outdoors type, nor does it seem like they sent their kids to summer camp, so that was surprising. I kind of figured that Ryan's racist father was what happened with Shiloh and Ryan. I also kind of figured that we really weren't being set up for a "Will falls in love with his straight best friend" storyline, and I'm glad that got confirmed that's it more of a "buddies helping each other" kind of deal. I picture Raine as this free-spirit type, born in 1986 to hippie-type parents who run some kind of animal cruelty-free corporation and espoused on her the virtues of open relationships and letting her be her own person without getting caught up on labels. Which would be cool. I've had friends who had parents like that, and they were always kind of a trip. I love that this is happening with Raine being entirely in the know that Will speaks fag fluently, instead of being in the dark about that.

I wonder how many references would have to be changed for this to be a good guide to Stanford Circa 2000.... Towards the end, I seriously had trouble understand what they were saying until that one guy ended with "fro-yo." And of course, the bit about his super-chill quarter lined up. The tall lanky dark-haired guy with glasses was cute as fuck. Mark, I've gotten you to add in "chill", right? Some major early '00s slang that doesn't seem to have gone away.

Day 43, April 17th While working on Box 9, I came across three religious service books. It made me think about how important religion must have been to the soldiers who fought. It may not have been their personal beliefs, but they definitely had to consider religion as part of their daily lives. I wonder what it might have been like to have been an atheist in World War I- would one have even admitted to such a thing back then?

I want to take some time to recognize and remember the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre shooting, which occurred on April 16th, 2007- 5 years ago today. Virginia Tech Massacre's 5th Anniversary I remember the day clearly. I was sitting in Trabant Hall, eating lunch, and then the news came on that a mass shooting had occurred over at Virginia Tech. What struck me about the whole thing was that I just couldn't believe that a school shooting would happen at a college- I thought that we were safe because college students don't really get bullied like they do in middle school and high school. A "College Columbine" didn't seem possible to me, until it happened. Later that week I took part in a candlelight vigil in front of Memorial Hall with some of my friends. Anyway, R.I.P., Hokies.

The Hunger Games have stayed number 1 for four weeks in a row. Pretty cool. I doubt they'll get to 5 weeks, but still, 4 weeks is quite an accomplishment.

I went on a ghost hunt at IUP this weekend, over at Keith and Leonard Hall. It was cool- last Halloween I went and nothing happened, but this time around, we had some experiences! Using a flashlight that would turn on and off by itself as well as a K2 meter, we had several ghosts communicate to us. One was named Danny- he had identified himself as a founding father of IUP, and had been around during the 1870's and 1880's, and died of an illness in March. I had literal chills going down my back when we communicated with him, and one of the other investigators told me that they pretty much think he was right behind me the entire time we communicated with him. Another was a professor at IUP up to about 1975. We figured out that when we stood up in the doorway of the room, he'd turn the flashlight on and refuse to turn it off, because he thought we were students trying to sneak out of class. We also talked to a woman, who would get excited and turn the flashlight on whenever we called her awesome. I definitely had an amazing experience there!

Day 40, April 11th I finished work on Box 2. Finally. Day 41, April 13th I started work on Box 9. It doesn't look as if it'll take as long as Box 2 did. Hopefully. I gave one of the other grad students a tour of the military exhibit at the society. He's into military history, so I pretty much let him lead the tour. I imagine that something like that will come up when gving tours, running into people who know more about the exhibit(or at least believe they do) than you do. I kept it to an easy discussion and tried to lead him around the exhibit, but John pretty much knew what everything was. It was definitely easier on me to lead someone around who knew what they were looking at. Day 42, April 14th I continued working on Box 9. I also watched another tour being given to Cub Scouts. They asked me to think about some hands-on activities that they could try in order to make the kids more into the museum. I was thinking making stone tools could be interestings, or perhaps teaching them how to march while carrying around sticks meant to represent muskets. That could be pretty cool. I know it worked for me back when I was a kid going to history camp for the Delaware Heritage Commission- there was a strong emphasis on hands-on activities. I'm definitely going to be challenged finding ways to get people interested in history, and coming up with hands-on activies is defnitely key.

Here's something that's kept coming up with me often. Will was born in September of 1986. I was born in December of 1985. There is only nine-month lag between our birthdates. So I tend to think and relate to Will as being like a peer, because he was born in '86 and my peers are generally people born between '84 to about '88. But of course, I'm 26 years old and Will's only 14, and I think a part of me expects for Will to be more mature because of that. The other thing was that, I remember that the initial way Will was written was that he was supposed to be That Guy. That cool guy you knew in 9th grade, who was so much more mature and laidback than most of the other rambunctious 9th grade kids you knew, who just seemed like he was already a senior, or even in college. But it does seem like Mark went another way with his characterization so that while Will is very bright and can be very perceptive, he's still very much an 14-year old. That just wasn't what I was expecting from the character, though.

Chapter 28 -When Matt, Sean, and Wade have their threesome.

It does seem like a cool graduation gift, and a nice way for Robbie and Brad to send off their remaining kids into adulthood.

Hey, I was on Funny or Die and found this. The Seven Types of People That Attend Coachella Will and Ryan would be the Teenagers on E, JJ would be the Music Lover, and John would sooooo be the Bro. Lacrosse players are basically grouped in the same genus as frat boys.

Hey, Mark, I sent you an email. Please read?

I'm a believer in not letting things go on just for the sake of letting them go on. Of course, Mark may think differently, but he has talked about genres he might get into after CAP, which makes me think that there is an end to this at some point. If we go at your pace, I'll be 52 years old while JJ is just 22 years old. Let's see, in 2008 I was 22 years old, attending community college, enjoying bars, and raging at Skid Row while dancing to these two songs. A lot. They basically typify the 2006-2008 era of music for me. The memories...it'll be fun when JJ and Will are college-aged. I can't wait to score that. I'm thinking Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake and the whole Neptunes music craze, crunk n b hip-hop, Nickelback, Beyonce(I'm not quite as thrilled about that but I have to include it), and Britney during her Blackout era.