methodwriter85

Right. I'm just explaining why I think a certain way about a story. That's all.

And this is why I have a problem with the slowed down timeline. When we used to skip a few years in between stories, characters were given a chance to develop and change offstage so that when we caught up with them again, they could be different in ways that were believable, with changed family/relationship dynamics that could be believable. I would have been able to buy Will's "wow is me" act better if this were say maybe fall 2001 and the events of PMS had been a whole year ago. That the relationship between Will and Brad deteriorated from the Hawaii surf trip in July 2000 to the point it is now (2-3 months later) just isn't that believable. Things like this need time to develop and fester, and we're not being given that because of the slowed-down timeline. I really think after we get done with 2000, we need to start getting back to one-story-a-year, or even actually skipping a year or two there. Three stories for one year is just entirely too much.

Day 37, April 3rd Continued working on Box 2. Day 38, April 4th Continued working on Box 2. Day 39, April 10th Almost finished with Box 2. There was a woman in here with her kid today, basically planning on having him volunteer over the summer. He didn't look all that excited, but my hope is that they'll find the right hook with the kid, and get him to enjoy the place. I feel like that's a major part of what I'm supposed to do in this field- figure out how to make people excited by what we're doing here.

http://news.yahoo.co...-225605958.html I think this story is hilarious. You get low-pollution, light industry wanting to build, and because you bitch and whine about it, you're going to get low-income housing instead? Hah. I'm not sure this story specifically should happen in CAP, but it would be funny for Brad and Robbie to deal with the charms of NIMBY. I would bet anything they'd get NIMBY reactions if they tried building around the rich area of Claremont. I do kind of wonder if we're going to revisit the whole "Claremont revitalization" deal at some point. Maybe around the 9/11 story?

JJ in general has a pretty regimented life, as well as the knowledge that he needs to maintain a pretty pristine image where discretion over things like drug experimentation and pre-marital sex would be key. However, if/when JJ decides to start stepping out of bonds(which I don't think he'll do until AFTER high school), I can't really see Brad or Robbie being able to do anything to stop him, because they pretty much gave him over to Jeanine to raise. Similar to how Will completely ignored anything that Jeanine had to say, JJ would completely ignore anything that Brad and Robbie had to say. He'd listen to these people: his coach, Jeanine, Tiffany. MAYBE Matt, but only to a certain point. If you do something to piss JJ off, he'll ice you out like a good diva should. If Brad and Robbie even tried to say anything to JJ about what he should or shouldn't do, he'd give them a death glare, and walk out of the room without a word. End of discussion. So in some ways, it kind of sucked, not being the favorite child, but in other ways it worked out well for him. JJ'll stick around Brad and Robbie if they're giving him praise, but the minute they get critical, he'll totally bounce.

I kinda of feel like JJ must be privately laughing his ass off in his room, glad that Brad's control freak tendencies don't extend out to him and he doesn't need to go all rebellious like Will does.

Chapter 27 -When Wade decides to use his money and real estate holdings to help Tim set up homeless shelters around the country. "Baby You're A Rich Man" by the Beatles -When JJ does his performance. "One" from A Chorus Line(instrumental)

Heh.

I'm rooting for Marie to turn into a hipster/future Occupy! chick, complete with the intentionally ugly wardrobe and addiction to cigs and Pabst Blue Ribbon.

"Red" was a Mark pick...I wasn't really all that familiar with it.

Horrible remake? Freaky Friday was awesome! Jamie Lee Curtis, pre-drugged out Lindsay Lohan, and hottie Chad Michael Murray doing Travis's cover of "Hit Me Baby One More Time." Another cool set-up would be for Will to travel back in time to 1976, when Brad was his age, and they just spend a day hanging out together and Will realizes that Brad understands him better than he thinks. Anyway, when they mentioned the properties, did anyone else think about the gentrification that happened in both Philly and Washington, D.C. during the 2000's and think that Wade just might ride the wave of the real estage boom that's going to happen?

When they mentioned the properties, I was thinking about how South Philly, particularly Center City, experienced a resurgence during the 2000's. Same goes for certain parts of D.C., which makes me wonder if Wade's going to ride the2000's real estate boom.

Chapter 26 -When Sean calls up Wade. -When Gathan tries to show off, and gets a concussion.

Eh, they seemed like they were more along the lines of "treat your kids like they're your best friends" kind of parenting, which was VERY prevalent for my generation. In some ways it's much better than the whole 50's style of parental rearing, but the negative aspect is that it's pretty much impossible for kids who were raised that way to actually follow any kind of discipline. I've kind of wondered how Claire and Jack's parenting style has been- I don't think Claire and Jack would be strict, but I also don't think John and Marie would get away with half of the crap that Will has been able to get away with. I would love to see Will even TRY to say the kind of stuff he's said to Jeanine, and say that to Claire. I think he'd be verbally bitchslapped so quick his head would spin.

Hell, you'd learn all that just from being in a school theater production. *shudders* I've never been interested in seeing WeHo- it feels like it'd be the QaF stereotype on crack. I wish I could find a gay enclave of nice, laidback gay guys who aren't inherently bitchy queens. Rehoboth Beach is kind of laidback, so there's always that....

Aww, come on. Kristin is pretty cool. And Gathan and Kristin could be the big power couple to lead Claremont into the 21st century. I had a hook-up with a 39-year old when I was 15 that was incredibly damaging. I felt guilt and shame about it for years, even though I had thought I was in control and it was what I wanted. Well, Will does play the whole "I'm getting a 4.0 and volunteer at the Mission" card a lot. I mean, Andy in Cross-Currents was similiar in the sense that he did all sorts of crazy things yet when it came down to it, he always fufilled his school obligations, and his parents were pretty much okay with whatever he did.

I'm putting myself in the mindset of a 14-year old kid, and I'd be pissed off it my dad acted like my buddy for the first 13 years of my life, and then suddenly switched things up to try and be Mr. Super Dad. It doesn't work like that- you can't switch your parenting style on a kid. You have to be consistent and consistently Brad has for the most part been about letting Will do whatever he wants. It's too late to suddenly start slamming your foot down and expect that the child is going to listen to you, when you never taught him the word "no." 14 is way too damn old to try and teach him that. That should have been ingrained by the time he was 4. I'm hoping that Wade, Tiffany, and Matt are taking notes here on what NOT to do with Riley. I'm guessing Brad and Robbie are really realizing at this point just how much they really lucked out with Darius and his general lack of a teenage rebellion. I wonder if JJ gets one too when puberty finally kicks in, or if JJ's need to look pristine at all times pretty much means he'll never have a rebellious teenager stage.

Chapter 25 -When Will continues getting all testy with his dads. "Little Fighter" by Death By Stereo -When Kristin tells her side of the story. "His Story" by TLC

Day 33- March 27th Continued working on Box 2. Day 34-March 28th Someone showed me a diploma from the Indiana State Normal School, from 1910. (That was IUP's name when it was a teacher's college.) It was interesting to read it, because the diploma listed all of the subjects that the person was able to teach. It was a quite a list as well- everything ranging from politics to geometry. Nowadays, a person needs a master's in education just to teach elementary school, it seems. I had an interesting talk with a woman who went to IUP back during the 1960's. It was eye-opening to think what college was like during the 1960's, when there were no co-ed dorms, people had to dress up for dinner, and students had curfews. Mind-boggling. Day 35- March 30th I continued working through Box 2. I was going through enlistment papers for the Pennsylvania National Guard in the 1920's- people must have been pretty short back then. The average height that I kept coming across was about 5'5"-5'8", which was pretty interesting. I had a conversation with a woman who is working through her family genealogy. She is having difficulty, because apparently records that she's looking for were destroyed in a fire sometime around 1855. It definitely drove home the point of how important records can be. Day 36-March 31st Today I helped a woman who wanted to learn more about what IUP was like during the 1930's, when her mother attended the school. It was nice utilizing the knowledge I had gained from working on the Sutton Hall tour in the first semester of grad school. As we looked for photos of buildings that would have been around in the 1930's, it was kind of depressing to think about how much IUP tore down, and is planning to tear down. I know there's planned obsolesce and all that, but there's something about being able to go to an older building and feeling a sense of place and historical continuity. IUP doesn't really have a lot of older buildings left, which is in stark contrast to University of Delaware, which(despite some mis-steps) really treasures a lot of the older buildings on campus, especially the Georgian revival ones. Talking to a woman who wanted to find the buildings that were around that her mother probably went, and realizing she won't find much, definitely makes me glad that Blue Hens can check out dorms that people lived in during the 1920's, and recitation halls from the 1890's. The dorm that I live in, UT, is scheduled to come down in a few years. It really is amazing to think that except for Whit, pretty much all dorms built in the 20th century at IUP are slated to come down at some point. They really don't build to last these days.

If we're going on how you set up the parental relations during Millenium, Will was pretty much always Brad's kid and didn't really follow much of what Jeanine had to say. It's kind of funny that Will is Jeanine's actual biological child, but it was always JJ that she was closer to. I'm wondering if it's because of the circumstances of JJ's birth- here she was, this 20-year old girl, taking care of Darius and helping Marie make sure that Bitty didn't fall off the wagon during her pregnancy, then this pre-mature little thing is born on the 44th annivesary of Pearl Harbour with a crackhead for a mother. It's hard to imagine that she WOULDN'T have wanted to protect JJ at all costs, from day one, and that on some level Jeanine felt like JJ needed her more than her biological son did, because Will always had Brad. Darius had Robbie, JJ had Jeanine, and Will had Brad, and it worked. Until it didn't. Favoritism. Leads to all sorts of fun things.

Well, JJ, on one hand it's really nice to have your family come out and support you at competitions. On the other hand, you've got Will for a brother. Seriously though- Daisy, have we been reflecting the drama accurately in this chapter? I really hope the tone was right. I imagine that stage moms are stage moms, whether it's in drama or in figure skating.

I wonder if JJ's re-thinking the whole idea of having his brother be so involved at his meets...

Chapter 24 -When Will and Pat have their talk. The Motivation Proclamation by Good Charlotte -When JJ performs.

Well, his best-known character was as a guy who was a total asshole, so yes. If Tony on Skins was a flamingly gay figure skater, I'm sure he would be just like Shane.

Nicholas Hoult from Skins as Shane Jackson. You could just see this guy rocking ridiculous outfits. He even has the right build for a figure skater.