methodwriter85

I was really surprised that they don't have a business administration program. I thought all universities had one. Tiffany got kicked out figure skating at age 18 in 1994. The timeline I worked out for her is that she then left Michigan to go back to California and attend college, someplace that would have been nearby where JJ learned how to figure skate. Given what Wade said about Tiffany's background, I think her grandparents definitely would have encouraged her and supported her through college, and since Tiffany's pedigree was shot, she pretty much had to go through college to get into coaching. I'm thinking Tiffany started her degree in fall 1995, and finished in spring 1999, which would have made her a senior in college when she became JJ's unoffical coach. It would make sense that when it became obvious that JJ had Olympic-level potential, Tiffany knew that she had to send him over to El Segundo because she didn't have enough experience, and she's still blacklisted by the USFSA. Speaking of El Segundo, it'll be interesting when Evan Lysacek arrives in California for the '03 season. I can see JJ and Evan being good-natured rivals.

Have a happy birthday.

UCLA doesn't have a sports-related undergrad degree program? Seriously? A school that known for their basketball program doesn't have sports medicine, physical therapy, sports management, or any kind of related degree? Damn. I had Tiffany in my mind as a UCLA graduate who has a degree that would allow her to coach or become an agent, but I guess maybe she went to USC instead? Hmm.

1. Ireland 2. Italy 3. France 4. Japan 5. Australia

Day 23, February 28th I found the 1966 bibliography that had been written for the collection when it was housed at the old museum. It's a pretty great thing to have, in order to understand how this collection had been processed and cataloged before. Day 24, February 29th I continued working on Box 3. There was also a visit from someone who was a consulting, which I'm interested in doing as a career. It was neat to hear the advice from her. Day 25, March 2nd I finished work on Box 3, and began work on Box 2. Day 26, March 3rd Box 2 had a folder of items that were donated by Richard Watson's son in 1990. It had a picture of father and son standing outside of their home in 1941, as well as a picture of Richard Watson at his American legion ceremony in 1960. He was being commemorated for forty years of membership with the Indiana County American Legion. The folder included a letter from Richard Watson's son that included the context of the items. It was really nice to have that- it made understanding the photos much easier! Definitely rare for that to happen when it comes to collections. Today I also watched a tour being given. It was interesting to see how the tours can differ in terms of who the audience is. The person giving the tour did not mention the Vietnam War pictures, probably because this wasn't a veteran crowd, and because there was a little kid there. You need to read your audience in order to figure out how you're going to relate the items to the people there.

I finally figured out Cole. Robbie Amell from True Jackson, if he gained about 20 pounds and had darker hair. He's got the kind of round, cute, boy-next-door face that I picture Cole having.

I mean I could see it if Harvard-Westlake was a community school right by where they live, but my understanding of the school is that it's not really a neighborhood school, but a private school that attracts people from communities all around the Greater L.A. area. I don't know if I see JJ and Will being the type of people who come back to watch school sporting events, especially JJ. It's possible, especially if these guys have older siblings that would have been at the school in 2000-2004, but I'm leaning towards "no".

It might be possible, but they wouldn't have grown up with them. Will and JJ are the class of 2004, which means a present-day high school senior would have been in 4th grade when these guys are graduating from high school. If they've got older siblings, it may be possible- but 8 years is usually too much ahead for you to know people who still go there. Unless Will and JJ became coaches at the school, but I don't see that happening. Will's not into team sports, and JJ gives the vibe that as soon as he's done with high school he's never looking back.

I'm really OCD about ages, and I estimate that you would have been about 2 years from conception when Q was in college. I would have been a couple of months old when Q graduated. (I think Quonus graduated college in 1986, correct me if I'm wrong.)

I pretty much thought he was trying to pull an American Pie, too.

It's kind of interesting how, in a sense, Wade is a social better compared to the Crampton/Schluter family. They're rich and powerful, but they just don't have that kind of pedigree- more of just solid mid-Western affluent stock who gained a massive amount of wealth starting in the 1960's.

Yeah. That's pretty much a given that we'll be exploring Justin Timberlake's ghetto fab period from '02 to '07. (Unless Mark somehow skips over the early/mid-2000's, but I don't see that happening. Mark doesn't do multi-year time jumps anymore.) I remember Christina Aguilera also did the ghetto thing. It's kind of interesting though, that Pink started her career with that, but when everyone jumped on the hip-hop band wagon, she jumped right off. Her career kind of lagged through the mid-part of the decade, though, after the success of Mizunderstood. You really had to. I liked Linkin Park, New Found Glory, and the White Stripes, but it wasn't like you were going to be able to hear any non-hip/hop stuff at dances. How else were the high school kids going to be able to bump n grind? Frat parties in '05 were pretty much wall to wall hip-hop. (See the bit above about grinding.) I kind of learned to appreciate hip-hop when I got into rager mode. This song especially brings me back to fall '05 Alpha Phi Delta parties... By the late part of the decade other music started coming back in, but you really did have to make an effort. Which is why I think it's interesting to see how Mark's going to portray this- you've got Brad's 1980's generation, where it was actually cool to be a whitebread preppy and flaunt the fact that you were, and then you got Will's 2000's generation, where more than just a few rich white kids attempted to act black, listen to hip-hop, and have street cred. I do think it's funny hearing Will throw around terms like "homie" and "da bomb". It's accurate, but it's still funny.

I've been kind of hesitant to put the "hate crime" label on this as well- yes, it was a horrible and thoughtless prank, but to put this and what happened to Matthew Shepherd in the same category...doesn't quite work for me.

Damn, this was a sweet story. http://randyreport.blogspot.com/2012/02/pic-of-day-marine-homecoming.html The more you have people living their lives and being part of the mainstream, the harder it becomes to marginalize them. I'm glad I'm seeing this happening in my lifetime.

Right. They're still more indie than everything, but at least they're managing to do pretty well in Canada. I don't think they're going to be a flash in the pan. The very early '00s, I associate with the pop explosion, pop country acts, Latin stuff, hip-hop, and hip-hop rock like Limp Bizkit. Then '03-'06 hip-hop rises above anything else, while rock retreats into the Indie background. '07-08 the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana rise, then Lady Gaga explodes in '09.

I don't know, Adele and Foster the People have given me hope...2010-2011 actually had some great music.

In general, music did change after 9/11- I kind of think Pink and Avril Lavigne's '02 rise happened because people were sick of the pretty princess pop trend. Pop definitely seemed to take a hit for a few years after 9/11- I'm thinking that's the reason why hip-hop and crunk really galloped ahead of pop, especially during around '03-'07. Pop really didn't come back in until the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus hit in the late '00s. (You could count the Pussycat Dolls, but they seemed to have more of a hip/hop vibe to them.) Then there was also Alicia Keyes, who was fantastic on her first two albums, but after...meh.

Day 22, February 25th I continued working on Box 5. Today, there was a presentation given by someone who wrote a book called Native Womb, about his journey into learning about his biological family once he got adopted. He talked about his usage of Ancestry.com, which makes me think the usage of genealogy to help people learn about where they come from. That's what the Historical Society helps with a lot- we've had so many people come in wanting to learn about their family history. That's the cool thing about working here- we're preserving the continuity of family knowledge, or at least making it easier to develop a sense of a family narrative.

I was kind of being flippant with the Brad and Robbie remark, to match Mark's remark about leaving JJ in Bulgaria. I could see Will getting pissed off about JJ wanting to go off to Bulgaria instead of being around for his birthday, but then again, he might not. I figure at that point JJ would have been in his 3rd year of figure skating, and the family would be used to it.

Would Brad and Robbie even notice he was gone? I'm actually thinking that JJ would have decided to stay home instead of going out to Bulgaria, because it was close to the beginning of the school year and he'd want to have everything squared away with his 10th grade teachers before taking week-long absences. Plus, it is supposed to be Will's 15th birthday that week, which hits on a Friday, which(in Will's mind) would equal a really fun birthday weekend. And in any event, JJ probably would have figured it would have been better just to do his Junior Grand Prix event in Arizona because it's a hell of a lot closer than Bulgaria.

I know I already posted a Liam Hemsworth picture, but hot damn... Seriously, if that's what Zach is going to look like in his 20's, who the hell cares that he's a sociopath? LOL.

Day 20, February 22nd I finally finished Box 5. It came out to about 130-something items. Day 21, February 24th I started work on Box 3 of the collection. It holds a lot of correspondence that Richard Watson got while being in charge of Camp Hancock in Augusta, Georgia. Some were regarding people who were prisoners for being AWOL, or simply getting drunk and disorderly. One was about a boy who lied about being 18 years old to get into the army, and was therefore getting discharged. I also found a letter about a man who tried to prove that his son was disabled and therefore needed to be discharged, but the army medical board replied that they could not find anything physically wrong with the song. It was interesting- you wonder if the son really was lying, or if he wasn't, and the army was ignoring actual injuries so that they could provide more cannon fodder for the Western front.

I kinda felt like that was the next natural step after Millenium, but Poor Man's Son served as the transition story instead. Although I guess PMS served to flesh out the next generation of the Crampton/Hayes/Schluter kids- we have a firmer grip on who they are as people and how they'll interact going into adulthood. With just 11 years separating CAP time from real time, I don't think Mark intends on having these 5-6 year time jumps like the days of yore...it'll probably be more like 1-3 year time jumps at this point from now. As such, there need to be more stories, which means we have to follow more of these guys' adolescence than we have before- for example, we followed Brad at 17, then at 22, and then at 37. At this point we're following Will at 13 and 14, and I'm betting we're not exactly going to skip to 17 because I don't think 2001 is going to get skipped. 2002, maybe. In order to make it so that Mark can write 8-10 stories for these guys(if he indeed plans on following every year up to say maybe 2010, 2011), he needs to have Generation 4 be a really compelling and strong cast of characters. We have to care about what Will, JJ, John, Zach, etc etc get into because we're following them in what amounts to real time, with more stories than we had for other characters before. It needs to stay fresh, and something we haven't seen before, or else the story will become really repetitive. That's why it's crucial Mark set up the character development and relationships of these kids, with inherent drama in all of them, to carry a 10-year long multi-story arc. That, more than anything, is what Poor Man's Son was likely about. I think Mark hit some snags in the character development there, but he fixed a lot of them, and I'm really liking how Will and JJ are turning out right now. Jury's out on John, but I actually think he's cool. Then again, John's going to grow up to look like Colton Haynes and I have a shameful lust for asshole lacrosse players, so I'm not exactly unbiased. LOL. I wish that we had skipped over to Paternity, or had spent less time with Poor Man's Son, because I'm frankly sick of coming up with music choices for the year 2000(LOL), but I see why we had to do it instead of just go directly in Wade's viewpoint of daddyhood and the 2000 election.

That wouldn't quite work because they'd probably use the family jet, but I could ask Daisy and see if there were any meets or competitions there. If you want to get Robbie and Brad there, the MTV music Awards were held on September 9th, 2001 in New York City, and I could see Robbie scoring tickets, courtesy of Beyonce. I think Wade having a summer internship in D.C. would make the most sense here. It's the summer before Senior year, and seriously- what ambitious guy would say no to what would be a very plum internship that his daddy would set up? Wade may hate his parents, but he's a pragmatic person. Stanford doesn't start their school year until late in September, so Wade could plausibly still be in D.C. during 9/11. Edited to add: I looked at the info on the 2001-2002 season. Here's what they said: Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States Figure Skating Association cancelled the Junior Grand Prix event to be held in Arizona and did not allow their skaters to compete on the Junior Grand Prix for the rest of the season.[1] There was a Junior Grand Prix event held in Bulgaria from September 13-16, so maybe JJ's in Bulgaria when 9/11 happens? Or he's getting ready to go, and the 9/11 panic about flying prevents him from going? In any event, on a career-level, it sounds like 9/11 is going to screw JJ over, as well as screw up Will's 15th birthday plans. (9/11 hits on Tuesday, Will and Riley's birthdays are on Friday.) Daisy, you wanna weigh in on this?

The clue to that would be the part in Millenium, when Brad and Robbie were discussing how the kids should be involved in their wedding. They said that Will would obviously go on Brad's side, Darius would obviously go on Robbie's side, and JJ would go with whoever he wasn't pissed off at the moment. It was a pretty flippant remark, but it showed to me, on some level, that JJ doesn't have a clear, defined paternal bond the way his brothers do. And I think it might be what you're saying- on some level, they felt like JJ didn't want or need their help. And to be honest, I think until Jeanine went around the bend, JJ probably didn't. I think he liked having this thing that no one else in his family could do, instead of always being the brother that can't quite do things as well and as easily as his older brother and younger brother can do. So he built up this world based around figure skating with Jeanine and Tiffany as his two big parental figures, and he was okay with Brad and Robbie not really trying to be part of it, because JJ knew that they'd always have Will and Darius as their respective favorites. In this world, JJ himself was the golden child, and as such it was easier for him to retreat into it, and believe Jeanine's fantasy world until it became impossible to do so. I'm a believer in "show", not "tell" when it comes to stories, and right now I haven't seen any real proof in this story that JJ is close to either Brad or Robbie. It's been shown, since Bloodlines, that JJ is close to Matt, to Jeanine, and to Tiffany, but not to his adoptive fathers. There's certainly love there, but not the kind of father/son bond we've with Brad/JP, Brad/Will, etc etc. And remember the comment Wade made, when he talked about how Brad made the comment to him about the feeling of fatherhood overcoming him? That was for Will's birth. It wasn't for JJ. Maybe he eventually felt that way, but Jeanine was the one who felt that way for JJ going all the way to his birth, while Brad did not. That's the thing though- I really don't think it's out of character. It's something that's been telegraphed for a long time, going back to If It Fits where it was clear that JJ was the stereotypical middle child who couldn't do as much as his brothers could except be really cheerful. He just doesn't really have that much in common with the rest of his family, and as such he's the odd duck that Brad and Robbie can't really relate to. That doesn't mean they don't love him, but father/son bonding hasn't worked as well with JJ as it has for the other brothers.