methodwriter85

As a guy who was on a sports team from 9th grade through sophomore year of college, the chapter reminded me just how bitchy and mean a team can get with each other. God, that was great. Wade's the natural leader...it's not Matt. The diva personality bit was spot-on, I thought.

I was basing it more on the superficial and shallow emotions side, which was true of JP until we got to Billy dying in Be Rad. I also think JP has a general lack of shame or guilt- if he makes a decison, he won't think twice. I don't think JP had much empathy, either. Adam Phillips could explain this so much better. Oh, well. I'm not really going to dwell on that. Back to Paternity...I loved JJ sitting to the side, looking pissed off at being dragged to a hockey game. That was sooooo me at 14. I would have had the exact same reaction. And I love how, through Wade's eyes, Will is still very much a kid. Which is probably true. When you're 14, you feel like a grown-up and you're mature and worldly. You don't realize you're still a child, which is reflected in how Will viewed himself. But through Wade's eyes, he's still a scrampy kid. It's interesting how perspective works. From my perspective, I don't really see myself as all that young, and I look at 19-year olds and feel in awe of their abundant youth and untapped potential and promise. But I had a 35-year old friend call me a "kid" once. It was weird, but makes sense. To someone who's 18, I'm an old guy who can make and understand references to the late 1980's/early 1990's because I am old enough to actually remember that era. To someone who's 35, I'd still probably be thought of as a spring chicken. I loved Wade's analysis of Matt: It makes sense. JJ and Matt were drawn to each other, and it makes sense that there's some characteristic about them that drew them together. Meanwhile, Wade who is more relaxed yet not any kind of follower, was drawn to Will who is much the same way. Neither of them seem to be into winning. At least not in terms of sports. It's why Will droppped competitve surfing, because he saw what the urge to win did to JJ.

Chapter 12 -When the guys get into a bitch fight over Carl changing in the upperclassmen section of the locker room. "Whatever" by Godsmack -When they announce the official 2000-2001 Cardinals hockey team. -When Matt does damage control, and Gathan is named the best freshmen player of the game. See? I can use techno music, too Tim n Blue.

And that's what I love. One of those things about soap operas was that fan feedback used to mean a lot to the powers that be- it's how Luke Spencer went from being the guy who raped into a guy who set up a romantic fantasy date for her just a year later in department store. (The Luke and Laura couple was one of the biggest things on t.v. back in the early '80s.) The chemistry between the characters was that powerful. A writer will have an idea of how two characters are supposed to interact, but then it doesn't work for the fans or the writer, and they'll change the story. I remember when Mark seemed to clearly have Max set up as Brad's serious parter, because it seemed like Robbie was never going to get his act together. But then Max didn't work for Brad, and it didn't happen. I'm a theatrical personality. If you took me seriously or weren't entertained by my antics, I'd be worried.

See, I can kinda see JJ having a slight rebellion when he gets towards the end of high school. He'll be 18 then, after all. I figure this would be the perfect kind of thing for him to be "bad" with while not wrecking his squeay-clean reputation. I'm sure JJ would be inconspicious in his Prada suit with oversized Louis Vouitton sunglasses. Coachella definitely sounds extremely cool, and something a high school kid would be chomping at the bit to do. Hell, I want to go, too. Dude, now I can imagine 17-year old Will driving his friends up to Coachella in his fully-tricked out SUV. That sounds like such a fun way to end high school. I had, through some weird quirk, a free period, but only for the final marking period of senior year. I only needed to take gym for a marking period, because I had done winter track in 2001, before the district stopped allowing people to substitute sports for gym credit. I took gym for two marking periods in spring of 2002, my freshmen year. Then I took the final quarter I needed, in the winter of 2005, my senior year. The final marking period, I didn't have a gym class and I kinda just walked around and did whatever. My gudiance counselor apparently caught wind of this, and sent my gym teacher what he deemed a "nasty-gram" about how this was unacceptable. So I became the gym teacher's "helper", which meant that I could do whatever the hell I wanted in the period as long as I told him what I was doing. I could have had more free periods, if I had not failed algebra my 9th grade year or French I my 10th grade year. You only had to take three years of Math, and two years of a foreign language. You had four years of English, four years of history, and three years of science. If you did it right, you could get away with only having three periods, and leaving at lunch time to go to a job. But I think they've changed it in recent years so you have to take four years of Math. Ugh. So glad I graduated before that happened.

First of all, thank you for posting. Welcome! This is meant to be a fun speculation thread about what we can see happening in CAP, based on character paths/historical context. It's not meant to denigrate other's people views of the story, or force Mark into doing something he doesn't want to do with the characters. I'm part of an online board called "Television Without Pity", where people post speculation threads about what they can see happening on their favorite shows. It's part of a lively discussion, and in no way intended to be disrespectful to the creator of the series, or to the other posters who take part in the discussion. The same logic is being applied here. It can be pretty fun, especially when some predictions turn out right, like when Blue posted that at some point Matt's sluttiness was going to become a liability for him in his relationship with Wade.

What's a pet peeve of yours that can fill you with such total rage? I'll start. Parking prices and regulations in Newark, Delaware. I drove past the Trabant Parking garage on Main Street, and I saw a sign advertising the new rates and prices. Before this winter, I could park at the Trabant Parking garage for 75 cents every half hour. On weekends, I could park there for 40 cents every half hour, and there was a weekend daily max of 4 dollars. It was wonderful. Then I come back for winter break, and I see a sign saying that it was now a dollar every half hour to park there, with no indication of a weekend daily max. That means I could be parked there for 5 hours on a Saturday night, and have to pay something like 10 dollars! Utterly, utterly ridiculous. Two dollars an hour for a freaking parking spot? Are you kidding me??? I can park at the beach for less than that! And at the municipal parking lots, they're planning on raising the rate from a dollar an hour to a $1.20 an hour, and they got rid of free all-day Sunday parking. Ugh. Dealing with parking around the University of Delaware area has made me incredibly paranoid about getting ticketed, so I won't try to park illegally in the Newark Shopping Center like so many do, but still. It just sucks. Everytime I go to a town that doesn't have insanely expensive parking complimented by aggressive towing practices, I feel like I'm about to die of shock. Got any pet peeves?

He'd be about two years ahead of Brian Cushing. What a sad case of steroids destroying what had been a beautiful, beautiful boy. Zach's college era would be 2003-2007('08 if he does a 5th year), so it'd be during the Reggie Bush era. Lots of interesting stuff, apparently. Good point about JP. Although I think he's going to be excited when the Occupy Wall Street movement props up, finding it delightful that student voices are finally rising up again after activism lied dormant for so long. I don't think he's going to think it awfully pragmatic, but he'll like that young people are finally standing up for something. Brad was only really a control freak with Will. With Darius, it seemed like the kid got away with murder. With JJ, it seemed like Brad pretty much relied on Jeanine's judgment calls. I wonder if that's going to come up at some point- I won't call it a "lack" of a parental bond between Brad and JJ, but they definitely aren't close. It would be hard for me to buy those kind of "father/son" scenes with JJ and Brad like you write with Brad and Will. It worked fine for Brad to let JJ gravitate towards Jeanine and let her handle him for the most part, but with Jeanine out of commission, I'm wondering if there's going to be some negative consequences coming up because Brad didn't build a tight bond with JJ.

Hey, Private Tim or Blue; did either of you ever go to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival? I came across reading about the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in a Harvard-Westlake article that talked about how 60 HW seniors did what was essentially their senior skip day to Coachella. Sounds like hella fun. Either of you ever go? It sounds like something I could see Will and JJ totally doing for their senior skip day in '04. I looked it up- Coachella started in 1999, and added camping in 2003. So I could see them knocking off on Friday, April 31st, 2004 to get to Coachella, and setting up camp. I liked this quote: Gotta love senioritus. I loved seeing all of these studious students suddenly become total slackers during their spring semester of senior year, because they already got their college acceptances and could do whatever. I had this '03 friend who was in all of these A.P. classes, so once those exams were done she pretty much stopped going to school. Unfortunately, by my senior year they mandated that students still had to show up for an AP class even after the exam. We sat around and watched movies. It was so retarded.

I don't really get the idea that Brad and Robbie are going to do everything possible to prevent Will from going to those kinds of parties. It's like what Donna Martin said on the episode of 90210 where West Bev parents were outraged at the idea of distributing condoms to students. You can build a pool. You can put a fence around it, and tell your kids that they can't go in it. But if you know that eventually, those kids are going to find a way in, don't you think you ought to teach that kid how to swim? I don't think Brad and Robbie are going to condone Will partying, but they won't explicitly forbid it, either. I think Will would probably handle himself fine in those parties, and probably not get taken in like what happened with Armand in The Land Whore. I'm more worried about what will happen with JJ when he finally gets into partying- people who don't get it out of their system when they're younger tend to go crazier at college than the people who started sowing their wild oats earilier. I wouldn't say I live pretty close to Ground Zero- New York City is about a three-hour drive away. But I went to college with a lot of people from New Jersey and Long Island, so yeah, 9/11 hit them hard. I personally thought adding in Jordan Pfinster from Connecticut, as well as the Danfields from D.C., was a roundabout way of adding ties into the East Coast. (Well, aside from Brad, Robbie, and Ace being alumni of Ivy League colleges.) They did close school in Delaware on 9/11, because there were concerns that air force bases might be targets as well, and Dover Air Force Base was fairly well-known. There were also concerns that the Delaware Memorial Bridge and Philadelphia might be targets as well. I really hope you don't take it that way. I think that Mark just likes adding personal ties into the historical context of any given era of the story he's writing- going all the way back to the original CAP, where JP met the Kennedy's in 1962. It's part of what elevates CAP from being just another soap opera- the use of the historical era to drive the story in some way. Anyway... -The 2000 election brings outrage to JP and Brad, who feel that Bush cheated his way into the White House. - JP gets really, really pissed when there's no massive student protest movement against the Iraq War that materializes, and tries to get Will and JJ into mobilizing their fellow HW students into a protest. -Zach Hayes winds up attending some southern California university, and terrorizes Will and JJ during their senior year of high school. (Zach is the class of '03, Will and JJ are the class of '04.) -Marie Hobart becomes a hipster who joins the Occupy! movement. (This is mainly just because I think it'd be hilarious for uber-prep Claire to have a hipster vegan corporate protestin' daughter, not that I really think it's likely.) It would be interesting for one of the trust fundies to join the Occupy movement. I don't think Will would join, but he probably would have some hipster friends that joined. -Will and JJ have a senior skip day of sorts to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with their friends in the spring of 2004. That sounds damn cool senior skip day. (My senior skip day I just cut school and went to visit a college I had already been accepted to and already visited so I could get away with having an excused absence. Most of my friends went to Six Flaggs in New Jersey.) -Matt uses some of his Google money to invest in Facebook. Meanwhile, Luke Carruthers invests in Myspace.

Adam Phillips wrote this really good invective about why and how JP and Sam are responsible for his death. It was quite a read. Damn, I miss having him around for feedback. He was a great part of the team. Back to the story...it'll be interesting to see how Tiffany will manage to keep Riley grounded and normal given the amount of wealth attached to him. I think Wade would be down with NOT raising Riley like a Little Lord Fauntroy. I kinda see Wade as wanting to keep some of the blueblood Danfield traditions, but modernizing things and bringing them more into the 21st century as more of an accessible kind of blueblood, kinda like Anderson Cooper. I think he'll probably take the Crampton/Schluter route of being very involved in charities and the like. I got the feeling that the Danfields weren't as much into the noblesse oblige or mingling with "common" people the way the Schluters/Cramptons are. I'm excited about getting to know the Danfields better. We still haven't met MaryEllen yet, which I'm assuming is going to happen. And I'm curious as hell about finding out about the uncle. A Danfield Southern Gothic Christmas should be very interesting indeed!

I don't think JP was a full-blown sociopath. But I do think he had this disconnection from people. If he had a different kind of rearing, I think he probably would have wound up a sociopath. But around the time he lost Billy Junior, he started to gain human feelings and became less self-centered.

I'm admittedly stretching with that one, but I don't see why the Provincetown one would be that out of wack- it's 2004, Massachusetts is the first state that gets gay marriage, and Provincetown would probably be pretty well-known to Stefan and JP. (They seem more like Fire Island people, but I don't think Provincetown is out of the question.) We already know from Millenium that Brad and Robbie like to put on a good wedding, and it seems like a no-brainer to take advantage of the fact that gay marriage is now legal in Massachusetts. And we know from established story patterns that each time we have a group of family teenagers in the summer in some different locale, dramatic stuff happens. The backdrop of a gay beach town during the first summer that gay marriage is legal seems like a pretty damn good backdrop for some interesting teenaged shenigans. (Not to mention that it's the summer of an election between Bush, who you know for damn sure that Brad and JP will absolutely despise, and Kerry, a guy who seemed like such a meh choice but the lesser of two evils.) I suggested the Jeanine storyline to get her(and the CAP family) back in the orbit of New York City, and therefore setting up more personal ties for when 9/11 happens. But I think a good portion of what I wrote really fits within the established character paths/historical context. Gathan's friends/cousins historically fit the profile of the kinds of people that joined the Iraq War. JJ's choice of career pretty much mandates that he would have to distance himself from the Crampton/Schluter image as much as possible, in order to sell himself as the squeaky clean Disney boy-next-door. Especially since, as Daisy put it, the Powers that Be in figure skating started to get really controlling with their figure skaters by the mid-'00s, i.e. during JJ's run for the Olympics. And the Will stuff I posted all seems incredibly likely- him having this years-long flirtation with Tony, and him getting with Ryan and Rainn at some point. All of that feels like it's been foreshadowed.

I don't get it?

So, this is basically split off from my "How Do You Think CAP Saga Should End?" thread, because the topic became less about how the CAP saga will end, and more about how we get to the end. I thought it'd be cool to start a thread where we speculate about what we see happening to the characters as they navigate the first decade of the 21st century. So what are some things you see happening? - I no longer see Matt and Wade getting married when gay marriage becomes legal in the U.S. I think they're going to be more like Stefan and JP; committed to each other, but not in a mongamous marriage setting. I like the idea of them raising Riley with Tiffany. - Gathan's going to lose friends in the Iraq War. That feels like a given. - JJ's going to distance himself from his family because of the demands of figure skating, not just time-wise, but in terms of personal image. Really, it wouldn't be that hard from him to slink away anyway because no one likes him as much as they like Darius and Will. And besides, JJ is going to get run over a bus and die anyway. - Will's going to have this messy, "will they or won't they" flirtation with Tony for the next four years, until one day finally realizing that Tony, although he's a cool guy, isn't the right one for him. Or Tony changes and comes out of the closet. I'm still not entirely sure even that would make them right for each other. - Brad and Robbie jet the whole family off to Provincetown in Massachusetts for a wedding ceremony, in the summer of 2004. That would be a hell of a lot of fun, seeing them spending a weekend in a gay beach town. - Will meets John Hobart and his new 8th grade girlfriend, and it's about as hilariously awkward as you can imagine it to be. - Will has some extremely awkward sex with Rainn, the cute blond emo girl, but it's still a fun experience. - Will has sex with Ryan, and they never talk to each other again because Ryan freaks out. - Jeanine gains her sanity, and moves back to New Jersey with Maddie to be among her family for a bit. That could be a way to tie her into 9/11 somehow- some New Jersey towns lost a lot of people to 9/11. -Frank dies of a heart attack. Or cancer. Either way, I don't see him living a long life like JP or Stefan. Events I'm hoping get covered in CAP: 9/11, the start of the Iraq War in 2003, gay marriage in Massachusetts in 2004, the Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Torino '06, The Duke Lacrosse scandal, the Virginia Tech massacre, the '08 election, the financial meltdown Trends I'm hoping get covered in CAP: Puka shell necklaces coming back, skater bois, emo kids, hipsters, the metrosexual "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" craze, trucker hats, Livestrong bracelets, Uggs, Northface jackets, Myspace, Facebook, "sexting" What about you guys? Thread disclaimer: This is not a spoiler thread. I am not a fortune-teller, nor can I read what's on Mark's mind when he writes. None of the scenarios described throughout this thread are necessarily what will happen within the CAP saga. In fact, for legal purposes, just assume that these scenarios are not going to happen at all.This is meant to be a whimiscal speculation thread about what one person can see happening in the CAP saga. Posters in this thread shall maintain polite and civil discourse, though colorful language may be tolerated given the context of the conversation. Posters should feel free to become engaged in a lively debate and/or discussion of the series without feeling harassed, coerced, threatened, humiliated, or intimdated. Any offensive, denigrating behavior towards Mark Arbour, other posters, and any other people living, dead, or fictional will not be tolerated. Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTiFNQBRwwU&feature=share This an MGMT cover of "This Must Be The Place" that they did in college. I like it- really cool how it encapsulates the feeling of college in the early 2000's.

Yeah. I loved it was a story about real people, leading relatable lives, through the eyes of an intelligent but seriously socially awkward protagonist. It'd be great if Mark could write something like that again, but I get that he wants to do fun, cheesy soap erotica instead. And it's been a damn fun ride. "CAP" kinda replaces the hole that the dying American soaps have left in my heart.

Well, my family was working class as well, but I was still able to get things like Pogs, Tamigotchis, CD players, etc etc. I don't know- even though there was a lot of crappy things in my life on a personal level, there was something about getting twenty dollars from Mom and thinking that was soooo much money that was great. And of course, the stuff in pop culture was truly great- from early 90's Disney, 90's Nickelodeon, late 90's the WB, the great teen movies like Clueless and Can't Hardly Wait, the fun of the boyband/teen queen pop era. My family got the internet in '99, and back then the internet just seemed really exciting and cool and new, and there was a high level of intelligence at every board I went to. As for the racism, sorry to hear that. I grew up, respectively, in New Jersey, Texas, Delaware, and Maryland, and I don't really remember running into racism. Which was kind of crazy, because Elkton, Maryland was the center of a KKK chapter back in the '90's. The closest to overt racism I've gotten was people asking me "where I'm from", because I'm filipino and I don't really into the black/white dichotomy of the country, so I don't automatically register in people's race-o-meter. Back to late 90's/early '00s pop culture: I think on some subconcious level, I used to buy American Eagle clothing because that's what they wore on Dawson's Creek. And remember when everyone was in love with Katie Holmes? Geez. And of course, we can't forget Cruel Intentions: What an awesome, awesome ending. How incredible was the use of music to match the imagery and emotion?

It's kind of interesting to consider Wade noble, because we've never really had a "noble" protagonist before. JP was borderline sociopathic, Stefan and Brad have a "grey" morality to them, and Matt wasn't that noble either. I actually like that Mark doesn't make these guys perfect people who do everything right, but with Wade we've got a change of pace. There are some things I can't see Wade doing that JP would have done in a heartbeat, and I like that. Keeps the story from feeling repeitive. (I knew someone who told me they stopped reading CAP when it looked like Will was going to be Brad Redux. We don't need a JP Redux, either.)

Here's something I've realized about myself in doing music for "Millenium" and "Poor Man's Son." Hip-hop really ingrained itself on me way more than I thought it had when I was growing up. I didn't consider myself a hip-hop/r&b fan when I was 15, but I gotta admit, when I go back for songs that bring back memories, I'm often heading towards stuff like Eminem and DMX. It's kinda funny how setting my "music clock" back to 2000 has made me realize how the music that plays around you at a certain age can really imprint itself on you. I went to middle school and high school in fairly urban areas, with urban kids, so hip-hop and hip-hop culture was all around me, even though I didn't partake in it. Although really, hip-hop was everywhere, including and not least white upper-class suburban kids. It's really interesting how the music background of one's adolescent impresses itself on you. If this had been out in 2000, there's no doubt in my mind I would have used it for Brad and Robbie for Millenium: And I probably would have used "Peaches and Cream" for Will and John Hobart's hook-up scenes:

I think Wade's never-before-mentioned uncle was openly gay, got disowned, and died of AIDS in the 1980's. As for Tiffany, here's my take. She pictured raising her child with Jeanine. Then when it turned out that Jeanine had cheated on her with Cody, Tiffany then figured that she'd raise the child by herself, with perhaps some babysitting help from Wade, but not NEARLY as much parental and grandparent-involvement as she's gotten. She obviously didn't grow up poor, because of her grandparents, but I think given the kind of early childhood that Tiffany had, she developed a bit of an independent streak. Note her not being all that enthused about being given three private nannies. I think Tiffany feels trapped, not just by Jeanine but by Wade's family and all the expectations and obligations that are getting attached to her son. Escorial is like a gilded cage to her that points out just how in over her head she's gotten- if her grandparents are still alive, I think she'd probably want to jet off to her grandparents with Riley and get a break from the craziness of this world.

Hey Mark, the precocious nostalgia my generation has is paying off in dividends. I remember reading once that bosses who deal with Gen Y like to study generational and cultural touchstones to better understand them. Here are two primers for you to understand this generation better. "You Know You're A 90's Kid When..." "Your Childhood in 94 Seconds" I related to most of this stuff, save for some of the cartoons mentioned. The shot of Bill Clinton getting sworn in for his presidency made me tear up. 90's America really didn't know just how good they had it. When you come up with childhood references for JJ and Will, just think, "90's Nickelodeon" and "pogs". Seriously, you won't fail there.

I'm not sure I'd call this my favorite, but I do think this is absent the structural problems that plagued Poor Man's Son. I've liked this story better for these reasons: 1. There's no jumping back-and-forth between narrators in every chapter. I think that was an interesting idea, but ultimately it broke up the narrative momentum. 2. Wade and Matt have been together, in CAP time, since 1998- a good two-year relationship. There's more weight in their relationship angst than dealing with Will's infatuations, or Gathan's summer fling with Kristin. 3. Will works soooo much better as the high school comical B-storyline. He's an interesting character, but I don't quite think he has the pathos or gravitas to fully lead a story yet. And there's nothing wrong with that, because there's a better balance between Wade's more serious story, and Will's B-story antics. In Poor Man's Son, it was like we were going full blast on the angst stuff on both sides, and it was a bit too much. It's like we were supposed to follow Gathan AND Will as the A-story, and the balance was off because of that. 4. A gay Southern blue-blood with a crazy Southern Gothic family. I mean really, the story just writes itself here. It IS nice that we're getting outside the Schluter/Crampton/Hayes trifecta here and exploring a completely different kind of family. Virginia tidewater tobbacco families have to be so utterly different from Mid-western affluent families, Midwestern blue-collar families, and California new money. 5. 14-year old angst is fine, but there's something about the angst of finishing up your college years, entering your twenties that really gets to me. It's a weightier kind of angst- when you're 14 you're thinking about getting a boyfriend. When you're 20/21, you're trying to think about what you want to do with the rest of your life once school is over, as well as a whole host of really complicated things that you just don't think about when you're a kid. I have enjoyed this.

I used to not be a big fan of facial hair on guys, but lately I've been finding the look pretty hot, on some certain guys. Actor Nick Zano didn't do it for me with his clean-shaven look in Final Destination 4 and the like. But then you add the facial hair and the hipster glasses with his look on 2 Broke Girls, and he suddenly became effin' hot to me. Who else do you think wears the facial hair well? Do you prefer facial hair on guys, or do you like them clean-shaven?

Tiffany, I wish you the best of luck in trying to raise a normal, well-adjusted son who can relate to people outside of his own class.