methodwriter85

Yeah, but kids weren't using the internet as much, then. That's the difference- 1999 was when the internet became cheaper, families could afford it, and for the first time you were seeing a lot of younger kids on the net. I remember that when I was first going online, it was all mostly grown-up adults...there weren't really that many kids on there. The evolution of the internet faciliated teenaged boys to meet other gay teenaged boys, whereas before the kind of environment you're talking about would have been more about grown men meeting other grown men, because the internet tended to be geared more towards adults back then.

I liked that one, too. He was off on Maryland, because Maryland is not known for lobster. It's known for crabs. Although I'm guessing he's making fun of the D.C. suburban people with vacation homes on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, as they are very, very rich.

Tim, you make a great point about the internet. When I was fifteen/sixteen, I had gay friends that I met online, and two of them were dating. The average kid in this generation started going online to make friends in middle school, and thus it really wouldn't be hard for them to meet guys. And of course, being that this is 2000, there would also be plenty of Gay Straight Alliances and the like. I mean, Will's going to take a boy to the senior prom in 2004 and it really won't be a big deal at all. That's how fast things have changed- it never would have happened at Shaker Heights in 1998 for Matt, I don't think. Plus, red-faced to admit this...but I had a profile on Planetout when I was 16. Ugh. LOL. SparkNotes also used to have a dating service as well that was specifically geared towards gay teenaged boys.

Here's a video where this guy goes on a riff about all 50 states in two minutes. I thought it was funny and cute. What did he say about your state? (If you're American.) On Delaware- "Come! We've got low incorporation fees. No, seriously, please come." LMAO. Very, very true. The main stereotype about Delaware is what we call "Slower Lower"- it's this stereotype that people who live in the Southern half of the state (which is below the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal) are total hicks who live a slow pace of life. Hence, why we call it "Slower Lower" Delaware. The ones I really liked were- Alaska - "I can see seasonal depression from here." Georgia - "Atlanta! We're kinda ashamed of the rest of it, though." Louisiana - "Thanks, BP. Like we didn't have enough problems." New Jersey - "Guidos. Turnpikes. Leeching off New York." Rhode Island - "No seriously, we're a state." Texas- "Everything is bigger. Even our morons." Vermont- "Gay marriageS on maple syrup farms." You guys got any funny state stereotypes from where you're from?

I'm still very touched that I got a namesake in this story. Of course, JJ has turned out to be a bit of a diva bitch, but no worse than I was at 14. Reading these Paris chapters have been fun, because they're back there now in PMS. Thank god Dr. Cabronne couldn't "inititate" Will into sex. Ugh.

Marcel was so devious and interesting when he was 16. What the hell happened that turned his personality so vanilla at 22? LOL.

This was such a fun chapter. I liked Mouse. What a sweet kid, god rest his soul.

I was never really interested in that. By the time I had that group of friends I was officially done with hook-ups. I've been celibate since 2008. To get back to the story, I wonder how Kristin's going to react when she finds out that Gathan's bisexual. Some girls can be cool; other girls don't understand. I hope she's cool with it. Gathan's brand of bisexuality is something we haven't quite seen before- it seemed like most the bi people we've had leaned more towards guys. Matt said he was bi, but it doesn't really look like he has an emotional connection to female sexual partners the way he can for male partner. That's why Matt seems to identify more with being gay now. Here, it seems like Gathan is about equal with both sides of his sexuality. He's physically and emotionally attracted pretty equally to both sexes. I really like that.

Pretty blond boys don't usually age that well. But I think the issue with Aaron Carter was the fact that he's a tweaker. That tends to kill people's looks. That's why Fergie's face looks the way it does- it got filled in to try and fix the damage, but you can still tell that her face just wasn't what it was during her Wild Orchid days because of the meth use. It's still kinda funny to remember back when all these girls were crushing on Aaron Carter- that would have been about 8th grade for me. I remember when Jesse McCartney came out with his one hit, "Beautiful Soul", and girls were going, "Oh, he looks like Aaron Carter!" But of course, Jesse McCartney didn't ruin his good looks with drugs. Damn, I can't believe how deep we just got there for a music thread that's primarily set within the late 90's pop boom.

Will's issue growing up won't really be about being gay - it'll be about who he wants to be and finding the person he wants to spend his life with, same as any other person. Will's representative of that growing subset of gay boys who just didn't have to deal with being in the closet, or having internal homophobia, because they were born in the right time, the right place, and with the right family to foster a total lack of shame about being gay. You can tell he already doesn't really understand why someone would want to stay in the closet, in regards to his reaction to Zach. I've seen that mindset- gay men who don't understand closetcases because they themselves didn't struggle with being gay. Hell, to some extent, I've HAD that mindset, because I was sat down at 14 and told by family how my being gay didn't change a thing and that I was okay the way I was. Coming out at the age of 13/14 really does shape how you view yourself as a gay man, I think, because you never had a time in your coming-of-age where you were pretending to be straight or trying to hide being gay. In actuality, I think Gathan might have a harder time, because people have a harder time understanding bisexual men than they do gay men, because we like things black/white. Gathan will have to deal with people who think he's a confused straight guy or a closeted gay guy, and get it from both sides about how he needs to pick a team, when...he really doesn't want or need to. As a gay guy who's college social group mostly consisted of straight guys, I learned that basically, straight guy friends tease the 'eff out of each other. You just need to know when it's playful and when it's for real. The key, I think, was the de-stigmatization for girls to have pre-marital sex with guys. The other thing would be the fact that women are expected to have careers now, so they're more likely to put off marriage. Abstinence wasn't hard to achieve when the average marriage age was 19. Now that it's closer to 30, it makes sense that more women are going with the mindset that who they date at 19 aren't necessarily Mr. Right, but Mr. Right Now. So the sex can be more casual.

Who didn't love Dawson's Creek? I was so happy when Joey went with Pacey when he left on the sailboat at the end of season 3 in 2000. Considering that he's gay and that this is the hook-up generation where no one wants to date, Will IS going to have to up against that kind of mindset quite a lot. I really liked that John is NOT like Jack in the sense of wanting to get settled down with his teenage sweetheart. Jack and Claire were representative of the high school sweethearts who never break up and get married while in college or just out of it. That was sweet, but it's cool that Mark's going in a different direction for John. And we already have Darius and Ella as the Jack and Claire of their generation, anyways. I also think that it didn't quite work with John in terms of sex because at heart, Will's just not a bottom. If John's a top, they're pretty much doomed anyway. LOL.

I think it's a little bit of both. Looking at John, he was so clearly not in that kind of place. It's not impossible for someone to be that way about a boyfriend at 13, but I never got that vibe from John. He doesn't have the same vibe his father did, about wanting to settle down with his high school sweetheart. Well, in this case, middle school sweetheart.

It was the WB. I think the only show were the guys didn't constantly take their shirts off would've been Dawson's Creek. Buffy, Roswell, Popular, and Felicity were good about getting their guys shirtless.Then later on, the O.C. and One Tree Hill were especially good with exploiting the man candy.

One thing that's been bothering me is the complete lack of mention of all the teenybooper stuff coming out at this time. Pop culture was just getting saturated with teen movies, music, and television at the time, and there's little reflecting that. There was some stuff about Leo Dicaprio in Bloodlines and a little bit about Harry Potter books in Millenium, but for the most part, the kids seem to almost exist in some kind of pop cultural vacuum. Will doesn't mention crushing on boy bands, or on the guys who populate the WB tv shows. Darius doesn't talk about crushing on Jennifer Love Hewitt and the like. It feels a little weird. One of the things that I really loved about Be Rad and Man In Motion was all the pop culture mentions that dated the time period, and made it feel like these were really people who were coming of age in the early/mid-1980s because the historical context was so well set up. It's not really happening here as much. I think maybe that might be why I was so bothered by the Six Million Dollar Man reference- because we're not getting that many Y2K-era references, yet we still got a 70's one. I wasn't sure why I felt so bothered by that one, but I think that's the reason- because I don't think the pop culture of this era is getting reflected all that well. It made sense in Millenium, because of Brad's age, but with this one...it just doesn't make as much sense because any fourteen-year old gay boy in 2000 is going to be watching the WB to gawk at Jason Behr's constantly bared abs. I could be wrong, though. I don't know why this bothers me so much, but eh. I have really liked the pop culture aspect of the story, but I feel like it's been getting de-emphasized in the last few stories we've had.

I still don't think Gathan would get a reference to the Six Million Dollar Man, but I'm just going to let that one go. I'll just pretend that Clara and Wally were big fans, so they would always make their kids sit through the tv movies that aired in the '90s. There better be a reference to some Gen Y tv show like Dawson's Creek and the like though to make up for this, Mark. All in all, it was a pretty good chapter. I really loved John's characterization. He's a very smart guy, but he's also very 13. I loved the way he demonstrated his photographic memory. Considering who his parents all, I'm betting no less than a Harvard undergrad degree and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins would satisfy them. LOL. I really, really liked this direction. Because if Will was set with his one true love at 14 and he only ever dated John, how much conflict and drama would Mark be able to create from his mid-teens into his mid-20's? It keeps the story possibilities open for Will not to be settled with his junior high sweetheart, and it's more true to this generation anyway. People in this generation, and especially with Will's economic status, tend to delay marriage and settling down until they're around 30 anyway.

Chapter 16 -When Will and John enjoy Disneyland Paris. - When Gathan and Kristin discuss the L-word. I'm not really a fan of this, but you gotta admit it fits the time period and sentiment really well. -When Will and John fool around. "I Want Candy" by Aaron Carter -When Will realizes that John is more of a friend who he can have sex with rather than his true love. And freaks out just a little bit. "If I'm Not the One" by N'Sync I went full-on circa 2000 pop for this. God. I cannot believe I actually used Aaron Carter. Or that Aaron Carter was actually REALLY popular with girls my age when I was growing up. I may as well embrace how awful this period in music was. LOL. I basically plumbed the Disney Radio backlog for this. Of all the boyband pop singers, the two I liked were Brian Littrell from the Backstreet Boys and JC from N'Sync. And of course, Nick Lachey. Damn, he was hot. Those lips alone. If you got rid of that one guy, overall 98 Degrees was the hottest boyband group.

I would say it's the most consistent part of my personality, going back to my childhood and when I would express nostalgia for the 60's because I watched a lot of the Wonder Years and Forest Gump.

At University of Delaware, there's this tradition that the graduating seniors jump into the water fountains on the last night, before graduation. It's graduation weekend, and I'm spending my night at Kildare's. After getting a slice at Margherita's on Main Street, I walked back up to my parking space at the Trabant Parking Garage. I was ambling up Delaware, then I decided to walk on the pedestrian bridge at Gore to get to the quad between Ewing, Smith and Kirkbride. There's this water fountain there, and low and behold these kids were jumping around the water fountain. They implored me to join them, and a part of me really wanted to... But the other part, the louder part, was telling me that I couldn't do this, because it wasn't my time anymore. Last year, I took part in the UD tradition by jumping around in the water fountain, with a bunch of other people, on South Green by the library. I had that experience. It's a much nicer, bigger fountain and there were at least 12 people in there. I pretended I was on the opening of Friends when we did that. It was a really fun experience, but doing it again would have been just another re-hash of my past. And it would have felt phony, in a way, because I'm not a UD senior, and to take part in the celebrations for the class of 2011 would have just felt wrong, in a way. I'm not even sure I can describe why that would feel wrong, but it just does. I mean no doubt when I graduate from IUP next year I'll be right with the people in celebrating, but to intrude on these seniors celebrating the end of college just didn't really feel right. Because I'm not one of them anymore. It's been fun being back, going to my old college hangouts, but at the same time I just keep feeling like something's different. I thought things would be the same....and the places are, but the people are different, and I'm different. I was walking down Main Street and I ran into this notable party guy from college that I'll call Russ. Dude was BIG into partying, and he was about as close to a real-life Van Wilder as you can imagine. He'd graduated in '08 or '09 and he was still living in Newark when I was a senior, last year. When I chatted with Russ a little bit, he was telling me that he felt old as shit still going to the bars around here, and that this was his last year of still hanging around Newark. There's no real point in him coming out here anymore because of all his friends graduated and moved on. I'm not quite at that point yet, because I still have friends who are going to UD, but...it hit home with me. I mean, I'm still going to go to Newark because I like Kildare's, Deer Park, and Homegrown, but...it's really lost its luster to me. I suppose at some point I'll need to start going to Trolley Square with the rest of the mid-20's to early 30's people. LOL. You ever just have that experience of going back to a place that meant so much to you during a specific period in your life, but it just doesn't hold the same magic it used to hold for you? That's how I feel about University of Delaware right now. It's kinda weird.

Alright. This is going to be a thread where I ask people about their opinion on pop culture references in CAP, to see if they're period-and-age appropriate. For the inaugural question, I'm curious about something. Would someone who is a contemporary with Gathan (born in the early to mid-80's) understand a casual reference to the t.v. show, the Six Million Dollar Man? My contention is that they wouldn't, because the Six Million Dollar Man was not something that ran on t.v. all the time when they were kids in the mid-80s to mid-90s. There were apparently t.v. movies, but I'm betting that would have only really appealed to the parents. I think if you mentioned Lee Majors to today's current mid-to-late 20-somethings, you get a bunch of blank looks until someone said, "Farrah Fawcett's ex-husband." If you're a contemporary with Gathan, do you remember any of your friends ever talking about that show? Did you watch it in reruns? My gut is saying that the Six Million Dollar Man is just one of those shows that would appeal strictly to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, not something that this current generation really remembers. What do you think?

It's fun to speculate what might go behind the series canon. Duh.

It would make a lot of sense that Marjorie would have refused to let Bill engage with his sons. It would have been socially embarrassing for people to know, and it would have pointed out that Marjorie herself could not give Bill a legitimate male heir. Considering how important that kind of thing was back then, it makes a lot of sense that she would have done whatever possible to keep it from getting out that the two sluts who slept with Bill were able to give him the one thing she was never able to do.

Okay, guys. I have a laptop that runs in Windows XP. I, in my stupidity, accidentally downloaded a malware virus called Microsoft Recovery. It looks like it's part of Microsoft. It pretends that that it's helping you from a crash on your hard drive, and it performs a fake scan that then directs you to spend 70 dollars on their full program that will clean up the errors. It was there that I realized it was a malware scam- I had run into that before on another computer. At that time, I had McAfee, so it was able to get the virus off. I'm not sure what I can do. Sopphos, the program I'm using for anti-virus, isn't doing anything against it. The Microsoft Security thing I have isn't working, either. I tried System Restore, which didn't work. I tried downloading an anti-malware program called StopZilla, which didn't work, either. I then tried something called Trojan Killer, which turned out to be an evaluation program. To actually remove the virus using Trojan Killer, I would have to pay 45 dollars for a subscription. Is there an good anti-malware program out there that is free and will actually work without telling you that it's only an evaluation program and you have to spend money to get the full version? What should I do against this virus? Or should I try manually removing this Microsoft Recovery malware virus? I'm not really good at the kind of stuff.

I was just making a guess, since the only legitimate child that Bill had who we know about is Donna Hendrickson Crampton, so yeah. I mean, there could be a son out there, but it might make things more interesting and with some added gravitas if Bill was never able to have a son that he could actually give his name to.

But that's the point- that Majorie herself wasn't that fertile, so she was only able to issue one child with Bill. It would make sense that he would blame her for that, which was a VERY common mindset back in those days, and to "punish" her for not being able to give him a son, he constantly cheated on her. That would actually explain a lot of his behavior, and add some extra depth to the scene between Bill and JP in the orginal CAP story. Bill agreed to let JP be raised as a Crampton because he was a teenager or something when JP was born, and Bill figured that he'd have a son with his wife later on to carry the family name. But that didn't happen, and thus carrying on the family name had to go to Bill's brother, Kristin's great-grandfather. As for JP somehow fathering either Kristin herself or her father...I mean, I wouldn't count it out completely, but...there are some boundaries I think JP wouldn't go past. Having sex with a woman married to a Hendrickson just doesn't seem all that likely, when you figure how JP pretty much needed to be with Jeff to get him through having sex with a woman just once or twice. And since JP already knew he was a Hendrickson biologically, I can't see him just throwing caution to the wind and screwing a Mrs. Hendrickson. JP has always been a very careful, deliberate person. For your scenario to work, it would basically have to contradict everything we know about JP. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would require JP to be seriously out of character.

Bite me. LOL.