methodwriter85

I don't mean the Persian Gulf War, which is "seven years ago" for our characters. I meant the Iraq War, which is a little over three years away. It might be interesting to kill off Brad's half-brother in Iraq...but...Mark's already brought Brad to the place of losing his brother, and he's already brought Brad to the place of losing a soldier relative. I don't think Mark really wants to repeat himself here by having Brad deal with losing his soldier relative yet again. And I thought Iraq War was more about the Marines and Army, not so much about the Navy. I kinda don't think there's much a point in doing 9/11 story where Mark only kills off people who the characters don't actually care about. He might wind up not killing anyone off at all, but I don't think there's much a point in having the characters lose people in 9/11 if they didn't actually care about them. The Brian solution of him being at WTC just seems way too much like the easy way out for Mark.

I was born in 1985 so I lived under Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) Bill Clinton (1993-2001) George W. Bush (2001-2009) Barrack Obama (2009-current) That makes five so far! My first presidential election was 2004. I voted for John Kerry, and my coach teased me mercilessly about it.

Aside from that...he's in the Navy Base in Southern California. Did the Navy even fight much or at all during the Iraq War? Were he a firemen for New York City, I'd be worried. The only way for him to die is if he somehow gets transferred to work in the Pentagon, but he seems high-ranking enough that it feels unlikely he'd get switched like that. I'm kinda surprised that Mark resisted the temptation to send Darius to college in New York City, but I do agree with him that UC Berkely or UCLA seems like more of a fit with him. I'm sure Mark will find another way to have Darius in NYC- the drama of looking Arabic in NYC on 9/11 is just too much to resist. And then there's Wade. Really, thinking of the massive amount of connections this guy has- there's no way 9/11 won't hit him in some way. He has to know way too much of the DC/NYC crowd for him to be unaffected by 9/11. But I'm betting there will be some 9/11 connections that will completely surprise us- which is how it all worked. I remember a story of a guy who rescued a woman who later died from her burn wounds, only to discover later that his sister and 4-year old niece died in the flight that was supposed to go to California for their trip to Disneyland. As for Brian...I'm getting the feeling that if it is him behind everything, Brian likely won't live to see 2001. He's going to get whacked before that. But even then- I don't know- if Mark's going to kill characters off in 9/11, it would seem way too easy for him to only kill off the villains.

Chapter 34 -When Kevin fills Brad in on his long-lost family, particularly on his evil step-mother. Falcon Crest Theme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4PzzZys0v8 -When Brad confides in Robbie, and realizes that what made him fall in love with Robbie in the first place. "Wonderwall" by Oasis

After all the bitching I did about turning 24 last year, I actually thought this little video made me smile. I'm only 24 until December, but eh- I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Side note: This guy is only ten days younger than Will from the CAP saga. (I'm obsessed with Mark's story. What of it? 24 Reasons It's Great To Be 24 The strange thing about having a December birthday is that, while technically being born in 1985, I'm the same age as people born in 1986 for the majority of the year. So I relate more to '86ers than I do to '85ers. There are some things I miss about being 21, but...I'm finding that being older really is better. And it helps that I still look 21, so I can hang with the young crowd. And it's nice that when I do hang out with the young 18, 19-year olds, I don't feel that same sense of pressure to fit in with them that I did when I actually was 18- it's more like I'm the older guy who's still "hip" to the youngsters. So for the older posters here, is there anything you loved about being 24? (Or 25, since that's where my next birthday is. LOL.) I do remember a poster in his late 40's telling me his favorite thing about being 24 was that he could get away with dating 18-year olds while being about to date 32-year olds- basically what this guy said as well. That's an interesting theory to test out.

Eh. I don't really see 48, 50 dollars as a major price to spend- not on jeans. Levis are generally a pretty good price, considering what you're going to spend on stuff like Diesel or True Religion.

Are a pair of Levis seriously as expensive as $150-a-pair Diesel there? That's crazy to think that! Like I said, I wouldn't expect to pay more than 50 dollars for a pair of Levi's, but they're usually more about 40 dollars.

Not really. You can get them somewhere around the 30 to 50 dollar range. Diesel Jeans were the top-shelf brand when I was a teenager...I don't know if they are anymore, but I do know they run as high as 180 dollars. Abercrombie and Hollister were pretty popular as well, and tended to be more mid-range at around 50 to 60 dollars so I saw more guys wearing them. And Seven and True Religion are outrageously expensive as hell- like we're talking several hundreds of dollars spent for one pair. I've seen pictures from the 80's of men dressed in 501's- it looked pretty good.

Brad and Ace never slept together, though. They messed around when they were around 12 and I think Brad gave Ace blowjobs, but they didn't get into actual screwing around. I just think it's interesting how the wacky relations of these people make some off-limits but others not. Yeah. I remember thinking Kevin calling himself "Sergio" was absolutely ridiculous, but now it actually makes sense. He doesn't feel worthy of the Kevin Carmicheal name, I suppose.

My undergrad college had a lot of people who were from the New York/New Jersey area. I knew a pretty good amount of people that were personally affected by 9/11 and had to attend funerals, especially kids from the affluent North New Jersey area. Come to think of it, Robbie and Ace might know people who died in 9/11 because of their Princeton connection, which lost 13 alumni. I think you're right. And aside from that, it's not like they actually grew up as cousins or thinking of each other as family. Kinda funny how those issues work itself out. I can't see Will ending up with his very own Hayes boy like basically every protagonist who is not actually a Hayes, because Robbie was for all intents and purposes his dad and Matt is his brother. Getting with a Hayes would be kinda gross to him, even though there isn't really a blood connection. In the case of Brad and Kevin, there is one, but Brad doesn't really think of the dude as family, so it's not really iffy to him.

Chapter 33 -When Brad whines yet again about his relationship with Robbie, this time to the whole group. "Boys Don't Cry" by The Cure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tophl_rBrwQ -When Robbie and Brad have a threesome with Kevin, and Kevin talks about his gay-hatin' pastor father, and Brad realizes that Kevin is his cousin. "Faith" by Limp Bizkit

I had a bit of a faux-paus today where I cracked some joke that I wouldn't let up on, and the professor took me aside and told me that I might not be picking up on the social cues that I was ticking off some of the kids in the class. I felt pretty embarrassed, although it reiterated to me what a great professor I have. It just reminded me that social cues and graces just are never going to be second-nature to me, and that I really have to remember when I should let my guard down and just free-flow or when I should perhaps think about what I'm saying before I say it. She also reminded me that I'm in a different area, and that some things that might be joked about casually where I'm from aren't taken so nonchalantly here. The other dimension to this is that I've been feeling tension with some of the people in my department, and it has been bothering me. There's this dude. I'll call him "Eric". Eric is this arrogant ass who, on the account of the fact that he's somewhat cute and cocky, has several of the girls in our department hanging on to his every word. He doesn't like me, and I've been feeling tension with the guy since week 1. He's got this wingmen, this girl who never leaves his side and likes to snub me right along with him. And they, and to a lesser extent their developing clique, have just made me feel very uncomfortable. I've been snubbed many times before, but experiencing this as a 24-year in the grad school setting just has me flabbergasted. I wasn't expecting to run into that kind of mentality here, and it's left me a little disjointed. I think this, combined with the gentle lashing I got from the professor, really got me down. So tonight after class I just sorta went out with my lone friend there, got drunk, and sang LFO's "Summer Girls" to forget about life for awhile. (As fate would have it, my job is shifting around hours and I don't have the Tuesday shift I thought I had.) I won't make a habit out of Monday Night Drinking, but it really helped to talk my friend and to talk to my roommate. They both basically just said to me, "Don't let the assholes bother you, just continue being you but take a second to think about whether a joke you might crack might rub people the wrong way." Justin, my roomate, was basically like, "JR, you're fine. You're doing your work. You're getting assignments done. You've balancing in your 9-hour job, and you've got the resident hall stuff you're doing. You're making friends. Don't let the few assholes get you down." He's definitely right. It was good to just talk this all out, though- one of the things I learned from life is that not talking about my problems and letting things build- that causes bigger problems in the end. I will take up my advisor/professor's invitation to talk at some point, and just...keep on keeping on, I guess.

It seems inevitable that Wade will know people who die in 9/11, because of his D.C. ties and because it's a given that the Danfields mix with the NYC high-powered business crowd as well. If it's not family, it'll be the parents of his friends or something like that. Or it could be friends who graduated from college already and are working at Cantor-Fitzgerald or some other WTC company. Wade and Matt are seniors by then, so they should know friends who have already entered the business world at this point. I'm sure Wade has a lot of prep school friends who followed the trajectory of going to some Ivy League school on the East Coast, and then headed to New York to start their careers.

I'd say JP/Stefan and Claire/Jack are basically the "for life" couples.I guess Ace and Cass are as well, since they are peripheral characters and there isn't much point to mess up their lives for drama. Everything else is up for game unless Brad and Robbie end this story committing for life. Matt/Wade seem the most likely to fall apart- especially if Wade decides he wants to pursue a political career in Washington after graduation in '02 while Matt decides to stay in California. Or Wade's dad used his connections to get Wade a job interning at the Pentagon during the summer of 2001 and... Seriously though, I remember thinking that 9/11 can't affect the Cramptons or the Schluters because they're Caliornia-based, but adding in the high-powered Danfields of D.C. really changed that, and it does give Matt a reason to be in DC on 9/11.

Blue, I really like your idea of the renewal of Claremont standing for the renewal of Brad and Robbie's relationship. That's a great thought, and one that makes a lot of sense. My guess is that after this story ends in spring 2000, the next story will pick up in fall 2000 with Matt Carrswold. Matt is starting his junior year by then, and him interning with Stefan's company seems like a no-brainer. I'm betting that Matt will update us over what happened with the fall-out of the tech meltdown during the summer of 2000. Mark fit 3 stories into 1999. I wouldn't be surprised if he had two stories that covered 2000. The 2000's actually was a pretty turbulent decade, thanks to stuff like 9/11 and the War on Terror and the Great Recession. It's the last decade of the saga, but there's a lot of material to work with. My guess is that after this story ends in spring 2000, the next story will pick up in fall 2000 with Matt Carrswold. Matt is starting his junior year by then, and him interning with Stefan's company seems like a no-brainer. I'm betting that Matt will update us over what happened with the fall-out of the tech meltdown during the summer of 2000. Mark fit 3 stories into 1999. I wouldn't be surprised if he had two stories that covered 2000.

There isn't, but I do prefer cut dicks over uncut. I just like the look better.

I took a class on the history of Wilmington, Delaware. It was a medium-sized city(about 112k people in 1940) that saw its population go down to about 70k by 1980. The population has remained at about that level- its story is pretty similar to rust-belt stories. It's been trying urban renewal since about the 1950's- some things have worked, and quite often a lot of things have gone wrong. Seeing what works and seeing what doesn't kinda informed my opinion when I consulted with JP and Stefan about doing plans for Claremont. Aside from still having rich folks in the area and some really good architecture, Claremont benefits from not having an incredibly rampant crime rate, which is the main thing that has always hampered Wilmington's urban renewal efforts. Claremont also benefits from having a river with an unique Y-shaped bridge. (Zainesville, the real-life model for Claremont, has an arts festival centered around the bridge.) And of course, Claremont is a town of about 20k to 25k, which means that renewal efforts can show up much more quickly than in a larger city. Like I said, Newark, Delaware is about the same size, and you could visibibly see how much the city had changed from 1995 to 2005. Of course, it has a major univerisity driving the economic engine of the town, but I'm betting JP has something cooking to give the economy a shot in the arm.

If you really wanted to, you could have the citizens of Claremont strike oil, turning it into a boom town of 75k overnight. In all honesty, I think their plan is workable. It differs from the renewal plans of the 1950's and 1960's, where they just plowed down entire neighborhoods with the idea that everything would be replaced with shiny new stuff to mimic the suburbs. The renewal plans are closer to the New Urbanism ideals that were developed in the 1980's and 1990's- building walk-able neighborhoods that are attractive to young professionals who are not interested in the suburban, car-dependant lifestyle. And it also has echoes of the Urban Homesteader Movement of the 1970's- the 1970's marked a new thought in urban renewal as cities began to see the benefit of rehabbing buildings instead of just tearing them down. The plan for East Claremont does echo the 1950's thought, but it seems like they want to save buildings that could be rehabbed. Unfortunately for E. Claremont, most of those buildings can't be because they were shoddily built in the first place. I got the idea for the Claremont factory from this factory in Newark, Delaware. After the factory closed, they gutted it and turned it into a thriving resturant with loft apartments. It has a really cool ambience. There are a lot of former factories that this happens to, at least brick ones that have interesting architecture. I kinda like the idea of Robbie helping with that project. JP and Stefan aren't dumb enough to think that if they just need the build the houses and offices and people will come. They're going to give people reasons to come there. It probably won't be completed in 10 years, but I bet there will be a lot of progress.

Alright, so how about 20 years instead? Although that would take us to 2020, and I can't imagine Mark will still be writing the CAP saga by then. Maybe instead there's promising signs by 2010, but it's not totally there yet. I'm just saying that you can see a major turn-around in a community in just ten short years. Maybe not to the extent they want, but it is possible to see a dying town show signs of thriving within a ten-year span. Off the top of my head, I can think of two towns in my state that it happened to. And I don't think they're advocating quick change- this is about building a base on which to grow on.

You'd be surprised, Conner. In 1990, my college town was a struggling backwater town reeling from the loss of factories around the area. By 2000, the town had successfully parlayed the college students into successfully reviving the local economy, resulting in lots of new construction of apartments, businesses, and resturants. Claremont is small enough (I'm guessing it's a town of about 20,000 to 25,000) that you could really change things pretty quickly with enough money behind it.

I picked it because that scene with the apartment in Wall Street seems like such a quintessential Yuppie cultural touchstone, which fits in with JP wanting to attract Yuppies to Claremont with loft houses and the like.

Personally, I like the idea of the plan succeeding, but at a cost. Namely the gentrification works so well that lower-income families get priced out of the Claremont. That tends to be the price for gentrifying areas. I could see that as something Darius, Will, and JJ struggle with when they start taking part in the family business- trying to keep parts of Claremont affordable because JP's plan worked too well. Ten years seems like a reasonable time frame to turn around a city, especially when you got the combined resources of the Cramptons and Schluter's being thrown at it.

Chapter 32 -When Brad and Robbie talk about their lives, including JJ's Olympic aspirations, and come to some sort of understanding with each other. "Let's Forget About It" by Lisa Loeb -When Brad and Robbie make love, on a more hopeful note. "All I Need" by Boyzone -When JP reveals his urban renewal plan for Claremont. "This Must Be the Place" by the Talking Heads http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf2s7UHUrBw

It's not that I don't like Cody. I just can see why someone wouldn't like him, because Cody is pretty one-dimensional. And Max and Tim do make sense. I keep forgetting that Max is only 34 or 35, meaning he's still plenty young enough to start a family. I picture the two living in some nice house in the suburbs, raising a family. I think if Stefan and Greg had been about a decade or two younger, the thought would have crossed their mind to have kids, but that wasn't really something gay guys in that generation considered as an option. My bet is that when Wade and Matt hit their 30's and if they're still together, they'll totally have kids. I can see Matt and Wade being good fathers when they grow up, I think. That's probably something we should see in CAP world- the rise of gay men raising children together without the sort of arrangement that JP had with Isidore or Brad had with Jeanine.

Right, but you've got to admit Mark, you're done a better job with periphereal characters. Brad was a pretty compellling character even as a child, and you've shaped Will and JJ into pretty compelling characters without giving them more storytime than they should have. The same goes for Lou and to some extent, Max. I think the problem with Cody is that we already know what he's going to do when he shows up in the story- he's going to offer advice to (insert whoever is the lead protagonist), he's going to sleep with them, and then they become fun buddies with some deep affection. That pattern has held true through three stories- If It Fits, Bloodlines, and now Millenium. I'm not saying we should suddenly get a lot of Cody so you can explore his pysche, but it'd be nice if Cody did something that we didn't expect. Right now I totally expect him to sleep with Matt when we go back to Matt, and then later on sleep with Will when he's 18 in 2004. He's basically like a sex toy that gets passed around by the protagonists. I know that's harsh and sounds judgemental as hell, but is it honestly an unfair impression?