methodwriter85

That makes sense. I guess I've been influenced by seeing how parents actually friend their kids on Facebook, and how my mom kept calling me when I went away to college. Maybe JJ can have a roommate with a helicopter parent or something. I feel like the helicopter parent is too much of part of how my generation turned out for Mark to completely ignore, when he gets around to a Gen Y viewpoint in the story.

Enema of the State came out in late 1999, so it's already been 10 years.

I am continually getting help in Farmville from Brian's father under Brian's profile. I am really close to deleting this profile. It is just too creepy that he's playing Facebook games under his dead son's profile.

You have vintage jeans from the 80s? I am so jealous.

Helicopter parents are normal for Darius/JJ/Will's generation- its related to empty-nester syndrome, and why Generation Y is considered to be so over-indulged. I can't see Brad becoming one, but I could see Robbie becoming one- especially with the last two kids who leave the house. He'll get over it, but not before driving Will and JJ crazy with constant cell phone calls. Such is the m.o. of Baby Boomer parents.

Here was this interesting retrospective I found about this decade that had no name. (And don't tell me anybody called it the 'aughts. I tried calling it the 'aughts several times and got brutally rebuffed.) Instead of going for the big stuff, it talks about the ways our lives have changed since that clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000. It's a fun little read. 50 Life Changers Over the Past Decade Mark, I thought this would be especially pertinent for you, as you plan on moving the Cramptons, Schluters, and Hayes into the 2000's for the Chronicles of an Academic Predator series. Good primer on what those CAP people will be encountering as they enter a decade that we're getting ready to leave. On a personal level, I remember getting my first cell phone in 2000- it was a 1998 Nokia hand-me-down from my sisters. It was a red brick cell phone, crude, and pretty much only capable of making phones calls, having a contact menu, and a few games. It's amazing just how ubiquitous the cell phone became over this past decade- I remember that the camera cell phones became "hot" during my junior year of high in 2003-2004. I remember the first time I saw a fully-functional, internet-capable Blackberry in 2005, and how novel it seemed. And of course, 2007 when the IPhones came out and they were the coolest gadget to have. Then there were the IPods- I'd heard of them in 2002-ish, but it wasn't until 2004 that they really became used widely at my high school, and CD players just got wiped out. I've held out against them, because I like using cd's...there's something about the physical act of holding a cd and placing it in the player that you can really "feel" as opposed to just an MP3 file. One piece of technology that was short-lived was the PDA- remember those? I knew a girl who had one in '02, but it seems like with the advent of Blackberry, PDA's were quickly rendered obsolete. As for the 'net, my family started off in 1999 using an 56k dial up connection through AOL. It's amazing how AOL has pretty much fizzled out this decade as Comcast and Verizon have become the dominant internet providers. And the net itself- wow. I remember when it was something that just for geeky people- but that all changed with Livejournal and later Myspace and Facebook. I remember when you had to know HTML code to have a webpage for yourself- now all you need is to just join up with Facebook and you have your own webpage. I remember there used to be a plethora of little personal websites all over Geocities, most of which don't exist anymore. Not to mention a lot of bigger websites that crashed with the dot-com bubble burst in 2000-2001. There is one website that has remained resillient- Mightybigtv, which was around circa 1999/2000, changed its name to Television Without Pity in 2003, linked up with Bravo Channel, and is now bigger than it ever was. It's crazy to think I've been a member of that site through all of its changes. And then there's Youtube- yeah, a lot of the changes suck, but...it's still a pretty great site for people to communicate through their videos. I can't imagine my college experience without Youtube or Facebook. I remember when I was 14, and cell phones were just starting to become common with middle-school kids. Just a couple years later, cell phones were common with elementary school kids- one of my nieces got her first cell phone around the age of 9! An interesting example of the generation gap occured when I was interviewing for a busboy job in 2003. The owner, who was maybe about two or so years older than Adam, thought it was incredible that high school kids had cell phones now. Probably because when he himself was in high school, which I guestimated to have been somewhere in the mid-90's, high school kids were more likely to have pagers instead of cell phones, and cell phones were more of a thing for college kids. It's amazing how technology like that is now being used by very little kids- my other niece is only 3 years old, and she's already figured out how to put in a DVD into the player, and is whining about wanting her own cell phone. It's incredible how fast this world is changing. What sort of changes in your own personal lives have accompanied this decade?

After reading more of Bloodlines, I realized Robbie is a very emotional parent. He is going to be an absolute mess when his first "baby", Darius, goes off to college in 2000. I can see it now- Robbie will become a total helicopter parent, starting with Darius, and then getting absolutely horrible about it with JJ and Will when he and Brad become empty-nesters in '05. I bet Mark has run into enough helicopter parents as a professor that he'll be really good at depicting this. For those not familiar with the term, it refers to overprotective parents who "hover" over their children. They've been known to call up their child away at college to wake them up for classes, and even go so far as to confront professors over grades their children got. It's a pretty interesting look into how parenting has evolved.

Too bad JJ and Will never got to know her. I bet she would have cheered the loudest at JJ's skating competitions. But she would have to be pushing 100 had she still been alive, and I wouldn't have wanted her to be stuck in a nursing home. Eh. Anyways, I think the power trips that people get on in school clubs is universial.

Chapter 49 -At the meeting, when Wade talks about the reality of politics while totally facing Jerry, and announcing a surprise speaker. "If I Ruled the World" by Nas featuring Lauryn Hill -When Wade gets Matt back to Escorial, and sexually satisfies him before they take a nap on his bed. "I Love You, Always Forever" by Donna Lewis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk4-e9dnGUQ Evan Wadle/Matt really does have some really nice blue eyes, don't you think? -When Matt and Wade finally have sex again once waking up in the morning. "I Want You" by Third Eye Blind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C8buGnZDvU -When Stefan gives his speech to the GLBT club, telling them about Matthew Shephard and his own assassination attempt. "Whiter Shade of Pale" by Annie Lennox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2NIDYNvx-4

The story is probably very similiar- the suburbs were expanding really far out and people were taking advantage of the cheaper, new houses in areas, and shopping centers followed. But the problem is, all that growth wasn't based on actual job growth in the area- just home construction and retail sales. And when the boom burst, man...

Mark, you forgot to mention your own experience writing in child molestation in your stories. There was a plotline in Mark's story The Landwhore, where Stefan Schluter catches one of his employees sitting naked, aroused, with a naked 13-year old boy in the room. The molestation wasn't actually shown, but you pretty much got the idea. Later on, Stefan talks to his 10-year old nephew Brad, who admits that he was a victim as well. I thought Mark handled that extremely well.

Here's an article about a failed planned development called the Promenade in a town a bit south of my suburb, called Middletown, Delaware. The "builders" have unsuprisingly not refunded the dozens of people who had put down around 25k deposits on houses that were never built. I thought it was pretty emblematic of the whole economic mess that we're in.No Homes, No Hope, No Refund After reading this article, I will never put money into a planned development for a house that doesn't exist yet, that's for sure. It's amazing watching just how hard the state of Delaware is taking the economic downturn- because Delaware has essentially based its entire economy around being the home of tax-free shopping and low taxes, which has encouraged massive retail and suburban sprawl over the past twenty years. Without as many people coming into the state to shop at the mall, or people who come in from Jersey seeking the lower property taxes and cheaper housing, the economy in this state has just really sunk. The one bright spot to all this, though, is that it's finally slowing the surburban sprawl in this state that has been eating up open space in this state for over twenty years. So I guess I'm glad for that. I'd like to hope that this crisis will make the state and county government think twice before letting developers run rampant with little regulation because they base so much of their budget on real-estate transfer taxes, but I doubt that will happen. In any event...I'm thinking 1950's mid-century modern house in an established suburb or college town- not one of these new-fangled exurbs that seem to be deflating now because of gas prices and the economy. Speculative housing is just that- speculative, and risky as hell.

Exactly. That's why I feel really unsettled by it. I don't want to slam on a guy for the way he's dealing with his grief, but Brian's father really should think about taking down the Facebook page, I think. Or just not posting on it. I mean, I really don't want to see notifications from the profile of a dead friend, I think. Or I should think about deleting Brian as a friend. Which...I mean, I know he's dead, but that would feel like a mean thing to do to him. Am I right for feeling like this is weird and being really uncomfortable with it? It feels like shades of how a parent will refuse to change anything about a dead child's room and leave it just as the child left it- neither that nor what Brian's father is doing feels all that healthy.

I got the heebie jeebies the other day when I was playing the game Farmville yesterday, and I got a notification that B.P. had done something to help my farm. B.P. died back around August, an apparent suicide. He was only 22. After that, his father took over the page, giving us updates on stuff like the funeral. Then he started sending us stories about Brian. Now he's apparently using his son's facebook page regularly enough that he's playing Farmville under the name of his dead son. I understand the father is grieving, and maybe this is his way of dealing with it, but god, this just creeps me out so much. Am I wrong for feeling like there's something wrong about this? It'd be one thing if the father just left the page up as a memorial, but I've gotten a birthday notification, status updates, and now Farmville help from B.P., who died back during the summer, and it's really unsettling. I'm thinking about deleting him from my profile, but I don't know if that would be a nice thing to do. Still, I just feel really uncomfortable about this. UPDATE: I wound up deleting the profile from my friends page in October. When it had reached over a year, I just couldn't take the weirdness of it anymore. It's not my friend Brian's page anymore- it's his dad's.

It's the Canadian oil boom, I reckon. Oil gold rushes usually ain't pretty to the niceness of the people.

The funny thing about that is the fact that Tobey Maguire was apparently very much a pussyhound back in the late 90's, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lukas Haas making up what they allegedly called the "Pussy Posse".

Thanks. It's a far cry from when I did music for Be Rad, when I refused to let myself use any music that was older than four years old in 1980. Man, that was tough. I'm so glad you got to 1999, though- 1999 really did have a lot of fabulous music. Eminem when he was new and fresh and not a tired has-been, the whole pop thing, the Red Hot Chili Peppers making their comeback, and the Latin explosion stuff...not to mention the Magnolia soundtrack as well as Mama Mia: The Musical.

I actually had an idea to do short concurrent stories written from the point-of-view of Will and JJ Schluter as they grew up in Malibu during the 1990's and early 2000's, before Mark switches to them as the storytellers when we roll around to circa 2005, but...eh. I got lazy. LOL. Still, I imagine that Will and JJ prolly have an intereresting viewpoint, growing up in such an different way from most kids. Two dads, a lesbian mom, and more money than we'll ever see in our lifetime. As for Lark, I imagine he's a stoned-out homeless loser who sleeps on the bench at the Santa Monica Pier.

And all that jazz. Hope everyone is happy this Christmas Eve day. As for me, I'm doing good. I had my best semester GPA at UD- getting a 2.975- almost a 3.0! I had two As in my 300-level history class, then a B- in geology and a C- in Italian. I'm satisfied with how I did this semester. My 2.975 brings my accumulative GPA from a 2.42 to a 2.53, which makes me feel good to finally have my GPA over the 2.5 line. Now if I can just get it to 2.66, I'll be good because that takes me into the B- range. I'm doing winter session, if I can get the private loan, so let's hope. And then there's my history GPA, which went from a 2.825 to a 3.1. Pretty happy about that- because it now means I'm eligilbe to apply to schools like Salisbury University. I'm also beginning the grad school application process. I'm going to be realistic- I'm not getting into William and Mary with my grades, but there are some schools I could get into. The plan is to go for whatever grad school will take me, do well there, and then go on to a a really good school for the PhD. If I don't get into grad school, I'll change my graduate date to 2011 and take up a political science minor.

Chapter 48 -In the morning, when Wade greets a slowly-recovering Matt. "How Deep Is Your Love?" by the Bee Gees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrLH9ZplUIo I tried to get the 1999 music recording from the musical adaption of the film, but eh. I figure this works fine. And in the 1990's, seventies nostalgia was big. -When Wade muses on his relationship with his parents after seeing the bouqet they sent to Matt, as well as a newsphoto with his father proclaiming the need for prayer in school. "Scar Tissue" by Red Hot Chili Peppers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlwYd5C4BAs -When Wade goes to party, and gets approached by Peter Parker about becoming president of the campus GLBT club. "Livin' Da Vida Loca" by Ricky Martin -When Wade gives Matt some of his...essence. "Honey Honey" from Mama Mia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXxb8qQOOVU -When Wade meets the GLBT club, as well as the always-gregarious Professor Benjamin Whist. "My Name Is" by Eminem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jvAx-7G8QQ

Going to gay town is always pretty fun. There is a gay-friendly beach called Rehoboth down here. And Mark, I bet you would still get hit on if you went over to City, you sexy Daddy.

It makes sense that Wade is more mature, because he's had to grow up very fast in the D.C. world where jaded cyncism is what's for breakfast. Not to mention what his parents did to him. Whereas Matt grew up in this very sheltered, upper-class suburban lifestyle. I think it's been very fascinating to see what a Hayes would have been like if he had been reared in an upper-class environment-he doesn't carry around the self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies of the typical Hayes, yet Matt is still just as emotional as Robbie or Jeff and cannot pull of the cooly unemotional rationality that people like JP and Wade can. It's interesting how even though Matt was raised that way, he can't quite pull off being a blue-blood.

I am SOOOOO happy I found a spot for "Santeria". That song is just brilliant.

Chapter 47 -When Wade sits at Matt's bedside, refusing to leave, and tries to comfort Robbie. "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" by Aerosmith -When Wade talks to his mother on the phone, trying yet again to make her understand humanity, and how much her silence hurt him. "Unpretty" by TLC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDYSXNIyyPo -When Wade has to deal with the fallout from Matt's illness, including talking to Doctor Carrswold on the phone. "Santeria" by Sublime -When Matt's parents come to his bedside, and talk about their change of heart. "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen" by Baz Luhrmann -When Cody comes up with an interesting way for Wade to communicate to Matt what he's got to fight to come back to. "Back At One" by Brian McKnight

Christie Brinkley is 55. She does look amazing, but we had to go with what 18-year old guys in 1999 were drooling after, not what 18-year old guys in 1981 such as yourself were drooling after. It's a good thing we have Adam Phillips for source material.