methodwriter85

My condolences.

It doesn't even really feel like anybody does anything with the Malibu house anymore. But I think that's actually kind of realistic- Darius is in college, Will lives in the SF-area house more because he attends school, and JJ's in New York City. I would bet that it was rented out or something in 2018 before it burned down.

It's really interesting to learn just how deep Kevin's psyche goes. He's such a mask but there are so many things about him that he won't reveal because he doesn't want to sound psychotic. Pretty fascinating. It's also interesting how he surrounds himself with rich people but resents them at the same time. I did a lot of that as a teenager and in my early 20's. Weirdly enough, in my mid-20's I wound up going to a university that was in a blue-collar area and I kind of loved being around salf-of-the-Earth types instead of the "Oh, I went to Sallies and I just got back from study abroad in Europe" types.

Mark's gotta be happy that the Rams are going to the Super Bowl. I wanted it to be against the Chiefs, though.

I talked to him a little bit back...he's okay, just busy.

Your boys are having another good season, while my boys are crashing and burning. Since it looks like an Eagles Super Bowl return is out of the question and the Ravens aren't looking that much better, I'm also going to root for the Rams. Again, Sean McVay is pretty hot. The Rams had an extended period of being pretty shitty, so it's awesome that they're starting 10-1 this year. Seriously, that's awesome.

I would have told 24-year old me not to waste money on a master's degree in history, but honestly, even though it didn't lead a professional career, I feel like grad school shaped me into a better person. I didn't have to be slacker party boy when I went to IUP as opposed to my UD years, and there were a lot of things I feel like I "righted" about myself when I was a grad student. If I could further back though, I'd tell my 18-year old self to just go to community college, get my grades up, and transfer into a 4-year college after instead of just going to a mediocre college before getting into UD. I also probably shouldn't have hung out at so many frat parties but honestly, those memories bring a smile to my face. (Even though they didn't lead to illicit sex with straight frat boys like Nifty Archive told me they would. LOL.)

Rogue One was actually really good. I think my biggest problem with Episode 8 is that instead of further developing Poe, Rey, and Finn as a team, the movie split them all up and we don't see them together until the end. Also...*Superman theme*....I mean, really? I didn't think either 7 or 8 were THAT bad, though.

Aww. I think our military kitten is smitten. Also, I'm kinda shocked that Becker isn't short. 5'10" is a pretty good height. The scene earlier where Kevin picks Becker up and swings him side to side suggested he was more than 4 inches shorter. I guess Kevin really is just that strong.

Hey, love your story, but I think you made a mistake with the dates here- you have a date saying that September 2004 is the start of Kevin's junior year, but it shouldn't be. He's class of 2005. (If we go with the idea that he's a year ahead of Becker, who is '06.) His junior year would have started at late August/early September 2003. I'm also the class of 2005 and junior year is pretty vivid for me.

I'm watching American Horror Story right now, and that reminded me of relative acting newcomer Cody Fern. Max Granger (paired up with Paster Tim) was described as looking like Andrew McCarthy with blond hair, and I think this comes pretty damn close. Cody reminds me so much of Andrew, just with a more distinctive eye shape. (His real hair color also reminds me a lot of Andrew's hair- they even curl similarly when grown out.)

Here's a weird thought- Wade's son Riley and Jeanine's daughter Madison would be turning 18. Probably in college or senior year of high school. Weird. I kind of always rooted for them to become a couple. Ace's daughter Courtney would have already turned 23 a week or so ago. A lot of September birthdays in this series.

Holy shit, are we supposed to infer that Kevin's Dad beat the shit out of his mother? THAT I was not expecting. He's had such a saintly characterization thus far. I did like the subtle bit about how boys are only supposed to give Valentine's to girls. As for the current stuff, I had to laugh at Duncan's reaction to Kevin being 9 in 1996. I really think your early 30's are when age really starts to creep up on you. I mean, most college kids now would have been born somewhere in the second half of the 90's. Weird as shit but I kind of like being an oldie now. I was annoying as hell at 21. I did have to laugh at Kevin playing home wrecker, although to be honest it doesn't seem like much of a home to begin with.

I flirted with the idea of joining a fraternity until I hit my (first) junior year, so it's kind of funny to see a window of what things might have been like if I had made a different choice. UD wasn't really frat mandatory, though. We don't even have a frat row, so it really didn't feel worth it. And I found some pretty decent party houses junior year 1 and junior year 1.5 and made some pretty damn fun memories n the process. By the end I was a pretty proud GDI. Anyway, it'll be cool to see Becker continuing (and failing) in his quest to stop thinking about Kevin. LOL.

What I think is interesting about this story is that Kevin's memories jump around and back and forth. It's pretty different from Best 4 Years, which is mostly linear. I wonder if that's because Becker doesn't really live too much in the past, while Kevin has so much emotional baggage and memories that he runs on a constant loop? It really expands on what Kevin said about how he has a thing for dates.

I wrote this article for Reddit just for the hell of it. *** Someone posted earlier about the annoying amount of over-development and suburban sprawl in Delaware. I thought it would be interesting to go a little bit over the reasons why the system is set up like the way it is, and how the forces of suburbanization have made Delaware into the bedroom community it is today. Wilmington developed at a steady pace throughout the 1800's- especially during the Civil War, which the du Pont Company really flourished as at the time they were known for gun powder. In 1864, a horse railcar line was developed around Delaware Avenue, which allowed for Wilmington residential development to expand out towards the "country", and leafy residential neighborhoods began to sprout. Note that this would be a continuing pattern for Wilmington's elite- building pretty "country" houses and pushing north of Wilmington. Soon, the railroad came, as well as the trolley car. This allowed for Wilmington's first official suburb, Elsmere, which was developed in 1886 by Joshua Heald for working middle-class families. Though there were talks for Wilmington annexing Elsmere into their city boundaries, Elsmere had incorporated as its own town by 1909. Wilmington couldn't really do much about it, because they had a weak city charter and New Castle County government would thwart them time after time whenever they tried to expand their borders. World War I and World War II brought continued prosperity to Wilmington, which reached 112k in population by 1940. Again, given that Wilmington had a weak city charter that made it hard for them to annex surrounding land into their city, a lot of residential development began to spill out of the borders of Wilmington, which was made even easier by the car. It was around this time that the prosperous North Wilmington suburbs were developed, originally for the du Pont company chemists and their families. (Think Alapocas, Greenville, Talleyville, etc.) Meanwhile, the more solidly middle-class suburban development continued out from Elsemere along the newly built Kirkwood Highway. Newark, which had been a relatively small town throughout most of its history, also exploded in population, going from just 6k people in 1950 to over 20k by 1970. The first wave of suburban sprawl began to hit the Newark area as areas such as Brookside were developed. As the 1950's continued and gave way to the 1960's, suburban development and flight from Wilmington continued. There are a couple of factors for this. The first is that the building of I-95 required demolition of several city neighborhoods, which destabilized the entire area and also made it even easier for people who worked in Wilmington to commute from the suburbs. The second is that the G.I. Bill, which returning WWII vets were using to buy homes, strongly favored new construction in the suburbs as opposed to the older housing stock. Third, the returning G.I.'s and their wives would give birth to what is known as the Baby Boomer Generation. This cohort was so large that entire children-consumer industries sprang up. These G.I.'s preferred to raise their kids in their suburbs, continuing the suburban flight from Wilmington. Finally, the perception of Wilmington being unsafe stemmed from the Wilmington riots of 1968, which led to most of suburban Delaware turning their backs on Wilmington and never looking back. From the 1950's through the 1980's, Wilmington's population would drop from 95k in 1950, down to about 70k by 1990, which is more or less where the population has stabilized. In the late 1970's, Christiana Mall began to be developed, which drove more development. The success of that mall meant that developers have clamored to build retail in the areas surrounding the mall since, hoping to capture that success as well- you see that today with the new Christiana Fashion Center. The building of nearby Christiana Hospital in 1984-1985 would also be a major driver of development in that region. Another biggie would be MBNA, which was founded in 1982 and became a massive behomoth of a suburban office complex in Ogletown. Ah, yes, we can't forget about banks, which began a boom in Delaware in the 1980's due to laws passed in 1981 that were favorable to banks. This did in fact led to a lot of office development in Wilmington, but the Baby Boomer bankers preferred living in the suburbs to living in the city. I mean, there were some city neighborhoods that got revived (think 40 Acres/Trolley Square) but by and large the affluence that was being driven by the banking boom of the 80's/90's was going out into the suburbs instead of being invested into the city. At least, beyond the gleaming office towers. The next round of suburban development (the 1980's-1990's) would take place around the Bear/Glasgow area. Originally cheap farmland (this area was big on horses), it became known for townhomes and cookie cutter housing developments. On the more upscale side, the affluent developments around Hockessin began to pop up as well. Both of these areas were not incorporated, which meant that developers did not need to go through city laws/city councils in order to get their developments approved- just having to deal with the city. I grew up in Bear during the 2000's, and I remember my jaw dropping when someone told me that Bear had largely been the "country" back in the 80's. You can still see some remnants of its past (I remember seeing some horse farms close to Old Porter Road) but man. Anyway, another really, really huge factor in the suburban sprawl deal in Delaware comes up in the 1990's. That would be the construction of Route 1. Originally built to bypass Route 13 and create a faster route to the beach, this would help the MOT area (Middletown, Odessa, Townsend) explode in population, as it was now a more convenient area to commute from. Middletown had 3k people in 1990, now it's up to over 20k, and that's just within the city limits. One difference in the suburban sprawl story of Middletown is that the mayor of the 1990's actually set this in motion on purpose, because Middletown was a dying farming town. The town began to aggressively annex surrounding areas so they would benefit from the building of the housing developments and strip malls. This would led to Middletown's population growing by 206 percent between 2000 to 2010. Not that there hasn't been some pushback- in 1999 Middletown residents rejected a school referendum purely as an attempt to stop the suburban development, but of course, it didn't really work. Route 1 has been a major driver of suburban development all across the state for the past 20 years. I lived in Dover from 2005-2006, and I remember there was a lot of suburbs getting built around the former farmland. Downstate also saw a lot of this growth, particularly with the beach areas, although that growth hasn't extended out to the western part of Sussex County. One thing that began to happen, especially during that 2000's real estate boom, is that developers in New Castle County started talking about "re-developing" golf courses, nature preserves, and former office complexes, particularly in the more crowded part above the canal. One particularly nasty fight occurred when the Stoltz Company wanted to build a 13-story tower in Greenville at the former Barley Mill Office complex, and basically the residents banded together to sue them 'til kingdom come until those plans were dropped. Another really controversial move has been talk abut re-developing the Newark Country Club, which has been bandied about for at least the past 15 years but it keeps getting thwarted. I also remember there were some whispers about developing in Bellevue Park around this area, although I don't know if that came to fruition. The Great Recession did put a damper for a while for suburban development in Delaware. Development has come back, but if you notice, a lot of what's getting built currently are townhomes aimed at seniors as well as apartment buildings. (Notably, the Newark student apartment buildings that everyone likes to bitch about.) You're not seeing as many plans for McMansion developments the way you would have back in the 90's and the 2000's. Anyways... 1.) Delaware has always been a really convenient place to travel through when it comes to go to Philly, D.C./Baltimore, or New York City. This convenience has only increased with the building of roads like I-95 and Route 1. (Probably the new 301 is really going to jumpstart some new suburban sprawl as well.) 2.) Delaware has historically stayed away from compact urban development. Newark was originally a sleepy town that had a small college. Dover was small town until the 1970's. A lot of Delaware was rural for most of our history. (Still shocked at the thought of Bear being a sleepy little farming community as recently as the 80's.) Our only "big" city is Wilmington, and even when they had 100k residents, they weren't building tall apartment buildings- note the row-homes and townhomes. 3.) Developers like building on flat, open spaces, which Delaware had/has a lot of because we had so many farms. And we are largely on the Atlantic Coastal plain. 4.) Wilmington lost 40k people in the course of about 50 years, and been unable to entice people to come back. One interesting fact- in 1940, Wilmington had 112k people. Delaware itself only had 266k people. That means that over 40 percent of the entire state of Delaware lived in Wilmington in 1940. Now that percentage is down to about 7 percent! 5.) Government, especially in New Castle County, has a really, really hard time saying no to developers. There's also this mindset of not thinking ahead. I've learned in the Memories of Newark group that in the 1960's, the Newark City Council was floating the idea of building a by-pass that would have gone around the Main Street area. Sort of similar to what's going on right now with the 301, which is going to by-pass the current 301 that goes through Middletown. It was floated because at the time, Newark was booming, and the traffic problems we see today started to appear. However, the city council voted it down because they thought it was unnecessary. Today, the proposed bypass would be impossible because most of that land got developed, so Newarkers today basically have to pay for the mistakes that were made 50 years ago. And you see similar stories to that again and again- developers getting their way and our government not making them put in the infrastructure needed because they don't want to lose the development deals. So yeah, there you have it. It's basically almost inevitable that Delaware basically is the way it is. We're basically just reaping what Elsmere sowed back in the early 1900's when they refused to become part of Wilmington because they didn't want to pay city taxes. TL;DR: Delaware's life as a suburban bedroom community is the result of forces that were set in motion as early as the 19th century. Edited...looks like people want some sources so here's a couple: "Corporate Capital- Wilmington in the 20th Century" by Carol Hoffecker, Temple University Press, 1983. Wilmington DE population Newark DE Population Dover DE Historical Population Delaware population figures Middletown DE Wikpedia Page Save Our County- Website for the group that fought the Stoltz Company tooth and nail over the proposed Greenville development Push for country park on former orphanage site remains strong, Newark Post Online 2017 West Main Street Residents Want By-pass, Newark Post Achives September 2,1994 Christiana Fashion Center's first phase on target, Delaware Business Times March 2015 Northern Delaware's Christiana Mall remains resistant to retail's rough patch, BisNow 2018 Banking Haven- Washington Post 1983 Middletown, Delaware Annexing Farmland- New York Times 1990 Market Street Renaissance- Out & About, October 2015 Developers Target Delaware Golf Courses January 2016 *** Growing up as suburban kid...I wouldn't have it any other way. I fucking LOVED hanging out at the mall growing up. I don't know if I would have liked being a city kid, or being in some small cow town or something.

He's what we would call a "power bottom." Uncle Pete's bitterness really struck a chord with me. He's a great example of what can happen to someone who refuses to learn from their mistakes and blames everybody else for their problems. As their looks and charms fade, it gets increasingly bitter. All this name talk though makes me wonder if any other loved ones aside from Justine and Kevin are going to have a reaction to Peter Adam Becker's name thing.

Of course Carver referred to Becker as Richie Rich. It's always kind of funny to figure that in 10 years, Carver will be wearing a beard and a precision buzz cut and freaking out about hitting 30. As for Kevin, it's interesting to see his point of view.

I didn't dispute him being GOAT. I'm just glad he didn't pull off a win in this year's Super Bowl.

True, but he doesn't always bring his A-game to every Super Bowl, and thank god he didn't bring it to the most recent one. And Napoleon Dynamite may only ever be second string, but this moment is always going to make me smile:

I'm really active on Reddit, and over on the Delaware subreddit, there's a thread going on that explains Delaware to a Santa Barbara, California resident who plans on moving here. This is how one person put it: *** Welcome, former Cali resident here too. Get ready for cold/hot/snow/rain/wind/flooding. Drive slow in the snow and ice (ice is worse). Other than the freeway expect roads not to be plowed till it’s really bad. Get ready for potholes. By comparison DE DMV is amazing and you’ll get it all done in record time. Don’t trust gps if you drive into PA. Yes, NYC is 2hrs away but $40 in tolls, so jump on a bus. Wilmington is our Compton/Oakland. Dover is our Modesto/Fresno. Newark is our college town. The state is tiny so it’s less that 10 miles to MD/NJ/PA from anywhere. Go to WaWa and get it out of the way early, AT&T wireless sucks here. You will be disappointed by our beaches. Get ready to cry at our low house prices and property taxes. Dog parks and farmers markets are not that prevalent here. No lane splitting motorcycles but you can pass on the breakdown lane if the person in front of you is turning left. Watch speed limits. That’s how we get away with no sales taxes. Expect to mow your yard weekly unlike California. All of the jokes about how boring DE is true. Go with it. *** To add to this, given what I've learned about California from you beautiful people all these years... -Expressway, not Freeway -We don't put "the" in front of expressway/highway names. "I'm going to Newark and I'm taking 273 to get there." -There's a really high percentage of private/charter/magnet school enrollment. Even if you're in a nice area, that in no way guarantees a good school the way it seems to do in California. -Herr's chips. -An insanely early last call of 1 a.m. -No big cities, but you CAN go to Philly, DC, or NYC pretty easily.

It would be incredibly unrealistic for a 2018 Will to not be sporting at least some facial hair. I can see JJ and Wade refusing to go the facial hair route (I think JJ might not even be able to grow one), along with the older generation, but yeah. Will, Carullo, Matt, Zach...they'd definitely have facial hair to varying degrees. It's so pervasive. And then there's that whole No-Shave November stuff, which seemed to become a thing around 2010. Facial hair and buzzcuts with shaved-in sideparts is definitely one of the big looks for this decade. I wonder if Will would rock a manbun? I can see it.

I went to my niece's college graduation, and there a LOT of beards even on the preppy guys. I can see the beard craze bothering the shit out of Mark if and when he gets to covering this time period. He doesn't seem like a fan of them.

We also might want to remember that Will is 17. He doesn't need to find his "for life" partner just yet. Dude hasn't even hit college. LOL. Anyway, I wonder if JJ will consider starting a lifestyle brand. People really do seem to lean on him for fashion advice even though he's not a designer.

God, that was brutal, but inevitable. I'm now going to listen to a period-appropriate break-up song to cope with this chapter: Anyway, I get why Kevin did this. I wonder how he'll handle his decision, though. Now I want Patrick to comfort Becker. Sexually. (Okay, old habits die hard, but they did have pretty hot chemistry in their hookup.) I do wonder if Becker will be turning to ManFind for some more comfort. I remember back in the day, it always seemed like you'd see personals online surge for hook-ups right around finals/Christmas time. LOL.