methodwriter85

Chapter 41 -When Will hangs out with Dally and his friends in small-town America. "Red Dirt Road" by Brooks and Dunn -When Dally tells Will about his father. "The Saddest Song" by the Ataris

Tet, your countdown to 30 has begun! Happy birthday!

Chapter 40 - When the gang arrives in Texas. "God Blessed Texas" by Little Texas

Hey, question for guys who were young men who lived in California circa 2003-2006.... Mark's memory of men's hairstyles in 2003-06 basically involves them looking like this. (Will's hair is supposed to look like this, just with dark auburn hair.) Which I remember too.. but I also remember in summer/fall 2003, this look was starting to creep in: The idea with this look was that guys were letting their hair grow out of the short and spiky trend of the late 90's/Y2K era. A little less product, with bangs and hair curling in what I called "wings". Or alternately, long with sideswept bangs like Aaron Samuels from Mean Girls: Both pictures are from circa 2003-2004, the current CAP time period. Would Will, a teen from California, think long hair looked unfashionable? I'm just questioning that because on the East Coast, at least, guys were actually starting to ditch the spiky short look in 2003. (By '05-'06, I felt like every hot jock/frat boy I knew and lusted over had longer hair like this.) But from Mark's memory, that look wasn't yet around in the Mid-West.

This has been a shitty year for icons from the 70's and 80's. R.I.P. Carrie. I really did love watching Meryl Streep bring to life Postcards from the Edge.

R.I.P.

Someone raised a good point that they have a hard time seeing a Texas family court allowing a non-relative gay male from another state have custody of a underaged teenager if the family chooses to contest the will, but I'm guessing Buzz figured out a way around that. As for JJ...what I think is interesting is that he's capable of being very perceptive about how other people. He's just dense about how he affects other people.

So...Buzz didn't think it was kind of weird that neither Will or JJ waited until they were 18 to leave Brad's care? Eh. Dally will probably just wind up at a boarding school anyway. It does say something that Buzz doesn't want his family to take care of Dally. Man. JJ's on Bitch Level 8 or 9 mode. Hope he gets the fuck over it and stops being a dick to Carullo.

I'm not surprised Will is graduating early (honestly I thought he would have done it during the spring 2003 semester), but I'm kind of surprised he plans to head East. Will seems like such a true blue Californian that I'm kind of shocked he's not staying on the West Coast. He'll need a nice new Northface black fleece jacket for that crispy Northeast fall weather.

I'm honestly kind of surprised Will didn't try to graduate during last year. He never really seemed to be that "in" to high school. Mark has been vague enough about what classes these kids are taking that you can just basically believe that Will has been taking enough credits that he can graduate a semester early. And then there's creative liberties and all that. It kind of would have been nice to see Marie, Will, and JJ do the whole "class of 2004" graduates thing, but then JJ dropped out of 9th grade and Will is graduating early. So, eh. I so wanted to use the Graduation song, too. Oh, well. Mark basically already did that anyway with Brad, Robbie, and Ace and the class of 1981. Can we send to Will to Australia for his gap semester? He would love it there. Surf all around and really hot guys. BTW, Mark, have you watched the Social Network yet? You need to. It nails the time period. Apparently every single shirt Mark wears in the movie is one he wore in real life. Funny to think that Will's going to have a Facebook account within the next year. It didn't make it down to where I'm from until '05. Myspace was big first. Someone should get Will a Northface black fleece jacket. He'll need it.

Not my idols, but I think these guys were the U.K.'s answer to the Backstreet Boys. Or were they like second-rung, equivalent to 98 Degrees? Not sure. Any U.K. people in their early 30's want to answer this one?

Growing Pains Star Alan Thicke Dies of Heart Attack at 69 Pretty sad. His youngest son is only 19. I loved Growing Pains as a little kid. Jason Seaver was a pretty cool dad.

Hey guys, check out the trailer for the brand-new Spiderman movie coming out next summer! Thank god this isn't an origin story. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

When Will was 14, his mental age was 17. At 15, it was 19. At 16/near 17, it's now 25. Does this mean that when he's 20 he'll have the mental age of a 50-year old? In all seriousness, I did enjoy the teen angst and drama. Try to appreciate that more, Will- once day you wake up and you're 30 years old and have no idea where all the time went.

Chapter 37 -When Will tries unsuccessfully to get into Christian's pants, who had no game. "Hey, Baby" by No Doubt -Marie gets into a fight. "Satisfaction" by Benny Benassi -Will is officially over high school drama. "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks

I had to post this picture, because it is one hysterical example of a very specific aesthetic from this time period. This guy on Reddit posted a photo of a really bad resume he made, which included a full-body shot showing off his 2004 fashion sense: Basically, I would call his look "The Gay East Coast Raver Who Posted A Personal Ad on Planetout." I can't see any of the CAP people coming near someone with this look, but seeing this photo jogged memories of AOL chatrooms and gay dating profiles. Seriously, you could drop this dude off at Shampoo in Philly circa 2004, and he'd fit right in. This also made me think about why people were willing to pay over a hundred dollars on jeans that were completely ripped up. I never bought into the distressed jean trend, but wouldn't the fact that they were already distressed give the jeans a pretty short shelf-life? I do think the Adidas throwback look was actually pretty cool, though. I wish I could have worn them, but my feet are too wide so I had to stick to New Balance. Edited to add: This was also a popular look for Eastern European dudes, too.

Chapter 36 -When everybody decides to roll on X. "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior -When John's band performs lame covers of popular songs. "Ignition" by R. Kelly "Get Low" by Lil Jon -When Christian performs a song from a hit Broadway show. "Ladies' Choice" from Hairspray I knew a kid who tried to be Link in a dinner theater production of Hairspray. I'm going to admit that I pretty much avoided the musical because I didn't think it was going to be nearly as good as the '88 original. Then I saw the movie version and it wasn't half-bad, which means the actual musical must have been something. Which you can see this Wednesday on NBC as the 4th annual Live Musical event! -The party continues. Christian gets complimented by Daniel, who then drops the guy as soon as John saunters up. Leaving Christian alone for Will to move in. "Get Busy" by Sean Paul

Well, the 2016 Thanksgiving weekend is upon us...I guess my biggest "Thanks" is for the fact that I'm in generally decent health and I'm still gainfully employed, even if I'm not making too much. I pretty much worked on Thanksgiving morning, and then I went over to my Vegan Sister's house for a Vegan Thanksgiving. It wasn't too bad. Then today my mother and I cooked dinner for my other sister, who brought her family over. We were able to facetime with my sister and niece who live in California. It was fun and generally low-key. Right now I'm listening to some mid-90's music ("Crazy Life" by Toad the Wet Sprockett) and just thinking about the Thanksgivings when we were all kids (or just barely out of that) and we all basically lived together. Twenty years ago, back in '95 or '96, we all (me, my mom, my 3 sisters, my oldest niece, and a verging-on-ex husband of my oldest sister's) lived in this townhouse. I remember it being pretty fun- the turkey refused to cook because it was frozen, but we sat around and had fun and watched Winona Ryder "Little Women's" and played Monopoly after dinner. That was such a huge thing for us. I miss that- everyone's kind of scattered off into their own thing and own lives now, and beyond that, Sister 1 and Sister 2 aren't talking over some dumb-ass issue I'm not going to get into, and we basically had this split Thanksgiving because of it. And my mom's 70 now and I'm realizing more than ever that I probably won't get decades more of memories with her, and some day making Thanksgiving dinner with her is going to be a memory that I'll have to hold on to and cherish because she won't be here. Maybe before my 30's are out. But yeah, I miss those Holidays. I really do. I guess you just miss childhood in general, but I think back in that time, we had managed to come back together after the absolute hell that my dad had put us through. He was gone, we were all living together, my oldest sister was doing fun things like taking us to the zoo or the movies while the Smashing Pumpkins or the Goo-Goo Dolls played on her car stereo, and there wasn't all these adult concerns and adult worries and adult squabblings. A great Christmas present (I think mine for that year was a Goosebumps ice cream machine) and everything in the world was perfect for a moment. I don't get those moments any more. Of course, things weren't perfect and I'm definitely looking through things with rose-tinted glasses (my mom's gambling addiction was still there, we could barely afford that townhouse, those 3 sisters still fought quite a lot, and the oldest sister was basically on the verge of dumping her first husband), but I still wish I could spend a moment back in Thanksgiving 1995/6. What are some of your happiest Holiday season memories from your life?

Eh. I feel like it. Enjoy these alternative rock tunes from mostly the mid/late 2000's. 1.) 3.) 4.) 5.) " 6.) 7.) 8.) 9.) "There's Nothing Like You And I" by the Perishers 10.) 11.) 12.) 13.) 14.) " 15.) " 16.) 17.)

So sad. R.I.P.

Another picture of my idea for a pre-teen Maddie, 12-year old Millie Bobby Brown: I could totally see the Jeanine that Mark described back in Man In Motion having a daughter that turned out like a cool, kind of punkish type tween/teen. I do hope that Maddie is rebellious as hell and gives Will a heart attack or two.

So over 40 million people decided to hand over control of the country to a racist, homophobic, sexist xenophobe who starred on a realty show. I fucking blame the DNC for failing to connect Hilary with the voters. Just disgusted. Completely and totally disgusted. I think I'm done with caring about politics. May God help us through these next four years. Or actually, may god help Trump when the working class straight white males who voted for him realize that he isn't actually going to bring back manufacturing jobs.

Back to the Future didn't account for the 1994 strike, so they're actually right!

Jimmy Garoppolo (Patriots second-string football player) as John Carullo? You can't get much more classic Italian-American hunk than him. He also just gives off a friendly vibe to him. I can just picture him being the friendly giant, kind of sloppy roommate to his fastidious roommate in some updated version of The Odd Couple. I really was loving that storyline. I hope that if Mark feels like he can resume the story, we'll get more scenes with Carullo and JJ.

Robert Rustler in Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Hot in that lithe 80's kind of way. Brian Geraghty in When A Stranger Calls (2006): Super-cute in that boy-next-door kind of way. He was actually like 30 when he did this role, but he had a babyface and was able to pull off being a teenager. I was totally shocked when I looked him up on IMDB after watching the movie and found out he was born in 1975. Age caught up to him, but he's still a pretty cute guy. I'm not usually into blonds but I just love that cute little Irish-American face of his.