methodwriter85

Happy birthday, Mark!

I mean, if you look at actual 1970's/early 1980's t.v., they're full of blonds/blondes. Mary Ingalls, Ma, Nellie Olseon, and Almanzo Wilder on Little House on the Prairie. The female half of the Brady Bunch. John Boy in The Waltons. Half of the cop duos on Starksy and Hutch and Chips, etc etc. James Savik, who is Mark's age, listed his teen idols growing up, and all of them were blond: Jim McKeon, Leif Garret, that kid from James at 15, and Willie Ames. (He's the goofy buddy from Charles in Charge who was inexplicably a teen idol back when Eight is Enough was airing. Totally confused me.) I wonder if it's because the Californian surfer boy/girl aesthetic was really popular then. I do remember Janice Dickenson, who was surprisingly beautiful before she let surgeons hack her face up, talked about how it was hard to break into modeling back in the 1970's because she didn't look like the ideal blonde. It's kind of funny to compare to our era, which tended to emphasize dark-haired guys. The only blond teen idols I can think of from the Y2K era are the Carter Boys, Brian Littrell, Chad Michael Murray, JT & Lance (although Lance wasn't really the teen idol of that group), and the poor doomed lead singer of LFO. The preferred aesthetic of our teen idol period seemed to be more along the lines of the blue-eyed guy with spiky dark hair, like the Carlson twins. Now, frosted TIPS were popular, just not full-on blond, it seems. At least for the guys. Anyway...no, I don't really have a guy for Cam. Maybe Zac Efron? Cam hasn't really featured much of an impression on me to get me into finding a guy who fits how I picture him.

We have two brown-haired guys named Cam- the gay one from Boystown that Matt hooked up with for a bit in high school, and the straight junior that goes to Menlo with Will. He hasn't really factored much- Will thought he was cute but backed off when he realized that Cam was straight and not interested in messing around. I'm kind of feeling Damn, Daniel for the straight high school one. In requests...Tom Holland (aka Spiderman) as some cute nerdy twink? He was absolutely adorable in Captain America! Not conventionally handsome, but cute. I figure Private Tim would find him just too cute- he kind of likes that look, I think. Also, Aunt May as some hot older lesbian that Tiffany starts dating? I wondered if they were going to dress her down like they did to Dianne Lane as Super Man's mom, but they did not, and it was a total squee! moment to see her and Tony Stark and remember the time they did a 90's romantic comedy together.

Alright, this is my offer for Music Monday...a nice little uptempto pop rock song about nostalgia and the beauty of youth: Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams A snippet of this is currently playing on the advertisement screen at my work; I think as part of some classic 80's playlist. I started singing along to it, and my co-worker Devan, who's this funny sarcastic Mormon, looked at me and said, "Well, you can actually remember 1969, can't you?" Ooh, burn. I flipped him off. Then, I started laughing hysterically, and thought about all the times I'd say stuff like that to Adam when he was 30-ish and I was 23-ish, similarly to the current age gap between Devan and I. Only I'm on the wrong side of it now. LOL. But yeah, I was like, "This song was a big hit the year I was born so I feel an affinity for it," and he was like, "Well, I have a brother who was born in 1989." Nobody there knew the song, and I realized it's because 80's nights and 80's parties just aren't really a thing like they were back when I was 21. And MTV/VH1 aren't airing retrospective 80's music videos anymore like they did when I was growing up. Anyway, it made me laugh and it made me think, "Wow, karma is a BITCH."

Thoughts, Mark? He does have that classic blond jock boy look you really, really seem to like. (Seriously, has anyone else noticed that guys with this general look tend to pop up a lot in the story?) I wouldn't say he looks like a Hayes, but more along the general lines of a hunky Mid-Western blond jock boy. I always wondered if the reason why Mark includes so many blonds in the story is because he grew up in the 1970's, which someone at TWOP called the Decade of the Blonde, because it was such a dominant aesthetic during that decade for whatever reason. So many music and acting stars were blond/e at the time (Blondie, Farrah Fawcett, Peter Frampton, Mark Hamill, etc etc), and even 2 of the 3 presidents of that decade were blonde.

I was kind of thinking instagram-guy-turned-model Matthew Noszka for Dally, but then again, I keep thinking this guy has more a mid-Western cornfed guy look to him: In any event, I'd figured you like him for something, Mark. You gotta thing for those beefy blond jock types, after redheads. But yeah, he's from Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has more of a mid-Western vibe to it. I could see him more as a Claremont youth or some guy in Boystown. Although we're just guessing he's like a younger "type" of his father. It could very well turn out that he's a nerdy, unattractive redneck, like how Wade thought Ethan would be the hot guy on the soccer field and it turned out to be the chubby awkward kid. LOL.

I think what JJ adds to the story is a viewpoint that we're not going to get from Will. We're not going to see Will putting up with snobby blueblood circles, and we're not going to see Will hanging out at the opera. We're also not going to get bitchy (but often very true) observations from Will, because Will tends to believe the best in people unless they repeatedly give him a reason not to, while JJ has to like you before he even considers deigning you with his discussion. The other difference is that Will is largely "settled", in a sense. Will at 16 is probably not going to be very different from Will at 26. Meanwhile, JJ still kind of feels like he hasn't really totally formed yet; inchoate-like. I think the years he missed out on normal teenage socializing adds to that, but he's making me think of something that director Richard Linklater said. People who are hard-core athletes are never really allowed to grow up, because their whole life is focused on getting to that spot. When that dream is over, then what do they do now? JJ basically gets to grow up now.

Well, it's all a moot point now. It's got to be weird for JJ to be going back to school, after dropping out in 9th grade.

The Human League were an 80's British synthpop band, best known for their 1982 monster hit, "Don't You Want Me." They had some other, lesser-known songs, including this top 10 hit from 1983: Man, Phil Oakley rocked the hell out of the 80's androgynous look. And this is just a song that would be fun as hell to dance to. The thing of note about them is that the two female back-up singers/dancers were just ordinary teenaged girls that Phil found dancing at a night club, and asked him to join a band. Any of you guys remember this now-obscure oldie?

Chapter 30 -When Brad goes to his super-secret meeting. "Extreme Ways" by Moby (Instrumental) I've actually never seen the Bourne Identity. It seems to have been the movie that cemented Matt Damon's box-office star status, while Ben Affleck's career started skidding until The Town came out. Ben did have a very admirable comeback streak this decade, but it's funny to think about how when they first started out at the end of the 1990's, so much of the attention was on him to be the next big thing, and then Matt Damon wound up having the much better career during the 2000's. -When Will tries to compose himself over the events of the day, and then has a very awkward conversation with Buzz's son. "Atmosphere" by Joy Division (instrumental) -On his way back home, Brad ponders the events of the day, and then hears Will's relief over the phone. "May It Be" by Enya

I mean, the ending of her coaching JJ sucked, but otherwise, JJ was kept pretty much out of trouble and he made it all the way to being national champ under her guidance. JJ may be a bitch, but other than flunking out of 9th grade, he's been pretty well-behaved during his teen years. Edited to add: That's the great thing about character development. Sometimes they really surprise you, like real people do. The kid who proclaimed that he would be on the Wheaties box at age 20 is not the kid who made the decision they did. I had pictured JJ as being a guy willing to do absolutely anything to get ahead, and in reality, no, he's not. Anyway, that's why I kind of figured you worked towards this point with JJ. It definitely didn't come out of nowhere. I'm interested to see if he's going to decide he wants to do some dumb kid things to catch up because he was the good boy all these years, or if he's basically going to remain prim n proper with some bouts of fun. There are a lot places you could take JJ, which you couldn't with the career he had.

Over on the t.v. show Nashville, they're currently doing an "rich teen tries to emancipate" themselves storyline. The circumstances are completely different, but it made me think back to the VERY strong (myself included) reactions to the emancipation storyline in Paternity. I still think it bothered me because as someone who grew up with people who were really getting abused by their parents, it bugged me that Will couldn't make it work with Brad, but I also get why Mark did it. He didn't want Brad and Will constantly at each other's throats until Will turned 18 and went off to college (which might have been what it was like with his own son), and there was no way that wouldn't happen if Brad was still in charge of Will's life. It also conveniently allowed Will to be able to do things like own land and travel more often, without Mark having to advance the story to 2004-2005. It served a purpose- it allowed Will to be this grown-up in his peer group, and Mark could have him do things a normal 14/15 year old couldn't, while we waited for the rest of his co-horts to get a little older and catch up in maturity. (See: JJ.) I'm still not entirely sure that Brad has ever really recovered from the damage that Paternity did to his character, though. I still have a really hard time rooting for him. And it also bugs me how Jeanine was just dragged through the mud. I liked the spunky, cool lesbian we met in Man In Motion, who instantly took to Preemie JJ as his mother, as he desperately needed one since his egg donor was getting it on at the local crackhouse. I'm not sure the bitter, stagemother bitch was out of nowhere, because you could see how being the "mother" but not REALLY being a full-blown member of the family while she could barely connect to her one biological son that was basically elevated to lord of the manor would eventually lead to some really bad things. I think ultimately, what bothered me about the storyline was the idea that the unconventional family unit that Brad set up back in 1986 with Jeanine, Robbie, and their three boys "failed", slowly crumbling apart from the time that Robbie said he wanted to try dating other people in late 1999, to Will's emancipation at the end of 2000, and then the final end during 9/11. I just really, really hope that Matt, Tiffany, and Wade have better luck, LOL. (Think about Maddie and Riley- they would be 15 years old right now!) I do think Tiffany would have never, under any circumstances, accepted the kind of treatment that Jeanine got from Will. Of course, Tiffany's different- she's not some poor nanny that the heir apparent decided to knock-up in order to get some offspring going. She herself springs from some pretty solid Midwestern upper-class stock, even though her parents were crazy the grandparents were supposed to be pillars of Grosse Pointe, MI society. I liked that she was kind of coy when asked about how much she has- probably not Wade money by any stretch of the imagination, but she's not hurting.

When JJ turned 16 in the story, I was saying something about how JJ should get his GED because it would free up his time from home schooling, and I think you or Blue said something about how it'd be completely unacceptable for his family, and either you or Blue agreed about that. That's all kind of a moot point now that JJ retired and he's actually going back to high school. Again, I really like the St. Anne's choice- it really does sound like a perfect place for him. And I love that he apparently has to do a seminar- it'd be a great way for him to engage his intellect on a deeper level than we usually see from him. I kind of wish we had done more with the school side of the character lives. Menlo really encourages study abroad, which would have been interesting to see Marie and Will do. Some of these places are places we haven't seen characters in, like Guatemala and India.

I think Claire's kids are supposed to represent more ordinary (if still rich) teenagers- still having fun without having an eye on a dedicated future career just yet. It is kind of funny though when you think about how JJ, Will, and Zach were all prodigies in some way, and JJ/Will's reaction to John's totally lame but totally normal high school band. I still lean towards the idea that Will should end up a marine biology professor some day. JP would LOVE it.

It was the 1970's. It was a thing back then for people to do their own thing and go against the establishment. I mean, the thing is, Armand was taken in as a ward, but he wasn't actually JP's or Stefan kid. I'm sure they probably brought it up, but I'm also sure that Armand shot them down, and they decided not to press him on it. However, with their grandchildren, I'm sure they'd threaten to pull their trust funds if they tried pulling not going to school. I remembered suggesting that JJ should get a GED when he turned 16, and Blue just went off on how that JJ's family would never allow that. I do think if JJ's going to be among snobby East Coast prep school elites, he's really going to have to up his educational game or else he's going to look stupid when he's not talking about art or classical music. He doesn't come off as very well-rounded in the learning department.

I mean, if you think about it, only JJ, Will, and Zach have done that. Darius Marie, and John had/have relatively normal high school experiences.

Agreed on the first point. Although I don't really follow serial drama t.v. series that much anymore- I watch reality t.v. much more often now. Southern Charm, Chrisley Knows Best, Below Deck, and VanderPump Rules are probably my favorites. Or, more likely, I watch narrations or vlogs on Youtube, such as that "loser guy" Tom Explores Los Angeles. LOL. Anyway,Buzzfeed also does a lot of videos about Los Angeles/Southern California life: That is an interesting regional difference that people say "the" in front of their interstate roads/freeways/whatever. Here, you would just say, "I'm going up 1, then taking the exit to 273." Also, the gourmet food truck thing was cool. I love the concept, and I love that it's expanding over here on the East Coast. Anyway, Interesting articles. The first looks really cool, although I'm not sure how I feel about the second one. It sounds like it's basically going to offer a few budget options, but try to go for this trendy hybrid deal, which the commentators below seem to feel is a betrayal to the original spirit of the place.

JJ is going to St. Anne's in New York City to finish out high school. He's going to be classmates with Lena Dunham. I can already see him finding her annoying. LOL. I think it's ultimately a good thing that JJ and Will didn't go through high school together. They would have killed each other. LOL. Anyway, St. Anne's is one of those independent study, no letter grades type of school. Which seems like a good kind of school for someone like JJ, who hasn't really made getting straight A's a big priority in his life. So far he hasn't really seemed to think about college at all, but he's going to have to, because I can't see this family letting him not go, especially because he's no longer skating. I could see him taking a gap year that gets a little bit longer than a year, though. One really interesting thing about St. Anne's is that the high school students basically attend some kind of seminar where they have to discuss a variety of topics, in intense depth. That's pretty cool, and very much something that JJ doesn't really seem to do, and something he needs to do if he wants to get into that college mindset. I really hope we see him engage his intellect a little more than we've seen him do. Right now, he comes off as a former child star who didn't go to school.

There are a lot of things Mark is willing to do, but killing off children is not one of them. The closest he got were Billy Crampton and Shane something-or-other, and they were already 15. Maddy just shy of 3 years old in any event. Anyway...the talent show stuff. It's really funny to see this stuff in here, because we haven't really done much with high school stuff in awhile. Will doesn't really a give a shit about his part in the high school social scene as he's too busy jetting around to Boystown parties and being a real estate mogul, and JJ hasn't attended high school since 9th grade as he was too busy reaching his goal of becoming a figure skating champ. It was funny to be reminded that John and Marie are very much into it, which is just so normal for that age. Of course, John and Marie had the closest-to-normal upbringing of the legacy teen characters on the show. They were rich, but they also came from the only real nuclear family unit. I honestly thought that Mark felt like JJ was detached from the general storyline BECAUSE of his figure skating career, and why he seemed to work out a very methodical and very organic way of ending JJ's career and moving him into other things. It was a lot of work, and a lot of research, and Mark would constantly have us change up the timeline when we'd tell him that, "No, JJ's actually got to be in Scotland" when he wanted him in California for a reason. This gives Mark a lot more latitude about being able to use JJ without having to explain which competition in which country he's at. As for the fashion stuff; I mean it's been pretty clear that JJ loves this stuff, but I don't really think Mark's moving him into becoming a designer or something like that. JJ's more along the lines of someone who knows what looks good and advises the fashion magazine editor, without really taking it to something formal. I think JJ's right now kind of just flitting around, seeing how things fit- I can't picture himself getting too heavy into anything particular right now after his very intense 5-year career.

The really nice thing about this time period we're in now is that 80's songs are starting to become "cool" again, and 1970's rock is "classic". But 90's stuff is kind of just passe and old, although again, I went with this version because I listened to a contemporary cover that was just awful.

You're thinking of the original by Kim Wilde, which came out in 1981. This is the cover by the Muffs, which kicked off the movie Clueless in 1995 Clueless kind of "defines" that generation of teenagers who aren't quite Gen Xers, but aren't quite Millennials. (I'd classify them as people born in the late 70's/early 80's, and attended high school in the mid/late 90's.) It was the first "post-grunge" teen movie. Daria is another really good look at that cohort. It was an MTV cartoon, but it actually nailed that Y2K high school vibe. The joke was that Daria had this depressive, cynical grungey vibe to her- but contrasted against late 90's American optimism and the sunny teen culture of the time. (Think TRL, boybands, Britney Spears, etc.) In terms of CAP, I'd say that Matt, Wade, Darius, Tony, Mary Ellen, and Gathan belong to that. Ella's kinda borderline- I'd link her more to Will's Millennial cohort, but she still had a significant amount of her high school experience in the 90's instead of the '00s. She's kind of like Blue-he was born in 1984 but I think he graduated in '01 because he skipped a grade.

Chapter 30 -When Will calls up Zach, who's at yet another college party. "Right Thurr" by Chingy -When Will and Buzz get it on. "Urgent" by Foreigner This classic rock tune plays a part in the new, 1980-set Richard Linklater Everybody Wants Some. (They NAILED how guys dressed in 1980. I was really impressed at how well they recreated the year 1980 for the most part...the girls were a little off for me, though.) Anybody else know this tune? I know Foreigner, but hadn't really heard this one before. "I Want to Know What Love Is" and "Hot-Blooded" are probably their best. -When Will starts his senior year of high school. "Kids in America" by The Muffs I feel weird about using 90's songs, because it's not old enough in 2003 to be retro cool yet like 80's stuff or classic like 70's stuff, but whatever. LOL. It's a great tune and I'm the DJ, damn it. I tried to think back to the O.C. but then remembered that they never really showed them in school that much, as most teen dramas are wont to do. So there's no identifiable song choice about the first day of school from that show. Oh, well. -When Will thinks for a mercifully brief moment that his father is dead. (Which he is not.) "Time after Time" by Eva Cassidy

Blue is so sexy when he goes on a rant. Just like Adam! (Well, if Adam was a skinny Latino guy from SoCal with a snarky attitude instead of a former Texan 18-year old jock boy-turned-36.) Ooh, interesting Tet. I wonder who it is. I also know that Prank vs. Prank is based in Philly. They're such Jersey Shore people, in the best way. Anyway, back to California... I might as well take this moment to mention the O.C., which premiered this month (August 2003) in CAP World. It had a very huge, if brief, social impact. It gave us the term "rager", as in a party, and "sick", as in good. Also saying "fro-yo." The fashion was pretty influential as well, with girls wearing peasant skirts and tank tops like Marissa, and vintage stripped polo shirts (Seth's deadl) becoming pretty popular on guys as well. The real legacy of the show though is the incredible, incredible soundtrack, which included Phantom Plant, Death Cab For Cute, the Shins, the Dandy Warhols, Imogen Heap, etc etc etc. I really think the show was really good at shaping the "look" and "feel" of the 2000's, and got us past the transitional phase between the 1990's and the 2000's. It also gave us a great look into the greed and ultimately empty housing wealth bubble of the 2000's. (Jimmy's storyline was eerily prescient for what would go down later in the decade.) One really cool factoid- in 2004, students at UC Berkeley created a scholarship for public defenders in the name of Sandy Cohen. I hope it's still going- that's such a cool testament to just how much influence the show had. I've always tended towards liking cult t.v. shows, so it was such a rare experience to be into a show that EVERYBODY was watching, at least during its first two seasons. Finally..."Welcome to the O.C., bitch! This is how it's done in Orange County!" So, I'm kind of curious though...the Chino as presented in The O.C. basically depicted it as a downtrodden, tough, blue-collared city that was pretty hopeless and crime ridden. (Complete with blue tinge lighting.) Was it really that bad, or was it a total exaggeration? I think the city blamed the OC for P.F. Chang's not wanting to locate there.

Hey, did anyone get a chance to check out the movie trailer for Richard Linklater's newest film, ? It's set during the opening weekend of the 1980-1981 school year at a Texas college, and follows a freshmen pitcher as he adjusts to life as a member of college baseball. I was able to catch a screening of the movie last Friday. (It's pretty limited release.) It was a pretty fun ride, and we get to see them go through all these different party scenes as the story goes on- disco, country western, punk, and New Wave alternative- really cool to watch. I thought they did a great job with depicting the year 1980- right between the mellowed, relaxed vibes of the Stagflation 1970's, and the bright, preppy Reagonomic 1980's. I really encourage people to catch this one. It's such a delightful little time machine.

Hank Green (brother of John) did a video where he showcases YouTuber culture in Los Angeles: It's interesting to see how "celebrity" has been splintered by the arrival of the internet. You can have someone's who's got a massive fanbase, like Smosh, but nobody who doesn't follow YouTube would know them. Blue, do you know any famous YouTubers? I think there's an accessibility to them that makes them appealing- they're "famous", but not really famous, and it makes them regular, normal people that just happen to get millions of views on their videos.