methodwriter85

Chapter 50 -When Will shows off the American and French meals. "American National Anthem"/"French National Anthem" -When the gang watches the start of Operation Enduring Iraqi Freedom. "God Bless America" by Celine Dion (Live at the 2003 Super Bowl) -When the baby is born, and Will names him. "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service You're probably going to see this get used several more times throughout the stories. I'm thrilled that it "exists" now in Cap-world. I consider it a generation anthem- it really set a tone for the kind of 80's New Wave-inspired music that was going to become so popular with indie rock in this decade. And it just sounded like something wouldn't have heard in the 90's, and it really felt fresh and new and different.

Blue, is the Lumbersexual look a thing in California, or is it just an East Coast thing? It can be mistaken for the hipster look, but the idea is that you're like a rugged lumberjack, and more of an earthy look: Confessions of A Lumbersexual (Time Magazine, November 2014) I can see JJ and Stefan being absolutely horrified at thought of this being sexy: The look seems very popular for whatever reason right now- going into the whole current "big bushy beard" trendy going on right now. Anyway, the term is relatively new, coined on Urban Dictionary in 2010, and gaining media notice in 2014. I wonder if Zach would become a lumbersexual on the off-season from football with a big bushy beard and lots of plaid....which CAP characters can you see becoming lumbersexual? In any event, I feel like the 20-something/30-something guy who is clean-shaven and without any tattoos or piercings is becoming a rare breed indeed. LOL. I can claim the last two but even I tend to rock scruff, because I'm too lazy to shave every day. We're a long way from the Queer Eye look that was so popular and so, so JJ.

There's this really funny anecdote in a book called Freakanomics, about naming babies and what they say about one's racial/socioeconomic background. One black mother wanted to name her daughter after Tempest Bledsoe on the Cosby Show. But she spelled it wrong and the baby was called Temptress, without the realization that it was A.) a misspelling, and B.) Temptress means a manipulative slut. I've joked to people that my name sounds like a Witness Protection Program name it's so generic.

I'm pretty sure the indication was that in the Mad Men universe, Don came up with the ad.

Chapter 49 -When JJ arrives in Palo Alto, utterly depressed about his career. "Moon River" from Breakfast At Tiffany's Alternate, to get REALLY depressing: "Asleep" from The Perks Of Being A Wallflower Anybody else remember this tune from the Perks of Being A Wallflower? It's an obscure 80's tune. -When JJ and Will have their talk about life. "Orange Sky" by Alexei Murdoch Thank you, the O.C. Soundtrack Mix 1. I'm excited now that we've hit the point in time where more songs that came from the O.C. soundtrack exist. -When JJ arrives at the Boston house, with the knowledge that his career is basically over for the next year, and his relationship with Alex is going to come to an end. Basically, a completely depressed mess. "Guess I'm Doing Fine" by Beck -When JJ tries to get through the dinner by putting on his fun persona, and then makes love with Alex as a distraction. "How To Fight Loneliness" by Wilco I dug deep for these, Mark.I hope you enjoyed it. I do think that doing music recs for JJ chapters usually allows me to use much more depressing music than I'd ever use for Will. LOL.

Tim and Mark's quotes from the reviews: Does he try to be a regular (for a 1 percenter) teenager? Can he do things he's never really done before- like getting drunk at a party, getting high because he no longer has to worry about drug tests, and do normal stupid kid stuff? You're written JJ as a very uptight guy who's that way mostly because he's very concerned about the image he has to project. (And, well, he's also a major snob.) I'd love to see him loosen up a little bit now that the pressure is off him to be the Disney-friendly JJ Schluter, Elite Figure Skater. Probably still won't go anything near as NC-17 wild as Will in Rome, but maybe something like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. (God, I am so gay.) I like JJ being more proper than his brothers and I hope we keep it that way! LOL. Another thing from the chapter I loved: I loved the insight here. Absolutely loved it. It's bang-on true about the differences between Will, Darius, and JJ. Will's anchor is the place where his family came from. He's pretty much the only family member of his generation that seems to give any kind of shit about Claremont. Darius's anchor is where he grew up- where he was Mr. Popular at Malibu High School and had his fun as the Prince of the Colony. (And I'm sure he did an awful lot of partying around the Los Angeles social scene.) JJ's different. His adolescence years have been shaped by hotels and competitions and traveling, not having things like best friends or favorite hang-outs, etc etc. He doesn't have that kind of anchor, or feel that he belongs to a place. Maybe part of it is just JJ's sign- he's a Sagittarius, and a big part of that is a real love of traveling and experiencing new places. I think JJ's ultimately winding up a jet-setting Continental type, but we'll see.

Rihanna is just the mis-spelling of a pagan goddess, Rhiannon. And the name of a kick-ass song by Fleetwood Mac:

Since JJ's figure skating career is on hold for a year,I vote for JJ to go back to high school, and become a Corbin-from-The-English-Year-inspired head-bitch-in-charge. (I've always thought Corbin would have made a great CAP character.) Or at least along the lines of Blair Waldorf. Also, Tiffany's baby is due in March, as has been said in the story, so we should be seeing Baby Van Den Boss 2. I think it will be a girl, to give some balance...I'd like her to be named Hailey. That was really a really popular name for the time period. There are currently a lot of girls named Hailey who were born in the late 90's/early 2000's.

So if any of you are expectant, or you're like me and just fascinated by naming trends and what they say about contemporary society, check out this list of 12 obscure baby names that might end up on the rise: 12 Cool Baby Names That Are on the Rise I'm digging Collins, Holland, Ford, and Bode.

In honor of Mad Men...

JJ being out for the 2003-2004 season basically lines up with his senior year of high school- would he go to a school in Boston, or would he try to finish at a school in California? As Mark and Blue have pointed out, this family isn't going to let him get away with a GED, and they'd want him to have a diploma from a good high school. He no longer has the excuse of skating to keep from attending school. I don't think his family would be cool with him continuing to home school when it's not necessary anymore. I wonder what's going to happen there. I personally like the idea of JJ at a bitchy East Coast private school ala Gossip Girl or Cruel Intentions. I'd love to see him become the Blair Waldorf of his school. LOL. (He is SOOOO the Blair to Will's Serena.) I kinda feel like JJ has been in this LONG character arc about how he can't really just hide in a safe cocoon away from the rest of the world. That is JJ's natural instinct. His life started to get dominated by skating in 1998, with Jeanine as his stage mother and Tiffany as his coach/other mother. Then Jeanine went crazy, and his coach started molesting him. Then Robbie got involved with JJ's life and JJ made him into his replacement Jeanine, and things got worse. Then 9/11 happened, with Jeanine and Robbie both being gone, and the end result is that Will has taken a big interest in JJ's life and won't let him just stomp off onto his own. Now JJ's in the blush of his first love, but at the same time, he can't just pull Alex into his own world and make everything about him because Alex has his own family. And now JJ doesn't have the refuge of the ice anymore- who is he away from being JJ the Figure Skater? He doesn't have any place to hide anymore. Now he really has to deal with himself. It'll be interesting to see what his life is going to be like now that he can't just go the ice whenever he doesn't want to deal with something. I'm kind of assuming that's why Mark decided to give JJ this injury and not just something that might have kept him away for a few months.

The iconic show about advertising ended with the most iconic commercial of the 20th century. In honor of the finale...check out the single version of Seriously though, I'm thrilled Mad Men referenced that ad. I think it's such a brilliant piece of advertising with a message that still resonates today- share a Coke with a friend and make a bond for a little while regardless of who they are. Here's the real origin story behind the ad- Bill Backer was on a flight layover, and noticed that the people who were irritated by the delayed made the best of the situation by sitting down and sharing stories over Coke. That's why it was the Real Thing- coke presented a common bond for people to relate to one another. Anyway, here's the actual ad: I mean really, just brilliant. Who doesn't feel good just by watching all these cheerful happy people of varying nations getting along as they bond over their love of Coke? Although I do think it's interesting when you consider the impact of globalization/Westernization, and the people who argue that it has led to the erosion of foreign cultures. The Coke kind of represents the incoming Westernization of the world, and the idea that these native cultures are going to be touched by things like Coke and McDonald's and KFC and other Western thing. Who here remembers the ad?

JJ has grown up far and away from the 15-year old brat that said he was going to be on the cover of a Wheaties box at 20 and didn't need school. And I loved Will confiding in JJ.

To be fair though, Chicago has a great skyline as well. San Francisco's skyline is pretty cool as well. Los Angeles, San Jose, Phoenix...those are pretty meh.

As Tet said, the teenagers that were here back around 2008-2009 grew up and entered their 20's as teenagers tend to do. The Gay Teen forum was much more active back then- I was in my early 20's and I was part of it to offer advice to kids who were going off to college.

So we're now in 2003...check out this Top 100 Billboard Countdown for 2003: 2003 was a REALLY hip-hop/R&B-heavy year. Luckily there was a lot of great indie rock/pop coming out that same year. However, I'm looking forward to using "Get Busy" by Sean and "Get Low" by Lil' Jon. Crunk n b was pretty fun.

My guess is that he's curious in an intellectual way about being gay- not that he's actually gay, but that he wonders what makes gay men tick. I honestly don't think he's actually gay- I think it's a thought experiment on his part to see how people would react to him if he were indeed gay- but you might as well tell him. At the very least so you can move on when he gently rejects you.

What the hell was with that awful wig they put on Victoria Principal? I remember the first time I saw that movie, I thought there was an earlier draft of the movie where the character she was playing was a street-smart black woman, but they lost the black part but dressed her like Pam Grier in Coffy anyway. I'm kinda surprised they didn't reboot Earthquake, but then again the concept has been done many times over, as seen in the latest effort. I'm kind of surprised that Private Tim didn't defend L.A.'s skyline. I remember his husband Matthew K going on a tear about how Los Angeles is NOT pro-low density and how all these skyscrapers were getting built. LOL. Anyway..check out the gorgeous UCLA Campus in this video: This will apparently be Zach's home for the next four years.

I posted this on Reddit, in a sub that talks about pleasant encounters you've had with people that left a good impression on you. Here's a tale of an platonic stranger encounter I had when I was 21... *** When I was in high school, I was a hormonal gay teenager who had two minute crushes on any cute guy that crossed my path. There was this one guy, I can't even remember his name now, who was a senior when I was a freshmen. He was an artistic type, with auburn hair with sideburns that framed his long face, big brown eyes, fashionably thin, and alabaster skin. Very good-looking. I never really approached him or had any kind of sustained crush on him because we never had any classes together or ever interacted, but I definitely noticed him. About six years later during the start of the 2007-2008 school year, I was a college student hanging out with this group of alternative hipster types, who would throw parties. I went to the house barbeque of one quirky hipster girl that did like me, but the party was about to move over to this one guy's house, who did not like me at all. When that party started breaking up, Jake told me this bullshit story about how they didn't have enough room at his house for me to go. I didn't really make a big deal about it, Some guy who straggled and was kind of sitting outside in a lawn chair basically struck up a conversation with me slightly before Jake came out to talk to me about how "there was no space for me at his house." As dusk turned to night Guy and I talked a bit about our lives. In retrospect this guy was probably very high and very much in need for someone to talk to, which made him way more candid than a young guy usually is to some random dude. Guy told me that he was a struggling heroin addict. He had been dealing with this dramatic relationship with a girl that he was very much in love with, but also using with. Guy told me about how he had a period in his life where he felt very strong, how yoga had made him very muscular and fit, and how much he loved his girlfriend and tried to have a life with her. Guy was also very fascinated by Japanese culture (I think he mentioned doing martial arts), and he wanted to move there someday. But his heroin addiction was destroying him, both physically and emotionally, and he wanted to get out of it but couldn't figure how. When we talked, I realized that Guy was the cute senior guy I remembered crushing on whenever I saw him around the school....he looked a bit different...still beautiful, but his face had become slightly bloated, he was stockier as opposed to rail thin, his hair was much shorter and spiky instead of curling around his ears, and his skin was patchy. Again, this was just a guy I thought had been pretty cute...not any guy I spent more than two seconds thinking about after I saw him walking around the hallways, so it took me awhile to place him. I just listened to Guy talk about his problems, and I shared some of my own. Then Guy listened as Jake went on his b.s. speech to me about not having room at his house. After Jake left, Guy told me, "You know that Jake just doesn't want you there because he doesn't like you, right?" I gave him a "No, duh" face and then he continued telling me about how Jake had told him what an annoying, douchey guy I was. Then Guy said, "But after talking to you...the guy that Jake described, and the guy that I'm talking to right now...you're nothing like that. And whatever beef Jake is having with you, it's not on you. You're not the bad guy here. There is nothing wrong with you." This guy, who was all of about 22 or 23 years old and struggling with some VERY serious demons, took the time out to tell me that he thought I was a quality person, after someone had just Mean-Guyed the hell out of me. The conversation soon broke up and we went our separate ways. I don't remember ever seeing him again...I didn't really hang out that much with that crowd going into that school year because I made a good friend that I hung out with a lot more, and hipsters were not his thing, and Jake continued being adamant about how much he didn't want me around so I stopped getting invited to the parties they threw. Which was fine by me because I had made friends I fit in better with by then. I hope Guy's in a good place. At 21, I thought it was just cool that this guy that I had randomly run into this guy from high school that I had never interacted with before. I had appreciated him thinking that he thought I was cool, as stoned as he was. At 29, and from the perspective of losing a very good friend to a heroin dose, I just hope that Guy found whatever inner peace he was looking for, and he's just another happy 30-ish year old guy...maybe in Japan with a loving wife doing yoga all the time. Guy was just as beautiful on the inside as I thought he was on the outside. He deserves to be living a good life, and I hope he is. As a post-script, Jake came up to me in a bar about five years later to say hi. I was shocked, but then asked him about his life and talked about mine. Then Jake said to me, "Dude, I really just came up to say hi." Then walked away. I thought to myself, "Thank you for reminding me why I hated you so much back then, Jake!"

So, the reason why Los Angeles has such a bland skyline is because in 1974, it was decreed that all new skyscrapers had to have helicopter pads on top, leading to typical boxy, flat-topped skyscrapers. It was repealed in 2014, which means that Los Angelenos might finally someday get a skyline that could rival San Francisco's. (Well, probably not, but still.) Historically, Los Angeles has favored sprawl and low-height buildings. It'll be interesting to see if Los Angeles will make a bold turn towards high-rises and higher-density development, and more creative architecture. It probably won't ever rival New York City, but eh...it could get interesting. Do you guys think that Phoenix's skyline kind of resembles Los Angeles's circa the 1980's? I remember reading somewhere that they filmed a movie set in 80's Los Angeles for that reason- Phoenix resembles 80's Los Angeles.

I cannot get over how real and true-to-life the sex scenes were. I hope Adam doesn't screw this up.

I am really impressed at the level of detail you put into this. I remembered the '06 Election pretty vividly- it was a thorough rejection of the Bush Years.

I went to University of Delaware which was mainly comprised of upper-middle class kids from New Jersey and Long Island, so this stuff about the South is interesting.

Hey, really enjoying this, especially because it's contemporary to my college years- I was in college from '05 to '10. Anyway, you might want to get a little tighter with the editing- I've noticed little typos throughout the first two chapters. Also, in the scene where they talk about gay people and Adam thinks about how it's 2006, not 1986...well, again...it's still 2005 in the story.

I'm pretty sure the Danfields are too busy with their tobacco plantations and setting up Virginia society to show up in the story. They're probably also getting themselves involved with the building of the new District of Columbia.