methodwriter85

Right. It's the 2000's. The 2000's were like the 80's in that "Greed is good" was the mantra again (although we weren't nearly as open about that), and it was the era of McMansions and SUV's and a love for status symbols that you bought on credit. And you gotta take into credit the fact that Matt grew up in a Shaker Heights Colonial mansion, at the country club, and in private schools. There might have been middle class people there, but it's not like Matt ever really interacted much with them. Cole was probably the first normal, middle-class guy friend he ever had. Exactly. Does anyone think that Matt hung out with the kids who went to Shaker Heights High? He probably attended both the Lower Campus and the Upper Campus of the University School. I thought it would be interesting to have a guy who's a Hayes in blood but was raised as a total Blue Blood snob, and that's where Mark had the idea to make him from an affluent, old money (not anywhere near Wade's family but still rich) family. Although unlike Wade, the Carrswolds seem like they're at the end of the line, about to die out, which is why they adopted Matt to try and keep the family line going. We never wrote Matt as having cousins, aunts, or uncles, right? I kinda figured that both his parents were only children, and the Carrswold line just wasn't that fertile, which is why they're dying out. It does happen- Abraham Lincoln's line died out by 1985. I liked the bit about what Matt's parents had to do in order to fly. Nice touch about the post-9/11 world. I'm still waiting for you to add in "Terror Level" color alerts, though. LOL. (Although I can't remember- were we still having those in 2002 or had that already faded out?)

Here's another article about it...Details Revealed for Comcast Innovation Center.

Wait, Ben's the carpenter who looks like Theo James. Who is the Jewish lawyer again? Is his name also Ben? God, I can't keep these recurring secondary characters straight. Anyway, let's take a few minutes to appreciate Theo James and his wonderful beauty. Good on him for the success of Divergent. (Blue, did you see the movie yet?)

There's this humor piece, called the United States of Bro, which purports to be a map of all the bro types in the country. Here's what they said about my area, and I think it pretty much nailed it: Other than the poor parents bit, that is literally a description of hundreds and hundreds of guys I saw walking around University of Delaware. It was culture shock when I went to school in Western P.A. and you didn't see boat shoes and salmon colored shorts as far as the eye could see. What does it say about your area? (If you're from the U.S.) Do they get it right? What are some things/areas they missed?

Yeah, we use Verizon. Eh.

You totally had a boyfriend like Matt, didn't you? LOL. I've adored Matt every since he admired himself in the mirror in the opening chapter of Bloodlines, so I'm glad to have him narrating again. He's a spoiled brat but his heart is pretty good. In any event, is there any guy who doesn't look back on what he was like at 22 and cringe? Most guys that age still have a lot of growing up left to do. It's why I find guys in their mid/late 30's pretty sexy- still youngish, but with experience and less of that "I know everything and am right about everything" attitude, because of said experience.

I'm not sure about soulmates, but this to me has been the barometer of what I see as true love:

I thought they basically stopped as soon as they found out that Kevin was his nephew or whatever the hell he was. It took awhile- remember, we met him as "Sergio." It wasn't until deep in Millennium, after Brad had done the whole "You get a new car!" deal that we found out who Sergio/Kevin actually was. I kind of wonder if Sergio used a fake Italian accent to go with the fake name, and if he still does that, or he's gone back to being Kevin. I think you're right in terms of actual lifestyle, but you're still adjusting. He has to build new relationships with new professors, learn his way around a new school, and build new friendships after creating some very tight friendships in college. I'm not expecting a flameout, but I think the bulk of people who make the jump have issues with it because it is a change, and if Matt were completely and seamlessly transitioned into grad school, that'd be a boring as hell read. He's been Mr. Big Man on Campus for 4 years of his life. Adjusting out of that should take a bit from him. I wonder if Matt will have friends who do flameout. It does happen. I knew a girl who decided to treat her first year of grad school like her first year of college socially, and then of course flamed out. I'm not even sure she had to do a thesis- she was in student development or something like that. I remember when I started grad school, I read this blog of a woman who dropped out of her PhD program, and I felt freaked out and wondered if I couldn't cut it. I think there was 1 girl who dropped out, and 1 guy who had to take out of our seminar (and add another semester to his load) because the professor of that particular 601 seminar told him that he was one of the worst writers that she'd ever come across in her life, and that based on his writing he shouldn't even be in grad school. (Having read his stuff it was true, but man, harsh.) I'm curious though- did anyone here have a grad school experience that was joyful and easy? On the opposite side, did anyone flunk grad school? (Or have stories of stellar flameouts.) In my case- I was somewhere in the middle. It was hard, but I managed to graduate with a 3.75. My biggest disappointment was that I didn't have a close co-hort group- in some years that happens, but in my case it didn't. I think my biggest "shell shock" moment from grad school was when we were told for my 614 class that we were reading and writing book reviews every single week. Is there a lot of reading for finance programs, or no? I know Wade should probably be slammed with thousands of pages to read every week as a law student. It's why study groups and outlines are crucial, right?

My point isn't that Matt won't do well. The point is that grad school isn't a cakewalk even if you're not doing a thesis, and you don't get coddled at any point during your graduate career, the way you sometimes do in undergrad. And Matt's frat boy lifestyle will have to be adjusted at least a little bit to accommodate the vastly increased amount of homework. Instead of partying every single night, he might have to cut back to 3 nights a week. LOL. He'll learn more about time management than he ever wanted to know. LOL. Grad school is not college, the way college is not high school. It's an adjustment, and it usually takes awhile. How Matt adjusts to the changes should be interesting. I think the challenges created some great character growth in myself, and I hope it does the same for Matt.

Well, damn. You learn new things everyday. My point remains the same that I could see him as Ben. Eh. At least Paul Rudd and Ben Feldman are definitely Jewish. LOL.

Right. In any event, grad school should be a pretty brutal awakening for Matt. Wade seems like he'll transition well, but I think it'll take Matt a couple of weeks to adjust.

I feel like Matt reminds you of an ex-boyfriend, like Tony reminds Private Tim of his. LOL. I think I like that Matt has a very spoiled only child brat attitude. It makes total sense for his upbringing, and it's not like his frat boy college party boy lifestyle would have disabused him of that. Now he's off to grad school.This is where reality starts to hit him, and I'm interesting in seeing how he responds. If everybody were perfect with little need for emotional growth, it'd be one boring story.

I think it's being called "Comcast Innovation and Technology Center."

Or another utterly adorable Jew for Ben, Chuck's Zachary Levi: Probably out of all of them, Zachary Levi is the one I can totally buy as a lawyer. When his hair's short he can totally rock that White Collar America look. I'm going to admit, I tend to have a thing for Jewish guys. I tend to like glossy dark curls, which most of them tend to have. It might also be that University of Delaware had a pretty significant Jewish presence. My friend Steve used to joke that I was a Secret Jewish guy because I would pick up spare change on the street and stuff. LOL.

Paul Rudd as Ben? What an adorable Jew. I swear, the guy never seems to age. He's in his mid-40s and can still pass for thirtysomething. Lucky genes. Or Ben Feldman from Mad Men: Another utterly adorable Jew.

Chapter 9 -When Matt, overcome by his emotions, leaves the hospital. "Just Like A Pill" by Pink -When Matt kicks the shit out of Brad. "Boom" by P.O.D. -When Will and Matt bond, and Matt realizes the shoe is on the other foot. "Screaming Infidelities" by Dashboard Confessional This video makes me want to run out to Hot Topic and get a leather cuff and a vintage ringer t-shirt. Maybe a chain wallet.

I'd never seen Silver Spoons until OnDemand ran them like 8 years ago...typical fun cheesy 80's sitcom. Jason Bateman was the great comic relief on the show. I knew Rick Schroder from his NYPD Blue days and 90's Lifetime Movie Days. He's one of those lucky child stars who seem to transition to adulthood relatively unscathed. Anyway, I kind of figured that if anything, PrivateTim would have to know Beverly Hills 90210. I mean, he basically lived a bisexual version of it, right?;-) West Bev's class of '93 would have been his peers, age-wise. I'm going to guess PrivateTim was the Brandon of his group.

I thought Matt being in the hospital was a pretty dire emergency. He might have been okay and stable and not in critical condition, but car crash injuries have a funny way of turning out to be worse than people think, and you just never know. (Remember the episode of Growing Pains where Carol's boyfriend Sandy dies after a car crash despite initially being okay because his internal injuries were worse than they thought? That does happen.) There's a reason why they have an observation period. If it were Darius or JJ in the hospital, Will would have done the same exact thing, because I can't see a parent not wanting to drop everything and rush to the hospital for their kid. Brad may or may not see Matt as a son, but Will does see Matt as his brother now, and he gave him the brother treatment here.

The iconic pop culture media website, TWOP, is closing its door.It's a total bummer. I grew up on posting on the site. I started posting there when I was 14 years old, in the spring of 2000. That is literally half of my life. I remember back in those days, my posts would likely revolve around the WB line-up...Dawson's Creek, Buffy, Popular (THAT was a big one for me because the board there was really active), Roswell (which was able to have 3 seasons instead of just 1 because the members of then-MightyBigTV banded together to get the show renewed), and Felicity. (I remember the on-going theory was that Ben was going to eventually abuse Felicity- didn't happen, but still.) Then the summer of 2000 happened, and with it, Survivor, and the big boom of the reality show phenomenon. , and that's largely because of the person who recapped it, and declared it one of the nastiest, hateful speeches she'd ever seen on T.V. Reality shows would eventually morph into stuff like The Osbournes and The Hills, but I don't think anything will ever top or replicate the Survivor phenomenon, where you suddenly saw ordinary people being turned into household names because they were appearing as themselves on a t.v. show. (You got a preview of that on the Real World, but Survivor was a much bigger show.) The discussions we had on MightyBigTV as this developed was pretty interesting, and somewhere during this era I learned the term :snark", and it became a part of my personality. Another term that I learned from TWOP in this era, when American Idol hit big in 2002, was the term "eyefuck", which described how Justin Guarini's eyes looked while singing on camera- it was kind of the updated term for the old-timey term "bedroom eyes." After Survivor and American Idol, the next big show that I got into while reading MightyBigTV/TWOP was The O.C., in 2003. It was a hit show that had a lot of posters talking, and loads of controversy, especially over the lack of acting chops of Mischa Barton, and the fast decline in quality of the show, which seemed to have imploded during season 3 but then given a chance to redeem itself during a shortened season 4 run.Here, I picked up the term "bromance" as Ryan Atwood and Seth Cohen had a great bromance. Also at this same time period, I got into the show Veronica Mars, which was tailor-made for a place like TWOP because the show actually had a lot of race, class, and gender conflicts that made for great discussion. In early 2005, my high school classmate appeared on the reality t.v. show on MTV called Made as a "Basketball Jock Who Learns Ballet", and I was so excited and posted a lot about it. He read the site and actually figured out who I was, and the whole thing got out, so I got a little bit of grief about it. In retrospect, that was an interesting lesson for me as a teenager to learn about the idea that what you say and do on the internet can come back to haunt you. Nowadays we hear so much about kids who overshare or post stupid things on the internet, and I kinda felt like a person my age was right at the beginning of all that. As the years went on, the site changed, the way people view T.V. shows changed(just think- in 2000 Ipods didn't exist and now people watch T.V. on them), and the site got more and more regulated. I'm still pretty active in TWOP, but I haven't quite thrown myself into the community the way I used to. Part of it is that at some point, my life stopped revolving around the WB lineup. (Seriously, my 14/15 year old journal entries were all about watching episodes of Buffy and the like.) I also think I took a lot of that enthusasm for discussion that I had with TWOP when I was a teenager and put it into Adam's many iterations of this bar, and Gay Authors. I know Adam rolls his eyes when I go on about the Hunger Games or other pop culture stuff instead of analyzing Mozart's music or pondering Kafka, but I do think it's a good thing to analyze pop culture. It often has a way of putting a mirror on contemporary society, and giving us a sense of where we're at and what we're valuing. (Or not valuing.) Not to mention throw a spotlight on the social issues that are plaguing us. I actually remember being surprised when I watched OnDemand streamings of the 80's sitcom Facts of Life and being surprised at how many of the topics they covered were still VERY relevant to contemporary society- lesbianism, rape, teen suicide, eating disorders, human trafficking, the sexualization of young girls by the media, the push for Abstinence -Only sex education, racism, the treatment of handicapped people, the controversy that can surround a university donation, etc etc. I think TWOP taught me how to argue a point, how to snark, and most importantly, how to analyze a story's characters, writing, and acting. It made me think about how T.V. is often written in cliches and generic formulas, and then wonder WHY those cliches and stereotypes exist. And really appreciate when a show goes against the mold. If a moment on T.V. moved me, I learned to articulate WHY it moved me.And if it left me cold, I learned to articulate why it didn't move me. If I had a problem with the writing or creative direction or acting of a t.v. show, I learned to go beyond just saying "I think Riley on Buffy is a boring male Mary Sue." I think those were valuable things to learn. Generally, I think TWOP had a pretty positive influence on me (although Gay Authors posters can get at me for how intense I can be giving feedback to Mark Arbour), and I'll miss all of the intelligent pop culture analysis. It's so strange- I posted at that place for an entire half of my life. It's basically always been around, so I never thought it might not be around. It's not quite as looming large in my life as it used to (especially back when they had the Off-Topic board and I made a ton of e-friends from there), but it was a part for an incredibly long time (14 years) and I'll definitely miss it.

Here's another nice photo of the Philly skyline, this time looking at City Hall, which was the highest point in the city until 1987.

I watched Judith Light on Dallas, and thought her iteration of an older bitch on wheels would make a great ABC. Or some other really crazy older head bitch in charge. As for Elizabitch...Brooke Shields? I always thought Brooke Shields would have made a great politican's wife. And I kinda figured that Elizabitch had to be someone who was a great beauty in her youth. Brooke Shields was considered the most beautiful woman in the world when she was 15, so...yeah. My other idea for Elizabeth Danfield...Daphne Zuniga? She's always had a great bitchface. You would probably know her best as Jo on Melrose Place. She's also known for playing Brooke's bitchy mother on One Tree Hill. Can I just say that it's nice to see actresses over the age of 40 who haven't turned their faces into immovable monuments to plastic surgery that no longer resemble themselves? *cough* Meg Ryan *cough* Yay for actresses letting themselves age naturally!

Good point- the bulk of this generation can't even legally drink yet. As for Wade, I can see it- but the problem is that he also has his responsibilites to the Danfield clan. It seems like he's the essential head of family now for them, with the Senator gone, and with his constant viligance to neutralize Elizabeth Danfield's power grabs I think he might be stretched a bit thin.

It'd make you about Kinsey 4 or 5. I'm a straight-up 6. I can look at an attractive woman and appreciate her beauty like a painting, but I've never felt aroused by a woman. For me to call someone "bisexual" I think they'd have to be a bit beyond just "straight with some gay experiences" or "gay with some straight experiences"- I'd say at least an 80/20 split.

I don't think there will necessarily be a need for a "head of the family" by the time Will and his co-horts are middle-aged and Brad's co-horts are senior citizens, in the 2020's/2030's. I kinda feel like J.P. really is the end of the line for that. Though Escorial is "home base" for these people, I don't really see the French family system working for them as time goes on, especially given how spread out they all seem to be getting. It's like the du Ponts- they had a family head and almost everyone worked for the family company, but as they became more of a global conglomerate and the family branches spread far out, that faded away. I think what we'd see instead will be someone will take over Escorial and be "family head" in the sense that they hold all the big family gatherings, but being the big decision maker that everyone follows? I can't see that happening- especially since it seems like it's not a foregone conclusion that Darius, Will, John, Marie, and JJ are going to work in the family company (Will seems like he'll at least be an active board member, but Darius, John, and Marie are question marks while I can't see JJ being remotely interested in it), which means that you really don't have the same kind of set-up that you still had going through Brad's generation, where the bulk of everybody there save for Jack was involved in one of the off-shots of the family business in some kind of very invested way. Although if it would be anybody, I'd go with Darius. He seems like the only person with a clear head and ability to get things done with little dramatics and the added bonus is that everyone gets along with him, which can't be said for Will or JJ. Marie seems more like a rebel type, while John seems more like a loyal follower.

Nirvana came out when I was 5 years old, but I had older siblings so I listened to it that way. "In Bloom" is my favorite song by them.