methodwriter85

Yeah, toddlers are adorable when they're in good moods. I've watched four nieces and 1 nephew grow up, ranging in age from 19 to the nephew, who's 14 months. I have a set of twin nieces that are 2 and a half and they're freaking adorable. (Again, when they're not moody.) I think the cute age is about 1 year to 7 years old. By 8, they start heading into tween territory and it's not quite as cute anymore. As for Marie and JJ, they're both 16 now. I think Mark told me that JJ won't get a car because he prefers being chauffeured around, but Marie strikes me as an independent type who'd want one. (Not quite as fervent as Will, but the independent streak is still there.) I can't see Marie driving a BMW because that seems like the car her mother would drive, so maybe an Audi? Or it could be something really quirky. I'd love for a scene where Marie and Will hang out and do the talk and drive...I really like that friendship.

Bring Blockbusters Back To California With Increased Film Incentives I think it's interesting that the California film industry has ceded some ground. It's been pretty cool to hear about the rise of the film industry in Georgia, Louisiana, and Pittsburgh over the past decade. I do think its kind of funny that there are movies or t.v. shows that are actually set in California but filmed elsewhere- the first two seasons of Teen Wolf filmed in Georgia, and the show Graceland was filmed in Florida. I'm so used to seeing California locations double for other places. Like, you know, Simi Valley doubling for Minnesota prairie land.

I don't think Tony is an actively malicious person. I think he's very selfish but at the same time, tries to talk a good game about being a good guy without actually being one, but I don't think he's in evil territory. Tony just strikes me as a guy who never really had to bother developing a personality because his looks alone attracted people, and he became a very "surface" person. Tony's issues about his father didn't make him a deeper person- it just kind of explains why he's not a very genuine person. He's good at telling people what they want to hear, but he can't follow through on it because it requires him to actually consider the feelings of other people. Anyway, as for this chapter, I really liked Matt taking Wade on Memory Lane. That was sweet and I loved all the callbacks to Be Rad. Oh, and I forgot to do what I normally do when we start new story...update the ages! So as of this point in the story... JP- About to turn 66 (Frank's gotta be around the same age- I think Isidore is 63) Stefan- Closing in on 57 Ace- 40 Brad- 39 Jack- 38 or 39 Claire- 37 Cody- About 32 Tiffany- 26 Matt- 22 Wade- 22 MaryEllen- About 21 Darius- 20 Gathan- 20 Beau- 19 or so Ella- 18, 19 in August Zach- About to turn 17 JJ- 16 Marie- 16 Will- 15 John- Almost 15 Courtney- 6 Maddy- 21 months Riley- 21 months

Chapter 3 -When Wade and Matt argue in the morning after. "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd -When Matt tries to lead down Wade on Memory Lane, and remind them of when they fell deeply in love in 1998-1999, and we montage over their happy moments. "Because of You" by 98 Degrees I actually went back to the Bloodlines Music thread and picked this tune from a Matt/Wade moment from when Wade decides to move into Escorial in chapter 50 of Bloodlines. - When Wade and Matt have sex again, after reminding him of the night that they cuddled together after Cole knocked him out at the hockey game back in '98. "2 Become 1" by The Spice Girls Browising the Bloodlines Music thread, I realized that I did actually score that moment. This was the tune for it. -When Matt announces that he's going to move back into Escorial, and discovers that he got into U. of Chicago. "A New Day" by Celine Dion

Colton Haynes just posted a link to his Abercrombie and Fitch photo shoot. Let's take a moment and drool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-fn5i0h0zU (He's our John Hobart, in case you guys didn't know.) Damn, the kid is beautiful. How Adam doesn't find him beautiful I'll never know.

I meant in Philadelphia. Of course there'd be ones in other places. Philadelphia doesn't have as many skyscapers as other cities...it had the Gentlement's Agreement until the 1980's, the city size wise is actually pretty large for an East Coast city (152 square miles), and of course the whole economic crash did a lot to halt skyscaper construction here. It's nice to see that they're playing catch-up. It'll never be Manhatten, but that might be a good thing. Like I said, Philly's only recently started building tall skyscapers again- there was a rush in the 1980's/early 1990's, then there was some activity again the early/mid-2000's, but the economic crash really halted it. (There was once a plan to build a 1,500 feet tall skyscaper here.) It's a sign that the city's moving up again.

Unfortunately University of Delaware is rather sports apathetic. Kinda disappointing.

First Look At The Plans for the Restaurant Atop New Comcast Tower There's never been a restaurant at 900 feet in the air before...pretty cool.

Something about the backing music of this tune sounds really familiar, and I can't figure out what it comes from. Thoughts?

I'm good with it, especially if it means that Claire looks like Vera Farmiga. Talent definitely abounds in that family. Good job, Blue.

Like the viewer before me, I really have to give you props in how damn good you are at creating dialogue that sounds like real people speaking. The conversation between Fitz and Jeff was so easy to picture because of it. I like to think that Jeff is a facet of you- a "what if?" of how you might have turned out if you had repressed your bisexuality. It's really interesting to follow and see what happens to this guy.

But Blue, like I said, Mark's described Marie's look and fashion sense in not-very wholesome, girl-next door terms. There's a bit of an avant-garde edge to her. But ooh, I like Taissa Farmiga for Marie: She can be the good girl, but she can also be pretty edgy. I loved her part in The Bling Ring. I also like that she's pretty, but not in a very cookie-cutter way.And she's actually the much-younger sister of Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring, Bates Motel), who Mark liked for Claire: Vera Farmiga has a very strong, Alpha Female look to her...I can so picture her in Junior Matriarch role for CAP. I just remembered that Mark did kind of sign off on Emma Stone for Marie, though. I do like the idea of Marie having big, feline-like eyes...and Emma Stone is so delightfully quirky and original. I like that she's not a cookie-cutter beauty.

This period gay short looks at a 14-year old boy in 1994 who, frustrated at his department store catalog offerings, learns that there's a big ol' stash of gay porn at a dumpster. I liked it because I'm right at that cusp between the guys who didn't have internet porn growing up, and those who did. My first introduction to porn was a stash of my father's Inches, Mandate, and Blue Boy (there's this incredibly complicated back story of why my dad had a gay porn stash that I won't get into) when I was 11 in 1997, but what I really grew up on was the Nifty Archive, when I started reading 98 Degrees, N'Sync, and BSB erotic fanfiction when I was 13 in 1999. (It's amazing how often a famous celebrity boybander would fall in love with an Average Joe 20-year old that they meet at a concert.) Even then, I still remember keeping a couple of pictures I cut out from catalogs or teen idol mags. As for the short itself, I really liked how it captured the "mood and feel" of adolescence in the 90's (check out the vintage Gameboy controller and Sub Pop sticker)...and despite being kind of skinny I thought the gay porn star really evoked a sense of circa mid-90's Blue Boy, right down to the period haircut. (It kinda seems like early/mid-90's porn seemed to lean towards bulkier, more roided out types than the late 90's/early '00s lean swimmer types, if I'm remembering correctly.) I also watched this and figured the bully came out sometime around 1999 or 2000.

Marie fucked her cousin, set up rumors that he got an STD, and has been described as dressing bohemian style ala Siena Miller circa 2005. I'm not sure "wholesome" would look good on her. I think there needs to be some edge to her look. I'm still surprised that Mark wasn't keen on AnnaSophia Robb, though. She had that blond hair, green eyes, and dollface that you'd expect Claire's daughter to have. But there's also this slight edge to her, like you wouldn't expect her to be sugary-sweet.

I have no idea how to use a rotary phone. They had one at my local library circa 1995 and someone had to dial it for me.

Well, he and Tiffany seem pretty much in agreement that they want to have another kid together. Since he's 22 and she's 26 and fertility issues are almost non-existent in CAP (Matt's parents notwithstanding) it seems inevitable that Riley will get a sibling.

Wade will have another kid with Tiffany, sure, but I can't see her becoming Wade's de-facto hostess for dinner parties and the like. She's trying to get JJ to reach the Olympics in 4 years. If he's successful, she'll probably take on other kids. That's a pretty massive time commitment from about August to March/April. Tiffany doesn't strike me as someone content to let Wade run the show while she acts as charming arm candy. I mean, her reasons for moving to Boston with Wade weren't entirely altruistic- on the East Coast, JJ's only real competition would be Johnny Weir. He's therefore got a much better chance at getting to Nationals than he would on the West Coast or in the Mid-West. It's not really swift- Will has been pissed off at Matt for 6 months. We can assume he got over most of the anger and was willing to accept a sincere apology. We gotta remember that these characters do live lives "off-book", so to speak. They're not the same people with the same issues that they were in November 2001, now that it's May/June 2002.

Chapter 2 -When Will and Matt clear out their feelings about what happened. "Creep" by Radiohead -When Matt and Wade decide that they're going to be friends with benefits. "End of The Road" by Boyz II Men This is a rather popular graduation song, so I thought it fit well. Private Tim, I hope you enjoyed that one, as it was a popular tune when you were Will's age.

As an update, Ethan called me tonight. We talked for two hours- he might have been a little drunk, but not anywhere near the way he was the last time we talked. Mainly, it was remembering our friend Steve. All these random little memories that we kept babbling about, because I think we both feel like we don't want to forget them. We don't want to forget his personality. His voice. His mannerisms. The way he wore this brown Sean John jacket and smelled of Black and Mild cigars. So many memories. And they're such good memories, for the most part- but at the same time, it hurts to remember them. He's the only one I know who fully gets that though, because he was closer to Steve than I was, and we knew him in the same context as all being students at the University of Delaware. We talked about the grieving process as well, and just how you can feel okay and not think about it, but then bam, something hits. I was telling him about how I can't get myself to delete Steve's number on my phone, and he was telling me about how he still calls him up from time to time to listen to the voicemail. And we both feel like it's still surreal, like it's not totally real, because we weren't there with Steve when he died. The realness of it all is probably going to come when we go to Steve's memorial in August. We also talked about the guilt we feel- he feels like it might have been his fault because getting stoned and drunk with Steve so much might have "encouraged him", and I feel guilt that I didn't third degree Steve about whether or not he was having problems. I feel like I might have just taken Steve at face value that things were going great for him, because I was in denial and wanted to believe that things were okay with him. (I have this e-friend who thinks that I had this idealized view of Steve, and I think he's right.) So then I told Ethan that I knew Steve a year longer and he was always like that, always trying to take the edge off. And he told me to remember that Steve was good at covering up his problems and looking like he had things together, and Steve might have been in denial about his own problems. And we both said to each other that we pretty much can't beat ourselves up about this. Which is true. All we could be was a friend. We couldn't save the guy. It's hard to accept that, but it's the truth- Steve had managed to survive a lot. He just used up too many chances and made too many bad decisions before it was finally his time to go. There is nothing I could have done, or Ethan could have done. We did talk about some day, getting the whole gang back together and just hang out; have something like our college rager days. I hope we do it. In the meantime, I tried to make it as clear as possible to Ethan that he can call me up whenever he's feeling bad, and I hope he does. Ethan's told me he's been drinking heavily (shocker) so I hope I can do what I can to help him work through that by listening to him, if he wants to be listened to. The biggest thing that I got out of being a friend to Steve for 6 years is that you've got to be willing to take the good and the bad with people...I was a fair-weather friend who stuck mainly to fair-weather friends until I really went through an incredible amount of crap when I was 21-22, and Steve helped me get through it. Steve stuck by people thick through thin, and he didn't judge. I want to try and hew to that as much as I can in my relationships and friendships going forward. That's probably the best way I can honor Steve- being as good of a friend to people as I possibly can be.

Yes. You know how many fucking hot blonde women with a bitchy look I had to look up? If I were straight or bi, it would have been fun, but since I'm not it got kind of boring.

To go on the female side...Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) as MaryEllen? (Mark, seriously- I really need to know what you think about in terms of MaryEllen's looks because it bugs the fuck out of me that I can't seem to nail it. Her and Marie.)

Since we're in 2002 now, I wonder if Mark is going to incorporate the D.C. Sniper attacks. That, Enron, and the war in Afghanistan felt like the big stories for the year. (it's a given that the 1-year anniversary of 9/11 is getting covered.) If JJ does indeed move to Boston, I really hope we get a catfight between him and Johnny Weir at the 2002 Eastern Sectionals. LOL. Have we heard someone say "Homeland Security" yet? That term feels like a huge part of what this decade was.

I haven't written a monologue in a really long time (we're talking undergrad, but I thought I'd give it a shot.) JUSTIN, late 20's, talks about the death of his good friend from college to a grief support group. So, hi. My name is Justin. I'm here to talk about my friend, Randy. Randy died of a drug overdose three months ago, today. He was 27 and just a couple of weeks short in getting his master's degree in drug counseling. The irony, right? It's strange. When he first died, I was pretty much doubled over in grief and crying all the time, you know? Now there are times when I can go an entire week or two where I'm okay, and I'm not mourning him. And when it does hit me, it's not as intense as it was...for the most part. It's just kind of more like a dull ache. I really am okay. Really, I am. But then every once in awhile, something just hits me. Like, the other day I was driving, and this really depressing song about teenage suicide came on. And even though the song really didn't have much to do with Randy's death, the emotions overwhelmed me. Because it made me think about the fact that Randy, from what he told me about high school, had a big struggle with depression and drug issues. Which then made me think about how Randy had managed to survive his shitty teen years. He graduated from college and get through the first half of his 20's, but then couldn't survive the last half. Like the guy almost made it, almost got past all the crap and drama of growing up, almost got to thirtysomething intact, but those demons managed to claim him right before he got to the finish line. So I started crying to the point where I had trouble driving because my eyes were stinging with tears. Sometimes I think I'm naive. I knew the guy had problems. In college, he was always looking for something to take the edge off. I remember one night in college we were supposed to try Oxycontin together- in retrospect, I'm glad that deal fell through, you know? Maybe I could have tried Oxy and been okay, but maybe I could have ended up like Randy. I don't know. I'm just trying to say that I knew the guy had problems, and I knew he was always wasted. I kept telling myself it was just a college thing. But when we hit grad school, I knew Randy was still going hard. Then it was just a twentysomething thing, and I figured he'd grow out of it, hit 30, become happy with his career, and settle down into a family. He didn't, of course, which is why he's no longer here. I have to tell myself that sometimes. Whenever I see something that I know he'd find hilarious, or if something crazy happened to me that I know Randy would love to give me shit about, I have to remind myself that I can't call him. I still have his number on my cell. I can't bring myself to delete it. The last time I talked to Randy was on November 20th. That's over three months. I have never gone this long without talking to Randy in the six years that I've known him. Knew him. It's strange to think that I might wind up going another forty or fifty years without ever talking to him again. He was such a great confidant....you could tell him anything. Randy was so observant, and so willing to call you out on your b.s If he thought you were being stupid, he wouldn't mince words. I felt like with him, I had someone that kept me grounded, and someone that I could be completely honest with, drop my guard entirely, and he wouldn't stop being my friend. That was the first friendship I've ever had like that. I'll never have anything like that again. I just miss him. And I get so embarrassed that it's been three months and I'm still crying about it. Like I just want to be okay with this, and I want to stop crying for good. I want to stop feeling angry about how he left. I want to be able to just let him go. I want to go back to the guy that I was the day before Randy died, where my biggest heartache was getting turned down for a job. But I know that I can't, and I know that this takes time. It just really, really sucks. SCENE.

Congrats, Sharon!

Hmm. I thought Theo James would have made more sense as Darius because he's got a vaguely middle Eastern look to him, but alright. I totally lust after Theo James. He's about to star in the movie Divergent with Shailene Woodley: Theo. God. *drools*