methodwriter85

As an aside...anyone else notice that it seems like a lot of gay men in their 20's and 30's are rocking facial hair now? Stark contrast from the smooth-faced Queer Eye days.

Right. There's also that. We had JJ scheduled to go to the 2000 Junior Grand Prix Final in Scotland on December 14th-17th (which he qualified for because we had him win a bronze at the Grand Prix in St. Gervais), but Mark had us change it because he wanted JJ around, and the result of JJ doing badly in school with Brad banning him from going off to Scotland led us to a really fantastic reveal. We've learned to flexible, in any event. We had JJ's 2000-2001 season so minutely planned, too. We learned from that when we refined the '01 - '02 season. For older guys, I see JJ with an Anderson Cooper type- an urbane, witty guy from a rich family with a killer fashion sense. For young guys, I see JJ with a gay version of Nicholas Hoult. Or maybe a Ronan Farrow type.He seems like a rather fey and a massive bitch, but with a pedigree and crazy family like his, it'd be hard not to be. He also graduated from law school at 21 and was a Rhodes scholar- impressive as hell. It's alleged that Woody Allen is not his biological father, but Frank Sinatra. Either way it's a pretty cool pedigree,. and this guy has one hell of a list of accomplishments for a 26-year old. I could see JJ attracted to that type even though he's not a genius himself. But yes, in any event, I can't see JJ with muscle boys.

Right. See, the thing is, Daisy and I have been writing out and planning a career timeline for JJ for 3 or 4 years now- we have a rough draft of where JJ goes up to the 2005-2006 season. Now that we've reached the point where JJ is a senior skater, we're going to see him start "displacing", so to speak, actual senior figure skaters. It's inevitable if we're having him be someone that people like Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek would even bother with. It's been cool to bring in the real events though- we can't find actual dates for the regionals and sectionals, but Skate America and Skate Canada were real. Johnny Weir actually placed 7th at Skate Canada, interestingly enough. Which was probably an decent result, considering that Johnny Weir was probably only doing senior skating events for two seasons. I liked how JJ got really unrealistic and obsessed with the idea that he could and should win the two Grand Prixes and make it to the final Grand Prix. My guess is that the general impression of JJ isn't that he's washed up and that it's cool that he even got to the Grand Prix during his first senior season, but I'm betting he overheard one of his competitors saying nasty things about him and JJ's decided that EVERYONE thinks it about him. *cough* Johnny Weir *cough*

9.11 Chapter 74 -When JJ starts punching Zach in the stomach. "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam -When Will tries to talk JJ through the grieving process while being on the rooftop. "Mad World" by Gary Jules -When they all enjoy and cheer for Zach at the football game. "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk

Well, in terms of emotional healing, yes. In terms of figure skating, that's more of a question mark and depends on how much Mark decides to re-write skating history to accompany him. Is JJ going to take off in his early 20's and become legendary like Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek did? It remains to be seen. I do wonder if Will's blackmail of the USFSA isn't eventually, years later, going to bite JJ on the ass. What I really loved about this chapter was JJ not even realizing his own strength, and that he kind of sees himself as weak and girly and that Zach probably couldn't even feel his punch. That was great insight into his mindset.

If Austin can get a major hit he really could be the final 1-2 punch to finish off Bieber.

I got pretty unsettled tonight. My friend Ethan, who was really close to our friend Steve who died, called me up to talk. Pretty soon it obvious that Ethan was completely and totally loaded, and on the phone he admitted to me that he was on cocaine, Adderall, and Vodka. We just had this ten-minute conversation- well if you could call it that- and he just kept saying these snippets of things. Like about what Steve meant to him, how I'm one of the few people that got Steve, and telling me about how he can't get the image of the last time they hung out and did drugs together out of his mind. It was so incoherent. The conversation lasted for 10 minutes until he likely passed out or something. After I stopped freaking out, I figured that Ethan, who has kind of been serving as the backbone for everybody else in this grieving process, must have hit a snap point and he needed to unload. I was pretty shocked- I really thought he'd been handling this so well, and I'd never heard Ethan this loaded and fucked up before, and I partied with him a lot in college. But grief is indeed a long and fucked up journey to make, and there are some big detours. The backstory to this, from what I've gathered...Steve's girlfriend T is in rehab somewhere. Ethan has been talking to her quite a lot- maybe too much, and maybe he's been the backbone so much that he hasn't really dealt. I don't know, I'm just surmising. Maybe something just set him off- and this has been his way of coping. It was so weird, though. I haven't really dealt with people being that messed up since college, and like I said, I never heard or saw him get that messed up in college. He was a recreational drug user, yeah, but I never thought he had a big problem like I admittedly thought with Steve. I mean, Ethan DID have his sober moments in college, which I can't really say about Steve. Anyway, if I'm right, it makes me kinda glad that I've been talking it out continually and admitting whenever I feel bad, rather than letting it all bottle up. I'm proud to say that I haven't had any drinking sessions to try and numb this...not to bag on my friend Ian for doing it, but in my own personal view, it doesn't help. It really doesn't. I've tried to tackle this as head-on and clear-headed as I can, and I think it's largely worked. I called up a buddy and asked him for advice on this, and he got me to calm down and figure that I'll call Ian up tomorrow and find out how he's doing. I really do hope he's alright and it was just a bad night.

I think Los Angeles is top dog in terms of industry and population, but San Francisco is still top dog in terms of being a cohesive city with a distinct, legendary culture. Isn't Los Angeles mainly just suburbs and industrial towns knitted together by expressways with one relatively small urban core? As Tim put it, L.A. is the proud anti-city. There's actually this interesting book, called Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, which delves quite a bit into how fast food and suburban sprawl of the Greater Los Angeles area came hand in hand. Anyway, speaking of Los Angeles, Buzzfeed is running a quiz called: Where In Los Angeles Should You Live? I got The Valley. Which is fun in one sense, because I fucking LOVED Valley Girl. But I also really hate suburban sprawl, which I grew up in as people in Philly and New Jersey started moving down here to take advantage of the low taxes in Delaware. Unless the Valley isn't actually a suburban sprawl area? Wouldn't they actually be kind of dense at this point? Older suburbs usually tend to develop walk-ability with mixed-use areas at some point. That's what happened in my surburb, Bear, and what seems to be happening in the small farming town-turned-Philadelphia bedroom community Middletown. In any event... I kinda figure the accent is totally different now, but man, that song still remains hilarious. "Like, OMG. Like, totally. Encino's like so bitchin'." I remember watching The Bling Ring, and thinking that the depiction of Calabasas with the whiny vocal fry accent made me think of a modern-day Valley Girl. Only the colors were a lot more muted.

That's a really good point, Private Tim. I think there were some things about high school that were better than college, especially early college- in high school, it was easier to just hang out with people and talk....college everybody wanted to get fucked and party. I was thinking though that the sense of freedom you had where you could call up a friend at 1 a.m. in the morning and ask if they wanted to hang out at the late night diner, as well as being away from the tedium of classes from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. everyday that never changed up and having to ask for hall passes, risking detentions, etc etc really outweighs any positives that there were about high school. I think my favorite part about college, especially coming from a small high school like I did (Cab Calloway's class of 2005 had 82 members and it was the largest class they'd graduated by that point), was that if you didn't like someone, it was so much easier to avoid them as opposed to high school, where if you didn't like someone you still had to see them practically every day. Hence why college B.S. wasn't nearly as bad as high school B.S. However, like you said, people tended to take college B.S. more seriously because the stakes in college are higher- the fighting in my drama club was pretty damn bitch, not to mention the saga of my Resident Hall Council during the fall 2011 semester. Ugh. If you've read JWolf's The English Year, he does a really good job of showing how self-important people can get in college. Kevin Reynolds yeah...his face isn't right, and the hair isn't right because it's that purposefully messy hair that I can't see JJ doing, but the haircolor, the bod and the suit were so damn spot-on. Frank was 7 or 8 when Aaron "died", as opposed to Nathan, who was 17 or so, so Frank didn't really grow up with Aaron, and he likely didn't have enough pleasant memories of him to outweigh how pissed off he was. And you can't really underestimate what addiction can do to people- we can assume that Fred Hayes likely WAS a decent guy, but grief and the ensuing alcohol addiction really changed him. Well, if Tiffany and JJ do wind up going with Wade to Boston, it's a given that they'd have to compete at the Eastern Sectionals to get to Nationals. Johnny Weir is going to be interesting: At this point, Johnny Weir is the 2001 Junior World Champion, so I imagine his ego is pretty much taking off. I remember Mark and I had some back and forth about whether or not JJ would be as flamboyant as Johnny Weir, but Mark's been insistent that JJ would have more of a Junior GQ look. As for attitude, I feel like JJ's going to be more like Evan Lysacek in terms of following and obeying the rules set out by figure skating- he doesn't strike me as a Johnny Weir trying to buck against the establishment. (Who then paid for it.) One thing we haven't done yet when it pertains to JJ's career is seeing what it's like when JJ goes into "family-friendly image PR mode." I'd imagine it'd look sort of like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3z303ybN-E Notice that Evan is doing here exactly what Johnny Weir disparaged in his interivew.

The body and outfit, totally. The face and hair- not quite. Like Tim said, JJ would be less goofy-faced and cuter- didn't Brad basically describe JJ as looking "stunningly handsome", and I don't think Brad's one to think his children are better looking than they really are. I do think he'd have elfin features like that, though. Like you said, JJ's hair would be short and spiky. But I did have the same reaction of thinking of JJ at the moment he came on, at least from the neck down. That is soooo an outfit that I could see JJ wearing, and the haircolor's right. Speaking of JJ... It's fun now that we've got JJ at senior levels, and we know that Evan Lysacek exists, which means that Johnny Weir has to exist as well. It's going to be interesting to see how JJ plays into that 2000's rivalry, and see what parts of figure skating history we'll be re-writing to include JJ into it. JJ could technically skate at 2014- Jeremy Abbott is his age, although both Johnny and Evan are done. My guess is that he'll be out by circa 2007, though. Interesting theory. I used to think that it was because you just didn't want to end the story and have them hit current time, but I think I like your theory much better. In my case, I've gotten over it, although I think I really wanted to see more of the 2000's get covered because they were a pretty big decade in my psyche as I went from 14 to 23 for that decade. There's a hell of lot of material to work with in any event, especially with 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008. I also think I really wanted to have Will and co. hit college age so that we can stop having the "OMG, he's too young and precocious!" reaction stuff, and in general being more interested in college shenanigans instead of high school b.s. That's why Bloodlines still remains my favorite. Is there anybody who would actually pick their high school years over their college ones? Every time I think of who I was in high school I just cringe even though I do have pleasant memories of it. As for Brad and Matt, really good explanation as to why they've drifted apart despite once being pretty tight. It's a good thing Matt, Zach, and Gathan don't look exactly like Robbie, or else it'd be pretty hard for Brad to be around that for a regular basis.

Good for him.

I'm going to say this, as someone who has been your beta reader ever since chapter 3 of Chronicles of an Academic Predator and even inspired you to create Matt in the first place- I never thought, at any point, Matt and Wade were acting out in character in terms of how their relationship is imploding. Sure, I didn't think Wade would have yelled at Matt at the the Halloween sorority party, but that's minor. I thought you've been laying out the groundwork for them to break up going all the way back to Paternity- yes, it had a happy ending, but it was also a rift that didn't really heal because Matt didn't really deliver on his promise to act like a partner to Wade and a father to Riley, and the stresses of 9/11 just ripped open the rift fully and totally. In an event, I really liked the talk that Will and Zach had about JJ. Of course, to a wolf like Zach, the idea that someone would be a virgin at nearly 16 while being cute and semi-famous would be shocking. I also kinda wondered if Zach's flirting with JJ reminded JJ of the coach who molested him. If I were in JJ's mind, I think he's going to wary of non-family members being nice to him. (I don't think Zach is quite considered a family member, and I doubt JJ would think of him as one.) He's going to view people being nice and flirty with him as there being some kind of ulterior motive, because his coach really did destroy the happy, cheerful, sociable kid little boy thrilled to meet new friends that we saw in If It Fits.

Alright, go Mark and Adam!

Alright, it's the Olympics again, which means it's time to start enjoying the eye candy. I've always found Canadians to be cute as hell, so I zeroed in on this: 17 Hot Canadian Olympic Athletes I'd say I'm feeling on Matthew Margetts, William Dutton, Andrew Poje, Jake Holden, and Dylan Moscovitch. The last one vaguely reminds me of Blake Berris, this soap opera actor that I kinda find cute in this quirky way. So who are you guys feeling?

He's also not the first Olympic swimmer to come out. Matthew Mitcham has been out for a long time.

The Fault in Our Stars trailer is now standing at 10.1 million views! Woo-hoo!

9.11 Chapter 72 -When Wade goes off on Matt and gives back his ring. "Pushing Me Away" by Linkin Park -When Wade decides to drink away his sorrows at the DG house and party his ass off. "Be Faithful" by Fatman Scoop -When Wade muses on Matt, thinks about how he can't wait for graduation, and lo and behold Matt shows up. "How's It Going To Be" by Third Eye Blind

Isn't Hot Jeff happily attending USC? It makes sense we're not really seeing much of him, because this book is so focused on the Palo Alto area. We haven't had that many chapters set around Los Angeles for this book, right? As for Matt and his biological family...I always thought it was funny how he's kind of got a reverse rags-to-riches story. Not really that he lost money, but Matt went from having a brahmin, well-respected WASP famiy, to discovering that he's actually the son that belongs to a family with serious white trash roots. That's probably why the notion of changing his name to Hayes has probably never hit Matt, because his adopted family name is much more respectable, especially if we're talking the mid-West.

Today, I spent time putting in job applications...a whole revamp of my CV and resume and cover letters...it's the first time in awhile I put in so many applications and the like. It felt nice. And then...something strange hit me. I felt inexplicably sad for some reason. Part of it had to be that I had just gotten through helping my mom do home loan modification papers, and that's kind of iffy and unpleasant. But the other thing...probably the main thing...it made me think about the fact that my friend, Steve, who died at 27...he doesn't get to send off job applications or go on interviews or make plans for the future. And it made me feel sad to think that. He's never going to turn 28, he's never going to have a career, and Steve now only exists as the past now. Which is crazy to me, because I've like said earlier- Steve was SUCH a "live for the present" kind of guy, while he mercilessly made fun of me because I'm so damn nostalgic for the past. It's so weird. My life for the past year and a half after graduation has been a parade of disappointment after disappointment, and keeping my head up in the face of a mounting realization that I perhaps will never get the museum curator or archivist job I want to have. But I have hope, every time I send off an application, that someone might say yes. Hope for a yes, and hope for a better tomorrow. Steve doesn't have that. He's never walking across the stage and accepting his master's degree in counseling. He's never becoming a counselor. And it just sucks, and it makes me sad and angry It's interesting how the grieving process goes. I feel fine for awhile, accept that Steve's gone, make my peace with it, and got through a couple of weeks in January with no crying at all. But then...I don't know. First up, I talked to my friend Josh, who all of you know is struggling with health issues. We hung out at his apartment one last time while he was getting ready to pack up, and I just had this really long talk to him, about his own mortality issues, as well as dealing with Steve's death. He was pretty understanding, which I knew he would be given that this guy has been facing mortality since the age of 10. The main thing I got out of that talk was accepting that I wasn't a shitty friend for not getting how fucked up Steve was, because even Steven probably either didn't get it, or tried his best to hide it. And there's only so much you can convey over phone or text, and I wanted to believe that my friend was doing great and therefore didn't try to probe him all that much about his issues. Maybe it was big denial on my part. I mean really, Steve was loaded every moment of the day in college, and I'm guessing that grad school wasn't all that different. I had hoped that Steve had grown out of it because I'm Mr. Pollyanna, but I was wrong. The talk helped, but then it also put Steve back on my mind. And then I got a letter from Steve's parents, where they thanked me for the condolence card that I sent Steve and told me that his service is scheduled for August 9th, and then it just hit me again, harder this time. I'm not constantly sobbing every day or anything like that, but I've been thinking about him again, more than I had until the past few weeks. Hence this whole "sad attack" that happened to me tonight.

So Mark wants to update the J-Bar, as seen in A Summer Love through 9.11, into the new decade. What was Boystown's club scene like circa '02? What did a hip club look like? Can Mark basically just crib off the Babylon from Queer as Folk, or was Chicago's gay club scene really different from Toronto-standing-in-for-Pittsburgh? I also read that Boystown became whiter, more affluent, less strictly gay, and started gaining families i.e. the gentrification process. Is this true, and would this have been in place by 2002? Like would there be straight and gay families pushing their babies in strollers by this point, or is that later in the decade?

Alright, here's the final, official trailer for Divergent: I think this one does a much better job of explaining the concept, which is probably what they should have done in the beginning.

Are you referring to Love Story? That's not how the movie ended- the son and father reconcile. Love Story, by the way, is now a Harvard tradition where incoming freshman mock and make fun of the movie. It's pretty funny to read about.

I still think the book has enough humor and ability to make one appreciate life to counterbalance the tragic stuff.

"Do I Wanna Know" by Arctic Monkeys

Blue, you're a bit off- the album wasn't released until March 25th, 2003. I remember thinking you had to be a bit off, because in 2002 a lot of Hybrid Theory stuff was still making the rounds. Evanescence is also from 2003- I remember "Bring Me To Life" became a hit in the spring of '03, when I was in 10th grade. Don't feel bad though- this stuff is hard, especially from music that's from the same era but not the correct year. If I'm being honest, I was hoping Mark was going to skip over 2002 because the music for 2003 was better, but with the graduation storyline for Matt and Wade, I can't see Mark skipping over '02. I remember this tune being used on the MTV show "Rich Girls", which played at Tommy Hilfiger's daughter's prom and featured a wordless cameo from a then-famous Mischa Barton. Anyway, I can't wait to use this one: 17. "Heaven" by DJ Sammy What a great dance tune. There's also an alternative, slow version of this that's pretty beautiful, I think.