"It's a natural but weird sensation knowing that you're becoming closer to your best friends but not in the same way they are and that's a fine line". "What I didn't realize was that I started to become more than fascinated with my friends and playing together allowed me to be close but not in the way they felt comfortable with".

Zachary comes from an upper middle-class family that lives in a nicely tailored community in California. The median income level is higher than most California communities but it's not super exclusive that it's only accessible to the very rich, although he did grow up around families in the high income brackets. "Yeah most of my friends parents were pretty well off, they never had to want for anything really, anything we asked for we would usually get as long as we were good in sports and did well in school". "I wasn't much of a rebel and neither were any of my friends. We goofed off a lot but we always pulled good grades and we excelled in sports, that's usually what parents like the most".

Most of Zachary's close friends all grew up together in their tightly knit neighborhood of custom designed homes on one or two acre lots. The homes are big by most other community standards and most of the cars in the circular drives are foreign or 60s American muscle cars. It's obvious money prevails. You don't see it as blatantly as other rich communities but if you look closely you can tell. The kids are all clothed nicely, their teeth are all straight and there's not a zit in sight. But most of all, they all seem to have manners. I guess when you don't have to worry too much about your finances you're free to really enjoy life.

"Well I wouldn't know if I grew up in luxury 'cause it's the only life I've known and it's not like we have everything you could possibly imagine. My parents don't just throw gifts our way for no reason, we usually have to earn it just like other kids. When you do well in school and excel at sports I think rewarding us is a good way of showing our parents love for their children".

So how does someone that does well in school, is popular with his peers, and excels at sports but has desires for the same sex, deal with coming out? Well in Zachary's case he just told his parents the truth, he didn't think they'd completely freak since they've always loved all of their kids equally. "I think I was in the seventh grade when I decided it was time to tell someone what was going on in my head. I mean I never acted like I wasn't interested in girls but I was beginning to think more of guys then ever before and in the sexual way not just close friends, and I thought at least my parents should know what I'm going through. I also thought it wasn't fair to my friends for them not to know me entirely, I mean we're close, we tell each other everything and we're super affectionate, always have been, so if something like this was going to change our friendship dynamics I thought they deserved the truth so they could decide how to proceed with our friendships".

Zachary says he wasn't actively pursuing anyone during middle school but that he wanted to be the person he really was and not hide behind a shield of who he really was. "Yeah I was apprehensive at first but I knew I owed it to them and they would expect it from me too".

Zachary's parents took it well. Initially they were shocked, there really wasn't anything that lead them to suspect he wasn't like all the other boys but they were accepting and only dealt with the facts: Did Zachary know for sure that he wanted to go through with this or was it just a phase he was going through? Was he sure that he wanted to tell all his friends or be selective and only tell his parents? These were all concerns but all and all his parents were very supportive.

My parents are great and the only concern they had was how difficult my life might become because I would be viewed differently from the majority of other people in society and was I prepared for tackling those issues. "I guess deep down inside I knew I didn't have a chance, there was no way I was going to hide who I really was and lie about liking girls, it's just not the kind of guy I am and I know people respect me for that".

So with his parents now in the know, Zachary rounded up all his friends for an informal dinner at the house. He purposely invited his entire family not merely as a show of support but to have everyone he truly cared for all in one place, so any answers or concerns could be dealt with all at one time. Huge dinner get-togethers were not uncommon in Zachary's household since every team member on the Pop Warner football team was required to hold a dinner at their house at least once every season. So with all his friends and family together Zachary made the announcement. "I remember it like it was yesterday. I made eye contact with just about everybody in the room when I told them and the silence was long and uncomfortable. I knew I was doing the right thing but it was hard standing up there with everyone starring at me wondering if I was just fooling with them. As soon as that thought disappeared and everyone started to realize I was outing myself, people started having questions". "How long have you known?", "Do you have a crush on any of us?", "Do you have a boyfriend?", "What kind of guys are you attracted to?". "They were all good questions, I don't think anyone left without getting the answer to the concerns".

There were lots of hugs and back slaps afterwards when people started leaving. It all seemed to go well but that was then, this is now. "The reality is some of the guys just couldn't deal, I guess they really couldn't understand that I could still be the friend that I've always been and still be gay, I guess they were worried what other people thought about our friendship. It wasn't many of the guys, most couldn't care less, some thought it was cool having a gay friend, but a few other guys, guys I really felt close to, I lost. And yeah that's sad but there's. could do to change they way they felt".

With Zachary's new found freedom he felt he could finally breathe. "For so long I felt like an outsider, like was going through all the motions of being a kid but that I had this secret, a secret I didn't know how to share with my friends and didn't know how they'd take it. In the end it all worked out fine, there's been bumps, there's been struggles, I've lost a few friends but I've also gained others, people I never probably would of been exposed to before. Guys and girls from school that found it brave that a jock like me would come out to all my friends while still in school. They admired that I didn't hide from them something so personal and intimate, that I could share my life with them. Some accepted it, some didn't but in the end these new friendships I've made are just as important to me as the childhood friends that have remained my close friends.

"You know I didn't set out to make a statement or to convince people to change their opinion of gay people, I just wanted to be honest to my friends and family and I think I've accomplished that. I'm still the same goof off that I've always been and being gay is really only a small part of who I am but I'm glad that I can share that with people and not live like an outsider anymore. It's such a relief knowing people like me for who I am, not someone I'm pretending to be, this freedom I'm feeling might not work in every town or community, but I know for me it's been very rewarding, now I can concentrate on doing what I do best: you know, being a kid".

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Written by Lars Von Trier and directed by Thomas Vinterberg, the film is a tongue-in-cheek celebration of America's long love affair with the gun, as well as a satirical critique on America's paradoxical claims to be a well-armed bringer of peace. All this is wrapped up in a zero-to-hero coming-of-age tale whose small town whimsy has an unexpectedly powerful recoil. And while it is, like Von Trier's Dogville and his forthcoming 'Manderlay', a very American story filmed entirely outside of the US, Von Trier's usual barebones rancor is fleshed out and humanized under Vinterberg's direction, so that you barely notice how true to its target it is until the movie's ended and you're left with your own thoughts.

The ever versatile Jamie Bell (see below), transforms the suitably phallic-named protagonist into a complicated monster, on the one hand just a vulnerable young dreamer, on the other a passive-aggressive little Napoleon. He is well supported by the ensemble cast, including the stellar Michael Angarano (see below) but perhaps the true star of the piece is cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, whose subdued browns and sepia tones, like the Dandies' outmoded costumes and vintage weapons, lull viewers into thinking they are watching a period movie - with only the occasional sign of modernity to rupture the illusion and expose the direct legacy, measurable in bullets, that leads from wild west showdowns to urban gangland shootouts. But it's a myth of questionable heroism and self-sacrifice that is as American as apple pie - except that the entire movie is Danish.

Add to all this the soundtrack of songs by 'The Zombies', some subtle commentary on America's race relations, a town square reduced to trajectory diagrams, and some increasingly dark surrealism, and you are looking down the barrel of a film with a very high caliber.

Jamie Bell, the Billingham-born actor that made his movie debut as a young boy wanting to become a ballet dancer in Billy Elliott, is about to show the world that there’s more to him than ballet steps. Already starring as the elder brother in David Gordon Green’s amazing Undertow, Jamie makes a big impression as the lead in Thomas Vinterberg’s movie Dear Wendy. Jamie, now 19, plays Dick, a young loner living in an American mining town who befriends a handgun he names Wendy. Strange, yes but it all makes sense as the movie progresses. Dick is oddly drawn to the piece, and despite his pacifist views he soon forms a club with other outcasts that have a penchant for handguns called The Dandies. The result of this film is yet another provocative examination of the United States by Vinterberg and Von Trier. As for Jamie, he will follow Dear Wendy with appearances in indie films The Chumscrubber and Peter Jackson’s much-anticipated remake of King Kong, in which he will play ship’s look-out Jimmy.

Following is an interview with Jamie on his current success and where he sees his career heading:

Q: Did you know much about the work of Thomas Vinterberg or Lars von Trier before signing on Dear Wendy?

Jamie: I knew of them. I hadn’t seen Festen at this point, before I joined the group to make the film. I had seen a lot of Lars’ work, like Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. And I knew about Dogme, because I’d seen The Idiots as well. After I read the script, and before I met with Thomas, I managed to get hold of a copy of Festen. I had seen Lars’ work before I even knew there was a script of his circulating around. At the time, when I got the script, I was working on David Gordon Green's film Undertow

Q: Von Trier has said your character is a version of him.

Jamie: I can definitely see that now you mention it. Dick is really a messed-up character hiding behind a cool calm demeanor. When I first saw it at the Sundance Film Festival, I thought to myself I must’ve been completely crazy when I was making the film because he’s an absolutely absurd character. He’s colorful and he goes through many different arcs in the film, and he’s got a lot of layers to him, and what’s going on on the outside isn’t necessarily what’s going on on the inside. But, yeah, it was just crazy. While I was making it, I never realized how mad and manic he is inside, and how obsessive he is with things and getting things right – which I guess I am, as I’ve just said as you came in, which is great!

Q: What's your opinion of Von Trier?

Jamie: Lars seems to always have problems communicating what he’s thinking, and likes to make people feel uncomfortable as well. That’s just the way he is, it’s his nature. But I love that about him as well. It’s a vibe. It’s electric when he does that to everyone. And I find him incredibly innovative. His films have changed cinema and he tells stories that people don’t dare to tell. I actually think he should be celebrated because of that. I love his work and it was an honor portraying this character that he wrote so beautifully.

Q: As an actor, what is your relationship to guns?

Jamie: I’m terrified of them. In Britain, guns are illegal and it’s completely illegal to own handguns at home, so the idea of guns is very foreign to me. It was something I never really considered. I’m terrified of guns and obviously I’m a complete pacifist. Before I did the film, I hated the guns. I detested them. My parents never allowed me to have toy guns as a child. Guns were something that were in films and on the news. So actually holding a gun for the first time was absolutely foreign and terrifying. I was shaking my ass off; I couldn’t even hold it right and I was worried about the kickback. We actually shot some live ammunition on a shooting range in Denmark. Once you get over that fear element, you suddenly feel yourself change and you eventually realize you’re holding something that can take someone’s life. That’s a big scary feeling. But once you learn to control the fear of it, then it becomes exciting. You can feel more relaxed and take people on, confront them and look them in the eye. You can be very forward and that can be a scary thing too. The power you acquire is phenomenal. But putting a gun on the table and looking at it, it’s actually a beautiful piece of machinery, especially the guns we were using in the film. Guns are really designed for one thing and one thing only, but the intricacy of all the pieces that fit together so perfectly, and the designs on the grips can be sometimes amazingly beautiful. The history of gun making goes back for centuries, and some are extremely elegant. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But that's a very controversial subject.

Q: Is there anything you are obsessed with in the way Dick is obsessed by his gun?

A: Well maybe my iPod but I’ve never really had an obsession with something to that extent. My childhood consisted mostly of dance classes, so I was just training and practicing most of the time. So in some sense I was obsessed with that I guess.

Q: Did you ever form a club when you were a kid like Dick does in the film?

A: Not really because I never had the time, I was always at tap and ballet class. My friends did though, they created little clubs. They were in Scouts or something like that, and were in a group, but I was always too busy with dance and never in anything like that.

Q: Do you think Dear Wendy is an anti-American film considering the controversial concept of guns and that it was filmed entirely in Europe?

A: It’s not directly anti-American. I spoke with Lars and he's actually fascinated with America. He makes films about America all the time. I don’t know why people get upset about him making films about America when he’s never been there. Be proud of it – that someone who has changed cinema, who is interested in your culture, keeps on making films about it. He’s fascinated by America and so is Thomas – he stood up in front of the whole Sundance audience and said, ‘I love your country. The world follows suit from you, for good and bad. That’s why we make films about you.’ They need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, where it takes place.

Q: Did you work on the body language of Dick in Dear Wendy because his mannerisms and facial expressions are a crucial part to his character development?

A: Actually, I did, really. Especially at the beginning of the film, his physicality is very odd. He’s all hunched up and stuff. That comes from his surroundings, the idea that it’s all so overwhelming and claustrophobic in this small town that it’s made him insular. Basically, his arms don’t really stretch out and he’s very small and doesn’t move that much. He’s not really connected to anything, and he’s not reaching out for anything. Once he gets Wendy, you see he looks people in the eye and he’s talking to people with his arms out. It was a conscious decision to do something very physical with the role. Otherwise, it’s all pretty well in his head. All that stuff just came up in Thomas’ office one day, when I started walking round imitating one of the guys in the crew. He said, ‘You should do that. It totally represents everything that Dick’s thinking.’

Q: Did being a dancer help?

A: Absolutely. It all goes back to that. Using your body to express yourself. In terms of being an actor, I always like to do something physical. For Undertow, there was a lot of running around and jumping on nails, being crippled in Nicholas Nickleby…if I can use my dancing physique in any way, I definitely try and use it.

Q: Was there much naked swimming in the pool at his offices?

A: Yes, there was a little bit of naked pool action. I initially tried to avert my eyes but eventually after the second week it I was ok with it. In fact, the American kids were more freaked out than I was since they don’t do that sort of thing over there.

Q: How do think you will react to seeing yourself surrounded by special effects in King Kong?

A: I’m actually worried that my brain is going to freak and I’m going to throw up everywhere. It must be weird. When you see how you were in a parking lot in New Zealand, and suddenly there’s this big jungle and this big drop – and you know it’s not real but it might make your mind freak out a bit.

Q: Naomi Watts has said the film is very modern. What does she mean by that do you think?

A: Hmmm, I have no idea, since it’s set in 1933. It deals with a lot of political issues as well as an amazing creature. Also, the way Peter has bought in some new characters makes it more appealing to a modern and younger audience. I understand what she means. But it’s hard to talk about it, as I’m not really supposed to talk about it since it's in its preliminary stages.

Q: How do you feel about the exposure it will give you?

Q: You’re also in The Chumscrubber. What’s that film about?

A: It’s a movie set in a development community outside of Los Angeles. Basically about dysfunctional youth and families in suburban America. This cult of kids are all hooked on pharmaceutical pills. From the beginning, my character witnesses this horrific event and throughout the film, it’s all about him trying to deal with it and reach out to people to talk to them about it – but no one’s really listening. And no one’s listening to each other. It’s a lack of communication in this small bubble that they live in. Throughout the film, he tries to talk about it and he does get it off his chest. It’s like a darker version of American Beauty. It’s that feeling of everything is again enclosed and there’s a crazy world where not much happens.

Q: Are you comfortable with the prospect of fame that these two films will bring you?

A: I am. If it comes through doing films like this, then it’s OK. I’m incredibly proud of the films I’m doing at the minute. Mostly because of the people I’ve got to work with. I have so many actor-friends who work out of Los Angeles who are incredibly envious of me working with David, Thomas and now Peter. I step back and think, ‘I have been a lucky bastard’. I’m just incredibly flattered that I’ve had the opportunity to do it.

Q: Which do you prefer; big-budget films or smaller, more independent movies?

A: I actually feel more comfortable with films like Dear Wendy. It gives me that creative freedom. Thomas is a very trusting director. He trusts his actors. The rest of the cast are great – and I really think he’s picked some of the best actors working in the business right now. I’m sure you’ll see a lot more of them after this film. All the actors gave impeccable performances and really gave their heart to the project. Thomas gives you the ability to be free. On some of these other bigger, more commercially-driven movies, I’m sure you don’t have that much freedom.

Q: Are you comfortable doing an American accent now? You definitely seem to be.

A: Yes, I think so. I’ve been an American for the last four – Undertow, Dear Wendy, The Chumscrubber and King Kong. I feel a lot more comfortable than when I did Undertow. I was terrified. That was the first time I had to do it – and it was scary. It wasn’t generic. Being a Southern red-neck kid is not the same as being a kid from Los Angeles – it’s very different. In terms of the accent, on Dear Wendy, the voiceover was hard, to keep your focus while trying to tell a narrative story.

Q: How did you cope with life after the movie Billy Elliot?

A: It was interesting. I wanted to go back to school and get that out of the way, so I did. Then Nicholas Nickleby came along and I played a cripple boy. And that was great thing for me to do – and why it was such an important film, even though it didn’t much box-office. For me, that was a conscious decision to do because the last time American audiences saw me, I was a boy dancing around and it was all very sweet and cute. But then to come back with this, it was just the complete opposite. It was a conscious decision and for me, that was an important film to make. After that, I just waited for the right scripts to come along.

Q: It seems you have managed to keep your projects varied…

A: The offers are coming in but it’s not the right time yet. I also think what’s important with films like King Kong is that you keep on changing, and you show people your range and show them what you can do. You keep people guessing. From David Gordon Green to Thomas Vinterberg to King Kong, it keeps people guessing and that's what makes my career interesting for me.

Michael Angarano, best know for his portrayal of Jack's illegitimate son Elliott, in Will and Grace, was born and raised in the New York area. Although he's taken a more traditional approach to acting with roles in popular television and movies, he's also starred in some quirky dark indie films alongside Jamie Bell. Originally a New York City Ford Model, he moved to film and television. At the age of twelve, Michael was receiving more complex roles and challenges, and is when Michael notes that he "really, truly started acting." During this time he took a lead role in the television drama Cover Me, a show based on the true life of an FBI family. Most striking about this series was Michael's performances, showing us how dynamic and diverse he could be at a young age, and of course his reoccurring role as Jack's son in Will and Grace where he got his first fame.

Michael's film career blossomed with critically acclaimed performances as Meryl Streep's son Nick in Music of the Heart, young Red Pollard in Seabiscuit, and Almost Famous, where he played the younger version of the main character, William Miller, a teenage music fan who is inspired by the bands of the time and lands himself a magazine assignment to interview and follow a new band. A string of diverse roles followed including Disney's Sky High, where Michael finds himself the son of two superheroes, mysteriously without any powers of his own. In Lords of Dogtown, Michael plays Sid, one of the legendary Z-Boys who pioneered the revival of skateboarding in the 1980s.

While all those projects were considered mainstream, Michael also followed a more serious acting path starring in One Last Thing and the rather deep indie film Dear Wendy, alongside Jamie Bell.

Michael's most recent films include Black Irish, in which he plays 15-year-old Cole McKay, a baseball-loving, sweet-natured, obedient teenager who yearns for the attentions of his emotionally remote father (Brendan Gleeson). Cole is by turns nurtured and abandoned by the rest of his family. In the true story of The Final Season, what's destined to be baseball's version of "Hoosiers," Michael plays a high school baseball player on a team who comes together to beat all the odds and win their 20th state title in what becomes their final season. Man in the Chair centers around a 17-year-old kid who flirts with the law, underachieves at school, and is at odds with his loving mother and his constantly indifferent and derisive stepfather. Despite his flaws and problems, Michael's character dreams to be the "man in the chair," a cutting edge filmmaker, who is afforded a once in a lifetime opportunity. Also awaiting release is The Bondage, in which he plays a youth who escapes an abusive home only to find himself shuffled into the juvenile justice system and then a psychiatric ward.

In spite of his very busy acting career, Michael maintains a remarkably normal life. He attends college and still loves to play sports, hang out with his friends, go to movies, and other normal activities. Michael spends most of his time in Los Angeles and on location, but still remains very close to his large family in New York, returning as often as he can.

We look forward to watching Michael on his upcoming projects and believe he will emerge as one of today's hot young actors

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That’s what the producers of John from Cincinnati asked themselves — and that is probably what will make all the difference. The show is the idea of HBO and David Milch, who’s the writer and executive producer of HBO’s Deadwood series, a huge hit with a cult-like audience. Kem Nunn, a writer on Deadwood also just happened to be the author of three surf fiction books out there: Dogs of Winter, Tapping the Source and Tijuana Sloughs. When HBO approached Milch if he’d be interested in being part of a show about the surf culture, Milch turned to Nunn. The writer suggested setting the story in San Diego County, California, where his most recent book took place, enabling the show to tackle issues such as illegal aliens, border disputes and the pollution of the Tijuana River Valley. Herbie Fletcher, surf star from the 60s is a consultant, and Steve Hawk, former editor of Surfer magazine, is one of the show’s writers.

In case you've never heard of the show Deadwood, well, it’s a funny, gritty, and pretty f king vulgar. Which means John will definitely gonna be R-rated. Nice.

So, this stranger John, played by Austin Nichols, arrives in Imperial Beach and gets mixed up with the dysfunctional Yost surfing family, which is typical of most beach families; the entire family usually surfs. There’s the grandpops, Mitch, played by Bruce Greenwood, a former superstar from the 70s Gerry Lopez era, who only surfs alone and is bitter about the industry in general; his thirty-something son, Butchie, played by Brian Van Holt, one of the sport’s most famous bad-boy pros who also dropped out of the scene and is now a self-destructive druggie; and Butchie’s teen son, Shaun, played by Christian Fletcher’s son Greyson, also a surf prodigy who wants to compete but isn't allowed by his grandpappy and hates him for it.

HBO has hired Hawaii big-wave legend Brock Little to be the stunt coordinator, women’s WCTer Keala Kennelly to play a local shaper and surfer, surf cinematographer Sonny Miller to handle the surf action, and surfers Dan Malloy, John-John Florence, Shane Beschen and Herbie Fletcher to do the surfing. The producers really wanted to make this show credible to surfers and is one of the reasons they brought Brock on to write and Fletcher as consultant.

Considering the people involved and Milch’s work on Deadwood makes John from Cincinnati certainly worth checking out.

The first episode aired in June on HBO, with 11 weekly, one-hour episodes to follow, and, if America loves it, future seasons on top of that. But if you don't get HBO you might find a friend to DVR it for you.

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All the while, Harry's bodyguards spend most of their time keeping other bar patrons from trying to give the prince Ecstasy. A friend of Harry's says the prince was ordered by senior royal courtiers and army superiors in his Blues and Royals regiment to clean up his act. "It's the military, they got tired of all late-night confrontations Harry was having with paparazzi outside the club Boujis," a friend says, recalling a night in March when a spunky Harry lashed out at a cameraman before stumbling into a gutter outside the club.

In an attempt to prevent embarrassing incidents from turning up in the papers, the princes' bodyguards have been instructed not to inform Scotland Yard of drug use among the princes' friends. More than just image is at stake. Harry's behavior poses a security nightmare. They already know that people plotting bombs have singled out nightclubs. This last statement was thrown into high relief with the discovery of car bombs in a London nightclub district last July.

Harry's response seems to have been to choose his nightspots more selectively. Boujis, a basement bar opposite the South Kensington tube station, is not in favor anymore. These days the royal clique frequents Mahiki, a hip watering hole where one of the princes' loyal friends, Guy Pelly, is marketing manager. Mahiki's trademark drink, the Treasure Chest, is a $200 concoction of brandy, peach liqueur, and champagne meant eight or more; Harry has been seen downing one by himself in a single night. He has also become a regular at Club Azteca, where the royal party occupies the VIP box under the DJ booth.

In a typical night, the princes usually start with dinner at a friend's or restaurant, then hit Mahiki's, entering through the back door, followed by a throng of bodyguards. Their friends must go through the front entrance but a special password allows them to cut to the front of the line and avoid the cover charge.

Most of the time Harry hangs out with the Gloucestershire polo team he met during his stays at Highgrove. One night in March he partied so late he missed his class reunion at Eton the next day. How punk rock.

In an attempt to reverse the prince's party-boy image, the palace recently embarked on a public relations campaign to portray the boys as solid, everyday boys. Responsibility for this image campaign fell on Paddy Harverson, a PR heavyweight who was hired as Prince Charles's personal spokesman after successfully handling publicity for Manchester United and David Beckham. Harverson arranged for both boys to appear on Dateline in a much-hyped interview with Matt Lauer, their first major appearance on U.S. television. Despite their awkward performance, the episode drew high ratings. In the palace, it was seen as a huge success. Over and over, both boys emphasized their normal, unregal values. Asked by Lauer what he'd do if he weren't a prince, Harry replied that he dreamed of being a safari guide in Africa. So in essence, they are just like other every day boys, right?

The PR hit it's high mark on July 1, with a six-hour concert at Wembley Stadium held in honor of the late Princess Diana. The event was organized by William and Harry and brought together some of Diana's favorite acts such as Duran Duran and the English National Ballet, along with more hip performers like Kanye West, under the guise of raising money for Diana's favorite charities, which she was always known for. But the event had problems from the start: Many top acts refused the princes' invitation, opting to play Live Earth the following Saturday at Wembley instead; after-party sponsors failed to materialize; and bad publicity resulted when it was revealed that Diana's charities would be forced to pay retail for tickets. A lavish after party hosted by Diddy also raised eyebrows. Partying after-hours was not seen as a fitting memorial to Diana for the princes. Anxious to avoid any embarrassment, Harry steered clear of booze for the day. Damn.

But despite his recent efforts, some people wonder if Harry will ever really reform considering the royal family does what they want, and the PR man faces the consequences. It seems every time Harry takes two steps forward, his character takes him three steps back. And that's why we love him so: He's human like the rest of us. Party on Harry.

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Deanne, a petite redhead with a broad, smooth face, walked into the Simpson break room. She called her husband. "You have to come home," he whispered.

Daniel, 18, was dead – shot in the head as he sat at his computer. Daniel's friend Christian, 19, and one of Christian's friends, 18-year-old Laird, had also been killed in the same gangland style.

In the days and weeks that followed, Deanne followed a path familiar to families involved in a violent crime – she sobbed in grief and anger, numbly arranged a funeral, turned to friends for comfort. But Deanne did it in two worlds at once – the virtual and the real. Deanne suffered in private, but she also shared her pain on MySpace. The aftermath of the murders resonated through the social network – touching the investigating detectives, the lawyers and even the victims. Daniel V. was dead, but he didn't disappear. He had lived so much of his life online that pieces of him lingered on the Web – a ghost in the machine.

PEOPLE DROVE FOR HUNDREDS OF MILES to have Daniel V. work on their cars. It was easy for him, and he loved it – he'd do it for strangers stuck on the side of the road, in the rain, in the middle of the night. And good luck getting him to charge for the work; maybe instead of cash he'd take parts for his Acura Integra Type R, a street racer he drove on the twisting roads of suburban Seattle at five times the speed limit – holding his cell phone against the handlebar so a buddy could hear the engine growl. He was a 5'8", 145-pound kid in a little kid's body, a mile-a-minute goofball talking at hurricane speeds, hoovering up fast food, bopping around raves like a noodle-armed maniac.

But Daniel was also a "magnet to trouble," his sister says. "All the cops knew his plates." He rolled with a tough crowd. He had served six months in the Shutter Creek Correctional Institution for intent to sell 76 hits of e. He had even managed to get busted for jaywalking. The threat of parole violations always loomed. i need to get on the ball, he once posted on his sister's MySpace page.

Then in January 2006, intent on making a clean start, Daniel and his boyfriend – 18-year-old blonde named Michael F. – moved from Seattle to a secluded suburb 30 miles north of Tacoma, Washington, to live with Daniel's mother. Away from friends, they started spending more and more time on MySpace, uploading their personalities, preferences, and relationships to the social network. He'd post flirty comments and decorated his page with pictures of himself; he posted an online kissing test and a picture of a Type R.

They spent the better part of a year keeping to themselves, mostly. Michael worked at Subway's. Daniel delivered pizzas and prepped for computer science classes – he rebuilt computers almost as well as cars. But on New Year's Eve, Daniel and Michael went to a rave called Apocalypse 2 at a club in a trashy little exurb southeast of Tacoma. Daniel was excited; he kept telling Michael that he was hoping to run into an old Seattle rave buddy, "DC." They met up with drug dealer and party promoter Christian just after midnight.

Six feet tall, with sculpted shoulders and pale-green eyes, Christian was charismatic, oozing confidence. He'd drop three grand at a bar without blinking and bought a motorcycle before he knew how to ride. One time, about to go snowboarding, he handed a friend a 4-inch wad of beer-soaked cash to hold while he was on the slopes. Christian hadn't bothered to count it, but his friend did: $28,000. Fueling all this was an e business with hundreds of thousands of pills in inventory. "He got the most dick, kicked the most ass, drove the fastest car, had the coolest dog and the dopest house," says Jensen, another Subway's employee. "Everything about him made you want to hang out with him, all the time."

Christian and Daniel had a bond that was almost chemical. "A little match made in heaven," Michael says. "Both really loud, always going-going-going." The pair partied for a full day after the New Year's rave. Within days, Daniel was crashing at Christian's rental house, a white stucco place on Sixth and North Union avenues in Tacoma's emerging-from-seedy Hilltop neighborhood. Michael built Christian's MySpace page; he used it to promote his parties and hook up with boyfriends. Christian decorated the page like his house, with pictures of cute gay boys and Al Pacino in Scarface. Soon after he started his online life, boys were leaving notes, telling him, I can't wait to touch you!

Through a fellow car junkie, Daniel met Ulysses. Known on MySpace as Lucifer – he had hellraiser tattooed across his back and 666 on his caramel-brown abdomen – Ulysses had just finished serving nearly a year in jail for beating a guy with a baseball bat. Since his release, Ulysses had been suspected of shooting two people and molesting his 14-year-old cousin. A 1998 hospital psychological evaluation mentioned past diagnoses ranging from "impulse control disorder" to "Jekyll/Hyde personality shifts."

The first time Ulysses went over to Christian's house, he figured he'd rob the place; Christian kept a safe in the bedroom, supposedly packed with drugs and money. But Christian was "so cool," Ulysses told friends, he couldn't bring himself to do it. In fact, he could barely bring himself to leave Christian and Daniel at all.

The three became inseparable. It was an unusual trio – Ulysses was the only African-American in an extended clique of white and Asian kids. At Sixth and North Union, the guys would play videogames, Taser one another, and clown around with Michael and the other gay boys who always seemed to be glomming onto Christian. The computer was always on, and MySpace was always booted up. Late one night, Daniel hopped on the PC and clicked over to Ulysses' page to tease him about his "Lucifer" persona – wasn't that the name of the cat in Cinderella? Ulysses wrote Daniel back: u assholes are stupid!!! but I love yall 2 death!HAHAHAHAHA.

Daniel fired back with a picture of the cartoon cat Photoshopped with Ulysses' face. Christian put up a slide show of pictures that had been taken in his living room. In one shot, Ulysses is whipping Daniel with a belt. In the next, Ulysses is on his knees, hands tied behind his back. Christian has a gun to the back of his head.

Ulysses' history of violence worried some of Christian's and Daniel's friends, who kept asking why they all continued to hang out together. "Karma," Christian would answer. Treat people right and they'll be good to you. But in early February, for some reason, the goodwill started to dissipate. Christian lost an expensive jacket with some drugs in a pocket and asked Ulysses if he knew where it was. To Ulysses, that sounded like an accusation. Tempers flared. Until I get that jacket back, Christian told Ulysses, don't bother coming to Sixth and North Union.

Ulysses couldn't let the slight go. He had his buddy Sirree get him a .357 Magnum for a "lick" – a robbery. Ulysses swore he wasn't planning to hurt anyone, but "if they try to fight or something," he said, "I'm gonna kill 'em." At 12:56 am on February 7, just before he, Sirree, and two others headed out, Ulysses logged onto MySpace and posted an entry titled "The Nature Of The Beast!!!" It had only one line: A tiger Cant Change its Stripes!!! So STOP trying to change ME!

POLICE FOUND DANIEL half-curled against the wall of the spare bedroom at Sixth and North Union. Head tucked in, arms folded across his chest, Daniel looked like he'd been stopped mid-somersault; more likely, he had fallen off the office chair just in front of the PC. His head was pierced by a single hole about 2 inches behind his left ear. His hair was matted with blood; a dark halo of it spread around him.

In the living room, Christian lay facedown, his driver's license and a crumpled scrap of paper tossed on his back. His wound was almost identical to Daniel's. Perpendicular to him was Laird's body, his toenails nearly touching his hand. He, too, had been shot in the head. Pepsi bottles, noodle-soup containers, and PlayStation controllers lay on the table beside them. Christian's safe was gone.

Detectives investigating the case couldn't help running into Ulysses. He rented a room nearby with his boyfriend. He was a suspect in several other cases, including shootings in October and January. And he was one of at least three people who had been in the Sixth and North Union house after the murders but before the police arrived. On February 8, he told detectives that he'd gone in to pick up any drugs, so the victims' parents wouldn't be upset when police found them.

Soon after, police formally charged Ulysses – not for the Sixth and North Union murders, but for the other shootings he was allegedly involved in. The charges were two counts each of assault in the first degree and unlawful possession of a firearm. Michael posted a note to Daniel's page: We caught 'em baby! Fuck that nigger.

MYSPACE STARTED OUT as a way for indie bands to connect to new fans. But the network and others like it made it so easy to create communities that before long all the halfway-cool teens and early twentysomethings had to have pages of their own. Their relationships now exist as much online as in reality.

With more than 120 million registered users on MySpace, odds dictate that some of them will die by violence. The ghoulish, encyclopedic Web site MyDeathSpace chronicles about 600 victims and more than 35 accused, convicted, or executed murderers with MySpace profiles. A year after Virginia Commonwealth University freshman Taylor Behl was found murdered in September 2005, friends were still posting messages to her page saying how much they missed her. Ryan Dallas Cook's crew still write him notes about their trips to Vegas and Disneyland; he died in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident in October 2005.

Other social networks are quickly piling up their own tragedies and online afterlives. Classmates of 23-year-old Jason Shephard, strangled to death in September, share memories and pictures on Facebook, as do friends of John and Kevin Frazza, whose father shot them to death and then killed himself in July.

Law enforcement authorities across the country turn to MySpace for help with roughly 150 criminal probes a month. In the Daniel case, police spent hours on the victims' MySpace pages. All those comments and pictures posted from the Sixth and North Union PC gave officers a map of the victims' interconnected social landscape. On February 9, two days after the murders, detectives asked MySpace to freeze the accounts of everyone involved to help in "determining possible suspects as well as assist in determining the time frame for the crime."

Daniel's family and friends reached out to him in the digital netherworld as soon as they found out he was dead. They flocked to his MySpace page to express their sorrow and vent their outrage. You were supposed to be here this weekend, Deanne wrote. DAMMIT! Why didn't you just go home?

It went this way for months. Daniel's circle kept leaving messages on his page as if he were still replacing engines and dancing silly at raves. Michael was especially forlorn: I slept in your bed last night … and sprayed armani cologne everywhere so it smelled like you.

They told him about their vacations, asked him car repair questions, even described the sunny weather outside and the cheese eggs they cooked for breakfast. "Darren and Daniel put so much of themselves into those pages – 'This is who I am, this is the music I like, these are my friends' – that it's like a little piece of them is still here," Deanne explains. "That's how we talked, anyway, the last few months. I'm just picking up where we left off."

Maybe Deanne was trying to avoid grief by holding on to her brother's digital shell. So what if she was? "That 'get on with life,' 'get rid of it' stuff? The whole concept doesn't seem to work anymore," says Connie Saindon, founder of the San Diego-based Survivors of Violent Loss Program. "If there are statues of George Washington, why can't we keep these people around, too?"

DEANNE had been through tragedy before. In July 2001, Lydia Braschler-Varo, Deanne and Danny's 13-year-old sister, was kidnapped. The following April, a man in search of wild mushrooms found her body dumped down a 70-foot ravine; she had been beaten and strangled with a telephone cord. The horrible events made headlines, but there was hardly anyone to share Deanne's pain. "I had a baby, still nursing," she remembers. "I just clung to her."

The flood of newfound friends sometimes made Deanne uncomfortable. Who were all these people? I was having a decent day today until I came on here. I didn't cry once. I was scrolling down my page, and saw all the comments my brother put on my page. I keep pretending to everyone that I'm okay. When I sit all alone as I am right now, the pain comes over me. I don't feel like I will ever heal.

Over the weeks that followed, Deanne cataloged her grief: the decision to put school on hold, the endless questions from her kids, the days spent smoking and absent-mindedly staring at the TV. She dyed her hair pink and got a tattoo of a fairy across her china-white back – its design includes the initials of her baby brother and sister. And knowing who was responsible for her brother's death did little to help her sort out her feelings; after all, nothing would bring her brother back.

Michael, Daniel's boyfriend, kept a blog, too. And his feelings were intense. Michael knew Ulysses; he even called him from jail to deny his involvement in the murders. Michael poured his anger onto Ulysses' MySpace page. I was fuckin nice to you, i hung out with you, i bought you shit, you called me … and then you fuckin MURDERED my boyfriend you piece of shit. 666? Hellraiser? I thought you were a fuckin freak when i saw that shit, and this just confirms it. Have fun playin with the devil now.

But Ulysses had defenders, too – especially since the papers continued to report that police had no suspects in the case. HEY I KNOW U BOUT TO BE OUT SOON. AND BUST A CAP ON THESE DUMB ASS MUTHAFUCKAS!!!!!!

In many murders, victims and their killers are acquainted: wife shoots husband, crack dealer stabs customer, pimp strangles streetwalker. So you would expect some interaction among the friends and relatives of the perpetrator and the victim. In fact, typically there's little. Even after intra-family crimes, relatives tend to choose sides and stay on them. "People distance themselves," says Charles Figley, head of Florida State University's Traumatology Institute. "The ties that bind people – births, marriages – split apart because of a catastrophe."

On social network sites, those sides interact. Victims' buddies can howl at killers' cousins, and the cousins can scream back. "All the old social relationship models and theories don't apply anymore," Figley adds. "We're rewriting textbooks here."

TWO WEEKS AFTER MICHAEL announced that Ulysses had been "caught," police still hadn't charged him with the Sixth and North Union killings. But after interviews with Ulysses' roommates, relatives, and MySpace friends, the detectives were closing in. On February 22, they brought Sirree in for questioning.

He began to cry almost immediately. "No one deserves to die like that," Sirree sobbed. Yes, he had been at Christian's place that night, along with Ulysses and two others. Yes, he gave Ulysses a gun. As Sirree drove around the neighborhood looking out for cops, Ulysses went inside – he later told reporters the full story.

The people who'd been with Sirree outside the house confirmed much of that chronology. Police recovered the safe and charged Sirree on February 24, hours before Daniel'smemorial.

On Ulysses' MySpace page, Daniel and Christian's crew ranted against the accused killer. Even though the evidence was lining up against Ulysses, his defenders kept posting. He didn't kill them, they said. Ulysses had gone back inside the house after the murders, but so had several others. Duy N., a friend of Ulysses and Daniel stopped by around 1 pm after receiving a call from Michael asking if he had seen his boyfriend. He knocked on the door, then looked through the window blinds. Duy saw the bodies on the floor and went inside the house. After trying to call 911 and failing, he called Laird, who was then living back home in Oregon. He says he told him to wait for him; Michael says he misunderstood. Either way, when he arrived three hours later, he called the police.

Other accused murderers have found themselves defended on social networks, too. Hours after police arrested 21-year-old Brandon Menard on suspicion of stabbing his parents and sister to death in August, friends were vehemently proclaiming his innocence on his MySpace page. Laura Rangel, the mother of a 23-year-old murder suspect in Oakland, California, posted police reports and transcripts of witness interviews on MySpace, which seemed to weaken the case against her daughter. The local prosecutor fought to have the page shut down. But that only served to draw more press coverage and outside interest.

The MySpace pages related to the Sixth and North Union killings also attracted gawkers. Some were just curious, like the spectators who sit in the back of a courtroom during a trial. But others had an agenda. The "Ludwigapalooza" pranksters, who gathered on the Xanga.com and MySpace pages of murderer David Ludwig, claimed they were out to undermine the "mob mentality" that takes over whenever an accused killer has a social network site. Exactly how this goal was accomplished by posting TEXAS MOTHAFUCKAS!!!!! on Ulysses' page is unclear.

More unsettling to Deanne and Michael were the Internet sleuths. In the summer of 2005, a group spearheaded by Atlanta opera singer turned crime blogger Steve Huff used Web postings to plot the movements of pedophile Joseph Edward Duncan III and to link him to an eight-year-old unsolved murder. Less than a week after the Sixth and North Union murders were announced, Huff put together a reasonable sketch of what had happened, citing nothing but MySpace and a local TV news report. But Michael resented what commenters on Huff's site were saying. They wondered aloud why Daniel's friends didn't call police to the scene right away – and whether the victims somehow brought this upon themselves. There once was a saying: live by the gun … die by the gun.

Michael responded: Get your facts straight before you go bashing on people you dont even know. And Huff came to her defense, blasting commenters on his own site. If you are coming here looking to bitch about something inappropriate or strange in a victims' life … you can go someplace else.

Following the links from the crime sites to Daniel's and Laird's pages, people naturally found Deanne's blog. After an August mention on MyDeathSpace, Deanne's readership went from about a dozen a day to several hundred. For her, that was too many eyes. Those posts had too much out there for everyone to read, Deanne blogged. I deleted them all.

IT'S A SUNNY THURSDAY in late July. A half-dozen tricked-out trucks and hand-tooled street racers pull up to Deanne's tan ranch house, one by one. People Deanne has known for years – like Daniel's jailhouse buddy Mike W., sporting spiderweb tattoos and a wife-beater – mingle with the gay guys who helped plan Daniel's raceway memorial.

Everyone trades stories about Daniel– the time he shot a friend in the ass with a paintball gun, the ride to the hospital he gave a stranger, the stray cat he took home as a kid that multiplied into 27, the shot glasses he brought back from San Francisco. Michael shows off the new tattoo on the inside of his lip – and the dv inked on his arm. Folks pass cases of beer, throw chicken on the grill, and pop wheelies on built-from-scratch motorcycles. Deanne moves from group to group, doling out hugs, barking orders. From a boom box, Snoop Dogg shouts at everyone not to stop. "At least there's some good that's come out of something so tragic," Deanne says to me. "We're all here."

On Sunday, Deanne and I climb into her 2004 Chevy Malibu and head north on I-5. She cuts across lanes and darts through traffic at 90 miles an hour all the way to Rochester, Washington. We reach a cemetery the size of a gridiron, lined with pine trees. The family can't afford a headstone; no epitaph marks Daniel Jacob Daniel's grave. There's just a purple pinwheel and a stuffed blue bunny in a corner of the grass.

Six weeks later, she calls to tell me about a dream she had about her brother. "It was really vivid. And he kept saying to me, over and over, 'You can always talk to me when I'm gone.'"

The same day, police report that Ulysses will plead guilty to three counts of aggravated first-degree murder and accept three consecutive life sentences, one for each of his victims.

Deanne posts a message on her brother's MySpace page: It's done.

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While none of these things came true and our computers all survived the roll over, the millennium has produced some incredible technological advancement. Today we do use the Internet to check the surf, order boards, watch contests and a million other things. And possibly more than any other single event in modern surfboard history, the closing of Clark foam has ushered in a thousand new forms of hard-goods technology that already has changed the landscape of surfboard creation and sales forever. Yes, we certainly are living in the millennium that we were promised, just a couple years after the big boom.

In addition to these new boards, websites and companies, another explosion in the modern surf world has surely been the discovery of new waves. Just a few years ago when Mavericks burst on to the scene as the premier big wave in North America, it seemed hard to imagine that there were still waves out there that we had not yet found. Fast forward a decade later and with programs like Quiksilver's crossing and Billabong's Odyssey, we now know that we are only peeking at the tip of the iceberg and that there are, in fact, thousands of waves we still have yet to discover. As recently as last year the Quiksilver Crossing's, captain Martin Daily was rumored to have said that he had stumbled across a warm-water Jeffery's Bay and a northern hemisphere Pipeline.

So last year when rumors of a beyond-perfect right-hand dredger on the Pacific Coast began to circulate, they weren't taken lightly. In fact, the mystery wave that quickly became the talk of online chat rooms and parking lots across North America would soon become known as ?somewhere in Mexico.

With all this technology and all these modern advancements in our sport, it's hard to believe that it took this long for the secret wave down south to make it onto the international scene, but it did. And that same technology that allows us to check the surf from our desks and watch the Mick fanning's third round heat at Snapper Rocks was the culprit that exposed this treasure to the world.

This year Rip Curl decided to hold it's mobile ASP WCT event at this nameless spot titled only 'Somewhere in Mexico,' and it risked exposing a great spot to have a truly great contest. The results were phenomenal, and depending on how you look at it, the incredibly perfect surf that they scored could be viewed as the worst thing in the world for this last secret spot.

The Rip Curl Pro got underway in head-high surf that resembled a mix of perfect Snapper Rocks with Dredging SandSpit. Hard to believe? Sure, but it's absolutely true. After more than a week of surfing this idyllic spot, the world's best all agreed that this is definitely one of, if not, the BEST wave on the planet. And here it was, right under our noses all along.

With the discovery of this spot, surf magazines and journalists have been put in a sticky situation. It's the job and obligation of a surf magazine to report on the best events and places around the world. And surely news of a spot like this is worthy of reporting on, but who throws the first stone? Who runs the first photo? This amazing spot has been someone's secret until last year. Just imagine some of the sessions that the lucky locals and tight-lipped travelers who have known about this spot have had.

Surf spots will continue to pop up. Whole new territories will burst on to the scene. Where will be next is as good a guess as anyone's. But with this new age of 24-hour information and instant accessibility, it's a pretty safe bet that whatever is left out there won't be left for too much longer. The incredible wave that is now known simply as: 'somewhere in Mexico' became an overnight superstar and has already created some new travel agencies on its back in just a few short months.

Will the next super spot be discovered here in North America? Closer than we think? Better? Bigger? Only time will tell.

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