keepingfaith

He mentioned that he got drunk after CApp and said to remind him to tell that story next time. No doubt he'll be reminded!

Wait til you get a load of Graceland! I was there in the '90's and wondered how Elvis fit that much gaudy, tacky stuff into his rather small mansion.

Did Clay get flak? I thought it was just a faction of his "fans" who gave him a hard time about it. Most everyone else who commented (that I read or saw) thought it was already known, "no news," etc. I figure that's the same general response Anderson will receive, a ho-hum. That was a great letter to Andrew Sullivan. Kudos to Cooper.

Is anyone here familiar with The New No. 2 and their upcoming album The Fear of Missing Out? I ran upon them quite by accident this morning through Twitter. I KNOW that some here will love this (luckiest1 comes to mind). I first came to this page http://thenewno2.com/preorder and wondered how a new group could afford to be this bold. So I clicked on to "continue to thenewno2.com and down the left side of the page is music to listen before the July 31st release. You can even download Make it Home if you like them on Facebook. Okay, start with Make it Home. Then click on photos and see who this is! So what do you think?

MUAH, liney23. I feel the same about YOU! I wonder if Brian Henson likes Clay enough to cast him in his new R-rated puppet and person movie? Could be awesome! http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/26/12417778-dont-call-them-muppets-but-henson-creations-set-to-star-in-r-rated-movie?lite Okay, so I forgot how to shorten and rename the links. I'm rusty!

And they are SO disappointed in him. He must have had some kind of breakdown, you know. Who is HE to like and defend his own personal friends? What kind of Idol is he, by God! It's apparently some strange tragic farce.

My feelings too. To hear that this sort of thing happened with Ruben in the early days makes me go ... whah?. To quote John Lennon, "You must have learned something in all those years." And I think the first learned lesson should have been that an artist's life does not revolve around "fans." To expect first consideration for "fans," at all times, is delusional. How is that so hard?

I'm convinced that FCA is the last outpost for the sane and responsible Clay Aiken fans.

Yes. Insane is a good word for it. In other news, HAPPY BIRTHDAY COUCHIE ! ! ! Hope your birthday is Insane Fun!!

New names mentioned as possible cast members that have popped up today: George Takei Penn Jillette Arsenio Hall

I like Jaymes. I LOVED the way she interacted with fans after Clay came out. She's the mother of his son, his dear friend, and has been his recording partner since 2005. So many fans are OTT protective of Clay, and they don't even know the real man. She does. I have always had a lot of admiration for her, and especially when she kicked ass at the OFC. I was glad it pissed off the guilty parties -- the ones who made it all about THEM. I mean, really, doesn't everybody know it's all about treenuts? :thbighug-1:

I've missed a lot of Clay stuff because I couldn't afford it, or because work interfered, or because it entailed connecting flights which I don't do. I wanted to go to Vegas, but couldn't. I wanted to go to the OMG concert, but work prohibited that. I'd like to go to Raleigh for the gala this year, but December is a very bad month for me, which is why I've never been to a Christmas concert either. Clay doesn't owe me diddly. I'm a big girl and I don't whine or stomp my feet, and I don't play with people who do. Age isn't mellowing me.

Now THAT is hilarious. CMSU! Congrats on a great question, LdyJ! Given Supreme Court rulings, the 2011 person of the year could be a corporation. However, I would give it to "The Arab Spring" - because that's actually real people. You know what they say .... Corporations can't be people until Texas executes one of 'em. Raiseyou hand if you're shocked. LOL. Hand not in the air. I'm happy for you, merrieeee! But, as always, I do expect a personal phone call just to hear you eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee when it's over. We don't have long to wait until it's January and time for the new single. I just hope the fandom doesn't start eating its young before we get there. I know, I know. But it's John Lennon's birthday and I'm holding out hope for peace and love with some harmony on the side. I'm such a dreamer.

I miss you too, Liney. Have a great day.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes. I had a lovely day today. The weather was gorgeous for a change, but I spent most of it indoors having a 3 hour lunch at Ninfa's on Navigation with a couple of friends - including Desertrose. Treenuts, glad YOU are keeping the faith, baby, with a lemondrop martini. I did my best to uphold your lofty standards today ... I think I succeeded. LdyJ, I had my first birthday wish today from YOU. I appreciate you so very much. jmh, I don't "see" enough of you these days. Thanks for the acknowledgement of my faithkeeping. I'm a happy trooper, you know! Fear ... one day I'm gonna get to meet you and jmh ... it's overtime for that! Caro, thank you too. I'm ready for Clay to get busy, so I can get busy again here at FCA. Whatever he's doing, I'm ready. I just miss him so much. Of course, I have my preferences, which begin and end with I want to see Clay looking his hot best ... SOON!

It's about all of us. If it were up to me, I'd rather see him on TV singing on DWTS than to see him for 10 weeks on a trumped up reality show. I don't even want to think about it. I do like to think that a Broadway announcement is forthcoming ... soon. Just now listening to Traffic's "Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave" just after "Roamin' Tho' The Gloamin' With 40,000 Headman." Wow does this make the past come alive. My iTunes is running amok and I love it. Well, I think the "unveiling" at the gala will have nothing to do with the big news, except tangentially. I think he's been studying piano and will unveil his new talents, singing while accompanying himself on the piano, at the gala. This may or may not have anything to do with the big news, but it would be big news all by itself. If he plays an instrument and sings, he can write music. This fits "unveiling" more than anything else I can think of. "Dear Mr. Fantasy" ...

Clay first talks about big news in the next few weeks that we'll be as excited about as he is. He follows that moving the gala date facilitated new aspects of the evening's production. He talks about updating pictures and the bio at the OFC because a lot of new people will be coming to look. At the end he says there will be news in the next week or so from NIP and the OFC. So ... I don't think the gala news is what it's all about. I think it's part of the news he has, but it's not his career announcement. Big news in the next few weeks that will have me as excited as he is ... won't be about the gala or any pissant reality show. I think the gala news will come first because that's up to him. I think the career news will be in the "next few weeks" because that will come from somewhere else, if it's what I want it to be -- a starring role in a NEW Broadway musical.

If he's going to have "news" in the next week or so, I'm hoping it has something to do with the casting of this: I've also read speculation that Clay was hiding behind the "Jersey Mike's" bag because he's joining the cast of Jersey Boys. I so hope it is one of these and not that he's going to join that crappy Trump quasi-reality show. I couldn't stand the thought of Clay being so desperate as to be on the show of a creepy homophobic narcissist. I'm praying over this one.

I'm just saying what I feel and think. I had a very emotional experience with Schindler's List - and it took me weeks to get it out of my head, which is not a bad thing. For me it wasn't entertainment; it was more important than that. I didn't like Saving Private Ryan at all, so it's just subjective, you know. My dad didn't see Private Ryan because it was still too fresh for him after 50+ years. He's a 91 year old former Marine, and he still doesn't like to talk about what happened in WWII. At the other end of the spectrum, my dad refused to watch John Wayne war movies, because he said they were fairy tales that gave people the wrong idea about the realities of war. Propaganda is all around us, and we live in it and drink it up for the most part. But when I can clearly identify it, I reject it. That doesn't mean I expect other people to reject it. But, I'll always speak my mind, and hope that others don't object to that.

I grew up in the segregated South and don't have any interest in watching glorifications of it. I'm glad those days are gone, and there's nothing close to entertainment value in it for me. To see how it really was, I recommend watching documentaries, such as Eyes on the Prize. There were whites-only everything in those days of hatred and ignorance -- restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, motels, bowling alleys, skating rinks, you name it. White and black people did not use the same restrooms, even at gas stations, or drink from the same water fountains in public places such as parks and zoos. People did not attend the same schools, or the same churches, much less live in the same neighborhoods. And I've been on city buses at a time when black people could only sit in the back. Black people could shop at Foley's department store downtown, but they could not eat at the lunch counter, and black children didn't sit on Santa's lap. There was nothing heart-warming about any of it. I recall during the 70's and the national debate over the Equal Rights Amendment, that it failed due to a big campaign from the Eagle Forum types who argued that this would force women and men to go to the same public restrooms. This struck me as beyond hypocritical since these were the same groups who had no problem in the 1950's with three bathrooms in public places --- Men, Ladies, and Colored. They didn't think it was so terrible that black men and women went to the same public restroom. I grew up with a ringside seat to this awfulness as a child, although, thankfully, I had enlightened, liberal parents. In Houston in the 1950's and early 60's, my family often ate at a barbecue joint called The Lockwood Inn, owned by a black family in a black neighborhood. This place did a sizeable trade with the white community because they served the best pit barbecue in town. But, and here is what shocks me to this day, it was whites only dining room, and black patrons picked up barbecue to go from a window in the back. I was disgusted by that when I was eight years old, and I still have a hard time believing that people tolerated that stuff as long as they did. I still bristle when I hear something like, "Give that to the black lady," or black woman or man. I heard someone in a store not that long ago tell his child, "Go ask the colored lady." I said, "You mean the lady in the green dress?" It pisses me off. The South has greatly benefited from interracial marriages -- of all kind. I know some people whose opinions changed dramatically with the arrival of a mixed-race grandchild. As John Lennon wrote in "Mind Games" -- Love is the answer, and you know that, for sure! I highly recommend the following linked documentary that develops into a study of the work, and ultimate murder, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It's free to watch, and is educational beyond anything taught in any school. It is two hours in length and full of stuff you don't know and wonder why you don't. It begins, the first 8 or 9 minutes, with pictures of men hanged, and video of some of the violence of the struggle for civil rights, and the unbelievably despicable behavior of bigots, which is hard to watch but necessary to the subject. I've watched this several times and each time I get more out of it. In light of the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial in Washington later this week, I think it's extremely timely. It's hard to get the truth told in this country. It's called "Evidence of Revision" -- because there it is in black and white, no pun intended, but there it is. You may be shocked, but the whole world needs to see this. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4920540616782600949

Melissa Harris-Perry (who I ADORE!) argues that the movie makes it seem like Real Housewives of Jackson, Mississippi when it was actually rape, lynching and other horrors. "What kills me," she concluded, "is that in 2011 the great Viola Davis is reduced to playing a maid." These were her tweets from the theater: To each his own, but this just isn't my kind of entertainment, and never has been.

Just to throw in my two cents ... I haven't read "The Help" -- and don't intend to, or to see the movie. I listened to Melissa Harris-Perry's review and then read an article from the Society of Black Women Historians, then got a personal review from my friend who saw it and found it embarrassingly bad. So, that's three strikes. I was at one time considering a download of the book, but when I read that it's written in dialect, that ended that. What? Y'all didn't know I was opinionated?

I enjoy Brooke Elliot's characterization of Jane .... a woman with two separate minds in her head. One is that of a selfish, gorgeous model who was killed in a car wreck on her way to a Price is Right tryout, and she was engaged to lawyer Grayson. The other is that of a plain Jane legal genius who wore no makeup and dressed to be ignored, and who was killed by taking a bullet for her philandering boss, and she had recommended Grayson for a job at her law firm before her accident. The turns she makes between thinking and responding as "Deb" and alternatively as "Jane" are amazing to me. I think her expression is cute when she changes from her self-centered and shallow identity to the creative legal mind - and back again. It reminds me of Liz Montgomery's nose twitch in Bewitched. I LOVE Fred.

From President Obama:

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